Speaking in Tongues

  It's a moment, Tate tells his classes, just like in fencing, when the red target of a heart is touched lightly with the button of the foil while the fencer's attention is elsewhere. No flailing away, no chops or heavy strokes, but a simple, deadly tap the opponent never sees coming.

  All cats see in the dark.

  Midnight is a cat.

  Therefore Midnight can see in the dark.

  Irrefutable. The purest of logic.

  Unless . . . Midnight is blind.

  But what kind of argument could he make to convince Megan to return home?

  He thought about the two letters she'd written and he didn't have any thoughts at all; he saw only her perfect anger.

  "We'll get her back," he told Bett. "I'll do that. Don't worry."

  Bett pulled down the makeup mirror in the sun visor to apply lipstick. Tate was suddenly taken back to the night they met--at that party in Charlottesville. He'd driven her home afterward and had spent a passionate half hour in the front seat of the car removing every trace of her pink Revlon.

  Five weeks later he'd suggested they move in together.

  A two-year romance on campus. He'd graduated from law school the year Bett got her undergraduate degree. They left idyllic Charlottesville for the District of Columbia and his clerkship at federal District Court; Bett got a job managing a New Age bookstore. They lived the bland, easy life that Washington offered a young couple just starting out. Tate's consolation was his job and Bett's that she finally was close to her twin sister, who lived in Baltimore and had been too ill to travel to Charlottesville.

  Married in May.

  His antebellum plantation built the next spring.

  Megan born two years later.

  And three years after that, he and Bett were divorced.

  When he looked back on their relationship his perfect memory was no longer so perfect. What he recalled seemed to be merely sharp peaks of an island that was the tip of a huge undersea mountain range. The wispy, ethereal woman he'd seen at the party, singing a sailor's mournful song of farewell. Walks in the country. Driving through the Blue Ridge toward Massanutten Mountain. Making love in a forest near the Luray Caverns. Tate had always enjoyed being out of doors--the cornfields, the beach, backyard barbecues. But Bett's interest in the outside arose only at dusk. "When the line between the worlds is at its thinnest," she'd told him once, sitting on the porch of an inn deep in the Appalachians.

  "What worlds?" he asked.

  "Shhh, listen," she'd said, enchanting him even while he knew it was an illusion. Which was, he supposed, irrefutable proof of her ability to cast a spell. Betty Sue McCall, devoted to her twin sister, with whom she had some mystical link that unnerved even rationalist Tate, reedy folk singer, collector of the unexplained, the arcane, the invisible . . . Tate had never figured out if her sublime mystique magnified their love falsely, or obscured it, or indeed if it was the essence of their love.

  Magic . . .

  In the end, of course, it didn't matter, for they separated completely, moved far away from each other emotionally. She became for him what she'd been when he was first captivated by her: the dark woman of his imagination.

  Today she prodded her face in the mirror, rubbed at some invisible blemish as he remembered her doing many times. She'd always been terribly vain.

  She flipped the mirror back.

  "Pull over, Tate."

  He glanced at her. No, it was not an imperfection she'd been examining; she'd been crying again.

  "What is it?"

  "Just pull over."

  He did, into the Park Service entrance to the Bull Run Battlefield.

  Bett climbed from the car and walked up the gentle slope. Tate followed and when they were on level ground they stopped and simultaneously lifted their eyes toward the tumultuous clouds overhead.

  "What is it, Bett?" He watched her stare at the night sky. "Looking for an angel to help you decide something?"

  Suddenly he was worried that she'd take offense at this--an implicit reference to her flighty side--though he hadn't meant it sardonically.

  But she only smiled and lowered her eyes from the sky. "I was never into that angel stuff. Too Hallmark card, you know. But I wouldn't mind a spirit or two."

  "Well," he said, "this'd be the place. General Jackson came charging out of those trees right over there and stopped the Union boys cold in their tracks. Right here's where he earned himself the name Stonewall." The low sun glistened off the Union cannons' black barrels in the distance.

  Bett turned, took his hands and pulled him to her. "Hold me, Tate. Please."

  He put his arms around her--for the first time in years. They stood this way for a long moment. Then found a bench and sat. He kept his arm around her. She took his other hand. And Tate wished suddenly, painfully, that Megan were here with them. The three of them together and all the hard events of the past dead and buried, like the poor bodies of the troops who'd died bloody and broken on this very spot.

  Wind in the trees, billowing clouds overhead.

  Suddenly a streak of yellow flashed past them.

  "Oh, what's that?" Bett said. "Look."

  He glanced at the bird that alighted near them.

  "That'd be, let me see, a common yellowthroat. Nests on the ground and feeds in the tree canopy."

  Her laugh scared it away. "You know all these facts. Where do you learn them?"

  A girlfriend, age twenty-three, had been a birdwatcher.

  "I read a lot," he said.

  More silence.

  "What are you thinking?" she wondered after a moment.

  A question women often ask when they find themselves in close contact with a man and silence descends.

  "Unfinished business?" he suggested. "You and me?"

  She considered this. "I used to think things were finished between us. But then I started to look at it like doing your will before you get on a plane."

  "How's that?"

  "If you crash, well, maybe all the loose ends're tied up but wouldn't you still rather hang around for a little while longer?"

  "There's a metaphor for you." He laughed.

  She spent a moment examining the sky again. "When you argued before the Supreme Court five or six years ago. That big civil rights case. And the Post did that write-up on you. I told everybody you were my ex-husband. I was proud of you."

  "Really?" He was surprised.

  "You know what occurred to me then, reading about you? It seemed that when we were married you were my voice. I didn't have one of my own."

  "You were quiet, that's true," he said.

  "That's what happened to us, I think. Part of it anyway. I had to find mine."

  "And when you went looking . . . so long. No half measures for you. No compromises. No bargaining."

  The old Bett would have grown angry or dipped into her enigmatic silence at these critical words. But she merely nodded in agreement. "That was me, all right. I was so rigid. I had all the right answers. If something wasn't just perfect I was gone. Jobs, classes . . . husband. Oh, Tate, I'm not proud of it. But I felt so young. When you have a child, things do change. You become more . . ."

  "Enduring?"

  "That's it. Yes. You always know the right word."

  He said, "I never had any idea what you were thinking about back then."

  Bett's thoughts might have been on what to make for dinner. Or King Arthur. Or a footnote in a term paper. She might have been thinking of a recent tarot card reading.

  She might even have been thinking about him.

  "I was always afraid to say anything around you, Tate. I always felt tongue-tied. Like I had nothing to say that interested you."

  "I don't love you for your oratorical abilities." He paused, noting the tense of the verb. "I mean, that's not what attracted me to you."

  Then reflected: Oh, she's so right--what she'd said earlier . . . We humans have this terrible curse; we alone among the animals believe in the possibility of change--in ourselve
s and those we love. It can kill us and maybe, just maybe, it can save our doomed hearts. The problem is we never know, until it's too late, which.

  "You know when I missed you the most?" she said finally. "Not on holidays or picnics. But when I was in Belize--"

  "What?" Tate asked suddenly.

  She waved lethargically at a yellow jacket. "You know, you and I always talked about going there."

  They'd read a book about the Mayan language and the linguists who trooped through the jungles in Belize on the Yucatan to examine the ruins and decipher the Indian code. The area had fascinated them both and they planned a trip. But they'd never made the journey. At first they couldn't afford it. Tate had just graduated from law school and started working as a judge's clerk for less money than a good legal secretary could make. Then came the long, long hours in the commonwealth's attorney's office. After that, when they had the money saved up, Bett's sister had a serious relapse and nearly died; Bett couldn't leave home. Then Megan came along. And three years after that they were divorced.

  "When did you go?" he asked.

  "Three years ago January. Didn't Megan tell you?"

  "No."

  "I went with Bill. The lobbyist?"

  Tate shook his head, not remembering who he was. He asked, "Have a good time?"

  "Oh, yeah," she said haltingly. "Very nice. It was hotter than Hades. Really hot."

  "But you like the heat," he remembered. "Did you see the ruins?"

  "Well, Bill wasn't into ruins so much. We did see one. We took a day trip. I . . . Well, I was going to say--I wished you'd been with me."

  "Two years ago February," Tate said.

  "What?"

  "I was there too."

  "No! Are you serious?" She laughed hard. "Who'd you go with?"

  Her face grew wry when it took him a moment to remember the name of his companion.

  "Cathy."

  He believed it was Cathy.

  "Did you get to the ruins?"

  "Well, we didn't exactly. It was more of a sailboarding trip. I don't believe it . . . Damn, how 'bout that. We finally got down there. We talked about that vacation for years."

  "Our pilgrimage."

  "Great place," he said, wondering how dubious his voice sounded. "Our hotel had a really good restaurant."

  "It was fun," she said enthusiastically. "And pretty."

  "Very pretty," he confirmed. The trip had been agonizingly dull.

  Her face was turned toward a distant line of trees. She was thinking probably of Megan now, and the Yucatan had slipped far from her thoughts.

  "Let me take you home," he said. "There's nothing more we can do tonight. We should get some rest. I'll call Konnie, tell him about Sharpe."

  She nodded.

  They drove to Fairfax and he pulled up in front of her house. She sat in the front seat in silence for a while.

  "You want to come in?" she asked suddenly.

  His answer was balanced on the head of a pin and for a long moment he didn't have a clue which way it was going to tilt.

  Tate pulled her to him, hugged her, smelled the scent of Opium perfume in her hair. He said, "Better not."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Crazy Megan reveals her true self.

  She isn't crazy at all and never has been. What C.M. is is furious.

  He's going down, she mutters. This asshole Peter is going down hard.

  Megan McCall was angry too but she was much less optimistic than her counterpart as she moved cautiously through the corridors of the hospital, clutching three boxes of plastic dining utensils under her arm and her glass knife in the other.

  Though she was feeling better physically, having eaten half a box of her favorite cereal--Raisin Bran--and drunk two Pepsis.

  Listening.

  There!

  She heard a shuffle, a few steps of Peter's feet. Maybe a whisper of breath.

  Another shuffle. A voice.

  Was he muttering her name?

  Yes, no?

  She couldn't tell.

  This could be it! Got a good grip on the knife?

  Be quiet! Megan thought. She shivered and felt a burst of nausea from the fear. Wished she hadn't eaten so fast. If I puke he'll hear and that'll be it . . .

  She inhaled slowly.

  A clunk nearby. More footsteps. These were close.

  Megan gasped and closed her eyes, remaining completely still, huddling behind an orange fiberglass chair.

  She pressed into the wall and began mentally working her way through Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits album line by line. She cried noiselessly throughout "Me and Bobby McGee," then grew defiant once more when she mind-sang "Down on Me."

  Peter Matthews wandered away, back toward his room, and she continued on. Ten endless minutes later she made it to the end of the corridor she'd decided to use.

  It was here that she was going to lay the trap.

  She needed a dead end--she had to be sure of which direction he'd come from. Crazy Megan points out, though, that it also means she'll have no escape route if the trap doesn't work.

  Who's the pussy now? Megan asked.

  Like, excuse me, C.M. snaps in response. Just letting you know.

  She rubbed her hand over the wall.

  Sheetrock.

  Megan had recalled one time she'd been at her father's house. A few years ago. He'd been dating a woman with three children. As usual he'd been thinking about marrying her--he always did that, it was so weird--and had gone so far as to actually hire a contractor to divide the downstairs bedroom into two smaller ones for her young twins. Halfway through the project they'd broken up; the construction went unfinished but Megan recalled watching the contractors easily slice through the Sheetrock with small saws. The material had seemed as insubstantial as cardboard.

  She took a plastic dinner knife from the box. It was like a toy tool. And for a moment the hopelessness of her plan overwhelmed her. But then she started to cut. Yes! In five minutes she'd sliced a good-sized slit into the wall. The blades were sharper than she'd expected.

  For about fifteen minutes the cutting went well. Then, almost all at once, the serrated edge of the knife wore smooth and dull. She tossed it aside and took a new one. Started cutting again.

  She lowered her head to the plasterboard and inhaled its stony moist smell. It brought back a memory of Joshua. She'd helped him move into his cheap apartment near George Mason University. The workmen were fixing holes in the walls with plasterboard and this smell reminded her of his studio. Tears flooded into her eyes.

  What're you doing? an impatient Crazy Megan asks.

  I miss him, Megan answered silently.

  Shut up and saw. Time for that later.

  Cutting, cutting . . . Blisters formed on the palm of her right hand. She ignored them and kept up the hypnotic motion. Resting her forehead against the Sheetrock, smelling mold and wet plaster. Hand moving back and forth by itself. Thoughts tumbling . . .

  Thinking about her parents.

  Thinking about bears . . .

  No, bears can't talk. But that didn't mean you couldn't learn something from them.

  She thought of the Whispering Bears story, the illustration in the book of the two big animals watching the town burn to the ground. Megan thought about the point of the story. She liked her version better than Dr. Matthews's; the moral to her was: people fuck up.

  But it didn't have to be that way. Somebody in the village could have said right up front, "Bears can't talk. Forget about 'em." Then the story would have ended: "And they lived happily ever after."

  Working with her left hand now, which was growing a crop of its own blisters. Her knees were on fire and her forehead too, which she'd pressed into the wall for leverage. Her back also was in agony. But Megan McCall felt curiously buoyant. From the food and caffeine inside her, from the simple satisfaction of cutting through the wall, from the fact that she was doing something to get out of this shithole.

  Megan was thinking too about what
she'd do when she got out.

  Dr. Matthews had tricked her--to get her to write those letters. But the awesome thing was that what she'd written had been true. Oh, she was pissed at her parents. And those bad feelings had been bottled up in her forever, it seemed. But now they were out. They weren't gone, no, but they were buzzing around her head, getting smaller, like a blown-up balloon you let go of. And she had a thought: The anger goes away; the love doesn't. Not if it's real. And she thought maybe, just maybe--with Tate and Bett--the love might be real. Or at least she might unearth a patch of real love. And once she understood that she could recall other memories.

  Thinking of the time she and her father went to Pentagon City on a spur-of-the-moment shopping spree and he'd let her drive the Lexus back home, saying only, "The speedometer stops at one forty and you pay any tickets yourself." They'd opened the sunroof and laughed all the way home.

  Or the time she and her mother went to some boring New Age lecture. After fifteen minutes Bett had whispered, "Let's blow this joint." They'd snuck out the back door of the school, found a snow saucer in the playground and huddled together on it, whooping and screaming all the way to the bottom of the hill. Then they'd raced each other to Starbucks for hot chocolate and brownies.

  And she even thought of her sweet sixteen party, the only time in--how long?--five, six years she'd seen her parents together. For a moment they'd stood close to each other, near the buffet table, while her father gave this awesome speech about her. She'd cried like crazy, hearing his words. For a few minutes they seemed like a perfectly normal family.

  If I get home, she now thought . . . No, when I get home, I'll talk to them. I'll sit down with them. Oh, I'll give 'em fucking hell but then I'll talk. I'll do what I should've done a long time ago.

  The anger goes away; the love doesn't . . .

  A blister burst. Oh, that hurt. Oh, Jesus. She closed her eyes and slipped her hand under her arm and pressed hard. The sting subsided and she continued to cut.

  After a half hour Megan had cut a six-by-three-foot hole in the Sheetrock. She worked the piece out and rested it against the floor then leaned against the wall for a few minutes, catching her breath. She was sweating furiously.

  The hole was ragged and there was plaster dust all over the floor. She was worried that Peter would see it and guess she'd set a trap for him. But the window at this end of the corridor was small and covered with grease and dirt; very little light made it through. She doubted that the boy would ever see the trap until it was too late.