All That's Left to Tell(62)
“Did you sleep at all, Josephine?”
“Not tonight, no.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Sitting here thinking about our story, mostly. Watching you sleep.”
She was speaking nearly in a whisper, most likely in order not to wake Saabir, though he supposed that’s what people do anyway when they speak to each other in the middle of the night. Facing the wall, he could not discern whether light was beginning to come through the window. He closed his eyes, and recognized the comfort in having her nearby when he was unable to see.
“I smell bad,” he said.
He heard her uncross her legs and shift on the chair, and he listened to the familiar resettling of her garments.
“It’s something you get used to.”
“I don’t think I could ever get used to this place. This room. Pakistan. This world.”
“Do you think, if you went home now, you’d get used to that place again, given all that’s happened?”
“Part of me—” But he didn’t finish the sentence, since he didn’t want to tell her that he would be willing to stay here if Claire could go on living, even if it were only in Josephine’s story. “I think it would take many, many days.”
They were quiet for a minute or so.
“You know this is our last day, Marc.”
He resisted the ache in his chest. “Where are they taking me?”
“I couldn’t tell you if I knew. You understand that.”
He nodded again. “Is it dawn yet?” he asked.
“Not for another hour or so.”
He lay on his side, waiting. “What happens after today?” he asked. “To these stories we’ve told? What will happen to Claire then? And Genevieve? All of this for what, finally?”
“I don’t know, Marc.”
“All of this was your idea. You suggested at least twice that there was some purpose.”
She cleared her throat. “I was sitting here thinking while you slept. Most every story you’ve told about Claire was an attempt to explain who she became, and what happened. Is there a story you can tell where you remember her as happy?”
He turned his shoulder toward her, because he realized this was likely the last story he’d ever tell of Claire, and he felt suddenly catapulted through the roof of the room, and he was looking down on the two of them from above with a dispassionate eye at the odd mechanics of the history of their conversation set in an inconsequential hovel on a street diminished by a sprawling city where millions breathed the heavy, foul air of the day.
“Are you going to kill me, Josephine?”
She didn’t answer that question, either. He was warm and damp, and his clothes clung to him. She was waiting for his story, but it didn’t seem impatiently.
He said, “Happy.” And then he began.
“She was ten or eleven years old. I don’t know why I remember this, particularly. I want to say we were in our backyard, but it couldn’t have been, because I remember trees, oaks, a number of them, and our yard wasn’t large. Claire had a friend over, her best friend at the time.”
“Was this before the day she cut herself on the leg?”
He blinked twice at how much she’d come to know about Claire.
“Yes. Before that day. It seems a long time before, but it couldn’t have been. She and her friend”—he hesitated trying to remember—“I think her name was Chloe. It was something close to that, anyway. She and Chloe had taken a sudden and passionate interest in birds. I don’t think it lasted more than the day or so, the way it does for kids, who seem to wake up every morning as if someone thrust a new map in their hands. But this was the day for birds. They had one set of binoculars between them, and when one of them spotted what they thought was a blue jay or a cardinal in the higher limbs, the other would say, ‘Let me see the binocs!’
“It was humid and warm, one of those late May evenings when the leaves had recently broadened into bright green blades, and the wind was blowing lightly, and the girls kept mistaking the movement of the leaves for the movement of birds. Whoever wasn’t carrying the binoculars around her neck was writing down the names of the birds in a tiny notebook. They were running from tree to tree, their shushing loud enough to chase away any animal, but the birds in that woods were used to children. Claire’s hair was cut short at the time, and she could have passed for a boy, the way strands of it were damp with sweat at her temples and her eyebrows.
“I remember how it started growing darker under those trees, and when they were about to give up the search, a crow descended into one of the lower limbs, and gave out three loud caws. Claire had the binoculars, and she immediately trained them on the crow, but Chloe was so excited, she screamed, ‘Look! Look! It’s gonna caw again!’ and it lifted off into the sky, calling as it flew away. And Claire said, ‘Aw, Chloe. You scared it. You scared it away. You scarecrow.’ They both laughed at this, but before their laughter could end in the usual fit of giggling, Chloe struck a pose she likely stole from The Wizard of Oz, crossing her arms and pointing in opposite directions, her back stiff as if her shirt was run through with a pole. I could see Chloe’s shoulders shaking with muted laughter, and Claire flipped the binoculars so Chloe would seem tiny.
“Claire looked through them and said, ‘That’s a good Mr. Scarecrow. You keep those nasty crows away from your corn way out in your field.’ Chloe laughed, fell out of her pose, and said, ‘Now you try. Let me see you,’ and Claire ran over and handed her the binoculars, then walked backward away from her, taking slow, long steps. Claire always had an amazing sense of balance when she was young that she was eager to show off. We thought for a while she might become a gymnast. So she stood about ten yards away from Chloe, and drew one foot up and pressed the arch to the side of the knee of the leg she’d planted on the ground. Then she held her arms out on either side at full length, tilted her chin up slightly, and for a few seconds, while Chloe peered through the binoculars, she closed her eyes.”