Forgive me for dragging you into the sickening scene I witnessed. It haunted me—haunts me still—but I should have been more considerate; should not have spread that contagion to you. I’ve reimagined that scene every day since I saw it; it grieves me to think that perhaps you have, too. Was I na?ve to hope that I could walk through the valleys and alleys of the shadow of death—even wrapped in the armor of truth and justice—and then simply walk blithely out again, scot-free, without something nasty sticking to the sole of my shoe; sticking to the shoe of my soul?
Now that the tarp is off the top of the cube, I can look up, through the chain-link, and see the sky for the first time in days. The airspace above the cage is crisscrossed with birds, stirred up by the passing helicopter, I suppose, and something about their flight strikes me for the first time. Birds on the wing rise and fall, rise and fall, a hundred times or more a minute. Not the loafing coasters, of course—not the lazy buzzards gliding overhead, sizing me up with appraising eyes—but the ordinary, diligent little fliers. In our mind’s eye, smoothing algorithms are overlaid, flattening the birds’ trajectories, minimizing their myriad midair miracles. We see their flights as perfect forward motion, but nothing could be further from the truth. In truth, every flap is followed by a tuck and a sweep, hasty and high stakes; hot on the heels of every flickering gain in altitude comes a small, heart-thudding drop.
So go their brave and lovely lives aloft: They—like us—rise and fall and rise again. Continually risking. Continually failing. Continually triumphing.
Or so I still hope, here within my cage.
I miss you, sweet Roxie, and I miss the man—I miss the “me”—I get to be when I’m with you.
Please let me see you at Thanksgiving. Please give me a reason to give thanks.
Please.
Please.
Please.
Tyler
THAT EVENING, AFTER SCRUBBING bones from the steam kettle, then scrubbing his skin until it was raw, Tyler put on exercise clothes and slipped into the back row of a yoga class—a room filled with bodies more limber than his, minds less troubled than his. During Tree Pose, he looked at the woman directly ahead of him and shuddered: For a moment, as she clasped one foot and folded her leg, Tyler thought her leg had been severed at the knee; thought the droplets falling from the knee were blood, not sweat.
At the end of the class, he lay on his back—Corpse Pose—and felt droplets falling from his face: not sweat, but tears. Then pressure on his fingers—the woman beside him had reached out, taken his hand, offered a comforting squeeze. He could not return the squeeze. Corpses cannot return kindness.
At the end of class, he rolled onto his side: Rebirth Pose. By the time he opened his eyes, the room was empty and he was alone.
CHAPTER 38
Kathleen
SHE GAVE THE OFFICE door an exploratory nudge, then—when it moved—she hipped it open with a practiced bump. She was mildly annoyed that the latch still hadn’t been fixed, but at the same time, she was grateful that she didn’t need to set down her briefcase or coffee to open it.
Kathleen wanted to believe that Bill was being coy at breakfast: that he hadn’t mentioned their anniversary because he was planning to surprise her with a romantic dinner at Regas or, better yet, the Orangery—closer to home and much more elegant, though twice as expensive. Despite her hopes, though, she suspected that he’d simply forgotten the date. It wasn’t that Bill was a thoughtless husband—not compared with most of her colleagues’ husbands, at any rate, not if their reports were accurate. But lately he’d been busy, preoccupied, and tense.
She felt a commingled rush of surprise, delight, and guilt, therefore, when she saw the vase of roses and the gift-wrapped box on her desk. Sweet man—he hadn’t forgotten. She plunked down her briefcase and picked up the phone to call him. While she waited for Bill’s secretary to transfer the call—the girl was new, and not terribly efficient yet—Kathleen shouldered the phone to her ear and plucked the box from the desktop. It was small—the size of a pack of cigarettes—and she gave it a shake, listening for the telltale rattle of earrings or a necklace. She untied the gold foil ribbon, then used a fingernail to slit the tape on one of the end-flaps of blue wrapping paper.
“Hello there,” Bill said breezily when he came on the line. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Did you just hear from the tenure committee, or did Jeff just get expelled?”
“You sneak,” she said. She tilted the package, and the box slid slowly from its tight paper cocoon. “You fooled me completely. I was sure you’d forgotten.” Still clutching the paper, she lifted the box by its lid, allowing the lower half to drop into the upturned palm of her left hand. The box’s contents were cushioned and concealed by a puffy rectangle of cotton batting.
“Forgotten what?” he asked as she laid down the lid and paper and plucked out the batting to unveil the gift.
Kathleen’s scream rose, the handset falling from her shoulder and clattering to the floor.
Inside the jewelry box, resting on another bed of white batting, were two objects. One was an antique pocketknife—Bill’s pocketknife, the one he’d inherited from his father. The other object was a slender human finger, its severed base black with crusted blood, its nail bright with scarlet polish.
CHAPTER 39