Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

The knot of annoyance grows. Or maybe it’s a knot of something else.

“That’s all past. It’s in the past.”

“Is it?”

“Of course. Jesus. Jeff just—”

She puts her hands on my shoulders, pulling me close. I can smell her citrusy shampoo. It feels too close for comfort.

“I know, Claire. I know.”

“I’m going to have to see him sometime.”

“I know that too.”

“So?”

“I thought…”

I take a step back. “You really think the worst of me, don’t you?”

“No, of course not. I was just…I don’t know what I was trying to do. I was being stupid, okay? Forgive me?”

I meet her eyes, a clearer, lighter version of my own. “Do you forgive me? I mean, really forgive. Not lip service.”

Her hesitation speaks for her.

“That’s what I thought.”

I walk to the front door and stop with my hand on the knob. “He forgave me, you know.”

“Do you mean Jeff, or Tim?”

I shoot her a look and enter the house. The heat is higher than we normally keep it, and I can hear the murmur of voices in the living room. My parents’ voices mixed with a deeper one, only slightly less familiar. A voice from the echoey past.

As I take off my coat, sadness replaces it, a tight fit. It makes walking to the living room harder, even though I can’t help myself from doing so.

When I reach the doorway, there they all are. My parents, sitting on the loveseat, forced closer together than they ever are in real life. Tim, in the wingback chair no one sits in, not ever. His face is tanned and wrinkled from the sun. He’s wearing chinos, a white T-shirt, and a chunky steel watch on his wrist. His left hand rests casually on the chair arm. His fingers are long, thin, and bare.

I stand there silently, watching, listening to the tone of the talk rather than the substance.

My mother senses my presence first. “Why, Claire. How long have you been standing there?”

Tim reacts like an electric shock’s passed through him, or the shiver of a ghost.

“Not long.”

“Tim’s here,” she says.

“I see that.”

Tim stands at the sound of his name, so quickly the chair tips backward and almost over before righting itself in the deep impressions it’s left in the carpet.

We stare at each other for a moment before he walks toward me, quick and certain. He takes me in his arms, pressing my face to his chest. He smells of salt and an aftershave I don’t recognize.

“I’m so terribly sorry, Claire,” he says.

Then he releases me and leaves.

Despite being only five hundred miles away from one another as the crow flies, there are no direct flights between my Springfield and Jeff’s.

I consider driving to the funeral, but since I don’t think I can stand that much time alone with my thoughts, I take a connecting flight through one of those hubs whose terminals splay out like spokes on a wheel. An hour there, an hour layover, an hour to the other Springfield, and I’ll be there.

I’ll. Be. There.

But what am I even doing here, on my way to Springfield, on my way to the funeral I told Zoey I wouldn’t be attending?

The day after the day, after the shouting, the crying, what I hope was the worst day of my life, I managed, somehow, to pull a cloak of normalcy around me. I sat at my desk, answered my phone and emails, and processed paperwork for the next three unfortunates who were being terminated. I pretended I wasn’t the object of stares, of whispers, of questions, of doubt. In my silence, I hoped, I’d reinforce the hasty explanations I gave on the ride home with Lori, and that would be that. If I was lucky, there’d be some other event, or someone else, to talk about tomorrow.

At midday, an email went out to the members of the HR department. It had been decided that someone from the company should attend the funeral. Be an envoy. Say a few nice things about how devoted Jeff was, how well liked. It wouldn’t be a pleasant mission, so a volunteer would be appreciated.

The email felt like a bomb sitting in my inbox.

Were my coworkers expecting me to defuse it?

As the minutes ticked away and no one reply-alled their raised hand, my chest started to constrict and I worried I might start hyperventilating. I wanted to go, and I knew at the same time that it was the last thing I should be doing.

In the end, I couldn’t help myself.

I’ll go, I wrote and hit Send before sanity restored itself.

As my email pinged into my department’s inboxes, I imagined I heard a collective sigh of relief. Oh, thank God, a dozen people were thinking. I won’t have to be surrounded by sad people, or search for the right words to say. Besides, my thoughts ran on, she should be the one to go, anyway.

Shouldn’t she?

I waited for the right moment to tell Brian. For many reasons, but in particular because of the timing.

Because timing is everything, and the timing here was way off.

“But it’s Nationals,” Brian said once I managed to get the words out in the kitchen after dinner. I’d poured him an extra-strong drink an hour earlier, but the whole bottle wouldn’t make him forget that detail.

“I talked to Zoey—”

“What do you mean, you talked to Zoey?”

“I explained the situation and asked her whether she’d mind if I wasn’t there.”

“You explained the situation?”

“I told her it was a work thing. She said it was okay.”

He leaned against the counter, an incredulous look on his face. “Of course she said it was okay, but you know she didn’t mean it.”

“She seemed sincere.”

“She’s eleven. It’s not her decision. She’s competing at Nationals, for Christ’s sake. Her mother should be there. You should be there.”

The stab of guilt penetrated through the Ativan shield I was still hiding behind. I have one pill left, and I’m saving it for what’s coming.

“It’s not like it’s the first time she’s been there. Or that there’s any doubt she’s going to win. Besides, I almost never go anymore. It’s your thing together. Your thing with Zoey.”

He held his thoughts for a moment. “Maybe you’re right, but it shouldn’t be.”

“I thought you were fine with that? You never said—”

“Honestly? I was hoping you’d realize it on your own.”

He pushed himself away from the counter. I reached out to him, but my reflexes were slow and all I ended up grabbing was the edge of his shirt, right below the elbow.

“Brian.”

He half turned to me. “Let’s drop it, all right? You’ve made up your mind anyway. But it’s not okay, Tish. I am not okay with this.”

He put his hand on the hinged door leading into the dining room and pushed it hard enough so that it slammed against the wall.

I stood there for a long time watching the door swing back and forth, thinking that it should be creaking, that its courtesy-of-Brian-oiled silence was a rebuke, evidence that his commitment to this house, this life, has always been greater than mine.

Julia agreed to drive me to the airport, but there was a thick silence between us.

She pulled up to the five-minute unloading zone. “You have everything you need?”

“I think so.”

“Will you tell me one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Forget it. You won’t say, anyway.”

Her face was a mask.

“I can’t explain, Julia. Not now. Can’t you understand how this might happen, even a little?”

“Understand how it might happen to someone else? Or you?”

“Why is it any different if it’s me?”

“I’m not sure. It just is.”

“I’m sorry, Jules.”

“Yeah, well.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. Her son, Will, was asleep in his car seat, his face flushed, his head resting at an angle only a small child can sleep at. “You should probably go. Don’t want to miss your flight.”

“Right.”

I gathered my purse from the floor, checking it automatically for the hard shape of my phone.

“Can we talk, you think, when I get back?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see, okay?”

“Thanks for the lift.”

She nodded and pushed the button to release the trunk.

“Have a safe flight.”

I collected my carry-on, and as I walked to the entrance it began to sink in that maybe I had lost more than Jeff.

Maybe I was going to lose everything.

Aboard my second flight, I walk down the long center aisle to my seat, and look for room for my suitcase in the full overhead compartment.

“Let me help you with that,” says a man touching forty.

Before I can protest, he swings the bag away from me and up into a space I thought was too small even for the little suitcase I’d brought with me. I don’t intend on staying any longer than I have to.

“All set,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing. Window or aisle?”

“Oh, window I guess. But you—”

“I insist. I prefer the aisle anyway.” He gestures at his height, which I place at six three at least.

I slide over to the window. I tighten the seat belt against my waist and rest my head against the cold oval of plastic, noticing a row of small holes across the bottom. I’ve always wondered what these holes are for. To release pressure, or to keep us from decompressing as we rise to the edge of the atmosphere?