Forgive Me. Amanda Eyre Ward
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and finding proof of Winnie’s involvement was simply impossible.
Still, Nadine loved talking to her subjects for hours, drinking tea and picking the locks of their minds. She was always amazed at how much people would tell her, a stranger, even as she held a pen in her hand. They seemed so eager to be seen, to be recognized. But Nadine had to listen carefully for the narrative beneath the fa¸ades they constructed for themselves.
Sometimes Nadine felt interviewees pulling back from her, as if they thought she could not understand their reality, or might judge them. She used her own secrets then, handing over personal tidbits like bargaining chips, creating a sense of intimacy that almost always led subjects to reveal deeper truths about themselves.
Nadine relished the drive home with pages of scrawled notes. She would pour a glass of wine, play some jazz, and type on her antique Olivetti–she had bought it in a Station Street pawnshop–finding the arc of the story in the process. The hiss of the fax machine, the thrill of snapping open a paper to see her name, the way people lit up when they realized she had written an article they had read and thought about: Nadine loved it all.
But then there was the night they heard gunfire outside the Waterfront. A large bottle of Castle beer in front of her, the lights in the bar going dark, the music stopping abruptly. There were shots, and then screams. Around her, the murmur of voices speaking in Xhosa.
Nadine didn’t have to go outside. Her work was slow and cunning. But the photographers stood in the dark, wrapped their cameras around their necks, and raced toward the action. Nadine sat in the warm shebeen, her hands pressed to her eyes. The gunfire stopped, and there was an eerie silence from the garbage-strewn streets. Something made her stand up, leave the bar. Notebook tucked in the pocket of her shorts, she ran outside, cutting through dirt alleys. And then the gunfire started again.
It hadn’t been a premonition that had made her run outside. It had been the silence. Now, on an island far from war, she was enveloped by terror.
“Nadine?” Hank sat next to her on the church step. He looked concerned as he bent down to see her face.
“My head,” said Nadine. Her hands were shaking. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m just feeling…”
“Continuing headaches are completely normal after head trauma,” said Hank. “Maybe this trip was too much for you.”
“No,” said Nadine. “I’m fine. Just some air, you know?” She looked into Hank’s eyes, and watched him decide whether or not to believe her.
“How about a burger?” she said, her voice controlled.
“There’s soup at my house,” said Hank.
“Really,” said Nadine. “I’m fine. Maybe I just need some food.” He nodded warily. She smiled, and took his arm as they walked back to the restaurant, wrapping around him tightly. She did not think of Maxim, the way his lips had felt on her skin. She did not think about returning to Nutthall Road the next day, staring at Maxim’s clothes abandoned on the floor.
Eleven
For four days, Nadine woke early in Hanks guest bedroom. The winter sun streamed through the panes of the upstairs windows; even when Nadine closed the white shutters, the light worked its way underneath her eyelids. Besides the hissing of the steam heat, the house was utterly quiet. Nadine’s dreams–which had always been blissfully blank–were filled with images like shrapnel: the clay Madonna on a sick child’s bedside table, the knot of skin where a Haitian boy’s ear had been. Ann’s wedding ring, nestled amid Jim’s spare change in a glass dish on his dresser in the Surf Drive house.
In her pajamas, Nadine made coffee and drank it in on the front porch, looking over the large yard, which led to a dirt road and then the beach. The yard was made for dogs and children, thought Nadine, but there was only Hank and his fragile patient, drinking coffee, wrapped in a scratchy red blanket. By the front door was a row of fishing rods and a green plastic tackle box.
In the afternoons, they would read in the living room. They had visited Nantucket Bookworks and bought each other books for Christmas. Hank was working through War and Peace and Nadine was revisiting Cry the Beloved Country. They sat at opposite ends of the couch, propped up by pillows. Once in a while, Hank would read a sentence to Nadine, or she would look up to find him focused on her, not his reading.
“What?” she said once, catching him staring.
“Oh,” said Hank, “I just hit a boring part. You thought I was gazing at you?”
“No,” said Nadine, smiling.
“Good,” said Hank.
After a lunch of cheese, sliced apples, and bread, they shopped in town and then sat on the beach. They told each other ribbons of stories: Nadine’s summer in South Africa, Hank’s mother in Florida, who was growing forgetful, the young girl he’d just diagnosed with diabetes. “That must have been tough,” said Nadine, when he described telling the girls parents.
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