HE HAD OWED them a lot of money and so he had offered her to them, not directly, not in a way that she could prove, but that’s what he’d done. And they had taken her. Why wouldn’t they? They had dropped her off at the hotel in case she had been needed. When she hadn’t been—needed—they had driven her in the van to the spa and had been waiting for the drugs to take full effect. She had not yet been used. Not in the way they had intended. She had been able to identify them in pictures but they were never found. At least the other girls had gotten away.
It’s always the middle of the night. Buried underground and then clawing her way out. Dirt in her mouth, the distinct grit, the taste of wet soil. In the nightmare she is trying to speak but the earth blocks her words. Dry fragments, insects, crawling to the back of her throat. She coughs up a spray of particulate world. She vomits mud.
She gets up in her sleep and walks to the window. She pushes away the drapes and puts her palms on the glass. She is standing in a T-shirt and loose pants, facing the city, hands splayed against the night. Felix is watching from the doorway, the low light from the hall outlining his boy frame. What is it? he says. Why are you screaming?
She turns around. She can feel the mud sliding down her chin, her neck, sticking to her nightgown.
Why are you opening the window?
She widens her mouth but cannot speak.
It was a long time before she could speak to anybody. Especially to Ian. In dreams he stroked her hair, and then disintegrated into night. She cried for Steve. She cried for everyone.
Once in those nights of underground dreams she had left the apartment, walked along the quiet streets, and gone to the park. She lay on the grass like a beggar or a dog and listened to the end-of-summer birds as the sun was rising. They argued and debated like philosophers who had no better place to be. She had no place else to be. She felt the cold ground. She scratched through the vivid-green grass and dug up a black clump. She put it in her mouth. It tasted like the dirt in her dreams, but slightly sweet. She felt the sharp blades of grass pressing against her T-shirt. She kicked off her sneakers and pushed her bare feet against the dewy hill. She rolled back and forth, back and forth, over the wet grass, attempting to press herself back into the earth.
When she finally agreed to see Ian he explained. He had decided the night when he had told Alix everything, the night before Steve died, that he would tell her. Tell her all of it, in spite of Steve, in spite of what he’d made Ian sign. Papers did not matter. Only she mattered, he explained. She was his child.
She had already had to comprehend so much that this new knowledge was simply another blow that she had to absorb. She took it in. She held it. She was horrified, amazed, unbelieving. He explained that it was the reason he had ended it between them, and had he known what would happen to her as a result he would never have done it that way. He would have told her that first night he had known. He would go back and change everything if he could. He would spend the rest of his life making it up to her.
The rest of his life. Was that a long time? Or not that long? Time had taken on a new meaning. Time was eternity, perceived in little bits. The rest of their lives was a long time and it was nothing.
You’re a survivor, he said to her across the table.
A survivor? She said she didn’t feel that she’d survived.
You have.
Barely.
You will.
Please.
I will do anything.
There isn’t anything for you to do.
There must be something I can do.
Like what? Give me back my youth? My sanity? My self?
The steam from her tea had stopped rising. Her hands wrapped around the cold cup. She tried to look at him for moments at a time but her eyes would drift, or dart, to the side, looking at the spot where the wall met the window, or focusing on the back of someone’s nodding head. She felt a burden, a pressure to explain herself to him. At the same time, she felt it was impossible to explain herself. This only added to her feeling of desperation, of futility.
You say you would do anything for me, will do anything, but there is nothing you can do to protect me. It’s too late. Everything is gone.
Please don’t say that, he said.
Why not?
It isn’t true.
Yes, it is.
You have your whole life ahead of you.
Is that a joke or just a cliché? She looked into the cold tea and then up at him.
It’s neither. I mean it.
You used to be funnier.
They sat in a nearly empty café. She hadn’t wanted to go to his apartment, or have him over.
Maybe I will be again someday. Funny, he said.
You act like things change.
Things do change. People can change. I’ve changed.
So have I, I guess. But I don’t think I can change back, she said.
You can change into something else.
She blew into her teacup, pointlessly. She felt another wave of pressure, a demand to ease his pain. But it was time to discard that kind of unnecessary responsibility. She experimented with telling the truth.
I can’t help you feel better about all of this, she said.
I know.
Her hair had grown longer. She wore a long loose sweater that covered her wrists, almost reached to her fingertips. Her bony fingers curled around the cup. She looked into the orange liquid.
I’m not sure that I can ever see you again.
I hope that isn’t true. But I understand.
The edges of her mouth wrinkled and drew a smile and frown simultaneously. It was a line of pure feeling, not happy or sad but living in the full emotion of the moment. It was form, not style, a form of strength.
She stood up. The scrape of her chair.
Where are you going?
I’m leaving now.
Please don’t, he said. Please don’t leave yet.
I’m leaving. I’m leaving you.
As she walked out the door her eyes squinted, darted, clenched. She caught sight of shadows on glass, the reflection of her coat, letters running backward, a sparkling wave of rhythmic chaos. The mumbled sounds of the restaurant rose in her consciousness and then quieted. Out on the street the reassuring traffic and random pedestrians calmed her nerves.
Ian watched her walk away as if she were a hidden piece of his heart that had taken shape outside of him and been hurled back with a violent force. Which of course she was.
She was gone and in her place was his love for her. The love of a parent. He let her go.