“I’m afraid that wasn’t possible.”
“But you know, there’s still something that my poor, traumatized, straitjacketed ego can’t quite grasp. What in God’s name does any of this have to do with my sister?”
Fox levers himself away from the drafting table and walks to the couch, where he takes a seat at the extreme opposite end from me and leans forward to link his hands between his enormous knees. “Because you asked how I knew I could trust you.”
“You’re nuts, you know that?” I stub out the cigarette and rise to my feet. “You come in here and tell me all about myself, like you’ve known me for years. It’s the most condescending thing any man’s ever said to me, and believe me, I’ve heard it all.”
“I apologize. If you think I’m wrong about any of that, set me straight.”
I don’t know how to answer him. I’m angry, all right, mostly because he’s probably not wrong about any of that, if I’m going to be honest with myself. I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to analyze the mess inside my head, does it? But I don’t like the fact that this fellow seems to have been following me around for years, speaking to everyone who knew me, going through paperwork, spying on me. Drawing goddamn conclusions about me. And I never suspected a thing, the son of a bitch.
He rises too. “I understand you’re upset. Probably upset,” he adds swiftly.
“You’ve got that right, at least.”
“As the sister of a woman married to a Soviet intelligence agent, you must have known you’d be subject to investigation.”
“To be honest, the thought never occurred to me.”
“If you want me to walk right out of this building, I’ll do that. You’ll never hear from me again.”
I stare at his pale, narrowed eyes. He stares back at mine. The room is summer-warm, and the perspiration trickles down my back. I think of Iris in Moscow. How warm is Moscow in summer? I remember the two of us lying on the sand, Ruth and Iris, side by side, nine years old, while the sun scorched our skin and the thick hot nebulous summer air surrounded us like the womb we had once shared, and that was our bond. That was the love in which we existed together, the air we breathed in order to live.
“Or I can stay,” Fox says quietly, “and explain how you and I can get your sister out of Russia alive.”
I was the one who discovered our father’s body. Have I mentioned that? Leave it to Ruth to go nosing around where she doesn’t belong.
They say the mind is supposed to block off terrible memories, in order to protect a person from having to experience them over and over. Well, I wish my mind knew that trick. I remember every detail, from the angle of sunlight through the window to the design on the bathroom tiles to the expression on my father’s face, mouth open in a shocked oval, eyes open to stare in amazement at the ceiling, as if death wasn’t quite what he expected. How his lips were the same color as his skin, because his blood had all poured out into the bathwater in which he lay. The nakedness of his body beneath the translucent red water, his delicate limbs, his bloated stomach, his penis floating above his dark pubic hair, all those human parts of him I had never before seen and now saw lifeless. Most of all, the smell of blood, as coppery as they say.
I dropped the magazine I had snuck into the bathroom to read. I crept out the door and closed it behind me and walked back down the hall to the bedroom I shared with Iris. We had two twin beds, but I crawled into hers and scooped her into my arms. She didn’t even stir. I was the light sleeper, the jittery one. I always did the worrying for both of us. I remember feeling jealous of her, because she didn’t know, and at the same time I didn’t want her to know. I dreaded the coming of dawn, when her universe would shatter. I felt our barren, hard lives yawn eternally before us. I felt her heart beat and wished with all my might that we could die together like this and never know what the world was like without a father.
But no fairy godmother came to grant my wish that night. Sometime during those terrible hours, I fell briefly asleep, and then woke to the sound of screaming. Iris stirred against my chest and asked what was that. I stroked her hair and told her Daddy’s gone to heaven, darling.
At the time, she thought she was dreaming, or else I was kidding, and maybe she was right. I don’t believe in an afterlife of heaven or hell. I think we create our own, here on earth.
Sumner Fox, on the other hand. No doubt he believes firmly in heaven and hell, angels and purgatory and the devil himself, to go along with the God he wishes I wouldn’t curse. As a decent Christian, though, he doesn’t seem to judge me for my failure of faith. He just stands there waiting for me to make my decision.