I remember all those playdates with Lex and Lucinda. Lucinda was never cruel to me—just indifferent. And who am I to hate someone for not giving a shit? As Broomsville rushes past, I recall shy smiles and vague offers of lemonade, Lucinda handing me the remote so I could pick the last half hour of television before Ma came to retrieve us. Small things that did not count as friendship, but had to count for something.
And I remember what Cameron said, about places you go when you’re feeling locked inside yourself, and I go there—not for me, or Zap, or even Cameron. For her. This stupid, perfect girl with the inexplicable misfortune of being dead. I go because I am alive, and she is not, and there must be some cosmic reason for this.
It’s this cliff, up in the mountains. It’s very calm.
Russ
When Russ comes home from the station, Ines is standing at the refrigerator. The rusty door hangs open, the only light in the house. The page from Love in the Time of Cholera is still trapped beneath a magnet, faded, with curling edges. From behind, Ines could be anyone. Her hair hangs in a sheet down her back.
Russ had left in the middle of interrogating the art teacher—no explanation. A frantic need to get out from beneath the station lights.
Ines? Russ asks now, soft.
When Ines turns around, tears bubble in her lashes. Something is terribly wrong. She looks very sad to Russ, who holds his car keys too tight in his fist. The kitchen, all shadows.
What’s wrong? he asks.
Russ, she says, a quake. There’s something I need to tell you.
Ines slumps against the refrigerator door, next to a crusty bottle of mustard and a liter of flat Pepsi. Russ, she says again, this time an apology, a word she has knitted, soft, just for him. Behind her, a solitary bell pepper wilts in the vegetable drawer.
They’d started meeting months ago, at the Hilton Ranch hotel bar, to talk about Ivan. Marco had just started his program at the community college, and he knew all about tuition loans and applications—maybe this was the next step for Ivan. He could put all his philosophy to practical use. Marco suggested social work.
It just happened from there, Ines tells Russ. I am sorry.
Russ gathers his keys, wallet, jacket. Before he leaves, he asks his wife one thing.
Do you love him?
Though Russ knows the answer. Maybe instead, he should have asked—Do you love me? But Ines is weeping into her hands now.
Do you love Marco? Russ repeats, one hand on the door.
A stranger asked me that just last night, Ines says. I did not know until then, but yes, I think so. I think I do.
Russ took Ines up to the cliff in the mountains. Lee’s birthday, five years after he left.
They got out of the car on that winding forest road, and Ines was shivering, so Russ gave her his police jacket. They made the hike hand in hand. When they got to the top, Ines gasped. Russ had almost forgotten the beauty of the place, the reservoir spreading beneath the cliff, glassy and sanguine. The city on the other side, unimpressive clusters of beige homes.
It’s beautiful, Ines said.
I know, Russ said. This used to be my favorite spot.
Used to be? Ines said.
Russ nodded, left it at that. He wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist and breathed in her familiar scent. Top of the scalp. Ines, so warm against his torso, fleshy and malleable. It was late afternoon; the sun pierced the sky like an open sore. It hadn’t rained in over a month, and the reservoir was slowly ebbing to a cracked, dry crater.
Russ tried not to think of Lee, as Ines kissed his neck. But the memory of this place. He laid Ines down on a flat stretch of dusty earth and lowered himself on top of her. She laughed, pinned beneath him. Right here? Out in the open?
Only if you want to, Russ said, and he traced the side of her cheek with a hangnail thumb.
I want to, she told him.
Russ gave a part of himself to the woman in the dirt, the same lactic muscle that had loved and snapped before. She took that fragile, aching thing. Kissed it lightly. When Russ came, he cried. Collapsed on top of her. Ines held his face in both hands and sucked the tears from the corners of his eyes.
They never spoke of it again, and they never went back to the cliff. Ines didn’t ask what had cracked Russ open. She had made her move in this long game they played, this strategic withholding of crucial information. Russ was thankful she had not asked, that she had left that vast black-hole distance between them. Secrets remained secrets. Wife remained wife. Someday, he would tell her, Russ vowed, as they shuffled back down the mountain, sticky and bleary and stunned. He thought of that night, in California. Tell me about the people you’ve loved. Someday, Russ would, and when he brought her back up to the cliff in the mountains, it would just be the two of them—Ines and Russ and the wind over the lake. No ghosts.
The night Lee fled, he did not go straight from the car dealership to the highway. No, Lee pulled into Russ’s driveway, hat yanked low on his forehead. Green T-shirt, cargo shorts. Flip-flops.
They stood in the front hall of Russ’s house. This was before Ines, of course; Russ had not cleaned the kitchen in months, and the mice chattered through the walls and cupboards.
Where will you go? Russ asked, when the silence had crept between them and placed one clammy hand on each of their throats. No air.
West, Lee said. Does it matter?
It did not matter.
Take care of my boy, will you? Lee said.
Okay, Russ told him. Okay.
There was nothing else to say. A hug would have been unbearable, a handshake too distant, so Lee just shrugged at Russ.
All right, then, Lee said.
And he was gone.
Only when Lee’s car had groaned out of the driveway and Russ’s house was its filthy self again—then, Russ wanted to ask. How could you do it? It wasn’t a question of whether Lee had committed the crime. No, he wanted to ask: How could you do this to me?
He wanted to know how Lee had hidden such devastating darkness, how he had allowed that darkness to briefly escape its chains. How, in this newly shifted world, Russ could understand the nature of violence. Because Lee’s specific violence—futile and needless—was something Russ could not possibly forgive.
Now, Russ does the only thing that will calm him: he gets in his squad car. Revs the engine, which sputters in the cold. Changes the radio to the local FM station, where the news reports about the investigation—substantial leads, still no arrest.
Russ’s phone rings four times in a row. His pager buzzes on the dashboard. Russ should go back to the station house, but instead he turns onto the road that will take him to the mountains.
It is Ivan Russ thinks about now, Ivan and his sermon on evil. If evil does not exist, how do you explain that broken little dove on the playground carousel—how do you explain Lee Whitley?