May We Be Forgiven Part 75

"What?"

"Why are you so compet.i.tive? Why do you feel like you have to outdo everyone? The wedding at the Pierre"-that was George, not me-"holiday party at the Four Seasons"-George again-"isn't it enough to have a regular bar mitzvah and a nice Sisterhood Luncheon, like we did for you?"

"Actually," I say, not even taking on the George of it all, "my bar mitzvah was a shared event with Solomon Bernstein."

"It was good for your father's business-he got several new clients."

"And several people got food poisoning."

"No one died," she says.

We say nothing for a few minutes. I see Bob in the pool, wearing floaties and talking with another woman.

"So," I say, nodding towards Bob, "is the honeymoon over?"

"It's only just begun," my mother says.

Sofia calls to say she wants me to meet her for coffee. "We need to talk."

"In person?" I ask nervously, thinking our last encounter was a close call.

"I'm not going to pressure you," she says. "I'd like to review the event and expenses, plus update you on what funds have been received. Also, we never discussed my fee."

"Fine," I say. We make a plan to meet in a local diner.

"I hope you're not mad," she says. "I made a Web page about you and the kids and your trip. I set it up so strangers who read about you and Nate can donate. Sakhile once said something to me, there are strangers, people we don't know, who care about us. I found that interesting."

I nod.

"It's amazing-more than a hundred people have sent in contributions, everything from ten dollars to five hundred dollars, people who want nothing in return."

"How much is in the BM account?" I ask.

"As of yesterday, gifts total twenty-seven thousand, three hundred eighty-nine dollars, and eighty-six cents. I think Nate is going to have to pay taxes. I had no idea it would be this much-otherwise we could have set up some kind of nonprofit. Do you want to deduct expenses from the gross?" she asks.

"No," I say, "I am paying for the bar mitzvah separately; whatever gifts were received should be absent of a processing fee."

"It's an enormous amount-I wonder if we should give it all at once-I wonder what should happen?"

"I'll ask Nate when he's home from camp."

"Okay," she says. "So about my fee..."

I'm thinking she's coming in for the kill, this is how she's going to get me....I wouldn't capitulate, so now she's going to sting me. I brace myself.

"Usually I charge between thirty-five hundred and five thousand, but in this case, I want to donate a portion of my usual fee. Fifteen hundred would be fine, if that works for you?"

I'm flush with surprise. "That's so nice of you-really generous," I say, embarra.s.sed by what I'd been thinking.

"I wasn't kidding when I said I enjoyed working with you-it meant a lot to me," she says.

"Thank you," I say.

And now she's giving me the look.

"Please," I beg, "you promised."

"Can't blame a girl for trying," she says, smiling.

Every Friday night, I take Madeline and Cy out for Chinese food. Mr. and Mrs. Gao, the owners of the restaurant, ask if I know about any available real estate-the commute from Brooklyn is getting to be too much.

It occurs to me that I could rent them Cy and Madeline's house, which would at least cover the ongoing maintenance expenses. On Sat.u.r.day morning, I take Mr. and Mrs. Gao to see the house.

"It is an American Dream house," Mrs. Gao says. "It is Leave It to Believer," she says. I can tell from the way Mrs. Gao is touching things that she is moved by the very things about the decor that agitated me-to her it is like a museum of the American Dream.

"We can't afford this place," Mr. Gao tells his wife.

"You can," I say. "We'll make it work." I ask what he pays currently and if that includes utilities. I offer him the house, including utilities, for a hundred dollars less a month.

"You drive hard bargain," Mr. Gao says.

His wife slaps him. "Why are you always such a cheapskate?" She wags her finger at him. "Don't ruin this for me." And she turns to me. "Thank you," she says. "We are very grateful."

"I hope you will be happy here."

The August days are bakingly hot, airless; every afternoon is punctuated by thunderstorms that start between five-thirty and six, often knocking the power out. I buy extra flashlights, batteries, and candles and make sure to have dinner cooked by five-just in case.

"What did Amanda die of?" Madeline asks one afternoon as the black clouds are quickly thickening and the first low rumbles of thunder echo through the neighborhood.

"Amanda?" I repeat, startled.

Madeline nods. "What did she die of? I keep thinking of the children with their mother gone-we must take good care of them."

I realize that she has conflated Amanda and Jane into a single missing person.

"It was sudden." I say, "Something in her head."

"She always had headaches," Madeline says.

"It couldn't have been antic.i.p.ated," I say.

"We had another child," she says, "an infant who pa.s.sed before she was a year. Amanda and her sister don't remember her-they were quite young when the baby came."

"I think they knew," I say softly, thinking of Amanda's attachment to Heather Ryan.

"It's possible," she says. "They certainly knew something was wrong, Amanda kept making me get-well cards."

The media exposure generated by the withdrawn Nixon short story is enough to get me access to agents. I strike up a correspondence with Franklin Furness, a fellow from an old political family who runs a mid-sized literary agency with a distinct interest in American history and politics. "We like representing those from the extremes-it's the center that frightens me," Franklin Furness writes. "Nothing good comes out of the middle-the action is at the edges." Furness agrees to represent the book and will commence submission as soon as I forward him the final draft.

At 5:37 a.m. on an August Thursday, a time remembered only because that particular clock permanently stopped, a bolt of lightning struck the maple tree next to the house, splitting it with an explosive crash that only the heavens could have wrought. The tree was cleaved in a way that left one half standing as it had for the last half-century and the other half slumped against the house, one fat branch jutting through the wall of what had been George's office, which suddenly looked like an arboretum.

The concussive crash, and simultaneous smell of something burning, hurls me out of my narrow bed in the maid's room, next to the kitchen. I grab the fire extinguisher from under the sink and frantically search the house. After I discover the tree in George's office, I dash upstairs to find Madeline's arms wrapped around Cy, who is sitting bolt upright in bed, screaming, "Papa's fired the derringer."

"Nightmare," Madeline says, patting her husband's back. I hurry back into the hall and pull down the attic stairs.

The smell of ozone, of burnt eggs, of gunpowder, of molecules ripped apart and rearranged, fills the attic.

My laptop sits on the card table, the sleeping screen no longer shows a slide show of the South Africa trip; it is blinking, stuttering, searching for itself-blank.

The wall around the outlet where the cord is plugged in is black; there are fiery singe marks a good foot or more up, marking the boards with a sooty electrical fingerprint.

There is no fire.

Tessie is at the bottom of the attic stairs, whining. Madeline and Cy are standing there in their nightclothes, looking upward. "Shall we call in the cavalry?" Cy asks.

Is this what I've been waiting for?

The book is done. Cooked. There is no more need for perfection, it has simply ended-or, more specifically, electronically imploded.

It's not as though the version on the computer was my only copy: there are others, various versions, iterations, three on flash drives, including one buried in the backyard in a time capsule-a fireproof box that I bought at the hardware store-and another e-mailed to the desk of Franklin Furness.

At another point in time, I would have been hysterical at having lost the changes since my last backup, or perhaps paralyzed, stunned dumb by the blinking eye of the black screen. Curiously, I feel relieved. It is as though something I carried with me for so long has vaporized, a great cloud lifting. I don't have to do anything-beyond accepting that it is over. Finis. I am free. And I am oddly exhilarated.

And then it occurs to me-was the book the foul thing that Londisizwe said I was holding on to, the thing I'd been keeping close like a companion? Is this what lived inside and needed to come out? Is this it?

Just before the children are due to return from camp, a letter is forwarded from the hospital where Jane died, with a Post-it attached. "This arrived a couple of weeks ago, sorry to be delayed in sending it, I was on vacation. Do not feel pressured to engage if the enclosed is not of interest to you. But if you want to respond-I am happy to act on your behalf as a confidential courier. Hope you're having a good summer. Best." And it is signed by the doctor who was in charge of Jane's case.

h.e.l.lo, My name is Avery and I am writing to thank you for the gift of life. I live in Ohio and was on the wait list for a heart and lungs for a long time before I received your donation. At the time, I didn't know if I would stay alive long enough to even have this chance to write to you. Through your tragic loss, I received an incredible gift, a second chance at life, and want to thank you and your family. I hope that you find comfort in knowing what the heart and lungs of your loved one have provided for me-since the transplant I have gained great strength and can now breathe well enough to walk and to climb a flight of stairs. I was able to return to school and finish my undergraduate degree-it is my hope to continue my education and become a social worker or perhaps a poet. And the big news, I am engaged to be married. For years I have been in love with a wonderful man, but I did not feel able to accept his proposal until I knew there was a chance we might be able to build a long life together. And more recently I have been able to travel, we went to California. It was amazing. Anyway, part of my reason for writing is to say that if you are open to the idea I would very much like to meet you and thank you in person. I know that this is a difficult thing-but it is my hope that seeing the opportunity and joy you have given me will give you some comfort in dealing with the loss of your loved one. I look forward to hearing from you.

Avery I read the letter and I can't help but cry. I cry for Avery, for Jane, for Ashley and Nate and Ricardo. I cry for everyone. And then I stop. I stop because Cy and Madeline are waiting for me to take them somewhere, Tessie wants her lunch, and the children will be home from camp in a few days and there are things to do. I put the letter away.

The children return, stronger and more confident than before. Ricardo arrives wearing medals for swimming, archery, boating. He is golden brown, slimmer, taller, with a golf swing and a tennis serve, and he is on no medications, instead a regimen of activity plus amino acids and some kind of fish-oil swirl that he says tastes like melted ice cream-I try it and almost vomit. Ashley has b.r.e.a.s.t.s that I swear weren't there four weeks ago. She's a funny mix, part girl, part woman, and painfully self-conscious. And on Nate's upper lip there's an unmistakable dark fuzz, and depth to his voice. They are filled with stories of friendships, adventures, and secret languages, the high of the South Africa trip extended through their time at camp, and I see not only growth but a new kind of thinking-things are possible.

Ricardo presents me with a wallet he made for me, pieces of leather whipst.i.tched together, my initials hand-tooled on the front. Ashley has constructed a shadow box that looks like a TV with a small painted portrait of her mother on the screen. Nate brings remains of animals he found in the woods around his camp-the skull of a squirrel, the skin of a snake-and a dozen owl pellets, which he cracks open, showing us how to identify what animal the owl has eaten.

There are only two weekends left before school starts. I gather the children and tell them about Avery.

"Would you like to meet her?"

"Yes," they say unequivocally.

"So," Ashley asks, pushing for further clarification, "is she like a new mom?"

"No," I say.

"A stepmom?" she tries again.

"Not so much."

"A transplant mom?"

"How about she's just a lady from Ohio," Nate says. "She's not related to us."

"But she has Mom's heart and lungs-don't you think that changes who she is? I mean, now she's more like Mom than anyone, except us."

Nate shrugs. "You know what, Ashley? She can be whatever you want her to be."

"Thanks," Ashley says.

I explain it to the children, and then I try and explain it to Cy and Madeline, who don't quite follow-the best they can manage is to understand that this woman, Avery, was bequeathed something precious that used to belong to Jane.

Cy seems nervous. "I just sold the insurances," he says repeatedly. "I didn't deal with technicalities. When they died, they didn't usually come back. Isn't this more of a trusts-and-estates issue?"

"She's just coming to say thank you," I say.

"Why didn't my mother get to give her organs away?" Ricardo asks me privately that evening. "Is that something only rich white people can do?"

"No," I say, "anyone can do it-but you have to plan ahead, and you have to die in a way that preserves your organs, so they are viable."

"What does 'viable' mean?"

"Your mother died on the scene after a car accident; Jane died in a hospital, where they could keep giving her body oxygen, making sure her organs stayed healthy, and then they removed them as quickly as possible."

"Do you have to be dead to give your organs?" Ricardo asks.

"Usually," I say. "There are certain organs that you have two of, like your kidneys, that you can give even if you're alive."

"I want to give an organ," Ricardo says.

I nod. "That's a lovely idea," I say. "But you can't give any organs away until you're a grown-up."

"Fine," he says, "but as soon as I'm grown-up, I'm giving it all away."

On Sat.u.r.day at noon, we meet Avery and her fiance, at the hamburger pub in town. It's a place George used to like to go, because they knew him and always seated him so he could see both of the TVs simultaneously. I've always hated it, because it seemed to be the place where miserable husbands went when they ran away from home-even if only for an hour-to soak themselves in the comfort of other b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and beer.

Avery and Mark, her fiance, are already there; I see them nervously pawing through the creme mints by the register when we walk in.

She is small, with short close-cropped hair, like a Jean Seberg or Mia Farrow.

"You must be Avery," I say as we approach.

"Wow," she says. "Look how many of you there are."

"I'm Ashley," Ashley says, extending her hand.

"Nate," Nate says, hanging back, just giving a wave.

"Ricardo," he says, shaking hands with both Avery and Mark.