Page 138 of Katabasis
“Stop trying to justify him.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were. Listen, Alice, I’ve been there. I’ve spent years trying to justify him. Everything you just said, I’ve been down that road. I’ve considered it all. So please trust me when I tell you there’s nothing more to it. Some people just are that cruel. There is no design. They are not giants. They don’t do it for any reason, they just like it. And the rest of us just have to survive them.”
“I know that,” Alice said tiredly. “I only mean—”
“We weren’t special for it. We weren’t—worthy of it, or handpicked for it, or anything like that, can’t you understand?” Elspeth’s hand moved again in that lecturing staccato. Harsher this time. “He did not care. It was completely random. We were justthere.”
“But can’t you see,” said Alice, “why I’d choose to believe anything different?”
“Oh, love.” Elspeth placed her hand over Alice’s. “You don’t have to believe anything about him at all.”
Alice supposed this was reasonable. The stakes of this debate were suddenly opaque to her. Whether Grimes had ever cared, whether she deserved it all—suddenly she couldn’t see why these propositions ever mattered to her in the first place. The name Jacob Grimes hung empty in her mind, a symbol with no referent. No flood of memory attended the call. The whole issue seemed shorn of significance, as if she had spent so much time working through its implications that the threads had snapped altogether, and now it was just crumpled paper. It simply did not matter.
“Thanks,” she said. Suddenly it felt very difficult to put words together. Her lids felt very heavy. “I think—I think that’s right.”
“Forgive me. You’re exhausted.” Elspeth rummaged beneath the seat and dug out a thick, ratty blanket that might have once adorned some grandmother’s couch. “Go on, you’re safe. I’ll be right here.”
Alice took the blanket and draped it around her shoulders. It smelled rank, somehow of mothballs and mildew both, but still this was the most comforting thing she had smelled in ages. She wrapped it snug and held the edges close to her face. It reminded her of guest rooms and grandparents. She couldn’t get enough of it.
Elspeth watched her settle back against the boards. Then she asked, very lightly, “By the way, where’s Peter?”
Alice hesitated, wondering how best to explain. Then she burst into tears.
“Oh, dear.” Elspeth fished around in her pocket and handed her a handkerchief, oily and stained. Alice took it and mopped it around her eyes. She was horrified; the tears simply would not stop. She hadn’t meant to cry. She hadn’t even planned to feel sad. But just then it was like a switch flipped and that veneer of dazed indifference shattered, and all the grief she’d been carrying broke through the floodgates.
“My apologies,” said Elspeth.
“It’s fine.”
“What happened?”
Alice wanted to answer but felt an overwhelming fatigue the moment she tried to open her mouth. She did not want to recount it. She could not put it into words. She felt fragile to the point of breaking, and to rearticulate those last moments in the trap might shatter her. All she could do was shake her head.
“I see,” said Elspeth.
There was nothing to do but let the weeping run its course, to succumb to the racks and shudders until the flood subsided, and all the phlegm and snot was run out, and finally Alice could take a breath without howling.
“He decided it should be me.” Her fingers curled into balls. “He didn’t even ask—he justdecided—and then I was out, and he was gone.”
“Of course he did.”
“What does that mean?”
“But surely you knew.” Elspeth gave her a look of deep pity. “He was in love with you.”
Two contradictory statements came to Alice’s mind then, and she couldn’t decide which one seemed more plausible, so she uttered them both. “That can’t be.” And then, “But I didn’t know.”
“Then you’re blind,” said Elspeth, “because it was written all over his face. Yours, too.”
Alice reasoned that Elspeth was probably right. If she thought about it, a small part of her suspected the same. Only she didn’t know what to do with this information. She wished she could carve it out of her chest; set it flaming and quivering down somewhere else, maybe lock it in a box, if it would just leave her alone.
“But we were fighting when we met you,” said Alice. “He hated me.”
“All the same. If anything, that made it easier to tell.”
“But he never said.” Alice sniffled, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “I wish he’d justsaid.”
