? ? ?
I AM NOT known for rash decisions. I tend to drive my friends crazy, thinking and rethinking choices for weeks before finally staking out a course of action. It’s the way I’m hardwired, the way I move physically as well: slowly, methodically, like a dancer moving through deep water. I think this is why, in my work, I’m drawn to the literature of centuries past. I like that Marcel Proust spends thirty pages describing how his character tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep. And that’s the action-packed part of his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. Proust meanders for a further six volumes before wrapping things up. It’s a gorgeous book. By comparison, contemporary literature feels too frenetic.
Suffice to say, I am not a taker of spur-of-the-moment trips. But that evening, my thoughts kept circling back to the house in Atlanta. I wondered what color the shutters had been painted when my birth parents lived there. I wondered how tall the tree out front had stood, what kind of car they had parked in the garage. I wanted to see it. I wanted to go there, see the house, and find whatever remained of my first life.
It felt urgent. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I would be too distracted to go through the motions of my normal routine tomorrow. I never miss work; I couldn’t remember taking a sick day in all the years I’d worked at the university. But surely this counted as a personal emergency? And I actually was unwell, I thought, touching my neck. It would be tricky: Fall semester was in full swing. I had four lectures to teach in the week ahead. But the next break in the academic calendar wasn’t until Thanksgiving. The end of next month. I would go crazy if I waited that long.
I thought for a while, rubbing circles up and down my wrist. Then I checked the clock—9:00 p.m., not yet too late to call—and looked up the phone number for Madame Aubuchon.
Hélène Aubuchon is the formidable head of Georgetown’s French Department. She is in her seventies, but her posture (not to mention her legs) puts students four decades younger to shame. The French use an acronym, CPCH, to describe a certain type of aristocratic woman. It stands for Collier de Perles, Carré Hermès—meaning, a lady too well bred to leave the house without her pearl necklace and Hermès scarf. Hélène must have perfected the look in Paris back in the 1960s, and she’d remained immaculately pulled together ever since. I respected her, and I was also a little afraid of her.
She answered on the fourth ring. “All??”
“Bonsoir, Madame Aubuchon? Je suis désolée de vous déranger . . .” We had worked together for years now, but I still addressed her with the formal vous. Hélène Aubuchon, in my experience, was not prone to informality.
“I’m so sorry to bother you at home,” I continued in rapid French. “But I’ve had a bit of a family emergency. I’m going to need to take a few days off.”
“Ah. When were you thinking?”
“Well, ideally, starting tomorrow.”
“Non. Tout à fait impossible,” she said sternly. “But you know this. Not in the middle of the term.”
“I’ve just found out I was adopted. When I was very young. I never knew.”
“Oh là là. Ma chère. That must have been a shock. However, I need you to run the study-abroad session on Wednesday evening. And you are needed in the classroom, that sophomore tutorial surtout—”
“The reason I was adopted is that my mother and father were murdered.”
Silence.
“And may I tell you how I learned all this? It’s because doctors discovered a bullet in my neck. Right up against my spine. It was fired there by whoever murdered my parents. They shot me, too.”
More silence. Then: “Mais je ne comprends pas.” I don’t understand. “A bullet?”
“Yes. In my neck.”
“But—you don’t—you don’t mean it’s still there?”
“It is. I can send you the X-ray if you like. The bullet glows bright white.”
“And your parents were—you said they were murdered ?”
“My birth parents, yes.”
She let out a little poof of air. “Oh là là là là là là.” I imagined her loosening the Hermès and fanning herself. “Je m’excuse. Take as much time as you need.”
? ? ?
A QUICK CHECK online revealed that flights departed Reagan National Airport for Atlanta nearly every hour tomorrow. They weren’t prohibitively expensive, either. I picked a midmorning departure, Delta flight 1139.
Then I opened a small suitcase and began tossing in sweaters, leggings, a caramel-colored suede skirt. What did one pack for such a trip? What passed for an appropriate wardrobe for an outing to lay flowers on the graves of a mother and a father you had never known? When I had booked my plane ticket, the computer asked whether I was traveling for business or pleasure. Umm, neither. Not even remotely.
I jotted down a list of everyone I should remember to tell that I was leaving town. My family, obviously. A student for whom I’d agreed to serve as thesis adviser. Also, Will Zartman. His name gave me pause. I was supposed to go see his neurosurgeon colleague next week. I reached up and touched my neck. The pain was less intense today. Will was probably right: I was only imagining I could feel something. The neurosurgery consult could wait. That bullet had been in my neck for thirty-four years; another few days wouldn’t hurt.