The Judge’s binoculars confirmed that the river was lapping at the base of the bridge, cutting off Round Hill from the town, just as the radio announced. Elmira’s Main Street, however, was nothing like the 1863 photographs I had seen at the local historical society as a child, when I still thought the word “Elmiran” applied to me, too. The windows of shops and parked cars glistened in the morning sun, intact. I could see three high-wheeled trucks slowly making their way from the county building to City Hall. Two rubber boats sat idle on one side next to a building, maybe waiting to ferry white flood victims to a church donut-prayer service. The Firecops were on their way, the radio trumpeted. Elmira could enjoy its day in the water.
Looking at the rich brown river stew of mud and detritus swirling angrily at the Shangri-La bend, the last visible point from my window, I felt the full gravity of McCabe’s absence. Gravity in the physical, not just the moral, sense. Skull-crushing, eye-popping, Jupiterian gravity. Would killing her restore the universal laws of physics? My mind said, Yes, Yes, Yes, but my body said. No, Never. You will feel her weight until you die. It was around midday, and the sun seemed to stand still in the cloudless sky. I knelt in front of the window, looking at the river. My shadow was a tiny black circle around my knees. I vowed again to kill McCabe even if it was not to be a cold-blooded, remorseless, liberating crime, but a guarantee of everlasting suffering. Tears poured out of my eyes. They rolled down my face and dropped on my chest and onto the floor, unstoppably.
I couldn’t live without her.
I had to get her back. Killing and suffering were better than this unbearable longing. No need to atone or repent: killing McCabe was as righteous now as when the Tongues of Fire first ordered it.
With the phones dead, the bridge to Elmira impassable, and my feet too mangled to drive, writing a letter to McCabe was all I could do on that endless day after Thanksgiving. I sat in bed propped up by many pillows, with one of the Judge’s yellow legal pads and a pen found at the bottom of his desk drawer. This was the first time my hands had touched writing tools since the New York meltdown. Hours later, the pad was still pure yellow, and the pen had long been dropped on the floor. If I had been able to write her a letter, one of those brilliantly devious, skillful eighteenth-century frog letters that tease answers without seeming to ask questions, I would have asked McCabe what I had to do to make her want to come back.
I did not want to force her. Other than pretending a serious illness, I had given up on coercion. Besides, if she refused to come back even if I was “gravely ill,” my humiliation would be absolute. I could not risk it. More subtle ways had to be found to plant in her the desire to return. Perhaps the way to bring her back could be hidden in the reasons that made her leave. On this second day without McCabe, the business emergency hypothesis seemed ludicrous. Could she be with Bebe? I kept pushing the gaseous suspicion to the back of my mind, not allowing it to acquire shape and volume. Jealousy was the worst advisor at this moment, but the suspicion kept returning. If she was with Bebe, was it for good, or a fleeting relapse? To distract myself from this thought and its complications (who would I be most jealous of, Bebe or McCabe, and why?), I reviewed my last night with McCabe.
Maybe I should not have been so didactic, playing César Franck’s entire Symphony for her. But hadn’t she placed her left hand on her knee, inadvertently pulling up the shirt cuff, so that the naked face of her wrist was visible? This was one of the small gestures of pleasure that I had noticed in her while we listened to music. Another was tilting her face slightly toward her left shoulder, so that her eyes seemed to follow the light coming through the window. Or touching the front of her left wrist with her right index finger, as if she wanted to take her pulse discreetly, without me noticing. Through intuition, which is reason operating on a back channel, I had compiled a catalogue of McCabe’s signs of pleasure. Now I was not so sure. They may have been signs of boredom. Had I attributed to her my own pleasure at having such a docile audience? When we listened to music, I felt in my natural state: neutral, equidistant from all feelings and humors. Only with McCabe gone did I realize that my perfect equilibrium could not have been attained without the pleasure directly flowing from her presence. It was I, not her, who had to be put under the microscope. There had never been any carnal desire on my part toward McCabe. Acknowledging pleasure from her verged on indecency, but this was no time for cowardice. She had given me pleasure daily. Incorporeal pleasure. How could that be? Was it just her docility, her willingness to dine with me night after night, listen to my talk about plants, and sit through the lengthy music? I suspected an ulterior reason, but my aching brain refused to dig deeper.
Her docility had a darker side effect, though: it made me miss the signs of her impending departure. Mrs. Crandall’s visit was the only red flag, or at the very least, a symptom of McCabe’s restlessness. Had Mrs. Crandall helped McCabe escape? I couldn’t see her doing much beyond driving McCabe to the airport or calling her a cab or performing some other factotum task. Mrs. Crandall was not the eloping kind. However voluptuous, she was a pillar of society.
At dinner, and when she changed my bandages in the morning, I should have prodded McCabe even more about herself. But it was hard work. Since her answers never expanded into conversation, I was forced to ask one question after another, just to hear her speak. Now that she had disappeared, I craved her voice, and hers alone. Even when they were monosyllabic, her answers were so complete and perfect when measured against my questions that they left me wanting more. The longest I had ever heard her speak was when she told me the story about the Biloxi marshes and the burning corpses.
It was easier to question McCabe in the morning, while she changed my bandages. (When I now thought of McCabe it was the new one I envisioned; the old, voluble, loquacious McCabe had begun receding at that moment on the edge of the Judge’s land when I almost pushed the usurper down the ravine.) We were physically close. In the bright light, I could see even the tiniest change of expression in her eyes. My questions the first day were about myself, asking if my feet had been amputated. She said “no” several times until I stopped, still unsure if she was telling the truth. The next morning she changed my bandages for the first time. Each layer she unwrapped from my right foot was more purulent than the preceding. She paused before unwrapping the one closest to the skin. “Your foot is in there. See the shape?” I nodded and glanced away. When she was sure I was not looking, she uncovered the foot. No nurse in the history of nursing had been more devoted than McCabe. Yet she had abandoned her patient.
One day, long after that, she invited me to look at my feet. The intimacy of the offer shook me. She was offering me a part of my body as if she owned it, which she did at that moment. I could see her reflected on the windowpane, waiting for my answer, the careless parting of her lips contradicting the competent hands holding a roll of gauze and a pair of scissors. I was afraid of her. Just for a second. Then I glanced at my foot. It was monstrous. I managed not to heave until McCabe left the room. After that, I was insatiably curious about her.
Questions had to be clear and direct, and seem innocent. They could not be nakedly personal, but nor could they be sneaky. McCabe would clam up in either case. The personal could be reached safely only by starting from the general. A comment wondering whether the Judge’s yellow roses risked black spot if it rained too much this fall would slowly lead to a casual question about fall weather in her hometown, which turned out to be Bangor, Maine. That was a logic-defying upset. I was sure Bebe had told me that McCabe was from Concord, where she had been raised in an orphanage. Someone was lying. As I learned more about McCabe’s childhood in Bangor, a tiny fact a day, I added this fib to Bebe’s catalogue, which was almost as long as mine.