“Don’t you dare,” Vivek said. “You don’t know what Miriam did or did not want any more than I do. The only thing we can be sure she wanted was to die.”
Liesl’s bottom lip was trembling now, making her go for a long pause, a deep breath, and a change in tactic. She couldn’t think about Miriam and her last wishes. Not without thinking about Miriam and her last days and her own blindness to her old friend’s desperation. Liesl had spent weeks now with the image of Miriam waiting to speak with her on repeat. At moments she’d believed that Miriam had wanted to talk about Vivek, at times she wasn’t proud of she was almost convinced that Miriam wanted to confess the thefts, but she’d finally come to rest on the real answer. Help. Miriam had been reaching for a life preserver, and Liesl had never thrown it in the water.
“Why are you leaving?”
“Why would I stay?” he said. “What is there for me here?”
“A job you were excited about,” Liesl said. “Stability. The stability you need to rebuild your life after going through something terrible.”
“After causing something terrible, I don’t deserve anything,” Vivek said.
“You know that isn’t true.”
“I know I killed her,” Vivek said.
“The medical examiner would say otherwise.”
“If I bought a gun, loaded it, and put it in her mouth, but she pulled the trigger? Who’s the killer?”
“Miriam was an ill woman. A mentally ill woman,” Liesl said.
“And I abandoned her,” Vivek said. “They should arrest me. The police who were so focused on arresting a thief? They should arrest me. I’m a murderer.”
“They weren’t that interested, in the end,” Liesl said.
“They called her a thief.”
“Do you think you would feel better if there was a service for her?” Liesl said.
“Who would even come?” Vivek said. “People think she’s a criminal. People think she’s a coward.”
“Let me come see you,” Liesl said.
“I’m packing to move. It’s not convenient.”
“I’ll sit on a box. I’ll sit on the floor.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Vivek. Do it anyway. Let me come see you.”
“Not at the apartment,” Vivek said.
“Fine, I’ll meet you anywhere you like,” Liesl said. “Can I buy you a meal?”
“I’m not a child, Liesl. I’ve been feeding myself,” Vivek said.
“Then where?” Liesl said. “Where and when?”
“I was going to go to the library later,” Vivek said.
“Our library?”
Vivek laughed. “I would never come there.”
“Then where?” Liesl said. “One of the other university libraries? I didn’t know you were still spending time on campus. If I’d known, I would have come to see you earlier. I can be at any one of those libraries in ten minutes.”
“The public library,” he said. “The big one downtown. I’ll meet you up in the fourth-floor reading area.”
***
Liesl pushed through the revolving door, padded across burgundy carpet and up three flights of curved stairs. Vivek was on the fourth floor as promised, head down on a big wooden table, wrapped in his winter coat. When she greeted him, he took a good long time before acknowledging her.
“I haven’t been to this library since Hannah was a child,” she said.
“I’ll bet it looks exactly the same,” Vivek said.
“Back then we used to come here three times a week.” Vivek finally lifted his head. Liesl pulled out a chair and sat at the table across from him.
“Not anymore?” Vivek said.
“Hannah would still come here with her friends during high school, but I would just send library holds to the branch closest to the house.”
“No time to browse the stacks?”
“No time to browse the stacks.”
“Miriam loved this library,” Vivek said.
“I didn’t know that. Is that why you’ve come here? It makes you feel close to her? I’m glad you’ve found a place you can come. I hope it gives you some peace.”
He ran his fingers over a metal nameplate screwed to the center of the table.
“I bought this table for her.”
“What do you mean?”
“A stupid thing. A named gift. The library lets you do that.”
“The nameplate says anonymous donor,” Liesl said.
“She would have hated having her name on it. It would have made her embarrassed. But the donation would have made her happy.”
Liesl heard the woodenness in his voice. Tears, screaming, those would have been easier for her than this bareness.
“All the more reason to stay here. Now that you’ve made this place.”
“Is it? I think it’s just a table. I come here because I can’t think of where else I’m supposed to go and because my therapist insists that I’m not allowed to stay in my apartment all day. There are libraries in every city.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re seeing a therapist.”
“Yes. The chair of my department all but insisted.”
“Will you continue after you leave?”
“No. If the point of therapy is for me to feel better, then no. I don’t deserve to feel better. Miriam didn’t get to feel better, so why should I? Maybe I’ll travel the world donating tables to libraries and feeling like absolute shit. I have a bunch of money now, did you hear? Not her life insurance; they don’t pay that off if you… Well, there’s no life insurance, but I was the beneficiary of her retirement accounts, and she must have planned to play a lot of golf because it’s so much money I don’t want that they insisted on giving me.”
“It’s good that you won’t be worried about money.”
“Why?” asked Vivek. “Don’t I deserve to be worried?”
“This table is a beautiful gesture in Miriam’s memory. It can be the first of many gestures in her memory. But you can’t make those gestures if you disappear from here. I’m here because I want to talk to you about preserving Miriam’s memory and restoring her reputation. A terrible thing happened to her, but I can fix it; I think I can fix it. You and I have always known that Miriam wasn’t the thief, but I know now who was.” Her voice cracked at the end and she tried to hold his despair-dulled eyes.
“The butler in the pantry with a candlestick?” Vivek said.
“Vivek, be serious. Do you think you’re the only one who feels like they failed her? I worked with Miriam five days a week, and I should have known something was wrong, I should have done something, but I kept my head down. And I should have done something to prevent that story about her being printed. As soon as I heard a rumble about her being a suspect, I should have done everything in my power to end those suspicions.”
“But you didn’t do those things,” Vivek said.
He didn’t say it as an accusation. He didn’t need to. She was working hard to punish herself. He could see it.
“I didn’t. We can still fix this.”
“Not me. Me and my shitty guilt money know it’s too late.”
A teenager at the next table over shushed them.
“The chair of your department cares enough about you to insist on therapy. I’m sure they would agree to a leave of absence.”
“A leave isn’t an option,” Vivek said.
“I’m sure it is,” Liesl said. “They stop people’s tenure clock for maternity leave all the time; I’m certain an exception can be made in this case.”
He rubbed the nameplate with the sleeve of his coat until it shone.
“A maternity leave is a legitimate claim. Bringing a life into the world. Who would argue with that?” He stopped rubbing, satisfied with the sheen of the nameplate. “Liesl, drop this. I’m not going to stay. I can’t.”
“Please,” she said, veering close to a tone that begged. “I’m sure if you just asked for a leave.”
Vivek started to get up. “They offered me a leave.” He pulled his parka closed and turned to go.
“Take the offer!” Liesl said. It was unfair to him perhaps. Probably. But she felt she needed him near to complete her penance. “The idea of returning there must seem awful now, I know. But if you just give yourself some time to heal. And if you give me some time to fix all of this. I promise that I can fix this.”