When I rose, however, I turned in the opposite direction and walked toward the refuse slot in the cafeteria wall.
“Where are you going?” Carol Lee shouted after me.
I didn’t look back. I deposited my leftovers and my tray and walked out of the cafeteria. There was still a good fifteen minutes to the lunch hour, so I went outside. The day had turned gloomy, overcast. There was that familiar late-fall chill in the air now, the harbinger of winter. I hugged myself and walked slowly around the building.
I hate being here now, I told myself. I was strongly tempted by the urge just to walk away from the building and spend the rest of the day wandering about the city, but if I did that, Papa would definitely be told and what happened would be revealed. Mama would be so disappointed in me. It all made me feel trapped. How could my life be anything but miserable? And whose fault was that?
It’s your fault, Roxy, I whispered. You’re like a rock dropped in a pond causing ripples to go out wider and wider. You’re like a scream that echoes and echoes. I hadn’t seen her for nearly ten years, but I suddenly hated her anyway. I don’t know why I ever wanted to meet you. Papa was right to throw you out. I wish he had thrown you out before I was born so I wouldn’t have any memories of you at all.
Raging like this, even though it was only in my mind, seemed to bring me relief, but when I saw my reflection in a classroom window, I didn’t like what I saw. I saw someone full of venom and fury, someone made so ugly by her sick rage that she was almost unrecognizable. I despised Chastity and loathed the girls in my class. Once so attracted to and enamored of Evan, I was now furious with him. The sight of him, even the mere thought of him, was revolting. I felt as though I would never smile again, but I had no idea how or why that feeling would become even stronger. It was lying out there, waiting for me like some hungry tiger. It had been watching me for a long time, stalking me, anticipating its opportunity.
“Emmie,” I heard, and turned around to see Mrs. Morris coming out of the building. Did she think I was sick again? Was she going to call Mama to come get me? Had some of the students told her I hadn’t finished my lunch and had practically run out of the cafeteria?
“Yes, Mrs. Morris.”
“I want you to come inside, come to my office.”
“I’m all right, Mrs. Morris. I just wanted to get some air and—”
“I’m not concerned about your health right now, Emmie. Please do as I ask.”
“Why?”
She stood there looking at me. “Dr. Sevenson asked me to find you. Please do as I ask,” she said.
I followed her back into the building. She waited at the door and then started down the hallway without saying another word.
“What is this about?”
“Your mother called and asked that you meet me at my office. She’s on her way,” she told me.
“Why?”
“I think it’s better that your mother tell you,” she said.
It was as if my body knew the answer before the words entered my ears. I could feel my heart tighten like a hand into a fist and the icy cold rush through my veins. My legs weakened, and my lungs seemed to stop calling for air. Nevertheless, I kept up with Mrs. Morris. When we arrived at her office, she told me to sit on one of the beds and wait, and then, as if I did have a contagious disease, one that frightened even her, she hurried away. I sat there silently, my heart thumping.
I heard the bell ring for the end of lunch hour, and then I heard students hurrying through the hallway, talking loudly, shouting and laughing. The warning bell for the first afternoon class sounded. The hallway grew very quiet, and the second bell rang.
The nurse’s office door opened, but it wasn’t Mrs. Morris who stepped in first. I recognized the man from the few times I had been at Papa’s office. It was Mr. Maffeo, the office manager. Mrs. Morris came in behind him.
“Hi, Emmie,” Mr. Maffeo said. “I’ve come to take you home.”
“Home? Why? Where’s my mother?”
“She’s waiting at home,” he said, forcing a smile. “I made the arrangements at the office.”
“Why do I have to be driven home?”
“Your mother wanted that,” he said.
“Just go with Mr. Maffeo, Emmie,” Mrs. Morris said.
I rose slowly. “Something happened to my father?” I asked.
No one spoke.
No one had to speak.
And if they had, I wouldn’t have heard, anyway.
There was that much thunder roaring in my ears.
10
“I feel like he really was a soldier,” Mama said. She was speaking slowly, with little emotion. “It’s as if he was fatally wounded on some battlefield.”
“He was a soldier,” Mr. Maffeo said. There were more than a half dozen of Papa’s coworkers in the house. Someone had made coffee. Others who had been in Papa’s division at the firm had brought cakes and cookies and were organizing things in the kitchen. “It’s a battle to make a living these days. He was just as much of a hero as any soldier, Vivian, fighting to keep his family safe and comfortable.”
Mama nodded, but everything she did was mechanical. She was moving with a robotic demeanor, like someone who had lost all of her senses and her ability to think. I remained stunned and skeptical. This couldn’t be true.
Yes, Papa was overweight, and his doctor had been warning him about his cholesterol levels, but he never looked or acted seriously sick. Maybe he walked more slowly, and maybe he slumped over a little more than usual when he wasn’t thinking about his posture, but he was still my strong and firm Papa. I kept telling myself that this had to be a mistake. He had just fainted or something, and soon we’d get a call from the hospital telling us that he’d bounced back and he’d be fine.
The phone did ring many times, and almost every time, I looked up, expecting to hear how this was all just some bad confusion, but all of the calls were from friends and more coworkers who had learned what had happened.
“I want you to know that we look after our own,” Mr. Maffeo was telling Mama. “We’ll be there for you, Vivian. I have my secretary prepared to help on all the arrangements. You just jot down anything you want taken care of, and it will be done, calls made, whatever.” In a lower voice, he added, “I know Norton wasn’t close to his brother or his brother’s children, and we know your brother and two sisters are in France, but believe me, we’re your family and always will be.”
Mama looked at him with a very strange expression on her face. Was she about to say she had another daughter who lived here? I held my breath.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I’ll wait to phone my family in Paris.”
“If you want us to do it . . .”
“No, no. It’s something I must do myself. Merci, Nick.”
“Absolutely. Just call on us for anything else,” he said. He looked at the others and then stood and looked down at me. “You have a great deal on your shoulders now, Emmie. Look after your mother.”
Mama reached for my hand and smiled. “We look out for each other,” she told him. “Always have and always will.”
I started to cry. Until now, I was just as stunned as she was, feeling like the little boy who had his finger in the hole in the dike that in our case held back a flood of sorrow. Thick tears began to zigzag down my cheeks. They burned my face. Mama wiped them off with her handkerchief and then hugged me and rocked me. Everyone stopped talking and looked our way. I was uncomfortable showing my emotions in front of so many people, so I got up and went out to go to my room.
The moment I stepped out, it seemed as if I had gone completely deaf. All of the voices and sounds fell like shattered glass around me, and then it became so still that I could hear myself breathing as I ascended the stairs. I paused for a moment at the top and looked toward Mama and Papa’s bedroom. Papa hadn’t been sick and home from work very much, but I recalled one time when he had such a bad cold and cough that he couldn’t go to the office and couldn’t talk much on
the phone. Mama didn’t want me going into the bedroom. She didn’t want me to catch anything, but I did go to the doorway to look in on him. When I did, I saw he was asleep, and I remembered he looked so much smaller to me. She had the cover up to his chin, and there was a humidifier going. It made me smile to think how when Papa was sick, Mama treated him the way she would treat a child, and he put up with it, welcomed it.
“Men really are babies,” she had whispered to me. “If they had to go through the pain and discomfort to give birth, there would be no human race.”
I had laughed, of course, but I also felt jealous of how Papa would show her his vulnerability and permit her to pet him and fidget around him. He always had to be “the general” as far as I was concerned. Maybe that, too, was a holdover from his time with Roxy. She was so difficult that he was afraid to show the slightest weakness, softness, even for an instant. It occurred to me that she might never have seen him as a human being, someone with real feelings, real pain, and real disappointment. Maybe if she had, she would have behaved better, been more considerate and loving.
But it was too late for any of that now, wasn’t it? It was too late for so many things. Too late for Papa to realize that I definitely would never be another Roxy. Too late for Papa to watch me graduate from high school and even college. Too late for Papa to meet the man I would marry and to give me away at my wedding. Too late for Papa to be grandfather to my children. It was too late to tell him one more time that I loved him or hear him say he loved me one more time.
It was too late for everyone in our family. Too late for his brother to mend fences and for his brother’s daughters to find out how much of a loving and considerate uncle he could be. Most of all, it was too late for Mama, who had died a little today, too. How lost and alone she already looked. How horrible it would be for her to lie in their bed and listen for Papa’s breathing or wait to feel his hand searching for hers under the blanket. Loneliness and loss would take so many forms in our home now, whether it be Papa’s empty chair at the dining-room table or the silence in the hallway. No more heavy footsteps coming our way. No more calling out Mama’s or my name. Yes, the silences would be most painful of all, the silences and the empty chairs.
What were his last thoughts? Did he realize he was going to die, and did he think, Oh, no, I have not spoken to Roxy, and I’ll never speak to Vivian or Emmie again? Did he rage against the dying of the light the way Dylan Thomas wrote in his poem? Papa was a soldier, a fighter. He wouldn’t simply surrender to death. There was surely a terrible struggle, a battle well fought. His ancestors would greet him with praise.
“You showed him,” they would say. “You weakened him good, and like a true Wilcox, you made death pay for his victory. He knew he was in a fight when he chose you.”
I smiled thinking about that, and then I went to my window and looked down at the street. Somewhere out there in this great city, Roxy was laughing with someone or having something wonderful to eat, completely unaware of what had happened. Maybe she was wearing that dress Chastity and I saw her try on in the boutique, or maybe she was in a limousine being brought to some man or returning from some man.
Maybe, just maybe, she heard something odd in the air and was confused for a moment.
Was that my name? she would wonder. Did someone just call to me?
She might have turned or paused and listened again.
Whomever she was with might ask her what was wrong.
She would shake her head but look a little confused.
“What was it, Roxy?”
“I thought . . .”
“What?”
“I thought I heard my father calling me.”
“Your father? What . . .”
“Nothing,” she would say, and shake her head. She would go on doing whatever it was she was doing, and she wouldn’t think about it again.
Because it was too late.
I sprawled out on my bed and looked up at the ceiling.
The phone was still ringing. I could hear more voices downstairs. I closed my eyes and didn’t wake up again until I heard Mama call my name. She had come up to my bedroom and was standing right beside me.
“Your friend is here,” she said.
My eyelids fluttered and then opened. I sat up. “What friend?”
Did the terrible news bring Evan back? How could I even care at that moment?
“Chastity,” she said. “She wants to come up to see you.”
“Oh.”
My first reaction was to tell my mother to send her away, but there was a part of me that longed for someone my own age. My father and mother’s friends and my father’s coworkers seemed to think of me as much younger now. I could hear it in their voices and see it in their eyes. It was as if they thought I didn’t understand fully what had happened.
“Okay,” I said, and got up to throw some cold water on my face. I stared at myself in the mirror for a moment. Of course, it was my imagination, but I looked as if I had aged years.
“Hi,” I heard, and turned to see Chastity standing timidly in my bedroom doorway. Over the past two years, my bedroom and hers were like our private clubhouses. The walls in both rooms were painted with our secrets. There was no formality. Nothing of mine was untouchable, as was nothing of hers. We no longer asked each other permission to do anything in our rooms.
“Hi,” I said, and sat at my desk.
She walked in gingerly, looking at me as though she were afraid I might suddenly develop thin cracks in my face and crumble before her eyes.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“I wish we could just do that, refuse to believe it, tell the truth to get out and go find another family, another home.”
She nodded. “Once you left, the news spread like some computer virus. Everyone was coming up to me, expecting me to explain it. I told them I was just as surprised. I had never seen your father sick, ever.”
“I know.”
“Evan wanted me to tell you he was sorry,” she said. I looked up quickly. “About your father,” she added. “He, too, said he couldn’t believe it. He said your father looked like he could stand up to anyone or anything.”
I just stared at her.
“I’m sorry I told anyone anything about your sister, sorry it spoiled things for you with Evan.”
“It turned out to be a good thing,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“It showed me what and who he really was. Most people just use other people to satisfy some need or get something they want. When the person can’t do that for them, they move on to someone else. If you had heard him talk when we first met, you would have thought he would sacrifice a kidney for me or something. I’m never going to believe what any man says, even if he writes it in his own blood.”
“I bet your sister feels that way now,” she said. “There’s probably a lot to learn from her.”
I looked away. Chastity was still idolizing and fantasizing, I thought. “I don’t care about her anymore,” I muttered. Then I looked hard at Chastity. “My father suffered inside because of her. I’m sure it hurt his heart.”
“Oh, sure, sure. I just meant . . .”
“I don’t want to think about her right now.”
“Okay. Your mother’s not going to tell her?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at her again. What was she hoping I would say, “You go find her and tell her”?
“That’s up to my mother,” I added.
She nodded quickly. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“What can you do?” I asked, a lot more harshly than I had intended. “There’s nothing anyone can do for me, Chastity. I’ve got to help my mother get through this.”
“Oh, sure. I’d like to help her, too. Maybe she needs someone to buy things for her or do some errand or . . .”
“You can ask her,” I said.
“I will. I promise. Are you going downstairs? There are people there putting out food.
” It didn’t surprise me that eating came to her mind.
“I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to see anyone right now.”
“You want me to do anything for you at school?”
“No, nothing. I don’t want to go back to that school,” I told her.
“What? Where would you go?” she asked with surprise.
“Anyplace else.”
“But . . . your father wanted you to go there, didn’t he?”
I looked away. Suddenly, talking to her was even more painful than talking with the adults downstairs. I stood up. “I’m going down to help my mother,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll stay with you,” she told me, and followed me out and down the stairs.
I didn’t know how my mother could continue to do it. She greeted people all day and into the evening. Once in a while, when she turned to me, I could see the exhaustion in her face, but she wouldn’t give in to it. I knew that holding herself together like this, keeping herself going, was what she believed my father would want, would respect. This was how a soldier’s wife should be at such a time. Apparently, while I was upstairs or while I was distracted, she had excused herself for a phone call in my father’s home office. As soon as she had a moment that she could spend alone with me, she told me she had called Uncle Orman.
“What did he say?”
“I thought I was talking to your father’s commanding officer,” she replied. She didn’t sound angry about it. She almost looked amused. “He told me he was about to begin a very important assignment at the Pentagon and couldn’t be here for the funeral. He said your father would understand. I left it up to him to inform his children and your aunt Lucy. I’m sure he’ll have a military attaché do it. The truth is, you and I were the only family your papa had,” she said.
My whole face trembled. She hugged me and kissed my forehead.
“Let’s do what we have to do, Emmie. We’ll mourn for him afterward and forever.”
I took a deep breath and followed her back to the visitors and mourners. Chastity was looking more uncomfortable than ever and told me she should get home. She wanted to tell her parents so they could visit my mother.