20. Jeremiah
JEREMIAH
The first correction takes me twenty minutes to send.
It goes to a friend I personally told Zelda struck Candace. I keep changing I knew to I found out later. The date stays the same in both versions. The second makes it easier to read what follows.
I put I knew back.
He answers before I have finished the next message.
Why did you let us keep saying it?
I sit at the kitchen table and tell him. Then I work through the other people I told. One doesn’t answer. Another says she has already repeated it to her sister. I ask her to send the correction on.
No message comes from Zelda. I hadn’t told her I was doing this tonight.
When Suri arranges her January supper, I ask whether the people from the Christmas party will be there. She says most of them will.
“I need to speak to them.”
“Then come.”
I tell Zelda where I’m going and why. She says she has read the message. Nothing else.
At Suri’s, Dax is putting another leaf in the table. He asks me to hold one end while he locks the legs. For a minute we are doing something we know how to do together. He swears at the catch. I lift my end a little. The table settles.
“There,” he says, pleased with the small victory.
I want the evening to stay that simple.
Suri brings in a bowl. She sees me standing at the head of the table and pauses before setting it down. I move to a chair at the side.
The man who apologized to Zelda at our anniversary sits opposite with his wife. She smiles at Suri, then looks at me without smiling. Her husband told her Zelda had lost her temper. She wasn’t at the first party. She didn’t even have to hear my wife say the lie to believe it.
I can see the space beside the window where Zelda stood with her mug.
“Before we eat,” I say.
Dax pulls out his chair. “If this is about Christmas, we’ve all heard there was a misunderstanding.”
Several people look relieved. Suri has worked hard on the food. There is bread to pass and wine to open. I could say yes, an awful misunderstanding, and let them have their evening.
My hand is on the back of the chair. I take it off.
“Zelda never hit Candace.”
“We heard that at your house,” the man opposite says.
“You didn’t hear all of it.”
The room quiets. Someone in the hall closes the bathroom door.
“At this party, I told Zelda we could go home and I’d listen to her if she apologized. She said it because she wanted me to hear her privately. The next morning I called it a confession.”
The man’s wife has stopped unfolding her napkin.
“I used what I’d made her say as proof she had done it.”
“But you didn’t know then,” Dax says.
I nearly take the help. I had not known at the first party. There is a whole explanation I could give about what I believed.
“Candace told me on December fifteenth. She said Zelda never touched her.” I take a deep breath. “And I should have believed my wife before anyone else.”
Suri sits down slowly.
“Your anniversary was the twenty-third,” the woman opposite says.
“Yes.”
She waits for more. I have to give it to her.
“I knew for eight days. Then I asked Zelda to apologize again. I was afraid you’d all find out I’d made her admit something false.”
“We heard you say you knew,” her husband says. “But I thought you meant that afternoon.”
“No.”
He looks at his plate. That is worse than when he was looking at me.
“And Candace?” his wife asks. “Why was she still there?”
I feel the heat in my face. This part will reach people who have never met Zelda. I can already hear how they will tell it.
“She told me she wanted a relationship with me on the seventh. I said I was married, that there was nothing to wait for. Then I kept seeing her and talking to her about Zelda. I didn’t tell my wife.”
“Were you having an affair?”
“I didn’t kiss Candace or sleep with her. I kept her close because she agreed with me.”
“Did she think you would leave?”
“I knew she wanted there to be a chance. I didn’t end the private visits until the twenty-eighth.”
The woman puts her napkin beside her plate.
“I booked her for our March anniversary. I trusted her with our family.” She looks at her husband. “I’ll cancel it myself.”
He starts to say something, then stops.
Across the table, Dax clears his throat. “You were trying to keep a family together under a lot of stress.”
“I wanted Zelda to make it easy for me.”
Saying her name brings her back beside the window. Her hand was shaking. I had watched it shake and been impatient to leave.
“I saw her ask you to listen,” Suri says. “I thought if I gave you space, you would.”
“She tried when we got home. I wouldn’t.”
No one reaches for the bread.
I sit because I can’t bear standing above them any longer.
“I’ve corrected the people I told privately. If you repeated it because of what you heard here, please tell those people Zelda never touched her. Tell them why she said she did.”
Suri nods. “There were people who left early. I’ll give you their names.”
“Thank you.”
I take out my phone. My hands feel thick and clumsy. Dax’s video is still in the group chat, with the little hearts beneath it.
I type under it.
Zelda never touched Candace. I pressured her to say she did by promising we could go home and I would listen privately.
On December fifteenth I learned the accusation was false.
On the twenty-third I asked her to repeat it anyway.
Her apology was not an admission of something she had done.
Please correct anyone you shared this with.
I press send. Four phones buzz around the table.
“Take the video down,” I tell Dax.
“It’s the only record of what she said.”
“It’s a record of what I made her say.”
He leaves his phone beside his plate.
“Dax.”
“You’ve written your explanation. It’s there for everyone to read.”
The video sits above the correction. Her face, waiting to be played again.
Suri is looking past me.
I turn.
Zelda stands in the doorway with a roll of library wrapping paper under one arm. Her phone is lit in her other hand. I don’t know how long she has been there.
I stand so fast my chair goes over.
She looks at me. Her chin is trembling and she lets me see it.
I take a step. She gives Suri the paper, touches her arm, and turns away. The front door closes quietly behind her.
At the hall, Suri puts a hand against my chest.
“She asked to wait in the hall,” Suri says. “She wanted to hear what you’d say without knowing she was listening.”
“Did she?—”
I stop. Suri can’t tell me what that look means.
“She heard you,” she says. “Sit down, Jeremiah.”
I go back and lift the chair. One of its legs has marked the floor. I rub the mark with my shoe until I realize everyone is waiting for me to sit.
We eat. There are questions about work, a story I miss the beginning of. The woman opposite asks her husband something quietly. Dax keeps trying to catch my eye.
Before I leave, I ask him about the video once more.
“Not tonight,” he says.
“You sent it to the group the night you filmed it. How many other people?”
His face closes. “I didn’t keep a list.”
“Then start remembering.”
Suri hears us from the doorway. Dax looks at her, then back at me.
“After what you’ve told everyone, how are we supposed to have the February dinner at your house?”
I had forgotten the winter dinner. For years it has been at our house. Zelda chooses the food, I move the tables, and Dax makes the same joke about how much room we have.
“You’ll have to use somewhere else.”
“If you’d said the separation was hard on both of you, people would give it time. Instead you told them all that.”
“It’s what happened.”
“How do you think Zelda felt, hearing everyone talk about her marriage?”
I see her trembling chin again. For a moment I wish I’d kept this between us. I could call that protecting her, instead of admitting how badly I want everyone to stop looking at me.
“She asked for the lie to be corrected,” I say. “She knew I was coming. I made her apologize for something she didn’t do. I’m not calling that a disagreement just so we can keep hosting dinner at my house.”
Dax goes upstairs. I wait for him to come back and finish the conversation. He doesn’t.
Suri stands with me in the hall.
“February will be here,” she says. “I’ve already told him.”
“All right.”
She looks toward the front door. “I won’t tell Zelda she ought to be pleased.”
“No.”
I wait for more. There isn’t any. I get my coat from the hook myself.
In the car I send Zelda a short message.
I corrected the witnesses and the people I told privately. The correction is under the video. Dax has refused to remove it. I asked him who else he sent it to; he hasn’t answered that either.
I don’t ask whether she heard enough, or whether she is home. I put the phone away and drive.
At my house, my mother’s Christmas photograph is still in our thread. She asked when she could call us. I told her we were spending the day quietly.
I ring her before I take off my coat.
She asks after Zelda. I tell her where Zelda spent Christmas and why. The first apology. The fifteenth. What I demanded on the twenty-third. I have to stop once because she says my name in a voice I haven’t heard since I was a boy.
“You let me send her a Christmas greeting as if she were beside you,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Have you told her you’re sorry?”
“I’ve started.”
My mother breathes into the phone. I want her to say Zelda knows I love her. I wait for that as helplessly as I waited for Dax to agree with me on Christmas Eve.
“I won’t ring her and explain my son to her,” she says at last. “She can ask to hear from me if she wants.”
“I know.”
“You can still call me. I love you.” Her voice catches. “But I can’t make this a quarrel that got out of hand.”
I thank her. We say goodnight twice before either of us hangs up.
There is no answer from Zelda.
I leave the phone on the kitchen table. Upstairs, I turn down one side of the bed.