“May I see it?” Grams says. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. For which course are you reading this?”
“None,” Andrew says. “The other day, I noticed that my copy of this work was out of place in my library. Simon—our housekeeper’s grandson—doesn’t know that I know he reads my books. I found this in a box of donations I had to pick up for my mother. Her charity is starting a library at an orphanage.”
“Stealing from orphans? I’m surprised at you.”
“I doubt the children would appreciate this particular text.”
“The boy’s people—are they educated?”
“No, ma’am. Simon is the first in his family to be schooled past fifth grade.”
“How old is he?”
“Twelve.”
“Should he be encouraged this way? A Negro boy—he is a Negro, isn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What chance does he stand to use his knowledge, as a person of that race?”
“If one follows such logic, why should Razi pursue her studies, as a person of the female sex?”
“A woman should have interests of her own.”
“Of course. You told me once of your confinement. You said being forbidden from intellectual pursuits didn’t help. The neurasthenia only worsened.”
“Yes. One’s mind must remain active.” She pauses. “Certainly, the Creator meant for us all to be thinking beings in some way.”
“I agree. Then if I may conclude, Simon is as entitled to seek knowledge as you or I. He’s a smart boy. Wouldn’t it be wrong to discourage him or take away his books, no matter how he gets them? Why deny him what he enjoys?”
“At least he’s not getting into trouble. But he shouldn’t raise his hopes. There is a certain place where each person belongs.”
Andrew does not reply. At first, I wonder if he’s considering a retort, but he is always so quick with an answer. From my father’s chair at the dining room table, I focus my attention in the other room. The follicles on the back of my neck tingle. I hear a murmur, the sound of Grams whispering.
“I wouldn’t ask such a thing,” Andrew says suddenly.
Again, no sound.
“There are exceptions,” he says.
“I suppose there are,” Grams replies.
“She would say rules are made to be broken.”
Grams clears her throat. “Then one must be prepared for the consequences.”
Before he can respond, I walk into the room. “Mr. O’Connell, aren’t you late for another appointment?”
“We were having a nice conversation,” Grams says.
Andrew stands up and squares the row of buttons down his torso. “Agreed. Until next time, Mrs. Burrat?”
Grams gives the Douglass book back to him, eases from her seat, and approaches the stairs. “Good afternoon.” I swear, she winks at him as she turns on the landing.
“She’s an old lady, darling,” I say, “set in her ways about the world.”
“Your Grams is not just any old lady. Opinionated, sharp. The nut didn’t fall far from the tree.” Andrew throws his arm around me and leads us to the dining room.
“You said nut, not fruit.”
“Right.”
I sit back in my father’s chair at the table, Andrew to my left. I tap a pencil against my physics notes. “What was she whispering about?”
“She’s afraid your expectations are greater than your chances.”
“For what?”
“To get what you want,” he replies.
“And what does she think that is?”
He opens a textbook. “It’s all right in front of you.”
THANKSGIVING BREAK my senior year, 1928. Andrew thinks I’m studying ahead for a tough exam, but I’m not.
On my bed are application packets to Harvard and Yale, their medical schools. I have told no one—not Mother or Daddy or Grams or Twolly, especially not Andrew. If I get in, well, then I’ll figure out what to do. If I don’t, the disappointment, or relief, will be mine alone.
Packets to five other medical schools were mailed weeks ago. There is no doubt in my mind that I will be accepted to Northwestern. My grades are excellent, the courses I’ve taken appropriate, my letters of recommendation glowing. I have no such confidence about the Ivy League schools, well aware that brains aren’t enough. I’m too proud to use influence that isn’t my own—which has been tacitly offered—or to rely on anything other than my own wits, as I always have.
I want the adventure that Chicago promises, an anonymous place where I am nothing but myself, early mornings with wind like blades, evenings when I can abandon my books and find the places where jazz has been born again. Apart from the soil of my birth, I want to see how I grow. When I promised Daddy that I would go to Tulane, it was with the understanding that he would let me go when it was time, that my concession was insurance for future freedom. By all indications, Daddy, as well as Mother and Grams, is keeping his part of the bargain.
But there is Andrew. The unexpected variable. As much as I want to believe that our love affair is one I indulge with blasé sophistication—I am a modern woman, after all—and expect to fizzle on its own, I know it isn’t. Not the tiniest bit. No other boy, any I once claimed to love and indeed had in some mimicry of the emotion, has ever tempted me to change what I thought the course of my life should be. I enjoyed their attentions. Even those I loved the most, I never missed them much when they were gone.
Here, I write my name on top of the Yale application, and what am I thinking about? That the haze of his shaving cream evaporated from my fingertips before I woke up this morning, that I didn’t see him at all today, that I will ring him if he doesn’t ring me first, simply to say good night and I love you.
I’ve gone mad. I’ve always been so rational, so methodical about my pursuits. Single-minded. Steadfast. When I overhear whispers that wits like mine are wasted on a girl, the slights only make me more determined. I am proud of every A, the marks of my future. I ignore ladies, who barely know me, who occasionally say to my face—to my mother—that overeducated girls become barren women. I know what I am. I know what I want to be. I have known since I was child, when I discovered that the human body is a machine so great that it repairs itself and makes more of its own kind.
When will I return to my senses?
AMY PLACED a mug of coffee on the nightstand for Chloe, who had finished packing her suitcase. Chloe tossed the bag to the ground and rolled it into a corner. She reached under the bed to pull out Scott’s puzzle. Outside, the lawn mower whirred past the side of the house. Amy stepped near the window and brushed her fingers along the gathered curtains.
“Something dawned on me last night.” Chloe traced her thumb along the junctures of Scott’s puzzle. “It’s not only the miscarriage that’s bothering you. It’s Jem.”
“It’s been eleven years.”
“Almost to the date. The anniversary is this month. But by now, it shouldn’t tear you up to hear his name.”
“If it happens to you, then we’ll talk.”
“Oh, stop. Just stop. Why push me away when you know it only makes me more persistent?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Yes, it is. We were friends before we met Jem or Scott. I give a shit whether you’re happy or miserable. I give a shit whether you’re freaking out. I give a shit whether you’re about to sabotage your life.”
“That’s true. You did your part to talk me out of marrying Jem.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You did. ‘You have a great job, Aims, right out of college. You’re so lucky. Why leave it? He’ll wait.’ And ‘It’s the twentieth century. No woman has to chase anything but her own dreams.’”
Chloe didn’t respond right away. A look of remorse settled in her eyes. When I glanced at her, I thought of Twolly, whose well-intended guidance I had quickly dismissed. I remembered the ring box, closed, left on my vanity the mor
ning I died.
“You didn’t have to marry him,” Chloe said. “You could have moved with him, but you didn’t. You decided not to, remember?”
Amy stroked the folds of the curtain. “You didn’t help, Chloe. All the reasons not to were political, rhetorical. Not reality. I loved him enough to marry him.”
“I didn’t think you were that serious about it. About Jem, sure, no doubt. But I didn’t get the impression you wanted to actually do it. A wedding, all that.”
“We thought about eloping.”
“Didn’t you want some time to yourself? You two had been together for three years. Didn’t you look forward to living alone, just to try it?”
“It was an idea. It might not have been terrible.”
“Does this all still hurt that much?”
Amy gnawed the corner of her lip. A dozen scents released from her—patchouli, cinnamon gum, grilled chicken, roses, sweat, rain—overwhelming out of context. “I still have nightmares. The car crashes, and no one finds us. I wake up from my coma, and he’s being eaten by maggots. Or my grandfather’s telling me Jem’s dead, and he’s crying so hard he can’t breathe. Or I miscarry, and the fetus is dangling out of my body, drowning in Jem’s blood that’s pooled up in the floorboards.”
“Jesus.” Chloe held her coffee mug and stared at her friend for several seconds. “I think about him. Sometimes, I’ll hear a song or catch a rerun or smell something that triggers him. I feel like we’ve had a chance to catch up. I let him in.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then what you’re telling me is that you never really got over him.”
“Of course I did. I moved on, didn’t I? I married Scott.”
“Different issue. What happened to make you so upset? Scott thinks it’s because you lost your grandparents.”
“He’s right. That’s still bothering me.”
“That’s only part of it. Best I’ve figured out, you snapped after I sent the video.”
Amy didn’t turn around. Her entire body tensed. The layers of muscle on her arms and calves drew into cords. Each breath was shallow, measured. She wanted to keep it hidden, buried, almost forgotten. “I wasn’t prepared to see him.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know what was on the whole thing. And I certainly didn’t know it would make you so upset.”
“On the tape, he gave me the look.”
“What look?”
“He had this funny wink, very fast. He’d squint right before until I’d look him in the eye, and then . . . But there was the little smile, too, with it, no one else could have noticed.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You wouldn’t. It was just for me.” Amy rubbed her eyes hard. “I’d forgotten what it felt like when he looked at me that way. It all came back. Every bone in my body turned hot. Then I couldn’t make it stop. All those memories. Whatever kept them stored away broke. There was a rush of sensation all through me, then nothing. And for days afterward, sometimes I’d get overwhelmed with a sound or the way my shirt rubbed against my arm or a smell. Like my body remembered and reminded the rest of me.”
Chloe sat cross-legged on the bed and watched Amy’s back. Amy controlled her breathing as if to pace what she might say next.
“I don’t feel the same with Scott,” Amy said.
“What?”
“That passion.” Amy lowered to the ground, clasped her shins between her arms, and propped her chin on her knees. “Have you ever had sex with someone, and it felt like you’d slipped away from this world, that you never trusted or loved someone so much in your life?”
“It’s been a long time.”
“I love Scott. He’s a good man—kind, responsible, sensitive, intelligent. He’s a wonderful husband. But it’s not the same as it was with Jem. Making love with him was transcendent. There was nothing like it. The feeling was incredible, inside and outside of my body. I can’t explain it. With Jem, the connection was almost unbearable. With Scott, it’s comfortable.”
“Did you ever give yourself the chance so that it isn’t?”
“What does that mean?”
“You love Scott—I know this—but not like you loved Jem. You’ll never love someone like you loved him. It will never be the same. But I think it could be as strong. You have to be willing to give it your all. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never done anything halfway.”
Amy shook her head. “I should have married him. I should have done it. No matter what you or anyone else said. If I would have married him, we wouldn’t have been on the road that day, at that time. It never would have happened—”
“You don’t know that.” Chloe moved to the ground and clutched Amy’s arm. “Goddammit, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t Jem’s. That trucker fell asleep at the wheel.”
“Had we just left the hotel later, like he wanted. I pushed for leaving at dawn.”
Chloe jolted Amy gently. “Stop torturing yourself.”
“Our baby would be ten.”
Chloe pressed her forehead against her friend’s. “Amy, listen. You have to get over this. Whatever it takes. See a counselor, grieve for your baby, grieve for him. And let Scott help. Never mind the history.”
“It’s too much,” Amy said.
“You didn’t survive to live this way.”
AFTER CHLOE LEFT, Amy stopped her frenetic upkeep of the house. Dishes remained dirty in the washer, dust collected on tabletops, and an occasional crumb remained on the kitchen floor. The laundry was separated in baskets and placed in their closets. No longer did Amy iron all of their work clothes at once. She pressed hers before bed, and Scott returned to his haphazard attempt to remove wrinkles from his shirts in the morning. Magazines lay open on the sofa, junk mail mingled with bills on the counter, and lint gathered into small tumbleweeds under the furniture.
Instead of doing housework, every evening Amy sat in front of the computer scanning photographs and retouching them. For each, she changed subtle contrasts and sharpness. She seemed to want them all to be flawless.
A week after their friend visited, Scott stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her click dots of color across an image. “I can’t take this anymore. You have to talk to me.”
Immediately, Amy stopped her work and began to shut down the computer. “It has nothing to do with you. Is that what you’re worried about?” she said.
“This has gone on too long—whatever it is.”
Amy went to the bedroom, and Scott followed. She turned off the lamp on her nightstand. He held the doorframe with both arms. Amy twisted under the covers, her face toward the wall. He climbed on top of the blanket and laid a hand on her hip.
“Good night,” Amy said.
“Give me a kiss.”
She rolled slightly and acquiesced with an arid peck. He kissed her cheek, earlobe, neck. Amy gave him no response. Slowly, he pulled his arm away.
“Are you cheating on me?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You won’t come near me.”
“I’m not having an affair.”
He sat against the headboard, looking down at her. “I’ve tried to be patient. I’ve waited for you to come to me. But all that’s happened is, the house has been immaculate and we’re falling apart.” Amy did not reply. “You can’t use your grandparents as an excuse anymore. It’s been months since they died. None of this makes sense.”
“I’m dealing with a lot. Everything will work out.”
“When? Our life together has stopped. Dead in its tracks. No moving forward. Don’t you want a family? Didn’t we always agree we wanted a baby?”
“Scott, let me go to sleep.”
“Is that it? This all started right after Twolly’s birthday. Did something happen that you didn’t tell me? Did someone upset you? Your mom? Crazy cousin Julie?”
“No.”
Scott clutched a pillow against his chest as if it breathed. He stared at her back, which hardly moved beneath the covers. “T
ell me. If you’re having an affair, just tell me. I want to know.” His voice was hollow. “How could you do this to me?”
Amy sat up, cross-legged, not touching him. “I’m not. I would never do that.”
“What else am I supposed to think?”
“It’s complicated. After—before—God, how do I tell you?” Silence. He was waiting. “I was pregnant—”
“What?”
“It wasn’t yours.”
“Then . . .”
“After the accident—”
“Oh.”
“I miscarried. The doctor told me when I woke up from the coma.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No one else knows but Chloe.”
Scott reached for her hand. She didn’t pull away. Jem’s scent infiltrated the room, the smell coming from both of them. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“I am, too.”
“I’m glad you told me. I swear.” He exhaled, almost a laugh. “I was afraid you really were cheating. This we can handle.”
“Sure.” Clearly, she felt no better having admitted part of the truth.
“There’s something else. I want to know.”
“Chloe sent me a DVD a while back. Part of it was when we were at the clinic. Some of it was interviews, well, mainly just she and I talking. And she had some footage at the end. I didn’t remember her taping it.” Amy wiped her nightshirt under her nose. “It showed him.”
“Who?”
“Jem.”
“Okay.”
“A lot came back to me. Memories. Feelings.”
“And?”
“I realized how much I miss him.”
Scott moved back toward his side of the bed. “You miss him? Okay—you know what—I know that shouldn’t bother me. He’s dead. It’s not like you could run back to him. But it rubs me raw because it’s affecting us now. He’s been gone for years, and this is my life—our life—and somehow, he’s appeared right in the middle of it. What am I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I feel like this.”
“I sure as hell don’t either.”
“I loved him.”
“I know.”
The Mercy of Thin Air Page 19
