Such writing is a fraud, a delusion: the being who is the writer cannot know the first thing about herself except when she is under attack, and, when she is under attack, she is not able to write.

  Like Letitia Tanik. Too distracted, too unhappy.

  Michaela wants to think that one day when this is all over, when Gerard is home again she might write a different sort of memoir, now that she has experienced such panic, the panic of dissolution . . .

  But she cannot imagine its conclusion, she can barely imagine her life before the catastrophe began. She has been so focused on the hospital vigil, like one who has pressed too close to a wall, and cannot see the wall, helpless to know how to begin.

  “Thank God for my students . . .”

  Though naive to think “my students”—rather, individuals who have intersected with Michaela’s life at this vulnerable time.

  Gratitude for the opportunity to be selfless. To forget self.

  The teacher defers to the will of others. As in a Zen meditation she must empty herself out and allow herself to be filled by others whose needs are greater than her own.

  The seminar room has become an oasis, a sanctuary. So long as the self of the teacher is kept at a distance.

  Michaela takes a (pathetic) sort of pride in the fact that none of her students has the slightest idea that Michaela’s husband is hospitalized. That Michaela’s husband is gravely ill. Nor will they, she is determined.

  Where is my wife? Why has my wife abandoned me?

  Now I have died, no one will love her.

  Michaela could weep, these words are so unfair, and condemning.

  Gerard hasn’t died! She isn’t abandoning him, she is only just trying to reach out to others, in the interim. To breathe, an air that is not hospital air, unnaturally cold, recycled air.

  Like a fever the desire has seized Michaela, to be of use.

  As if, offering herself of use to others, Michaela will impress an invisible being with her goodness and virtue and be rewarded with Gerard’s recovery.

  So simple, a child’s logic. Yet, Michaela half-believes.

  Still, Michaela has spells of weakness, despair. Even on these Thursday afternoons in Albuquerque, where no one knows of Gerard’s struggle. Assailed by devastating thoughts like teeming bacteria devouring her flesh.

  Deluding yourself. Taking solace in a (false) identity parceled out to strangers.

  As if you matter to these strangers, or they to you.

  As if anything matters except that your husband is dying, you are failing to save him.

  Since the start of the term when Gerard first began coughing Michaela has been losing weight. Her clothes hang loosely on her. (Not unlike Letitia Tanik’s clothing on her.) Soft-crepey skin beneath her eyes has become bruised. Out of defiance she has thrown herself too intensely into her students’ work, each three-hour meeting is highly charged, exhausting. As if her life depends upon it.

  Her voice gives out while she is speaking to the students, her throat feels scraped. She pauses sometimes as if she has lost her way while speaking, like a blind person. She has a new unconscious habit of groping for her cell phone (in her handbag) as if she has heard it ringing inaudibly, vibrating—but when her fingers discover the phone, it is still, without life.

  How many times in their marriage have Michaela and Gerard called each other. How many times has Michaela smiled happily in anticipation of hearing Gerard’s voice close in her ear—Hello, Michaela? Where are you, darling?—(a question Gerard invariably asks). But now Gerard has ceased calling Michaela, and when Michaela calls Gerard his phone goes directly to voice mail.

  Sometimes Gerard’s cell phone becomes lost in the sheets of his hospital bed, or has fallen onto the floor, but even when Michaela has carefully positioned the cell phone beside the bed, where Gerard can keep it in view, it is not often that he answers any longer.

  You will have to live without me, Michaela.

  Since you’ve abandoned me, that will be your choice.

  * * *

  TEARFULLY LETITIA INSISTS NO, she does not want to see a doctor. No intention of seeing a doctor. Or informing anyone at the university, or the Albuquerque police.

  Her mouth is bitter, downturned. She is close to screaming at Michaela—No no no. Leave me alone.

  Still, Michaela persists. If not a doctor, Letitia should see a therapist, at least. There is a Rape Crisis Center at the university, Michaela has seen posters. There is Psychological Counseling.

  A professional would probably counsel Letitia to avoid encountering her rapist, Michaela tells her. Ideally she should move out of the house they are both living in.

  Letitia protests why should she move out, he should be the one forced to move out.

  Michaela tries to explain: if no charges are brought against the rapist he won’t be forced to do anything, he’ll continue to behave as if nothing has happened. It’s important that Letitia avoid him, never talk with him or allow him to talk to her, no telephone calls, no emails or texts. If she decides to file charges such exchanges could be used against her by a defense attorney arguing that she couldn’t possibly have been raped by the man since she’s on cordial terms with him following the (alleged) rape.

  Hotly Letitia says that the rape isn’t “alleged.” It happened!

  Nor has she been on “cordial” terms with the guy since what he’d done to her. She has not!

  Patiently Michaela explains: the term “alleged” is a legal term. It will always be used in this way until there is a court case, and an adjudication, and if at this time the rapist is found guilty of rape, it will no longer be “alleged.”

  Such bullshit!—Letitia cries, disgusted.

  “He knows, and I know. He should take a lie-detector test, that will show who’s lying.”

  The bitterness with which Letitia speaks is a revelation, Michaela thinks. Her hatred for the rapist is contaminated with other, more ambiguous emotions.

  “Oh Christ, why don’t I just die.”

  The door of the seminar room is opened hesitantly, students are about to enter for the next class. Letitia gives a cry of exasperation and distress, snatches up her bag and rushes from the room. Michaela follows after, feeling protective of the reckless young woman whose face gleams with tears and whose eyes glare and glower.

  Does she want others to see? Her shame, mortification?

  Michaela follows Letitia along the corridor to an exit. She is reluctant to let Letitia go, and senses that Letitia is reluctant to break away from her.

  Utterly new behavior for Michaela, following a distraught student out of a classroom, trying to reason with her. Take care!—Gerard might advise her.

  She can’t abandon Letitia under these circumstances. A rape victim might harm herself, do something irrevocable.

  Letitia’s anger is a bulwark against breaking down entirely, Michaela thinks. It’s her moral duty to help the girl, despite the girl’s resistance.

  She should not have agreed so readily not to report the rape. But Michaela reasons that she can convince Letitia to change her mind, eventually.

  “Letitia? Why don’t I take you to an Urgent Care facility. We don’t have to go to the infirmary on campus. That would be a very good idea.”

  Letitia pauses warily. She listens as Michaela explains what an Urgent Care facility is: not an ER, not a clinic or a hospital, nothing to do with the university or with the Albuquerque police. “If you’re concerned about the cost, I can pay for it. I have faculty medical coverage, I can arrange this.”

  Of course Michaela has nothing of the sort: faculty medical coverage. As Gerard’s wife she is included in Gerard’s Harvard medical insurance plan at Harvard but has nothing at the University of New Mexico.

  After an exchange of several minutes Letitia agrees reluctantly to be taken to an Urgent Care facility. But only if Michaela promises not to come into the examining room with her, and not to speak with the doctor or nurse after the examination. And not to ask her questions.

  To this absurd demand, Michaela agrees. Against her better judgment, but what choice has she? She will hope to convince Letitia to cooperate after the exam.

  Thinking—If there has been a rape, a crime has been committed. A crime will have to be reported to the authorities.

  HOW STRANGE IT FEELS, a stranger beside Michaela in her car! If Gerard could see her he would stare and stare.

  Michaela recalls an Urgent Care facility she has often noticed, on Lomas Boulevard a mile or so from campus. She drives Letitia there as Letitia frets and twitches in the seat beside her like an anxious child.

  In the waiting room Michaela speaks with a receptionist while Letitia takes a seat in a corner, slump-shouldered, sulky. The spiky neon hair looks particularly incongruous in this setting, Letitia is drawing attention.

  Michaela provides her credit card, wondering at her folly. What Gerard will say when he scans the credit card account at the end of the month and comes upon this inexplicable expense: Urgent Care, Albuquerque.

  A forty-minute wait before Letitia can see a doctor.

  Michaela takes the girl’s hand which is limp, damp. Except for Gerard’s hand she has not closed her hand around another’s hand in some time.

  Assuring the frightened Letitia that she will be all right.

  All right. All right. No idea what these trite words might even mean.

  At first Letitia sits stiffly beside Michaela as if in a state of shock. Each time a patient’s name is called she steels herself: but her name is not called. She soon becomes restless again, fretful. Withdraws her hand from Michaela’s. Scrolls through her cell phone. Checks her email. Sighing, put-upon and peevish. As if Michaela has brought her to this place for some purpose having nothing to do with her but only to do with Michaela.

  At last in an outburst of pique Letitia tells Michaela that she has changed her mind. She doesn’t want to be examined—anyway, not right now. She needs to be somewhere else.

  Michaela protests: She has waited a half hour, why not a few more minutes?

  It’s for Letitia’s own good to be examined. She may have been injured in some way of which she isn’t aware . . . What if she has an infection?

  “I said—I need to leave.”

  Letitia’s voice is rising. Others in the waiting room are observing her and Michaela beside her, trying to reason with her, distressed.

  (And what is the relationship between the excited girl with the rainbow-streaked hair, and the concerned older woman? Surely they are not blood relatives, that’s obvious.)

  Letitia leaps to her feet, leaves the waiting room. Deeply embarrassed, Michaela has no choice but to speak with the receptionist, cancel the appointment. (And hope that the credit card charge will be deleted from the system.) She is dismayed with Letitia, she has had enough of Letitia, how difficult to deal with a young person, this young person, like driving an eighteen-wheel truck on a highway, downhill on a steep grade, barely able to keep the wheel steady, danger at every turn.

  Michaela follows Letitia outside, into the parking lot. Half-hoping that Letitia will have vanished but when Michaela approaches her car she sees that, of course, no surprise, Letitia is sulking in the passenger’s seat.

  Letitia’s face glows with a radiant fury, righteousness. A sharp odor wafts from her underarms.

  For Michaela is to blame, Michaela must be blamed.

  In a quivering voice Letitia declares that she needs to be taken home, to where she lives. Now.

  “I don’t have time for this. Only just makes things worse, I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen.”

  Michaela thinks—She is afraid. I must respect her fear.

  Michaela thinks—I am the adult, I am responsible.

  “Do as you wish, Letitia. Of course.”

  Yet still believing that Letitia will come around to her way of thinking, perhaps by tomorrow. Tonight, she will relive the past hour, she will hear again Michaela’s calm voice.

  Michaela drives Letitia back toward the university, straining to hear Letitia’s murmured directions. So exasperating!—Letitia is punishing Michaela by being barely audible.

  Very tired, light-headed. After the three-hour workshop. And before that an hour’s commute in freeway traffic into Albuqueque. So tired, I am so tired. When will I have time to die.

  By the time Michaela pulls up in front of the grimy sand-colored stucco house on La Union Street it seems to her that she and Letitia Tanik have been together in each other’s company for many hours. They have traveled many miles together.

  The residence is a former private house, square-built and graceless, partitioned into rooms for students like other houses on the street. It has three storeys with narrow balconies on the two upper storeys: on the second floor, laundry has been hung to dry, on the third floor a shirtless male figure is leaning against the railing, smoking, drinking from a can. In the waning late-afternoon sun his hair glistens darkly as if it were lacquered. Michaela wonders if this is the person for whom Letitia feels such excited loathing.

  Letitia strikes Michaela’s arm: “No! Don’t stop here! Drive to the corner.”

  Adding in a rueful voice: “Please.”

  At the corner several houses away Michaela brakes the car to a stop. Thinking that, if the young man on the balcony noticed her vehicle passing the house slowly he wouldn’t have recognized it.

  For a minute or more Letitia sits crouched in the seat beside Michaela, panting. Michaela can feel her thoughts rushing and chaotic as a swarm of hornets.

  Unexpectedly, impulsively, Letitia reaches out to Michaela, leans over to awkwardly embrace her, pressing her damp face against Michaela’s neck.

  Such intimacy, so suddenly—Michaela is stunned.

  Then, in a murmur, what sounds like OK, Professor—thanks! Letitia breaks away from Michaela, slams the car door behind her, and is gone.

  So fleeting, and gone.

  Michaela stares into the rearview mirror seeing the girl running toward the grimy sand-colored house, with surprising agility. Not a wounded creature after all, Michaela has been deceived.

  Watching the rapidly shrinking figure in the rearview mirror, bounding up the front stoop of the house, pushing open the door and disappearing inside.

  Michaela rouses herself from a kind of stupor, for a moment uncertain where she is, and why.

  An unfamiliar neighborhood, children playing in the street. Vehicles are parked on both sides of the street. Michaela must drive with exaggerated caution as the children’s cries turn to jeers in her wake. She feels a crushing loneliness, a dread of what lies ahead.

  OK, Professor—thanks! Michaela shakes her head in wonder, she had not expected to be thanked, or embraced.

  Nor is Professor meant to be ironic, she thinks.

  Michaela sees that she has circled the block. Back on La Union and again approaching the sand-colored house.

  Slowing her car to see more clearly. Glancing up, surprised to see, unless she isn’t surprised, the figure of a girl on the third-floor balcony, approaching the shirtless young man.

  Michaela stares. Michaela feels a stab of betrayal. A stab to the heart.

  Yet: from this distance, and from this perspective, squinting through the windshield of the rented car that isn’t entirely clean, obscured with tiny particles of dust and pollen, a shiny-scummy sheen, Michaela can’t be absolutely sure if the girl is Letitia Tanik or someone who resembles her: glaring late-afternoon sun has blinded Michaela, the girl’s face and hair are blurred.

  Drive away as unobtrusively as possible. Your turn to disappear.

  RECOGNIZING HER SURROUNDINGS NOW, Lomas Boulevard leading to the entrance to I-25. Returning to Santa Tierra.

  But she is late!—she will be late, returning.

  In a crawl of traffic, slowed. It is Michaela’s punishment, such sinkage, slippage. On the ocean’s floor she is trapped, thick sinuous tendrils curl about her, holding her fast, strangling her.

  All that she has kept at a distance for hours rushes at her now like black befouled water, she is powerless to keep it away.

  When I died, you were nowhere near.

  Where you were, I would never know.

  And now—you will be the abandoned one.

  14

  Respite II

  But no. It has not (yet) happened.

  Whatever it is that will happen, that will happen inevitably and inexorably and will tear your papier-mâché life in two has not (yet) (evidently) happened.

  What relief! Weeping with gratitude, exhaustion. The entire day has swung into dark, it is nearing 8:00 P.M. You are dazed with hunger. Yet the most exquisite happiness swaying in the doorway of room 771.

  For your husband has not died in your (clandestine) absence. He has not passed into a coma. He has not ceased breathing.

  In fact Gerard is lying more or less as you’d left him eight hours before. In his hospital bed on the seventh floor of the Santa Tierra Cancer Center. Saline drip in bruised right arm and in bruised left arm oxycodone. Not (yet) oxygen in a nose tube.

  Rumpled bedclothes, which the night attendant will change. Possibly, hidden in the bedclothes, Gerard’s cell phone which you’d positioned on his movable tray purposefully so that it wouldn’t become lost amid the bedclothes.

  Scattered across the bed stray pages from the New York Times from which you’d been reading to Gerard that morning in your strained schoolgirl voice so eager to please.

  Not so fast, Michaela! Start from the beginning.

  The beginning?

  Yes! The beginning.

  15

  Secret Cache

  So tired! Her head pounds with pain. A vise is being tightened about her head squeezing her skull out of shape.

  It is the unbearable. The unspeakable. Tight ever tighter. And tired.

  Yet tired doesn’t translate into sleep. Only exhausted.

  Can’t risk sleeping pills. Can’t risk addiction. Not at this crucial time, she must be awake and alert. She is the wife.

  For addiction to the pills would be immediate, Michaela knows. From past experience. Short intense dreamless interludes of sleep. Waking with such effort, it’s like lying beneath slabs of broken concrete. So heavy! Try to throw off with broken wings for arms.