by Marnie Vinge
He turns and opens his arms wide as though I’m a prospective buyer of a home he’s selling. I smile, his enthusiasm is infectious.
A section of horror books lines the first shelf, but I wonder about them. Out here, flesh and blood predators picking off livestock are a very real and living nightmare. I’m not sure that ghost stories hold as much weight. But then again, it does get awfully quiet and awfully dark at night without the noise of the city to coax you into believe that you’re not alone. That we’re not all one skipped heartbeat away from death.
I walk up to them, run a finger along one spine.
“What do you think?” he asks.
There’s pride in his voice. This is obviously the thing out here that he feels is his greatest accomplishment. And I have to say that, if I were to leave behind everyone and everything, I’d hope for such a library.
“It’s amazing,” I say. And it’s true. The whole thing is amazing. I’m shocked at the amount of literature that Tom has amassed here.
“It was what I thought would be most important to invest in once we got everything else built. Aside from the cafeteria, of course. I guess food is more important than reading,” he smiles at me. He’s at ease. He’s in his element surrounded by the words of civilization dating back centuries.
Libraries are sacred places, I’ve always believed. A space in which so many different ideas are brought together and accessible to anyone that can read or listen to a book. If you can read, you have nothing to blame but your own unwillingness to put in a little time to cure your ignorance.
Tom is many things, but not ignorant or lazy.
I watch him as he walks past the first shelf. His pace picks up. There’s life in it. I follow him, speeding my steps to catch up. He wanders into the general fiction section and I turn to trail him down between the stacks.
We reach a shelf of T’s and he pauses. I look at the shelf and see the volume I want to pick out. Tolstoy. Anna Karenina.
I reach for it and pull on the spine. Books packed too tightly around it spring forward and cascade onto the floor in a pile. I kneel quickly to pick it up and Tom does the same, our heads slamming into each other like two big horn sheep.
“Shit,” he mutters.
“Sorry,” I grunt.
“Not your fault,” he rubs his head and his eyes meet mine.
There’s a smile there, his eyes glittering like a lake swept over by a breeze. I’d forgotten how blue they are. They stare into mine, two orbs of ice water. And suddenly I’m reminded of how cold Tom can be. The moment of romanticizing is cut short by a dose of reality. Suddenly I remember why I’m here to begin with. My rose-colored glasses quickly fall to the side.
But Tom isn’t so eager to give up the ghost.
We stand and I gather the books, shoving them into their respective places on the shelf. I stop when I reach Anna Karenina, the last of the pile, buried under the rest when they fell.
“Do you remember reading that?” he asks.
The question opens a wound inside me. It’s like I haven’t breathed until this moment. I inhale sharply.
“I do,” I say.
“I remember when you came to discuss it with me,” he says quietly. His tone becomes contemplative. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” I say, and look down at the book in my hands. How could I not? That semester changed the course of my life. I laugh bitterly. Maybe I have Tom to thank for my success after all. The thought that his influence stretches that far makes me sick. I look back at him.
“I remember it all,” he says.
I wonder if he remembers things as they were, or perhaps as he wants them to have been. I can’t say that I haven’t, over the years, strained those memories through a sieve, plucking out all the pain and only looking at the moments that brought me to life. I carefully tucked away the ones that destroyed me. But being here, in front of him, it’s impossible not to bring both sets out to be examined.
I think of Johnny Cash singing, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light. Tom is a backbiter, there’s no doubt. But what I do have a doubt about is my conviction to stay as far away from him as I can, emotionally.
In this moment, I wish I was stronger. I wish that I had the strength to stand up and slap him and tell him what he did to me. How deeply he betrayed me, and worse, how he ruined one of the best relationships I’d ever had. Two of them, really. Birdie and Wes.
But it occurs to me that it’s no one’s fault but my own that I let Tom have such a position, whispering constantly into my mind’s ear. If I could just let it go. If I could just find a way to banish him once and for all out of my life like an unwanted spirit haunting a house, I’d be fine.
But instead, I’m here.
And I’m not fine.
I haven’t been fine for a really long time.
I look at him, my eyes begging him for something—I don’t know what. Whatever it is, I want it to heal everything. I’m looking to him in the same way that his followers do. I want him to fix all that was broken. I want to love away the wounds that were left that fall.
He leans toward me and his lips meet mine.
A crackle of energy passes from his mouth to mine, my body coming to life against his. I drop the book. It thuds on the floor as his arms wrap around my waist. His kiss is like a tonic to a sickness I didn’t even know I had. His chest against mine makes my heart beat wild inside my ribs, making them rattle against my lungs. My breath catches as I pull away. I look into his eyes and all I see there is that same longing that drew me in so many years ago.
That same pain that drew me to him.
There’s something about those of us that are drawn to the written word. Something broken and irreparably damaged that we seek to mend through absorbing similar experiences written down by others and then purging ourselves of it all, creating new ones for those that will come after us.
He looks down at me and reaches a hand for my cheek. I flinch, though he’s never hit me. The proximity with someone like him is enough to put me on edge and soothe me at the same time. I can’t explain it. It was never this way with Wes. With Wes, it was comfortable and easy. With Tom, it’s something else. Easy was never part of it.
He touches my cheek, his fingers trailing along my jaw.
“Please don’t leave,” he says.
Before I can formulate an answer, the door of the library swings open, creaking on its hinges, announcing the arrival of someone else to our little party.
Tom looks over his shoulder.
“Stay here,” he says.
He turns and walks out of the stacks. I bend slightly to peer through the rows of books that separate me from the entrance of the library, and I see her. A woman. I can’t see her face, but I know who it is.
Vanessa.
I hear them argue. I can’t make out the entirety of it, but it pisses Tom off. He storms from the building, leaving me alone with his wife in a five-thousand square foot room full of heavy shelving that I have no doubt she would shove on top of me if she thought it might kill me.
I hover in the stacks, waiting for her leave, but she doesn’t. She pauses and places her hands on her hips. I imagine her craning her neck, sniffing me out, knowing that it’s me just from the way that Tom acted. The thought is ridiculous, and I try to dismiss it entirely. But Vanessa stays just long enough to make me doubt myself.
Finally, she turns and leaves.
I exhale, realizing that I’ve been holding my breath since she came in. The static electricity in the air that was present between Tom and I is squelched in her presence, and I’m a little grateful for that.
Seeing Tom again is like being sucked right back into the eye of a storm after having evacuated. Far too late, albeit, but I got out. Part of me hates myself for being here. The other part reminds me why I came at all.
Birdie.
I have to find a way to see her.
I rise from my bent position in between the stacks and I step over th
e copy of Anna Karenina, leaving it behind me as I leave the library.
BIRDIE
The idea that a journalist has come is enough to make Birdie almost giddy. Even with the pain in her shoulder escalating, the thought that someone could turn the tide of this tidal wave is like salve on a burn, taking out the sting. It gives her hope. And she knows that hope is an important thing to have.
Especially in a situation like this.
She decides to take a look at her wound, evaluate her current predicament. She reaches over with her good arm and tugs at the end of the bandage beneath her shoulder. She groans, the pain running like an electric current through every muscle fiber in her body. Birdie manages to unravel some of the bandage, revealing the gray green of her flesh. Purple and red meet in a swirl of sickly yellow bruising, but the bullet hole itself remains a red-so-dark-it’s-black wound.
The thought occurs to her that she should try to dig the bullet out herself. It’s in there, the root of the infection, making it spread like ivy over her slowly dying body. It’s only a matter of time before the infection reaches her blood. After that, it’s all but over. Time is not her friend today.
She grits her teeth. Touching the wound will only make it angrier, possibly exacerbating whatever process is taking place. She thinks better of the idea and abandons it, an orphan thought floating in the room.
She’s spent so much time alone since the shooting. Her thoughts have been the majority of her company, furthering the divide that had been growing between her and Tom since the beginning of all of this.
Before she can descend into them, a spelunker exploring the recesses of an unmapped cavern, there’s a knock at the door.
It startles Birdie. She reaches for her bandages, covering up the wound as best she can and the door swings open.
Tom.
His face is drawn, somber. He looks like he’s aged overnight. His hair is undone, a mess of waves around his face and neck. A collection of stubble clings to his jawline, grown long past a respectable five o’clock shadow. The situation is wearing him down. Birdie wonders if he’s talked any more to the FBI. And then it occurs to her that he’s been talking to the journalist.
She longs to leave this room, find that person, and tell them the truth about Tom. How he’s ruthless and cold. How he’d leave her to rot in this prison of a room rather than face the consequences of the shooting. He’s a coward, she realizes. And seeing him this way unshackles her from him.
For so long, she’s been joined at the hip to Tom. His Girl Friday. His right-hand woman. She’s covered up so many of his messes at this point, they all blur together. The truth of history bleeds into the fictions Birdie has created. And for what? So that it could all amount to this? A broken man avoiding arrest while she dies?
“Hey,” he says. His voice contrasts with his appearance, making him sound alive and young again. Like the man she met so many years ago.
Birdie doesn’t speak. She watches.
Tom paces the room, picking up a knickknack and turning it over in his hand the way someone might if they were looking for the price tag. Your money bought that, she thinks. Countless dollars spent on useless trinkets. It’s a shame now. The whole thing.
Tom roams the room, taking it in as though for the first time. Something is different about him. He projects an energy that is at once so strange and yet so distantly familiar to her. She’s seen him like this before. She can’t put her finger on when. But it’s been a long time.
“How are you?” he asks, finally pulling himself out of whatever distraction he’s been under.
“Fine,” she lies.
His eyes dart to the roughly re-bandaged wound at her shoulder. Then they meet hers.
“Did you take it off?” he asks.
“I wanted to look at it,” she says, her voice defying him.
“Let me see,” Tom sits on the bed next to her and reaches for the blood and pus-soaked gauze. He pulls it back, revealing the still-blossoming kaleidoscope of colors on her skin.
“It’s swollen,” he notes.
He brushes a finger over the entry wound. Birdie recoils too quickly. Pain explodes like a bomb and her skull threatens to burst.
“I’m sorry,” his words are distant. She fights her way through the pain back to the room. Back to Tom.
He draws back a hand like she’s shocked him. Their eyes meet, the tension of what Birdie needs to say hovering between them. She reels for a moment from the feeling in her shoulder, the pain becoming a dull ache that radiates throughout her entire body. A reminder that time is running out.
“Tom,” she says, the word like a death rattle in her throat.
He looks down at her, taking her in as though for the first time.
“I need—”
Tom’s energy shifts, the lightness leaving him to be eclipsed by the broken pieces of him that Birdie has come to know so intimately. The pieces that she has come to fear. The pieces with edges so jagged that anyone passing by would snag on them.
“I want to see a doctor,” she blurts out.
Tom’s nostrils flare, his immediate irritation clear on his face. His brow furrows, the line there like a crevice on a map.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says. He draws the sentence out, coaxing each word like a reluctant stray. Birdie wonders if he hopes to coax something out of her. A steadfastness in belief that she no longer feels, perhaps.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t come when he calls.
Instead, Birdie feels something else stir inside of her. The ghost of an idea, a thought. Something that she dares not put words to. But it’s there. She thinks that she might have found a way out of this mess.
“I think you’re right,” she says with a serene smile. She fights the urge to yell—to scream—and slap him, tell him that she never wanted this. That she never wanted this child or this life or the burdens that come with it. Instead of that, she just smiles at him, confident in the knowledge that she’s going to find a way out of here. Whatever it takes, she thinks. She’ll do whatever it takes.
Tom smiles, his anger evaporating as quickly as spilt perfume. He reaches for Birdie’s hand and takes it in his. She can’t stand it anymore. She has to ask even though her mind’s made up.
“I heard a journalist came today,” she says.
Tom looks away, hiding something from her, she knows.
“That’s right,” he says. He’s omitting something, she’s sure of it. She doesn’t know what it is, but it worries at her like a splinter that won’t dislodge.
“I hope they can set things straight,” she says. Her words dismiss him. The role reversal is complete. Tom stands from the bed.
“She will,” he says and his lips curve on one side, a lopsided smile emerging. Birdie’s seen it before, but it’s been so long she’s not sure where or when. There’s a whisper of something familiar on it. A name. It knocks around in the back of her mind, not quite ready to step forward into the light and be seen.
Tom steps out of the room without a goodbye. He brings the door all the way closed, its bolt sliding home into the metal notch on the wall.
She is alone.
She looks over at the oil lamp on the bedside table. It will be enough. She imagines the glass shattered into hundreds of pieces, only needing one big enough. The trick will be getting it to break silently, and she can’t see a way to do that yet.
She needs more time.
As the infection pulses out from her shoulder with every beat of her heart, the thought drives itself home: she needs more time.
BIRDIE
6 YEARS AGO
There was another day in Birdie’s life where she decided that she had to take matters into her own hands. That time, though, it had been for Tom.
The night that started the fiasco that was the Morgan Wallace incident was like so many other nights that Birdie spent at Tom’s house. Except in one significant way. Birdie realized on this night that she was in love with Tom.
It didn’t dawn on her in a romantic moment shared under the starlight or in a stolen kiss in Tom’s office. Nothing physical had transpired between the pair. Even so, Birdie spent every waking hour in Tom’s company. She was there with his coffee at the university in the morning, she organized his schedule, she even saw students for him sometimes. Some of them even sought her out before troubling Dr. Wolsieffer.
Birdie had completely put her own writing on the backburner, and she resented Tom for that. The Gorman Fellowship had not turned out anything like what she’d expected. And she didn’t feel unreasonable in her anger about that.
Tom promised her all the time that they would focus on her novel just as soon as The Way, as presented to him in Brother Martin’s journals, was published. The self-help tome had found an editor at one of the big five and Tom was waiting on the last word before publication.
Even though this had freed up some time for both him and Birdie, he hadn’t put any of those extra moments into Birdie’s writing. Instead, he had buried himself in his social life both inside the church and the university. Tonight, he was hosting one of his famous parties.
It was on this night, though, that they truly became infamous.
Birdie watched as Tom flirted with three of his students. He perched on the old writing desk that he’d told her had belonged to his grandfather and hovered over them like a vulture. She wondered if any of them knew what easy prey they would make for someone like Tom. The thought beckoned another—Ione. She thought of her old friend—she hadn’t in a while—and she longed to know if Ione had known what an easy mark she’d been for Tom from the beginning.
She didn’t think so.
Ione had been in love with Tom, Birdie was sure of it. Sometimes she had her doubts about how Tom had felt about Ione. But then there would be moments. Moments when Birdie would bring her up and Tom would banish the subject swift as a hammer driving a nail home. In the second just before he changed the subject, Birdie saw the truth in his eyes. He longed for her friend just as much as she did, if in a different way.