The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  The psychiatrist also strongly suggested that she get out of the house more, go to the movies, a museum, a civic event. Toward that end, he handed her a flyer for a lecture a week hence at the civic center, given by a world-renowned professor of sociology and comparative religions. It was called “How to Adjust to Our Changing World.”

  Against all her instincts she forced herself to go. She saw Elin’s parents there, sitting by themselves, oddly enough, a square of conspicuously empty seats surrounding them like a waterless moat. She wanted to say hello, to thank Elin’s mother—what was her name?—for allowing Elin to spend so much time at the Mathis’s house. Not that Maggie wasn’t paying Elin a damn nice wage for her services; nonetheless, it would have been the friendly thing to do, the neighborly thing. Trouble was she didn’t feel particularly friendly or neighborly. Instead, she sat forward, hands obsessively fidgeting in her lap as if she were Lady Macbeth. She was antsy for the lecture to start; this was the first time she had been in an auditorium with so many people in well over a decade. Her periodic parent-teacher conferences were always one-on-one, set in an otherwise empty classroom. At the most recent one, Bella’s teacher had told Maggie, to her vague astonishment, that Bella was a star pupil, excelling in everything she set her mind to, but that she could be a little standoffish, and some of the girls made fun of her because she never went trawling through the mall with them or gave them the satisfaction of rejecting her attempts to join their clannish cliques. Young girls had a pack mentality, which was perfectly normal, the teacher had explained. But Bella didn’t. Did Mrs. Mathis think Bella had enough friends? the teacher had inquired, with a birdlike tilt of her head. Girlfriends were oh so important at this age, the teacher had babbled on—didn’t Mrs. Mathis agree? Maggie had nodded, though she had no idea whether she agreed. What girlfriends had she had at Bella’s age, or now for that matter? She could never make her way through that fog.

  Sitting in the packed auditorium now, she was bound by terror, which was why she had doubled her dosage of Lexapro and Wellbutrin XL an hour ago. And before she had left the house, she had grabbed a handful of other pills. As soon as she had stepped out the door, her anxiety had risen like a fever, and now, as the world-renowned professor took the stage to polite applause, it commenced to skyrocket. She popped a pill, swallowed it dry.

  “We live in an age of fear: it cannot be denied.” Matthew Kirby was the evening’s speaker, and his amplified voice penetrated into every corner of the auditorium. He was a tall, slender man, younger than she had imagined, though there were touches of silver, like wings, at his temples. He had an intensity that made her tremble and shake with anxiety, especially when she felt his gaze settle on her. Claws digging into her. “And what happens when we feel fear en masse? We retreat into tribalism. Why? Because tribalism defines the most primitive part of the human psyche: the reptile brain. Though we have evolved far beyond the reptile, yet that atavistic part remains. Why? Because the reptile brain sees tribalism as the self’s last defense against danger. Its sole purpose is self-preservation.”

  The renowned professor paused to take a sip of water kindly provided by the staff of the organization sponsoring his lecture. In this interregnum he looked about the room, his gaze moving from row to row, alighting on first one face, then another. He smiled in what many in the audience took to be reassurance. Maggie, however, interpreted that smile as the consequence of a joke he had told himself at the audience’s expense. She popped another couple of pills, rolled them around in her mouth like sucking candy or mints before swallowing them. She deserved the bitter aftertaste.

  He cleared his throat and continued. “It is the great irony of the new age of fear in which we find ourselves that globalization has, in fact, spawned the return to tribalism. And what, precisely, is tribalism? It’s the unshakable sense that I—and my people—are right, and everyone else is wrong, is out to attack me, lay me low.

  “The rapid rise of Muslim extremism following 9/11, if we can force ourselves to pull back to an objective distance, is an action. So. There must be, according to the laws of the universe, an equal reaction. And that, my friends, is the rapid rise of the extremist Christian right wing. Their rage has for years been directed almost solely at Muslim jihadi. But in the way of tribalism, their rage now has spread to include Americans who they consider enemies of the Christian State. These people would have you believe that their way of life is being threatened by the federal government, Muslims living here, Latinos living here. They want a clean sweep. They want a Christian nation, a theocracy, if you will, that ignores the fundamental separation of church and state.”

  There was more—surely there was—but Maggie ceased to hear it. Her anxiety spiked to an unmanageable level, which, in concert with the unholy cocktail she had ingested, caused her to lose consciousness.

  When she awoke, she was in a hospital room, hooked up to IVs, monitors beeping in a rhythm that set her teeth on edge. Oddly, the first face that swam into view was that of Elin’s mother.

  “Mrs. Mathis. Maggie,” Elin’s mother said. “You’re in the hospital. How are you feeling?”

  Maggie opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. Intuiting her problem, Elin’s mother reached into a plastic cup, offered her a chip of ice. Maggie’s mouth opened like a child’s, and the ice slid onto her tongue. She sucked on this for a moment, unsure exactly what it was. Her head was swimming, her thoughts wriggling away from her like a school of frightened fish.

  The ice melted; she swallowed and felt well enough to ask, “What happened?”

  “They had to pump your stomach.”

  “What?”

  “You were convulsing when they brought you in.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “I called 911. I also looked in your cell phone and called your husband. He’s on his way back from Ephesus, I think it is. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

  Maggie didn’t know how to answer. At the moment she had no idea what an archaeologist was. She couldn’t even remember this woman’s name.

  “I’m Elin’s mother, Lely.”

  She had a welcoming smile. Reassuring, which was more than you could say for the world-renowned professor. “That damn lecture,” Maggie muttered, the recent past rushing back at her like a wall of water. “It was so frightening.” She must have spoken out loud because Lely answered her.

  “Yes, it was. Particularly for me and my family.”

  “That’s why I fainted!”

  Lely smiled gently, sadly. “That’s not why they had to pump your stomach, Maggie. You were full of drugs.”

  “Prescribed by my shrink!” And then because her thinking was slow on the uptake: “Why for you particularly?”

  Lely’s smile turned sadder. “Surely you must know.”

  “Know what?”

  Lely sighed. “I almost couldn’t get up here, even though my husband and I were the ones who brought you in.”

  Maggie blinked, looked at her blankly. Then: “Oh, I see—because you’re not family.”

  “No,” Lely said slowly and distinctly, as if speaking to a small child. “Because we’re Muslims.”

  Maggie’s brows knit together. “What has that to do with anything?”

  “Everything, Maggie. But let’s not talk about this now. America and Americans are better than that. Freedom and liberty for all, yes?”

  Lely paused as a nurse, bustling in, gave a cheerful greeting to her patient; checked the electronic readouts for heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen flowing to her extremities; changed the glucose bag; made some notes; and bustled out again, all without saying a word or making eye contact with her.

  “So how did you get in here?” Still focusing on herself.

  “Elin talked us in; she’s a jinni at these things.”

  “Jinni?”

  Lely smiled. “Jinni are a kind of fairy. Very powerful.”

  Maggie frowned. Her thoughts were muzzy. “But they don’t really exist, do they?”

 
Lely patted her leg. “Never mind. Just rest now, okay?”

  “Richard. My husband . . .”

  “I called him. I told you, remember?”

  Maggie shook her head; her expression darkened. “Oh, I don’t want him to see me like this. Not like this.”

  On the flight back to New York, Angela at last came to her senses. Thirty thousand feet above the curve of the earth, she realized the extent of the danger her relationship with Richard Mathis had put her in. Of course, on a purely visceral level she had been aware of the peril when she had made the decision to abandon the dig, reverse her disappearance, and make her return to the country and dangerous situation she had fled four years ago. Once Kieros informed her that Richard had been run down in the street forty-eight hours after Bella’s disappearance, there was no question of her remaining on Crete. She was sorry to leave Cul and Culsans, the guardians she had come to love, and doubly sorry to have been kept away from them the moment Richard had left by the men who had never really had any respect for her. Now, in the terrible aftermath, they saw her as nothing more than Richard’s whore. All except Nigel, who for some reason felt inclined to treat her with a modicum of kindness. Unsurprisingly, she could not bear to stay at the dig, on Crete, away from America one day longer. That suited the entire team just fine. Besides, by rights it was Richard who should have been the first person in the tomb, not Kieros and his crew; Richard who should have made the assessment; Richard who should have received the glory. Now that was all gone as if it had never existed. For herself, she was quits with being chthonic, buried underground, in fearful hiding.

  As was often the case in the flawed perception of human beings, she hadn’t really understood the depth or breadth of her feelings for Richard until after he was dead. To have him erased from Crete, from Dearborn, from the world of the Etruscans, from life itself was for the moment unbearable. But repeating in her mind like a mantra was his last wish to have his daughter back, to do all the things Angela had enumerated in her first email to Bella. He couldn’t do that now. But she could.

  I hate it here. I wish I wish I wish.

  Did that mean that Bella had run away? But if so, where to? Surely not a friend’s house; that would be the first place the police would look. And if she had run away, how often did that lead to very bad things happening: a hitchhiking pickup with the wrong person, a hit-and-run, falling in with the wrong people, a life of God alone knew what? And speaking of the police, she couldn’t go to them with the messages on Richard’s phone without putting herself in grave danger—they’d ask too many questions about her.

  You don’t know.

  What didn’t she know? Bella had never written, and this was what terrified Angela the most: the not knowing. Something had been terribly wrong in Bella’s life. Despite their closeness, Richard had never given her so much as a hint of what it might be.

  So much had gone wrong in her own life. The parallels between her and Bella were so stark, so obvious to her that she knew she couldn’t let Bella’s disappearance go.

  You don’t know.

  Once again, she read the accounts in the copies of the New York Times and USA Today she had purchased at the Athens airport—threadbare though they were—of Richard’s death. He had been struck two hundred yards from his front door by a hit-and-run SUV, a black late-model Chevrolet or Lincoln Navigator with blacked-out windows, according to the sole witness, a pensioner who lived across the street. He couldn’t recall the license plate number; he hadn’t been able to see inside the vehicle. It had struck Richard at speed, flung him ten feet away. He hit the back of his head on the curb, instantly breaking his neck and shattering his skull. His body was found sprawled in the gutter. That was the sum and substance of Richard Mathis’s death. An accompanying article detailed how deeply he was being mourned by the entire worldwide archaeology community. The usual quotes of shock from Kieros, past colleagues, museum curators, university presidents, especially after the disappearance of his daughter. “All in total shock . . .” “senseless tragedy . . .” “irreplaceable loss . . .” “Everyone who knew him loved and respected him.” “Our hearts and thoughts are with his family.” It was astonishing how boilerplate and insincere impromptu expressions of condolence could seem. And then there was this: “Richard Mathis’s alleged inamorata, Angela Chase”—how she winced at that name now—“abruptly left Dr. Kieros’s team on Crete, vanishing into thin air.” The same photo of her at Richard’s side that had appeared on page 6 two days before, her face blown up, blurry, accompanied the sidebar. “Where is she? Who is she?” She was overcome by the magnitude of her mistake. Oh, God. Oh, Christ. Four years in the wilderness, meticulous in her disappearance, mindful of Dey’s long arm every hour of every day. Only to be undone by her relationship with Richard. Of Bella, there was even less news; she was, in fact, a footnote. Angela had to comb the papers to find any mention of her: “mysterious disappearance,” “ongoing investigation,” “no suspects, no substantial leads, according to local police officials.” Boring; no news there, nothing that passed as what journalists these days would call sexy. Jesus, what was anyone doing to find her? Clearly, news sources were not going to be of help. Boots on the ground.

  There was actually more ink on Margaret Mathis, widow of the recently deceased Dr. Richard Mathis. Unwell for some time, Mrs. Mathis had suffered a complete psychological break following the twin shocks of her daughter’s disappearance and her husband’s death, had taken a fatal overdose of Vicodin and fentanyl. Angela thought again of Richard leaving Bella in the wake of Maggie’s venomous force and wondered if Bella had been snatched up by a new one.

  At least Kieros had kept his promise not to tell anyone when she left the dig; the delay in the media finding out had given her a head start. She did not tell him—or anyone—where she was headed. She was taking a very roundabout route back to New York. Still she knew it would be only a matter of time before some snoop scouring the airline manifests would trace her. By that time, she prayed she’d have disappeared from New York.

  In the toilet at the rear of the plane, she wept for herself as well as for Richard, for Bella, whom she knew: “I hate it here. I wish I wish I wish”—and yet didn’t know well enough: the enigmatic and frightening “You don’t know.” To fight the fucking chaos of life that shredded happiness, contentment, and security between its cruel teeth, Angela needed to find her, to save her, and perhaps, in the process, to save herself.

  The plane bucked and jerked as it hit turbulence. The pilot came on, asking the flight crew to suspend drinks service, passengers to return to their seats and buckle up. Angela, ignoring the announcement, gripped the stainless steel sink with both hands. Stared at herself in the mirror: the coffee-colored eyes that, up close, didn’t look quite right; her thick hair cut short, blonde as Monroe’s. She tried to see what Richard saw when he looked at her but failed. We never saw ourselves as others saw us, she thought. Mirrors reversed our slightly asymmetrical faces, changing our appearance. She staggered as the plane dipped and righted. Who am I? she asked herself. Am I Angela Chase, am I Helene Messer, am I Laurel Springfield, or am I someone else entirely? Someone Richard Mathis had befriended, mentored, confided in. Trusted. She didn’t recognize herself because she was no longer who she had been in Dey’s world, no longer who she had been when she had disappeared, no longer who she had been on Crete. Who had Richard met there? Who had he trusted? She had no idea.

  SEVENTEEN

  When Richard pushed open the hospital room door the next day, he only had eyes for Lely, who had taken time out from her family to check in on Maggie. When she told him Maggie had collapsed at a lecture, what had ensued, he thanked her for being the first one to Maggie’s side when Maggie had fainted, for calling 911, for asking her husband to follow the ambulance to the hospital so Maggie would see a familiar face when she woke up. None of this was easy for him. In his mind rose the specter of the jihadi who had shot Ben while they stood together in friendly argument as to who was better,
the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

  “We can kill you,” a spokesman for one of the extremist groups he had contacted had told him. “We will kill you if we so choose. Or torture you, bend you to our will. If we so choose.” And they had said, “Your life is in our hands.” And he had understood what it meant to have your life taken away from you. Armed with that knowledge, he had not shown fear, had not blinked under their fierce scrutiny.

  “You are a disease, American,” they had said. “You vomit your naked entertainment, your low morals, your money, weapons, drones here where we live, killing our women, our children, our hope for a righteous life. And because of you, all we have left is hate. That is our one weapon against you, American. It is why you will never defeat us. Never.”

  And he had said, “I understand all that. I am an American, and I understand.”

  They had laughed, and he had laughed with them. It had preserved his life.

  Now it was Lely standing before him, but in his mind, he was once again speaking with the Muslim extremists at great personal peril, as vulnerable as if his life were an unmoored tent in a sandstorm. It was Sinai’s bitter sand he felt in the back of his throat, Sinai’s blinding sun in his eyes. He shivered in the hospital’s prophylactic chill. As if he had never left Sinai. As if he had become an Arab.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said with a throttled voice. Warring emotions ran through him, stretching his professionalism near the breaking point.

  “Perhaps I had better step out,” Lely was saying now. “So you and Maggie can have some private time.”

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.” He hadn’t said a word to Maggie. He’d scarcely glanced at her, had no desire to do so. In fact, he found it painful to see her now. He thought about Bella, but that just brought more pain, another tide of unendurable emotions. Drowning. Drowning. Almost.

  “Your wife is very ill, Dr. Mathis,” Lely said. “She overdosed. She’s been self-medicating.”