In All Deep Places

by Susan Meissner

  “I found this in my old room,” he said, handing it to her. “I thought you might want it back.”

  Her first reaction was reluctant curiosity. She stood up, took the paper, and unfolded it, seeming only casually interested in what he’d brought from their shared past. But when she saw the faded ink and the tender words of a young girl who seemed to have understood so much, the tightness left her face. But she did not appear to be at ease. On the contrary, the words of the poem seemed to involuntarily subdue her. She looked defenseless and afraid.

  Luke followed her eyes across the page. He saw her take in every word.

  Underneath the rocking sea

  In the shadows of the deep

  The mighty kings in silent rule

  Swim the lengths of the salty pool

  Blast of steam, plume of spray

  Tails and fins like pennants wave

  But barely touch the world of man

  Content to stay where time began

  No show of force to change or scorn

  Nature’s way Earth’s slow turn

  Unconcerned or unaware

  That a world of light and air

  Is not far; just there it lies

  Just above their hooded eyes.

  “You kept this,” she said quietly, with no inflection in her voice.

  “Yes,” he said. “I love this poem. I loved it from the moment I first read it.”

  She said nothing as she fingered the page, not taking her eyes off the piece of paper in her hand.

  For a moment, she looked as if she might give way to tears. Whether tears of regret or tears of desperation, he wasn’t sure, but he imagined either would be a beginning of healing for her. But the moment passed. She folded the paper and tossed it onto her coffee table like it was yesterday’s grocery list. There didn’t appear to be anything more he could do or say today to change anything.

  “May I call or write you from time to time?” he asked.

  She laughed.

  “You can do whatever you want, Luke. Just keep in mind you’re a married man.”

  He winced. He’d meant nothing improper by his request. He started to walk toward the door, and she followed. He was inches from the door. Inches from leaving her—and he hadn’t told her everything. He turned back.

  “Norah, I’m writing a book, a memoir really, about what I… what we went through as kids. I think there’s something to be learned from what happened to us. I—”

  She interrupted him with a laugh. “Something to be learned? Just what you do you think we have learned, Luke? I am very curious. Tell me!”

  Her gaze was steel. It reminded him of Nell. He shook the image from his head and tried to gaze back into those hardened eyes.

  “I’ve learned that this life isn’t all there is, Norah.”

  For a moment he thought she was actually picturing to herself something endless and beautiful, but the glimmer in her eyes lasted but a second.

  “Congratulations, Luke. You’ll be valedictorian for sure.”

  There had to be a better way to say what he wanted to say. He thought of his father, then, sitting with him in the tree house on a cold Thanksgiving afternoon. He remembered that when they had climbed back into his bedroom the savory, blended aromas of sage, onion, and celery had enveloped them. He could almost smell it. The fragrance of heaven.

  It was within reach. Not so far away. Just next door.

  Paradise.

  “You’ve been in the deepest of deep places,” he said softly. “But it’s still just above you, Norah. It’s right above you. It always has been.”

  “What?” she demanded angrily. “What is right above me?”

  “Everything you have ever longed for.”

  She said nothing for a few seconds.

  “How do you know what I long for?” she said softly, but clearly challenging him to supply the answer.

  He remembered back to the day he’d kissed her, to the moment before he’d kissed her, to the moment when she’d told him she ached for the day when everything would be right but didn’t think it would ever come. His mind took him back to the moment when he’d had a chance to show her the way to God and wasted it.

  “Because I want the same things,” he replied, matching her tone. “We all do.”

  She said nothing… only waited.

  “We all want to be in a place where, finally, everything is as it should be.” Regret made his voice sound thick in his ears. “We all want a place where we can have the beautiful sand dollar and the little white birds. A place where we can have them both.”

  Norah’s hand instinctively went to her neck, as if she meant to finger a long-ago necklace. But her neck was bare, and her fingers met only skin.

  “There is no place like that…” she whispered.

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Especially for you.”

  She swallowed, as if a question had been poised on her lips and she’d pulled it away, sending it back to the deep places inside her.

  “Goodbye, Luke.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Don’t turn your back on God forever, Norah.”

  “Goodbye,” she said again, eyes raised. And this time there was no hostility in her stare, only sadness.

  “I will write you,” he said, touching her arm. She looked at him and slowly pulled her arm away.

  He wanted to hug her goodbye, but he knew she would not welcome it. A kiss on the cheek would not be welcome either. Shaking hands—like two business associates—would be laughable. He stood on the threshold, half in and half out of her house. She stood just to his right, waiting for him to leave, arms folded across her chest. Twilight was dappling the porch with spent sunlight.

  “If you change your mind about coming to see us in Connecticut—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “Goodbye, Luke.”

  He hesitated just a second longer.

  “Good night, Norah.”

  He turned and walked to his car. After he got in and started the engine, he looked up and was surprised to see that Norah was still standing in her doorway, watching him. In that final moment he noticed that directly in front of his car stood a giant elm, just like the one that grew between their houses when they were children. He turned his head back to her and, on impulse, pointed upwards—their old sign for “meet you in the tree house after dark”

  Elm tree, he mouthed to her through the car window. He saw her raise her eyes to the tree shading her house. When she looked back down he thought perhaps he saw a glimmer of hope in her face. It was difficult to tell in the failing light.

  And he was suddenly struck by the knowledge that he was also pointing to the sky, to the expanse above them, beyond which lay so much.

  Luke spent the night in a Denver hotel that offered an early-morning shuttle service to the airport. It took him only a couple hours to write the last pages of his manuscript in the quietness of his room—the words on the screen were echoes of the words shared at Norah’s house. As he typed the last few sentences, he sensed no regret about coming to see Norah, though his emotions felt raw and exposed from the encounter. He knew now how the memoir ended… but he also knew it wasn’t truly the end. He had Norah’s address safely in his pocket. He would never again be without it.

  The last sentence reverberated in his mind long after he’d turned the computer off.

  The outstretched branches of Norah’s elm tree filled my rearview mirror as I drove away, as if reaching in anticipation for what waits above the sky…

  Epilogue

  A September sun was starting to inch its way down to the Connecticut horizon as Luke clicked his cell phone off and placed it on his copy of Shallow Water, which was resting on the patio table.

  Téa poked her head out of the door to the kitchen. “Was that Alan?”

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “And he doesn’t like it.”

  His wife stepped out into the twilight. “W
hy not?”

  “It’s too personal, too spiritual, too not Red Herring,” he said, squinting up at her.

  “Well, of course it’s not a Red Herring book,” she said, angrily. “It’s not meant to be. And what’s wrong with writing something spiritual?”

  “It’s not what my readers want.” He was repeating what his editor had told him.

  “How does he know what your readers want?”

  “He gets paid to know, Téa,” he said, leaning forward in the chair. “Maybe he’s right.”

  “He’s not right. What else did he say?”

  “That people don’t want to read this kind of stuff after a long day at work. They want to be entertained. They like Red Herring books because the bad guy never gets away with anything. Good always wins out. It makes them feel better about their world.”

  He looked up. “They want the happy ending,” he added and winked.

  “Did he use those exact words?” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  He grinned. “He did.”

  “Well, that’s just laughable. Happily-ever-after books are so overrated.”

  Luke couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “You don’t seem very upset,” she continued.

  “I’m not. I don’t regret writing it, Téa. It’s the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Maybe it was meant just for me. Maybe there is no audience for it right now.”

  “That’s silly. Of course there is!”

  “Well, we’ll see. I’ll give it to Carmen and see what she can do with it.”

  “So what about Alan?”

  Luke looked up at her. “We’ve set a new deadline. I still have those ten chapters. I only need ten more. I have until October 31 to finish it—I think I can make it.”

  “So, you know where to go with the story then?”

  “I think so,” he said, nodding. “I’ve decided Eden was right about Clarice Wilburt. She killed for love, not for money.”

  “So does that still make her the bad guy?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. It makes her someone readers can still care about. Readers will like her, they’ll sympathize with her. I’ll dream up someone else to be her accomplice. Someone who doesn’t love. Someone readers can loathe.”

  “And that’s what readers want?” Téa chuckled.

  “Yeah, I think they do. They want good to prevail. They want the ending to make them feel good. Hopeful.”

  She came up behind him to rub his shoulders. “I guess I can understand that.”

  Talking about hope brought Norah to his mind as Téa’s touch soothed him. He’d written her three times in the past two months but had heard nothing from her until two days ago. At his request, she’d sent him a copy of Shallow Water. She’d signed the title page with nothing but her name. But the capital “N” was large and flowing—it didn’t look like the signature of a woman who has no hope. He’d also been noticing that while some of the poems in Shallow Water were dark and bleak, others were fragrant with expectation. Norah had not completely forgotten how to dream.

  It was not too late.

  In his last letter he had asked her to join their family for Thanksgiving. The note she’d included with the book said she was considering it, “If I can get away.” He pictured her unhurried, quiet life in Colorado and was confident there was nothing to keep her from coming except lack of persistence on his part. That was not going to be a problem. He would not let her down again. Somehow he would convince her to come.

  “We’d better start getting ready to go, don’t you think?” Téa said, interrupting his thoughts. “Traffic might be a problem with the weather being so nice. People will be out tonight.”

  “I just want to sit here a little longer,” he said, patting her hand on his shoulder, feeling no hurry to get ready for the Connecticut Literary Awards banquet. “It’s so peaceful here.”

  “Okay, I’ll take my shower first, then.” She squeezed his shoulder and turned to walk away. “By the way, the woman in green you saw at the last dinner—the one that looks like Eden Damaris? She won’t be there.”

  He spun his head around. “What? How do you know that?”

  His wife patted him on the head as she walked away. “’Cause I know who she is.”

  “You do not!”

  “Do so.”

  “You’re toying with me,” he said, grinning and turning back around.

  “Am not,” she replied, coming back to the table. “When we got this invitation and you said we’d be going, I asked around.”

  “Yeah, right!”

  “I did! I know who to ask when I need to know something. So I know who she is. I know her name. Want to know?”

  He turned back toward his wife, who was smiling broadly with the knowledge she possessed. He smiled back, remembering how troubled he’d been that night he’d seen the woman in green. How complicated his life had seemed on that spring evening five months ago. How the image of the woman in green had been the catalyst to move him into a new stage of his life as a writer, as a father and husband, as a believer. It was almost like a divine apparition from a world apart had set things in motion for the fresh enthusiasm he now had for writing and for living. He didn’t want to ruin the effect with a mortal name. He suddenly had no desire to know who the woman was.

  “No, I don’t,” he said.

  “Liar!” Téa said playfully.

  “I really don’t! If I find out who she is, then it will remove the mystery—you know, the pleasure and intrigue of not yet knowing what I really long to know. It will make her mortal.”

  She looked back at him, open-mouthed. “Are you nuts? She’s just the daughter of—”

  “I don’t want to know whose daughter she is!” he yelled, putting his hands over his ears.

  Téa stepped in front of him and looked down at his face. She pulled his hands away from his head. “You’re serious.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You really don’t want to know.”

  “You’re right—I don’t.”

  She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Not knowing would drive me absolutely crazy!”

  He grinned and looked past her at the grove of birch trees beyond The Lab. “I think it drives me forward.”

  “What? What drives you forward?” She was laughing.

  “The lovely lure of the Not Yet,” he said, smiling up at her.

  She shook her head. “Writers,” she muttered and turned toward the back door again.

  Just then the door to the guest cottage burst open and Marissa and Noelle came running out of it in leotards and fairy costumes.

  “What have they got on?” Luke asked, smiling.

  “Oh, they wanted to show Grandma and Grandpa their fairy costumes for the ballet recital next weekend.”

  Their daughters sprinted up the path to the patio.

  “Look, Daddy!” Noelle called out. “We can fly!”

  The girls sailed onto the patio.

  “This part’s coming off on mine,” Marissa said, showing Téa a place on the skirt where the material was separating from the waistband.

  “Oh, dear. Let’s go inside and pin it right now before it gets any bigger. Come on, sweetie.”

  Téa and Marissa went into the house as Noelle twirled about on the patio, watching her skirt ripple through the air. “Are my wings moving?” she asked him.

  He smiled, looking at the glittered-covered wings hanging a bit lopsided on her back.

  “They look great. You look just like an angel.”

  “Except I’m a fairy. Angels are in heaven.”

  He leaned back in his chair, watching her twirl. “Yes, they are.”

  “I don’t think there are any fairies in heaven.”

  “Probably not.”

  Arthur the cat sauntered onto the patio then, and Noelle stopped twirling and scooped him up.

  “Will there be cats in heaven?”

  Luke looked at his daughter, standing in a patch of fading sunlight and stroking the
cat. He had met Norah when she was just about the same age. And when she was almost as innocent of the sometimes-weary weight of the world as his own child.

  “I think everything that makes us truly happy will be there,” he said.

  “All the best things.”

  “Yes, all the best things.”

  He stood and reached for his cell phone and his copy of Shallow Water, tucking the book under his arm. He watched, smiling, as his daughter jumped off the patio onto the grass, twirling with her arms stretched toward the heavens, the amber glow of spent sunlight glinting off her glittering, transparent wings.

  Discussion Questions

  1. Who (or what) do you think the woman in the green dress represents, if anyone or anything? (There are no wrong answers here—only personal interpretations!)

  2. Luke found himself “stuck” in his manuscript before his father’s stroke, before returning to Halcyon. Why do you think he came up against writer’s block?

  3. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least, how much are Norah and Téa are alike? How did you arrive at your answer?

  4. Luke’s return to Halcyon is unsettling for him in many ways. Have you ever returned to your hometown after years of being away? What was your experience?

  5. How much sympathy do you have for Nell? Or for Darrel? Have you met people like these two? Why, in your opinion, do some people end up living such unfulfilled lives?

  6. The tree house becomes a refuge for Luke, and later for Norah, too. Discuss the placement of the tree house between the two houses. What is its significance to the story? Discuss its survival throughout the years.

  7. Describe your first impression of Norah when you meet her at the age of six. Does your impression change as she grows up within the story?

  8. Why did Kieran invent an imaginary playmate? Do you think Luke and Norah handled this situation appropriately? What would you have done differently?

  9. What role does Goose Pond play in the story? Is there significance in Norah’s attempting to touch the bottom and being unable to?