The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (77 page)

Is Mary Beth still in Nairobi?

Last I heard, said her father.

Mary Beth? said Christopher. God, how is she?

We should go see her, Daddy. On the way to the wedding.

There’s a good idea.

Ev, said Dottie, shattering his invisibility, will you come?

Oh, grand, said Jocelyn, beaming belated curiosity toward Dottie’s male companion,
her inquiring eyes probing the unexplained nature of their relationship, preempted
by the undersecretary’s cursory introduction back at the town house; Ev, a friend
of the family. Jocelyn reached across the table with a surplus of sincerity to lay
her hand atop Eville’s. Please come.

Let me check the dates, said Eville, more uncomfortable with the sudden attention
than their preoccupation and indifference, the unconscious rudeness families seemed
to generate when they gathered into their nucleus, orbited by outsiders.

Steven Chambers swiped his red-greased lips with a napkin and took out his wallet,
setting money on the table, Dottie slipped away to the restroom, and Chambers stood
up saying, Sit tight for a minute everyone, but motioning for Ev to join him. Let’s
get Dottie’s things out of your truck.

Sir, may I speak? Eville said, once they were out in the parking lot, and Chambers
said impatiently, For God’s sake. About what? The transfer was messy, Burnette unzipping
the duffel, yanking out Dottie’s clothes, grabbing her day pack from the cab, Chambers
flustered because he couldn’t find his keys, left behind inside on the table. He came
back out with the full crew, Dottie casting a chagrined doll’s face at Eville, an
offering for his plight or hers, hard to say which, helping him stuff everything into
the available space in the Mercedes’s trunk, already occupied by the couple’s luggage.
Numbed by the sudden opacity of Dottie’s eyes and her father’s irritable behavior,
he reported wooden-voiced to Steven Chambers, I think that’s it, sir. Chambers told
him to head back down 123 toward Tysons Corner, take a right on Route 7, and go a
mile to a Hilton, where a prepaid room awaited him. Burnette, flat-faced, nodded acknowledgment
of these instructions and pivoted with the practiced precision of obedience, baffled
and furious once his back was turned to the undersecretary, stomping to his truck
and climbing in, shutting the door, Dottie running over to knock on the window. He
took a breath, refusing to look at her, grimaced, and then sighed and rolled it down.

I have to go to the airport with them.

I know, said Eville.

I’ve been horrible, haven’t I? she said, searching his face for consensus.

It’s family, he said. It’s important.

And then she was back-stepping away, her hand raised to the side of her head, fingers
pantomiming a telephone, saying she would call him, and he started the engine and
drove off, convinced he had just been inducted into the Suckers Hall of Fame, certain
his episodic misadventures with the undersecretary’s daughter had been permanently
discontinued, his service ending in the customary manner, a sudden forfeiture of meaning
and utility, the voiding return to irrelevance and banality, the personnel who previously
found you necessary and vital staring at their feet at the mention of your name. He
would never see her again, he told himself, hauling his cargo out of the bed of the
truck to the elevator and up to his room, a severance that would have been almost
all right with him were he able to forget or even dismiss their days out on the island,
their night in the motel.

At midnight, though, she was knocking on his door at the Hilton, passionate with apology
and outbursts of gratitude, rattling with fucked-up rationales and nevertheless a
presence he welcomed as he never thought he might or could, his good sense unmoored
by this alchemic mess of a woman and her countervailing force—you always know better
until suddenly you don’t seem to know anything at all.

Seeing my brother Christopher was odd, she said.

You seemed glad to see him.

We were really close as kids and then one day we just weren’t.

What happened?

I don’t know. Daddy. I guess that’s what happened.

How’s that? he asked, but she was thinking in another direction.

I always thought my brother was queer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Do you have brothers and sisters?

Two brothers.

Are you close to them?

Like you, he said. I was and then I wasn’t. I’m close to my mother.

So, can I stay? she asked, less manic, glancing around at the gear cluttered around
the room. Is that a problem?

Am I aiding and abetting an act of home-front insubordination? he said, attempting
lightness.

I told you, she said. I wasn’t spending the night there.

Explain the rules. Dead? Not dead?

Explain an act of grace. I want my life returned to me. It’s mine. I’m taking it back.

And Parmentier? What about him?

He’s gone. We won’t be hearing from Jack again.

You and your father—

We’re not talking about it.

Minutes before she appeared he had taken an Oxcycontin for the recurrent pain low
in his back; now, after such a day of aggravation unscrolled from the ease of their
splendid morning, he felt incongruently mellow, sloppy with tenderness, pleased that
she came to him regardless of what she ran from. Hey. Honey, he said. Look. Shh. Sitting
down on the edge of the bed. It’s okay, I don’t care, none of that matters, and, suddenly
queasy but painless, he floated back flat and loose and she responded as he might
have hoped but for the bad timing of the opiate’s arrival in his bloodstream, leveling
him out, deboned, Dottie occupying another spectrum of energy, recharged and moving
forward, his jeans unbuckled and tugged from his legs. He fell asleep caressing her
silky head, her mouth warm and wet around his grateful penis, startled upright in
the morning by the room phone ringing, the operator announcing his wake-up call, Dottie
undressed and clinging to his bare self from behind, mumbling, We have to get up,
we have to get Daddy and take him to mass at St. Luke’s, and all Burnette could think
to say was, Fuck all that tradecraft stuff, huh.

Dottie keyed open the door to the town house to a sonic blastwave of
Rigoletto
playing top volume on the stereo from one of the upper floors, her father’s unfaltering
tenor joined in a duet with the soloist, Dottie ascending the stairs and descending
ten minutes later on her father’s arm, dressed for Sunday services but wearing a blonde
shoulder-length wig and designer sunglasses, everyone behaving with the utmost circumspection,
like coddled, overprotected amnesiacs, imminently vulnerable to the wrong word or
careless action that might trigger the memory of old grievances, and so they drove
to church like any other family carved away by time, incomplete in number and destined
for further shrinkage, filing together reverently into their pew on Sunday morning.

Ev, Chambers stage-whispered, offhanded, wickedly, into Burnette’s ear, stepping close
with jaunty arrogance as they walked back out into the sunshine an hour later. You
fucking my daughter? He chuckled, one cocksman to another, and clapped Eville on the
back and said, You lucky dog, and Eville gritted his teeth and impulsively placed
his open hand on Chambers’s chest, over his gold necktie, his hand there and gone
in an instant but the line irrevocably crossed, the slightest push of insolence, warning
the undersecretary to never speak to him this way again.

Or you will strike me down, Ev? asked Chambers, his head tilted with a taunt of gleaming
interest, and Burnette said, Yes, sir.

Dottie, ahead of them, turned around gaily and asked, What are you guys laughing about?
and Eville, his face blanched and rigid, said, I’m not laughing, am I? But she laughed
herself, scanning their confrontational expressions, ignoring them with a smirk, continuing
to the car, not about to step between them.

They went to the Joshua Tree for brunch, an Agency hangout in McLean, where the undersecretary
spent much of his time table-hopping among his fellow suits and their fleshy accessories,
the painted wives sipping mimosas, big-haired ladies smelling of Paris, his clubhouse
laugh of affability bubbling through the atmospheric clatter.

He’s like the fucking mayor, isn’t he, said Eville.

Yeah, Dottie said drily, of the underworld. So, she said, and changed the subject.
What was going on with the two of you after mass?

Nothing, said Ev. He made an inappropriate remark.

You must have noticed, she said. His behavior, it’s been strange. Lately. A bit mental.

Yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him that much.

I can see it in his eyes sometimes, she said. Slippage. Something, anyway. Ev, give
me some advice.

The wig is too much.

People up here know me as a blonde. That’s not what I meant.

Okay. The eggs Benedict.

She swatted toward him with her menu.

Advice about what?

She explained to him that despite appearances to the contrary her professional relationship
with her father was casual, advisory, and that her actual handlers, her case officer
and the little group of people in the Ops Directorate who had been running her quite
unnoticed from their closets had now flashed onto the radar of the potentates and
suddenly people on the fifth floor were talking about, and I quote, she said, the
death-wish flamboyance of what they call my stunt. They wanted her in from the field—not
so cold anymore, is it?—secured behind a desk, exploiting her language skills, analyzing
documents, fetching coffee.

Yeah? he said. And? What does your father say?

This is internecine. He’s against it, but I don’t think he has the clout. It’s all
too straightforward and petty. Inside the building, no one knows he’s actually theirs,
one of their own. More than one of their own, actually. Not just clan. More like a
chieftan, you know, with his own faction. The guys on the summit with their oxygen
bottles, two or three people—they know. Everybody else knows him as an ideological
cheerleader from Foggy Bottom with impeccable connections.

Well, Burnette said with a tight grin. I’d advise you to go rogue.

They seem to think I already have.

Flow with the go.

I love that. Rock on. Everything is happening out there. I’m prepared to take the
risks.

Copy that, he said, pausing for the waitress to set down their plates and leave. Didn’t
I hear you mention you wanted to go back east and study classical Arabic? He told
her to request an assignment that fit the profile. Let them put you in an embassy
somewhere in Indian country as an analyst and then enroll in a class in a local school
or find a tutor or something along those lines. Have it both ways, you know. Let the
bureaucracy reform you on your own terms.

Hey, she said, suddenly effervescent, will you go to Africa with me? For the wedding?

Go as what? he said. Your bodyguard?

Wouldn’t that be great.

I was there. Last year. Short mission.

Where? You never told me.

Kenya, he said. Two or three days. Jihadi pest control.

Kenya? she said. I haven’t been paying attention.

Chambers returned to the table and they ate their breakfasts garnished with Beltway
small talk and the latest gossip about the president, specifically his famously careless
propensity to knuckle-walk his way into scandals with women who proved to be stupendously
insipid. With perverse optimism, Steven wagered that the commander in chief would
one day soon discover a higher purpose for his testicles, their existence to date
limited to slinging jism into the dentally challenged mouths of trollops.

God! Daddy! That’s disgusting.

Eville’s face reddened and he said, Sir, come on now, stopping himself from voicing
any further admonishment. Chambers clipped him with an indulgent smile and continued
on, mindless of his offense.

The undersecretary predicted the president would shoot his way out of this farce,
his latest and most dire sexual folly. Watch, said Chambers. And that would be a blessing,
don’t you think, but God save us, consider the man’s target list. Haitians? Timorese?
Serbs? I’d suck him off myself in the Rose Garden if I thought it would wake him up.
He’s a weak sister, a little momma’s boy from Arkansas.

That’s really enough, said his daughter. Stop.

Rome’s burning, Kitten. Christ almighty, what do we have to do?

Eville folded his napkin over his unfinished breakfast and said he intended to drive
over to Arlington to visit his father’s grave. Dottie said she wanted to go along,
which she did, after her father declined the invitation and they dropped him back
at the town house, exchanging the Mercedes for
the pickup truck, and turned around, taking Dolly Madison Boulevard to the George
Washington Parkway, exiting at Memorial Bridge and through
the arch to sacred ground.

Like all family members of the interred, Eville had been issued a VIP pass to the
national cemetery but it sat in his odds-and-ends box in Fayetteville and so they
parked among the tourists for the long walk in. I’ve never been here before, she confessed,
her voice wavering as they hiked from one acre of hallowed ground to the next, the
nation’s sorrow a city unto itself, its resources inexhaustible. It goes on forever,
doesn’t it, she said. Eville consulted the map he had grabbed at the entrance to the
visitor’s center and guided them forward. We go left here. Then, a few minutes later,
Okay, right again and up a ways. Then he said with a catch in his voice, Two more
blocks is Vietnam, and they counted the headstones down a middle row until they were
standing above his father’s grave, perfectly surrounded by the fallen, and Dottie
took his left hand in hers, Eville kissing the fingertips of his right hand to touch
the rounded white stone of the marble marker and pass the kiss to the dead—
Dad. Hey
.