I want to tell Patrick about this trip. I pick up the phone, mentally calculate the time difference between here and the West Coast; it’s just after six there, so there’s an okay chance he will have just gotten home. I dial his number but get an error, then feel like an idiot when I realize I’ve left out the area code.
“Jess?” he answers after I redial. Second-ring pickup.
“How did you know it was me?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the only person I know in Ohio right now.”
“I didn’t know if you’d be home.”
“I’ve actually been home for a while.”
“Did something happen there?”
“No, nothing like that, I just had another interview for that project manager thing at our office in town.”
“Another? Is that good?”
“I guess it’s good. They seem pretty interested.”
“That’s great?”
“I guess so.”
“But what else?” I ask. “There’s something else.”
“It’s in Tokyo.”
I feel my chest squeeze at this, and I say the very first thing that comes into my mind. “I’ll go with you.”
“Jess, come on.”
“I’m serious, I will. I’ll go with you. Anything. Whenever. I’ll go.”
“We’ll talk about it.”
“I will.”
“Okay.”
“Is the rule over?”
He lets out a little laugh. “We can talk about that too.”
“I sent you an e-mail.”
“I saw it. What’s this about staying longer?”
“I’m going on a little road trip with Josh’s sister. I’ll let you know when my new flight is. I can take the shuttle if you can’t pick me—”
“I can pick you up. Just tell me when.”
“I miss you, Pat.”
“I’ve missed you too. Lots.”
We say good-bye and hang up, and when I go to shut down the computer I see that there’s a new message in my in-box, just six minutes old, and the subject says “HI FROM NZ.” I can’t click on it fast enough. It’s a short mail, and it says: “JZ—On the boat in Auckland. Feel lost. Feel alone. I love you.—KZ”
I hit reply and look at the screen and think for a moment, and then I type
“ME TOO.”
I look at this, and I look, and then I tap the backspace key again and again and again until those two words are gone. Because maybe I don’t feel that way. Then I think for a bit and I type
“I LOVE YOU, KZ.”
And I hit send.
28
The road north of Columbus is rural and absolutely flat. There are fields and farms and woods, and no hills to speak of. Green leafy trees, and rows of crops. Red barns, and satellite dishes.
“Does it ever bother you that there aren’t any hills?” I ask Emily. She’s been behind the wheel of the midsize Chevrolet with the pro-life bumper sticker since we left.
“I’ve never really known anything different. Are you bothered by mountains?”
“Well, no,” I say.
“There you go.”
I stayed home this morning to pack my things and take a shower and check my e-mail while Emily and Tim and the kids went to church. I’d hoped to see a reply from my sister, but there was nothing. When everyone was back, I played with Caleb and his snap-together blocks while Emily packed their things for a stay at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Tim said nothing to me the entire time.
The drop-off at Emily’s parents’ place was smooth and the kids did not cry; Alice Hadden and I chatted in the driveway while Emily went inside to see her father and the boys chase each other around the yard. Mrs. Hadden and I stuck to small talk (though I could tell she wanted to talk about more), and when Emily came out of the house her eyes were red like she’d been crying. She kissed her children and her mother, and they’d all waved when we pulled out into the street.
An hour later we pass a stinky oil refinery in northeast Ohio. Later, handsome white minarets tower over soybean fields as we approach the most incongruous, beautiful mosque in the middle of nowhere.
“They built that right around when I was born, I think,” Emily says. “I always wanted to go inside.”
“We could stop. Do you want to stop?”
“No. I do not want to stop.”
We find a grocery store in Toledo to get some things to eat. I buy bottled water and apples and deli sandwiches, and Emily seems to approve of my choices. She acts like she does, at least, but she doesn’t eat very much as we sit in the car in the parking lot and have our lunch. Then we’re back on the road again, crossing into Michigan. There’s a heavy silence in the car, and I talk, and talk, to try to fill it. I talk about Katie and her boat, and I talk about Gretchen. I tell her about writing advertising copy.
Through all of this, Emily says nothing.
We drive through Detroit, through road construction and heavy traffic. Emily holds the wheel with both hands. We stop to pee and to fill up the car. I pay for the gas.
We go on, north of Detroit, and the traffic eases somewhat. We drive over a tremendous bridge spanning a river in a place called Zilwaukee.
“What kind of name is that?” I ask. “Is it Indian or something?”
“The people who founded this town intentionally called it that so immigrants would come here to work. Instead of going to Milwaukee.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“Do the Haddens have like, an authority gene or something?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you said that just like Josh would have said it. Like it’s an absolute truth.”
Emily lets out a little sigh at the mention of her brother’s name. “Unlike Josh,” she says, “I’ve always been able to recognize that some facts are useless.”
I laugh at this, because it’s completely true.
“He filed every bit of trivia away like a treasure,” she goes on. “Not for himself, though. Well, I guess they were for himself in a sense, he kept facts around to use against other people as he saw fit.”
I nod at this.
Now past the town ripping off Milwaukee, the traffic eases, and the countryside is rural again. There are hills, too, rolling hills with fields and trees and deep red barns and silos, and seeing all this makes me happy. We drive in silence, rolling along, and pass a sign announcing an upcoming twenty-seven-mile-long construction zone.
“Every road in this state has been under construction for my whole life,” Emily says.
“They’re dedicated to continuously making improvements?”
“They’re dedicated to wasting time. It’s the union effect.”
“That’s a very Josh-like statement,” I say. “Sort of on the other side of the ideological spectrum, but Josh-like nonetheless.”
“Stop,” Emily says. “Stop. No more talk like that. Please.”
Emily is quiet for a long, long time after this. We enter the construction zone, and the road squeezes down to one lane and the car buzzes from driving on the shoulder rumble strip we’ve been forced onto. I feel Emily looking at me, though, again and again and again, and I can tell she wants to say something.
“What?” I finally ask.
“I want to know what he told you,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“Yesterday you said you knew everything.”
“I don’t know everything.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
She’s quiet again, and when I look over at her I see tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Are you okay?” Emily shakes her head. “Emily, what’s wrong?”
“He told you, didn’t he?”
“Told me what?”
“About—” She holds her breath for what seems like a minute, and her face is bright red. “About the abortion,” she finally coughs out.
“Whoa
, whoa, what? I mean, I know your husband didn’t like him, and he almost punched him, and he talked to your mom about you leaving him, I think? But I didn’t know anything about—”
Emily is really crying now, and she’s all over the road. “He told you I had an abortion, didn’t he?”
“Emily, he didn’t…I didn’t know anything about that.”
“He told you, I know it.” The car knocks over a couple orange traffic markers, and swings back into the lane.
“Why don’t you pull over, Emily. Emily?”
“I knew he told you.”
“Can we pull over?”
“Damn it, I knew it!”
“Fines doubled in work zones, Emily. Please pull over? Now?”
She sobs and sobs, and the car swerves from left to right.
“There’s a ramp, Emily, there’s a ramp. Please get off here. Exit ramp, here. We can stop, and talk.” I’m almost ready to take the wheel myself, but she steers us over through her sobs and we roll up the ramp and coast to a stop at a farm road. Emily puts the car in park and her whole body shakes as she holds her face in her hands.
“I know he told you,” she whimpers through her hands.
“He never told me that.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m serious.”
Emily drops her hands and looks at me, and her face is a wet mess. “Well, I had one. I did. And I don’t care what you think of me.”
“Honestly, I don’t think anything.” I open the glove box, and just as I suspected, there’s a box of tissues in there, like there should be in any car that regularly ferries children around. I pull out the box and hand it to Emily.
“I don’t care what you think of me,” she says again.
“Emily, I am not thinking anything about it. It happens to people. I’m not holding it against you. It’s not a big deal.” I don’t know if that was the right thing to say, because suddenly Emily falls into a new round of sobbing.
“It is a big deal,” she says.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Let me, let me calm down.” Emily wipes her eyes and blows her nose. “He was the only one who ever knew. Josh was.”
“Was it, was it Tim’s?”
Emily laughs at this, a bitter sort of chuckle. “God, no. I was seventeen. My boyfriend didn’t even know.”
“Your parents?”
She shakes her head. “My dad would have freaked out.”
“Whose dad wouldn’t have?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I was terrified. And Josh, Josh, my big brother…” She wipes her eyes again. “I don’t know if you can understand this. I told him. He was my best friend.”
“I do understand.”
“He took care of everything. He made the appointment. He drove me to Cleveland. He paid for it. We stayed at his friend’s apartment after, and he took care of me.”
“You did the right thing,” I say.
“No,” Emily says. “No.” She bites her lip and shakes her head. “After, after I did it, I realized I made a mistake. But Josh kept telling me, and telling me, that I did the right thing. And the more he told me that, the more I realized I did the wrong thing.”
“You feel like he pressured you into doing it.”
Emily nods, and cries, and covers her face again.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I reach over and touch her shoulder. “I’m sorry. He could convince people.”
“I flipped out,” she goes on. “I graduated, and went to college, and I hated myself. I had this secret, you know? And I hated myself for it. And the more Josh tried to help, the more I convinced myself that he made me do it. I got crazy. I got militant. I started protesting at clinics. I thought that would somehow fix my bad decision.”
“I can see the logic. You were confused and upset.”
“There are weird people in that group. The protest types.”
“I bet.”
“But there are some nice people too. Sincere people. Tim was one of them. And the more time I spent with him, the more I hated my brother.”
“I think you were okay to be angry at him.”
Emily breaks down again, and whispers, “No, no. There was something I forgot.”
“What?”
“There was something I made myself forget. When I told Josh I was pregnant. I called him, he was at school in Chicago. I was freaking out, it took me like an hour before I could get myself to the point I could tell him. And after I did, he told me to stay calm, stay put, and he borrowed a car and drove straight back to Columbus. He told our parents he came back for some lecture, or something.”
“He could be smooth, like that. And he was good at borrowing cars.”
“You don’t even know. But he calmed me down. He was like, ‘Emmy, you have some options. You can end it, or you can keep it. You could give it up for adoption.’ And this is the part I forgot. This is the part I made myself forget. He said whatever I did, whatever I chose, he’d support me. He’d help me, no matter what. That’s the part I put out of my mind.”
There’s a change in the sound of the idling car, and Emily blows her nose. I don’t say anything.
“In my head, I wanted to keep it. I really did. I know it’s crazy, but there was a little part of me that was almost, maybe excited?”
“I can see that,” I say.
“But I was terrified my parents were going to kick me out. I mean, I was seventeen, right? Josh tried to tell me that they would probably be really supportive, but the only thing I could see them doing was kicking me out. All I could imagine was my dad going crazy and my mom screaming at me. But Josh said even if they did, he’d take care of me. He’d make sure I had a place to live. I mean, he was just saying that, now I know my parents wouldn’t have kicked me out, but he was really ready to do those things.
“But there was one thing he told me I had to do. One thing. I had to tell Mom and Dad myself. If I was going to go through with it, if I was going to keep it, I had to tell them. He was like, ‘I’ll be there with you when you do it, but you’re the one who has to tell them.’ And that’s what it came down to. I had an abortion because I was too scared to tell my parents. Josh made it easy for me with his support. He made me feel strong about what I chose, and then I blamed him for it. He didn’t talk me into anything. But I made myself believe he did. I regretted making the choice, and I made myself believe it was his fault that I did it.”
“I understand,” I whisper, and my voice breaks when I say it.
“So I went to college. They were active there, you know, it was easy to get wrapped up with them, and I started protesting. I started seeing Tim. I never told him I had one. I could almost believe it never happened, and those times I couldn’t make myself forget, I made myself believe that Josh forced me to do it. So I lived this hateful life. We’d drive around in a little bus, we’d go to these clinics, and I would scream at girls going inside. Like, six a.m., and I’m screaming that some girl is a murderer. Sometimes they’d put jackets over their heads or whatever to hide from us. But sometimes they’d look at us. Sometimes I’d see a girl going in, and it was like I was seeing myself. And it just made me scream louder. I’d hate the girl like I hated myself.”
“Did you really hate yourself?”
“I did. And Josh was the only one who understood that. He understood it in a way I couldn’t, you know? I was inside it, I couldn’t see it like he could. And when he’d try to bring it up, I just, I guess I just closed him off. And I made Tim hate him too, you know, all I had to say was that he was a liberal, pro-abortion, virtually a socialist, and that was enough. And the art too, that was over Tim’s head, and just another reason for him to think Joshua was virtually a criminal. They got into it, a couple times. Like, really into it. I thought Tim was going to take a swing at Josh once.”
“He mentioned that before.”
“A couple years ago, actually, I guess three, I was really pregnant with Caleb, I was huge, Josh had just gotten back fr
om South America and he came to visit us. He and Tim were really going at it, really going at it, and it was starting to get ugly. I don’t even know what they were talking about, probably politics or something, but it got to where Tim was standing over Josh and pushing him in the chest with his fingers. I came in and I was like enough, enough, you’re going to wake up Justin. I really didn’t want Tim to hit Josh or anything. So I took him into the guest room, the same room you were in, actually, and I was like, just leave it, please? And he looked at me and he said, ‘I should just tell Tim everything, right now.’ And at first, God, I laughed at him, I was like, ‘I don’t think he would even believe you.’ And he kept looking at me, just calm, that look he had, and he goes, ‘Too bad I still have all the paperwork and bills. He might believe that. And if he doesn’t, I bet Mom would.’”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything at first. But the way he said it, I knew he was serious. And at the moment, it was like, like breaking through the ice on a frozen lake. I was shocked awake, and all of a sudden I saw this lie, this whole lie I had built my life around, I could see it from the outside. But then I was terrified, like terrified, I knew he was serious and I was down on my knees and crying and begging him, begging him not to say anything.”
“Emily, I’m so sorry.”
“So, I don’t know. He pulled me up and sat me down. He told me I was killing myself, living like I was, hating myself like that. He understood it. And for the first time, I guess I did.”
“What exactly did you understand?”
Emily laughs. “Okay, well, for starters, I married someone out of self-loathing. I married Tim so I could keep hating myself. How’s that for clarity?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m sorry that I’m telling you this.”
“Did he ever give up the secret?”
“No. But I was always scared he would. Especially when he called drunk.”
“I know what you’re saying.”
“That night, in the guest room, he promised me he wouldn’t. But he said I had to do something about fixing the way I was living. About fixing my life. And if I didn’t, he’d reconsider his promise.”
“So what did you do?”
Jessica Z Page 29
