by Sarah S.
The woman plucked a Kleenex from a box on the desk and shook her head. “You didn’t get her message?”
“Message?”
“She said she was going to call. She wanted to meet you at nine, not ten. Really killed her, having to come down here and use the phone. But it was important she keep her doctor’s appointment today. He’s making a house call, a last-minute thing.”
Charles blinked. He hadn’t checked his office voice mail before he left last night; she must have left a message there. Only, if she had, she would have heard his name on his outgoing voice mail message. This is Charles Bates-McAllister; I’m not available, et cetera. She might not have left a message at all.
“She was here at nine,” the woman went on, turning back to her work. “But she only left a few minutes ago. You might still be able to catch her.”
Charles’s heart lurched again. So she had come. “Which way did she go?”
The woman pointed out the window. “Through those trees there. You’ll probably see her. She’s not walking too quickly these days, because of how far along she is.”
Charles bolted out the door and into the woods, slogging through the soft, murky earth. Far off in the distance, he smelled wood smoke. And then, he heard a twig snap. A footstep. He stopped and quieted his breathing. There it was again, ahead of him. He ran a few steps and saw a figure walking quickly down a ravine.
She had dark hair and that same sharp profile. She wore a simple gray dress, a black coat, and black loafers. And she was hugely pregnant. He sucked in his breath, stunned.
“Bronwyn,” he called out. It emerged from his lips as not much more than a croak. “Bronwyn,” he said, louder.
She stopped and turned and shaded her eyes, looking up the hill. Charles raised a hand to his mouth. He’d tried to prepare himself for this, for it really being her, but his heart still raced, his knees still trembled. Her skin was blotchy, her hair slick. There were rafts of pimples on her chin and her forehead, and her lips were cracked and dry. She met his eyes, first unknowingly, and then her eyebrows sank together. He held up one hand. She squinted, taking a few steps backward.
“Bronwyn,” he said, walking down the ravine. The wet ground seeped through his thin loafers, sending a shiver up his spine.
He stopped a few feet from her. Bronwyn’s face had gone white. She dropped her hand from her forehead. “Charles?”
He tried to smile. She was now staring at him almost angrily, as if he’d caught her doing something terrible.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. She placed her hands over her stomach. The gesture seemed vaguely protective.
“I’m the … writer. Working on the … the magazine. I’m the one interviewing you.”
“You?”
“I didn’t know it would be you. Mirabelle didn’t tell me who I was meeting with. But when I saw you here, I …”
The words tumbled out of him unwittingly. He didn’t know if lying was the right way to play this, but admitting that he’d known seemed so insidious.
Bronwyn blinked. Her eyes were cold and black. Uncomfortable. She picked at her lips with her pinkie finger, a gesture Charles recalled from when they were dating. It was like an old smell, wafting back to him. “They said the writer’s name was Charles,” she said in a faraway voice. “They didn’t give a last name. I didn’t ask.”
They stood still for a long time. There were no sounds. Charles’s gaze fell to her swollen stomach. Her thin, dirt-colored shoes looked like they were made out of cardboard.
“Do you … like this?” He swept his arms around, indicating the woods, the solitude.
Bronwyn nodded meekly. “Yes.”
“Is it like … camping?”
“A little.”
“And you’re going to have a baby here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Please,” she said quietly, pleadingly.
He paused, grateful she’d stopped him.
She took a breath, composed herself. “This is a little unexpected, Charles.”
He placed his hand against a tree trunk, digging his nails into the bark. Her discomfort didn’t surprise him. He’d had time to prepare for this, time to gather his emotions, but he would have responded the same way if the situation were reversed, if she had ambushed him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get another writer to do this. I’ll see if we can reschedule.”
Bronwyn nodded.
“I mean, it isn’t that I don’t want to see you,” he rushed on. “I just … I want to do what’s best for the magazine.”
“The magazine,” she repeated.
Behind them, sticks crackled. Charles turned. The woman from the office was standing at the top of the hill. “Winnie?” she called. “You okay?”
“Fine, Laurel,” Bronwyn called back, her voice halting.
Laurel shrugged, remained for another long moment, and then trudged back into the cabin.
“Winnie?” Charles asked when she was gone.
Bronwyn blinked back at him.
“I’ve never heard anyone call you Winnie before.”
She jutted her chin away from him, staring at a spindly tree. Nothing had bloomed out here yet. Everything was still bare. “How do you know, Charles? Have you met everyone who’s ever spoken to me?”
Charles opened his mouth, and then shut it fast. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just . . . this is about the last place I expected to see you. When did you move here?”
“A few months ago. I got married. We lived in LA. But then my dad got sick, so we moved back.”
“You lived with your dad when you first moved back?”
“No, Leon and I lived here. We made this decision together. Anyway, Dad has lots of people caring for him. Round-the-clock nurses and stuff. He has Alzheimer’s.”
All the information hurtled at him too quickly. Leon. Only a few months. And her dad had been sick. Why hadn’t they lived in her family’s big, beautiful house when they moved back? Why had they chosen this instead? His eyes landed on her stomach again. Her clumsy, handmade dress. One of her fingernails was black.
“I like this,” Bronwyn said simply, as if sensing his observations. “I like what I’m doing. I’m happy.”
“But you could have been so many things,” he blurted out. He had to say it; there was no way he was leaving without saying it. “You could have become so much.”
She laced her hands over her belly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just mean … well, what do your parents think about this?”
“Well, my dad doesn’t have much of a grasp on it. And my mom and I don’t speak.”
“Because of this?”
She paused on him for a long time, as if it was the stupidest question he could ask. “No, Charles. Not because of this. We haven’t spoken for a long time.”
The tip of her nose was red. He knew, from years of being with her—standing with her out in the cold weather, talking, kissing, arguing, promising things to each other—that her nose wasn’t red right now because of the cold. It was because she was upset. He was upsetting her. She led an insulated, pleasant life, and here he was, tramping on it, cheapening it.
“I’ll call my boss,” he said wearily. “I’m not going to write the story. It’s a conflict of interest. They’ll send someone else.”
“Okay.” She pushed a greasy hank of hair out of her face. “Are you going to get in trouble for that?”
“It’s fine.” He started back up the hill, trying not to trip.
“I heard about your father,” she called after him.
Charles stopped but didn’t turn. He could just make out the top of his car up the hill. “How?” he asked.
“Laurel? In the office? She sometimes buys the Inquirer at the gas station. I was in the office one day, leafing through a paper, and there was your dad’s picture.”
“Huh.”
“But I try not to use the ph
one, which is why I didn’t call. Maybe I should have. I try to be … pure about all this, I guess.”
Charles gritted his teeth. If Bronwyn were truly pure about all this, she wouldn’t have read the newspaper at all. Asceticism was just an excuse. She simply wanted nothing to do with him.
There were crackling noises behind him. It sounded like Bronwyn was shifting her feet in the dirt. “How did it happen?” she asked.
He turned back to her. “Brain aneurysm,” he managed, stiffly. “Hit him from out of nowhere. They tried surgery, but it didn’t work. He died on the table.”
“Oh my.”
“I mean, it would’ve been worse if he’d lived. He had brain damage. He wouldn’t have been able to work or walk or even talk. He signed papers ahead of time asking not to be kept alive by machines. I don’t begrudge him the decision.”
Bronwyn nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
Charles shrugged. He arched his back and stared at the sky through the emaciated trees. The sun was nowhere to be found. And the air, he noticed, smelled swampy and rotted, like an overflowing septic system.
“And you’re married, too,” she said.
Joanna came to his mind, fuzzy and far away. “Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Nearly a year.”
“Do I know her?”
He shook his head, and she smiled, probably figuring as much. He thought about Joanna. She was probably with her mother right now. He thought about the clumsy argument they’d had about Bronwyn, how he’d pretended she wasn’t on his mind. He’d kept this interview from her, twisting it around so that it felt like she was making the decision that he come here for him. His stomach roiled with shame.
“I lied,” he said.
Bronwyn raised her head. “I’m sorry?”
“I-I knew it was you,” he stammered. “I saw your picture in the brochure. And Mirabelle, the woman who came to talk to our firm, she saw me looking and then started talking you up and from there I couldn’t stop it. We were writing about you, and that was final—and I was going to be the writer. I thought maybe Mirabelle would tell you my name and you’d be okay with it. And at the same time, I didn’t want to call and tell you, for fear you’d say no. I thought if you knew it was me coming, you wouldn’t show up.”
Bronwyn’s jaw trembled. “I might not have.”
There it was, out in the open. He balled up his fists, feeling something inside him break. “Do you hate me that much? Am I really that terrible? Is what I said why you’re doing … this?”
Her forehead furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“I just … I just need you to tell me. I need to know if I changed you, somehow, saying those awful things I did. Then I’ll go.”
When Bronwyn still looked puzzled, he took another breath. “Scott has been accused of this . . . thing,” he said, even though he hadn’t planned to tell her this. It was the last thing he’d planned to tell her. “He coaches wrestling now. At Swithin. And he has been accused of something with the boys he coaches. They’re saying he might’ve incited … violence … among them. Hazing, I guess. Like, he might’ve encouraged it. And I can’t stop thinking that there’s some connection between that and what I said that day—the day of the banquet. The last day you and I …”
He brushed his hand across his forehead, feeling blown off course. “I deserved Scott hitting me that day for what I said, but maybe he thinks that’s a permissible way to handle things—beating up people gets them to listen and change. But I need you to tell me if that’s why you left me, if that’s why you stopped speaking to me. Because of what I said. Because you sided with Scott. Because you thought I deserved getting my ass kicked, too. And I want to know if you think that whatever Scott’s done now, I’m partly responsible for. I just need to know what you think. I need you to say it out loud.”
He felt winded, saying all this. His chest felt like it was on fire.
It took a long time for Bronwyn to speak. “If you think this is funny, it’s not.”
He dared to look at her face. It was red. She was shaking. “This is a joke,” she stated. “Right?”
“No …”
“So I’m supposed to believe you just … blocked it out.”
“Blocked what out?”
“I’m supposed to believe you didn’t see it? Or you didn’t hear? Or that he didn’t tell you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m supposed to believe you really buy that bullshit about Scott? That you didn’t come down here to ask me the obvious questions?”
He frowned. “Those are my obvious questions.”
“I get it, of course,” she went on, ignoring him. “I could see you’d want answers right now. But don’t play dumb with me about the rumors, Charles. I know you know.”
“Rumors?”
She sniffed. “Seriously. Just stop it.”
“Huh?”
She lowered her chin and stared at him hard. “You really don’t know?”
He shook his head. A crow cawed. Far off, very, very far off, a trunk honked its horn. “Know what?”
“How could you not know?” Bronwyn said.
He shrugged, helpless. His voice started to quiver. “You’re freaking me out.”
She sighed. “For God’s sake, Charles. Do you really think you’re the only one who blurts out awful things when they’re frustrated or annoyed? You think you’re the only one who picks on his younger brother? Who suffers from sibling rivalry? Cut yourself some slack. Sibling rivalry is everywhere. It’s even here in the woods. You’re not the only one. There’s more in this world than just your tiny little life.”
“I …”
Bronwyn gazed at him warily, her lips parted. “Whatever this thing is that Scott is implicated in, you really think it’s because of what you said? Do you really think you have that much power over people’s destinies or identities, Charles? And do you really think your brother is that impressionable? Or that insane?”
Charles shrugged one shoulder, about to respond, but Bronwyn interrupted, holding up a pointer finger. “Is it possible you want Scott to be guilty, so you can finally be held responsible for the way you felt about him? You want to find out something bad about him, don’t you? Something that incriminates him. Because that would incriminate you, too. So you’re finally rightfully punished.”
Charles could feel the sweat under his arms.
She looked at him, her eyes dimming. “I hid from you.”
“I know,” he said. “Because of what I said to Scott.”
“No.” She said it loudly, almost a shout. “Not because of what you said to Scott. Jesus. Because of what I thought you knew. It’s why I told you we shouldn’t see each other anymore, Charles. And it’s why I cut off ties with all our other friends, too. I thought you saw it, and I figured you’d misunderstand. I thought you’d tell all our friends, too, and they’d side with you.”
He started to tremble. “What are you talking about?” She breathed heavily, and then shook her head. “Forget it.” “Bronwyn …”
“Seriously. Let it go.” She turned around clumsily, heading away from him. “I didn’t leave you because of anything you said. Just … that should be enough, right?”
“But …”
“It was nice seeing you, Charles. I have to go—I have a doctor’s appointment soon. But I wish you all the best. Please tell Mirabelle it’s my fault, okay? So they don’t blame you. There are plenty of other people here who’d be happy to do an interview. Everyone’s great.”
A flame rippled through him. “No. You can’t leave.”
She kept going. He ran down the ravine and caught her cold, fleshy arm. She whirled around, fear flashing across her face. “What aren’t you telling me?” Charles demanded.
She shivered. “You don’t want to know.”
“I do.”
Bronwyn wrenched her neck to the side. When she turned her face toward him again, he saw her eyes were glistening.
“This is why I never wanted us to run into each other. Because I knew we’d get to this point. I knew it would come up.”
“What? What happened?”
She stepped away and lowered her head. Birds sang in the tress. The sun passed behind a cloud, then reemerged.
“I got into a fight with my parents,” she said. “They pushed me to be thebest at everything, and they wouldn’t settle if I came in second. It was so easy for them, and they assumed it was easy for me, too. They thought it was what I wanted. So one day, I had this fight with my dad about how he wanted me to go into medicine. I didn’t want to, but he said I had to.”
Charles frowned. “I thought you wanted to go to medical school. That was all you ever talked about.”
Bronwyn stared at him pleadingly. “I didn’t, Charles. I never wanted to. I was just … his mouthpiece. But that’s beside the point. I drove over to your house. Only you were somewhere else … doing something with your mom in the basement maybe. But I didn’t feel like going to the basement. I didn’t feel like talking to your mom. So I sat at the table and waited. And while I was waiting he came in and he just … he really looked at me. Me, Bronwyn. No one else did. Not even you, Charles. I’m sorry but not even you. He asked what was wrong, and it all just poured out of me. And … it felt like he really got it.”
She paused and took a shaky breath. “We talked, sometimes, after that. Most of the talks weren’t about anything important, but we struck up a friendship. He opened up to me, too. He even bought me a Christmas present that last year we were in school, but I said I couldn’t accept it—I didn’t know how I would explain it. I couldn’t tell you because I thought it would just make you uncomfortable. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
Charles gaped at her, scrambling to keep up with what she was telling him.
“One time not long before that banquet, we were talking and he leaned in and hugged me. But there was someone in the next room. Someone saw us. I knew in that moment it was going to be misconstrued. I tried to do damage control, but it was too late for that. I figured you’d hear about it, too, and you’d assume the same things. I wanted to tell you what was going on a million times, but I thought it would hurt you. You guys didn’t get along, and there I was, coming in there and disrupting things, taking away some of that attention for myself …”
