me a ride home.
Two
More than thirty-six hours passed before I felt like myself. The shot of Imitrex I took when I got home knocked me out cold for twenty-four of them, and then after I ate some soup and took a shower, I slept for another twelve. By the time another day rolled around, I was feeling better but unsteady on my feet. My phone, with its ringer turned off, had fielded calls from the police, my department, and members of the writing group. In a daze, I jotted names and numbers on a blank piece of stationery.
My first call was to the department chair, Terrence Graham, to explain my absence and try to salvage my job. He was more understanding than I had expected, until the topic of the police investigation came up.
“So, Cassie, what’s this about the police looking into your background?” asked Dr. Graham. “I know you said you found Neville’s body—so unfortunate, ghastly what is happening in the City—but why would the police be calling me and asking about your credentials?”
“Oh, you know, they need to check out everyone who was at the apartment, it’s just routine,” I said. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
“I don’t know. They sent someone over here to look at your personnel file. That doesn’t sound routine to me,” he said.
“Well, how would I know? I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. This is the first time I ever set foot in a police station.”
“You mean they took you to the station?”
Dammit. “Just routine questioning. I think they brought in the entire writing group, as a matter of fact,” I said, back-pedaling as fast as I could. I stared out the window at the dreary gray sky, rain smudging the edges of nearby buildings and trees.
“Is that so?” He sounded skeptical.
I called upon his Southern upbringing to cadge his agreement to let me out of teaching for the remainder of the week to recover from my traumatic experience.
“I’ll be as good as new in a day or two, I promise,” I said. “I just had such a migraine. It was so upsetting, seeing Neville in that condition. I can hardly get it out of my mind.”
When I hung up, I reached for the silk-wrapped bundle that I kept in the nightstand next to my bed. Unwrapping the fabric, I removed a well-worn deck of Tarot cards and began to shuffle them. They moved between my hands like old friends, and I closed my eyes, focusing on the questions that ran through my head.
“No,” I said. “I need to know what this has to do with me. Why is this happening in my life now?” I turned over a card: the Fool smiled up at me.
“Really?” I asked. “Who is the fool? Me?”
I contemplated the card. The Tarot had been a part of my life for many years, a fact I’d hidden from my father, for I was certain that he would not approve. I’d watched my mother lay out these very same cards for years, starting when I was quite young. I could still recall her patient explanation of the meaning of the Major Arcana, of which the Fool was the first card.
“The Fool is at the beginning of the journey that the cards will take you on,” she’d said. “See how carefree he is? He’s starting fresh, just like a child having an adventure. No matter how old you are, remember, when you see this card, it means that you are going to have a chance to start over, to get another chance in life. And you should always, always take it. Never lose your inner child, Cassandra. Never let anyone take that away.”
I picked up the card and studied it. “I did it, Mom,” I said. “I came here and started fresh. And now look at the mess I’m in.”
I tossed the card on the bedspread and fanned the deck around it. Randomly, I pulled out another card and tossed it on top of the Fool. It was the Eight of Swords, in which a woman was depicted in bondage, her hands behind her, her eyes covered by a blindfold. I laughed aloud.
“I see,” I said. “I get the message.” Although the woman looks trapped in her dire situation, in fact, the bindings are all in her imagination—she is tied only by her own hesitation and the limits she has brought on herself. I swept up the cards, shuffled them lightly, and said, “Okay, Mother dear. Any other advice?”
I tossed down a card. It was the Fool again. I laughed and put the cards away.
“Got it,” I said. “I won’t give up on my dreams, at least not yet. I’ll keep trying this new life I started.”
I went out to the living room and plopped onto the couch. My apartment had nothing to compare it to the spacious home in which I’d discovered Neville. This was an institutional box in a tower of faculty housing, much of which was occupied by lower-level, untenured laborers like myself. It had four white walls and a muddy brown carpet, with the sole redeeming feature the large picture window overlooking Washington Square Park. It was nice to look at, but a nightmare to live above: if you had any inclination to open a window, the constant noise coming from the park made it impossible to hear any music, television show, or conversation inside the apartment.
I had tried to brighten the place up in the few months I’d been there with a red couch, a black Ikea chair, an artfully draped shawl over a small table in the corner. I'd added an old lamp I picked up at a tag sale in Somerville before I moved to New York, and a throw rug from my father’s basement that mixed the red and black colors nicely and almost obscured the ugly institutional carpet beneath. I hadn’t really hung anything on the walls, and there was only a small bookcase with some fiction that I dragged out—nothing at all like the massive library Neville cultivated. If I was going to make my new life an exciting and interesting one, I needed decorating help and it was just the thing to distract me from the pickle I’d gotten into with Neville. I picked up the phone.
“Michael? What’s your schedule today?” I asked. My best friend in the city, a colleague who worked one flight above my office in the Humanities Department, was a year away from his tenure review and more attentive to spending time in his office than I.
“Um, class at 4:00, office hours afterwards. What’s up? You sound stressed. Where are you?” he asked.
“Home…You wouldn’t believe what happened. Well, maybe you will,” I said. “I spent the night in the pokey.”
“What? Like the ‘hokey pokey’?” He giggled. Michael, a former all-state wrestler from Massachusetts, was a seriously silly person. When we first met, I’d heard his infectious laugh while I was waiting for the elevator. When the door opened and I saw his lively dark eyes, sweeping black hair, and Oh-my-God what a body, I was a goner. Unfortunately, I learned very quickly that he only had eyes for the guys.
“No, like the jail. Can you meet me? I need to shop...I have to fix up this place. When I got home from the Police Department, I realized that their décor was better than mine.”
“Oh, stop. It can’t be that bad.” He paused. “The station, I mean.” He resumed giggling.
“So you’ll help,” I said.
“I really should work on this article, but this sounds like an emergency.” He stopped laughing. “But really, you need to tell me what happened. Did you cook dinner for someone and get picked up for manslaughter?” The peals of laughter started again.
“Har-de-har-har,” I said. “Meet you on
