“You’re late,” she said, “and making me late, too. I wish you were staying around because you’re just the person I’d like to tell whatever happens today.” She touched her forehead. “I feel pregnant with anecdote.”
I looked at the money in my hand. I felt my eyes filling with tears.
“That’s a loan, remember,” Ann said. “My finances are in shambles.”
“I’ll pay you back. I’ve got money in…Stoughton.”
“Don’t be shy about saying it,” Ann said. “I’m glad. I know it’s not my place to be…to be anything about it. But I’m glad. You two belong together.”
I nodded.
“And besides, I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then don’t,” I blurted out. “Stay loyal to me. Try to understand. No matter what happens.”
Ann nodded but she didn’t know what I was talking about; she felt a soft wave of embarrassment over how ardent my plea had been, but she was letting it pass right by. It was just as well.
“OK,” said Ann. “Off you go. I’m going to be late and for all I know my Mystery Man is as punctual as death.” She smiled, but a little uncertainly, as if she suspected she’d said exactly the wrong thing.
I put the money in my pants and shifted my suitcase from my right hand to my left.
“How come you’re in New York?” Ann asked.
“I had to go to Chicago and I only had enough money to get this far. Didn’t Jade…?”
“No. Of course not. That’s the condition of our truce. Jade wants an old-fashioned relationship, based on kinship and ignorance—what she calls respect. And I think she’s absolutely right; it’s the only way it can ever work between us. Did you ever tell her about the night you and I spent here?”
“No. There was never a reason to. It wouldn’t matter. It would only—”
“I agree. It’ll go away on its own.”
Coming in through the open windows at the front of Ann’s apartment was the sound of church bells, ringing in the quarter hour.
“OK,” she said. “Out. Away.”
“Let me in,” I said. “I have to tell you something. I wasn’t going to but I have to. I want to now. You’ll know soon enough anyhow but I want you to hear it from me.”
“No. I’m late. And I’m not sure I really want to know. I hate confessions. They always make me think I’m supposed to match them with a bit of breast-beating of my own. I don’t want to get into it.”
“No. You have to. You want to know.”
“You are so wrong. I don’t. At least not today.” She put her hand on my face and rubbed her palm against the grain of my whiskers. “You look strange unshaved. I don’t think it suits you. You’re not growing a beard, are you?”
“No. I just haven’t shaved.”
“Good. I think you should get on the bus, get up to Stoughton, and hope to God that Jade’s not home when you arrive and you’ll have time to shave—and bathe.”
“Ann, I want to—”
“No,” she said, stepping back and preparing to close the door. “Not now. If you want to tell me something, write a letter. I hope that the mere fact that you’ve found my daughter won’t forever discontinue our correspondence. I like you in letters and I love writing to you. Confess to me in a letter. Now go.”
She closed the door and I heard her footsteps going back into her apartment. “I killed Hugh,” I whispered to the door. I thought of shouting it out, but it would be stupid, it would be cruel. And—this thought presented itself in a tone distinct from the others—what did I really know? Maybe Ingrid wanted to talk to Jade about something else. Wouldn’t it have been a waste to try to expose myself before Ingrid exposed me, only to find that I’d really been in no danger at all?
It was eight in the evening when I reached Stoughton. The sky was a low inkwash and behind the swollen clouds lightning flashed, throwing a skittery bleak light that looked as false as a stage effect. It was a simple hitchhike from the bus to our house in North Stoughton, but I walked—past the Main Street Clothiers, past the church on whose lawn Jade and I took our lunch, past the art supplies store where I’d recently put ten dollars down toward a set of drawing pens for Jade, and finally into a Dunkin’ Donuts where I tortured my growling stomach with five donuts and three cups of coffee. Powdered sugar was on my lap and my hands shook. I looked down and my suitcase was gone—no, it was on the other side of the stool. I took it in hand and went to a phonebooth. I didn’t think I should appear home without first speaking to Jade.
The phone rang at least a dozen times before I hung up. I felt a peculiar relief but it was blown aside by a rush of panic. A thought had been murmuring all day behind my will not to think it: Ingrid telling Jade the truth of Hugh’s death might ignite a terror and grief in Jade that would make it so she wouldn’t want to live. I put my last two dollars on the counter and left, already starting to run. It was at least three miles to home and within a minute I was breathing with effort and in pain. Carrying my suitcase was impossible and I tossed it aside, with the idea I’d come back some other time to retrieve it. The world before my eyes bounced up and down and I held onto my senses as if they would otherwise take flight and leave me forever. I was running as fast as I could. I had to rescue Jade, but I must have known that was not the case because already I was lying, telling myself that there was a way I could somehow explain myself to her: the real danger I wanted to rescue her from was the danger of holding Ingrid’s information without me there to counter it.
The house was dark when I finally arrived and the door and windows were locked. I pounded on the front door and punched my finger against the bell a hundred times. Then I went to the back and started again. I went to the back of the yard where I could see the small darkened attic window and I called Jade’s name. I threw pebbles against the window, ran out of pebbles, looked for a stone and couldn’t find one, and finally tossed my shoes. The first shoe sailed past and landed somewhere at the side of the house; the second hit direct with a thud, but didn’t break the glass. I waited and then the light went on. I don’t know how much time passed but finally a shadow moved across the window and then I saw her standing, naked, looking down at me. I called out to her, lifting my hands—they felt so heavy. She struggled to open the window and then realized she’d locked it. She turned the latch and the window slid open.
“Go away. You have to go away.” She stared down at me. The light was behind her but I could see her eyes in the darkness. Her chest was heaving. “I know everything,” she said. The window slammed down.
I raced to the back door and beat against it with open hands. My world, the only world I knew, the only one I wanted, was broken into pieces. I had no world. I could do anything. I beat against the door, I called her name, I threw my shoulder into the door hoping to break it down. It did not budge, and as I bounced off of it I brought my arm around, reaching over the railing of the soft wooden porch, and without a moment’s hesitation pushed my fist through the kitchen window, through the old glass and the saggy wire screen as well. I withdrew, picked a piece of glass out of my knuckle, and tried to see through the darkness if I was bloody. I couldn’t see but I felt the wetness, oily through the cracks of my fingers.
I climbed onto the porch railing and somehow got myself onto the window sill, an inch ledge of tender wood and peeling paint. My fingers gripped the frame and my stockinged feet did their best to hold on to the ledge; to keep myself from falling back, I leaned my weight against the glass and tried to knee a hole large enough for me to crawl in. I neglected to simply reach in to the hole I’d already made and unlock the window. On the third try the window fell away in two huge jagged sheets. I kicked through the screen and as I did, the light in the kitchen shuddered on. I lowered myself in and was hit in the shins—a terrible crack that knocked the wind out of me. The pain spread in every direction and then I was hit again and again. I held on to the window frame with its miniature Alps of splintered glass, three-quarters of my body in the house and my head sending cries into the night air. I was hit again—this time in the knees—and I let go, falling into the kitchen.