“I’m sorry,” I told her.
“For what? You didn’t do anything.”
“You never really got the chance to know him,” I said. When Nina moved east, I stayed away, at his request. She blames me, not you, he promised, but when you’re there, it’s harder for her to forget. “Maybe if you did, this would be…” I didn’t know. Less difficult, or maybe more. Impossible to believe, or too obvious to have missed.
“I loved him,” she said.
After graduation, we paid her rent, or most of it. When he died, I kept sending checks. She sent the first one back, but not the next. Our wills were identical, all communal assets defaulting to the spouse. He could have designed things differently. I would have, I think, if the daughter had been mine. But maybe he wanted a reason for her to need me.
“It’s not like I didn’t already know he was… I knew a lot. I loved him anyway. He was my dad, you know? But this? What am I supposed to do with this? Assuming there’s a this.”
“He was your dad,” I said, firm. “That’s allowed to matter. You’re allowed to keep loving him, no matter what.”
“What about you? Are you allowed to keep loving him, no matter what?”
“I think that’s the wrong question.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t tell her it was because I simply did love him. That wasn’t choice, it was fact, and it wouldn’t change just because I wanted it to. The right question was how was I supposed to live with that?
“I know you think I hate you,” Nina said.
“No.”
When she took my hand, I wondered why. My cheeks were wet, and I wondered at that, too. She squeezed, and I said thank you, and wondered if she had never hated me, what I had always felt for her.
“I hate him, though,” Nina said. “I really want to hate him.”
She felt like family.
* * *
Benjamin’s heart did not break. It beat too fast, ventricles quivering. Disordered electrical activity desynchronized chamber contraction. The organ’s ability to distribute blood to the rest of the body, its raison d’être, subsequently failed être. Blood flow to brain decreased. Brain function decreased. Autonomic systems stuttered. Lungs failed, kidneys failed, body failed. Heart sparked then stuttered then stopped. Husband slipped from sleep to unconsciousness to unbeing. I slept through it.
That morning I discovered I could not will my own heart to stop. The body wants to live, until it doesn’t. The heart wants to beat. A heart once broken, however, has various means of self-destruction. Grief can spur overproduction of calcitonin gene-related peptide, which overcoats the cells designed to seek and destroy infection, which depresses immunity, enabling disease or cancerous mutation and ultimately death. A faster route to the same end, takotsubo cardiomyopathy, occurs when emotional shock spurs a hormonal one, which in turn incapacitates the left ventricle, which in turn removes the widow from her misery. Widow, because broken heart syndrome most frequently befalls women. Then there’s the French, who until the 1870s thought you could die of nostalgia, the longing for a long-lost life. The French—quel surprise—were big believers in the deadliness of a broken heart, des maladies de la mémoire. Children died of missing their nannies; soldiers died of missing their home. Nostalgia, of course, is the distortion of the past into an unattainable perfection, and maybe this is the most important point. Misremembering the past can kill you.
ALICE
Alice hid out the day at the movies. It was all she had the energy to want: darkness and transport. She ate a Snickers bar for lunch. She ignored the widow’s calls, and she ignored her father’s. There was nothing from Zach. She napped through a matinee. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She missed her mother.
Her lip was swollen and tender. She was bad for him, Zach always told her, and now she wondered. The logic here felt murky: Alice lied to Zach. Zach hit Alice. But: if A, then Z suggested Z was inevitable outcome of A, gave A all power over Z and Z none over himself. And maybe, she allowed herself to think, this had been the intent all along, because hadn’t she ultimately asked for pain? Maybe she was her mother’s daughter, a born victim. She was her father’s daughter, too, and maybe she was genetically primed to love a monster.
In the break between movies, she checked her phone again. More texts and voice mails from her father, from the widow. A message from Nina, the girl who might be her sister. All of them family as much as they were not. All of them wanting to know if she was all right.
She was not all right.
Nina’s text offered dinner and a place to sleep, if she needed, one or both, on neutral territory. She texted back to say yes. One real dinner. One more night of sleep in a stranger’s bed, and in the morning she would wake up knowing what to do next.
* * *
Nina’s studio was squat and sloppy, oozed cozy. Mismatched wood furniture mosaicked with tile and bottle caps. A wall plastered with Polaroids of household objects in bizarre, extreme close-up. Blankets and throw pillows everywhere. It was an apartment that promised a soft landing; it delivered an ambush. The widow was sitting in wait, ridiculously prim and posed, on Nina’s overstuffed armchair.
“Family dinner?” Nina said weakly.
“I’m out of here.”
“To go where?”
“What do you care, either of you?”
“Humor me,” Nina said, and the widow still said nothing. She looked like a wax dummy of herself. Nina lit a candle at the coffee table, which had been set with woven place mats, pink and purple ramekins of olives and Parmesan cheese. “I made spaghetti. Let’s eat. Then talk.”
Alice sat down at the coffee table. The wood floor was reassuringly firm beneath her. She put her hands on the table. That was firm, too. Nina sat beside her. The widow lowered herself, carefully and creakily, across. A candle flickered between them. Alice’s mother liked candles. She liked to slide her finger through the flame. When Alice was a child, she thought that was magic, that her mother was a witch.
The widow wanted to apologize for lying, wanted to explain, again, that she’d been so uncertain and Alice had seemed so sure—that her father was her father, that her life made sense—it seemed cruel to destabilize her with unfounded suspicion. Then she corrected herself. “And I was afraid to tell you,” she said. “I was afraid what it might mean.”
Nina wanted her to take a paternity test. “So we can know. You must want to know.”
Must she? If she wasn’t a match to Benjamin Strauss, it would mean her father could be anyone, any man who’d passed through or near the Meadowlark Institute that month. She would probably never know who had done what with or to her mother. She would probably never find him. Another missing person.
And if she was a match to Benjamin Strauss? She didn’t know what that would mean, but whatever it was, she didn’t want it.
“My mother didn’t want me to know,” Alice said. “She didn’t even want to know herself. Maybe she had good reason.”
“You want to follow your mother’s lead here, considering what happened—”
“Nina,” the widow said sharply. “It’s her decision.”
“It’s okay,” Alice said. “I’m not going to break.”
“Sorry,” Nina said. “Big mouth, as usual. What do you need? You tell us.”
“Some space, maybe?” Alice said. “And some garlic bread?”
Nina passed the basket, and Alice took three pieces. She hadn’t expected an appetite, any more than she’d expected to be tempted by the idea of a sister. They ate. Spaghetti Bolognese, garlic bread, sautéed asparagus. Alice gobbled it all up. She was cavernous. They chatted about television and politics. The widow laughed at Nina’s jokes. Alice did not pretend to smile. She felt no impulse to cry.
They finished dinner, washed the dishes together, and finished that, too. They ran out of tasks. Nina said Alice could stay. The widow said Alice could come home. “Only if you want.”
Before she left, Nina folded her int
o a hug. “One way or another, whatever the DNA says, in a way he made us both. That counts.”
The widow, wine sodden, asked Alice to drive. Alice hadn’t been behind a wheel since leaving home. She had to concentrate, which was good.
“It might not be him,” the widow said into the silence. “And you only have to find out if you want to.”
“I can’t even find out the things that actually matter, though.” What happened, and why. Whether her mother wanted her; whether her mother ran from her. Whether her mother had wanted the man who was her father, or feared him.
Wendy Doe had discovered she was pregnant, then immediately allowed her memories to flood back in, knowing they would erase whatever had come before. Alice didn’t know if that was strength or weakness, but either way it seemed like answer enough.
She squinted in the glare of passing high beams. There was perverse pleasure in the blindness that followed the bright. The destructive possibilities of the wheel in her hands, the exhilaration of escape.
“Do you think she wanted to forget?” Alice asked.
“Yes.”
“And maybe she didn’t entirely. Forget.”
“Maybe.”
“How could she, when I was there? A reminder. No escape from that.”
“People can always find a way not to know something they don’t want to know.”
Which of us, Alice thought. All of us.
“I’m never going to know, am I,” she said. “Not what happened to her here, not why she left this time. Not where she went.”
“Maybe not,” the widow said.
The thought of knowing anything more was intolerable, because everything she’d come to know just made things worse. But the thought of not knowing, of living every day certain of nothing, that was equally intolerable, and here was the problem—here was the swell of temptation, to bear down on the gas, speed into oncoming lights, easy and ultimate escape, and she was, after all, her mother’s daughter. She was her mother’s daughter, and she was her father’s daughter, and no one could blame her for wanting to be anything but. The road blurred, the speed ticked up, the widow yelped, Alice let the tears run, the snot flow, the road unspool, but could not make herself want it—not escape, not erasure, not transformation. She did not want to trade pain for oblivion. She did not, in the core of her wanting, want to be anyone but Alice, even this Alice, Alice in a nightmare, Alice orphaned and deorphaned, Alice a hybrid of figment and monster, Alice gripping the wheel, tight, tempted, resisting, temptation persistent, but she was not her mother. She was not her mother, fragile and fled into fantasy. She was the daughter her mother had raised to be stronger than the mother. She was not going to break.
XIV
UNFINISHED FUGUE
WENDY
You
Now there are two of us squatting in this body, both of us wonders of science. Baby to be born only a few months after her mother. Call the National Enquirer.
I thought I was writing this for her, to force her to remember me, but now I know better. Now, there’s you. Now, the three of us are in this together. She is our host; we are her guest. Eventually, both of us will have to leave. This is something you will grow up to understand: sometimes you have no other choice. Sometimes there is nowhere else to go. I can’t stay here, with him. I can’t both remember him and love you.
I’ve always assumed she is a coward, but maybe she’s no more coward than I am. I hope she has somewhere better to go.
Somewhere cold, I hope. You should have snow.
I remember snow. Cold, like pain, but fresh and sweet. Toes numb, tongue out, sky falling. Remember to wear waterproof boots, please. Gloves, not mittens. Two pairs of socks and a scarf, a hat. I would knit you a scarf, if I had time. I’ve felt it, for a while now, the end of time. Her need to come home. It will be easier to let her. I won’t have to look at you and see him. I won’t have to see anything anymore. I won’t have to try to forget. I can love you now, while you’re still an idea. Let her love you when you’re flesh and his blood. It happened, but it didn’t happen to her.
She might hate me for leaving her with you. I would hate me. Do hate me. If she does remember—him, it, me—she might still find a way to love you. I would love you. I’m your mother, but I will not lie to you: she might not.
It’s not your fault.
LIZZIE
Wendy’s window overlooked the parking lot. Lizzie imagined her lying awake, watching headlights dance across the ceiling. She might have seen Lizzie and Strauss knotting themselves together. If she had been a witness, she’d been their only one.
Lizzie watched through the window as Karen Clark paced the parking lot curb, waiting for the taxi that would take her—and her hypothetical fetus—to her hotel. She watched the woman turn back to face the Meadowlark, impassive. She watched the woman take the journal Lizzie had given her, Wendy’s journal, and drop it in the trash. The taxi arrived. Karen Clark climbed in, shut the door, drove away.
Lizzie considered retrieving the journal. Pulling answers from the trash was apparently the theme of her day. Surely in that notebook was some indication of what had happened, and with whom. Of whether Karen Clark would be receiving a nasty surprise from her trusted doctor. When she did, if she did, she would want to know, wouldn’t she? Lizzie couldn’t decide. This was more like the theme of her year.
Enough, she thought. Wendy was gone. Lizzie had no subject, no lover. She had a mother but not a family. Her love, the love she’d given herself up for, had no evidence: no photographs of her and Strauss, no love letters, no witnesses, no past. If she left, it would be as if she’d never been here. She could erase herself from the year and the year from herself, unmake all her mistakes, escape the distortion of this city’s present and past, regain her essential shape; she could hit the reset button and revert to the person she meant to be. The body did not have to remember.
Here, she decided, is what she would do. She would remove herself. First from this window, soon from his fortress. She would call Gwen to apologize, because Gwen only wanted to protect her. She would go back to California, nestle herself between mountains and sea. She would luxuriate in sunshine, fresh doughnuts, roads that ribboned and swooped. She would find some way to explain the sudden departure, right the wrong to her résumé; she was a bright young thing, she could forge herself a bright new future. She would propose a new project, find something new she could love without reservation, that would not depend on anyone’s participation or approval but her own; she would not do this to prove anything to him. She would live like he wasn’t watching. She would be self-contained. She would acquire a home, which she would furnish and in which she would hang posters she bought at museums. She would go to museums. Join a gym. Overcome her fear of waxing. Maybe get a dog; she’d always wanted a dog. She would return to her rats, on which she could rely. She would build her new self as a scientist built a theory, each step deliberate, logically predicated on the one before. She simply needed to take the first step, which was away from this window, from the parking lot where she might eventually spy Strauss in his car, sitting at the wheel, waiting for her to change her mind and join him in the dark. When he discarded that hope, he would drive home to his family, kiss his sleeping daughter, climb into bed with his wife, move on. She would not watch this. She would not be his audience. She would turn away. She would leave him. She just needed to sit here a little longer, to be ready, to be certain. As soon as she was, she would.
* * *
Except that when dusk came, she was still sitting by the window, waiting to glimpse Strauss one last time as he left the building, and so when he came looking for her, finally, she was there to find. He stayed in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be sorry, she got her memory back. That’s good, right?”
“No, I mean. Yes. I’m sorry if this is upsetting for you. I thought it might be. But that’s not it.”
It wasn’t like him, the halting speech, t
he uncertainty. The look on his face, as if for once he needed something from her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say this sooner,” he said.
“What?”
“May I?” He gestured toward the room, and when she nodded, he came in, sat beside her on the bed. It had been so long since they’d been awkward with each other, since Lizzie had needed to be so aware of the space between.
“I want to be a good person,” he said. “I want that very much.”
“You are a good person.”
“Am I?”
He looked down, kneading his fingers. She couldn’t stand it—she stilled them with her own. They held on.
“You are a good person,” she said.
“If I were, I would pull some strings, get you a fellowship somewhere else, away from me.”
“I don’t want a fellowship somewhere else.” She had decided. “I don’t want to be away from you.”
“You make me want to be a better man,” he said. “But that shouldn’t have to be your job.”
He turned toward her, finally, and she felt her lungs expand for the first time in weeks.
“I thought it would be harder for you if I told you the truth,” he said. “But the truth is, I love you.”
Lizzie breathed.
He kissed her forehead. “I love you.” He kissed her nose. “I tried not to.” Lips. “But I do.” Neck. “I should have said so sooner.” Lips.
The door didn’t lock. She wedged a chair under the knob. They consummated his confession in Wendy Doe’s bed, and she fell asleep in his arms. Lizzie dreamed that he told her he loved her. She woke up in the dark, trapped beneath his weight, numb, tingling. He shifted off of her, kissed her, and it felt like a goodbye. His wife was waiting. “It won’t always be like this,” he whispered.
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