Origin
Page 18
As I reach the block in front of the Lab, however, I notice the street is crowded with cars—vans, actually. The building’s front door swings and glitters in an odd way. A woman emerges and for one tilting moment, I think it’s the person from the alley.
But it’s Alyce. Without a coat or hat, running out of the building, right at me. “Lena, don’t go in there!”
I’m so happy to see her, I could fall right into her arms. I’m panting, trying to speak. “Alyce, you won’t believe it—this crazy person—she was chasing me. . . .”
But Alyce keeps looking over her shoulder. “Sure,” she says. “It was a reporter—they’re staking you out. They’re all over the place. There’s, like, a hundred reporters in there, screaming about anthrax and ricin and God knows what. They all want to talk to you.” The glittering light shines in the glass lobby door again. I squint, trying to focus, and the door opens again and someone is there, leaning out, looking after Alyce. I get a glimpse inside and realize I’m seeing the flash from a camera. The bank of vans in front of the Lab all bear TV logos; a small satellite dish is mounted on one of them.
Everything slows down inside that blooming yellow light: the door seems to swing in slow motion—closed, then open again, the woman leaning out the entrance, looking from Alyce to me. Her lips are moving, though she’s too far away to be heard.
“You can’t stay here.” Alyce grabs my forearm. “The Times just came out with this article—Jesus, why on earth did you ever talk to that woman?”
“I didn’t.”
Alyce pushes her lips together in disbelief. “You must’ve. Frank told me you said last night you wanted to keep working on the investigation.”
The woman at the entrance has come outside. She’s focused on me, trying to place me. The back of my neck tightens. Long, ropy currents race through my arms and legs, panic firing my senses. But I need to talk to Alyce. “I thought you said they interviewed the parents—what’s this about the blankets being mailed anonymously?”
The door opens again—a blur of faces in my peripheral vision. Two cameras.
“I know—” Alyce makes a wiping movement with her hands. “The Cogans and the Wilsons—they forgot to mention that little detail. When the blankets came in the mail the parents assumed they came from friends. Both arrived with unsigned baby shower cards. Lena, you need to know—listen—” Alyce is following me as I back up on the sideway; she’s still clinging to my arm. “They found—there’s another baby—in Lucius. Another baby died there. Sometime last night.”
The woman is twenty steps behind Alyce. “Lena Dawson?” she calls out. “Miss Dawson, how do you—”
She doesn’t know who I am. She’s throwing out my name like a bit of bait, to see if I’ll look. “I gotta get out of here,” I mutter to Alyce, who says, “Yes—go—go. Don’t tell them anything.” I start walking back in the other direction. I try to remain calm, even as I hear the reporters running up behind me: “Miss Dawson? Is it true that there’s a baby killer loose in Onondaga County? Is the police department trying to hush this up?”
I don’t slow down or turn to look. There’s a clatter of equipment, flashes, anonymous voices shouting questions; I walk through them. A flash goes off against the side of my face. Don’t look. They circle me, call my name, trying to get me to stop or look up. “Lena, do you have any leads in the case?”
“Lena, is this an anthrax copycat?”
“Do the blankets arrive with any kind of message or warning?”
“Could this be linked to Al Qaeda?”
They follow me. I keep my eyes pinned to the sidewalk and keep walking. I don’t say a word, I just keep walking, shaking my head. I hold up my hand, refusing to speak, warding off the camera flashes. One by one, they relent, peeling off and calling to Alyce, running back to the Lab with their microphones before them like torches.
CHAPTER 21
I CLOSE MY EYES. MY APE MOTHER PULLS AT ME, MURMURING ON the other side of the leaf border. My thoughts turn into beetles with copper jackets, they zing through the air.
The cold seeps through my clothes, blows right through my parka, and cracks my lips. Twice, news vans pull alongside of me as I walk and reporters try to ask me questions through the window of the van; one of them mentions the Unabomber. I keep my expression fixed and empty, tell them, “No comment.” Eventually it seems that they give up on me—at least for the moment.
After some circling around, I end up on Marshall Street in the SU campus town. It’s close to the Lab, but it feels safer to me than walking in isolation along the open blocks downtown. This street is crowded with hair salons, pizza parlors, glass-fronted shops selling orange and blue sweatshirts emblazoned with the university logo. The students wear down-filled jackets. They look wan and sun-starved, their skin gaunt, as if they haven’t slept for days. They clutch books to their chests or hunch under backpacks.
Music rises from a doorway—a repetitive plea: Baby, you know I mean—I mean it—Baby, you know I mean— An herbal scent twirls out of another store, and the next shop splashes the sidewalk with spotlights. I follow a group of laughing students into a coffeehouse called Big Orange. At the counter, I order coffee and borrow a pencil from the cashier, then settle into an armchair facing the door.
The streetlights stay on in the late-morning dimness. The sidewalks are nearly black beneath crusts of old snow and new flakes descending, luminescent as pearls. On the back of an old bulletin board flyer I write: Cross On Window; Haverstraw; Reporters. I stare at the paper. Exasperated, I crumple the paper into a ball.
I CAN’T KEEP hiding out in the café and it seems that the reporters will have given up on me for now. I decide to start walking to try and clear my mind. I head up the street, past student and campus buildings, and the grand old fraternity houses. I turn down Comstock Avenue, wondering if I might be able to find Charlie’s house, though I’ve only been there once before. I imagine that if I set myself due east I’ll hit Westcott Street, which runs south into Charlie’s neighborhood. But I’m not entirely sure that I’m headed in the right direction.
I walk through unfamiliar neighborhoods, snow-molded lunar landscapes, until I realize I may actually be lost. I lose track of time. I turn at various corners, trying to reorient myself, but the snow thickens, blurring the buildings and street signs.
There’s a phone booth on the corner, which gives me a moment of breathless hope. But I shove through its door only to find the receiver is torn out, its metallic cord dangling. I stand in the empty booth, the door crusted with frost, and remember how I used to call Charlie from a booth like this one, and how—even when we spoke—it was as if he wasn’t present at all. Then I recall Charlie saying that the baby killer was “a load of hogwash.” As I walk, I understand that the heaviness in my limbs and across my body is not simply from the chill, but the weight of sadness. It’s the sense of abandonment—helpless isolation, the clear understanding that no one is coming to save you.
But I can’t let myself think about that too much.
Instead, I consider, in a distant, bemused way, that I could freeze to death if I stay outside much longer. The houses along the street are lit up. Inside, I think, it must be warm. I’d like to go in. Can I do that? Could a person simply knock on any door and say, Help, I’m freezing? I wish that I were back in the bakery, sitting at the little table with a cup of tea, talking to the gray-haired nurse with her calm eyes. I suppose the word for what I’m feeling at the moment is plain old loneliness. And that’s when it comes to me—shocking me, really—that the person I would most like to see—feel an undeniable, almost physical longing to be with—is my foster mother, Pia.
This realization irritates me, really. I already know what a pure disappointment it is to subject myself to that woman. But there I have it. I’m cold and alone, and unhappy, along with a whole slew of nameless emotions, and I miss my mother. O
r the closest thing to it. And I make up my mind that if I ever get myself back home again, I will break our long silence and go to see my foster parents.
Finally, I do let myself sit on a series of steps leading up to someone’s front porch. The cold presses through my pants right up to my hip bones, but mostly I’m just aware of how snug all these homes look, and how I always seem to be outside.
MINUTES PASS AS I idly study the wave patterns in a row of icicles, frozen on the step railing beside me. In reality, I’m just waiting till I’m cold enough or brave enough to ring someone’s doorbell and ask to use their phone. Just when I think I’ve had about enough, I hear a murmuring sound. It rises from the ground, a mechanical purr.
I look up and realize a car has appeared on the deserted street. It pulls up in front of me, the window rolls down, and a hand is there, fingers splayed along the glass edge, and someone calls, “Lena? Lena? Lena!”
My first thought is that it’s another reporter and I push up to my feet, torn between my sense of dignity and my desire to warm up. I wonder if I can reasonably ask for a ride and refuse an interview at the same time.
But the fingers retract, and then, marvelously, Keller is there, throwing open his door, climbing out. “Lena, get in here!” He practically seizes me, helping me in. The interior is wonderfully hot and I tug off my frozen jacket and flop the melting thing on the floor of the backseat. Keller straddles the seat divider, bringing his warm body closer, rubbing the stiffness from my hands. “You must be half frozen.”
Sensation returns in a slow bloom, first to my fingers, slivers of blood dilating in my fingertips. He rubs all the way to my elbows and I let him, grateful and light-headed with relief and surprised pleasure at seeing him, at the luck of it being Keller. My arms soften with his touch. My breathing deepens. It seems purely natural to lift my arms then and move into an embrace. “You have no idea how happy I am.” My chin rests on his shoulder and I feel his breath in my hair. “How the hell did you find me?”
“Oh. Hey,” he says. He seems to be catching his breath. “I been looking for you.”
His grip on me relaxes, yet he doesn’t quite release me, we don’t quite slide out of our embrace. I become aware of the pulse in his hands and inside his chest, like there’s another man hidden in there, pounding on an anvil. “I was there this morning—that mob scene at the Lab,” he says. His face has shifted slightly, close to my own face.
“You saw all that,” I murmur.
We finally slide apart, though our hands rest on each other’s forearms—and even though I know we don’t have this sort of relationship, I find that I don’t want him to roll himself away from me. His face is very close to mine, our foreheads nearly touching.
“I tried to go after you when you left,” he says. “It’s dangerous to be out in this stuff.”
“I’m used to it,” I say truthfully. In fact, my body feels bright with energy and attraction, the simple fact of his face beside my face. The air in the car is rich with our breathing and the warmth of our bodies, the windows of the car white with fog. As if we’ve entered an imagined space. I don’t know if the fog is inside or outside the car. I don’t know exactly what to do—I just follow my body and it’s like swimming, one stroke following another. My face curls to his neck and I breathe in his skin.
I try not to think, not to frighten myself: I was scared of humans—of human touch and the human body—when I was growing up. Pia told me, “Boys want only one thing. And you have to be especially careful. You’re more vulnerable, Lena.” Sex with Charlie was on Sunday night, lights out; he slept in boxer shorts, so I never saw him naked. He was in charge of the whole event—two minutes of dropping sweat onto my face: just before coming, he’d stop and ask, “You good?” Then finish. After sex, he’d pull on his boxers, roll onto his back, link his hands behind his head, and say, “Any complaints from the management?” Charlie gave me to understand that the more a man “purely” loved a woman, the less there’d be of this other sex-thing—a lower kind of love.
But in the car, I think, I’m not in love, so it’s okay. I inhale again and then try touching my lips lightly to Keller’s neck. Not in love. Finally I put my hand on the knot of his tie and kiss him low on the side of his neck, just inside his shirt collar. I feel something run through him, and there’s a sound at my ear: I hesitate. But he doesn’t move away and I don’t want to stop. So another kiss at his jaw, near the hollow behind his ear. Then above the jaw, beneath the cheekbone. This time he does pull back; he looks at me as if he’s just awakened. His pupils move through infinitesimal adjustments—his irises fill with expanding pupils. I push forward and cover his mouth with mine. I taste his lips, the salt of his tongue. And then he shifts us, moving forward into the kiss, I feel the presence of his fingers grazing, threading through my hair, capturing my head, his arms holding my back and shoulders. He pulls his head back but doesn’t let go. “I’ve got to move the car,” he says. “We’ll be asphyxiated. . . .” My legs tremble; a tiny muscle beats beneath my right thigh, inside the crooks of my arms. My fingertips, my feet, and the very tip of the V between my legs are all warm. My senses uncoil in a way I’ve only experienced in the earliest mornings, surfing out of dreams, so I’d assumed these feelings were all merely dreams themselves. But now I’m wide awake.
And I think, for the first time in a long time: It’s good to be human!
THERE ISN’T ANY DISCUSSION, just a slick, fast, fishtailing ride to his house, a dash, hand in hand, through the front door, into the bedroom.
Keller lifts me onto the bed, skins off my shirt, unzips my pants. He pulls the tie straight up over his head and undoes his shirt seemingly without touching the buttons. His body is lean and almost caramel-colored in the soft bedroom light. He kisses my ear, teeth grazing the lobe. Then suddenly, incongruously, asks me, “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, and then laugh, remembering Charlie’s old question? Does the management have any complaints? Keller looks at me and I try to explain: “We’re not in love, so it’s fine, whatever it is.” And when I say this, he looks so stricken that I close my eyes and wish I could take it back.
But then it’s all right, because we’re alone and naked on the bed with its flannel sheets. My sense of smell roars in my head and when Keller pushes—slowly, insistently—inside of me, it’s as if we are sinking together two inches beneath the water, bobbing. The feelings are so different from what I experienced with Charlie, it’s as if my own body is changing: I breathe water and grow gills. My hands and feet are distended, my toes curl, my lips and nipples turn orange, my eyes are webbed, golden scales spring up and shimmer over my body.
And the movement together is so different from what happened with Charlie that I can hardly believe this is also called sex. Keller moves slowly, hands scooped under my hips, until he lifts me off the bed. And then he begins to move quickly: it’s over suddenly, like a plunge to bed from a thousand feet away. His palm stays curved over my cheek, the cool damp sliding between my legs. He is kissing my face so carefully, as if I might crack. But before either of us says anything, he wants to begin again.
Again. Only this time, the room shifts and I’m up in the air. The room is brightly lit: I see Keller, I see an orchidlike conch shell on the nightstand, a pair of plaid slippers near the door, the blue blanket that’s fallen in a puddle on the floor. He watches me, tracks the movements of our bodies together as I lift and lower myself, thighs flexing; I sink until something tightens, hardens knotlike at my crotch—the hidden world that I knew was there but never managed to find for myself.
But now I’ve found it, this tightening knot I press down against. I squeeze my eyes shut, though I hear Keller breathing, his hands on my arms. When the knot springs apart it’s opening and undoing all through me. A thing that I’ve never felt before, as hard and darting as a sparrow, flies straight up and through the center of my body.
I study Keller. A faint ambient light skims over the tops of his arms and knuckles, his shoulders and hips, the hair and slope of his genitals. Carefully, I extend my right arm along the mattress. I stretch my hand beside Keller’s, the left partially tilted on its edge. In the dark, it seems possible that my fingers are longer than his. I lie drowsing yet fretting about falling asleep. I imagine Keller forgetting that I’m there, and the shock on his face in the morning when he wakes to see me. I no longer seem to be able to do something as simple as sharing a bed or enjoying the possibility of a new romance. It’s a bit like the way I didn’t love the right fairy tales as a little girl—not Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella—I knew they weren’t for me. I wanted the changelings and chimeras, vampires that hid from the light. Not love. I wanted the sweetness of hiding.
His hand turns in sleep to touch mine. But I ease out from under the piece of blanket, silently gathering my clothes, and slink into the bathroom down the hall. I flip the overhead light; it hums, then blinks on. I use the toilet, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The soap on his sink smells like fir trees. I let the bubbles sieve between my fingers.
Then I look up.
It’s my face but not my face. The eyes are too dark and staring. All the blood has risen to my cheeks and lips.
My stomach contracts and I’m once again struck with sadness. I think of being in the snow, alone, and how Keller came for me. And then I’m thinking of Odile Wilson’s tiny face, pale and bright as a shell. My eyes glow with tears. They bud up from my tear ducts, sharp and hot, each one a pinprick. I think: How lucky I am.
CHAPTER 22