watching his mother’s path from his vantage point by the casket. “When this is over I swear I’m going to lock her in a room.”
“Who?” Sean tried to follow his brother’s moving gaze.
“Mom.”
“Mom? Why?”
“Why?” Wasn’t it obvious? She’s all they had left. He tugged at his tie. “Is it warm in here?”
“Very.”
Russell ran his hand across the closed casket; his father had it worst of all, stuffed inside in the suit he hated and wore only to church. Or maybe he had it best. If only Russell could give his father some air. “She has to answer some things.”
Sean offered his hand to the Speighs as they approached and gave him and his brother, the sons of Dick Mulligan, a solemn nod. “Thank you for coming.”
“Dick was a good man,” Mr. Speigh said, his nose twice the size it once was, not from the lie but from age. “It’s a shame what he d—”
“… what happened,” Mrs. Speigh corrected, tugging at her husband’s arm. No one wanted to say it out loud.
“Your father had some of my tools …”
“Of course,” Sean said. Eventually they would clean out the garage.
“Another time, Arthur.” Fed up, Mrs. Speigh gave her husband a full yank, pulling him toward the door.
Sean waited until their old neighbors were out of earshot. “What things? What does Mom have to answer?”
“Questions! She has to answer questions. Without circling the room, without walking away. Face-to-face. It’s time.”
“Now? You think now is the time. In the wake of …”
In the wake of, well, this wake.
“YES.”
“And how will she answer them, these questions, locked in a room.”
Russell stared at his brother, his eyes red, cried out, but overrun with inspiration. “I’m going to lock myself in with her.”
And that’s when the idea for The Quarantine took hold. As his mother, on her umpteenth lap, passed the table with the cups and the saucers and decided they needed restacking. As Sean removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves like a politician hitting the campaign trail. As his sister, Fiona, held everyone’s hand and listened as the same drab stories were told again and again and again. As his own head throbbed with torment and heartbreak. A quarantine. Russell wouldn’t go home, back to California. He would stay in Ithaca, secured inside a room with his mother until there were no more secrets, until they knew each other as well as two people could. As two people with the same blood should. It was the only way he could make sense of the gunshot that took half his father’s face.
It needed to shatter everything.
She moves quickly and with purpose, threading the tight corridor between a hedge maze of cubicles and the string of office doors. Her stride is serious; I have a thousand questions, but the snap to her step suggests I should select only one. Maybe two. Nope, one. I try to take everything in, to remember the details—I’m going to want to recount them later, to relive this in my head—but we’re moving so fast. I see paper. Lots of paper. And push-pins, I think, colorful ones, tacked directly into the cubicle walls, holding calendars, schedules, memos, and important lists (more paper!) in place. Marketing standees announce titles as Coming Soon, and a parade of book covers framed like art hang evenly spaced on the walls between door-frames, following me down the hall as if I’m viewing them through a zoetrope.
“I’m sorry, where are we going?” Just like that, my one question wasted. And I hate that I apologize. I have been invited here and I need to act like I belong before they figure out that I’m the wrong guy. An imposter. A dupe.
Without looking back, she says, “Conference room. End of the hall.” Then, with barely a pause, “Would you like some water, James?” The sound of my name startles me. Hers is Lila. She told me, by the bank of elevators, where we were introduced. My agent’s assistant told me it was Lisa, but that’s typical Donna. Thank goodness Lila introduced herself before I had a chance to call her by the wrong name. That would have really started things out on the wrong foot. Lila has blond hair, but not so blond that you can’t take her seriously. I really like her shoes.
“No. No water, thank you.” I can’t imagine walking this fast with a glass of water and not sloshing it everywhere, on my sleeve, or—heaven forbid—down the front of my pants. “I’m sorry I was late.” Another apology, but this one is warranted.
“You were five minutes early.”
Was I? “I’m usually ten minutes early, so in that sense I was late.”
Lila ushers me inside the last room at the end of the hall. “Here we are. Conference room.” She stares at me, and for the first time I notice her clothes are impeccably tailored. She’s serious for a beige girl. That’s what I’ve heard people call a lot of young women in publishing. I’m not fond of the term; it reeks of an unnecessary sexism. They’re called that, beige girls, because they wear understated monotones and sweaters to match. But this girl (woman!) is a different animal. Power beige. Like a café-au-lait color, or camel or ecru.
“It’s nice,” I say, about the conference room, which is stupid. It makes me sound impressed, like I’ve never seen such a room before, and of course I have. I’ve worked at pretty much every office in Midtown in a never-ending string of toxic, depressing temp jobs. This conference room is exactly like any other conference room, with a bulletin board, a whiteboard, a phone in the center of a long table (at least I think it’s a phone—it looks somewhat like a light-up game I had as a child), and a set of dry-erase markers.
“It serves a purpose.” Her enthusiasm is considerably less than mine.
Yes, conferencing. For some reason I try to sell her on it. “It has everything. Even a window.” Then, as an afterthought, “Anyone ever jumped?”
“Out the window?” She is appalled. I can tell. She tucks her hair back behind an ear while pursing her lips.
“It’s just … I can imagine these meetings get a little … I mean, I know I’m feeling …” Fraught? Power Beige is just staring at me. “I’m sorry.” I cringe. My third apology inside two minutes. “You’re not interested in my twaddle.”
For the first time in our incredibly brief relationship, she perks up. “I’m interested if you’re going to jump out the window.”
“I promise I’m not going to jump out the window.”
She exhales. Disappointed? Perhaps. “Why don’t you just have a seat, then.” We’ve officially run out of things to say.
Silence.
Which I abhor.
I pull a chair back from the table and start to sit and then stop. There’s a loud ringing in my ears similar to the one I would get as a kid after swimming endless summer hours in Lake George. “I always thought I’d be more of a pills person.”
“More twaddle?” There is the vaguest hint of a smile. She’s joking with me, letting me know to relax.
“Ha, no. It’s just, I don’t like it when other people have to clean up my messes.” Talk of suicide has gone on so long, it may be professional