All That's Left to Tell(67)

She stopped there because she could remember nothing else. She wanted to open her eyes, but was afraid to. She wanted to open them to California and that other life. She felt Genevieve shift next to her, she felt her shadow over her, and when she felt her lips on hers she didn’t flinch, didn’t turn her head. Genevieve left them there for several seconds, and when she pulled away, Claire raised her head to keep them there a moment longer. She opened her eyes, and Genevieve was still close, blacking out most of the sky.

“I’m sorry, Claire,” she said. Genevieve rested her hand on the side of Claire’s face, her thumb lightly stroking her temple. “There’s no Lucy. No Jack. No motel in California where you learned to love the summers.”

“I know that,” she said. “I know that now.”

She felt the ache in her belly and arms where Lucy had never been, but she would not cry.

“And I promise you, I promise you, that he won’t know that you know. That I would never tell him that you know.”

Claire did not think to ask who he was.

“Do you still want to hear the rest of Marc’s story?”

“Yes.”

“Claire, it would make him so happy that you still want to hear it.”

“I know that, too. I do know that, Genevieve.”

She closed her eyes and waited.





15

Marc could discern only the sounds of a city slowly waking—cars on a street several blocks away, the warning signal of a truck backing up, then a shout, a train in the distance braking on its rails. A man coughing as he walked past. He was still turned away from the window, but light now shone dully off the walls.

He realized he was barely breathing, waiting for Josephine to continue, waiting for her to rescue Claire from the moment of her … the moment of her …

But she goes on living, doesn’t she? he thought. She’ll climb out of the back of that truck bed, and when the sun rises, she’ll drive down the toll road toward Chicago, and Genevieve will tell the story of Marc and Kathleen at the lake house, and in the quiet and the cold, they’ll find a way to start talking again, and that night Marc will sleep curled next to Kathleen, and when Claire and Genevieve arrive outside of Chicago, Claire will drop her off at an L station, and they’ll say good-bye, and Claire will think about Lucy as she drives the two hours that will take her to the hospital where Marc lies dying.

He waited. But Josephine sat so quietly she may as well not have been in the room. He made a quarter turn toward her and felt the pain in his shoulder where he’d fallen.

“You’re not going to leave her there, are you?” he heard himself say. “Alone and dying in that room?”

“Marc, it’s dawn. It’s all we have time for.”

“I don’t hear anyone.”

“They’re coming.”

“I don’t hear anyone yet. How can you leave her alone like that, after everything?”

“It’s her story to tell. And she’s not alone. She’s with Genevieve.”

As she said the name, he heard the car quietly pull up outside the door. He felt himself break into a sudden sweat.

“Turn and look at me, Marc.”

He heard a car door thump, then another.

“Turn and look at me.”

He knew he had only the moment, and something like panic filled him, as if this opportunity to see her face were his last line to the world, and he ignored the sharp pain in his shoulder as he rolled over, and the two men came through the door where Saabir stood guard.

She sat with her large hands in her lap, looking down at him, her hair covered by a deep-blue hijab, her mouth drawn into the slightest smile, her lips full. The bones of her face were slightly masculine, her skin so pale in the light of early dawn that she looked luminous, though plain, her eyes decidedly gray. She held his gaze as the men pulled him up to his knees, her expression almost serene, and then one of the men yanked a black sack over his head.

“For whatever it may mean, Claire wants to hear the rest of your story, too.”

This was the last thing she said as the men lifted him to his feet and led him through the door to the car. But her face seemed imprinted on the black cloth, if not onto his own face, and cloaked an image of Claire’s that he couldn’t reach. He thought it was the kind of face that someone could look at for a long time, not for minutes or days, but for weeks and years. And as the men pushed him into the backseat of the car for what he knew would be a short drive, it struck him that it was the last face he would ever see.





Epilogue

For a long while I thought, Now, the sunrise. Now, a woman at my bedside who says she’s my mother. Now, a morning cup of coffee. Don’t misunderstand me. I knew the way to pull the sheet under my chin, knew to loop my finger around the handle of the coffee mug, knew what a mother was and believed the woman when she said she was mine. And in a few months, as I healed, I saw the emerging pattern of the days, and I remembered to expect the rising heat of a July morning, expect—as I made my way down to the porch, and spent long afternoons in a rocking chair, my strength slowly returning, my hair growing in—the slow turning of the heads of the flowers toward the summer sun, wildflowers that my mother had planted, plants that I could name—cosmos, daisies, black-eyed Susans—but could not tell you where I learned to name them, and couldn’t tell you how I arrived at expectation at all. It was some kind of underweaving that had preserved language and the naming of things that weren’t people, weren’t the ones that I loved, or that I had once loved. I couldn’t remember loving anyone.