And I wonder if we’re still talking about Herschel Walker or if we’re now talking about Jack.
He says, “I think we’re more like Herschel Walker than Mary Katherine Blackwood. I actually don’t think we’re like her at all.”
I can feel him looking at me, but I keep my eyes on the road.
He says, “Thank you for helping me tonight.”
“I prefer to think of it as saving.”
“Fine. Thank you for saving me.” And now I can’t help but look at him. And he smiles. It is slow at first, creeping across his face like a sunrise until suddenly it shines like the hottest point of the day. I sit on one hand so that I don’t cover my eyes, which is what I want to do.
I smile at him.
And our eyes lock.
Neither of us breaks away, and I actually don’t want to, even when I remind myself I’m driving, Hello.
I drag my eyes away and stare out the windshield, but everything is a blur. I can feel him looking at me.
You need to calm down, girl. Calm. Yourself. Down.
We hit a pothole, and the Land Rover sounds as if it’s going to bottom out.
Jack says, “Christ, this car is shit.”
We turn onto my old street, Capri Lane. I haven’t been back here since that day they carried me away to the hospital. Jack is talking, but I’m not listening because everything is coming back to me. My mom. Being trapped in there. The feeling of not being able to breathe, of thinking this was it, of thinking I was dying. Of being rescued.
When I woke up in the hospital, everything was white. Blue, gray, black, white, like they were the only colors in the world. “You had an anxiety attack,” my dad said. “You’re going to be okay, but we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
We’re getting closer to my house, and I can see it coming toward me, only it’s nothing like it used to be because, of course, they had to tear my house down, didn’t they? Even though it was the last place I saw my mom alive. Even though memories of her were in every wall and floor.
I expect to drive right by it, but Jack says, “Pull over here.” At first, I wonder if he’s playing some sort of messed-up joke. But no, he’s waving at the two-story house across the street and saying, “Let’s see if my brother’s in there. If he is, he can drive you home.” He gets out of the Land Rover and starts up the walk.
I don’t move.
Then—somehow—I open the door. I set one foot on the ground. I pull myself out. I set the other foot on the ground. I stand there.
I say, “That’s your house?”
He turns. “Come on already.” And then he looks past me at where I used to live, and his face goes blank, almost like he’s seeing a ghost.
“How long have you lived there?” It’s all I can do to get the words out.
He doesn’t answer. He looks like he’s having a stroke.
“Jack? How long have you lived there? In that house?”
Silence.
“Answer me.”
“All my life.”
And the world
just
stops.
“Can you tell me what happened, Libbs? Can you tell me what has you so panicked?”
“All of it.” That was my answer, even though I knew my dad was expecting something more specific. “Everything. It was you. Me. Aneurysms. Death. Cancer. Murder. Crime. Mean people. Rotten people. Two-faced people. Bullies. Natural disasters. The world has me panicked. The world did this. Especially the way it gives you people to love and then takes them away.” But the answer was actually simple. I had decided to be afraid.
I don’t know how long it takes me to speak. Finally I say, “I used to live there.” I point at the new house, shiny and big and perfectly intact, that sits on top of the grave that is my old one. The new house is nothing like the one that was there before it.
“I know.”
“How do you know?” And by now, I’m waiting for it. I just want to hear him say it.
“Because I was there the day they cut you out.”
Marcus is driving, and I’m in back. My brother is in a mood about having to leave the house, and now he’s shooting me death looks via the rearview mirror. He won’t even turn on the radio, this is how bad it is. The three of us are driving in silence except for Libby going “Turn here” and “Make a right there.” Her voice sounds frostbitten. Now that I’m doing nothing but sitting, my head has gone heavy from the booze.
It’s warm in the car and quiet. So quiet. I must blur off for a bit because my phone buzzes and I jump. I dig it out of my pocket and there’s a text from Kam.
You ok, man?
I text back: Fine.
Seth said something about you going blind?
I stare at the screen, at the back of Libby’s head. I click my phone off, then click it on again. I write:
I’m face-blind. Prosopagnosia. It’s a thing. Just diagnosed.
When he doesn’t write back, I shove the phone into my pocket. I get this urge to shout into the silence, but I don’t. In a few minutes my phone buzzes again. I don’t bother to look at it.
We eventually get to her neighborhood, and Marcus slows the car to a crawl, inching along, peering out the window. Part of me hopes we’ll never find her house so that I can make this right, and another part of me is just done. Done with her. Done with everything.
Inevitably, we’re there, and I’m struck all over again by how her house looks exactly like all the other ones. If I was designing a home for Libby Strout, it would be exceptional. It would be one of a kind. It would be bright red with a tin roof, at least two stories, possibly more, a state-of-the-art weather station, and lots of turrets. Also a tower, but not one to lock her in. It would be a place where she could sit and look out over and beyond the town, as far as the horizon, maybe even past it.
Marcus says, “We’re here.”
Libby tells him thank you and practically hurls herself out of the car. I always forget how fast she is. She’s at her front door by the time I manage to get myself up the walk.
She whips around to face me. “What? What is it, Jack? What? What?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. But I didn’t want to embarrass you any more than I already had.”
“You could have mentioned it.”
“I could have mentioned it. If it helps, I’ll write you a letter of apology.” I give her a hopeful smile, but she waves her hand at me like she’s erasing it.
“No. Keep that to yourself, do you understand me, Jack Masselin? Put that smile away. That doesn’t work on me. You’re so worried that you can’t ever be close to anyone, but it’s not the face blindness that’s to blame; it’s you. All the smiling and the faking and pretending to be what you think people want you to be. That’s what keeps you isolated. That’s what screws you up. You need to try being a real person.”
I drop the smile.
“Next to my mom dying, being cut out of my house was the worst moment of my life. Do you know I got hate mail? Everyone had something to say about what happened, about how fat I was, about my dad. They wanted to make sure I knew just how disgusted they were and how disgusting I was. They sent them to the hospital and they sent them here. They found my email and sent them directly. I mean, who does that? Who sees a story like that on the news and says, I’m going to write her a letter and give her a piece of my mind. I wonder if I should mail it to the hospital or just hand-deliver it. Did you and your brothers have a good laugh over it?”
Her eyes are blazing. She is daring me to say Yes, that’s exactly how it was, my brothers and I split a rib over it. We love to watch people almost die.
Instead I say, “I’m sorry.”
In that moment, I want to write not just one apology letter but hundreds, one for every horrible person who ever did or said anything mean to her.
“There’s no way anyone would have done that if they knew you. And just so you know, not everyone was wishing you harm. We were rooting for you. I was rooting for you.”
“What did you say?”
“I was rooting for you.”
Something passes across her face, and I can see it—she knows I’m the one who sent her the book.