The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [136]
Phoebe shook her head. Her ears were ringing. “Okay,” she said, “that guy who died had children. But what about us?”
She looked at Wolf, who knew nothing, and was engulfed by a surge of wild anger. “I can’t believe she did it,” she cried. “I can’t believe she stood here and did that to us!” Each word incensed her further, until she felt crazed with the need to vent her rage. “Was she out of her mind?” she shouted. “Standing here and—goddammit!” She kicked the outside of the church, hurting her foot, knocking flakes of plaster to the ground. She pounded it with her hands, raking them over its rough surface until a hot, delicious pain flashed through her. “Goddammit!” she cried. “Goddamn her!”
From behind, Wolf took Phoebe’s hands, scraped and bleeding from the plaster’s abrasion. He folded her in his arms, holding her still. “Stop it,” he said. “You’re hurting yourself.”
Phoebe let her weight fall on Wolf. “I hate her,” she said. “I hate her more than anything.”
“Okay,” Wolf said gently, holding her.
After a while Phoebe turned around, facing him. Wolf watched her a moment, as if to gauge her calm. “Phoebe, I have to say this,” he said. “The last thing Faith wanted was to hurt you—any of you. In her mind it was a sacrifice. She was trying to right a balance.” He paused, breathing hard. “The fact that she caused more misery is just a horrible irony. Her worst fear, all over again.”
He let go of Phoebe. She moved away from him and hunched against the church, its stone warm at her back. She shut her eyes.
Can you feel it?
Faith opened every door.
Reaching, reaching. Whatever it took.
Come on, Faith said. Come on, come on. A lump on her head, who cared? A bloody nose? So much the better.
And they’d loved her for it.
Adored her.
Everyone had.
Watching. Silently egging Faith on as she climbed or pushed or mounted the high dive, craving the spell that fell on the world when she risked her life.
Strangers scrambling over rocks, holding her sister’s wet head in their strangers’ hands. Not what Phoebe had imagined. Policemen picking through her things. A whole life—a warm thing—broken into procedures. Not what Phoebe had imagined. The opposite.
And she was riven, then, by a vision of her sister unlike any she’d had before: a girl like herself, reaching desperately for something she couldn’t see but sensed was there, a thing that always seemed to evade her. Reaching violently, giving herself to that violence, only to find, when normal life resumed, that she’d done a thing she couldn’t live with.
“I should’ve known,” Wolf said. “That’s the thing. I should’ve guessed.”
Phoebe opened her eyes. Wolf was facing the sea. “I walked away,” he said, shaking his head. “Just walked away.”
In his voice Phoebe heard the unspeakable weight of having seen, having been responsible.
“When I saw you on the stairs that day,” he said, “I thought, Thank God, I can finally do something for Phoebe. You needed help and I thought, I can help her, she deserves help and I can help her. Like a brother, almost. But something happened. It was like an undertow, and by the time I felt it, it was already too late, I couldn’t stop.”
Phoebe went to Wolf and put her arms around him, to silence him. She couldn’t bear to have him explain himself. But Wolf went on.
“If I’d just stayed by the wall. Not even held her hand, just stayed. Why walk away? I’ve asked myself a million times.”
Phoebe held him. She wanted to comfort Wolf, to absolve him, but of course she was powerless.
“If I’d just—” he said. “Then running away—”
“Please don’t,” Phoebe said, holding him. “Please.”
“Running away when she—”
“Don’t.”
“Then, after everything else, I couldn’t even stay. I ran.”
“But then you came back,” Phoebe said. “I found you.” And only in speaking these words did their simple truth affect her, the weight of her debt to Wolf, her gratitude. “She disappeared,” she said, “but you came back.”
“Came back where?” Wolf said. “I sat on my ass in Munich.”
Phoebe shook her head. Some door had opened in