We are collaborators. In a project of social justice.
We will work together from now on.
For he knows he can trust me.
THAT NIGHT AT 10:40 P.M. It seemed clear, the Intern would stay the night at the Investigator’s rented house where there was a room for her, a narrow bed, a bureau of drawers and a private bathroom.
Where she’d stayed in the past, from time to time.
Stammering she had to—in the morning—would have to . . .
She had no choice now but . . .
. . . had to return home.
(Home! This had not been a word in her vocabulary, the Investigator had ever heard. No more than home had been a word in his vocabulary, the Intern had ever heard.)
(For hadn’t she assured him, hadn’t she insisted, she had no parents living, no family—or the remnants of a family, from whom she was estranged? No home. And no memory of home.)
Her employer was astonished. He was stunned. He was not a man—(you could see this)—accustomed to being surprised but rather—(of this, he was proud)—a man who surprised and upset others.
Saying, was she ill?
What was she saying?—home . . .
It was so, Sabbath McSwain wasn’t looking good. Eyes stark in their sockets with too much seeing.
He was saying, No shame in being sick. Or weak.
We are all weak at times, McSwain.
Tenderly he spoke. Or tried to.
He did not want a personal relationship with his assistant. It was something of a joke, to call her “Intern”—she knew.
He did not want an emotional relationship nor did he want—this was clear, this had not ever been an issue—any sort of sexual relationship.
She knew. She would not have wished to upset him.
He said, “Fuck. I took you to that God-damn place, and it has made you sick.”
She hoped he would not blame himself. She’d have preferred, he blame her.
He’d opened the bottle of Johnnie Walker. Rarely the Investigator drank and only at such times, as the Intern had observed, when he believed he’d completed a difficult or arduous assignment, or had failed to complete a difficult or arduous assignment; when he wanted to “celebrate”—(inviting the Intern to join him, please). Now splashing whiskey into a glass and drinking and still he could not believe any of this, what the Intern was telling him, and trying to tell him.
“Something happened to you in the ‘execution chamber.’ In the ‘diving bell.’ God damn, I shouldn’t have sent you inside.”
“You didn’t, sir. I volunteered.”
“Fuck ‘sir.’ Call me—”
The Investigator paused. For there was no name he could offer to his employee.
“—call me ‘asshole.’ For making you sick.”
“But you didn’t. I volunteered.”
“Yes, but I signaled you to volunteer. Both times.”
Silence fell between them. The Intern feared to shut her eyes, she might lapse into unconsciousness, extinction.
Hearing herself say, faltering: “Just that I—love you. I think I love you. Sir.”
The Investigator laughed. A flush rose into his face as if the Intern had slapped him.
“But you are fifty years younger than I am. Christ, you are a girl.”
“I am not a ‘girl.’ I don’t think that I was ever a ‘girl.’ I was—I am—some sort of freak. But I have the strength to love you, because you don’t want love from me.”
The Investigator laughed again. He could not believe any of this.
Another several inches of precious whiskey. He drank and still—could not believe.
A speeding vehicle, headed for disaster, and no one to clutch at the wheel.
Silence between them. But an agitated silence not the companionable silence of the past eight months.
When she’d thought If this could continue. Not forever—there is no forever.
Observing the Investigator—(for whom she had no name, in fact: he was supremely he, him)—in another part of the large office at the Institute, or at his computer in the home-office, whistling through his teeth, cheery and absorbed in his work, listening to crystalline notes of early-Mozart like raindrops—thinking secretly, subversively If this could continue it is all that I could want.
All she’d hoped was to help the Investigator assemble the new SHAME! exposé. The Investigator had planned eighteen months of traveling and research. The Intern had been surprised to discover that, despite his best-selling books, the Investigator didn’t really seem to know what he was going to write until he began to write it: like groping in the dark, he’d said. Yet, he had faith, after the other groping-starts, that he would assemble the manuscript, and it would repay the effort.
He believed that the strongest passages would be eyewitness accounts of executions. He hoped—(was this unreasonable? The Investigator had contacts in law schools)—to be granted a pass, to actually witness an execution in one of his target states—Florida, Texas, Louisiana, etc. If he was lucky—(but this was terrible to speculate!)—he would witness one of the numerous “botched executions” that occur routinely, and are rarely reported. In this way, in SHAME! and in the media he would bear witness to the inhumanity of the death penalty; he would lobby in Congress, maybe. Certainly the strongest passages in the book would be eyewitness accounts of “botched executions”—in the ordinary vernacular speech of Americans like the tour-guide Lieutenant.
He’d become dependent upon the Intern, these past eight months.
Not on her, he’d have been quick to explain. But on her as his assistant.
Now, abruptly and unbelievably, unconscionably, their association seemed to be ending.
She was saying—oh but what was she saying?
He was saying—Betrayal.
Furious with her now. In an instant his surprise, his concern, his sympathy, his embarrassment at her faltering words—now fury.
“You’d given me your word. You would help me in this project. I told you—about eighteen months. I’ve trained you, and I’ve invested time in you, and now you’re saying you need to leave—to go ‘home’—which means that you’d lied to me, when I interviewed you. You lied to me and you’ve betrayed me.”
“I—I will try to come back. I don’t know when, I . . .”
“ ‘Come back’! If you leave now, you will not ‘come back.’ ”
“But I—I would hope to see you again, Dr. Hinton . . .”
(Though “Hinton” wasn’t his name. What his name was, the Intern had not been told.)
Stiffly he said, “There is no need for you to ‘see me again,’ McSwain.”
“But when—if— After—”
“I can’t wait for you to return. From wherever you think you’re going—‘home.’ Where is it, upstate New York?”
The Investigator spoke sneeringly, his voice hoarse. The Intern had never seen the Investigator so agitated.
“I will call you. I will try to . . .”
“You gave me your word. You betrayed me. I could never trust you again, McSwain.”
The Intern tried to think of a way to reply. The Intern was weak with shame, self-disgust.
The Intern did think, she had betrayed the Investigator.
Betrayal—that was the correct word.
She had betrayed. Numerous others, she’d betrayed.
“I will interview for another assistant. I will run ads. I’m sure that I can find a replacement. I will stress ‘computer skills’ this time. But I will not contact Chantelle Rios again.”
The Investigator spoke bitterly. It was clear, the Investigator was badly hurt.
The Intern wanted to clutch at him but dared not. The Intern knew that this man fifty years her elder would stare at her in disgust, throw off her fingers as you’d throw off a snake brushing against your arm.
The Intern felt again the sensation of breakage, from within. Her personality was falling apart. She’d cobbled together a self, out of fragments, sh
e’d glued and pasted and tacked and taped, and this self had managed to prevail for quite a long time. But now, after the airlessness of the execution chamber, after the death sentence she understood was her own, she was falling apart.
In fact stumbling out of the Investigator’s rented house. She would not be staying the night of course. She would never return. The Investigator was waiting for her to depart, the Investigator would slam the door behind her and lock it.
On the stairs the Intern lost her balance. The Intern would have struck her head against a railing except she managed to block the fall, just barely.
“Fuck. God-damn fuck.”
In disgust the Investigator hauled her up the stairs. Into a chair.
The Investigator’s breath smelled of whiskey.
Fury-fumes. Disgust.
The Investigator held the Intern in the chair, so that she didn’t slump, sink, fall.
The Investigator held the Intern in his arms. The Intern was stupidly weeping.
The Intern was saying she had to leave. She had to return—home.
Years she’d been gone. How many years she wasn’t sure.
She’d done something wrong, back there. She’d made a mistake.
Or rather, something had happened to her, that had been a mistake.
And so, she had to return. She would have to beg forgiveness.
The Investigator couldn’t make sense of much of this. The Investigator listened, with a pained expression.
This day, March 11, 2012, had begun a very long time ago. The Investigator was seventy-five years old and as he liked to complain to the Intern, not so young as he’d once been.
The Investigator had no choice, he had to comfort the Intern who grasped his hands, and kissed his hands. In a paroxysm of foolishness the Intern who had never betrayed the slightest emotion for eight months was now crying. Warm tears fell on the Investigator’s hands. The Intern was filling her lungs with oxygen like one in danger of suffocating, for so little of the oxygen she inhaled was making its way to her brain. He said, All right—take this.
From the middle finger of his right hand he removed the silver star-ring. The Intern had never dared to ask him what this ring was, what this ring might commemorate. Now, the Investigator tugged it from his finger, and slipped it over hers.
Of course, the star-ring was much too large for the Intern’s slender finger.
The Investigator sent her away. For it was time, the Intern must leave.
The Investigator said, You have my number. If you need me to come to you, call me. But otherwise, if you need me, come to me. Until then.
The Intern went away scattering tears on the pavement. The Intern went away uncertain if she’d heard these words of the Investigator or if she’d imagined them or would imagine them that very night in her bed, in her exhausted delirious sleep bearing her back to the Nautauga Preserve, to the lost debased girl stumbling through the Preserve in terror of extinction.
Went away from the Investigator’s house on the Rio Vista Canal turning the beautiful silver-star ring on the middle finger of her right hand, loose on the finger, round and round.
ELEVEN
The Rescue
July 2005–October 2009
HE’D SAID DON’T WANT you get away you disgust me.
FOR A LONG time then unable to speak.
Mute as if her vocal cords had been cut. As if handfuls of dirt had been shoved into her mouth, and into her throat.
Her face ground into the dirt. Ugly ugly ugly girl you don’t deserve to live.
DIED WHEN he’d shoved her from him.
Died when he’d shoved her away like trash.
Like a wounded animal crawling through underbrush. The shame of such injury, physical mortification. The wounded animal wants only to hide, to expire. Dying, dissolution must be solitary.
They—the Mayfields—had owned a dog, when the girls had been young children. Beautiful speckled-chestnut setter, Rob Roy his name, he’d been twelve years old when he began to disappear from the household, at first for only a few mysterious hours, then longer, at last overnight, his lustrous brown eyes so suddenly fading, his attention turning from them as if averted, drawn elsewhere. They’d called and called Rob Roy! Rob Roy! Good boy Rob Roy come home! But Rob Roy had not come home and they’d found him at last, the girls shrieking with grief, Zeno and Arlette heartbroken, the valiant Rob Roy had crawled away to die in the dense underbrush beyond the Episcopalian churchyard of what a veterinarian friend had later guessed might have been cancer and ever afterward Zeno had only to say quietly Like Rob Roy . . . for intimates of the family to know that he meant dignity, courage, selflessness, a wish to spare others, a great dog’s heart.
THAT WAS THE MOTIVE, the disgraced girl could not have named.
Such shame, such mortification. Not to be named.
On her lacerated hands and knees crawling. Rocks, sharp-edged pebbles strewn at the narrow shore. In pitch-dark, beneath a befouled sky. And he’d called after her furious, frightened—Cressida! Where are you! Come back here—God damn come back here! I’m sorry—
Or maybe he’d called after her, and she had not heard.
Or maybe he’d called after her, and his words had lacked the strength to reach her blown back into his face by fierce hot wind-gusts out of the sulfurous summer sky.
For he, too—Iraq War vet, wounded, Purple Heart, multiple disabilities, neuropsychological deficits—had been dazed, stunned; he’d been drinking, despite having taken psychoactive medications though he knew, should have known, had been warned that he should not drink even lightly while taking these medications and particularly, he should not be driving any vehicle; his words had been slurred, the vision in his good eye blotched, he hadn’t the strength to act as he’d have acted ordinarily—climbing out of the Jeep and pursuing the mortified girl, the bloody-faced girl, young-girl sister of his fiancée.
Pursuing her, and bringing her back. Daring to lift her, carry her back to the Jeep.
Instead, she’d escaped him. He could not see where she’d gone, after she’d thrown herself from the Jeep.
A faint moon high overhead. Obscured by rain-heavy clouds.
The rushing sound of the Nautauga River. Frothy-white current, rapids in the shallower water.
Farther out, the river was about fifteen feet deep. The drop-off was sudden, treacherous.
NO SWIMMING signs grown weatherworn with the years were posted at intervals.
She’d intended to crawl into the river and the river would bear her body away, and no one would know how she’d been rejected, cast-away.
Stop this! Get away from me! Don’t mean this—you don’t want . . .
Pushing her from him blindly as a shocked boy might—a fastidious boy—brother, cousin—whom she’d dared to touch in a way wrong, distasteful to him.
Instinctively he’d reacted. This was wrong.
Though he’d been drinking for several hours, and was no prude.
Brett Kincaid: a guy you didn’t mess with.
Sure he’d been a nice guy—before. But now, after his fiancée dumped him, her family treated him like shit ’cause he’s shot-up and not pretty to look at—now, Kincaid isn’t a guy you messed with.
Still, Brett had driven the young-sister home, that was the intention. That, witnesses would report.
Not that they’d gotten home—that hadn’t happened.
Still, he’d meant to. Brett wasn’t so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing or who this girl was, the younger Mayfield sister wasn’t the kind of girl he’d choose to become involved with sexually, for sure not the kind he could take for granted knew what sex meant. There were women, and there were girls—now he wasn’t a kid any longer he wasn’t so interested in girls any longer. After Iraq especially. Girls he turned from quickly, fighting a sensation of sick-dread.
And maybe—(these were ugly rumors, suggested with smirks and sneers by Brett’s old high school friends)—Corporal Kincaid was impotent since the war. M
aybe where the poor bastard’s penis had been there was a gnarled stub of flesh, barely adequate to hold a catheter.
They’d misunderstood each other. Possibly that was it.
She—the girl—the younger Mayfield sister—had been drinking, too. A single beer, an immediate sensation of recklessness, audacity, laughter—Brett. Look at me for once. Know what we are?—soul mates. Now you’re disfigured like me.
He’d been shocked by this remark. He’d been deeply wounded, insulted. But seeing the girl was alone, and had to be his responsibility since he was the one who knew her family, he’d tried to ignore the insult. Thinking She is just a kid. What the fuck does she know!
It was clear, Cressida Mayfield wasn’t accustomed to drinking. And the din of the Roebuck Inn—loud voices, laughter, music—was jarring to her.
In the parking lot, a deafening noise of motorcycles. Adirondacks Hells Angels.
A solitary girl at the Roebuck, Saturday night—a terrible blunder.
Stupid, heedless. And how to turn back, she had no idea.
And then, why not take a chance.
She was in love with her sister’s fiancé. She should not have been ashamed, to be in love with him.
And the more she thought of it, of the fact of her love for Brett Kincaid, the more confident she was, despite her rapidly beating heart that signaled alarm, that it was the right, the moral thing to do—to tell Brett.
Her sister had given him up—(hadn’t she?)—so there was no question that Cressida was hoping to appropriate Juliet’s fiancé. Was it so terrible, so unnatural, nineteen-year-old Cressida who had not yet had a lover, had not yet so much as kissed another person with passion, nor been kissed with passion, should feel so powerful a yearning for Brett Kincaid; that she should want him to look at her in the way he looked at Juliet; that she should want to touch him, to caress him, the serrated scars on his neck and the underside of his jaw, scar-welts, sinewy-snake-welts she’d had a glimpse of, on his back. That he limped, that the vision in one of his eyes had been destroyed, that he winced with pain like currents of electricity darting through his body yet managed to laugh—to try to laugh; that he would not complain, or denigrate the U.S. military as some had urged him; that he was the individual he’d once been, now trapped within the disfigured body of the wounded vet, and you could see in his eyes the shock, misery, and resignation of his condition—all these factors made Cressida love Brett Kincaid the more.