UnSouled

They all sit spaced apart on a sectional sofa and the two chairs facing it, trying to keep this from feeling as awkward as it is. Grace is the only one who doesn’t sit yet. She wanders around the room, seemingly immune to the tension, examining photographs and knickknacks and digging her hand into a jar of Jolly Ranchers on a shelf too high for Dierdre to get at.

Cam wishes he could dig into at least one part of himself that retains that much innocence. Not even the tithes he has residing within him are naive enough to feel safe in Hannah’s comfortable living room. The memory bits of his tithes are more about feeling superior, so all he can dredge forth from them is aloofness. That’s not going to endear him to Risa.

“Hannah’s the teacher who saved Connor and me from the Juvey-cops when we were first on the run,” Risa explains.

“Oh,” says Cam impotently. “Good to know.” All her explanation does is reinforce the history Risa has with Connor. Cam hates having to hear it.

Grace, happy to fly beneath the radar of conversation, lines up her cache of candies on the living room’s coffee table. The bowl of Jolly Ranchers is still half-full, and the sight of it sparks absurd discord in Cam. Option Anxiety, he’s come to call it. “One man’s meat,” he mumbles to himself, but realizes it’s loud enough for the others to hear, so he explains. “It’s not just taste buds that create a preference for flavors,” he tells them. “My internal community is always at odds when it comes to things like those candies. A part of me loves the green apple and another the grape. Someone has a particular affinity for the peach ones—which they don’t even make anymore—and someone else finds the whole concept of Jolly Ranchers nauseating.” He sighs, trying to dismiss his pointless Option Anxiety. “Bowls of mixed things are the bane of my existence.”

Connor looks at him with a blank zombie stare that must be well practiced. “You talk as if someone actually cares.”

Risa offers that slim grin to Cam again. “How can people be interested in the inner workings of your mind, Cam, when they can’t figure out the inner workings of their own?” It sounds like a sideways snipe against Connor, but then she gently pats Connor’s hand, turning a perfectly good snipe into a playful barb.

“Why don’t you choose a flavor for me?” Cam asks Risa, trying to be playful too, but Risa avoids the issue by saying, “After the trouble Roberta went through to find you such nice teeth, why rot them?”

“I got my favorites, but that don’t matter,” Grace announces. She indicates her well-spaced row of candies and puts a definitive end to the subject by saying, “I always eat them in alphabetical order.”

Cam decides to obey the sense memory that doesn’t like hard candy and doesn’t take any.

“How are your friends at Proactive Citizenry?” Risa asks Cam tentatively.

“They’re no more my friends than they are yours,” he tells her. He’s about to tell her that he’s turned on them and has given up the shining spotlight to help her, but Connor steals the reveal from him.

“Camus showed me some damaging evidence we can use against them.”

Cam regrets having shared it with Connor at all. Had he known he’d come face-to-face with Risa here in Akron, he would have saved it all for her. Now he resents Connor for even knowing.

“And there’s more,” Cam adds. “You and I can talk later,” he tells Risa.

Connor shifts uncomfortably and turns his attention to the pictures around the room. “My guess is that Hannah is divorced or recently widowed. There are pictures of a man with her in some photos, including one with Dierdre—but Hannah’s not wearing a wedding ring.”

“Definitely widowed,” says Grace without looking up from her candy organization. “You don’t keep pictures out of a guy you divorced.”

Connor shrugs. “Anyway, it looks like she’s really taken to raising this Dierdre as her own.”

“She has,” Risa admits. “It was a good choice for us to leave her with Hannah. Not that we had much of a choice.”

The direction of the conversation makes Cam uncomfortable. “Exactly whose kid is it?”

Connor smirks at Cam and puts one arm around Risa. “Ours,” he says. “Didn’t you know?”

For a moment Cam believes him, for he knows Risa has many secrets yet to be discovered. Cam is disheartened until Risa slides deftly out of Connor’s embrace.

“She was a storked baby that Connor picked up from a doorstep,” Risa explains. “We took care of her for a brief time; then Hannah volunteered to take her off of our hands before we were shuttled to the next safe house.”

“And did you find motherhood an interesting experience?” Cam asks, relieved enough to be amused at the thought.

“Yes,” says Risa, “but I’m in no hurry to repeat it.” Then she stands, moving away from both Cam and Connor. “I’ll see what’s in the refrigerator. You must be hungry.”

After she’s gone, Connor’s demeanor changes a bit. He becomes dark. A brooding gray like the sky outside. “You’ll keep your eyes and your hands off of her. Is that clear? You will not cause her any more grief than you already have.”

“Ah! The green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on!” Cam says. “She told me you were the jealous type, but you’re a weak and pale Othello.”

“I’ll unwind you with my bare hands if you don’t leave her alone.”

That makes Cam genuinely laugh. “Your pointless bravado will be your downfall. All that arrogance with nothing to back it up.”

“Arrogance? You’re the one who’s full of himself! Or full of others, I should say.”

It’s like a sword has finally been drawn in the duel. Grace looks up from her Jolly Ranchers, even Dierdre and the dog, way across the room, seem to tune in. How will Cam respond? Although the wild parts of himself want to lash out in anger, he reins them in. Anger is what Connor wants. It’s what Connor knows how to deal with. Cam won’t oblige.

“The fact that I’m physically, intellectually, and creatively better than you is not arrogance or conceit; it’s a simple fact,” Cam says with forced calm. “I’m the better man because I was made to be. I can’t help what I have any more than you can help what you don’t.”

They hold hard gazes until Connor backs down. “If you want to joust over Risa, now’s not the time. Right now we all need to be friends.”

“Allies don’t gotta be friends,” Grace points out. “Take World War II. We couldn’t a’ won it without Russia, even though we hated each other’s guts then.”

“Point taken,” says Cam, once more impressed by Grace’s unexpected wisdom. “For now, let’s agree that Risa is off-limits. A demilitarized zone.”

“You’re mixin’ your wars,” Grace says. “The Demilitarized Zone was Korea.”

“She’s a person, not a zone,” says Connor. Then he goes over and plays with Dierdre, putting an end to all negotiations.

“You’re forgetting,” Cam says to Grace, who also noted the documentaries that so absorbed her at the motel, “that the United States and Russia almost nuked each other to smithereens after World War II.”

“I’m not forgettin’ nothin’,” Grace says, returning to her candies. “When the two of you really go at it, I expect I’ll build myself a bomb shelter.”

62 • Connor

This changes everything.

Connor’s initial thrill at seeing Risa is quickly crushed under the weight of the reality. Not the reality of Cam, but the reality of their situation. Now that Risa is with them, she’s no longer out of harm’s way. Connor had longed for her—there is no question about that. For all these months, he has ached to hear her voice and to be comforted by her words. He longed to massage her legs even though he knew she was no longer paralyzed. His feelings for her have not changed. Even when he thought she had betrayed the cause and had become a public voice in favor of unwinding, he knew deep down she could not be doing it of her own accord.

Then, when she came on live television to reveal it was a sham and thoroughly slapped down Proactive Citizenry, he loved her even more. After that, she vanished into hiding, just as completely as Connor had—and there was comfort in that. He could look out into the night and know she was out there somewhere, using her formidable wits to keep herself safe.

Connor, however, is anything but a safe harbor now. With what they mean to expose about Proactive Citizenry—and what he might potentially learn from Sonia—she is in much greater danger in his company than not. His journey is now into the flames, not away from them—and of course she’ll want to go with him. And Cam’s words still echo in his mind.

“I’m the better man because I was made to be.”

For all of his handpicked intelligence, Cam is an imbecile to think jealousy is what this is all about. Yes, Connor admits that a certain amount of jealousy is there to cloud things, but competing for Risa’s affections feels like a petty endeavor compared to Connor’s need to protect her from both himself and from Cam.

As Connor plays with Dierdre on the living room floor, he tries to let his anger dissipate. It won’t help the situation. Giving into his jealousy will only distract him.

Dierdre lies back and puts her feet in Connor’s face.

“Tricker treat! Smell my feet!”

Her feet smell like the baby food she must have stepped in, orange globs of sweet potato marring the pattern of ducklings swimming all over her socks.

“Nice socks,” Connor says, still amazed that this was the same baby he took from the doorstep of the fat, beady-eyed woman and her fat, beady-eyed son.

“Ducky socks!” says Dierdre happily. “Fishy arm!” She touches the shark on his arm with a sticky index finger. “Fishy arm. Army fish!” And she giggles. The giggle opens an escape valve in Connor; his frustration is soothed by Dierdre.

“It’s a shark,” he tells Dierdre.

“Shark!” repeats Dierdre. “Shark shark shark!” Dierdre snaps a woman’s plastic head on a little plastic body of a firefighter. “Your mommy see the shark there? She mad at it?”

Connor sighs. Little kids, he’s decided, are like cats. They always like to hop in the laps of people who are allergic. Connor wonders if Dierdre has any clue that the topic she just put in his lap is enough to make him break out in hives.

“No,” he tells her. “My mommy doesn’t know about the shark.”

“You’ll get in trouble?”

“No worries,” Connor says.

“No worries,” Dierdre repeats, and snaps a tire on top of the little plastic figure’s head, making it look like an oversized Russian hat.

Dierdre doesn’t know that there’s a letter in a trunk in Sonia’s back room. There are actually hundreds of letters. All written by AWOLs, all written to the parents who gave them over for unwinding. From the moment Connor saw the trunk earlier that day, he’s been imagining what it would be like to hand deliver that letter and watch from a hidden location as his parents read it. Just thinking about it now causes Roland’s arm to tighten into a fist. He imagines punching through a windowpane, grabbing the letter back from them before they can read it—but he chases the thought away, consciously releases his fingers and directs the hand to get back to the business of preschool play.