Toward the end of her prayer, she reaches out to me by the bed and clasps my hand. No gloves. No stiffness or apprehension. I’m so distracted by this that I miss the part where I’m supposed to say Amen. She continues to hold on to me, standing close enough that a few of her stray tears land on my sleeve.
My father goes next, as always. He reads a poem by heart from Derek Walcott. It’s his favorite poet from a long-ago lost life, before children, before deadlines, before mortgages, when he still cradled this dream of being a writer of plays and prose and believed it could one day be real. The poem is called “Love After Love,” and when he read it to us that first time four years ago, I thought maybe he misunderstood it, read it through a cloudy lens. It’s about a breakup, I told him in an e-mail the following summer (I couldn’t bear tell him to his face after he shared it at the memorial).
“Dad, I think it’s more about learning to love yourself again after the love of another goes away.”
“Yes, that could be true. But how is that any different than what’s happened here?” he replied in an e-mail several weeks later.
I had no answer for him.
The poem became one of my favorites too. And though I’ve written it across my own heart, hearing my father recite it every year since makes me feel like it’s brand new each time.
My father’s voice is low and pained, but he gets through the whole thing, stopping when needed.
For my turn, I pull out my special gold coins and lay them out at the foot of the bed on top of the folder. I don’t want to let go of my mother’s hand, but I need to—I need my fists clenched and arms folded against my chest to do this.
“Dad, I know you have questions about what happened, how it happened. But this story starts before all of that. These coins, it’s the best place to begin. We each had pockets full of them, all three of us, just cheap tokens that we used to play games at the ice fair. We spent nearly all of them trying to win crappy stuffed snowmen and reindeer and junky plastic toys that we knew we had no uses for.” My father chuckled at that, and asked to hold one of the coins in his hand. But Mum just stared through me with fierce sorrow in her eyes. “There were rides. Benjamin and I went on a couple, but Bryant just wanted to go. There was a constellation, a star that he said he couldn’t miss. He went on about it, bugging us to leave. We surrendered, finally, and left. One of them gave me their leftover coins as we started out of the gate.” My father’s bent and spindly fingers wrap around the coin he’s holding and places it up by his chest. He’s moving his dry lips; it’s slight and quick as if reciting an incantation, a plaintive chant to face what he knows is coming next.
I’ve paused here, trying to reclaim my resolve. But watching him cling to the coin sets an ache in my bones. My mother’s face is plastered with torment. I don’t know if I can look over at her any longer. The snot and salt from my tears appear without notice and slide into my mouth—the taste of it is so heavy, so nauseating, I want to stop talking, stop breathing and moving, stop all of this for all of us. I’ve changed my mind. Nothing will be mended from this.
“Please,” my father says, and I know that he’s begging me to continue, not stop. He wants to hear it and maybe my mother does too. Everything in my body is screaming for me to run, run fast and far from this, and spare these good people. Leave them with the coins and whatever’s left of their shredded souls.
But he says it once more: “Please.”
Digging my fingers deep into the palm of my tight fists, I stay where I’m standing and force the next piece out. “Bryant told us about the shortcut. We didn’t know it was ice. We didn’t know.”
I see Bryant in a flash—his backpack first, then his coat, and finally the back of his head. It’s dark all around us except for some faint brightness shining down from above: stars joined up to create a nightlight for us. Bryant, he’s so sure, confident as he leads his siblings home—I could tell from his stride. He’s practically marching out on that cold, slick earth, not once looking back at Benjamin or me. I need to push this vision from my mind in order to keep talking. But shaking my head isn’t working. The scene continues to play in my brain, only sharper than any time before, even clearer than in real life. I can see the very stitching in Bryant’s bag now, the curl pattern of his precision-cut hair peeking out from the bottom of the dark gray toque on his head, the grooves of his thick soles on his boots as he takes each step. I just can’t see his face. I never saw his face.
The lurch in my stomach is violent now. I squeeze my fists even more until the pinch of it starts to sting. I’m sure there’s blood. The neckline of my sweater is wet. I have long stopped wiping away the sludge of tears and mucous gathering there. And all I can hear is my mother’s breathing. It’s dense and uneven and growing louder.
With my eyes squeezed shut, I start again. My voice is raised—I need to be louder than that breathing. I can’t listen to her breathing. “Bryant was out ahead of us, looking up to the black skies. He didn’t hear it, the thunder beneath our feet. He didn’t hear it.” I focus on the other gold coins, the leftovers resting on the bed, and try to make it replace the vision playing out in my head. “He was gone before I could blink.”
Mum leans forward on the bed as if the strings that were holding her up had been cut. They’re not ready for this. Looking at them, their crumpled faces, I want to end the torture, spare them the wet gore of it and just tell them a plainer truth instead: The daughter they knew, the one that they still hold space for in their dilapidated hearts, does not exist. She died along with their other children that sad night, and in her place a brute was born. That’s the thing that stands before them now.
Both of my parents look destroyed, but my father’s soggy eyes continue to plead with me to keep going, keep dragging them through the shards of this dreadful story. I promised myself that no matter what I wouldn’t run, that I would stand and receive everything that comes from this. So I take another breath—it’s shaky and pinched—but it helps me get to the next part.
“Benjamin, he was weighed down by something. His jacket, I think. He was trying to escape it. He flailed and grabbed at the broken pieces of ice around him, but that only crushed them even more. His teeth were chattering; mine too—it was so cold. It felt like angry, frozen fangs digging into our thickest parts.” I’m still fixated on the gold coins. It’s the only way I can pull the words from my grinding teeth. “Somehow he thrashed enough to get close to me . . . reach for me. But it was too much weight. He was too heavy and his reaching turned into pulling, dragging. He was dragging me under with him. I couldn’t breathe or think or see and something in me took over. I started clawing at whatever was solid, whatever my hands could find. And then I felt something clawing at me. It was him—my neck and my head, he was just pulling and grabbing. He was dragging me under. I had to. I had to get out.” I hear my voice loud in my ears. But it’s muffled, as if I’m under water—again. My father has dragged himself up from the bed. My eyes are blurred-out, but I can still see him: he’s practically crawling toward me at the end of the bed. I step back and hold my palm up between us. He needs to let me finish this. “I had to, Dad. I had to get out. And before I could even realize it, I was stomping on him, climbing and kicking and scrambling to break free. And then he was gone. He was too heavy. He was dragging me in. He was too strong and I watched him drop beneath the frozen boundaries, no floundering or fighting, just gone.”
My father, through tears, tries to reach for my open hand. He’s mumbling soft words about forgiveness. “You didn’t know,” he says. “You couldn’t know.” All the warmth and soothe have evaporated and a thick smog of sorrow drifts up around us. He stretches out his feeble arm and connects with me, pulling me closer to him by my wrist. I give in and let myself lean into his wobbly embrace. “You didn’t know,” he whispers into my forehead.
What I know is, I don’t want to hear that. Just like I don’t want to hear that I’m lucky to be alive. I don’t feel lucky or spared, only ruthless. I
try to tell them this, but Dad interrupts again, assuring me that Benjamin knew that I never meant him harm, that I was delirious and doing what anyone would do: clutch at life as it was being violently dragged away.
I nod and let him carry that line for as long as he can, as long as his quivering voice will allow. Mum is sobbing now, hunched over; her fingers are pressed deep into the blanket on the bed. Part of me feels like this was a mistake, upsetting this sick man and his shattered wife. It was enough for them to just honor their two sons, ten years gone. This pushed them too far.
But then a different thought springs forth, a forceful one that makes me immediately see the finer point in all of this: I did it. I told the truth and nothing swallowed me whole. I showed them who I am, what I am, and somehow they still want to love me. And for the first time in years, I feel good, shameless, and free.
CHAPTER 24
It took a lot for me to get on a plane and fly back to New York while my father is still in the hospital. But I told him about the Fatima story and the boiled crap soup that was waiting for me at Millhause-Steig. He practically demanded that I head home on the next flight out, face my accusers with my head high. I promised him I would and that I’d also be back to wheel him out of that smelly hospital when he got the all-clear. Never one to shy away from a friendly wager, he took my bet (fish cakes fried up by my hand) that he would be out of there and home in a matter of days.
I came directly from the airport here, to the secret second lobby of Millhause-Steig on the twenty-seventh floor, where I’m waiting for a pair of leggings on top of clacking heels to come collect me and show me to my fate.
There’s a ghost town-y feel to everything up here. The receptionist barely looked up at me when I gave her my name. And the same four people who have walked by repeatedly as I sit here act as though making any eye contact with me means catching the uncorked virus I represent.
I don’t need to bet on this; I know it’s bad. The anvil will be dropping on my head any minute now. They should have just sent me straight to HR and be done with it. Why make me come in, so that they can perp-walk me right back out? The snarky insider blog MagDrag.com already called it: James’ Best Lightburn (ALLEGEDLY) Out. They quoted only nameless sources, of course, and made sure to SHOUTY-CAPS every mention of the word allegedly. That blog is consistently the worst. Always doing the most with the least. One “source” in the post claimed that I had fled to the UK and was hiding out at a former boyfriend’s house—sorry, a former flame’s flat (like they just discovered alliteration). And hiding out? I was in Canada for five days, mainly driving between my parents’ house and the hospital . . . with a couple visits to Miles’s place when I couldn’t sleep. We mainly watched 90s TV shows together and talked—and also made out. A lot, actually. It felt good to hang out with someone who didn’t want anything, didn’t have questions with no real answers, happy to see what I show him, happy to just share the space with me and rub my feet sometimes. Miles is exactly who I need him to be. But no “source” could possibly know about any of that.
Twitter’s on it too. Folks are all in my mentions making guesses at why I’m getting the boot, which magazine I’ll head to next, and who the mystery British ex-loverman could be. People are actually naming names and linking out to photos of random English men. Jesus be a fence.
Tell Me More has been surprisingly quiet. I scanned through the site on the plane. They were trying out a new, revolutionary (their word) in-flight iPad loaner program in business class. The flight attendant slipped one my way. Coach-class pity, I guess. I was able to check a few local gossip sites from 30,000 feet in the air, and still felt like I had crawled through mud after reading most of it. These people, they’re out to gut all the fish, in big ponds and small. All sarcasm and spite, these sites seem to delight at the destruction of some young journo’s reputation and dreams. And for what—a snarky headline and a viral post? It can’t be worth it.
“Hey.”
“Trinity? Hey. What are you doing up here?” I pop up and my coat and bag roll from my lap, landing on the floor with an echoed splat. Trinity bends down, helps me scoop things up.
“Well, I got promoted,” she says, beaming, and hands me my scarf and gloves. “I’m the assistant editor, special projects for Hudson, so I’m up here now.”
“Word?”
“Yeah, word.”
“Holy shit. That’s great, girl. When did this happen?”
“I know, it’s kind of crazy. I applied on the low, like, back in September and they told me I got it around Thanksgiving. But I told you about this already; I left you a voice mail a while ago.”
“Yeah, I haven’t really been checking that thing. Actually, I haven’t checked it at all in over a week. E-mail, same. I only got the urgent message about this meeting at the crack of dawn from Ashley. Or Tiffany. Amber?”
“Summer.”
“That was next. Summer.”
“Summer Harris. She’s nice. She’s like me, when I was working for JK, but she’s that for this whole floor.”
“So basically, she knows where the bodies are buried.”
Trinity barely smiles and starts her nervous tic—brushing away bangs that are nowhere near her eyes or forehead. I call it her phantom sweep. She nervously looks over her shoulder and I notice she’s chopped off all of her hair.
“Your hair—whoa. The new cut is banging, T. You look great.”
“Yeah? Thanks. I went super-short and fringe, plus darker with the color, you know, trying to do the total fresh-start thing. Still getting used to it this short, but I like it. It’s easy. Oh, and you look great as well.”
“Don’t bother. I just flew back early this morning and had to rush over here for this meeting. Trust me, I know how I look right now. Hot-ass mess would be a very apt description.”
Trinity looks flustered; she’s blushing. “You always look great, Best.”
“You’re kind. Anyway, I should get back to waiting for Amber—”
“Summer. Yeah, she’s not coming. It’s me,” Trinity says. “I’m in this meeting and they know I know you, so I said I’d come out and grab you.”
“What . . . wait, who else is in this meeting?”
“Best, I just started . . . I don’t want to—”
“Don’t want to what—treat me like a human being? Finish a conversation?”
Trinity steps into me and lowers her voice further. “It’s like hawk-central up here,” she whispers. “Everyone watches everything.”
“What does that have to do with what I’m asking?” I say, trying to keep my voice low and controlled too.
“Whoever you think is in the meeting, is in the meeting.”
“Nik Steig?”
She shakes her head. “He’s not back in the office yet. Traveling.” Trinity glances past me and waves at someone, adding the widest, toothiest, open-mouth grin of her life; I could count her fillings. I glance back. The horse-laugh is for the receptionist, the same one who acted like I was an annoying but harmless ghost. “Let’s just head in,” Trinity says to me, loud enough this time for all the listening walls to hear. “They’re waiting.”
I stare at her for a breath, trying to glean anything I can from her typical nervous tics and tells. Nothing. She’s keeping all her cards close to her chest. I still can’t believe that my part-time protégé has grown up, got herself a smooth pixie cut and a schmancy new post in the upper room, and just like that, she’s bettered me.
Trinity gives me the no-touch-hand-by-my-back move that diplomats, official gentlemen, and condescending businessmen like to do when trying to usher you—the dawdling woman—along. I’m so stunned I barely hear the snort-chuckle that falls out my own mouth.
“Are you okay?” she says through her teeth. She is, after all, still cheesing hard as we move down the empty hall. “Do you need a minute or something?”
“Do I? Are you telling me I should take a minute to call legal counsel or something? Just scratch your chin if yes.”
“Yeah, let’s do that, get it over with.”
Trinity leads me into the bright conference room and says, “Found her,” without so much as a smirk thrown back at me. Really, Trinity? First the sweaty remark and now this? Forget the loyalty, where’s the love? Trinity takes her seat next to Agnes Wolf Freedman, the features director at Hudson. She’s been at the company going into dog years now, starting out as someone’s secretary. Every few years she’s offered a specially-created VP, EVP or some other kahuna post at Millhause, but famously declines, preferring to stay put at the flagship Hudson, “just working the words,” as she liked to say back when she still gave interviews. Agnes is extraordinary. Exceedingly smart and talented, and she still looks unthinkably fabulous. She’s a classic: style and substance commingled, walking around like her days could never be numbered.
Of course Agnes is at the head of the boat-shaped, glass table. Trinity looks comfortable there to her right, like an able XO of this ship. On the other side of Agnes, an empty chair, but not give-her-space empty: it seems reserved. Next to the chair is the Robot and beside her, two others—one a young man—who I don’t recognize from anywhere. They all look up at me as I walk toward a chair. Hell, yes, I took the other head seat at the table. I’m going to act this thing out to the very end.
“Thanks for coming in,” Agnes says, smiling. “Glad you could make it. I know everyone’s attention is turning toward the holidays.”
“Oh, no problem. I was due back today anyway.”
Trinity clears her throat loudly. Yet more shade from her! (What’s up with this chick?) And now I have to clarify my opening statement.
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