Seven Months after the Accident
OCTOBER 1983
I finally tell my mother about Jude’s appearance at the market, expecting her to be saddened, but instead she seems angry on my behalf. Why does Jude continue to torture and taunt me, after I’ve made it clear I want nothing to do with her? Why is Jude intruding upon my new life and attempting to drag me back into the old? She had been eager for Jude to return, too, but now enough is enough; my sister has done nothing but lie and connive and try to interfere with my burgeoning happiness and peace. Let’s make a pact, darling Katherine, to never let Judith come between us. It’s a miracle we’ve found each other, and she won’t abide losing me again.
When I visit Richard at his stall, he has a more nuanced take. “Jude must have some regrets, just like everyone else,” he says. “Whatever happened between you is clearly complicated. You’ve been through a lot, and you need to act in your own best interests. Your brain is still healing. You’re still navigating your new reality. Try not to stress yourself out over a past you can’t remember.”
His words stay with me, and I realize that he’s reinforced the true goal of my recovery: focus not on excavation work, but construction work. The question shouldn’t be What have I done? but Who am I? All of those old epiphanies dust themselves off and reassert themselves in my mind:
I am a person who throws parties and likes beer.
I am a person who appreciates certain private devices.
I am a person who won’t be told what to do.
I am a person who takes risks.
I am a person who likes to keep parts of herself hidden.
I am a person who can’t afford to lose.
I am a person who has played cards.
I am a person capable of losing control in unpredictable and dangerous ways.
I am a person who likes stories that strangers tell.
I am a person who is stronger than I know.
I am a person who will do anything to define herself.
I am a person capable of handling herself in any situation.
I am a person who appreciates a shortcut.
I am a person who is being solved.
I am a person unafraid to do the thing that nearly killed me.
I am a person who will never speak to my twin again.
I am a person who finally cares more about the future than the past.
And the one that still worries me: I am a person who will believe anything I’m told.
On Friday, one week after Jude came in disguise to the market, I find myself at Richard’s stall near closing time. It had been an unseasonably cold day and less busy than usual, and the dealers are calling out to each other, boasting about new finds and telling dumb jokes of the trade: “You know when you pay a lot for an antique chair and then discover that the seller had just roughed it up themselves? That’s distressing!” I spot Richard polishing and packing the most valuable of his guns, and clear my throat when I reach the display.
“Can I help you?” He looks up and smiles when he sees me.
I transform my voice into Verona’s smokey growl: “Today I bumped into a man who sold me an antique globe.”
“Let me guess,” Richard says, rubbing his chin. “And now you think it’s a small world.”
“You got me,” I say in my own voice, and fish a comb from my purse. “Can I interest you in any puns about hair looms?”
“Enough!” he says. “I can’t let you become a total dork like the rest of us. After you help Verona pack up, how about an early dinner? I made a bitchin’ jambalaya last night.”
“Sounds good, but if you say bitchin’ again, I’m out of there.”
We shake hands.
Richard lives about a ten-minute walk from the market, just off the main road in the town center, in an old stone dwelling perched near the bank of a river. The front yard is landscaped with mature hydrangeas and rose bushes with no blooms. “Those were gorgeous until fairly recently,” he says. “But for whatever reason, someone decided to take an axe to them.” I want to ask if he thinks it’s the same person who took out his eye, but stop myself just in time. He respects my boundaries, and I should respect his.
Inside, the decor is a peculiar blend of modern and antique, suave bachelor and eccentric professor. A full suit of medieval armor keeps watch by a dart board. A baroque grandfather clock stands next to a hanging macramé chair draped in tea lights. A strange sort of glass lamp with floating neon blobs sits atop a steel desk. In an alcove near the recreation room, a floor-to-ceiling cabinet showcasing antique guns faces a wall of rare coins. He gives me the full tour, including the bedroom, which features a tufted leather headboard and a wraparound shelf lined with soldier figurines, representing every war.
“One of my ancestors fought alongside Washington at the Battle of Brandywine,” he says. “Brigadier General Sebastian Vance.”
“Is that your last name?”
“It is indeed. There’s a long line of Sebastian Vances, and it looks like I’ll be the end of it.”
“You don’t want children?”
“I love kids, but I’m not good with them. I’m doing my nonexistent children a favor, I’m certain of it.”
Something in his tone made me think of Sab, who was so eager to have kids he’d already chosen their prospective names and dream professions: his son, Felix, the orthopedic surgeon; his daughter, Lidia, the Wall Street mogul. I feel something entirely new, something that the accident had stolen from me; enough time has passed for it to reappear in my cache of emotions. I think Jude would call it nostalgia.
In the hallway I pause before a cluster of photographs, some sepia-toned and wrinkled in their frames, others in color and intact. At the sight of one of them my breath turns cold in my chest.
Long, dark hair. Very pale skin. If the photograph could walk, it would have a pronounced limp.
It’s Nancy, the girl who followed me. Jude’s loan shark. The girl who sent me to an abandoned house where The Rabbit Hole is scrawled along one wall. The girl I spoke to at the wine bar, who asked me how much I knew about myself. An older version of the girl in the pictures he’d showed me at the market; she was standing between me and Jude, wearing a scorpion costume, her smile accentuating her witchy chin.
He follows my pointed finger. “Violet. My sister’s daughter. My sister was—is—an alcoholic, so I’d take Violet in for long stretches of time. Her father was never in the picture. As I mentioned at the market, she’s one of my regrets. But we still talk from time to time. She doesn’t really have anyone else. I enjoy her company, and she enjoys my money.”
Two frames farther, there’s a picture of Verona and Richard in the front of the house, their hands clasped together and raised in some private victory. I wonder if it was taken before or after their fling.
“Have I been in this house before?” I ask.
I am chilled by my own question.
“You were, a long time ago,” he says. “I’d have gatherings with our circle of friends, and sometimes your mom would bring you and Jude, and you’d play all night with Violet.”
“With Violet,” I repeat. I try to picture us, playing hide and seek in these cavernous rooms, our deep abiding friendship with Jude’s future loan shark. I think, Here’s yet another lie Jude didn’t hesitate to tell me.
I feel weak, and throw my hand against the wall for support. I’ve been in this house before. I have a very intimate history with this man, with his family. I beg my brain to flash me something, anything, that will color in the outlines of my past.
“I’m sorry,” Richard says. “I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. I hope it helps you when I say it was a very happy time in your life.”
“It might help me in a bit,” I tell him. “But right now I need to sit down.”
“Let’s go have my definitely not-bitchin’ jambalaya,” he says, and takes my arm. He leads me to a large acrylic dining table and pulls out a chair. Its arms are made of twisted pieces of animal horns, and the face of a gargoyle sits atop a very high back, watching over us.
“It doesn’t bite, I promise,” he says. “Dig in.”
For a few moments we eat in comfortable silence, and then he sets down his spoon.
“Can I ask you something personal?” he says. “I know we’ve been avoiding certain topics, but I think we’re good friends now, right? Good friends who now have more porous boundaries?”
I feel my back go rigid, and then relax. How ironic that Jude had transferred to me her inherent suspicion and paranoia, when her behavior was the most suspect of all.
“Yes, you can ask,” I tell him. “And I might even answer.”
He hesitates, and then says: “Tell me about your accident. Do you know where you had been? Where you were going to? What you had done? What was it like to realize your memory was gone?”
“You’re cheating. That was four questions.”
He smiles. “What can I say? It’s now in your past, and the past is my specialty.”
I look at his face, assessing it as though it’s one of my mother’s jewels, holding it up to the light, deciding if it’s worth my investment. The pupil of his uncovered eye dilates, signaling interest.
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I say, “with the caveat that what I know is based on the word of an incredibly troubled and unreliable person.”
“Your twin, Jude—”
I shake my head. “I don’t talk about Jude anymore. That boundary is still solid.”
“Understood,” he says, and I believe him.
I close my eyes and tell him about the accident—not just tell him but relive it, as though I have perfect recall on every detail—my dive into the windshield, my bloody head resting on Jude’s lap, a kindly trucker, the shock and mystery of my brain. What was it like to grasp the complete erasure of my life? Imagine your emotions—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—all surging and colliding at once, your entire world losing structure and shape, the borders collapsing and dissolving, the fear that you might lose it again lurking in some far corner of your mind.
My spoon is hovering near my mouth, shaking, the jambalaya spilling over its rim. Richard hands me a velvet napkin and says he’s sorry; it was too much to ask of me, he should learn to keep his mouth shut, he’s too curious for his own good.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “If I didn’t want to tell you I wouldn’t have. Willfulness is one thing I’ve apparently retained. As for the rest of it—where I was coming from, where was I going?—I’ve been told we were driving to some far-away restaurant for dinner. I have no idea if that’s true. I wish I did. Come to think of it, maybe I don’t.”
We’re quiet again, scraping the bottoms of our bowls.
“Now can I ask you something personal?” I say.
“I think I owe you that.”
“What happened to your eye?”
He smiles. “I knew that would be your question.”
“It’s only fair, right? I showed you mine, you show me yours. We misfits have to stick together.”
“In other words, ‘a brain for an eye’?” he asks, and smiles again. “And yes, it is fair.” He sets down his spoon, dabs at his mouth. “If I didn’t have so much paperwork to do tonight, I’d make us martinis. It’s one of those kinds of stories.”
He stretches out his arms and audibly cracks his knuckles, a gesture that seems at odds with his mannered, old-world airs. “Some of it is embarrassing. I might have to edit certain details just to save face. I mean, clearly I lost the fight.”
“It’s your story,” I say softly.
“Would it disturb you terribly if I removed my patch?” he asks. “The prosthetic eye sometimes gets dusty and needs a deep cleaning. And when I wear the patch, the strap can get itchy against my skin.”
“Not at all,” I tell him. “This is your home.”
I am expecting a thicket of purple veins—the stuff of horror films—but he reveals a smooth, small valley of flesh. From a distance, it would appear that he had one eye permanently closed.
I smile to encourage him, and he begins.
One night, he says, he was eating dinner on the sofa, watching television. And out of nowhere—actually, from his basement door—came a masked figure pointing a loaded gun. A second intruder—also masked, he would soon learn—loomed up behind him, waiting to strike. They were tall and lithe and moved with the slippery menace of ninjas, and he’ll never unsee their masks: Comedy and Tragedy, the features exaggerated and swooning, the smile of a jester and the grimace of the insane.
He heard the click of a gun, but no shot, and then another empty, fruitless click.
He leapt and folded his hands into fists, prepared to defend himself, but the first intruder surprised him by using martial arts, arms and legs spinning and chopping like helicopter blades. Richard switched postures, tapping into the jiu-jitsu moves he’d learned on a trip to Brazil; although a novice, he was able to take that intruder down. Rolling around on the floor, writhing and grappling, it degenerated into a street brawl: punches to the face, hair pulling, knee pinning. In one lucky moment, his hand encircled the intruder’s neck, he slammed the bastard’s head against the sharp point of a coffee table, hard enough to make a dent in the skull.
The second intruder, the one who’d come up behind him, found a fire iron. Richard saw the shadow of the fire iron stretched along the ceiling before it came crashing down, exploding the side of his head. The iron came again and again. He felt himself falling. He paused on his hands and knees. He remembers so acutely the softness of the white rug beneath his palms. He remembers watching his own blood stream down from a seismic crack in his head, and wondering, absurdly, how in the hell he would ever clean that stain.
Through his blurring vision he saw the prongs of a fork aimed straight at him, the four silver points coming like bullets. In a fleeting second of detachment, in which he experienced the classic sense of floating outside of his own body to observe a personal trauma, he thought, “Oh yes, I had left my dinner plate on the coffee table, a fork resting on its edge, and now it is being used against me.”
The fork connected with the meat of his left eye, whipping his cornea into meringue. He screamed in such a way that he terrified himself; even now, sitting at this table, he can hear it echo in his ears, and feel the blood from his eye seep inward, like venom he had released within himself. There are no leads, no suspects—and now he has an alarm, so if those fuckers ever try again he will be ready to kill them both.
He is gasping now, the words breathy and shallow, his cheeks puckering in and out. “I’m sorry,” he chokes. “The last time I spoke of it was to the police. And, come to think of it, Violet—she was kind enough to come by and help me clean up the mess. This happened right after two old friends had died, suddenly and under weird circumstances, one after the other.”
“How did they die?” I ask.
“One by suicide, the other by accident,” he says. He closes his good eye for a moment and—I can’t help myself—I focus on the concave valley, its stark and violent absence; I nearly reach out to touch it. “It doesn’t seem they’re connected, but then again, how could they not be?” he asks, and the good eye flips back open, the hint of tears making it shine. “They’re a big part of my regrets. Their deaths made me reassess old chapters of my life. Bad things happen in threes, and that night I was supposed to die.”
I try not to stare at the eye but the valley now seems to be pulsing, heaving in and out with his breath.
“I still get flashbacks, Kat. I still see them standing over me. Every night, even with the alarm, I go to sleep worrying that they will come again. They will cut the wires and they will aim my own guns at my head. They will use their strong, agile bodies to trap and kill me. I’m so scared, Kat. I’m so scared.” The missing eye stares at me, blank and unseeing, and the other is slick with tears; they spill down his right cheek while the left remains dry, creating the illusion of a face split in half. I realize that he, too, has a before and after, a then and a now—a singular and devastating moment that cleaved his life into two, one that will stalk and mark him forever.
I take my napkin from my lap and, with a second of hesitation, dab at his cheek, a gesture that only makes him weep harder, and without any shame at all. He tries to talk but the words are lost in his sobs, and he repeats his sentence three times before I understand: he knows that he deserved it.
“Shhh,” I say. “I can’t imagine that’s true.”
“It’s not just seeing them,” he says, and gulps for breath. I dab the tissue again and pet his shoulder. “I hear them, too. I hear their hard, whispery voices, voices that were identical to each other. They were talking in some foreign language. It made it so much scarier, not knowing what they were saying. Speaking in tongues, like some strange beasts from hell.”
My hand, hovered over his missing eye, goes absolutely still. I can’t imagine he doesn’t hear the sudden dull pulse of my heart. I can’t imagine he doesn’t hear the quaking in my voice, the absolute horror embedded in every syllable of my words: “Do you remember anything specific? Did any phrases stay with you?”
“Do I remember?” he repeats. He places his hand over mine, and pulls them both to his eye. “I’ll never forget. My mind will play their words again and again until the day I die.”
“What are they?” I whisper. He lifts our hands, treating them as one. His good eye—so blue beneath the buttery light—fixes on mine, pinning me. I’m desperate to look away, and it is his singular, specific power that renders me incapable of doing so. I’ll stand there, my hand in his, hypnotized by that eye until he decides to release me. My own heart punches at me. Bile inches up my throat. I feel like I might piss myself right then and there on his priceless Persian rug.
“One said, ‘Si eh leary dade?’” and the other responded, “‘Si eh. Nafilly, yeth lal rea.’” He repeats the phrases, softer this time, and this spotless, elegant room turns into a vertiginous house of mirrors, the walls zooming in and rushing away and zooming in again, displaying every angle of myself that I never wished to see.
My mind translates:
Is he really dead?
He is. Finally, they all are.