Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,63
deserved. Funny Bruce had mentioned Sunset Boulevard; it’s what came to mind now, Norma Desmond saying, “We didn’t need dialogue; we had faces.” It’s what Thurlow used to say on days they spent staring at their newborn. Ida on that play mat with the arches overhead, groping for toys, gumming the fur, and them on either side, on their stomachs, watching the world dilate in her eyes. Esme did not get to see this reaction much anymore, though she couldn’t know if it was because novelty no longer solicited at her child’s door or because, when it did, she just wasn’t there.
Ida retrieved rose petals from a dish of oil, and the only way Esme knew Crystal had broken the news Mom wasn’t skating was from a pause in Ida’s chemistry, just time enough for the love in her heart to freeze over.
Crystal appeared to laugh, and because this was not in the script, Esme upped the volume and heard her say, “I know, totally, and in those gross slippers, too. Just be glad you get to go with me instead,” and Ida saying, “I dunno, I kinda like those slippers,” so that Esme closed her computer, brought a hand across her mouth, and tasted the bile that had come up her throat because, despite all, her child continued to reenlist in the collapse of her hopes. Her child still loved, still loved her mom. And this, it turned out, was worse than being unloved, because with love comes expectation.
Practice: Ida, honey, there are things you should know. Your grandparents are dead? The people who raised you, who are the only real family you’ve ever known, died in a car accident? I probably won’t make any of your important events at school this year and might even miss your end-of-term play? Also, of some relevance, your father is wanted by the FBI for trucking in ideas that are anathema to the right wing’s divide-and-conquer brand of governance? Not to mention for consorting with enemy nations? Esme’s heart slammed against her rib cage, and it was like the bones would snap and jut from her chest, because these thoughts were not apropos of nothing. They were apropos of Jim, who was on the phone, yelling the news: “Fucking shit, Esme. Thurlow took them hostage.”
Breathe. Think. Relax. Permit dread of what you have done to paralyze you for ten minutes; then let this paralysis sell indulgences like the Pope. Do not rue your choices. No one could have predicted they’d amount to this. You are an eavesdropper, not a fortune-teller; you can make sense only of what people say, and when did Thurlow say he was going to do this? And how self-destructive can a person be? She felt so defeated. All that effort to protect him in North Korea. The risks she’d taken. And for what? He was in worse trouble now than before.
She held the phone tight. She said, “How long and what are his demands?”
“I don’t know. But I want you where I can see you. Be at the hotel in ten. Fucking shit, Esme. Be here in ten.”
A siege in Cincinnati. This would not end well. No major standoff since Fort Sumter could offer reassuring precedent. And Sumter hadn’t gone that well, either. The kids who had died at Beslan? The fatal vapor that blew through the draw at Nord-Ost? At best, the siege gone wrong provided empirical data. The stuff people were too stupid to figure out in a controlled environment. From Waco and Ruby Ridge: rubber bullets can kill; tear gas is flammable; when your rules of engagement permit deadly force, regardless of who’s in danger, people are going to die. Good lessons, but ones unlikely to preempt every fiasco brinked on a sniper’s mood or the Special Agent in Charge’s bow to pressure to get this thing resolved yesterday. In the crosshairs of a reticle, for a guy who had slept five hours in the last forty, and these in a bivouac tent pummeled by the snows of Cincinnati—for this sniper, whose thermal underwear was frozen with the drench of his labors, Thurlow Dan was a stag trophy and his ticket home.
At last, a legitimate reason to go to Cincinnati. Get dressed, get dressed! She had an emergency bag, of course. Jeans, sneakers, and BDU, which covered most of the bases in a pinch except when you wanted to look presentable, and God forbid a fractal pattern in olive should complement her skin tone. At