“I finally listened to them a couple of nights ago. All of them, in a single sitting. Oh God, Robert. I’m so sorry. Robert, I’m so sorry.” She attempts to hug Robert. Robert thinks, do I let her? Do I hug her back?
“Okay,” he says, but does not hug her back. Viola pulls away from him.
“I don’t want you to think I’m a terrible person,” she says.
“I don’t think you are a terrible person,” Robert says.
Robert looks past her, at the window. After a moment he realizes, with no particular affect, that he is looking at his own reflection.
On Friday, Viola calls to tell Robert that her aunt has died.
~ ~ ~
Robert and Viola drive through the husk of downtown Indianapolis. It looks, if anything, worse than it did on the news. They feel as though they are driving through an alien landscape. What could possibly live here, they think.
Their yard is littered with trash, their front door kicked in. Robert and Viola explore the house, half expecting to find someone sleeping in one of the rooms. There’s damage, some missing items, but the house seems livable.
Robert sets to work repairing the door. Viola finds a broom, a dustpan. They work in silence, as if afraid that any unnecessary sound might break the truce, however brief, that has been called forth between them.
They sleep in different rooms, pass each other in the hallway like memories.
~ ~ ~
“When my mother died,” Viola tells Robert, “I didn’t really even notice. Really, I didn’t. For such a long time she hadn’t been my mother, she’d been this woman who appeared every couple of months to tell me that she was getting better and that soon we’d be together again. By the time I was six, I was terrified of her. I was terrified that I would have to go live with her someday. But she never got better.”
They are in Viola’s old room in North Carolina and Viola is putting on her black dress. Robert sits on the end of her bed wearing his socks and his underwear and a white shirt and black tie. His suit pants and jacket are draped across his legs. “We were supposed to be there for each other,” Robert says. “I could forgive you anything, except that.”
Viola breathes in and out, carefully, and does not respond.
In the next room some distant cousins are trying to help Viola’s uncle get dressed. Viola’s uncle keeps calling out his wife’s name, over and over, while the distant cousins grunt with the effort of trying to get his arms in his jacket.
“Her heart just gave out,” Viola’s uncle says, on the way to the funeral. “She was just a little thing, always had a fast heart. I used to say she was my hummingbird. She thought it was funny, me calling her that. The way she was always flitting from one place to another.”
“How are you, Robert?” one of the distant cousins asks.
“Okay,” Robert says. “I may be asked to resign from my firm. Not bad.”
The funeral is in the chapel of the Hillsborough Street Baptist Church. “I didn’t know Melissa that well,” the minister admits. “But I have several trustworthy accounts of her character. She was loving and generous, more tidy than not, a woman of excellent mores and standards even if not a regular church-going woman per se… ”
When it comes to be Viola’s uncle’s turn to speak, he says, “Missy and I never had any children. But I never knew a better mother than her in my life. Missy, damn you, what’s Viola supposed to do for a mother now? You’re just leaving her? You’re just leaving me?”
~ ~ ~
Robert stays quiet during a dinner with several of Viola’s old friends. After dinner, as they’re walking back to their rental car, Viola says, “You didn’t have to come.” When Robert doesn’t answer, she says, “Look, I can find my own way back.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Robert says.
“I don’t want to be in a car with you right now,” Viola says. “I don’t want to share so little space.”
“I came down here because that’s what we do,” Robert says. “We support each other. That is how this is supposed to work.”
“This doesn’t work,” Viola says. “Jesus, Robert. None of this works.”
They are standing near the edge of Moore Square Park, near the City Market. Just as Viola’s starting to walk off, a man in a bomber jacket with a raw red face comes up to the two of them, waving like they were all old friends. “Hey. Hey I need to talk to you guys for a minute.”
“Jesus,” Viola says. “Not right now.”
“You’re the one who gave up,” Robert says. “I never fucking gave up. You have no idea.”
“No, listen: I need to talk to you,” the man
says, and shows them the pistol underneath his
jacket.
“Jesus,” Viola says.
“This all you’ve got on you?” the man says, looking through Robert’s wallet. “What about her earrings? Give me her earrings.” His eyes dart continuously from Robert to Viola, as if expecting one of them to tackle him. Cars drive by from time to time without stopping. Robert is trembling. He’s ashamed and angry. He’s thinking, Why isn’t anyone stopping this? Can’t they see what’s going on? Viola hands over her earrings with a strange smile, as if she found the whole episode more awkward than terrifying.
The man tucks the earrings into his pocket, pushes the gun into the waistband of his pants, then takes off running through the park. Robert screams and runs after him.
“Robert,” Viola yells. “What are you doing?” She’s trying to follow after him, but not doing much of a job in it in her heels. She kicks the heels off, but that’s even worse, because now she has to watch where she’s putting her feet.
Robert keeps screaming. He doesn’t think about what he will do if he catches the man. He doesn’t think about the fact that the man he is chasing has a gun and he, Robert, does not. He doesn’t think about what he would do were the man to turn and pull his gun. There’s something furious and red in Robert’s brain that blocks out the possibility of all other thought, so that all that is left in the world is a single thing made of running and screaming.
The man trips himself up on something or another and Robert’s on top of him, catches him by the collar of his jacket and jerks him into the dirt. There’s a wrenching sensation as Robert collapses on top of him. Then, hugely, the pistol goes off. Robert and the man look at each other, surprised, for a moment, as if neither had ever expected to hear such a sound, so close, in his life. The man studies Robert’s face. Robert studies the man’s face. Both Robert and the man are thinking: Which one of us was it? Robert feels himself for a wound. The man does the same. “The fuck,” says the man. “The fuck.” Both are unhurt.
Robert pushes the man’s face to one side and scrambles on his belly for the gun, where it’s fallen, a little over an arm’s length away. Robert pushes himself to his feet and aims the gun. The man sits cross-legged in the dirt, looking up at him.
“I wasn’t going to use it,” he says. “Don’t you see? What we’ve just been through is a miracle. You and me. You see what I mean? I’ve always wanted that, my whole life. I’ve always wanted to experience a miracle.”
“Get on the ground,” Robert says. “Face down. Into the dirt. Good. Now: my wallet. My wife’s earrings.”
“Here,” the man says, flinging away the earrings and wallet. “Take it. Take your stuff. Don’t you see what we’ve just been through?”
“Robert, what are you doing?” Viola says.
“Face into the dirt,” Robert says to the man on the ground. “Give me your fucking wallet. Give it to me.”