Okay, he said, and she ached at his trust, how confident he was that she would be right back, as she always had. It was she who turned then, turned and hoisted her backpack on her shoulder and went straight out the door, before her heart could change her mind.
Two days later, when Family Services arrived, her things would already be piled on the curb. When they questioned him, Ethan would shake his head and his son’s heart would crack. No, he didn’t know where she’d gone. No, he didn’t share her views, not at all. Quite the opposite, to tell the truth. No, he couldn’t honestly say he was sorry. He’d tried to make things work for the sake of their son, but a man could only stand so much, right? Well—let’s just say he was relieved that she’d no longer be an influence. Yes, exactly. Much better off without.
Her books? Absolutely not. Seditious trash. He’d burned them all.
* * *
? ? ?
A bus to Philly, scarf pulled up, shielded by sunglasses. Eleven hundred dollars cash in her pocket, most of their savings. She did not have a plan just yet, only a hope: someone she thought might help, who might give her a place to pause and decide what to do next. But first, before she could pause, she needed to pay respects, to apologize. To atone. Slouched in her seat, she tugged her knit hat down nearly to the bridge of her nose, dug her chin into the collar of her coat. She refused to cry. Instead she watched the highway whir by in a blur of gray and white. Beside her, a man with a mustache snored, the roll of fat on his neck trembling with each breath.
The small suburb where Marie Johnson had grown up had neat green lawns dotted with flowering shrubs and old oak trees, tidy wooden houses with crisp coats of paint over edges softened by age. Marie’s house could have been any one of them: from the outside, it did not look like a house in mourning. But she knew it at once, from the news reports that had flashed it over and over on-screen, always with curtains shut tight against the cameras sizzling outside. Now, months later, the neighborhood had returned to some semblance of normalcy: a few yards down, a man yanked the chain of his leaf blower and it ground to life with a throaty growl; across the street an older woman in flowered gardening gloves deadheaded a chrysanthemum with schoolmarmish rigor. At Marie’s house, the only signs of life were the car in the driveway and the thin gap between the curtains, letting the afternoon sunlight slice inside.
As a girl, Marie must have played here. Maybe she turned floppy cartwheels on this patch of grass and chalked hopscotch grids on the sidewalk squares. Maybe she ran through the sprinkler on hot summer days, fleeing—then chasing—the curtain of spray. Margaret could see it, could hear her squeal, like Bird’s, rising like the peal of a bell. On her back, the rucksack chafed wide red welts into her shoulders. She rang the bell.
The woman who answered might have been ten years older than Margaret, but Margaret had the feeling she had lived lifetimes more. Her face was still young, but there was something worn and heavy about the way she carried herself, as if she had been stretched past what she should hold. Behind her a man, broad shoulders rounded and hunched, reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, a newspaper folded in his hand.
Mrs. Johnson, Margaret said. Mr. Johnson. I’m here about Marie.
It came pouring out of her then, in a confused torrent: apologies and confession, explanation and regret and self-recrimination. Her poems, her intent, her horror and sadness at Marie’s death. I didn’t mean, she kept saying. I never imagined. I didn’t expect. Even as the words slithered from her mouth back to her own ears she realized her mistake. What she desperately wanted—reassurance, comfort, absolution—she had no right to ask of them, and they had no reason to give to her.
They’re after me, she found herself saying. Pleading, half begging, her own fear shrill in her ears. They blame me for all this. And they’re right.
Before her, Marie’s parents stood in the entryway, impassive. Down the street, the man with the leaf blower cut the motor and the air went quiet. She was still on the front step; she hadn’t even waited, she thought, before laying all this at the feet of this man and this woman who had lost their child. It was hopeless, she was hopeless; how could you ever apologize for this.
I am so very sorry, she said finally, and turned to go.
What did you come here for, Marie’s father asked. He folded the newspaper in half, not angrily, but calmly. As if he had read enough news to last a lifetime, as if this were the last newspaper he would ever read again. He looked at her directly, without flinching: he was past fear, now. You think we have anything to say to you? he said. Our baby’s dead and you come here, looking for what. Wanting us to feel sorry for what you went through?
His voice was quiet, the kind of voice you’d use to talk in the library, and somehow this froze Margaret more than if he was shouting.
You think you know her? he went on. They all think they know her. Everybody thinks they know her, now. You got people wearing my little girl’s face on their chests, who don’t care about her or who she was. Just using her name to justify doing what they want. She’s nothing but a slogan to them. They don’t know the first thing about her. You don’t know the first thing about her either.
Around them, the ever-present noises of the suburbs—cars ambling by as if they had nowhere urgent to be, a sky-bound crow’s squawk, the inevitable dog bark from some indeterminable distance. Continuing on, as if nothing were amiss.
What is there to say, he finished.
He turned and retreated into the dark interior of the house.
For a moment, Margaret and Marie’s mother stood there on opposite sides of the doorway: Margaret frozen on the front step, the breeze chilly on the back of her neck, where sweat dampened her hair. Marie’s mother with one hand braced against the jamb, as if she were keeping the house from collapse. Eyes half squinted against the sun, her back cast in shadow. Studying Margaret. Margaret wondered what she saw. She thought, belatedly, of the Asian and Black worlds, orbiting each other warily, frozen at a distance in a precarious push-pull. In her childhood: a young Black girl shot, Los Angeles on fire, Korean stores aflame. Her parents had fumed, reading the news, indignant at the damage, the delinquency. And then, years later, a young Black man dead in a stairwell, a Chinese American cop’s finger on the trigger. There’d been outcry on all sides—an accident, police brutality, scapegoating—until the circles separated again into an uneasy truce. More than once, her mother had been shoved on the street by a Black teen, taunting her with ching-chong chants. Yet also: soon after she’d moved to New York, she’d been in Chinatown picking fruit from a cart when a Black man drove by in an SUV, rap blasting from the rolled-down windows so loud the pear in her hand shivered, and the shop owner, a wiry older Chinese man, gritted his teeth. Those thugs, he said, as if it were something they already agreed on, and spat, and she’d been so stunned that—to her shame—she’d simply nodded, paid, and darted away without a word. It weights her, this history, heavy as the pack on her back.
I’m sorry, Margaret said, again. I should go.
You have children? Marie’s mother asked suddenly.
One, Margaret said. I had a son. The past tense, unintended, shocks her. How easily her mind has accepted what her heart cannot. Have, she corrects herself. I have a son. But I won’t ever see him again.
A long pause between them, stretching and swelling until it wrapped around both of them, thick and plush. Then, to Margaret’s surprise, Marie’s mother reached out, touched Margaret’s wrist.
Welcome to the worst club in the world, she said.
* * *