Innocents and Others (23 page)

When they got to the train station, Carrie and Kyle got out of the car, and Meadow switched to the driver's seat. Carrie leaned down to Meadow's window.

“Are you going to be okay?” Carrie asked.

“Yes,” Meadow said. “I am just tired of confessions.”

“You don't have to drive back tonight. Why don't you stay in the city?”

“I'll be fine. I want to get up there,” Meadow said. And Carrie watched her drive away.

* * *

Carrie remembered that it was three days before Meadow's mother would call her and tell her about the accident.

DAMASCENE

I

In the 2015 spring semester, Meadow taught her class in DIY film, which always overenrolled. She attracted the students who disdained commercial filmmaking; they wanted to be like Sadie Benning, making disturbing videos with discontinued Fisher-Price PixelVision cameras they bought on eBay, or editing narratives out of found surveillance tapes, or using stop-action animation techniques for ironic nonchildish subject matter. She liked her students. They were finishing two weeks on the “LA Rebellion” of African American filmmakers of the 1970s. The anti-Blaxploitation films. Today they would discuss one of her favorite films,
Killer of Sheep
by Charles Burnett, which she had screened earlier in the week.

“
Killer of Sheep
was Burnett's MFA thesis. Think about that. Burnett made it for ten thousand dollars. Black-and-white sixteen millimeter shot with a school camera and edited in the school editing room. He made it on weekends over five years, using a number of nonactors from his Watts neighborhood, and filming in locations he grew up in. He says he wanted ‘just the daily life of a person.' A scripted, fiction film that also contains a lot of real life, including the famous extended scenes of children playing. It is a beautiful film. The poverty of the neighborhood is everywhere, but Burnett treats it as something worthy of deep looking, with long takes, striking compositions, and lush music.”

Meadow paused. “Today for small amounts of money we can buy a digital camera and edit film on our laptops. Or we can shoot and edit films using our iPhones. And yet. We should be overwhelmed with amazing outsider films, indie films, handmade films. Where are they? If technology was the barrier, and that barrier is gone, why don't we have some nerd in Albany making a homemade great American film like
Killer of Sheep
? Or like John Cassavetes? Instead we get bright kids doing super cuts of TV shows or selfie/vanity films made for Vine and Instagram. Fast and shallow.”

She didn't mind that she sounded like a scoldy old person sometimes. The students looked up to her, listened to her. One of them, she was determined, was going to make something great.

“But maybe there are brilliant homemade films being made. How would we see them, find them, with all the visual static vying for our attention? Between all the”—Meadow paused, looked very serious, very stern, waved her hand—“cat parkour videos taking up all the available channels.” The class giggled.

Afterward, as she was collecting her things, a student came up to her and waited until she looked up.

“Professor Mori, I saw your film
Children of the Disappeared.
I loved it.”

“Oh. Good,” Meadow said. “It was made a long time ago.”

“I read Carrie Wexler's essay,” she said. “And your essay.” She made finger quotes when she said “essay” and smiled.

Meadow knew they would get around to asking her about that. Meadow smiled and then zipped up her bag. Meadow liked this student; she always listened and made interesting comments.

“Your essay was great—people were totally confused by it.” Then, “I didn't realize you wrote fan fiction. And it is really cool that you did old fat Orson Welles, nobody does old fat Orson Welles. Plenty
of people have done young slim Welles, but I don't think anyone has done what you did.” The girl beamed. She appeared to be waiting. Meadow just nodded and waited back. “So, can I ask you something, Professor?”

“Sure.”

“Since you are so passionate about cinema, why would you quit making films? If you don't mind my asking?”

“I don't mind your asking. I just haven't wanted to make any more films. I used to—” Meadow stopped, looked at this young woman's face. “But not anymore.” The student nodded. “I'm afraid I have to get to a meeting now.”

“Oh, sure.” The student walked to the door and then turned to face Meadow. “You know what? I know you were joking, but there actually are cat parkour videos. It's like a whole subgenre of cat videos.”

Meadow laughed and shrugged. “Of course!” When the student left the room, Meadow said, “Fan fiction? Oh my god.”

When she got home, Meadow opened her laptop and reread Carrie's essay. Carrie had written that the accident had changed Meadow, which certainly was true. Of course Carrie knew more than that, and she had to leave that part out. But over the years Meadow saw the whole thing much more clearly. Your life changes, and it can seem like it bursts into the new life. A damascene moment, a conversion. But if she was honest, she saw it was a number of moments—­significant events, one building on the other. All of them converting her, spinning her toward her new life. It wasn't a downward spiral, although it felt that way at the time; it was an inward spiral, a seashell spiral, a
spira mirabilis
, as if she were drawing the events to her, moving her closer to who she really was.

The first event was the phone call from Nicole/Jelly/Amy. It came long after
Inward Operator
had been released, when she was deep into
the filming of
Children of the Disappeared.
Meadow got a message on her voice mail. She referred to herself as Jelly, not Nicole or Amy. Meadow called her back. She had no idea what was coming—she truly expected that the woman had seen the film again and was calling to say she liked it.

Jelly:
I finally saw your film. The one you made about me.

Meadow:
You did.

J:
I didn't want to see it before because I was scared of watching myself, my life.

M:
I can imagine.

J:
You cannot imagine.
(A pause.)
You have no idea. The fact is that some women do not get love. And I knew that, I didn't need you to show me that. I didn't need the world to laugh at me. I did not need you to humiliate me. There is enough pain. Only Jack had a right to judge me.

M:
I think you are wonderful, and I tried to show how interesting you are.

J:
Don't condescend to me. I am not stupid, although I was naive to believe you. You had all the power, and you knew exactly what would happen.

M:
I believed in you, I thought that Jack—

J:
What?

M:
I really thought that Jack would love and forgive you. That he would understand you.

J:
You set me up to be humiliated. You knew how it would look. You filmed it.

M:
I didn't know. I swear I didn't know how it would go.

J:
You did this to me. You did this to me. It was a hard, mean thing.

M:
I am so sorry.

J:
You played me. And then when you saw what you had, you put the film out there. Not everything needs to be filmed. Not everything needs to be seen, to be public. What good did it do? What was it for?

M:
I don't know.
(A pause.)
I don't.

J:
I just wanted you to get the picture on costs. What you did and what it felt like for me.

M:
Okay. I'm sorry.

J:
Some people—you, for instance—are very lucky in this life.

Meadow never told anyone about Jelly's call, but it was impossible to forget what Jelly said. When Meadow later received a lot of criticism for
Children of the Disappeared
, she kept thinking back to Jelly's reproach. Meadow needed to do something different, which led to the second event: the aborted Sarah Mills confession. And her weird lack of affect as she confessed. The experience shook Meadow completely, which led to the third event, the accident. The stupid, careless accident.

After the three-hour drive from Bedford Hills, when she was just a few minutes from home, she realized she had no coffee or food for breakfast tomorrow. Meadow stopped at the Price Chopper to get groceries. She swiped her credit card and waited. She was tired, and she heard the girl say, “Thank you,” and hand her the receipt. It didn't occur to her to say “thank you” back until she had already started to walk toward the door.

“Excuse me,” she heard the girl shout. Meadow turned back and the girl was holding up her bag.

“Oh, my groceries! Sorry. Thank you so much,” Meadow said brightly and took the plastic bag. Where was the car? She clicked her alarm button on her key to find it. It clicked and the lights blinked. Of course, there it was.

Sarah's hand had shaken a little, otherwise you would never know that she was fragile. It would be impossible to guess what she was talking about if you didn't speak English. She was so cool, even after twenty years, could someone be so cool?

Meadow turned on the car. She cranked up the heat. She turned on the radio, then she turned it off again. It was like that
Brother's Keeper
documentary. Wasn't there a scene where the old guy confesses on camera to killing his brother?

People will tell you anything. “I would confess,” Meadow said out loud, and she was shocked at how her voice sounded in the car. She laughed. Maybe it is from watching so many confessions on TV and in the movies. Meadow's hands held the wheel lightly at four and seven o'clock. Her neck was sore; she put one hand in her lap and moved the other one across the steering wheel so she could control the wheel with one hand. The setting sun was in her eyes. She was driving into the dusk, and even with sunglasses it was too bright.

“I confess,” she said. “I am a terrible, selfish person who just tries to make myself look smart,” she said, doubtfully. “But really, I am just trying to make myself. Out of looking at other people. I have no real self, I think,” she said. Meadow still couldn't see and reached to lower the visor. Just then she changed lanes, to get into the lane that was for her turn, the turn she had made a thousand times before. Meadow was already in her driveway when she made that turn, already walking to her bed, to the sleep that she needed so badly. She looked to her left, but she didn't look. She heard a horn, and she saw her car rushing toward the side of another car. She pressed the brakes, but her car did not stop, it swerved, and in the moment before contact, she knew this was a big accident, and she thought perhaps she would die.

When she hit the side of the other car, the front of her car crumpled and ripped away. There was an explosion, and her hands were
pinned down as the airbag hit her face. Then it was over, just the burning smell. The airbag deflated, but she felt something sticking to her chin. She pulled the latch of the door and pushed. It creaked loudly but the door opened and she stumbled out.

“Are you okay?” a woman asked her. And Meadow nodded yes, but then she fell back against the car and the woman helped her to the curb.

“My face,” Meadow said, and tried to touch her chin.

“Don't touch it. It looks burned from the airbag. And your knee, does that hurt? Don't move. An ambulance is coming.”

The EMS people put a blanket on her. They made her lie down. They put something on her face. It was starting to hurt. The burning smell was awful, plastic and acid. She felt suddenly that she would be sick.

Only once she was in the ambulance did she think to ask.

“What about the other driver? Is the other driver okay?” The attendant nodded.

“They took her to the hospital. They are taking care of her right now.”

“Oh my god. Was she hurt badly?” Meadow tried to get up. The attendant gently pushed her back down.

“I don't know, but she is getting care. Don't worry.”

“What have I done,” Meadow cried. “Oh god, what have I done?” Meadow started to sob, which hurt all of her face and her chest.

“It was an accident. Just an accident. You need to calm down. Everything is okay.”

Meadow shook her head. She closed her eyes.
No. You don't understand. I am a terrible person, I do this all the time.

It was true. Lately Meadow had been reckless in her driving. She slid blindly into traffic, she barely looked over her shoulder when
she changed lanes. She drove quite fast, and negotiated turns with one hand loosely gripping the steering wheel. None of this was on purpose. None of it broke the surface of her conscious mind. It was only in the hospital, where she was kept for a day and a night due to her concussion, that she remembered how much she had been courting an accident. Her own desire to hit a divider and bounce off, or a tree, or an embankment. Not to die, but to make something hit her, shake her up. But never—she swore—did she ever imagine hurting another person.

Her victim was a thirty-year-old woman. Her injuries were not serious. A broken hand from her airbag and some bruises and a stiff neck. Yet Meadow knew that she was lucky. The cost of Meadow's carelessness could have been someone's life, and Meadow would have fallen into it without a thought.

Meadow's mother had flown out and was there to drive her home. Meadow was weak and unable to take care of herself. She needed to stay in bed and rest for two weeks. So here she was, at thirty-five, being cared for by her mother. She did not mind this at all. Her mother, as beautiful and familiar a person as Meadow would ever see, brushed her hair from her face. Her mother brought her a tray of food. Her mother helped her sit up with pillows behind her back. Her mother brought her books and ice water. Her mother helped her to the bathroom, and then stroked her face gently before kissing her good night. Meadow gave in to it. She had no resistance to the love. She was helpless, and her mother helped her. But still Meadow stared into space as she tried to sleep, her eyes wide open in the dark, and she knew it was not good—her life, the world, the accident.

Kyle visited. Carrie called her. Meadow told them all she was fine, just sore. Her face looked bad where the plastic had stuck to her chin, but even that would heal quickly. The second time Carrie called, Meadow
told her, “Do you know why people change when they are sick? They have time to think about where they are. And how little they have left.”