Hummingbird Salamander(88)
“I needed it.” I still needed it.
“Meanwhile, I’m paying all the bills, the mortgage, everything else.”
“You have your real estate business.”
I said it, but I couldn’t look at him.
“You mean commissions on sales that don’t fucking exist? I have no incoming revenue. No one’s buying houses in this market. The world’s going to shit. I have no access to money other than the pittance you left in the accounts and loans from my family.”
My husband never swore.
“I have a bag of money in the car,” I said. “You can have most of it.”
He wheeled out of the chair so fast and hard, it fell over. Went over to the window, as if afraid if he got close, he’d strike me.
“As if that solves it,” he said.
“You said you needed money.”
That look from him again. Couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t be that person, but kept being that person. Couldn’t look him in the eye.
The table had a history. It would’ve meant something to find a salamander carved into that table, a hummingbird. But Ned and I had mostly drawn creatures that didn’t exist, like bats with human heads or cats with wings. Still could faintly see a crude sailing ship like an ark, full of all manner of imaginary beasts. I’d forgotten that. A mythos of discover and escape. Created together in such a way that I couldn’t recall who had done what.
“You haven’t even asked about our daughter,” he said.
Rambunctious, curious, mercurial child. No, I had not.
“She’s not here. That means she’s somewhere safe.”
He would not have left her unsafe. If I knew anything about my husband the bear, I knew that.
“She is,” he admitted.
“Where?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
Good.
“Do you have a photo?”
“No.”
A lie, but I had no right.
“Don’t you know what this is all about? Why I’ve done this?” Why this has been done to me.
His look was pitying, like my father’s. He’d made up his mind about something and he didn’t understand what I meant. But that was okay. I could let him go. I really could, because I already had.
I took in the contours of his face. Really looked at him, past the weariness and wariness. Fix him someplace in memory that meant something real, before he faded. Before I never saw him again. We had an urgency once. We did. We had a rhythm and a secret language. I could half remember it, even in that moment.
Don’t you know? I wanted to say to him. Don’t you know that I don’t worry about our daughter? I worry about you.
After a while, he stood, looming over me.
“Let’s just go get that money.”
* * *
I watched him drive away from the old family cabin he’d never known about a month ago.
Didn’t my husband know I thought my daughter was better off with him? That I wouldn’t see a photo of her now and demand to know where he’d hidden her? That I knew how devastating it might be for her to see me like this? Broken down. A different person. In thrall to an idea, a person.
But I’d taken one risk. I’d left an anonymous message in the inbox of her account for an online game she’d outgrown. An account I’d set up. Maybe someday she would remember to check it. Become nostalgic to play the game. See the message. Know that I had reached out. Or maybe not. But it made me feel better to know she might see it.
“I’m okay and I love you. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…” Don’t look for me. Don’t remember me if it hurts. Don’t be like me. Don’t don’t don’t
The old, dead things Ned and I had carved, the roughness, to recall what had been good then.
I didn’t want to be alone. Didn’t trust myself alone. I called Jack. No one else was left.
“You set my husband on me.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that. But now I’m certain I know where you are.”
“To set me up?”
“You didn’t call me for this.”
Pathetic comfort of a familiar voice in my head, someone who claimed to understand me.
“Do you want to know what Silvina was up to?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me at my house. The place where you used to be a creeper in the woods.”
“When?”
“Just be there.”
Didn’t give a fuck if he had to wait a long time. Like, forever. But maybe it would keep him close but not too close.
Me, I was going back to the storage unit.
Knowing I was a murderer without real cause or claim.
Shot hadn’t killed Ned.
[93]
The letter had no signature. It was addressed to no one. It was in Silvina’s handwriting.
I have thought about this moment for many years. How to say it. How to express it. What might be meaningful. I know that your life has hinged on that moment. I know that you took action based on that moment. And I remained silent. Because I was forced to, but also because I had to.
I knew him, but not what he did for the family. I talked to him several times. From the house up on the hill. I thought that Roger employed him to help with the gardening. I didn’t know at first what my family did in those parts. I didn’t know we used local boys as couriers and suppliers.