The reason I can’t follow Dorie’s monologue is that I’m distracted, wondering when and what I should text Izzy. I go so far as to pull my phone out and type I’m not finished being angry at him, but that feels melodramatic in a way that isn’t quite true. The closest I can come to figuring it out is that I want to learn how to think of myself in some way that isn’t in relation to Marcus, but every time I try to squeeze the idea into a few words, it sounds stupid. I drop my phone back in my pocket as the train pulls into the Forty-Seventh—Fiftieth Street station, resolving to text her later. I pen a small I on the base of my left thumb to remind me.
Dorie didn’t mention that this particular demonstration was planned to coincide with some free pop concert at Rockefeller Plaza. The sidewalk is awash in people, tourists trying to find the plaza, businesspeople heading home after work, a smattering of protesters carrying signs under their arms, all of them bewildered by the police barricades that are set up on seemingly every corner. There’s no current to the crowd as people go one direction and then another, trying to find a way across Sixth Avenue. Dorie stops and asks several of the omnipresent police officers which way to go. They all give her different answers: six blocks north, nine blocks south, recalcitrant shrugs. By the time the third one brushes her off, she steps closer, gets louder: “This is ridiculous. You’re all trying to stymie a peaceful protest. Because you’re scum.”
I don’t want any part of this. Maybe Dorie can get away with saying stuff like that, looking the way she looks, but I definitely don’t want to be standing next to her when she does. The policeman only sneers at her, and Dan hooks his arm through hers and drags her away, south down Sixth Avenue. I stick my hands in my pockets and follow them, keeping my eyes cast down toward my Chucks. Nobody—Mr. Ippolito, Aunt Patrice, the Westcroft dean who took a chance on me, and least of all me—wants to hear the word police whispered in conjunction with my name. But here I am.
From farther down the avenue, we can hear people shouting “Hands up!” Dorie bristles like she’s picking up a scent, follows the sound like a bloodhound. The more ground we cover, the more I can feel a drift developing in the crowd, the mass gaining momentum, and around Forty-Sixth Street, it slows and piles into an embolism. We’re body to body now, the crowd thick enough that we’re barely moving forward, Dan, Dorie, and I packed into a close little triangle and the larger knot of people tightening around us. I’m tense, but I tell myself that I’m overreacting, because even though elbows are knocking elbows, everyone is calm and good-natured. Dorie is happily chanting, giving big smiles to the people around us. I stay quiet, wanting her to get her fill of rabble-rousing so we can get out of here.
Some jolts of electricity run through the crowd, and my eyes look for the source. There, down on the next block, people are pushing against the police barricades and the police are pushing back. The garbled bark of a bullhorn reaches us, though I can’t see it and can’t make out the words.
“That’s where we want to be!” Dorie crows. She reaches down and grabs our hands, starts to cut and shimmy her way forward. That’s not where I want to be. I’m filled with a stab of longing to be in the Sagan gymnasium at the stupid fund-raiser, to be with Izzy and Marcus, the people who know me. I pull down on Dorie’s arm, like I’m a kid trying to get his parent’s attention.
“I don’t like this,” I shout over the noise. “I think we should get out of here.”
“It does seem like it’s getting rowdy,” Dan adds, though I don’t hear the tremor of alarm in his voice that I’m sure is ringing in mine.
Dorie is pressed very close against me, and I’m looking almost straight down into her face, the cheekbones, the eyes, the amplitude of her smile. “No problem. I’m going to stay.” She tosses off the words as if they are nothing, as if they have no consequence, but I recognize them as the challenge they are. If you’re not brave enough for this, maybe you’re not brave enough for this friendship. She turns as if she actually expects Dan and me to leave her here alone. We glance at each other and wordlessly reach for her hands again so we can be pulled along in her wake.
The tension along the police barricade is stronger now. We’re close enough that I can see the stony expressions of the police officers, can see the locked muscles of their jaws. We’re only a few rows back from the barricades ourselves now, and when a middle-aged but still fit white woman, not all that different in appearance from Izzy’s mom, starts to throw her knee over the top of one of the wooden sawhorses, I’m close enough to hear the policeman say, “Ma’am, I will arrest you if you come over this line. I will arrest you, do you understand?” The woman continues to scramble over, and I know that Dorie is watching this happen, too, because she stabs her fist into the air and issues an excited yowl. I don’t think I could force sound from my constricted throat even if I felt like it, but other people yell and cheer the climbing woman as the policeman fastens handcuffs around her wrists. She grins as an officer drags her behind the line of police.
There are more police now, pouring in from somewhere, and their heads, bobbing above the fray, are wearing helmets and visors instead of the regular police hats. “Riot gear?” Dan shouts to me. “Unbelievable!” He says some other things, rights of assembly and so on, but we are swimming in a sea of distractions, and one of them has risen to the surface, commanding my attention. Over to my left, there’s a black guy in short sleeves tussling across the barricade with a cop. They’re shoving each other and yelling. The cop is not one of the ones in a helmet, and I can see that he’s very young, I can read the fear on his face, and I can hear it, too, when he says, “Are you threatening me? Are you threatening to assault an officer?” The shoving is rapidly spreading to other cops, other people, the circumference of confused turmoil widening; someone knocks into me with his shoulder, and I hear a woman to my left gasp at the rapidly escalating scuffle.
I look again at the man at the center of the conflict. I know that it can’t be Marcus—this isn’t his scene, not at all—but I can’t take my eyes off of him, the outline of him so familiar, the close-shaven head, the bare muscled arms. I lurch forward, half tossed by the crowd, half of my own volition, and grab the man’s arm at the exact instant that it’s cocking back, readying itself to throw a punch. The motion of his arm wrenches me farther forward, and when he glances in my direction, to see who’s responsible for the resistance to his movement, I see that it’s not Marcus, of course it’s not, this man doesn’t even look particularly similar to Marcus.
I’m about to turn and try to locate Dorie and Dan again when there’s a punch at my rib cage, so strong, with something that feels like ice. Then it’s red-hot. A sound registers in some corner of my brain, a pop. Too many sensations at once: the scrape of the pavement, someone saying “Back up, back up, back up,” a feminine shriek that could almost be Dorie if Dorie were one to shriek. And then I’m not even here.
THE QUEEN
THERE ARE SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED next, questions that will never be answered for me. Officer Vallese, his second week on the job, fumbling, he later claimed, for his Taser: What did he say to Tristan? Did he say anything at all? When he realized it was his service revolver that he was holding, what did he do and where did he go? The people in the crowd: Did they try to stop the bleeding? Had they read memoirs of combat medics the way I have? Did they put a clean compress on the wound? The bullet itself: Did it hit an artery, a bone, an organ? Did it remain lodged inside him or did someone pick it up off the pavement later?
I asked all of these questions in the hours that followed, and no one could give me an answer that would satisfy me. Even then, though, I knew I was asking so many questions because there was one person I didn’t want to ask about: myself. What was I doing at the moment it happened? Was I selling a stupid cookie? Was I talking and laughing? Was I being told by Marcus that I couldn’t fix everything? And why couldn’t I fix just one thing, just this once?
THE KNIGHT
A COLD LIGHT, THE BEEP-BEEP-B
EEPING OF MACHINES, the overlapping rustle of voices. I can see but not see, I can hear but not hear, something is wrong with my brain, with my voice, with the world. There is pain, but I cannot sort out what part of my body it is coming from.
Izzy, I think, and I guess my lips manage some sort of movement, because a face hovers over me as if in answer.
“I’m here,” someone says, but it’s all wrong somehow, it’s not the person I want.
Izzy on the swings, her hair flying behind her. Izzy standing beside the telescope in R. J.’s room, her face so close to mine. Izzy bending down to wrap my ankle, the sun setting behind her. My mind crawls further and further up the rope of time.
“Izzy.” My brain is reconnected to my mouth now, and I can feel myself say it this time. “Tell her to come.”
And then another wave of cold light pushes me backward.
A chessboard, black and silver. I am standing on it, square b1, the white knight. I think of what I told Izzy about the knight—he is smart and wily and can dodge the enemy like no other piece. I will find my way out of this. The black pieces move, their smooth faces impassive. The opponent is clever, but I see the endgame already. I will march off the edge of the board, to where nothing is square.
I come to again, and this time the pain is insistent and it sharpens me. It is a physical alarm bell going off in me, and I can do nothing to quiet it.
“Izzy,” I say, and the same face looms over me. I feel the rough sequins of her gloves on my arm, and it is all wrong.
“You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay,” she whispers.
“Izzy,” I say again. “Is she coming? Is she almost here?” The gloves lift, the face tightens, drifts to a square of darkness that I recognize as a window. There is still the clamor of pain, a piercing whistle, a body-shaking gong. A nurse is standing by the bed, suddenly. She moves my arm, and the whistle becomes a scream.
“This will help,” I think the nurse is saying, though I can barely hear her over the cacophony of pain. Besides, I know that there is only one thing that will help.
“Is she coming?” I ask.
The face by the window is carved of ivory, even the tears that are running over it are hard, crystalline. Who is she? My mind flails, trying to remember. She has a small, small voice, but it reaches me like an arrow. “No. No one is coming. There’s only you and me in all the world.”
Impossible that Izzy is not here, when she is the only thing that matters. A tide of panic rises in me. She has to be here.
Then there’s the prick of a needle, and a blanket is thrown over the alarm, muffling the noise. I close my eyes, window shades being drawn. It’s dark now, quieter, and I can think. Another chessboard stretches before me, disappearing into the distance, more like a road. The panic slowly drains, and I feel that click of satisfaction, of certainty, that I get when a game is a few moves from being over.
I’ve been silly, wanting her to show up here. She doesn’t belong here, so it isn’t important to wait. I will always find my way to her. I will go to her now.
THE ROOK
IT’S A FULL MOON. IZZY AND I ARE WALKING HOME from the fund-raiser, and, embarrassingly, I don’t see it coming at all. The information descends out of nowhere, in the speed of the car, in the squeal of the brakes as it pulls up alongside us, and it’s only when I see T’s aunt looking at us through the open window that I know something is wrong. She says, “Get in,” and her face is hard, and that’s when I know how wrong this something is. Izzy is ahead of me, as always, maybe she’s the one with the gift now, and she climbs into the back seat without asking a single question. I manage to jump in after her in the second before the door slams shut.
There is traffic on the bridge, taillights like red eyes, car horns like angry shouts. This gives us time, too much time, to hear the few details that T’s aunt knows. A protest gone wrong, a single shot fired by the police, the police department not saying anything yet, and why was he there in the first place? She is talking in the way of someone who cannot take silence. Izzy says very little, though I can see a deep shiver in her, a tremor running through her whole body.
When we arrive at the hospital, Izzy tumbles out of the back seat while the car is still in motion, and this time she’s far too quick for me to follow. Patrice gives a small cry of alarm and hits the brakes hard, but Izzy is already long gone, and the two of us sit for a moment, stunned, watching her streak across the small parking lot by the ambulance bay. Her long dress is pale gray, but in the darkness it looks white, and I wonder what she must look like from all those hospital room windows facing the street. A ghost, an angel, the rippling sail of a ship.
T’s aunt throws the car into park, not caring that we’re blocking in another car, and as we speedwalk toward those startlingly bright doors, she takes my hand. We have never spoken to each other, not directly, but there we are, hand in hand like I’m a little girl, or she is.
He has already been moved out of the overcrowded emergency room and into critical care on the third floor. God, the terrible smell of hospitals, even inside the claustrophobic elevator.
And then there is the room. Like a photograph that cannot be understood no matter how long you stare at it. Like a photograph that can be understood at a glance. There is the bed and what it holds, a form that was so recently human and now so clearly is not. There is Izzy on the bed, too, her body curled around that still form, her limbs stretching over it, her head lying upon it, her mouth open as if she is speaking, though I hear no sound. There is Patrice, crumpled on the floor next to me. There is the girl in the window, the one I think I am imagining at first, wearing a prep school uniform and crouching in the corner like a terrible gargoyle, like the old man from the Hermit card of my tarot deck. The whole scene, the whole terrible collage, it could all be titled “Too Late.”
THE QUEEN
HE DIDN’T FEEL ANY DIFFERENT, AND THAT WAS MAYBE the worst part. He wasn’t cold or stiff. He was perfectly himself. On his hand, written in pen, was a small I, and I pressed my lips against it.
I laid my head on his chest where it had been a thousand times before, and I waited for the soft bump of his heart against my cheek. It’s only a muscle, contracting again and again; there’s nothing magical about it. Someone who wants to be a doctor wouldn’t forget that. But I did. I spoke to his heart as if it had a mind of its own. I whispered to it. I cajoled. I sang its praises and criticized its intractability. I begged.
And when it wouldn’t listen, I begged my own heart to stop.
THE ROOK
THERE IS A FUNERAL, OF COURSE, OR A HOMEGOING ceremony, as the people in this neighborhood sometimes call them. I’ve never known Tristan to be religious, but the funeral is planned in one of the huge old churches that are all over Brooklyn, this one a few blocks from where he lived, and when I arrive with Hector and my parents, I realize that it has probably been chosen for its capacity.
Marcus is here, we see him almost as soon as we walk in the door, and Hector walks over to hug him, and though his face is stony and stoic, I can see the shock waves still coursing through his brain, I can feel them all the way across the room. I used to believe that Marcus could fix anything, used to fantasize about him making all my small troubles vanish once we fell in love. I stare at my shoes while Hector talks to him; touching Marcus is more than I can take right now.
We sit in a pew about halfway back on the right side, and I have a clear view of Marcus, who has now taken his seat in the front row. His arm is wrapped protectively around his aunt Patrice, who looks shrunken and shriveled, as though some internal layer of her has been sucked dry. There’s a man on the other side of her, and I don’t know him, but it has to be T’s father; they have the same light brown skin, the same slightly square head, and he is weeping noisily, shamelessly, into a handkerchief, sounding as if he might never stop. It’s painful to behold, so I force my eyes away from him, and I make a list of the other mourners to keep myself from thinking.
Everyon
e is here. Near the front, there are the other members of T’s family, some of whom I recognize, like Marcus’s mother and his sister. Farther back, there are dozens of people from school: R. J. and Roxanne and Tyrone and Kevin and even Frodo, whose eyes are so red that it looks like he hasn’t slept for days. There are people from Sagan who I know only by sight, not by name, and there are teachers, too, and the principal, Mr. Price, who offers a tissue to a girl I’ve never seen before. The coach of the chess team, that old Russian guy, is here, looking pretty much as he always does, though maybe a little more stooped. There are some well-dressed white kids who are all sitting in a group; they take up several rows, and I guess that these must be people from T’s new school, though I don’t see that gargoyle from the hospital. Izzy’s parents are here; her mother is wearing a black scarf in her hair, another around her neck, and even her brother is here, with an empty expression on his face.
Farther back still are the people who surely never even knew T, who have only heard what happened to him and have shown up here tonight, their faces twisted with anger and indignation instead of sadness. They take up some of the back rows, but there are too many of them, and they flow out of the church, onto the steps and into the street, and there are police here, too, for crowd control, I guess, or maybe as an act of courtesy to T’s family, most of them looking like they’d rather be anyplace else in the world.
There is one person who is not here, and that is Izzy.
It’s not until the funeral actually starts, when the pastor goes to the altar and starts to speak, that I remember that T is here, too. There’s a coffin, almost buried under an avalanche of flowers, but I’m relieved that it is closed so that I don’t have to see him again. Imagining him in there, looking like he did in the hospital bed, is bad enough, and I shiver, and my mom reaches down and holds my hand and whispers a Hail Mary, maybe to me or maybe to herself.
Izzy + Tristan Page 22