in the dusky church—one slow knee, then the other—her expression now flaccid with a resignation Caddie hates.
Grandma Jos, counting and recounting the cookie-jar money for that yellow dress with the lacy collar that Caddie can wear to the school dance, because Grandma Jos says she must look presentable now that she’s “nearly of age.” And though Caddie is embarrassed by the old-fashioned concept, and even more by frilly dresses, she loves this one because it’s starchy in that new-clothes way that the church hand-me-downs never are, and without even the tiniest of stains.
Grandma Jos, coming down the street in time to see Caddie, already bandaged on one elbow, jumping her rusted bicycle over a makeshift wooden ramp. A growl—Girl!—softened quickly to her public voice. Why does it always have to be dangerous to be fun?
No. Grandma Jos is not here. Caddie is not a child. She has to pull herself from this fog.
SHE WAKES UP ALONE in a room devoid of color. Why do they do that in hospitals, as if bland and passionless were comforting? Her left upper arm is sore and taped up; she’s tethered to an IV. She remembers a flight from Lebanon, vaguely. She gets up, pulling the contraption along with her, her hand rigid on the cold metal. Someone has left a newspaper on a table. The Cyprus Mail. So she’s in Nicosia. She flips rapidly through the pages until she finds it: Award-winning British freelance photo-journalist, 41, killed in a . . . She skims to the bottom, where she sees her own name: Catherine Blair, 32 . . . In between her name and his, the words blur.
What makes her think, then, of that Walt Whitman poem she had to memorize and recite during a sixth grade assembly? But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red. What remote melodrama; no one would publish it today, and still school-children have to learn it. “Whitman,” Caddie says aloud. She grips the newspaper and snickers.
Somehow, through none of her own doing, the laughter shifts into something else, something loud and unruly that makes her chest vibrate unnaturally. The nurse with the needle returns.
HOW DID SHE LET THIS HAPPEN? She’s usually so careful, her caution more valuable than a flak jacket. So how could she let him down like this?
Kill those bastards.
“AND YOU’RE SURE that Sven and Rob, that my colleagues . . . ?”
They’re fine. No injuries at all.
So where are they, then? Where the hell . . . because she needs to ask them why.
Isn’t there anyone you want us to contact?
It was all set up. Yaladi wanted to be interviewed, damnit. There was no crossfire to get caught in, no shelling. A simple interview with a famous criminal.
Some relative somewhere? The nurse, insistent, squeezes Caddie’s hand.
Relative? Not anyone living. Grandma Jos, the last to die, would be useless anyway. She’d show up straight from the airport with the Lazarus Department Store shopping bag she always carried, and she’d pull out a Bible and suggest they pray together. That would be the extent of it.
Caddie smooths the thin, bone-colored blanket that covers her legs. She makes her voice absolute. “No one.”
The nurse disapproves. She stands motionless for a moment as though weighing her options. Eventually she sighs. Maybe you’ll think of someone later. For now, sleep. She reaches to the cart and closes in.
THE DEEP PULSE OF NIGHT, its shadows a retreat, its tiny noises companions to breath. Night is a woman’s hand spread wide to shield her, to protect her from shame. At night, it’s all right if she finds herself musing without purpose, careening through memories, dallying longer among the dead than the living. It doesn’t matter that pieces of herself have been scattered, that everything she does takes place some long distance away, that her emotions, once so tethered and well behaved, now threaten to cripple her.
The permissive night: she’s begun to crave it.
Still, she won’t give in to a dread of dawn; she won’t be sunk by this sunlit heaviness. A flying leap, perfect form with arms outstretched and toes pointed, is what she’ll try for.
They bury Marcus with a camera and one of those little boxes of raisins he always carried in his pocket. Does someone tell her that, or does she dream it? She isn’t sure. She imagines, against her will, his hands draped over his stomach. Square hands, almost clumsy looking, with squat nails pressed to the ends of his fingers. But when he used them in a rush to insert film or change a lens or focus a shot, they were precise enough to mesmerize her. They became, then, the hands of a creator. When they touched her, she sometimes imagined herself to be one of his cameras. Though she and Marcus always avoided talking of the future, she knew that if she let herself, she could get addicted to those moments.
As a photographer, he was a master of angle and light and, most of all, passion. His photos of faces revealed secrets and captured essence, raw and unrelieved. He was known for the single shot that exposed a person’s history. “Penetrating,” one award committee said. “Too powerful to ignore.”
She remembers being with him once in his converted darkroom. They were studying some photos he’d developed, full of expression and gesture, and suddenly he switched off the lights and slipped out, leaving her fumbling first for the wall, then the door.
Whatja do that for?
It’s a life skill, Caddie. Always know how to find your way out of a darkroom. Or did he say dark room?
On the fourth morning, clear of drugs, she writes a letter to Marcus’s parents in London. “A fine photographer and cheerful companion. He loved the story that he died for. Was committed to his work.” A bit beside the point, but she can’t say what she really means. That he was irreverent, and lemon-tasting, and intense and lighthearted at once, so often exactly what she needed. That already she misses the nights. That miss is not a strong enough verb. And that maybe she should have told him that.
“CATHERINE BLAIR?”
She raises her hand, palm out as though blocking light, and sees him through her fingers. A doctor this time. Milky white suit with shit-warmed-over grin. She shifts her body away. “Caddie,” she says. “I go by Caddie.”
“Well, Caddie. Good to see you sitting up and reading. You must be feeling well today.”
Christ. This phony cheerfulness is more painful to witness than a child’s tears.
“You were lucky with the arm. Everything checks out fine. Someone from your newspaper comes tomorrow, I’m told. We’ll probably release you the next day.”
“Right-o.” One of Marcus’s expressions.
“In the meantime—” He pulls up a chair as though someone had invited him to sit. “I’m here. We can discuss anything.”
He emphasizes the last word. He thinks she’ll find comfort, does he, in asking her questions aloud? As though to pronounce them one by one would remove the weight? Okay, doc, tell me. Why, right after a shower, did he smell like citrus and taste like salt? How did he learn to cook spaghetti with such a flourish? Where did he get those lips, far more beautiful than mine, heart-lips, lips that, in truth, belonged on a girl’s face? And that way he had of looking at me sideways and making it feel more intimate than anyone
