Chapter Thirteen
Farkas
I climb down from her window into the dark.
The wind has died and the first stars are out above the apartment complex. I cross the lot to the van. I don't look back at her window. If I look back I won't be able to leave, and the leaving is what makes the coming back possible.
I drive home.
The road is empty. The fields on either side are gray with old snow. I don't feel the cold of the night through the open window — I feel nothing at all except her warmth still on my mouth and the taste of her blood from the kiss still faintly on my tongue.
I've been many things in a thousand years and tonight I'm this one.
The thought repeats. The shape of it is steady in me.
I am hers. It isn't a sentence I've ever made about myself before.
I don't know what to do with it except to let it sit, as a man sits with a small bird that has landed in his hand and might fly away again if he closes his fingers.
I let myself into the farmhouse. The kitchen is dark. The phone sits on the table where it's sat for two years. The cord is curled against the wood.
I lift the receiver.
I dial.
The line rings three times.
"Whitfield."
"It's me."
"Sir."
"I'm leaving the country tomorrow night. I'm bringing one passenger."
The pause on the other end is half a second long. I've never said passenger to him. I've never said bringing anyone. In the two centuries his family has handled my account no one has ever traveled with me.
"Yes, sir."
"The jet is to be ready at the field by seven o'clock Monday evening. I'll board at seven-thirty. We'll fly to Budapest."
"Of course, sir."
"I need documentation for the passenger by tomorrow afternoon. United States passport. Hungarian residence permit. A name registered with the appropriate authorities. The name is Jenny Lin. L-I-N. Twenty-three years old. Her date of birth I'll give you."
I give him the date of birth from the memories her mother gave me. I give him her social security number from the memories Tammy gave me. I give him the details that'll let his people build a paper version of her that the world will accept.
"Sir, the timing is tight."
"I'm aware."
"It can be done. We'll have the documentation at the field when you board."
"Thank you. There's one more thing."
"Sir."
"The sheet music. The Massenet that arrived Friday. I'll be delivering it tonight."
"Very good, sir. May I wish you well on the journey?"
I don't know what to say. Whitfield's family has handled my account for two centuries and the relationship has always been transactional. The wishing well is something else. The wishing well is a thing being given without expectation of return.
"Yes," I say finally. "Thank you, Whitfield. I'll be in touch from Budapest."
"As always, sir."
I hang up.
The sheet music has been on my kitchen table since Friday afternoon when the courier left it on the front step. I haven't given it to her, because she didn't need me to. The piece has been in her body for years. The page wasn't what she needed. The remembering was what she needed.
She played the Meditation from Tha?s from memory yesterday afternoon. She found her way back to it without me.
Now I can give her the page.
I cross to the table. I lift the envelope. Massenet. Meditation from Tha?s. Violin and Piano. The cover is plain. The paper is good.
I take it back out to the van.
I drive back to her apartment.
The lot is quiet. Lisa's car is here now — she has come home — but her window is dark. Jenny's is dark too. The whole building is sleeping.
I climb.
I work the latch one more time and step into her room, and close the window behind me.
She's on her side, curled toward the place where I lay beside her earlier. Her hair is loose on the pillow. Her hand is splayed across the warm depression in the sheet where my body had been.
She's asleep.
I cross to the desk. I lay the envelope on the surface where she'll see it. I square it gently against the edge.
I look at her, and I force myself to leave.
The sun is rising when I let myself in to the farmhouse. The day is coming. This day is going to be the longest day I've lived in a millennium because at the end of it she'll walk out of her front door for the last time and I'll be waiting.
I cross to the room with no windows. I sit on the floor with my back against the wall. I close my eyes.
The day passes over me.
* * *
Jenny
I wake Monday morning to the tick of the heat kicking on through the vent.
The room is gray with the light of an overcast day.
The bed beside me is empty. The impression of his body is gone from the sheet — the cool shape that was there yesterday morning has faded, replaced with the natural warmth of my own body where I have rolled into the place where he was.
My hand is curled in the blanket the way it was when he left me last night.
I lie in bed for a while looking at the ceiling.
I should be sad. I should feel something like loss. He was here yesterday afternoon for hours and now he's gone and I should feel his absence keenly — a thing whose use I'd only just learned, and now taken away.
I don't feel sad.
I feel something I can't name. A small steady warmth in my chest that's been there since I opened my eyes. The shape of tomorrow night. The shape of I'm taking you with me. The shape of the yes I said into his chest in the dim light yesterday evening.
I'm leaving.
The thought arrives whole — fluent suddenly, settled, a sentence in a language learned slowly for years and abruptly understood, the meaning of it whole and clear in my head.
I'm leaving Millfield. I'm leaving Mr. Burger.
I'm leaving this apartment and the second-floor window and the parking lot lights that have been burned out since I started working here.
I'm leaving Lisa and Dee. I'm leaving the country, I think.
He didn't say where. I don't need to know.
I'm leaving with him.
I get up.
I shower and dress, then drink a glass of water at the kitchen counter and look out the window at the snow piling against the bottom of the glass.
I cross to the phone.
I dial Mr. Burger. The line rings four times. Tammy picks up.
"Mr. Burger, can I help you."
"Tammy. It's me."
"Jenny. You sound like that again."
"I'm sick."
"Bullshit."
"I'm sick."
"Okay." Her voice has dropped. The voice from Friday morning. "Tell me what you need."
"I'm not coming in today. I don't think I'm coming in tomorrow either."
A pause.
"Honey."
"Tammy."
"Are you safe."
"Yes."
"Are you happy."
The question is the question I haven't had to answer in a long time.
I let it sit. I think about the inside of my wrist where his mouth was.
The cold of his palm against my cheek in the late afternoon light.
The way he held me after the conversation, my cheek against the long scar, his fingers in my hair.
"Yes," I say. "I'm happy, Tammy."
"Good." Her voice has gone soft. The voice she uses with Marcus when he comes home from school excited about something he wants to tell her. "Then I don't need to know anything else."
"Tammy."
"What."
"I just wanted to say. I'm glad you've been kind to me."
The line is quiet for a moment.
"Jenny."
"I'll call you."
"Okay."
I hang up the receiver.
I stand at the counter, my hand on the phone. Tammy knows. She doesn't know what she knows but she knows. The woman has been watching me for eight months and she's always known more about me than I've known about myself.
I go to my room.
I see the envelope on the desk immediately.
I cross to it. I don't pick it up at first. I stand at the desk and look at it. The plain brown paper. The neat squared edges. The printed return address of a music shop in London.
I sit at the desk.
I pick up the envelope. I turn it over in my hands. The paper is good. The seal is clean. I open it carefully.
The sheet music slides out onto the wood.
Massenet. Meditation from Tha?s. Violin and Piano. The cover is plain. The paper is good.
I lift the music in my hands. I haven't seen this piece on paper in three years. I haven't needed to; the piece is in my body. I played it yesterday from memory and the memory was complete.
But the page in my hand is a real thing. The page is the page Dr. Reeves marked up for me. The page is the page I held at my recital. The page is the page my father stood up for when I was finished playing.
He's given me back the page.
I sit at the desk. The page is in my hands. The morning gets later. The light through the window slowly brightens and then dims again as another snow front moves in. I don't move.
Eventually I cross to the violin case. I open it. I lift out the violin and the bow. I rosin the bow with the Hill Dark. I tune the instrument. I sit on the edge of the bed with the page open beside me on the blanket and I play.
I play it slow.
I make mistakes. The page is showing me things my memory had smoothed over — notations Dr. Reeves had written into the margins, a fingering she had marked at the top of the second page, the molto espressivo she had underlined twice in the cadenza.
I'd forgotten these things. The page is reminding me.
I play it again.
By the third time I'm playing it better than I played it three years ago at the recital.
The cleaner notes. The steadier bow. The thing the years have taken from my body has been less than the thing the years have given to my body.
I'm a better musician at twenty-three than I was at seventeen. I didn't know.
I lower the violin to my lap when I finish the fourth time.
I'm crying. I've been crying for a while without noticing. The page on the blanket is spotted in two places where the tears have fallen on it. I press the heel of my hand to my eyes and I wait for the crying to stop.
I cross to the phone in the kitchen.
I dial my mother.
She picks up on the second ring.
"Hello."
"Umma."
"???." Her voice is the voice I remember from when I was small. "I got your postcard."
"I know. I wanted to call."
"I'm so happy you're coming on Sunday."