I'll Stay

by Karen Day

  I pushed away from the table, my cappuccino sloshing over the rim of the mug and onto the wood, and cried, “But I saw them! I could identify them!”

  The waitress behind the bar looked over her shoulder at us.

  “Well, of course you could,” she said. “It was an idiotic plan. Because he was an idiot. After that, everything is mixed up. They argued a lot. I remember that. Somehow I got dressed. Charlie helped me, I’m pretty sure. They talked about killing me, too. Or maybe I imagined that. There was an explosion of glass. Then suddenly you were there. I remember that. You were standing on the step. It was like magic. Or a miracle. So, you see? You did save me, after all.”

  I burst into tears and dropped my head into my hands.

  “Oh, God, the burn mark! On your face! It was from the lamp,” I sobbed. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes seemed tired and heavy and I didn’t understand how she’d gotten here, to this point, where she could talk about this horrible thing. She nodded slightly, and I dropped my head again, sobbing.

  “Hey, hey,” Lee said. “It’s okay now. Clare? Look at me, Clare.”

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I blubbered as I lifted my eyes. “This is awful. I’m so upset. I’m so angry! I didn’t know this!”

  “How could you?” she whispered. “I barely let myself know it.”

  “I hate those fucking guys!”

  She nodded and looked down again. “I hate them, too.”

  I reached for a napkin and cleaned the tears off my face. I felt as if I were on a merry-go-round, spinning out of control and emotions—disgust, anger, panic—slapping me with every turn. Sweat began to pool under my arms.

  “I want you to listen to this, okay?” she said, more control in her voice. “I barely remember the end of senior year and even parts of the years after. I was so full of shame and denial and fear. I was a wreck when I got to Thailand and almost bombed it like I did the internship. But one night, Patricia took me for a walk and asked what had happened to me—she said she felt it—and I told her everything about Florida and the lamp. About my track coach and my family, too.

  “I hadn’t been able to tell anyone about this. Actually, it was a shocking relief to talk about it. So, for months Patricia and I kept talking—she was a good listener, as I’m sure you can imagine. And when we got back, she gave me the name of a therapist. I started going to this woman four times a week. For years. I’m still going.”

  So, Lee had been to therapy. Was that what made her seem so different from how she was after Florida?

  “I realize now that it wasn’t my fault what those guys did,” she said. “And no one was going to blind me now. Or ever. And I’m working on something else with my therapist although I can’t seem to stay with it for long. But it’s this. What if Florida wasn’t the source or the beginning of my problems? Maybe they were more about growing up with no money, feeling dropped by my parents, being taken advantage of by my track coach, and not being able to count on people. Maybe that was what led me to my decisions, including the one in Florida.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not minimizing what happened, are you?”

  “Hardly,” she whispered. “It still keeps me up at night. Sometimes I’m gripped with so much fear that I can’t function. I’ll always hate what those guys did, and I feel terrible that I put so much pressure on you. I didn’t mean to do this. It wasn’t fair to you. But I’m not ashamed anymore. Of anything. That’s what I want you to know.”

  I picked up my cappuccino and drank, even though my stomach was still churning. My hands shook so much that when I set my mug down coffee sloshed over the side again and onto the table.

  With a napkin she mopped it up. “Remember back in college when we watched Patricia’s documentary and I asked for advice? She said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Then she said something like, ‘For your life, sanity, and art, you must learn about yourself.’ That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  I hadn’t lived that kind of life. I often didn’t know why I did the things I did.

  “Does any of this make sense to you?” she asked.

  If I examined my life, what would I find? Fear and doubt. Compromises and mistakes. But also good, too. I’d tried to be good. I nodded. But then I remembered what Mr. Donahue had said years ago about the South American writer who suffered from writer’s block after years of therapy. That was the danger with this kind of thing. It was bad for creativity. It made a person too self-focused. It was better to work hard and move forward. Life should not be spent wallowing over the past.

  And yet her words were swimming around in my head. What if Florida wasn’t the source of my problems? How could this be? Everything changed after that night.

  The floor lamp.

  I remembered. It was tall, the shade covered with different colored racing cars. Something thick and powerful rushed through me and I sucked in a breath and looked for anything to push it away. Oh, God, poor Lee. I blurted, “I liked your film.”

  She sat up. “You saw it? At the MFA?”

  “It was good.” I felt the tension inside me ease. “And fun to see Indiana again. But I did wonder what happened to your plans of finding a great person in history.”

  She smiled slightly and leaned back in her seat. “Remember how obsessed I was with that? It’s so funny how your unconscious works. All those years of wanting to find a great person to film. I had no idea that I was really looking for my benefactor, to feature him, you know, to thank him.”

  Wait, what?

  She shook her head and chuckled.

  I felt a little lost. “Well, did you ever figure out who it was?”

  “Not officially. Although, I’m pretty sure it was someone in the Meaghan family. You know, the ones who owned the automotive plastics company.”

  “So, you were able to thank him, after all.”

  She nodded. “I hope the film was about more than that. It took me a while to figure out what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be. It threw me off being in Thailand with Patricia. She was trying to change the world. I thought I had to do that, too.”

  “How did you figure out what to do?” This felt more comfortable and familiar now, me asking questions and Lee explaining.

  “Process of elimination, I guess,” she said. “Some filmmakers set out to expose something to the world. Others just try to make sense of their own worlds. I guess I’m in the second camp.”

  I knew only too well what my mother would say about this. With Listen, she always insisted that she was writing a novel to expose the dangers and hypocritical nature of war. She’d put herself firmly in Lee’s first camp. But if what Oliver said was true, then wasn’t she also trying to make sense of her world?

  “Clare?”

  They were going to try to blind her with the floor lamp.

  I felt sour juices roil in my stomach and kept swallowing to keep them from rising into my throat. The muscles tightened across my upper back and tears sprang into my eyes again. No wonder she couldn’t function after this. No wonder she’d been a wreck. “I feel so awful. I don’t know what to say.”

  She sat very still now. “Sometimes I think that I could kill each of them if I ever saw them again. I really think I could do it. Maybe with my bare hands. When I’m feeling like this, it helps to remember the Rat Man case.”

  The Rat Man case was somewhere in the back of my mind. Before Florida. When I was a different person. Or maybe the same person. I didn’t know.

  “Remember how we talked about the torturer, that he had to have experienced something like that in order to do what he did?” she asked. “It helps to think about those guys that way. That they were troubled. Neglected. Somehow repeating their own abuse. Otherwise, how do you explain what they did? Especially Mikey?”

  I wasn’t ready to forgive them. Or maybe that wasn’t what she meant. She stared at me with that faraway look in her eyes again, and I knew she was floating, drifting. But then she straightened and rubbed the back of her neck with her hand and
said, “Sometimes I think that I want to find them. Or at least find out, for sure, what made them do what they did.”

  “They’re probably all in prison by now,” I said. “Or maybe dead.”

  We were quiet for a few moments. I took another napkin across my face.

  “What do you think about what happened to us?” she asked.

  I remembered how happy I felt when we sat outside the cold dorm and talked. And when we both realized that we felt the same way about so many things that were going on in our lives. I hadn’t felt that kind of connection with anyone, not even Ben. “It’s sad. We were so close.”

  “We connected on a very primal level. And when I was feeling so neurotic I think I scared you. Deeply. I’ll always feel terrible about that. My therapist is really big on this transferring idea. She thinks people will repeat in the present a relationship that was important to them in their childhoods. I guess that sounds right in my case with you. But it makes me wonder. Are all relationships like that?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know what to think about this. All I felt was sadness. About the lamp and all she’d gone through and what had happened to us.

  “I’m so sorry!” I suddenly wanted to tell her every confusing emotion I felt about her, about my mother, and even about Ben. I would be vulnerable. Yes!

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “But it’s not!”

  “It will be okay. I think. Maybe.” She bit her lower lip. “Anyway, I have something I want to ask you, Clare. A favor.”

  I nodded.

  “I want you to go back to Daytona with me.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “That night in Florida has taken up too much space in our lives. We let it have too much power. If what my therapist said is true, that that night isn’t the source of the problem, then let’s face it. Let’s go down there and tell that city to go fuck itself.”

  “I don’t want to see those guys again.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to see them, either, not really. I just want to drive through town. Maybe find both houses. I haven’t been back since that night. Maybe it’ll give me some closure. Or shift something in my head. I don’t know.”

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do this.

  “I think it would be helpful and maybe for you, too,” she said. “It might be healing. I don’t think I can do it alone.”

  “But what about your husband!” I blurted.

  She nodded. “Yes, he could go with me. But he wasn’t there that night. You were. I need help putting all the events together.”

  “But I don’t remember where the house is!” My breath felt shallow in my throat and I put my hand to my chest again. Why do this? Why go back and relive it?

  “We could figure it out.” She crossed her arms and rested them on the table. “I think it would be good for you, too, Clare. It might help you, you know, forgive yourself. Don’t you think it’s time you forgave yourself?”

  Was that what had been wrong with me? I couldn’t forgive myself? I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

  “No, it’s not just that.” But I stopped because it was too much to ask, and I couldn’t do it. Not only did I not want to relive that night, but how awkward would it be, traveling together after we hadn’t seen each other in so long? And yet she’d put herself out there by asking this, and it suddenly felt dismissive, and a bit cruel, to rule it out so adamantly. “Maybe we can talk about it after Christmas?”

  “Sure,” she said. But I could tell by the way the sides of her mouth fell that she knew I didn’t mean it. I tried to hold her gaze but eventually dropped my eyes and drank the rest of my cappuccino.

  After that, we made small talk about the unusual weather and New York and then she glanced at her watch. She had to leave for a meeting. She said, “It was so nice seeing you. I don’t know where this leaves us, but I’d sure like to keep talking.”

  “So would I.” And I meant it. “We could write to each other. And phone, too.”

  “Yes, that sounds good.”

  We paid the bill and walked out to the street. It was mild, near sixty, and the sun, shining through a sliver of space between two buildings, was strong and warm. How could this be? It felt like late spring instead of the beginning of winter. Lee turned and smiled at me. And suddenly I felt so sad that our time was over and we were going back into worlds that didn’t include each other. I had this terrible sense that I’d lost something, a part of who I was or wanted to be or could have been. Or maybe it was just that when I was with Lee I was somebody I used to know.

  We hugged and said goodbye. And then I cried as I walked back to our hotel in midtown.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Just look at him.” Kitty, a furry scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, pointed a gloved finger at a boy with curly brown hair who was bossing around a group of kids on the snow-covered blacktop. “He’s gonna grow up to be a mass murderer. Mark my words, ladies.”

  “Kitty!” one of the third-grade teachers said. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “Okay, so I’m exaggerating,” she said. “But it’s been a long time since we’ve had a bully of his caliber in the school.”

  The other teachers murmured in agreement as we watched the boy. We were six altogether, huddled against the brick wall next to the playground, bouncing to keep the circulation moving, scanning the kids for any signs of imminent snowball throwing. Since we’d returned from break six days before, we’d had nothing but frigid temperatures and bouts of snow. So far, a foot was on the ground. But I didn’t mind playground duty in the cold. It beat sitting in my classroom by myself, stewing as I waited for the kids to return. And I liked watching them play.

  Today I was watching Sophia and Talia, who were each with different groups. Sophia was on the play structure, playing an elaborate game of house while Talia was with the boys, playing tag. Before break they’d been inseparable and exclusive, both on the playground and in the classroom, but since we’d been back, I’d only seen them together at random times. And so I watched, I knew, to see if I could determine what had happened. Was one snubbing the other? Had they had an argument?

  “Hello, earth to Clare, hello?” a third-grade teacher said. I turned back into the circle. Everyone was staring at me, our white breaths forming a collective, malleable cloud in front of us. “Are you looking for something?”

  “Well,” I began.

  “That’s Clare!” Kitty laughed. “So attached to her kiddies. You’re too invested, Clare. You gotta know how to let them sink or swim on their own.”

  “Kitty, please,” Lindsey, a second-grade teacher, said. “Sometimes I think you’d be better suited as a prison guard.”

  “Hey,” Kitty protested. They laughed. Then someone brought up the hot new gym teacher, and that started another flurry of conversation.

  Stung with being discovered, I forced myself to listen to their cooing. We were all attached to our students—even Kitty—but I had a sense that maybe my attachment was different although I didn’t know what that meant. No matter what, I wasn’t going to look for Sophia and Talia. But when Talia ran by me, so close that her jacket brushed against mine, I turned and watched as she jumped onto the swings, only a few feet away from Sophia. Neither girl paid a bit of attention to the other. How could they go from being so tight to barely speaking?

  I turned back to the group and when Kitty grinned at me, slyly, I jumped in before she could accuse me of anything else.

  “How was Arizona, Lindsey?” I asked. “How is your grandmother?”

  “It was good and she’s better,” Lindsey said. “Thanks for asking. My God, you have a good memory. I told you about my grandmother like a hundred years ago.”

  “No, just at the holiday lunch,” I said. Everyone laughed and that started another round of comments, this time about the food served and whose parents were responsible for the cotton ball snowmen.

&nb
sp; It was safe to peek at the playground again. Several boys were trying to make a giant snowball. Two others pulled icicles off the chain-link fence. Abby and the hangers-on were talking by the swings. And still Sophia and Talia were separate. But neither appeared to be looking for the other and neither seemed unhappy, either.

  Later, as I saw them talking by their wood cubbies after lunch, I chided myself for being so overly involved. My job was to teach them to write better, to understand math and science enough to pass fourth-grade benchmarks, not to obsess over friendships. My God, what was wrong with me?

  When it was time for read-aloud, I gathered everyone on the rug. We’d finished Matilda, but the kids had become so invested in Roald Dahl that they demanded another book by him. Max had wanted me to read The Witches, but I thought that might be too nightmare inducing for some. We settled on The BFG, which also had some scary parts although when I examined the drawings they’d made about the book, nothing alarmed me.

  “No, no.” I pointed to Jonah, who was nettling Paolo with the toe of his sneaker. “Now you have to come sit next to me. Come on.”

  Jonah sighed, scooted next to me, and sunk his head in dramatic fashion.

  I glanced at Sophia, who’d settled in front of me with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. Talia walked by her without looking and plopped down next to Vanessa. Before break, Sophia and Talia always sat together during read-aloud. Something had most certainly happened. Or maybe their connection wasn’t as close as I thought. I glanced at the window, now covered with so much condensation that I couldn’t see out. It was their sweaty bodies and tinny, little breaths that did this.

  The kids were seated now and staring at me with eager eyes. Forgive yourself.

  That was what Lee had said. It was time to forgive myself. For what? The list was lengthy.

  I began to feel so irritated that when reading was over and the kids were working quietly at their tables on their vacation essays, I sat at my desk and stared at that fucking window and decided that I had to do something. I had to make a decision. If I was going to stay in teaching, I needed to get my master’s degree in education. Then I’d have the credentials and knowledge to teach these children. Maybe that would give me the confidence, too.