A Small Fortune (22 page)

My hand wrenches from beneath Jonathon’s knee. I hook my fingers inside the piece of open flesh in his cheek as if it’s nothing more than old wallpaper. I yank and a chunk comes loose.

Jonathon releases my throat with a cry the world has never known. He scrambles over my head for the knife. He snatches it up, but I’m already stumbling above him, slamming my heel between his legs.

He rolls to the side, clenching the knife, his bloodied mouth like the opening in a slab of raw bloody meat.

My foot comes down across his nose. He swings the knife, slicing my ankles and calves, slicing me everywhere in tiny strips, my hands now dripping red.

Red lights flash over the hill. The staccato blare of sirens. Voices rise from a place I can’t see.

All I see is the shape of my foot stomping, crushing the hand with the knife. I trample flesh wherever I feel it, wrist bones snap beneath my heel.

His hand lies limp in the grass, his eyes closed, the bloodied knife in the grass beside him. My foot continues to stomp.

Mom.

I grind him into the earth, grind him like a powdery black ash.

Mom!

“I can pinpoint what’s wrong now, Jonathon,” I try to mouth. “Are you going to fix it?”

“Mom!”

Oliver spins me around to face him. He shakes my shoulders. “Stop!” His voice a shrill alarm in my face. He touches my ribs, my hands. “You’re bleeding everywhere!”

“Why didn’t you listen to me?” I say, my words croaking past a singed larynx.

It’s only then that I remember the knife went into my side. I remember Benicio sprawled across the grass as if blown by a giant wind.

Oliver stands before me, untouched. My mother’s dimple. Annaliese’s eyes. My beautiful, beautiful boy.

Katerina comes with her husband Simon and their ten-year-old daughter Frida. They bring yellow tulips tied with thick blue ribbon and a family photo album I get to keep. Detlef and his brother Lukas bring pink roses. There’s Anseln, his wife, Dagmar, with their newborn baby, Maximillian. They bring chocolate and white daisies. Sophie, who’s the exact same age as Oliver—and could be his sister for all the likeness—comes with her father, Emil, and his girlfriend, Klarissa. They speak perfect English, having lived for a time in New York City. They bring red Gerbera daisies and a copy of the
New York Times
. They bring Oliver, too, having offered to keep him however long is needed. Sophie and Oliver immediately take off for a Coke in the café downstairs, instant friends, a united teenage front against so many adults. There’s Lena and Tillie and Ulrike and Magda, all sisters, all great-aunts. There’s Rolf and Astrid and Karl and Rainer. I can’t remember how we’re related. My own nurse, Vanessa Seifert, turns out to be my second cousin.

They give me advice on what to eat and drink to speed up the healing of my wounds. How to tame unruly frizz when the damp summer heat moves in. They give me advice on parenting, baking, where to buy a home, where to buy furniture, even whether or not to ever marry again.

And if that isn’t enough, Willow is arriving at two that afternoon with plenty advice of her own.

Benicio rests quietly in the hospital bed next to me. The doctors finally moved him into my room this morning. He spent three days in intensive care. The cocktail in Henri’s needle was designed to paralyze, and then stop a beating heart.

If it hadn’t been for Oliver’s arm accidentally flopping in the way of Henri’s hand, the needle would have plunged deeper into Benicio’s leg. He could have died within minutes. I’m lucky, too. Jonathon’s knife came within a quarter of a centimeter from puncturing my spleen.

It’s noon and the bustle of doors and carts and voices rouses Benicio. He opens his eyes.

“Hey, you,” I say.

“Hey,” he answers groggily.

I wave the giant bundle of my bandaged hand like a puppet. “Welcome back.”

He smiles. So beautiful. So sleepy, and I know so warm beneath his blanket. It takes everything I have not to crawl in beside him. I’m stitched up everywhere. The pain in my ribs upon standing is unbearable. It hurts to breathe.

A nurse’s assistant slides Benicio’s IV to the side and helps him to sit. I can see how weak he is. He moves carefully, slowly, as if everything is bruised. His eyes seem to be adjusting to the room.

“Lunch,” he says. The first word out of his mouth.

The young woman wheels the convertible table to the side of his bed, turning the top so the brothy soup and mashed potatoes are on a tray suspended over his lap.

The young woman hands me mine and hurries to the next room.

I watch as little by little he comes back to me.

I try the soup, feeling his eyes on me. I know what he’s going to say.

“Don’t you dare,” I say, holding up my puppet hand. “Not a word. My insides are literally going to split open if I laugh.”

“I was going to say,
Guten Appetit
.”

“Sure you were. You don’t even know what that means.”

“Of course I do. It means enjoy your meal. Stuck in this room. Eating off a tray.”

It’s been four years, but I never tire of the view. The tiled rooftops, especially when covered in snow, the twisty river splitting the city in two, the spires and domes and trees, and beyond that, the Alps,
my
Alps as I’ve come to think of them, all there when I open my eyes.

I sit up in bed, quietly, my pillow raised at my back. Any moment the sun will crest over Fraumünster Church, reflect off the spire, shine through the towering bedroom windows, and settle across Benicio’s face on the pillow next to me. He’ll scratch the bump on his nose as if the golden light itches. He won’t remember when he wakes. I watch him without touching. Not an easy thing to do.

Soon Benny will wander in and slip under the covers with what’s left of his floppy yellow bear, its fur worn to a net so thin it scarcely contains what is left of the cotton stuffing. Benny is an early riser like me. Some days the two of us make chocolate chip pancakes alone in the kitchen while everyone sleeps. Benny likes to explain to Pinto, our long-eared brunette mutt, when to put the chips in and how to wait for the top to bubble before flipping it to the other side.

Today is special. I’m thinking waffles with summer berries. Benny loves to try new things in the kitchen. He has opinions about salt and leeks, dense bread and peppered salami. He is a chef in the making. He’ll get a kick out of whipping the cream.

When Benny scrunches his face just right, Jonathon appears in his eyes. The first time this happened I had to look away. But that was years ago. These days what I see in Benny’s face, in the shape of his hands and mouth, in the sound of his little voice, is Oliver fused with a fairer version of Benicio. When Benicio walked off the plane carrying sleepy-eyed Benny on his hip, my love for the boy was undeniable. It was immediate. Instinctive. He was Oliver’s brother. Benicio’s nephew. I wanted to bite his chubby arms and feet. I wanted to swallow his entire body whole.

Benny turns five today. Waffles with summer berries and whipped cream. After that a short sail around the lake. Sometime in between will come the phone call. Benny understands, as well as can be understood at his age, that he has a birth mother named Isabel. But he has always called me Mutti, and I have always referred to him as my son. Deep inside this is who he is, who we are, together. In the end Isabel got what she wanted, at least for her son. Benny will have a better life. I see to it every day.

Benicio scratches his nose and sighs.

I smile but continue thinking of Isabel. Her call to wish Benny happy birthday like last year and the year before that leaves him confused, distracted from the joy of his day. Isabel’s cards and letters have grown more frequent in recent months. A red flag Benicio tries to lower, but the facts are the facts. Isabel’s six-year sentence will be up in the middle of next year. I’ve never quite trusted Benicio’s custody arrangement through Family Services in Mexico. I’ve never quite trusted that everyone who is supposed to be is sitting behind bars.

Isabel’s cards and letters feel like a way of preparing Benny for her return. The thought of this makes me want to pull the blanket over my head and go back to sleep. My mind tunnels back to the very first time I held Benny in my arms, the time I lifted him from his crib and then turned to Isabel and said, “You don’t call the shots anymore,
chica
.”

All of this is causing me to begin the day off balance. I shake it from my mind, yet the joy I’ve come to know these past four years feels threatened, and I find myself falling into a hole.

What did Benicio know? How did he know it? When did he know it?

Every now and then shades of doubt tiptoe in unexpectedly. Benicio and I might be setting the long family table, or riding the Strassenbahn, or sweating in the sauna, or reading a book by the fire, and suddenly I have to ask—
Tell me again how you felt in that moment when you changed your mind. Tell me again what made you change.

You’re what made me change my mind. You, in the car next to me, so close I could have touched you.

Such conversations get inserted, strangely, between chasing one another around the table, dishcloths snapping, Pinto barking at our heels.

Benicio opens one eye and snaps it shut against the sun. He smiles with eyes closed and caresses my thigh with a lazy finger. He was up late working on his most recent script. I ought to slip out of bed, close the drapes, and let him sleep. But I know he’d rather be in the kitchen with me and the boys, running his finger through whipped cream. Celebrating.

It’s summer now, which means picnics in Zürichhorn Park watching Oliver play soccer with his cousins. There are enough of them to fill two teams. Oliver is on break from his second year at NYU, a double major in journalism and music. He knows exactly what he wants to do with his life. Write album reviews, interview bands, keep people up on the latest in the music industry. He has an internship at
Pitchfork
magazine in the fall. He’s a grown man, hugging me in the mornings and at night before I go to bed. He tells me he loves me, and not just before he hangs up the phone. He squeezes me when I cry at the airport. Tells me it’s all right, that he’ll be back in just a few months’ time. I wipe my tears and call him Ollie. “Don’t call me that,” he says with a smile.

It’s when Oliver’s away, when the feelings of loss swirl through rooms empty of him, that so many questions reappear in my mind.

When did you first know the couple in the jungle were there to help us?
I might ask in the middle of brushing Pinto’s matted ears.

When I woke up alive and everyone had a smile
.

Do you still think of Emily? Of the life you wanted so badly to return to?
I might whisper in the phone late at night when Benicio is away in Los Angeles, meeting with producers.

I didn’t know you existed when I wanted those things. I didn’t know I could have the life I have with you.

I didn’t know either. Sometimes I feel guilty for having more than anyone could hope for, while Jonathon remains locked in a cell, bearing my scars, living forever in a place he claimed would be worse than death. I’ve heard the cells are spacious with televisions and books, a soft rug at the center of a clean tiled floor. Jonathon spends his days sitting in a modern chair writing his appeals behind a wooden desk. There are worse things than a Swiss prison.

The FDIC seized Pacific Savings and Trust. It most likely would have collapsed anyway, but it was certainly kicked down the road by Jonathon. For years his focus had been on digging himself out of a hole rather than actually doing his job. In the end customers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I felt partially to blame. If I’d been honest with myself, I would’ve left Jonathon years ago, and all that followed might have gone differently. I made up for this by offering to return money that went beyond what the FDIC could insure. I paid off mortgages and set up college funds. I reinstalled home care nurses to the elderly, returned charities to their work at hand. The number of Christmas cards I receive every year is staggering.

This is what I need to focus on. My life today. Here, with all of my boys. My family. So much family I had to order a custom-made dining room table to fit everyone around it. And Willow visits so often I have given her her very own room.

I need to focus on the future. Benicio and I have plans to collaborate on one of his screenplays. Most of his films feature a female similar in character, if not looks, to me. At least this is what he tells me. “If only,” I say with a wave of my hand, while secretly aspiring to their beauty, cleverness, and wit. Right now I’m too busy with my own work. The screenplay will have to wait.

My office down the hall overlooks the old town and the Limmat River. Some days it’s all I can do not to stare at the winding streets, the wet cobblestones walking me back through time, back to where my story began. But most days I look out, and then I look right back at my computer screen, my own way of looking ahead. Sometimes words feel like tiny jewels between my fingers, so precious I’m afraid to set them down. Other times they drop heavily to the page, boulders thrown from the roof. But most days they gush like sweat from my pores. I forget to breathe. Remember with a gasp. These are the moments I live for.

I never did see Seth again, though it’s only a matter of time. He and his family have accepted my invitation to visit. I’ve become friendly with his wife Julia, our lives intersected when my career took off over a year ago. We love the same authors, send excited e-mails back and forth over the same books. My own book,
Illume
has been on several best-seller lists for ten weeks now. Critics compare me to Joella Lundstrum as
Illume
inches closer to Lundstrum’s number one. Julia removed Seth’s display of Roth and Vonnegut and put my book front and center in the store with a bright yellow sign that reads,
If you’re a fan of Lundstrum’s, then Celia Hagen is your only man
.

Benny slowly opens the bedroom door and peeks in. His eyes are big with sleep and anticipation. By this evening twenty people will be seated around the long table celebrating his life, toasting him to many more. Oliver will play guitar, and everyone will crack up trying to remember lyrics to old pop songs in English. There’ll be more food and cake than we can eat. More laughter than our stomach muscles can stand. Children will fly in and out of the room with Pinto trailing behind. The phone call will be behind us then. Pushed away until the next.

I smile at the big eyes in the crack of the door. I cannot wait to see his face when he opens his very own popcorn popper. Parmesan, he’s told me. He likes it best with butter and Parmesan cheese.

Benicio stirs and sits up as if sensing the start of the day.

I open my arms and wave Benny in.