“You need to tell the police what you saw.”
She nods, wiping her eyes. “And Jody. You must get her to speak to them. She must know this man. This man who killed Abe.”
My lip twists automatically. “Who’s going to pay any attention to what Jody says?”
But before she can answer me, the nurse comes back in. I turn around to smile at her. Only she and I know that, aside from the medical staff, I was the first person in the world to hold Flori. I am amazed to find it means something to me.
But she doesn’t return my smile. “Miss Mackenzie?”
“Yes.”
“They need you down at ICU. You need to get there quickly if you want to—”
But I’m already out the door.
Jody is hunched, fetal position, on the chair beside the bed. Wrenching sobs shake her whole body, as if an invisible giant is punching her again and again.
I feel no anger toward her. I feel nothing. It is if I am watching action unfold on a screen: action that I have walked in on halfway through, before I’ve had the chance to care about the characters.
The nurses move around the bed. Above the rustling of the clothes and sheets, I can hear Abe’s breathing. They have taken the ventilator away. It sounds as if he is choking.
“Shouldn’t you be doing something?”
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid.” Dr. Bonville is standing next to me by the bed. “Abe is dying. Sit down, Mags. It can take a while for a person to pass.”
“So do something! Is it because I agreed to the DNR? I take it back. I want you to save him!”
“His system is shutting down. There’s nothing we can do—and it was nothing to do with the DNR. Don’t blame yourself.”
I sit, and the foam seat cushion gives a heavy sigh.
“His system was irreversibly compromised by the accident. He was never one of those patients that would linger for years. Better this way, I think. Don’t you?”
The nurses move away, and I see that all the monitors have been switched off. One by one, the nurses slip away through the blue curtains, but Bonville stays.
Minutes pass. Abe’s rattling breaths become more and more spaced out, and Jody is crying quietly.
And then his breathing stops.
My eyes are fixed on his face, watching for the moment of death to see if something tangible will leave his body. I realize then, in the cocoon of those blue curtains, that however far and fast I ran from our father’s creed, I never quite left it behind.
I am watching for Abe’s soul.
The sudden choked gurgle makes me cry out, and Dr. Bonville lays a hand on my shoulder. “Not yet.”
I don’t know how long it takes, but it’s exhausting listening to those last agonized breaths. The light strengthens, and shadows pass across the bed. The morning rush-hour traffic begins. Engines are revved bad-temperedly, horns are sounded.
My mind drifts back to Eilean Donan. I wonder if we were both thinking the same thing as we stood on that parapet. Is it worth struggling on?
It was, Abe. For you at least. You, of the two of us, made something worthwhile of your life. You were loved, and you gave love. Whatever I used to think, I am sure now that this is all that matters.
I realize that several minutes have passed since Abe last breathed. I glance up at Dr. Bonville, who has stood sentinel behind me all this time.
He steps forward and takes Abe’s wrist. A minute passes, then he raises his head. “He’s gone.”
When I was nine, I would borrow Peter Pan from the school library and hide under the covers to read it, listening for my father’s footsteps on the stairs. I remember so much of that forbidden book, with all its blasphemous magic.
As I gaze at the body on the bed, I think of Peter, flown off into the night, leaving just his shadow, tethered with lines and tubes. I stand up and begin to pull them out, one by one—pushing back the bandages, peeling off the tape—and Bonville does not try to stop me.
Finally, I can see my brother clearly. He looks like a boy asleep.
I taught you to fight and to fly, Peter says to Wendy. What more could there be?
And yet without me, you learned so much more, Abe. You learned to care for people. That I have never learned. And now you are not here to teach me.
I don’t want to see death take hold of him. I don’t want to see his lips go slack or his skin turn gray, the eyelids peel back to reveal eyes as dull as pond water. And yet I cannot tear my gaze from my brother’s face.
A flash of memory…Abe asleep on the sofa when he should be reading his Bible. Me leaning over him, a delicious sense of anticipation blooming in my chest as I realize I have something I can tell on him for. I will be rewarded. Daddy will be happy with me. So happy, he will let me beat Abe myself. I have come to enjoy my brother’s tears and pleas for me to stop because they mean that my star is in the ascendant. My fingers itch to feel the slippery length of leather, the chill of the buckle that will leave such precise half-moon bruises.
I lean over and kiss Abe’s lips. They are warm and soft, but no breath tickles my cheek.
I’ve lived in America too long to place any store by I love yous, but I wish I’d had time to say that I’m sorry. For all that I did to him. For leaving him alone there. To tell him that it wasn’t fear of our father that made me leave but fear of myself, of what I had become.
I think of the last meager words we shared. Words on flimsy Christmas cards, hastily inscribed, destined to arrive late and unlooked for.
From Abe. From Mags.
But perhaps, after all, they said all we needed to.
I know. I understand. I forgive.
Ah…I have to go.
When I’ve moved away, Jody falls on his body and howls. I watch her for a moment, transfixed. This liar. This fantasist. God, how she loved him.
I travel back to St. Jerome’s in a daze, and as I let myself into the flat, I can barely remember how I got there.
Somewhere in the depths of my subconscious, I must have always believed we would be reconciled one day. Now I am gripped with a wild panic. He is gone, and I must imprint all that remains of him onto my mind before the darkness takes him away from me forever.
I pull open drawers, looking for photographs, mementoes, anything that will let me glimpse the real him, even just for a moment.
In the bedroom, I become Jody, rifling through his wardrobe, trying to catch a fleeting scent of him.
I upend the box in search of letters or email printouts, something that will let me hear his voice again in my mind.
A Christmas card falls out.
On the front is a picture of the Eiffel Tower wearing a Santa Claus hat. It takes me a moment to realize that it is not the real thing, only the mini one from the Las Vegas Strip, and another to realize it was I who sent the card.
I sit down on the bed and open it.
Seasons Greetings from Sin City!
I can barely remember scrawling my name at the bottom, but it is clear that it was done with little care, knocked out from duty, a year late because his had only reached my desk that February.
From Mags.
I close it and run my fingers across the embossed image. Suddenly, I remember Abe’s card. A snow-covered castle on an iced-over lake, a trail of ducks padding across the ice toward the distant horizon.
You and I stood on that parapet, wondering whether to drown ourselves. Whether life would ever be bearable.
But we didn’t need to go under. We could walk across the water to freedom. I suppose you never meant it as a metaphor, just a reminder of that time, that single time, when we were truly brother and sister. And contained within that, the hope that we could be again.
The cards we sent were more than the flimsy paper they were printed on and the trite sentiment within.
They were
a covenant. A promise we made to one another to forget the past, to do right by one another in future.
I know what I have to do. I start packing my case.
_____________________
The lady’s expression is so hostile, the girl wishes she didn’t have to sit next to her. Her eyes flash with the light from the fluorescent strips above the table, as if there are torches shining out from behind the black irises.
“Let’s just get this over with, shall we?” Her voice is dangerous.
The policeman stacks his papers on the table, as if he’s not really interested. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and his arms are thick and shapeless as sausages. Gingery hairs sprout from the freckles. Ignoring the lady, he looks up at the girl. His orangey-brown eyes match his hair.
“Before we begin, I need to confirm with you that you understand the significance of an official caution and you have given informed consent to receive it.”
“The Goddards gave consent on her behalf, and they’re hardly disinterested parties. I should have been called way before this.”
The policeman turns on her. “Firstly, they were her legal guardians up to today.”
Were? The girl stares at him.
“And secondly…” Just for a moment, he is the hissing, spitting bully who terrified her into saying she was lying—into thinking it too. “You’re lucky we decided to offer it at all. She could have gone to prison. You do know that?”
“Oh shut up, Kellan. You know as well as I do that a jury would never have convicted her. The case would have been thrown out, and you’d have been wiping egg off your face until next year. I’ve named you personally in my complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.”
He smiles drily. “And your complaint will be fully investigated. Now, if we could get back to the job at hand?” His amber eyes click back to her. “Do you understand the proceedings up to this point?”
She’s supposed to agree with this, so she nods.
“Good. I’m cautioning you for wasting police time and making false allegations. These are very serious crimes. You do understand that?”
She nods.
“This caution will appear on any criminal record certificate applied for, for a period of two years, and will then remain on your criminal record and may be used as evidence in a court of law should you commit another offense.”
“Another offense?” The lady explodes. The girl wishes she would just be quiet. She just wants it over and done with so that she can go home.
“If you continue to be disruptive, I’ll ask you to leave.”
“No, you won’t,” the lady replies. “I’m her legal chaperone.” But she settles nevertheless, literally shaking herself down like a fat pigeon after a rainstorm.
The girl glances behind her at the door. Why didn’t Mum come in with her?
“A condition of the caution is that you will issue an apology to the boys involved.”
“Oh fuck off.”
“Watch your language, Mrs. Obodom.”
“She’s not apologizing.”
The policeman turns to the girl, smiling. “You ever been to a prison, young lady?”
She shakes her head.
“Some of the women there, well…” He looks her up and down and shakes his head.
“You aren’t seriously doing this? You do know her history?”
His smile slips. “I’ve read the file.”
“So don’t threaten her, or it won’t be just the complaints commission I’ll be going to. It’ll be the press. They won’t have forgotten her.”
The policeman pushes his tongue into his bottom lip. Finally, he says, “Because of what you’ve been through in the past, we’ll waive the apology, but if anything at all like this happens in the future—”
“Come on, sweetheart.” The lady gets up. “We’re done.”
Mum and Dad are waiting for her outside. Mum is crying. Dad’s face is as gray as his suit. He steps forward as she emerges.
“Mr. Goddard.” The lady shakes his hand. “Mrs. Goddard.” But her mum won’t take the proffered hand. She presses her tissue to her eyes as if she can’t bear to look at it.
“There’s her stuff,” Dad says.
The girl looks in the direction he’s pointing. She recognizes the red suitcase they took to Majorca on the Easter holiday.
“If there’s anything we’ve left out, we’ll send it on. Email us, please. No phone calls. I won’t have my wife being upset.”
“You’re doing a good job there, then.”
Multicolored ribbons flutter from the handle of the case. She and Mum tied them on to make it easier to spot on the baggage conveyor belt.
“Let’s not draw this out any longer than necessary. You got the papers I sent last week?”
He’s asking the lady, but she’s just staring at the girl.
“You did tell her, didn’t you?”
Last week was when Felix was staying with his Auntie Carol and she was in the house alone with her parents. Up in her room mostly, listening to the creaks and ticks of the silent house, trying to breathe air that seemed to have less oxygen, as if it had all been used up by the shouting and crying.
“I’m…sorry”—it seems like it’s difficult for him to say the word, like his tongue has suddenly stiffened—“it had to end like this. Goodbye, Mrs. Obodom, and we really do wish her the very best of luck in the future.”
She wonders who he’s talking about, because he isn’t looking at her.
He turns then and clasps his wife’s arm, but she shakes him off.
“Let me talk to her, David, please.”
He makes an angry noise as she moves past him. Her face looks so weird, all red and swollen, and her eyes are crusty and half-closed. She takes the girl’s hands, and the trembling passes into her own arm.
“We had to choose.”
“Mrs. Goddard, please be mindful of—”
“We had to choose, and he is our son.”
“I’m your daughter,” she says, her voice rusty from disuse. “Aren’t I? That’s what you said.”
“Helen, let’s—”
“GET OFF ME, DAVID!”
It’s the first time she’s ever heard Mum raise her voice. The foyer of the police station falls silent. Even the drunk on the bench stops humming to himself.
Her dad’s face goes tight and pinched up. “Tell her whatever you need to. I’ll be waiting in the car.” And without a backward glance, he stalks out through the police station door.
The lady waits until Mum has finished talking, and then she takes the girl’s hand and helps her over to the bench. The girl watches her mum’s blurry figure, haloed by sunlight, as she opens the door and follows her husband out into the warm afternoon. A moment later, the car engine starts. The girl remembers the way the car always smelled of boiled sweets and Felix’s sneakers.
The lady hands her a tissue, but her hands are so numb, she can barely hold it.
Thursday to Saturday, November 17–19
36.
Jody
It’s three days since you passed on. I can’t bring myself to call it anything else. I have to believe that you are somewhere. That one day, perhaps, I might reach you.
Every minute takes forever to crawl by. I watch the shadows in the flat creep across the floor and then up the walls where they spread out like ink in water. I sit in the darkness. I’m still sitting there at dawn.
I haven’t washed or brushed my hair or cleaned my teeth since I got back from the hospital. I suppose I must smell.
It’s so quiet.
Nobody hammers on the door anymore. Nobody orders me to open up and explain myself. Even the baby has stopped crying. They’ve gone, she and her mother, back to Albania. The husband never came home.
Your sister pushed a note under my do
or.
I’m returning to the United States. Have the decency to go to the police and tell them what you know, for Abe’s sake. Mags Mackenzie
I watched her through the spyhole as she let herself out of your flat for the last time, in her masculine suit and tight ponytail. Her high heels clip-clopped down the stairs, and then the front door banged closed and a moment later, there was the sound of a car engine. Her taxi? Or the man I had seen her with that night?
Now I’m alone up here at the top of the church. Tucked away in the space near the roof. If St. Jerome’s was still a working church, the congregation would be sitting in their neat rows far, far below, heedless of my existence. Just the way I like it. You were the only one who ever made me want to be noticed. Now I will fade into the background again. A gray girl in a gray dress in a gray city, living a gray life until it’s my turn to pass. Will I see you then?
Yes.
You loved me.
You gave your life for me, Abe, and if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
I didn’t need the pills when I had my love for you to keep me grounded. Now I do. I took the ones I had left but they ran out, and the next morning, I felt like going up onto the roof and throwing myself off. I could see myself lying spread-eagled on the pavement of the parking lot, utterly still and peaceful. The image brought such a sense of release. But what if it went wrong? I’d end up like you did, or worse. And with no one there to hold my hand.
Oh God, I can’t keep thinking like this.
In desperation, I call Tabby, and she organizes for a prescription to be left for me at the drugstore on the main street.
It’s so cold now. The sky is a dense white with no sign of the sun. We must be nearly in December. Christmas is coming. The mere thought of that is enough to make me want to step out in front of the bus passing the corner of Gordon Terrace. Helen will send a card, maybe even a pair of slippers or a set of bath oils that I will give to the thrift shop. Tabby will buy me chocolates, and her daughter will bake me another cake that will only make me feel more alone.
I cross the road and go into the drugstore.
The Girlfriend Page 23