Anxious People(61)
The girls. Oh, the girls. The monkey and the frog who would grow up and have to learn to be good liars. She hoped their dad would have the sense to teach them to do that properly. So that they could lie and say their mom was dead rather than tell the truth. She slowly removed the mask. It no longer served any purpose, she realized that, to think otherwise would be nothing but childish delusion. She was never going to be able to escape the police. Her hair fell around her neck, damp and tangled. She weighed the pistol in her hand, clutching it harder and harder, a little at a time so she barely noticed. Only her whitening knuckles betrayed what was happening, until her forefinger suddenly felt for the trigger. Without any great drama, she asked herself: “If this had been real, would I have shot myself?”
She didn’t have time to finish the thought. Someone’s fingers suddenly wrapped around hers. They didn’t tear the pistol from her hand, just lowered it. Zara stood there looking at the bank robber, neither sympathetic nor concerned, but without taking her hand off the pistol.
* * *
Ever since the start of the hostage drama, Zara had tried not to think about anything in particular, in fact she always did her best not to think about anything at all—when you’re in as much pain as she has been for the past ten years, that’s a vital survival skill. But something slipped through her armor when she saw the bank robber sitting there alone with the pistol. A brief memory of those hours in the office with the picture of the woman on the bridge, the psychologist looking at Zara and saying: “Do you know what, Zara? One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos. Someone who has got themselves into a catastrophic situation rarely retreats from it, we’re far more inclined to carry on even faster. We’ve created lives where we can watch other people crash into the wall but still hope that somehow we’re going to pass straight through it. The closer we get, the more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash.”
Zara looked around the office then. There were no fancy certificates hanging on the walls; for some reason it’s always the people with the most impressive diplomas who keep them in their desk drawers.
So Zara asked, without any sarcasm, “Have you learned any theories about why people behave like that, then?”
“Hundreds,” the psychologist smiled.
“Which one do you believe?”
“I believe the one that says that if you do it for long enough, it can become impossible to tell the difference between flying and falling.”
Zara usually fought to keep all thoughts at bay, but that one slipped through. So when she found herself standing in the hall of the apartment, she put her hand around the pistol and said the kindest thing a woman in her position could say to a woman in the bank robber’s position. Four words.
“Don’t do anything silly.”
The bank robber looked at her, her eyes blank, her chest empty. But she didn’t do anything silly. She even gave her a weak smile. It was an unexpected moment for both of them. Zara turned and walked away quickly, almost scared, back to the balcony. She pulled a pair of headphones from her bag, put them on, and closed her eyes.
Shortly after that she ate pizza for the first time in her life. That, too, was unexpected. Capricciosa. She thought it was disgusting.
48
Jack jumps out of the police car while it’s still moving. He storms into the police station and runs to the interview room so fast that he hits his already bruised forehead on the door because he can’t get it open quickly enough. Jim comes after him, panting, trying to get his son to calm down, but there’s no chance of that.
“Hello! How’s tricks—?” the real estate agent begins, but Jack cuts her off by roaring: “I know who you are now!”
“I don’t underst—” the agent gasps.
“Calm down, Jack, please,” Jim pants from the doorway.
“It’s you!” Jack yells, showing no sign at all of calming down.
“Me?”
Jack’s eyes are glinting with triumph when he leans over the table with his fists clenched in the air and hisses: “I should have realized right from the start. There was never a real estate agent in the apartment. You’re the bank robber!”
49
Of course it was idiotic of Jack not to realize everything from the start, who the bank robber was, because it seemed so obvious to him in hindsight. Maybe it was his mom’s fault. She held the two of them together, him and his dad, but perhaps that sometimes distracted him, and for some reason she had managed to get into his thoughts the whole damn time today. Just as much trouble in death as in life, that woman. Maybe somewhere there was another priest who was more difficult than her, but there could hardly be two. She got into arguments with everyone when she was alive, maybe more with her son than anyone, and that didn’t stop after her funeral. Because the people we argue with hardest of all are not the ones who are completely different from us, but the ones who are almost no different at all.
She used to travel abroad sometimes, after disasters when aid organizations needed volunteers, to the constant accompaniment of criticism from all directions both inside and outside the church. She either shouldn’t help at all or ought to be doing it somewhere else. Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort. One time she was on the other side of the world and got caught up in a riot and tried to help a bleeding woman get away, and in the chaos she herself got stabbed in the arm. She was taken to the hospital, managed to borrow a phone, and called home. Jim was sitting in front of the news, waiting. He listened patiently, as usual happy and relieved that she was okay. But when Jack realized what had happened, he grabbed the phone and shouted so loudly that the line began to shriek with feedback: “Why did you have to go there? Why do you have to risk your life? Why don’t you ever think about your family?”