Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

The rest of the interview with the lawyers that afternoon had been repetitive and interminable. Andrew had tried to take notes but had eventually fallen into a fretful underlining of the notes he’d already taken. After the revelation of Lily’s drug purchase from Ignacio Toledo, nothing new was revealed; she’d stuck faithfully and reassuringly to her story about the day of the crime, and in its repeated tellings the narrative seemed to move from the specific to the archetypal—like a Bible verse or a Beatles song, it became too familiar to actually hear. Lily told the story so many times that Andrew nearly felt he was watching it unfold before him: He could almost see the ghostly shadow of stoned Sebastien LeCompte, he could almost hear the coppery yelping of the game shows that Lily had watched while Katy’s undiscovered body—good God—lay a floor below her in the basement.

By the time the lawyers finally left, Andrew and Maureen’s visit was over. Maureen had tried to persuade Lily to eat the rest of her sandwich, but she did not; they’d left it on a crusty pile on the table, even though Lily said that the guards would probably make her throw it away. Then they’d both kissed her on the cheek, and she’d clung to Maureen for longer than the security guards had liked, and then it was time—again—for them to leave her.

“Come on,” said Maureen, tugging on Andrew’s wrist. “Let’s go inside.”

Andrew followed her into the room, vodka between his forefinger and thumb, and shoved aside a pile of newspaper clippings so that he could sit on the bed. In the corner of one of the articles, he could see the edge of that awful picture of Lily from her own camera, standing in front of the church with the immodest décolletage and the too-bright smile. Andrew turned the newspaper over, and Maureen joined him on the bed. She smelled like moss and cedar and some new late-in-life perfume. She smelled mostly like a stranger.

Maureen sighed. “I can’t believe she lied about the drugs.”

“Well, she didn’t lie, I don’t think,” said Andrew. “Not really. She just didn’t volunteer that information.”

“She should have known better.”

“She’s scared. She’s with lawyers. She doesn’t know what to say.” Andrew ran his hand through his hair. “Anyway, it was just a little dope.”

“Just a little dope? Down here? Jesus Christ. Just a little dope would have been a big enough problem, even if she hadn’t happened to manage to buy it from a murderer.” Maureen sighed again and shook her head. “God. You know, I can’t even really let myself think about it, but it could have been her. It so, so easily could have been her, instead of Katy.”

“I know,” said Andrew. It was true. It could have been her. It had been her once. It had been Janie.

Maureen traced her pinkie along the rim of her vodka, then put it in her mouth. “Do you think I was unreasonable about her hair?”

“You weren’t wrong.”

“But do you think I was unreasonable?”

Andrew flashed again to that photo—the forbidding sobriety of the church, Lily’s bosom spilling out of that ridiculous tank top, which had probably cost her less than the equivalent of three U.S. dollars somewhere. Could she not afford a shirt containing enough fabric to actually cover herself? They would have bought her one! Didn’t she know that? Is that all it would have taken? Andrew shook his head. “It just might have been a little late, you know?”

“What do you mean?” Maureen’s voice was vinegary.

“I just mean,” Andrew said slowly. “It seems like there are things we should have talked to her about. In terms of how she presents herself. Probably a while ago.”

“Me, you mean.” Maureen was chewing audibly on her nail. The physiology of her anxiety was like a childhood language Andrew hadn’t known he still remembered until now.

“Us, I mean.”

Andrew did not know if this was really what they had done wrong—but clearly, they had done something wrong. And really, how could they not have? They had just been trying to keep it together, and Andrew was still proud of them—he would never stop being proud of them—for having managed as long as they had; in situations like theirs, it was usual to divorce much earlier. Right after Janie had died, of course, there’d been a moment when they’d teetered. Maureen’s mother had come to stay; she was rigid and humorless even under the best of circumstances, her face flat and white as a Japanese empress’s. The three of them moved through those days with the insensate numbness of creatures of the very deep sea: They were little translucent crabs scrabbling along near the volcanic vents, they were blind and mute and looming dumbo octopi. Maureen walked around with an expression of enduring, ferocious blankness, and Andrew had known she would not have noticed then if he’d let her drift away, or if he’d drifted away himself: into the geriatric Peace Corps, perhaps (they had a branch, he knew, for sufferers of late-onset idealism), or the arms of a younger, undestroyed woman. It was nearly unbelievable to Andrew now that they’d even bothered to bathe and dress, let alone hang on to their marriage for a time. He could see how an outsider might think they’d been saints, though, of course, that wasn’t true at all—they had, in fact, been utterly devoid of compassion for anyone besides Janie and each other (and, for a brief time right before the death, only Janie; and, for a brief time afterward, only themselves). Janie’s death was the monstrous planet around which everything else orbited. Even the other children at the hospital lived and died merely in relation to Janie; viewed in one light, the death of another child could seem like a harbinger of Janie’s departure, the hideous reality that made the more hideous potentiality more real; viewed in another, it could feel like dodging a bullet (and, as Churchill had said, there’s nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result). And if only a certain percentage of children with X were doomed, and if child Y died, would that mean it was statistically more or less likely for Janie to die, too? Andrew and Maureen would actually talk about this. Maureen would point out that they were conflating probability with odds. Neither of them would point out that in the narcissism of their grief they had forgotten the other child, forgotten the other family—who were somewhere weeping, picking out a tiny gold-limned coffin. There was no other family, there were no other children. There was only Janie and Maureen and Andrew, at sea on a little boat, and all the continents of the world submerged.

How did they love each other again after that? How did they even look at each other? But they did, somehow they did, and there were the years of Lily and Anna: chubby hands, dandelion-down hair, adorable little pets—a tuxedo kitten who eventually grew to a murderous twenty pounds, a precious lop-eared dwarf bunny who transformed into a sexual predator overnight—and life had been livable, at least until the girls went to school. But once they did, the show was over: The stage lights dimmed, the orchestra was dismantled; the audience, drunk on their own lives, disappeared into the night. And Maureen and Andrew found themselves staring at each other, alone together at last.

Andrew nearly wanted to say some of these things to Maureen, but he looked down and found her in a shallow and hard-earned sleep. He rose, careful not to crinkle the newspapers, and turned out the light.

Andrew rode the elevator up one floor, then stood for a moment in the harsh yellow light of the soda dispenser, listening to the snorkeling of the ice machine, before walking back to his room. He dipped his key and watched the console flash green and opened the door.