“Let me take care of you,” he once said.
This is when she explained what his house “signified” to her. They were at her office. It was after hours. The janitor was buffing the floor with a giant metal polisher while listening to his iPod. The building was desolate.
Hers was a small office in a modern building. It had one large window that partly faced a green courtyard, but it was obstructed by another part of the same building. She there—the teacher—waiting for him to say something. He stood behind the chair reserved for the student. He wouldn’t sit. Wouldn’t play the student. He was her lover. He was here for an appeal, not a lecture or a grade. There were black-and-white photos on the wall of African American faces. He could recognize only a few: W.E.B. Du Bois. James Baldwin. Maya Angelou. Richard Wright. A black woman astronaut with a sweet face he should probably have recognized but didn’t. A dozen more portraits or busts in small frames collected from yard sales and antiquing trips. He wanted to ask them: “What do I say?”
He didn’t come for a lecture, but that is what she delivered. And not one that was heartfelt; not one that cried out from the vastness of her heart about loss and grief and anger. Lydia, instead, doubled down on academic and Latinate words of the intellect that seemed, to Marcus, inadequate and confining. The fancier her vocabulary, the more infuriated he became.
“What, Lydia?” he said after she started to explain calmly why, no, she did not want to visit him anymore. “What exactly does my apartment ‘signify’ to you?”
“Someone who couldn’t even keep what he was born with,” she answered.
“Which is what? We’re not rich. We aren’t powerful. My dad works on a farm. My sister is a cop. It was a little Norwegian farm that—”
“Your skin, Marcus! Your skin,” she said finally.
Was this a truth revealing itself, or was it simply the most offensive thing she could think of in that exact moment because she was so hurt and there was no one closer at whom she could lash out? Are we most truthful during our anger or just the most creative in finding ways to hurt people?
“Your skin is a shield,” she said. “My skin is a target. That’s it. That’s where the shovel hits the stone, don’t you understand? It isn’t some abstract discussion about inequality or indignity or history, Marcus. It’s about being born into danger. It is dangerous to be black. To be called black. To be labeled black. To be singled out, specified, categorized, compartmentalized, and ultimately treated and shelved as black. Jeffrey was born with a bull’s-eye for a face. And eventually someone shot at it. The end.”
“I’m not a symbol, Lydia. I’m a person.”
“You’re both.”
“I love you.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said aloud but clearly to herself.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No,” she said, immobile behind her desk.
Marcus was flailing for direction. Should he have been apologetic? For what? The past, the present, or the future? He was angry and defenseless and he felt wronged. Unable to think of how to defend himself, he chose to attack. This was the day of her death. These were the precipitating events. This is what he needs to relive and replay to settle on an understanding of this moment that will satisfy him while he sits by a pond in a forest in the soil of an America that will become his grave.
“You’re blaming me for this?” he asked. “For Jeffrey? For . . . my God . . . America?”
“No,” she’d said. “You’re just some foreigner. I absolve you, Marcus. But I look at you and I think about it. I look at you and it reminds me. I look at you and I . . . Your skin, your hair, your penis. I don’t want it near me anymore.”
“I didn’t do this,” he yelled at her in his defense. “I don’t want to let what’s most random about us matter most. It’s all so . . .”—he looked at her, he looked at the faces of the chorus on the wall, and through it all still said—“arbitrary!”
“It might be completely arbitrary that my skin tone makes my life dangerous and not yours, Marcus. But once it’s true, it stops being arbitrary. It becomes very consequential.”
And then, pathetically, he appealed the decision with the nothing that remained. Not as lover, not as an adult, not as a man. But as a child overwhelmed by impending loss and the final recognition that he was letting it all happen again; that words were failing him again. That if only he’d spoken his mind properly he could have saved it all. Again.
“My mother,” he’d said.
She looked at him with pity but not comprehension. And he knew immediately that she wasn’t going to. She had lost Jeffrey. A sister to heal. A family. A community. Students who were facing this . . . this . . . for the first time. He was a casualty, yes, but a lucky one. He was only walking wounded.
Even thinking about this is so embarrassing that he wants to vomit into the lake. Forty-six years old, and he was saying “my mother” to save a relationship that was only months in the making. They weren’t married. There were no children to suffer from this. “My mother,” he’d actually said. And he’d said it because there was a musical note to this. A tone. A shifting earth below the surface of their conversation that maybe hinted at another reason why she wanted him to go away. Was he hearing it or creating it? Was it an echo or a new sound? Was Lydia only sad, or was it deeper? Was she finished with not only him, but all of it?
It would have been better if she had quietly stood and taken him by the arm and led him into the hallway, saying nothing. But that isn’t what happened. She folded her arms and acknowledged that he had turned this moment onto himself.
“What about your mother?” she asked.
“She had cancer. I had to watch her die,” he said.
“I know, Marcus. And I’m sorry for you.”
“I knew she was going to die.”
“I really am sorry for you.”
No, that isn’t what he meant. He had meant something more specific than that. But he’d failed to find the right words. Again.
A Hot One
Sheriff Irving Wylie’s Jeep Wagoneer chugs merrily into the town of Saranac Lake. When they arrive, Sigrid feels as though she has finally stepped onto the movie set of the small-town America she had always imagined. The green forest wraps around wooden homes that stand impervious to time and change. The main street is simple, welcoming, and unmarred by the brand names that litter the interstate and bordering towns. Saranac Lake is not overwhelming in its beauty or aware of its own charm. It feels to Sigrid as though the town has discovered a way to live in harmony with its own American self, and the source of her attraction to it comes from its integrity. It is a proper destination; a place to experience a way of life and an invitation to perform it correctly.
The lake itself is not called Saranac.
“Lake Flower,” Irv tells her.
It is, at least today, a vision of tranquility, and its blue is less a reflection of the sky above it than a melody inspired by it. Beyond the lake are distant mountains that ring Lake Placid, where the Olympics had once been held—back when they were held every four years and were therefore interesting.
Sigrid looks out the open window as they drive. A dozen middle-aged women and pension-aged men have erected small easels and are painting the town and scenery. Two children wave at her and she waves back.
“It’s delightful here,” she says.
“You’re surprised,” Irv replies, turning toward the police station.
“This isn’t what I’ve seen so far.”
“You haven’t seen us at our best. The whole area out here is inspiring and relaxing at the same time. A lot of celebrities and artists and famous folks have summer places out here. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of them, even became friends with a few. I used to set them up with security companies for their big parties, and help them manage the press. You might say I have fancy friends out here.”
Irv drives down Broadway and through the intersection of Main Street.
“It’s actually called Main Street?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I thought that was a metaphor,” Sigrid says, as a cyclist in Spandex and a helmet passes them briskly on the left.
“What?”
“Main Street. I thought it meant the primary street.”
“It does.”
“But it’s also the actual name.”
“Yes.”
“Like . . . Watertown.”
“Sigrid, I have no idea what you’re going on about,” Irv says, crossing an intersection marked as Route 3, passing a convenience store on the right, and then slowing to a near crawl as they pass over a bridge that abuts the lake on their left, which is due east. The sun breaks through the trees there and broils the car.
“Gonna be a hot one,” Irv mutters.
He parks outside a low brick building that is tucked discreetly behind trees that separate it from the town.
Irv parks in the shade and proceeds into the station, but Sigrid lingers outside and walks the short distance to the edge of the lake, peering outward toward the distant forest and hills.
“Marcus,” she whispers.
Of all places for us to end up.
In Oslo, like the smokers outside her office building, she too would often stand with her eyes closed to feel the heat—finally—upon her face. The entire city would loiter on street corners or between shops where the light broke between buildings and they would bask, for precious moments, as urban flowers of unwavering reverence.
Her colleague, Petter, used to mock her for the metaphor. “Flowers don’t turn to the sun because they love the heat,” he once said. “The sun is actually burning off the moisture of the cells on that side of the stalk, so the flower is collapsing in the direction of its tormenter,” he explained.
“Sounds like love to me,” she answered.
This New York sun, though, is vastly hotter than her Norwegian sun. These people talk about being upstate as though it means north. But it is not. It is barely 43 degrees north latitude. Compare that to Kristiansand at the southernmost tip of Norway, she would like to tell them. That is already 58 degrees north.
Even Venice is farther north than this.
No, this is south. And the sun burns like a southern sun.
Sigrid’s solitude ends when a black van with SWAT markings rolls to a halt in the space beside the Wagoneer. Behind it, on a trailer, is a black Zodiac raft with an enormous engine.
Five men, unhurried, hop down from the back in helmets and full assault gear. The leader, emerging from the passenger side, is no one Sigrid has seen before, and the five other men look task-oriented but neither excited nor grave. Together with the driver, they set about off-loading the raft and gliding it into the lake.
Sigrid leaves them and steps into the cool hall of the police station. A clerk smiles at her so Sigrid makes a face much like a smile in return, which stops the clerk from smiling. Sigrid turns to the left through a closed door and finds Irv talking to a portly white policeman in an official POLICE baseball cap that is too small for his round head. Irv stands in front of the man’s desk. He is speaking quietly but waving his hands dramatically. The officer—Frank Allman, according to the brass shirt pin—is taking Irv’s rant in stride.
“What’s going on?” she asks, not sitting or introducing herself.
The local sheriff stands and extends a hand, which Sigrid shakes. His palm is moist and his face looks innocent and helpless.
“Sigrid Ødegård,” says Irv, “this is Sheriff Frank Allman. Frank . . . Sigrid. She’s the police officer from Oslo I talked to you about.”
“You’re much prettier than your photo,” he says.
“What’s going on?” Sigrid asks.
“The commissioner has called,” Irv says. “Not Howard. The actual commissioner.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” says Frank, sitting again, “that a number of decisions have now been taken over our heads, and events have been set in motion, as they say.”
“There’s a SWAT team outside,” Sigrid says. “With a commando raft.”
Irv melts into the visitor chair across from Frank’s desk.
Sigrid does not like his body language. “Talk to me about the SWAT team,” she insists.
“The commissioner,” Frank says, “heard about the standoff by the biker clubhouse last night. He has gone on television to allay any fears that the African American community might have that the death of Dr. Lydia Jones will be ignored or sidelined. He has made a statement from an institution with marble steps saying that catching the killer of Dr. Jones is now a top priority for his office.”
Sigrid looks at Irv, who is looking down at his boots.
“There is no killer of Dr. Lydia Jones. What little evidence we have suggests suicide.”
“There is now,” says Frank.
“That’s not how evidence works. Or facts. Or truth. Or reality.”
“It is, however, how politics works in this crazy world of ours,” says Frank.
“If you send six men into the woods with guns after Marcus, they will go in with the idea that the job requires six men with guns. And they will act as if they are on a job needing six men with guns. And the chances of them hurting Marcus will be disproportionate—it will be unrelated—to the job they should be doing.”
“I don’t disagree with your analysis, ma’am, but there is a chain of command and I am not at the top of it.”
“So this is now politically driven—is that what I’m to understand?” she asks.
“They were elected,” says Frank Allman.
Sigrid places two hands flat to the desk and leans far forward toward Frank’s ruddy face.
“A month ago I was leading a manhunt that ended violently. This one is not going to end that way. That is my brother out there. Who is not violent and never has been. I need you to look into my eyes and promise me this will end gently and peacefully.”
“Ma’am,” says Frank, leaning backwards to gain some distance. “I cannot promise you that.”
Sigrid stands. “Irv,” she asks quietly. “Do you have anything to say?”
Irv looks helpless for the first time since they’ve met. “No,” he says.
“I see. I’ll be outside,” Sigrid says. “I need a minute to myself.”
“I understand,” Irv replies, though Sigrid knows he understands nothing about what’s coming next.
The SWAT team members are chatting amicably to one another about a movie the SWAT leader saw last night about a man whose only way of communicating was by blinking, and he ended up writing a book that way.
“I’m more of an action-adventure or comedy kind of guy myself,” he says, but his wife had made him see it because she thought they needed to break out of their usual patterns. “Ten-year anniversary coming up,” he says. “I guess she’s feeling a little jumpy about it so I went along. I’ll tell you though . . . it was beautiful. Really was.”
The other five men nod their heads until one of them erupts into sobs and the others laugh.
“You’re such assholes,” he mutters.
They talk while stacking gear behind their van as Sigrid strides purposefully but inconspicuously to Irv’s car, where she had earlier placed her bag with the four terrible bottles of one-hundred-proof vodka. When she bought them, and even when she brought them with her, she did not actually think the circumstances would require her to use them.
As she assembles the Molotov cocktails in the trunk of Irv’s car, she tries to remember the name of that film the guy saw. She had seen it too. Something about a butterfly. He was right; it was beautiful.
She rips a motel towel into four strips and shoves them into the bottles. She soaks the wicks. She feels for the lighter in her pocket.
According to the comprehensive report about her last case, Sheldon Horowitz had bullshitted his way into a room at the finest hotel in town and had fooled a rural cop into thinking he was German. He had stolen a boat in
plain sight but without witnesses. He broke into a house on the fjord and spent the night there with the boy, having left nothing behind except a sink full of dishes. After that he jacked a tractor, and later, alone and eighty-two years old, he assaulted a mafia stronghold with an inoperable rifle after demanding their surrender.
Not all of Sheldon’s plans worked out either, but she couldn’t help but admire his moxie.
Leaving the bombs in the Wagoneer, she emerges from the side and yells to the commandos: “Hey!”
All six men turn to look at her.
“Frank needs you out back. You need to wait there for him. He’s coming out after he talks to the commissioner again.”
The six men turn toward one another for some piece of knowledge none of them has, and so Sigrid provides it. “Move it.”
And so they move it.
Alone by the water, she walks to the floating black raft and examines the controls. A steering wheel, a lever that adjusts the speed, a red button to start it, and—helpfully—keys in the ignition; they dangle from a fuchsia-haired troll.
There are two other small boats by the pier. The first with a Yamaha 75 HP engine started by a pull cord. The second boat has an old Honda engine that starts the same way.
Snapping open her brother’s Buck knife, she hops into the first boat and takes ahold of the plastic handle on the starter. She pulls it out of the engine as far as it will stretch and slashes it off. She hurls it under the dock and out of immediate view.
As quickly as possible—glancing back toward the building for signs of an enlightened SWAT team—she performs the same trick on the second boat. Their navy effectively sunk, aside from the Zodiac, she jogs back to the sun-drenched parking lot, removes the bottles from the Wagoneer, and enters the black raft. Throwing off the mooring line, she starts the engine by turning the troll head. Once she knows it is running smoothly, she lights three of the bombs.
With a nice arc, the first bottle lands a tad short of the SWAT truck, smashing glass and spewing liquid fire over the stacked gear bags. A thick black smoke quickly rises. If the team wasn’t on their way back before, they will certainly come running now. She has to hurry.
American by Day Page 24