“I’m going to call my parents.”
42
A few hours later, a knock on the front door of my condo sent Baxter into a paroxysm of barks. Before the accident, I would have scolded him, but now it thrilled me to see his spirit.
The doorman was outside. “Flowers,” he said. A large round white vase filled with blue hydrangeas. “These are the prettiest flowers I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of flowers.”
I smiled. They could only be from my parents, who had hydrangeas all over their property in the summer. Like the alchemists they were, they constantly played with the amount of aluminum they put in the soil to make the hydrangeas light blue, sea blue, palest purple, pink. Their property was a piece of art that they created together. Hydrangeas were their favorite, and had always been mine, too.
“We’re on our way,” the card read. “Hang in there! We love you.”
I sat down on the couch, and I promptly cried. If I accepted that moment as it was. I accepted that my ex-husband had been arrested in a country where anything could happen and that he had a very unsure future and it made me conflicted with emotion. I accepted that aside from his safety, there was nothing more I wanted than those blue flowers, that note from my parents. And so despite the situation, I felt grateful. They were coming! They were coming for me. And why? Because I had reached out. Because I had asked them to. They were despondent for Sebastian, who they very much cared for, but excited to be consulted. My dad had packed a bag for them (just one bag for the two of them) and they were in the car by the time my mom and I had finished our phone conversation. They’d gotten a flight from Buffalo. They would be here in a few hours.
I threw myself into getting the spare room ready. I moved artwork around the apartment so that the second bedroom had some of the most interesting pieces. I brought pillows from my bedroom that I knew they would like. All the while Baxter scampered around me, occasionally putting a ball at my feet to see if I would play. Instead we took a walk to a grocery store at Clark and Division. I clipped Baxter’s leash to a rail with a few other dogs, who immediately moved in for a sniff and greet.
I bought fruit and wine and cheese, plus things to make my parents for dinner—chicken and pasta. I felt, in some ways, as though I was preparing for a fun weekend. My parents were coming to support me, to be with me, and I could not help but feel elated about that.
When the doorbell rang, I froze. I was only a few feet away, just in the kitchen, but suddenly I remembered what Barbara meant about the last moment of a previous life—holding on to a life because you knew that life was about to change.
Baxter was at the door, barking like a little madman, his spirits again cheering me.
When I opened my door, my parents were standing shoulder to shoulder, as they often were. My mother was a thin woman. She was of Scandinavian descent, and you could tell that, in part, by the minimalist way she dressed. In the winter she usually wore a feltlike coat in ivory, along with black riding pants, black riding boots. But now she sported her summer look, which was a slim, black cotton skirt to the floor, a white, short-sleeved shirt and a light blue scarf around her neck. My father, on the other hand, was a big man, unafraid to take up space. He let his belly grow from the cooking and baking he did. His hair, pushed back in a still-stylish manner, was now thick and white. My mom’s hair was pixie cut and mousy-brown. Individually, they were vaguely interesting. Together, they were lightning, charisma, shine, sparkle.
They stood for a moment, both gazing at me, and then they rushed inside, arms around me. I felt what Barbara must have with her sisters—comfort, release.
Eventually we sat at the table, my parent eschewing water or anything to eat.
“Have you heard news?” my dad said. “Since we were on the phone?”
“Poor Sebastian!” my mother said. “Can you imagine...?”
“Well, exactly,” my father answered.
“It’s...” my mom started.
“Disgraceful,” my dad finished for her.
They often spoke in shorthand.
Darling, my mom might say over dinner, apropos of nothing apparent, but looking at my dad with questioning eyes that said, Don’t you need to...?
No, my father would answer, without waiting for the question. I took care of that already. Later I would find out that they were discussing something as exciting as taking out the recycling.
A few minutes later, my mom might look up from her plate. And did you...?
I did. And the other thing, too.
My mother would give my father a sweet smile across the table.
I was always envious when I watched their brand of verbal Morse code, when I saw the love and the sparkle. And yet I was always grateful that, even if I didn’t exactly share it, their brand of adoration existed. Sometimes I thought of one of my parents dying. And it scared me, not for me or the grief I would surely feel, but for whoever was left behind. My parents operated as a unit, always. What would happen when only one remained?
Right then my dad moved his hand to mine and covered it. He nodded, encouraging me to tell them.
“Beverly told us there’s a video now in addition to the picture.” I marveled at how Beverly, the name of the State Department lady, rolled off my tongue, as if she were a friend. I’d only spoken to her for about five minutes. She’d mostly wanted to introduce herself, since Barbara had told her she had shared information with me.
“A video?” my dad said.
I’d received a short email from Beverly just before they arrived. Video released of Hess and Baxter. We will send to Barbara, as our rules require next of kin.
“Can they use the Superdog attention to get some attention here?” my mom asked.
“That’s what I’ve been wondering, too. Beverly says it would only confuse things right now.” I stood. “I’ll get my laptop and show you the photo.” I stopped walking. “If you want to see it.”
“Of course,” my parents said in unison.
Of course. They were visual people.
“We want to be involved,” my dad said.
“If we can help,” my mother added. “Sometimes people have to help themselves.” She nodded at me. “That’s what you always told us.”
I blinked fast. Baxter was at my feet. I held my arms open and let him jump into them, squeezing him for comfort.
“Mom, look...” I said.
“We saw the magazine,” my father said. “About Billy. And you.”
I flinched inwardly.
Almost as if he were miming me and Baxter, my dad stood then and opened his arms. I hesitated, then placed Baxter down and launched myself into his embrace.
My mother stood, too. They both hugged me.
“I saw Billy,” I said. They both pulled back, eyes wide, and then we sat down.
Normally, my father would lead the conversation for them, be the one to ask the questions. But he was pissed off that Billy had rejected me all those years ago.
So my mom launched in instead, and I basked in her questions—“How did it feel to see him? How did the meeting come about? Was it difficult? Are you okay?”
Eventually, my father asked, “How is Billy’s family?”
“He doesn’t speak with Mick anymore. Other than that, I didn’t have a chance to find out. I was talking with him when I got the news from Barb about Sebastian.”
“Oh, honey,” my mom said.
I felt comfort from them. I reveled in it.
But then something struck me. “It must be terribly embarrassing for you,” I said, my face in my hands now, and it felt good to mimic a motion recently made by my mom. “This news of my arrest must have been terrible for your art careers.”
“Bah!” my dad said dismissively.
My mother murmured her protests, and they told m
e, both of them told me, over and over and over that they loved me.
This time, for some reason, I believed them.
43
“If you die, what you want to say?”
The voice came from behind the camera, his English poor.
On the video, Sebastian and his photographer were sitting against the wall. They both looked very, very tired.
“Okay, then each say three persons to say when dead,” the voice said, his glee evident. He sounded as if he were leading blissfully excited first-graders on their first pony ride. That pissed me off. And that surprised me. I didn’t get mad often. I got disappointed, I got depressed, but not mad.
But that jackhole militant/police officer/whatever he was (Beverly had said they couldn’t be sure of the group that had detained Sebastian) was joking about Sebastian dying? I flushed with rage. I turned my attention back to the video.
“Who you want to know when you die?” The man’s voice had gotten some composure, his English improving. He zoomed the camera toward the photographer, next to Sebastian. The photographer named Baxter. “Three people.”
I was sitting in Barbara’s kitchen again, the morning after my parents arrived. They were still asleep at my place. I reached down for Baxy and put him on my lap.
On the video, the photographer named Baxter spoke. “Lauren Baxter. Jackson Dilly. Anthony Baxter.”
“Say three people,” the delighted voice said, turning the camera on Sebastian. In the same clothes, squatting now as if very comfortable with the position.
Sebastian cleared his throat. “Jessica Champlin,” he said.
I gasped.
“Barbara Hess,” he said. “And Baxter Hess.”
I immediately burst into tears—a bouquet of droplets falling onto Baxter’s soft head, the tears representing stress, fear, confusion and also, right at that moment, happiness and love.
Sebastian had thought I could deal with it. He’d thought that Baxy and I could deal with the dangerous ramifications of his job. Now he wanted me to be his...well, his first of kin.
I walked to the front door and opened it. Barbara was outside again—on the porch, her arms between her legs, looking to the street, but with a vacant stare. She was usually the busiest of women, especially when something had to do with her kids.
I said her name. Slowly, she turned around, looked at me.
“Barb, where are your sisters?”
“One is upstairs. The others are coming back in an hour.”
“Good.”
“Sebastian...” She shook her head.
“You haven’t watched the video yet?”
“No. I can’t. But I want to know what’s in it.”
I took a breath and then I told her. I told her the question they had been asked. “He lists me, you and...” I gave a soft laugh. “And Baxter. The dog Baxter, not Bill the photographer.”
That made her smile minutely, but then the question must have hit her, her expression returning to one so bleak, so tired.
I sat on the steps and touched her hand. “It’s going to be fine.”
She looked at me, shocked. “You know it’s not.”
“I know?”
“You were always the one who said his job could end his life.”
I had never said as much to Barbara. Sebastian must have told her I’d said it to him.
“And you were right!” She sounded shrill.
“I’m not right. I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
Sebastian’s mom was in her early sixties but could usually pass for a decade younger. Now she appeared aged somehow. Weak. Diminished.
“And he risked himself for what?” she said. “To report on the stories that needed to be told? Blah, blah.” Barb sucked in air and seemed to crumple a little with the exhale.
When she spoke again, her voice was a bitter whisper. “You were right.”
44
What a strange, strange world mine had become. Stranger, I suppose I should say.
I walked Baxter through Lincoln Park in a light summer rain. Baxter liked the rain because he could trot about, plunge into puddles, then stop and shake off the water and do it again. I liked it because there was no one around, and I could consider what a strange, strange world mine had become.
My parents, who I’d rarely seen for years, were ensconced in my apartment (all of us happily, comfortably, strangely). Meanwhile, my ex-husband Billy was in town staying at a lux hotel, Just in case you need anything at all, he had said more than once, texted more than once.
In talking with him, what I realized I needed most from Billy was his ear. Not his musical ear, but his listening one. I talked to him about Sebastian, mostly telling him the story of how Sebastian and I had met, where we’d lived, the places we had traveled and why we’d broken up. Then I would start over, and Billy kept listening, asking different questions each time, and I wasn’t even embarrassed, and I would find side angles to our story that I’d forgotten.
I was relieved to relive it. And it kept my mind far away from the magazine article and my full voice mail and multitudes of texts and emails. None of that mattered now. In that way, I was grateful for the situation with Sebastian—it had given perspective to my past.
“And I’m realizing something,” I told Billy now on the phone. “What I’m realizing is that I want to keep it alive. Sebastian and me.”
“But you don’t want to keep us alive?” Billy said, gesturing between us.
“Us as friends, I do. I’m grateful for you.”
“What about as something more than friends?”
I thought of Billy, of his green eyes and dirty-blond hair. He always looked so adorable to me, since I’d first known him.
“It’s too long dead,” I told him.
He blew out a puff of air, as if he’d been holding it until he got my answer. But then he said, “I understand.”
I was so thankful then to have Billy. Repairing us in that way made my feelings about the magazine article, my past, come into more perspective, get placed in the proper level of my present.
And right then, something bobbed into my consciousness, something broke through a tiny crack in the shell I wore, one that held the decisions I’d made about Sebastian, the conclusions, the shading of the truth. And the thought was this—Sebastian loves me unconditionally.
The truth of that statement kept breaking over me, rushing through the crack, light seeping into dark.
I told Billy about that, too. “Well, that’s good, right?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.” In fact, I wasn’t sure I could handle the intensity of the emotion.
“Billy,” I had said upon feeling the swell, the rush, “I’ll call you back.”
I turned and headed back home, to my parents, walking Bax through the rain.
After a minute, I let Baxter’s leash drop, let him bound ahead of me on the wet path.
Sebastian had always loved me. I knew that. I’d always known that basic fact, but when we were together I thought he hadn’t loved me enough—evidenced by his unwillingness to change the conditions of his job. He always said he would try—that he wouldn’t take so many overseas assignments, that he would work in the newsroom, would start to take a managing role. And he did try a few times, particularly when we moved to Chicago, but in the end the job won. That’s what I’d thought.
I watched Baxter pawing at the mud, as if he’d found something stuck there.
“Bax, stop!” I said. But his DNA digging instincts must have kicked in, because he started frantically burrowing, his butt in the air, mud flying behind him from between his legs.
“Baxter, stop!” I walked toward him fast, but he was lost in that motion, in that mud.
That’s what I do, t
oo. I get lost.
My instincts were to assume people didn’t love me, or didn’t love me enough. I’d dig and dig, looking around for the evidence, and I kept finding it. Or so I thought. But maybe I was just unable to stop my reaction. Because a lack of love wasn’t what I had, not with my parents, not with Billy, and not, I realized now, with Sebastian. His love was unconditional, despite what he could or could not do at my request.
“Baxter!” I said.
Finally, my voice had penetrated the instinctive behavior. His brown eyes were big, a little startled-looking. He glanced around, like, What? What did I do?
“Come!” I said, pointing to the ground. He listened then, he dodged to me. I bent, kissing his wet nose and forehead. He looked up at me, thumping his tail, seeming so happy. I couldn’t help but hug him, mud or not.
I hugged Baxter tighter. I let other thoughts—new and old—about Sebastian enter my mind. I didn’t bat any away. I didn’t look away. And then another thought, a memory really, came back.
It was of a brunch Sebastian and I once had in New York. On the Upper West Side, a few blocks from my apartment. It had been dumping rain, and so we’d gone inside and tucked into a booth and stayed for hours. And in answer to my questions, Sebastian had talked about his job.
The table was covered with a checkered tablecloth, I remember, because Sebastian said it reminded him of a restaurant in France. And as if we were in Europe, we ordered menu items slowly, and then shared them.
When I asked Sebastian what he liked most about his job, he thought for a long time.
“You know what I like?” he said. “I like when I know something for certain and yet the government in that country denies the piece of information.”
“Why would you like that?”
“Because I’ve found the truth.”
“And now you’re going to fight a government to expose it?”
“Not fight, necessarily. Sometimes the government is misleading you intentionally.” The waiter put down an omelet with porcini mushrooms. Sebastian’s passion made him ignore it, lean over it to keep talking. “Sometimes they just don’t know the situation as well as a journalist who has special sources different from the government.”
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