“Because they were right. I am frayed.”
The problem here is that I can’t really tell him about the intruder on my property, the visit paid to my father, the cop and his questions. There’s too much about me that he doesn’t know, that I used to be someone else. That the person I used to be is guilty of some grave mistakes. He thinks I’m Annie Powers, formerly Annie Fowler. He thinks my husband is an insurance investigator. He knows about my dreams, the black patch, my history of fugue and disassociation, my choice to stop taking medication. He knows that I’ve been well and stable since Victory’s birth. He knows a version of my past wherein names have been changed to protect the guilty, myself included. But he’s ignorant of some crucial details and the very real recent threats. I think he must be aware of this, that he knows he’s helping me only as much as I’ll allow.
“Well, even so. You have a right to say what you want, Annie. Even if other people have legitimate and well-meaning reasons for asking something of you, it doesn’t mean you have to comply.”
I know he’s right, and I tell him so. “Anyway, they’re gone.”
“It’s something to keep in mind for next time. You have a right to say no, even if your reasons don’t seem logical to anyone else. Due to traumatic circumstances in your life, you have had breaks from reality when you were unfit to make judgments. But it has been nearly five years since one of these episodes has occurred. You have been dealing with the root cause of your illness, and you are well, even without your medication. You aren’t defined by those moments in your life; don’t allow your husband and in-laws to make that mistake, either.”
He’s right, of course, even with all he doesn’t know. The essential truths of our lives sometimes exist above day-to-day events. He thinks Gray found me in a bus station, that in a fit of altruism he took me to a hospital and, in an unlikely turn of events, fell in love with me during visits he made while I recovered. This is not very far from the truth, without being the whole truth.
“Gray fell in love with you while you were helpless and mentally unstable,” the doctor reminds me.
“So maybe he doesn’t want me to be strong?”
“Is that what you think, Annie?”
“I don’t know.”
Someone like Gray is at his finest when there’s a crisis to be handled. He is the man you want when the sky is falling. But when the sky is not falling, does he feel a little lost? I think about our family and all the things we are forced to conceal, all the secrets we keep.
Florida rests on a network of limestone mazes, a labyrinth of wet and dry caves and crevices referred to as a karst topography. A layer of quartz sand thinly mantles the underground landscape formed by the movement of water through rock over millions of years. It’s another world, filled with dark passages, populated by creatures that couldn’t exist on the earth’s surface. Sometimes I think of Florida’s secret places, its wet darkness, its silent corridors, and I feel right at home.
18
Most of us don’t live in the present tense. We dwell in a mental place where our regrets and grudges from our past compete with our fears about the future. Sometimes we barely notice what’s going on around us, we’re so busy time traveling. Before Victory was born, I could spend whole days trying to sort out the things that have happened to me, the terrible mistakes I’ve made. I marinated in my anger and self-loathing, cataloged all the different ways my parents failed me, cast myself as the victim and played the role like I was gunning for a gold statuette.
Motherhood changed that for me. Victory forced me into the moment. She demanded that I focus on her needs, that I live by her schedule. When I was with her-feeding her, changing her-just looking at her or playing with her, everything in the past and the future fell away. I was aware that we would be together like this for only a short time, that in a heartbeat she’d be walking away from me, living her own life. I didn’t want to waste a second thinking about what might have been, what might be. Love makes you present. So does mortal fear.
I am fully present as I race up the stairs to the bridge. I burst through the door and am confronted by the body of the captain who waved to me earlier. He has a bullet hole between his eyes and an expression of profound peace on his face. I step over him to get to the control panel and nearly lose my footing. The floor is slick with blood. Another body lies in a pile of itself by the door. I register all this but don’t have time to feel the full rush of horror the situation demands.
I stare at the knobs and switches before me. I have never been on the bridge of a ship like this one; I have no idea how to start the engine or even what to do next if I succeed. Outside, there is nothing but pitch black. It’s bitterly cold, my ragged breath visible on the air, but I’m sweating from stress. I start randomly pressing buttons and turning knobs, but after a few fruitless minutes I give up. I sit in the captain’s chair and take in the scene-the dead night, the dead ship, the dead men around me, the only person who could have helped me gone because I sent him away. My mind is racing through my limited options. Did I really send Dax away because I wanted to face down my enemy? Or did I do it because I wanted to surrender? I don’t know. But I do know I have to take responsibility for this desperate moment, at least partially. I am as guilty as anyone for how my life has turned out.
My fingers reach for the gold pendant at my neck. I feel the jagged edges of the half heart. When I left my family behind, I put it back on for the first time in five years. I did this to remind myself that he was right: I did belong to him. And until I claimed myself, I always would.
I am swallowed by the silence. I have never heard such quiet. I close my eyes and pray to a God I’m not sure exists. Then I hear a distant hum, a speedboat engine. Hope and dread compete for control over my chest. Either reinforcements have arrived or I am about to make my last stand. Only time will tell.
19
About a week after it hit the news that my mother had succeeded in her lobbying to getting Frank a new trial, a woman came by the trailer to see her. She knocked loudly on the door, and I opened it, expecting to see our landlord come to collect late rent-an all-too-familiar scenario. But standing there instead was a tiny woman with watery eyes and a quivering line for a mouth.
“I’m here to see Carla March,” she said. Her voice was timid, little more than a raspy murmur. But there was an odd resolve there, too, an unmistakable mettle to her bearing.
“She’s working,” I said. “She’ll be back in a few hours.”
“I’ll wait,” she said. Before I could say anything else, she moved over to one of the white plastic chairs we kept outside by the door. My mother had imagined us sitting out there in the evenings. But the humidity and the mosquitoes kept us inside beneath the A/C. The stranger sat herself firmly down, clasped her pocketbook in her lap, pulled her shoulders back, and stared off in the direction from which she’d arrived.
“I mean, like, four hours,” I said, wondering if she’d misunderstood. “Maybe more.”
“That’s fine, young lady,” she said without looking at me again, and pulled a Bible from her purse. Her hands were covered with dry and split patches of skin. Her skin was deeply lined, and there were the dark smudges of fatigue under her eyes. Still, she had a palpable aura of pride and righteousness in spite of the shabby condition of her apparel-a cotton floral-print skirt with the hem hanging, a white button-down blouse, yellowed at the neck and cuffs, white shoes covered in polish to hide the cracked and graying leather. She made me nervous; I didn’t want her waiting there.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
She turned her head toward me, said clearly, “I want to speak to your mother, and I’m not leaving until I do.” Her tone brooked no further questioning.