The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  Beside me the bed was empty. Through the warped opening in the bathroom door I could hear the shower running.

  My view of life had changed in recent days. I found myself noticing, with breathtaking acuity, and . . . what was the word? Language came and went too quickly now, as if my mind lacked some glue to keep it long enough to say. Appreciating. Yes, I found myself appreciating everything. I could never pretend to be an artist or spiritualist, just a man of law, a servant of precedents and procedures. Yet now I was heightened, aware of each thing however humble. At dinner the innkeeper lowered a match to a candle, and the wick seemed to pull the fire into itself. The bread had a thick crust I had to bear down hard upon to bite, and foolish or no, I felt a fondness for my strong teeth. A lump of ice chimed in my water glass when I raised it. Life was filled to bursting, rich as a kingdom. The shortness of time was teaching me to notice.

  When a man is dying, the world is loud, insistent, and vivid. Each thing, however modest, becomes exaggerated, because it is the last of its kind: the glint of a wave, the cry of a gull, the weight of clothes on my bones. More than once I wished that I had infinite pockets so I could tuck aside one thing after another, keeping them somehow before everything vanishes. Yesterday a bee veered near to inspect me, then hummed off on its tireless errands, and I nearly wept as the sound fell away.

  That first time, in the icy sea, I experienced the loss of everything in seconds. The pain was so unspeakable, vast and sudden, that fading consciousness brought relief. This time, losing the world by degrees, in full consciousness, is proving harder.

  Once I thought that aging would make me into an excellent judge. Experience would give me wisdom. Now I know that I will never grow old. Yet I feel ancient already: less the master of my body, swept by tides of emotion, mindful that each thing I perceive is already on its journey away from me, and the wisest act I can perform is to appreciate.

  Even now, the angling of the light into this room. The curl of the curtain as it falls from a slackening breeze. To call these things symphonies would be untrue. They are but two of the hundred thousand simultaneous extravagances known as existence.

  Of course my keenest appreciation has been of Kate. She laughs and it is a melody. She takes my arm when we are strolling and it is serenity. She becomes pensive, increasingly of late, and I wait with affection for the shadow to leave her face.

  A spasm gripped my foot, then passed. Hm. How much longer could I conceal my body’s paroxysms from her? I wanted to shield Kate from worry for as long as possible. Perhaps today I would tell her. At least there was no pain.

  Through the window I heard children playing. My mind leaped to Agnes, my cherub, and to Joan. Was I wrong to keep myself from Kate in their name? Was it honorable to remain steadfast in my vows regardless of the way that time had distorted them? The world of here and now made little sense. Joan was my foundation and firmament. When all else was unknown, her fidelity and generosity were certain and enduring.

  Yet if I said that waking that dawn to find myself entwined with Kate was anything shy of comfort, anything less than delight, it would be falsehood.

  Once upon a time, so long ago it feels like it happened to a different Jeremiah Rice, a woman loved me with devotion beyond my deserving. She bestowed the singular gift of a daughter, my heart’s joy. Yet I left them blithely, arrogantly, certain I would return in a few months’ time. On that voyage I lost everything of myself, yes, but worse, I inflicted who knows what hardships upon them, what undeserved suffering.

  Now a woman of a new era offers me her kindness, her intimacy, whilst I know it is a matter of hours or days before I depart from her, too. Am I to deny what happened the first time? Am I to join her in tenderness, give in to the desire like a fire in my blood, and inflict another generation of harm? I have already left behind one woman, one child. How can I countenance hurting another? Do I want to be that kind of man?

  I sat upright, throwing back the sheet to see my diminished body. My time was escaping. Was the man who lived ever grateful for Joan’s willingness incapable of being willing himself? Did I truly believe that withholding would spare either Kate or myself any grief?

  Of course not. The bond existed already, consummated or not. The sweet entanglement of our sleep proved it. Our loss would occur, then, regardless of the happiness beforehand. My leg shuddered from ankle to hip, as if the spasm were an instruction to me: it is better to live generously than to regret having lived with restraint. I would surrender to Kate that very night—I vowed it—and give her my fullest remaining self, grateful and entire. I was willing, yes, because sorrow is the price we pay for joy.

  With that I roused myself, rising to dress. My clothes had begun to hang loosely, despite all the foodstuffs I gorged. My shirt slouched, my trousers drooped. At least my boot, my trusty old sea boot, slid on snugly and held me like the handshake of a friend.

  I heard the shower stopping, and hurried with the other boot. Kate deserved private time to dress and settle in herself. She was generous, taking time from work and driving me up and down the coast. Rockport had galleries, Hyannis hotels. Everywhere change, everywhere cars and crowds and haste. Then we reached the National Shore. The relentless waves at Nauset pounded with their drumming and rush, a rhythm unchanged since I’d last seen them in my twenties, two turns of the century ago.

  Eventually we landed in Marblehead, settling in this little inn among old houses near the docks. Kate paid for everything, though it chafed my masculinity. But the plain fact was that I had no cash. One day she handed me some bills, so I might explore whilst she rested. Kate needed naps, of course, because I could persist without breaks both day and night. I returned with bread, grapes, and cheese, waited hours until she woke, and we made a light meal on a dock deserted but for us two. A wood drake swam by to lecture us. I felt as though I had never beheld a duck, its iridescent feathers, its comical nagging. A thing of beauty.

  Kate nibbled and chatted whilst I showed restraint as well as I could. Then her face took a melancholy cast. “Go ahead, Jeremiah,” she said, pushing the wedge of cheddar toward me. “It’s all right.”

  I devoured that cheese as a dog would. The remaining grapes lasted seconds more. Kate ambled to the end of the dock. Swallowing the last bits, I followed and stood near. She leaned against me without a word. Even her silence was a pleasure. I promised myself to remember. If I was learning to appreciate, I must also honor experience by remembering.

  That morning in our room I reached into the closet for my jacket, and tremors ran through my fingers. I wagged my wrist to shake them away, but that trick was becoming less effective. I hurried to make the bed, as I had done every morning with Joan. What are habits but a steady way of either honoring or diminishing ourselves?

  The shower curtain slid back with a scrape of rings on rod, and I hastened to the hallway door. My instinct—call it, perhaps, my base animal self—could not resist the temptation, and I peeked through the cracked open bathroom door before my conscience had a chance to intervene. I was the plaything of my own eyes.

  There stood Kate amid the steam, hair wet and clinging to pink skin, stunning, lovely brightness, the long, lean flank of her. She brought her nearer leg up on the toilet seat and rubbed downward with her towel.

  I burst from the room and down the stairs, my body roaring and ravenous.

  CHAPTER 39

  Where Are They?

  (Kate Philo)

  He slept. After four days that I know of, four long nights without his eyes closing, at last he rested. He laid himself beside me, he curled his body into mine, he slept.

  Sometimes when I see someone lose his temper, I imagine someplace else where a person is praying, or gardening, or performing some meditative action that is the opposite of the anger in front of me. That place is what it is like to sleep with Jeremiah Rice. The world may rush and rage, but you are in a realm of deepest calm.

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nbsp; Drying myself after a shower that morning, I admitted to an unreasonable optimism. When a man is revving so high he practically hums, a night of sleep is like hearing that a cancer patient’s chemotherapy has worked. There may be a reprieve. Forty winks for Jeremiah made me hopeful again. I slept better, too, relieved of worry for those tender hours.

  Maybe it was the power of touch. Over those celibate months I had forgotten the effect of body on body, the warm weight, the way my arms wrapped him by instinct. So what if we hadn’t had sex? I didn’t expect it. There are many ways of taking a man inside yourself and filling both of you with pleasure. There are many ways of making love.

  Oh, who was I kidding? What I felt for this man was want, in every meaning of the word: in my heart, in my sex, in the memories I hoped to hold for the rest of my life. Ultimately, I now understand, my yearning for Jeremiah might best be described as curiosity. After all, what is love but the desire to know another person as thoroughly and deeply as possible? Every quirk and passion, each response to the changes of time, every possible inch of skin? Also perhaps to be ourselves known, with all our flaws, yet somehow miraculously still be desired? In days past they spoke of lovemaking as a man and woman knowing each other. That is precisely how I wanted Jeremiah Rice. At long last, completely, to know him.

  Also to save him from dying alone.

  I left the bathroom wrapped in a towel, to see that he’d gone out. But not before making the bed, which amused me. Jeremiah had done the same thing in the motels on the Cape, no matter how clearly I explained how the hospitality industry works. He’d listened, nodded, said he understood . . . and made the bed the next morning anyway.

  I was glad for the minutes alone. Not that I felt burdened by him, no. I craved every second that I could get. But matching his tirelessness was exhausting.

  Also I needed to catch up online. I wanted to see what the world was saying, what Carthage was up to, without leading Jeremiah to think I was doing anything more than taking a vacation. While the computer booted up I pulled on underwear and my last clean shirt. It was as yellow as a sunflower.

  I sat at the tiny dressing table that served as the room’s desk, tucking my knees to one side. We were staying in a B&B, so the place was better equipped for downtime than for surfing. I had ninety-four new e-mails. None from Carthage. Half a dozen from Chloe with subject lines whose use of capital letters increased with each unanswered one. Plus interview requests, the usual attacks on my conduct and character. Ironically, those people were helping me grow a thick skin. If you’re going to vilify someone anonymously and with lots of obscenities, at least check your spelling.

  At the project’s internal site my account was disabled, password invalid. The public home page announced that Carthage was holding a news conference that day to refute the slanderous allegations that had been made against the project.

  Allegations? A quick search found this headline: FORMER INSIDER CLAIMS FRAUD AT LAB. One more search produced a video of Dixon’s news conference, unedited.

  I watched all fifty minutes, my emotions covering miles along the way: surprise that Dixon had the nerve to challenge Carthage, dismay that he sincerely believed he had revealed us to be frauds, concern about the harm he might do to the reputations of good people. I even felt badly for Dixon, figuring no one would be more damaged by this error than him.

  When he reached his so-called fourth proof, my sympathies evaporated. The vulture had been spying on us the whole time. It didn’t matter that my relationship with Jeremiah was chaste. In Dixon’s lens, we looked sordid. I felt rage at the invasion of privacy. Yet I kept viewing the photos, tugs of nostalgia at the waiter who sang to us, until the one where I held a grieving Jeremiah in the graveyard. With his coarse sexual innuendos, Dixon had managed to diminish even that.

  My first impulse was protective. I could handle this onslaught, ugly as it was. I could explain everything. But Jeremiah, for all of his intelligence, was unequipped.

  My search found one more story, media writing about the media, which was the most chilling of all. Yes, the paparazzi were seeking us, they staked out the project offices, they chased down every tip and rumor about our hiding place. The scary part was that some of the protesters were following them. Wade tepidly disavowed the conduct of his followers, one of whom was quoted as saying: “It doesn’t matter whether these people demean the sanctity of life through science or through lies. They are evil and must be stopped.”

  I closed the laptop. Now I felt especially glad Jeremiah had gone for a walk. I needed to think. I pulled on jeans and jogged downstairs for the breakfast on which the Harborview Inn prided itself, a big coffee before anything else.

  There she is,” sang Carolyn, the proprietor of the inn, whose white hair belied her energy and poise. “And you have the place all to yourself.”

  I had learned about Carolyn’s past over three prior breakfasts. A former travel agent, she bought the inn when she retired. That first winter she discovered yoga. Seven years later she not only attended class daily, she also fell into poses during conversation. Carolyn seasoned breakfast with her chatty history of Marblehead, banter about Massachusetts politics, jokes about her knees’ ability to forecast storms—all while standing on one foot, or turning her head frighteningly far to the back, like an owl.

  The first day she noted my coffee consumption. The next morning she swapped the dainty teacup at my place for a tall red mug. I was, therefore, a fan.

  She brought a thermos, filling my mug while stretching at the waist. “Your friend had breakfast earlier and went out. Ate like a teenager, to tell you the truth.”

  “I’m sorry about that. He has an endocrine problem.”

  She arched her upper back, chest high. “You don’t need to tell me. The guy has thyroid written all over him. Scrambled eggs for you again?”

  I blew on the coffee to cool it. “Please.”

  “Here’s the day’s blues,” she said, bringing newspapers from the counter. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Holler if you need anything, okay?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I mean anything,” she said, holding out the stack. “Any thing.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said, puzzling at her meaning as she stretched and bent her way out of the room. Then I turned the papers over and saw the Herald’s front page.

  WHERE ARE THEY? read the headline, above a photo of our kiss outside my apartment. I flipped to the Globe. COUPLE MISSING IN ALLEGED FRAUD. It was incredible, complete with pictures of our faces cropped to look like mug shots.

  I gulped coffee. It was clear the reporters believed Dixon. Carthage issued one written statement: We do not stoop to refuting nonsense. Now there were questions about who was bankrolling the project’s work. Through it all, every reference to Jeremiah included me, our disappearance likened to the escape of Bonnie and Clyde.

  Meanwhile Jeremiah was dying. There was nothing I could do. I felt his body jump and twitch. I saw him eat enough for four people. In Falmouth, a tremor struck just as he was raising a spoonful of chowder, causing him to spill it on his front, and I ran for the restroom rather than have him clean himself up in front of me. After that I’d managed to arrange most meals to be outdoors, at hamburger stands or lobster-roll shacks.

  I often wondered how much he knew. When we sat on the beach at Nauset, I watched him pour sand from hand to hand for a solid hour, studying the falling granules as intently as if they held the secret to everything unknown. I didn’t dare interrupt.

  Neither, however, did I find the courage to tell him. It was all another drive, another beach, anything but the truth. I felt like a scuba diver, swimming along with my tank full of oxygen while the person beside me unknowingly runs out.

  I threw the papers across the table. Right then, Carolyn returned with my toast and eggs. We made eye contact and she did not flinch.

  “None of it is true, you know,” I said.r />
  She set the plate beside my coffee. “It’s not important to me.”

  “It is extremely important to me,” I said. “And to Jeremiah. It’s all lies.”

  “I want you to know something.” She held a chair and arched her back. “All kinds of people come through here, not all of them saints. I can keep a secret.”

  “We have nothing to hide. There are predators, though, who would love to—”

  “I don’t blame you, anyway. A guy that unique? I’d want him for myself, too.”

  “That’s not at all what I’m doing. Not the littlest bit.”

  Carolyn smiled, not saying a word. She topped my coffee and left for the kitchen.

  Is that what I was doing? Protecting him or keeping him to myself? Giving peace to him or seeking it for myself? I heard the inn’s front door swing wide, Jeremiah’s boots ringing on the wood floors. Passing the dining room, he peered in, veered back to me.

  “I had to obtain more food,” he said, “and get some air. I love this old town, all the well-preserved houses. I hope you weren’t worrying about me.”

  “Not a bit.” I stroked his hand, then saw the papers spread on the table. I flipped them facedown. “Did you chat with anyone while you were walking?”

  He considered. “Some children by the docks. I confused myself in the streets, and needed directions back. They were playing stickball. I showed one boy how to hold the . . . the . . .” He raised his hands, pantomiming while he searched for the word.

  “Bat?”

  “Exactly. Bat, yes. The lad had never heard of choking up.”

  “Jeremiah.” I stared at my plate. “Did any of those children recognize you?”

  He smiled. “I’d say so. The boy with the bat asked if I was ‘him.’ ”

  “Damn it all.”

  “Are we in trouble?”

  “Some people are after us again. Bad people.”