So Near

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “Close the door behind you,” she told me.

  But I did her one better. I slammed it.

  12

  Jenny

  “W ell, what do you think?” Jude asked, throwing her arms up over her head as she cocked her left hip. She was wearing a strapless yellow-flowered sundress with a flared skirt that came halfway up her thighs. She recently had her red hair—which has darkened as she’s gotten older—styled into one of those newfangled shags. Her body can still pass for that of a teenager. But the many disappointments of the past few years have etched little grooves around her mouth and cast shadows under her eyes.

  “You look just fine,” I told her. “But I’m facing into the sun. Move to your left a little. Yeah, that’s better.”

  We were out on the new terrace. It was an almost balmy late October afternoon. Indian summer. Sugar maples sent bright red flares up the hillside. Below us, Daniel’s plantings patterned our sloping yard with the jewel-like hues of an oriental carpet: the reddish purple of the sedums, the hydrangeas’ dusky rose, the straw and greeny gold of the many different grasses. I’m still not accustomed to the reality of Daniel’s almost too-perfect composition: the way the different shapes and groupings lead the eye, the subtle balance of color and texture. How could I have ever thought Daniel’s plans were generic? They’re like photographs I’ve seen of the gardens at Versailles, or paintings of paradise. The kind of place you might dream about, but where you could never imagine actually living.

  In that sense, it’s not really my garden anymore. It’s Daniel’s. It’s almost as if he’s left a part of himself behind. When I walk along the pathways that wind through the beds, or down the new stone steps that are carved into the hillside, I feel once again the sense of relief—and release—that began to wash over me in the days following my lunch with him. The guilt that gripped me when I first told him about Betsy’s car seat has slowly eased, replaced by a real if fragile tranquility. It no longer feels wrong that I told him my secret. I know it’s safe with him. It’s been almost three months now. Three months since I’ve seen him, but the tactile memory of his lips on my palms still lingers. It went no further than that. Still, it was enough to make me feel absolved in some way. It seemed to me that his brief touch was both gentle and forgiving—like a kind of benediction.

  “I’ll want a full-body shot,” Jude was telling me. “And a couple of close-ups, too. Can you do retouching on your computer? I’d love to have these damned frown lines removed.” She made a face at me, pulling at the sides of her mouth with her thumbs, scowling like a gargoyle, and sticking out her tongue.

  “Do you think you could hold still for a second or two?” I asked her, just barely able to control my irritation. Without Besty—or the garden now—to care for, I have more time than ever on my hands. Yet the simplest tasks seem burdensome to me. And Jude’s request that I take some new head shots for her feels like an enormous imposition. Having spent the summer selling her work at craft fairs and growing increasingly bored and restless, my sister has now decided she needs to get her long-dormant acting ambitions back on track. She simply wouldn’t hear my attempt to say no, showing up earlier that afternoon with a couple of changes of clothes and a bag of makeup. It stuns me sometimes how narcissistic she can be. She still seems utterly oblivious to my pain and loneliness.

  “They’re mounting A Christmas Carol in Stockbridge over the holidays,” she said. “Maybe I could audition for that old hag who tries to sell Scrooge’s bedclothes.” She began to pluck invisible fabrics out of the air and hold them out to me for inspection.

  “I wager this’ll fetch us a pretty haypenny, dearie,” she said in an approximation of a cockney accent, then cackled as she bit down on an imaginary coin.

  “Please, Jude,” I said, frowning as I lifted the camera. “The light’s starting to go.”

  She froze midpose, like a mime. Then she quickly repositioned herself and, shaking back her hair, smiled seductively into the camera. And there—between blinks of the shutter—I saw Betsy again. Betsy, rather than Jude, smiling impishly back at me. It’s not so much that Jude and Betsy look alike, though they share the same high forehead, curving brow, and slightly crooked, definitely wicked grin. It’s more that they have like spirits—fun loving, headstrong, unpredictably wild. Betsy, who would fling her arms around my neck for no reason and whisper, “Love, Mama!” Jude, who’d call me collect from strange towns and tell me drunkenly, “You’re the only person in the whole world I believe in.” Betsy, who would throw a temper tantrum without warning, her screams echoing across a crowded Walmart. Jude, who tried to seduce my husband.

  So when Jude said, “You’re beginning to feel better, aren’t you?”—it seemed to me as though somehow Betsy, too, was asking.

  “Yes,” I said, lowering the camera. I felt my anger ebbing. So she was aware of the hell I’d been going through. “Maybe I finally am. Finally.”

  “That’s great. And things are okay with you and Cal?”

  It’s unlike Jude to pry. In general, I think she’s usually too self-involved to really focus that much attention on those around her. And, since that business with her and Cal, she’s got to be aware that I’ve stopped confiding in her. She’s my sister and of course I love her. But I’m not sure I’ll ever really be able to trust her again. And I think she knows that. Knows, and has been careful not to push her luck, especially when it has anything to do with my husband. So I had to wonder where these questions were coming from. Then it occurred to me:

  “Why? Is His Holiness worried?”

  “Can’t I be, too?”

  “Sure you can,” I said, raising the camera again. But I felt I had my answer; my father had obviously asked Jude to quiz me. How silly of me to think she’d bother asking on her own. I know my father’s upset with me that I still refuse—despite the kind of tragedy that often brings a person back to organized religion—to attend his services. Does he truly want to help? I wonder. Or does he just worry that his congregation might find it unsettling that their minister and his grieving daughter are so obviously estranged? Whatever his motivation, the fact remains that his rote answers to my life-and-death questions are useless to me. Just as I know how ineffectual any advice he might want to offer me about my marriage would be. Cal’s and my problems won’t be fixed with any of the usual bromides. I can’t begin to imagine how we’ll ever find our way back to the couple we used to be before Betsy was killed. It’s like we’re in Hansel and Gretel’s dark forest, and the birds have eaten the trail of breadcrumbs that was supposed to mark our way home.

  I spent a few seconds adjusting the camera before I finally told Jude:

  “You can tell him that there’s really no need to worry. Everything’s fine. We’re good.”

  By the time the light faded altogether I felt I had a decent range of shots to select from. I’d used Cal’s digital camera, rather than my old Nikon analog, so that I could work in iPhoto to crop and enhance the best ones. I decided just to get the whole damned thing over with. After she left, I went right into the great room, where we have our computer set up, and started to import the afternoon’s work. It’s a process that usually takes a few minutes, so I wandered into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.

  The postage stamp–sized images filled the screen when I sat back down. I started from the last photo I snapped and worked my way backward, enlarging each one, deleting those with obvious problems. I had a chance to really study Jude’s face as I did so, thinking back to that flash of Betsy I’d seen earlier in the afternoon. It was harder to detect any real similarity in the still photos. The likeness is far more obvious in the actual laughter, the brightness of the eyes, the turn of the head. Looking at Jude’s prominent cheekbones and her wide, eager smile, I was reminded again of the couple of grainy photographs we have of our mother. And though my memories of my mom are as blurry as the photos, I’ve long felt that she and Jude shared more than just good looks. In the same way Jude reminds me of Betsy, I’ve o
ften sensed my mother’s temperment playing out in my younger sister’s behavior.

  “I hate this!” Jude told me one summer evening when she was eight or so. “I’m running away.” There was still a little light on the horizon at nine o’clock, which my father had designated the hour of her bedtime. She’d just thrown her nightgown on the floor, refusing to change into it. For weeks now she’d been objecting to the fact that I was allowed to stay up until ten o’clock in the summertime. When it came to my father’s rules, Jude saw only injustice, never mind that a lot of kids her age were put to bed even earlier.

  “But that’s crazy,” I told her, though already alarmed. Even then, Jude didn’t make idle threats. “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t care!” she said, kicking her nightgown across the room. “Why do you get to stay up? This isn’t fair! I can’t live here anymore!”

  Did she know how frightened I was of being abandoned again? Just the thought of it made me go numb: the one person I loved more than any other leaving me behind as our mother had done. Of course, a part of me realized that she’d have a very difficult time making good on any of this, but fear had gotten the better of me. Before I thought twice about what I was doing, I was pulling back the covers on my own bed and crawling in.

  “Okay, so now we’re equal,” I told her. “Now it’s fair.”

  I went to bed when she did for the rest of the summer. And, of course, Jude didn’t talk about leaving again. At least not then. But in many ways, it was only the beginning of her complaints and ultimatums. The more I tried to placate her, the more restless and demanding she became. Until, of course, she crossed the line from bad behavior to betrayal. Until she took a step too far—one that forced me to agree that, after all those years of threatening to do so, the best thing she could do finally was walk out the door.

  How sad, I was thinking as I stared at her frozen coquettish expression on my computer screen, that things couldn’t be easier between us. How sad that even now, when I was feeling so uprooted and unstable, our old, entrenched patterns of behavior remained the same. Why couldn’t she be there for me—when I needed her most?

  Angrily, I clicked on the backward arrow for the next shot.

  And my heart stopped.

  A part of me knew instantly what I was looking at, even while my mind refused to focus. But the bucket seat was so familiar. And it looked perfectly normal, except for the fact that the left shoulder strap had been wrenched loose from the frame and dangled from a few frayed strands. A part of me knew what I was looking at, but the shock of seeing Betsy’s car seat again—the evidence of my own, unspeakable negligence—kept me from taking in the reality of the thing all at once.

  In fact, I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the screen, before I clicked on the backward arrow again. And there was another shot of the car seat, this time from a more head-on angle. I clicked again. And again. There were thirteen shots of the seat altogether, each taken from a slightly different position. For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine how my daughter’s life had ended. I don’t know why I’d never really thought it through before. Perhaps it was because I’d seen her body at the hospital. I’d held her in my arms. But then Kurt had carefully arranged her for us in the chapel, wrapped her in that sheet, maybe even hastily borrowed somebody’s makeup to cover the bruises. Staring at the photos, I began to see how it must have really been. What she would have looked like when Kurt first found her. When the EMS crew tried everything, as Kurt assured me they had, to bring her back to life. The car seat had made it through with just a mangled strap, but she’d been thrown from the car like a rag doll, her body bloodied and broken.

  I could hardly breathe. It felt as though my rib cage was being crushed. What were these photos doing on Cal’s camera? Where was the actual car seat now? I hadn’t thought to ask after the accident. No, I hadn’t wanted to know. Now I felt panicky, trying to understand what had happened. Why Cal had taken these shots. Why he’d never told me. Had he somehow figured out what I’d done? Had he taken the photos to confirm his suspicions? What else could I think?

  His car lights swept through the downstairs as he pulled into the driveway. I remained seated in front of the computer with one of the photographs of the battered car seat enlarged to fill the screen. I heard him open the front door. Walk down the hall. Stop in the kitchen to get a beer.

  “Jenny?”

  “I’m over here,” I said. I heard him cross the room and come up to stand behind me. I could feel him staring at the screen.

  “Oh Jesus,” he said.

  “I don’t understand. Why did you take these?”

  “I was going to tell you,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me!” I swung around in the chair to face him.

  “Listen, Jenny,” he sighed, closing his eyes. “I know how you feel—”

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “You can’t. You can’t possibly know.”

  “She was my daughter, too! I have every right to do this. More than a right. It’s an obligation. To Betsy. To other innocent kids.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not about the money,” he said. “I mean that; I really do. But someone has to stop Gannon. Someone has to step up to the plate.”

  “You’re going ahead with the lawsuit.”

  “I want us to go ahead with it. We need to do this together.”

  I just stared at him, my heart racing. He didn’t know. But now was the moment to tell him. How it had happened. Why. That exchange with Tessa. The worry about Jude. I thought about how to begin. How to explain. But my thoughts kept circling. My mind wasn’t working right. I felt as though I was falling back into the dark hole of those first days after Betsy’s death. The walls were closing in. Cal was talking, but I wasn’t really tracking what he was saying.

  “. . . a firm Edmund contacted in Albany . . . Already sued Gannon and won . . . a huge settlement . . . forensic tests should show . . .”

  “You gave this law firm Betsy’s car seat?”

  “Yes, they’re conducting some tests to pinpoint exactly what went wrong.”

  “You went behind my back. You lied to me.”

  But what were Cal’s lies compared to mine? He did have every right to try to find out why his daughter had been killed—and to hold the guilty party responsible. Would these tests be able to show that Betsy hadn’t been correctly buckled into her safety seat? If so, the law firm would certainly want to drop the suit, wouldn’t they? Then Cal would come home and ask me why I’d been deceiving him all these months. And what would I say? That I’d begged him not to go after Gannon. That he hadn’t listened. He hadn’t even tried to understand. But the truth was, I didn’t tell him because I was so ashamed. And now I was afraid. How would he react when he found out what I’d done? But if he didn’t pursue the lawsuit, he’d never have to learn what had really happened. I knew I had to find a way to stop all this. I was so rattled, I could hardly stand up.

  “I’m doing this for Betsy. For all the—”

  “No,” I said as I walked away. “I can’t hear this. I can’t take any more of this. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  I drove south. I didn’t know why at first. I drove south into Covington and then east along Route 206, which winds up through the mountains. A moon rose above the trees. It was the harvest moon, nearly full, the orangey red of a bonfire. When I was a teenager and first got my driver’s license, I used to steal out of the house at night and take my dad’s secondhand Camry on joyrides through these same mountains. Sometimes Cal would come with me, and we’d park along the side of one of the back roads and make out right up to the point of no return. But never beyond it. What a pure pleasure it was kissing him then! How special and powerful I would feel when he’d reluctantly pull away and tell me:

  “That’s it. Or we’ll be sorry.” Though, honestly, I think Cal cared a lot more than I did about saving the ultimate step for our wedding night. If he’d pushe
d me at all, I know I would have given in. But he had such a definite sense of right and wrong. A vision for our future life together. Does he still? I wonder. Betsy’s death has managed to blur so many once-clear moral lines. I’m not the only one hiding things. For instance, I know Cal’s drinking more than he lets on. He’s taken to stashing six-packs in the extra refrigerator in the garage and drinking out there at night after I go up to bed. He crushes the empties and puts them right into the recycle bin, thinking I won’t notice.

  I’m partially responsible for that, too, I guess. I know he feels frustrated. Well, probably far more than that by now. But having sex with him at this point would feel so utterly dishonest. I’d only be faking it—the way I’m faking so much else. Every social interaction these days feels like such a burden. I can hardly face going down to the Covington Public Market and making small talk with the cashier. How could I possibly expose myself to the most intimate of acts? And with Cal—from whom I’m already trying to conceal so much? I flinch when he touches me. If he knew the truth—would he ever really want me again?

  It wasn’t until I was on the outskirts of Northridge that I fully realized why I was heading in that direction. Whom it was I wanted to see. I don’t know where Daniel lives, but Cal told me that he hangs out at Ernie’s. It was early evening still; it wouldn’t look too odd for me to drop by. I could pretend I was in town and thought Cal said he might be there. I parked in the public lot and put on some lipstick. The weak little light on the back of the visor hollowed out my cheeks; my eyes and mouth looked roughed in like in a child’s drawing.

  I’ve been avoiding crowds for months. So when I walked into Ernie’s, the noise unsettled me—all those voices, the laughter, the heavy electrified bass line thumping out over the sound system. I scanned the bar, but it was hard to see more than a long row of backs from where I was standing. I made my way across the crowded lounge area, looking for that distinctive profile.