“She wasn’t my student,” he says.
“No?” she asks, her voice in his phone on his ear. He turns the volume down, then up, then down again. He’s not sure how clearly he wants to hear anything.
“She was just in the play.”
“Oh, right. The play. God, James. I just can’t believe it. It’s so sick. I couldn’t place her at first, when I saw her picture on the news? It took me a long time before I remembered how I knew her. The babysitter. I mean I recognized her, but I thought it was just déjà vu.”
“What?”
“Déjà vu.”
James watches a line of ants march out of the kitchen drain, up the sink, into his life. He opens cabinets, forgetting where he stored the whiskey. It’s their first postdivorce conversation that has strayed from domestic bureaucracy and the demands of time.
“What was your reaction?” she asks. “When you saw the news?”
The girls are with Meg for the week. Even when they’re with him, it’s apparent that they do not belong in his downsized life. They are elite, climate-controlled, dentally supreme. It comforts James to think of the blue corduroy rocking chair that his father built for him when he was born, the one where James rocked and fed and soothed his own children. The lullabies and stories and tears imbued in the fabric. When he moved out, he left the chair in the girls’ room. They didn’t want him to take it. But you’ll have a room in my new house, too, he told them. How about we put it there? This made them cry harder.
“Yeah,” James says. “It’s a shock.”
“You knew her pretty well, right?”
“No. Not really.”
“You guys rehearse for months, though. You get close to all those kids.”
“Well, she dropped out.”
“But wasn’t that toward the end?”
“Yes, but—it’s just that it was—she was pretty withdrawn. She kept to herself, mostly.”
“Strange. I must’ve misremembered.”
James locates the whiskey skulking behind a tub of venison jerky and pours himself a cup of it. The ebbing marijuana grants him an aerial view of this night, his life. He sees highways, a junkyard, a high school stage. His daughters. One young goat. Plastic, tires, wreckage from a hurricane. “Misremembered?”
“I had the impression that you were like a mentor to her.”
“Oh. Well. I guess I was, sort of. She didn’t have anybody else. I mean, no friends. She was in the foster system, you know. You had to read between the lines with her—it was all subtext—but I think she had it pretty bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“Abuse. She never talked about it directly. But yeah, I guess theater was good for her. She was one of those pressurized kids, you know, one of those kids who holds everything in until there’s a pretext to explode.” He gulps the whiskey. Referring to Tiffany as a kid sends him into a paroxysm of revulsion. He frees himself from it.
Hours ago, her blood and organs seemed so reliably encased in her skin. How unfair that the materials of such an immaterial person would prove as essential for her as they are for everyone else. He injured her, he knows that, he always knew that, but still he believed that she was untouchable. Until Meg called to say she was so sorry, she just saw the news. Forcing James to admit that it was possible to wound Tiffany Watkins.
“She played this very isolated character,” he said. “Maybe it helped.”
“She was good, right? I remember you saying she was good.”
He blushes until it feels like a fever. “She was okay. I mean, for a high schooler. It’s not like she was bringing anyone to tears in rehearsal.” He plows on. “I just got the impression that theater was maybe the only place where she felt secure enough to . . . express emotion, you know? I think she was trained to hide it, growing up. Or numb it. I don’t know. But in the play, everything was fake, she wasn’t herself, so she felt . . . free, maybe. That’s just my impression.”
The ease with which he can summarize and assess Tiffany at a time like this alarms him, but his subconscious flags it as a problem to resolve at a later stage, preferably in a dream.
“That’s horrible,” replies his ex-wife. From the background noise and eighteen years of conjoined life, James can tell that she is taking out the trash. She prefers a multitude of small waste bins to a few centralized ones, and so when she takes out the trash, she does so systematically, room to room, consolidating all small bags of waste into one large bag. She’s usually completing other tasks when they’re on the phone together, and this used to bother James, before the divorce, but now he appreciates it—this remaining window into her life. “I mean, I knew she was in the foster system, I remember you mentioning that, but I didn’t know about the abuse. That poor girl. Do you think someone from her past could be involved in the stabbing? Someone from her foster days? Or maybe someone from school?”
Meg loves true crime podcasts.
“I don’t know,” says James.
“They said they have suspects, but they aren’t releasing the details.”
He emits an involuntary noise—one that usually precedes vomiting.
“Oh, James. I’m sorry. The news is upsetting to me and I only met her once—I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. You’ve always been so connected to your students. Surreal, isn’t it? Does it feel real?”
“Yeah.” He considers crushing the ants. She wouldn’t want him to. “No.”
“It’s good that she had you. I bet there weren’t many adults she could trust.”
Fuck it. James crushes the ants slowly under his fist. They don’t move out of the way, don’t exhibit any self-preservation, just accept the gentle slaughter as though it were preordained. “Well. Yeah. She had a hard time connecting to people her age, so.”
“Do you know why she dropped out?”
Another gulp of whiskey. He stares across his kitchen counter into the living room, whose sole occupant is the B?sendorfer. It watches him, evaluates him, extorts him. It strikes him as a carcass. He wants it removed. “Just became too much for her, I think.”
“Mm. High school’s torturous enough, without . . .”
“Yeah.”
“All those other challenges.”
A pause.
“When was the last time you saw her?” asks Meg.
Up until now, some strong, otherworldly nurse had kept James intact, kept the news unbelievable, kept his eyes on the whiskey and the ants. But as soon as Meg asks this question—When was the last time you saw her?—the nurse abandons him, knocking things over as she leaves. Her substitute arrives at once. Her substitute is ugly and dangerous and weak and true. Her substitute looks like him.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Honestly, Meg, I never really saw her at all.”
“Well, I’m sorry. Truly. Anyway.” Now Meg is drinking something—lemon water, he assumes. She is an impeccably hydrated person. “I was thinking you could pick up the girls around four tomorrow, then drop off Emma at soccer since it’s on your way, and take Rosie back to your place. Maybe go for ice cream. She’s been sort of anxious lately, irritable, crying a lot. Obviously, we’re to blame.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rosie threw a tantrum at the pool the other day because she didn’t want to wear sunscreen. Screaming and sobbing and everything.”
“Hm.”
“Anyway, she could use some one-on-one time with you. What do you think?”
But James has placed the phone on the counter and concealed his face in his hands, shoulders heaving.
“Are you there? James?”
Tada
At the police station, vapor rises from two Styrofoam cups of coffee and fills the room with the scent of morning, although it is nearly midnight. Two officers scrutinize Jack with furrowed brows and split reactions. Throughout his interview, Jack has addressed his own shaking hands. His eyes are pink, his mouth dry, his face pale. He’s been crying intermittently since they brought him here, but his story was steady throughout, as if he were recounting a folktale from his childhood. Observing the boy before him, Officer Stevens is reminded of a white rabbit, pulled by the scruff from a magician’s hat, frightened and surprised. The punch line.
“These are the facts,” Jack concludes. “Do they look like an explanation to you?”
What Hildegard Said