I have tried not to let these things haunt my dreams. I have tried not to believe that human beings are evil, animals picking each other’s bones.
After the camp, it began to seem urgent that Kay tell the chief nurse, go ahead and get her discharge. She kept saying she wanted to wait a little longer, but she was starting to fill out, and soon it would be apparent to anyone who looked at her, and more than that, more than that, I just couldn’t bear it. I was responsible for her, and I couldn’t bear it anymore, not after the camp. Later I pasted the pictures from the camp in my scrapbook, with all the other ones I took. Pages and pages of army life: A nurse washes her clothes in an empty barrel. A soldier smokes a cigarette, striking a cocky pose. Pages and pages like that, and then there they are in neat rows: A stack of dead bodies. A man like a stick figure in a striped uniform. I can’t remember putting those pictures in the book, slipping the corners into their little black triangles, lining them up. It frightens me a little to think of the person who did that. The person who documented the horrific and the daily as if they were the same. The person I must have been.
So one day I said, again, “Kay, you have to tell her.”
“Not today,” Kay said, her usual demurral, but this time I said, “Yes, today, or I will.” At that she tightened her mouth into a line. Silence. All day I waited for her to crack. I waited and waited. But we went to bed without another word on the subject.
I couldn’t sleep. No matter how I positioned myself on the cot my body ached. When I finally got up Kay stirred. “Where are you going?” she asked. I pretended not to have heard.
We were in tents there. The chief nurse had a tent to herself. I knocked on the tent pole, heard a faint, “Wha . . . ?” and stepped inside. She sat up, pushing a tangle of hair out of her face. She was a martinet and we all hated her, but even she looked vulnerable at three in the morning, her cheeks oddly puffy. “What on earth, Riley?” she said. “Are we under attack?”
“No.” I crouched awkwardly at her feet. It was not too late to change my mind. “I think Kay is pregnant.”
I watched as she registered this news. “Thank you, Riley,” she said. “You may go.”
I went back to my tent. I thought Kay was asleep. But then she startled me by speaking. “You told her, didn’t you,” she said, without the question mark.
“You can’t stay here anymore,” I said. I expected anger from her, but instead in the dark I heard weeping. I rolled away from her, hardening myself. “I’ve arranged everything with my parents,” I said, and I was the one who sounded angry. I’d gone to the camp and she hadn’t. Maybe that was why. “You have a place to go. You’re lucky to get out of here. You’re lucky.”
I’d been bringing her the syrettes. But I didn’t know she’d been hoarding them. How would I know? There were days she barely spoke to me. What was I supposed to do? Refuse her help when she was in pain? Insist I give her the injections, search her things, treat her like a child, humiliate her? How was I supposed to know? What could I have done to stop her? Tell me, Jennifer. What could I have done?
You’re lucky was the last thing I said to her. In the morning she was dead.
Jennifer said, “You told me she lived.” I was startled. She was accusing me.
“Did I?” I said.
“When you first brought her up. You said she didn’t die.”
“All right, let’s say she didn’t,” I said. “Let’s pretend none of this, none of what I’ve told you is true.”
“Is that what you want? Because I’ll write it down however you want.”
I’d upset her. I couldn’t get over my surprise. “What happened happened.”
“What happened is what somebody says happened,” she said. “That’s all history is.”
I’ve been thinking about that, since she left. So we create the past, do we, Jennifer? Maybe. Maybe. But have you really convinced yourself it’s quite that simple? I think you know perfectly well that the past creates us too.
See Rock City
As soon as she gets home Jennifer goes out on her back deck. She tells herself not to go out there but does it anyway. After the fog and a run of cloudy days, the sun is out, the light is bright, the leaves are green, the pond is a shimmering blue reflection. Margaret is not outside. Though what drove Jennifer out was a sense that Margaret would be watching, waiting for her, she fails to be relieved by the sight of the empty deck across the pond.
Kay died. Kay died of an overdose of pain medication. Is this story even true?
She can’t listen to Margaret anymore. She can’t. She tightens her grip on the deck railing, firming this decision, and at that moment Margaret comes outside. Jennifer sees the old woman register her presence, but she doesn’t wave, and neither does Jennifer. They both stand there, Jennifer leaning on her railing, Margaret leaning on her cane.