“I know you did.”
“That’s what I still think. You know—” she picked up the old essay, looked over the precise, nearly typewriter-quality printing she had then—“when I walk down Fifth Avenue in New York, I find myself looking up at all the skyscrapers that make the street half-dark even in the middle of the day, and I picture bodies dropping out of them. One after another. How pretty they look, as if they’re flying.” She swallowed, trying to keep her body from shaking. She wiped her eyes. “I always keep plenty of pills around. Lithium. Sleeping pills. Aspirin. Anything. Sometimes I take a few too many of something. Not enough to do any serious damage, but enough to knock me out for a day at a time. I used to miss classes because of it.”
“I know.”
She dropped the paper to the ground, took the young woman’s wrist and studied the scar that ran across it. She noticed how much redder it was, how much more raised off the skin, than hers was now. Her tears slowed. “I only ever actually did it that once. But I—you know, once I went to this psychiatrist, I saw her a few times, and I remember a questionnaire that I had to fill out. One of the questions was, ‘Do you ever have suicidal thoughts?’ And I thought to myself, My God, is that really a question? Doesn’t everybody have suicidal thoughts? I’d had suicidal thoughts every day of my life. Every day. I thought of it—I think of it—all the time. Not in the sense that I’m about to go do it. I just think about it, like other people think about the morning newspaper or the baseball scores. I think about ways to do it. Pills. A gun. Driving a car off a cliff. Running out in front of a train.”
“Why do you think about it?” her companion asked.
“It’s—” She hesitated.
“Go ahead, Mina.”
“It’s—it’s a comfort. That’s a fact. I know that sounds awful. But it’s a comfort. To remember, every day, that there’s a way out, there’s—” She choked as another wave of emotion slammed into her. “It—it isn’t supposed to be this hard, is it? Life? Living? My God, I’m so privileged. I have so much. Why is it—why can’t I—I don’t understand—”
She gave herself over to tears then, her body shaking violently, spasms of pain washing over her. Her companion held her silently, gently.
# # #
When they returned to the house it was dark again. Mina fell onto the bed and her companion massaged her shoulders, brushed her hair, washed her face with a damp cloth. They said nothing for a long time. The girl who had been eight years old and then ten and then twenty-one was now her own age, thirty-eight; they were twins. The wind whistled through the windows upstairs. The house creaked and groaned. Mina lay there wordlessly, enfolded in the woman’s arms. Her eyes were closed.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, after a while. “I’m scared of the dark. I’m scared of the wind. I’m scared of strange sounds. I’m scared of my feelings. I’m scared of driving on highways. I’m scared of flying. I’m scared of spiders. I’m scared of other people. I’m scared of small children. I’m scared of electrical outlets. I’m scared of knocks on the door. I’m scared of the phone ringing. I’m scared of thunder. I’m scared of large dogs. I’m scared of small dogs. I’m scared of looking stupid. I’m scared of men when they see my body the first time. I’m scared when they make love to me. I’m scared they’ll think I’m ugly or boring or bad in bed. I’m scared they’ll say I’m fat. I’m scared they’ll leave. I’m scared they’ll stay. I’m scared of enclosed places. I’m scared of teenagers in groups. I’m scared of butcher knives. I’m scared of the dentist. I’m scared of the computer when it does something I don’t understand. I’m scared of letters from people I don’t know. I’m scared of creaking floorboards. I’m scared…”
“Everybody’s scared, Mina.”
“Not like me. They’re not scared like me.”
“Yes. They are.”
The wind whipped across the plains and she could hear it swishing in the buffalo grass outside.
“Mina,” the woman said finally, stroking her hair, “why did you come here?”
“Here?”
“Home. Why did you come home?”
Mina thought about it. Her thoughts were gray, confused, inchoate.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I—I just needed to come home.”
“There’s nothing here, Mina. You knew that.”
“I—”
“What?”
She swallowed. Her throat was hot. The wind blew. “I wanted to disappear,” she said. “Say goodbye to my life. I just wanted to…I didn’t want anymore. Coming back here was a way of…vanishing.”
“Dying?”
“I—yes, I suppose.” She smiled thinly. “I guess I’m the world’s slowest suicide.”
They listened to the wind for a long time. Moonlight illuminated the room. Looking around the room, Mina realized suddenly that others had materialized here: many others: all of the different versions of her, the ones she’d met here and others she hadn’t, small children, adolescents, young women; some nude, some in underwear, some wearing outfits she remembered from ten years ago, twenty, thirty; all standing motionlessly, dozens of them, crowding the room, watching her intently. And yet Mina felt no anxiety, no self-consciousness; nothing emanated from the shadowy, silent figures but acceptance, love.
“You cut yourself off from us,” the woman said at last.
Mina could not reply.
“You cut yourself off from us so much that you got lost.”
“I was always…lost,” she protested.
“No. You were always sensitive. You were always depressed. You were always in pain. But you weren’t always lost.”
“I—I don’t know—how to find my way back…”
“Sure you do. What have you been doing these past couple of days but finding your way back?”
“I don’t—understand…”
“You found us, Mina. We came out. And you found us.”
“You came out…?”
“We couldn’t stay with you anymore. Not the way you were. You cut us off. We were drifting in nothingness. We were unloved, forgotten. We had to come out. It was the only way we could survive. It was our only hope.”
“We…?”
“You didn’t really think we were gone, did you? You didn’t really think you were alone?”
“I did…Yes…”
“That was a mistake, Mina.”
“A mistake…”
“You were never alone. We were always with you. But you cut yourself off from us. We had to come out, Mina.”
“What—what happens now? A person can’t be…can’t be…” She gestured vaguely toward the silent sentinels all around.
“Accept us again, Mina,” the woman answered.
“Be with us again,” one of the figures in the room said quietly.
“We want to be—” began another.
“—whole again,” finished someone.
“You’re us, Mina,” came another voice.
“And we’re you.”
“Don’t hate us. Love us. We love you.”
“I…” Mina tried to speak. “I… I don’t…”
“Accept us,” the woman beside her said. “Love us again.” As she said it, her voice seemed to change: first it was the voice of a woman, then the voice of a child, then the voice of a teenager. They blended, interwove. One became the other. In the end, all of them were the same.
Tears ran down Mina’s blackened eyes. She looked desperately around at the assembled figures. “I—I don’t know how…”
“Yes, you do,” someone said.
“I don’t know how we…can join together—again…”
“You do.”
“I’m scared…”
“There’s nothing…” began one.
“…to be scared of,” finished another.
“I—” She choked out the words. “I—I’m not sure…”
“Trust us, Mina. Accept us again.”
“How…?”
“You know
how.”
“How…? How do we—join?”
…And in an instant in the darkness all the figures were reduced to one.
The figure next to her was a tiny child, hardly more than an infant. The woman who had been there had vanished, along with all the others.
Mina looked at her. The child was naked, virtually a baby.
The baby said: “I love you, Mina.”
Mina said: “I love you, Mina.”
The baby crawled slowly onto her, suckled at her breasts for a time. Then she crawled down her body. Soon she was between Mina’s thighs.
“Won’t it—won’t it hurt?” Mina asked.
“Doesn’t it always hurt?” the baby replied. “Love?”
The baby reached its tiny fingers into Mina. Then her hand. Then her whole arm.
Mina opened her legs.
Very slowly, very painfully, the baby, all the Minas, came back into her. Very slowly, very painfully, Mina accepted the baby, all the Minas, back into her.
# # #
She returned to New York only once, and then briefly, to tie up a few loose ends. She knew Judy Epstein would never forgive her if she didn’t see her, so they agreed to have lunch at a small café off Central Park West. Afterward they went for a walk in the park. It was December, cold and cloudless, crystal-perfect. The light was stark, sharp, and put the leafless trees in vivid relief against the winter sky. Mina felt wonderful.
“So,” Judy said, “you’re writing again? Poems?”
“Oh, no,” she answered. “I doubt if I’ll ever write anything again.”
“Oh, you say that now,” Judy said, looking away dismissively. “It will come back.”
“Maybe it will,” she conceded. “But if it does, it won’t be anything like what I used to write. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay. I’m not worried at all about it.”
“You seem—very relaxed, Mina.”
“Do I?”
“My God, you’re smiling. I’ve never seen you like this. As if you didn’t have a care in the world.”
“Well, maybe I don’t.”
Judy scowled. “So where will you go now? What’s next for you?”
Mina stopped. She shrugged and looked up toward the sky, shaking her head. “I don’t have the faintest idea. I’m going to travel for a while, maybe. See new things.”
“By yourself?”
She considered it. “Yes. By myself.”
“Well…I wish you luck.”
“Thank you, Judy. But I don’t need luck.”
“No, I guess you don’t.”
She put out her hand. “I have a plane to catch.”
“I wish you’d come back to school, you know.”
Mina smiled and they embraced. “Goodbye, Judy.”
“Okay. Take care, Mina. Love you.”
But Mina had taken only a dozen steps away from her friend when she suddenly whirled back toward her again. “Judy!” she called.
“What?”
“You remember that Emily Dickinson poem, that famous one? About depression? ‘There’s a certain slant of light’…?”
“Yeah, so?”
Mina laughed, her arms outstretched in their winter coat, her mittened fingers reaching as far as they could go. “Emily Dickinson was crazy!” she shouted. “Look at this light! All around us! What’s depressing about it? It’s beautiful! Isn’t it, Judy? This light? This slanting light?”
5
The next evening I was on the sofa, flipping through the latest Poets & Writers and listening to 94.7 playing softly in the background—Genesis, Blondie, the Stones—while Rae read “A Certain Slant of Light” at the kitchen table and I tried not to look as nervous as I felt. There was no reason to be nervous, of course. I knew that. I was a widely published writer, for God’s sake. Rae was a sixteen-year-old. It would be nice if she liked it, but in terms of my work, would I generally take the opinion of a teenager—Dion or Annie, say, Marcus, any of my students—particularly seriously? But this was different. She was my daughter. And Mina Lynn Greenwood was—once or twice removed—her mother.
Finally she got up, bringing the stack of yellow sheets with her and dropped down next to me. She put her arms around me and nuzzled her face into my chest.
“You gave her a happy ending,” she said at last, looking up at me.
“Mm-hm.”
“I love it. It’s beautiful. I wish Mom could really have been like that.”
“I do too.”
“You were—sort of thinking of her sister too, weren’t you? The one that died when she was a baby.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I said, “but maybe you’re right. Maybe that was—in there. In me. Somewhere. Churning around.”
“You wrote it all last night and today. You’re so fast.”
“I didn’t used to be. But since you’ve come I’ve written more than I have in years and years.” I kissed her temple. “You’re my good luck charm.”
“You’re mine too, Dad.”
She leaned her head against my chest again and we said nothing for a long time. She whispered softly into my shirt, the same words over and over again. At first I thought she was saying I love you, I love you. But she wasn’t.
She was saying Love me, love me, love me.
# # #
The message was still there, of course—the e-mail I’d received, the one I’d not been able to face or think about, the one I’d quickly closed, nearly deleted. I’d successfully blocked it out of my mind since last night, with my writing completely preoccupying me. Now, though, sitting before the computer’s glowing screen, I went to Old Mail and brought it up again.
Hi Ben, it read. I don’t know if this is a working address for you, so I’ll keep it short. You’re a teacher now, I guess? Wow. You know, I read your book. The murder mystery. I just came across it in a bookstore one day out of the blue. I couldn’t believe it—there was your name! I bought it on the spot, naturally. The story was lots of fun. You must have had lots of fun writing it. Seems like your life has worked out really great. I’m so happy for you!
Ben, my job has brought me into the D.C. area for a few days. I’d love to see you, or just talk on the phone. It’s been so long. (I can’t really believe how long it’s been, actually.) I’ll understand if you don’t respond, Ben. Believe me, I will.
I’m here through next Thursday. I’ll put the hotel info & number below. Or just e-mail me. If you want.
All My Best,
Sherry.
I breathed. It was as if I were reading the words of someone from another time, a different era, a far earlier historical epoch. A voice from the long-dead past. My God.
Sherry O’Shea.
I’d had no further contact with her since the day she’d left our apartment in Santa Barbara with Peter Welch. (Good Lord, another name and face from dry, dusty, distant days.) I recalled how sudden, how brutal the separation had been, but trying to feel anything in particular about it now was like trying to reanimate, Frankenstein-like, a corpse. It was too long ago. The early ’80s! Another life. All that had happened to other people, younger, handsomer, more energetically unsettled people. Kids. Confused children with hormones running loose and free and not a lot of considered judgment. Sherry and I hadn’t been crazy young people, but we’d still been young. The passion we had for everything then...the future, all that future that was ahead of us, or seemed to be...
Well, at least she’d liked Leprechauns Can Be Murder. Abigail McGillicuddy and her goddamn parrot. I shook my head.
Finally I clicked out of the e-mail and went into the living room, where Rae had turned off the stereo and switched on the TV.
“Kiddo,” I said, “do you want to go for a walk? I feel like some exercise.”
She jumped up. “Great! It’s good for you. Let me get my coat.”
What I really felt was restless, jumpy. Everything was happening at the same time: Rae, my heart attack, and now Sherry O’Shea. I could, of course, simply delete her e
-mail and forget about it. But I wouldn’t forget about it, or about the information that she would be in town until next Thursday. That would include Christmas. What kind of company would send their employee out of town over Christmas?
“You okay?” she said, looking up at me as we made our way out of the building. A few snow flurries danced downward to the street. “How’s the old ticker?” She bumped my arm playfully.
“The ticker’s great. Feels great. Really.” And it did, though I found myself aware every time my pulse rate hastened or slowed. I wondered if I would even make it to the millennium, that historical pivot point that both frightened and exhilarated me. To be living in the twenty-first century—it sounded so science-fictioney. And yet, the clocks ticking...all the computers in the world seizing up...airplanes careening down from the sky, elevators in freefall...Y2K, the blasting-back of humanity to the Stone Age...
“You know,” she said, “we don’t have any Christmas decorations in the apartment. None at all.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I never got that kind of stuff just for myself, and a heart attack kind of distracts a person.”
“I’m not criticizing,” she said, smiling. “Only, just...do you think we could get some? I’ve never had, like, Christmas before.”
I glanced at her. A thousand questions popped into my mind all at once, but I decided against asking any. Talking to her about her life—life?—before I’d met her only opened up a chasm of mystery, things I doubted I’d ever understand. Who could? It was like college bull sessions I remembered from American University, years ago, a bunch of earnest English majors arguing about the existence of God: around and around we’d go, the beer and weed flowing, saying great and profound things (or so they sounded to us, anyway) that contradicted and disproved each other but in the end, life went on. We stopped talking about the unknowable and went back to our daily lives, singularly unilluminated. It was like that with Rae. I could talk to her forever about who she was, what she was, but in the end all that mattered was that she was here, she was my daughter, she was real. The rest was abstraction.
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