she was gone.
It was all there, on the surface, waiting. But I stopped it before it could escape out of me. ‘She’s away on a trip,’ I said to Claire. ‘She’ll be back.’
A long beat passed. The wind picked up, making the snow swirl. ‘Oh,’ Claire said softly. ‘Okay.’ She waited a few more moments, then turned and started walking into the center of the great lawn. Halfway across, she stopped and looked over her shoulder, pausing, maybe giving me another opportunity to say what she knew I needed to say. I stared at a fixed point on the ground, an ember from Claire’s cigarette.
When I finally lifted my head, Claire was all the way across the lawn, heading for the snow-dusted trees. The ache inside me was cruel and precise. I stood there for a while, my toes stiffening with cold. The church bell near Grand Army Plaza bonged out the hour. There was nothing to do but walk back. I creaked through the school gate and padded down the silent halls. The classrooms were full and preoccupied. I passed by my biology classroom; the new sub, the one that had taken over for Mr Rice, was showing a filmstrip. After Mr Rice had been asked to leave, it came out that the principal had had his eye on him for a while-there had been reports that Mr Rice had acted strangely in his other classes, too. The principal assured us that none of what Mr Rice taught us that last day-the invisible tethers of DNA, the certitude of science-was true. But I didn’t want to believe that. Wherever my mother was-walking on a sun-dappled beach, riding a street car in San Francisco, scampering down a rainy street in London-the tether around her was a literal one, a rip cord. Any minute now, it would stretch taut, and she’d snap back to us.
After school that day, I went home and stared at the buildings across the water for a while, thinking. Then, I sat down at my father’s cluttered mahogany desk and wrote Mr Rice a letter. I said I was sorry he had to leave our school, that I hoped he was all right. I wrote that I wanted to know a little more about those magical, unbreakable bonds of DNA he’d spoken about. How exactly did they hold family members together? I was looking for a little more scientific evidence to support this. If he could respond with articles, books, theories, I would be greatly appreciative.
At the bottom of the page, I signed the letter, Yours in Genetics, Summer Davis. When my father came home from a rare day at the lab, he noticed the envelope with Mr Rice’s name on it but no address. I’d told him a little about Mr Rice-just his theory, not what I believed. Without asking any questions, as if my father sensed something big in me had changed, he picked up the envelope and sealed it with a stamp. He knew the woman in charge of substitute teachers at Peninsula, he said. If I wanted, we could mail the letter to her-she’d know Mr Rice’s forwarding address.
It didn’t seem possible that my father could know such a person-he wasn’t involved with the school and hardly knew anyone outside of people he associated with at the lab. But I chose to believe this, too.
I watched as my father wrote out the woman’s address on the envelope. I watched his head disappear down our apartment building’s stairs, and I ran to the window and watched his head reappear on the street below. It was comforting to conjure up this image of him later, after he’d become so very different, so very damaged. I tried to remember him as he was right then, walking to that mailbox, protective and productive and strong.
Cobalt, Pennsylvania,
June, 1994
That winter, I would stand in front of Two World Trade and look for you. I watched people go in and out of the revolving doors, thinking you’d be among them. When you weren’t, I went down to the underground mall and brushed through the shoe stores, the Gap, Duane Reade. I kept thinking I’d find you among the ribbed V-neck sweaters, the first-aid supplies.
They’ve asked me to pinpoint pivotal times where things began to really change for me, to reconstruct my life as best I can. I remember we were at a party at the Boathouse in Central Park-a friend of yours from your new job had graduated from business school. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and when I was on my way back, I saw you sitting at the table, laughing, drinking, eating cold shrimp with a dainty little fork. And I suddenly realized-it didn’t matter I was gone. Maybe it was better. So I started just to walk down the park drive. It was the middle of a Saturday afternoon in May, close to the anniversary.
I stopped when I got to the zoo. Outside the gates, there was a man selling balloons in the shapes of animals. A group of kids ran for the turnstiles, sneakers squeaking. They were so, so young. I sat down on a bench, listening to their high, happy voices, and all the things I vowed so long ago not to think about suddenly throbbed inside of me, way too present. The flashing blue lights. The way Mark looked at me when I told the EMT what I knew. All those years later, and I still felt every ounce of his shock.
And then, suddenly, there you were. You were standing above me, hands on hips.
‘What are you doing?’ you asked. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
‘I went for a walk,’ I said.
‘Why?’ Your face was so red.
I gestured to the zoo’s cheerful gate. ‘Remember when we took Summer and Steven here?’
‘Yes.’ You said it very slowly, cautiously, as if I’d told a joke and you were waiting for the punch line.
‘Do you think all parents understand how great it is for kids to see animals?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been sitting here, watching, and every kid who has gone in is so happy. All parents understand this, right? All kids get to go to zoos?’
You turned your wedding ring around on your finger. ‘I thought you were sick. I even had Paul go into the bathroom and make sure.’
We went back to the party and explained that I’d run into an old friend and walked a ways up with him toward the reservoir. Your friends nodded and smiled and drank their drinks. The rest of the lunch, you had a hand on your bare knee, and you kept squeezing, squeezing. When you took it away once, I could see the fermata-shaped nail indentations in your skin.
After that, similar episodes came more frequently. I wasn’t where I said I would be. I wasn’t as dependable, wasn’t as cogent, couldn’t carry a conversation, missed days of work, spaced out for hours. Once, you caught me watching a Three Stooges marathon when I was supposed to be getting ready for a party. Another time you caught me on the Promenade, coaxing a baby squirrel toward my lap with a spoonful of peanut butter. I’d said I was going to the lab that day. ‘Have you been tricking me?’ you asked. ‘Have you always been this kind of person, but just hid it all this time?’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said.
‘Try,’ you said.
But it was about the same things, the things I’d already told you. And it was about the things I could only halfway tell-I was so afraid to tell it all. But maybe I should have; maybe I owed it to you. And maybe that’s why I waited for you in front of your old office building, that winter after you left-so I could come clean. Or maybe I wouldn’t have said anything, if I’d seen you. Maybe it would’ve been enough to know that you were still here, near us, close.
This is probably the part where I should tell you how I really feel. That I think what you did was terrible, and that you ruined lives, and that I’ll never forgive you. But there’s room in me to forgive, I think. Maybe, in some ways, I saw it coming. Maybe, in some ways, I understand.
‘Do