Georgia Levy Coffey
Friday night, my diary open on my lap, some movie I’m not watching on Lifetime. The packers didn’t finish till after six. They’re still not finished. Then, when I finally put Zoe down, Justin woke up again, and I had to lie down with him, stroking his hair, telling him a story, telling him everything’s going to be all right. When I’m not at all sure it is.
Finally, after three months, he’s driven me off the edge.
I took him into the city, Wednesday afternoon, to show him the new apartment. I thought it important that he see for himself, let the reality of change sink in before it actually happens. There were still workmen there, dropcloths all over the place, ladders, the reek of fresh paint. I showed him his new room—it has a lovely view of the river—and then I was looking over some fabric samples with the decorator. The next thing I knew, he was gone. Somehow he walked out of the apartment, rode the elevator down eleven floors by himself, and out into the street. Nobody stopped him, nobody saw him.
I went nuts. The Patz boy, the Patz boy! This was New York City, not St. George, and Justin doesn’t know the Village at all. I ended up waiting, with my father, in a dreary police station on Tenth Street. The cops came and went; we sat. It was after dark and drizzling by the time they found him, all the way over in Tompkins Square Park, that charming showplace of the East Village where they’ve had all the trouble with the pushers and the squatters.
He was sitting on a bench, by himself.
He was hungry.
He’d gone looking for his goddamned beloved Harriet.
It was my father who got that out of him. I could hardly talk to him. He told his grandfather that he was looking for “’arrit.”
But isn’t that why we’re moving? So he’ll stop looking? So there’ll be no third floor, no room, no memory triggers? Because everything else I tried—getting rid of all her stuff, every trace, and moving him downstairs to the second floor—failed totally? I even had a gate installed at the bottom of the stairs going up—what a joke! It took him all of ten seconds to figure out how to climb it, and then I’d find him staring out her windows again, staring out at … nothing!
His “mute resistance.” That’s what they called it at Group. They said his “mute resistance”—refusal to talk, sing, whatever it was they were doing—was too “disruptive” for the other children.
His therapist called that “attention-getting” on Justin’s part.
I’ll say.
And all it takes is a moment’s inattention on mine.
“But what am I supposed to do?” I asked her hysterically. This was yesterday, after the New York experience. “Am I supposed to tether him to me?”
“I’m afraid, for the moment, there’s not a lot else you can do,” she answered sympathetically.
“But should I cancél New York? I mean, I’ve got the movers coming tomorrow morning, but maybe it’s all a terrible mistake!”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think you’ve got to give him time. And me time.”
Time.
That’s what everybody says.
But time for what?
The little light in the alarm panel on the bedroom wall just went from red to green!
I jump at first, but now I’m fuming. Goddamn him! Who else in the world but Larry has the code? And didn’t we agree, through the lawyers, that he could come anytime he wanted this weekend for his stuff but that he had to call me ahead of time?
I don’t need this now. Don’t need it, don’t need it!
What does he want from me? Does he want to hear it all over again—that we’re a walking cliché? One of those “great” suburban marriages that, at the first crisis, turn out to be hollow at the core? Or that it was my fault as well as his? Or nobody’s fault? Or Harriet Major’s fault? Or whatever “spin” he wants to put on it this time?
Or is it the money? He knows—over my lawyer’s dead body—that I don’t want alimony. I even hit my father up for the loan to get us to New York because I refused to ask Larry. But I damn well do want child support.
I turn off the TV, throw on my robe. From the top of the stairs, I can’t hear a sound.
Very un-Larry.
Unless this is his idea of a joke?
I call out his name softly. No response.
Unless … good God, could he have given someone else the code?
Should I check the children first?
I start down, flicking on the front hall sconces from above. Damn, why didn’t I change the locks?
Still no sound. From the curve in the stairs, all I can see is cartons, stacks of them. The most depressing of sights. They take up almost the whole downstairs.
Then, her voice—and simultaneously I spot her between two of the stacks, gazing up at me.
I don’t move. I can’t believe it.
Goddamn it, she wrecked my life, and now she’s standing in my house!
She looks awful too. Tired, hair all scraggly, and she’s wearing some dirty misshapen parka, hands jammed in the center pouch.
“How did you get in here?” I say. Instinctively, I pull the ends of my bathrobe together.
“Easy. My code’s still in the system. You programmed in the digits of my birthday, remember? I knew you’d forget to take it out.”
She’s right, I did forget.
“What are you doing here, Harriet?” I say, struggling to keep the shrillness out of my voice. “Why have you come?”
“But what’s all this stuff?” she says. “God, you’re not moving, are you?”
“I think you’d better go.”
“I don’t believe it! You’re moving? Out of this house?”
“It’d be best if you just left. Right now.”
“I want to see Justin,” she says. “To make sure he’s all right.”
I stiffen on the stairs. No, not in a million years.
“He’s not here,” I answer quickly.
“Not here? But where is he?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s at his grandparents’, in New York.”
Still she makes no move to leave.
“There’s no need for you to be afraid, Georgia,” she says. “Not of me. I don’t mean you any harm.”
She’s smiling up at me now. The eyes, at least, haven’t changed. Innocent, long-lashed, blue-gray eyes.
“I’m not afraid,” I reply. “Why should I be afraid? I just want you out of my house. If you go right now, I promise I won’t call the police.”
For some reason this makes her laugh. But then she says she can’t go, not until she’s talked to me.
“But what makes you think I want to talk to you, Harriet?” I say. “It’s over, done. I have nothing to say to you.”
“No, it’s not over,” she says. “Not for me, anyway. Not as long as you hate me.”
The remark makes me jump inside.
(How does she know? How does she know that every time Justin runs away from me, I hate her all over again?)
I bite my tongue. I have to think practically. For God’s sake, I have two children upstairs, and I’m alone in the house. Is she dangerous? How do I know she’s not? How do I know anything until I find out what she’s come for?
“I don’t hate you,” I say. I come the rest of the way down the stairs. “Where have you been all this time?”
“Oh, here and there.”
Great answer, I think. For three months, she’s been here and there.
On closer inspection, she doesn’t look so much tired as strung out. It reminds me of college, the way people used to look at exams when they’d been up the whole night before on NoDoz and coffee. There’s a wet, musty smell about her too. It’s been raining off and on all week.
I hesitate. I want her gone, out of my life, but how am I going to get rid of her? And she was institutionalized, wasn’t she? (Who was it who told us that? Joe Penzil?)
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” I say. She starts down the back hall, but the back hall is almost totally blocked. “It’s easier through the dining room,” I tell her, and I follow her through the doorway. The dining room is completely done. My round oak table top is resting on its side, packed and strapped in quilting, and the base with the lion’s claw feet stands weirdly alone. The art-glass Handel chandelier is gone; the built-in glass oak cabinets, as old as the house itself, have been emptied out.
The kitchen is about half-dismantled. The cabinets are done there too. The plumbers are coming in the morning to unhook my Viking range, which I had to sell in the tag sale because there’s no room for it in the city. Larry’s lawyer agreed that I could hold the tag sale and keep the proceeds, as long as I kept a record.
“I still can’t believe it,” Harriet says, gazing around. “You loved this house, and it’s so … so perfect! How could you bear to move?”
I see no reason to answer. She goes automatically to the closed side of the butcher-block counter, her back to the range. I stay on the open side. We sit on facing stools, about equidistant from the wall phone.
She seems to be waiting for me.
“All right,” I say in a measured voice, “tell me why I shouldn’t hate you. Tell me why you stole my son, and why you didn’t bring him home, that day you called.”
She doesn’t seem able to answer at first. She sits rigidly, chin jutting, hands still jammed into the pouch of the ratty parka, and under the strong recessed floods of the kitchen, I see how worn she looks. Her skin has an unnatural pallor, almost gray. Could she have been locked up somewhere?
“My real name’s Rebecca,” she says finally. “Rebecca Dalton. People mostly call me Becca. I lied to you about practically everything.”
“I know that,” I say. “But it’s not important anymore.”
“Yes it is. To me anyway. I lied to you in the beginning because you’d never have hired me if you knew the truth. Later on, it was because I was forced to. Robert A. Smith forced me to, the man I told you was my stepfather. It was because of him that I took Justin away.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say to her. “None of it matters.”
“Oh, yes it does.”
“We know Robert A. Smith was a fake name.”
“So did I,” she says. “But finally, just the other day, I found out who he really was.”
Just the other day? When you were here and there?
She waits for me to answer, or ask, I don’t know which. Don’t I want to know? But I’m thinking: The last thing in the world I want tonight is to relive it. Any of it. Not with my son asleep upstairs, who I just said was at his grandparents’.
“Holbrook,” she says. “Francis Hale Holbrook.”
She’s eyeing me, as though watching my reaction.
“You knew him, didn’t you?” she asks.
“No. I never met him. Larry knows him.”
“Yes. And that’s what it was all about, Georgia, don’t you see? He wanted something out of Larry. That’s why I was permitted to come to work for you in the first place. And that’s why I ran away with Justin.”
Maybe I’m supposed to be shocked. Maybe once I would have been. Maybe the news that Frank Holbrook had been behind it all—my husband’s old “mentor,” the CIA type who, Larry always said, pulled all the strings—would have sent me climbing the walls.
If she’s telling the truth.
But no more. It’s over. My husband betrayed us, and my son’s an emotional mess, and I’m dealing with both as best I can.
For the rest, I no longer care.
I say as much.
“I’m sorry, Georgia,” she insists, “but you’re going to have to listen whether you want to or not. It’s too important. You don’t know what they did to me.”
Now, underneath her level tone, I hear the menace and, in her eyes, see that old, steady, grim expression from when I’d catch her unawares. And suddenly, seeing that brings it all back in a rush—the references I never checked, the double-dealing with Larry, the weirdness of those weekends when she would insist on leaving no matter what was going on.
To go to him? Robert A. Smith? Frank Holbrook?
So she said.
And Justin on the slide! Of all the terrible things that happened, this is what my brain singles out. Why, when I’ve long since forgotten it? That first week, my son all alone at the top of the slide, so small … Her … her recklessness. Her goddamn recklessness!
Oh God, why didn’t I fire her, that same day? When it was in me to fire her?
And now she’s back! How do I know she’s not crazy?
“I’d like a drink,” she says evenly.
Rattled, I point to the refrigerator, tell her to help herself.
No, she explains. Hard liquor.
“Another lie,” she says, laughing. “I know, the whole time I was here, I always refused a drink.”
I’d forgotten that.
“You could try the den,” I say. “Though I’ve no idea what you’ll find.”
I see her glance at the wall phone.
“Okay,” she says. But then, half-smiling, “I think you’d better come along with me.”
In a daze—is this really happening?—I follow her back through the dining room to the front hall, the den. All Larry’s stuff, untouched. From the doorway, I watch her find the Scotch and a glass tumbler. She fills the tumbler to the brim, no ice, holds the glass with both hands, sips.
“Where’s Larry?” she asks.
“He’s not here.”
“I know,” she says. “At least his car hasn’t been.”
I do a double-take at the remark.
“What do you mean, ‘his car hasn’t been here’?” I ask her. She doesn’t answer. “Just how long have you been hanging around?”
“The last couple of nights,” she says casually. “I guess I was working up my courage.”
“Working up your courage?” I repeat. The admission—its casualness—enrages me. “What were you doing, hiding in the bushes? Spying on us? Waiting for him? Well, if it’s him you want, you’ve got a goddamn long wait! I’ll be glad to tell you where you can find him!”
I see her recoil.
“Please, Georgia,” she stammers out. “You’ve got it all wrong! It was a setup. I was supposed to seduce Larry, but I couldn’t do it. I swear, I never—”
This, above all, I don’t need to hear.
“What makes you think I give a damn whether you slept with him or not?”
I want her gone now, out. I don’t care if she’s crazy or dangerous or a fugitive from justice or whatever the hell she is. Out!
But I hear a cry above our heads, then, seconds later, a full-fledged wail. A rush of panic inside. Thank God, it’s only Zoe. But how can I let Harriet upstairs? And she’s not going to leave of her own free will, what am I supposed to do?
In my own house, damn it! This is going on in my own house!
I fight to control myself.
“It’s just the baby,” I say. “She must be hungry. I’m going to run up and get her. I’ll bring her down to the kitchen. Just wait for me there.” I force a smile. “Please don’t worry,” I say. “I’m not going to call anybody. I promise.”
For a second, I think she’s going to follow me anyway—what will I do then?—but she doesn’t. Upstairs in the nursery I pick Zoe up, all red-faced and soaked, and with my free hand throw the traveling diaper bag, which has everything I need, into the Kanga-rocka-roo. Back in the hallway, listening. Not a sound, either from downstairs or Justin’s room. His door is wide open, though. I put the carrier down, pull his door closed but not all the way shut. He still has trouble with doorknobs.
I’m not going to let her intimidate me!
Then down the back stairs, with Zoe, to the kitchen. Where Harriet is waiting for us, her glass already half-empty.
It’s a long and, I judge, largely self-serving story. Zoe, changed and fed, sleeps through it on the kitchen counter. I listen, distracted. It’s the kind of story, I think, Dickens might have invented on an otherwise dreary day—complete with the punishing mother (still alive, it turns out; I’d always thought she was dead), the callow boyfriend, the seducer-uncle who wasn’t her uncle, the running away and the being brought back, followed by the mental institution and finally the hapless young beauty in thrall to the aging monster.
Smith. Holbrook.
It’s not that I disbelieve it entirely (although the idea that she would run off from the institution with a man she claims she’d never seen before stretches my imagination). More likely, I think, it’s a mixture of truth and fantasy. Is that maybe who Harriet is: a mixture of truth and fantasy? Either way, though, my mind keeps wandering off. How am I going to get rid of her? And why is she telling me all this, three months later? What does she really want from me? Is it sympathy, for God’s sake? Absolution?
There are times, while she talks, when I even find myself lulled by the voice. Not the content—she describes what Holbrook did to her in horrific detail—but the soft, soothing tone. In spite of myself, it takes me back to the Harriet of my pregnancy, the back rubs, the dreamy afternoons when her voice descended on my relaxing body, raising the hairs on my back, my neck, in little prickles. I have to jerk myself back to reality—to my kitchen, to this bedraggled creature, her glass now empty, hands stuffed in the parka pouch, who, if she is to be believed, was stampeded by Holbrook into taking my son away because she was terrified about what he might do to him, and at the same time so panicked that she could tell neither me nor my husband nor the police nor anybody on the planet what was happening.
She has a reason, it seems, for everything.
I’m even treated to an account of how great my child was on the road, motel-hopping, such a brave little trouper, and the story, horrendous if true, of what happened when Holbrook caught up with them. And then her phone call to me, the next morning, and finally the scene at the mall.
“I wanted to bring him home, Georgia,” she says. “I really meant to. I’d even asked him—Holbrook—I’d begged him—to let me take Justin home. But after I called you, I realized they’d be watching the house. It was too dangerous. That’s when I thought of the mall. When I called you the second time, we were already there.”
I’ve hardly said a word up to now. But like it or not, she’s brought me back to the reality of that awful Saturday.
“Then why weren’t you with him, at The Greenhouse?” I snap at her.
“But I was! I waited till the last minute, at least what I thought was the last minute. You were late yourself, weren’t you?”
“Late? All of ten minutes! Why couldn’t you have waited with him?”
“But I did! I even put a note in his pocket, telling you he was in danger. And I did wait. I didn’t want to be around when you actually got there, but I watched the whole thing from the second level! I saw it all happen, Georgia!”
Her voice has risen. I guess mine has too. Suddenly we are both shouting at each other. She’s telling me something about the police, that she thought I’d bring the police with me, and I can’t help it, it’s all becoming vivid again—running through the restaurant, my heart pounding, and the crashing sound of the organ, and the goddamned hostess with the southern accent: “But it all happened so fast!”
“I saw it all!” Harriet is saying. “I saw him pick Justin up! I couldn’t hear it, but I could see Justin calling my name. It drove me wild. But it wasn’t Holbrook, Georgia. It wasn’t Holbrook! It was Mark Spain!”
She rushes on, something about a pistol, running after them, too late, but I’m just staring at her. Did I miss something? What did Mark Spain have to do with it? How does she know Mark Spain?
She notices my confusion.
“What’s the matter?” she says, stopping abruptly. “Don’t you believe me?”
I shake my head. It’s not that.
“How do you know Mark Spain?” I ask her.
“Georgia, haven’t you been listening? Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Who did you think I was talking about before? My uncle Mark?”
I did hear it. It just hadn’t registered. Something about the uncle who wasn’t really her uncle, some old friend of her father’s.
But Mark Spain? Why should this Uncle Mark of hers be Mark Spain?
“He was my mother’s lover, for God’s sake! And mine too, at the same time! A regular slimeball. But don’t you see, Georgia? They were in it together! They were in it together the whole time! It used to drive me crazy how Robert—Holbrook—had found me in the first place. He’d never tell me. All he’d say was that he’d had a letter, introducing him as my cousin Robert, although he never had to use it. But a letter from whom? Who’d sent him? He’d never ever tell me. Well, but I know now! It was my uncle Mark, Mark Spain. Mark Spain wrote that letter! He sold me to Holbrook. He—but Georgia, what’s the matter? You don’t know him, do you? Do you know Mark Spain?”
I nod. For the minute, I can’t get the words out. Yes, I know Mark Spain! The bastard! Yes, he’s Joe Penzil’s boss, and Joe Penzil, oh yes, is, or was, my husband’s best friend. I knew it too, knew Spain was somehow mixed up in the deal they got Larry to agree to, just before Justin came home. At least that’s what Larry always said. But he’d also said—or was it Joe Penzil?—that it was all Harriet’s doing, something about an old Wall Street family, and Harriet was—what? mentally unstable?—and somehow they’d managed to get Justin back from her? Never clear how? But it was complicated, wasn’t it? Oh yes, it was complicated.
But suppose everything she’s been telling me is true? Her whole, rambling story? Because how else explain the missing whatever it was—seventy-two hours?—between the scene at the mall, the way she’s just described it, and the night I found Justin on my front porch?
“Don’t you understand, Georgia?” she goes on. “All along I thought it was just Holbrook—Robert A. Smith, I thought then—and it was him. But not at the mall. That was Mark. I saw him! He picked Justin up in his arms and ran with him, and I saw Justin calling my name! My God! They must have been working together the whole time. It freaked me totally. I knew it was Larry they were after, but they’d used me, and now they were going to use Justin. I failed, Georgia, don’t you see? I tried to save him—I … I love him—but I failed!”
I’ve never seen her like this before. It’s in her voice, the emotion wrenching loose, and tears flood her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she stammers. “Every time I think about it, I see Justin. Even though I know he got home okay. But at the mall that day, I couldn’t hear him—there was too much noise—but I could … I could see him. Oh my God, Georgia …”
I believe her. Finally I think I do believe her. And, momentarily at least, I share her revulsion, her outrage.
But there’s some kind of failure in me too.
“What happened next?” I ask, staring back at her. “After the mall?”
She shrugs, looks away.
“I did what I always do,” she says, her voice still choked. “I ran away.”
“And you’ve been running away ever since?”
“Just about,” she manages. “At least till now.”
She pauses, still looking away, and her hands are stuffed in the pouch of the parka, and now I see her jaw jut out fiercely. Finally her head turns, and her eyes come back to mine.
“I went to see him the other day,” she says.
“Went to see whom?”
“Mark.”
“Mark Spain? For God’s sake, what for?”
“I knew where he lived,” she goes on, “so I went there. I had to—well, I had to find out what had happened. He was—what should I say?—pretty surprised to see me. After all this time. It wasn’t a very pleasant conversation, but I got it out of him. Who Smith really was, and what their connection was. Did you know I was only one of many girls he kept in that house?”
I nod, remembering, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t think I was the only one Mark found for him either. Anyway, he—Mark—said I was crazy to have come back. Said that if nobody had found me in three months, nobody was going to, and if I was still worried about that, it was sheer paranoia. He laughed at me, Georgia. He actually laughed at me! Well, as I say, it wasn’t a very pleasant conversation.”
Her voice trails off. She’s dry-eyed again, tense, expectant. It’s as though she’s waiting for me to comment. Instead, I glance at the wall clock. She’s been here almost two hours, and I’m thinking: Maybe what they did to you was as horrible as you say, but I can’t help that. At the end of the day, whatever your reasons, even if they were good ones, you were responsible for my son, and you took him away from me. That’s my reality check. It happened, and now it’s over. All that’s left for me to do is pick up the pieces, which is exactly what I’m trying to do. Larry’s gone, and these men—Mark Spain, Holbrook, Gamble, whoever else was involved—are no longer a threat to me or my children. So don’t ask me for help or compassion or whatever it is you want from me. Maybe that’s a failure on my part, maybe it’s even cruel, but I don’t have room for you right now. All I really care about, you see, are my children and me.
Maybe I’d even have said these things to her.
I’ll never know.
Because now what I was afraid of, and have half-forgotten, has just happened.
“Mom-mee? Mom-mee?”
The cry drives right through my heart.
I glance wildly behind me, at the back stairs, then back at Harriet. She’s half-risen off her stool, her mouth agape.
“Stay right where you are!” I hiss at her in a half-whisper. Then, to the stairs, my “normal” voice: “It’s okay, darling, I’ll be right there!” An afterthought: “I’ve been on the phone!”
I’m on my feet, mind racing. God Almighty, what am I going to do?
She says something like: “But I thought you said he was at his grandparents’?”
“Shut up!” I command her in a harsh whisper. “Do you think you’re the only one capable of lying?”
“Mom-mee?” it comes again. “Me need you now!”
“I’m coming, Justin, I’ll be right there!” Then I whirl on her. “If you try to come upstairs, if you so much as let him see you or hear your voice, I’ll kill you. I swear it!”
“But please, Georgia! For God’s sake! How can you say that? You’ve got to let me see him! It’s why I came! You don’t understand, I haven’t told you everything. He’s the only person I care about in the whole world. Or who cares about me!”
I can’t shut her up. I’m about to scream, strangle her, and at the same time I can hear him crying. At the top of the stairs now!
“Just a minute, Justin!” I cry out. My mind is a whirlwind, confused, shrieking. Because suddenly I’m thinking: Give him time, that’s what everybody says, isn’t it? Give him time. But I have no time, there is no time! If anything, he’s worse. And I’m thinking: It’s the last thing in the world I want, the very last twisting thing in the nightmare I’m living, but maybe I’ve got to do it, maybe for him, his sake, save him, stop it, at long last, let him have his goddamn beloved Harriet! Let him see her! Go on, for God’s sake, let him, what do you have to lose?
But there’s this other voice in me too that’s laughing, crazy, sobbing laughter, how could you do that, Georgia, how on earth, she’s crazy, she’s wrecked your life, she’s ka-ray-zee!
I turn to her, hand raised, willing myself to stop shaking.
“Shut up!” I hiss at her again. Then, my voice low: “Maybe I will,” I say. “I’m not promising you anything. You’re to stay right here. I’ll call down to you. But if I let you see him, it’s for one thing, one thing only. You’ve come to say good-bye. That’s all. It’s good-bye, and it’s forever. I want you to promise me.”
She nods. She’s crying again.
“That’s what I came for,” she’s saying.
I’m aware of her face, a white blur. I grab Zoe, her carrier, then I’m on my way up the back stairs.
He’s waiting for me at the top. I can see his silhouette against the dim light.
“Mom-mee?” he says again, his arms stretching forward. He’s still half-asleep, drenched in sleep.
I swoop him up in my free arm. He clings to me. I’m panting, struggling for air, I can’t help it. I manage to ask him if he has to pee. He nods drowsily, buries his head in my neck. I carry him and Zoe into the big bathroom at the end of the hall, put Zoe on the floor, then, both hands free, support him at the toilet while he fumbles for his penis.
He pees, then reaches forward to flush as I’ve taught him to. Then I take him and Zoe into his room and close the door behind us.
I realize I’m crying too, silent tears. The last thing in the world I want. I can’t stop, can’t control myself.
I get him back into bed but not to sleep. I can feel his tension on top of mine. I can’t get either one of us to relax.
“Justin, it’s the middle of the night,” I say. “You’ve got to go back to sleep.”
“Jutesy,” he says.
I have a juice box waiting for him on his night table. With trembling hands I get it open, the straw inserted. I prop him while he drinks.
He sinks back into his pillows. Even in the near-darkness, I can tell that his eyes are on me.
“Is her here?” he says.
“Is who here, Justin?” I answer, fighting my voice.
“’arrit.”
“Harriet? What makes you think that?”
“Me hear her. Her promise.”
Oh my God.
“What did she promise?”
“Her come back. Her promise.”
“Justin, you must have been dreaming!”
“No. Me hear her! Yes I did!”
He starts to wail. My God. It’s not full-fledged, but at any second he’s going to let go, and then he’ll wake Zoe up, and then I think I’ll be the one to go crazy—raving, full-fledged mayhem.
Please, Justin, I beg him in my mind, please!
But it’s no use.
I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing.
“You’re right, darling,” I tell him as softly as I can. “You’re absolutely right. You did hear her voice. In fact, she’s downstairs right now. She came to say good-bye to you. In a minute, I’m going to ask her to come up. She’s going for good, and she only has a few minutes, but before she goes, she wants especially to say good-bye to you.”
“Her promise,” he says again.
“You’re right,” I answer crazily. “She promised.”
I stand, Zoe’s carrier in my hand. From the top of the stairs, I can see Harriet looking up.
I motion to her. I think: Georgia, you’re going to regret this the rest of your life.
But it’s too late for that, isn’t it?
I talk to her hastily at the top of the stairs, my voice low. “I’ve told him you’re going away for good. That you only have a few minutes, but you want to say good-bye to him.” She nods, wordless. “I swear to you, Harriet, anything more—any promises, any anything—and I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.”
She nods again, and then she’s gone inside his door.
It’s more than a few minutes. It seems forever. I stand in the hall of my own house, my almost ex-house, holding my sleeping daughter’s carrier in my hand. I can’t bring myself to put it down, can’t bring myself to pick Zoe out of it. I listen, half-listen. I can hear Harriet’s voice like a murmur, but few of the words, and if he says anything, I miss it altogether. Otherwise it is very still, night-still, except, possibly, for the sound of Georgia Levy Coffey trying to swallow.
I hate her for it now, hate her from the bottom of my heart. For what she’s done to us, her power over us. Now I’m an exile in my own house, locked out. How do I know what she’s telling him?
You’re doing it for him, I keep telling myself. For three months he’s been like a caged animal trying to get out, and you’ve been stuffing him back in, telling him it’s all right. When you know in your heart that it isn’t.
That’s why I’m standing in the hall, biting my lip raw.
I’m praying now. I think maybe, just maybe, it’s like the end of something and before something else has begun. An interval, a time warp, like the gorge between death and birth if you believe in reincarnation. I know I’m not a praying person, but dear God, please let it be true. Please let it be the end of something, and the beginning of something else. Please let my son, Justin, be a normal, loving child again.
Oh my God.
Whatever God is doing at the moment, though, the little prayer calms me.
I stand guard.
“Georgia.” It’s Harriet, emerging from his doorway. She has her finger to her lips. “He’s asleep,” she says.
I brush past her. In the dim light from the hall, I see his little head burrowed into the pillow. His eyes are closed, his breathing slow, even. I’m aware that my own heart is pulsing as I lean over him, but there’s no telling. No telling what she said to him; no telling what he now believes.
She’s not in the hall when I come out. In a daze, I put Zoe down in the nursery.
When I come down the stairs again, she’s back in the kitchen. I notice she’s refilled her glass. Does she think, it occurs to me crazily—does she think she can make herself at home now?
Move back in?
It’s almost midnight on the wall clock. I’m too strung out to go on. I tell her so, but she makes no move to leave.
“Why did you lie before?” she asks me. “Why didn’t you want me to know he was here?”
“Because I didn’t think it would be good for him to see you.”
“But why not, Georgia? I love Justin. Even though he didn’t think so.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t think so?”
“It was about the last thing he said to me. I mean, our last night on the road. It was when I told him I was taking him home. He said it meant I didn’t love him. It made me wild. I promised him I’d come back, by summer at the latest, maybe before. I did promise. And now I have. But I did exactly what you wanted me to do. I told him I’m going away for good. I said good-bye.” She hesitates. “He’s okay, isn’t he? I mean, he seems okay. He is, isn’t he?”
I don’t know what I feel toward her now. The resentment is gone. But I’m not going to let myself be sucked into a discussion of his well-being.
“Yes,” I say, “he’s okay. But I have to ask you to leave now, Harriet. Please. You’ve gotten what you came for.”
The words sound so cold—I don’t mean them that way—but they only make her laugh. She looks at me, protrudes her lower lip, shakes her head.
“You don’t have a clue, do you?” she says.
“A clue as to what?”
She doesn’t answer, laughs again, a little snorting sound. Then: “The thing is, I’m finished with lying. With running away too. It never did me any good.”
“I guess that’s fine,” I say, “but—”
She cuts me off.
“He’s a great kid, Georgia, don’t you see? He’s special. You’re just his mother, I don’t know if you get what he’s really like. He’s so smart. He’s thinking in there all the time. And he never forgets anything. He’s also brave,” she says, “very gutsy. He’s strong inside. He’s going to be somebody. No, that’s wrong, he already is somebody.”
But why does she feel compelled to defend him to me? Have I said that he’s an emotional wreck, that I don’t think I can deal with him anymore? Have I said anything like that?
“But there’s one thing you don’t get,” she says.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“The one he really loves, most of all, is you.”
Her eyes are measuring me, as though gauging my reaction.
“We were very close,” she goes on. “We did everything together, Georgia. I know it’s strange, but a lot of the time on the road, when they were hunting us, it was fun. We had a lot of fun. We built a snowman together. I’d never done that. I guess he was a little in love with me. I mean, really in love, like he will be when he’s older. But even so, do you know who it was that he cried out for in the middle of the night? I mean, when he was having a bad dream? Or when he woke up scared, not knowing where he was? It wasn’t me, Georgia, even though I was right there. It was you. It was his mommy. It was his mommy he wanted.”
A strange validation, I think. But what am I supposed to feel? Gratitude? Resentment? Both?
“You know something, Georgia,” she says, and now her blue-gray eyes are locked on mine, “and this’ll sound really weird to you, but in spite of everything that was going on, those were the happiest days of my life? From the minute I rang your bell? I mean, when I was living here, working with Justin, and you were pregnant?”
Nostalgia in her tone, bittersweet. Defiance, too. It’s almost as though she’s saying: Take me back, Georgia, take her in. And yes, I know that’s impossible, doesn’t she? And yet, at the same time …
“It was a happy time for me too,” I hear myself answer, my voice suddenly gentle. “In spite of everything.”
Do I mean it? Yes, weirdly, I think I do. At midnight, in my kitchen, there’s this peculiar, momentary kinship. I know it makes no sense, how can it make any sense? But if it makes no sense, then why am I on the verge of tears?
“But it’s over, Harriet,” I say. “Or is it Becca? Rebecca? I’m afraid I’ll always think of you as Harriet.”
“Harriet’s better,” she says with a half-smile.
“But it is over, you know,” I repeat. “There’s no way for us to bring it back. No way, even if we wanted to.”
She nods.
“No, there isn’t,” she says. “Is that why you’re moving?”
The question startles me. I’ve never thought of it like that.
“In a way,” I say. “Yes, I guess it is.”
“Where are you going?”
I shake my head—my reflex is not to tell her—but then I say, “New York. Back to the city.”
She nods again. She seems satisfied by that. At least she falls silent. Her drink, I notice, is half-empty again, but she makes no move to finish it. She simply sits there, hands in her pouch, rocking a little. Her eyes are on me, the light and shadow of her cheekbones sharp in the kitchen light. Perfect bone structure, I notice in passing. A gorgeous face, even as tired as she looks now. And I think—for the last time, I hope—what a strange creature she is, and how, in the space of one exhausting evening, she’s managed to run me up and down a whole emotional gauntlet.
I want her to go now, but it’s clear she won’t until she’s ready to. As though in response, she looks away, half-rises. But then subsides again. Thinks. Says slowly, reflectively:
“I guess the only important thing, to me, is that you understand that I’m not crazy. I’m not, you know. Sometimes I may do crazy things, but there’s always a reason. I’d like to think that, whatever happens to me, you and Justin will know I’m not crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. But what do you mean, ‘whatever happens to me’? That sounds awfully melodramatic.”
She shrugs.
“Maybe all I’m saying is that I don’t want you to hate me anymore.”
Upstairs, a little while ago, I could have torn her to shreds. Now it’s gone. I just want her to leave.
“I don’t hate you, Harriet,” I say. “Believe me.”
She takes a deep breath, sighs.
“I’m going in a minute,” she says. “Out of your hair, out of your life. But what if you were me, Georgia?” she says. “What would you do now? Try to put yourself in my shoes. Imagine that you’re twenty-two again and you feel like you’ve already lived through hell and you’re still not out of it. What would you do?”
Georgia, the oracle?
But she’s serious about it. She leans forward over the counter, eyes intently watching me.
I don’t want to disappoint her, but suddenly I have the uneasy feeling I’m going to, whatever I say.
“It’s hardly for me to tell you that,” I answer.
“Still, I want to hear it.” She smiles wryly. “You said you were my friend, remember? On TV?”
I’ve forgotten about that. She must have seen it after all.
I take a deep breath of my own.
“I think if I were you,” I say, “I’d try to put it all behind me. Everything. Close out the past. I’d go as far away as I could, get away from here, all the bad things that happened. I’d try to free myself from it. And that, by the way, includes Justin and me.”
Pretty self-serving, I think. But it also happens to be true.
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “And then?”
“Then?”
“Well, suppose I did do that? Then what?”
“Well,” I say, hesitant. “Then I guess I’d see about inventing my life.”
She’s gone now.
Why, though, instead of relief, do I have the nagging feeling that I’ve let her down?
And what if I did? Why is that important?
Strange young woman. What’s going to become of her now? Technically I think she’s still a fugitive, but what would the police do with her if they found her?
I reminded her that, once she left, it would be for good. We even shook hands on it, awkwardly, and I, in turn, was reminded how she’d never liked to be touched.
This was in the front hall, among the stacks of cartons. She commented on the house again, my beautiful house. She said she couldn’t believe I was moving, couldn’t imagine anyone else living here. But the last thing she said to me was, “God, Georgia, how can you be so strong?”
Justin first, now me. Both so strong. I don’t remember what I said, but the more I think of it, the more I’ll take that on my tombstone:
HERE LIETH GEORGIA, HOW COULD SHE BE SO STRONG?
I’m lying on my side now, on the edge of my son’s bed, in near-total darkness. There’s just a slit of light from the hallway, the door ajar in case Zoe wakes up in the nursery. Somewhere below my feet, on the floor, is another box of juice I brought up from the kitchen.
I’m stroking Justin’s hair lightly. He doesn’t seem to feel it. He’s facing me, one arm flung up over the side of his face, and all I can hear is the faint wheeze of air entering and leaving his nostrils.
It’s the only sound, other than my own occasional voice.
“We’re going to make it, my darling,” I whisper to him. “She’s gone now. It’s all over. Together, we’re going to invent our own lives.”
I’ve no idea what time it is. No matter. I think it’s in me to lie here, stroking his hair, until he wakes up in the morning.