The Most Dangerous Thing Read online

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” she says, trying to be careful with Karl’s feelings but also her words. She doesn’t want to be drawn into making promises she can’t keep. But his eyes are sad and hurt. He clearly wants to ask other, softer, more vulnerable questions. Why did she leave? Doesn’t she love him? Doesn’t she want to be with him? But these are not the kind of questions that Karl will ask out loud because Karl does not know the answers and Karl never admits he doesn’t have answers. “That’s a surgeon’s personality,” her father, Karl’s onetime professor, told Gwen early in their courtship. “He’s used to being in charge, having authority.” Like most people in love, she ignored any observation that didn’t serve her vision of her romance.

  “Aren’t you running late? Go save lives,” she says now, not meaning to be cruel, only factual. But Karl takes offense.

  “It’s not—” he begins, then stops because Annabelle has entered the kitchen, frowning at the morning, slow and cranky, quite unlike both of them. Gwen is a morning person, while Karl, like many hyperachievers, permits himself no more than four or five hours of sleep.

  Annabelle, by contrast, is a night owl who fights bedtime and treats morning as a personal offense. Another reason for Gwen to be here for bedtime every night. Karl would never have the patience to cajole Annabelle through her nighttime routine. There are circles under Annabelle’s eyes, bigger and darker than usual. Gwen wonders if Karl knows that Annabelle sometimes creeps down to the kitchen with the earbuds from her little MP3 player and then watches the television on the counter, standing all the while. Once Gwen found her with her chin resting on the counter, asleep on her feet, while an infomercial touted the miracle of mineral makeup. She wonders at the secrets of her daughter’s DNA. Were her parents night owls? How had they coped? Given the remote orphanage where Annabelle spent the first eleven months of her life, her parents were almost certainly farmers. Did they frown at sunrise, did they stay up late, despite knowing the price they would pay come morning? Did they abandon their daughter to strike out for the city, find a life that suited them better?

  “Good morning, sweet pea.”

  “Peas are not sweet,” she says. Then: “Can I have pancakes?”

  “We’re a little pressed for time. But we can have them this weekend. I thought you could come over to Poppa’s, have a sleepover?”

  “You should check with me—” Karl begins, but Annabelle is already lighting up. “Can I have the princess room?”

  “Of course,” Gwen says. The princess room is nothing more than Gwen’s childhood room, virtually untouched since she left for college. If her mother had lived—but her mother did not live.

  “You didn’t ask me,” Karl says in a low voice after she sends Annabelle back upstairs to put on real pants. She was trying to coast by with her pajama bottoms. Plaid, they would have fooled her father. This is another reason why Gwen has to come by every morning; Annabelle gets too much by Karl. Their daughter is the one person impervious to his surgical authority and expectations.

  But for all the reasons Gwen can list for being here every morning and evening, none really matters. She’s here because she cannot bear being away from her daughter. Yet she has chosen to be away from her daughter. No, she doesn’t understand it herself.

  “I know we have no formal arrangement—” Karl continues.

  “Yet.”

  “But you didn’t ask me if you could have Annabelle this weekend.”

  “I don’t have to,” Gwen says, putting bread in the toaster, getting out the cinnamon sugar that Annabelle likes. It comes in a plastic yellow sifter shaped like a bear, a relic of Gwen’s childhood. Her own did not survive, but she bought this one at an antique store, laughing at herself for paying seven dollars for a piece of plastic that used to cost less than two—and was filled with cinnamon sugar.

  “If you are serious about this—”

  “I am serious. Serious as a heart attack, as they say in your world. But then, my world doesn’t have metaphors or similes about what matters because, as you so often remind me, nothing matters in my world.”

  “I never—”

  “Always,” she says. She is aware that she is interrupting him, aware that she is enjoying it a little too much. “You always let me know how trivial my life is. Not in words. Through your lack of words, your lack of questions, your inability to feign interest. By your silence, you let me know every day that what I do and who I am is of absolutely no interest to you.”

  Annabelle has returned and is standing in the doorway, regarding them. She is bright, exceptionally bright, although no child could be expected to compete with the brainiac powers of Karl Flores. Still, she is probably aware of more than they want her to be. Gwen hopes those dark circles aren’t from lying awake, worrying. When she first started out testing the idea of leaving Karl, trying it on in front of her friends, as she might have asked them about a particularly bold fashion choice or luxury purchase, the litany of questions had been consistent: Did he cheat? Is he abusive? Is he an addict? Has he lied to you about important things? When Gwen said no, everyone said: “You should stay together for Annabelle’s sake.” Karl said the same thing. No one understands that she could leave for Annabelle’s sake. She likes to think her mother would have, if she had lived. But if her mother had lived, would Gwen have chosen the men she has chosen? Certainly, she never would have married Stephen. Ironically, her mother’s death probably drove her into that doomed, ridiculous marriage.

  “You’ll be late, Daddy,” Annabelle says. Ah, she wants to defuse the bomb, ticking away, separate them now so they might choose to be together later. So that Gwen might choose. Karl has made it clear that he has no desire to divorce her. But not because he loves her, only because he can’t stand to lose at anything.

  “Will the film crew be there today?” Gwen asks, taking in her husband’s suit, one of his nicest, and the bright blue shirt that flatters his dark complexion.

  “Only for—I’m not sure what you call them. No interviews, but walking, sitting in meetings. Establishing shots? Something like that. I wish I hadn’t said yes.”

  Under her breath: “But you always do.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She turns back to the task of fixing Annabelle’s breakfast, as if it requires great concentration to butter toast and sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar, pour a glass of juice. But it works. When she looks up, he’s gone.

  Friends have pointed out to Gwen that it is hypocritical of her to complain about the constant media demands on her husband, given that she was a journalist who met him on assignment. She knew of him, of course. Dr. Karl Flores had been famous for a long time, more than fifteen years, when they met. He became famous for performing heart surgery on infants, working with tiny instruments of his own design, precious things that appeared to be plundered from a doll’s hospital.

  Plenty of surgeons do what Karl does, with just as good results. But few have Karl’s charisma, and no matter how the world changes, some aspect of his life always seems to be in sync with the zeitgeist. Gwen met him when he was in handsome-surgeon mode. Never married, he was the subject of much gossip. But the ordinary truth was that he worked too much and had no taste for a playboy lifestyle because it would have undercut his good-guy image, which he enjoyed mightily. His self-knowledge on this topic was his saving grace. “I like the attention,” he told Gwen on their third interview, which somehow mutated into their first date, upending her professional life when she failed to reveal this fact to her bosses before her article ran. “Not because I’m egotistical but because I can use it.”

  “Oh, you use your powers for good,” she said, laughing.

  “Yes,” he said, laughing yet earnest. On the first night they spent together—which happened to be the next night—they watched a movie on cable, a wonderfully campy affair in which a doctor, asked during a deposition if he had a god complex, replied: “I am God.” Oh, how they laughed.

  Oh, how true it was. />
  Karl is a surgeon. Karl is handsome. Karl goes to third world countries on his “vacations” and makes miracles. Five years ago, as the subject of immigration heated up, Karl revealed that he had entered the country illegally as a child, obtaining citizenship status under the Reagan-sanctioned amnesty of 1986. He testified before Congress. He wrote op-eds for the New York Times, although with considerable help from Gwen, who made his language less pedantic and high-handed. Karl may not have a god complex, exactly, but he has a touch of Zeus in him, flinging his words like thunderbolts. He wrote a memoir, this time with the help of a not-so-ghostly ghost. The memoir led to a cable television show, and while it wasn’t a huge hit, it scored solidly in the ratings, renewed year after year. Every journalist who wrote about the show seemed obligated to include the detail that it was the rare case where a Hollywood actor wasn’t quite as good-looking as the real person he portrayed.

  Seven years ago, when they started the process that would bring Annabelle into their household, Gwen thought, hoped, prayed that a child would change the balance in their lives, that their professional selves would recede somewhat. She was right, and yet she was wrong. Karl adores Annabelle, despite initially resisting Gwen’s choice of China. Why not his native Guatemala? (Gwen claimed she feared that country’s bureaucracy, but the truth was she couldn’t bear to have a daughter who would be like Karl, but not her.) What about Zimbabwe, where he had performed yet another surgery? He wanted to find the child that needed them most, he wanted to save someone. But Gwen understood that a child would save her. If they had a child, at least one person would find her essential.

  “How was the freel?” Annabelle asks, mouth full of toast.

  “The what?”

  “You said you were going”—she swallows—“to a funeral yesterday. For your friend.”

  “Oh. It was very sad. It’s always sad when people die. But I saw some old friends.”

  “Your best friends?” Annabelle is entranced with the idea of best friends. Since entering kindergarten this year, she has had no fewer than five. She tries them on like hats. She has a heartless quality. Nature or nurture? Gwen or Karl?

  “Yes, I guess so.” Does Gwen really want to affirm Annabelle’s belief that best friends are interchangeable, disposable, that they come and go like trends? “We were best friends until high school, when we went to different schools.” True, but a lie. She was suggesting to Annabelle that the different schools changed the nature of their relationship. But Gwen and Mickey had never attended the same school, and their friendship was irrevocably broken before they started high school.

  “Who’s your best friend now?” Annabelle asks her mother.

  “Miss Margery, I suppose,” Gwen says, although she considers all her female friends equally close. Which is to say—not very. But Margery is the one she would call if there were major trouble. She’s the one she called the night she decided she wanted a trial separation from Karl.

  “Did he cheat on you?” Margery asked. Everyone starts there. Everyone expects it. He’s too damn handsome. Gwen’s looks are holding up well, and Karl is ten years older, yet it’s clear that everyone thinks she’s competing above her weight class.

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “A woman’s after him, but he really doesn’t get it. I mean, he has no clue. He’s pretty naive that way.”

  “How do you know, then?”

  “He’s so naive that he showed me her e-mails because he thinks they’re funny. He’s, like, ‘She’s such a good writer. You should hire her, give her a column.’ I had to explain to Karl that women don’t write funny, flirtatious e-mails about being newly single to their old boyfriends in order to get the attention of their editor wives.”

  “Someone from high school?”

  “College.”

  “Had they seen each other recently? At a reunion? Did he e-mail her first?”

  “No. And no. Margery, that’s not the point.”

  “What, then?”

  What, then. She toys with the story in her head. It still hurts, thinking about it, but she knows others would find her overly sensitive. Babyish, even.

  It was last month. Karl came home from one of his full, full days. The White House had called. Not the president himself, but still. And now there was going to be this documentary, serious stuff, made by an Oscar winner. Two hours of Karl’s life, his real life, not the cotton-candy version on the cable network, with all the fake romances and intrigue thrown in. Gwen listened, happy for him, happy for their life. Gwen never had a problem being happy for Karl. Annabelle put out place mats in the renovated kitchen alcove, where they preferred to dine. It’s a lovely house. A lovely house is practically obligatory when one is the editor of a consumer service magazine, but that doesn’t make obtaining and maintaining one any easier. Their life, at that moment, looked like the kinds of lives in Gwen’s magazine. The house and the magazine had just come through a year of turmoil but were relatively solid now. (It was two weeks before the retaining wall gave way and the basement filled with mud.)

  As they ate dessert—homemade apple pie with a cheddar crust, made by Gwen—she started to tell Karl about her problems with a fairly big story, something a little tougher than the magazine usually did. She had a showdown with the publisher, the money guy, and had persuaded him to see things her way, although he wouldn’t let her make it the cover story. Still, it would run as written. It would make news.

  “I met with the publisher about the Figueroa story today,” she began.

  He nodded absently, pulled out his BlackBerry, and began scrolling through his messages as he left the room. Annabelle, who had started to clear the table, didn’t notice.

  And that was the problem.

  I can’t do this to her, Gwen thought. I can’t let my daughter grow up in a household where Daddy matters, but Mommy doesn’t, where only one person’s day matters. She’ll make bad decisions, she’ll choose the wrong men. Just like I did. Twice. Once. Twice.

  Back in the kitchen, which looks quite perfect, although now there’s a pervasive dank smell from the basement problems, she still feels the same way. Everyone keeps telling her she has to stay for Annabelle’s sake. If she were to tell them why she left Karl, would anyone agree that it was for Annabelle’s sake? Probably not. Besides, it’s not the whole truth. But it’s part of the truth, a big part.

  Then again, parsing out the truth—deciding what needed to be told and what could be held back—wasn’t that the beginning of the end for Gwen, Mickey, and the Halloran brothers?

  Chapter Six

  Summer 1978

  Sean—of course—found the fact in a book, and although he could never find it again, that didn’t make it not so: our own Leakin Park was one of the largest parks within a city’s limits, 1,200 acres or so when combined with Gwynns Falls Park. We loved telling that fact to out-of-town guests, who always countered: What about Central Park? But Sean had an answer for that, too: Central Park was a paltry 843 acres. Still, our visitors—cousins and the like—were seldom impressed. To them, it was just a bunch of trees and hills. Even if we took them to the tamed part that had tennis courts and ball fields and a little train and the wonderfully spooky chapel on the old Crimea estate, they remained bored. But that was the thing about our park, as we thought of it: It required day-in, day-out commitment to find its treasures. It was a place that rewarded persistence and stillness. In the summer of 1978, we pushed farther and farther into the park every day, Mickey at the lead, and each day brought a discovery. A branch of the stream, with tiny minnows and frogs and snapping turtles. Bright blue flowers in places so shadowy that it was a miracle they bloomed at all.

  Sometimes the park turned on us, reminded us of its power and immensity. We blustered into mud as deep as quicksand, came home with burrs in our hair, rips in our clothes, scratches on our faces. On such days, our exasperated mothers would threaten us with day camp or chores or house arrest. But they never followed thr
ough. Mickey’s mother worked, and Gwen’s mother had one hobby after another, and Mrs. Halloran did whatever she did. Cleaning, she said, but either she was bad at it or the Halloran boys were too much for her because their house was never really tidy. Clean, perhaps, but messy. By the summer of 1977, when Go-Go was seven, she was reduced to buying underwear in various sizes and leaving them on a sideboard in the upstairs hall. It was up to the boys to find pairs that fit.

  Anyway, the primary rule, in those days before cell phones, was that we had to stay within shouting distance of Gwen’s house. But what was shouting distance? How far could sound carry? Whose lung power dictated the range? We would sometimes tell Go-Go to let the rest of us walk ahead for five minutes or so, then bellow. We could always hear Go-Go, so we kept going. And, yes, we understood that we were cheating, that Go-Go’s shouts did not expand the farther we walked, but we were prepared to plead ignorance of this bit of physics if ever confronted. The fact is, our parents didn’t want to look too closely at how we spent our days because then they would have to be responsible for us. And, as noted, Mickey’s mother worked late and slept later, Mrs. Halloran did whatever she did, and Tally Robison threw pots, scribbled on legal pads, and, eventually, stared trancelike at blank canvases in her little studio, frozen with doubt. It could take her days to apply a single stroke of color, and her paintings were never really finished, not that anyone could tell. Tally Robison painted the kind of pictures that made people like Mr. Halloran say: “My kids could do better than that. Even Go-Go.”

  But one overcast day, we walked so far that some of us began to wonder how we could ever get back by dinnertime. It was one of those gray-green days that feels deliciously poignant after so much summery perfection. Rain threatened, but it was an empty threat. The air was moist, heavy, yet not unpleasant. We walked for what felt like hours. Gwen struggled at the end of the line. She was the least athletic of us and fat to boot. Over hill, over dale, she sang in a soft whisper, and the rest of us picked up her song, although we all found it mystifying. We weren’t clear on what dales were, much less the “case-ons” that kept rolling along. Gwen must have learned the song from her father, who was old, in his fifties already. We sang absentmindedly, glad for the sound of our voices. If we had taken time to contemplate how queer this was, we would have stopped. But not even Tim, sixteen at the time, uttered his favorite insult: This is so gay. We just kept marching and singing, singing and marching.