Barney Harrigan!

 

The name, his voice, the memory stunned her. Her fingers shook and she steadied the phone against her ear.

 

“Is this Naomi Forman?” the man inquired, still tentative and uncertain.

 

The red numbers on the digital clock displayed three in the morning. The hour of desperation. No call could come at that moment without a reason. Would Barney Harrigan announce disaster? She shivered at the ancient memory, the old painful love, her own awful guilt. Barney Harrigan! From the beating pulse in her throat and the sudden emptiness in the pit of herself, she knew it still lingered. Hadn’t she killed it for good years ago? Five. Nearly six.

 

“I can’t believe it.”

 

“I’m sorry.” He offered the obligatory apology.

 

Kicking off her comforter, she sat cross-legged on the bed.

 

“Where are you?” she asked.

 

“Fort Lauderdale.”

 

“I didn’t know you moved out of Manhattan.”

 

Had he moved since she, on a guilty whim, had last looked him up online? She found that the address had changed from the apartment in SoHo they had once shared, where they had once loved. The flame had burned hard and hot, finally ending, the reasons blurred by time.

 

“I’m at my parents’ place in Lauderdale. I had to drop off Kev.”

 

“Kev?”

 

“My son.”

 

“Son?”

“I married a few years ago. He’s four.”

 

A brief pause, a mite too long.

 

“Congratulations.” Her tone was sarcastic, and she was embarrassed by her reaction. He ignored it.

 

“I’m calling….” He hesitated, clearing his throat, “…at this ungodly hour…you see, I just found out. And you were the only person I could talk to in Washington.”

 

So it was Washington that he needed. For a fleeting moment, she had allowed a part of herself to yearn for something more. He had her at a distinct disadvantage. He had found someone else to love. She had not.

 

“It’s very complicated,” he said. “But it boils down to this….”

 

So he was boiling down again. He had once called it “the bottom line.” How bitterly she had reacted.

 

“The bottom line,” he had ranted, “is that I cannot live a life that is totally political. Not everything is politics and causes, there is home and hearth. Family. Sharing.”

 

That was their old one-note argument. She hadn’t been ready for compromises. Not then.

 

“Charlotte.” He coughed. “My wife.” A bark of hoarseness quickly cleared. “She has been captured by the Glories.” He paused, waiting for a reaction.

 

In her mind, the Glories formed a vague collection of information: rich, powerful, right-wing, espousing a totalitarian view of the world. A dubious religious sect. Some called it a cult with political pretensions. Their leader was Father Glory, an Indian businessman, who believed he was the Messiah. She thought of Jim Jones, the People’s Temple Guru who commanded 900 people to kill themselves in Guyana; Waco’s David Koresh, who created a standoff with the government, then ordered his band of crazies to head for Armageddon; Marshall Applewhite, who talked his followers into believing that suicide would buy them a UFO to trip to a “higher level,” wherever that was. Other images came to mind, shaven-headed Hare Krishnas chanting on street corners; stories of frantic parents chasing lost adult children; and neatly dressed Glories selling candy, knickknacks, flowers. And of course, there was Bin Laden and all the associated fanatics who believed, really believed, that paradise awaited them, an eternity with seventy-two virgins.

 

An eternity? But a cult was a cult, and fools who believed such things were just that—fools, and even worse. Seventy-two, no less. Their thing would have to be made of wrought iron.

 

Naomi remembered her own clumsy and painful deflowering. It was equally horrendous. She had forgotten his name, only recalling that his thing stabbed mercilessly, and the whole experience was appalling.

 

But cults only happened to other people. Unless, of course, you were caught in the crosshairs of their horror, like 9/11. The date stirred her disgust, and she shook it away and thought about what Barney had said about the Glories.

 

“How awful,” she said. It seemed an appropriate response.

 

“I just found out.”

 

“How…?” she started to ask, but Barney was already off, explaining in a choppy narrative.

 

“She had gone to Seattle to visit her sister,” he explained. His voice conveyed a touch of hysteria and she forced herself to listen respectfully, patiently, although her interest in the subject of his pain was minor.

 

“She has this sister, Susan. Both their parents are dead. I said, ‘Fine.’ She hadn’t seen her in two years. Why not. She worked pretty hard with Kev. What’s one lousy week? We both knew Susie was involved with something. But we didn’t know it was that. Not the Glories. ‘Sure, go ahead,’ I told her. I encouraged her. So she went.”

 

Out of the cage, Naomi thought, pulling together a picture of Charlotte and her life, hoping it would recall the old image of her own rebellion. It didn’t.

 

“She called every day from the coast. Spoke to Kevin and me. Told us how much she missed us. Said she had gone with Susie to some kind of farm, had met fabulous, really caring, loving people.

‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘Just wonderful.’ Then she called and said she’d like to spend some more time out there.” He was talking compulsively, not to Naomi, but at her. She let it happen, trapped by their old ties.

 

“Charlotte is twenty-five. That’s their target age. They zeroed in and got her. Just like that. Imagine.” She heard him swallow, picturing his bobbing Adam’s apple.

 

A ten-year difference, Naomi calculated. In comparison to her, he had robbed the cradle. She was his age, thirty-five.

 

“She seemed happy.” State of mind was another difference between the two. “We have this big apartment, a co-op on seventy-fourth and fifth.” Different financial status, “And she loves the kid. Loves him.” He paused. “We were all very close.” And she had family ties. Naomi winced, resisting the gnawing envy.

 

“Then she called two days ago.” His voice broke, and the panic slid into her dark bedroom, raising goose bumps on her thighs and arms. She waited until he cleared his throat, her ears clogged with the pounding pulse of her heart. For some reason, she felt his fear now. Was this voice really Barney’s? Or some disembodied bleat that had splintered loose from an old fantasy? Keep your distance, she begged. This mess is on your plate, not mine.

 

“She said….” His voice steadied. “She said she was not coming home. Never. That she loved me and Kevin…that she had found something important, a new way of life, something spiritual. That someday we would understand. It wasn’t Charlotte talking. Not her at all. Not my Charlotte. She was different, sounded different. I couldn’t understand it. At first I thought she was drugged or hypnotized. But then I thought…hell, the son of a bitch brainwashed her.” His voice had risen. “Am I making sense?” he said quickly, his tone lowering.

 

“Easy, Barney,” she whispered.

 

“I’m really sorry for throwing this shit on your doorstep, Nay. I have no right.” So now he’s bringing up rights, she thought. Rights, after all, were her business. She was assistant director of the Human Rights Council, a group that monitored rights in countries with repressive governments, a growing menace. Did he know that? Was he was trying to subliminally appeal to her sense of compassion? Naomi had just started with the Human Rights Council as she and Barney had approached the exit door of their relationship.

 

Actually, despite his assertion, he did have the right, she thought. There was the right of past relationships, of old friendships, of shared experiences, of love. They had once touched each other deeply. She had often felt his mark on her, like fingerprints on her body, tangible and telling, and on her heart and soul, intangible and abstract. There was also the bond of the dead fetus. Their baby. She had never told him, never would. Ever. Despite her conviction that she had the right to make this choice, she could not totally shake the guilt of the action. For a long time she had put it in back of her mind. With his call, the discomfort came raging back.

 

“You have every right,” she told him.

 

“The thing is,” he said, his courage hardening. “I’m not going to just accept this without a fight. There has got to be some channel of official help. The FBI. Congressmen. They can’t just take people, tear them away from their families, from the people who love them. This is America, dammit.”

 

Torn away? Suppose it had been Charlotte’s conscious decision to leave? Like herself years ago. Perhaps Charlotte also had had enough. But to tear a mother from her living child, that was unnatural, wrong. Nobody had the right to make someone do that.

 

“I’m going to fight this,” Barney said. “I have no set plan. But I’m going to fight. That’s why I called, Nay. I need your help.”

 

She hesitated. Help? What could she do? But at this hour, who could say no…?

 

“But how can I help?” she asked, hoping he would sense the skeptical spin, that she could not help. He indeed had the right to ask her, but not the right to enmesh her. Guilt, the eternal enemy, prodded her.

 

“I…I don’t know if I’m the one, Barney. I mean, I know about human rights and I do have some connections in Washington. But this, the Glories. I don’t know much about these cults.”

 

“I need you, Nay.”

 

“I’ll grant you that you need something, Barney.” She paused, hesitated. “I may be the wrong ticket. The rights I monitor deal with another field…governments primarily. ”

 

“Rights are rights,” Barney said. This time it was he who paused. “I’m invoking …well…what we once were to each other. I know. I know. I’m pushing the envelope. Hell, we have history, Nay. History counts. And you have a sense of justice, and compassion….”

 

“You’re conning me, Barney,” she said.

 

“I wish.”

 

“I’ve toughened up,” she said. “I don’t give in so easily,” she lied. Guilt would make her comply and she knew it.

 

“Yes or no, Nay? I’m begging, and you know from experience that’s not my style.”

 

“Shit, Barney. Why me? Why now?”

 

“Yes or no, Nay?”

 

“That’s not fair, Barney.”

 

“Is that a yes?”

 

“I don’t want this.”
Of course I don’t, she cried within herself. But he must have anticipated her tacit consent.

 

“Please, Nay. Do it.”

 

“I’ll disappoint you. I haven’t got the connections you need.”

 

“We’ll see. I’ll be in Washington tomorrow. Could you just call around, so you’ll be able to point me in the right direction? Maybe that’s all I’ll get from you. A road map. Who to see. What to do. Where to start. What’s your office number?”

 

She gave it to him.

 

“I’ll get Kevin set with the folks. Poor kid. He’s all confused. He keeps asking, ‘Where’s Mommy?’ You tell me how to explain that to a four-year-old.”

 

“I wouldn’t know,” she said, thinking of their own lost baby again, bitterness welling up, her gut cramping.

 

“God, Nay, I’m grateful,” he said.

 

She heard the click and the connection went dead.

 

In the stony silence of her dark bedroom, she was shivering, not just from the cold. His presence had descended like a tornado, leaving a trail of destruction—her tranquility, her courage, her sense of self, her carefully erected barriers. It had taken her years to construct the protective walls. The tornado had shaken loose her foundations.

 

She could clearly remember the beginning and the end. Between was not exactly a middle. There was no continuity, more like revved-up images on a projector gone awry, leaving impressions. He had never lived with her in her current place, but it did not stop the memories from coming. She smelled his presence in the room, an amalgam of his aftershave and musk. — Read more at Amazon.com