chute, where it began traveling down again, gathering speed to push over the first domino in a vast array. The last of these black-and-white dominos tripped a switch, which blew a fan, which extinguished a candle. In this way, Emily put the fires out, and saved Jonathan, and the world as well.
To which end she hid in bed. She did not eat or drink or speak to anyone. Far below, she thought she heard someone at the door, but she did not venture down to answer it. She kept the faith all day, pretending nothing had happened, struggling to protect herself, building new facts by which to breathe and live, but she had competition. Working overtime, her imagination took a guilty turn, and reason followed, where it was afraid to lead.
If she had not delayed the wedding, if she had hurried east the year before to marry Jonathan, then he would not have flown out to L.A. to meet her. If she had not hesitated; if she had simply married him when he’d asked, then she would not be alone. If she had loved him as she should have loved him, without trepidation, without tests, then Jonathan would be alive.
Because he was right after all, in everything he said about her. If she had really missed him, if she’d really wanted him, then she would have come to him before. She’d have shown him, instead of talking and postponing all the time. She would have been with him.
What was wrong with her? Why had she held back? She should have left Veritech long ago. It seemed a paltry sacrifice in retrospect. She might have saved him, if she had been less ambitious.
What did waiting get you in the end? There was no perfect time to marry, no ideal moment to move or leave your job. The only perfect time was now, and now was what she had denied herself. Who said that patience was a virtue? And temperance? And practicality? Who said, “Look before you leap”? With all that wisdom she had murdered Jonathan. These were her thoughts, as the banging on the door below grew louder.
I killed him, she thought, as Jess called, “Emily, let me in!”
I never really loved him, she accused herself.
I’ve never loved anybody, she thought, and she hoped that was wrong. She hoped she had loved Jonathan— loved him still!
“Emily!” Jess screamed, and the banging came from the back of the house, a thumping so loud that even in her distracted state, Emily remembered that her neighbor worked nights and slept days, and she scrambled to open the kitchen door.
“Shh! Be quiet!” Emily pleaded, barefoot, wild-haired, blinking in the late-afternoon sun, balled-up tissues in the pocket of her plaid pajamas. And then her eyes teared up, and she began to laugh and cry at the same time. For there stood Jess, with her hair pulled back, wearing the Vivienne Tam suit Emily had given her a million years ago. Tweed jacket in brown and rust, caramel silk blouse, tailored skirt, and stockings, actual stockings, and a pair of brown pumps. “You’re wearing the suit now? You’re getting dressed up
“You know why.” Jess took her sister’s hands in hers.
“What happened to your hands?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jess tried to hug her sister.
No, Emily thought. Don’t. She would break into pieces at the slightest touch. She would shatter.
Jess sensed this and stepped back. She stood before Emily in that beautiful suit and said, “I got dressed up so that you’d see … so you’d know I’ve come to take care of you.”
28
Ash fell. A fine gray powder covered everything. Ash coated burned-out cars and traffic lights. Ash infiltrated apartments, graying books and dishes, smothering house plants, clouding windowsills. Ash smogged streets and soiled papers, loose and lost, invoices and receipts, canceled checks, business cards, appointment books, memoranda unremembered. Black dust, black ink, black banner headlines in
Museums opened free of charge. Oases of deep color: Rothkos, Rembrandts, Egyptian tombs, Roman glass, iridescent bottles outlasting their perfume. Amulets, silk gowns, and Grecian urns. Those young girls with parted lips, those haystacks, those stone angels taking flight, those paintings of fruit and full-blown flowers.
Classical-music stations broadcast elegies, and listeners stopped what they were doing to hear Fauré’s
Churches opened doors for candle-lighting, singing, sermons, vigils. In the nave of the National Cathedral, President Bush said, “We are here in the middle hour of our grief …” and he told the American people to keep on living, to travel, to attend the theater, to go out and buy. Alas, buying did not appeal. Only American flags sold out. Great flags hung from walls and firehouses. Smaller versions adorned shop windows and front doors. Drivers clipped miniature flags to car antennae where they fluttered in the breeze.
A flag was tangible. Its stars and stripes were real, unlike the dot-com bombs of yesterday. Who remembered those? The upstarts, overhyped and overfunded. When the Nasdaq reopened on September 17, even Cisco hovered at twelve dollars a share. Vaporizing into usefulness, online shopping, e-mail, and instant news, the Internet lost its mystique, and suddenly it was everywhere and nowhere, like the air. A flag had value. A leaf blower made sense. Unprofitable companies with huge growth and huge debt did not. Few bought Veritech at two. Fewer wanted ISIS, even at eighty cents.
None of that mattered to Emily. For the first time since Veritech’s IPO, she did not check her company’s share price. She didn’t look; she didn’t care. When Alex called, or Bruno, or Milton, or Laura, she let Jess answer the phone. With each ring, she expected Jonathan. She couldn’t talk to other people.
When Dave invited her to Jonathan’s memorial service, Emily told Jess to thank him and say no.
“Maybe you should think about it,” Jess said when she put down the phone.
“No, I don’t want to think about it.”
“You don’t have to decide right away. You don’t have to say anything yet.”
“Okay, don’t say anything.”
For days she did nothing. She didn’t even open her computer. She sat at one end of the couch with her legs tucked under her, and then sometimes, for a change of scene, she moved to the other end.
Jess reminded Emily to get dressed in the morning. “You can’t wear pajamas in the daytime.”
“Why not?”
“Your circadian rhythms will get out of whack. I read an article about it. You shouldn’t work in your bedroom, you shouldn’t wear pajamas in the daytime, and you shouldn’t exercise or eat at night, or work too long in the dark. So put these on.” Jess pulled out a shirtdress and a sweater. Obediently, Emily changed into clean clothes.
Laura came bearing Emily’s dry cleaning along with a loaf of homemade pumpkin bread. The condo association left a giant fruit basket wrapped in cellophane. Emily’s cleaning service, Maid for You, sent her a condolence card and refused to charge her for the week of September 11. Orchids proliferated on the coffee table. She had been in all the papers.
Jess shopped and prepared meals: oatmeal, or brown rice with broccoli, or avocado-and-sprout sandwiches on cracked-wheat bread. Like an old married couple, the sisters completed the
Waking up was hardest, because each day Emily had to teach herself that Jonathan was gone, and the life she might have had with him was gone, their conversations and their fights. That was the worst part. Her struggle
