by Dale, Lisa
She shook her head to clear it. She simply needed to push forward as planned—to get herself up to Maisie’s spare room, grab the wayward folder, and head home. She was nearly to Maisie’s house when she noticed the man. He was standing on the sidewalk, leaning against a street sign. He was bent slightly as if talking on a phone. She didn’t know why, but she felt a jolt of warning. She took stock of him: the fact that it was summer in the South, and he was wearing a hoodie. His white sneakers and baggy pants. She reassured herself: She had her pepper spray on her keychain. And the street was relatively bright where he stood leaning against the sign.
Her heart was beating a little harder as she neared him, and she readied herself to look him square in the eye. Firm eye contact could be enough to put someone off because it signaled that she would not be an easy target. She was almost to Maisie’s house now and she laughed at herself silently: most likely, there was no reason to be afraid.
The man looked up when she walked past him, though not all the way, and she met his gaze. He seemed startled for a moment. He was very young and baby-faced. His hair was so blond it was nearly white, and buzzed close to his head. His eyes were wide-set and militant blue. She walked past him and saw his profile: he hadn’t much chin to speak of, and his triangle nose made the shape of his head look vaguely sharp and triangular like a blade.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the boy said. And then he was walking beside her. He was short for a man—about her height. She was caught between the urge to run and the desire not to be rude. He was just a kid, after all. She gripped her pepper spray. “Can you tell me whereabouts is Jefferson Avenue?”
“No, I can’t,” she said curtly. She was only a few steps from Maisie’s door. She was hurrying. “Sorry.”
“Oh,” he said.
And then, quicker than she could have imagined it, he’d grabbed a big fistful of her hair and was pulling her toward Maisie’s door. It was then that she realized he hadn’t been waiting for just anyone: he’d been waiting for her.
Her fingers weren’t working and she couldn’t activate her pepper spray. She reached for her self-defense training, tried to stop his foot, to grab and twist, but it was like he held her everywhere at once.
She called out loudly, “Help!” but the man’s hand wrapped tightly around her mouth, crushing her lips against her teeth, her spine against his belly. He’d gotten a knife from somewhere and he held it up before her face. It was a tiny little blade, but it was enough to make her stop yelling.
“Open the door,” he said. And when she didn’t, he pulled her hair so hard she thought it would come out. Tears filled her eyes. “I said, open it.”
She could hardly feel her hands. Some small voice said that she could not let him drag her into the privacy of Maisie’s house. She flipped her key chain around in her hand, making to open the door like he’d asked. But instead of turning the lock, she tossed her keys as high as she could over her head and backward. She heard the clink of them behind her, hitting the street.
The man yelled in her ear—at least, it sounded like yelling. It might have been a whisper. He pulled hard now on the hair on the side of her head, not letting up on the pressure for a moment. “You want to do this the hard way? Fine. We do it the hard way.”
He walked her, jostling, deep into the alley that separated Maisie’s building from the house next door. When he tried to reorient her to face him, she took the advantage: she kneed him hard, began to run. She called for help. But she’d barely gotten a word out before he was on her. Her head connected with the brick wall. His hand was over her nose and mouth. He stomped her foot so hard that she suddenly understood what it was to be blind with pain. Among garbage cans and roaches, he pushed her face down. She thought: So that was it. She no longer had anything to decide.
Years before the Arlen Fieldstone trial, before the word trial had become a regular part of Lauren’s everyday vocabulary, a good friend and professor had called Lauren into her office and began asking questions. You’re different, her teacher had said. You can see more than the rest of us. Isn’t that true?
Lauren was not modest about her talents, and so, sitting on the worn-down love seat in her teacher’s tiny office, she talked about Jonah, of how he saw even more than she did, and how she had a knack for people-reading, but it was Jonah who’d taught her everything she knew. Her professor had listened carefully, and when the story was over, she suggested that Lauren would make a good jury consultant. Lauren had said she hoped to go into law. But she’d never known a jury consultant and she wasn’t yet sure what she wanted to do, exactly. She’d had no plan at the time. She told her professor: I’ll think about it. She felt a slight shiver—that was all—and then the conversation, and the years, went on.
Arlen had walked the long blocks of Monument Avenue enough times now that he half wondered if the police weren’t going to question him for suspicious behavior. He’d tried knocking, and when there was no answer, he’d wondered just for a second if Eula had given him the wrong address. Then, he’d started walking. The night air was cooler and fresher than it had been in some time. He felt lighter in his shoes. He needed to be careful, he knew, about falling in love. About re-falling. But something about Eula—she’d always made him reckless, which he supposed was another word for brave.
He was near the house where Lauren was staying when he heard voices. A woman. A man. And the erratic and primitive sounds of struggle that he might not have recognized before he’d gone to prison but which now made his ears prick up with alarm. Instinct kicked in. He ran without hesitation.
In the alleyway he found them. He knew the man by the shape. But the woman—he couldn’t see her. He could tell she was there only by the sound. He grabbed with two hands for the man’s shoulders, picking him up off the ground. He was surprised to find that the guy was small.
“What the—”
The kid didn’t have a chance to get out the word. Arlen threw him. The boy was scrambling to his feet, cursing, and the woman was facedown and scrambling to get away. He had only a moment to register these things before the boy’s feet were pounding the pavement, his sweatshirt billowing behind him like a cape.
Arlen thought about chasing him. But the woman was still there and he hated to leave her. She was sitting up now, her back against the brick wall. She had her phone next to her ear.
“You okay?”
“I’m calling nine-one-one.”
He waited at a distance, to let her know he was with her, that he would protect her, but that from him she had nothing to fear. She argued for a moment with the operator about not needing to stay on the line. When he heard her phone click closed, he moved closer again. He wanted to be sure she wasn’t going into shock.
“My foot,” she said.
He crouched down. Her high heel had come off and was lying on its side in a damp spot. Her ankle was swelling. Arlen rubbed his face.
“Will you help me get out of this alley?” she asked. “It’s too dark back here. I want to wait out there, in the light, for when the ambulance comes.”
“If you’re sure you can move … ”
“I’m fine,” she said.
He helped her stand. All her weight was balanced on one foot. She brushed herself off and, in the near darkness, lifted her head. He couldn’t make out her face, but there was something about her that he recognized. She relied for balance on his hand, then hopped—just an inch, on one high heel, toward the light. She hopped again.
Arlen cleared his throat. “May I?” he asked.
“Yes. Please.”
He bent down, picked her up. He felt the cool sweat behind her knees where they folded over his forearm, the slight drape of her arms around his neck. “Did he get anything? Your wallet? Money?”
“He didn’t want those things. He just wanted to hurt me. He kept saying it was punishment.”
“You knew him?” Arlen asked, making his way around garbage cans and boxes to the front of the alley.
“No.
But I think I knew his brother, once. In my line of work, a person makes enemies.”
He was nearly to the street now. He could hear sirens in the distance, too far away. “What on earth could a woman like you do for a living that would piss a person off like that?”
“You’d be surpri—” She stopped talking as they reached the sidewalk, the gold wash of the streetlight. Arlen had been eyeing the far end of the neighborhood, looking for the flash of blue and red. But he stopped looking when she stopped talking. And then he saw her face.
“Arlen … ” she said.
He held her, barely registering her weight. Her head was bleeding, though not much. Her pupils were so big that her eyes seemed nearly to be black.
“You’re—”
“Yes,” she said. “I think you just saved my life.”
He must have smiled, unintentionally, because when his head cleared and he looked down into Lauren’s face, he saw that she was smiling timidly back. Something fiercely protective rose up within him. He felt triumphant. He shifted her weight in his arms.
That was when he heard the sound. Behind him. Sneakers, beating the pavement. A dog’s bark. And then the boy in the sweatshirt, this brother of someone he didn’t know, raised his arm in front of him and squinted. Arlen heard angels. The streetlight wasn’t light anymore; it was beaming music. The dark was bright as day. He knew what was going to happen. He turned away.
When the shot rang out he was ready, Lauren protected by the wall of his body. In the distance, he saw the faint wash of red and blue lights, splashed like watercolors up against the brick buildings. And behind him, he heard the sound of someone running away. He dropped to his knees, careful with his cargo, and he set her on the ground before he fell onto his shoulder.
“Arlen? Arlen!” Lauren leaned over him. “Arlen!”
He tried to tell her. Everything was going to be okay. But he was dreaming with open eyes. He saw his mother; she was touching his shoulder like she used to when she woke him up for school. His dog’s tail thumped the ground. He knew he was in his house, the house where he grew up, because wintry drafts were blowing in through the closed window, making his skin pebble with cold. And he knew that today was another day, for school, for friends, for chores, for all those overlooked things that—when he saw them, really saw—he loved so much it broke his heart. He finally understood what freedom was and what it meant to be free. His whole body filled with gratitude that was unspeakable, inflating him until he became light as air, light as light, gladness so big that it carried him like a balloon, high over Richmond, over the clusters of lighted neighborhoods, over the silver slick of river, over all the sleeping people who couldn’t begin to know what it felt like, sailing toward the moon.
Lesson Sixteen: Once you have been studying people for a while and learning to read them, you may find yourself becoming increasingly confident in your abilities. You might even get cocky. Overly assured. You might think you know people better than people know themselves—and, on occasion, you might be right.
But I’ve seen the most tenderhearted mothers turn into snarling demons when their kids are in trouble. I’ve seen little old ladies with crosses around their necks come into a courtroom and tell me they’re advocates for marijuana and free love. And I’ve seen brutes of men with barbed-wire tattoos and shaved heads stop to pick up a little girl’s dropped doll.
If you want to be an expert reader of people, never forget this: People will always surprise you. You’ll surprise yourself.
CHAPTER 16
As Richmond’s early risers woke to their radios, as they stood in their kitchens hurrying to chew one last bite of a bagel or take one last gulp of coffee, they were struck down by disbelief at the story on the news. Those who weren’t alone called out—Honey, come here. Those who were alone stared at their television screens, or they paused where they were listening, trying to explain it to themselves. At office buildings and teachers’ lounges, they told one another: Did you hear? The baker across from the antiques store went to Will’s door, his arms full of hot bread, the least he could do, but no one answered. The local news anchors made the seamless transition from talking about back-to-school shopping to relaying Arlen’s selfless act.
A hero, they said. A hero.
In the hospital, Eula sat at Arlen’s bedside, worrying the corner of a sheet. Machines beeped and clicked, their soft sounds louder than any sound Arlen had so far made. She prayed—sometimes pleading for God to have mercy and not make her suffer his loss a second time, sometimes threatening to never say another prayer again. She held Arlen’s hand, his fingers dry but warm, and she talked to him.
“Come on,” she said. She had a sense that once again he was imprisoned, this time by his body, which was keeping him away from her, locked inside. “I need you to stay. Who’s gonna fix my roof if you don’t stay?” she asked him.
The nurses brought her cups of coffee and the doctors spoke soft and low. If there was a clock in the room, she didn’t notice it. She rubbed her left hand, the finger where her wedding ring used to gleam. “Come on,” she said.
All over the city, people stole moments of quiet, at delis and libraries, at parks and playgrounds. There was the staid infrastructure of everyday life: copy paper, pencils, telephone wires, buses, the work desk, the stepladder—but none of it was the same. Husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, touched one another’s backs, arms, hands. Blessings had to be not only counted, but attended to.
At the police station, a young man sat in a holding cell after a long night of not sleeping. Until now, he’d thought panic was a thing that happened in a split second, then was over—like when someone snaps a picture unexpectedly, and everyone jumps to see the flash. But this panic was the slow, steady withering of a candle burning down—a voice playing on an endless loop: Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.
He couldn’t hear the detectives, who were talking about him in a cramped cubicle, complaining as they filled out papers upon papers. The kid fit the profile: Antiestablishment. Antigovernment. Anti-everything. He had a blog that said he didn’t believe in courts. That the justice system needed to be brought to justice—Lauren Matthews especially.
He’d refused an attorney. He told the cops everything they wanted to know. Prior to the Fieldstone trial, Lauren played a part in his brother’s conviction for cooking and selling crank. When she became very visible during the Fieldstone case, his anger at her spiked. Arlen’s release from prison had finally pushed him over the edge. He’d found her easy enough, just by making a few sly calls. He was good and drunk when they arrested him. But he was sober now.
Morning brought to the police station the sound of tired good-byes, the smell of coffee, the ringing of phones. The words press conference were uttered, sometimes placating, sometimes annoyed, sometimes feeble and apologetic. Cops and dispatchers made their way to peek into the cell of the man who had done such a terrible thing, the boy who had done it. They shook their heads and commiserated with one another. How unfair.
In the night Lauren sat with Will on a blanket on the second floor of his house, among all of his things. Arlen was in a hospital in Richmond, fighting for life for the second night in a row—they could do nothing but wait. They’d filled their bellies with Chinese food and soda. They’d made love on the hard floor, fast and desperate. The need to keep moving drove them, and so they worked. Though neither said it, they were both waiting for a call.
“This?” Lauren asked. She held up a box; in it was a pair of never-worn jogging shoes. “Do you want it to stay or go?”
“Those can go to charity,” Will said.
She put the box aside, held up a broken basket. She made no assumptions. She asked him about everything, even the most broken, worn, and obviously useless things. The basket was coming apart in her hands. “Stay or go?”
He laughed. “Go.”
He looked at her. She knelt beside him in a clearing, towers of rubble on either side. His heart filled up and he reached for her hand. �
�What about you?”
She tipped her head, puzzled.
“Stay or go?”
“Will … ” She lifted herself, closed the space between them. She put her head on his shoulder and kissed his neck. “You tell me.”
“Stay.” He held her close. “You’re worth keeping.”
He kissed her, his hands catching in her hair. And they moved, finally, only when the phone rang.
By November, the weather had cooled. Sunbaked side streets were filled with children holding their backpacks by the straps. Pumpkin and squash filled the storefront windows. And the memory of what had happened during the summer began to fade with the falling of the leaves.
In the auditorium of a community college, Lauren adjusted the microphone, which was old when Will had found it in his attic and which now worked only when it was raining or when it didn’t need to be used. She tapped the mesh and a breathy puff reverberated over the rows and rows of empty seats. Will appeared from behind a fortification of boxy black speakers, coming toward her and wiping his palms on his pants.
“Working?” he asked.
“So far,” she said, and her voice boomed through the auditorium. She laughed and stepped back.
“Don’t turn it off,” Will said. “It might not turn on again.”
She heard noise on the roof; it was raining harder now—a cold autumn rain. She worried her lip. “Do you think the weather will keep people away?”
“I don’t think so. Not from something like this.” He stole a moment to wrap his arms around her. She closed her eyes, grateful for the feel and smell of him. Her heart was quiet. His warmth had gotten her through the last few months.
Last night, somewhere around three a.m., while he sat with her at his kitchen table and they sifted through letters upon letters written by incarcerated men, she’d looked up from her work and realized she loved him—and that she had for some time. Who but Will would have so thoroughly and completely supported her when she’d said, No, thank you, to more money? When she’d said, For a while, I’m going to work for charity? She hadn’t told him yet that she loved him, but she would. Until then, she would hold the knowledge inside her, to savor it—but not for very long.