Mercury (25 page)

The courtyard suddenly brightened. A gust of wind tossed water from the fountain onto the privet leaves. I asked about his wife. Marguerite was French. She worked at the embassy and understood the painstaking nature of restoration. “See that green.” He pointed to the privet. “In the fifteenth century that was a hugely expensive color. Artists used it only when patrons requested it. Then green got cheaper, and suddenly there were all these nature painters.”

Now that we were outside, he gestured freely. I might have passed him in the street without recognizing his face, but I would have recognized the way his hands accompanied his words, and although they were presently encased in neat black boots, I am sure I would have recognized his bony feet. Whatever came next, I was glad to have these hours.

Much that we talked about has nothing to do with this story. At some point Robert phoned his office to say he was taking off the rest of the day. We abandoned my problems and walked to another museum to eat delicious food off cafeteria trays. We
exchanged news of our parents—his were flourishing in Fife—and of people we had known. We reminisced about an outing to the open-air swimming pool at Portobello, when we had dared each other to jump off the highest diving board.

“We were eight years old,” Robert said, “and the board must have been thirty feet high. I remember you could see the Castle from the top. I can't believe no one stopped us.”

I remarked that there weren't so many rules back then.

“That's still true in Britain compared to here,” he said. “But I do like the States. It's the country of second chances.” He paired his knife and fork neatly on the edge of his plate as if one of our mothers, his or mine, might be about to reprimand his table manners.

“I wish I felt that way,” I said. “Perhaps it's because I never really decided to be here. First my parents brought me. Then my father's illness brought me back.”

“And now?”

“Now I could never do to my children what was done to me.”

“They'll grow up,” he said. “You'll have a second life and a third, like the Peacock Room.”

I thought of Viv, fainting on the subway platform. I thought of my lies. “I think my second life has already begun,” I said.

We returned once more to the Peacock Room. A man in a blue shirt was lecturing a tour about the painting over the fireplace. Christina Spartali's father had refused to buy it because it wasn't enough of a portrait. As the tour straggled out, Robert asked if I remembered that sonnet, “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.”

“Who would ever say Spartali's name now,” he said, “if not for Whistler? I have to pick up the kids in an hour. How can I help?”

“What do you think I should do?” I said. “There's no one I trust more.”

Once again he circled the room, pausing at what I presume were favorite vases, before he led the way back to the courtyard. It had begun to rain. We sat at a different table under the arcade. I felt very calm. The rain fell on the sidewalk in big warm splotches.

“I think,” Robert said at last, “you have several choices, none of them simple. You can beg Viv to go to the police. You can tell Jack and let it be his decision. You can consult a minister or a rabbi or a Zen master and do whatever they advise. You can walk away. But if you want to know what
I
think you should do, I think you should go to the police.”

Night after night, I had stood in the doorway of Trina or Marcus's room, weighing their well-being against my need to look in the mirror. Now, listening to Robert, all the equations fell away. Going to the police was the only right thing to do. I could not shift the burden of decision onto Viv, or Jack, or even my children.

“So?” he said.

“The police,” I said.

The rain fell softly within a few inches of our feet. “Will you tell Viv first?”

Again I knew the answer. “Yes. This doesn't have to do with my feelings for her.”

“And Jack?” Robert's eyes were closer to gray than I remembered. Or perhaps I had misremembered.

“And Jack what?”

“Do you think he'll be able to forgive you?”

All along I'd been thinking that Viv was the one who had hurt Jack. Now, with Robert's question, I began to understand
that I too, by my silence, by my lies, had hurt him. I held out my hand to catch the rain. “I don't know,” I said. “I'm not sure anyone will forgive me: Jack, Viv, my mother, my children.”

“I bet they will,” said Robert. “Eventually. And then you have to forgive yourself. In your letter you wrote that sorry is a very small thing to say, but what else do we have?”

We went back into the museum, walked past the Peacock Room and out into the street. As I apologized for monopolizing the conversation, Robert's hair grew dark with rain. Mine too, I assume.

“I hope we can meet again,” I said, suddenly awkward.

“Sure,” he said. “Give me a heads-up when you're next in DC, and I'll do the same if work brings me to Boston. Do you know the way to the Metro?”

I did. We embraced, kissed each other's cheeks. He wished me luck and walked off with his quick, easy stride into the rain.

W
E WERE PAST DAYLIGHT
savings, and the sun was just setting behind downtown Boston as I left the airport. I found myself thinking again of the woman who'd driven the IRA getaway car, the yearning on her daughter's face as she sang “Deck the Halls.” Which matters more: ideals or people? When Diane posed the hypothetical question about the Rembrandt and the grandmother, I had felt certain I knew the answer. But I had lost that certainty. Now, thanks to Robert, I had it back. There might be different versions of reality, but there were indisputable facts: a gun, a bullet, Jack's pain, the laws of Massachusetts. I arrived home to find the children playing Ping-Pong and Viv scrubbing the kitchen floor, a latter-day penitent in her yellow rubber gloves.

An hour later, sitting at the kitchen table, the air still smelling faintly of Murphy Oil Soap, I described my day. “How great,” Viv said. “After all these years you found Robert.” Her smile was so bright, I blinked. I had forgotten what she looked like when she was not struggling to contain, or conceal, her feelings.

“I needed his advice,” I said.

The brightness vanished. “And?”

I told her my decision. “I'm sorry,” I added.

I had been ready to justify myself, to explain my reasoning,
but she gave a small, curt nod. “For what it's worth”—her gaze was surprisingly neutral—“I'm amazed you waited this long.”

Quietly she stood up and left the room. I heard the study door close. Later, in a notebook on the desk, I read the list she wrote that night.

    
Saddle pad for M.

    
Talk to Claudia, kids, Peggy.

    
Speak to Francesca re lawyer.

    
Police.

My jaw clenched when I read this for the first time, and still does when I reread it. The human brain often juxtaposes the sublime and the trivial. On the beach at Gloucester, in the midst of lamenting my father, I was momentarily distracted by what I thought was a seal. But that the arrangements of our lives came after a saddle pad for Mercury made me want to break things.

That night at the kitchen table, though, the night after my day with Robert, I had no idea what she was writing. I sat there, looking at the print of Edinburgh Castle, wondering if I should go after her, tell her that, whatever came next, we would face it together. Instead I went over to Nabokov's cage. He was sitting on his perch, one claw drawn up, his head tucked to one side. I opened the door and reached in to stroke him.

“Tell me I'm doing the right thing,” I said.

“Now is the winter of our discount tents,” he said in my father's voice. Then, giving me a bright, attentive look, he reached out and pecked my wedding ring.

In bed I did not read but turned out the light and lay there, my head full of thoughts about Robert and the movable room. Around the feet of the Money peacock the ground was strewn
with little gold coins. The blue vase on the sideboard was from the Song dynasty, eleventh or early twelfth century. How had it survived nearly eight hundred years when I could barely survive forty? I was in that state between waking and sleeping, neither fully inhabiting my body nor entirely absent, when I heard footsteps. The mattress dipped. There were hands on my chest, my stomach, lower. One part of me drew back, watching; one part plunged into doing. Then Viv and I were making the beast with two backs: rocking, pushing, almost fighting. We cried out, and for a few seconds we were both free of the net of time. When I opened my eyes again, she was gone. Only a lingering warmth testified to her presence.

M
Y CONFESSION, AFTER ALL
my agonizing, was surprisingly easy. At lunchtime—Viv had asked me to wait until noon—I drove to the police station; there was a parking space; Detective O'Donnell was on duty. Seated once again in her small office, I offered neither apology nor excuse. There was something I hadn't told her. I had seen who shot Jack Brennan. My wife had accidentally fired the gun. Detective O'Donnell offered no reproaches. She thanked me and asked for details: Where did Viv get the gun? New Hampshire. Where was it now? She'd thrown it into the woods. Where was she? At Windy Hill. Did she know I was here? She did. The whole momentous conversation took less than ten minutes.

“What will happen?” I said.

“We'll talk to Ms. Turner, and hopefully recover the weapon. It'll be up to the DA exactly what she's charged with.”

“And me?” I said. “Will I be charged with concealing a crime, withholding information?”

“In the circumstances—Mr. Brennan is recovering, the assailant is your wife—I very much doubt it. And you have children, don't you?”

As I rose to leave, I asked if she could wait until tomorrow evening to speak to Jack. “I want to be the one to tell him,” I said.

She eyed me curiously; I was sure she was going to refuse. Then she said, “It's quite irregular, but I don't see why not.”

All afternoon as I met with my patients, I was thinking, Is Viv being arrested now? Or now? Is she being taken away in handcuffs? I was waiting at the school gates when finally a text came:
talked to police tell u later
. In the supermarket I allowed Trina and Marcus each to choose three treats.

“Is something wrong?” Trina asked.

I was in the kitchen, unpacking the groceries, when there was a knock at the door. “Hello,” called my mother. Viv had phoned to ask her to babysit. She needed me at the stables. The code of the new security gate was the year of her birth.

Only now, writing this, do I realize that I could have ignored her summons, gone to Paddy's Lunch and enjoyed a solitary beer. At the time I seemed to have no more choice than one of my father's trains. It was just growing dark, and the road outside town was still lined with snow. I listened to the CD Hilary had played as we drove to the stables. In all the turmoil, I had never once thought to call my sister. Without our father, we had less and less in common. On the barn door was a note: “In the arena.” The windows shone as they had the night I came to retrieve Marcus's book. When I stepped inside, Viv and Mercury were at the far end. I sat down in the viewing area.

As they approached, I saw the dark shine of his eyes, the muscles rippling in his shoulders and haunches, his tail flying like a flag carried into battle. I had never seen Viv ride him before. Now she was offering me her most persuasive argument: Mercury in motion. After circling twice, she approached the row of jumps. I watched, and then I shut my eyes and listened. Gradually I began to separate out the sounds. The thud of hooves, the snort
of breath, Viv's comments when they were close: “Good boy.” “Pay attention.” The way Mercury's pace slowed as he neared a jump. The brief silence while he was in the air and, when he landed, the rhythm different again until he hit his stride.

I opened my eyes to see him galloping towards the highest jump. He and Viv leaned forward, hurling themselves into the air. Mercury drew his hindquarters under him. His forelegs reached for the ground. During one of our early dinners Jack had described the Centaurides, beings half horse, half woman, the two halves not fighting, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but in harmony. This was Viv's ultimate version of the beast with two backs. This was what she had risked our lives for.

And with that thought, the spell was broken. I was on my feet.

“Wait,” called Viv.

In a moment she and Mercury were beside me. I could feel his warmth, hear his breathing. “What happened with the police?” I said.

Her face, looking down at me, was shadowed by her helmet. “I told them everything, except Chance's name, and I took them to where I'd thrown the gun. One of the policemen went back and forth with a metal detector. He found the ammunition but not the gun. They'll try again when the snow's gone. Then I went to the station and made a statement.”

“But you're not under arrest.”

“Not yet.” Her voice was calm, almost gentle, as she described how sometime this spring the district attorney would decide the charges. Then Viv would appear before a judge, who would decide her sentence: probably six months to a year.

As she spoke, Mercury swung his head; his bit jingled. Did he sense her grief? Or mine?

S
URELY IT WAS NO
coincidence that that night the Simurg finally came. I was walking beside the Firth of Forth on a summer's day, bright but not warm, when suddenly the air overhead was thick with wingbeats. Before I understood what was happening, a pair of claws encircled me. The Simurg clasped me to its feathery breast. Slowly we rose into the air until I was looking down at the Hawes Inn and the houses of South Queensferry, the gray water of the Firth and then the city of Edinburgh, with its castle and its church spires, the city my parents, Robert, and I had left far behind. When the Simurg set me down at the country railway station, the willow herb was in full purple bloom. My father was standing at one end of the platform, waiting.

The next morning at breakfast I described the dream to Trina and Marcus.

“Did the bird talk?” Trina said.

“It must have been huge,” said Marcus.

“It was, but I wasn't frightened. I don't remember either of us talking. There was no need.”

I did not tell them about my father, how he had smiled as I approached and how, just as he was about to speak, my eyes had opened.