It would have to be quiche. Caridad peered into the refrigerator at a dewy jug of milk, a carton of eggs, a wedge of gruyere cheese, and a cellophane bag of baby spinach leaves. She could serve the egg pie with the cantaloupe half in the fruit bin. After setting out the bowl, measuring cups, and ingredients, she flipped on the stereo. National Public Radio was broadcasting a BBC program featuring Scottish music. A lively clamor of bagpipes, fiddles, and flutes filled the kitchen, and Caridad longed to lift her knees and fling out her feet, one in front of the other, with her fingers laced behind her back, so glad was she not to have to drive to Gainesville on a Friday. Remembering that Harrison still slept, she lowered the volume, but it was too late. Footfalls pounded in the hallway, and he soon appeared at the threshold.
Harrison released a huge yawn and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t see why he has to come here. Why can’t you meet at Denny’s?”
“Lazar’s nice enough to drive out here to go to the health fair with me. The least I can do is offer him breakfast.” Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford hadn’t wanted her to represent the center at the Athens Health Fair, but Lazar supported the idea, offering to help Caridad set up the informational display. “Don’t you want to meet him?”
He shook his head. “Look at me. I’m exhausted. I haven’t been well in weeks.” Though he could use a shower, Harrison appeared well fed, even rested. Caridad hoped that having a guest would prompt him to clean up a bit, the way he used to preen himself for social events. He’d had many friends before they moved to Georgia, and from ironing his shirts to patting on aftershave, he’d enjoyed getting ready for entertaining or going out with them.
“I think you’ll like Lazar.” Caridad measured flour into the sifter. “He’s a social worker who was in the Peace Corps. He spent two years in the Dominican Republic developing a job-training program, and then he worked as a substance-abuse counselor. He’s a CASA volunteer, and he teaches GED classes at the prison in—”
“Sounds like a do-gooder to me.”
She shook her head. “He’s not like that. He’s smart and funny. Just give him a chance.”
Harrison gestured at the mixing bowl. “What are you making?”
“Quiche.”
“Of course, quiche! Do we have champagne for mimosas?”
Caridad looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”
Harrison’s eyes thickened. “You’re going to fall in love, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re going to fall in love with him and leave me.”
“Oh, Harrison!” She wiped her hands on the dish towel and rounded the counter to draw him into an embrace. “Why would you say such a thing?”
He clung to her, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Sometimes I get these feelings, and I don’t know if it’s intuition or just paranoia.”
Caridad stroked his back while wondering if such worry projected his desire to be free of her. Remembering how he’d whistle when preparing to go out with friends prompted her to see that he had been happy before they married and moved to the South.
“Why don’t you have a shower while I finish the quiche?” she said. “Lazar will be here soon, and you’ll see there’s nothing to worry about.”
Harrison pulled a tissue from his pocket and honked into it. “I guess it might be fine to have a guest.” He lumbered for the shower, and Caridad turned up the jigging music. She foresaw Harrison forging a fast friendship with Lazar, the way he had with Leslie, and in time, they would all go out to restaurants, concerts, and movies, double-dating if Lazar had a girlfriend. Maybe being with her wasn’t what depressed Harrison. What if he just missed his old life, his friends? Lazar’s visit would do him good, she was sure of it.
But later when he opened the door for Lazar, whose gingery hair flashed goldfish-bright in the sunlight pouring through the bay windows, Harrison seemed to deflate, recoiling from the threshold, his eyes hooded and furtive. By contrast, Lazar appeared alert and energetic, neatly dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeved aqua-and-gray striped shirt. With a paperback tucked under his left arm, he extended his other hand to Harrison. “I’m Lazar. You must be Harrison?”
After shaking hands, Harrison mumbled something about having to leave. He sidestepped Lazar and hurried out the door. Caridad gaped after him.
“Is everything okay?” Lazar asked.
The Lincoln’s engine roared in the carport, and Caridad shook her head. “I should have told you. Harrison is . . . unwell.” She pushed the door shut as the car backed out of the carport and peeled, tires squealing, into the street.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“He’s getting better,” Caridad said. “It takes time, though.”
Lazar nodded. Then he handed her the book. “This is for you. It’s Justine by Lawrence Durrell. I notice you like novels with women’s names, so I thought you might enjoy this one. It’s a favorite of mine.”
Caridad examined the book. Its cover depicted a view from a boat: a coastal town of whitewashed edifices shimmering across an expanse of water. “What’s it about?”
“It’s the story of these four characters in Alexandria, Egypt. One is the narrator, who meets this woman, Justine, and she introduces him to her husband, so she’s married, but they, well . . .” Lazar’s face pinkened. “I won’t spoil it for you. Just see what you think.”
The kitchen timer buzzed, and Caridad hurried to pull out the quiche, a golden-brown pie embroidered with deep green whorls of spinach. She set it on the stove top and removed her oven mitts to prod the tawny crust. It was firm to the touch, but flaky. The lime-sprinkled cantaloupe released a sweet perfume from its bowl nearby. Even if Harrison had weirdly walked out, the breakfast she’d serve Lazar should be just right.
The Athens Health Fair—fifty or more people milling about a cluster of booths and table displays—was held at the East Athens Community Park. Once she and Lazar arrived at the park, Caridad realized that Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford had been right. There was no reason for Cooperative Community Resources to be represented here, except that Caridad hadn’t wanted to drive to Gainesville and that she and Lazar looked forward to a day of sunshine at the park. Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford had yet to compose their job descriptions, and despite her recent purchase of mobile phones for their cars, the director had grown more and more reluctant to release the consultants she’d hired from the confines of the chilly basement office.
As he propped the display board on a picnic table, Lazar speculated on Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford’s reasons for this. “Maybe she’s afraid we might actually accomplish something.” Over the summer, Micah had been content tracking car deals for buyers willing to split what he saved them, and Caridad, who had finished two sonnets, was now composing an essay on Richardson’s Pamela. She told herself the piece would be helpful to Harrison for his comprehensive exams, but it could also serve as a critical writing sample if she applied to the university’s doctoral program. Caridad and Micah didn’t much mind the long empty hours at work, but being paid to do nothing rankled Lazar.
“Peabody-Lunsford’s probably worried that we’ll draw attention to the fact that all she does is waste funding,” he said.
“Do you really think so?” Caridad arrayed pamphlets and refrigerator magnets on the table along with a bowl of butterscotch disks to attract passersby. More likely, Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford suspected her trio of consultants would goof off if unsupervised, and she preferred to have them goof off where she could keep an eye on them. Or perhaps Micah had been right when he’d said, “She just doesn’t know what the fuck to do with us.” Caridad arranged ballpoint pens so these fanned out before the candy bowl. Pamphlets, magnets, and pens were all printed with the center’s logo, a key inscribed with the initials CCR and its phone number, but she had no idea why anyone would ever call the agency.
“She takes prevention too far,” Lazar said, “by preventing us from doing any kind of meaningful work.”
The morning was clear and radiant, though the early warmth promised a punishing afternoon of heat and humidity. Now the air smelled of freshly mown grass, grass that still sparkled with dewdrops. A spangled knoll rose in the distance, cresting at the tree line, a cluster of pines huddled together like hooded giants. Runners jogged by on paved trails, unfazed by the fair’s displays, many booths festooned with bold signs and balloons. The attendees were were mainly people from the nearby housing projects and retirees. A line formed at the blood pressure testing booth, and the candy dish Caridad had set out soon emptied. Just before noon, a gaggle of teenaged black girls emerged from the tree line and wandered to the picnic area, one of them holding a baby wearing pink barrettes in her short weave. The teenagers browsed various booths and displays before making their way to the picnic table where Caridad and Lazar stood talking.
“What do you all do here?” one asked as the others snatched up pens and magnets, leaving the pamphlets untouched.
“Well . . .” Caridad began, unsure of how to describe CCR’s activities because, so far, there had been none. “It’s a community resource center.”
“We’re supposed to prevent substance abuse through increasing protective factors and reducing risk factors,” Lazar said.
The girl with the baby peered into the empty candy bowl. “You got any more candy?”
“No, sorry.” On an impulse, Caridad tweaked the baby’s bare foot, as silky and plush as a satin sachet. “How old is she?”
“Six months.” She shifted the baby’s weight on her hip and grinned, baring braces. “You got to bring more candy, one of those big sacks from Sam’s.”
Her friends laughed, and she said, “Next time, get a jumbo bag of Tootsie Rolls, a’ight?”
“Where are you all from?” Lazar asked.
One gestured in the direction of the housing projects. “Parkview,” another said.
“Here.” The girl with braces thrust the baby in her arms at Caridad. “You want to hold her for a little while?”
“What?” Caridad fumbled for the baby. “Oh!”
“We’ll be right back,” she said. Giggling, the teenagers traded looks and turned away. They hustled away from the sheltered picnic area before charging up the slope and disappearing into the tree line.
The baby in Caridad’s arms watched her mother retreat with wide, unblinking eyes.
“Hope they do come back.” Lazar tickled the baby under her chin, and she crinkled her nubbin of a nose, grunting with laughter.
Caridad hoped they’d take their time before returning. The warm talc-scented bundle molded as easily as Miles had into her arms. Though she loved the little boy he had become, Caridad missed his babyhood keenly and wanted to hold on to this infant as she recalled the time when her son was this small. “Wish they’d left a bottle,” she said, “and some diapers.”
Lazar shrugged. “They’ll probably be right back.”
But they didn’t return, not for more than an hour. After the baby’s diaper leaked on Caridad’s lap, Lazar drove to the Walmart for diapers and a bottle that he filled with distilled water. After she’d changed the baby and given her the bottle, Lazar took a turn holding her while Caridad shook out her cramping arms.
He lowered himself onto the picnic bench to bounce the baby gently on his knee, and Caridad wished for a camera to take a picture of the two. Such a snapshot subverted a portrait she’d once seen in a book: the image of a tense and unsmiling black woman holding a joyous white baby. Like that daguerreotype, this composition was a study in contrasts: ginger-haired Lazar thrown into sharp relief by the dark-skinned baby in his arms, his anxious expression contrasting with the baby’s calm gaze to reveal something essential yet unnamable about what was to come—a luminant glint that dissolved as swiftly as Caridad tried to grasp it. Still, she longed to capture this image before those girlish voices sounded in the distance and the teenagers appeared to reclaim her, as they would just when the baby fell asleep, taking the bottle and diapers with them before once again vanishing into the tree line.
At the end of the next week, Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford arranged to go with her consultants to a prevention workshop in Dalton, Georgia, near the Tennessee state line. She’d booked rooms for them at the hotel where the training would be held. Though no advocate of fieldwork, Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford was avid to register and accompany consultants for such trainings, joining them only for meals provided by the trainers. After the last session ended early (dinner on your own) and Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford had slipped away, Lazar invited Caridad and Micah to visit the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, just thirty miles away.
“I’ve never been to Tennessee,” Caridad said. “I’d like to go.”
“To see what? A bunch of fish?” Micah wrinkled his nose as if he could smell these from Dalton. “I’d rather hit that used-car dealership downtown while it’s still open.”
As Micah bounded toward the parking lot, Lazar snapped his fingers. “Oh, Caridad, before I forget—I had a call from Harrison on my car phone. Did he reach you?”
She nodded. The mobile phones Mrs. Peabody-Lunsford had purchased had numbers that were sequential, and the last digit of Lazar’s was one off from Caridad’s.
“Is everything okay?”
“He was just checking in,” Caridad said. Harrison had suggested joining her in Dalton, but she’d discouraged this, claiming to be busy with the training. “Do I have time to change before the aquarium?”
“Sure.” Lazar arranged to meet her in the lobby in ten minutes. In her room, Caridad scrubbed the makeup off her face and threw on a pair of blue jeans and a white blouse. She brushed her hair and hurried downstairs to find Lazar waiting at the front desk for directions. A group of businessmen was checking in, the clerk resolving a complication with their reservation. Caridad and Lazar talked about the training while they waited, joking about the enthusiastic facilitator, when the green blur of a bank note whooshed across the floor. Lazar snatched it up. Without missing a beat, he tucked the bill—a twenty—into his shirt pocket.
“Are you going to turn that in?” Caridad asked. “To the desk clerk, I mean?”
“Nope.”
Her heart flipped.
Lazar had lifted a twenty from the floor, and Caridad bounced on the balls of her feet. Exhilaration effervesced in her, bubbling in her throat until she yearned to leap up and down. Lazar—a man who provided job training in the Dominican Republic, who was an advocate for juveniles in the justice system, and who taught basic math to convicts—had swiped twenty dollars in a hotel lobby. For all his commitment to humanitarian acts, he would take what did not belong to him. She knew this now. He’d scooped the bill up and folded it into his pocket as if it were nothing, an unthinking act of theft that was everything to her right now. Everything!
“What is it?” Lazar eyed her in a wary way.
Caridad shook her head. “I’ll tell you later. I promise I will.” Someday she’d tell him how it happened for her and that she wasn’t sorry or afraid to be first. Even if it never happened for him, though she hoped it would, Caridad had at last been gobsmacked, as a BBC radio host liked to say, utterly astounded by—what was it? Could she say it? Or would it be devalued if she tried to purchase it with an inflated and overused word? She glimpsed a green corner of the bill stashed in Lazar’s pocket, and noted the date: Thursday, August 1, 1985. Caridad glanced at the wall clock behind the check-in desk. Four seventeen.
“Still want to go?”
“I do.” She reached for his elbow, startling Lazar and surprising herself as she took his arm and entwined it with her own.
The next week, Caridad and Harrison had an appointment with Francine, the marriage counselor they’d been seeing. Once in the lamp-lit office with its homey living room furniture, and with Francine to bear witness, Caridad would tell Harrison she could no longer live with him because, because . . . Though determined to carry through with this, she faltered here, uncertain whether or not to mention Lazar. In fact, she was unsure about Lazar. After the aquarium, the great glass walls that seemed to submerge them in watery depths, neon-bright fish darting past, and after the drive back to Dalton, he’d stood at the threshold of her hotel room, drawing her close as if to kiss her. But then he’d pulled back. “I better not,” he said. “We better not.” He’d turned away to go to his own room.
After that night, Caridad made a hard choice. At work, she’d put aside her essay on Pamela to list pros and cons on notepaper. She’d debated herself aloud in the car while commuting to work. She’d even written a harshly worded letter to herself, to which she’d replied, writing herself again to apologize and explain. In the end, she saw that there was no way for her to continue living with Harrison. Miles would return to start school in less than two weeks; they would have to separate before then. Though she wanted to remain in the house—the down payment made from her settlement funds and monthly payments largely afforded by her salary—Caridad might have to relinquish it since she’d be the one to instigate the separation and it was closer to the university Harrison attended than to the center where she worked.
In the antechamber to Francine’s office, Caridad sat reading Justine, her eyes tracing and retracing the same passage, a journal entry of Justine’s: “‘Idle,’ she writes, ‘to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts; it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them . . . All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point—for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.’” She glanced up, her face warming as if Harrison, beside her, could see how these words struck her. But he pored over an issue of Family Circle, engrossed in an article on backyard barbecuing.
A skeletally thin man stepped out of the inner office and nodded to her on his way to the door. Moments later, Francine appeared to summon them. “Come on in,” she said. “I hope you all don’t mind if I eat my salad while we talk.” She was a statuesque brunette who favored brocade jackets in neutral colors—mauve, taupe, puce—padded blazers that made her look upholstered, comfortable as an armchair.
“How are you two doing this week?” she asked once Caridad had settled in a wicker seat near the floor lamp and Harrison sank into the lilac-patterned couch.
“I have to say something,” Caridad blurted out, her heart pummeling her throat.
Francine held her plastic fork aloft. “What is it?”
“I’ve had to make a hard decision.” She turned to Harrison. “I’ve thought about this a lot, and I see now that I can’t live with you anymore.”
He groaned and sank his face into his hands. “I knew it. I knew this would happen.”
“What’s brought this on?” Francine asked.
Harrison raised his head. “Go on, tell her. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“I’m speaking to Caridad.”
“I can’t stay with Harrison. I’ve tried—”
“That’s a lie.”
“Harrison, please let her speak.”
Caridad dropped her gaze to her lap. The floral sundress she wore had a brownish splotch—soy sauce?—near the hemline. She licked a fingertip and daubed at the spot. “That’s it. I want a separation. One of us will have to move out.”
Harrison rubbed his jaw, issuing a raspy sound. “I expected this.” He gazed at a framed diploma on the wall as if addressing it. “Now I have something to say, something to report, really. Francine, you’ll want to write this down.”
The counselor cast a regretful look at her salad. “Is it really—”
“Write. This. Down.”
Francine pulled her writing pad near and picked up her pen.
“I witnessed my soon-to-be estranged wife, Caridad McCann,” he said, “I witnessed this woman commit a criminal act.”
Caridad perched on the rim of the wicker seat, leaning forward. Her ears throbbed, a metronomic plumph-plumph-plumph measuring out dull beats. What would he say? That she redeemed coupons at the supermarket past their expiration dates? That she’d accidentally brought an unreturned library book with her from California and hadn’t mailed it back yet?
Harrison pointed a long finger at Caridad, as if auditioning for a role in a courtroom melodrama, and deepened his voice. “I saw her molest her eight-year-old son.”
Caridad drew a sharp breath. The small room seemed to shift, the walls shuddering and the carpeted floor lurching like an abruptly halted Ferris wheel ride that left her dangling in dizzying disbelief. She shook her head to clear her ears. Surely, he hadn’t said what she thought she’d heard. Impossible!
But Francine said, “This is a very serious accusation. Are you sure about it?”
With a sad but satisfied expression on his jut-jawed face, Harrison nodded.
“You’re insane.” Caridad gawked at Harrison. “You really are mentally ill.”
“You may not know this,” Francine told him, “but I am required by law to report this to Child Protective Services and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”
Incredulity and outrage now collided in Caridad. Did he have any idea what he was doing? Not just to her, but to Miles? She considered what Daniel might do with such information. Caridad could lose her son!
His lips compressed in distaste, Harrison nodded again.
“So I’ll need details. When and where did this happen?” Francine took up her pen again. “And why did you wait until now to bring it up?”
Caridad stared at him, as if observing a grotesque transformation, the sight of someone either losing his mind or behaving with unfathomable malevolence. “Every man is made of clay and daimon,” Justine observes in Durrell’s novel. In Harrison, Caridad had seen plenty of clay. Was this a glimpse of daimon, his shadow beast?
His jaw loosened, his eyes shifting back and forth in momentary confusion. “Uh, it was over a year ago, when we were living in California. I saw her touching Miles, and I told her to stop. I said I’d call the authorities and—”
“If it happened in California, then that’s not a matter for the GBI,” Francine told him.
“And—wait—it happened here, too, the touching. I saw her touch the boy.” His voice broke. “It started in California, but she’s done it here, too.”
Caridad met Francine’s eyes and shook her head again. How could anyone believe this?
“If you witnessed this and did nothing, you may be liable for neglect or charged as an accessory,” Francine told him.
Harrison tilted his head back and gazed at the ceiling, his eyes tracking back and forth as if he were reading a script—the words he ought to say—written on it. “I always made her stop. I tried to protect him.”
Caridad rose, clutching her book and bag. She had to get out of this room, the mad scene unfolding in it. The walls of the cozy office drew close, the flower-printed upholstery and curtains grew loud and mocking, the atmosphere charged with pressure. Caridad struggled to breathe. She needed open space, fresh air, and outdoor sounds to flush out Harrison’s lies.
“Where are you going?” Francine asked her.
“I can’t be here,” Caridad said. “He’s unwell. His mind is unbalanced, and he’s being very, very . . . hazardous. I won’t stay for this.”
Francine sighed. “I’ll have to make a report.” She looked at Harrison. “False accusations are also punishable. If asked to testify, I will say that I don’t believe you. Still, I have to report it.”
“Good,” Harrison said. “I want everyone to know the truth.”
Caridad turned for the door, worried that he might stand to follow her, but he remained on the couch. “You can’t take the car,” he said. “I’ll be stranded.”
“That’s your problem,” Caridad told him, and she stepped out into the waiting area.
Harrison’s voice rang out. “Did you get that? Add car theft to your report.”
“Stolen cars are not my concern,” Francine said, her voice weary.
Caridad drove the Mustang, Harrison’s car, back to their house. She would leave it there for him, the keys on the kitchen table. Her notions about community property were sketchy, but Caridad had no doubt that he would try to have her arrested if he did not find the Mustang parked alongside the Lincoln when he returned home. She pulled out a telephone book to look up the local cab company’s number. In this small college town, cabdrivers picked up two or three fares in one trip. It was likely the cab that collected her would arrive to drop Harrison at home. Still, after he climbed out, she would take the taxi to a hotel and stay there until she figured out what to do next.
Over the phone, the dispatcher told Caridad that a cab would arrive for her in about forty-five minutes. While she waited, Caridad threw clothes into an oversized trash bag and placed toiletries in her carryall. She was gathering a few books when a fist pounded on the kitchen door. Relieved that this was not Harrison, who would have let himself in with his key, she swung the door open to find Lazar standing at the threshold. Her heart squeezed, and she again felt overwhelmed by incredulity, much like the breach of reality she’d experienced when Harrison made his false accusation. “What,” she said, “why?”
“You’re here,” Lazar said. “I wasn’t sure, but—”
“Wait—stop.” Caridad raised a palm as if to halt the flow of confounding events. “Not to be rude, but why are you here?”
“Harrison called me on the mobile phone,” Lazar said.
“Harrison called you?”
“Yeah, I was kind of surprised,” Lazar said. “I was heading to my cousin’s house in Oconee when I got his call. He was saying some pretty wild stuff. I thought he was drunk. I hung up and tried to reach you in your car. You didn’t answer, so I thought I’d stop by to see if you’re all right.”
“I’m okay. I’m just waiting for a cab to take me to a hotel.”
Lazar tilted his head toward the carport. “Your car’s not working?”
“It’s not my car anymore.”
“Look, I can give you a ride.”
Caridad pulled the door wide, and Lazar stepped in to help her load her belongings into the trunk of his small white car. Once they pulled onto the street, Caridad caught sight of a red-and-white checked cab approaching, the blinker signaling to turn into her driveway.
As Lazar drove them to the hotel in silence, Caridad studied the vista scrolling past: the iron works, the car dealership, the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall, the title-pawn office, the hot-wings shack. She was snapping mental pictures, so sure was she that she would never return to the house she had paid for, except to collect the belongings she’d left behind. Hawthorne Avenue to the Atlanta Highway to Broad Street: the psychoeducational center, the Baptist church, the video rental shop, the gas station, package store, gas station. Before reaching the hotel, Lazar turned to her. “What all happened? Can you tell me?”
She shook her head.
“Say, why don’t you come over to my cousin’s house with me for supper?”
“I couldn’t—”
“I already called her and said you might come. You’ll like her and her husband. Just come on with me. It’ll be good to get away from things for a while.”
The thought of an empty hotel room held little appeal for Caridad, who might be tempted to call Harrison to reason with him and wind up making things worse. “You’ll take me to the hotel after?”
“If you want, or you can come with me to Columbus. I’ve got an advocacy case out there in the morning. And it’s not because you’re sad or because hotels are expensive. I swear it’s not. It’s because I really want you to go with me.”
“To Columbus?”
“That’s right,” Lazar said with a smile. “To Columbus. You don’t have to decide right now.”
During the drive to Oconee, Caridad again stared out the window as kudzu-covered houses, pine forests, and then fields streamed past the passenger-side window. “Bad decisions,” she murmured.
“What’s that?” Lazar asked.
“I have a habit,” she said, “of making bad decisions.”
“So what?” Lazar shrugged. “Everyone makes poor choices. The question is who’s harmed by these?”
Caridad thought of Harrison, Jorge, Seth, Nash, Gray, Carl, and even Daniel. Had she harmed them, or—as the narrator considers in regard to Justine in the novel—had she pushed them to change? “But those she harmed most,” Durrell wrote of Justine, “she made fruitful. She expelled people from their old selves. It was bound to hurt . . .” While Caridad doubted the men she’d left had changed much, this idea intrigued her.
In a low voice, Lazar began telling Caridad of a time when he was near the Haitian border in a jeep he’d rented for sightseeing. One of the men in the job-training program had accompanied him as a guide. Along the way, they stopped for an obstruction in the road, and bandits emerged from the jungle, bearing guns and machetes. They demanded the keys to the jeep. “I refused,” Lazar said. “I didn’t want to lose the rental car. I thought, what can they do to me? They were so raggedy and young, barely teenagers.”
He offered them money instead. But as Lazar reached for his wallet, a blast sounded and his guide dropped beside him. The discharge, likely accidental, frightened the bandits, dispersing them into the jungle. Lazar rushed his companion to town for medical help. “Thank god the bullet grazed his scalp, and he’s okay now, but he could have been blinded. He could have been killed.” Lazar shook his head. “I should have given them the damn keys. You want to talk about bad decisions. There’s one that haunts me to this day.” He turned to Caridad. “You ever make a decision that dangerous, that harmful to another person?”
Who had her choices endangered? Miles, of course—her own son. The risk was greatest for him, but would her choices harm him? He was happy and bright, and she had woven for him a sturdy network of family and friends. Risk factors and protective factors. The jury was still out on the balance of these, and it would be for the duration of his life. When Harrison accused her of assaulting Miles, he’d prodded a tender place of conscience. Of course, she’d never molested her son. That was the cruelly vengeful product of Harrison’s warped imagining. Despite this, the underlying accusation stung: Had she harmed Miles? Was she harming him still with her choices?
Lazar again lapsed into silence, and Caridad continued gazing out the window. They passed church after church. The South was lousy with churches and fast-food restaurants and dollar stores and auto-repair shops, a few of these offering “Christian discounts.” Yet more churches loomed ahead and a revival tent appeared, a great white canvas shimmering in a dusky field. Back 2 the Bible, the banner snapping near the highway read. If Caridad were to ask the people milling toward the tent what she should do, she imagined most would urge her to return to Harrison, to make the marriage work. Good women make hard sacrifices. Caridad remembered how Esperanza had struggled in the early years of her marriage. “I have to make it work for Mimi’s sake,” she’d say when Felicia urged her to leave Reynaldo. What an example she was setting for her daughter, who would grow up expecting and accepting mistreatment. It was a lousy legacy to pass from mother to daughter or from mother to son.
Wasn’t it better to walk away, to recognize an irredeemable situation and to leave it behind? In the novel, Justine laments that there is no choice. “You talk as if there was a choice,” she tells her lover. “We are not strong or evil enough to exercise choice.” Justine was wrong. There were more choices now than when Anna Karenina threw herself under a train or Madame Bovary swallowed arsenic or Edna Pontellier swam out too far to return. Caridad cast a sidelong glance at Lazar as he drove, at his well-defined profile, with the straight nose and full lips, the reddish hair that he flattened with gel. He was a slow and cautious driver. He would wait and watch and think before deciding anything.
Caridad cleared her throat. “Here’s what happened.”
Columbus. The swollen cloud canopy, the head-thrumming heat, the paved river walk winding along the green-gray Chattahoochee, the long-legged herons skimming over the water, the house where Carson McCullers lived, the art and history museum, the small country store and sandwich shop, the restaurant nightclub where Caridad and Lazar shared a bowl of blue she-crab soup and then blackened catfish while a drunken comic insulted diners from the stage, the immaculate hotel room where Caridad discovered the quiet thrill of whispered words, gentle touches. Again, she did not mind the imbalance of desire, knowing that she wanted him more than he wanted her.
When Caridad and Lazar returned from Columbus, he drove her back to the house she shared with Harrison to collect the belongings she’d left behind. Lazar suggested that she stay at his apartment in Atlanta. Caridad didn’t want Miles to return to live with her in the home of someone he’d never met, but she might stay with Lazar until she found a place of her own. As soon as they entered the city limits, apprehension overtook her. What if Harrison barred the door and refused to admit her? What if he created a scene? What if after Francine filed her report, the police were waiting to arrest her? Lazar now steered his small white car toward the ranch-style house in Athens, her house, as she’d come to think of it, nosing it into the drive. The empty oil-splotched carport appeared, and within that, the front door stood open. Though it was early afternoon, the lights in every window burned bright.
He pulled into the carport and turned off the ignition. “Wait while I check things out.”
But Caridad climbed out and followed him into the house. The dining table and chairs were missing from the kitchen, cupboards were open and empty, a lidless jar of mayonnaise stood amid breadcrumbs on the counter, releasing a rancid odor. Green flies buzzed about, alighting on the rim of the mayonnaise jar. Lazar and Caridad wandered through the overwarm house, one hollow room after another—nothing remained but the furniture in Miles’s room and Caridad’s clothing and miscellaneous belongings, which were strewn about as if in a ransacking.
“My books!” Caridad stood before empty bookshelves that gaped like mouths with all their teeth yanked. “He took my books.” A feeling rose in Caridad like a bubble that she expected to pop. She waited for anger or grief, but all she experienced was that bubble expanding, the hollowness of it empty as any sorrow she had known. In the bedroom, they found a note. Don’t bother trying to find me, it read. I’m leaving this wretched place to spend my life with people who love me, who need and appreciate me. Find someone else to destroy. Harrison.
“He’s moved in with his parents, I bet,” Caridad told Lazar. Harrison was entitled, if he was giving up his claim to the house, to take the furniture and pay to store it, even if this was done in spite. But he had no right to take her books—and not just her books, but her own words, too, written in the margins of their pages. For Caridad, who had never kept a journal, these books held the record of her thoughts and ideas.
“What will you do now?”
“I’ll stay here.” Caridad gazed about the empty bedroom, thinking about the furniture she’d have to buy—a bed for herself, a kitchen table and chairs, a couch, a television. She and Miles would spread a blanket on the floor for picnic-style meals. They’d sit cross-legged on the carpet in the living room and pretend they were camping indoors. “I always liked this little house.” She stretched out her arms as if to embrace its empty rooms.
In thumping rain, the wiper blades sluicing water from the windshield, Caridad threaded a cautious route toward the airport in the Honda that Micah helped her purchase at a repo auction. This used compact was nearly as nice as the car she’d bought when she managed the Encino bookstore, the car that was totaled by Malaysian tourists years ago. Caridad parked it in the garage structure, imagining Miles’s surprise at its shiny newness. Over the phone, she had told him that Harrison had moved out, that he’d no longer be living with them, and Miles had been strangely subdued by this news. “Will we ever see him again?” he’d asked, even though in the end, he hadn’t liked Harrison much.
Caridad, hoping that they would not, said, “We might.”
A few days ago, Caridad had run into Francine at the supermarket. After exchanging greetings, Francine placed cool fingers on Caridad’s wrist. “You know, I never reported that nonsense.” She had talked to Harrison for a while after Caridad left her office. When she questioned him closely, he’d become confused about the details and wound up contradicting himself. “He admitted making it up,” she’d told Caridad as they waited in line to check out. Harrison had withdrawn his accusation, asking Francine not to pursue it.
Caridad wondered how Miles would adjust to Harrison’s absence as she wove through the milling crowds toward baggage claim, where she’d arranged to meet him and Felicia, who’d accompanied him for the flight and a short visit. And now Caridad glimpsed Felicia’s harassed-looking face among the throng emerging from the gate area. Her gaze swept down, and there he was—Miles! His handsome face bloomed with a wide grin. He dropped his aunt’s hand and dashed through the crowd to throw himself into his mother’s arms. Caridad crouched to catch him. “I missed you. I missed you. I missed you,” he said. He buried his face in the hollow of her shoulder, his thick black hair tickling her chin. She held him close, inhaling deep and familiar draughts of his sweetly sour scent.
“Next time, Mommy,” he said. “Next time, come with me, okay?”
“I will,” Caridad said. “I promise.”
Felicia approached, dragging a rolling bag behind her. “This airport is insanely crowded and noisy as hell.” She cut her eyes to Caridad, as if to blame her for this.
“Let me get this straight,” Caridad said as she reeled Felicia into an embrace. “You’ve just come from LAX, and you think this place is chaotic?” She winked at Miles and took her sister’s bag, leading them to the carousel that would disgorge the rest of their luggage.
As Caridad steered the small car into the driveway of her house in Athens, its headlights jounced over the lawn, illuminating the overgrown grass, the ornamental pear tree, the azalea bushes, and a large rain-soaked carton that had been deposited near the front door in her absence. After they unloaded the car, Felicia helped Caridad drag the box inside. She sawed open its sealed flaps with a plastic knife. “What’s with the no silverware?” Felicia asked. The box bore a sticker with Harrison’s parents’ return address, and it contained dozens of books—Caridad’s books that he’d taken with him when he moved out. Their covers were water-soaked and warped, the pages pocked and blurry. In the margins, her pencil marks had faded and the notes she’d penned in ink had bled—most of them unreadable now.
“You’ve got to throw this box out or the mildew will spread.” Felicia glanced about. “And what’s with the no-furniture look? Don’t tell me that motherfucker took everything.”
From his bedroom, they heard Miles cry out, “My bed, my bed! I’ve missed you so much, my sweet, sweet bed!”
“Everything but Miles’s stuff,” Caridad said in a low voice. “At least he left that.”
“So what are we supposed to sleep on?”
“I bought an air mattress.”
“Great.” Felicia toed the waterlogged box. “Want me to help you drag it back out?”
“No!” She pulled out books and set these on the floor, pages splayed. “If I open them up, they’ll dry out. Tomorrow I’ll get a fan. Help me, will you?”
Felicia grumbled, but she, too, began drawing books out of the soggy carton and opening them up so that the water would evaporate from their buckled pages.
After putting Miles to bed and settling with Felicia on the air mattress, Caridad had trouble falling asleep. They had stayed up late to help Miles adjust to the time change, and when he’d gone to sleep, she and Felicia shared a pot of tea, sitting cross-legged on the living room carpet. Felicia told of plans for her upcoming wedding, which had been delayed by the lingering illness and death of her fiance’s father, and confided in Caridad her worries about their mother and sister. Esperanza had recently been diagnosed with hypertension, and Reynaldo, after years of good behavior, had started drinking again. Esperanza, who had moved back in with Reynaldo some time ago, was ready to leave him again. “And Mama’s not doing great,” Felicia had said. “She’s got almost no circulation in her feet and her glaucoma’s so bad she’s homicidal on the road, but she refuses to retire, so the neighbor dude, old Nevelson, says he’ll drive her to work when school starts. And now this business with you . . .”
As expected, Felicia blasted Caridad for marrying and moving away with Harrison, for the furnitureless house, for the concern she caused, and again for the chaotic airport and its distance from Athens. “The fucking drive here from the airport was nearly as long as the flight!” she’d said. “Why do you have to live here anyway? Didn’t you just move here for that asshole, so he could go to grad school? You should move back home with Miles.”
“I can’t,” Caridad told her, thinking of Miles returning to another year at the same school, to his friends there and in the neighborhood. She also thought of Lazar, and this house, her house. “We live here now.”
Felicia had laid into her for deserting their family, for not helping out with their mother, for being selfish and short-sighted and stupid, but now her hard words had little impact on Caridad. She’d already had a similar conversation over the telephone with Leslie, who had been kinder and more restrained, but who, in the end, had grown just as frustrated as Felicia.
“I have to do everything,” Felicia said. “I have to take care of everyone.”
But Caridad knew otherwise. Felicia’s fiancé had long been recruited to help her out. Since he played music at night and was free in the daytime, he took Mama to medical appointments and ran errands for the household to which he did not yet belong. Unlike Caridad, Felicia had chosen once and wisely—her prettiness protected by prickliness the way cactus fruit is guarded by spiny needles. In this way, she had found a useful and devoted man and had not wasted time with any others.
Hours later, her mind a busy hive, Caridad rose from the air mattress, careful not to disturb her sleeping sister, and padded to the front room where the damp books were arrayed on the floor. She flicked on a lamp to check these for dryness. Caridad found the novel that had been given to her by Esperanza in the hospital, the used copy of Moll Flanders. Caridad fanned its pages before flipping to the ending, and there she made out a three-word note scribbled in the margin, an annotation to countermand the book’s pious ending—the heroine’s resolve to repent for wicked living. The barely legible phrase called back that night in South Carolina, the amber glow of the night-light and this nearly forgotten message penciled in as a reminder, a promise to Caridad from a former and foresighted self: You are loved.
Then she rearranged the books, turning pages to expose these to the air. No matter if the covers remained warped or if the pulpy mess of pages became brittle—Dreiser, Nabokov, Tolstoy, Defoe, Lawrence, Shakespeare, James, Durrell, Flaubert, Hardy, Richardson, and Chekhov—Caridad would keep these until she could, one by one, replace them. She would buy two copies of each book. They would stand on bookshelves in her office at the university where she would teach and in her home. When Miles was grown, she’d arrange them in the house she might one day share with Lazar, and in this way, she’d keep them with her always, books by all the dead men she had loved.