Innocent Blood

‘You said your son seemed OK, too.’

Frank stared at him. ‘Excuse me? What exactly are you trying to imply?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I was simply trying to suggest that this young woman could have been more seriously injured than she first appeared.’

‘She was walking and she was talking and she was articulate, OK?’

‘Did you know her?’

‘No. No, I didn’t.’

‘She wasn’t a parent at The Cedars or a member of the faculty or anything like that?’

‘I have no idea who she was, none at all. She asked me if I was OK, and then she asked me if I had lost anybody in the blast. I said . . .’ He pursed his lips, and then he looked away, toward the window.

‘I understand,’ said Lieutenant Chessman. ‘At that time you didn’t know that Danny had been hurt.’

‘We’re just trying to find as many eye witnesses as possible,’ put in Detective Booker. ‘Like, if you saw this young woman again, do you think you would recognize her?’

Frank pictured the young woman’s dusty, short-cropped hair, and her bleached-out blue eyes. She had been almost beautiful in a rather Slavic way. Not the kind of looks that usually attracted him – he had always preferred Audrey Hepburn types like Margot, small and dark and vivacious. But now he came to think about the young woman again, he thought yes, there had been something about her, something both assertive and wounded. Something that would catch you like fish hooks, and cause you a whole lot of trouble to get free.

‘She . . . ah . . . well. She just walked off. Shocked, I guess, like everybody else.’

‘Did she say anything before she walked off?’

I’ve lost somebody, too. Not a child. Somebody closer than that. What had she meant by that? Somebody closer than that. Who can be closer than your own child?

‘She . . . no.’

Detective Booker raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

That night he watched television until well past midnight and drank three-quarters of a bottle of Stolichnaya. For most of the time he quietly cried, his cheeks glistening in the light of The X-Files and Stargate SG-1, letting out a thin agonized whine that hurt his chest.

He couldn’t bear to watch the news again. The same footage was being repeated over and over – the smoke, the dust, the bloodied bodies in the schoolyard.

At last, exhausted, he switched off the television and made his way to the bedroom, walking like Captain Ahab on the tilting deck of the Pequod. He collided with the half-open door and it was only then that he realized how badly he had been bruised when he had been blown into that parked Toyota. He unbuttoned his shirt, pulled down his sleeve and frowned at it, although he was finding it hard to focus. His shoulder was a mass of crimson and purple.

‘Oh, God,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘Please turn back the clock. Oh, God, please let it be yesterday.’

But when he negotiated his way along the corridor to Danny’s room and switched on the light, he found that Danny’s bed with its X-Men bedcover was neatly made and empty, and that Danny’s Star Wars figures were still crowded on the shelf, as bereaved as he was. Nobody would ever play with them again.

He sat down on the end of Danny’s bed. He didn’t cry any more because he didn’t have any tears left. He didn’t want to think about this morning ever again. He wanted to forget that it had ever happened. But even with his eyes open, all he could see was an endless silent re-run of the bomb going off, and Danny sitting in the back of the car, and the expression on the face of the paramedic who had lifted Danny out of his arms.

A few minutes after two A.M. he knew for certain that when dawn came it wasn’t going to be yesterday, and so he shuffled along to the bedroom and tried to open the door. It was locked.

‘Margot,’ he called. There was no reply. ‘Margot, could you open the door please.’ Still no reply.

He raised his fist, ready to knock, but then he thought, no, I’m too tired and I’m too drunk and she blames me for Danny’s death and I can’t stand the thought of a screaming, furniture-breaking argument, not tonight. Think of Danny, lying in the morgue. Show some respect.

‘Margot, I know you can hear me. I’m showing some respect.’

He paused, and swayed, and held on to the door frame to catch his balance. ‘I just want you to know that whatever happens, whatever happens, I never wanted it to happen, not that way. Not Danny. I did . . . I made the wrong decision. I know I made the wrong decision. Nobody . . . nobody loved Danny more than I did. Nobody. And I made the wrong decision. I admit it.’

He pressed his ear to the door, holding his breath, listening, but he couldn’t hear anything at all, not even sobbing. After a while he went back to the living room and sat down on one of the white leather couches. The living-room walls were painted pale magnolia but they were hung all around with Margot’s paintings – enormous paintings, six feet by seven feet some of them, Impressions In White I – VII. She had painted them all on untreated canvas, in white oil paint, and although they were textured with whorls and curls and cross-hatching, that was all they were: white.

‘Painting is all about paint,’ she always said, crossing her legs in the lotus position. ‘I want people to forget about form and shape and composition. Form and shape and composition – they’re all tricks, to stop people seeing what really matters.’

What matters, Margot, is our only son lying dead and chilly in the morgue. What matters is all those poor children blasted to bits in the schoolyard. But then, if people in this world are capable of acts as hideous as that, maybe nothing matters. Not hoping, not believing, not kindness, not smiling.

When we went to bed on Tuesday night, he thought, little did we know that a dark army of scene-shifters would be busy while we slept, so that when we woke up, without realizing it, we would no longer be living in a world in which we were confident and happy, but a dangerous and heartless replica in which nothing was certain and nobody could ever be trusted ever again.

He stood up and went over to Impressions In White IV. He stared at it for a long time. Then he took a thick black marker pen out of the box on the coffee table and drew a huge cartoon face of a boy on it, with tears in both eyes.

Two

She appeared from the bedroom just before seven A.M. It was obvious from her face that she hadn’t slept. Frank was sitting at the breakfast counter with a large cup of black coffee. He had made some toast but he had only taken one bite out of it.

‘Coffee?’ he asked her.

She shook her head. She went to the fridge and took out a carton of cranberry juice.

‘There’s been some news about the bombing,’ he told her. ‘Some Arab terrorist group say that it was them.’

She poured out her juice and drank half of it. Still she didn’t speak.

‘There, look,’ he said, nodding toward the caption underneath CNN News. ‘Dar Tariki Tariqat, whoever they are. Nobody’s heard of them before, but I guess they’re connected to Al Qaeda.’

Margot said, ‘I saw what you did to my painting.’

‘Yes.’

She waited, and waited, but when he continued sipping his coffee and watching the news, she banged her glass of cranberry juice down on the counter in front of him.

‘Is that it? “Yes”? Is that all you have to say?’

Frank turned to her and put down his coffee cup. He was trying to be calm but his heart was beating unnaturally fast. ‘No, Margot. I could say a whole lot more, but right now I don’t think you’d understand. I don’t think you’d want to understand.’

Margot let out a disbelieving ‘hahhh!’

‘What would you like me to do? Apologize?’

‘No I damn well wouldn’t. You could say a million times and it still couldn’t make up for what you’ve done. You’ve killed my only son, Frank. Danny’s dead and it was you who allowed him to die.’