You Should Have Known

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “Windhouse is on Facebook,” Rory pointed out.

  “Sure. And it’s very useful that way.”

  “To communicate with your ten fans, you mean,” Henry said slyly.

  “Twelve fans, Henry,” Leo said. “Why do you think we’re feeding you and your mom right now? Obviously to buy your allegiance.”

  Henry, who was not immediately sure if he was joking, looked a little alarmed for a moment. But then he smiled.

  “Well, I’d want to hear the music first,” he pointed out.

  Afterward, they played. They played tunes Colum had grown up with in Scotland and tunes they’d written themselves. Rory, it appeared, was the chief source of their original music. His bow hand, loose in the wrist in a way Vitaly Rosenbaum would have found intolerable, bobbed and danced over the strings, and Henry—Grace could not help noticing—seldom took his eyes off it. The sounds of the two violins (fiddles, she corrected herself) had a way of moving alongside each other, then suddenly drawing apart and crisscrossing back and forth (there was probably a musical term for this), and the mandolin and guitar made a kind of steady enclosure for them. The songs had names like “Innishmore” and “Loch Ossian” and “Leixlip”—which sounded like “leaks leap” and had to be explained to the guests (it was a town in Ireland that meant “salmon leap”). Grace sat, sipping her wine, feeling strange and warm and increasingly happy as the time went by. She thought she recognized some of the music, a few strains that had made it across the lake as she lay, flat on her back on the freezing dock, looking up at the winter night; but the truth was that they all sort of flowed together, not unpleasantly. Henry remained quiet for an impressive amount of time. He never asked for his book.

  Around eight, they stopped for coffee and a cake Colum had brought, and while he was in the kitchen Rory suddenly turned on the couch and held out his instrument to Henry. Henry looked alarmed. “Want a go?” the teenager said.

  Henry, to Grace’s great surprise, did not say no right away. What he did say was: “I don’t know how to play that.”

  “Oh. Leo said you played.”

  “Yeah, but I play violin. Classical. Well, in New York I played classical. Now I’m just doing orchestra at school.” He hesitated. “I was pretty good, but, you know, not, like, going to conservatory. Most of the people my teacher taught were at least in conservatory, or they were professionals.”

  Rory shrugged. “Okay. But have a go.”

  Henry turned to look at Grace.

  “Why not?” she said. “If Rory’s willing.”

  “Sure,” said Rory. “I love my fiddle, but it’s not like it’s a Stradivarius.”

  Henry took it. He held it up for a moment as if he had never seen a violin before, as if, for example, he had not very recently spent an hour after school in intensive rehearsal for the orchestra’s winter term concert. Then he flipped the chin rest up to his neck and held it up in the posture he’d been taught.

  “Well, that looks uncomfortable,” said Rory. “You can hold it however you want.”

  Henry let his left hand wilt a bit, so the scroll descended. Grace imagined Vitaly Rosenbaum barking like a dog. Henry might be imagining something similar.

  “Now shake out your bow hand. Shake it out,” said Rory, and Henry did. “In bluegrass, nobody cares how you hold your bow, either. You can hold it in a fist if you want.”

  “But please don’t,” Leo said from his chair. He, too, was watching closely. “It’ll kill your back.”

  “The point is, be comfortable.” He put his bow into Henry’s shaken hand. “Now: Give us a tune.”

  For a minute, Grace imagined that he was going to play “You Raise Me Up,” the unfortunate centerpiece of the Housatonic Valley Regional Middle School orchestra’s fast-approaching concert. But to her surprise, Henry (after the briefest of scales, just to feel the instrument) began to play Bach’s Violin Sonata no. 1 in G Minor, the Siciliana movement. It was the last piece he had worked on in New York, before things fell apart. Grace had not heard it in months. He had not, to her knowledge, played it since New York, and although it was not as assured as it had been back then, it didn’t sound bad. Really, not bad at all. And frankly, it thrilled her to hear it again.

  “So pretty,” Lyric said when he stopped after a minute or two.

  “I haven’t practiced much. I mean, apart from orchestra.” Henry had carefully lowered the violin and was now holding it out to Rory.

  “Can you do any jigs or airs?” he said.

  Henry laughed. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “I wish we had another fiddle,” said Rory. “It’s easy to learn it when you play it together. I mean, if you can already play, it’s the best way to learn.”

  “My violin’s here,” said Henry. “It’s in the car.”

  Leo looked at Grace.

  “Big concert coming up.”

  “I’ll go out with you,” said Leo.

  There was a light wind coming off the lake when they stepped outside, but it wasn’t actually cold. The worst of the winter had passed a week or two earlier, and something in the ground underfoot had seemed to break open as it began to release its frost. She had never spent a mud season at the lake house and wasn’t sure how fast it would come on. In her imagination, the earth of Leo’s yard already seemed to suck at her feet.

  The minute the aluminum door slammed behind him, she knew something was different, and she knew what that something was. The idea of it was so remarkable that she forgot to be upset. When she remembered again, she realized there wasn’t anything to be upset about. And that made her smile.

  “What?” said Leo. The light in the car had come on when Grace opened the passenger door.

  “I thought I might give you a kiss,” she told him.

  “Oh.” He nodded, as if she had proposed a financially incomprehensible conservancy arrangement for the lake. Then he said: “Oh! Right!” And he kissed her without waiting another second. He had been waiting longer than she had. It was her first first kiss in nearly nineteen years.

  “Wait,” she told him as soon as she could manage it. “I don’t want them to know.”

  “Oh, they know,” Leo said. He looked down at her. “My crowd knows. I’ve never invited anyone over on a practice night. You should have heard them before you got here. They were thoroughly juvenile.” He laughed. “Grace,” he said, belaboring the obvious, “I really really like you.”

  “Really really?” she asked.

  “I never told you, once I saw you on the dock in your blue bikini.”

  “Not recently,” she clarified.

  “No. When I was thirteen. That sort of thing stays with a guy.”

  “Well…” Grace laughed. “I don’t know where that blue bikini is anymore.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll use my imagination.”

  She laughed. She reached in and picked up Henry’s violin case.

  “Would it be all right if I ran home for a bit?” Grace said, handing the instrument to Leo. “I want to look in on the dog, and feed him. He’s been alone most of the day. I’ll come right back.”

  Of course, he said. “But take your time. We’re breaking in a new fiddler. When you come back he’s going to be playing ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia.’”

  “I guess…that’s a good thing?” said Grace, and Leo, in response, kissed her on the forehead. This didn’t explain the reference, not that she minded.

  She climbed into the driver’s seat and turned right out of the driveway and drove down the road, past the still, dark houses, rolling down the window to breathe in the wet air. Grace was not going to think very hard about what had just happened, not tonight, at least. That she had arrived at his house as a neighbor and left—for the moment—as a person he “really really” liked meant that some Rubicon had clearly been reached, if not crossed. But it had been so…well, “gentle” was the word that came to her first. She thought—yet again—of the night she had met Jonathan and how that instantaneo
us and mutual I’ll have that one had seemed like proof of the rightness of it all. It wasn’t, obviously. Maybe this was better: not quite so strict, not nearly so unyielding. Not so much right as good. Good would be very good indeed.

  There were circulars sticking out of the mailbox, so she stopped and extracted a great wedge of papers, catalogs, and random correspondence and brought it all in. Sherlock barked from the yard and met her on the back porch with two muddy paws to the front of her legs (his exuberance was the only stain on his otherwise perfect manners). Grace fed him and went back inside, brushing the dirt from her jeans, then she turned on the lights and carried the great stack of mail over to the recycling bin, where she started to go through it. With luck there would be an estimate in here somewhere, from the contractor who’d come last week to talk about winterizing the house and possibly regrading the driveway. (One of the hardest things about winter had been parking up at the roadside and slipping treacherously downhill to her own front door.) She was dreading it, but she wanted it to be there, too.

  It wasn’t there, but something else was: a nuclear white envelope, perfectly ordinary, with an utterly unoriginal flowing American flag stamp and an address (her address, her Connecticut address) written in the classically bad doctor’s handwriting of her husband, Jonathan Sachs. Grace, staring at it, forgot to breathe, and that went on for some time. Then, as if the part of her brain that required breath had seized control of the entire machine, she remembered again in a violent wave, and stepped smartly over to the kitchen sink, and efficiently vomited her dinner of chicken Marbella, with its oregano, bay leaf, and rice vinegar, into the basin.

  Not the right time, she thought vaguely, as if there would ever be a right time for this, but it wasn’t now. It wasn’t right now. Right now, or mere minutes before right now, she had been, actually, happy, and proud (so proud) of Henry, and also happy that there was a Leo in the world who really (really really) liked her. She was happy that she might find work in which she might actually help somebody else, and happy that her dear friend had come back to her, or was coming back, and that her son was going to know all of his grandparents, and that her house might not have to be as freezing cold next winter as it was in the winter now ending. This was not great happiness, of course. She might not be in line for great happiness yet, perhaps ever—not after everything that had happened—but she wasn’t asking for it, either. It was only modest happiness, but modest happiness was so much more than she had thought she would ever see again.

  I don’t have to open it, she thought. Then, to make sure the idea had gotten through, she said it aloud to herself: “I don’t have to open it.”

  Inside were two sheets of unlined paper, covered with his writing, folded in precise thirds. She opened them up and looked at them from a distance, the words stubbornly refusing to translate into meaning, like hieroglyphics before the Rosetta stone. How comforting that was, Grace thought. She wanted it to stay like that. She could live with the writing if it stayed like that. But then, before her traitorous eyes, the words clarified and sharpened. All right, thought Grace. Then if I have to, I will.

  Grace.

  Writing this letter is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but every day that has gone by without my at least trying to speak to you has hurt me, you can’t imagine how much. Of course this has been devastating for you. I won’t presume to know how much. But I know how strong you are and I know you can get through this.

  I think what it all comes down to is that I failed to appreciate you and the family we were. Are—we are. Whatever happens now, that we are a family is something that can’t be changed. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself in the worst moments.

  I made a terrible, terrible mistake. I can’t believe I did it. It was like an illness came over me, and I just lost control. I let myself be persuaded that a person desperately needed me, because her child was very ill and I could help him recover—and I let that be enough of a reason to lose my own strength of character. I responded to her—I didn’t initiate it. I know that doesn’t make a difference in the long run, but it’s important to me that you understand it. I felt very sorry for her, and I guess my wanting to help overwhelmed me. When she told me she was pregnant I thought—if I just kept her happy and took care of things I could keep her away from you and Henry and we could go on, even though I was just ripped apart by the stress of it. I don’t know how I kept everything together. Then after everything, instead of being grateful for all the efforts I’d made for both her and her son, who is healthy now, thanks to me, she told me she was pregnant again. She wanted to destroy us as a family, and I just couldn’t let her do that. I was just desperate to protect you. There was not a single moment that you and Henry were not my first priority. I hope you can believe that.

  What happened in December, I can’t write about it, except to say that it was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It was a horrible, horrible thing, and I am distraught every time I think about it. I can’t put it on paper, I just can’t, but one day if I am far more lucky than I deserve, I want more than anything to talk to you about it, if you can bear to listen. You are the best listener I’ve ever met. There have been so many times I’ve thought: I am so lucky to be listened to like this, and loved like this. I think about it now and the suffering is so terrible.

  Do you remember the night we first met? What a question. What I mean is: Do you remember the book I was reading and the place I said I wanted to go? I used to joke about going there in the dead of winter, and you said it was the last place in the world anyone in their right mind would want to go, the end of the world. That’s where I am now, and it feels just like that, just as bleak as you predicted. But it’s also safe for me, I think. At least for now. I won’t stay here much longer, though. I know I can’t—no place is as safe as I need it to be. But before I leave I wanted to give you the chance to do something I know I don’t deserve. I don’t think you will come—you should know that. But if I’m wrong, Grace, I’d be so happy. If you or both of you came here, and we got the chance to start over someplace, just thinking about it makes me cry. I think it can be done. I’ve been going over it. I think it can be managed. I have a country in mind that I’m pretty sure we can get to, and where we’d be all right, and I’d be able to work there, and it’s a decent place for Henry. Obviously I can’t write down any of the details.

  I don’t know why I think for a moment that you’d leave your own life for that, but I love you enough to ask you to. If you don’t come, at least you’ll know that, and that makes it worth asking. If you would just come and let me talk to you. And then, if you won’t, or can’t stay with me, I would understand. But I could at least say good-bye to you and Henry and you’d both know I didn’t abandon you without a fight.

  You shouldn’t fly here. I know you know that. There are places a few hours away, where you can rent a car. Please be very sure that no one follows you. I’ve been renting a house near the town. Well, walking distance. I don’t have a car. Luckily I like to walk, as you know. Most afternoons I walk along the river—yes, even at this time of year. It may be dark, but it’s milder than you’d imagine. There is a ship there that is now a museum. It has the same name as the book I was reading that night I saw you and fell in love with you instantly. I’ll look for you. Please do this for me. And if you won’t, or can’t, please know that I have never loved anyone else, and won’t ever love anyone else, and I’ll be okay.

  It wasn’t signed. As if it had to be signed.

  She didn’t realize how tightly she was gripping the paper until it tore, and then she gasped and actually dropped it on the floor. She didn’t want to pick it up, because it was poison, but after a minute or two she couldn’t stand the idea that it was down there on the floor, either. So she reached down and picked it up and set it on the wooden tabletop, as if it were the inanimate object it was pretending to be.

  And then, because she did not know what else to do, she read the letter again.

  Now
she thought of him walking over snow, head down, parka drawn up around his face. He had his hands deep in his pockets. He wore unfamiliar clothes. Probably his hair had grown, and his beard. He was making his way along an iced-over river, past a ship that was now a museum called Klondike. He was peering out from within the fake fur circle of his hood, looking for a small woman who seemed very out of place and very cold, who acted as if she might also be looking for somebody. What would it feel like when those two people actually recognized each other? Would it feel like that time in the dormitory basement, where she had met another man carrying a basket of laundry with the copy of a book about the Klondike balanced on top, who had been at that moment walking toward her just as she was walking toward him, as if they were looking for each other. Would there be that relieved Oh good. Now I can stop dating that her long-ago patient had once described? Would there be the comfort of recognition, the passion, the deep love no real person could ever just walk away from, just like that, not after so many years? And what would happen after that? Would they go back to a hotel room where their son—the son they had made together—was waiting for them? Would they go farther on, to a country he had been thinking about, that he was pretty sure they could get to and where he was pretty sure they would be safe?

  Grace closed her eyes. All right. She had had to do that. She had had to follow it that far.

  Now, though, her head was going somewhere else, and because she had no strength left to fight with herself, she went there, too, and the place it took her to was back again to the basement of the medical school dormitory at Harvard. She remembered the messy room upstairs where he had made love to her for the first time (medical students are very basic creatures), and then, methodically, all of the rooms in which he had made love to her ever since. But there were too many of them and they were too disparate: Maine and London and Los Angeles and the apartment near Memorial and the apartment she had grown up in on 81st Street. And here, right upstairs in this very house, where it was unimaginably cold in the winter, as she now knew. And Paris. There were three trips to Paris over the years, but different hotels. How was she supposed to count them?