Trail of Broken Wings (40 page)

Today, I drive to San Jose and walk the streets, appreciating the diversity of people who inhabit the city. I photograph faces and interactions, capturing moments so that they can last a lifetime. Returning to what I love helps me forget what happened between David and me, and what I almost did in the bar.

My phone rings in the middle of the shoot. “This is Sonya,” I answer automatically.

It’s a nurse asking if I’m nearby. A patient has come in, a teenager with a neurological condition. Would I be able to spend some time with him this evening? I glance at my watch. Normally I would have still been in the hospital, available. “I’ll be there in fifteen,” I promise, ready to hang up.

“Oh, Sonya?” the nurse says, “Dr. Ford asked me to let you know he’s the attending.” There’s a question in her voice, curiosity as to why David would feel that was important enough to mention.

What I don’t confide in her is that David is giving me a way out. An opportunity to say no so I don’t have to see him. I don’t take it, not analyzing the reason why. “Thanks. Let him know I’ll call him as soon as I finish with the patient.”

“I’ve been playing soccer since I was a kid. You know those kid leagues where everyone gets a medal for participating?” Will is fifteen. He’s staring at the camera in his lap. He’s had three grand mal seizures in the last two days. “I’m the captain of my team.”

“You must be really good,” I say, feeling his pain from my seat next to the bed.

“Yeah, I am, actually.” He glances out the window. “It’s all I do. My dad had dreams of me becoming the next Beckham. Until the seizures started.”

“When was the first one?” I ask, unsure. I feel like a surgeon who never trained in the field but has a patient opening up in front of me, waiting for me to heal him.

“A week ago. I hit a header,” he glances at me, clearly assuming I don’t know what that means. “I tried to score a goal with my head.”

“Right.” I offer him a weak smile.

“A few minutes later, I was down on the ground, seizing.” He turns away again, his hand absently playing with the camera. “In front of everyone. My girlfriend, my friends, my dad,” he says quietly. “He’s scared I’ll never be able to play again.” He shakes his head, finally picking up the camera. “So, what’s this for?”

“A type of therapy,” I answer, reaching over to open the camera’s lens. “There are studies that show different types of therapy, including photography, can be part of the healing process. What do you think?”

“What am I supposed to take pictures of?” he asks, looking around. “The room?”

“If you want. Or we could walk around the halls, see if there’s anything interesting.” I see his hesitation, his lack of interest. “Dr. Ford thought it might help you.”

“I thought that’s what this was for,” he says, pointing to the wrap around his head with electrical probes attached, meant to study his brainwaves through the night. He hands me back the camera.

“This is meant to help in a different way,” I say, holding the camera like a lifeline. “Want to try? It might make you feel better. Maybe get you back to playing sooner rather than later,” I tease, trying to find common ground with him.

He shakes his head slightly, no. “Want to know the truth?” he asks. Before I can answer he says, “I hate soccer.”

David is not on the main floors. I ask the nurse to page him, waiting while she does. “He said he could meet you here or in his office.” She waits, with David on the other side of the phone line waiting for my response.

“Tell him I’ll be there in five.” I drop the camera in a safe spot behind the desk. I fight the anxiety that seeps through me, ordering myself to get it together. I take the empty elevator to his floor and walk quickly down the hall to his office. From a distance, I can see his door ajar, awaiting my arrival.

He’s behind his desk, reviewing a file. When he hears me, he glances up. In the second before he shutters his emotions, I see want and need in his eyes. My breath catches and I look away, staring through the window at the darkness that has fallen outside.

“He wasn’t interested in taking pictures,” I say. “He took a photography class in high school. Wasn’t his favorite.”

“I see.” He stands, coming around to the other side of the desk. “Thank you for trying.”

“What’s his prognosis?” I can’t help myself.

“We’re not sure yet.” He rubs his hand across his face. “A neurologist is scheduled to see him first thing in the morning.” He leans his weight against the desk. “We’ll have more information then.” He shakes his head, as if fearing he will fail the young man. “He’s hurting. Confused. I was hoping taking some pictures might cheer him up.”

I yearn to reach out, to offer comfort when I have none to give. What could I possibly offer another human being? “He doesn’t want to play soccer,” I reveal. David looks up in shock.

“He told you that?”

I nod. “He plays it for his dad.”

David shakes his head, puzzled. “It was all his father could focus on when they brought Will in. He must have asked me at least five times whether his son will be able to play soccer again.”

“Sometimes parents are the last ones to know what their child wants,” I murmur, not considering my words before saying them.

“Is that what happened with you?” he asks, his hands clenched around the edge of the desk. “Your dad didn’t know what you wanted?”

I want to walk—no, I want to run. To hide, to be safe. But Trisha’s revelation has left me rawer than I was, empty in a way I couldn’t imagine. When your life is a dark hole, you believe everything passes through without having an effect or making an impression. The fact that my sister’s heartache makes me want to lie down and weep forces me to realize I am not as hollow as I believed. Maybe my father hasn’t stolen everything.

Everyone must reach a point in their life when they stop running. When it is easier to stand still than to keep being chased, even if the person chasing you is only in your head. When a fire burns, it rages fast and furious, devouring everything in its wake. But when the job is done, when all that is left is smoke and ashes, you wonder what has become of the fury that propelled the flames to destroy everything they touched.

I assumed I would never stop running, never stop being one step ahead of the demons that are in constant pursuit. I accepted that I would do that for a lifetime, and I was sure that if I ever stopped I would be devoured by the memories, be haunted by those still living. But now, standing before David, it has become harder to run than ever before.

“He didn’t care,” I admit, tired of my escape. Our status quo has created so much loss, I wonder what it would be like to do it differently. To try, to trust. “He . . .” I struggle for the words, search in vain for a way to describe what he did to me, to my family. “He beat us,” I finally say—the truth, the words harder than I thought. “All the time.” I wait for the pity, the disgust, all the things that come with someone knowing you are damaged. The acceptance that the scars that cover your body and soul have shriveled you to nothing but a fragment of what you once were.

“No.” His voice is broken, shocked. He shows pity but no disgust. I look up, sure I have missed it, but his eyes are filled with warmth. “I’m so sorry.” He comes toward me, but I take a step back. He watches me, not missing a beat. “There was no one who was able to stop him?”

“No one wanted to,” I whisper, confiding in him. “In the eyes of our community, he was perfect. In the eyes of my mother, he was right.” I have revealed too much to this stranger. Given too much of myself away.

“Sonya,” he starts, but I have to stop him. I can’t accept what he is offering. It is too much for someone like me, someone who is beneath him, beneath everyone, I am sure.

“I’m just like him,” I blurt out. It is the belief that I couldn’t even admit to Trisha. When she told me her fear, I kept silent about my own.
But it is time to tell him
, a voice urges me. Once he is aware of the truth, sees past the illusion to the reality, he will run from me. I won’t have to hide anymore.

“I don’t understand,” he says, stopping.

“I’m dark, evil like him.” I turn away, wrapping my arms around myself. The room has gone cold, quiet. My breath comes in gasps as I struggle to even it out. “I read stories, watch movies of women,” I pause, scared. What has not begun between us will be over forever once I tell him. The hope of more will become impossible. The burden of my secret has always been heavy before, but with David, the weight of it has become too much to bear. Only in revealing the truth can we be free of one another.

I imagine all his diplomas crashing down around us, his crystal accolades shattering, an earthquake tearing the room into two to give me an escape. But only silence echoes off the white walls. The only sound is him waiting for me to speak. “Of women being hurt.” I laugh to fill the silence. “It’s the only way I can find release.”

Images of the men I have slept with swarm before me, each one oblivious to what was happening in my head. “When I am making love,” I pause, my eyes shutting with shame, “the only way I can have an orgasm is by imagining a woman being broken.”

I will not cry. Not now. He has to see the malevolence, all the shades of black that I am. “It’s my definition of love.” My chest is heaving with dry sobs. “But if a man ever dared to touch me that way, if a man ever actually raised a hand to me, I know I would kill him where he stood.”

I don’t remember the first time my father hit me. They say you form your first memory when you are four. If that’s the case, then I imagine he started hitting me long before my brain knew to make an imprint. The recollection I do have is when I was barely six. Like a stream searching for a river to belong to, I was sure if I became beautiful like Trisha, I too would become favored, loved by the father who barely gave me any attention. I sneaked on one of my mother’s saris and wrapped it around myself as best I could. I powdered my face with talcum and used her red lipstick to highlight my mouth. A quick
perusal in the mirror told me what my young brain needed—I had succeeded in becoming a swan.

I found him in the living room. “Look, Daddy,” I announced, twirling in all my glory. The sari proved too much for me to navigate; I tripped and fell onto him, sending his chai flying. He hit me over the head and then threw me across the room, the sari coming undone and floating over me like a sheet over a corpse. I lay there silent, in disbelief that I hadn’t succeeded when I was so sure I would.

“So, you see,” I start, watching David watch me. It is time to say good-bye. “There is nothing for you to get to know. Nothing for you to miss. I’m not good enough, and I never will be.”

MARIN

The memory of her father’s words came to Marin while she was sleeping. “It is all a game,” he had said. Marin hadn’t understood until now how important those words were. How critical the lesson was. The game wasn’t over; it hadn’t even begun. The last play she had lost. Gia and Raj had made their move, and they stood as the victors. But Marin would not lose her daughter, not now, not ever. She sat in her office, contemplating the next step with more thought than she had ever given to any of her business dealings. The answer came to her just as she feared there might not be one. It was simple, really, but she realized most things were. It was emotions that made things difficult. As long as you kept those in check, everything else would fall into place.

“Raj?” Marin says, knocking softly on his office door. He glances up, his face shuttered from revealing too much. He has been working more from home, wanting to be near Gia in case she needs anything. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.” He motions her in but stays in his seat behind his desk. “What’s going on?”

“I wanted to talk about us.” Marin begins, not breaking eye contact.

“I was under the impression there wasn’t an us.”

He is not going to make it easy on her, but that is fine. She has fought larger battles and won. “Things have been difficult; we have gone through a lot with Gia.” Marin pauses, trying to find the right words. “We’ve been married a long time. I’m not ready to give up on that yet.”

Raj falls silent, watching her carefully. Marin sees the distrust but also the hurt, and she is surprised at the emotion. “What do you propose?”