by Peter Israel
He pees, then reaches forward to flush as I’ve taught him to. Then I take him and Zoe into his room and close the door behind us.
I realize I’m crying too, silent tears. The last thing in the world I want. I can’t stop, can’t control myself.
I get him back into bed but not to sleep. I can feel his tension on top of mine. I can’t get either one of us to relax.
“Justin, it’s the middle of the night,” I say. “You’ve got to go back to sleep.”
“Jutesy,” he says.
I have a juice box waiting for him on his night table. With trembling hands I get it open, the straw inserted. I prop him while he drinks.
He sinks back into his pillows. Even in the near-darkness, I can tell that his eyes are on me.
“Is her here?” he says.
“Is who here, Justin?” I answer, fighting my voice.
“’arrit.”
“Harriet? What makes you think that?”
“Me hear her. Her promise.”
Oh my God.
“What did she promise?”
“Her come back. Her promise.”
“Justin, you must have been dreaming!”
“No. Me hear her! Yes I did!”
He starts to wail. My God. It’s not full-fledged, but at any second he’s going to let go, and then he’ll wake Zoe up, and then I think I’ll be the one to go crazy—raving, full-fledged mayhem.
Please, Justin, I beg him in my mind, please!
But it’s no use.
I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing.
“You’re right, darling,” I tell him as softly as I can. “You’re absolutely right. You did hear her voice. In fact, she’s downstairs right now. She came to say good-bye to you. In a minute, I’m going to ask her to come up. She’s going for good, and she only has a few minutes, but before she goes, she wants especially to say good-bye to you.”
“Her promise,” he says again.
“You’re right,” I answer crazily. “She promised.”
I stand, Zoe’s carrier in my hand. From the top of the stairs, I can see Harriet looking up.
I motion to her. I think: Georgia, you’re going to regret this the rest of your life.
But it’s too late for that, isn’t it?
I talk to her hastily at the top of the stairs, my voice low. “I’ve told him you’re going away for good. That you only have a few minutes, but you want to say good-bye to him.” She nods, wordless. “I swear to you, Harriet, anything more—any promises, any anything—and I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.”
She nods again, and then she’s gone inside his door.
It’s more than a few minutes. It seems forever. I stand in the hall of my own house, my almost ex-house, holding my sleeping daughter’s carrier in my hand. I can’t bring myself to put it down, can’t bring myself to pick Zoe out of it. I listen, half-listen. I can hear Harriet’s voice like a murmur, but few of the words, and if he says anything, I miss it altogether. Otherwise it is very still, night-still, except, possibly, for the sound of Georgia Levy Coffey trying to swallow.
I hate her for it now, hate her from the bottom of my heart. For what she’s done to us, her power over us. Now I’m an exile in my own house, locked out. How do I know what she’s telling him?
You’re doing it for him, I keep telling myself. For three months he’s been like a caged animal trying to get out, and you’ve been stuffing him back in, telling him it’s all right. When you know in your heart that it isn’t.
That’s why I’m standing in the hall, biting my lip raw.
I’m praying now. I think maybe, just maybe, it’s like the end of something and before something else has begun. An interval, a time warp, like the gorge between death and birth if you believe in reincarnation. I know I’m not a praying person, but dear God, please let it be true. Please let it be the end of something, and the beginning of something else. Please let my son, Justin, be a normal, loving child again.
Oh my God.
Whatever God is doing at the moment, though, the little prayer calms me.
I stand guard.
“Georgia.” It’s Harriet, emerging from his doorway. She has her finger to her lips. “He’s asleep,” she says.
I brush past her. In the dim light from the hall, I see his little head burrowed into the pillow. His eyes are closed, his breathing slow, even. I’m aware that my own heart is pulsing as I lean over him, but there’s no telling. No telling what she said to him; no telling what he now believes.
She’s not in the hall when I come out. In a daze, I put Zoe down in the nursery.
When I come down the stairs again, she’s back in the kitchen. I notice she’s refilled her glass. Does she think, it occurs to me crazily—does she think she can make herself at home now?
Move back in?
It’s almost midnight on the wall clock. I’m too strung out to go on. I tell her so, but she makes no move to leave.
“Why did you lie before?” she asks me. “Why didn’t you want me to know he was here?”
“Because I didn’t think it would be good for him to see you.”
“But why not, Georgia? I love Justin. Even though he didn’t think so.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t think so?”
“It was about the last thing he said to me. I mean, our last night on the road. It was when I told him I was taking him home. He said it meant I didn’t love him. It made me wild. I promised him I’d come back, by summer at the latest, maybe before. I did promise. And now I have. But I did exactly what you wanted me to do. I told him I’m going away for good. I said good-bye.” She hesitates. “He’s okay, isn’t he? I mean, he seems okay. He is, isn’t he?”
I don’t know what I feel toward her now. The resentment is gone. But I’m not going to let myself be sucked into a discussion of his well-being.
“Yes,” I say, “he’s okay. But I have to ask you to leave now, Harriet. Please. You’ve gotten what you came for.”
The words sound so cold—I don’t mean them that way—but they only make her laugh. She looks at me, protrudes her lower lip, shakes her head.
“You don’t have a clue, do you?” she says.
“A clue as to what?”
She doesn’t answer, laughs again, a little snorting sound. Then: “The thing is, I’m finished with lying. With running away too. It never did me any good.”
“I guess that’s fine,” I say, “but—”
She cuts me off.
“He’s a great kid, Georgia, don’t you see? He’s special. You’re just his mother, I don’t know if you get what he’s really like. He’s so smart. He’s thinking in there all the time. And he never forgets anything. He’s also brave,” she says, “very gutsy. He’s strong inside. He’s going to be somebody. No, that’s wrong, he already is somebody.”
But why does she feel compelled to defend him to me? Have I said that he’s an emotional wreck, that I don’t think I can deal with him anymore? Have I said anything like that?
“But there’s one thing you don’t get,” she says.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“The one he really loves, most of all, is you.”
Her eyes are measuring me, as though gauging my reaction.
“We were very close,” she goes on. “We did everything together, Georgia. I know it’s strange, but a lot of the time on the road, when they were hunting us, it was fun. We had a lot of fun. We built a snowman together. I’d never done that. I guess he was a little in love with me. I mean, really in love, like he will be when he’s older. But even so, do you know who it was that he cried out for in the middle of the night? I mean, when he was having a bad dream? Or when he woke up scared, not knowing where he was? It wasn’t me, Georgia, even though I was right there. It was you. It was his mommy. It was his mommy he wanted.”
A strange validation, I think. But what am I supposed to feel? Gratitude? Resentment? Both?
“You know something, Georgia,” she says, a
nd now her blue-gray eyes are locked on mine, “and this’ll sound really weird to you, but in spite of everything that was going on, those were the happiest days of my life? From the minute I rang your bell? I mean, when I was living here, working with Justin, and you were pregnant?”
Nostalgia in her tone, bittersweet. Defiance, too. It’s almost as though she’s saying: Take me back, Georgia, take her in. And yes, I know that’s impossible, doesn’t she? And yet, at the same time …
“It was a happy time for me too,” I hear myself answer, my voice suddenly gentle. “In spite of everything.”
Do I mean it? Yes, weirdly, I think I do. At midnight, in my kitchen, there’s this peculiar, momentary kinship. I know it makes no sense, how can it make any sense? But if it makes no sense, then why am I on the verge of tears?
“But it’s over, Harriet,” I say. “Or is it Becca? Rebecca? I’m afraid I’ll always think of you as Harriet.”
“Harriet’s better,” she says with a half-smile.
“But it is over, you know,” I repeat. “There’s no way for us to bring it back. No way, even if we wanted to.”
She nods.
“No, there isn’t,” she says. “Is that why you’re moving?”
The question startles me. I’ve never thought of it like that.
“In a way,” I say. “Yes, I guess it is.”
“Where are you going?”
I shake my head—my reflex is not to tell her—but then I say, “New York. Back to the city.”
She nods again. She seems satisfied by that. At least she falls silent. Her drink, I notice, is half-empty again, but she makes no move to finish it. She simply sits there, hands in her pouch, rocking a little. Her eyes are on me, the light and shadow of her cheekbones sharp in the kitchen light. Perfect bone structure, I notice in passing. A gorgeous face, even as tired as she looks now. And I think—for the last time, I hope—what a strange creature she is, and how, in the space of one exhausting evening, she’s managed to run me up and down a whole emotional gauntlet.
I want her to go now, but it’s clear she won’t until she’s ready to. As though in response, she looks away, half-rises. But then subsides again. Thinks. Says slowly, reflectively:
“I guess the only important thing, to me, is that you understand that I’m not crazy. I’m not, you know. Sometimes I may do crazy things, but there’s always a reason. I’d like to think that, whatever happens to me, you and Justin will know I’m not crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. But what do you mean, ‘whatever happens to me’? That sounds awfully melodramatic.”
She shrugs.
“Maybe all I’m saying is that I don’t want you to hate me anymore.”
Upstairs, a little while ago, I could have torn her to shreds. Now it’s gone. I just want her to leave.
“I don’t hate you, Harriet,” I say. “Believe me.”
She takes a deep breath, sighs.
“I’m going in a minute,” she says. “Out of your hair, out of your life. But what if you were me, Georgia?” she says. “What would you do now? Try to put yourself in my shoes. Imagine that you’re twenty-two again and you feel like you’ve already lived through hell and you’re still not out of it. What would you do?”
Georgia, the oracle?
But she’s serious about it. She leans forward over the counter, eyes intently watching me.
I don’t want to disappoint her, but suddenly I have the uneasy feeling I’m going to, whatever I say.
“It’s hardly for me to tell you that,” I answer.
“Still, I want to hear it.” She smiles wryly. “You said you were my friend, remember? On TV?”
I’ve forgotten about that. She must have seen it after all.
I take a deep breath of my own.
“I think if I were you,” I say, “I’d try to put it all behind me. Everything. Close out the past. I’d go as far away as I could, get away from here, all the bad things that happened. I’d try to free myself from it. And that, by the way, includes Justin and me.”
Pretty self-serving, I think. But it also happens to be true.
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “And then?”
“Then?”
“Well, suppose I did do that? Then what?”
“Well,” I say, hesitant. “Then I guess I’d see about inventing my life.”
She’s gone now.
Why, though, instead of relief, do I have the nagging feeling that I’ve let her down?
And what if I did? Why is that important?
Strange young woman. What’s going to become of her now? Technically I think she’s still a fugitive, but what would the police do with her if they found her?
I reminded her that, once she left, it would be for good. We even shook hands on it, awkwardly, and I, in turn, was reminded how she’d never liked to be touched.
This was in the front hall, among the stacks of cartons. She commented on the house again, my beautiful house. She said she couldn’t believe I was moving, couldn’t imagine anyone else living here. But the last thing she said to me was, “God, Georgia, how can you be so strong?”
Justin first, now me. Both so strong. I don’t remember what I said, but the more I think of it, the more I’ll take that on my tombstone:
HERE LIETH GEORGIA, HOW COULD SHE BE SO STRONG?
I’m lying on my side now, on the edge of my son’s bed, in near-total darkness. There’s just a slit of light from the hallway, the door ajar in case Zoe wakes up in the nursery. Somewhere below my feet, on the floor, is another box of juice I brought up from the kitchen.
I’m stroking Justin’s hair lightly. He doesn’t seem to feel it. He’s facing me, one arm flung up over the side of his face, and all I can hear is the faint wheeze of air entering and leaving his nostrils.
It’s the only sound, other than my own occasional voice.
“We’re going to make it, my darling,” I whisper to him. “She’s gone now. It’s all over. Together, we’re going to invent our own lives.”
I’ve no idea what time it is. No matter. I think it’s in me to lie here, stroking his hair, until he wakes up in the morning.
WALL STREET EXECUTIVE SLAIN
Headed Own Firm
Pound Ridge, NY, April 8 (AP)—Francis Hale Holbrook, 57, prominent Wall Street figure and Chairman, CEO, of Holbrook & Company, investment bankers, was shot and killed last night at his Pound Ridge, New York, estate. The victim was apparently alone at the time. His body was discovered early this morning by his caretaker couple, Mr. and Mrs. Derek Murphy, when they arrived for work. Police investigators say Mr. Holbrook was murdered in his living room sometime after 10:30 P.M., when he telephoned the Murphys, having just returned from a weekend’s absence. There is no evidence that a struggle took place, and no indication of breaking and entering. According to one official source, robbery could not have been the perpetrator’s motive.
The victim’s wife, Margaret Frame Holbrook, who was at their home in Palm Beach, Florida, at the time of the crime, could not be reached for comment. Mr. Holbrook’s two children, Francis Hale Jr. and Dorothea, are away at school. A spokesperson for Holbrook & Company said: “This is shocking, an atrocious crime. Frank Holbrook was a dynamic and brilliant leader, and greatly admired as a human being. We can’t believe what’s happened. The loss to us is incalculable.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Alexandra Frye
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9352-2
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