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CORNERED
When Gray takes me into his arms, my anger fades and is replaced with guilt for lying, for doing what I did. I’m suddenly unsure of myself, of this flight response I’m having to the threats I perceive in my world. The worry on their faces reminds me that it could be real or all of it could be imagined.
“We were wondering if we could have Victory for the weekend, Annie,” says Vivian from the table. She is a big, strong woman, but beautiful and feminine, with a neat steel gray bob, flawlessly smooth skin, and square pink fingernails. She’s always in silk and denim. “It will give you and Gray some time to yourselves.”
I don’t say anything but my anger and annoyance creep back. There’s always this implication that I need time away from Victory. Or is it that they think she needs time away from me, her crazy mother? If I protest, it makes me seem selfish or unstable or both.
“Just tonight and tomorrow night,
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He walks over to the bookshelf and lifts a snow globe up to the light. He stares into the orb at the pre-9/11 skyline of New York City. He is all hard angles, a dark tower against the sherbet-colored plush of toys and downy blankets. His silence is my answer.Gray’s working with his father represents a kind of cease-fire. After a troubled adolescence and many years of estrangement in adulthood, Gray and his father have finally come to a demilitarized zone in their relationship. I think Gray likes it there; he doesn’t want to go back to war. I understand this, but I resent it, too. We fight again and again about it, with no resolution.“You know, I’m not crazy,” I say, apropos of nothing, after a few minutes of silence, each of us isolated by our private, angry thoughts. I just feel I have to assert this.“I know that,” he says, returning to sit beside me again. He has a look on his face that reminds me he’s s
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Motherhood changed that for me. Victory forced me into the moment. She demanded that I focus on her needs, that I live by her schedule. When I was with her-feeding her, changing her-just looking at her or playing with her, everything in the past and the future fell away. I was aware that we would be together like this for only a short time, that in a heartbeat she’d be walking away from me, living her own life. I didn’t want to waste a second thinking about what might have been, what might be. Love makes you present. So does mortal fear.I am fully present as I race up the stairs to the bridge. I burst through the door and am confronted by the body of the captain who waved to me earlier. He has a bullet hole between his eyes and an expression of profound peace on his face. I step over him to get to the control panel and nearly lose my footing. The floor is slick with blood. Another body lies in a pile of itself by the door. I register all this but don’t have
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My airways are constricting, and there’s a dance of white spots before my eyes. It’s a full-blown panic attack. I try to breathe my way through it, like my shrink has taught me. I turn on the car and blast the A/C; the air is hot at first, then chill. I start to calm down. I catch sight of myself in the rearview mirror. My face is a mask of terror.“What is wrong with you?” I say aloud. “Pull yourself together.”After a while, when I can breathe again and the inner quake has subsided, I drive home. My headache has reached operatic proportions.Gray is waiting for me at the kitchen table when I return home.“Where’d you go?” he asks with false lightness.I’m sure he knows I moved the things under our bed. I sense he’s worried about me and what I might do. What I love about him is that he always gives me my space, gives me the benefit of the doubt.“To the store,&rdq
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“I thought we were leaving,” I said. I kept my voice flat and unemotional. I didn’t want him to know my heart - how afraid I was, how much I needed him.“We can’t,” he said quietly. “He’ll find us. And when he does, he’ll kill you. I’m not allowed to love anything.”I was too desperate to hear the sickness in his words. I heard only that he was letting me down, like everyone else. “You promised me,” I said, my voice sounding childish even to my own ears.“That was before,” he said tightly. “I never thought he’d be released.”I’d seen the way Marlowe followed his father around, looking at him with begging eyes, waiting for scraps of attention. “You don’t want to leave him,” I said.“You don’t understand,” he said. He came and sat on the edge of my bed. “No one leaves him.”Marlowe ha
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