Black Mirror (22 page)

I said nothing.

“And I know that—that the bad things about Daniel—I know that, in a way, they don’t matter. He was your brother … But if it would help you to talk … and I think it might … We were friends, Frances, you and I. Are friends. Aren’t we?”

I didn’t think so. I said softly, “I don’t want to talk.”

Some minutes passed. Then: “Okay,” said James.

The traffic finally began to move. The man in the Toyota turned off to the right. I closed my eyes. And I was back in the apartment building, in Saskia’s tiny room, sitting across from her. Listening, listening, in a time-space vacuum that contained only us, face to face, staring into each other’s eyes, each other’s souls.

“It all happened quickly.” Saskia’s voice was flat, factual. “One morning Daniel found my tapes, all my accumulated
evidence. He’d secretly made a copy of my room key. I walked in and found him sitting with my Walkman, listening to a tape. He’d torn my closet apart looking—he told me he’d suspected I was taping conversations.

“I tried to bluff. I told Daniel it was just insurance, leverage to use against Patrick if we needed to. That it was for both of us. He said he understood. But I watched his eyes as we pretended to believe each other, and I knew he’d tell Patrick. It was only a matter of time. Patrick was due at Pettengill the next day, and if he knew what I was doing—” She swallowed.

“Daniel didn’t get it, Frances. Patrick Leyden was ruining both our lives, and he didn’t see it. Daniel didn’t see what he had become. He didn’t see how bad—how—or he didn’t care.

“We had both become monsters. I didn’t understand at first; I just liked having more money. I didn’t see what I—what I … And then one day I did see. Last September, when Patrick started talking about middle schools. It was like waking up from a dream—like a slap. Suddenly I understood: We might be hurting—killing, destroying—thousands of people. And Daniel—I remember he laughed and said—”

She stopped. I watched her fists clench.

“What?” I said. “Saskia? What did Daniel say?”

She wasn’t looking at me now. I waited.

Then she seemed to gather herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly.

“But Saskia—”

“No!” Saskia said sharply. Then, after a while she added, still not looking at me: “Frances, you can’t possibly understand—I don’t
want
you to understand—what it’s like to suddenly see how ugly you are. You, and the people you’ve chosen to be with …”

My throat closed.

“Look, I thought I had to kill Daniel,” Saskia said rapidly. “I thought I had to. I had to get Patrick. I had sworn to myself that I—and I don’t know. I looked at Daniel and I knew it was too late for him. Maybe I was crazy that day. Maybe I’ve been crazy for months. Or years. But that day I only saw one way for me to—to go on. It seemed to be a choice between one person or thousands.”

Suddenly she looked directly at me. “I still only see one way,” she said. “The way I took.” She reached out then. She reached out across the length of the bed and gripped both my hands in hers. She gripped them tightly, tightly, and it hurt.

“It was easy, Frances,” she whispered, and the words went right into me and lodged like shards of glass. I knew they would never come out. “Killing Daniel was actually very easy.”

“And this is the thing. This is what I want you to know. It was him or me, Frances. It was. If I hadn’t shut Daniel up, Patrick would never have been caught That’s important, right? Isn’t it?”

I looked at her.

“Please,” said Saskia to me. “Please, Frances, tell me you understand it’s important.”

She didn’t say “Tell me you forgive me.” But I heard it. I heard it, and I saw it in her beautiful, beautiful face.

You don’t know what it’s like
, she had said,
to suddenly understand how ugly you are.

I didn’t answer. I stared at her, and she stared at me. And my hands moved a little, in hers, and—almost against my will—gripped back.

I wanted to ask: Why, Saskia? Why exactly do you hate Patrick Leyden so much? Is it just because of the thousands of kids that you think destroying him might have saved? Or is it something more … personal?

The difference in age between Saskia and Patrick Leyden was actually less than between me and James Droussian—Diefenbacher.

I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask because this too was one of the answers to why Daniel had died. I wanted to ask.

But I didn’t.

I was not ready to know.

We had made it to the highway, where the traffic remained thick but did move. I wondered how long it would take to get back to Pettengill. I was supposed to have dinner in the cafeteria with Andy. I wondered if he’d mind if I canceled. If I just went to bed.

Or maybe it would be better for me to keep busy. To take the bus to Boston tomorrow with Andy as planned, and visit
the hospital, talk with the nurses and doctors and social workers who’d known Debbie there … yes. Yes. I’d do that. Yes, that was best. Andy was so excited, so hopeful. And perhaps—who knew?—maybe we would find Debbie. Find her, take her back on the bus with us, help her make a life. Keep her from dying. If I could be part of that, then maybe, maybe …

“Frances, I wish you’d say something,” Diefenbacher—James—said quietly. “Anything.”

I looked over at his profile. It was nearly full dark outside now. I wet my lips. I said, “Okay. Tell me, Special Agent Diefenbacher. Do you like working for the FBI? How do you feel about all of—all of this? Good? Do you like working neck-deep in—” I groped for a word and, to my surprise, found it. “In evil?”

I heard Daniel’s Buddha voice in my head suddenly, and for once it wasn’t sarcastic. He was whispering.
A whole water pot will fill up from dripping drops of water. A fool fills himself with evil a little at a time.

Perhaps that was what had happened.

“Aren’t you afraid?” I said to James. I could hear in my voice that tears weren’t far away, but I wouldn’t let them come any closer. I said what I wanted to say. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get infected? Or that, some day, you won’t know the difference between—between—” I stopped then. I couldn’t go on.

Oh, God. What had my brother thought he was doing? Who was he? What had he believed? And who—who was I?

I buried my face in my hands.

Then, in the darkness, James answered. Almost. He said: “I feel good about Patrick Leyden being in jail. Not to mention his ten best pals. I feel good about their probable futures.” Another second, and then: “The world is not a pretty place, Frances. But I know where I stand in it. I do my best out there.”

I looked up. I wasn’t crying. “Fighting evil?” I said hoarsely. I wanted it to be sarcastic, but somehow it wasn’t. It was just—sad.

A few seconds passed and then James said, “Yes. That was the idea. Doing what I can. I can’t say I never have regrets, but I’m not sorry to be out there trying.” I thought he was done, but then he added quietly: “Every one of us is needed.”

I thought of how Daniel had said similar things originally. About Unity. About doing good in the world. But he had been lying.

“Saskia,” I said eventually. “Do you think she’s heroic? Successful at fighting evil and all?” Could a cold-blooded murderer also be a hero?

I wondered what Saskia’s motives had been, exactly. What was it I had seen in her face as I sat across from her, as I looked deep into her eyes? Pain? Regret? Fear? What had she wanted from me? Forgiveness?

Was what she had done evil? All of it? Part of it? I thought so, but I—I had done nothing. What was that? Who was I to judge?

“Is that what you think?” James asked. “That Saskia is a hero?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I turned back toward the window, and watched the darkness outside the car.

She had participated in Unity, understanding what she did. And then, she had risked her own life, and her future, to shut it down.

She had made love to my brother—my wicked brother—and then murdered him.

There was something I didn’t know, and maybe never would, about her relationship with Patrick Leyden.

She had tried to keep me out of Unity. In her weird way, she had tried to protect me. Maybe.

She was friendless. She was alone. She was facing all kinds of court trials—as witness, as defendant. It would go on and on. She’d said she had a lawyer. What kind of a life would she have from now on?

I didn’t understand her. I had never understood her. Behind that lovely face, she was layer upon layer of complexity. If I were to try to paint her, I wouldn’t know where to begin … I was even more afraid of her now, in truth, than I had been before. She was a dangerous girl, Saskia Sweeney.

No. A dangerous woman. A woman.

Like me.

Compulsively I said, “Will she be all right? What will happen to her, James?” I hadn’t meant to say his name. It just came out.

James didn’t appear to notice. He said, “It’s going to be rough on her. She’ll need to be strong. And—she’s going to need a friend, Frances. Badly.”

I couldn’t speak for a moment. Then I said, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Maybe not,” said James.

We finally broke free of traffic and the car picked up speed. We sat in silence for the remainder of the drive. But as we entered the outskirts of Lattimore, James said abruptly, “Frances? I want you to know something. You’re going to be a very intriguing, very attractive, and very unique woman. Well, you already are. I hope you know that. The man you decide to love someday—when all this is over and you’ve come into yourself—will be very lucky. That is very clear to me.”

He didn’t look at me. And he didn’t say anything else. I knew for sure then that he did know how I’d felt—how I still felt—about him.

He was trying to make me feel better. In the midst of everything that had happened, he was trying to make me feel better about that one thing. I swallowed hard.

Maybe James already had a lover in his life. Yvette? No, somehow I couldn’t imagine that; and, rightly or wrongly, I felt I’d have known when I saw them together. But there was a world of women out there.

And yes, I was one—or nearly one—now, now and not “someday,” now and not “when I was older.” But that didn’t matter.

That
was very clear.

James pulled the car onto the Pettengill campus and stopped in front of my dorm. It was just dinnertime, and there was no one in sight. I was a little late to meet Andy, I thought, but I knew he’d wait. I moved to open my door.

“Frances, just one minute,” said James.

I turned back and, astonishingly, he reached over and took my left hand. His hand was warm, dry. It enfolded mine, and I felt my entire body go still. I looked at him warily. I wanted to run. I wanted—
wanted
—things I couldn’t ever have—

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it once, gently, in the very center of my palm. Then he folded my fingers around the kiss and let go. “Good-bye,” he said. “Be good. And, Frances?”

I was feeling as if I’d been kicked, hard, in the stomach, and it wasn’t the cramps. I could barely breathe. “What?” I said. The word was almost inaudible.

“I meant what I said a few minutes ago. I meant every word of it.”

I felt my shoulders shift uneasily. I could feel the intensity of his gaze. Even in the dark I knew what it said.
You.
A lie? Or not?

I got out of the car. My whole hand seemed to throb. I had just been kissed, sort of, even if it was farewell. The world was black. It was gray. It was unknowable.

I stood on the steps of the dorm. James was still there, in the car, waiting.

With my other hand, the hand he hadn’t touched, I waved once and saw James lift his hand in return. I saw his head move in a nod.

I didn’t watch James drive away forever. I let my feet take me, automatically, to meet Andy for dinner.

A
fter dinner I returned to my room. I knew I should go to bed early; Andy and I were catching the 6:30
a.m
. bus to Boston. Carefully I put the maps of Boston, the bus and subway schedules, and the “Debbie” notebook that I’d started with Andy into my backpack. I planned to take notes tomorrow on everything we did and everyone we talked to. I would also get a list of all the women’s shelters in Boston so that we could call them, one by one.

Andy was hopeful, almost ebullient, about our search plans. Being with him at dinner, watching his face as he talked about Debbie, had made me feel a tiny bit less numb. I took the notebook back out and looked at the picture of Debbie that Andy had taped there. She looked like an ordinary, plump, middle-aged woman, but she’d ducked her head a little and hunched into her shoulders as if she feared
the camera might attack her.
We will try
, I told the picture silently.
I will try my very best to find you and help you.

I put the notebook away again. I set the alarm clock. It wouldn’t hurt if I went to bed now. But I didn’t know if I could sleep. Behind the barriers I’d set up I could feel my brain shaking, my pulse pounding. If I turned out the light, if I lay still in bed, would I be attacked by all I’d learned today?

It might take you years, James had said.

I was overwhelmingly aware all at once of the mirror in the corner, on the wall, still draped in black. I ought to take it down now, I thought. Its purpose was over. It and its black mourning cover should come down. The Frances who had put them there was gone. Gone forever—even if I didn’t quite know who she—who I—had become.

Was becoming.

Still, I didn’t take the mirror and the fabric down. Instead I got undressed and into my pajamas. I carefully put away the new white cashmere sweater, unable to resist giving it one gentle stroke before closing the drawer on it. I went to the bathroom, Mr. Monkey in hand, and briskly flushed away the remains of Daniel’s marijuana. As I came out of the toilet stall, I was surprised to run into Tonia Mack, also in pajamas, brushing her teeth. We smiled shyly at each other and she murmured something about not knowing I was another person who liked to go to bed early sometimes. Then we both scurried back to our rooms. I set the empty Mr. Monkey on top of my bookcase.