The Real Michael Swann

by Bryan Reardon

  “Please call me. I know this isn’t true. Just call . . . We can figure it out.”

  Julia had never felt as empty as when she ended that call. The news continued to drone on. Julia heard none of it. Her mind could not leave the other report, the one about Michael. She buried her head in her hands. In that moment, she thought she might die. Julia could feel her lungs seizing up. Her body willing itself to quit on her. And maybe she wanted that. Maybe that was the only way out.

  “Jules?” her mother said softly.

  Through shaking hands, Julia said, “It’s a mistake. He could never do something like that.”

  “I know, sweetie,” Kate said.

  Instead, Julia heard, How do you know?

  STRIKING THE FUSE

  The entire country had been smoldering like a lit stick of dynamite. Though the presidential primaries were still months away, rhetoric was ramping up with surprising fervor. It was midsummer, and the lines in the sand had been drawn. Some spit acid as they argued on Facebook over who the candidates should be. Others sat in upscale suburban neighborhoods listening to the first sounds of crickets and discussing the carnival with a mixture of humor and veiled panic, or what eventually would be revealed as closeted support.

  On this particular night, Evelyn, Tara, and their husbands sat on the Swanns’ back porch with three other couples, two from the neighborhood and one of Michael’s friends from work and his wife. Julia, Evelyn, and the men drank LandSharks while the other women polished off their second bottle of white wine. Thunderstorms had rolled through that afternoon, breaking a weeklong hot spell.

  Julia leaned back and let the relatively cool and considerably less humid breeze play across her face. It seemed to move along with the soft but lively discussion going on around her.

  “Global warming sucks,” one of the men said.

  “That’s random,” Michael responded, then listened to others argue.

  “The heat, man. It’s crazy.”

  “It’s summer.”

  “No, man, this is different. I don’t remember it being this hot out.”

  “In the summer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You watch too much news.”

  “Are you one of those people that don’t believe in global warming?”

  “No, I’m one of those people that don’t believe what I see on the news. Do you believe everything you see on a sitcom?”

  The guy laughed. “No.”

  “Well, they’re subject to the same ratings system. And that ratings system dictates how much the television station can sell their ad space for during the news. So the more people that watch, the more money the station can make. Hate to say it, bro, but I doubt that coexists with that fantasy of journalistic integrity . . .”

  “Chill out,” his wife interrupted.

  Everyone laughed. But the door had been open. Tara’s husband jumped in, targeting his question to the man with all the opinions.

  “I bet you’re voting for Trump, too,” he said.

  “I might,” Michael blurted out.

  Everyone from their neighborhood spun around to look at him, shocked.

  “What?” Julia said with a chuckle.

  “Seriously,” he said.

  She noticed his tone, and she was likely the only one to recognize it. It wasn’t new, per se. The first time she had heard it was when they were still dating and they ran into an ex of hers out one night. Michael had been a gentleman about the whole thing until Julia decided it was a good idea to walk her old boyfriend out to his car. She was gone for only a minute, but when she came back, Michael didn’t hesitate to address what happened.

  “Look, I trust you. I know nothing happened. But don’t make me a goat,” he had said.

  Julia hadn’t understood it that night. Later she would, though. It wasn’t about her walking the guy out. It was about what others might think about her walking him out. She thought about that night before saying anything else. But his comment had surprised her.

  “Stop,” Julia said. “They might believe you.”

  As she looked at her husband, afraid at what his response might be, she remembered the second time she heard his tone like that. It had been when he called from his trip to Indianapolis. And she corrected herself. She had heard that tone many times recently. Whenever he spoke about his job.

  “You think I’m kidding,” he said. “I mean, look around. Everything’s so messed up. Everyone’s turned soft. You can’t say anything or do anything without offending people.”

  “You sound like Trump,” Evelyn’s husband said.

  Their laughter echoed through the neighborhood, but Julia noticed. Her husband and Evelyn’s were good friends. They golfed and played tennis at the club all the time. Michael was usually his most reliable audience. Not this time.

  “He’s going to win the primaries. You know that, right? You know who’s voting for him? It’s white men. They’ve become second-class citizens. They’re losing their jobs. They’re not getting into schools. And it has nothing to do with their ability. Their intelligence. It’s just about the color of their skin. It’s crazy.”

  “Um, aren’t you a white man?” Evelyn’s husband said, smiling.

  Again, Michael didn’t bite. Julia reached over, put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off.

  “Come on, let it go,” she whispered.

  Michael looked her dead in the eyes. “I mean, look what happened to my father-in-law. That fucking company of his killed him.”

  The party went silent. Julia couldn’t breathe. The moment stretched out for what felt like an eternity, the only sound that of the insects singing in the silence.

  * * *

  —

  That night, as they lay in bed, Julia looked at her husband. The buzz he’d clearly built up on the back porch had faded away, replaced by a deep tiredness apparent under his eyes as he looked up at the slowly turning ceiling fan above their heads. She sensed his regret, but also knew him well. He’d never openly admit he had said anything stupid and out of character.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  Julia took a deep breath. “Something’s up.”

  His eyes closed, but he told her. “I’m in trouble at work.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  His statement had taken her unaware. His comment about her father hurt, badly, but she had never considered why he might have said it.

  “Hugh came into my office. He closed the door and told me that he thinks our business is about to be sold to another company out of Germany. They have a similar product . . .” He let out a long breath. “Which means they have a similar sales force. And . . .” He paused again. When he continued, she had never heard him sound so low. “He said my numbers aren’t good enough. That . . . I might be in trouble.”

  “What? When could this happen?”

  “A few months, maybe. He thinks it’s already pretty far along.”

  Julia’s heart stuttered. She thought about the house, the kids, their life. And for the first time, she realized just how reliant she was on her husband. She’d known it, ever since she decided to stay home with the kids. But she hadn’t realized how heavy that was until then.

  “Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a salesman,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. I just need to fix things.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She had always taken care of herself, relied on herself. If things went south, she fixed them. She had acted. This time, she was helpless. Julia wanted to do something, to help him fix it. But as she made suggestions, the lines of his face grew deeper and his eyes took on a coldness she’d never seen before.

  “Look,” he interrupted as Julia was saying something about helping him update his ré
sumé. “I just need to put in more hours. I can’t keep covering for you with the kids, and going to all their stuff at school.”

  Julia flinched. “Really? Is that how you see it?”

  “Look, that’s why you’re home, so someone can be there all the time. That’s your job.”

  Julia shook her head. “Fine, Michael.”

  She got out of bed and left the room. Julia slept that night on the couch downstairs. By the next morning, they both acted as if nothing had happened.

  7

  The sun set as I moved through a thicket of bramble. Sweat stung my eyes as the barbs bit into the exposed skin of my forearms and face. I lashed out at the branches, and they returned with a vengeance.

  “Who the hell am I?”

  What happened on the bus had shaken me. Not the fight, but the conflict I felt right before it. In a way, I felt it every time I tried to think. Each thought became far more exhausting than trying to push through the underbrush.

  It took me nearly an hour to reach the first exit off the highway. My legs started to cramp. That’s when I realized I hadn’t eaten or drank anything in almost twenty-four hours. Actually, it might have been longer. Obviously, at the time, I couldn’t remember.

  As I neared the embankment of the cloverleaf, I heard a siren. Dropping to the ground, I lurked in the shadow until it passed. Then I rose, barely aware of my own decisions, and moved down a grassy embankment. As my physical exhaustion caught up, my thinking slowed. With my head down, I walked along the smaller road toward a gas station a few hundred yards away.

  My nerves picked up as I moved closer. People stood under the lights up ahead, pumping gas and slipping in and out of the convenience store. Car headlights turned on as the long shadows of the early evening fell over both sides of the road. But the growing darkness didn’t put me at ease one bit. With every step, I expected to be found out. I imagined being swarmed by guns and dogs. My head on a swivel, I watched every direction, looking for the inevitable. Yet it never came.

  So I continued, inching closer and closer. As I neared the parking lot, I shied away from the cars, moving along the perimeter. My head down, I neared the back and then came around, moving along the side of the building. As I passed, I tried the door to the men’s room, but it was locked.

  I had no idea what I was doing, much less what I should do next. I just moved like some rabid animal, like some primal instinct to survive against all odds was pushing me feverishly forward, ever forward. And I kept thinking about that dream I had on the bus. Hearing that voice calling out my name.

  Michael Swann . . . Michael Swann . . .

  I imagined pushing through the fog and the gloom to get closer and closer to her. I needed to reach her. She called to me, begging me on. And I moved, one step past another, inching along the wall, creeping through the shadows.

  I think that I expected to ask for a ride. I know that didn’t make any sense. The risk of someone recognizing me was far too high. At the same time, what else could I do? I didn’t even know where I was. Who I was. I needed help or I’d never make it.

  As I reached the corner of the store, though, a car pulled up. With the headlights still on, a young woman, maybe in her twenties, popped out of the driver’s seat. Slamming the door, she walked quickly into the store as she typed away on her phone with two lightning-fast thumbs. I stood there, watching her, until the door closed. Then I heard her engine running.

  There was no premeditation. There wasn’t even a thought. I just acted—walking out, stepping off the curb, and climbing into her car. Without even knowing if I actually knew how to drive, I put the car in reverse and slowly, carefully backed out. Then I rolled out of the parking lot, turning right onto the two-lane road. I passed back under the highway and drove away.

  8

  The television was still on. Julia shook her head, clearing away the memory of Michael from that night so long ago, only to make room for more reporters to vilify him. She blinked, and the screen came into focus. A man with a morose yet canned expression looked into the camera and said, “The video you are about to watch may be disturbing for some audiences.”

  A grainy video played, clearly shot from above by a surveillance camera inside Penn Station. At first, it was a wide shot. In it, hundreds of people milled around what looked like the Acela lounge. In the distance, Julia could see out to the main part of the station. People stood shoulder to shoulder around the enormous board that showed arrivals and departures. There were so many that it looked more like some singularity, like the individuals had merged together in a primordial ooze of frustrated commuters.

  After only a second or two of this shot, the camera zoomed in on one person in the lounge. For a second, Julia didn’t recognize him. Instead, her mind, reeling from everything that had crashed around her, had a very mundane and rational thought. She decided that the zoom must have been done digitally, after the fact. Why else would the camera suddenly zoom in on one sole person? A clean-cut, middle-aged man in a nice suit. He stood among others, holding his phone to his ear. His movements were jerky and amorphous due to the pixelation, and the coloring transformed him into a specter.

  Michael, she thought.

  The image of her husband was too much. In a way, it numbed her, removing her from her own existence. It is, she would later think, possibly the human mind’s defense mechanism. Maybe it is how people who endure horrendous torture somehow survive. They walk away from the tragedy looking normal. Yet they’ve changed. That numbness never truly leaves their eyes. They step through the days like the image she watched on the screen, like a soulless shell existing in a world that has lost all color.

  She continued to watch, though, in a way, it was no longer her. His hand dropped suddenly to his side. His attention snapped to the right, as if some sound or motion startled him. She noticed a change in him, then. He looked on edge. He reached down and started to pick up his briefcase. As soon as the case lifted off the floor, he stopped, as if confused, and looked down. At that instant, the video stopped. An instant later, the somber reporter came back onto the screen. His flat eyes did not blink as he spoke.

  “Once again, this video was obtained through an unnamed source close to the investigation. It purportedly shows the prime suspect in the Penn Station attack holding the case containing the explosives just moments before the bomb goes off, killing and wounding thousands.”

  Julia ripped herself away. Standing, she turned on her mother.

  “No!” she screamed. “I’m not going to let them fucking do this!”

  She stepped out of the room, pulling out her phone. Julia called Michael and the call failed. She texted him again.

  Where are you

  They were wrong, she thought. She continued down the stairs, staring at the text. It felt so futile, like screaming in an empty room. She felt helpless and hopeless, powerless to act in any way that seemed even remotely productive.

  She started to cry again, staring at what seemed like an endless chain of unanswered texts. She had convinced herself that he never saw them, that they were lost in the service disruption following the bombing. With each minute that passed, though, that excuse pulled thinner and thinner. Through it, the truth became uncomfortably too clear.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she dialed the number for the New Jersey State Police. She needed answers. And she’d get them. She had to.

  On the third ring, the call was answered.

  “Can I speak with Marci Simmons? This is . . .”

  At that instant, someone pounded at her front door. Her heart leapt and the phone lowered to her side. Julia turned toward the sound, filling with an unrealistic hope. She pictured the door swinging open and Michael standing there, hurt but okay. It would all be okay. Everything would get cleared up. If . . .

  The pounding started again. The door shook. Then she heard a man’s voice.

  “Homeland Sec
urity.”

  9

  The man sitting across Julia’s kitchen table from her looked as if he were still wearing sunglasses. Not that his eyes were deep-set or shadowed. His face just looked as if it were made to wear them. And without them, something seemed off.

  His partner, on the other hand, was not what she expected. A thin man with a dark complexion and facial hair, he might pass for a Saudi Arabian prince or, to more than half of the United States at that moment in history, a well-dressed terrorist. He spoke with a slight British accent and in a manner that caused Julia to feel interrogated.

  They began immediately, once they had shown their badges and introduced themselves. She showed them to the table, and the thinner agent, Bakhash, began the questions.

  “How long have you and Mr. Swann been married?” and “How many children do you have?”

  Julia answered, trying her best to hide her growing frustration. She slipped her own questions in between theirs. Yet every single one went essentially unanswered.

  “Do you know where Michael is?” and “Are you saying he did this?”

  Agent Bakhash smiled a good bit. His partner—Julia never remembered his name—did not, not even once. He sat staring at her. She would not say it was with open disgust. Nor was it with any noticeable suspicion. It was something else, something far more frightening. He looked at her like a butcher might look at a chicken.

  “Have you heard anything from your husband?” Bakhash asked.

  “No. But I spoke to someone that saw him in New York. And I was told he used his credit card to get a bus ticket. I think one call went through . . . but I don’t know.”

  “Has any stranger contacted you recently, before or after the events yesterday?”

  “No, nothing I can think of.”