How Will I Know You?

by Jessica Treadway

  She left her father sitting there, wondering if he would sweep it all into the wastebasket or leave the pieces assembled for a few days, to remind himself that he had worked on it in good faith trusting that what would appear beneath his fingers was something he wanted to see. It took her three trips to haul the ornaments up to the attic. The next time she walked by the dining room, the table was empty. She went straight to the kitchen and began to bake, wanting to fill the house with the smell of sweets that were all she knew how to offer her family, which she hoped they would not be able to resist.

  Tuesday, December 29

  I haven’t written here since the day the grand jury met, but it isn’t because nothing’s happened; it’s because so much has.

  When Ramona called to tell me that the district attorney’s office was not going ahead with the indictment because new evidence had caused them to focus their suspicion on someone else, I knew I should want to celebrate as much as Violet and Cass did, when they drove me straight from the Cineplex (we were only halfway through the Morgan Freeman movie when the call came) to a steak house down the road, where they ordered champagne and insisted on multiple toasts along with their treat of a dinner I did not have the stomach to eat. I wanted to feel excited, but I could not. The arrest and the accusations, the questions and the crowd outside my house, the phone hang-ups and being kicked off campus (which hurt more than anything, to be honest) made me feel burned and battered, as if I’d been outside too long in a high wind.

  Hearing the revelations about the police chief, I thought it would mean I could move in public again without being looked at with the distrust that had been aimed at me since my arrest. At least there’d be that, I told myself, but instead I found that the stares were longer and harsher now. Instead of causing the people who’d assumed my guilt to feel ashamed that they’d suspected me when there wasn’t enough justification, the prosecutor’s decision to drop my case seemed to make them conclude that I’d gotten away with something. And not just anything, but murder. While somehow manipulating the system to escape my own charges, I had also managed to get the spotlight thrown on the police chief. It’s absurd, and yet they seemed to believe it.

  A few days after Armstrong’s arrest, I moved out of Cass’s and back down to Rochester, back to Grandee’s house, taking some time to regroup and decide what to do next. Violet couldn’t understand why I didn’t pack up the same day I was a free man and leave the state. Or, if not the state, then this disgusting hickville I’d chosen to come to for school, and join her in New York City. I’d be free in a different way there, she told me—free to make whatever art I wanted, and to live a life without having to worry about looking different or about what anyone else thought. “You would blend in,” she said, thinking this idea would appeal to me. But I don’t want to blend in. I want to stand out—just for the right reasons.

  Still, I knew she was right. I had to make a move, and New York was the most logical destination. I called a real estate agent and let her convince me to put Grandee’s house on the market, reminding myself that I could always take it off before committing to a deal. I’M GORGEOUS INSIDE, said the sign the realtor posted outside the rusty fence, and when I protested because it wasn’t exactly true, she told me to relax: “In my experience, people like it when someone tells them what they should believe.”

  But she didn’t get the chance to find out if she was right. The night after I moved back into the bedroom I’d occupied most of my life, someone set fire to the house. Erupting while I was asleep, the flames would have killed me if Violet hadn’t kept the smoke detectors up to date. I jerked awake to the sounds of beeping, felt myself inhaling smoke, grabbed my phone from next to the bed, and ran toward the back bedroom where I’d stored my paints and the unfinished portrait of my father. But the fire had a head start, and I had to turn and pitch myself toward the front door instead. I escaped just in time, with only the phone and the clothes I was wearing.

  The fire trucks arrived and I stood on the sidewalk with a gathering crowd of my old neighbors to watch the house being sprayed. The woman who’d been Grandee’s best friend for more than fifty years, Nell Walker, put a hand on my shoulder and said that God didn’t give people any more than they could handle. Then she made a point of saying it was a good thing my grandmother wasn’t around to see what had happened, and I knew she was talking about more than the house being destroyed.

  When the firefighters told me they’d been unable to save anything, I felt stunned to the point of muteness. On the other hand, there was a sense of relief I couldn’t ignore. What if I’d started the paintings for Souls on Board sooner and ended up losing more work than just the first few brushstrokes of my father’s portrait? It was almost enough to make me wonder if I’d had some premonition without being able to identify it, though I knew even as the thought crossed my mind that this sounded more like something Grandee would believe, not me.

  The next morning the fire chief held a news conference, saying that although he had no actual information so soon after the event, he hoped it would not prove to be the case that my home had been destroyed in an attempt to run me out of town by “some faction of our citizenry dissatisfied by the recent dismissal of the charges against Mr. Willett up in Chilton.” But it didn’t take long for investigators to determine the fire was arson, despite the pains whoever did it had taken to conceal the intent. Only hours after the grand jury was excused in my case, I’d been walking through my apartment in Cass’s house when someone hurled a brick through the window, this time carrying a note saying Guilty as charged. I did not report it to the police. But when the fire occurred at Grandee’s, I assumed that whoever had thrown the brick—or that person’s brother, or cousin, or son—had carried his hatred to Rochester and was responsible for the arson, too. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the arsonist was the same person who’d set fire to the church on my corner the night Obama was elected.

  But since there was no surveillance footage of the neighborhood and no one seemed to have filmed it on a cell phone, there was no way to figure out who it might have been. Almost as quickly as they determined the fire was set, they dropped the investigation.

  If I hadn’t already been convinced it was time to leave, the fire would have clinched it. The day after Christmas (which I spent at Nell Walker’s house; I knew Grandee would have wanted me to accept the invitation, but I found myself more comforted to be there than I’d expected), I called Violet and told her I was ready. She said she’d help me find a place, but in the meantime, I could stay with her. “Come now,” she said, after I finished giving her the details about the rock, the fire, and the destruction of my work. “Don’t even wait till morning. Go out and get a cab to the bus station right now. And don’t look back, you hear me?”

  I promised, but I knew there was one more thing I had to do. One more thing I wanted to do. As soon as my cell phone was repaired, I called the number I’d known by heart since the summer, having composed the message I would leave when it inevitably went to voicemail. Shocked when Susanne picked up, I found myself momentarily unable to speak.

  “Is that you?” she asked, and I nodded before remembering she couldn’t see it, then rushed to tell her, “Yes, it’s me, I’m here.”

  “Good,” she said. “I thought you weren’t going to call me back.” Without letting her know I’d never received her message and had called of my own accord, I closed my eyes at the sound of her voice in my ear. Just that one word, “good,” and I was ready to change my plans and stay forever, until she said it was time for us to meet in person, so we could say good-bye.

  Diminishing Perspective

  She had not seen Martin, except on TV and in the newspaper, since the day almost two months earlier that Joy had left her, then died. She always thought of it that way, as a leaving: her daughter had left, their last words uglier and more hateful than any they’d ever exchanged, never to be repaired or undone except in Susanne’s dreams and fantasies, which she would
experience every day for the rest of her life. Occasionally these visions were as wrenching as the actual rupture had been, but most of the time they came to her as solace, especially the recurring image she had, both asleep and awake, of Joy sitting quietly on the edge of Susanne’s bed, her hands folded as she smiled at her mother. She did not speak, but the smile contained everything—forgiveness, love, and especially a lightness of the heart that Susanne felt when she awoke or came back to herself, and that lasted, on her luckiest days, for hours before fading. Though she understood that the bedside visit was not real—that she was manufacturing what she needed to see—it still brought her comfort of a kind she knew Gil would not allow himself, and she pitied him because of it.

  She asked Martin to meet her at the mall; it was twenty miles outside Chilton, and the most anonymous place she could think of. It held no memories for them together. She’d thought he would appreciate the suggestion, but instead he insisted on seeing her at school. Susanne had heard what happened the day of Joy’s funeral, when he’d been escorted off campus, so she was surprised at first at his request. Then she understood it was his way of reclaiming one of the things that had been stolen from him.

  Massey Hall was deserted for the holidays. Arriving before Martin, she chatted with Percy at the security desk, wanting to ask him who’d issued the order directing that Martin be evicted if he showed up, then realizing she didn’t want to know (she still had to work with these people, and she knew she did not have the courage to confront whomever it had been). Over the years, she and the security guard had built a rapport based on small talk—how are you, how was your weekend, it’s freezing/gorgeous/pouring out there. Though she knew it was wrong to feel proud of it (some professors didn’t acknowledge Percy as they went in or out of the building), she did feel proud. But neither of them had taken the step of moving their conversations from the superficial to anything that mattered, and now it was too late.

  Watching Martin approach the building, she imagined how fast his heart must be beating though he walked with deliberate steps, unhurried—trying, she could tell, to feel again that he belonged here. Stepping inside, he paused a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark lobby. “Percy,” he said.

  “Pablo,” Percy greeted him back, not looking at Martin at first, then raising his eyes and adding, “Sorry, man.” Martin nodded again, and Susanne understood she had witnessed something important pass between the two men, even if she couldn’t have named precisely what it was.

  They walked together to the sculpture studio, keeping a foot of distance between them as if they’d agreed on this beforehand. Once there she took a stool, but he declined and stood by the window, where the weak winter sun revealed details of his face she had not noticed before, even in bed: a pockmark at the top of one cheek, the small scar of a burn on his chin. If they’d been in bed, she would have asked about the scar. As it was, she knew she no longer had the right to do so.

  She’d thought she would be the one to start the conversation; it had been her idea to meet today, after all. I’m sorry were the only words she could think to say, and she knew how insufficient they were. But before she could find any others, Martin turned and took a step away from the light and back toward her. “I just need to know if you ever thought I was guilty,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about anything else. But I need to know that.”

  She nodded, then realized from his expression that he misinterpreted the gesture. “No—no!” she said. “I’m just saying I understand. I get what you’re asking.” She opened her purse, took out the bookmark she’d been keeping there since she found it in Joy’s drawer, and put it on the table between them.

  “Oh,” he said, exhaling the word.

  “You kept these in your bedroom.” Her voice wobbled on the word “bed.”

  He hastened to answer. “Yes, but remember, I also kept some upstairs. In the studio. She came to see me, Susanne.” When he spoke her name, she remembered (with a pleasure she couldn’t deny, though she tried to) how different he made it sound than anyone else ever had. “On Halloween.”

  She calculated: that had been a few days before Joy’s arrest, and two weeks before she left. “Why?”

  He hesitated; if it had lasted another moment, she would have said (guessing that she did not want to hear his answer), Never mind. “She came to ask if I was sleeping with you.”

  She felt the words before she understood them; they hit her in the stomach, a cruel punch. Yet it didn’t feel as if Martin had been the one to deliver it. The blow came from inside.

  What Martin was telling her meant that Joy had known about her mother’s infidelity for more than two weeks before she died. After their confrontation that day—the last conversation they would ever have—Susanne thought to wonder how Joy had found out, but the question became moot when her daughter didn’t return home that night. However it had happened, Susanne assumed the discovery was fresh when Joy picked a fight, disobeyed her mother, and sped off to met Delaney Stowell at the pond.

  How long had Joy been aware of it? Could it go as far back as September, the day Martin had been in their house for the barbecue?

  It was too much to bear recognizing for more than a few agonizing instants. To distract herself, she tried to summon an image of the exchange between her daughter and her lover. Where had each been standing when Joy made her demand, when Martin supplied the answer? “You were in your studio?” she asked. He’d always been protective of the space upstairs. The first time he took Susanne up to see it, he told her that she was the only person he’d ever invited up to the third floor.

  “She asked if she could see it. I didn’t want to reject her.” He emphasized the word “reject.” “She was—upset.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” If you had told me, I could have done something about it. I could have talked to her. We wouldn’t have had that fight, and she wouldn’t have—

  “Right after it happened,” he said, “I didn’t tell you because she asked me not to. I figured it was between you and her. Then I thought about it and realized, No. It meant something to her, that it was me. So I did try to tell you. That’s why I came to see you that day.”

  That day—Friday the 13th, the last day she saw her daughter alive. The day Martin had appeared after the argument with Joy, then offered to follow her, to make sure she was okay. Susanne had asked that of him herself, using those very words: Make sure she’s okay, okay?

  “You could have called before that,” she said. “By then it was too late.”

  “You weren’t answering my calls.” She heard no bitterness in his voice, but because she knew him, she knew that bitterness was what he felt.

  She could have pursued it: Why didn’t you leave a message? Tell me it was important, that it was about Joy? But she knew he was right; she’d been the one to cut off the relationship, to reject him.

  Besides (she had to acknowledge to herself, excruciating as it was), she would have gone out of her way to avoid finding out what he had to tell her. She’d had no way of knowing that Joy’s life was at stake.

  Martin picked up the bookmark. “You could have given this to the police,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I knew it didn’t mean anything. I mean, anything to do with—” But she would not say the words “her death.” “I knew it wasn’t you.”

  It hurt to see his relief when she said it, to realize that he’d been living under that shadow along with the one cast by the police, the prosecutor, and the people he lived among.

  Outside, a snowplow was scraping right up to the building. If the mound was still there in a few weeks, she knew, her students would hold an informal snow-sculpting competition to usher in the new semester. Bart Richlieu had offered to continue covering her classes for the spring, if she wanted, but she told him she’d be back to teach. She knew she’d need it more than ever from now on, talking about art and watching people try to make it. She’d need it for more than the money now.

  She
told Martin she’d heard about the fire, and asked if they’d caught who did it. When he shook his head, she asked how much work he’d lost.

  “Hardly anything; I’d just started a portrait of my father for the new piece. American Commonplace is still here.” He gestured down the hall, toward the room in which students were allowed to store their work.

  “Thank God. I mean, not about the portrait . . .” But she trailed off, recognizing that her reaction was insufficient, and also understanding that he sensed the limits of her sympathy and would not hold it against her. He had lost a painting (an unfinished one, at that), not a child.

  “I’m leaving,” he blurted, and at first she thought he meant he’d had enough of this conversation, which she did not understand yet would be their last.

  “Okay,” she said, picking her purse up. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  “No, I mean really leaving. As in moving. To New York.”

  In that flash of a moment she saw him sitting before an easel by a window, his brush lifted in the light of the sun reflecting the East River as he tilted his head to consider the canvas before him. There was noise on the street below, but he didn’t hear it. As he did now, he lived in the same place he worked. But he was not alone in this vision she had of his future, which was more vivid than any she had of her own.

  “Well,” she said, setting her purse back down. “I probably don’t have to say I’ll be thinking of you.”

  This was also insufficient, but he would forgive this, too. She waited for him to make that bad joke again: It’s because I’m black, isn’t it? She waited for him to pick up the bookmark and slip it into his pocket. But he did neither, only nodded before he gave a slight smile, then turned. She watched him recede down the corridor toward Percy’s station, his figure becoming smaller with each step.

  Diminishing perspective, she thought, then forced herself toward the materials cabinet where she took out a package of clay, not yet knowing what she would make with it. Watching Martin walk away had exposed a fresh layer of the grief she’d felt since Joy’s death, or maybe it added a layer; she couldn’t tell which.