The Company You Keep (48 page)

Oh, I didn’t doubt that I was as huge for him as he was for me, as legendary for him in the personal mythology of his life as I was in the popular mythology of our generation. I saw it all in reality, what was happening. I knew too that he had had a baby with another woman, and by that very fact that woman was never entirely absent from him. I knew that tired fact that old lovers learn when they meet again: that we never
fully progress from one lover to another, that each real experience of love is in its own way a dead end, because each particular intensity is never found again. The twenty-two years between now and our last meeting was irrelevant. Nothing had changed. Except, of course, everything had changed. And lying there on him that night, after twenty-two years away and a single evening together, I knew that for Jason, what had changed was that I could never again be an end in myself. Not while his daughter was missing. I could only be a means to the single end that meant anything to him: getting her back.

So we lay there in the dark, he staring open-eyed at nothing, each hoping for the courage with which we had, as long as we had known each other, faced everything else.

I woke once to see the pink and blue of dawn, out the window, in the sky. My head was on his shoulder. Then I must have slept again, for when I opened my eyes the second time, he was gone, but the window was ablaze with light. And again I must have slept, because when I next opened my eyes, as if by appointment, the sun had risen high enough to throw that shaft of thick light past the sink and onto the floor, dust swimming in the brightness.

I felt I could sleep forever. I could do anything to avoid what was ahead. But I rose and dressed, jeans and a sweater against the chill morning. He was outside, in a thick plaid shirt, crouched over a little fire, on which he’d made coffee and oatmeal. He had a transistor radio, which he turned off at my approach. Wordless, I crouched next to him, thighs and shoulders touching, while he gave me coffee.

“What’s the news?”

“Sharon was arraigned this morning. Pleaded not guilty.”

“Has she said anything?”

“Nothing. No interviews, no nothing.”

“What’s her lawyer say?”

“Gilly? That her client’s innocent. Gilly was one of us, you know.” His voice was velvety, as if comforting a baby.

“I do know.” I looked at him. “What’s she doing?”

He met my gaze, and struggle showed in his expression. Then:
“Sharon’s after a plea, Mim. She was trying to negotiate a surrender when those bastards got her.”

“Um-hmm. Those bastards. Shame on them.”

My tone was derisive. But your father shook his head.

“Don’t go that way on me, Mimi. Please.”

And suddenly, at last, I didn’t care. As if finally, with Little J, I could complain. For the first time in nearly a quarter century. “Oh, what way, Jasey? Oh, what the fuck way?”

“Mimi. Mimi.”

“Little J. Everyone has a daughter. Slovo. Che. Sandino. Allende. Everyone has fucking children.”

“I know that. I know that.” He answered miserably, looking down. “It doesn’t make any difference to me. She’s seven, Mimi.”

“Her life’s not ruined.” My voice was low, urgent, like a pusher: first nickel’s free, darling. “There’s so much more of it, so much more. She has every chance in the world.”

But your father shook his head. “That were true, I wouldn’t be asking you to do this. I
know
this child, Mimi. She will never get over what’s happened to her already. Sending her back to her mother is setting the stage for disaster. I mean serious, serious disaster. Drug addict, violent, miserable disaster, Mimi. Her mother has a disease that a few years won’t make better. Maybe ten years, if she really really tries. As is, this child…Mimi, if I could take my heart out of my chest and give it to her, I’d have a chance of saving this child. If I can’t, then she’s finished.”

I broke in. “Jasey, don’t you think for a second it’s the
sacrifice
that’s stopping me. That I’m protecting my life? Fuck my life. Fuck my goddamn life. I could slit my wrists this minute. You know that, you of all people. You’re asking me to do something
wrong
, something neither of us believe in. It’s not
right.
You can’t
make
it right that way. It’s not
right
for Sharon to do time. Why don’t the boys down to Kent State have to do time for their mistakes? Why do the ones who massacred Vietnamese become senators and the ones who screwed up a single time become fugitives? Why don’t the ones who shot Freddy Hampton get jail terms? How about the soldiers who
assassinated
American
citizens
in the Phoenix Program? Why us, not them? For Christ sake, we’ve given our
whole lives to the principle that the government can’t excuse
them
and punish
us.
They have to
pardon
us all, or
punish
us all. Now you want me to give in, Jasey, Jasey, how the fuck can you ask me to do that?”

I was shouting, and he hushed me. “Mimi, Mimi. You don’t have to convince me.”

“Then why are you asking me this?”

“Because the principle doesn’t matter.” He was nearly whispering. “None of the principles matter.”

“So you’re one of those, huh. As soon as you breed, all your ideals go out the window. Suddenly it’s a Darwinian universe, and you have to protect your young. Fuck everyone else’s kids. Fuck racism, globalization. Fuck the people all over the world being massacred by our guns, by governments we put in power, we arm, we support. Fuck the black kids with no schools and no food and no future, all over this country. Fuck that we’ve spent twenty-five years proving that if people want to, they can be free of all these rules, of all this government power. Fuck that we’ve been the
only ones
saying fuck you to the march of this government, and
fucking everyone
has seen us do it.”

He answered as if reciting a familiar point in a familiar argument. “If there were a revolution to sacrifice her to, I’d do it. I’d do it in a second. You know that.”

“Well, the revolution didn’t happen. That doesn’t make us wrong. Every single thing we said then is true today. SDS, the whole New Left, it didn’t make the slightest difference: just like we said. Imperialism, racism, warmongering. The government’s stronger, and the people are weaker, that’s the only difference.”

“I know that, for God’s sake.” Now, for the first time, he let his intonation sharpen. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

I, in turn, hardened, my voice hoarse from shouting. “What are you asking, then, if it’s not to abandon every ideal that means anything to us?”

“I’m asking for a trade. She’s seven. You’re heading for fifty. I know her, Mimi, you don’t. I’m asking for the next ten years of your life against the rest of hers.”

A long silence ensued in which I watched the high clouds drifting in from the north, felt the enormity of air mass moving against me, the rising
wind that felt already like it was bringing, from great distance, rain. When I spoke, what I said scared me. It scared me that I was even capable of saying it.

Because of all the things I could have said, what I said was: “I saw her in Ann Arbor.”

Your father nodded, but didn’t answer. Then he said: “What’s she like?”

I started crying again, just like that. “She’s beautiful, Jasey. She’s so, so beautiful.”

Two hours after I left Rebeccah’s father, when my cell phone rang, I was in my new Mitsubishi Montero, parked in front of a camping supply store in Traverse City, studying topo maps of Michigan. It was Rebeccah on the line.

“Are you still in Traverse City?”

I told her I was, hoping I wasn’t going to have to explain what I was doing.

“What happened there?”

“Nothing. Solarz was arraigned. I saw your dad.”

“He told you his news?”

“No. What news?”

“God, Benny. My father just called. Both my parents have quit their jobs!”

I let that sink in, which it seemed disinclined to do. “What in God’s name does that mean?”

Her voice was cracking with excitement. “I don’t know. It’s on the local news. My mother resigned too. They each did a press conference saying they were resigning for personal reasons. And then my dad sent a police car to bring me home. I’m on my way now.”

“Is he sick?”

“No. He says not. He says he’ll explain when I get there. And he left a message for you. He said to tell you that the answer to your question is ‘yes.’ Do you understand that?”

I answered slowly. “I do.”

“There’s more. He told me that I have to tell you something. Benny? Are you listening?”

“No, I fell asleep. Out of boredom. Christ sake, Beck.”

“Calm down. He told me that I have to tell you that I was adopted. And one more thing. He said that you have a one-hour head start. Do you understand any of that?”

“No. Do you?”

Pause. “No. I was hoping you could explain it to me.”

Do you know what the funny thing was, Isabel? The funny thing was, that when she said the word
I
, I couldn’t.

But when she said the word
me
, I could.

I mean, at the beginning of her sentence, I could have explained a little. I could have explained the coincidence of her mentioning her father and Mimi Lurie and the family connection to the Linder estate to me when we first had drinks at the Del Rio and how, therefore, I knew that her father had lied to me when he said he had never met Mimi Lurie.

And I could have explained the intuitive leap I’d made when I learned Rebeccah’s father was having the Linder estate surveilled.

I could have explained to Rebeccah how, therefore, I understood that Mimi Lurie and your father had gone to meet, again, at their old hideout, and realized that her father knew that too.

And I could explain my realization that there was something wrong in Osborne not chasing two known fugitives when he was aware of their whereabouts.

Finally, I could have explained that there was something Mimi could do that could exculpate your father.

All of that, I was able to explain to her when she said the very first word of her short sentence.

But by the last word, less than a second later, I could explain the rest, also.

All of it.

I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, and if you ask me till the end of my life, I still won’t be able to tell you. But in that second while she spoke, I suddenly understood it all.

And so I answered, slowly, slowly: “Beck. I think you need to go talk to your father.”

I lay against his chest, the wool of his sweater against my cheek, heaving with tears. I couldn’t remember crying like this before, ever; I couldn’t remember ever before feeling so deeply purging an emotion. When it was over, sniffing, I sat up and crouched next to him, pressed against him, feeling Jasey’s muscle next to mine, drinking his coffee in hot sips.

Big clouds were blowing in from the north on gusting winds, throwing the tree line in and out of shadow. I watched, and felt Jasey next to me, and dared not look at him. What would he do when I said no? I knew the harshness of what I was sentencing him to. He’d never see his daughter again. He’d have to go somewhere and start over. I knew what it was like to go somewhere and start over at our age. It was not a pleasant thing. Would he stay with me? The thought made my heart quicken. Why not? I had more than enough to live on. Could we not kidnap his daughter and take her with us? At this thought, I looked over at him, now, smoking a cigarette and ashing it into the little breakfast fire he had built. Then I said nothing. There was only one thing he wanted me to say to him. There would be nothing possible for us, nothing, after I said no.

Instead I stood and took his hand. Led him back inside the cabin, back to the nest of sleeping bags on the floor. He followed, willingly, as if he, too, knew that in the impasse between us there was only one kind of communication that was possible, or that made any sense.

Inside I knelt with him on the nest of sleeping bags. I held his face in
front of mine. The dusky light, the high sun splashing light on the floor but leaving the corners in absolute shadow. “Little J.” He nodded watching me. “I can’t do what you’ve asked me to.”

He nodded, again. “I know you can’t.”

“Then what are you asking me?”

“To become the person who can.”

The sun dipped and deepened, dipped closer to the ground so its rays lengthened into the windows of the cabin, creeping up across our bodies; deepened in color so that the afternoon light that filled the cabin when I woke with Jason’s head sleeping on my shoulder, it was a light that seemed to stain rather than illuminate. Slowly, I felt myself sinking into that light; slowly I felt myself traversing the whole range of emotions conjured by that light, the whole territory of emotions that had been waiting to have their way with me again these twenty-two years and more.

Then the process stopped short, and before even being able to think what I was doing, I shook your father’s head and whispered.

“Jason, wake up. There’s a car coming.”