Martin didn’t hug me. He was stiff. That’s how he gets when he’s afraid. He cleared his throat & said, “Well, we’ve been busy at the office.”
The world carried on making money & buying stuff, enjoying sunlight on pink sand while K & I hung in this backbreaking “limbo.” I heard a sound, hopped up. Baby was covered in sweat & didn’t know a thing, but I dripped some water thru his lips, & as he coughed he moaned something.
Now, Nabi-girl, be fair. You can’t be sure what Kenji moaned, it was very weak, poor sight was definitely past thinking. & if he did say what you think he said, it’s partly your own fault cuz of the stupid idiotic confusion you started when like a stupid idiot you mixed up your priorities.
Still, did I get vexed. Man, did I get vexed. Cuz I thought Kenji said her name. I mean “Aetna.”
I stomped back to the living room with the image of her stupid face burning in my head. If my head had poisoned rocks in it, I’d hurl them at that face. Chances are there’s only one other human being alive who’s seen that face & knows to connect it with what Aetna Simmons did.
Martin (he’s not the one, he never laid eyes on her), staring into space all forlorn, he don’t know what Kenji wrote, not “Works Of Art” or the Unnamed. I said Kenji told me (lie, he wrote it) that his brother was involved in this thing with Clocktower, & Nikea had his emails. I said I want to see them.
I know from the HD clone that after the first couple “victims” someone emailed times & places where Aetna went for info on the dead people that she was going to “impersonate.” Places like Harbourfront (!), the Arboretum (!!), etc. I didn’t say none of this to Martin, I said I want proof that Kenji’s own brother conspired with the demon-fish who preyed on my Baby when my back was turned (I didn’t say it like that). Martin brought up Nikea’s latest update on his phone. (“When do you think you’re coming home?” said Martin.) Since Nikea started watching, Erik’s been deleting stuff like crazy, shouting out to Brooklyn floozy, but she (floozy) is ignoring him. (“I’ve told them I’ll have to postpone my next trip,” said Martin.) I thought: Erik saw her, Erik spoke to her, she was what she was partly cuz of Erik, & when she slipped thru his fingers Erik told Kenji NOT to stop hunting her. “You sure their bosses weren’t in on it?” I said.
Martin sighed. “They weren’t in on it. But Mrs Caines is dragging her feet on the investigation. We still don’t have a contract. It’s understandable, I suppose.”
Putting it in my book feels like watching myself in a movie starring strangers. I’m appalled at myself now, but at the time I totally wasn’t. I thought: Watch yourself, acegirl & said, “Even the police gave up. Maybe there’s sides to this that should be left alone.”
“Kenji didn’t think so.”
“He’s got no choice now, innit. Honey, if & when you speak to him—”
“I hardly think that’s a good idea.”
“Well, even later. Don’t bring up any of this. It hasn’t done him any good.”
My voice was too high & crackling like the sound of marbles spilling all over the place. But my husband didn’t say, Don’t worry, your dearest, dearest friend will pull thru, he’s got a good long life ahead of him. Martin said, “I told Mrs Caines what he did up on the hill.”
“What’d you have to do that for?”
“He’s her son.”
“That never made no difference! The last thing Kenji needs is that woman coming around—”
A cry from Kenji’s room. I ran, I know this cry, it’s what comes with the dream of that woman & the sword & the black books with red tongues, it caused another horrible attack of throwing up. I had the bright idea of a damp towel for Baby’s forehead, but the dampness killed the wrinkly attempt I’d made at bandage-changing. This was a last straw for me, I don’t know why, maybe all I could think about was throwing rocks at somebody, but when poor Kenji fell back, panting, I ran out to yell at Martin. “You hear that? That’s a lifetime of bad dreams & it’s her fault!”
“My guess is it’s your fault. You lied to both of us, & he’s too carried away to handle it.”
The room swam like Martin had kicked me in the face. He said sit down. I sat down gasping on the floor. My poor husband stood stiffly over me.
“I just want all of us to be OK!” I said.
“What about doing the right thing?”
“That’s all I ever wanted, Martin, you know that.”
“Then tell the truth. If Kenji hasn’t lost his mind, why in the world does he believe you’re Aetna Simmons? He believes it enough to stake his life on it, Nabilah. If that’s some gross delusion, if the man needs psychiatric help—”
“He’s hurt, not crazy.”
“Is he? Because he came to my office, did you know that? So what I heard with my own ears was either: (A) Kenji in the grip of some dire misapprehension of which you just didn’t bother disabusing him because, Jesus save you, all you care about is concealing your own transgressions, or (B) Kenji going seriously insane & spouting demented rubbish.”
“No.”
That’s all I could say. No, Martin, no, Kenji, my sweet genius. It was like something popped inside me. Maybe the imaginary hot air balloon I’d dreamed up to follow Seabird in sometimes. Like my part in what she’d done could float away over the sea & learn spelunking.
If Kenji thought he was insane, if my Baby thought his big bold brain had given out on him, well then he really wouldn’t want to live. & I’m sure he saw online in his research, people who try to do like he was trying to do often retry & succeed. The probability is more than 50%. I’ve checked.
So when Martin cornered me with that, I felt like I really had vomited that hurricane. (I thought: “destruction in creation’s name…potential that art shares with death”!) But the truth that spilled out of me in Kenji’s empty living room at poor frightened Martin’s feet wasn’t the whole truth. How could I tell Martin what Kenji wrote & felt, how could I talk about Inspector Bean & Brooklyn skank? Baby didn’t write any of that for Martin. I didn’t tell the whole truth about Seabird either. I left out one detail.
Besides that I told Martin everything I did. My husband looked at me like I was something on the bottom of his shoe.
“You promised. Nabilah, you swore to me you wouldn’t.”
“It was already too late. But it was just her, nothing else. Everything I did, it was all to try to help—”
“You abetted a CRIMINAL. You helped these people commit fraud. You participated in the very type of offense that I spend all my waking hours fighting to prevent!”
“And what would you do in my place? Turn her away?”
“This could finish me, Nabilah, you’re my wife for God’s sake.”
“Answer me, Martin.”
“It’s a compulsion with you, isn’t it, that’s what it is.”
“You call yourself a Christian, Martin Furbert—”
“Don’t you dare try that with me! Don’t you DARE! Did you even give a thought to the people you love? Then again, I guess that’s never been priority for you, has it.”
Martin walked out & slammed the door, Kenji screamed from the bedroom, “What the ____ is all that racket?! Can’t a _____ die in peace in his own _____ house?!! Take it outside, both of you! Get out of here & LEAVE ME THE _____ ALONE!!”
So here’s me in the hallway like “a ghost nobody wants.” Between the bedroom where my lover didn’t want me & the door that slammed when my husband walked out on me. Mid-afternoon & it was dark like end-of-day.
It can’t be true what Martin said, that this nightmare of death & pain is all my fault. It’s true I didn’t say I’m Aetna Simmons just to protect Aetna Simmons. I said it so what I’d done wouldn’t unravel: my gallant rescuing, my Artful Vanishing, my shadowy triumph. “Like my Aetna, I am lies stacked upon lies. But the foundations of her lies were death and poetry. The basis of my masquerade is shame
.” Kenji wrote that. But was it masquerade if I was doing it to help, I mean cuz helping’s what I always do, that’s how I really am? Would I have let Martin go on thinking Kenji’s crazy, Martin who just blabbed to Kenji’s relatives? Would I really let my Baby start thinking he’s insane just to keep up the illusion that “I’m Aetna Simmons” if Martin hadn’t called me on it??!
All I wanted, I mean ALL I wanted, was for one of them to cuddle me & say we’re OK. I was ready to believe him, whichever of them did it. Whatever happened after that, I figured I could handle it. But the truth is I’m scared of missing one of Kenji’s breaths. I stayed in the hallway cuz I’m scared of messing with them too. If I tell Kenji the truth, it could kill him. If I don’t tell him, it could kill him. Hope he plum forgot it all? Really? Wish brain damage or amnesia on my Baby? Now I’m frightened of the one Kenji called “the only one he trusts.” I’m frightened cuz he thought that one was me.
“Aetna Simmons” who’s not Aetna Simmons anymore.
Was she worth it? We learned, we flew thru shadows, we took on the bank & TCD. Seabird was a fun thing. We had a connection. I mean I thought we did. It was me that talked her off the ledge! With the power of prayer & shopping! But maybe it wasn’t real, I mean our “connection,” me & her. Kenji said to me once with that soft laugh I miss so much, “You wanna know a thing that’s awesome about you? Everyone’s your friend right up until the moment they’ve proved they never were. Don’t ever change, Nikkou.”
Sometimes I think about hunting her down myself: Aetna Simmons, look what you’ve done, look what you made me do!
She’d say: I’m sorry but you knew the risks. (How was I supposed to know she’d sink her teeth in my Baby?) Or she’d get all up a tree & jump out of it in remorse. (The ledge, remember?) Or she’d take off without saying nothing. (Track record!) Wherever I found her, she’d jump ship & run, knowing I can’t tell nobody what we did. (Except apparently a BRMS “Team Leader.” Sigh!) Or she’d get sorrowful & say: Won’t you let me meet your K, let me tell him it’s better to stay alive, all that rah-rah-keep-on-movin stuff you sold me that you can’t remember now cuz you can’t hardly think of nothing except Kenji not breathing?
Stop ya noize, acegirl, you know “the great impersonator” wouldn’t risk that kind of commitment. “The real Aetna, the one who lived and died, she understood that identity’s all just words. And that’s what she sold you, her ability to not be anyone.” Char Richards, that floozy born of Satan, got to hear Kenji say it with his voice. But he wrote it down for me. He wanted me to be the one to think about it. & I think Kenji pegged Aetna Simmons to a tee.
Every time we met up, she tried her best to make sure I wouldn’t remember her.
I never noticed it while it was happening, at the time I was just happy to be going in the shadow world, just like a foolish worker bee dipping in a flower. But later when I read stuff like “Aetna in place of Seneca watching the cutie scribe,” it popped into my head that “Aetna Simmons” was perfectly, consistently, “Bermudafully” polite when she spoke. She always answered back exactly as you’d expect a decent person to answer back, I mean exactly. Like I think Baby would say she spoke only in cliches. Phrases everybody uses like…whatever, I can’t think of any, but stuff we hear all the time. Stuff that wouldn’t stand out. Words that you could never say “Aetna Simmons always says…”
Maybe she really was a polite & decent (?) person who just wasn’t creative with words? That’s what I would’ve said to K if he’d come out with this a week ago. But we know Aetna Simmons was creative with words! We know her job was to fade away behind the words. So she had to be unmemorable as herself, right?
That’s why I think she never wanted to laugh. Laughing is a thing that’s worth remembering. She didn’t even like it at 1st when I laughed. But I like laughing, I wanted to make Aetna Simmons laugh. I worked at it. & she did her best to make sure I did the chopsin. That means she must’ve asked me questions, just not memorable questions. “Nice weekend, then?” Maybe not those words, maybe not even that question, maybe I blabbed about my weekends cuz that’s what I do (I need a nap or something, mercy).
If I’d known what she was running from, would I have helped her? I thought I did know what she was running from. No, I knew I didn’t know. I knew it wasn’t the airplane. Poor thing wouldn’t have said “no questions” about the airplane. That was all over the news till I Vanished it from every digital archive. & if it was about the airplane, the theft (somebody robbing her for a change!) wouldn’t have mattered.
I didn’t know her at all, did I.
4-ish Martin called. Still vexed. I said, “Honey I’m sorry,” but he cut me off: “I’m at work, Nabilah.” He just wanted to “inform” me that he’d done some digging, & although my “little operation” clearly “had some measure of success” with Aetna’s police file, a paper copy still existed, which Martin took to mean that I’d “failed to cross (my) T’s as usual,” & in fact all my “efforts at concealment” were the kind of thing that he & his team eat for breakfast.
To think I’d been fool enough to hope that after Seabird flew away I could use my shadowy “talents” to help Team Leader with shadowy questions.
“Thank you, Martin,” I said in the yawning pause.
After one day working on this, he’d not only found the police file but also found out how it got to where it was & spoken to Commissioner Wallace himself.
“Good for you, Honey.”
That made him more vexed. So what he said next was hurtful.
Wallace told Martin that somebody told him that if he made his Inspectors stop investigating Aetna Simmons’ death, he could count on a favor from the future Minister of Finance. That would’ve been a bribe, the commissioner said no. He only canceled the Island-wide search, cutting the investigation short, but that was obviously just to save resources. There was nothing to investigate anyway, he said, cuz clearly Aetna Simmons killed herself. It just didn’t hurt that the future M of F (Mr C) so happened to have a firstborn (K) who, according to a “certain source,” had an affair with “the Simmons girl” years ago, an affair that “culminated in an illegally terminated pregnancy”!! Martin’s words, quoting Wallace, quoting this unnamed “source.” None of it is true, Kenji loves me & only me, & besides I know exactly how Aetna Simmons spent her nights, & it wasn’t with him! The “source,” guess who it was, wanted to save a certain family from any risk of embarrassment as future M of F prepared to hit the campaign trail, where Wallace thought this person deserved a fighting chance. Clearly there was nothing to investigate. So why risk the reputation of good people who wanted to do something worthwhile for Bermuda? Obviously, since Wallace was completely transparent about this with Martin, there was nothing wrong with his decision whatsoever. Some people just amaze me. E.g., who was it, this “source” who made up this horrible malicious evil totally untrue gossip?
Erik-Katsuo Okada-Caines, that’s who, the “needy little brother” I’d forced on Kenji weeks ago when “poor Kiki” came crying to my door.
I’m disgusted. So is Martin. He didn’t believe the malicious evil totally untrue gossip, he knows Erik was covering himself, but my husband pretended to believe it. He reminded me what Erik said about K & the fish-demon, & that kicked off the biggest argument we’ve ever had, & sometime Martin said, “Did you ever really love me, Nabilah?”
Really don’t need this right now.
“I do love you, Martin.”
“Well, he’s convinced that you’re in love with him.”
“Hard to say this to you, Martin, but I do love him.”
Confused pause. Poor Honey.
“Have you told him the truth?”
“Not yet. Honey, you’re both wonderful people.”
Martin laughed! A nasty laugh. “Do you ever mean anything you say?”
“I mean everything I say, thank you, that’s why I never promised Kenji anyth
ing.”
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t realize you were free to make promises to him, considering a significant promise you made to me!”
“What about what you promised? Respect & all that—”
“When have I not respected you? I tell everyone how proud I am of you, my wife, a self-made professional. I’ve always been supportive.”
“Supportive, huh?” I recalled the jibes (confetti, etc), my supportive & respectful spouse claimed he’d never jibed, those were “lighthearted aphorisms.” I said I beg to differ, things got a little berserk, & he came out with this:
“Maybe I envied you a little, how everything comes easily to you—”
My turn to say, “I beg your pardon.” But Martin didn’t listen.
“How at ease you are, especially with him, since you know you’ll get everything you want. The two of you treating life like it’s one big playground. (Not true.) But I never did anything to endanger any part of it, Nabilah.”
Oh, Martin.
Silence fell on us like a bunch of overripe coconuts.
“Look, call me if you hear anything. About CAM or, you know, related matters.”
“Why are you still looking, Martin? You said Mrs C wasn’t interested.”
More coconuts. Then he sighed.
“You & I both know I’m a man of integrity. (Me: Of course, I’ve always admired etc.) No, just listen, Nabilah. Whatever he might be, there’s no question that he’d sacrifice everything for you. Other people, his family, self-respect, whatever. Understand? You better make sure you deserve it.”
That night everything changed. Putting it in my book will make it more real or less real, I’m not sure. I’m worried that my book, so full of songs & kisses, is getting used to being a burial ground for things that could be demons. But that’s why it’s gotta take them. Things like the Unfinished Church. Water in Kenji’s lungs. Martin running blindly into the night. So they can get out of my head. “Writing’s a different kind of thinking.” I can’t look at my hands when I’m writing.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 39