Some characters belong to Dick Wolf and the creators of L&O. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback.
Things I Remember About Me
Luna
Out of obscurity I came--to obscurity I can easily return.
- Charlotte Bronte
My name is Mary Swafford. I live in Wyoming; I've lived here since I finished college. A master's, in library science, and a teaching certificate. Both my parents died in Ohio, where I grew up. My social security number is 502-09-1933.
Until a year ago, I didn't exist.
Waking up in the morning is never easy and always the same. Silence wakes me up first, makes me open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. Nothing stares back. I was probably dreaming. The radio turns on just beyond my fingertips. I listen to about five minutes of yesterday's news before dragging myself out of the tangled sheets. I like the shower as hot as it will go. Steam covers the mirrors.
Everything about me checks out, if you run the records down. Social security, birth certificate, diploma. I'll bet they've even slipped my picture into old Kent State yearbooks. Turns out it's not so hard to create somebody from scratch.
My house...well, I still feel strange, having a whole house to myself. It's only becoming mine by degrees. The bedroom, first, and then the bathroom and most of the kitchen. One of these days I'll colonize the living room with a can of yellow paint. I should get a cat. Anyway, my house is cool in the mornings, so I get out of the water and into my bathrobe as fast as I can.
As I comb out my hair, I hear the rain start to patter on the windows. I'm standing in the bathroom doorway, dripping and starting to shiver. This is one of the hardest times of day. I have no one to fool but myself.
*
The day that I woke up in the hospital, I met Walter. That's how he introduced himself; I never knew if it was his first name or his last. Walter was a heavy black man in a black suit, and he had that dry look. I knew he was Bureau before he flashed his ID.
"Miss Cabot," His voice sounded foggy. That must have been the drugs. "Do you understand what's happened to you?"
"I was shot," I said. As soon as I said it, I started to cry and shake, so hard that pain slashed through my shoulder. I knew it was just shock, but I couldn't stop. Walter stepped away from my bed, a blurry shape in the pale room. He wasn't looking at me. Somehow that made me cry even more.
When I had myself under control, Walter came back. "The jurisdiction problems in this case have been beyond ridiculous," he said, as if it was perfectly normal to discuss this kind of thing with a woman sobbing in a hospital bed. Maybe it was, for him. "If it had been up to me, I'd've pulled you off this case the minute you started getting threats."
There was a box of Kleenex on the stand beside the bed. I took one, wiped my face, and didn't know what to do with it. "I wanted to stay on the case," I told him.
"And now?"
"What?"
"Do you still want this case?"
I crumpled the tissue in my fist and looked up at the ceiling. The fluorescent light wavered. The doctors had spoken to me, but all I remembered--a hand on my elbow, a sharp noise that made me turn my head--it ran away from me. I glanced at the bandaged shape of my shoulder and thought I would cry again.
"I don't know."
"We can't guarantee your safety in this city." Walter lowered his head. "Miss Cabot--"
"Please." I had to choke out the word. "I'm still--I haven't even talked to my friends yet. They called my mother..."
"No. They didn't." His voice was deep, and dark, like the sound of underground water. "At the moment, the official word is that you're still in surgery."
I opened my mouth to say I didn't understand. And then I did. "Oh, my God."
Walter turned away. He wrapped one big hand around the top of a swivel chair and rolled it over by the bedside. "I was saying, we can't guarantee your safety. The Colombian cartels have more money, more firepower, and more intelligence than the DEA. You're lucky to be alive." He sat down. "There's nothing we can do to keep you that way, if you insist on pursuing this case."
Deep breath in, deep breath out. It hurt. "You're saying you want me to fake my..." I stared at my hands, unable to finish.
"Witness protection," Walter said. "You know how it works. We'll establish a new identity for you, new name, occupation--"
"No."
We looked at each other. I felt myself blush.
"You can't ask me this now," I added. "I can't think about this." My hands were starting to shake again. I hid them under the sheet, let my head fall back against the pillow. "Please."
He stood up, rubbing his hands together as if he wanted to get them clean. "Time's a material issue here," he said. "You gotta understand the decision you need to make, and then you have to make it."
I must have nodded, or something. I shut my eyes.
"I'll speak to you in a few hours." His footsteps clicked away on the cold floor. I heard the door of the room close, and opened my eyes again.
There was no clock in the room. There were no windows. I had a button to control the position of the bed, and one to signal a nurse, and a used tissue still in my grip. Under the bandage, the gunshot wound was bleeding.
I looked at the buttons and didn't touch them. I was afraid to call anyone.
Maybe that was when I made the decision.
*
I go to work in my green raincoat and a hurry. It's early, but not as early as I'd like to be. With my bag in one hand, my coffee mug in the other, and my keys in my teeth, I'm a train wreck as I let myself into the school.
There are already kids standing around in the hallway. I don't think they notice me. They're young in that self-protectively selfish way. Blind to the world beyond arm's length. Innocent. At least, that's what I tell myself.
I unlock the library and walk inside. Thin daylight slips past the edges of the shades and illuminates single books on the shelves like piano keys. Like teeth. I raise the shades, one by one, and look around to make sure everything's in order. Of course it is; I left it that way last night. I always do. Routines help. So I turn the computers on, and then the copier, and the overhead lights last. As they're stuttering to life the bell rings, not really a bell, an electric high C-sharp.
A stampede in the hall. I'm supposed to be out there, watching. I make my way back to the door, sipping my coffee. Already it's getting cold.
The kids move by in clusters, cliques that I can recognize even decades after my own high school sentence. Locals and bus kids. Girls with artfully shredded jeans and butterflies on their T-shirts, girls with baggy jeans and band names on their T-shirts, girls in church clothes, girls in high heels. Boys in an undifferentiated mass of shoving, yelling, sweaty denim, laughter, bad haircuts.
I'm yawning a little as I watch; they're bashing their locker doors and speaking in code. No fights. No visible drug deals. The second bell sounds and they're sucked slowly into their classrooms, like stars passing too close to a black hole. When the last of the stragglers are gone, I finish my coffee and go back inside.
The library is my territory. Usually, it's deserted until halfway through first period. I go through the books that need to be shelved, water the crackly potted plants, straighten the out-of-date magazines. Routines.
Maybe I drift off for a few seconds, because the squeak of the door makes me jump. I turn around, holding a copy of National Geographic up like a shield.
"Hey, Miss Swafford." I know this kid, a tall towheaded boy with the headphones of a Discman hanging around his neck. He grins at me. "Did I scare you?"
"No," I say, letting my hands drop. "You didn't."
He flips the headphones up and shuffles over to the computers, bobbing his head. He's in here roughly every other day, killing time through a study hall--or maybe skipping trig. I'm still learning.
I set National Geographic down in its place on the shelf. The cover text is printed over polar bears fighting in morning snow, white on white on white.
*
The doctor was with me when Walter came back, talking to me about cauterized tissue and how long I'd have to wear a sling. Walter walked in, nodded, and the doctor backed out like someone had set fire to his shoes.
My hospital gown had fallen open at the back. I reached around to hold it shut. "Tell me what I have to do," I said. "Tell me what I get."
Walter's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. For him, a dramatic reaction. "We're empowered to provide you with a new identity," he began, and I could tell it was part of a spiel he'd given before. "All the necessary documentation. We relocate you, provide housing, help you find employment. There's a modest living allowance until you're established."
"Where would you...establish me?" I frowned at the word, but Walter didn't seem to notice.
"Lots of possibilities."
"But I'd be a long way from New York City," I said.
He nodded. "We can access your apartment, relocate your personal belongings."
The mental image of a couple DEA dicks rifling my underwear drawer came to me very clearly. I tried not to shudder, because I knew it would hurt. "You're sure this is necessary?" His eyes darted toward me. I looked away. "I mean, in a permanent sense. You're sure the, uh, the threat--it won't just pass?"
He looked at me without saying anything, a long look that went through me, paper gown and all. Blood rose into my face. How naive I sounded, how doomed.
"Let me stress one more time, you aren't required to do this." As he spoke he turned his back and took a few measured steps away from the bed. He looked at the painting on the far wall, a still life, as if it was a window.
"I'd have to be an idiot to choose this lightly," I said. I was still blushing, breaking into a sweat. Already they'd come up with a cover story; they'd talked to my mother. To Cragen, and Elliot. And Olivia. People I would never see again if I took this offer. The thought crashed over me, and I couldn't move.
Walter didn't notice, or at least he pretended not to notice. "I know it's a tough situation," he said. He turned around, fingers steepled under his chin. A central casting FBI man. I knew what he was doing and it still worked. "I also know it's a life or death situation."
No more law. No more sex crimes. No more broken little kids or women caught in their pain like deer in a blind; no more practicing a closing argument until I'd fall asleep with the words clanking around in my dreams. No more losing cases and no more winning. No more late nights at Mulligan's, drinking with the cops until we'd stumble in pairs from the cab.
No more cops. No more Olivia. No more.
I made my back straight and looked Walter in the eyes.
"You have to be prepared to give it all up," he said, and lowered his hands. "To put it bluntly, Miss--Alexandra Cabot doesn't walk out of this room. We start over. We start now."
"No," I said.
We stared at each other, both surprised. My pulse pounded against my ribs and underneath the bandage. No, he was surprised, but I was just scared, so scared it was all I could do to hold my head up. Life or death. Maybe. It already felt like dying.
"I have to be able to say goodbye to someone," I told him. "Otherwise I don't think I can do this. There has to be--I need some kind of closure."
"That bullet was a few inches south, and you'd have closure," he said, in a tight voice. "This isn't easy, but we follow strict procedure for a reason. We can't protect you if you don't accept that; you of all people should--"
"She's a cop."
He jerked his head back, frowning, either at my words or at something in my tone. I felt the threat of tears again and swallowed hard. I'd had to be strong before; I was stronger than this.
"Not every cop can be trusted," he said.
"Not every employee of the federal government can, either," I said, trying to smile. Walter smiled, too, or at least I saw an upward quirk at the corner of his mouth. "If we can negotiate this, I'll do everything else you ask. No unauthorized contacts, no complaints. I'll be a model witness."
Model prisoner, I thought, but didn't say. He let the quiet stretch out, until I was sure I could hear more than my own heartbeat; I heard the air moving through the ducts in the walls.
"It's your ass on the line." He shrugged, glancing at his watch to let me know I was wasting his time.
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
I was sure he smiled, then. For the first time since the--since I'd woken--it seemed safe to draw a deep breath. The fear had receded, a tide hitting low ebb before it came back.
*
Before noon, a class comes in, the honors sophomores in history. The best twenty students in the school. They know it. They exude an aura that's part entitlement and part nervous energy, knowing at once that they're big fish and that the pond is very small. Sophomore: wise fool. I was one of those kids once. It's terrifying to be that young, with so many choices and nothing out of reach.
I have to remind myself that I'm not jealous.
I point them into the stacks and watch them dive into the biography section. They're picking through two and a half centuries of politicians, artists, activists and lawyers, picking through lives and histories. Some books get their pages flipped, get debated, cast down or passed around. Some aren't so much as fingered. I don't know the criteria.
Most of these kids would probably learn just as much if they never had a single assignment. They don't need hand-holding, at least not in their academic affairs. As I remember it, the smart ones aren't always so far ahead after the last bell rings. Lots of suffering in silence. But they move between the shelves, looking focused, even if they're faking it. So I walk back to the front desk. Their teacher is leaning against it, reading my copy of the New York Times.
"Hi, Mary." Tony Amanti straightens up, rifling his fingers through his hair. In spite of his name he has a white-bread American look: dark brown curls, blue eyes that seem insistent on friendliness behind his wire-rims. I've been told he came from California. I've been told, pointedly, that he's not married. I don't know him at all.
"Hi," I say, and take the top section of the newspaper away. I cross to the other side of the counter.
"It looks like spring," he says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.
For a minute I think he means the kids, but he's talking about the streaks of rain on the windows. I remember that autumn is supposed to be part of the dry season. "In July I said I'd be happy if the temperature ever went below eighty-five," I say. "So I've promised myself not to complain this winter--"
"When it won't get above fifteen."
"Right."
He smiles at me. It's a nice smile. I look down at the paper and make myself busy folding it. I never used to read the Metro section, only skim for names I knew. For my own name. Now I can get absorbed and lose an hour.
"So what's really on your mind, Mary?"
I raise an eyebrow and look up at him. "Excuse me?"
"You just seem like you're thinking about something more than the weather." Tony crosses his arms, waiting for me to come up with a satisfying answer. I wonder how this steady gaze affects the girls in his class. I wonder what he's heard about me. "Come on," he says. "The weight of the world?"
"The weight of the Dewey Decimal system." I reach up to tuck a loose curl behind my ear. Frizzy, of course. "Oh, it's just one of those days where everything's running a step behind schedule."
"I call those Mondays." He places his hands on the counter and leans in toward me. "Anything I can do to help out?"
"Thanks. As if you don't have your hands full?" I nod toward the kids gathering over by the Xerox machines. Someone is whistling, a tune from a commercial, but I can't quite place it. Someone else is balancing a book on his head.
Tony calls out to them, "Move it along," and turns back to me without missing a beat. "No child left behind."
"They like you." He just blinks. "It seems that way," I add, watching the kids shuffle along in line.
"These guys? Mostly, they know what they need to get done. I'm just here to keep them from getting lazy. Now, my fourth block, general freshmen--that is a police state."
I lean back, just slightly, weight on my heels. Hands behind my back. "There are worse things," I say. "It could be a boxing ring."
He chuckles and puts up his fists. "Teach like a butterfly, grade like a bee."
Smoothly, he throws a jab at the air, turns out of the boxer's stance and strides over to his students. There's a lot of good-natured whining as he herds them along. I slip into the rhythm of checking their books out, stamp and slip, stamp and slip.
As Tony passes me on his way out, he says, "Seriously, if I can help."
I press my lips together, grateful for the cluttered desk between us, the neutral space. In a library, you don't need an excuse to stay silent.
*
Olivia and I didn't have a relationship. We never even tiptoed near that word. When we could have talked about what we did--if we could have, without ruining her career or mine--we never did.
We had so little to describe, but still no vocabulary. We'd spend three nights together in a row and then switch back to cold professionalism for weeks at a time. Not necessarily during a trial, or before or after.
Alcohol, though. There was always that.
One night we drank at Mulligan's, late, after they had gone off-duty. No one was left in the bar except for a couple of old uniform cops, the type that still wears a mustache and complains about the switch to automatic handguns. We'd had several vodkas apiece and Elliot was nursing his third beer. When we finally went out to the street, Olivia stepped on the back of my shoe. We stumbled against each other in the doorway.
Elliot was parked out front. He plucked a ticket from under his windshield wiper. "Meter-maids," he said. "Hell with 'em."
We were giggling as he climbed into his car. "Buckle up," I said.
"I should make you let me drive you home," Elliot said. "Drunk and disorderly. I should collar the both of you."
"We'll get cabs." Olivia bent down, leaned into his window. "See you in the morning." She might have said something else; I didn't hear.
We watched him take off down the street. The heat was heavy on the air, and the clouds were low. It needed to storm, to break the heaviness and humidity, but it wasn't going to, yet.
"Do you feel like going home?" she asked me. "I know a place that makes a really good martini."
"I've never had a really good martini." I reached a hand out to the wall for balance. "I don't think I like them."
"You'll like this. It's just down this way."
She started walking with a sort of swagger. A cop thing, a thing that knew I would follow her. I watched her feet as we walked, trying to go in a straight line. The sidewalk seemed less than steady.
Manhattan is funny. You can live there for ten years and still be surprised. Or lost. We weren't more than two, three blocks from the precinct house, but I would have sworn I'd never seen that street before. I had this strange feeling that the city was moving around us, rearranging itself every time we took a step.
As I was thinking that, Olivia stopped just in front of me. She turned around and my eyes traveled up to her face. The streetlight threw shadows under her eyebrows and cheekbones, glistened in her hair.
"Hey," she said. "Do you ever think this job has screwed us up?"
I must have been staring. "I don't--I thought you really loved it." Stupid. As if it was the sort of job you loved. "I mean, it's worth it. Every time we help somebody it's worth it."
"Yeah." She tossed her head, shrugged her shoulders back. "But, I don't know, maybe we pay for that. Sometimes I have to stop to remember that what we see isn't normal. To remember consensual sex. To remember to trust people."
Sadness crossed her face like a passing headlight. I held my hands, palms up, toward her. "Well, of course it bothers you. Us. We'd die if it didn't. Of course it's hard to separate work from our sex lives. It's hard to--"
"I trust you, though." Olivia folded her hands over mine. Before that registered, she'd leaned in to kiss me.
It was the first time I'd felt that way in forever. The thrill like a cyclone in the pit of my stomach, the taste of salt and alcohol when I opened my mouth. Somehow she maneuvered us into the vestibule of one of the buildings, kissing me the whole time, the night liquid around us. She slid her hand up my thigh.
"Olivia?" I didn't know what was happening. I didn't want it to stop. Her to stop. I kissed back, and let her hitch my skirt up. I'd left my stockings in the office, hours ago, because it was so hot.
It happened so fast, it almost didn't happen at all.
We made it to the martini place and found it closed. Instead, we walked down to the corner and bought bottles of water at a convenience store. There were a few other people on the street, mostly couples, mostly young. Olivia took a shot at hailing a cab. It passed us by.
I didn't feel drunk anymore, not in the overwhelming way. All the lights around us in the dark shone very clearly. "You know," I said. "There's a reason they changed the unit's name from Sex Crimes to Special Victims."
"P.C.-ness," Olivia muttered. She looked past me, down the long dark canyon between buildings.
"That, and...sex crime isn't actually about sex." My words rang hollow. My knees were trembling as I touched her elbow. "That's what we have to stop to remember."
A cab pulled up past us, blinking its lights. "Right," she said, and opened the back door. She held it. Waited for me.
I got into the backseat. Olivia closed the door behind me, and I stammered out my address as the driver pulled out. There were tears in my eyes. I still don't know what more I'd expected.
*
Sometimes I lose time. Everyone does. I'm reading through a stack of memos from the school board, my eyes go unfocused. I blink and the minutes have slipped away.
That this happens when I'm at work is mildly frightening to me. Unfocused. I don't like that.
I look across the library, wondering what I've missed. It's quiet: the hum of circulating air and electric current, the counterpoint of fingers on computer keys. I hear these things the way you might suddenly catch the sound of your own breathing.
There's no information in these memos that I can use. I've never even met the people on the school board. I know them as Xeroxed signatures at the bottom of blue sheets of paper. They approve the books I order. I guess if I made a run on extra copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves or The Handmaid's Tale, they might shift themselves to telephone me. So I'm not really reading, just staring at the words, forgetting as fast as I file the paper away.
Someone calls out, "Miss?"
High school girls call all the female teachers 'Miss' unless they like them, and then call them by name. 'Miss' conveys nothing and could be anyone. I look up. "Yes?"
"This thing won't print."
There are always computer problems, glitches, things I'm learning to solve by the skin of my teeth since they haven't hired an expert. I let out a sigh and walk over, past the row of computers. The printer's jammed. I fix it, turn the machine off and on again. "It should work now."
The girl looks at her monitor and I look at her. Her face is pale as the crumpled paper in my hand, under bangs cut straight and dyed black. Black hair, black T-shirt, heavy black makeup around her eyes. Six or seven little silver rings in each ear. The effect is supposed to be tragic, mysterious, seductive. I think she just looks exhausted. Maybe that's one way I know I'm getting older.
"Did you try it again?" I say.
She hunches her shoulders forward. "No. Here." Her hands on the keyboard are white, fingernails speckled with old polish that looks like it was nibbled away.
A groan comes from the guts of the printer, almost a human sound. It makes a lot of displeased noise before giving up the pages. I pick them up, to make sure the ink and toner don't need replacing. "It looks--"
The girl jumps up and snatches the pages from my grip. Not before I glimpse a word here, a phrase there. ...Freedom. You Can Control Yourself!
Cutting.
Her eyes snap at me. Before I'm even sure of what I'm seeing, she's back in her chair, stuffing her printout into a beat-up leather backpack. She doesn't look at me again. As if, if I was going to say something, the window of opportunity has closed.
My head is pounding as I force myself to walk away.
I could say something to the guidance counselor, I think, drumming my fingers on the desk. I could call someone...I don't even know the girl's name. And I'm jumping to conclusions, assuming the worst. Maybe whatever she's reading is just another layer in her black-and-white disguise. I've got no evidence that anything's really wrong.
Bad things, the worst things, happen in small cities and middle-sized towns. Middle America. I know this. Still, I'm like everyone else; I want to believe that this place is immune, this place is safe. Maybe I want to believe it even more because I know better.
I'll speak up at the next faculty meeting. I'll look into putting filters on the Internet access, which I should probably have done months ago. I've found some tamely dirty pictures in the history folders before. Thought it was nothing.
Most of all I wish I had the nerve--I wish I had the right--to take the chair next to the girl and wait for her to look out from her eyeliner. "If someone's hurting you, I can help. There are people you can call. You don't have to deal with this alone. I can help."
I can't say that.
Speechless, I turn back to the circulars, catalogues, the forms. Paperwork. I've always been good with paperwork, and it's always seemed like a waste of time.
*
The last time I saw Olivia, of course, we weren't alone.
The agents put me in the back of a white van and drove. There weren't any windows, but I assumed we were going through the Lincoln Tunnel, back into the city. Maybe taking a more circuitous route. I heard the van's engine, and the honks and hums of surrounding traffic. The traffic ebbed and then we jerked to a stop.
I sat there for a while, one arm in the sling, one hand over my eyes. Waiting. A hot, tingly feeling began at the back of my neck. It was hard to breathe, as if my ribs were clamped too tight. Silently, I was rehearsing what I would say.
For days I'd been rehearsing, the way I would plot out a closing argument, trying out the language, the tone of voice. My head hurt when I thought about it. All the times she'd called me, drunk. The way she always pushed me away after sex like I was going to hurt her, or the other way around. The way she'd push herself to solve a case, past sleeplessness and recklessness; she would give sweat and blood and every muscle in her body. The way she could look at me, touch me, like I was the only thing left in the world. It had to prove something.
A car pulled up and braked nearby.
Goodbye, I was supposed to be saying.
I heard voices, muffled, just barely there. Then one of the agents opened the van's back door. I got up, stepping down to the street.
Olivia stared at me, shock flashing on her face. I saw my name take shape on her lips before I even realized that Elliot was with her. Well, of course he was with her, and the DEA guys were standing behind me. It was a swampy night, not the right place for confessions or declarations. I tried to smile.
I don't remember how the words, the few words I said came out. When I try, all that comes back are things I didn't say. Like: I wish none of this was happening.
Like: Olivia, you're so hidden from yourself; I think you need help; I hope you find it.
What did you think, how did you feel when I was--you thought--dead?
Hey, Olivia, I loved you, I think. I think you need help.
Okay?
I must have told her I was sorry. Her eyes were wide open. Brilliant. Full of light and hurt.
And I was back into the van, entirely alone even though I was a few feet from the driver. Alone, lurching out of the city for the last time. I said it again, mostly to myself. "Goodbye."
*
Two o'clock. The bell-tone sounds and the classrooms empty, rapid-fire. I stand in the open doorway. Now there's no loitering; the kids go by so fast they blur. Most of them have known each other since the neonatal ward; most of the teachers here taught their parents. I haven't been here long enough to scratch the surface.
By two-thirty the halls have emptied, and filled again with that weird kind of silence that you only find in deep space, or high schools after hours. I lock the library door behind me when I go back inside to go through the checked-in books.
Sort, scan, shelve. Routines. The weight of an encyclopedia volume in my numb hands.
At four o'clock I make the rounds, turning off lights and screens, and let myself out. The rain's stopped, but the sky is still a choppy gray. Tony Amanti's standing against a car in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette.
He chucks it as I walk up and puts his foot over it, laughing. "Busted," he says.
I smile. "I'll let you off with a warning."
"You're too kind." Tony puts his hands in his jacket pockets. "Did your day get any better after lunch?"
The polite lie comes to mind, but instead I say, "No. Yours?"
"Freshmen?" He shakes his head. "I'm not even sure they're completely human. They're still in the larval stage. Grubs."
"You don't mean that."
"No, I guess I don't."
I cross my arms, pushing up the sleeves of my raincoat. "Do you ever...worry about them?"
"Every time I grade their homework."
"I don't mean that. I mean, what goes on in their lives that we don't know about." In my own ears I sound unbearably sappy. I look down at the shiny blacktop. "Or talk about. I'm thinking of putting filter software on the computers in the library."
"The administration tried that a couple of years ago." He leans back against the car; it must be his. "Net Nanny on all of the computers in the building. The problem is, it doesn't just block the, well, the porn. It blocked the Zapruder film, for crying out loud. We pleaded and whined, and finally harassed them into removing it."
"Because it was inconvenient?" I raise my eyes. He's trying that smile out on me again. "Couldn't they have given out passwords to the staff, or something?"
"Convenience trumps the moral high ground." Tony shrugs. He says it like it's common knowledge, or ought to be.
It is. Everyone cuts these kind of deals, makes these decisions. Bargaining. You weigh the things that matter against the things that make your life easier. Safer. It's not that cold out here, but I'm shivering.
He's looking at me over the top of his glasses. "Someone just walk over your grave?"
"Yeah." My voice squeaks out just above a whisper. I clear my throat, try again. "Yeah, I'm just fine."
"I gotta go back in there," he says, nodding toward the school. "There's a pound and a half of essays on my desk. But, uh..." He comes off the car to stand up straight. "Maybe we could meet up for dinner?"
Even though I'm not quite surprised, I'm off-balance, rocking back onto my heels. "I can't," I say. And, quickly, "I mean, not tonight."
He slouches back against the car. If he's hurt, his smile doesn't waver. "Some other time."
"Definitely." And honestly, there's no reason why I couldn't. I like him. I do. "Definitely," I say again, and I let my fingers brush against the sleeve of his jacket, as I walk away.
*
I didn't count the days I spent in the safe-house in Jersey. It was a little like jail and a little like the last week of summer vacation, when I was a kid, that blend of nervous excitement and boredom and dread. I dyed my hair--the box said chestnut, but I thought it looked like mud in the door of the empty medicine cabinet--and started letting it dry in curls.
Cosmetic surgery, Walter told me, was an option.
"Not for me," I said, before I thought about it. A new face, a softer jawline, bigger breasts. No. "Not for me."
He gave me one of his sizing-up looks, but didn't reply. It's your ass. He took out an overstuffed binder and laid it on the coffee table. "Passport," he said. "Driver's license, Social Security, credit cards. You got about ten grand in credit, one in the bank account. We've leased a house in your name, but you'll have to take care of getting yourself a car."
City girl, I'd never owned a car in my life. "I think I can do that."
"Plane tickets," Walter continued, flipping through the file. "Diplomas, transcripts. Some phone numbers you can use as references, you can go over that on the plane." He took a silver pen out of his breast pocket and wrote something on one of the pages. "That's a phone number you call if you're in danger. Serious danger. Not, 'I think I heard the boogeyman in my closet.'"
"You think I'm that stupid?" I tried to laugh. My heart was beating too fast.
"We don't take chances." He shut the binder and handed it to me. "Ought to be everything you need."
It didn't seem heavy enough for that. I curled my fingers around the edges. "Wyoming," I said, shutting my eyes. A vague picture came to mind of rocky land, empty sky. I couldn't see myself in this landscape. I certainly couldn't see anyone like Olivia there.
Walter must have guessed what I was thinking. "It's what you make of it," he said, getting to his feet. "You'll be watched for a while."
"By you?"
He shook his head. "You won't know who."
"I'm not a civilian, remember?" I crossed my arms and held the binder to my chest. "I can tell when I'm being tailed."
"You won't know." He strode toward the door. "You'll do fine," he said, with his back to me.
I knew then that I wouldn't see him again, and something made me call him back. "Walter, I--thank you," I said. And I meant it; suddenly I felt sure that I was going to miss him. Though I barely knew him, though all I'd ever done was test his patience, I was going to miss him. I got up to shake his hand.
His fingers were warm. A fast, solid handshake. "Be careful, Miss Swafford," he said. And he was gone.
After a few seconds, I realized he'd called me by name.
*
I stop at the grocery store, just to grab a few things, spaghetti and salad vegetables. I still haven't really learned how to cook, but the takeout in this town doesn't really bear thinking about, much less eating. Groceries in the backseat, and I drive away.
There are a few ways I could get to my house from downtown. I pass the first turn. I pass the second. In a shockingly short time, the town shrinks away and the road opens up under the sky. Silvery-green brush covers the median and the hills on either side of the highway. Low hills, with the same rolling curve as the heavy-bellied clouds in the sky. No sound but my engine. I swing around into a U-turn, and head home.
It takes me two trips to get everything into the house, and close the door behind me. I leave the lights out, walking into the kitchen. There are no messages on the answering machine, and I'm glad; that little blinking light always makes me nervous. A red, angry eye.
I put some water on to boil. Dinner for one. This is the other hardest time of day.
My name is on the lease. My old couch is in the living room, the first real piece of furniture I owned. I could paint, or raise kittens, or plant roses in the backyard. Anything I want. I reach up and touch the scar on my shoulder, a raised circle like a coin under my skin. It doesn't hurt, anymore. It hardly feels like anything.
The biggest lie I tell is that I'm not scared; I am an ordinarily safe person in an ordinary town. The biggest fear I have is that someday the lie will come without effort. I won't be pretending. I won't remember anything that didn't happen to Mary.
At least Olivia knows I'm alive. At least that.
I open the refrigerator and, standing in its ice-colored glow, take out the vodka. I drink it straight, and straight from the bottle. No one sees me.
*
End. Reviews are love.
--luna
Things I Remember About Me
Luna
Out of obscurity I came--to obscurity I can easily return.
- Charlotte Bronte
My name is Mary Swafford. I live in Wyoming; I've lived here since I finished college. A master's, in library science, and a teaching certificate. Both my parents died in Ohio, where I grew up. My social security number is 502-09-1933.
Until a year ago, I didn't exist.
Waking up in the morning is never easy and always the same. Silence wakes me up first, makes me open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. Nothing stares back. I was probably dreaming. The radio turns on just beyond my fingertips. I listen to about five minutes of yesterday's news before dragging myself out of the tangled sheets. I like the shower as hot as it will go. Steam covers the mirrors.
Everything about me checks out, if you run the records down. Social security, birth certificate, diploma. I'll bet they've even slipped my picture into old Kent State yearbooks. Turns out it's not so hard to create somebody from scratch.
My house...well, I still feel strange, having a whole house to myself. It's only becoming mine by degrees. The bedroom, first, and then the bathroom and most of the kitchen. One of these days I'll colonize the living room with a can of yellow paint. I should get a cat. Anyway, my house is cool in the mornings, so I get out of the water and into my bathrobe as fast as I can.
As I comb out my hair, I hear the rain start to patter on the windows. I'm standing in the bathroom doorway, dripping and starting to shiver. This is one of the hardest times of day. I have no one to fool but myself.
*
The day that I woke up in the hospital, I met Walter. That's how he introduced himself; I never knew if it was his first name or his last. Walter was a heavy black man in a black suit, and he had that dry look. I knew he was Bureau before he flashed his ID.
"Miss Cabot," His voice sounded foggy. That must have been the drugs. "Do you understand what's happened to you?"
"I was shot," I said. As soon as I said it, I started to cry and shake, so hard that pain slashed through my shoulder. I knew it was just shock, but I couldn't stop. Walter stepped away from my bed, a blurry shape in the pale room. He wasn't looking at me. Somehow that made me cry even more.
When I had myself under control, Walter came back. "The jurisdiction problems in this case have been beyond ridiculous," he said, as if it was perfectly normal to discuss this kind of thing with a woman sobbing in a hospital bed. Maybe it was, for him. "If it had been up to me, I'd've pulled you off this case the minute you started getting threats."
There was a box of Kleenex on the stand beside the bed. I took one, wiped my face, and didn't know what to do with it. "I wanted to stay on the case," I told him.
"And now?"
"What?"
"Do you still want this case?"
I crumpled the tissue in my fist and looked up at the ceiling. The fluorescent light wavered. The doctors had spoken to me, but all I remembered--a hand on my elbow, a sharp noise that made me turn my head--it ran away from me. I glanced at the bandaged shape of my shoulder and thought I would cry again.
"I don't know."
"We can't guarantee your safety in this city." Walter lowered his head. "Miss Cabot--"
"Please." I had to choke out the word. "I'm still--I haven't even talked to my friends yet. They called my mother..."
"No. They didn't." His voice was deep, and dark, like the sound of underground water. "At the moment, the official word is that you're still in surgery."
I opened my mouth to say I didn't understand. And then I did. "Oh, my God."
Walter turned away. He wrapped one big hand around the top of a swivel chair and rolled it over by the bedside. "I was saying, we can't guarantee your safety. The Colombian cartels have more money, more firepower, and more intelligence than the DEA. You're lucky to be alive." He sat down. "There's nothing we can do to keep you that way, if you insist on pursuing this case."
Deep breath in, deep breath out. It hurt. "You're saying you want me to fake my..." I stared at my hands, unable to finish.
"Witness protection," Walter said. "You know how it works. We'll establish a new identity for you, new name, occupation--"
"No."
We looked at each other. I felt myself blush.
"You can't ask me this now," I added. "I can't think about this." My hands were starting to shake again. I hid them under the sheet, let my head fall back against the pillow. "Please."
He stood up, rubbing his hands together as if he wanted to get them clean. "Time's a material issue here," he said. "You gotta understand the decision you need to make, and then you have to make it."
I must have nodded, or something. I shut my eyes.
"I'll speak to you in a few hours." His footsteps clicked away on the cold floor. I heard the door of the room close, and opened my eyes again.
There was no clock in the room. There were no windows. I had a button to control the position of the bed, and one to signal a nurse, and a used tissue still in my grip. Under the bandage, the gunshot wound was bleeding.
I looked at the buttons and didn't touch them. I was afraid to call anyone.
Maybe that was when I made the decision.
*
I go to work in my green raincoat and a hurry. It's early, but not as early as I'd like to be. With my bag in one hand, my coffee mug in the other, and my keys in my teeth, I'm a train wreck as I let myself into the school.
There are already kids standing around in the hallway. I don't think they notice me. They're young in that self-protectively selfish way. Blind to the world beyond arm's length. Innocent. At least, that's what I tell myself.
I unlock the library and walk inside. Thin daylight slips past the edges of the shades and illuminates single books on the shelves like piano keys. Like teeth. I raise the shades, one by one, and look around to make sure everything's in order. Of course it is; I left it that way last night. I always do. Routines help. So I turn the computers on, and then the copier, and the overhead lights last. As they're stuttering to life the bell rings, not really a bell, an electric high C-sharp.
A stampede in the hall. I'm supposed to be out there, watching. I make my way back to the door, sipping my coffee. Already it's getting cold.
The kids move by in clusters, cliques that I can recognize even decades after my own high school sentence. Locals and bus kids. Girls with artfully shredded jeans and butterflies on their T-shirts, girls with baggy jeans and band names on their T-shirts, girls in church clothes, girls in high heels. Boys in an undifferentiated mass of shoving, yelling, sweaty denim, laughter, bad haircuts.
I'm yawning a little as I watch; they're bashing their locker doors and speaking in code. No fights. No visible drug deals. The second bell sounds and they're sucked slowly into their classrooms, like stars passing too close to a black hole. When the last of the stragglers are gone, I finish my coffee and go back inside.
The library is my territory. Usually, it's deserted until halfway through first period. I go through the books that need to be shelved, water the crackly potted plants, straighten the out-of-date magazines. Routines.
Maybe I drift off for a few seconds, because the squeak of the door makes me jump. I turn around, holding a copy of National Geographic up like a shield.
"Hey, Miss Swafford." I know this kid, a tall towheaded boy with the headphones of a Discman hanging around his neck. He grins at me. "Did I scare you?"
"No," I say, letting my hands drop. "You didn't."
He flips the headphones up and shuffles over to the computers, bobbing his head. He's in here roughly every other day, killing time through a study hall--or maybe skipping trig. I'm still learning.
I set National Geographic down in its place on the shelf. The cover text is printed over polar bears fighting in morning snow, white on white on white.
*
The doctor was with me when Walter came back, talking to me about cauterized tissue and how long I'd have to wear a sling. Walter walked in, nodded, and the doctor backed out like someone had set fire to his shoes.
My hospital gown had fallen open at the back. I reached around to hold it shut. "Tell me what I have to do," I said. "Tell me what I get."
Walter's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. For him, a dramatic reaction. "We're empowered to provide you with a new identity," he began, and I could tell it was part of a spiel he'd given before. "All the necessary documentation. We relocate you, provide housing, help you find employment. There's a modest living allowance until you're established."
"Where would you...establish me?" I frowned at the word, but Walter didn't seem to notice.
"Lots of possibilities."
"But I'd be a long way from New York City," I said.
He nodded. "We can access your apartment, relocate your personal belongings."
The mental image of a couple DEA dicks rifling my underwear drawer came to me very clearly. I tried not to shudder, because I knew it would hurt. "You're sure this is necessary?" His eyes darted toward me. I looked away. "I mean, in a permanent sense. You're sure the, uh, the threat--it won't just pass?"
He looked at me without saying anything, a long look that went through me, paper gown and all. Blood rose into my face. How naive I sounded, how doomed.
"Let me stress one more time, you aren't required to do this." As he spoke he turned his back and took a few measured steps away from the bed. He looked at the painting on the far wall, a still life, as if it was a window.
"I'd have to be an idiot to choose this lightly," I said. I was still blushing, breaking into a sweat. Already they'd come up with a cover story; they'd talked to my mother. To Cragen, and Elliot. And Olivia. People I would never see again if I took this offer. The thought crashed over me, and I couldn't move.
Walter didn't notice, or at least he pretended not to notice. "I know it's a tough situation," he said. He turned around, fingers steepled under his chin. A central casting FBI man. I knew what he was doing and it still worked. "I also know it's a life or death situation."
No more law. No more sex crimes. No more broken little kids or women caught in their pain like deer in a blind; no more practicing a closing argument until I'd fall asleep with the words clanking around in my dreams. No more losing cases and no more winning. No more late nights at Mulligan's, drinking with the cops until we'd stumble in pairs from the cab.
No more cops. No more Olivia. No more.
I made my back straight and looked Walter in the eyes.
"You have to be prepared to give it all up," he said, and lowered his hands. "To put it bluntly, Miss--Alexandra Cabot doesn't walk out of this room. We start over. We start now."
"No," I said.
We stared at each other, both surprised. My pulse pounded against my ribs and underneath the bandage. No, he was surprised, but I was just scared, so scared it was all I could do to hold my head up. Life or death. Maybe. It already felt like dying.
"I have to be able to say goodbye to someone," I told him. "Otherwise I don't think I can do this. There has to be--I need some kind of closure."
"That bullet was a few inches south, and you'd have closure," he said, in a tight voice. "This isn't easy, but we follow strict procedure for a reason. We can't protect you if you don't accept that; you of all people should--"
"She's a cop."
He jerked his head back, frowning, either at my words or at something in my tone. I felt the threat of tears again and swallowed hard. I'd had to be strong before; I was stronger than this.
"Not every cop can be trusted," he said.
"Not every employee of the federal government can, either," I said, trying to smile. Walter smiled, too, or at least I saw an upward quirk at the corner of his mouth. "If we can negotiate this, I'll do everything else you ask. No unauthorized contacts, no complaints. I'll be a model witness."
Model prisoner, I thought, but didn't say. He let the quiet stretch out, until I was sure I could hear more than my own heartbeat; I heard the air moving through the ducts in the walls.
"It's your ass on the line." He shrugged, glancing at his watch to let me know I was wasting his time.
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
I was sure he smiled, then. For the first time since the--since I'd woken--it seemed safe to draw a deep breath. The fear had receded, a tide hitting low ebb before it came back.
*
Before noon, a class comes in, the honors sophomores in history. The best twenty students in the school. They know it. They exude an aura that's part entitlement and part nervous energy, knowing at once that they're big fish and that the pond is very small. Sophomore: wise fool. I was one of those kids once. It's terrifying to be that young, with so many choices and nothing out of reach.
I have to remind myself that I'm not jealous.
I point them into the stacks and watch them dive into the biography section. They're picking through two and a half centuries of politicians, artists, activists and lawyers, picking through lives and histories. Some books get their pages flipped, get debated, cast down or passed around. Some aren't so much as fingered. I don't know the criteria.
Most of these kids would probably learn just as much if they never had a single assignment. They don't need hand-holding, at least not in their academic affairs. As I remember it, the smart ones aren't always so far ahead after the last bell rings. Lots of suffering in silence. But they move between the shelves, looking focused, even if they're faking it. So I walk back to the front desk. Their teacher is leaning against it, reading my copy of the New York Times.
"Hi, Mary." Tony Amanti straightens up, rifling his fingers through his hair. In spite of his name he has a white-bread American look: dark brown curls, blue eyes that seem insistent on friendliness behind his wire-rims. I've been told he came from California. I've been told, pointedly, that he's not married. I don't know him at all.
"Hi," I say, and take the top section of the newspaper away. I cross to the other side of the counter.
"It looks like spring," he says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.
For a minute I think he means the kids, but he's talking about the streaks of rain on the windows. I remember that autumn is supposed to be part of the dry season. "In July I said I'd be happy if the temperature ever went below eighty-five," I say. "So I've promised myself not to complain this winter--"
"When it won't get above fifteen."
"Right."
He smiles at me. It's a nice smile. I look down at the paper and make myself busy folding it. I never used to read the Metro section, only skim for names I knew. For my own name. Now I can get absorbed and lose an hour.
"So what's really on your mind, Mary?"
I raise an eyebrow and look up at him. "Excuse me?"
"You just seem like you're thinking about something more than the weather." Tony crosses his arms, waiting for me to come up with a satisfying answer. I wonder how this steady gaze affects the girls in his class. I wonder what he's heard about me. "Come on," he says. "The weight of the world?"
"The weight of the Dewey Decimal system." I reach up to tuck a loose curl behind my ear. Frizzy, of course. "Oh, it's just one of those days where everything's running a step behind schedule."
"I call those Mondays." He places his hands on the counter and leans in toward me. "Anything I can do to help out?"
"Thanks. As if you don't have your hands full?" I nod toward the kids gathering over by the Xerox machines. Someone is whistling, a tune from a commercial, but I can't quite place it. Someone else is balancing a book on his head.
Tony calls out to them, "Move it along," and turns back to me without missing a beat. "No child left behind."
"They like you." He just blinks. "It seems that way," I add, watching the kids shuffle along in line.
"These guys? Mostly, they know what they need to get done. I'm just here to keep them from getting lazy. Now, my fourth block, general freshmen--that is a police state."
I lean back, just slightly, weight on my heels. Hands behind my back. "There are worse things," I say. "It could be a boxing ring."
He chuckles and puts up his fists. "Teach like a butterfly, grade like a bee."
Smoothly, he throws a jab at the air, turns out of the boxer's stance and strides over to his students. There's a lot of good-natured whining as he herds them along. I slip into the rhythm of checking their books out, stamp and slip, stamp and slip.
As Tony passes me on his way out, he says, "Seriously, if I can help."
I press my lips together, grateful for the cluttered desk between us, the neutral space. In a library, you don't need an excuse to stay silent.
*
Olivia and I didn't have a relationship. We never even tiptoed near that word. When we could have talked about what we did--if we could have, without ruining her career or mine--we never did.
We had so little to describe, but still no vocabulary. We'd spend three nights together in a row and then switch back to cold professionalism for weeks at a time. Not necessarily during a trial, or before or after.
Alcohol, though. There was always that.
One night we drank at Mulligan's, late, after they had gone off-duty. No one was left in the bar except for a couple of old uniform cops, the type that still wears a mustache and complains about the switch to automatic handguns. We'd had several vodkas apiece and Elliot was nursing his third beer. When we finally went out to the street, Olivia stepped on the back of my shoe. We stumbled against each other in the doorway.
Elliot was parked out front. He plucked a ticket from under his windshield wiper. "Meter-maids," he said. "Hell with 'em."
We were giggling as he climbed into his car. "Buckle up," I said.
"I should make you let me drive you home," Elliot said. "Drunk and disorderly. I should collar the both of you."
"We'll get cabs." Olivia bent down, leaned into his window. "See you in the morning." She might have said something else; I didn't hear.
We watched him take off down the street. The heat was heavy on the air, and the clouds were low. It needed to storm, to break the heaviness and humidity, but it wasn't going to, yet.
"Do you feel like going home?" she asked me. "I know a place that makes a really good martini."
"I've never had a really good martini." I reached a hand out to the wall for balance. "I don't think I like them."
"You'll like this. It's just down this way."
She started walking with a sort of swagger. A cop thing, a thing that knew I would follow her. I watched her feet as we walked, trying to go in a straight line. The sidewalk seemed less than steady.
Manhattan is funny. You can live there for ten years and still be surprised. Or lost. We weren't more than two, three blocks from the precinct house, but I would have sworn I'd never seen that street before. I had this strange feeling that the city was moving around us, rearranging itself every time we took a step.
As I was thinking that, Olivia stopped just in front of me. She turned around and my eyes traveled up to her face. The streetlight threw shadows under her eyebrows and cheekbones, glistened in her hair.
"Hey," she said. "Do you ever think this job has screwed us up?"
I must have been staring. "I don't--I thought you really loved it." Stupid. As if it was the sort of job you loved. "I mean, it's worth it. Every time we help somebody it's worth it."
"Yeah." She tossed her head, shrugged her shoulders back. "But, I don't know, maybe we pay for that. Sometimes I have to stop to remember that what we see isn't normal. To remember consensual sex. To remember to trust people."
Sadness crossed her face like a passing headlight. I held my hands, palms up, toward her. "Well, of course it bothers you. Us. We'd die if it didn't. Of course it's hard to separate work from our sex lives. It's hard to--"
"I trust you, though." Olivia folded her hands over mine. Before that registered, she'd leaned in to kiss me.
It was the first time I'd felt that way in forever. The thrill like a cyclone in the pit of my stomach, the taste of salt and alcohol when I opened my mouth. Somehow she maneuvered us into the vestibule of one of the buildings, kissing me the whole time, the night liquid around us. She slid her hand up my thigh.
"Olivia?" I didn't know what was happening. I didn't want it to stop. Her to stop. I kissed back, and let her hitch my skirt up. I'd left my stockings in the office, hours ago, because it was so hot.
It happened so fast, it almost didn't happen at all.
We made it to the martini place and found it closed. Instead, we walked down to the corner and bought bottles of water at a convenience store. There were a few other people on the street, mostly couples, mostly young. Olivia took a shot at hailing a cab. It passed us by.
I didn't feel drunk anymore, not in the overwhelming way. All the lights around us in the dark shone very clearly. "You know," I said. "There's a reason they changed the unit's name from Sex Crimes to Special Victims."
"P.C.-ness," Olivia muttered. She looked past me, down the long dark canyon between buildings.
"That, and...sex crime isn't actually about sex." My words rang hollow. My knees were trembling as I touched her elbow. "That's what we have to stop to remember."
A cab pulled up past us, blinking its lights. "Right," she said, and opened the back door. She held it. Waited for me.
I got into the backseat. Olivia closed the door behind me, and I stammered out my address as the driver pulled out. There were tears in my eyes. I still don't know what more I'd expected.
*
Sometimes I lose time. Everyone does. I'm reading through a stack of memos from the school board, my eyes go unfocused. I blink and the minutes have slipped away.
That this happens when I'm at work is mildly frightening to me. Unfocused. I don't like that.
I look across the library, wondering what I've missed. It's quiet: the hum of circulating air and electric current, the counterpoint of fingers on computer keys. I hear these things the way you might suddenly catch the sound of your own breathing.
There's no information in these memos that I can use. I've never even met the people on the school board. I know them as Xeroxed signatures at the bottom of blue sheets of paper. They approve the books I order. I guess if I made a run on extra copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves or The Handmaid's Tale, they might shift themselves to telephone me. So I'm not really reading, just staring at the words, forgetting as fast as I file the paper away.
Someone calls out, "Miss?"
High school girls call all the female teachers 'Miss' unless they like them, and then call them by name. 'Miss' conveys nothing and could be anyone. I look up. "Yes?"
"This thing won't print."
There are always computer problems, glitches, things I'm learning to solve by the skin of my teeth since they haven't hired an expert. I let out a sigh and walk over, past the row of computers. The printer's jammed. I fix it, turn the machine off and on again. "It should work now."
The girl looks at her monitor and I look at her. Her face is pale as the crumpled paper in my hand, under bangs cut straight and dyed black. Black hair, black T-shirt, heavy black makeup around her eyes. Six or seven little silver rings in each ear. The effect is supposed to be tragic, mysterious, seductive. I think she just looks exhausted. Maybe that's one way I know I'm getting older.
"Did you try it again?" I say.
She hunches her shoulders forward. "No. Here." Her hands on the keyboard are white, fingernails speckled with old polish that looks like it was nibbled away.
A groan comes from the guts of the printer, almost a human sound. It makes a lot of displeased noise before giving up the pages. I pick them up, to make sure the ink and toner don't need replacing. "It looks--"
The girl jumps up and snatches the pages from my grip. Not before I glimpse a word here, a phrase there. ...Freedom. You Can Control Yourself!
Cutting.
Her eyes snap at me. Before I'm even sure of what I'm seeing, she's back in her chair, stuffing her printout into a beat-up leather backpack. She doesn't look at me again. As if, if I was going to say something, the window of opportunity has closed.
My head is pounding as I force myself to walk away.
I could say something to the guidance counselor, I think, drumming my fingers on the desk. I could call someone...I don't even know the girl's name. And I'm jumping to conclusions, assuming the worst. Maybe whatever she's reading is just another layer in her black-and-white disguise. I've got no evidence that anything's really wrong.
Bad things, the worst things, happen in small cities and middle-sized towns. Middle America. I know this. Still, I'm like everyone else; I want to believe that this place is immune, this place is safe. Maybe I want to believe it even more because I know better.
I'll speak up at the next faculty meeting. I'll look into putting filters on the Internet access, which I should probably have done months ago. I've found some tamely dirty pictures in the history folders before. Thought it was nothing.
Most of all I wish I had the nerve--I wish I had the right--to take the chair next to the girl and wait for her to look out from her eyeliner. "If someone's hurting you, I can help. There are people you can call. You don't have to deal with this alone. I can help."
I can't say that.
Speechless, I turn back to the circulars, catalogues, the forms. Paperwork. I've always been good with paperwork, and it's always seemed like a waste of time.
*
The last time I saw Olivia, of course, we weren't alone.
The agents put me in the back of a white van and drove. There weren't any windows, but I assumed we were going through the Lincoln Tunnel, back into the city. Maybe taking a more circuitous route. I heard the van's engine, and the honks and hums of surrounding traffic. The traffic ebbed and then we jerked to a stop.
I sat there for a while, one arm in the sling, one hand over my eyes. Waiting. A hot, tingly feeling began at the back of my neck. It was hard to breathe, as if my ribs were clamped too tight. Silently, I was rehearsing what I would say.
For days I'd been rehearsing, the way I would plot out a closing argument, trying out the language, the tone of voice. My head hurt when I thought about it. All the times she'd called me, drunk. The way she always pushed me away after sex like I was going to hurt her, or the other way around. The way she'd push herself to solve a case, past sleeplessness and recklessness; she would give sweat and blood and every muscle in her body. The way she could look at me, touch me, like I was the only thing left in the world. It had to prove something.
A car pulled up and braked nearby.
Goodbye, I was supposed to be saying.
I heard voices, muffled, just barely there. Then one of the agents opened the van's back door. I got up, stepping down to the street.
Olivia stared at me, shock flashing on her face. I saw my name take shape on her lips before I even realized that Elliot was with her. Well, of course he was with her, and the DEA guys were standing behind me. It was a swampy night, not the right place for confessions or declarations. I tried to smile.
I don't remember how the words, the few words I said came out. When I try, all that comes back are things I didn't say. Like: I wish none of this was happening.
Like: Olivia, you're so hidden from yourself; I think you need help; I hope you find it.
What did you think, how did you feel when I was--you thought--dead?
Hey, Olivia, I loved you, I think. I think you need help.
Okay?
I must have told her I was sorry. Her eyes were wide open. Brilliant. Full of light and hurt.
And I was back into the van, entirely alone even though I was a few feet from the driver. Alone, lurching out of the city for the last time. I said it again, mostly to myself. "Goodbye."
*
Two o'clock. The bell-tone sounds and the classrooms empty, rapid-fire. I stand in the open doorway. Now there's no loitering; the kids go by so fast they blur. Most of them have known each other since the neonatal ward; most of the teachers here taught their parents. I haven't been here long enough to scratch the surface.
By two-thirty the halls have emptied, and filled again with that weird kind of silence that you only find in deep space, or high schools after hours. I lock the library door behind me when I go back inside to go through the checked-in books.
Sort, scan, shelve. Routines. The weight of an encyclopedia volume in my numb hands.
At four o'clock I make the rounds, turning off lights and screens, and let myself out. The rain's stopped, but the sky is still a choppy gray. Tony Amanti's standing against a car in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette.
He chucks it as I walk up and puts his foot over it, laughing. "Busted," he says.
I smile. "I'll let you off with a warning."
"You're too kind." Tony puts his hands in his jacket pockets. "Did your day get any better after lunch?"
The polite lie comes to mind, but instead I say, "No. Yours?"
"Freshmen?" He shakes his head. "I'm not even sure they're completely human. They're still in the larval stage. Grubs."
"You don't mean that."
"No, I guess I don't."
I cross my arms, pushing up the sleeves of my raincoat. "Do you ever...worry about them?"
"Every time I grade their homework."
"I don't mean that. I mean, what goes on in their lives that we don't know about." In my own ears I sound unbearably sappy. I look down at the shiny blacktop. "Or talk about. I'm thinking of putting filter software on the computers in the library."
"The administration tried that a couple of years ago." He leans back against the car; it must be his. "Net Nanny on all of the computers in the building. The problem is, it doesn't just block the, well, the porn. It blocked the Zapruder film, for crying out loud. We pleaded and whined, and finally harassed them into removing it."
"Because it was inconvenient?" I raise my eyes. He's trying that smile out on me again. "Couldn't they have given out passwords to the staff, or something?"
"Convenience trumps the moral high ground." Tony shrugs. He says it like it's common knowledge, or ought to be.
It is. Everyone cuts these kind of deals, makes these decisions. Bargaining. You weigh the things that matter against the things that make your life easier. Safer. It's not that cold out here, but I'm shivering.
He's looking at me over the top of his glasses. "Someone just walk over your grave?"
"Yeah." My voice squeaks out just above a whisper. I clear my throat, try again. "Yeah, I'm just fine."
"I gotta go back in there," he says, nodding toward the school. "There's a pound and a half of essays on my desk. But, uh..." He comes off the car to stand up straight. "Maybe we could meet up for dinner?"
Even though I'm not quite surprised, I'm off-balance, rocking back onto my heels. "I can't," I say. And, quickly, "I mean, not tonight."
He slouches back against the car. If he's hurt, his smile doesn't waver. "Some other time."
"Definitely." And honestly, there's no reason why I couldn't. I like him. I do. "Definitely," I say again, and I let my fingers brush against the sleeve of his jacket, as I walk away.
*
I didn't count the days I spent in the safe-house in Jersey. It was a little like jail and a little like the last week of summer vacation, when I was a kid, that blend of nervous excitement and boredom and dread. I dyed my hair--the box said chestnut, but I thought it looked like mud in the door of the empty medicine cabinet--and started letting it dry in curls.
Cosmetic surgery, Walter told me, was an option.
"Not for me," I said, before I thought about it. A new face, a softer jawline, bigger breasts. No. "Not for me."
He gave me one of his sizing-up looks, but didn't reply. It's your ass. He took out an overstuffed binder and laid it on the coffee table. "Passport," he said. "Driver's license, Social Security, credit cards. You got about ten grand in credit, one in the bank account. We've leased a house in your name, but you'll have to take care of getting yourself a car."
City girl, I'd never owned a car in my life. "I think I can do that."
"Plane tickets," Walter continued, flipping through the file. "Diplomas, transcripts. Some phone numbers you can use as references, you can go over that on the plane." He took a silver pen out of his breast pocket and wrote something on one of the pages. "That's a phone number you call if you're in danger. Serious danger. Not, 'I think I heard the boogeyman in my closet.'"
"You think I'm that stupid?" I tried to laugh. My heart was beating too fast.
"We don't take chances." He shut the binder and handed it to me. "Ought to be everything you need."
It didn't seem heavy enough for that. I curled my fingers around the edges. "Wyoming," I said, shutting my eyes. A vague picture came to mind of rocky land, empty sky. I couldn't see myself in this landscape. I certainly couldn't see anyone like Olivia there.
Walter must have guessed what I was thinking. "It's what you make of it," he said, getting to his feet. "You'll be watched for a while."
"By you?"
He shook his head. "You won't know who."
"I'm not a civilian, remember?" I crossed my arms and held the binder to my chest. "I can tell when I'm being tailed."
"You won't know." He strode toward the door. "You'll do fine," he said, with his back to me.
I knew then that I wouldn't see him again, and something made me call him back. "Walter, I--thank you," I said. And I meant it; suddenly I felt sure that I was going to miss him. Though I barely knew him, though all I'd ever done was test his patience, I was going to miss him. I got up to shake his hand.
His fingers were warm. A fast, solid handshake. "Be careful, Miss Swafford," he said. And he was gone.
After a few seconds, I realized he'd called me by name.
*
I stop at the grocery store, just to grab a few things, spaghetti and salad vegetables. I still haven't really learned how to cook, but the takeout in this town doesn't really bear thinking about, much less eating. Groceries in the backseat, and I drive away.
There are a few ways I could get to my house from downtown. I pass the first turn. I pass the second. In a shockingly short time, the town shrinks away and the road opens up under the sky. Silvery-green brush covers the median and the hills on either side of the highway. Low hills, with the same rolling curve as the heavy-bellied clouds in the sky. No sound but my engine. I swing around into a U-turn, and head home.
It takes me two trips to get everything into the house, and close the door behind me. I leave the lights out, walking into the kitchen. There are no messages on the answering machine, and I'm glad; that little blinking light always makes me nervous. A red, angry eye.
I put some water on to boil. Dinner for one. This is the other hardest time of day.
My name is on the lease. My old couch is in the living room, the first real piece of furniture I owned. I could paint, or raise kittens, or plant roses in the backyard. Anything I want. I reach up and touch the scar on my shoulder, a raised circle like a coin under my skin. It doesn't hurt, anymore. It hardly feels like anything.
The biggest lie I tell is that I'm not scared; I am an ordinarily safe person in an ordinary town. The biggest fear I have is that someday the lie will come without effort. I won't be pretending. I won't remember anything that didn't happen to Mary.
At least Olivia knows I'm alive. At least that.
I open the refrigerator and, standing in its ice-colored glow, take out the vodka. I drink it straight, and straight from the bottle. No one sees me.
*
End. Reviews are love.
--luna