She peeled off the shirt again and let it drop to the floor as he walked in.
“They’ve all gone to her mother’s house in Houston.”
He kissed her across the room, one step at a time, and took his shirt off, his pants, both of them staring into the other’s eyes, intent on seizing this moment, this time.
Grayson had finally fallen asleep. She traced the edge of his hairline with one finger. He looked like a child, hair off his face, eyelids flickering, little jerks that revealed deep sleep, REM, dreaming of who knows what. She lifted his heavy hand, kissed his limp fingers in turn.
There was a scratching sound at the window. It was the masked bandit, but she didn’t need to look. She lay back and let the raccoon do his thing. Tumbled into sleep like Rip Van Winkle with Grayson beside her.
She didn’t sleep long. He was awake, watching her in the darkness. She felt his eyes more than she could see them.
“Grayson, have you done this before?”
He straddled her and fell forward, buried his face in her hair. “Once.”
“What was she like?”
“Bottle blond and skinny as hell. The kind of girl you wouldn’t like.”
“Why did you pick her?”
“Because she was there.”
She didn’t answer, but thought back to the day at the co-op, when he’d helped her at the bulk food bin. He had picked her the same way, because she was there, nothing more than that. And yet that habit, his penchant for picking women he could never commit to, hadn’t put Wendell off in the slightest.
His hopeful wife, the home and family he said he couldn’t leave. His wife had no idea who he was, the man he became with Wendell. In her mind, he took back a shell when he went home to his wife. His real self stayed with her.
“Wendell.”
He whispered her name, stopped doing the thing that made her crazy. Pulled her body to his. All she felt then was comfort and safety, like Aunt Jessie and her father and the picture of her mother with her hand caressing through the skin of her abdomen, all rolled into one.
“Don’t go.”
“I’m not leaving, Wendell.” His whispered voice was soft and full of breath.
Grayson took her to Hippie Hollow, a surprise, he whispered loudly, as they parked and wrestled canvas bags and a cooler up the winding path, through the brush and over rocks. They crested the hill and walked down the rocky cliff toward the water where he picked a spot and spread the huge jewel-colored towels she’d brought, cobalt blue with lemon yellow, turquoise with deep orange. The bright colors seemed almost garish in that setting, soft putty colored rock that terraced down to the water. There were trees and shade. They had their own little cove.
Her gauze shirt fell in one easy motion and she unbuttoned her chino shorts and let them drop too. Her swimsuit was black against her pale skin.
Grayson watched and started to speak.
“Yes, I put on sunscreen, head to toe.”
In front of them motorboats trolled past, beyond the area marked off for swimmers. Grayson opened the cooler and made gin and tonics in plastic cups.
“This is another one of my favorite places,” he said.
“Do you bring her here?”
He put down his cup. “No. We have our routine. There are places we go. Not the places I’m showing you.”
They walked down the hill to the edge of the lake and lowered themselves into the water, waded out far enough to cool off.
Grayson left her in the water to make more drinks. He called down to her. “What should we do tonight? We don’t have to go hear music.”
She came out to get a towel. Grayson handed her the drink and after she took a sip, he pulled it back and set it aside.
“You’re so quiet today.” He kissed her shoulder. “Let’s go watch the bats after dinner. Have you seen them yet?”
“No. I heard about them though.”
After dinner they drove to the river downtown and parked, then walked along the edge to a bridge that spanned the banks. Grayson said a huge colony of bats lived beneath the bridge from spring until fall, when they went back to Mexico.
Near sunset they flew out in a cloud, a swirling magic carpet of black that whipped and moved like a single piece of fabric through the air.
Grayson held her hand until the bats disappeared.
Late in the night they got out of bed to sit together on the back steps. She was determined they would see an armadillo, but none had arrived.
“One could still come.” She sighed and leaned her head on Grayson’s shoulder.
“I’ve seen them before, you know.”
“Not this one. She’s special.”
Grayson pulled her even closer to him. “Tell me about your work. It must be interesting, finding things from the past.”
“I’ve been reading up on archaeology in Texas. Maybe I’ll find something here. I don’t know.”
“Is it exciting when you find something?”
“To me it is. It takes a long time though. Everything has to be done carefully and you keep notes and sketches on everything you do. It’s not like taking a shovel and digging until you hit something hard.”
He laughed. “No, I imagine it’s not like that.”
She woke in a sweat, middle of the night panic: where is he?
It wasn’t immediately clear which he she meant.
She wrapped around the body beside her like her limbs were a heavy blanket, weighted with fear, and determination that he would not leave. She felt the bulk of him and knew it was Grayson, not Tristan, and she decided. She would not let him go.
Something was chirping next to her. Grayson wasn’t there, and when she shifted in the bed she discovered his cell phone ringing. He’d left it on the pillow next to her.
“Sweet girl,” he said when she answered.
“You left without waking me up.”
“You were sleeping so soundly.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I’m still weak in the knees, darlin’, let me take you dancing this afternoon.”
“Tonight, after the sun sets.”
He sighed so loudly the exhalation of his breath passed through the telephone. The idea of his warm air in her ear made her want him.
“I can’t Wendell, they’re coming home tonight.”
She hated that he wouldn’t just walk out of there. Already, she wanted him to throw everything away for her. She wanted to matter more than they did. She slid her finger around the keypad and accidentally depressed the end button. Click. Grayson was gone.
That evening she pressed talk and then the seven digits that led directly to Grayson’s other life. His wife answered. The same hopeful voice. What was she hoping for? A sojourn from being tolerated? That he step up to the plate and end the farce of a marriage they had? But she hung up.
Wendell sat up late into the night thinking of her father. In the vespertine quiet of her living room, the photograph sat on the end table, the two of them together, a year ago outside the house in Culpeper. He was taller, with tawny brown hair and gray eyes. A fine handsome face that looked hard but was really gentle when you knew him.
He was broad-shouldered and strong, and although his hairline receded ever so slightly and his forehead was creased, he looked younger than he was. His arms were around her shoulders. She leaned into him. The photo was a frozen moment of perfection, but it misstated the truth. Five minutes after the photo was taken he took off again, his secret life. She didn’t see him again for six months.
When she was sixteen her father was home and she had driven the ancient Honda Civic from Aunt Jessie’s to show off what she’d bought with the money he’d transferred to her account, sixteenth birthday, that he of course missed due to work.
First, he didn’t like the car, thought it was too small to be safe. Mumbled something about Volvos and crash tests. Then narrowed his eyes at her skirt, not even trying to disguise his contempt.
“Your ass is barely covered, Wen
dell. Exactly what kind of message are you trying to convey, wearing that thing?”
She started to ask what he was doing checking out her ass, but Josh, the boyfriend at the time, was coming over later and she didn’t want to start things up.
When she came home he had the guns out, and a bottle of Glenmorangie. She rolled her eyes. “Why are you drunk and cleaning guns? Aunt Jessie would freak.”
“She’s got nothing to say about what I do.”
He looked at her and exhaled, a long wisping sound that made her cringe beneath her clothing. Suddenly she felt every inch of her body, the pull of fabric in different places. His face was twisted and odd, and she pushed, because maybe then he’d fall apart or explode. Maybe in that aftermath something would finally be revealed.
“You want to hear about what girls and boys do on Saturday nights in the back seats of cars?”
He stood up with his gun and the bottle of Scotch and headed to the back yard, where she watched him fire round after round into the night sky.
The car was nearly silent as she pressed the pedal and careened softly along the sandy drive. On the road, the headlights flooded the potholes, small chasms made sinister by the darkness. The noise of the tires increased as she went faster. No music, just the rush of air and the whisper of her own voice. “Be there, please be home.”
Her father didn’t sleep much, if he was there he’d answer. She still had Grayson’s cell phone at the house, she could have called from there, but it was better her dad didn’t get that number. She urged the rings of the pay phone, one, two, three, prayed he picked up before the fourth, because that was when his voicemail would if he didn’t.
“This is Scott, leave a message.”
“Daddy, where are you? I love you.”
She tried his cell, which rang twice, then broke up and cut off. He was not an easy man to get hold of.
She replaced the handset of the pay phone and turned back to the car. He would know by the area code where she was, and that was enough for now. She could call Aunt Jessie, too, since she’d given this much away, but Aunt Jessie would freak, no matter what Wendell said she’d know something was wrong. She would stand in the hall in her long flannel nightgown and pace until the phone cord pulled her back, one way and then the other, because Aunt Jessie had never bought a cordless phone. She would fret and worry and the emails would start.
There was one thing left to do. Wendell lay across the hood of her car, warm from the engine, and let the light of the stars speak. If she saw it in her mind, he’d come. He could find her. Her daddy could find her anywhere, anytime, any place. She closed her eyes and there he was, driving in his truck. Making his way across the miles, straight to her. He was on his way.
Back at home she found a note stuck inside the screen door. It was folded carefully into a small square, as notes had been in high school. She took it to the sofa and sat in the dark, opening it fold by fold. She smoothed it out on the coffee table, ironed it flat with the palm of one hand, and then switched on the lamp to read.
I know what you were doing on the car earlier. It’s called remote viewing. We need to breathe the same air.
That was all the note said, two brief sentences written with a dull soft pencil. She followed the curves and loops of the cursive script with her eyes, feeling a tiny lurch in her stomach as though she were riding a roller coaster.
In the bedroom, she crawled between the sheets and lay still, imagining the halcyon hush of air moving in and out of the mysterious man’s lungs. A metronome, marking time. A whispered lullaby to her restless thoughts.
She closed her eyes and imagined sleep. The mysterious man seemed to be there with her, waking her from sleep – not actual sleep, but the sleep of not knowing – with the air from his lungs, a soft and tiny wind that tousled her hair and cooled her forehead. The room was dark when she opened her eyes, but even so she saw his, blue with slivers of gray, long eyelashes, the smooth contour of his nose, which he lowered until it touched hers.
He pinned her, arms above her head. The way they touched was nothing she had felt before, real but not, a potent mix of knowing and not knowing. The sharp edge of his intention, a primitive thing, making her his own.
Shhh, he might have said if he’d actually been real, and there, and even though he was neither, she listened.
Scott drove down 77 with Van Morrison at close to full volume. To the mountains, expecting the usual protocol, images of Lynnie, but what came instead was Jess. Brown hair hanging in his face, and yes, she did look like Lynnie at first, but then she was nothing more than the woman who had just kissed him and fucked up all his rules. His cyclone fencing around the sore places.
He took an exit and got on the parkway. The first overlook, he pulled off and closed his eyes. His head was full. He thought about the seedling Lynnie planted before Wendell was born. Rowan. Protective powers. Maybe he’d find one now and take it to Wendell’s apartment to plant. Tell her the story. He wished he could tell her something profound. But he didn’t know what to say.
After Lynnie died he’d stopped going to the mountains. Hadn’t been since the one time years ago when he’d tried to take Wendell. They lasted a long and terrible night. There were mountain ranges overseas, but the landscape of other countries didn’t affect him the way these hills did. The terrain where he had formed as a young man.
When she had died, when he’d buried her, he didn’t cry. He held the infant Wendell in the crook of his arm, wrapped in a moss green blanket Lynnie knitted. Wendell was wearing a tiny hat Lynnie made, stitched with purple flowers. He endured the minister’s words. Listened impatiently to the prayer spoken in a halting voice. Had suffered the sympathetic glances from everyone who came. He had been too young and too proud to understand or even care how grief worked.
He refused himself the comfort of these mountains when she died. The one thing he knew would wring the sadness out. And his grief was still heavy. It seeped out little by little like the trickle of an underground spring.
The distant hills ahead reminded him of her. Made him think he smelled her beside him. He supposed this was what it meant to be haunted.
The road began to ascend and curved like a snake.
Exhaustion set in, even over top of the adrenaline, the sure sign of middle age, and fuck that, anyway.
He needed twenty minutes, just enough to keep him this side of sleep deprivation. He pulled over, shut off the part of his brain that stayed on high alert. He was like a machine, Had trained himself to be. Sleep came quickly.
He saw himself the strange way people do sometimes in dreams, from above, in the desert of a middle Eastern country, lying flat out in a tent. Mouth dry, eyes itchy, wishing like hell he had a shower and clean clothes. Three fingers of good scotch. In the tent, in the dream, he considered quitting the life, but he knew by the time he’d stayed home a few weeks the need would surface. He’d wait impatiently for the next call.
A mission, a puzzle. Something he could work to an end.
Inside the dream he was uneasy and tears stung his chapped, sandy face. He slid out of the tent and looked up to the sky. The stars were blurred. The panorama shifted with each blink.
When he woke, it felt like someone had died.
He was unnerved. Grabbed his cell phone. Wendell had called, area code 512, which he thought was Austin, Texas. So he was right about south and west. He hit redial and waited. There was no answer.
He centered his mind, like sand to a creek bottom after someone passed through. When the image came clear he was sure. She was fine. He was free to drive on.
His body was a collection of aches, pangs, odd gurglings he was used to ignoring. Left eyelid twitched like some kind of goddamn signal. He checked the rearview, side mirrors, scanned the road ahead. Got a take on the position of the sun. He did these things out of habit. These machinations were a comfort.
Breathed in what was blooming and that, finally, was what did it. The smell of mountain air in springtime hit hard
. Then a wave from the top down, like water falling.
Without meaning to he ex-filled. Stopped the car, threw open the door, heaved his tired old body out.
Lynnie.
She was an enigma in certain ways. With Lynnie it had been like this: one week of hot can’t get enough of you Scott sex. He veered off the trail and leaned against a birch tree. Lynnie at the door with nothing on but the white gown. Climbing on top of him. Her soft mouth waking him in the middle of the night. The pull of her lips against his hardness, the wet of her saliva leaving trails up and down.
What followed the passion was a week of irritation and easy tears, when nothing he did was quite right. Every little thing made her cry. Those were the times he found her on the phone with Jess, shoulders rolled inward as though protecting a secret, whispering how he’d done this wrong or that wrong and hanging up when he came in the room. The time she told him to get out of the house after she found his stash of hunting clothes in the closet. He hadn’t washed it because the perfume of laundry detergent fucked with the deer. They smelled it a mile away. And then when he came home with roses in apology, she broke down and cried. He stood like a fool, looking at her. Looking at the ground. Moments like that he had no clue what she wanted or needed.
There was time she kept to herself, not out of anger but just her own singular way of being. Knitting in the chair by the living room window, bamboo needles whispering to one another. Placid little smiles as he passed by. Dinners left with notes that said she’d gone for a walk and would be home soon. Hugs upon return that bespoke secret rendezvous with nothing more than her own sweet self in the woods. Lynnie waving from the garden while he watched from the back porch. Seemingly subdued sex that was possibly the most intense of any they ever had, abbreviated by her silent leave-takings in the night to sit in the light of one candle and write in her blue notebook.
The Meaning of Isolated Objects Page 9
