The Cruelty, page 6
Sixteen hours after I’d fallen asleep, I wake, still exhausted. But it’s nearly noon, so I get up anyway, shower, take another pill. I pull a chair to the window and stare out at the world, trying not to think or feel. Let today be a quiet day. Let today be silent. But no.
The apartment intercom startles me with its grating electric warble. Someone’s on the street below, demanding I get off my ass to see what they want. I actually laugh out loud. Such a quaint idea, asking permission to burst into my life. Why not just force your way in like all the others?
I shuffle to the intercom and press the button. “Yes?”
“I’m—I’m looking for Gwendolyn Bloom. Is this she?” It’s a woman’s voice I don’t recognize.
“I’m Gwendolyn,” I say. “Who are you?”
A pause, only the sounds of the street coming through the static of the speaker. “It’s Georgina Kaplan,” says the voice. “Your aunt.”
It takes me a few seconds to process the idea of it, as if I’m not quite sure what the words mean. My aunt. My mother’s sister. I press the button to let her in, then wait in the open apartment door. I haven’t seen my aunt since I was, what, seven, right after my mom was killed? And why has she come?
I hear her moving tentatively up the stairs, heels clicking on the gritty tile floor, then she appears on the landing in front of me. She’s a fit, pretty woman of maybe fifty. Her hair is a salon-bought auburn helmet that matches the perfect French manicure. She smiles with very white teeth. “Wow, Gwenny. It’s been so long.”
When she hugs me, I feel the firmness of her five-workout-a-week muscles. Hanging on her clothes is yesterday’s perfume, and the smell of an airplane cabin, plastic and coffee.
“Gwen, Gwenny, I’m so sorry about your dad,” she says, the Texas accent round and sweet as an apricot. “So sorry.”
She holds me for a long time, then takes me by the shoulders and studies my face while I study hers. Thin wrinkles form deltas at the corners of her eyes and mouth, the only flaw in skin that’s otherwise a mask of tasteful earth tones painted with department-store makeup.
“You’re very pretty, Gwenny, like your mother,” she says. “I’m sorry, can I call you that, or do you prefer Gwendolyn now?”
“Gwendolyn.”
“Then that’s what I’ll call you,” she says. “The man on the phone, Mr. Carlisle, he said you’re being looked after by neighbors.”
“Yes. Bela and Lili.”
“I’m sure they’re doing a great job, a great job, but Mr. Carlisle said maybe it would be better if you were with family. You know, if the situation with your father lasts longer than a few days.” Georgina twirls a lock of my hair with her finger. “Well, isn’t this just the prettiest shade of red?”
“Look, I appreciate your coming all this way,” I say as I pull away from her. “But I’m sure you have a life back in Texas. There’s really no need—”
“Oh, I don’t mind. Really,” she says, pursing her lips into something between a pout and a smile. “Robert’s taking the synagogue youth group on a horseback-riding trip and Amber’s going with him. Myself, I can’t stand horses.”
“It’s really not necessary,” I say. “My dad could be back anytime.”
She pulls me into a hug, a hug full of pity and sadness, the kind reserved for funerals. “Of course he will, dear.”
* * *
We avoid each other for the rest of the day. Or rather, I avoid her by hiding in my room while she keeps a patient, respectful distance. There’s nothing wrong with her. Nothing evil. But this is my apartment, where I deal with my shit, which, maybe you’ve heard, Georgina, is pretty fucking significant right now. I hate the idea of her being here. How embarrassing to have a stranger hear you cry. In the morning, I try avoiding her again, but then, a moment before I’m out the door, she stops me.
“Sit a minute,” she says, patting the spot next to her on the couch.
I’m about to say no, but I have no legitimate reason to be rude to her. She’s come all this way for me. That’s worth at least a conversation. I take off my jacket and sit down in a chair across from her.
“School,” she says.
“What about it?”
“It might be a good distraction. When do you think you’d like to go back?”
I hate to admit it, but she’s right. “A few days,” I say. “Later this week.”
“I’m so glad you agree.” Then Georgina inhales sharply like there’s something else she wants to say. “Look, Gwendolyn,” she manages finally. “If this sounds premature, I’m sorry. But if this situation—the situation with your father—should go on more than, I don’t know, a few weeks—”
I cut her off. “You can go back to Texas whenever you want.”
“That’s just it,” she says. “I was thinking you might come with me. Temporarily. Until he comes back.”
I stare at her, tamping down my anger, resisting the deep desire to tell her to get the fuck out. “Look, I appreciate you coming here. I do. But why would you want a stranger in your house? I mean, honestly, what am I to you?”
“But you’re not a stranger, Gwendolyn,” she says. “You’re family. I’m sorry, but no matter how you feel about us, that’s God’s own fact right there.”
“I don’t want to be a burden to anyone.”
Georgina clears her throat, presses her hands down on her knees. “A burden? Honey, you could never be a burden. I know it won’t be New York City or Paris, but if you give it a chance, I think you’ll like it there. And anyway, it’s just for a while.”
She comes over to me and sits cross-legged on the floor at my feet. Then she pulls her Louis Vuitton tote bag—the real thing, not a Chinatown knockoff—onto her lap and removes her phone. She opens the photos and turns the phone so I can see. There on the screen is a large suburban house in the middle of an impossibly green lawn, a white Cadillac SUV the size of a tank parked in the driveway. “You’d have your own room, of course—there’s plenty of space where we are. You’d share a bathroom with Amber, but she’s tidy, don’t worry.”
She scrolls to the next photo. A pretty girl with curly black hair in a cheerleading outfit standing atop a pyramid of other girls. “And there she is,” Georgina says. “Amber’s captain of the cheerleading team, but she’s also a very good student. She leads a Torah study group at the school. You could go with her, if you wanted.”
“I’m not religious.”
“Just to make friends, then. Look, we’re Reform all the way, very casual about it. You wouldn’t even have to come to temple with us unless it was your choice.” She puts the phone away and digs through the bag, looking for something else. “You’d be free to be your own person there. Be whoever you wanted.”
I’d be lying if I said the sales pitch didn’t work, at least a little. Life sounds easy there. Warm weather and nice people and space.
She pulls something else from her bag and sets it on my knee. It’s an ancient, fraying black-and-white photo of an old woman with her large family spread out on the porch of a run-down house. There must be a dozen kids and grandkids. Some are sitting, some are standing, no one smiles. The date on the bottom of the photograph says 1940.
Georgina taps the old woman with her perfect nail. “Alona Feingold—your great-great-grandmother—goodness, do I have that right? I did all the research about her online. Born 1882 in Odessa. That’s in the Ukraine, or maybe Russia now, I can’t keep it straight. Anyway, she came over to America in 1913 with her husband and five children. This is Alona as an old lady with her children and grandchildren at their home in Fenton, Missouri. Only Jews in town, I’d bet.”
On a young man’s lap sits a toddler who looks vaguely like a picture I remember of me at that age. She’s about two or three and wearing a clean white dress. “That’s your grandmother Sarah. You never met Sarah because she died when you were just little. Lovely woman. Strong-willed.”
My breath trembles, and I stifle it to keep Georgina from hearing. I had been only academically aware that I had an aunt and a grandmother and a cousin and family. A few lines of a sketch. But now, here they were, real people in all their detail. I brush my hair back behind my ear. “I’ve never seen pictures of them before,” I say.
“Your mother wasn’t very sentimental about family,” Georgina says. “It was probably our fault, mine and your grandmother’s. We were too conventional for her. So off she goes at eighteen to join the army. What a scandal it was for your grandmother—a nice Jewish girl joining the army! But she was always the brave one, your mom. Always the intrepid explorer.” Georgina reaches up, touches my cheek. “Bet you’re the same way, aren’t you? Fearless. Always looking for adventure.”
She has no idea how wrong she is. “It must skip a generation,” I say.
* * *
Mrs. Wasserman’s saccharine pity is in fine form as she looks at Georgina and me across the desk. She is a stage actor, projecting her sorrowful eyes all the way to the balcony. The staff, she says, has been informed that my dad went missing while on a business trip in Europe. But hanging in her voice is the busybody’s question mark, an implicit plea for details, mundane or salacious. Neither Georgina nor I give her any, though, and I can see Mrs. Wasserman is disappointed. Still, she purses her lips in kabuki warmth and presses her hands over mine as she tells me Danton will, as always, be a safe space for me in this period of emotional challenges.
As I leave Mrs. Wasserman’s office and walk to my locker, it’s clear to me that news of my dad’s disappearance evidently spread further than the staff. Conversations slam shut as I pass, and all eyes turn to me. Only when my back is to them do the whispers start. Rumors of intrigue and murder? It may be the case that my stature has actually risen. That I am now at least interesting.
Terrance approaches me at my locker. There’s concern and empathy on his face, as if someone he cared about had been hurt. I almost ask him what’s wrong. Then I realize the look is for me.
“Hey,” he says as I stand in front of my open locker. “I heard about your dad. That he was captured or something. I mean, holy shit, Gwen, are you all right?”
Something good and warm pulses inside me at the sound of his voice, but right away I feel guilty and push it away.
“He wasn’t captured. He’s just missing.” My voice is flat and cold. I don’t mean it to come out that way, but it does.
“Do you need anything? Can I help?”
“I’m fine,” I say as I close my locker. “Sorry. Gotta go.”
I head to class and wonder if things would have turned out differently had I answered my dad’s call when I was with Terrance in the park. Probably not. But maybe. It’s all your fault, Gwen.
But it’s to avoid thoughts like these that I’m back in school in the first place, and it mostly works. It’s been eight days without news, eight days of nothing except the torture of my thoughts at what it means to have no news. Luckily, calculus cares not a whit about my troubles, and neither does the civilization of ancient China. To dwell on hard facts and long-ago events is the closest I’ve come to actual pleasure.
After the last class ends, I take the train downtown to my dad’s office, where it’s nothing but the same shit as all the days before. The only difference now is that I can sit and do homework in a conference room between interrogations. Why did you write in your diary about Syrian refugees on April 23? Why did your father charge $79 at a flower shop on June 12?
But it’s clearer to me with each day that passes, with each pointless question, that they have no idea what they’re doing, or even what they’re looking for. It’s obvious that looking for clues in a schoolgirl’s diary entries and old credit card statements is the best they can manage.
I see Joey Diaz rarely, and when I do, he only squeezes my shoulder and tells me, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” I see Carlisle even less often. It’s always some variation of nothing new today, said with a brusque, dickish tone as he stirs his coffee with a pen.
* * *
It goes this way for yet another week. Monday through Friday, I go to school, then to the building downtown. There they don’t even bother with the interrogations anymore. I study in a conference room, the red VISITOR badge dangling around my neck, and the only time I talk to anyone is when an agent peeks in and asks if I want coffee. Gradually, I realize the badge is right. I’m just a visitor who happens to be there, not the object of inquiry, not even an object of interest. The automatic looks of pity I used to get from everyone have turned to looks of polite tolerance. And one day, when I catch Carlisle in a hallway and ask if he’s heard anything new, he says, “About what?”
Every night, I return home to Georgina, where there is dinner waiting for me, and a recap of her day’s adventures in the city. Every night, I look for a reason to hate her, this interloper, this stranger. But I come up empty.
The truth is, she’s been nothing but kind to me. Nothing but sweet. Nothing but generous. And here, this part, this is where it gets weird: It’s her love that she’s generous with most of all. We’re nothing to each other besides a strand of shared DNA, but that’s not how Georgina sees it. She helps me with my calculus, and turns out to have majored in mathematics in college. She shares the dirty joke she overheard in the salon, then giggles along with me. She holds me when I break down, whispering into my ear it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay until I dry out. And it’s as she holds me that I realize I have to amend that conclusion I came to that first night on Bela and Lili’s couch, that truth I replayed like a chanted mantra a million times a day: He’s already dead and you are alone.
Because that last part isn’t quite true.
* * *
As I play with my VISITOR badge and work through a chapter on the Zhou dynasty in my history textbook, Chase Carlisle enters the conference room. He is different today. No more implied fuck off when he sees me. No more brusque, dickish tone. Instead, he smiles warmly, like a real human, and inquires after my health and the health of Georgina. When I tell him we’re both good, he smiles warmly again, as if he cares about the answer. Then he sits.
“Gwendolyn, I need to speak with you about your father now,” he says.
I ball my hands into fists under the table. “You have news,” I say, a statement, not a question.
Carlisle inhales through his nose, places his palms flat on the table. “We do not,” he says.
“You do not what?”
“Have news.”
I blink at him. “So then…”
“Gwendolyn, for twenty days the NSA has monitored all communications from all possible sources—terrorists, suspected terrorists, criminals, suspected criminals—everyone. There have been no mentions of your father, nothing related to your father.”
My lip trembles. “Look harder.”
“French intelligence, French police, our own FBI—they’ve scoured every inch of Paris. They’ve interrogated the man your father met there. They’ve interrogated everyone that man knows, from his brother to the person who delivers his mail.”
“And?”
Carlisle turns his hands, palms up. “Nothing.”
“Nothing,” I repeat in a breathy whisper.
“There is no evidence, Gwendolyn—none—that your father was kidnapped. If there were, we would go to the ends of the earth to find him. But right now, nothing indicates anything other than that he—walked away.”
The buzz of the fluorescent lights above us is deafening. I bite my lower lip and feel my face expand into the tortured version of itself that’s become so familiar to me. I force myself to breathe slowly. I count to ten in my head and open my eyes. “But you have no evidence for that, either,” I say. “That he just walked away. You don’t know that. You have no proof of that.”
“No,” Carlisle says. His eyes are wide, sorrowful. “But such cases—such instances when people simply walk away—rarely provide anything like proof.”
The words burst out of me in a furious shout. “So keep looking!”
He nods slowly. “And we will. I promise.” He folds his hands together, as if in prayer. “But on a different scale.”
“What does that mean, ‘a different scale’?”
“Interpol—it’s a police network, worldwide.…”
“I know what fucking Interpol is.”
“Interpol has issued alerts. His passports—diplomatic, civilian, both—have been flagged. And border agents have his photo and biometrics in case he’s traveling as someone else.”
I stare down at my hands, trembling with a sudden violent palsy. “So—a missing person flyer on a telephone pole. That’s what you’re doing. That’s the best you got.”
“A question of resources, really. Manpower. So many threats in the world today. We just can’t afford to—”
“You can’t afford to save your own agent,” I gasp, pushing myself back from the table.
Carlisle grimaces as if the words hurt him. “Unfortunately, without a crime, our best hope is waiting for him to surface on his own. Which means this may take a while.” He leans forward, waits for me to look at him again. “In the meantime—”
“Go to hell.” I cross my arms over my chest, squeeze tight.
“In the meantime, your aunt Georgina. I called her today, explained the situation. We are both in agreement that you should go with her back to Texas. Is it ideal? No. But on a temporary basis—look, Gwendolyn, it’s the best option.” He pulls a thick packet of paper folded in thirds and opens it on the table in front of me.
“What’s this?”
“A court order. Giving your aunt and her husband temporary custody. Until you turn eighteen or your father comes back.” Carlisle coughs, frowns. “Or is declared dead. Legally, I mean.”
I get up to leave. Fuck him. Fuck Georgina. Fuck legally dead. “I know my rights. You can’t just do that. There’s—court hearings. Lawyers. Speaking of which…”
