Be Ready for the Lightning, page 19
“Only if I think about it too much.”
She laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear.
“How come you dye your hair? You’re blond like—You’re blond too, aren’t you? Naturally?” I asked.
“I had a boyfriend once who only liked redheads. I did it for him, and I just ended up keeping it. I was going to dye it back, though, for Peter. I thought it might help him remember when we were kids.”
“What happened to your boyfriend?” I said, after an awkward pause.
“Hopefully he stepped on a land mine. He was a piece of shit. I haven’t been super lucky with the men in my life.”
I was facing the window, which was behind Sunny. As the sun set, her face was slightly shadowed.
“Like our dad. He was not good. Once he broke one of Peter’s fingers.” The delivery was flat, factual.
I kept my eyes down, somehow ashamed.
“One time he threw Peter into the chest freezer in the basement. He put his toolbox on top. Said if he couldn’t get out, then it served him right. And then he left. He went out. And my mother said not to let him out, that our dad would kill me if I did. I could barely lift the toolbox, but I got him out. He could hardly stand. And he said, Why’d you let me out? He said, You should’ve left me. But the worst part is, I did leave him. For awhile. I was afraid our dad was coming right back, that it was a trick. I waited. I don’t know how long. Awhile.”
“Oh my God. That’s horrible. Not that you—I mean, that your dad did that. That’s awful.”
“He said if I told anyone, he would kill Peter and tell the police it was me. Peter would be dead, and I would go to jail. I did tell, though. Eventually. My dance teacher. I was seventeen—but you know I still believed I was going to jail? Stupid, right? But I told anyway.” She lapsed into silence again for a few seconds. “I thought I was saving him. He was eleven. They sent him to foster care, and they were going to just keep me in the group home till I was eighteen—it was only a few more months. I ran away.” She looked up at me now instead of talking to the table. “I thought I was saving him. He got the worst of it. Because he was a boy, I think. And they thought he wasn’t smart; he couldn’t really read, for a long time. I read to him. Stories, but his school books too, so he could do his homework and everything. He’s smart, though; he just can’t read well. Our dad called him a retard. Maybe if he’d been able to read—I don’t know.”
The pleading in her voice worked like turbulence, and a stomach-dropping nausea swelled in me. I’m sorry would be a grotesque response, the same thing you say to someone you bump on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry,” I said anyway. I was confused, though—Ajay had said their parents died. The details seemed scrambled, but asking for clarification felt ghoulish. I was sorry I’d come to dinner at all. I didn’t want to hear this, all this pain, snaking in and out of Peter to everyone around him. I wanted to see him lying peacefully, safely, under clean sheets.
Just then, the waitress arrived with our food, smiling a wide American smile. It was a cheap restaurant staffed by TV commercial actors, the ones who dreamed of superhero movie roles, not Oscars or Tonys. They were friendly—but in the midst of Sunny’s story, the friendliness felt too raw, too bright.
“Did you want some fresh ground pepper on that?” the girl said to Sunny.
“I’m okay.”
She instructed us to enjoy and hurried off.
“We talked on the phone sometimes, but he never told me what was happening. He never told me anything. And then I was at my boyfriend’s one day—different boyfriend—and I’m checking my messages, and there’s one asking if I can come back to Baltimore. Saying Peter’s done something.
“I went to the trial, but they had him on something; he hardly knew where he was, much less who anyone else was. And then, after he finished the treatment and got released, they called me again. I went, and he was living in this place, this halfway-house type thing, full of these fucking perverts and psychos. I wanted to bring him with me, but I didn’t have any money then. I hadn’t even gone to college yet. My boyfriend wouldn’t have let him stay—and where would I have put him? Where would he have lived? So I went home and got my act together. I got into college and did classes at night, got a job, and once I had a place of my own, I went back for him. It was only a year later, maybe a little more—” And then she broke down for a moment. Why at this point, when there had been so many other horrible ones, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t move to comfort her. What would I say? It’s okay. He’s fine now. It’ll all work out. It wasn’t okay, and Peter wasn’t fine. And it definitely hadn’t worked out.
“He wouldn’t come with me. He didn’t recognize me. He said he was waiting for Wendy—that’s what he called me when we were little. We’d play Peter and Wendy. He said she was coming for him, and he couldn’t leave. I left, and the next time I called, he was gone. He’d just walked out—it was a voluntary thing, they couldn’t keep him there. And I couldn’t find him. I didn’t see him again until New York. More than ten years.”
Sunny wiped her eyes on her sleeve, smearing an enormous quantity of black eye makeup across her gorgeous face. She took a package of tissue from her purse and mopped her face clean with surprising ease and then applied an expensive-looking lipstick, followed by an eye pencil. She didn’t speak while she was doing this, but when she was done and the makeup was stored away, she continued. Her voice was steady, but the last part was a whisper. “Anyway. I just wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know.”
I cast around for a response. That there was no possible response was a given, as was the fact that I had to respond.
“He seemed nice,” I said finally. I tried not to flinch at my own stupidity. And yet he had, strangely. Seemed nice. Guilt spread like a fever ache through me, and I imagined the families of the dead gathered in front of me, incredulous at what I’d said.
Sunny was looking at me, her expression softer than it had been. Tears were running down her face again, her makeup even streakier than before she’d fixed it. It was hard to tell if she even knew she was crying.
What could I say that wasn’t completely moronic? There was something electric about Sunny, something appealing. I wanted to tell her about Conrad, my long-held and oh-so-serious cross to bear, which seemed like a joke by comparison. There was something in me that answered, though. I was a sister too, and I wanted to say so. I turned my head from side to side, as if literally searching for what to say.
“What’s that?”
Sunny was looking at the side of my face, at my ear. Maybe she hadn’t noticed it before, or maybe she just hadn’t said anything. It would have been hard for her to make out exactly what was going on, with my hair down. I turned and lifted my hair quickly, as if she’d asked, and she tipped her chin a little, like a mother had told her to sit up straight.
“Let’s get real drinks,” she said, and she flagged down our waitress.
Before I knew it, I was drinking a huge glass of mediocre red wine. I didn’t care that it wasn’t good. I just wanted it.
Then I was talking and talking. I was telling her about Conrad, about the fights. I even told her about the bars, about the nights on the beach. She sat perfectly still—not like a therapist, but like a statue, as if we were in a church, and I was confessing to a remote deity.
“That sounds pretty shitty,” she said finally.
I felt battered, like I’d been in a strong wind for too long.
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “I mean, it’s all been fine really.” I felt callow, suddenly worried that Sunny might think I was asking for sympathy, which would be insane considering what she’d just told me. I didn’t want sympathy—I wanted to talk, to tell and tell, to turn all the not-talking of Conrad, my parents and Ted inside out, to rip it down like day-old party decorations. “I think I’m just drinking too much.”
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Sunny just sat there, and I wanted to keep going. I felt like a villain on one of my police shows, unable to stop myself from explaining my own crimes.
“Those nights. In the bars, at the beach,” I said. “It wasn’t me, really. But I needed them to be me the rest of the time, I guess?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Sunny.
There were some things I didn’t say, though. I didn’t tell her about Annie and Conrad. About the baby. I wanted to purge the past, not drag all of this—Sunny, New York, Peter—into the future.
After we split the bill, I would be walking south, while Sunny would head to the subway.
“Are you sure you have to go back to Vancouver?” she said.
I was drunk and felt my head nod, my sense of it slightly syncopated, like I was swimming through something thick.
“Okay,” she said. “And thank you.”
—
I woke up the next day with a hangover. I took two Advil and packed my bags before heading down to check out of the hotel. The clerk who had given me the big new room was at reception.
“You’re checking out?” he said anxiously. “Was the room not good? Was something wrong?”
“It’s not that. The room was great. I’m going home. To Vancouver. To be with my family.”
The clerk nodded sagely. “I remember hearing that you were Canadian. That’s so weird, you know, considering.”
I was used to that sentiment from Americans by this point, so I just nodded.
He was looking at me as if deciding whether to say something else. Finally he said, “I was going to knit you something. I mean, I know it’s summer, but you can never have too many scarves, right? Or hats. I’m learning hats, or I’m going to soon—I signed up for another class. But now I don’t have time.”
“That’s really nice,” I said. “That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”
“I just thought that what you did was really brave. I can’t imagine being in that situation. Is it rude of me to ask you what it was like? That’s probably rude, right?”
“To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur,” I said. This was something I’d said a lot during the interviews. It was both true and untrue, but it had the effect of halting most conversations.
“But you talked to him, right? I would have been way too scared to say anything. Or I would have said something stupid. I can’t believe you talked to him and saved all those people. I wish I could have seen you—it would’ve been so cool.” Then his eager smile disappeared. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I said that.”
I almost put my hand on his on top of the counter. He looked so upset. “It’s okay,” I said.
“I really didn’t mean to say that,” he whispered.
I thought he might cry.
“Honestly, don’t worry about it.” I pulled up the handle on my suitcase. “You’ve been really nice to me. I hope the hats go well.”
—
In the taxi to the airport, there was a free paper abandoned on the seat. I flipped it to the Sudoku, which was an easy one, with three numbers already done in blue ink. I found a blue pen in my purse and continued the puzzle. When the last number was inserted, I stowed the paper away. The numbers were finite. I knew them to be correct.
Words, on the other hand, were slippery. You talked to him and saved all those people. But I hadn’t reasoned with Peter. I hadn’t spoken so eloquently that he’d changed his mind about shooting us. I just made up what I desperately hoped he wanted to hear. Or not even—I’d babbled, grabbing at this and that, for reasons I didn’t even understand. Grabbing words like fistfuls of cash in a robbery.
And I hadn’t meant to tell Sunny all those things in the restaurant. My words just barged in without permission, before I even knew what I was saying, and I didn’t even feel like I’d gotten it right, explained things properly. Maybe that was why those little cuts on my legs had worked so well. Pain could be a language in itself, when words weren’t enough, a better language. I bet Sunny would understand that. The way I would bite Ted’s neck, his fingers, when I couldn’t think of a way to say more than I want you, a way to say it big enough, loud enough. How once I drove by Ted’s apartment, after one of the many times he had said that he needed some space, and I slapped myself across the face and said out loud, “Go home, Veda,” The sting of it.
It was a language Conrad spoke too. Something that took over when words, which were not that useful at the best of times, failed.
TWENTY-FOUR
The shooter is silent so long that I’m sure I’ve said the wrong thing. Only a small part of my mind is thinking like that, though—the right thing, the wrong thing—is thinking at all, in fact. Mostly my body, its fear and its panic, overrides everything and all thoughts. There’s no sound except the syncopated breathing of the crowd, like we’re trapped together inside a giant, struggling lung.
Then he says, “Their tongues are hanging out. They are hungry tonight.”
“Yes,” I say.
“You’re like me.” He says it with a questioning inflection, but also sounds weary, almost pitying.
I feel like I’m swallowing dry bread. “Yeah.” My whole body is damp with a slick metallic feel, a pop-tin smell that’s choking me. “I’ve written it all down; I’ve got it at home. Everything I’ve dreamed, everything I’ve heard.” I lick my lips. “Just come with me. I can show you. We can go now.”
He says, “In a book? In your bedroom?”
I walk forward, forward, until I can reach out and touch him if I want to.
“We can go there. We can get out of this; we don’t have to be here. We’re not stuck here, we’re free, and we don’t ever have to come back. You know, I have a bad memory, and I’m not good at knowing, really one hundred percent knowing, what is happening inside my head versus what is happening outside. And you know how that feels too, don’t you? When you’re like me, like us, you can get stuck in a moment. Sometimes it’s good, because it’s a good moment, one you want to be stuck in. You want to build a tree fort in it and live there, you know?”
Peter’s eyebrows draw together. I can see him searching his memory for a good moment, can see how much film is scrolling past his eyes that doesn’t fit the bill. But then a softer look comes over his face, and he says, “Like when someone reads you a book. That’s a nice moment.”
“Yeah. That’s a nice one. But you can get trapped in bad moments too, even more easily. They wait for you. In the bathroom mirror, if you don’t turn on the light, when you get up to pee in the night. Or behind you on the stairs; their knees bend when yours bend, they follow you so closely.”
His mouth is hanging open. His lips are pink, the kind of pink teenage girls try to achieve with drugstore lip gloss. I have no idea where my words are coming from; they are strange to me, even frightening.
“But the moments that are easiest to get trapped in are the impulsive ones, I think. Maybe they are good, and maybe they are bad, but you don’t know, because they changed everything that came after, and you only ever got to see what happened from that one outcome. You left someone you love instead of staying. You took that job instead of the other one, travelled to that country but not this one. You lied, or you told the truth. Or you threw that punch or held your tongue instead of talking. Or maybe you pulled that trigger.” When I say this, I think I can hear a sound from the people behind me, maybe an intake of breath, but they are not there, are not real.
“Those times suck you in, the what-ifs, the if-I-could-do-it-agains. You can waste away in those moments, taking them apart like clocks, spreading their pieces out on the floor, putting them back together again. You want to say, Look at this. You want to ask people, What do you see? But there is nothing to see. It’s only the past. It doesn’t make sense. You just have to get out of it.” I don’t turn around, because I can’t, but I raise my voice. “Everybody close their eyes.”
There’s murmuring behind me. I can hear a woman crying.
“Do it,” says Peter. He’s looking at me, but he has the gun up, pointed past me at the crowd. “Close your eyes. Everybody.”
I pull my dress up to my waist. Last summer’s tan is still lingering. I’ve got my mom’s skin tone, and the little lines, the scars, are white against my thighs. Peter reaches out with his free hand and traces a finger over them, and then he lays his hand flat. His fingertips rest on my hip, over my underwear.
“This is one of those moments, and we don’t have to be stuck in it. Come out of it,” I say. “Come with me. I don’t want to be alone.”
His hand travels up my body, and he buries it in my hair. I think he’s touching me just to be touching, but then I feel his fingers exploring what remains of my ear. His touch is tentative and soft. He puts his fingers under my chin and tilts my face up, and he touches the scar on my face, which is still faintly visible, running his finger along its length. I don’t speak, but I look at him.
He says, “The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming the window blew open.”
And then he says two more words.
“You came.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I took a cab home from the Vancouver airport. When I walked into the kitchen, my father was making a pot of tea.
“It’s so nice to have you home,” he said.
For awhile we didn’t say anything, while I went through my purse and threw out some trash, useless receipts and gum wrappers. Where does this junk come from I wondered. I used to be so organized.
When the tea had steeped, he offered me a cup. And then, as he poured, he said, “You’ve had a hard time.”
“I’m okay, Dad.”
“Hell of a thing, though, all that. It was a shock.” Then, after a pause, “Do you need anything? I’m going to go to Shoppers Drug Mart later. If you need anything, just tell me, and I can pick it up.”
“I think I’m okay. I brought stuff with me.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, and I was struck by the awkwardness of it all, even with my father. How tentative he was, after his explosion on the phone. Maybe it would change, once I’d been back awhile. Maybe they could ignore it, like they’d ignored Conrad’s troubles.
