The Muse

by Anne Calhoun

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to pack you a suitcase and have Marla box up the rest of your things and put them in storage. Then I’m going to put you on a plane to West Palm.”

  “Arden, you have to—”

  “—do what I think is right,” Arden finished. “You turned the foundation over to me two years ago. It’s mine. You’re going to Florida. I’m going to think about our future as a family, and make a decision.”

  * * *

  At Breakers Point she texted Betsy, who set things in motion on her end, then she packed her mother’s suitcase, and booked her on the last flight to West Palm. She called Neil and updated him, making arrangements to send over a list of her mother’s property to be collected later. She and Derek dropped her mother at Kennedy at the private plane hangar. In moments her mother was airborne.

  Derek drove her home, then went off to whatever private life he lived. Inside the town house, closing in on midnight, Arden sat down in her living room and looked at the incomplete drawing of Seth she was finishing for the end-of-class show. Ever since the accident—half her life ago—she’d been spinning like a top jerked around by a toddler. Lately the hits had come faster and faster, from unexpected places. Seth. The baby shower. The panic attack in the park. The video. The video getting out. She felt like the universe was sending her a message, using bigger and bigger circumstances to make a point, shouting, coloring in bigger, broader swaths in an effort to tell her something.

  The picture drew her eye. It was of a man in an extreme situation, living with the threat of death and failure every day, but all the while radiating paradoxical strength and woundedness, determination and fear, surviving under the most crushing circumstances, because Semper Fi never ended. She would never get tired of looking at Seth, could spend hours watching him like she’d study a painting by a master. He was complex, shrouded, shaded, finding strength not in individual success but in brotherhood and belonging, in fighting the fight that had to be fought.

  Safety was an illusion. So was peace. But she could find calm in the chaos, a harbor in the storm, and be that for someone else.

  She was at the end of her rope. The only solution she could understand, the only one that made any sense, was to reach out and cut the rope.

  “I’m turning the foundation money over to the authorities.”

  The words were quiet, calm in the darkness. She waited for the aftershocks to shudder through her, the doubts and questions and automatic assumptions that questioned her decisions, her worth as a person.

  They didn’t come. The calm space she’d found with Seth was now her center.

  “I’m closing the MacCarren Foundation. The money will be transferred to the advocate charged with distributing assets to the victims of the MacCarren Ponzi scheme.”

  Nothing. Just calm. Like she’d been hanging a millimeter off the floor, so close to solid ground there wasn’t even a jolt when she landed.

  She looked at the easel, the picture on it, of Seth, but not any of the poses from their class with Micah. He’d shown her that strength, the steel inside her that would vibrate from blows, but not break, not bend, not shatter. He’d walked beside her through the worst weeks of her life, never doubting her but always challenging her, never questioning but always opening space for her to find herself.

  It was the best gift anyone had ever given her. He’d given her the tools she needed to find herself.

  * * *

  At four A.M. she still hadn’t slept, so she pulled on a pair of jeans, a fisherman’s sweater, and her boots, went downstairs, and walked down Fifth Avenue to Betsy’s building. The streets didn’t seem so threatening at night, empty and beautiful in that emptiness, light pooling on the corners, familiar landmarks shrouded and sleeping. The night doorman had the door to Betsy’s building open before she got to the door.

  “Ms. MacCarren,” he said, poker-faced. “Is Ms. Cottlin expecting you?”

  “No.”

  He buzzed, and Betsy’s sleepy voice filled the intercom even as Arden’s phone lit up. Are you downstairs?

  Yes.

  “Go on up,” the doorman said.

  Betsy opened the door dressed in a chenille bathrobe, her bare feet curling away from the cold tile, and looked at Arden, her face filled with love and horror and amusement. Arden said the first thing that came to mind.

  “I finally found a way to convince my mother to move to Florida.”

  Betsy’s laugh trilled down the scale, bouncing around the empty hallway, as she enveloped Arden in a big hug. “Oh, honey.”

  Arden hugged her long and hard, then unwound the scarf from around her neck and shed her coat onto the coat rack by the door. “You watched it.”

  “Of course not,” Betsy protested. Arden raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I watched it. Everyone has watched it. What did your mother say?”

  “She said Dad would be so disappointed. Among other things.” This time Betsy’s laugh resonated off the windows. “I told her I was disappointed in him, so we were even.”

  “What did Garry say?”

  “I don’t think he watched it, because most brothers don’t want to see their sisters having sex, but he said, ‘Good for you.’”

  Nick wandered in, shoeless, his tie around his neck but not tied, a cup of coffee in his hand. “Hi, Arden,” he said, and bent his head to kiss her cheek. At least he’d seen her having sex before.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Make another pot of coffee, would you?” Betsy said, pressing a fond kiss to his recently shaved cheek. “I want pain au chocolat. Will Le Pain deliver this early?”

  “Give them another hour,” Nick said. “I’ll stop by on my way to the train and send someone over.”

  “What does Seth have to say about all of this?”

  Arden shrugged as they followed Nick into the kitchen. “I’m not sure. He left.”

  “Left where? Your apartment? The city? You?”

  “All of the above.”

  “Over a sex tape?”

  Arden flicked a quick look at Nick, saw his I-know-what’s-going-on-here-but-I’m-not-saying-anything face as he poured coffee into two cups. “It wasn’t just a sex tape,” she said.

  “Ah,” Betsy said, and took the coffee her husband offered her. “So he saw that, too.”

  “Betsy, everyone on the planet with an Internet connection saw everything.”

  “Not really. The sheet actually hid quite a bit. It looks more like soft-core porn than one of those celebrity tapes. It’s dark, and you’re badly positioned. You can tell it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, not something you were doing for the attention.”

  “Thank you, Mike Nichols.”

  “You know what I mean. It was about the two of you, together, not about tits and ass. Even if I didn’t know you, it’s almost too intimate to watch.”

  “I think that was worse,” she said. She sipped the coffee, trying to keep her emotions under control. “It was special.”

  “Anyone with eyes can see that,” Betsy said.

  “Between us,” Arden continued. “Now everyone’s seen it. I can’t decide if he thinks he’s failed me—he takes honor very seriously—or if he’s furious that he’s been exposed, too.”

  “The guy takes off his clothes to model for art students,” Nick pointed out as he sat down in the breakfast nook and tied the laces on his oxblood wing tips.

  Was that just a hint of jealousy from her former fiancé? He could see exactly how different she was in bed with Seth than she’d been with him, the two of them wrapped in a cocoon they spun of touch and look and taste. There was something about them, something special. She knew it. Seth knew it. But she wasn’t afraid of it, while Seth was. He’d had it, and lost it.

  “Does he need a job?” Nick added, snugging the laces on his second shoe.

  “He’s got a job,” she said.

  Nick lifted an eyebrow. “A career, then. We’ve got an executive development program,” he said. “If
he’s got a degree and any aptitude at all, he might be a good hire for us. The government is making a real push to hire veterans.”

  The last thing Seth would want is to be part of some quota. “I’ll tell him,” Arden said, but even as she spoke, she knew Seth wouldn’t want that job. He was wired to take care of people, not compete against them.

  “He’s not going to want that job,” Betsy said after Nick left.

  “I know,” Arden said. “But it was nice of Nick to offer.”

  “How did you react to the video?”

  “Did I have a panic attack? No. Shockingly, no. I did not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m angry. I’m really fucking angry.”

  “Finally!” Betsy said, slumping back against the chair.

  Clarity washed over her. All along she’d been trying to convince herself that the jumbled mess of love and loyalty knotted inside her was clean, hard, clarifying anger. It wasn’t. She’d been shocked, horrified, hurt, scared, in denial, then scrambling to stay on top of the wreckage left in her father’s wake. Finally, as Betsy said, she was nearly rigid with fury.

  “It was a vulnerable, intimate moment that’s now on display for the world. He was mine. He was the first thing I had for me, not for MacCarren.” And now he was gone. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and clung to the anger. “It’s like I’m standing on the other side of a raging river, and I don’t know how I got there. I can’t see the stones, or the bridge, or the boat. All I know is that I’m different. Not cured. I’ve had too many long stretches without a panic attack to think I’ll ever be cured. But I’m different.”

  “You are,” Betsy said quietly. “I can see the change even from the first drawing class.”

  She was going to cry, because the relief was so profound, so transformative, to find herself on the inside of something, on the inside of herself. She’d found herself, but the man who guided her through the turmoil had disappeared under the rapids.

  She took a shaky breath. “I’ve decided to turn the foundation’s endowment over to the law firm working to reimburse investors. It won’t make everyone whole, but it will help. I’m letting it all go. I’ve told Neil to keep anything Mom and Dad bought before he started the scheme, but otherwise, to let it all go. It’s the only way we can move on.”

  And she’d already moved on. These were the details, the pesky loose ends to tidy up and tuck away, no longer the only thing on her mind. Short of death, she’d survived not one but two arguably worst-case scenarios, and come through stronger. She would no longer let fear rule her life, and she would stop asking for permission to do what she knew was right. She thought of the swords tattooed down Seth’s chest and back, and wanted one for herself. A wild, warrior woman with tattoos on her breast. Why not?

  “I might get a tattoo,” she said absently.

  “Why not?” Betsy said rhetorically.

  The doorman buzzed again then sent up a delivery man carrying croissants, pains au chocolat fresh from the oven, and two enormous hot chocolates from Le Pain for them.

  “I’m not going back to sleep,” Betsy said.

  “Me, either,” Arden said, and bit into the pastry.

  – NINETEEN –

  The morning after Arden told him he wasn’t as alone as he thought he was, Seth set out to prove it by biking into Manhattan to meet Phil for breakfast at a twenty-four-hour diner in the East Village. His friend, dressed in what were obviously last night’s club clothes, was hunched over a textbook, spinning a pen around his thumb joint as he read.

  Seth tossed his helmet on the booth bench and slid in after it. Phil raised red-rimmed eyes to his. Definitely out late, maybe even up all night, maybe even still drunk, but not that drunk, and definitely not high.

  “So. What’s new?” Phil’s eyes were dancing, bright with the kind of vivid glee, a sheer, joyful delight, Seth hadn’t seen on his face in a very long time. “Seen any good movies lately?”

  “Very funny,” Seth said.

  Phil signaled for the waitress and tapped his coffee cup for a refill, then said, “I have to say, of all of Doug’s friends, you’re the last one I would have expected to do something like that. Doug might have, if he was drunk off his ass. Brian would have, but only with Brittany, with candles and roses and music and all that shit. Manny . . . who knows? In the right mood, Manny would have done it with two girls but he would have been just as likely to not do it at all. He was one unpredictable motherfucker. But you?”

  Seth gave him a level look.

  “Come on,” Phil said. “It’s not that bad. The lighting sucked, for one thing. You took too long to get to the action, too.”

  Seth felt a muscle pop in his jaw. “Leave it,” he said.

  Phil’s eyebrows drew down. “What’s the big deal? Give it one news cycle, maybe two, and it’s gone. Based on what I read, she’s got bigger problems than making a sex tape with you.”

  She did have bigger problems, and the video would never be gone. Not for Arden, and not for Seth. He’d seen, and once he saw, he couldn’t unsee, erase his memory, rewind with a zip, and forget it ever happened.

  The waitress refilled Phil’s cup and poured fresh for Seth. “Get you anything?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “We’ll both have the Make My Day,” Phil said as he slid the laminated menus to the edge of the table. “Over easy for me, scrambled for him. White toast for both. Why do we call them tapes, anyway? No one’s used videotape in, like, years,” he added when the waitress left.

  “No idea,” Seth said, studying Phil, who was adjusting the scalloped edge of his paper place mat. “Are you high? Is this a pot-munchie binge?”

  “I’m not fucking high. I’ve been up all night and I’ve got three hours of class today. I need fuel,” he said, his voice rising as he spoke. “Jesus Christ, Seth. What does it take with you?”

  “Me? What are you talking about? You’re the one who’s drinking too much, you disappear for days—”

  “I’m reacting normally to combat stress and losing my brother. My behavior is within the normal boundaries for a grieving veteran, something I know because I fucking go to the fucking support groups and see my fucking therapist like a fucking grown-up. You, on the other hand, are riding right off the fucking rails!”

  Phil’s voice rose with each fuck, his index finger thumping on the stained laminate table surface. Seth stared at him, along with the customers in their immediate vicinity.

  “You act like it didn’t happen, like if you step into their boots, they won’t be gone. Manny.” Thump. “Brian.” Thump. “Doug.” Whump. Edge of his fist this time, making the coffee jump in Seth’s untouched cup. “It happened. They’re dead. You have to accept that and move on.”

  Seth’s temper slipped, Phil’s voice and fist tapping open a fine crack in the thick pane of glass between him and the world. This was Doug’s baby brother, a stern voice in the back of his mind reminded him. What would Doug do? He thought of their interactions, the fights Doug described, in-your-face explosions that disappeared just as quickly. “I have accepted it,” he snapped, low and sharp. “I was there. I pulled your brother’s body out of the fucking Humvee. I smelled his blood, Manny’s, fucking Brian’s, boiling on the burning fucking undercarriage. You think I haven’t accepted it?”

  —Whump smoke and fire billowing out of the vehicle’s distorted frame time frozen shattered glass meat cooking—

  “That’s exactly what I think, you dumb grunt.” Phil held up a fist, and jabbed out his thumb. “You won’t call any of the veterans organizations. You’re living in permanent limbo, a job that’s about being in motion, a house you can drive away, or ditch.” He added his middle finger to the index and thumb. “You’ve got no real relationships going besides me and Britt and Baby B. Even those aren’t real, Seth. You’re my brother, but you’re not Doug. You’re taking care of Britt, but you’re not Brian. You could probably be Manny, whose exploits on leave in Thailand are fucking le
gendary, but who the fuck wants, really wants, to be Manny? What you had on the video, that was real!”

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Phil raged on, ignoring the looks from other customers. “Unless she’s some kind of rich girl getting off with the Marine, in which case you’re still the luckiest fuck ever. That’s who you are now. You’re alive, living in the greatest fucking city in the world. Fucking act like it!”

  “I can’t!” He didn’t know it was true until he said it. He wanted to rage the building down. He wanted Arden, wanted to be wanted by her, and he couldn’t . . . he couldn’t.

  “Why not?”

  The anger welled up inside him. “Because I owe people! I owe my brothers! I thought you’d understand that!”

  Phil sat back and blew out his breath. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Do you want to owe them?”

  “No! God damn it!” He’d rage the fucking city down if he could. “I don’t want to owe them a goddamn thing. I want your brother, my best goddamn friend, alive, here, at this goddamn table. I want them all to meet her, and her to meet them. I want them to be the honor guard at our wedding, godfathers to our children, telling her stupid stories about me so I can tell her stupid stories about them, because she’ll fit right in with them. With us. But there is no us anymore, and I don’t know who to be without that. Don’t you get it? There’s no rule book for this life. Nobody writes about it, makes movies about it, tells stories about what happens after.” He could hear his voice tightening, thickening. All movement around them came to a halt, although whether that was real or just a part of his imagination, he didn’t know. “I’m so fucking angry with them—”

  He stopped. Fists clenched, vibrating on the edge of violent destruction, and nowhere for it to go. “I should have died with them.”

  “You didn’t. You got in the second vehicle like you’d done a hundred times, but this time, you lived. Life’s random. Get angry, Seth,” Phil said quietly.

  He swallowed hard, the lump of everything he was fighting to keep inside straining his throat. “The city will burn if I let it out.”