“So what? What does that mean?”
“Genetics. You’re alike. You look like them. Like your father.”
I was silent for a moment. I did look like my father, or at least as he had been before the cirrhosis bloated him. Then I shrugged. “A bit. But what does that do for me? I get to worry that I’ll succumb to the curse too and end up a drunk all yellow with liver problems.”
He said, “I’m not like them. My parents. They’re jolly. Do you know what I mean? They like to watch football on TV. They’re always wanting to go camping. They don’t understand . . . And my brother. He’s just like them. He’s their real son, and it shows, and we all know it.”
I remembered what Ellen had said so long ago about children and parents and the misfit that can happen even with blood. “You know what? I have a brother. A one-hundred-percent blood brother. And he’s jolly too and he likes to watch football on TV, only it’s Irish football, which is worse. I made my life as a writer, but I don’t think he’s ever read anything I’ve written. Not because he doesn’t like me, but because he never reads anything. We share the genes, but I’ve got more in common with— “ with you, I almost said— “with the Italian I once shared an office with.”
“At least you know. You know who your father is. You know who your mother is.”
“I’ll tell you who your mother is.”
This came from Ellen. For just a second, I thought, she knows the truth. Somehow.
But she didn’t. Or she knew the real truth, just not the one the boy wanted. “You know her too. You’ve known her all your life. Your mother was the one who woke up at night to give you a bottle or take your temperature. Your mother was the one who put you on the bus that first day of kindergarten and then followed it all the way to school to make sure you got there safely. No matter who gave you life, the one that kept you alive is your mother.”
He nodded, nodded, as if it was only politically correct to agree with this analysis. But he repeated, “I have to know. And maybe you can help me find out.”
Helpful Ellen. She said, “That birth certificate. Do you still have it?”
“Upstairs.”
“Go get it.”
He trotted off obediently enough, looking back only once from the stairs, probably wondering if Ellen was just sending him away so she could slip me the gun. No need to worry about that. Ellen was adamant. Ellen was implacable. That tag-team act of ours a minute ago was just for show. She wasn’t my partner anymore.
She waited until the door closed above and said, coldly, “He’s not buying it. Not entirely. And neither am I. He’s not going to let you go.”
I sank back on to the cot.
“So get me out of here. For Christ’s sake. You just need to call the police and—”
“And the boy will be prosecuted for kidnapping? No.”
“I won’t prosecute.”
“You won’t have to. The prosecutor can bring charges without you. This is assault and kidnapping, and if that doesn’t stick because you won’t testify, there’s still criminal trespass. And I’m not going to do that to him. He hasn’t hurt you.”
I closed my eyes and breathed in the damp from the stone walls.
“And all you have to do is say the name. And the only reason you’re not doing that is because it’s too dangerous. And you better tell me why.”
“There is no why.” That sounded good—it sounded existential. Zen. Something. It sounded true. There was no why. There was only the emptiness that lurched along after the truth.
“You’re protecting her, aren’t you? That’s why you won’t tell us. Because she’s someone who could get in trouble if this is known.”
“No.”
“Who is she? The lieutenant governor?” She was baiting me. Our lieutenant governor was a proud lesbian.
“I don’t think so.”
“The president’s wife. The president’s mother.”
“There’s no one famous involved.”
Bitter now. “Then it’s because you still care. You don’t want to ruin her life. She’s still that important to you.”
I closed my eyes. It made me feel even dizzier. I recalled the passion, that pure, extreme, dangerous passion, that I’d only experienced the once. I never wanted to experience it again. “No. When it was over, it was over.”
“Then what? Maybe she’s been blackmailing you?”
“No.” I laughed. It hurt my lungs. “Yes. Something like that. That’s where he got his criminal nature. Not from me.”
I heard her get up. Panic seized me. “Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving. I’ll tell him that I won’t talk to the police, and that he needs me to find the answer for him, but I’ll only do that if he promises not to hurt you.”
Tell him to let me go then, I thought. But it revealed too much weakness. I wasn’t going to do that anymore. Wasn’t going to show weakness to her. I didn’t want her saying, in that sad way, that I needed her. That she had to stay because of my need. She wanted out and I wasn’t going to keep her with my need.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I’d perfected all sorts of ways of dealing with claustrophobia, panic, terror, and other benefits of imprisonment, and they came back to me now. Yeats—always Yeats, I could not escape my heritage—filled my head. I wasn’t a great memorizer, and in nearly every verse I recited I’d know there was a word or a line wrong, and if I concentrated on that, I’d be able to ignore how impossible this situation was. There was a poem called “The Dawn”, and that came first to me, and I worried over the end of it, because my version of the last line didn’t scan . . . Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; I would be - for no knowledge is worth a straw - Ignorant as the dawn. Ignorant and . . . something . . . as the dawn?
I remembered all of “An Irish Airman”, for my father used to recite that in the pub every Veteran’s Day, and the cadence was so military, so sure, that every word came to me like an obedient little soldier—My country is Kiltartan’s Cross, my countrymen Kiltartan’s poor. No likely end could bring them loss, or leave them happier than before. And I’d once written a paper about “The Second Coming”, so every brutal line came parsed and analyzed to my mind . . . And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
No love poems. Nothing about loving the pilgrim soul in her or torn hearts or love’s loneliness, or love’s betrayal.
Ellen —
No. I wouldn’t think about Ellen. I couldn’t think about her. Couldn’t make any sense of her. Married almost two decades, and I didn’t know her anymore.
The boy was in and out the rest of the day and night—restless, angry, fitfully weepy. He’d finished off my whisky, and made sure to show me the empty bottle, along with another gun he’d apparently had hidden. He tried to bait me, but I quit arguing with him. I just ignored him, sang silent Tom Moore songs, the militant ones the old men at Dad’s pub used to sing to mark the anniversary of the battle of Arklow—The minstrel boy to war has gone, and The harp that once through Tara’s halls. Anything to keep from thinking.
He finally went away, and I finally went to sleep.
After a restless night, I felt dawn approaching—this was mid-June, so it came very early— and kept my eyes closed as I woke. I didn’t want to wake to total darkness again. Finally I sat up and put my bare feet on the cold concrete floor, and opened my eyes. I felt my way to the bag Ellen had brought, and washed my face with the bottled water, and longed for light.
Finally the boy came clumping down the stairs with his flashlight. I ignored him, getting yesterday’s newspaper and opening it, straining to read even the headlines in the weak light. He stood there outside my cell, holding the flashlight so the beam ricocheted off the wall behind me.
“I read up about you,” he said suddenly. “Did a Google search. That’s how I got the idea. You know. Of taking you hostage.”
Yes, well. Just my luck. I’d written hundreds of articles and three book
s, but what would come up first in a Google search would be my sojourn in an Iranian dungeon. “They were better than you. They at least let the Red Cross visit me,” I said. “And let me watch TV with the guards.”
“How did you get out?” he asked, edging closer.
Slowly I folded up the newspaper, hoping he’d move near the bars so I could—what? Grab him? Yeah. To distract him, I said, “Like I said, the Red Cross came. And they’d bring me packages from home. First-run videos from Laura—the guards loved those Arnold films. Theresa would send prayer cards from her convent.” I wasn’t one to pray anymore, but the lapsed Catholic in me appreciated that. “And then once Ellen sent some homemade brownies with a note suggesting that the guards might like a piece or two.”
The boy frowned at this. “It was . . . drugged?”
“Sure. Old recipe. We used to make it in college, only she tripled the effective ingredients.”
“Ellen? I mean, Mrs. O’Connor?” Shocked. “Reverend O’Connor?”
I had to laugh. These kids in their dun-colored clothes, their angry faces, take being bad so seriously. It’s a calling to them. Well, we were bad too . . . we just had a lot more fun with it. “It’s not a skill she bragged about on her résumé, but she modified the recipe. Added more chocolate to counteract the taste. “
“So I should, like, refuse if she offers me a brownie?”
He said this jocularly, as if we were buddies.
I didn’t bother to reply that Ellen wouldn’t be helping me escape this time.
He must have felt my renewed hostility, because he started backing away, staying clear of the bars of my cell. “So then,” he continued with that strained bonhomie, “I read that you walked out of the dungeon, and just kept going till you crossed the border.”
Oh, great. Admiration. He must still be drunk from last night’s binge. I answered shortly, “Something like that,” and went back to my newspaper. The surreality of this conversation, while he was himself holding me hostage, threatened to loose me from my tenuous calm. Best to concentrate on the analysis of the State Department’s continuing war with the Defense Department, spread over three columns on the op-ed page.
“I thought it was cool, that’s all.”
Okay, that distracted me from State v. Defense. “You thought it was cool,” I said slowly. “So imitation being the sincerest form a flattery, you thought you’d emulate that cool group of terrorist thugs and give me this little flashback.”
“I meant the escape was cool.” After a moment, he added, “And that, you know, repeating the event might make you more vulnerable. Maybe you’d get that post-traumatic stress condition.”
I could feel it coming on even as we spoke. “You were wrong.”
“It’s not like it’s a state secret.”
“It’s not like it’ll do you any good either. What exactly are you expecting to happen if you find out? How will your life change?”
“I’ll know who I am, that’s all. You think I’m weak, don’t you? Needing to know?”
“While you’re holding a gun on me, I’m not thinking much at all.”
“You think,” he said sullenly, “that I can’t handle the truth.”
“You keep laboring under the misapprehension that I care.”
It was cruel. He flinched. He’d probably shoot me now. But he just sat there, looking wounded.
I thought back, trying not to spare myself. There must have been a point where I could have averted all this. Sure. That first time I decided to go with her. But try as I might, I could not honestly say I would have been able to resist. She was beautiful. She was willing. I was twenty-two. Or I could have told Ellen the truth when I learned it—but Sarah was just a baby, and—and I couldn’t have done that. Maybe I should have . . . but I couldn’t. She would have left, and I would have lost my daughter. Or I could have told the boy when he first came. But he wouldn’t have just walked away. We would have ended up in some crisis one way or another. He wanted more than information.
I could have treated him more kindly. Yes, I could have done that. Hard to want to, with him sitting there on the crate, a gun resting on his knee.
Suddenly he said, “She was a whore, wasn’t she?”
I shook my head, clearing away the debris of regret. “If you mean, did I pay, no.” I was willing to give him that much.
“I meant like promiscuous.”
His imprecision of terminology annoyed me. I focused on that for a moment, then answered his question. “I have no idea. That was before everyone exchanged sexual histories on the first date.”
“So did—did you care? No. You didn’t. You said that before. Did she care?”
He was going to keep asking questions. And I was trained to answer. That was my job. I tried to say nothing, as long as I was answering. “I don’t know what she felt. Not love. I know that.”
“Did you know it then?”
Now that, I had to admit, was actually a good question. “I wasn’t much older than you are now. And I was even more arrogant. I assumed any girl who went to bed with me would have to love me. But I was wrong.”
“How do you know you were wrong? If you didn’t know her? If it was only—only a night?”
It was more than a night, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. And I wasn’t going to tell him I’d seen her again later. “Because love isn’t about a night. Or a week or a month. We were strangers.”
He was staring at me now. “You really meant it, didn’t you? When you said you didn’t know her?”
“I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. The truth is, you were created by a meaningless act between two people who didn’t care enough to trade names. It was nothing special.” Well, that wasn’t precisely true. Special enough to lead to this point. “So guess what? You want meaning for your existence? Go fucking make it. I’m not going to give it to you.”
He was regarding me with shock. If he told me once more I didn’t understand . . .
I did feel a stirring of sympathy. Of course. He was young and idealistic. He wanted to matter. And I couldn’t help but think about Sarah, how deeply I loved her, how much I’d give to keep her safe. But she was mine. This boy wasn’t. Even if he hadn’t done his best to wreck my life these last few days, I wouldn’t have anything to give him. There wasn’t a need for me. Some other man had taught him what he needed to know about life. Some other man would gladly die to save him.
But it wasn’t going to be me. The mere fact of common blood didn’t make me his father.
He was starting to ask another question when we both heard a clatter upstairs.
“Forget to lock the door?” I asked. I tried to keep the hope out of my voice. Out of my mind. Maybe Ellen was back—
He was thinking the same thing. But my hearing was more attuned now— a while in total darkness does that— and I distinctly heard two sets of footsteps. “Looks like she’s brought someone with her.”
That was the wrong thing to say. The boy fumbled with his gun.
“Put that down,” I ordered. “You’re not going to shoot anyone. So don’t pretend.”
He glanced up the basement steps, and then, reluctantly, set the gun down on the crate.
Ellen came down first. I saw her scuffed sneakers and her khaki slacks and then the rest of her; her face was calm but wary. I couldn’t read that expression. Did she know?
My hope that she’d be followed by a cop was blasted when a pair of expensive high-heels appeared next. Laura. Now that I didn’t expect. She looked over at me anxiously. Guiltily.
They’d left the door open, and light filtered down the staircase, glinting off the weapon on the crate.
“He’s got another gun,” I said conversationally. “Maybe you better go back up those steps and get out of range.”
Laura looked ready to comply, but Ellen just fixed the boy with that look. “Another gun? Give it to me.”
Brian handed it over readily enough, muttering something conciliatory as she put it into he
r purse.
I didn’t trust him. Well, yeah, but I really didn’t trust him. “He’s probably got another stashed. Card-carrying member of the NRA too.”
Ellen very much disapproved of the NRA. But she seemed to disapprove of me more, because she wouldn’t even look at me. She kept her gaze on the boy. “Laura and I figured it out. So you can unlock that door.”
I resigned myself to it. She knew now. I didn’t care about anyone else.
He was silent for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Tell me first.”
Ellen didn’t even bother to argue. In a voice that managed to sound both gentle and firm, she said, “It’s not good news. Your mother is dead.”
That dashed any hope I had that she had the wrong answer. Involuntarily, I glanced over at the boy. He was staring, his eyes glassy. “Who?”
Ellen glanced at Laura, then said quietly, “Our older sister. Cathy. She died in 1992.”
“That’s—” He took a breath. “A year after I was born?”
“Yes,” Ellen said quietly. “She was a mountain climber. She died in an accident east of town.”
“So you’re like . . . my aunt?”
“Yes.” Ellen took Laura’s hand and pulled her closer. “This is Laura. She’s another sister. Of Cathy’s.”
“And you’ve already met Theresa,” Laura said.
She gave him a level look, and he ducked his head. I didn’t know what this was about— didn’t care. I was watching Ellen not watching me.
It was lost. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Just wanted out. Just wanted away. Just wanted to talk to Ellen alone, explain.
She and Laura answered a few stuttering questions from him, but he ran out of things to say. Probably never expected what he’d heard—that his birthmother had been dead most of his life.
“Ellen,” I said finally. She turned to me, her gray eyes opaque in the dim light, and I added, “When I’m out of here, I’ll explain.”
“What’s to explain?” she said in a brittle voice. “That you were young? That she was beautiful? That when she came and visited us and sat in our living room and held Sarah on her lap, the two of you were still keeping this a secret? That you had this little inside joke? That you were laughing at me?”
The year She Fell Page 25