Authors: Andrew Porter
It’s depressing for him to even think about such things, but even more depressing to think about the alternative, to think about going back to Chloe with empty hands. It’s only one night, he tells himself. What can possibly happen in one night?
He stares at the bookshelves in front of him, wondering what the poets he admires would do, what anyone in his position would do. A moment later, he dials the number and, in a moment of haste, pushes
SEND
. A voice comes on a few seconds later, a friendly voice, and within a matter of minutes arrangements are made. A time is set. But it all happens so quickly, so abruptly, that he barely has time to process it. Already, it seems, his mind has gone numb.
LYING NEXT TO RAJA
in the dim light of Brandon’s tiny study, Chloe feels momentarily at peace. She feels a sense of resignation, an acceptance of what will happen now. If Richard comes through for her, which she knows he will, then they’ll be gone from here tomorrow night. Their lives will change in ways she can’t possibly imagine, but they’ll be together. That’s the most important thing. No matter what happens to them, they’ll be together.
For weeks, she’s been living like this, living only in the moment, not knowing what might happen from one minute to the next, not knowing what might happen in the next couple of hours, or days, to change her life completely. As much as she’s been concerned, as much as she’s feared for her future, there is another part of her that has found it strangely liberating. If you could shut out everything else, she thinks, if you could concentrate only on your current dilemma, your immediate circumstance, if you could concentrate only on the present, you could simplify your life completely. Suddenly all of the questions about your future would disappear. Where you would live after college, what type of job you would have, whether you’d marry. These things would all go away. They’d disappear. They’d be replaced by other things, by questions relating only to the here and now. Questions relating only to your immediate circumstance. You couldn’t live that way forever, of course, but you could live this way for a while, and if they actually made it down to Mexico, if they were able to make a life for themselves down there, then they’d have to live this way for the next couple of weeks, maybe months.
As for other issues, issues relating to family and friends, she has decided to put those out of her mind. There is no point in dwelling on things you can’t control. And besides, it’s painful. To think about a life
without Richard, to think about a life in which she can no longer talk to him, or to her parents, it’s almost too much to process. Instead, she has chosen to focus on the alternative, a life without Raja, which at the moment seems even harder to fathom. If she had to choose, she’d realized earlier that night, if she had to choose between her family and Raja, she’d choose Raja. It wasn’t even a question. As hard as it would be, as hard as it would be to give up everything else—her family, her friends, her lifestyle in America—she would sacrifice it all in a heartbeat to be with him, to be able to stay with him. And she knew that he would do the same. That was what love was, wasn’t it? That was what love in its most absolute form was. If it was anything less, then it wasn’t love. It wasn’t absolute. And if this was a test, some type of divine test of her love for him, then she was determined not to fail.
Raja, on the other hand, seemed much more troubled by the uncertainty of their future, by what would happen next. For the past half hour he has been lying next to her on the mattress, shaking his head, talking about his parents and how he has shamed them or, alternatively, about Mexico and how they will fend for themselves down there. How will they get food? he wonders. Where will they stay? And what will happen when their money runs out?
We’ll figure that out when we get there, she tells him. It will all work out. It will all be fine. She can tell he doesn’t believe her, of course, but he’s stopped trying to resist her, too, just as he’s stopped trying to resist the notion that she will be accompanying him down there. They’d argued about it for most of the day, had argued about it to the point of tears, but finally he’d given up.
It’s your life
, he’d finally said.
If you want to do this, then I can’t stop you. There’s nothing I can do. But I want you to know that it’s not what I want for you, and it’s not what I expect
.
I know that
, she’d said, and then she’d held him, not wanting to say anything else, not wanting to give him any reason to suddenly change his mind.
In general, it seems, a part of him has given up. He has given up on fighting, given up on arguing with her, given up on any hope for a decent future. In all of the time she’d known him at Stratham, she’d never seen him like this. It had always been she who was having these little crises, she who was worrying about her parents or about some paper she hadn’t turned in or about who had said what to whom. He had always been the voice of reason, the eternal optimist. But now she can tell that something
has changed. He has fallen out of himself. He has dissolved. A part of him, a very fundamental part of him, has disappeared.
In the other room, she can hear Brandon, just back from his job, putting on music, pulling plates and glasses out of the cabinets. A moment later, there’s a knock at the door, and he sticks his head in.
“You guys hungry?” he asks.
Chloe props herself on an elbow, smiles at him. “We actually already ate,” she says, motioning toward the empty Chinese food containers on the floor. “But thanks.”
Brandon nods, then stands there for a moment. “I actually wanted to give you something,” he says, pulling a thick white envelope out of his back pocket and tossing it to her.
Opening the envelope, she sees a wad of cash inside, easily a thousand.
“What’s this?” she says.
“My contribution,” he says. “Richard should be getting you the other half tomorrow.”
At this, Raja sits up and stares at the money, but says nothing.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she says.
“It’s not really from me,” he says. “It’s more like a loan I’m giving Richard. He’s gonna pay me back and stuff, you know, later.”
She looks at him uncertainly, then back at the money. “Thanks, Brandon,” she says finally. “But like I said, you really didn’t have to do this.”
He shrugs. “It’s not a problem,” he says. “And besides, it’s your brother you should be thanking.”
She nods and sits up on the bed, places the envelope down beside her, thinking about Richard, wondering where he is, realizing that now they’re only a thousand short.
“Where is he tonight anyway?” she asks.
“Who? Richard?” Brandon shrugs. “Can’t say.” But he looks away when he says this, and she can sense that he’s hiding something.
“He’s not at Beto’s?”
“Uh, he might be,” he says, then he turns around and looks back at the kitchen. “Shit, I got water boiling. You guys wanna join me, you’re welcome to.” Then he turns around again and returns to the kitchen, closing the door behind him.
After he’s gone, Raja looks at her and sighs. “We can’t take this money,” he says.
“Why not?”
“We barely know him.”
“He’s a friend of Richard’s. And besides, Richard’s gonna pay him back.”
Raja shakes his head. “It doesn’t seem right,” he says.
And she realizes then that he’s disappointed, that a part of him had probably been holding out hope that Richard wouldn’t be able to raise the money.
“You’re mad because now I’m gonna be able to come down there with you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but I can tell.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
He looks down at his hands, shrugs, then finally stands up. “I’m gonna go out for a bit,” he says, “to get some cigarettes.”
“I’ll come with you,” she says.
“No,” he says. “Stay here.”
“Why?”
“I just want to be by myself for a while.”
She looks at him, and she can see that something in his face is cracking, giving way. She walks over and holds him.
“What’s the matter?” she says, rubbing his back, but he doesn’t answer. “Honey,” she says again, pulling him closer. “What’s the matter with you tonight?”
“It’s nothing,” he says finally, then hugs her back. “I’m fine.”
“
WHY AM I EVEN HERE
?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why am I here?”
“Today’s your appointment.”
“I know, but I shouldn’t be here.”
“Then where should you be?”
“I don’t know,” she says, “but not here.” She stares at Peterson, the mid-afternoon sunlight filling the white empty space around him, bouncing across the walls. Earlier that day he’d called her up and given her an ultimatum, told her that if she missed another appointment (it would be her third in a row), he’d have to give up her spot. But still, why had she cared? Why had she come?
“We were talking about Elson,” he continues. “You were telling me how you spent the night with him last night.”
“I did,” she says, sighing, “but not in the way you’re thinking.”
“No?”
“No,” she says. “I didn’t sleep with him. He just spent the night at my house. We slept together in the same bed. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
Peterson looks at her, says nothing, and already she regrets saying anything about it. If she weren’t feeling so vulnerable right now, so confused, if she had had her head on straight earlier, she would have never even brought it up. But suddenly she feels like she’s lost all sense of judgment. As soon as she sat down, she’d blurted it out, almost on cue, and now she realizes that she’s going to have to deal with the fallout, with Peterson, with his inevitable questions and probing.
“I was feeling vulnerable,” she continues. “I didn’t want to be by myself last night. That’s all. I had a horrible day, you know, and he came over to talk to me about it, and then suddenly it was late, and it just seemed natural that he should stay with me. That’s all it was. It was nothing more than that. There’s nothing to read into here.”
“No?”
“No.”
Peterson nods, scribbles something down on his pad. “And that’s all you want to say about it?”
“That’s all.”
“So why did you have such a horrible day?”
“That’s another story.”
“Humor me.”
She looks at him, considers what she’s told him already, then sighs. “It’s about my daughter,” she says finally. “Chloe. Things have gotten worse with her situation.”
“Worse?”
“More complicated.”
He nods.
“Yesterday some men came by the house to talk to me about her. Some detectives.”
Peterson leans forward, suddenly interested. “Detectives?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you were so upset?”
“Yes.”
“And did these men talk to Elson, too?”
“No,” she says. “Just me. They’re going to be talking to him today.”
Peterson puts down his pad. “And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what you talked to them about.”
“We’ve been through this.”
“You can’t.”
“No,” she says. “I can’t, and I won’t.”
“Because of your daughter.”
“Because of me.”
Peterson leans back now, picks up his pad, and then puts it down again. She expects him to be mad, but he’s not. He’s surprisingly calm. “Well, I’m glad you came by here at least, Cadence,” he says finally. “I think that’s something.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” he says, smiling, picking up his pen. “I actually do.”
Driving home, Cadence has a sudden desire to call up her own mother and talk to her about it, to tell her what’s happened. Throughout it all, she’s told her nothing, has barely even spoken to her. She and Elson had both decided to keep their parents out of it. But suddenly she feels a need, a desire even, to talk about it, to get another perspective. A perspective other than Elson’s or Gavin’s or Peterson’s. A female perspective, a mother’s perspective. The perspective of someone who might actually understand what she was going through.
Ever since her divorce, she’s found herself longing for female company. It was strange. Usually after a divorce, one person got all the friends, or the friends were split up evenly, but in their case, neither of them had ended up with any of their friends, which had made her wonder whether any of these friends had actually been friends to begin with. Most of their friends had been couples, and what they had done with them had been couples’ things. Now, however, she realized that nobody wanted to invite a single woman over to dinner, nobody wanted to bring a third wheel out on a date. There’d been an initial outpouring of support, of course, from the women she knew, but after a couple of months, that support had dwindled, their interest had waned. Even Cheryl Millhauser, her former best friend, had stopped returning her phone calls, had stopped answering her e-mails, had stopped inviting her over for lunch. Was divorce really such an uncommon occurrence? she wonders. Such an unforgivable offense? Or was it something else? Was it simply that she was a symbol now, a reminder of the unhappiness in their own lives, their own marriages, of what could one day happen to them?
Had she had someone to talk to, what would she have even told them about yesterday, about what happened? Even now, it seemed like a dream, something surreal, an imaginary conversation she’d had with two imaginary men. Not a real-life conversation she’d had with two real-life detectives. She’d invited them inside, and she’d been surprised at first by how friendly they’d been, by how they seemed almost apologetic about having to be there. Everything they said involved a “please” or a “thank you,” a “yes, ma’am” or a “no, ma’am.” She’d even made them some tea, shown them some pictures of Richard and Chloe as children. But then at some point the conversation had changed. She couldn’t really remember, but at
some point their friendly dialogue had turned into a formal inquisition, and “a few minutes of her time” had turned into almost half an hour.
Initially, she had almost wanted to tell them everything, but after a while it became clear to her that they were not here to help her, nor to help Chloe. They had told her some horrible things about the incident itself, about how Raja and his friend had broken into the dorm room of Tyler Beckwith and terrorized him, how there’d been a fight, a terrible fight, and how Tyler Beckwith had come out on the losing end of that fight. They’d told her about how Tyler had been rushed to the hospital, about the concussion he’d sustained, about his facial lacerations, about his three broken ribs. They’d told her about the blood they’d had to excavate from his chest cavity, about the swelling in his brain, about the heart monitor that was right now tracing his heartbeat, the ventilator that was right now, at this moment, keeping him alive.