Black Out: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  “Anyway, I came to bring you this,” he says. He walks over and hands me a folded piece of paper. I unfold it and look at it for a second. It’s a check in the amount of the money he blackmailed from us.

  I try to give it back. “Keep it,” I say. “Pay us back when you’re on your feet.”

  He raises a hand. “No. This is right. I need to do the right thing by you. I promised my wife.”

  I nod my understanding, put the check down beside me. We are silent for a minute, awkward, neither of us knowing what to say. Our relationship is so bizarre we have no template for polite conversation.

  “There are things I can tell you,” he says. He’s doing that rocking business he does, has stuffed his hands in his pockets. “But maybe you don’t want to know. Maybe you just want to move forward with your life from here.”

  I haven’t spoken to Drew or Vivian since the night we left their home. Gray has asked his father to buy out his interest in Powers and Powers, and Drew has agreed. Drew has refused to talk any further about his relationship to Grief Intervention Services, how he knew about Victory’s paternity, or to offer any explanation of the things that have happened to me. Gray has tried to find some explanations through avenues of his own but has come up against wall after wall. We have both decided that for the sake of our family, of protecting Victory, there are things we’ll just have to live with never knowing.

  “I thought I was going to be in the dark for the rest of my life,” Harrison says, pacing the room. “But I had a visitor the other day to my new office.”

  “Who?”

  “An old friend of yours,” he says with a wry smile. “She’s no friend of mine, of course. But she brought me this.”

  “Ella?” I ask eagerly. “Where is she? The hurricane shutters are down on her house. She’s been gone for weeks. I haven’t had a call or an e-mail. We’re going to have to leave without saying good-bye.”

  He gives a cryptic shake of his head. “I don’t know what her plans are. I’m sure you’ll hear from her, though, Annie. One of these days.”

  As he takes another piece of paper from his pocket and gives it to me, my headache intensifies. This time it’s a picture, a blurry black-and-white photograph of two boys in fatigues, arms around each other’s shoulders, one smiling, one grim. It takes me a second to figure out who I’m looking at. For a second, I think one of the men is Gray. But then I recognize them—Drew Powers and Alan Parker, younger, thinner, barely resembling the men they became. Someone had scribbled in the corner, Bassac River, 1967, Vietnam.

  “I don’t understand,” I say, feeling suddenly as though the ground has shifted beneath me. “What does this mean?”

  “They served together on SEAL Team One in Vietnam. They’ve known each other most of their lives.”

  I’m struggling with this information, trying to understand how everything fits together. But my head is aching so badly I can hardly concentrate.

  “I have a theory,” he says. “Want to hear it?”

  I don’t really, but I find myself giving a half nod.

  “I think, years ago, when Alan Parker wanted revenge for the murder of his daughter, he came to Drew, his old war buddy. Drew had already founded Powers and Powers at that point, and it was a thriving private military firm. Based on some digging I’ve done, I think Drew hired out one of his men to Parker to track down Marlowe Geary—a man named Simon Briggs. Later, when Parker started Grief Intervention Services, Powers and Powers provided the muscle needed to help people face those who had injured them or their loved ones. Vigilantes, basically.”

  I think about this. It makes sense somehow to me that they knew each other. I can see them, both controlling, arrogant men, thinking that what they did was motivated by love for their children, never understanding that love and control are two different things.

  “Then it was just a coincidence that my father met with Gray and asked him to help me?” I say with a shake of my head. “No.”

  Harrison hangs his head for a second. He seems to be debating whether to say what he wants to say. Then, “Your father, Teddy March, also known as Bear. He served on the same SEAL team in Vietnam.

  I laugh at this. “No,” I say. “Not my father.”

  But then I remember all the times he talked about the Navy SEALs, all his Vietnam stories. I thought they were lies. I never once believed him.

  Detective Harrison has another photograph. In the picture I see my father, Drew, and some other men I don’t recognize sitting in a boat heading down a gray river surrounded by jungle. They are grim, intent, uncomfortable. My father is a boy with the stubble of a beard, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He is lithe, muscular, with dark eyes and square jaw. Drew looks like a heavier, less appealing version of my husband—like a young bulldog with a stern brow and mean eyes.

  “These men, these fathers, all searching for their kids,” says Harrison, drifting over toward the glass doors leading to the deck. “Alan Parker’s daughter murdered by Frank Geary, Teddy March’s daughter held in the thrall of Marlowe Geary, Drew Powers’s son far from the fold, estranged for years. They all had a common purpose, to do right by their kids in the ways that they could.”

  I think about this, the deviousness and planning, the deception that it took to make all this happen.

  “And how was it that both you and Melissa fell prey to the Gearys? Coincidence, maybe. Or maybe it was their karma, their bond? I don’t know, but it’s poetic in its way, isn’t it?”

  That’s our karma, our bond. Marlowe’s words come back to me.

  Harrison goes on, “The only thing they didn’t plan for was Gray falling in love with you.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say, even though, on a cellular level, it does. “There are too many variables, so many coincidences. Did my father go to Drew for help, too? Is that how he connected to Gray? They used me to draw Gray in, knowing he couldn’t resist the idea of rescuing a lost girl?”

  “Paul Broward—your Dr. Brown—he had a lot of experience with manipulating people’s psyches. You should know that better than anyone.”

  My emotions—a terrible alchemy of impotent anger, disbelief, and fear—must be playing on my face, because suddenly Harrison seems to regret coming. He looks over toward the door, then back at me, and raises his palms.

  “I’m sorry, Annie. You know what? It’s just a theory. I’m talking out of my ass.”

  “What about Briggs?” I ask quickly, still turning his words over, still trying to punch holes in his theories.

  “A longtime employee of Powers and Powers, that much I do know for a fact. Maybe Gray wasn’t aware of that. When he couldn’t figure out who Briggs worked for, he killed him fearing for your safety.”

  I feel exhausted, and my head is pounding now, accompanied by a terrible ringing in my ears. I try to think about what all this might mean, that we’ve been under the control of these men, my father included, since before Gray and I ever met. It hurts too much to think about, and I feel myself powering down emotionally. I’m grateful.

  “As for me, I made a nuisance of myself,” Harrison said. “And they laid waste to my life.”

  I think about what Sarah Harrison told me, how Ella attacked Ray with a Taser. I’ve hardly known what to do with that information. I’ve wanted to confront her, but she’s gone. Who was she, this woman I called a friend? I can feel my chest constricting. Ever since the smoke inhalation, my lungs ache when I get upset. I struggle to slow my breathing. Harrison seems to sense my discomfort.

  “Look,” he says, moving toward the front door, “maybe you should consider yourself lucky at this point, Annie. Move on, you know? My life is a train wreck. But you, you’ve exorcised your demons—you’ve won. You can walk away with your family and start over.”

  I laugh. It sounds harsh and bitter as it bounces back to me. “You mean just forget all this? I think we’ve seen how that works out.”

  “Not a denial, Annie,” he says. “A rebirth.”

  I
get up and walk to the back glass doors, watch the waves lick the shore. I take the salt air into my lungs and wonder if Detective Harrison might be right.

  “Is it possible?” I ask him. “Is it possible to cast it all off and start again—the new and improved Annie? Or will it come creeping after me again one day when I least expect it?”

  I listen to my voice echo in the empty room. Harrison doesn’t answer me.

  I keep looking at the shoreline. I lose myself in thought for a moment and notice that my headache is lifting.

  “Maybe it is possible,” I say, answering my own question.

  “Annie?”

  I turn around to see Gray standing behind me with an odd expression, something between amusement and worry. We are alone.

  “Who are you talking to?” he asks.

  The headache I had is gone, but it is replaced with a rush of panic. As I walk past him, he reaches for my arm, but I slip by. I lift the three pieces of paper from the couch, two receipts from the grocery store and a baby picture of Victory. Not a check, not old pictures of Vietnam.

  I sweep the room again with my eyes, wondering if Detective Harrison will come out of the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee. But no. I crumple the papers and shove them into my pocket. I walk to the front window and see that Gray’s car has blocked the driveway. I can’t bring myself to ask if another car was parked on the street when he arrived.

  “Annie,” Gray says, walking over to me. His tone is more insistent now. “Who were you talking to?”

  I find it difficult to answer; the words won’t come. I’m in a tunnel of dawning, swallowed by a stone-cold understanding of my own twisted psyche, a realization that Ray Harrison was exactly who I needed him to be.

  “Do you remember Ray Harrison?” I ask, trying to keep my voice level. I find I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes. I lean against the window’s edge for support.

  He looks confused for a minute, seems to search his memory for the name. Then, “The cop? The one who answered the 911 call—the one with all the questions?”

  I nod slowly. “Did you ever see him again—after he came that morning?”

  Gray frowns. “Me? No. Why would I?”

  I hear blood rushing in my ears. “Did you ever give him any money?”

  Gray releases a little laugh. “No,” he says, surprised. “Of course not.”

  I walk over to the back of the house, look at the ocean and the white sand. The ground beneath me seems soft, unstable.

  “Annie, what’s this about?”

  “The night—” I begin, then stop. I was going to say the night you killed Briggs but I don’t want to say those words out loud. “When you said all threats had been neutralized, you meant Briggs.”

  Gray is behind me, his hands on my shoulders now. “Why are we talking about this?”

  “Just answer me,” I say quickly.

  I hear him release a breath. “Yes, that’s what I meant.”

  I lean against him, my back to his front. “What’s happened?” he whispers.

  But I can’t bring myself to say the words. I can’t bring myself to tell him about the Ray Harrison I knew. Not now, not when my husband has started to believe in my sanity for maybe the first time.

  “Annie,” Gray says, insistent now as he spins me around to face him, lifts my face to his. He looks frightened; it’s not an expression I’m used to seeing on him. “What’s going on? Who were you talking to when I came in?”

  I force a smile, a bright and happy one, and I see his fear start to melt away, his eyes brighten.

  “I don’t know,” I say lightly. “I must have been talking to myself.”

  Epilogue

  Victory and I walk up Eleventh Street from our brownstone on Tompkins Square Park, heading for school. It is a crisp fall day in New York City, the sky a crayon drawing of blue air and puffy white clouds. Cabdrivers lean on their horns, birds sing in the trees lining the streets, children yell on the playground as we approach. Victory is chattering about how much she likes her new shoes and book bag. She wonders, “Do you have snack and naptime at your new school, too?” I tell her, “No, enjoy it while you can.” Naptime is one of the many casualties of adulthood.

  I leave her at the bright green doors and watch as she runs down a happily muraled hallway to her teacher, a lovely older woman with graying hair, café au lait skin, and the lilt of a Jamaican accent. She has the warmest smile for my daughter.

  “Victory!” Miss Flora exclaims. “I love your shoes!”

  “Thank you!” says Victory, shooting a pleased glance back my way. I don’t feel the terrible twinge I used to feel when I leave my daughter. Not yet a year after we have left Florida, I feel like we own this life we live in New York. I won’t be dying again until it’s my time for good. Hopefully, I have a while.

  I continue down Eleventh and turn left on University Place, on my way to class at NYU. I blend in easily with the crowd of tourists and shoppers and students, New Yorkers of every size and color and style. I am home here in a way that I have never been in Florida. I love the cold air and the changing leaves, the smell of the vendors’ honey-roasted nuts, the rumble of the subway beneath my feet.

  We have left Gray behind in the brownstone, affectionately referred to as the money pit. We bought it cheap by New York City standards, but we’ll be renovating indefinitely, tearing it apart inside to re-create it, to make it ours. This is something with which I’m quite familiar. In the meantime Gray is using the top floor as the office for his private-investigation firm. He already has a few clients. I’ll be happy if his desk doesn’t fall through the ceiling onto our bed below.

  I enter the white building on University Place and wait for the elevator. I had to fight hard to get into this school, but good test scores, a compelling essay, and a little bit of begging made up for a blotchy transcript, a GED, and a degree from a Florida community college. I am studying for my master’s in psychology. I’m also conducting an internship with the Ophelia Foundation (believe it or not), which is dedicated to helping young girls who have experienced abuse, abandonment, and trauma. I find the work healing in ways I couldn’t begin to explain. With all my vast experience, I consider myself uniquely qualified for this profession.

  I move with the throng into the large classroom and find a seat toward the back. I take my notebook and my new pen, a gift from Gray, out of my bag. Today we’ll be discussing trauma and the various ways in which the personality seeks to defend and heal itself. The other day my professor made an interesting comment: “No one ever talks about issues like dissociative identity disorder, fugue, or psychotic breaks in anything but the most negative light. No one ever talks about how the personality does this type of thing to protect itself, to save itself, or how powerful and effective it is.”

  I must say I agree. I have a therapist now, one with whom I’m actually honest, and we’ve been over the events of my life again and again—rehashing without judgment the things I’ve done, the things that have been done to me, and how I ultimately saved myself. We’ve talked about all the players, the archetypes both real and imagined, and the roles they have played in my illness and recovery. The Terrible Mother. The Absent Father. The Rescuer. The Destroyer. The Lost Girl.

  The truth is that I may never be fully able to discern between the actual events—or people—in my recent life and the dreams created by my psyche to heal itself. Sometimes I’m not sure it matters. Take Ella, for example: Other than Gray, she’s the only true friend I’ve ever had. Though, naturally, her sudden and total disappearance from my life makes her suspect. I suppose it’s possible that, like Ray Harrison, she was a person I met, someone I knew in passing, and that the fuller relationship we shared was something created in my mind, a fantasy established to fulfill some deep need in my psyche. It’s equally possible that she was someone who worked for Drew, someone hired to keep tabs on me; this is what Gray believes, though he has no evidence or knowledge to support his theory. Sometimes I search my memory fo
r clues that might have indicated that my friendship was a fantasy—like the white shock of hair my imaginary Ray Harrison had, or the searing headaches that were the inevitable backdrop to my encounters with him. But there’s nothing like that. Whatever the case, Ella Singer was friend enough that I feel her loss deeply. And that means something in this world. It means a lot.

  I am less hard on myself these days. I try to treat myself the way I treat my daughter—with patience and understanding. I strive to treat my memories of the girl I was in the same way. Ophelia was a damaged young woman who did what she had to for survival. I see a version of her every day at the clinic—with her head hung, her arms wrapped around her middle, her eyes dull. I see her cut herself, starve herself, slit her wrists, poison herself with drugs and alcohol. I know that Victory is not in danger of becoming one of these lost girls. We have taught her to know and value herself, to respect and protect herself. I hope to be better at teaching by example.

  I look around the large classroom, watch the other students tap furiously on laptop computers or chat with their friends before class begins. A girl flirts with the guy behind her while another girl looks on with unmasked envy. Two young men talk heatedly in the corner, one of them gesticulating wildly, the other listening with his hand on his chin. They all seem so put together, so well dressed and healthy. I imagine their idyllic childhoods, their close relationships with parents and siblings. I realize that this is just a fantasy. No one knows the dark places inside others; no one knows what pain, however horrifying or banal, has been visited upon them.

  Last month I claimed my mother’s ashes. She’d been cremated and stored with her belongings at the county morgue. We took her ashes to Rockaway Beach last Sunday and scattered them as the sun rose. I picked this place because it is the setting for the only happy memories I have with both of my parents. I like to think that she remembered those times, too, that sometimes, maybe when she was alone in bed at night, she missed me. I know I have missed her. I loved my mother. And, in her way, I believe she loved me, too.