PG. Gen, angst. My Spanish is good enough to get by in Mexico, make polite small talk with the nice boys at the burrito joint, and eavesdrop on conversations on the subway. Native speakers and Spanish majors, please take it con un grano de la sal. Muchas gracias: Karen y Kat.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
“Sydney … how much do you remember about the year after you were told that your mother died?”
“I remember … just feeling disconnected from everything. My father was away on business for most of that year.”
“No. Your father spent six months in solitary in a federal prison. He was suspected of being in collusion with Laura. The FBI almost tried him for treason and even though he was vindicated, the damage was done. And he began to unravel.”
That buzzing sound that drills deep into your ears every night is lockdown. Eleven PM.
Not that it matters to you. You’ve never once been allowed to see another prisoner. You hear them sometimes. Bounce, bounce, the high pitched sound of a basketball on concrete; it echoes surprisingly well. A shout across the courtyard when the wind is just right.
For you, every hour is lockdown.
You are like a virus. You must be contained.
They let you out for questioning, and you know that is one of their tricks. You’d do the same, if it had been another agent’s wife.
At least, you tell yourself, your cell is clean. No books, no pen, no radio or television or newspaper — but the cell is clean. You’ve spent time in worse places, been locked inside worse places. You even have your own shower. Because they can’t let you out to mix with the others. You might corrupt them.
You like to think of that. Of how you might use what you know to your advantage, for revenge.
You know you will never do it. Even now, your loyalty is the one thing you can count on, the one thing that makes you who you are. When everything else has been taken away.
You have no photographs. There are not many you would want.
But somewhere, far on the other side of the continent, there is a seven-year-old girl you draw over and over in your memory, trying to remember.
You are careful not to make her look too much like her mother.
You wonder why you never thought it strange that Laura did not know the words to nursery rhymes.
You count the days since you’ve seen her: 18. 33. 56.
They gave you almost a month after the funeral, 29 days. Even that, you know, was because you’d called in every possible favor.
“My daughter has just lost her mother,” you said, tightly, to Peloski, the CIA director. “I don’t care what your opinion is of me. She is not a part of this and I will not let you do this to her.”
You said the same thing to every assistant director, to the Agency psychiatrists, to Arvin who had been your friend and was now in Germany, to everyone who would listen.
Twenty-nine days. Every conversation recorded, every hug with your daughter photographed. Twenty-nine days of background checks and secret investigations, of details you didn’t want to hear, couldn’t bear to ask for.
(It will be many years — 22 years — before you understand that during those 29 days you and Sydney were bait. You and Sydney, the only two people who did not know that Laura Bristow — Irina, dammit, Irina Derevko — had not drowned. You and Sydney, the only reason she might return.
And when you realize this — when your grown daughter has told you that her mother is still alive, when the colleagues you once trusted have confirmed it — you will be terrified and furious in retrospect. Twenty-two years too late.
You will wake in the early hours of the morning and stare at the blank wall — you will always, for the rest of your life, put your bed in the same corner of your room, against the same blank wall — and you will think: What if Laura had come back for Sydney?
What you will not ask yourself is this: Why didn’t Laura come back for Sydney?)
Tell me how you met your wife.
(At a cocktail party.)
Why did you want to marry her?
(I was hopelessly in love with her. She said she was in love with me.)
Did you ever meet her family?
(She didn’t have any. Neither did I.)
What did you think when she told you she was pregnant?
(She’d said she never wanted children.)
Did you ask where she went on her trips?
(Academic conferences.)
How could an agent as well trained as yourself fail to notice that your wife was leading a secret life?
(You think I don’t ask myself that?)
What would you have done if you had known, if you found out?
(Turned her in. In a heartbeat. I think.)
What did you tell her about the CIA? Where did you speak with her about the CIA? Why did you speak with her about the CIA? Didn’t we train you better than that?
(Yes. Yes, you did.)
They let you talk to her, sometimes. In the interrogation room, with them listening. There is a telephone there. It is all you can have, so you take it. They have worked very hard to condition you; to make you think, like a Pavlovian dog, that this room is a place of refuge.
At first, she answers all your questions. Tells you about school and Brownies and Marta’s homemade granola and that this week she wants to be a fireman when she grows up. You smile but do not correct the gender.
As the months go by (months are forever) it gets harder. Harder for Marta to get her to the phone, harder to lie about where you are (you’ve told them Bangkok), harder to think about what questions to ask or to convince her to answer them. Harder to remember what it was like to be seven.
She’s quit her soccer team. She’s falling behind in English class, but she’s swallowed up her mother’s worn copies of Jane Eyre and Gone With The Wind. She’s declared a private war on broccoli and on potato soup, things her mother used to love.
You know all this from Marta. You also know this:
“She calls for you when she sleeps, Mr. Jack.”
Marta is from Guatemala. She is, of course, in the country legally. You have seen her green card. You have never asked how she got it. You hardly know her but she came highly recommended by a neighbor couple. They took pity on you and their oldest was going off to college anyway.
“You no come home soon?” Marta asks.
“As soon as I can, Marta.”
You do not ask if Sydney still calls out for her mother. You know she does.
You still do, too.
When they came, you cooperated. Because Sydney couldn’t know. She could never, ever know.
It was morning, early, winter when the days were short, and she was cranky when you went to say good-bye.
“Sydney,” you said quietly. “Sydney, Daddy has to go away for a while now.”
She cried. It was still dark in her little yellow room, except for the small light you’d clicked on on her dresser. The shades were down: Laura had always had a thing about light-blocking shades. The whole room spoke of Laura. The whole house shouted her name at you as you walked quickly through it. You’d started sleeping in the guest room. It didn’t smell of her. It was the only thing you had that didn’t.
Sydney cried, alternating between “Don’t go, Daddy,” and “I want to go back to sleep.” She rubbed her eyes with her fists the way she had as a toddler.
You knew you’d never been much of a father to her. You’d let Laura handle the tantrums and the report cards and the soccer games and the swim meets. You’d had a career, you’d had to be away. You’d been a Sunday dad, a Christmas dad.
“Marta will take good care of you,” you said. “I love you but I have to go.”
“I don’t want Marta. I want you.”
You touched her hair.
She’d always been tall for her age. Twenty-one inches at birth. You’d brought Laura roses and told her she was amazing and beautiful and thanked her over and over for your gift. Your 21-inch, fussy, noisy, beautiful gift. Unplanned, but not unwanted. To you.
Seven years later now, a darkened bedroom before sunrise, her hair reddish from sun and chlorine. “I’ll go with you,” she said. Sniffling, but decisive.
“No, Sydney. I’m sorry. You can’t come with me.”
She cried, begged you to stay, asked you where and when and how long. You couldn’t tell her when you’d be back. You didn’t know when you’d be back, if you’d be back. It didn’t matter: weeks and months and years all mean forever when you’re seven.
Downstairs, Internal Affairs was waiting.
Sydney had a toy carousel that played tunes while the little horses pranced up and down and around. You turned it on as you got up to leave. Rainbows on roses and whiskers on kittens.
“I’m sorry, Sydney,” you said.
“Turn it off, Daddy” she said. So you did.
You put your head underwater, sometimes. In the sink. Wonder what Laura thought as she died.
Remorse, you think — remorse, and love — is too much to ask for.
It was wrong to bring a child into this life, into your twisted world, yours and Laura’s. Never mind that you didn’t know who Laura really was. (You should have.)
Your hair is shaved close, buzz cut, prison standard. It doesn’t take long for the stubble to dry.
Sydney is better off without you: that is what you tell yourself at night so you can sleep.
Bounce, bounce, another game of basketball in the yard. Off limits.
Her birthday falls on the 127th day, a Saturday. They allow you to call, a nicety, a small attempt to convince you they are on your side.
Marta says, “Oh yes, Mr. Jack, she is here. I take her for pizza for lunch.” And then, the sound muffled by her hand over the receiver: “Teléfono, Sydney. Tu papa.”
“No deseo hablar, Marta.”
Sydney speaks perfect Spanish with Marta, never guessing that that is one of nine languages they taught you years ago, never guessing that you understand.
“Dígale hola, Sydney. Llame de Bangkok para decir feliz cumpleaños.” You hear her put the phone back to her ear. “What time is it there, Mr. Jack?”
You tell her it is four in the morning. You were prepared for this question and you’ve always been good at math.
“Está después de medianoche allí, Sydney. Venido al teléfono.”
“No deseo. Dígale que estoy leyendo.”
You say: “Just give her a kiss for me, will you, Marta?”
As you leave the room, you’re very careful not to look any of your interrogators in the eye.
You have no way to send her a present.
They don’t let you out in the yard to exercise. You do jumping jacks and situps in your cell. Fifty, 100, 500. Until you’re too tired to remember.
But every night, just before you fall asleep, you mentally redraw her picture.
She never did, did she? Look too much like her mother?
It’s getting harder to remember, harder to draw every day.
You try to imagine what it will be like to see her again, to touch her, to tuck her into bed as you used to do on Sundays.
That is getting harder, too.
This is what it will be like, on the 173rd day:
“Hello, Sydney.”
“Hi Daddy.” She will say it with a flip of her ponytail, which has gotten longer and darker, and will return to her book, hardly registering you.
“I brought you presents from Thailand.”
She will hide her interest in the gifts, pull her knees up to her chest on the deck chair by the backyard pool that you and Laura — Irina — had installed but rarely used.
Marta will watch you from the kitchen window. Wondering why you’ve come, what this will do to Sydney, what was so damn important that you had to spend six months in Bangkok so soon after Laura had died. Questioning you (mentally — she’d never say it aloud). Knowing your own daughter better than you ever will.
Sydney will prop her book on top of her knees, close to her face, and try very hard not to notice you. You’ll remember just enough about seven and loss to know what the show really means.
You will want to say — there will be so many things you will want to say.
You will know that it’s best if you don’t. Safer. For Sydney.
You will leave the little embroidered purse and painted silk fan (both yellow) on the plastic table by her chair, and leave your daughter alone.
“She is tired, Mr. Jack,” Marta will tell you in the kitchen, with a kind smile. With pity.
“I know, Marta,” you will say. “It’s all right. I have to go back to the office anyway.”
Late that night, long after lockdown, you will push the bed in the guest room into that same corner; lie on the bed staring at that same blank wall. The wall that protects your sleeping daughter from you.
You are like a virus. You must be contained.
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