Death and Other Interruptions

Chapter Nine

I got to the newspaper before Mom could throw it out. Somehow I woke up the next morning with nothing more than a slight headache. Somehow I felt rested. I had seen her through the window, going outside to pick it up from the sidewalk, glancing at the front page, her eyes widening in shock. She had shoved it back in its bag, as if that would erase its existence and whatever sordid tale it had printed on its cover. I knew immediately that it had to do with me, and I hurried out of the bathroom and downstairs to intercept her before she made it to the trash can, where I had correctly assumed she would be heading.

Grabbing it from her, I pulled it from its plastic wrapping.

"'Terrorist's Fiancée Escapes Grasp of FBI,'" I read aloud slowly. Were they running out of actual news to cover? The front cover story, above the fold, was about how I had left my apartment yesterday moments before the FBI arrived, presumably to handcuff me and lead me away to Guantanamo Bay, where I would rot for my fiancé's crimes. Or at least that's what the story was implying. Of course, the true story was that soon after I left, I had spoken to them; that I wasn't escaping them but willingly went to them, hoping to clear my fiancé's name. But if I were trying to sell papers, I would have gone with the more exciting version too. Inaccuracies are trivial details in a capitalist world.

Apparently the fat photographer had managed to get a shot of me after all, through the garage door. I looked pale and harried as I climbed into my car. I looked, I admitted, plausibly guilty. It was all very dramatic. The continuation of the story contained an image of a man in a suit, named in the caption as an FBI agent, standing outside my apartment door. Of course, the paper had felt perfectly justified in printing a picture of my apartment building, address clearly visible. There goes my privacy forever. I'll probably go back to it in five years and find my door covered in toilet paper and surrounded by photographers who have slowly fossilized in wait for me.

By the time I had finished reading the article—mostly postulation, thrown together with a few tenable facts, and deftly formed into something resembling credible reporting by the skilled hands of journalists whose livelihoods depended on making lies seem truthful—Mom was on the phone with Amy.

"Can you come over, darling?" Mom asked, and I realized for the first time how much Mom and Amy had dropped everything to be by my side over the past couple of weeks. In the past I might have been irked or bitter—okay, envious maybe—to notice Mom's easy pet name for Amy, but right now it had occurred to me that I hadn't needed to ask anything of either of them. They both seemed to know what I needed, and provided it without asking anything in return. I wondered if I would have been as selfless were the situation flipped. I was, at once, completely humbled. How many times had I complained to Al that my mother loved Amy more, or that Amy wasn't a friend like a sister was supposed to be? How little I had appreciated that perhaps they did care for me as much as I saw them care for each other. Amy must have taken off of work for me more than one day since Al died to help look after me. And all I did was disregard her help and rebuff another offer of assistance. Was that within my mourners' rights, or was I just a complete brat?

"Mom, it's okay, Amy doesn't need to come over right now," I protested after she'd already hung up. "I'm sure she's busy with work or whatever."

"They'll understand, sweetie." Sweetie. I was a sweetie too. Had she always called me that, and I was just too churlish to notice it? "Anyway, we need a lawyer right now. She can write this off as pro bono work. What's happening cannot be legal."

"What's happening?" I felt thick. Then again, I've been feeling thick ever since November 20th.

"This media attention, these accusations, the way the FBI treated you yesterday. We need to do something about this, and your sister will have the best ideas about how to do that."