by Ursula Pflug
The always present sense of mystery had acquired an extra tone, emanating, Peter was suddenly sure, from the kitchen he’d just left, more specifically from an institutionally painted green kitchen cupboard that he saw through the open door. But he didn’t go into the kitchen, not yet, rather just glancing down the hall and through the door, at the cupboard, its door hanging ever so slightly ajar.
Making fun of himself, distancing his own fear, Peter went through the remaining rooms, looking at all the stuff the previous owners had left behind, which, in seven years he’d never brought himself to get rid of. It helped him think, he always told himself, when he was looking for a new angle on how to make a go of things. Objects from before, belonging to strangers, things that retained this alien sensibility of another life, someone’s life beyond his own, unknowable, unreachable, yet here, made concrete by abandoned items: huge bags of pesticide, fertilizer; the previous owners grew corn and tomatoes to sell to the cottage folk in addition to running the marina.
Peter looked at the gargantuan, heavy bags leaning in a corner, too heavy to lift, really, even shove aside. What to do with the herbicides, the 5-5-5? He knew he could unload them on local farmers who’d be glad for the stuff, but the thought of it running into the ditches bordering his own land, contaminating his own well water, the well water of his children-yet-to-come, elicited a profound distaste. He composted religiously, had a heap the size of a small shed. The neighbours were covetous, but Peter, who didn’t grow a thing, was saving it for the wife.
The newly strange kitchen still called, and so he went back, if only to see there was nothing there. A sink, a hotplate, no refrigerator; he’d taken that up to the main house when the compressor on his own had fried.
“Kitchen cupboards, panelling, click-handle latches that lock and pinch your fingers. Kitchen cupboards that have never belonged to a family, never been tamed by children. The moment suddenly framed and put in a late-night movie where it’s difficult to breathe, or maybe like you’re under water. You open that door. Your rational mind tells you there’s no danger but your instincts tell you otherwise; you can feel your heart pounding, pumping adrenalin. You’d shut it except you’ve already started opening it, can’t stop now. Somehow you have to complete the motion, as though, now, you are in one of those dreams where everything is hyper-real. Open the door. Hand goes in. Hmm. A paperback book.”
Late winter and he was talking to himself: suggestible, susceptible, cabin fever taking a wrong turn. He shut up, acutely aware that should anyone walk in on him, which no one would, not in a million years, they’d think him barmy. As if everyone didn’t already, a little, simply for buying the place.
But what about Marti? What would she think, if she chose this moment to return?
Peter took the book out of the cupboard. It was called The King in Yellow, and Peter remembered Marti reading it. She hadn’t brought it with her; she’d found it here. It was strange, she said, like nothing else she’d ever read, but she couldn’t stop—maybe he’d like to read it too? He hadn’t given it another thought. Every cottage on the lake was lined with musty paperbacks after all, but then she’d disappeared, leaving the book here and not in the shelf under the window with the one-dollar used copies of Agatha Christie and Stephen King and John Grisham.
What could it possibly mean? He turned it over and over, unable to let it go in spite of the fact the book elicited a profound terror, a kind of childhood nightmare panic. His hand shaking, he at last replaced it gingerly, as though he’d been caught going through someone else’s cupboards, which in a way he had; he couldn’t remember ever cleaning them out in any methodical way. He glimpsed a few plates: green plastic, a tinfoil pie plate, some loose spoons. But it wasn’t those objects that gave him the creeps, only the book. Being terrified of a book was even worse than talking to yourself. Thankfully he had no audience unless he included the broken aluminum coffee percolators on the counter, the black-capped chickadees in the cedar outside the little window above the sink.
He left the room, bewildered. It was only a book. He could go back and get it, throw it into the middle of the lake, put it in the trash, use it for kindling in his wood stove. There were a million ways to dispose of it. But he didn’t. On the one hand it was too ridiculous, and on the other, he was afraid to touch it again. They’d come and find him, dead of heart failure in the spring, his body frozen. It would be a balm to whoever discovered him; decomposition wouldn’t have set in, or at least not much.
Peter sat down behind the heavy, scarred oak desk, made doodles of ducks and frogs on the unused memo pad, waiting for his hand to stop shaking, his heart to settle down. Because of a book. He thought of the warnings of gap-toothed, patched together oldsters dropping by the last few summers, never spending a penny, just wanting to yarn. They told him all the lake’s old stories, stories he’d shared with his tourists. Probably some of them kept coming back because of it. Hearing the stories, they’d feel part of something.
And then inevitably, just before the old guys left, they’d ask some version of, “Have you felt it yet?” A knowing grin. “It gets everyone sooner or later; you’ve just held out longer than most.” But Myrtle had never said anything about it getting her, although perhaps she’d been too embarrassed to admit it. Maybe for Myrtle it hadn’t been the book but something else. The percolator parts, perhaps, or the tin spoons.
It had certainly gotten Peter, whatever it even was. He drew another duck, another frog. He’d forgotten how intrinsically inescapable fear could be, how impervious to the ministrations of the rational mind. He’d have to remember that when the children came. Night terrors came at age three or four. How did he know that? Had he really spent the winter skimming copies of Today’s Parent he’d surreptitiously swiped from his GP’s office?
He would’ve liked to leave, to walk down to the marsh bordering the lake west of the beach, say hello to the real frogs, following his usual spring patrol, but it was too early in the year; the spring peepers wouldn’t be awake yet. Tiny dogwood-climbing frogs with suction cups for toes. In two months he’d wish he could shut them up, calling for a mate all through the night. And so, without frog songs to keep him company, it was once again back to the kitchen; at least his breathing was normal now. On the cracked and chipped counter there were three bent aluminum coffee percolators, but there wasn’t one whole, usable one among them. While the coffee basket that was missing in one was there in another, of course it didn’t fit.
For the hundredth time Peter played with the percolators. If he had a stem for the one with the coffee basket that fit, and a lid for it, instead of the twisted, non-fitting mess he held aloft, distastefully, between finger and thumb, he could make coffee, actually work down here instead of up at the house. And then if Marti snuck back through for old times’ sake, he’d be there. She wouldn’t come to the house, she’d come here, drawn to the bags of 5-5-5, where they’d done it, in great haste, before the boaters returned at sundown. And he’d talk to her, just as now he’d already started talking to himself again, not even aware of it.
“Hate to throw things away that will have a later use. I could buy cheap plastic for the kids when they’re old enough to use sand toys, the kind of things I sell and then have to clean off the beach every fall, already split and faded. Truth is, these old metal percolators will be perfect; you can use the coffee baskets as sieves. These will last for years—they already have.”
Of course, there was one small snag in this offspring fantasy; you had to have a mother first. And as far as women go, there hadn’t really been anyone besides Marti. Not exactly mother material.
He was holding the book again, had removed it from its cupboard nest without even realizing it. He’d been right to be spooked by the mostly empty cupboards, to leave them alone. They were haunted, he was suddenly sure, by the demonic powers of this seemingly innocuous thing he was holding in his hand just now. He dropped it in a hurry, shaking again
. Damn. He needed something to keep from talking to himself, from thinking a cheap paperback called The King in Yellow was a dimensional portal activated by human touch. As he was thinking now. He needed an extra little job for the winter, when the marina was closed, as it was now. And it would help with the more conventional panic over the bills. Never mind the market gardening; that would be the wife’s thing.
He and Marti shouldn’t have had sex on the 5-5-5 bags. If they had gone to the house, she’d have stayed. “In our family we throw everything of value away.” Weren’t those the words he’d used, to his own father? Get into hopeless debt buying back the marina, throw Marti away, as though the property wasn’t useless without her. Wifeless. Kidless. Barren.
He’d thought she was that kind of girl, adventurous, finding odd locations a little thrill. And maybe she had; but sex in a store room is the kind you enjoy and then move on from. It was so stunningly clear; why hadn’t he seen it before? “There’s always a part of you that knows the truth, however hard you try to shut it up,” Peter told the book sadly. Perhaps, he thought, it was the haunting that had value in this place, and not the stony beach, the still blue lake, the loons calling from between the piney islands. “We always throw everything of value away in our family,” he whispered again. But not the marina, and not the book. He’d keep it forever now, treasure it for its moment of insight. He hadn’t asked her to stay because she was a mess, even though he’d known by then he loved her.
In the storage room there was a wheeled, folded up cot: kept there for the nights you have a fight with the wife, Peter thought, patting the book in his jacket pocket, but really, he didn’t know why the cot was there. He and Marti never had sex on the cot, in spite of it actually harbouring a remarkably mildew free mattress
“A bag of 5-5-5 doesn’t have a mattress, it just emulates one. Sort of,” Peter remarked. “Since the cot is for cottagers too drunk to drive their boats back out to the islands after wandering back from the bar.”
He’d never asked for anyone’s keys, even the few times he should have. He’d been too intimidated to take keys away from drunks larger than himself, drunks deeply invested in their own competence. Pissed. Blasted. Wrecked. “Note descriptive words,” Peter said, “They’re very accurate.” Every winter they were hauling frozen snowmobilers out of the lake. The sober frozen snowmobilers were often still slightly alive, at least alive enough to be rushed off to the county hospital. But the frozen dead ones had always, without exception, been pissed, blasted, wrecked. And never once a drunk dead female snowmobiler. Home with the youngsters they were, knitting and purling lavender worsted booties. Much too sensible to take the snowmobile out after consuming half a bottle of vodka, complete with exclamations about how well it made her drive. If a man would let anyone take his keys away, it would be his wife.
Peter knew, he’d seen it: the largest, drunkest, most obstreperous man giving his keys to the teeny, tiny, soft spoken, completely sober wife, wailing toddler in tow. Name was Josie. Got the kid out of bed, wrapped him in a blanket, and drove like hell just so she could snag hubby at the boat launch where Peter let him keep his ancient Snow Cat, said, “Give me the keys.” Why hadn’t she let him crash through the ice? He just drank the money anyway. Josie had been one hell of a driver, Peter remembered, used to race when she was young, and drive in demolition derbies. If anyone could drive the icy back roads to the marina in the dead of night on bald tires, with a screaming baby in the car seat, Josie could. If she wanted to have a couple of beers and take the snowmobile out on the ice, Peter was pretty sure she’d handle it. But Josie never felt safe enough to leave the baby home with Dad, go out alone on the lake at night, get some air in her hair. Daddy might drink half a bottle of vodka and drop the iron on the baby’s head. And not enough money for sitters; besides, he’d be insulted, think she was out of her mind hiring someone when he was in the house.
Would Marti do any of those things? Not bloody likely. Marti, with her bravado and love of self-medication of all kinds, was, like the big, drunk, egotistical man in question, the type who’d tangle herself and the Snow Cat around an island pine. If it was sense that men were after when they looked for a wife, to compensate for their own lack of same, Marti would’ve been exactly the bad choice Peter had so often told himself she was.
Years younger, she’d been a summer employee. They’d had an affair, and Peter had surprised himself by falling in love. He’d wanted to know her then, had gotten to know her, too, much more than he’d ever known anyone. Had ever wanted to know.
It was March; soon time to open the marina. Or at least, start preparing to open it. Peter discovered he could care less. All the details of management and maintenance he used to obsess over, even enjoy, seemed as turbid today as the water-coloured sky. “Even if I wanted to be like that again,” Peter said, “I no longer know how. That part of me is a lost shirt, gone overboard from an outboard, sunk to the bottom. Or gone with Marti, more likely.”
Marti’s liquid body, made out of stars, arching over him on the floor of the store room, the stars falling out of her body, a dark sea, stars floating in it, five pointed stars he could pick up and stick on the walls of the bedroom to entertain the children when they came: luminous, glow-in-the-dark stars. They jumped out of his hand, sat beside him and Marti on the bed, watched them make love approvingly. Smiled and told jokes to the lovers, in fact.
How terrifying it had been, the surrender required, the hard bitten edges of himself he’d have to give up to say, yes, I want this. Except that he hadn’t. He’d pretended it wasn’t real. And now he couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how much he wanted to. And he couldn’t have Marti, either, because she was gone. A goner.
Faced with the unknown, there was only one thing to do. Ask it what it wanted, feed it. “What d’you want then?” he asked the book, “How do I get my real life back?”
Maybe she’d seen the stars too; he’d never actually thought of that. She’d played the reckless babe for him, lying beneath him on the stony shore of an uninhabited island, her skin smelling of pine woods and salt and wind in spite of the vodka they’d been putting away. Maybe it wasn’t a choice; perhaps portals opened each time Marti made love, funneling the lovers into more beautiful dimensions. And perhaps each and every one of her lovers, and he knew there had been quite a few, had closed his eyes to a beauty so much larger than he could fathom. I’d drink too much too, Peter thought, and remembered how, making love on their island, he’d briefly seen their future spread out before him, pretty and comforting as a star quilt. It was the last time, the time before she left without saying goodbye or even leaving a note. Leaving her few things behind. He’d thrown them away. Except for the book.
In his vision Marti had been leaving to go grocery shopping, Peter’s list in hand, getting into her rusty little yellow car, her blonde hair tied in two long pigtails. She wore silver dream catcher earrings, a plaid car coat she’d made out of the same material as the worst couches in existence, a knee-length red and white striped skirt, black tights, black ankle boots, a black rolled-brim hat. Somehow, on Marti, this didn’t look dreadful but fetching: a country punk chic that managed, impossibly, to be stylish as well as original. Smiling, sure of herself, as he’d never once seen her, she waved goodbye to Peter and Julian, who didn’t squall at his mother’s departure, solemnly sieving sand through a dented percolator coffee basket, knowing she’d be bringing home treats.
She reversed down the driveway, tires screeching, and Peter sat on the edge of the sandbox with Julian and played with percolator parts, until the real Marti interrupted, asking, “What are you thinking about?” And he hadn’t told her, had run his fingers through her hair and smiled. Maybe she’d been afraid to tell him about the little stars, afraid he’d say she was crazy. It had never even occurred to Peter, how his silences might have hurt her.
He’d closed his eyes again and watched as future-Marti hung laundry, drove Julian to da
ycare, started tomatoes in flats to grow and sell to the island cottage folk. She invented cookie recipes from scratch, mainly successful, although there was one problematic experiment containing canned pineapple that exploded in the oven. When they put it outside the back door, even the usually indiscriminate stray dogs didn’t touch it. Peter, who had taught himself how to cook over the years, perhaps also, like saving the aluminum percolator parts, in anticipation of the children, made most of the dinners.
He shuddered with longing. But what if it was her self-destructiveness that he found seductive? The doomed Marti, the Marti who fucked everything in pants and then laughed at them. The one who was as surprised as he was, to find herself loving Peter. The erstwhile coke head, the brilliant drunk? Maybe she didn’t share his vision of their lovely possible future at all. Maybe that had been his job, yet another he’d neglected, like taking the keys away from Josie’s husband himself, and growing tomatoes, and inviting Marti to stay in the house no matter what people said, and picking a smiling yellow five-pointed star out of the crumpled sheet and putting it in her hand, saying, “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
Peter knew he’d never find her, not unless he gave something up, some preciously adhered to delusion or illusion, as much a part of him by now as his hair, which, truth to tell, was less a part of him than it used to be. For some reason this gave Peter hope. If he could lose his hair, perhaps he could lose his self-importance, his stubborn pride. Delusions could fall out each morning, come out in clumps in his comb. Marti had once said he looked cute balding, that he was lucky he had the right shape of skull for it. As she shared her peanut butter sandwich with him, told him the names of wild flowers he’d never learned.
