They’ve asked me to pinpoint pivotal times where things began to really change for me, to reconstruct my life as best I can. I remember we were at a party at the Boathouse in Central Park-a friend of yours from your new job had graduated from business school. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and when I was on my way back, I saw you sitting at the table, laughing, drinking, eating cold shrimp with a dainty little fork. And I suddenly realized-it didn’t matter I was gone. Maybe it was better. So I started just to walk down the park drive. It was the middle of a Saturday afternoon in May, close to the anniversary.
I stopped when I got to the zoo. Outside the gates, there was a man selling balloons in the shapes of animals. A group of kids ran for the turnstiles, sneakers squeaking. They were so, so young. I sat down on a bench, listening to their high, happy voices, and all the things I vowed so long ago not to think about suddenly throbbed inside of me, way too present. The flashing blue lights. The way Mark looked at me when I told the EMT what I knew. All those years later, and I still felt every ounce of his shock.
And then, suddenly, there you were. You were standing above me, hands on hips.
‘What are you doing?’ you asked. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
‘I went for a walk,’ I said.
‘Why?’ Your face was so red.
I gestured to the zoo’s cheerful gate. ‘Remember when we took Summer and Steven here?’
‘Yes.’ You said it very slowly, cautiously, as if I’d told a joke and you were waiting for the punch line.
‘Do you think all parents understand how great it is for kids to see animals?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been sitting here, watching, and every kid who has gone in is so happy. All parents understand this, right? All kids get to go to zoos?’
You turned your wedding ring around on your finger. ‘I thought you were sick. I even had Paul go into the bathroom and make sure.’
We went back to the party and explained that I’d run into an old friend and walked a ways up with him toward the reservoir. Your friends nodded and smiled and drank their drinks. The rest of the lunch, you had a hand on your bare knee, and you kept squeezing, squeezing. When you took it away once, I could see the fermata-shaped nail indentations in your skin.
After that, similar episodes came more frequently. I wasn’t where I said I would be. I wasn’t as dependable, wasn’t as cogent, couldn’t carry a conversation, missed days of work, spaced out for hours. Once, you caught me watching a Three Stooges marathon when I was supposed to be getting ready for a party. Another time you caught me on the Promenade, coaxing a baby squirrel toward my lap with a spoonful of peanut butter. I’d said I was going to the lab that day. ‘Have you been tricking me?’ you asked. ‘Have you always been this kind of person, but just hid it all this time?’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said.
‘Try,’ you said.
But it was about the same things, the things I’d already told you. And it was about the things I could only halfway tell-I was so afraid to tell it all. But maybe I should have; maybe I owed it to you. And maybe that’s why I waited for you in front of your old office building, that winter after you left-so I could come clean. Or maybe I wouldn’t have said anything, if I’d seen you. Maybe it would’ve been enough to know that you were still here, near us, close.
This is probably the part where I should tell you how I really feel. That I think what you did was terrible, and that you ruined lives, and that I’ll never forgive you. But there’s room in me to forgive, I think. Maybe, in some ways, I saw it coming. Maybe, in some ways, I understand.
4
‘Do we have everything?’ I asked.
My father and I were standing in the doorway of our apartment, bags slung over our shoulders, the wheels of the suitcase caught on the lip between the door and the hall. Steven had already gone down the street to look out for the car service.
We shut the door and locked all the locks. My father stooped, jiggling the handles to make sure they were truly secure. We heard the shouting on Montague Terrace before we pushed our way out of the heavy wooden brownstone door and clomped down the building’s front steps. The bags Steven had brought downstairs were waiting patiently at the curb next to an old diesel Mercedes, but Steven was standing in the middle of the street, his hands on his hips, glaring at Renee Klinefelter, our forty-something neighbor down the block. Renee was in her uniform, jeans cut off at the knees and a slightly-too-small black t-shirt that stretched tight over her paunchy stomach. As usual, her two grumpy-faced pugs flanked her, one on each side.
‘Don’t pull that amnesty stuff on me,’ Steven was shouting. ‘That bomb could have decimated one of our most vulnerable buildings. He should’ve been shot on the spot.’
‘So what do you suggest we do?’ Renee shouted back, spitting a little. ‘Deport everyone? Take away political asylum as a whole?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’
‘Some people need political asylum.’