by Lisa Unger
She shook her head. “But Erik, I—”
“I’m begging you,” he interrupted. “Can you forgive me for what I’ve done?”
“Erik, yes,” she said, squeezing his hands, closing her eyes. “But I need forgiveness, too.”
“It’s already done. Don’t say another word. From right here, from this place, let’s move forward and do better for each other. Without looking back even once. Can we? Can we, Linda?”
The look on his face was so wide open, so earnest. He’d known all along she’d been having an affair, hadn’t he? She could see the pain and the understanding and forgiveness in the blue wells of his eyes. She could even see that it was the reason he’d done what he did. He thought that if he could give her the security she craved, she wouldn’t be tempted to seek the cheap and foolish comfort she’d sought elsewhere. She bowed her head in shame.
She’d not been able to keep her father from leaving her. But she could hold her family together now; she could forgive them all, even herself.
“Yes,” she said after a moment. She looked up at him. From this place, he’d said. He hadn’t meant the actual apartment, of course. But it was here that they’d conceived their children. These rooms had been the battleground for every major argument, the place where they’d first made love, where’d they laughed so hard it hurt, where they’d wept and yelled and cooked their meals. Sure, it was hocked up to heaven at the moment, but it didn’t make it any less theirs. She thought of one of Fred’s Zen adages: The journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step.
“Yes, of course we can.”
She felt grief for Ben. She’d cared for him, made love to him, considered him a friend. She felt some culpability—however irrational—for his death. But she also knew that he was a very sick man. The knowledge of what he would have done to Erik, to her, to both of their children, eclipsed the feelings of affection she’d had for him. She found she couldn’t muster much compassion for him, in spite of her sadness.
She remembered that closed-down, shut-off feeling from the night her father killed himself, as if some critical part of her had drifted off into space. When she could feel anything at all, it was only rage. If he’d loved her, he’d have remembered the moon was full. He’d have remembered the night belonged to her. He’d have known she’d find him. She’d always believed this in her darkest heart. But now she understood he hadn’t been thinking about anything except his own unbearable psychic pain.
When she wept in her husband’s arms then, she knew it was the first time she’d allowed herself to really cry for her father. She wept for him as much as she did for everything she’d almost destroyed in her life because she just couldn’t let him go.
Hello, Moonbeam.
Goodbye, Daddy.
THE MOON WAS full and high in the sky when he pulled into his driveway. It wasn’t until he’d exited the vehicle, a brand-new beefy, black Mustang that he’d bought to comfort himself after Clara left him with their new Acura, that he saw the silver RSX parked on the street. He stopped and checked the tags and knew it was hers. There was a light burning in the living-room window of his row house. He’d never asked her for her keys, hoping that she’d decide to use them one day to come home.
He opened the door and found her asleep on the couch, a light on, the television on CNN with the volume low. She’d taken a blanket from the upstairs linen closet and covered herself. She was curled in a tight ball, her hair fanned out on the pillow. She looked like a child when she slept, small and pale. He stood in the doorway looking at her, feeling his heart in his throat.
A couple of times he’d come home and saw a light in the window. Each time he felt his heart leap, only to be crushed when he realized he’d left the kitchen or the bedroom light on when he’d left for work.
But now she was here. She inhaled deeply, issued a soft sigh, as she shifted in sleep. He was afraid to move, afraid to dissolve the mirage. He did mental calculations. It was nearly four A.M.; if she was here, where was Sean? He didn’t work midnights anymore, so it’s not as if she could be out at this hour unnoticed. They must have fought after the phone call he and Grady had had earlier. She wouldn’t have had anywhere else to go. Both her best girlfriends were happily married with kids; she wouldn’t barge in on them, wouldn’t want to lose face again, after already being divorced once. She would never go to her parents, couldn’t bear the nagging and the judgment she’d surely receive from them. Her mom still sent Grady cards for Christmas and his birthday. “Be patient. She’ll come back to you,” she’d scrawled in the last one. He kept the card in the nightstand by his bed.
She opened her eyes and saw him, sat up slowly. He stepped into the living room from the tiny foyer, pushing the door closed behind him.
“Hey,” he said. He shifted off his coat, hung it over the banister, sat on the bottom landing of the staircase, respecting her distance. He caught his reflection in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. He looked tired, disheveled, thick in the middle from months of fast food almost every day.
“You told him I called you.” She rubbed her eyes, then lifted her hands high above her head in a deep stretch.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Okay. No, I’m not.”
The room was exactly as she’d decorated it. She’d picked out the plush cream carpet, the suede sectional, the flat-screen television and entertainment center. It was nice stuff, expensive. He was still paying for it. Even the blanket over her was a gift from their wedding. Thick chenille, her favorite. Feeling petty and mean, he wouldn’t let her take it; it was a gift from his sister on the occasion of their marriage. She had no right to it, he told her.
“So. What? You had a fight?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, gave an annoyed shake of her head. “What do you think, Sherlock?”
He shrugged. “You left him?”
She folded her slim arms across her middle, looked at something on the floor, then picked at some invisible scab on her elbow. She didn’t want to meet his eyes. He saw her shoulders start to shake. Then she buried her eyes in the palms of her hands. He stayed put. She didn’t like to be touched when she was crying. It made her angry.
“I really am sorry, Clara,” he said from his perch. “I just wanted to make him mad. I didn’t mean to fuck things up for you.”
“Oh,” she said into her hands, issuing a mirthless laugh, “I don’t need any help with that. I do just fine fucking things up on my own, Grady”
He wanted to feel her skin, bury his face in her hair. His hands wanted to roam her body, reclaim her in this room that was the home of their young marriage. He wanted to hear her breathing in the dark of their bedroom, look at the sliver of light under the bathroom door when she got up in the night. He wanted to listen to her blow-dry her hair in the morning while she sang out of tune to whatever was playing on the radio. He wanted to sit on the porch with her on Friday nights and sip wine, watch the neighborhood kids play stickball in the street like he used to a lifetime ago. Such little things he wanted, nothing fancy—not weekends in Paris and Veuve Clicquot. But there was so much distance to cross, such rough terrain between where they were now and that warm, comfortable place. He didn’t even know if she wanted those things, too. He realized he’d never asked her what she wanted, that even now he had no idea what might make her happy.
“He didn’t get mad about the phone call. That’s the worst part. He wasn’t even angry. It’d been you? You’d be screaming like a jealous little boy.”
He took the hit and didn’t argue. She was right. He’d have blown his stack had he been on the other end of that call.
“Then what?”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “He just asked me why I’d called. Was I missing you? Was I sure I was ready to move on?”
She blew out a breath, pushed the blanket aside and crossed her legs. She was wearing black leggings and one of his old Regis sweatshirts, soft and faded from years and ye
ars of washing. Her at-home uniform, he used to call it.
“He said he wanted to know we were both there, heart and soul, before we walked down the aisle. He didn’t want to marry Angie. She was pregnant and they were young. He thought he had to do that. Maybe he did. But he never loved her enough to ride the ups and downs of a real relationship. He didn’t want to make another mistake, this time marrying someone who didn’t love him enough.”
He was about to make a smart comment about what a deep guy his good friend Sean was, so wise in the ways of love, but he could tell by the look on her face that she was actually waiting for him to say something shitty. Suddenly he knew he had to man up now, tread carefully, or watch her walk back to Mr. Wonderful. He went for a solemn head nod. In the mirror, it looked good.
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him why I called you, what I called to tell you.”
“Why did you call?”
“I told him I was pregnant,” she said, simply, quietly, still not looking at him. “That we made love after the divorce hearing and that three weeks later I didn’t get my period.”
Grady felt as if something had washed over him, some cleansing rush of air. He felt as if it would carry him away if he let it. He stood up.
“I didn’t tell him that I think about you every day, wonder where you are, what you’re doing, if you’ve found someone new. I didn’t tell him that when he and I are”—she looked up at him, embarrassed—“together, I’m remembering how it used to be with you.”
He was afraid for a minute that he was dreaming, that he was going to wake up crushed by disappointment. He’d dreamed scenes like this before, could barely get out of bed afterward from the weight of his sadness when he realized she was still gone.
“Clara.”
“And before you ask how I know it’s yours and ruin everything—Sean had a vasectomy after their second child. He intended to try to reverse it if we decided later on that we wanted children together.”
She looked up at him then, her hazel eyes—green in the center, fading out to brown at the edges—locked on him. He felt paralyzed.
“I’m pregnant, Grady. I want to come home, but there have to be changes. A lot of changes—or I’ll be on my own, raising this child without you. I’m not afraid to do that.”
“No. No,” he said, moving over to her quickly. “I know I have a lot to learn, that I have to grow up to be the man you deserve. I’m capable of that. You’ll see.” He hoped it was true; he would have promised her anything.
He dropped to his knees before her, put his hands on her hips. He took in the scent of her, the citrus of her shampoo mingling with her skin. She already felt softer to him, wider at the hips in a nice way. She leaned down to kiss him and he pressed his lips to hers. He felt her open to him like a flower. She was so soft, so sweet.
“I’ll do anything, Clara,” he said, pulling away. He pushed the hair back from her face with both hands. “I’d die for you.”
He realized then that he was crying. He hadn’t cried once in his adult life, not even when she’d left him.
“I need you to live for me, Grady” She put her hands to her belly. “For us.”
“Yes,” he said, putting his head in her lap. She rested her hands on his head. “Yes,” he said again, but his voice was just a raspy whisper. He wasn’t sure she’d heard.
24
I look back on it all now and see that my motivations were murky. Then it all seemed very clear. I remembered Ivan’s sullen anger: He betrayed me. And I thought that was it for me, too. He’d stolen my money he’d stolen from Linda and Erik, jeopardized Emily and Trevor’s education, their future. He’d taken my love and used it for his own purposes. He’d made a fool of me; I, the seer, the one who misses nothing, never once suspected he wasn’t who he claimed to be. There was a powerful drive. Sometimes I thought I was looking for justice. Sometimes I acknowledged it might be revenge I wanted. Other times I thought I just wanted to get our money back, at least something to bring to Linda and Erik, some offering. She’d warned me after all, hadn’t she? Just wait and get to know him better before you jump in. Izzy, he’s so cold.
But maybe it wasn’t any of these things. I risked my life, my best friend’s life, our futures, to get on a plane to follow a ghost of a man, when I wasn’t even certain I was heading in the right direction. But now I think I wasn’t chasing Marcus at all. I was chasing my father.
There was a light in my father’s eye for me that wasn’t there for anyone else. And even as a little girl I knew it. He loved Linda; they shared their unique bond. But when he looked at me, there was something—maybe it was just a chemistry—that I knew was unique to us. Linda and I never discussed it. We never talked about our father at all after his death. Her wounds stayed raw for years; some of them still bled occasionally. Linda chased him in life; she was always at his heels, pulling at his coat. Look at me, Daddy. She saw his death as the ultimate abandonment, which, of course, it was. And all her adoration—which in the end meant nothing to him—turned to rage. She turned away from him forever. After his death, it was my turn to chase. Daddy, why?
It’s the word that drives me, the question, the answer just on the next page if only I can get there. I write, letting a river of possibility flow through me, letting all the energy of all the stories in the world pass from the air onto the page. Some writers fear the enormity of the blankness before them, that empty white field. I live for it.
“Is it just about the knowing?” Jack asked me again. “Is that what this is about? Is it worth it?”
Could anything be more worth it? In every character is a universe, every shade of black and white, every potential darkness, even the potential to turn from darkness and walk into the light. I have to go there, into the shadow of unknowing. I’d rather die in the dark alley than bask a lifetime ignorant in the light.
“Well, that’s just ridiculous,” Jack said. “In fact, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Most people run from the dark, Isabel. With good reason.”
“I’m not most people.”
“I know.” He sounded sad, nearly pitying, when he said it.
“WHAT ARE YOU thinking about?”
We were at the end of a long day that had yielded nothing, both of us tired, drained. We sat at a thick wooden table in a dark pub, much like the one where Marcus proposed. It was dark, lit by candlelight—sconces on the wall, glass votives on the table. Huge orange flames leapt in the stone fireplace.
“You know.”
“I know.”
*
WE’D RENTED A car at Ruzyne Airport, a big, black late-model Mercedes, and drove a highway studded with brightly colored billboards and road signs neither of us could read, while I tried to navigate us into the city with a map I didn’t understand. With the blind luck of fools, we managed not to get ourselves killed and arrived on the cobblestone streets of Prague. After another harrowing twenty minutes during which we nearly collided with a tram, narrowly avoided running over an old woman with a cane, and drove the wrong way up a one-way street, Jack suggested I consult our Prague guidebook to figure out what the street signs meant.
“Tourists should not drive in Prague,” the guide read. “The city’s complex web of one-way streets and the large number of pedestrian-only areas around the historic core of the city make driving confusing and dangerous for foreigners.”
We eventually found our way to our hotel, a narrow slice of a building at the end of a long, winding street across from a park. I have never been so glad to see a valet drive off with a vehicle in my life.
The rest of the day was spent trying to find someone to help us get around, someone to help us talk to locals, since Czech, a West Slavic language, has never resonated with me. I’ve found its pronunciation nearly impossible and continually made an ass out of myself during my two previous visits. Finally, through some arrangement Jack made, the concierge’s cousin agreed to meet us in the morning and, for one hundred U.S. do
llars, spend the day with us trying to follow up the few leads I had.
“He can’t come tonight?”
“No. It’s not possible. I’m sorry.”
“Is there anyone else?” I sounded petulant, and too American. The concierge gave me an apathetic shrug.
“That’s fine,” said Jack. “The morning is fine.”
Jack smiled at the concierge and pressed some money into his hand, which seemed to simultaneously please and annoy the man.
“The morning is not fine,” I whispered to Jack as he pushed me up the flight of stairs to our room.
“It’ll have to be.”
The room was nice, a suite, everything polished and new. Hardwood floors, brocade drapes, elaborate faux antique furniture, a large comfortable bed. The bathroom featured gleaming marble surfaces and big plush towels. I had suggested the Four Seasons. Jack said that fugitives were not accepted at five-star hotels. I am sure that’s not true.
I sank into the bed and felt despair lash me to the mattress. A powerful fatigue weighted down my limbs, my head. The full scope of my folly was suddenly clear. The wound on my head throbbed.
“This is a mistake,” I said. “He’s not even here.”
Jack sat beside me, put a hand on my forehead. “We’re here. We’ll try, Izzy If he’s not? We’ll go home. At least you’ll know you did your best. It will help you to live with all of this better; it will help you to move on.”
It was then that I realized he was humoring me. He didn’t believe that Marcus was here, or that we’d find him, or that I’d get anything that I needed in this mad enterprise. He had come because he knew if he didn’t, I’d go alone. He’d come simply to hold my hand, then pick up the pieces and carry them all home. I made the decision right then and there to ditch him as soon as possible.
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said softly into the silence that followed. Somewhere there was a little girl laughing; a light strain of music came through the ceiling from the room above us. The air smelled a little too floral; too much air freshener. I let Jack pull me up off the bed and corral me toward the door.