An impatient man was actually pushing him aside, to get at the registration table.
“Excuse me,” this person said, gruffly, after the fact.
That smile. It was small, because her mouth was small, and her teeth were perfectly aligned. Too perfectly, he thought with new horror. Had her teeth been smashed? Were these new teeth, false teeth? He struggled to remember in what specific ways he had damaged her: arm, foot, concussion, suture.
“You were in the hospital,” our father said, like a fool.
She looked at him. “Well, yes. A long time ago, I was.”
Mandy Bernstein, his acknowledged fiancée. Daniel Abraham, his fraternity brother and friend. Their two victim-spirits had been his companions every day since that day, two lost people fastened to him and walking gravely beside him, step by ponderous step, and never once did he imagine they might release him, because he truly did not believe he deserved release. And not once, not one time in all these years, had he given a single thought to that other person in the back seat, that other body in the tumbling car, because he hadn’t killed her and because there was so much else, too much else, in the way: Mandy and Daniel, who were dead. This woman wasn’t dead. Had he ever even seen her? Had he turned back, offered a hand or a word of welcome? He had been listening, half listening, to Mandy as she narrated the story of the movie her sorority had screened the night before. He had been wondering if he shouldn’t run into the fraternity house to use the bathroom before setting out. He had been questioning whether he’d fastened the canvas roof correctly the last time he’d had the car out and was showing somebody how the convertible top worked, but he was too proud to ask his girlfriend to get the manual out of the glove compartment. He had barely turned his head as the two of them, his passengers, climbed into the back.
Had Danny said: Morning! This is Stella.
Had Stella said: Nice to meet you!
Had Salo said: Great to meet you, too.
But he remembered nothing else, nothing about her at all, not even that she was Black, which was not a non-thing, not in 1972, and then he was turning in the air and they were dead and yoked to him forever, except that here this woman was in the foyer of the Metropolitan Pavilion.
“I’m sorry,” he heard his own voice say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Salo,” she said quietly, “it wasn’t your fault.”
And right then, right there, he started to cry, not silently and not with restraint, and this was the first time, the only time, if he was being honest. All those years, not once: never by the roadside, or in the emergency room, or down in the horrible basement morgue with a pathetic Ace bandage on his wrist, or at either funeral. Never, it now occurred to him, with his wife, whose entire purpose, he knew, was to persuade him of the very thing this stranger had just, so matter-of-factly, said. Of course it was his fault. Every moment since that day had been formed around the understanding that it was his fault. He shook with the weeping, he felt its aftereffects on the skin of his cheeks, and chin, and neck. Both of those men, the impatient one who had pushed him aside and the impatient one behind the table, were looking at him now. Salo could see it, from the extreme blurred edge of his vision, but he couldn’t get himself to care about it. He might be a grown man in a business suit sobbing in the crowded entryway of the Metropolitan Pavilion, but for the first time in so many years our father was also standing still. Perfectly, beautifully still, and rooted to the ground. The endless tumbling that had been his life since that awful morning: it had all just … stopped.
“Do you want to come upstairs with me?” said Stella. “We could talk.”
He nodded. He had not one thing to say. The delirium of stasis had silenced him.
He followed her up three flights, barely able to catch his breath as they climbed, his absent wife, his children who did not acknowledge one another at school, the little-girl soldiers somewhere in that building, all now utterly forgotten. Salo kept his eye on her, on her slim legs climbing the steps, on the video camera bouncing against her hip. When they reached the fourth floor she led him through the booths to the back of the building. There were people here, but not as many as he’d expected, not with those crowds in the lobby.
“I thought there’d be more people,” he said to the back of her head.
“They’re all on the second floor, where the Dargers are. Apparently, no one can resist a female child with a penis and a sword.”
Their destination apparently was a square booth in one of the back corners, its walls covered with what looked like large framed blueprints and schematics. There was a glass-topped case in the center of the space, also full of smaller pictures of buildings. Misshapen buildings. The sign above the entrance said SANDRO BARTH, LLC. BERKELEY, CA. A young woman got up from her desk as they approached. “Thanks, hon,” said Stella.
“No worries. Hope you found something drinkable.”
“Doubt it,” Stella said. She turned to Salo. He had stopped crying, which was a great relief to him. “We’ve invented this thing called coffee out on the West Coast. It’s kind of like this,” she raised her takeout cup, “in that it’s liquid and hot. But it’s different because it tastes good. I feel sorry for you guys.”
“We’re just used to it,” the woman said. She left.
“So … you live in California,” said Salo. He took the seat beside the desk. A group drifted in and over to the glass-topped case.
“I grew up in Oakland. I went back after the accident.”
She said this so easily, gliding on without a falter.
“You didn’t … you mean you didn’t graduate from Cornell?”
“Started over at Berkeley.” She smiled her beautiful smile. “I love how you East Coast people do that whole Ivy League thing. I get this a lot. What do you mean, you could have had a diploma from Cornell and you turned it down? I was thrilled to be accepted there, but I would have gone to Berkeley if my parents hadn’t persuaded me. Then, afterward, they were the ones who didn’t want me to go back.” She paused. “I sometimes think it was all harder on them than on me.”
Salo wasn’t surprised. The man’s daughter had climbed into a ridiculous car with three white students, one of whom had sent the others hurtling into injury and death. And Salo had not even gone to the hospital to see her and the damage he’d caused, whatever it was. It had to have been terrible, but nothing alongside the damage he’d inflicted on the others.
“What,” he began. “I mean, what were the … your … injuries? I can’t remember.”
She sighed. The topic seemed of little interest to her. “We don’t have to talk about this. I want to hear about you! What are you up to? Married, I see! Do you have children?”
Our father looked down at his own left hand. He had come close to denying his children, not duplicitously, but because he’d genuinely forgotten them. “Yes. I have three children.”
“Three! How old?”
He explained. It took so little time.
“My gosh, that’s a lot to take on.”
“I work for my family’s company. Financial services.”
She nodded. “Do you like it?”
“I…” The question didn’t immediately compute. “Well, sure. And I started buying paintings, years ago. Nothing like this,” he said apologetically. “I mean, they’re very nice, but I’m just looking.”
Stella burst out laughing. “Please! I’m not here to sell you art. These aren’t even paintings, you know. All drawings. I think he’s much more interesting than Darger, actually.”
“He?” Salo asked.