May We Be Forgiven

lives, and they’re going to want something back. Stay with her, don’t leave her alone; Jane is vulnerable,” Claire says. “Imagine if it were you; if you went nuts, wouldn’t you want someone to stay with me and keep an eye on the house?”
    “We live in an apartment with a doorman. If I went crazy, you’d be fine.”
    “That’s true. If anything happened to you, I’d be perfectly okay, but Jane is not me. She needs someone. Also, you should visit the surviving boy. The lawyer is going to tell you not to, but do it anyway—George and Jane need to know what they’re dealing with. There is a reason I run Asia,” Claire says. “I’m always thinking.” She taps the side of her head. Think. Think. Think.

    A nd so the next day I visit the boy, more out of a kind of familial guilt and less out of the need to calculate the impossible cost of making the boy “whole.” I stop at the gift shop, where the selection is limited to brightly colored carnations, religious necklaces, and candy. I pick a box of chocolates and powder-blue carnations. The boy is in the same hospital as George, in the pediatric unit—two floors higher. He is sitting up in bed, eating ice cream, his eyes fixed on the television— SpongeBob SquarePants. He is about nine years old, chunky, a single eyebrow arches across his face in the shape of the letter “M.” His right eye is blackened, and a large patch on the side of his head has been shaved, and there’s a meaty purple line of stitches exposed to the air. I give the gifts to the woman sitting with the boy, who tells me that he is doing as well as can be expected, there is always someone with him, a relative or one of the nurses.
    “How much does he remember?” I ask.
    “All of it,” the woman says. “Are you from the insurance company?”
    I nod—is a nod the same as a lie?
    “Do you have everything you need?” I ask the boy.
    He doesn’t answer.
    “I’ll come back again in a few days,” I say, anxious to leave. “If you think of anything, you’ll let me know.”

    I t’s funny how quickly something becomes a routine, a way of doing business. I stay with Jane, and it is as though we are playing house. That night I take out the trash and lock the door; she makes a snack and asks if I’ll come upstairs. We watch a little television and read. I read whatever it was that George had been reading, his newspapers and magazines, Media Age, Variety, The Economist, and a big history of Thomas Jefferson that sits beside the bed.
    The accident happens and then it happens. It doesn’t happen the night of the accident or the night we all visit. It happens the night after that, the night after Claire tells me not to leave Jane alone, the night after Claire leaves for China. Claire goes on her trip, George goes downhill, and then it happens. It’s the thing that was never supposed to happen.
    The evening visit to the hospital goes badly. For reasons that are not clear, George is locked in a padded room, his arms bound to his body. Jane and I take turns peering through the small window. He looks miserable. Jane asks to go in and see him, the nurse cautions her against it, but she insists. Jane goes to him, calls his name. George looks up at her; she sweeps his hair out of his face, wipes his furrowed brow; and he turns on her, pins her with his body and bites her again and again, her face, her neck, her hands, breaking the skin in several places. The aides rush in and pull him off of her. Jane is taken downstairs and treated in the Emergency Room, her wounds are cleaned and dressed and she’s given some kind of a shot, like a rabies vaccination.
    We go back to the house. Jane heats hundred-calorie brownies in the microwave, I scoop no-fat ice cream onto them, she sprays them with zero-calorie whipped cream, and I cheer them further with chocolate sprinkles. We snack in silence. I take out the trash and change out of my clothes, the same clothes I’ve been wearing for days, and put on a pair of his pajamas.
    I hug her. I want to be comforting. I am in his pajamas, she is still dressed. I don’t think anything will happen. “I apologize,” I say, without knowing what I am saying. And then she is against me, she puts her hands on the sides of her skirt and slides it down. She pulls me towards her.
    There was a time when I almost told Claire about Thanksgiving—in fact I tried to tell her, one night after sex, when I was feeling close to her. As I started to tell the