Because It Is My Blood

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “Yes, of course. Have you talked to Leo? Or Yuji Ono?” I asked.

  “I’ve been trying Yuji Ono but I haven’t gotten him yet,” Simon Green said. “I’ll keep trying. Anya, how are you?”

  “I’m…” I couldn’t come up with an answer. “I want to see Natty.”

  I hung up with Simon Green and then I dialed Yuji Ono again. I was about to despair when Yuji finally answered. “Hello, Anya,” he said. His manner seemed awkward but I didn’t know if that was because of the conversation we’d had the last time we met.

  “Why haven’t you been picking up your phone?”

  “I have been occupied with—”

  I realized that I didn’t care what he’d been doing. “I need to know if Leo is okay,” I said.

  For a second, Yuji didn’t answer me. “There was an explosion.”

  “An explosion? What kind of explosion?”

  “A car bomb. I am sorry, Anya. Your brother’s girlfriend was hurt very badly, and—”

  “What about Leo?”

  “I am sorry, Anya. He is dead.”

  Oddly, I knew I was not going to cry. Some once fleshy part of me had turned to bone, and I was no longer capable of such displays. “Was it you, Yuji? Did you plan all of this? Just because I wouldn’t marry you? Was it you?”

  “It was not me,” Yuji said.

  “I don’t believe you. No one else had the information. No one else knew where I was and where Leo was. No one except you!”

  “There were others, Anya. Think about it.”

  I couldn’t think. Leo was dead. Imogen was dead. Someone had tried to kill Natty and me. Theo was gravely injured because he had gotten in the way of a bullet meant for me.

  “Say who you mean.”

  “I choose not to speculate. I can only say that it was not me,” Yuji repeated, “but I did not intervene to stop these events from happening either.”

  “Are you saying that you let my brother die? That you would have let me die, too?”

  “I said what I meant. I am very sorry for your loss.”

  I hung up on him. I was sorry, too. If it turned out he had killed my brother, Yuji Ono would have to die.

  XI

  I LEARN THE COST OF FRIENDSHIP; MONEY STILL MAKES THE WORLD GO ’ROUND

  THE PLANE WAS BARELY larger than a bucket, and the ride was bumpy. Though I hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours, my mind would not rest. I couldn’t stop thinking of Leo and every time he’d ever asked to come with me and I’d refused him. I’d been the one to send him to Japan. Had that been a mistake? Why had I ever trusted Yuji Ono? How could Leo be dead when we hadn’t spoken in almost ten months? None of this seemed possible.

  My eyelids would begin to flutter shut, and it would seem as if unconsciousness might temporarily absolve my guilty conscience. That was when I’d start thinking of Imogen. When Nana had died, I had accused Imogen of unspeakable acts. Imogen, who’d done nothing but take care of Nana and Natty and me. And now Imogen was dead. Dead because of us.

  I’d think of Theo. They’d said he was stable, but he could still die. What would they do on that farm without him? Theo ran that place, and because of me, he wouldn’t be able to do that for a very long time. And then my thoughts would return to my brother. I began to feel as if I would never sleep again.

  The plane touched down on Long Island around four in the morning. I looked out the window. The tarmac was reassuringly desolate. As I walked down the steps, I got my first whiff of New York air—filthy and sweet. Though I had loved Mexico and though I wished I were returning under better circumstances, I was happy to be restored to my city. It was freezing, by the way. I was still wearing the clothes I’d worn to visit the factories in Oaxaca, where it had been 72°.

  A solitary car, black with tinted windows, was parked in the lot. On the driver’s side, the window was rolled down about three inches, and I could see Simon Green sleeping. I tapped on the glass, and Simon started. “Annie, come in, come in,” he said as he popped the locks.

  “No cops,” I pointed out once I was inside.

  “We were lucky.” He put the key in the ignition. “I thought I’d take you back to my apartment in Brooklyn. Imogen’s murder has attracted a fair amount of attention as I’m sure you can imagine, and there are too many people around Mr. Kipling’s apartment and yours.”

  “I need to see Natty tonight,” I insisted. “If she’s at Mr. Kipling’s, that’s where I need to be.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Annie. Like I said—”

  I interrupted him. “Leo’s dead, Simon, and I don’t want my sister to have to hear it from anyone but me.”

  For a moment, Simon was speechless. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I honestly don’t know what to say.” Simon shook his head. “Do you think Yuji Ono was involved?”

  “I don’t know. He said he wasn’t but … It doesn’t matter right now. I need to get to Natty.”

  “Listen, Annie, you’ve experienced a very great loss. You’re tired and you’re overwhelmed, for completely understandable reasons, so please take my advice here. It will be much better for you and for Natty if you aren’t apprehended by the police tonight. We should negotiate your surrender if that’s something deemed necessary. Let me take you back to my apartment—no one will look for you there—and I promise to bring Natty to you as soon as it can safely be arranged. I don’t want to compromise either of you.”

  I nodded my consent.

  We didn’t speak for the rest of the drive though I could tell Simon Green wanted to. “There’s blood on you,” he commented as we drove into Brooklyn. I looked at my sleeve: the blood was either Theo’s or the masked man’s. It had been that kind of day.

  Simon’s apartment was on the sixth floor of a walk-up with squeaky, steep stairs. After three flights, I wanted to give up. Sometimes, it’s these little acts that seem the most unbearable. “I’ll sleep on the landing,” I told him.

  “Come on, Anya.” Simon pushed me onward.

  Finally, we were in his apartment. It was large for a city place, the lone residence on the floor, but there was only one room. The ceilings were vaulted as the room was just below the roof. Simon Green lived in an attic. He told me that I could have his bed, and he would sleep on the sofa.

  “Annie, I’m going to drive back to Mr. Kipling’s now. Can I get you anything?” He stifled a yawn, then he took off his glasses and wiped them.

  “No, Simon, I’m fine. I’m—”

  (I told you that I would never cry again, and while I certainly believed that at the time, it turned out this was overly optimistic on my part.)

  I fell to my knees and I could feel them bruise as they hit the wooden floor. “Leo,” I sobbed. “Leo, Leo, Leo. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

  Simon Green put his hand awkwardly on my shoulder. It was not a particularly comforting gesture yet I felt grateful for the weight of him.

  I had started to hyperventilate and I felt like I might choke. Simon helped me out of my bloody clothes like I was a toddler, and then he loaned me a T-shirt and helped me into bed.

  I told him that I wanted to die.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Everywhere I go, there is violence. And I can’t escape because I bring violence with me. And I don’t want to live in a world where my brother is dead.”

  “There are other people who love you and count on you, Anya. Think of Natty.”

  “I do think of her. All the time. And what I think is that maybe she’d be better off without me.”

  Simon Green put his arms around me. I had never been so close to him before, and he smelled of peppermints. He shook his head. “She wouldn’t. Trust me, she wouldn’t. Natty only gets to be Natty because you have to be Anya.” Simon gently extricated himself from me. “Get some sleep. By the time I’m back, I’ll have Natty with me, okay?”

  I heard the door close and lock twice, and then I did fall asleep.


  When I awoke, a white cat with a black spot on its side was looking at me. The cat was in my sister’s arms. “Did you know that Simon has a cat?” Natty asked.

  I had been too distracted to notice, though now that she mentioned it, his place did smell faintly of litter.

  “She’s a fighter,” Simon Green reported. “She likes to go out during the night.”

  I looked at Natty. Her eyes were red from crying, and she looked even older and taller than the last time I had seen her. Natty set the cat down, and I stood and fiercely pulled my sister toward me. Her head banged against mine. That head was higher than I was used to it being.

  “I knew you’d come,” Natty said. “I knew it.”

  In order to give us some privacy, Simon Green said he was going on a walk.

  “It was awful, Annie. We were on the street outside the apartment, and a man in a mask came out of nowhere, and Imogen tried to give him her purse. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘Just take it. I only have twenty-two dollars.’ He grabbed the purse, and for a second, we thought he was going to leave, but then he threw it to the ground. All of Imogen’s things spilled out—her books and her diary and everything! I remember thinking that it would be impossible to get everything back in the bag. The man started to point his gun at my head, but Imogen jumped in front of me. And this was when she got shot, but I didn’t know where. It was weird because the shot was so close I didn’t know if I’d been shot and I fell to the ground, too. I guess it was the sound of the bullet.”

  “You were smart to do that,” I told her. “They thought they’d gotten you and so they left.”

  “What do you mean ‘gotten me’?”

  She didn’t know that the attacks had been meant to kill the three of us. She didn’t know about Leo. I told her what had happened to me in Mexico and then I told her about Leo.

  She did not cry. She stayed completely still.

  “Natty?” I moved to touch her arm, but she pulled away.

  I looked at her face. She seemed thoughtful, not devastated. “If you don’t trust Yuji Ono, how do you know for sure that Leo’s dead?” she asked.

  “I know, Natty. Yuji Ono would have no reason to tell us that Leo was dead if he wasn’t.”

  “I don’t believe it! If you haven’t seen the body, you can’t know that someone’s dead for sure!” The pitch of Natty’s voice had grown impossibly high. She sounded squeaky, hysterical. “I want to go to Japan. I want to see for myself!”

  Simon Green returned from his walk. It had begun to rain, and his hair was damp. “Think about it, Natty,” he said gently. “You and Anya were both attacked on the same night. You and Anya were both lucky to escape. Your brother wasn’t.”

  Natty turned to me. “This is your fault! You sent him to Japan. If he was here, he might be in jail but at least he would be alive. He would be alive!”

  Natty ran into Simon Green’s bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

  “It doesn’t lock,” Simon Green whispered to me.

  I went in after her. She was standing in the tub with her back to me. “I feel stupid,” she said tearfully. “But I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Natty, I did send Leo to Japan. It’s true. If that was a mistake, it was also the best I could do at the time. We will go to Japan to bury Leo but we can’t go right now. It’s too dangerous and I have things to arrange here.”

  Slowly, Natty turned to me. Her eyes were furious and red, but dry. She opened her mouth to speak and that was when the tears started. “He’s dead, Annie. Leo’s dead. Leo’s really dead.” She took the wooden lion statue out of her pocket. “What will we do? No Imogen. No Leo. No Nana. No Mom and no Daddy. We have no one, Anya. We truly are orphans now.”

  I wanted to tell her that we had each other, but it felt too corny to say. Instead, I drew her closer to me and let her cry.

  Simon Green knocked on the door. “Anya, I have to take Natty back to Mr. Kipling’s now. He doesn’t want to compromise my house as a safe place for you.”

  I took Natty’s face in my hands and kissed her on the forehead, and then she was gone.

  I sat down on Simon Green’s bed, and the cat jumped onto my lap. I considered the cat, and she considered me with gray eyes that reminded me of my mother’s. She wanted to be scratched so I obliged her. There were so many things I couldn’t solve, but this cat’s itch I could relieve.

  I tried to imagine what advice Daddy would have given me for the situation I was in.

  What would Daddy say?

  Daddy, what would you do if your brother was dead because of decisions you made?

  I came up with nothing. Daddy’s advice only went so far.

  The room got darker and darker, but I didn’t bother to turn on the light.

  * * *

  Imogen’s memorial service was two Saturdays away, and I felt Natty and I both needed to go to pay our respects. The problem was that I was still a fugitive, and so I decided it was time for me to resolve that situation. I couldn’t very well spend the rest of my life holed up in Simon Green’s attic studio. The six days I’d already passed there had been long enough.

  The only person I was allowed to call from the apartment was Mr. Kipling.

  “Three things,” I told Mr. Kipling and Simon, who were at the office. “I want to go to Imogen’s service. I want to surrender myself to the state. I want to arrange for Natty to go to a boarding school, preferably one in another state or abroad.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Kipling said. “Let’s take these one at a time. The boarding school is easy enough. I’ll begin talking to that teacher of Natty’s she likes so much.”

  “You mean Miss Bellevoir.”

  “Yes, exactly. And I agree that this is a good plan, though potentially one we won’t be able to put into motion until next school year. Moving on. I fear that if you attend Imogen Goodfellow’s service, you’ll be arrested, which means that we have to arrange the terms of your surrender before that time.”

  “Even before the events of last Friday, I’d been talking to the new district attorney’s office,” Simon Green interjected.

  “You do remember that Bertha Sinclair’s staff people made the contribution to Trinity, don’t you?” I asked.

  “That was just politics,” Mr. Kipling said. “It was nothing against you, and it’s actually an advantage to us that Charles Delacroix lost because the Sinclair regime can basically disavow all the actions of the predecessor. The Sinclair people sounded amenable to arranging something with you. A short stay at Liberty and then probation, maybe. People are more sympathetic to you than you would think.” Mr. Kipling said that he had planned to meet with Bertha Sinclair on Wednesday, but would try to get the meeting pushed up.

  I asked if they had any leads on who had orchestrated the hits on my family.

  “We’ve been discussing it. It was so complex,” Simon Green began. “Three countries. Three hit men. It could only have been someone with the ability to arrange a multifaceted operation.”

  “And yet the mission was also 66 percent a failure,” Mr. Kipling added.

  “Maybe the person wanted to fail?” Simon Green suggested. “You said you didn’t think it was Yuji Ono but when I think of the other obvious options, it doesn’t seem like it could be anyone else. Jacks is in jail. Mickey doesn’t have the skill set. If not Yuji Ono, the only person I can think of is Fats. He comes from the other side of the family but some people think he’s making moves to overthrow Mickey. It would be to his advantage to have all the direct descendants of Leonyd Balanchine out of the picture.”

  I didn’t think Fats would want to kill me. “But what if it was Mickey? He knew where I was and I’m pretty sure he knew where Leo was, too. What if after I lost favor with Yuji Ono, Mickey decided to avenge his father’s shooting? Yuri Balanchine has been ailing a very long time, and it hasn’t been a pretty decline.”

  “Lost favor with Yuji Ono?” Mr. Kipling asked.

  “After he proposed marriage and she refused him,” S
imon Green explained.

  “Marriage?” Mr. Kipling asked. “What’s this? Anya’s too young to marry anyone.”

  “I never told you about that,” I accused Simon Green.

  Simon Green paused. “When I gave Yuji Ono the letters, he informed me of his plans. I didn’t know for sure that you had refused him. I just guessed that was what had happened.”

  “Simon,” Mr. Kipling said in a hard voice. “If you knew that this proposal was going to happen, you should have told me. Maybe we could have arranged to get Leo out of Kyoto!”

  “I apologize if I made a gaffe.”

  “Mr. Green, this is far more than a gaffe.”

  Mr. Kipling certainly had a point, but I decided to defend Simon Green. He had been kind to me since my return, and I knew that I had not been the easiest houseguest. (Although I’ve chosen not to dwell on it in this account, I had been depressed and unable to sleep since my return.) “Mr. Kipling, as of December twenty-sixth, I, too, knew about the proposal. I could have called you but I didn’t think there was any need to move Leo. I honestly didn’t think that what had happened with Yuji Ono was serious enough to merit a change. It is my fault much more than Mr. Green’s.”

  “I appreciate you saying that,” Mr. Kipling said. “But it is my and Mr. Green’s job to advise you. It is our job to anticipate the worst-case scenario. We have been negligent in this duty once again. Simon and I will discuss this later.” Mr. Kipling closed by saying they would call me once they had spoken to Bertha Sinclair’s office.

  I hung up with my counsel and looked at the clock. It was nine in the morning. The day stretched out ahead of me, everlasting and awful. I missed having the cacao farm to tend or a school to go to or friends. I was tired of Simon Green’s apartment, which had begun to reek of cat litter. I was tired of not even being able to go for a walk.