The Office of Historical Corrections(60)
“You OK?” I asked.
“My agent. I don’t have enough. He thinks we can’t pitch this story on an interesting theory. Not enough open conflict.”
“What, he wants you to DNA-test White Justice in the town square?”
“He’d love that, probably.” Genevieve took a breath. “Do you think it would change anything? If we told him the truth?”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t. People can convince themselves of anything if they want badly enough to believe it.”
“Why are you doing any of this then? If you don’t think telling people the truth makes a difference?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, and I had the strange experience of hearing myself say something I knew to be true only once I’d heard it come out of my own mouth.
“Now you don’t care about the job?” said Genevieve. “You damn near acted like I was invisible for a year. You, the person I used to be able to at least count on not to have the sense to stay out of trouble. You didn’t stand up for me because you didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t think it would be better if neither of us was in the office.”
“Ella Mae didn’t think it would be better if both she and her brother had to be Black.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, though I couldn’t shake how personally I’d taken you know the type.
“It’s not fair,” Genevieve conceded. “You wouldn’t watch me die. But you get away with so much. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.”
“Thanks. I love you too, Genie,” I said.
“It’s going to be Genevieve forever. But I look at my daughter and I think sometimes that’s what I want for her. A life where she doesn’t feel like she has to answer to anyone.”
“Did you just call me a role model?”
“I would deny it in court.”
“White Justice would deny his Blackness in court but that doesn’t make it true.”
“Yes, well. At least I have a story to break.”
“There’s no more story here. The story’s dead.”
“It’s a story if I talk to him.”
“He doesn’t seem like a great talker.”
“I need this to work. I can’t go back to LA with nothing.”
“Genie, you’re brilliant. You don’t need to rile up an idiot in order to validate your career.”
“Don’t play stupid. Of course I do.”
* * *
—
Genevieve and I stayed at the bar long enough to have a third round, and then a round of coffee, which we nursed until I felt sober enough to drive her back to her car. It looked like rain, one of those flash storms that would pass through and leave the day sunny, not strong enough to signal the tornado sirens, but nasty enough that we’d want to be inside before it came. The wind had picked up and the white tarp over the sign billowed. I told Genevieve to go home and sleep, to call her daughter, to find another story, and she said she could promise me only the first two.
I took my own advice and went back to my hotel room to nap. I hovered at half awake, my dreams upsetting and not subconscious enough to be actual dreams. I gave in and decided to go toward the fear instead. While it stormed outside, I opened my laptop and watched an hour of Free Americans videos, trying to make myself immune to them. It felt unfair, how absurd someone could be and still be terrifying. I watched video after video of white boy and “white” boy, cherub-faced and angular, blond and brunette, sharply styled and scruffy, all mangling their country’s history in its purported defense, promising to fight for the return of an America that, as they described it, was as real as Narnia. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I went back to bed and finally fell asleep for real, but I woke up after only an hour, with the Free Americans’ rallying cry of We are the future circling in my head. I tried Genevieve on the phone, thinking of Octavia, of the fact that maybe Genevieve was the closest thing I had to a sister, because what was a sibling but a person you stayed tied to whether or not you liked them. She could not stay here, I decided. I had given her this story and I had to take it back, even if I had to put her on a plane myself.
It had stopped raining and was barely dusk now. Genevieve didn’t answer. I decided to go in person and talk her out of whatever nonsense idea I was sure she was planning. Five minutes from Genevieve’s B & B, my phone beeped to life, and after a minute the messages became so persistent that I pulled over to find out what was wrong. I assumed at first, with the flood of Genevieves on my screen, that the messages were all from Genevieve telling me to turn around and not sabotage her moment, but instead it was a tumble of messages about Genevieve, messages from Nick, and Elena, and Daniel. Daniel’s message told me to go somewhere safe and not to watch the livestream; Nick’s message had a link, which I clicked.
White Justice’s grainy live feed appeared. He was filming on his phone and the angle shook and shifted. First his whole face took up the screen, enraged, and then the camera went to Genevieve’s. She had taken down the tarp and was standing where the sign and the graffiti were, where I had seen her just a few hours earlier. “This bitch,” White Justice said, “thinks she can come to my town and lie about my family,” and as the camera rocked I could see that he was holding the camera in one hand but in the other was a gun. Genevieve had settled her face into a terrifyingly calm expression, although she was armed only with an IPH printer—I wondered if she’d kept hers when they fired her but realized belatedly that it was mine, that she must have taken it, impatient with me, with the lack of purpose with which I was using it. In the background of the livestream I could hear what sounded like sirens on their way, and I willed Genevieve to just keep quiet, to stall until the police got there, although I knew that this would not happen and that even if it did it might not help. Genevieve pointed to the wall, to the silver scroll she must have placed there, her correction of the correction. She read it to the camera, her voice fighting with White Justice’s, breaking only on Ella Mae.