The Grief of Others

by Leah Hager Cohen

  Still, Paul had hopes of a repeat holiday. For a while he persisted in asking every now and then when they might get together with Jess again. “We’ll have to try to work something out,” his father would say. But when the Ryries went back to Cabruda Lake the following summer it had been without Jess, and no other plans for a visit ever transpired. He began to think of her less frequently, though when he did, the thought still caused a great prick of interest, and continued, in a vague way, to seem like a treat yet to happen, a promise on the horizon. Then one day when he’d been in second or third grade his mother had replied to his latest inquiry, with what he took to be inexcusable offhandedness, that the Safranskys had moved some time ago to California. After that he’d stopped wondering when Jess might visit them again. If he wondered anything, it was how that single summer’s holiday had ever come to happen.

  As he grew older, a few more details of the story had filtered through: how young his father had been at the time of Jess’s conception, and how foolish. That it had been the mother’s decision to raise the baby alone, that she’d actually refused his father’s involvement.That only when the teenage Jess had rebelled, insisting on meeting her birth father, did the mother begrudgingly allow it. And that mere months after the summer at Cabruda Lake, the Safranskys uprooted and moved clear across the country. So that the picture Paul formed of Jess’s mother was of Rapunzel’s witch: a woman so jealous she locked her daughter away from the rest of the world—or, at least, away from the Ryries.

  To see Jess today in real life, real time, to stand before her in the kitchen and have her look so diminished, so ordinary, had been like having a trick played on him. It was like something Stephen Boyd might do: set him up in order to deflate him. It wasn’t so much that Paul had exalted her in his memory; it was that his memory of her had functioned to exalt him. That holiday at Cabruda Lake had become, in the uncanny way of a select few childhood memories, a storehouse of symbolism. They had fallen for each other, the little boy and the teenage girl, in a way that remained unparalleled. He believed that no one since, no friend or teacher or babysitter, not even his parents, not even Baptiste, had seen in him such promise, or reflected back at him such delight. The notion of this Rapunzel, this distant half sister vaguely in need of rescue, who’d seen him more purely than anyone else before or since, had been itself like a promise.

  For her to show up now as she was—shorn, short, pale—and see him as he was—overweight, awkward, acned—was a double blow. He felt duped. He longed for Baptiste to have come home with him, but whether as buffer against Jess or in order to flaunt him before her, Paul didn’t know.

  The cookie had become a perfect disk of chocolate-andcream paste on his tongue. Paul swallowed and inserted another. He slid open the top drawer of his desk, removed a spiral sketchbook and a bottle of Winsor & Newton Black, selected a pen from a mug full of drawing tools, and stuck in a nib. Then he flipped open the sketchbook and riffled through its pages, more than half of which were covered with drawings, or bits of drawings, fits and starts of images and designs that had coalesced, collage-like, into a world of his and Baptiste’s making. There, on one page, crouched the black panther, muscular and scowling in the shadow of a garbage can. There, behind him, stood the private eye, lantern-jawed and stubbled, slouched in his trench coat. Paul dipped his nib in the ink, then blotted it on an old waddedup T-shirt he kept for this purpose. His breath slowed and he brought his head so low the fringe of his bangs brushed the paper. There, on the facing page, with no idea yet of what it would contain, he began to sketch in the next frame.

  5.

  Ricky never crossed the bridge from east to west without seeing herself driving off it. This didn’t happen when she was going in the opposite direction, on the way to work each morning, for example, or when they went to Tarrytown to visit John’s mother, or to Manhattan to visit her parents. But without fail every time she spanned the Hudson in a westerly, homeward direction, she imagined herself pointing the car—or allowing the car to point itself, more like—toward the shoulder, bursting through the guardrail, nosing toward the waves, disappearing from sight. She didn’t imagine anything beyond death, beyond breaking through the silvered surface of the water. She never considered particulars such as the rate at which the car might sink, or flood, or for that matter what the physical sensations would be: the impact, the temperature of the water, how drowning would affect the heart and lungs. The engine of her imagination always cut out at the moment of the car shooting beneath the river’s skin, the moment of her vanishing.

  She’d begun having this fantasy almost a full year earlier, as soon as she’d started back to work after the baby. For the first few months it would come on so strong, so like a premonition or compulsion, she would begin to sweat as soon as she’d passed the tolls at the entrance to the bridge. She was convinced that only the most dedicated act of concentration would keep the car in its lane. Her palms would be wet on the steering wheel, her back muscles tight with effort, the whole way across. Over time the vision of a fatal plunge did not fade, but its fearful grip abated. After a while, not only did it no longer induce sweats, it no longer even disturbed her. In fact its effect was reversed. Familiarity in this case had bred good company. The fantasy became almost a necessary traveling companion, the morbid daydream having taken on the aspect of a good-luck charm.To have it was to ensure that she would get home safely.

  On this afternoon, when she was halfway across the bridge, traffic slowed to a crawl. Ricky leaned back against the headrest and looked out across the river, toward the faraway shore. Earlier that afternoon it had rained. For about ten minutes, the windows of her office had turned nearly opaque with the streaming, and so noisy was the cloudburst that she hadn’t been able to hear Silvio, the risk manager, on the phone; she’d had to call him back. Now the sky had cleared, and the lowering sun shone, apricot-colored, through scudding clouds. She tried to enjoy it, to will herself to experience pleasure from it.Tried to see it (it?—beauty, she supposed) instead of the rush-hour traffic in which she had once again found herself stuck.

  All senior-level staff at Birnbaum and Traux not tied to trading desks were allowed to set their own hours. At least on paper this was true. Ricky had found that in order to get the job done, she could not avoid rising in the dark nearly every month of the year, leaving John still basking in warm slumber, the children still oblivious in their beds. Similarly, she rarely managed to leave the office before six or get home much earlier than seven. As a result, most nights the Ryries ate frozen dinner, take-out, or else John’s simple, mannish fare: hamburgers, spaghetti. This past January she’d made what seemed a perfectly reasonable resolution: she would leave early on Fridays. She’d announced it to her family on New Year’s Day, framing it, if not quite as a concession, then as an offering to John, as though he’d been after her to spend more time at home. Truth was, the resolution had pleased her: the idea of beating traffic, of stopping at the grocery store on the way home and walking into the house with kale and salmon, lemons and fresh bread, making a simple, hot dinner from scratch. One day a week. One single evening on which they could play happy family. Of course—she should have known—this had not turned out.

  Somewhere up ahead a car must have stalled; now traffic halted altogether. Every couple of seconds it inched forward. Someone, somewhere, beeped, as if that might get things going. In fact, the cars ahead of her did begin to flow, slowly at first, then picking up speed. Girders cut the sky into a succession of geometric shapes; as she drove under them the shapes shrunk and pinched off and expanded into other shapes. A sudden bloom of taillights; Ricky braked. Another standstill. Wind sang, ghostlike, through the girders. Ricky thought she could feel the bridge sway. Down below, the breeze spanked curt waves from the surface of the water, and these were spangled by the post-storm light. Hardly noticing she was doing it, Ricky took stock of the distance between her car and the guardrail.

  Her phone rang. She fished inside her bag on the passeng
er seat and checked the ID: HOME.

  Flipping it open, “Hey. I’m on the bridge.”

  “How is it?” John asked. “It looks slow.”

  Ricky wondered at which window he stood. At this time of year, the Tappan Zee was visible from the den as well as from their bedroom upstairs. By late spring, once the trees filled in, only the upstairs window would offer an unimpeded view. For her part, she looked out now beyond the latticework of cables, across the wide river toward Nyack, toward the very spot where she knew their house to be. “Yeah, it’s not really moving. How’s Biscuit?”

  “She’s fine—well. I’ll have to fill you in. She actually fell in—”

  “Sorry?”

  “—the river, sort of.”

  “What?”

  “She went to the Hook.”

  Ricky looked at it through the window: Hook Mountain, jagged and darkly shadowed at this hour. Biscuit had gone there? And fallen in the river? For an ignominious moment Ricky felt she’d been trumped. Wasn’t that her move, the card she’d been hiding up her sleeve? She looked over at the guardrail—perhaps twelve feet away—and then her heart seemed to slow and she was falling through the air, crashing into the river, her limbs tearing the water into soft ribbons that curled apart and knit effortlessly back together in her wake.

  “. . . but she’s fine,” John was saying. “A guy brought her home. Can you hear me?”

  “A guy?”

  “A nice kid. With his dog. It’s been a weird”—he sighed—“well, day. Listen. I mainly called to tell you, to prepare you: Jessica is here. Jess.”

  Ricky, creeping forward, saw that all the cars were merging into the left lane. She put on her blinker. Only when the car in front of her turned did she see the flares in the road, the flashing lights ahead. For once she was thankful for the state law banning cell phone use while driving “Wait. John? I’m going to have to hang up—there’s an accident or something.”

  “Okay. Did you hear what I said about Jess?”

  “Yeah, I just—there’s a police car. Bye.”

  She tossed the phone back in her bag. Had she heard what he said about Jess. Ricky began to cry. Just like that, stupidly and not very convincingly. A swelling behind her nose, a surge of self-pity. A rough bleat loosed itself from her throat: half sob, half bitter laugh. A collapsing feeling in her chest. Everything present but the tears. She waited, but no: tears were not forthcoming. Was she not unhappy?

  As far as Ricky knew, beyond an occasional postcard, twice a year at most, Jess had not communicated with the Ryrie household since she’d moved to California with her parents. Some, what, seven years ago? John rarely spoke of her. Paul never did anymore. Ricky herself hardly even thought of her; sometimes she practically had to remind herself the girl existed: that’s how nominal a factor she was in their lives.Yet the whole time Ricky had been bracing herself for the reappearance of John’s grown daughter, knowing all the while two things with equal certainty: that it was inevitable and that it was a thing to dread—not because the girl was in and of herself dreadful, but because of, well, simple economics: supply and demand. Or for that matter, because of basic maternal instinct, the innate drive to protect her own. No, it was not mean-spirited of her; if anything it was Darwinian. Keynesian. Sensible.

  Here she paused to let a driver merge from the right, signaling him on with a wave. He mouthed his thanks and she was warmed by this acknowledgment of her own magnanimity.

  So Jess was, at this very moment, in her house. Odd. She searched her feelings for discomfort, for violation. She was aware only of a sense of grim vindication. Ever since the vacation they’d all taken together at Cabruda Lake, the prospect of Jess’s reappearance had loomed, Damoclean, above their heads. Never mind that John virtually did not speak of her, let alone pine. Never mind that as the years passed with hardly a sign, hardly a word from the girl, Ricky had almost fooled herself into believing the sword wouldn’t fall. In her heart she had known that one day the single hair on which it was suspended would break, that Jess would reenter their lives, lay claim to them, awaken their rightful shame.

  But that was not quite right. That was not really how the story went. And in fact she did feel something other than grim vindication. Something anticipatory. Eager. A somewhat untoward gleam of possibility renewed.

  Now she was close enough to glimpse the accident, a car and a van at ugly angles. A gurney. A figure inside the car, the front of which was tightly crumpled. A state trooper in a big hat, standing by the driver’s side. Now she was passing it. Crimson flares, diamantine glass salting the asphalt. The stateliness of the paramedics, moving in. Now the right lane opened up again. Now she was past the cantilevers and onto the causeway portion of the bridge. More space between cars, unobstructed sky above. The flashing lights of the ambulance grew small in the rearview mirror. She breathed. It wasn’t that accidents frightened her more now. It was that they made her feel more tired, as if by possessing a fuller understanding of the complexities of loss, she could not help experiencing more particularly the losses of others.

  Ricky had known about John’s out-of-wedlock daughter since early in their relationship, learned of her almost as soon as she and John began seeing each other exclusively.“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said seriously one night, spreading his fingers flat on the purple tablecloth in a little Indian restaurant on East Sixth. Ricky’s stomach had pitched, less from fear than excitement; she’d experienced so little real drama in her life. Over bits of pappadum dipped in chutney, John had told her about the child he’d fathered, a girl by then eight years old. He had, he said, no contact with the child or her mother, a woman he’d been with (his phrase) for only a few months in college. It had been the mother’s decision to raise the child alone; she’d been adamant about wanting no contact, no money, nothing to do with him.

  “Okay,” Ricky had said, wondering whether she ought to mind, whether there was something wrong with her. She’d found the announcement titillating, and the man himself more interesting than she’d hitherto thought.

  It was only later, when she had the affair (or not even affair, but dalliance: a single misguided, electrochemical weekend) three months before their wedding, that John’s having a child with another woman came to seem like a blessing, like good luck. Even, if you went in for this sort of thinking, like part of a grand, intricate design. Meant to be. Because in fact she thought of her affair this way, too: as having about it an aura of inevitability—hadn’t she been built for transgression; didn’t she possess, not outright badness, but an errant streak? Wasn’t this the message she’d received indirectly again and again from her mother and father, her judicious, compassionate, secular humanist parents who never said but managed silently to convey that they were mildly wounded by the person their daughter turned out to be?

  John was like them. Endowed with native decency, uncomplicated good. Almost, it sometimes struck Ricky, insultingly so. For if he loved her brazen appetite and air of mischief, if these were the very things that made him gaze at her besotted, didn’t there also lurk in that same gaze a kind of wary bemusement, even faint reproach? Wasn’t it that very gaze that had propelled her, in a way, into bed with Parker? (Parker of all people, that arrogant dolt, that callow, blond, Brooks-Brothered, prep-schooled, disastrously magnificent lay.) Even while it was happening, she’d felt a little sick. Even while he’d been sucking tequila from her navel, sliding bits of crushed ice inside her with his thumb to make her gasp and claw at his arms, she’d been sickened to think of the truth she was proving: that she was unfit to be a good man’s wife. But it turned out there was a providential symmetry, a reason she and John were suited, after all. For when John confronted her with what he knew (what he’d only guessed, actually, it would later emerge); when she confessed, broke down and begged, wretched, mascara-streaked, hating herself for the cliché of it all more than anything, when she pleaded for another chance, for him to trust her again—even in the midst of the squalor that w
as of her own making; even before John had, indeed, granted forgiveness—it dawned on her that he would.

  He’d have to. In order to balance some larger equation. Hadn’t he made mistakes, too, of a related nature? Hadn’t he been irresponsible in the bedroom? Didn’t the world hold living proof of this? And from that point, long before she’d ever met Jess, before Jess became remotely real as an actual person she might lay eyes on, Ricky had come to see the value of her. Jess was a kind of magic pebble, a trump card that could be played when other options had run out.

  The first seven years of their marriage had passed as John foresaw, devoid of contact with his daughter.Then one day a letter had come, on orange-and-yellow daisy-strewn stationery, and this was followed a week later by a phone call, and this by a rainy Saturday when John had driven up to Elsmere, alone, and taken his daughter out to lunch. A month later there was another lunch, and then more phone calls: lengthier, leisurely, at a regular time (Thursdays after dinner)—and then a series of shorter, tenser calls between John and the mother as negotiations were conducted for a longer visit. Jess would accompany the Ryries on their summer holiday at Cabruda Lake. It was decided.Terms were agreed on. Arrangements put in place.