The Vanishing Half(86)

“Jesus, stop,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“What do you mean? I told you already, I’m not feeling well.”

“Well, Christ, you don’t have to bite my head off.”

He rolled away from her glumly and turned off the light.

“I knew they weren’t your friends,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t have black friends,” he said. “You don’t like anybody black but me and we’re not really friends, are we?”



* * *



—

IN THE MORNING, she called Hotel Castor again, but nobody answered.

She lay alone in bed, studying that faded photograph until she had to get to work. The twins, side by side in those somber black dresses. Her mother and not-her-mother, her grandmother between them. A whole family where her mother said there’d been none, and Jude, somehow, knowing all of this. Once, when she was thirteen, her mother had brought her to the mall to buy a new dress for her birthday. Kennedy was beginning to pull away by then, wishing she could have gone to Bloomingdale’s with her girlfriends instead. But her mother was barely focusing on her. She paused in the middle of the shop floor, fingering the lacy sleeves of a black gown.

“I love shopping,” she’d said, almost to herself. “It’s like trying on all the other people you could be.”



* * *



—

DURING HER LUNCH BREAK, Kennedy called the hotel room again. Still no answer. This time, she tried the front desk.

“The girl said they’d be at the hospital all day,” the receptionist told her. “In case anyone called.”

“Which hospital?”

“Sorry, miss, she didn’t say.”

Of course, what did she expect from some country girl who’d found herself in New York City for the first time? Of course she’d never considered how many hospitals were in Manhattan alone. She was irritated but flipped through the phone book to find the closest hospital to the hotel. The receptionist told her that she couldn’t release the name of any patients, and Kennedy, hanging up, realized that she didn’t know Reese’s full name anyway. Still, she left work early and rode the bus to the hospital. At the nurse’s station, she asked a tiny redhead to page a Jude Winston. She waited five minutes, the phone book page crinkling in her pocket, wondering if she’d have to work her way uptown until she found them. Then the elevator doors opened. Jude stepped out, frazzled at first then relieved once she saw it was only Kennedy.

“You didn’t leave the hospital name,” Kennedy said. “I could’ve spent all damn day looking for you.”

“But you didn’t,” Jude said.

“Yeah, well, I could have.” Jesus, they were already bickering like siblings. “It’s a big city, you know.”

Jude paused. “Well,” she said, “my mind’s all over the place right now.”

It was exactly the type of thing her mother would have said—sly, meant to guilt her into submission.

“Sorry,” she said. “Is he all right?”

Jude chewed her lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s still under. They won’t let me see him. Since we’re not family and all.”

It occurred to Kennedy then that if she suddenly had a heart attack, right here in the hospital lobby, Jude would be her nearest relative. Cousins. They were cousins. But if Jude told a nurse this, insisting on the right to visit, who would ever believe her?

“That’s absurd,” Kennedy said. “You’re the only one he has out here.”

“Well.” Jude shrugged.

“He should just marry you,” she said. “Get it over with. You’ve been together long enough and then you wouldn’t have to worry about bullshit like this.”

Jude stared at her for a second, and Kennedy thought she might tell her to go fuck herself. She deserved it, probably. But Jude just rolled her eyes.

“You sound like my mother,” she said.



* * *



—

THE PHOTOGRAPH WAS from a funeral, Jude told her. In the cafeteria, the girls sat across from each other at a long metal table, sipping lukewarm coffee, the photo lying between them. A funeral, she’d figured as much—the black dresses and all—but now she glanced back at the picture, those twin girls. Matching hair ribbons, matching tights. For the first time, she noticed one twin clutching the other’s dress, as if she were trying to keep her still. She touched the photo, reminding herself that it was real. Needing it, somehow, to tether her in place.

“Who died?” she said.

“Their daddy. He was killed.”

“By who?”

Jude shrugged. “Bunch of white men.”

She didn’t know what was more shocking, the revelation or how casually Jude offered it.

“What?” she said. “Why?”

“Does there have to be a reason why?”

“When someone gets killed? Usually.”

“Well, there isn’t. It just happened. Right in front of them.”

She tried to imagine her mother as a girl, witnessing something so horrible, but she could only picture her eight years ago, standing at the end of the darkened hallway with a baseball bat. Kennedy had been a little drunk, sneaking back home after a party; she’d expected her mother to yell at her for breaking curfew. Instead, she was standing at the end of the hall, a hand covering her mouth. The baseball bat clattered on the wood floor, rolling toward her bare feet.