I stared over the river, watched new light touch the fog on the water and give it depth. A golden rim of sun appeared above the trees, my last, and I stared as it seemed to leap skyward. The world sprung into stark clarity, and I saw so very much of it: the green fields, the dark trees, and the muddy snake of river that steamed as if it, too, was being consumed.
I put the barrel under my chin, pressed it there, and sought the strength to pull the trigger, sought it in a wave of faces. Saw my mother as the floor fell away beneath her. Jean, crushed, and how she’d damned me for making Ezra’s truth my own. I saw her face at the funeral, the disgust when I’d tried to take her hand. Then Vanessa—beaten senseless and fucked like an animal in the stinking mud. And shame so absolute that even now it poisoned me. It had driven Vanessa away, and I’d allowed it. That was the worst, and in a burst of resolute self-loathing, I found the strength I sought. The trigger moved under a finger that seemed to burn, and I pushed the gun so hard against my chin that it forced my head up. I opened my eyes to look again at the sky. It curved above me like the hand of God, and held therein a single hawk, wings spread and motionless. It seemed to hover, but it cared nothing for me. It circled, and I watched it. Then it cried once and flew off, and I knew that I could not pull the trigger.
The gun spun away; it hung from my finger, and in the silence the tears finally came. They burned down my cheeks, fell into the pool of my lap, and I did not look up as I dropped the gun into the river below. I knelt as my shoulders shook and I put my forehead on the cold metal rail. At first, I cried for the memories and for the failures, for all that should have been, yet was not, but as the seconds slipped around me, they brought a great and terrible truth. I was alive, and I wept for that life. It was all that I had left, and so the tears came for it. Not for joy’s sake, but for existence, for this breath that even now burned my lungs, and for the many times that I would look at the sky and remember.
And so I left the river. I felt new strength, a determination—something that felt like hope. I realized as I drove what had happened. I’d hit bottom again, and this time I’d bounced. I was not alive from a lack of courage, but from the sudden discovery of it. I could have pulled the trigger but did not. Why? Because life was not perfect and never would be. Max was right about that.
So I went home. I stopped at the bottom of the driveway and checked the mailbox. The picture of Alex that I’d left for Hank was gone, so he must have come at some point. In a way, I was glad to have missed him; I’d heard the mistrust in his voice and could not bear to see it in his eyes. Later, maybe, but now I was used up.
Exhaustion settled on me as I entered the kitchen. I could barely pull off my boots, and I could tell that the house was empty, not that I’d expected anything different. I wanted food and needed coffee, but the chair felt too good. So I sat at the small desk where Barbara spent so much of her day, writing small notes and talking to her friends on the telephone. I could almost feel her there, her smell and her practiced laugh of quiet amusement. I put my feet on the desk. My pants were damp and muddy, and they smeared her stationery. I sat like that for a long time, staring at the blinking red eye of the answering machine. Eventually, I pushed the button, and the machine’s mechanical voice informed me that I had seventeen messages.
Thirteen were from reporters. I erased them. One was from Hank, confirming that he’d picked up the photo, and three were from Barbara. In the first, she was pleasant. In the second, she was polite. But in her last message, she was angry. She didn’t shout, but I recognized the controlled, clipped tones. Where was I? That was the question, and I knew what she imagined. I was at Vanessa’s.
I erased hers, too, and looked at my watch. It was 6:30, a new day. Sleep was impossible, so I went to put on some coffee. I had the pot in my hand, under the faucet, when the phone rang. I let the machine get it. By the time Barbara’s outgoing message had played, I’d shut off the water and turned for the coffee machine. I froze when I heard Jean’s voice. It was weak and strained, worse than before.
“Work, are you there?” A broken voice. “Work, please . . .” She coughed.
I dropped the pot in the sink and it shattered. I snatched up the phone. “I’m here, Jean. Don’t hang up.”
“Good,” she said, and I could barely hear her. “Good. I wanted . . .” She began to cough. “I wanted to tell you . . .”
“Jean. What? I can’t hear you. Where are you?”
“. . . tell you that it’s okay. That I forgive you. Will you remember that?”
“Jean,” I shouted, suddenly frantic. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
For a time, there was only my voice and the sound of her breath, and when I spoke again, I begged her, “Please. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Tell me that you’ll remember. I need to hear it.”
I answered, not knowing why, knowing only that she needed to hear it and that I needed to say it.
“I’ll remember.”
“I love you, Work,” she said, and I could barely hear her. “Don’t let Alex tell you different.” Her voice trailed away, then came back, seemingly stronger. “We were always family. Even when I hated you.”
I knew then what she had done and I couldn’t bear it.
Then her voice again, the barest whisper. “It should have meant more. I should have . . .”
“Jean!” I shouted. “For God’s sake!”
I thought she’d hung up, for after my explosion there was only silence, but then I heard her, a thin wheeze that became a faint laugh, like wind through grass.
“That’s funny,” she said. “God.” Then she inhaled. “I’ll tell him.”
I heard the phone drop from her hand and hit the floor, and then her voice, as if from a distance. “For God’s sake,” she said, but she was no longer laughing.
“Jean!” I screamed. “Jean!” But she did not respond, and those horrible words chased again through my head: Third time is the charm.
I put the phone down but kept the line open. I called 911 with my cell phone, told the dispatcher what had happened, and gave her Jean’s address. She assured me that she would send EMT immediately, and I hung up. Then I dialed Jean’s house, but the line was busy. That’s where she was.
I pulled on the same muddy boots, grabbed my keys, and flew out the door. The truck was not built for the way I drove it, but there was no traffic yet and I beat the ambulance to her house. Loose boards vibrated beneath my feet as I crossed her porch at a run. I pounded on the door, shouting for Alex, but nothing happened. A dog barked at me from across the street. I aimed for the spot between the handle and the frame and I kicked the door. Wood splintered and I was inside, in the dark and the must, calling for Jean, shouting her name. Suddenly, Alex was there, framed in the bedroom door. She wore boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and her hair stood up in spikes. I could tell she’d just awakened.
“Where’s Jean?” I demanded.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she yelled back. “Did you just break in my door?”
I crossed the room in three strides, grabbed Alex by the shoulders, and shook her so hard, I heard her teeth click.
“Where’s Jean, Alex? Where is she?”
Alex tore away from me, stepped back to the bedroom door, and reappeared with a gun in her hand. She cocked the hammer, pointed it at me.
“Get the fuck out of my house, Work, before I put a hole in you.”
I ignored it. For me the gun was inconsequential, like I’d never seen one before. “Damn it, Alex. Something’s wrong with Jean. She called me. She’s hurt. Where is she?”
My words found their way through her rage and the gun wavered. “What are you talking about?”
“I think she’s trying to kill herself.”
Uncertainty showed on her face. Her eyes darted around the house. “I don’t know,” she said. “She’s not in bed.”
“What do you mean? Come on, Alex.”
“I don’t know. I was asleep. You woke me up. She’s not
in bed.”
“Your phone is off the hook. She has to be here.”
“We take it off the hook every night.”
I glared around the small house. There was only the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the room we were standing in. I checked all the rooms, but Jean was not in any of them.
“Her car,” I said, running to the kitchen window and throwing back the dusty curtain. But there was only Alex’s car, the roots that rose from the bare dirt, and the oily stain where Jean’s car should have been.
“Damn! It’s not here.” I went back to Alex, saw that her gun was on top of the television. “Where would she be? Think, Alex.”
But she was at a loss, and stood uncertainly, shaking her head and muttering to herself. “She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave me.” Alex reached out for my arm, and her eyes were fierce. Her voice steadied. “Not Jean. Not without me.”
“Well here’s a news flash. She did. Now where would she go?”
Alex started to shake her head, when suddenly it hit me, and I knew with absolute clarity where my sister had gone.
“Does Jean have a cell phone?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh my God. She’s at Ezra’s house.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” I turned for the door, my mind racing. “Do you know Ezra’s address?”
“Yes.”
“Call 911, give it to them.”
“Then what?”
“Stay here, in case the ambulance shows up. If they do, then lead them to Ezra’s.”
“No,” Alex said. “She needs me. I should be there.”
“Not this time.”
“You can’t stop me, Work.”
I turned at the door. “She called me, Alex. Not you.”
Alex shrank under the words, but I took no satisfaction from the pain they caused her. Nevertheless, I had one more thing to say.
“I warned you, Alex. I told you she needed help, and I’m holding you responsible.”
Then I was out the door and sprinting for the truck. My father’s house was only a couple of miles away, but the roads were filling with cars. I passed three on a solid yellow line, going eighty in a thirty-five. I caught air over the tracks, then went the wrong way down a one-way street but shaved two blocks off the trip. I fishtailed into the driveway, clipped one of the box bushes, and stopped behind Jean’s car. I hit the back door at a run and bounced off it. It was locked. Damn! I fumbled for my keys, realized I’d left them in the truck, and had to run back for them. But then I had the key in the door and it moved under my weight. I was inside, shouting, turning on lights. Her name echoed off marble floors, ran down paneled halls, and returned as if to haunt me; otherwise, the house wept with silence.
I moved as fast as I could: the kitchen, the study, the billiards room. It was a big house, and it had never seemed more so. She could be anywhere, I realized, and I thought of the bed upstairs; but then I knew, and I ran for the foyer. I rounded the corner and saw her at the foot of the stairs. She was unmoving, ashen, the rug beneath her sopping with blood.
I hit the floor beside her, my knees squelching in her blood. Her wrists had been opened with long vertical cuts, and I saw the razor blade, bright and red on the carpet.
Blood still pulsed weakly from the cuts, and I called her name. No response. I ripped off her shoes, pulled out the laces, and tied them around her arms, jerking them tight just above the cuts. The blood flow ceased, and I checked her pulse, feeling for the big vein beneath her jaw. I couldn’t find it. I pushed harder, touched it. The pulse was hesitant, feeble, but it existed, and I thanked God under my breath. But I didn’t know what else to do; I had no training. So I crossed her arms on her chest, tried to elevate them, then put her head in my lap and held her as best I could.
I studied her face, looking for a reason to hope, but it was bloodless and as pale as bone china. Blue veins showed through the skin of her closed eyelids, and they looked bruised. Her mouth hung loosely and I saw where she’d bitten down, bright red moons on her cracked lips. Her face was slack and her features sagged, but she was the same Jean, my sister. We used to laugh, damn it, and I swore then that I would make it better if she lived. Somehow I would do that, because it couldn’t end like this. Not for her.
I stroked the hair from her face and talked to her. My words had no meaning beyond apology; they blurred, ran into the minutes that stretched away like hours, and later I could never recall them, although I might have begged her to please not leave me alone.
Then there was noise around me, the clatter of a gurney and calm, efficient voices. Hands were upon me and I did not know them, but they led me away and steadied me so that I could see. Jean was surrounded by men in white, and they moved over her, binding her wrists, slipping a needle into her arm, and covering her so that the last of her warmth should not escape. Someone asked me if the tourniquets were mine and I nodded. “Probably saved her life,” the man told me. “A close thing.”
I covered my face with my hands and dared to trust that she would live. When I looked up, Alex was there. She met my eyes over the stillness of her lover, and her old pride was back, her anger and her strength, but in that moment we shared the same thought: If Jean lived, it would be because of me, and Alex acknowledged that fact with her eyes and with fingers that fluttered before her mouth, as if to stop words that she could not take back. But I nodded nonetheless and she nodded back.
Then Jean was on the gurney and it took her from this place she’d chosen. For a moment, I was alone with Alex, and she came to where I sat slumped against the wall. Her jaw moved beneath sealed lips and her hands were fists, beating the tops of her thighs as she sought for words.
“Will you go to the hospital?” she finally asked.
“Yes. You?”
“Of course.”
I nodded, looked down, and noticed that her feet were bare. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” she asked.
I thought about the question. “I think she’ll live,” I said. “The paramedics think so.” I paused, studied her face, saw that she’d been crying. “Do you think she’ll be okay? I mean . . . well, you know what I mean.”
“She’s strong,” Alex said. “Strong enough, I thought. But now I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything. I always thought . . . We always said . . .”
Her voice trailed away and she wiped at her nose. I thought of something she’d said back at Jean’s house, and I understood, but the understanding left me chilled.
“You always said you’d go together? Is that it?”
Alex stepped back as if struck, and I saw that she’d left a bloody footprint on the hardwood floor, a perfect little foot. I could even see the lines.
I told her what was on my mind. “ ‘Not without me.’ That’s what you said.”
“What?” Her voice was loud, and I knew that I was right.
“‘She wouldn’t do that. . . . Not without me.’ Those were your words. I want to know what they mean.”
I climbed to my feet, growing angry. “Did you talk about this? Doing it together? Is that what you meant?”
“No.” Another step back.
“Is that the kind of help you’ve been giving her? Is it?” A shout. “Then it’s a miracle she’s alive at all, and no damn wonder that she called me instead of you.”
Alex stopped moving, and there was a sudden resoluteness in the way she stood and in the tone of her voice. She was no longer defensive, but upset herself, pissed-off—the Alex I knew so well.
“It wasn’t like that,” she said.
“It was a call for help, Alex, and she called me. Why did she do that? Why not you?”
“You couldn’t possibly know how it was, and you could never understand. Don’t flatter yourself. You’re all the same.”
“Who?” I demanded. “Men? Heterosexuals?”
“Pickens men,” Alex replied. “All men
. Take your pick. But mostly you and your damn father.”
“Try me,” I said. “Explain it to me.”
“You have no right to judge us.”
My voice rose and I let it. I was furious. I was scared. And I could not bear the comparison she’d made. I pointed at the empty door, toward the hall through which they’d rolled my sister to the ambulance.
“I do have the right,” I shouted. “Goddamn you, Alex. I do. She just gave it to me, and you can’t change that. If Jean lives—and you should pray that she does—then we’ll see who has the right. Because if so, I’m going to have her committed, so that she can get the help she needs.”
“If you’re around,” Alex said, and her eyes glittered with insect intensity.
“Are you threatening me?” I asked.
Alex shrugged, and her features dropped. “I’m just saying it seems like you’ve got other worries, other things to occupy your mind.”
“What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m stating the obvious. Now, if you’re finished with your tirade, I’m going to the hospital to be with Jean. But remember this.” She stepped closer. “You have never had power over me, never, and as long as I’m around, you’ll never have power over Jean, either.”
I looked at Alex, at her bottled rage, and felt my own fall away. How had we come to this?
“She said that she loves me, Alex. In spite of everything, she still loves her big brother. So, you see, I don’t need power over her. I don’t want it. She called me and I saved her life. Just like I did before she met you. Think on that. Then let’s figure out what we can do to help this person we both love so much.”
If I’d expected Alex to back down, I should have known better.
“That’s not what I meant, Work, and you know it. Stop being such a fucking lawyer.”
She turned and left, her bare feet soundless as she fled the truth. I heard the door slam, the muffled sound of her car, and then I was truly alone in the great house I’d known for so long. I looked at the rug spread beneath the stairs, the lake of blood that filled the space with its own peculiar scent. Footprints led away from it, and tracks from the gurney, growing lighter, transparent, and then disappearing altogether. I saw Jean’s cell phone and picked it up. I held it, studied the dried blood on it, and then placed it on the small table by the door.