Visible Empire, page 18
To Robert, she merely said, “Yes?”
He swallowed hard. This meeting—offensive, indecent, completely without decorum—was everything he’d hoped to avoid. In his quest to be reunited with his past life, he’d taken one giant step backward, and it was all because of Coleman.
What he wanted to do was drop to his knees. What he wanted to say was that he was sorrier than she’d ever know. “We’re here for the keys,” he said instead.
“The keys?”
“To Coleman’s Thunderbird.”
Lily looked at Coleman, who’d dug his hands into his pockets and trained his eyes on the grass at his feet. He looked like some gangly schoolboy who’d been caught peeping through the window of the girls’ first-floor bathroom.
“Are you bored?” Lily directed this question at Coleman. “Is that what this is? Have you nothing better to do?”
Coleman didn’t respond.
“Just give us the keys and we’ll leave,” said Robert.
“Yes,” said Lily. She smiled suddenly. It was an awful thing to see. “I understand that you, Robby, want the keys to the Thunderbird. What you don’t understand is that I mailed them to Coleman last week. The day after you turned Piedmont into a target by asking him to drive what might as well be a brand-new convertible with a flashing neon sign that says ARREST ME back to Atlanta while you—is this really true? While you flew around in some airplane in the middle of the night?” She raised her hand. “Don’t answer. I don’t care. But Coleman has the keys. There’s nothing I can do for you.” She stepped back, so that she was now immediately under the outdoor light. Her face, which had been backlit and difficult to see, was now lighted from overhead. Her nose stretched out in a funny way, and her mouth was pulled too far to one side. But even in the grotesque lighting, he could see her eyes were bright and clear. She looked once again beyond the men, at Piedmont. “Unless you want to come inside for milk,” she said, “I think we ought to get some sleep now.”
It was outrageous, yes? The fact that Lily was inviting a Negro into her home in the middle of the night?
“Thank you,” Piedmont said. “But I’m tired. If it’s okay, I’ll skip the milk.”
“Another time,” said Lily. She smiled, something different than what she’d shown Robert. Then she opened the door, walked inside, and turned off the light.
Outside, the three men stood motionless for several seconds. Light from the moon reflected off the surface of the pool, and all around the perimeter of the property, atop the even blades of blue grass, there was a pale afterglow.
Without asking, without saying good night or goodbye, Piedmont turned and walked slowly across the yard. He did not use his flashlight. At the pool house, he paused, looked up at the sky, back toward the two men, then—without any ceremony or explanation—he walked inside the pool house and shut the door behind him.
Robert couldn’t bring himself to look at Coleman. He was afraid that eye contact, even in the dark of the night, would be too much. He’d slug him. He’d push him into the deep end. He’d dive in after and hold him down. The ire he felt was propelled by humiliation, confusion. He felt like an animal. He felt like a dog who’d been kicked but didn’t know why. He felt completely without language.
He turned and walked away from Coleman, around the side of the house, past the dogwoods, under the magnolias, skirting the hydrangeas, back in the direction he’d come five or ten or fifteen minutes earlier. It—time—continued to elude him, surprise him. In seemingly unimaginably small moments, the story—his story—kept changing, kept turning, kept being something other than what it had been a measly few seconds before.
Beneath his shoes, the grass folded against itself, flattening wetly into the soil. At the Mercedes, which was still there—because, why wouldn’t it be?—he stopped. He didn’t have to get in. He knew that. He could simply walk away. He could travel the sidewalks until morning or until he came to a halfway house or a hospital or maybe just a clean and cheap motel. He could do anything he wanted, including disappear forever. But what he did was so predictable he could spit: he opened the passenger’s door and got in.
“Man, listen,” said Coleman, after he’d also climbed in. “The keys to the Thunderbird are at my place. I was just having a little fun. I’ll pick the car up tomorrow. I’ll have someone else drive me. You won’t be involved at all. I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Robert.
Coleman nodded. “Whatever you say.” He turned the key and the ignition roared to life. “You want a drink?”
“I want a bed,” said Robert, “and a pillow and a set of ice-cold sheets.”
“Sure,” said Coleman. “Sure. You got it.”
“One more thing.”
“Name it.”
“If you dose me again, I’ll murder you myself.”
Ivan & Lulu
“I’ve been thinking, dear. The crash in May? It was a warning . . .”
“What crash in May, Lulu?”
“The other crash—when the Dow Jones fell.”
“I don’t remember talking to you about that.”
“But, dear, just because we don’t talk about something doesn’t mean I don’t know.”
“Of course, Lulu. Is Alma downstairs? Is she with the children?”
“The children are back in school, Ivan.”
“It’s seven a.m., Lulu. It’s summer. School isn’t back in session. It’s too early.”
“Is it? It is. You’re right. I must have looked at my watch wrong.”
“Have you seen them this morning? Do you know that they’re awake yet?”
“If it’s seven, then they must be.”
“Please go see if Alma is with them.”
“Yes, but first I have to finish what I was saying. Do you remember what I was saying?”
“Is that a question or an accusation?”
“I was telling you about the crash. The precursor? The Dow Jones fell 5.7 percent. You remember? Two and a half hours after the market closed, the ticker finally finished reporting, that’s how bad the losses were. They say it was the second-largest point decline on record.”
“I don’t understand why you care about this, Lulu. I feel this isn’t a healthy use of your time.”
“But what is a healthy use of my time?”
“The children.”
“But they’re only children.”
“They need to get ready for school. You should check on them now.”
“But let me finish. It’s important I tell you. I believe that the Flash Crash—did you know that’s what they’re calling it?—was a kind of heralding of the Orly disaster. Do you know that Donna and Jake wanted to come home early? And if they had come home early, do you know that they’d still be alive?”
“That isn’t healthy, Lulu. That isn’t healthy thinking at all, and your logic is all wrong.”
“It makes me wonder if maybe others besides Donna and Jake wanted to come home early. Maybe it was everyone. Think about it, dear. They all had some sort of investments—Coca-Cola, Polaroid, IBM.”
“Did you read this somewhere?”
“Though that isn’t my point. My point is that if they’d been paying attention, reading the signs, they might still be alive.”
“No.”
“We have to read the signs.”
“No.”
“What’s going on in the world—We have to pay attention, dear.”
“I’m worried.”
“Exactly! Their flight was still six days away when the warning sign came. They must have been chomping at the bit to get home.”
“Lulu, my love, I’m worried about you.”
Lily
On July 3, Lily was sorting through the month’s unopened mail when she saw the taxicab pull to a stop at the bottom of the driveway. Raif had asked for a list of household expenses, but she’d never seen a complete accounting before. It was Robert who’d always managed their bills. “Go through your mail,” he’d said. “Send me anything with a due date.” The prospect was a humiliating one, but to ignore the request would have been an affront to his generosity.
When the taxicab pulled to a stop, she was sitting at Robert’s desk. She was in the process of dividing the mail—more than a hundred envelopes, all told—into two piles: those that appeared personal and those that appeared business- or bill-related. She’d yet to open anything. The number of condolence cards appeared obscene. It was as the taxicab’s door opened that she noticed Helen Seydel’s handwriting on an envelope. She tossed the letter quickly into the personal pile.
She leaned forward in the chair—not easily given her belly—and squinted. Then she groaned: P. T. Coleman emerged from the backseat.
Lily didn’t have the energy for Coleman at that moment. She didn’t have access to the proper sense of humor that one required when dealing with him. Last night’s shenanigans were more than enough. She was surprised and then relieved when he walked not toward the front door but toward the garage at the side of the house, in front of which was parked the Thunderbird.
With a fair amount of effort, she pushed herself up and walked to the window to watch. From his pocket he pulled a set of keys. Then he unlocked the convertible and opened the driver’s-side door. He was about to get in when he stopped. He looked up and in her direction. She didn’t hold up a hand to wave, but she was sure he could see her. He was staring directly at her. After several moments, he shrugged. Then he climbed inside the car and drove away.
Lily returned to Robert’s desk. The truth was, she’d been hoping it was Robert who would come back for the Thunderbird, alone, during daylight hours, and talk to her. Their last conversation had been the day of the crash, before Piedmont’s arrival and Raif’s offer, before any of the grueling memorials and the revelation of her parents’ finances.
She’d been in the tub so long that day that the water had turned from hot to lukewarm to very nearly room temperature. The skin along her arms was chilly in a pleasant way. The tips of her fingers and toes had turned soft and white, the texture pocked like the core of a ripe peach. Outside it had been close to a hundred degrees. There was no defeating heat like that. A person either stayed inside or submitted to whatever havoc the unruly humidity might inflict on skin or hair, on makeup or clothes.
Downstairs, the office extension had rung. She’d listened and waited. Through the corridors of their spacious home, she’d heard the muh-muh-muh of Robert’s voice. He’d promised not to work that weekend. After several minutes the murmuring ceased; Lily dunked her head under the water one last time. When she came up, the extension was ringing again. This time it wasn’t followed by Robert’s voice. She pulled the plug from the drain and, a hand on each side of the tub, pushed herself up. She stepped carefully over the side, planting each foot deliberately on the bathmat. She wrapped her hair in a towel and pulled on her robe. Then she called to Robert. To her surprise, she heard him almost immediately on the stairs, as if he’d already been coming to her.
She opened the bathroom door, and there he was, already in their bedroom, already standing in front of her, clearly ready to knock.
“How funny,” she said.
On a whim, she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
She moved past him to the bed. “Sit beside me,” she said. “I’ve been thinking.”
He sat beside her, exactly where she patted the mattress.
“Who called?”
“What have you been thinking?” he asked.
“Was it McGill?”
“It was,” he said. “Tell me what you’ve been thinking.”
“It’s silly really.”
The whites of his eyes were red, she realized. She wondered if he’d already been drinking. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table.
“Do you,” she said, “do you think you know me? Do you think you have a good estimation of who I am? What my character is?”
He licked his lips, then wiped the sides of his mouth with his thumb and his forefinger. He nodded. “I do,” he said. An oriole landed on the branch of the magnolia outside their bedroom window. Robert watched it; she watched Robert.
“And do you,” asked Lily, “do you think I know you? I don’t mean, do you have secrets I don’t know about? Everyone has secrets. Lord knows. What I mean is, do you think I know you, really know who you are, as a man?”
After a moment, Robert turned away from the oriole. His eyes now were wide, wild. He had about him the air of a madman. All of a sudden, Lily didn’t want to be sitting next to him. She wanted, in fact, to take back her question. She wanted him to go back downstairs. It was merely an instinct, but the instinct told her that what was coming was irreversible; what was coming was grisly to an unprecedented degree. She did not, under any circumstances, want him to speak.
That day, he’d shaken his head and appeared truly devastated when he said, “No.” His shoulders had begun to shake. “No, I don’t,” he’d said, and then with no further warning, he told her everything.
Now, today, several weeks since learning the news not just of the existence of that other woman but of the crash and of its casualties, she covered her face with her hands. She did not cry as she had that day, but she did allow many minutes to pass in which she stared at the flesh of her palms and concentrated on the apricot smell of her apricot skin.
She returned shortly after to the business of the mail, but she found herself almost immediately confused. In a stack to the right, she’d been placing bills, in the middle were personal missives, and to the left was what remained to be sorted. When she picked up the stack on the left, she was greeted again by overseas postage. Yet she clearly remembered shoving Helen’s letter in the middle pile, wanting it out of her sight. But here it was anew. At least, that was how she first encountered the letter she now saw. It was, for all time, how she’d recall its introduction to her life: as a misperception.
Picking up the envelope, she saw that the handwriting on the front did not belong to Helen. This, then, was a different letter than the one she’d already filed away. It was surprisingly thick. The script—now so obviously different than Helen’s—was large and sloppy. The ink was blue. The name on the upper-left-hand side was in cursive and had been smudged at some point along its journey by liquid. Tears perhaps, more likely rain. C-something. Lily couldn’t make it out. But the origin country was clear: FRANCE. It was addressed to Robert.
She tore it open.
She was surprised to find that inside the first envelope, there was a second, smaller envelope, which had already been opened. She pulled it out. A note that must have been hiding behind the interior envelope dropped to the floor. She picked it up.
She was now holding—it made no sense—two opened envelopes (one now empty and one still containing a letter) and a note, which was folded in two. The management of so many pieces was unwieldy. She took them to her sofa bed and sat.
First she unfolded the note. It was written in the same sprawling blue hand as had addressed the larger envelope. The fact that it was in French wasn’t the problem; Lily had learned the language in school. The difficulty was in the writer’s script, which was untrained. It was an apology of some sort and this, too, was addressed to Robert. The letter writer, who’d been a stewardess on the plane and somehow survived the crash, had committed an offense, and she was deeply sorry for it. The offense was in opening a letter not addressed to her and also in not immediately forwarding it to its rightful home. But this letter writer had been deeply moved by what she’d read. She’d also been made profoundly curious. There was a final apology and then nothing. The end, which was abrupt, seemed to have been dictated by the length of the page. There was a small cursive C in the corner, and that was all.
Lily put down the note and picked up the small lemony envelope. Two people had survived the disaster in Paris; why had she never before considered them or the torment they must have been feeling? From the envelope’s already-opened spine, she pulled a letter that had been folded crisply into three. The handwriting here was tight and tidy. It took up all of the first side and three-quarters of the back.
Lily sucked in her breath when she saw the author’s signature. The letter was from Rita.
She set it on the sofa and stood. Next she backed away from it. Whatever was inside was also unknown to Robert. This wasn’t Lily’s letter to read. She knew that and, at least in part, it was why she found herself initially backing away. She could tear it up, throw it away, grant that poor dead woman a modicum of privacy. But even as she considered such a gesture, she found herself advancing. She was aware of her body stooping over, her arm reaching outward, her fingers connecting with the paper.
She had the wherewithal to sit back down before she opened it. In the same way that she’d known—could feel in her bones the sureness of it—that last week’s phone call from the police in the middle of the night was to deliver the news that Robert was dead, in the very same way that she’d known and then been absolutely wrong, Lily now felt certain that this letter would contain the world’s most obvious confession. Rita was pregnant. Of course she was. What wife wouldn’t have guessed immediately? And yet still, despite knowing, despite having heard the words in her head, it had taken Lily several attempts with the letter—several distinct readings—before she was convinced of the utter wrongness of her assumption: Rita was not in the least bit pregnant.
Robert, Robert, Robert . . .
I must confess I am not completely sober. This evening I was wined and dined. I was flirted with, made love to, spoiled rotten. But instead of giving the poor bloke what he wanted, I have returned to my little room to pack and to write this letter. You have been kind to me. I believe I have been kind to you. But as you’ve said yourself a thousand times, we have each been unfair to her. (I cannot write her name, even now, even so far removed from you . . .) It is time, I think, for me to distance myself. If you have not guessed—but of course you have—this is my attempt at a Dear John. Please do not think I am being cruel, but I have “ended” things with you in the past and you haven’t taken me seriously, no doubt in part because I haven’t had the gumption to make it stick. My hope is that, in writing, you will understand that this time is different. Last month, you sent me away. I was loath to be parted from you. I was loath to be treated like some disposable bobby-soxer you’d only fooled around with on a lark. Did you ever love me? I don’t know. You were fond, for sure, as I was of you. But I doubt that it was love. What is indisputable now is this: my total happiness these last many weeks in Europe. How young I’ve felt. How unburdened. How free. I have seen the way men look at me, Robert, and it has given me such a thrill! (How good it must have felt for you to be desired by the two of us . . . I understand that now . . .) Tonight, downstairs, the dancing, the champagne . . . Somewhere in the midst of it, I came to understand this as well: My heart remains light and untethered. Your heart, on the other hand, is promised elsewhere. What I didn’t know—didn’t see until this journey—was that I could never have been yours. You are married, Robert. Married! This must mean something. It must! I know it does to you, deep down. To her. One day perhaps to me . . . By the time you receive this letter, I will have been stateside for several days, a week even, maybe two! You will have been wondering at the way I am so thoroughly avoiding you, but now you know . . . Do you think I am being a child? Do you think this letter is contrived? Possibly I am being silly and in the morning I will feel none of this. But tonight, just now, I feel confident. I feel open-eyed, full of life, and utterly and divinely happy.
