August 2011
That night of the dinner in his father’s townhouse, Jude lost track of Ella. She seemed to have suddenly vanished. He looked everywhere, running up and down the stairs calling for her, and he kept texting her. What’s up? Where are you? Why did you leave? But there was no response. Had she really left him to handle this night by himself? He kept looking, even went outside to see if for some reason she was hanging around the front stoop, maybe talking to his dad. And when she wasn’t, he went to the subway station she used, even going down to the platform and calling her name. But she wasn’t there either.
He was so tired he couldn’t think straight. He sat on the stoop, waiting for her, and found himself dozing and then sleeping, and then he jerked awake. The weather was so humid, so disgustingly heavy. What the hell time was it? He checked his phone for her texts again, and for the time. Nine at night. She wouldn’t have left so early.
He went back into the townhouse, for the AC, and into the kitchen. To his surprise, the counter was wiped clean, the tea was gone, the leaves—and how had that happened? He couldn’t remember. Whoosh, he heard. Whoosh. He followed the sound into his father’s study, and there was his father, struggling to pull himself up by the filmy window curtains, a teacup smashed to pieces on the floor. His father coughed and gasped. His hands grasped at the air and his eyes locked on Jude.
Jude grabbed his cell and called 911. By the time they answered, he was screaming.
THE WHOLE WAY in the ambulance his father wasn’t making sense. The paramedics gave him an EKG.
“Heart rate’s low,” one said.
Jude told them about his father’s cardiac condition, how he was on digitalis. The judge mumbled deliriously that he was seeing halos, and turned his head to vomit onto the floor of the ambulance.
AS SOON AS they got to the ER, the doctor looked at the EKG results and frowned.
“Does he ever mistake his meds? His digitalis? Take too many?”
Jude froze. “He never has,” he said. “That I know of.”
“Let’s get some blood tests, some levels—we’ll give him atropine. It’ll punch his heartbeat up. And we’ll measure his dioxin levels to see what’s going on.”
His father was just lying there, not moving. Jude took his hand, which felt clammy.
Then his father clutched Jude’s fingers. “I’m dying,” he said.
Jude’s eyes stung with tears. “No you aren’t,” he insisted, but he felt the cold racing up his spine.
“Your dad doesn’t mess around with herbs, supplements?” the doctor asked.
Jude couldn’t breathe. “He doesn’t believe in that stuff,” he said. He pressed himself against the wall.
“Could he die?” Jude asked in a whisper.
The doctor studied him. “You let us do our job,” he said. “We’ll do a blood panel for toxins to make sure, get the results fairly quickly. Once we get some results, we’ll know what to do.”
They unlocked the wheels on his father’s bed, and Jude followed them to the fifth-floor ICU, where the doctor squeezed his shoulder and told him to wait outside.
He sat alone in the waiting room, watching the clock on the wall. One in the morning. Then two. Then it was three a.m. and still no one came to speak to him. There were some magazines, and a TV was broadcasting weight-loss infomercials soundlessly.
Jude put his head in his hands, feeling his pulse beating through his temples. He remembered vaguely, through a haze, that he had been looking for Ella. He was sure that he had searched for her all over the house, and then outside, even walking a few blocks in each direction, and he couldn’t find her. His father must have had a heart attack, he reasoned, and he began to shake. He hated his father, but he loved him, too. He shut his eyes. Only for a moment, he told himself.
WHEN HE AWOKE, the room was bright with light. There were all sorts of people going back and forth, a commotion of carts and gurneys, people crying or laughing or just stunned, and everyone was ignoring Jude. He glanced at the clock and then jumped up. Eight in the morning! He felt himself going crazy. Why hadn’t a doctor come to tell him anything? He had this idea that if his father was all right, things would have happened quickly; but instead, they were moving through sludge. He wanted to get up, to grab a doctor, but even after his few hours of sleep, he was still so exhausted.
He waited, falling in and out of hallucinatory sleep. Finally, he jolted awake again, not knowing where he was at first. He tried to flag down a doctor or nurse, but no one could tell him anything. The receptionist reiterated that someone should be right out to speak to him. He sat down again and tried to stay awake, waiting for someone to come update him. He moved only to relieve himself in the men’s room down the hall, then to grab some food from the vending machine that he was way too tired to eat, and then later just to walk, to try to center himself and keep exhaustion at bay. Each time, he ended up back in the waiting room. Maybe this was all a nightmare and he was still asleep. He sat again, and then kept nodding.
SOMEONE TOUCHED HIS shoulder and Jude awoke, blinking, his throat so parched that he couldn’t speak at first. A nurse and two men in suits towered over him.
“Is my dad okay?” Jude asked, standing. He looked at the clock. How could it be five in the afternoon? “Why didn’t anyone wake me?” he said.
“Your father’s stable now. Sleeping,” the nurse said.
“I need to talk to the doctor,” Jude said, and then he looked at the men again. “Are you the doctors?” he asked, confused.
“Detectives,” one said, opening his coat to flash his badge. Cops? Jude thought, panicked.
“You can talk to the doctor when you come back,” the other man said. “We need you to come to the station with us, just to answer some questions, get it all down on record.”
“Get what on record?”
“You need to come with us.”
“I can’t leave my dad.”
“Yes you can, son. This is a good hospital.”
The cops stood firm, so Jude gave in and went with them.
AT THE POLICE station, Jude was put in a room with a lawyer who said that he knew Jude’s father personally. He told Jude to call him Frank.
“Your father is a good man,” Frank said. Some other cops came in—a woman, and the two detectives from the hospital. “You want some water?”
Jude nodded, and someone got him water and a package of cheese crackers.
“Tell us what you remember,” the woman said.
Jude’s mind clouded over. “I don’t—” he said, then halted.
“Why don’t you remember?” she asked. “A kid like you. You don’t want to go to prison.”
“No need to threaten,” Frank said calmly.
“I didn’t do anything!” Jude cried.
“I see,” one of the detectives said. “You know your girlfriend, Ella, is right in the room beside us. We picked her up this morning.”
Jude jumped up. “This morning? When this morning? Why didn’t you tell me?” He swallowed hard. “I have to see her.” But the detective shook his head.
“The hospital called us because they found poison in one of your dad’s labs.”
Jude’s head swam. “I thought he had a heart attack? I don’t understand why someone didn’t wake me to tell me—”
Then Jude remembered: the times he had gotten up to pee, to grab candy from a vending machine way down the hall. Doctors might have come while Jude wasn’t there. Once again, it was his fault.
“Hospitals are busy places. And your dad could have had a heart event, but you know, the lab tests apparently say something different. And when your dad stabilized a little, he said something interesting to one of the nurses. That last night, he drank some tea you and your girlfriend made.”
“Wait—” Jude said.
“Ella told us she grew it in her backyard. That means criminal intent.”
“She told you that?”
“Let’s just focus on you.”
“Please, I’m so tired. Can’t I just sleep?” Jude said.
“Yes, let’s finish this up,” Frank said.
“Soon,” one of the detectives said.
But they wouldn’t let up. They kept hounding him with the same questions—about Ella, about foxglove, about how he could make this easy for himself or he could make it hard.
It seemed like hours passed, and then another cop came in and said something to the one asking all the questions, who nodded.
“So, your father’s going to make it,” he said. “He’s turned a corner.”
Jude collapsed, banging his head on the table. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. His lids were burning. The detective hoisted him up again, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly.
Frank gestured to the door, indicating that the detectives should follow him. They stepped into the hallway. When the door opened again, only Frank came back in. This time, every muscle in his face looked relaxed and smooth.
“The cops are letting you go now,” Frank said. “There’s no real evidence against you. Nothing to charge you with.”
Jude braced his hands on the table, weak with relief. His father was okay. He could leave. And then he remembered. “Where’s Ella?” he said. “I want to see her—”
Frank looked at Jude and shook his head. “You can’t see her. She’s in a different boat than you are.”
“What boat?”
“The attempted murder boat.”
Jude felt himself reeling, so nauseous he thought he might vomit. “That can’t be true,” he said.
“It’s true,” Frank said. “She signed a confession.”
“What? Confessed to what? When?”
“She confessed. And no, you absolutely cannot see her. Go see your dad.” He said it like an order. “We think you had no part in this. You’re free to go and you should count that as a blessing.”
“I want to see the confession!”
“That’s not my call. Not yours, either,” Frank said.
Frank escorted him out of the station, then flagged a cab for him, clapping him on the shoulder and telling him to give Judge Stein his regards. All Jude could think was that something was so very wrong. He kept hearing his father’s voice yelling at him about his mother. You are responsible. You did this. You.
WHEN JUDE RETURNED to the hospital, a nurse was just coming out of his father’s room.
“Ah, there you are,” the nurse said. “He’s so lucky; he nearly died. We’ll keep him here with us for a few days so we can watch him, but he’s out of the woods. You can go in now.”
Jude’s father was hooked to an IV and dressed in a faded green hospital gown. He looked wan and tired, so small in the hulking hospital bed. Jude didn’t know what to do or say, so he just stood there. And then his father reached for his hands. “My son,” he said.
“They told me you’re going to be all right,” Jude said.
“I will be. They have to monitor me here for a few days for rebound toxicity, and I have to check in with my regular doctor.”
Jude swallowed hard. “I had to speak to the police.”
“Well, of course,” Andrew said. “I was poisoned. They can’t ignore that.”
Jude felt the room chill, and he started to cry. “I’m sorry!” he said. “I’m so sorry!”
He thought of his father teaching him how to ride a bike, holding on, assuring him he’d never let him fall. Then he thought of his mother dying in that crash, and the way his father’s face had changed when he learned that Jude had been driving.
“Jude,” Andrew said, pulling his son closer to him. “Please don’t talk that way. I know that I don’t always act like it, but I do love you.” He gripped Jude’s hand tighter.
“I know I’ve been so sad. So angry. I’ve made so many bad judgments. And I’ve been a rotten father. If I hadn’t been, then we wouldn’t be here now.”
Jude caught his breath, sobbing. The air was moving around him. I love you. His father had said I love you to him.
“We’re all going to be okay. I promise you that,” Andrew said.
“Where’s Ella? What’s going to happen to her?”
“I don’t know.”
“They told me she signed a confession. Why would she confess to something she didn’t do?”
“Listen to yourself,” Andrew said. “Listen to what you just said. There was hot water in the kettle. There were leaves in the cup.”
“I left the cup!” Jude said. “She wasn’t even in the kitchen then! She didn’t do anything! I don’t think she—”
“You don’t think—” his father said, interrupting him. “I can see that look on your face. You’re not sure, are you? Well, that confession should make you sure.”
Jude struggled to remember what happened. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t figure out the order of events that night. He thought of the missing time, the blank where the memory of that night should be, the moment when he realized Ella wasn’t there. He thought: She’d do anything for me. And then: I’d do anything for her. But oh my God, what had she done?
“I need to hear it from her,” he said. “I need to see that confession—”
“And what good will that do? How could that make you feel any better? Besides, the police don’t have to show you anything, and they won’t.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“What needs to happen.” His father’s lids began to flutter. “She confessed. That’s all I know. And I know that both of us are tired, and we both need to sleep. Especially you.”
BUT JUDE DIDN’T sleep. He couldn’t. He kept calling the hospital to make sure his dad’s condition was still stable. He lay awake alone in their big, empty townhouse. Time began to blur again. Did he visit his father that day or was it the day before? Was it the next day or the day after, when he ran past a vendor on the street and saw the newspaper headlines, blaring at him? There was his photo, his dad’s, and Ella’s.
RICH BOY, POOR GIRL. YOUNG TEMPTRESS ATTEMPTS MURDER
And beneath it:
REDHEAD CAUGHT RED-HANDED
He grabbed several different papers, wondering how it had all happened so fast. He returned home to find a TV truck parked in front of the townhouse, a newscaster saying something into a microphone and pointing to his home. His heart pounded with terror.
“I need a smoke, then let’s do another take,” the woman said, walking briskly toward the truck. Jude used the opportunity to rush behind her to the basement entrance, and quietly locked the door behind him. As soon as he was back inside, he stuffed the papers into the trash.
He called the police department, but still no one would let him see Ella’s confession. It was just as his father had said.
He stayed up, listening to the sounds outside his door, sure a cop was going to bang on it and tell him they had arrested the wrong person, that it was Jude who was going to be locked up in prison, that they knew he had made the tea, that Ella was going free.
Somehow, as always, he was to blame. And somehow, he had to make this right.
HIS FATHER CAME home three days after he had been admitted. The media continued hounding them; the phones kept ringing. Jude kept calling Ella’s phone, Helen’s too, and both kept going to voicemail. He wouldn’t answer any call unless it was from Ella. And when she didn’t call or text, he just stayed in his room, paralyzed.
The next morning, while his father slept, Jude went to the police station again, asking about Ella. “I have to see her,” he said.
“Then you better travel upstate to her prison,” the cop said, mentioning a place Jude had never heard of: Rigley Women’s Correctional Facility.
Without fanfare, the officer swiveled his body to talk to someone else.
WHEN JUDE GOT home, his father was sitting up in bed. He smiled when Jude walked in.
“I need to go see Ella,” Jude said, and his father’s smile faltered. “I know the name of the prison.”
“So do I,” his father said. “And you won’t be allowed to see her. You won’t be on any visitor’s list.”
“I can go there, though. I can stand outside and—”
“And what?” his father said. “Do you think prisons allow people to do that?”
“Did you see to that?” Jude asked quietly, and his father sighed. “Did you pull those strings?”
“Listen, Jude. We are lucky to be rid of her. We can move on with our lives now.”
But Jude couldn’t move on. He and Ella had telepathy; they could tell what the other was thinking. Alone in his room, he shut his eyes tight, reaching out to her. Nothing happened.
HE WENT TO her apartment in Queens, his second home, his real home. He pushed the buzzer to Helen’s apartment over and over but got no response. He wanted to throw himself into her arms, to hug her the way he always used to. But she wouldn’t answer. He felt raw with yearning. He wound around to the backyard so that he could look up at the apartment’s windows. But when he turned the corner, he stopped dead. The garden was gone. All that remained was plant debris strewn carelessly over a raw patch of dirt. Jude could read the message clearly: I’ll never forgive you for this.
He had destroyed Helen too.
DID MEMORIES OF Ella fade like his old T-shirts? Did he forget her when he got to Philly with his father a week later, the way he was supposed to? No. Instead, she haunted his dreams, and his waking hours too. Every time he saw someone with curly hair like Ella’s, he felt punched in the heart. Every time he showered, he didn’t just see the hummingbird tattoo they had gotten together to symbolize their love. He felt it too, as if it were burning on his arm. It reminded him of every bad thing in his life, the terrible fate of the girl he loved.
One day in the early fall, Jude found himself outside a tattoo removal parlor.
“Might hurt,” the guy said, examining his arm.
“Good,” Jude said, and shut his eyes. Make it hurt, he thought. Make it kill. He deserved it.