AFTER HIS CONVERSATION with Tilly at Babka, Karl headed home. He unlocked his door and stepped into his apartment. Once, before Vivian, he had come home to silence and emptiness every night. He had valued the quiet. Now it felt like a vacuum and he strained to hear Xìnyùn whistling, terrified he would come home and there would be nothing but stale air to greet him.
He hung up his coat—the coat he’d given Vivian was still hanging in the closet because she’d refused to take it—and let Xìnyùn out of his cage. The bird wasn’t his pet. Vivian said it wasn’t even her pet, but Karl still had the responsibility to make sure the bird got mental stimulation and exercise, and stayed healthy.
There was that word again. Responsibility. Duty. Tilly talked about obligations as though they were distasteful concepts, when he had let Vivian stay with him in the first place because of duty and he was playing basketball with a miniparrot because of a responsibility to the bird. If everyone did their duty, there wouldn’t be abused children, or homeless veterans, and his dad might still be alive.
The bird lobbed the ball of wadded-up paper into the cup and whistled. “Jackpot.”
Karl laughed. He would never have thought a bird would be such good company, but the two things he looked forward to most in his day were playing basketball with the bird and the hour or so he got to see Vivian at Healthy Food.
Between a developing case at work and making the drive south every day to make sure Vivian was still there, he wasn’t getting as much sleep as he needed—being beaten by Tilly in an argument made that clear. But not seeing Vivian wasn’t an option.
He tossed another ball to Xìnyùn, who missed the cup and chirped, “Hit me.”
When he’d first started driving to Archer Heights every day, he had done it out of a sense of duty. The paternity test was clear—he was the father of Vivian’s baby. He never should have expressed doubt in the first place. He’d promised her they would be friends and partners in the raising of their child, and he was going to own that promise.
But at some point his feelings about the drive had changed. Maybe it was when Mr. Biadała had asked Karl if Vivian was going to Phil’s wedding, and Karl had stared blankly at the man, wondering how he could have asked such a simple question to which the answer was obvious. Maybe it was seeing the guilty amusement on Vivian’s face when she’d opened the door to him, using her body to shield his mother and her friends playing blackjack in the kitchen. Maybe it hadn’t been one of those moments, but a culmination of them all that made him realize Vivian was as much a part of him as Healthy Food, Archer Heights and his own family were. More special, even, because he’d been born a Milek in Archer Heights, but he had chosen Vivian, and she had chosen him.
Now the drive to his old neighborhood was a pleasure. He liked to see the small changes in Vivian’s body during the day and wished they shared a bed at night so he could explore those changes in more detail. To see the curve of her pink lower lip over her sharp chin. To have her be completely unimpressed by the seriousness of his life and make him laugh as only someone who loves you can.
Karl finished his losing game of H-O-R-S-E with Xìnyùn and put the parrot back into his cage, draping the cover over the bird. He wiped down the counters and headed off to his bathroom to brush his teeth. When he climbed into bed the sheets were cold and smelled of whatever flowers his dryer sheets were scented with. Not of jasmine, as they did after Vivian was here. Instead of the heady fragrance only his wife had, it was the generic smell of millions of sheets in millions of homes across the United States. If he wasn’t capable of giving Vivian what she needed, this was how his sheets would smell for the rest of his life.
His hand hesitated over the lamp switch, knowing he should turn it off and also knowing he wouldn’t sleep tonight, light or no light. And so he lay in his bed, blinking to calm the bright light of the lamp in his eyes. On another not-so-distant night that felt like eons ago, he’d jokingly handed Vivian books to help her sleep. Karl rolled over onto his side and faced the spine of the Melville book, still unfinished. He picked it up, opened to his bookmark and began “Billy Budd” where he had left off.
It was a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers did not close.
Melville’s language, even so cluttered and impenetrable to a modern reader, could not hide the great wrong the British Navy was about to commit upon the person of Billy Budd. Though he was innocent of murder in the barest sense of the word, Billy Budd was guilty as a point of fact, and so he was about to hang.
And since he felt that innocence was even a better thing than religion wherewith to go to Judgment, he reluctantly withdrew.
Karl had read “Billy Budd” in law school, when the chaplain’s opinions of the condemned Budd hadn’t felt so personal. At the time, he’d felt the story was cut-and-dried. Billy Budd had killed someone; there was no arguing that fact. The Articles of War said the punishment was death. Ergo, Billy Budd must hang. Age must have added some gray back into Karl’s life because he finally saw the tragedy in Billy Budd’s story.
He closed the book and bounced it off his chest as Vivian’s words echoed through his head. Do you still judge me for nearly cheating Middle Kingdom and getting fired?
Shades of gray notwithstanding, the situations weren’t the same. Billy Budd had been wrongly accused of mutiny and, when too overcome by his stuttering to defend himself, had pushed his accuser, who hit his head and died. Vivian had nearly cheated her employer out of money to help her wastrel father. Billy Budd had been sentenced to hang. Vivian had been fired.
Not the same at all.
And yet—both were innocent of the crimes they were being accused of. Billy Budd had not been guilty of mutinous assembly, and the death of his accuser was debatable as murder. Vivian hadn’t actually cheated. She’d thought about it, but the law didn’t judge a person’s thoughts to determine guilt or innocence. Actions were key, and Vivian’s biggest problem had been the inconclusive video evidence.
They had both been punished according to the rules of their employers. In both cases the justice was “by the book.” And in both cases the justice felt like a waste.
When Karl bounced the book this time, his hands slipped and the paperback bobbed off his chin. Clearly it was time for sleep and not confused thinking about a Victorian writer—or Karl’s wife.
He put the book back on his nightstand and turned off his lamp before he could change his mind. Karl flipped over onto his other side so that he faced away from the book. The other half of the bed was empty, unfortunately, and when he stuck his legs out the sheets were cold. Despite the shock of it keeping him awake, he left his legs there.
He wanted to sleep. He needed to sleep. But he’d had an epiphany he still wasn’t sure what to do with.