SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2021
CARROLL STREET, BROOKLYN
THE ENVELOPE is addressed to “Aby and Joanna Wasserman,” and Joanna recognizes her own fine, cramped writing. When Aby opens it they find one sheet of paper folded in four and two other sealed letters.
Dear Aby and Joanna,
In this envelope there’s a letter for you, Joanna, and I know that you’ll read it to Aby because that’s what I would do. And one for you, Aby, and you alone.
Like both of you and like so many of the people who were on board that plane, I’ve tried to find answers, even just clues, in The anomaly, the strange book written by that French author who was on the flight. I didn’t find anything except this: “We must kill the past to ensure it is still possible.”
We wanted to resuscitate the past too, and we took ourselves off into the sympathetic arms of nature in that log cabin in Vermont. Aby had taken me there, taken you there, Joanna, for those long, freezing, snowy days when we decided to have a baby. Aby, what we had together then was so powerful that we wanted the memory of it to keep us going and to dictate the route that all three of us should choose.
But when we walked along that stony little path between the spruce trees and the firs, the path that—so symbolically—was too narrow for us to walk side by side, you trailed miserably between the two of us, my poor Aby, like a spaniel between two masters. Your sad smile was a constant apology for spending time with the other Joanna and for having to get back to her soon. You were never there, plainly and simply there, with her or with me. Instead you were just torn in two. You did a lot of painting, you couldn’t stop, it was your way of avoiding questions that have no answers, and I’m leaving with the watercolors that will always remind me of you.
That’s right, I’ve gone, I’ve left you alone in that log cabin full of sadness, before we destroyed one another. Joanna, because you’re carrying Aby’s baby you guessed I’d be the first to back down, to cave.
The first to run away. And of course I knew that you knew.
I ran away.
I went back to New York and, after contacting Jamy Pudlowski, presented myself at the FBI’s Manhattan headquarters. In just a day they’d created a new identity for me, with six years of digital life, and—just as a precaution—my name is now Joanna Ashbury. Ashbury, it sounds like a little English town that has nothing special except for its Norman church. And then there’s the connection with Woods: Ashbury—buried ash. It would be kind of funny if they’d done it on purpose.
So, Joanna Ashbury’s going to be working in senior management for the FBI’s legal department, and, thanks to the NSA, she now has a Stanford degree to her name. The bureau also offered to cover the costs of Ellen’s treatment. It’s a generous offer, and I didn’t refuse. But still, don’t give up your job at Denton & Lovell, Joanna, not that I need to tell you that, I know what you decided.
Obviously we’ll see each other again. We’ll run into each other someday visiting Ellen.
I wish you all the happiness in the world.
Joanna Ashbury
Dear Joanna,
It’s so weird calling you that.
You’re name’s now Wasserman and mine’s Ashbury. Wasser like water and Ash like ashes—there’s so much irony in this whole thing. Joanna Ashbury sounds a little like John Ashbery, and that reminds me of his long poem Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, that I promised myself I’d read, if you remember. He talks about a painting by Parmigianino from the cinquecento. I liked the poem and wanted to find out about the painting.
One day, when the painter was very young, only twenty-one, he saw himself in one of those convex mirrors and decided to do a self-portrait. He had a curved panel of wood made the same size as the mirror, so that he could create the image in the exact same shape. In the foreground at the bottom he paints his hand, it’s huge and so beautiful it looks real. His face, in the center, is hardly distorted at all, and it’s endearing, angelic, he’s almost a child. The world revolves around this face and everything is distorted, the ceiling, the light, the perspective—it’s a chaos of curves.
That painting isn’t an image for the two of us, or for you, the mirror of my mirror, but it really should be an allegory for something, because I stayed there looking at it and suddenly started to cry—I’ve done so much crying recently. Right then I realized that that oversized hand was grabbing me, threatening me, stealing everything that belonged to me.
I had a dream while we were in the log cabin in Vermont. You suddenly died and I went back to my old life, I was so happy that you were dead. I comforted Aby and it was so easy to win him back, to make him forget you. I woke at dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep so I went out onto the terrace with a coffee. You were already out there, you couldn’t sleep either. Just like me, you’d made yourself a coffee, and just like me, you were barefoot, your hair was held back with a silver barrette like mine and you were holding your cup in both hands in the exact same way. Opposite us the mist clung to the mountain and the sun still wasn’t quite ready to break through, and we exchanged an icy look. I got it, you’d just killed me in your dream too. That was when I decided to leave. Not because I was scared but because jealousy and pain were making me so hideous and I could see that ugliness all over you, plain as plain can be.
I don’t know where I’m going. But I know that if I’m a long way away from you, from both of you, I still have a chance of remembering who I am and who I want to be.
Joanna
Aby walks away along the balcony and opens the letter that’s meant for him alone; and every word he reads adds slightly to the crushing weight in his chest.
Dear Aby,
You’re the only person I love and I’m leaving.
A year ago we didn’t even know each other. And you, this guy who doesn’t believe in anything, you called it a miracle, and I smiled, me, this girl who’s always talking about how people meet.
I know the other Joanna will show you my letter to her. I won’t add much to it.
The day I came to the apartment from the military base, you suggested the two of us go out to the park opposite your studio, to the bench where we’ve had so many conversations. Sitting there, you put your arms around me, my head dropped onto your shoulder and you put your hand on my stomach. I knew instantly that you did it without thinking, it was a tender ritual established between the two of you: your hand protecting your child—yours and hers. But there was nothing to protect in my belly,
Aby, nothing, just my longing for you. You were embarrassed, you took your hand away and talked about I don’t remember what, and everything about your expression said that you hoped I hadn’t noticed.
Then we went back to the apartment and I felt empty too, emptied of all strength, just like my belly was empty of life.
And remember that night when we were at your cabin in Vermont, that hot clammy night when I led you out into the forest and I so wanted you to make love to me under the trees, but you no longer dared to make the slightest move toward me or the other Joanna, you didn’t want to ignite the tiniest spark of longing. I wanted you to take me, that’s right, I wanted to feel your powerful desire thrusting inside me. And when I suddenly ran away it was because I was filled with disgust at myself. Aby, what I wanted more than anything was for you to make me pregnant too, for fate to go ahead and give me some way of competing.
Just look at the person I’ve been turned into by this pain. I have to go. Don’t worry, my darling Aby: you’ve read War and Peace more than once so you know what General Kutuzov knows—the two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
Another man will come along, another meeting of minds, another miracle. I’m sure of it. I’ll love again. At least love stops us constantly looking for some meaning to life.
I’m looking at that incredibly gentle portrait you painted of me in the sunset, with my head resting on the wooden beam and my eyes closed.
I love you, I’ll always love you, and you’ll know I do because, in the weirdest way, I’ll be right beside you.
Joanna
THE PREVIOUS DAY
CLYDE TOLSON RESORT, NEW YORK
ARE YOU OKAY, Joanna?” Jamy Pudlowski asks through the door in the FBI’s all-gender restrooms. No, Joanna June is not okay. Too much Scotch and too much pain. Her head and heart are spinning, she wishes she could collapse but she would just dirty her clothes.
Joanna wrote those letters a few hours ago, thinking she would never succeed in mailing them. She slipped them into her purse, and those letters are now like a revolver that someone’s made the mistake of buying: It’s hidden in the nightstand but the fact that it’s there gradually fills the whole room, becoming an obsession, and because that revolver wants to be used, it ends up making a murderer of them, or a suicide. Joanna June can’t bring herself to burn the three letters, and they insist on being slipped into a mailbox.
In order to leave the man she loves a woman must dismantle the world. Joanna June had to rewrite their story, had to dig up doubts that she’d buried and exhaust the attraction she felt for Aby in the same way that she could rob a word of all meaning if she repeated it dozens of times. She’d learned to unlove his too-blond curls, his bootlicking goody-two-shoes act, his skinny-boy awkwardness, his slightly snobby clothes, the way he wanted to joke about pretty much anything, even the way he burst out laughing like a kid. She remembered being uncomfortable about his elation, his urgent hurry to get married, to lock them both into a contract, as if it might all disappear overnight, as if he didn’t entirely trust her, or himself or them. Over the course of one painful night she forced herself to relive every moment she’d spent with him, and discovered a chilliness in herself as she contemplated this disgustingly tender display. And, very gradually, she unraveled the emotion until she felt a growing aversion. The lawyer had become the prosecutor; she mercilessly put all her intelligence into serving the crime, and the prosecutor took this Aby with his thousand perfections, this simple branch on which Joanna’s love had crystalized endless glittering, shifting diamonds of salt and poured the rain of indifference over it. And then the crystals dissolved and the charmless, leafless branch reappeared, dull enough and ordinary enough to make her weep.
So, when she actually mailed those three letters and for an hour afterward, Joanna no longer loved Aby. Then all her love came flooding back, and she opened the bottle of Talisker.
FROM: ANDRE.VANNIER@VANNIER&EDELMAN.COM
DATE: JULY 1, 2021, 09:43
SUBJECT: SEPARATION
Dear André (what else can I call you?),
I’m writing to you from the Drôme. I’m going to stay here for a while, and you can stay in my apartment, your apartment, in Paris for as long as it takes. I’m attaching the complete email exchange with Lucie from when we returned from New York. If you read them, you’ll understand. I wrote a lot, she didn’t reply much. You see plenty of “I don’t want to hound you/pester you in vain,” which were all lies because I wrote again and again, pointlessly. And that last email, which goes on forever—Jesus, be brief—the one that ends with the pretentious thing about walking “the longest of possible paths, together.” I was by turns bombastic, insistent, tearful and plaintive, and even after she’d evicted me from her life, I still tried to get her to backtrack.
I’m not your enemy or your rival, or even an ally. But I have my past in my mailbox, and if you don’t want it to be your future, do something.
See you soon,
André
FROM: ANDRE.J.VANNIER@GMAIL.COM
DATE: JULY 1, 2021, 17:08
SUBJECT: YOU AND ME AND ME AND YOU
Dear Lucie,
I’m writing from my new email address to yours because the old ones belong to other people, and, like you, I’ve added a J for June. Why are we the ones who have to adapt? I suppose those four months that you and I haven’t lived give the other André and Lucie the advantage.
We now both know what happened to “us.” “You” left me, tired of my eagerness and impatience. I’ve read the emails that “we” sent each other, another Lucie’s words describing how she drifted apart from another André. I’ve read sentences that I recognized as my own, in all my vulnerability, and my stupidity too.
I’ll make this short. Being with me was never a rational choice on your part. And yet you approached me. Being with you was a miracle, but I also managed to lose you.
People rarely have the opportunity to save a relationship before it’s even in danger. I want to have a second chance before I ruin the first one.
I love you. Hugging you close…but not too tight.
GHOST SONG
Music & Lyrics:
Femi Taiwo Kaduna & Sam Kehinde Chukwueze
© RealSlim Entertainment, 2021
Here I dance with a holy ghost
On a sandy Calabar Beach.
Because now love’s so out of reach.
Oh we didn’t see them comin’.
I loved your skin, that was our sin,
That’s why they burned you in a tire
And threw our rainbows on their fire.
I still remember every kiss,
So much about you that I miss.
Oh fallen hearts in the abyss.
I sing about a long-lost ghost
On a sunny Calabar Beach.
Even love’s now out of reach.
Hear the dogs barking around us,
The wind blowing over the dust
Of my sweet love gone in the dark.
Let’s go, let’s swim with one last shark
I still remember every kiss,
So much about you that I miss.
Oh fallen hearts in the abyss.
As I walk with you, lover Tom,
On a weeping Calabar Beach,
Look, even hate is out of reach.
I want a mist of forgiveness,
But then I’ll beg for nothing less
To cover up the blood and tears,
I just want love, I’m asking please.
I still remember every kiss,
Everything about you I miss.
Oh fallen hearts in the abyss.
To cover up the blood and tears
I just want love
I’m asking please
I’m asking please.
THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2021
CLYDE TOLSON RESORT, NEW YORK
WOULD YOU LIKE to hear the recordings again, Mrs. Kleffman?”
April June shakes her head. Jamy Pudlowski watches as she sways in her seat, her expression blank. A game, a mouth, some soap, the whole world is swirling around her, and each word resonates without achieving any meaning. The SOC officer hands her a glass of water, but April has to put it down because her hands are shaking so badly. The business with the plane, and now this.
“The child psychiatrist let your daughter talk, she didn’t steer her in any way. She established trust, and Sophia explained each of her drawings, she talked about the secret. Do you understand?”
April is paralyzed with shock. Clark, her own daughter, the bathtub, every ounce of her refuses to conjure the suggestion of an image. April tender, April shady, said the poem that Clark didn’t write. The officer leaves long pauses in her explanations, but she keeps going, her voice gentle.
“Mrs. Kleffman, my name’s Jamy. May I call you April?”
“Yes, that’s me,” April says in a toneless voice.
“Have some water, April.”
April does as she’s told, like an automaton. April soft, so sleepy warm…
“Yes, thank you, ma’am.”
“April…” Jamy says. “Can you hear me? Your daughter can get through this. She was able to talk. And that’s important, talking is very important. The cognitive therapists were with her for a long time, they discussed her fear of water and of the dark and her relationship with her body. They’ve given a reassuring prognosis about the short-term effects of the trauma that Sophia has experienced. But of course we can’t be sure about her future development, Mrs. Kleffman. We hope everything will be okay.”
“…everything will be okay.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen: your husband will be tried, and given Sophia’s testimony, both Sophias’ testimony, I wouldn’t be jumping the gun to say he’ll be found guilty. Because, since you were in Paris, in the last three months…that you haven’t had…your daughter, well…the other Sophia has been abused in your home. Do you understand? In the state of New York, the sentence for this crime is ten to twenty-five years.”
“Twenty-five years. Yes.”
“It could be less if he agreed to attend therapy, to be monitored, to move away. You’ll need to explain this to your children, especially Liam, who’ll be angry…with you, with his sister, even with himself…”
“Has…Liam…?”
“No. You can be sure of that. The interviews leave no room for doubt.”
April runs her fingers over her lips, her eyes staring vacantly, then she slides a hand through her hair. Jamy watches her compassionately.
“You could change your name, move to another state,” she says. “Your double’s doing just that. She already accepted our suggestion. I’ve negotiated with the army and you will keep your husband’s pension as if he’d been killed in combat.”
“Killed in combat,” April repeats feebly.
She’s thinking about foals, like the ones she used to draw for her mother. Foals. They’re blood-colored, hovering in a steel-blue sky. It’s cold, it’s so cold. Everything’s stopped moving. Absolute zero. April caught in the icy storm.
“You will have medical and psychological support for your children and yourself.”
April doesn’t have time to do anything, her eyes widen in horror and nausea rises inside her, an uncontrollable bilious black wave of it, she wants to throw up, but she can’t manage even that.