I said furiously, but Michael began to laugh. I looked at him, disconcerted.
He sat down on my chair and pushed off, rolling across the floor, shaking his head. “Oh shit, Emma. You really do think you are the center of the universe, don’t you? First it’s ‘I can’t leave, I’m involved in this,’ all very martyr-ly and fatalistic. Now you’re blaming yourself for the way everything turned out. A little internal consistency, puh-leeze!” Michael wiped his eyes, hauled himself out of the chair, and began to pace. “Sure, I could argue you’re the center of the universe, plenty of evidence for it. But you gotta go one way or the other. If you are, then you don’t have to worry about your actions—you are, after all, the prime mover. If you aren’t, then it doesn’t matter in the first place. You’re just an insignificant bundle of water and nutrients on a wet little rock that’s quickly getting overheated by a cold and dying star.”
I felt a flash of adolescent impatience: He was totally missing the point. “Can’t you see? I’m just like Harry. I am no better than he is…was.” I walked over and looked out the window. Down below, Brian was inspecting the early daffodils critically. I rested my head against the glass and watched as he scraped cautiously at the dirt to see if the tips of green showing were really going to be tulips. I sighed. “When he burnt my…that letter, I knew what he was feeling—I nearly drove us both off the road to get at that letter.” And, I thought, what about the rage I felt at the dean, that night he called up to prod me about my tenure review? It scared me to think how tightly I’d wound that phone cord around my hand, almost wishing it was his throat. I was capable of the same feelings as Harry. The same kind of passion. The same violence. And that scared me to death.
“Okay, that’s where you’re getting hung up.” He gestured emphatically with both hands, framing the issue, rendering it moot. “Empathy is not the same thing as sympathy. When you did finally drive off the road, was it to save yourself or to punish Harry?”
I didn’t really want to go back there, but I also wanted to be convinced, so I told him. “I was just trying to get out of there alive—”
Michael threw his hands up, Q.E.D. “There you go. There’s nothing wrong there. So, in simple terms, you’re fretting about being angry that a bad person hurt you and might have done worse—to you and who knows what other innocent bystanders, if there are actually such things—and not thought twice about it. And you’re upset that you were the force that stopped him from doing those things?”
I didn’t answer.
He wasn’t discouraged yet, and settled comfortably into searching out a rationalization that would work for me; rationalization on short order was a specialty of his. “Hmmm. Look, there are a thousand versions of the truth, I must have one that fits. Okay, how about this? What about vengeance? Jack and Faith, flawed as they were, didn’t deserve to die. You made Harry belly up to the cosmic bar and pay his karmic tab, would you buy that?”
I shook my head, watching Brian pick up the rake and walk back toward the house.
Michael seemed to take all this as a challenge, trying to come up with every angle ever thought of. “Well…What if, by stopping Harry, giving him that one moment of realization of what he’d done, you’ve redeemed him?”
I turned and looked at him askance. “You don’t believe in redemption.”
He waggled his hand back and forth, mezzo-mezzo. “Jury’s still out, as far as I’m concerned, but the real question is, did Harry?” Michael wagged a finger, sure he’d hit the answer, and began to pursue his point. “And, more important, do you? Every one of us has the capacity for evil or good. You had the power, you made the choice. All you have to do is make the decisions for the right reasons. And wasting your time worrying about why you’re still alive is silly.”
I walked over to the little glass-topped case and carefully reorganized the lithic and ceramic pieces that Michael had mixed up, moved out of order. I didn’t feel a weight tumble off me, or anything dramatic like that. But I did feel as though a heavy, barred door had opened a crack, and that was enough.
I