The Bullet Read online

  But all day long I kept wandering back to my laptop, hitting refresh on the image, and imagining a small girl, turning somersaults on that lawn.

  • • •

  I AM NOT known for rash decisions. I tend to drive my friends crazy, thinking and rethinking choices for weeks before finally staking out a course of action. It’s the way I’m hardwired, the way I move physically as well: slowly, methodically, like a dancer moving through deep water. I think this is why, in my work, I’m drawn to the literature of centuries past. I like that Marcel Proust spends thirty pages describing how his character tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep. And that’s the action-packed part of his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. Proust meanders for a further six volumes before wrapping things up. It’s a gorgeous book. By comparison, contemporary literature feels too frenetic.

  Suffice to say, I am not a taker of spur-of-the-moment trips. But that evening, my thoughts kept circling back to the house in Atlanta. I wondered what color the shutters had been painted when my birth parents lived there. I wondered how tall the tree out front had stood, what kind of car they had parked in the garage. I wanted to see it. I wanted to go there, see the house, and find whatever remained of my first life.

  It felt urgent. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I would be too distracted to go through the motions of my normal routine tomorrow. I never miss work; I couldn’t remember taking a sick day in all the years I’d worked at the university. But surely this counted as a personal emergency? And I actually was unwell, I thought, touching my neck. It would be tricky: Fall semester was in full swing. I had four lectures to teach in the week ahead. But the next break in the academic calendar wasn’t until Thanksgiving. The end of next month. I would go crazy if I waited that long.

  I thought for a while, rubbing circles up and down my wrist. Then I checked the clock—9:00 p.m., not yet too late to call—and looked up the phone number for Madame Aubuchon.

  Hélène Aubuchon is the formidable head of Georgetown’s French Department. She is in her seventies, but her posture (not to mention her legs) puts students four decades younger to shame. The French use an acronym, CPCH, to describe a certain type of aristocratic woman. It stands for Collier de Perles, Carré Hermès—meaning, a lady too well bred to leave the house without her pearl necklace and Hermès scarf. Hélène must have perfected the look in Paris back in the 1960s, and she’d remained immaculately pulled together ever since. I respected her, and I was also a little afraid of her.

  She answered on the fourth ring. “Allô?”

  “Bonsoir, Madame Aubuchon? Je suis désolée de vous déranger . . .” We had worked together for years now, but I still addressed her with the formal vous. Hélène Aubuchon, in my experience, was not prone to informality.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you at home,” I continued in rapid French. “But I’ve had a bit of a family emergency. I’m going to need to take a few days off.”

  “Ah. When were you thinking?”

  “Well, ideally, starting tomorrow.”

  “Non. Tout à fait impossible,” she said sternly. “But you know this. Not in the middle of the term.”

  “I’ve just found out I was adopted. When I was very young. I never knew.”

  “Oh là là. Ma chère. That must have been a shock. However, I need you to run the study-abroad session on Wednesday evening. And you are needed in the classroom, that sophomore tutorial surtout—”

  “The reason I was adopted is that my mother and father were murdered.”

  Silence.

  “And may I tell you how I learned all this? It’s because doctors discovered a bullet in my neck. Right up against my spine. It was fired there by whoever murdered my parents. They shot me, too.”

  More silence. Then: “Mais je ne comprends pas.” I don’t understand. “A bullet?”

  “Yes. In my neck.”

  “But—you don’t—you don’t mean it’s still there?”

  “It is. I can send you the X-ray if you like. The bullet glows bright white.”

  “And your parents were—you said they were murdered ?”

  “My birth parents, yes.”

  She let out a little poof of air. “Oh là là là là là là.” I imagined her loosening the Hermès and fanning herself. “Je m’excuse. Take as much time as you need.”

  • • •

  A QUICK CHECK online revealed that flights departed Reagan National Airport for Atlanta nearly every hour tomorrow. They weren’t prohibitively expensive, either. I picked a midmorning departure, Delta flight 1139.

  Then I opened a small suitcase and began tossing in sweaters, leggings, a caramel-colored suede skirt. What did one pack for such a trip? What passed for an appropriate wardrobe for an outing to lay flowers on the graves of a mother and a father you had never known? When I had booked my plane ticket, the computer asked whether I was traveling for business or pleasure. Umm, neither. Not even remotely.

  I jotted down a list of everyone I should remember to tell that I was leaving town. My family, obviously. A student for whom I’d agreed to serve as thesis adviser. Also, Will Zartman. His name gave me pause. I was supposed to go see his neurosurgeon colleague next week. I reached up and touched my neck. The pain was less intense today. Will was probably right: I was only imagining I could feel something. The neurosurgery consult could wait. That bullet had been in my neck for thirty-four years; another few days wouldn’t hurt.

  It occurred to me that there must be knock-on effects from this week’s surreal developments that hadn’t even dawned on me yet. Yesterday, for example, after hanging up with Will, I reflected that all my life I had blithely filled in medical forms claiming no family history of diabetes or heart disease. Whereas, for all I knew, all four of my biological grandparents had dropped dead from massive coronaries. I had no clue what my family medical history was.

  I felt a stab of fury toward my parents. My adoptive parents, if that was the right term. By what right had they kept so much from me? How could they have thought I would not want to know? What made it worse was that I was closer to my parents than to anyone else in the world. They could both read me like a book. I had assumed the reverse was true as well.

  Now I felt a shift. A fracturing. The decoupling of souls.

  You think you know people when you grow up with them. When you believe they’ve been beside you your whole life. You know their voices, the curves of their hands, what makes them laugh. You know their hearts.

  But it turns out you don’t know their thoughts. Not truly, not in full. All people have their secrets, and not just things they keep from you, but secrets about you. Things they hope you’ll never learn. You can share your home with someone, share all the silly, little details of life, share the soap, the sugar bowl, shoes—and you would never guess.

  You think you know someone.

  Then, at the age of thirty-seven, you grow up.

  Nine

  * * *

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2013

  I woke up hungry, which—considering I hadn’t eaten in four days—seemed a good sign.

  My favorite breakfast is a ham-and-cheese croissant from Pâtisserie Poupon on Wisconsin Avenue. This pleasant spot is cramped but sunny, and the only place in Washington that produces croissants and baguettes that taste remotely the way they do in Paris. They also bake a bacon quiche that—trust me on this—will change your life. Amazing what a pastry chef unafraid to embrace obscene quantities of butter, salt, and pork can achieve. I suspect the same formula is at work in the croissant jambon fromage, which is why, for the sake of my thighs, I try to limit myself to stopping by no more than twice a week.

  Pâtisserie Poupon is only a few minutes’ walk from my house. I could head there for a croissant and tea, swing back home for my suitcase, and still make it to the airport in plenty of time. When I got there, though, I was greeted with a
locked door and a CLOSED ON MONDAYS sign. No, no, no. I always forgot this inconvenient detail. I pressed my nose against the glass and squinted, desperate enough to beg an off-duty employee to open up and sell me yesterday’s remnants. But the bakery was deserted, swept clean, chairs neatly stacked on tables, sunlight glinting off empty display cases. Not a croissant in sight.

  Discouraged, I retraced my steps home. I would have to settle for a gluey bagel at the airport. More taste of cardboard. Although wasn’t there a café that sold decent prosciutto paninis, right after the security line? Which terminal was that again? I was trying to recall as I rounded the corner onto my block and spotted a man standing on my front step.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  It was Will Zartman. My doctor, leaning on my doorbell and looking agitated.

  “Dr. Zartman? Is that you? What on earth are you doing here?” I glanced at my watch; it was not yet nine o’clock.

  “Caroline! Hi. Hi there. I told you, call me Will.” He heaved a deep breath. “I thought I’d missed you.”

  “You did, nearly. I’m just grabbing my bag. But why are you—”

  “I got your message when I woke up. I’ve been trying to call. I must have tried you five times. Don’t you ever answer your phone?”

  I considered this. I’d left my cell phone in the house, propped on top of my suitcase. I often wander out without it. Not out of forgetfulness, but because I spend too much time around teenage students who can’t conduct a five-minute, face-to-face conversation without twitching for their phones. I like my friends as much as the next person, but I don’t feel the need to tweet them my thoughts a dozen times a day. And anyone who needs to reach me can probably wait an hour or two. I don’t have the kind of job that demands urgent responses. So, no—on an early walk for my morning croissant, I don’t ever answer my phone.

  “Why are you here? Is something wrong?”

  “Is something wrong? You mean, aside from your experiencing a burning sensation in your neck, and the fact that an X-ray just confirmed there’s a bullet in there? I thought we’d agreed that you would see Marshall this week. The surgeon. You need to talk to him.”

  “I will. As soon as I get back. I just need a couple of days.”

  “No. Leaving town is a bad idea. That’s why I kept calling. You shouldn’t be traveling. I’m worried that you—”

  “But why are you worried? A week ago you barely knew who I was, and now here you—”

  “I knew who you were. Any man under the age of ninety and still in full possession of his faculties would notice who you were.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  To my surprise, he did not blush or back down. Instead he leaned forward and gripped my right wrist. “Look, you need to take this seriously. A bullet rubbing against your spine is not something to mess around with.” He turned my arm over, studied it. “You’re not wearing your wrist guard.”

  “It’s been feeling better.”

  “No, I’ll bet it hasn’t.”

  “Oh my God! I know whether my own wrist hurts. And anyway, whether it hurts or not is none of your—” I clamped my mouth shut. Whether my wrist hurt was of course precisely his business. “I’m going to be late,” I said, changing tack. “I promise I’ll go see your friend Marshall. Later this week, if you like. Now excuse me.”

  I unlocked the door, plucked my phone and suitcase from the front hall, and pulled the door shut again.

  Will was still standing there. “How are you getting to the airport?”

  “Taxi. I’ll get one on M Street.”

  “You’ll be lucky to catch one in rush hour.” He pulled out his phone, glanced at the time. “My first patient isn’t booked until ten. My car’s right here. I’ll drive you.”

  “Across the river? To National Airport?” It wasn’t far, maybe twenty minutes’ drive. Still. “I’ll be fine.”

  “For God’s sake, get in the car.”

  So I did. He was right; traffic was terrible. We inched along in silence. An accident had narrowed Memorial Bridge down to one lane for cars crossing into Virginia. Beneath us the river flowed sullenly, the water choppy and brown.

  Will’s Jeep had a baseball glove and tennis rackets thrown in the back. The radio was tuned to NPR. We listened as the Morning Edition anchors delivered gloomy updates on the latest horrors in Mali, in Syria, on Capitol Hill. Strangely, my mood lifted as they forged on. So many people in the world had worse problems than I did. By the time the newscasters introduced a story about an oil spill and the resulting environmental catastrophe off the coast of Norway, I broke into a grin.

  Will glanced over. “Oil spills are funny?”

  “No, but honestly, are you listening to this?” I shook my head. “If we don’t all die from toxic oil fumes, we’ll be overwhelmed by rising ­Islamist militants from the Middle East. There’s no hope.”

  He grinned, too. “I was only playing NPR to impress you. Want music instead?”

  “Sure. Whatever you like to listen to is fine.”

  He hesitated. “Country, actually. You probably think it’s corny. But, yeah, I love it. Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, all the old honky-tonk stuff. Garth Brooks isn’t bad.”

  “No. Seriously? Garth Brooks?”

  “Well, but mostly I listen to C-SPAN radio. Obviously. Unlike you, I find there’s nothing like live coverage of a House Agriculture subcommittee to get a guy going in the morning.”

  I smiled. We fell quiet again, but the silence was more amiable now. I studied his hands on the steering wheel. No wedding ring.

  Will Zartman was not my type. I tend to go for undernourished, slightly tragic-looking academics. You know the sort: pale, artsy guys who chain-smoke while wearing skinny jeans and black turtlenecks. It’s a pathology, I know. Too much time spent studying abroad in Paris during my formative romantic years. My penchant for the Euro look has provided endless amusement for my brothers over the years; they excuse themselves to the kitchen and break out in the “Sprockets” routine from Saturday Night Live whenever I bring a new boyfriend home. Tony in particular has perfected Mike Myers’s mincing hip wriggle (“Now is ze time vhen ve dance!”).

  Annoyingly, I had the feeling that Tony and Martin would like Will. He looked both robustly healthy and robustly American. He was into country music, of all things. Definitely not my type.

  Will pulled up to the curb at airport departures exactly fifty-two minutes before my flight was scheduled to take off. I didn’t have luggage to check; I should just make it.

  “Thanks for the ride. It was awfully nice of you.” I reached for the car door. He saw me flinch as I jerked at the handle with my right hand.

  “Hang on.” He put the car in park, jumped out, ran around, and opened my door from the outside. “Door-to-door service. There you go.”

  I felt simultaneously charmed and irritated. “Okay. Well. Thanks again.”

  “I’m going to make that appointment for you with Marshall Gellert. How about the end of this week?”

  “Fine.”

  “But will you back here by then?” He searched my face.

  I nodded. “By Wednesday or Thursday, I would think. I need a few days down in Atlanta. To try to make peace with things. And to see their old house and whatever else is left to see, which I’m guessing isn’t much.”

  “Right. But, Caroline, if that bullet is pressing down on a nerve . . . if that’s what has inflamed your wrist . . . then you really need to get it checked. Before there’s any further damage. Promise.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Then, before I quite understood what was happening, he stepped close. I smelled soap and coffee and something else, an animal scent, as though he’d recently been in the company of a warm dog. He lifted a lock of my hair. His fingers slid down the dark curl, then closed around it and held still for a moment. My breath ca
ught. The gesture was astonishingly intimate.

  He dropped the curl lightly on my shoulder and stepped back. “Be careful. Take care of yourself.”

  “I will.” I couldn’t think what else to say, so I turned and walked ­toward the bright lights of the terminal. Glass doors slid open and then sealed shut behind me. I did not look back, and for two days I did not again think of Will Zartman.

  PART TWO

  Atlanta

  Ten

  * * *

  I wish that I could report a dramatic development the first time I stood outside that house on Eulalia Road.

  It was early afternoon on Monday when I pulled my rental car up to the curb. The front of the house was in shadow, and the street was quiet. Either few children lived on this block or else they were not yet home from school. Wind rustled the leaves of the graceful elm tree that dominated the front yard. How old must that tree be? Fifty years old? Seventy-­­five? It was stout enough that it must already have been well established when the Smiths lived here. I must have played under these branches, must have tried to wrap chubby little arms around this trunk. I waited for an epiphany. For some ancient shard of memory to dislodge itself and come rushing back to me.

  But no: it was just a tree. The house was just a house.

  I felt nothing.

  I crossed the lawn, climbed five brick steps to the front porch, and knocked.

  No answer.

  I knocked again and was about to conclude the house was empty when the door cracked open.

  “Yes?” An older woman’s voice. I could see a patch of gray hair above the safety chain, which remained fastened.

  “Hello, forgive me for disturbing you. My name’s Caroline Cashion, and I used to live in this house, when I was a child.”

  Silence.

  I fished in my handbag and produced my business card, embossed with the university seal and indicating my status as a member of the faculty. I’d found that pulling rank as a professor could prove useful. Even in Washington, where the average government intern probably wields more actual power than I do, the title commands respect. It’s as if people hear professor and are transported back to their student days, a period in their lives when teachers represented ultimate authority.