Jessica Chiarella - And Again

“I’ll be home in a month, buddy. Mom says you’ll have your cast off by then,” I say, imagining the time we can spend before I return to Washington to face the Ethics Committee. Everything hinges on the FDA vote. If SUBlife passes, I might avoid charges for tampering with the study.

Maybe I’ll take David Jr. fishing. Maybe I’ll start him out hunting, even. I started younger than him, and maybe handling a gun will give him the sense of patient confidence that it instilled in me when I first went out with a rifle over my shoulder. But David Jr. looks confused by the sentiment.

“I thought Mom said you weren’t coming home,” he says, brow furrowed.

“Of course I’m coming home, buddy,” I say.

But again, he shakes his head, adamant.

“What exactly did your mother tell you?” I ask, apprehension squaring my shoulders.

“She said you were going to stay in Chicago with your girlfriend.”

“My girlfriend.” There it is, I think. Beth, showing her cards through our son. A winning play, if I ever saw one. “David, go get your mother and put her on the phone,” I say, trying to keep my tone even.

“She said she doesn’t want to talk to you,” he says.

“Tell her she should call me in the next five minutes or I’m driving out there right now so we can talk in person, okay?” I say. David Jr. nods. “Okay, you keep your chin up son, you hear?” He nods again, and then my screen goes dark.

Four minutes later, my phone goes off. It’s Beth. “At least I know now what it takes to get you to drive up here,” she says as soon as I answer.

“What have you been saying to our son? You told him I’m not coming home?”

“I figured it might be better for you to stay in Chicago for a while,” she replies, her tone controlled, dispassionate even.

“With my girlfriend?” I ask, trying to sound both weary and condescending. “I don’t have a girlfriend, Beth. I don’t know what the hell you’ve dreamed up there.”

“Well, then, whoever it was I heard at your place, the night David Jr. broke his arm. Connie, is it? She’s certainly pretty enough. Though, no matter how tough you think you were once, you never really had the stomach for the junkies, now did you?”

The mention of Connie feels like a punch below the belt, like going after someone’s sister. Veins of anger open up in me. I feel like there is something hot and dark and molten at my core, and every wall I have built to keep it hidden, keep it contained, is cracking apart. I’m angrier than I should be, if I intend to continue this conversation without imploding our marriage. But maybe ending our marriage is exactly the intended purpose of this conversation for Beth.

“Or maybe it’s Sam’s girlfriend,” Beth continues. “What’s her name again?” I jerk to attention.

“Sam?”

“Sam Foster, the journalist,” she says, and I begin to see, faintly, the outline of something treacherous here.

“How exactly do you know Sam Foster?” I ask, feeling like I’m about to be sucker punched and there’s no way to get out of its way.

“I found him through those files of yours,” Beth replies. “Ironic, isn’t it, that one of them had a journalist for a boyfriend? It never occurred to him to write about SUBlife until I called and told him all about you. He seemed pretty adamant that his girlfriend be left out of it, but you he was more than willing to write about.”

I lean forward, resting my forehead in my palm. I’ve known Beth to be a lot of things. But this cruel, this calculating, I never knew she was capable of this. I’m almost impressed, which sickens me a bit, because I have indeed married the perfect political wife, someone who is just as capable of terrible, deceitful things as I am.

“I’ve helped you out a lot over the years, baby,” she says. “I’ve been whatever you needed. But not this time. You lied to me, when you told me things would be different. You lied to my son, too, and you should’ve known that there would be a price for that.”

“Our son,” I say. She doesn’t reply. “Our son, Elizabeth.”

“Well, I guess we’ll see what the courts have to say about that,” she replies. I end the call by throwing my phone across the room. It ricochets off the wall, leaving a dent in the paint and raining pieces of plastic onto the wood floor.

When I get home, my camera slung over one shoulder and a bag of takeout from Tamarind in my other arm, David is sitting outside my apartment door. My first impulse is to simply walk past him, to pretend he is so irrelevant to me that I don’t even recognize him, but the slump of his shoulders makes me pause. He has a beard now. It makes him look older, a bit more grizzled than I remember. I wonder, in these few months since we’ve seen each other, if I have changed as well. And, despite everything, seeing him is the most potent relief I’ve felt in weeks.

“How do you know where I live?” I ask by way of a greeting. He looks relieved that I’ve acknowledged him at all.

“Your records,” he replies. “I had my chief of staff get them for me.”

“Jesus, I should have guessed,” I say, still hurt and angry despite the fact that everything in me wants to throw my arms around him. “Opposition research, right? Or does Jackson do that sort of thing with all the girls you sleep with?”

“Can I come in?” he asks, motioning to my apartment door. Part of me wonders if he’s crazy enough to think we could pick up where we left off.

“No,” I reply. “Not until you tell me what you want.”

“I want to apologize,” he says, running his hands through his hair. It’s longer now; he probably hasn’t had it cut since the last time I saw him. I get it. He’s less recognizable this way. “For everything I said about you, about the article. I know now that it wasn’t your fault.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. He stands, and the size of him surprises me. He’s muscled now, more imposing.

“Hannah, can I please come in?”

We sit at my kitchen table, though I don’t offer him anything to drink. Politeness is still a bit beyond my capabilities when it comes to David. As he looks around my place, I wonder at how little of me is reflected in this home, how much of it is the person I was when I was with Sam, the girl who didn’t mind her parents’ money, the girl who was more than willing to smooth out her rough edges for him.

“What do you mean about the article?”

“Is that one of yours?” he asks, motioning to a huge painting hanging above my sofa. It’s one of my favorites, one that I could never sell, the first of the series that won me my artist’s grant. It’s so detailed it’s nearly photo-realistic, a woman being dragged away by her hair, a flock of ravens doing the dragging. The background is 1920s dustbowl farmland, and all of it is bleak and desperate except for the woman’s expression. There is something there, something like surrender, a bit like peace, as if the woman knows there isn’t anywhere those birds could take her that could be worse than where she’s leaving.

“Yeah,” I reply, glancing at him, recalling what he said about paintings when I first visited his apartment. “My version of reality, I guess.”

“I like it,” he replies.

“What are you doing here, David?” I ask again.

He pauses and then nods. “I know you weren’t Sam’s source for the article. I’m sorry I accused you of that.”

“So where did he get it?”

“My darling wife,” David replied, shaking his head. “Lady Macbeth. I promised her everything would be different when I bought my way into the program. That’s how I justified it to her, and to myself, I guess. It would be worth it, to take someone else’s spot, because I would be a better man. I would use my influence for good.”