by Anne Calhoun
It was almost a relief when her on-screen self bent to kiss him, because surely, surely the sex would be less revealing than this. She noticed, in the graceless scramble to get their clothes off, that her scars were barely visible in the light.
“We should have turned on a lamp,” she said. “It gets dark so fast now, and we’re kind of shadowy.”
He didn’t respond.
“It’s rather art house,” she added.
Shut up, Arden.
She glanced at the time, and saw that they were about halfway through the video before they started having sex. Twenty minutes. It would have been perfunctory, even laughably boring—oral, missionary, a bit of oh-so-super-exciting woman on top for the big finish—except the lines of their bodies, the essence of them together, was of total trust and abandon. They were lost in each other. Found in each other.
The sound she made when she came sent a shock wave of pleasure straight through her sex, and a sudden blush to her face. “Oh, God,” she said. “Am I always that loud?”
He chuckled. “You are.”
“I don’t really hear it when it’s happening,” she said, thinking her way through what she meant. “It’s not as loud.” Because her heart was pounding in her ears and she was somewhere else, far away, so deep in pleasure, sound reached her from across a vast chasm.
On the screen she’d slumped forward over Seth. His legs were stretching out under the sheet, but she could see her toes uncurling, the muscles in her legs going slack, then she clambered off the bed, picked up the camera. The replay button appeared in the middle of the screen. She powered off the camera.
“Well,” she said into the awkward silence. She had to be careful here, rather than shoving the view screen under his nose and saying Look! Do you see what you’re doing to yourself? He hadn’t done that to her. She would return the favor. “That was interesting. I don’t think it will cure my panic attacks, but it was . . . informative.”
“Yeah,” he said, and shifted down to the end of the bed. He shouldered into his shirt and started buttoning it.
“Plans?”
“I might hang out with a friend,” he said without looking at her.
It was an excuse. Seth never made excuses. Not for what he’d done, what he did now. He didn’t have to. He’d paid for his life with blood, sweat, and tears. But he was making an excuse now. He plucked her underwear from the floor and tossed it at her feet. “Are you mad at Ryan?”
It took her a second to make the connection between her tap pants and Ryan Hamilton. When she did, via Simone Demarchelier’s Irresistible, she thought about it for a long moment, trying to separate Ryan from her family’s total destruction. “No. He did the right thing. I can’t blame him for choices and decisions my father and brother made over and over again. I don’t know that I want to talk to him anytime soon, but I’m not angry with him.”
“He’s with the woman who owns Irresistible.”
“I know,” she said. “That was the affair of the summer. The gossip was scorching hot.”
A distraction to go with the excuse. She wondered if he understood what she meant when she said he might be afraid to be on the other side of things, rather than the one who sees things, goes deep into another person’s soul, looks around. As either the artist or the model, Seth deftly managed attention and scrutiny, using his pen or his bared body to prevent anyone from seeing inside him. Even his job as a bike messenger kept him moving at top speed, focusing attention on the people whose lives were blown apart by the IED. Look at all these people left behind, brothers, wives, children, and pay no attention to the man in the middle of it all. The silent one, the one with no claim of blood or marriage but used words like love and brother without hesitation. The one who’d left his family of origin and lost his family of choice.
He picked up his messenger bag and lifted the strap across his body, then turned to leave.
“I had a nice time today,” she said. “Thanks for taking me to MoMA. I’ll never see a museum the same way again.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I’ll . . . I’ll text you later.”
“Be safe,” she said.
She of all people couldn’t help him find his way through that wilderness. Instead, she let him go. For the first time in their relationship, she didn’t pay him.
* * *
If he’d known how the day was going to turn out, he would have ridden his bike to Arden’s town house. Instead, he was on foot, all but jogging toward the Lex line at Ninety-sixth Street. He needed movement. It was cool, crisp, a perfect night for a ride. Night rides were the best, the speed and rush of wind in his face, and the adrenaline rush of substandard vision would set his skin humming like it was electrified. With his bike he could play chicken with taxis, SUVs, semis making deliveries, scream after that near-sexual rush that only intensified as he pushed himself to stay even with a taxi, the cab’s metal frame and whirring wheels an inch from his leg.
Instead, he was on foot, unable to stop thinking about the sex he’d just had. That wasn’t “I didn’t die in Afghanistan” sex. It wasn’t “I didn’t die at all” sex. That wasn’t “I’m getting on with my life” sex.
That was “you reorder my world” sex. That was “life will never be the same” sex. That was “I’m falling for you” sex.
That was exactly the kind of sex he didn’t want to have.
He took the stairs down to the subway two at a time, swung through the turnstile, and walked from the station to the end of the platform all the way down to the other end. Keep moving. The train’s single headlamp appeared in the depths of the tunnel, but he didn’t stop moving, not even when the wind and noise hit him. The speed of the local train was barely enough to soothe his need for movement, as was his short jog from the Grand Army Plaza station to the motor home. But when he unlocked the door, dropped into his bed, the truth caught up with him.
The video laid him bare. It wasn’t the expression on her face. It was the expression on his, before, during, and after. He’d never seen himself like that, desperate, yearning. He was the one with the pencils and pens, the one who saw and recorded, who found the essence in others and gave that back to them. But in that video, he was the one being seen, the one looking at a future like it was something he wanted. It made him hot and cold, ashamed and afraid and hopeful, all at once.
It made him feel things he had no business feeling.
“Okay. Fine,” he said, not sure who he was talking to. His muse, probably. He reached under the bed and pulled out his big sketchpad—the one that held an in-progress drawing of Arden, the one of her with her hair loose, studying him as he modeled for her—and his pencils and pastels. As he worked, the pencil in her hand became a dagger, the tunic a shirt of chain mail, the easel a shield. Her boots became greaves. He added the gold he’d come to associate with her in his mind, and the drawing took on the mystical-quest feel he too often fell back on.
When was he going to learn that the quest was over? It had failed, a spectacular train wreck, engine in the ravine, steaming, flames coming from the linked cars. And yet he reached for this again, and again, falling back on what he knew, except what he knew no longer existed.
An eerie stillness settled in his mind. It was the blank calm of the convoy before the IED went off, a single moment of stillness where you knew everything and nothing, all at the same time. It wasn’t stillness in terms of noise or motion, but rather as if the universe had come to a halt before white light, concussive sound waves gave way to shrieking metal, then hoarse screams.
He reached back under the bed and drew out the sketchbook he’d been carrying when the IED went off. Dust was embedded in the textured black cover, while blood had dried on the pages, adhering the edges together. He trailed his fingers over the cover, smelled old blood and dust, then pressed the pad of his middle finger against the top edge, intending to open it.
“I can’t,” he said.
You’ll have to eventually echoed in his mind.
“No.”
But when he woke up the next morning and dressed for a day on the bike, he slid that journal, not the new one, into his cargo shorts pocket.
* * *
Arden shoved her sketchbook into her purse, slid her sunglasses from the top of her head to her nose, and hurried out the door to the SUV. She was reworking her rough drawing of the photo on Seth’s phone, but rather than adding details, she was paring them back, seeking to evoke their deep bond with as few lines as possible. While she drew, Derek drove her to Kennedy, where Garry’s flight was due to land in less than an hour. Derek dropped her off and went to wait in the short-term parking lot. She wore big sunglasses, no makeup, a bare-bones outfit of jeans, flats, tunic sweater with a denim jacket over it for warmth, and reveled in a moment of anonymity as she waited in the baggage claim area.
Would she recognize Garry? He’d been gone for years, hadn’t come home for holidays, hadn’t called, sent few emails and fewer pictures, mostly of mountains and sheep. To the best of her knowledge, he didn’t even have a cell phone. She understood his desire to run as far away as possible; if he could have gotten accommodations on the international space station, he would have. Remote New Zealand was about as far he could go, with a decent climate and no ongoing civil wars, and still be on the planet.
She recognized him immediately, standing tall and straight as he loped down the stairs to the baggage claim area. Deeply tanned and dressed in jeans, boots, and a sheepskin jacket, he scanned the crowded, echoing space with his electrifying blue eyes, and caught Arden’s gaze on the first go-round.
She wanted to run to him, to hug him close, to fall apart on his shoulder as she had so often when he was still at home, but that would mean making a scene, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. So she let him cross the floor to her, and held back the tears.
“Arden,” he said quietly and hugged her tightly.
“Garry. I’m so glad you’re home.” She laid her hands flat on the thick stubble on his jaw and searched his eyes. “How are you? How was the flight?”
“Long,” he said. “Crowded. I haven’t been around this many people in years.”
“Do you have luggage?” she asked, glancing down at the overnight bag in his hand. A tablet was tucked into the outside pocket, but otherwise, it didn’t appear to be half full.
“No,” he said.
“Garry.”
“I left clothes in my apartment,” he said. “And at Hollow Hill Farm. We still own that, I see.”
He’d caught up on the situation. “Yes, the trust owns Hollow Hill. But the clothes are years old.”
“They’ll be fine.”
“Men have it so easy,” Arden muttered and texted Derek to come get them. “Derek’s on his way.”
“Derek is . . . ?”
“My driver.”
“I thought he might be a boyfriend.”
“No. My driver.”
“Anyone in your life right now?”
Well, that was a complicated question. She thought long and hard about it before saying, “Maybe. Which is not important, because we have plenty of other things to think about. I assume you’re caught up.”
“I spent the flight reading the news coverage, your emails, Neil’s emails, and the indictment,” he said.
That explained the tablet. Trust Garry to attack “the situation” as ruthlessly as he’d avoided it. She lowered her voice, trusting the ambient noise of planes, cars, rolling suitcases, people greeting and parting ways to cover their conversation. “The short version is that Mom’s going to lose everything she and Dad owned together. Dad fired Neil, but I kept him on to represent me and the foundation. He’s putting up a fight, but it’s a lost cause, and we all know it. She’ll be able to keep what was hers before the marriage, so it’s not like she’ll be destitute. But forty years of her physical world is about to disappear. We’re not sure how much Charles will keep of the money Granddad gave him. Again, Neil’s fighting to keep that and somehow transfer it to the girls. You and I have our money, obviously. That money is completely removed from the business. Mom’s refusing to leave Breakers Point.”
“And the FBI is threatening to evict her.”
“We’re not quite there yet, but Neil says yes.” She took a deep breath. “The real problem is that they’re also going after the foundation’s assets,” she said, and heard her voice quiver as she did.
Why was this still the problem for her? Why was this the thing she couldn’t face? Because it was the only MacCarren work she’d been allowed to do? The investment side was gone. But the foundation, which had been hers, wasn’t.
Garry wrapped his arm around her and tucked her into his shoulder. She fought back the tears, the impending sense of doom swelling in her chest. She could not fall apart at Kennedy. When she lifted her head, she recognized a photographer snapping pictures ten feet away as one who’d been staking out her building since the story broke.
“Oh,” she gasped. She straightened out of Garry’s embrace, turned the opposite direction.
“Welcome home, Garry,” the photographer said, continuing to snap pictures. “How long are you staying?”
Garry turned the other direction and started walking away, subtly giving Arden some privacy and neatly cutting off the photographer at the revolving doors. Derek was pulling up to the curb when a horn honked, setting off a cascade as the waiting cabs all released their frustration at once. She startled, felt her heart rate shoot straight to the moon, and the impending sense of doom swell until her vision began to blacken around the edges. Then she heard her name through the hammering pulse in her ears. She looked up and saw Derek, standing on the driver’s side running board. Garry grabbed her elbow and hustled her through the cars to the SUV. The locks thunked open, Garry hauled the door open and shoved her inside, all but sitting on her as he clambered in after her. Another thunk, and the cocoon closed around them. The photographer stood in front of the vehicle, taking pictures through the windshield until an NYPD officer got in his face. Hands raised innocently, he backed up to the sidewalk, and they drove away.
It didn’t work. Drawing didn’t work, sex with Seth didn’t work, seeing that beautiful video of them together didn’t work. Nothing was going to work, nothing. She would succumb to this over and over for the rest of her life. Shudder after shudder rolled through her body, from her teeth to her toes, and not even Garry’s solid body at her side, the familiar scent of lanolin and denim and the cream he rubbed into his boots, could stop them.
“Where to?” Derek asked.
“Breakers Point,” Garry said, his hand curled into Arden’s shoulder. “I’ll see if I can talk some sense into Mom. When do we meet with Neil?”
“Tomorrow morning,” she said, hearing the quaver in her voice. Hating it.
“Shhh,” he said. “It’s okay.”
She gave a wild little laugh. “It’s not okay, Garry,” she said, then straightened and grabbed her journal to pull herself together. It fell open to the latest sketch of Seth and his friends, caught forever in laughter and sunshine. “It’s not the panic attacks anymore. It’s the hope. After every single one, I hope that’s the last, that I’ll find a way to fight them off. It ends, I realize how ridiculous my fears are, I feel ashamed of myself for giving in to them, I try again. I’ll be rational. I’ll be in control. But once the dominoes start falling, I can’t stop them. I don’t want to stop them anymore. I just want to hit bottom so I can stop hoping.”
– EIGHTEEN –
“I’m not saying it’s the only right thing to do,” Garry said. “I’m saying it’s one right thing to do, and we have to consider that.”
Arden took a deep inhale, then let it out slowly, trying to send Garry a subtle hint to settle down. It wasn’t even nine in the morning, but his voice was already impatient. He’d not been able to talk sense into their mother, but given the amount of mood-altering medication she was on, that wasn’t really his fault. Everyone involved needed to be in his o
r her right mind today, so they’d put her to bed without a Xanax. She was alert, sitting across from both of them in Neil’s conference room, and determined to go down fighting.
“But there’s legally no way they can take the money,” she said.
“I’m not sure of that, Aunt Lyd,” Neil said. “Regardless of the outcome, they’re an effective method of calling attention to a situation. The longer you fight this, the worse you look to the media, and the longer it takes to move on with your lives.”
“But if we give up the foundation, we lose the reason for moving on!” her mother said.
“Mom,” Garry started.
“You hush,” she said, pointing her index finger at him. Arden nudged him under the table. Garry scribbled something on his legal pad and edged it to Arden. We should have let her take the Xanax.
This is best if we’re all clear and calm, Arden wrote back.
“. . . And a significant portion of the money in the foundation’s accounts was legitimately raised. Yes, Don made donations, we all did, but—”
“You’re splitting hairs, Aunt Lyd.”
Arden rose to her mother’s defense. “She’s doing what we always did at the foundation. We weighed one good against another. This is no different. Which is the greater good: giving money to people swindled in the Ponzi scheme, or distributing it via the methods and organizations we’ve always supported?”
“That’s not how the government or the public perceives the situation,” Neil said.
“It’s not a situation. It’s our legacy! Don’t we owe something to the future, to the people who donated to the foundation, who supported our goals?” her mother said.
“What’s the ratio of outside funding to MacCarren money?” Garry asked.
Her mother’s mouth shut with a snap. “About twelve percent,” Arden said.