That day became a standout that she would string together with other standouts, one after the other, for eight months, until she could look back on the state of her marriage and realize there had been far more superior days than inferior ones. She began to feel safer, sure enough of herself that one day three months ago, without warning anyone—Brian, her friends Melissa and Eugenie, her shrink, Jane—she took the elevator again.
And now here she was in a mall, riding down an escalator into a maelstrom of bodies. Teenagers mostly, as she’d predicted, on a Saturday of all days, and a rainy one, the kind of day mall managers prayed for. She could feel eyes on them—real or imagined, she had no idea—and the press of bodies as they passed and she could hear so many disparate voices, so many snatches of conversation— “. . . said you ’fronting now, Poot . . .”
“. . . pick up, pick up . . .”
“. . . and, like, I’m expected to just drop everything? Because he happens . . .”
“. . . not if you don’t like it, of course not . . .”
“. . . Olivia has one and she’s not even eleven yet.”
She was surprised at how calmly she took in all these souls hurtling toward her, past her, and streaming on tiers above and below her with their aggressive need for goods and services, for the itchy satisfactions to be found in acquisition for its own sake, for human connection and disconnection in equal measure (before she quit counting, she noted twenty couples where one was ignoring the other to talk on a cell phone), for someone, anyone, to tell them why they did it, why they were here, what separated them from insects moving underground right now in colonies that bore a remarkable resemblance to the three-tiered mall in which they found themselves wandering, roving, stalking on a Saturday afternoon.
Normally, it was just this type of thinking that preceded a panic attack. It started with a tickle in the center of her chest. The tickle quickly became a piston. Her mouth would turn Saharan. The piston would transform into the sparrow, imprisoned and panicked. It would flap its wings—whomph, whomph, whomph, whomph—in the hollowed-out core of her, and sweat would sluice down the sides of her neck and pop on her forehead. Breathing would feel like a luxury with an expiration date.
But not today. Not even close.
Soon she even gave into the pleasures of a mall, bought herself a couple of blouses, a candle, some overly expensive conditioner. A necklace in the window of a jewelry store caught both their eyes. They didn’t even speak about it for the first minute, just exchanged glances. It was two necklaces, actually, a smaller one within a larger, strings of black onyx bead balls, the chains white gold. Not expensive, not even close, probably not even something she’d pass on to a daughter, should she and Brian ever have one, and yet . . .
“What’s the pull?” she asked Brian. “What do we like about this?”
Brian looked at her for a long time, trying to sort through it himself. “Maybe because it’s a pair?”
He slipped it around her neck in the store. Had a little trouble with the clasp—it was too tight but the salesman assured them that was normal; it would loosen with use—but then the beads draped themselves over her blouse, just below her throat.
Outside the jeweler, he ran his palms along hers.
“Dry as a bone,” he said.
She nodded, her eyes wide.
“Come on.” He led her to a photo booth under the escalators. He inserted the required coins and pulled her into the booth with him, made her laugh by feeling her breasts up as she was pulling the curtain closed behind them. When the flashbulb flashed within the booth, she pressed her cheek to his and they made goofy faces, sticking out their tongues or blowing kisses at the lens.
When they were done, they looked at the strip of four panels and the photos were as silly as she’d expected, their heads half out of frame in the first two.
“I want you to sit for another strip,” he said. “Just you.”
“What?”
“Please,” he said, suddenly somber.
“Okay . . .”
“I want to mark this day. I want you to look in that lens with pride.”
She felt silly in the booth alone, could hear him out there inserting the coins. But she felt a sense of accomplishment too; he was right on that. A year ago, she couldn’t imagine walking out the front door. And now she was in a jam-packed mall.
She stared at the lens.
I am still afraid. But I am not terrified. And I am not alone.
When she came out of the booth, he showed her the strip and she liked what she saw. She looked a little tough actually, not the kind of woman you’d fuck with.
“Every time you see these pictures or you wear that necklace,” Brian said, “remember how strong you are.”
She looked around the mall. “This was all you, babe.”
He took her hand and kissed the knuckles. “I just nudged.”
She felt like weeping. She didn’t know why at first, but then it hit her.
He knew her.
He knew her, this man she’d married, this man she’d committed herself to walking through this life with. He knew her.
And—wonder of wonders—he was still here.
13
REFRACTION
Monday morning, a few hours after Brian left for the airport, Rachel tried to return to work on the book. She’d been writing it for the better part of a year but still wasn’t even certain what genre it fell into. It had started as straight journalism, an account of her experiences in Haiti, but once she realized it was impossible to write the account without inserting herself into the narrative, the book morphed into something resembling memoir. While she hadn’t yet attempted a chapter that detailed her on-camera breakdown, she knew she’d have to give it context once she did. Which led to a chapter about her mother, which led to another chapter about the seventy-three Jameses, which led to an overhaul of the entire first part of the book. At this point, she had no idea where the book was going and no idea how she’d get there even if she did, but most days she loved writing it. Other days, it fought her to a draw before her second cup of coffee. Today was one of those days.
There seemed to be little rhyme or reason as to why one day snatching the correct words from the ether was like opening a faucet and other days it was like opening a vein, but she began to suspect both the good and the bad parts of the process were connected to the fact that she was writing without a map. No plan at all, really. She fell quite naturally, it seemed, into a more free-flowing approach than she ever would have allowed herself as a journalist and gave herself over to something she didn’t quite understand, something that, at the moment, spoke in cadence more than structure.
She wouldn’t show the book to Brian, but she did discuss it with him. He was, as always, unfailingly supportive, though she wondered if, once or twice, she caught a patronizing glint in his eyes, as if he didn’t quite believe the book was more than a dalliance, a hobby that would never turn into something whole and finite.
“What are you going to call it?” he asked her one night.
“Transience,” she told him.