Passenger(63)

“I sent you a package.” I am startled at how small my voice sounds.

“Yes,” she says. She drops her hands but won’t turn to face me. “Oh, yes. And what was I supposed to do with that stuff? Do you know how long it took me to get rid of everything, to pack it all away? To forget about it? Do you have any idea what it was like to open that goddamn box and see all that stuff?”

“I can’t remember—”

“Just get out. Get the hell out.”

“Please…”

“If you’re not out in thirty seconds I’m calling the police.”

Heading toward the door, I pause to watch the woman’s childlike shoulders hitch as she sobs quietly with her back toward me. I do not know this woman. I am not aware of the things I have done to hurt her. Part of me is grateful for that.

Out in the hallway, I creep through the house, my shadow hardly noticeable on the wall by my side. The old woman is waiting in the foyer, the front door open. She, too, is crying. But when she speaks, her voice is composed.

“She doesn’t hate you, Palmer. It’s not about you. You know that. But you can’t come here. She can’t see you. Please—let her be.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell the old woman. And I am about to walk past her and through the open front door when she does something astonishing.

She embraces me.

Her arms circle my skin-and-bones frame and she gives me a brief hug. I am speechless and unable to move.

“Don’t blame Maddy. She can only react to all that has happened. Don’t blame her for that. No one can help it; it is useless, Palmer. We can’t escape it. We’re all defined by our past.” Finally, when she pulls away, she looks up at me with those wet eyes and says, “Take care of yourself, Palmer. You look bad.” She says, “So bad.” She says, “And don’t come back here again.”

Resigned, I turn to leave. I swear I can hear the young woman—Madeline—still weeping in the far bedroom at the other side of the house. The old woman has her hand on the doorknob. I can feel my heartbeat in my shoes, my forehead bursting with sweat. This must be some fever.

I see something, notice something, as I leave. It gives me pause, although it is certainly not unusual, nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps no one else on the planet would pause to look at it. In fact, my own eyes don’t even linger on it. Not for long, anyway. Because I don’t understand it, not at first. And the full impact will not hit me until almost an hour later.

But when it hits, it opens the world.





TWENTY-FOUR





Because what I see is me. In a sense, anyway. Partially. It’s half me.

What I see as I leave the house in Ithaca is a picture, a photograph, of me.

I am you.

In a sense: yes you are.

And you are driving through the stretch of that countryside highway. The trees wash by the windows in a blur, green and full, and the radio hums static. You are not alone; when you look to your right, Madeline is in the passenger seat. Looking pretty. Looking content. You say how the program director at the institute sounded very excited on the last phone call and she laughs beside you in the passenger seat. She mimics the voice of the program director—she has answered the phone enough times during the program director’s courting session—her voice adopting a deep resonance that makes you smile. She laughs at your smile but there is some detachment in the laugh. Rubbing her knee, you reiterate about the apartment—that it is only temporary until the house is ready and, anyway, it is only a few blocks from the institute so you both can have lunch together every day. She is smiling, looking damn supportive, and you feel for her. This is a difficult move for her. For all of you. And the boy is whining in the back seat. Oh, hush. Come on, now. Halfway there. Madeline smiles and says someone’s awake, look who’s awake. Madeline tends to him, the child, the small child, the child you share. She turns around, her narrow shoulder rubbing against yours, and tends to the whining child, the small child. The child you share. You strike a series of bumps and she tells you to cool it, speedy, all right? So you cool it. You slow it and cool it and search for a different radio station.

These long-fingered memories.

These open floodgates.

This waltz therapeutic.





*





It hits me as I am once again on that vacant swatch of highway, heading back to Baltimore. Blacktop straight and narrow, snow-burdened trees on either side. I am thinking of what has transpired at the house with the young woman, with Madeline, and what it all means. I am wondering about the package and I am wondering about what I could have done to hurt her. And I am barreling down this concrete byway, Clarence’s truck vibrating all around me, when it comes crashing down. All of it. All at once. Nicole Quinland’s little voice saying, What if you’re not supposed to remember the stuff all at once? and it all comes crashing down.

Because what I see as I leave the house in Ithaca strikes me several hours later, in the dark, racing along a lone highway beneath the scrutiny of a full moon. What I see is a picture of me—in a sense, anyway. Partially. It’s half me. Because the other half is Madeline. Because the combined whole is the child, the baby, and that is the picture on the wall by the front door of the house in Ithaca. It is the baby, the small child, the whining child in the back seat.