“I’m going to dye my hair blond and start walking home from bars late,” Lucy wryly says, and I believe she would do that.
I want to tell Lucy that the direction she has chosen is exciting and I am thrilled for her, but the words won’t come. She has lived many places that aren’t close to Richmond, but for some reason, this time it feels as if she is finally leaving home for good, that she is grown. Suddenly, I become my mother criticizing, pointing out the downside, the deficits, lifting up the rug to look for that one spot I missed when I cleaned the house, reviewing my report card of straight A’s and commenting what a shame it is I have no friends, tasting what I cook and finding it lacking.
“What will you do with your helicopter? Will you keep it up there?” I hear myself say to my niece. “Seems like that will be a problem.”
“Probably Teterboro.”
“So you’ll have to go all the way into New Jersey when you want to fly?”
“It’s not that far.”
“The cost of living up there, too. And you and Teun…” I hammer away.
“What about me and Teun?” The lift has left Lucy’s voice. “Why do you keep picking on that?” Anger rolls in. “I don’t work for her anymore. She’s not ATF or my supervisor anymore. There’s nothing wrong with us being friends.”
My fingerprints are all over the crime scene of her disappointment, her hurt. Even worse, the echoes of Dorothy are in my voice. I am ashamed of myself, deeply ashamed. “Lucy, I’m sony.” I reach over and take her hand in the fingertips of my plaster-confined one. “I don’t want you to leave. I’m feeling selfish. I’m being selfish. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not leaving you. I’ll be in and out. Only two hours away by chopper. It’s all right.” She looks at me. “Why don’t you come work with us, Aunt Kay?” She is out with what I can tell is not a new thought. Obviously, she and McGovern have discussed quite a lot about me, including my possible role in their company. This realization gives me a peculiar sensation. I have resisted contemplating my future and suddenly it rises before me like a great blank screen. While I know in my mind that the way I have lived my life is in the past, I have yet to accept this truth in my heart. “Why don’t you go into business for yourself instead of the state telling you what to do?” Lucy goes on. “Have you ever given serious thought to that?”
“It’s always been the plan for later on,” I reply.
“Well, later on is here,” she tells me. “The twentieth century ends in exactly nine days.”[“_Toc37098909”]
CHAPTER 7
IT IS ALMOST MIDNIGHT. I SIT BEFORE THE FIRE IN the hand-carved rocker that is the only hint of rusticity in Anna’s house. She has set her chair at a deliberate angle so she can look at me but I don’t have to look at her if I find myself in sensitive discovery of my own psychological evidence. I have learned of late that I never know what I might find during my conversations with Anna, as if I am a crime scene I am searching for the first time. The lights are switched off in the living room, the fire in its agonal stages of going out. Incandescence spreads along smoldering coals that breathe shades of orange as I tell Anna about a Sunday night in November a little over a year ago, when Benton got uncharacteristically hateful toward me.
“When you say uncharacteristically, you mean what?” Anna asks in her strong, quiet tone.
“He was accustomed to my peregrinations late at night when I couldn’t settle down, when I would stay up late and work. On the night in question he fell asleep while reading in bed, Not unusual, and it was my cue that I could have my own time now. I crave the silence, the absolute aloneness when the rest of the world is unconscious and not needing something from me.”
“You always have felt this need?”
“Always,” I tell her. “It’s when I come alive. I come into myself when I’m absolutely alone. I need the time. I must have it.”