So Near

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  I was expecting some kind of blowback from Tessa. She tends to keep Kurt on a short leash, especially since Jamie arrived. And nobody has to tell me that she considers me a bad influence. The pampered, party-boy baby of the family. Tessa can be prickly and judgmental, and I know she feels that I take my good luck way too much for granted. My wife, Jenny. Our business. The old farm as a wedding gift. Then Betsy, without any of the miscarriages I know Tessa and Kurt had to suffer through.

  So I was surprised and gratified when she said to Kurt, “Okay, sure. We could all use a break. I’ll call Jenny, and we’ll pull things together for a cookout after the game. You go with Cal, and I’ll pick up Jenny and Betsy on my way down.”

  The inside of the Jeep was stifling. I rolled down my side window after I started the engine, and Kurt did the same. It must have been almost seventy degrees out by then, dangerously warm for this time of year. The heat could force fruit trees into flower, and then a late frost might come along and wipe out a whole crop. I was feeling both edgy and elated, like the nights during Jenny’s senior year when she would sneak out to meet me. The air had that rich, wormy smell of thawing earth. On our left, the land sloped downward into a long valley where rows of winter corn straggled through the mud like a defeated army. Beyond that, the Berkshire hills rolled eastward in huge gray swells.

  The only place in Covington that serves a decent sit-down lunch is Deer Creek Bistro. Though Jenny likes it, I think the Frenchified menu is pretentious, and the owner, Larry Bisel, is always first-naming you and announcing the day’s specials in hushed, reverent tones. But he was nowhere in sight when Kurt and I came through the door. The only people left in the place were my father, my brother Edmund, and some overweight red-faced guy in a dark blue suit whom I vaguely recognized. The three of them, seated at a banquette in a dark corner of the room, were leaning toward one another over a jumble of coffee cups, half-eaten desserts, and a bottle of wine. My dad and Edmund drink only beer or whiskey, so I thought the wine might account for the high color of the man lunching with them.

  “Guys!” Edmund said, half rising from his seat when he saw us winding our way through the tables.

  Edmund’s the oldest, Dad’s right-hand man, the number-crunching end of the operation. Since Kurt and I left the business to go off on our own, he’s been heir apparent and increasingly impatient to ascend his coveted throne. People say we resemble each other physically: big framed and lanky with a kind of bowlegged swagger. But there’s always been something secretive and judgmental about Edmund that actually makes us about as different as two—or three—brothers can be. What you see is what you get with me. I like to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt. Gullible, Edmund calls it. I think Edmund believes, like Tessa, that my success is the product of dumb luck and Dad’s brand of hail-fellow salesmanship, something that doesn’t come easily to Edmund. He’s more comfortable in his back office with his inventory printouts and aging-receivables reports. Edmund and I, born eight years apart, have been squaring off against each other for as long as I can remember. Kurt, our middle brother, plays mediator.

  Dad turned around.

  “Hey, boys,” he said. “Pull up a chair. You remember Terrence Kennedy from First Union, don’t you?” I worry about the fact that Dad’s heart surgery has left him looking so physically diminished. His neck has gotten scrawny, his face pouchy and off-color. There’s also something overhearty in his attitude these days, as though he’s trying to compensate for some deep-seated exhaustion or sadness that he can’t quite name.

  I didn’t take up Dad’s offer to sit down. I could sense a definite uneasiness hovering around the table. Our visit wasn’t welcome. Kurt must have picked up on it, too.

  “We can’t stay,” he told Dad as his gaze moved from Terrence to Edmund. “We called around and our crew’s meeting for a practice game in half an hour. We were hoping you’d let your guys off a little early, too.”

  “I mean, look at the day out there,” I added.

  “Well, I don’t think—,” Edmund began.

  “Sure,” Dad said, throwing down his napkin and pushing back from the table. “Good call. Let’s go get some of that vitamin D into our bones.”

  Dad’s still as tall as me, but he’s lost so much weight he had to hitch up his pants as he rose from the chair. None of his clothes really fit him anymore. He’s been backsliding recently, but when he was first recuperating he swore off drinking and cigarettes and started a big regime of herbal supplements and vitamins.

  “You go on, Dad,” Edmund said. “I’m going to stay and finish up with Terry.”

  “Right. Thank you, sir,” Dad said, leaning over and shaking hands with the banker. “Your insights and advice have been edifying. And keep my boys here in mind if you decide to go ahead and build that new branch office up in Harringdale.”

  “What was that all about?” Kurt asked Dad when we got outside.

  “Who knows?” Dad said as we walked three abreast across the empty parking lot to my Jeep. “Something Eddie has up his sleeve. You’ll have to ask him.”

  But he knew we wouldn’t. And I think Dad counts on that for cover. There was never any overt break with Edmund when Kurt and I started Horigan Builders, but there were plenty of bad feelings all around. We hadn’t invited Edmund to join us, not that he would ever have left his safe perch with Dad. But he had to act all pissed off anyway, and then turn around and tell Dad that he couldn’t advise backing us on a start-up loan. Not that Dad listened to him, but my blood still boils when I think about it. We got the last laugh, though, riding that beautiful long crest of the construction wave. Or the most recent laugh, anyway. No one’s laughing much now.

  “It’s starting to drop off,” Jenny said, coming up to where I was standing behind the backstop with a group of the guys around the cooler. As usual, we’d been drinking beer on and off through the game. It felt great to be out there again. We’d divided the players up so that it was basically Horigan Lumber versus Horigan Builders. We were in the top of the ninth and all tied up. My shirt was soaked through with sweat.

  “It is?” I said, smiling down at her. She looked so good, standing there in her jeans and bright red Horigan Builders sweatshirt, Betsy straddling her hip. Jenny’s petite but curvy, even more so since our daughter was born. She has a husky voice that catches like an adolescent boy’s. No question, she’s still the prettiest girl in the room. I must have had something of a buzz on, because I wasn’t really thinking about what she’d just told me. Instead, I was contemplating what we’d do later, after the cookout, after we bundled the baby into bed. The other days of the week are optional, bonus days, but Saturday is always our one sure night.

  “Yes, it is,” she said in a chiding tone, smiling back at me as if she knew exactly what was on my mind. “Tessa and I think it’s going to be too chilly for a cookout by the time you guys are done. And besides, we looked at the grills and they’re all gunky. I don’t think anybody’s cleaned them since last summer. Why don’t we just have everybody back to our place and you can do the honors?”

  “Fine by me,” I told her. Since my folks gave Jenny and me the farmhouse as a wedding present, making their long-discussed move to a restored Victorian nearer town, we’ve felt obliged to throw open our doors as often as possible to the rest of the family. Not that entertaining is any kind of hardship for the two of us. We both love a good party. Kurt and the crew helped me renovate the back of the house so that we now have one long, beamed room that’s just right for entertaining. We have speakers mounted inside and out. In warm weather, we open up the row of new French doors and blast music out into the backyard. The yard takes a lot of our spare time. I’ve been repairing the flagstone patio and Jenny has been trying to rehabilitate the old gardens. We’ve got one of those Weber Genesis gas grills that’s almost professional grade and has a cooking area big enough to feed a small army.

  “I’ll need to do some shopping,” Jenny told me, just as Ivan Gruber struck out swinging. I w
as up next. The bases were empty.

  “Okay, but wait until the game’s over,” I told her as I picked up a bat and started to walk toward the plate. “I’d hate for you to miss seeing me hit this home run.”

  Sometimes, when everything’s aligned just right, I think wishing can actually make a thing happen. For the last half hour or so, the sun had been caught behind slow-moving cumulus clouds. But as I tapped my bat against the little dirt mound that formed home plate, a fistful of sunbeams burst through the cloud bank and, like God’s hand in that Michelangelo painting, seemed to bless the worn paths and beaten-down winter grass of the playing field.

  I kept my thoughts from drifting toward my father, who was somewhere behind me, and how he wasn’t coming back from his surgery anywhere near fast enough. I refused to let my mind dwell on Jenny, sitting with Tessa and the babies on the bleachers, and how quickly her moods could shift these days, how I kept catching her staring off into space. I made my mind a blank, erasing Kurt, the business, Ravitch not returning our call, all the guys who were counting on us. Instead I concentrated everything I had on the ball leaving Craig Linaweaver’s right hand. I distilled every last damned shapeless worry in my world into one laser-sharp pinpoint of need. Make it happen, I told myself. Just go ahead and make it happen.

  The second my bat connected with the ball I knew that I’d gotten my wish. The impact went right through my body—a bolt of electricity—and the ball sailed high over the center-field fence, bounced once, then dribbled into the parking lot. And in that moment, when my hands were still twanging, even before the guys started shouting behind me, I felt a sudden letdown of easy victory. What larger, better thing should I have asked for? I wondered.

  Mike popped up to make it an easy third out, and Horigan Lumber came roaring back with two doubles and a nasty grounder that bounced off Burt Mayer’s glove and let the guy on third slide home in a cloud of dust and cheering. So my homer didn’t count for much of anything after all.

  Both sides gathered around the infield for one last beer before heading home.

  “Tessa’s going to help me with the shopping,” Jenny said, walking up to me with Betsy slung over her shoulder, fast asleep. “But you better take this one back with you. I’m afraid she’s coming down with something. Feel how hot her forehead is.”

  “I can never tell,” I said, leaning over and kissing my daughter on her temple. I breathed in her sweet, musty smell. Her thumb drooped in her mouth. “She seems okay to me. Here, let me take her for you—”

  “No, I don’t want to wake her. I’ll carry her to the Jeep. But you’ll have to transfer the safety seat from Tessa’s car.”

  We walked with the others toward the parking lot, our shadows fanning out behind us across the ball field. Jenny had canvassed the crowd and figured we should plan for at least twenty people. As we approached the cars, I was surprised to see Edmund, leaning against the hood of his Explorer, parked next to my Jeep, arms crossed, talking to Kurt. He never comes to our games. His wife, Kristin, was sitting in the passenger seat of the Explorer, reading a book, with the five-year-old twins, Ava and Alan, buckled into their car seats behind her. Edmund and Kristin tend to live a more exalted existence than the rest of us. They’ve renovated one of those old Victorian-style mansions outside Hudson and usually limit their exposure to the rest of the family to major birthdays and holidays.

  “Damn,” I said under my breath. “I guess we’ll have to invite them, too.”

  “Now, play nice,” Jenny said. Though she’s naturally accommodating, I know Jenny finds Kristin, who works as a speech therapist with underprivileged children and has zero sense of humor, pretty heavy lifting socially.

  But I didn’t have to ask. Thankfully, Edmund and his family were about to take off for a weekend visit with Kristin’s folks in Albany. He was just hoping for a quick word with me and Kurt before they left.

  “I didn’t want you two to worry,” Edmund said, following me and Kurt over to Tessa’s Subaru. “That meeting was all Terry’s idea.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I said. “At least not until right now. Why drive all the way over here to tell us that if nothing’s wrong?” Kurt unlocked the car and I leaned in to get Betsy’s safety seat. It’s anchored by a seat belt that snakes through narrow passages in the back of the bucket. I invariably have a hell of a time getting the damn thing unbuckled.

  “Why do you always need to be such a smart-ass?” Edmund said.

  “And why do you always have to be such a—,” I began, just as the belt suddenly released and the car seat fell into my arms. I staggered back with it.

  “Whoa!” Edmund said, catching my arm. “I guess you guys have been putting away the old brewskies.”

  If anybody else had made that comment, I might have actually taken stock of myself and wondered if, indeed, I wasn’t a little loaded. After all, it had been a long, hot afternoon. And I’d had—how many beers? I couldn’t remember clearly now. But Edmund’s condescending tone, that fake, folksy “brewskies,” just provoked the hell out of me. I shook his arm away and turned to face him, gripping Betsy’s car seat in my right hand like a shield.

  “What the—?” Edmund said, taking a step back. “What the hell’s with you, little brother?”

  “Nothing,” Kurt said, stepping between us. He slid his arm around my waist and pulled me to him in a rough hug. “Don’t be such an asshole,” he whispered in my ear. Then he slapped me on the back and said, “We’re all good. Right?”

  Jenny and Tessa, who were waiting for us by the Jeep, had stopped talking. I never like to walk away from a fight, but I realized that I’d somehow lost the thread of my argument with Edmund. Or, more to the point, that it wound back through so many years and around so many issues that to face off against him now seemed too arbitrary. A waste. What the hell’s the problem here? That was a question that eventually the two of us were going to have to answer. But I knew that there were bound to be other, better opportunities to do so.

  “Sure,” I said. “Sorry. Long day.”

  Betsy woke up and started crying. I took her while Jenny strapped the car seat into the back of the Jeep. Edmund and his family drove off. Kurt loaded their Subaru wagon with our equipment. I handed Betsy back to Jenny and walked around the parking lot, trying to work out my anger. How could I have let Edmund push all my buttons like that? I felt a little foolish now. Muddled. Something was weighing on my mind, but I couldn’t get to it.

  I came back to the Jeep and climbed in. I watched in the rearview mirror as Jenny gave Betsy a long kiss on the forehead. She leaned into the front seat and told me, “She seems a lot better. Maybe it was just the heat after all.” Then she smiled back at Betsy and waved.

  “See you later, little gator,” she said.

  I took the back way up North Branch. It’s not the fastest route, but it’s one of the prettiest roads in the area, winding up through long rolling pastureland and a couple of old dairy farms. The last of the sunlight glinted off the top of a silo and blazed across the surface of an old cow pond. We had all the windows down. Something wasn’t right. I tried to think back to what Edmund had said. About not wanting Kurt and me to worry. That business with the bank. That the meeting had been Terry’s idea. Except, I remembered now, just as we were leaving the restaurant, that my eye fell on the black leather folder Deer Creek Bistro uses to present the check. It had been placed in front of Edmund.

  I came to a series of little roller-coaster hills. At the crest of the third one, I heard Betsy behind me. I glanced in the rearview mirror. She was wide-awake. She was giggling as we rode the swells, her hair blowing in the breeze. Just as my gaze turned back to the road, I saw something flash right in front of us. A reddish blur with a white tail. Fox. I braked. I swerved. The fox ran into the woods. I felt the Jeep lift off the ground. We were flying. Betsy was laughing. And I remembered how I felt earlier that afternoon when I hit the home run. The euphoria, so quickly followed by regret. The conviction that I’d wished for t
he wrong thing. That I’d missed something important. That my luck was running out.

  2

  Jenny

  Dahlias, I’m thinking, maybe five or six of the big white dinner-plate variety. They’d be just the thing to fill the bald spot between the hostas and the lilies of the valley. I’m visualizing that whole corner of the garden below the porch in cool shades of green, blue, and white. It would contrast nicely with the red trim around the French doors and our green wicker outdoor furniture.

  I crosshatched a shape for the dahlias in my sketchbook and sat back on my heels, swatting at the no-see-ums that formed a nimbus around my head. The unseasonably hot April temperatures have forced nature out of its dormancy—insects, robins, even a lone black moth—though there was something wobbly and a little surreal about all the activity.

  “Yessa and Yay Yay!” Betsy cried. She had been digging in the grass behind me, but now she dropped her plastic trowel, climbed to her feet, and took off toward the porch steps. Tessa and Jamie. Oh damn, I think, clutching the sketchbook to my chest. I’d been looking forward to a long, quiet afternoon of puttering around in my gardens, making notes and plans, breathing in those first tangy scents of spring: mud, grass, sap, chives. Not that I don’t love Tessa and dote on Jamie, but I’ve been yearning for a bright spring day just like this one when I could dig my fingers into the cold and yet finally yielding earth. Another gardener would get it. But Tessa was raised in suburban Niskayuna, and her idea of a garden is a couple of plastic pots of impatiens on the front-porch steps.

  This winter has been long and oppressive in ways that I’m still trying to understand. And I’ve been baffled about feeling down because I’m usually so good at being able to shake off the occasional bout of anxiety or depression. I learned early on how to pick myself up by my emotional bootstraps, how to shun self-pity as a sin. I’ve always tried to keep on the sunny side because I know what happens when you stray even briefly into the shade. How quickly darkness descends. So I count my blessings every day: Cal, Betsy, this beautiful old farmhouse and property that have been in Cal’s family for more than 150 years. And, thanks to the way Horigan Builders has taken off, I was able to stop working when Betsy was born and stay home to raise her with all the love and attention my sister, Jude, and I were never shown. I’ve been thinking lately that maybe that’s it. Maybe Mom’s the reason I’ve been struggling with these densely knotted feelings of unhappiness and unease. And the news about Jude has just intensified the tension. Maybe I never really made that clean break I imagined, and the whole time the past has been steadily and stealthily climbing up through my heart like a rampant vine, trying to reclaim me.