The Meaning of Isolated Objects

by Billie Hinton

  “He told me you two got together after I left.”

  Aunt Jessie breathed in hard. “I have to be honest with you. I’m mad at him. I won’t tolerate what Lynnie did. And he won’t give it up, stubborn as he is.” She stopped. “There, now I’ve gone and blurted that out. I shouldn’t talk that way to you.”

  There was no way she could ever tell Aunt Jessie what had happened. All Aunt Jessie saw was his job; she didn’t know the worst of it. Her father might not even realize this yet, but Wendell did. He needed Aunt Jessie. Her light would heal them all.

  “He’s different, Aunt Jessie. A lot has happened. Give him a chance.”

  She didn’t commit herself. “We’ll see.”

  At least she didn’t say no.

  Wendell dreamed she was at Tristan’s house, her feet firmly planted in front of the footprints embedded in his hardwood floor, prints still there from before she left.

  Kate was standing in her old footprints.

  Kate was strong but skittish as a trickling stream that danced across rock and carved tiny, hidden paths through mountain laurel. Wendell was fire, blazing, burning, though tempered now, the steady flame of an eternal light.

  Tristan said he wanted fire and water to make peace, no sizzle or hiss, nothing dramatic. Deepest forest, shelter for a large and weathered rock that rested beneath a small and laughing waterfall that sang it to sleep, the clearing lit by a warm and steady fire, fed by air and contained by the pit in the earth beneath. All four elements co-existing peacefully. As they should be.

  In the dream she said hello to Kate and walked past her down the hallway to Tristan’s bedroom. Tristan walked Kate to the front door and said goodbye. He came to the closet outside his bedroom and unpacked Wendell’s things from boxes.

  When she finally went to see Tristan, they stood awkward in his living room, both raw with love and loss and not knowing.

  “I’m seeing Kate,” he said, and Wendell said at nearly the same moment, “I know.”

  “Do you want a beer?”

  She nodded and he brought two from the kitchen. She tried to find the same level of comfort she usually had with him. It was Tristan, after all, not some stranger. But he seemed different, and she had left him instead of giving him an answer.

  “What happened out there?”

  She didn’t know where to start. How much to tell and how much to leave out. “I found out a lot of things about my father. The work he did when I was born. That I can do it too. There was someone who followed me, who wanted me to work for the government.” She paused. “He and I had this intense thing, but it’s over now.”

  She stayed until they’d finished all the beer. Tristan loved hearing about the little town called Anima, and the Animus Mountains. He nodded when she told him the dreams she’d had, and the way she and Tag had connected.

  “I’ve read about that kind of communication,” he said.

  He wanted to talk about Jung but she stopped him. “Tristan. Don’t try to analyze this. Just listen.”

  He reached over and touched her shoulder. Without meaning to, he pushed past the awkwardness, back to the familiar. They kissed, and undressed. She wanted to feel safe, but it wasn’t the same way of being together they’d had before.

  He had feelings for Kate, and felt guilty about sleeping with Wendell. She felt his resentment, that she had made him want her again, that he could not say no.

  He could see she loved Tag and missed him, and Tristan’s roughness was his way of expressing anger. She sorted these things through in her head, while they made love on the sofa.

  They said things they shouldn’t have said. Held nothing back.

  “She’s anorexic.”

  “You’ll never hear from him again.”

  “I let him leave first.”

  “She whispers to me in Greek.”

  Nothing stopped them. They went as far as there was to go, loving one another, hurting one another. In a strange and terrible way it comforted them both.

  There was something Scott had changed his mind about, and he thought on it a moment, but just one. It was too easy to fall back to old habits and he didn’t want to do that right now.

  He got in the truck and drove, not all the way to the mountains, but far enough to whet his appetite for autumn. Noted the change in color, the falling away of leaves and other things, the chill that crept in on the night air. Sweaters in bottom bureau drawers.

  He was ready for this change. He thought he might have been ready for a while but there was no way to know until right that second.

  The truck whined as he turned it around and headed back to Culpeper. It too needed attention. Certain things had been ignored far too long.

  He was sitting on Jessie’s front porch when she drove up. She got out and shaded her eyes. Looked at him like she couldn’t believe what she saw. Walked up the cobblestone path and stopped on the bottom step. Her hair blew a little in the soft Virginia wind.

  “What are you doing, Scott?”

  “Sitting on your front porch.”

  She flung her hair back with two fingers. “I know, but why?”

  “You’ve waited for me to get home a thousand times. More. I figure it was time I did the waiting.”

  “Today. But what about next week, or next month, when you leave again?”

  This woman did not mince words. She wouldn’t let him get by with one centimeter of bullshit. Which was, of course, what he loved about her.

  “I’m not leaving any more.”

  She swayed to her right and put her foot up to the next step to steady herself. He fancied that’s how much he’d stunned her with his news, but it was just a wayward honeybee, fooled by the warmth of an autumn afternoon, buzzing around her legs. She stepped back to her left to avoid it.

  “Okay then.”

  She unlocked her door and went inside. There was no telling what he would have to suffer for her forgiveness. There would likely be more words spoken than he cared to hear, ranging from things that had gone down twenty-odd years ago all the way to right this minute. Hell, things he hadn’t even done yet.

  He wasn’t sure what he was in for inside his own head. He had never stayed in Virginia more than a few weeks at the time. He had never lived with the prospect of no escape. There had always been another job, a dangerous trip. An anonymous woman.

  And that was just the work side of it. What would happen when they went to buy groceries and Jess insisted on pushing the cart, then sent him to the video store to get a movie while she shopped? Would he say no to the scarlet woman who invited him to bed?

  These were not questions he could answer. He’d have to take them one day at a time. The fact was, he had to take them one day at a time. That was all he had left.

  He went into Jessie’s living room and sat down on the sofa. She brought glasses of iced tea in and surveyed him from what felt like a hundred miles.

  “Exactly what are you saying to me?”

  “I’m retiring. Staying put.”

  “That’s kind of hard to believe.”

  “I know it is. But a lot has happened. It’s time I was here.”

  She looked hard at him, like she was searching for truth. Any clue that he was putting her on. She seemed to find nothing, and her face softened. He noted the way her mouth dropped as her jaw relaxed.

  She put her iced tea on the coffee table and slid over beside him. She kissed him. He pulled back. “Jess, there’s something else.”

  She looked alarmed, and there was nothing he could say to reassure her.

  “It’s a medical thing. It’s pretty serious.”

  She tried not to, he could see the effort, but she started crying. “Have you told Wendell?”

  He didn’t want to think about that, but he had to, and part of his telling Jess was that he knew she’d make him do the right things. She would be the rock for Wendell, like she always had been.

  “Not yet.”

  She took his hand to her lips and kissed, and he hel
d her. For a moment he could feel the pulse in her neck and it reminded him of the ticking of a clock.

  The tires of the Toyota spun in the gravel outside Tristan’s window. She got out and let herself in his front door, slid quietly along the hallway, and opened his bedroom door with a click and creak.

  In the dark, her clothes made the soft sound of fabric falling to the floor. She climbed into his bed. Sometimes this meant she missed him. Sometimes it meant he missed her.

  “Say you want me,” she whispered. He tangled his hands in her hair, kissed her, placed his face against her neck.

  For the most part, she spent her nights with Tristan. Mornings she left early and read Tag’s notes from the early days in Austin. She wanted desperately to know the details of his life. Sometimes when she and Tristan made love, she thought of Tag. Often she felt his energy between them in the bed, a forbidding force that pushed at her and sometimes provoked her to shift to the edge of the mattress, apart from Tristan but not at all alone.

  And yet Tag wasn’t there. Not in the real way. It was Tristan who remained.

  She ran into Kate on campus one day and walked with her to Kate’s office. Kate smiled and then her eyes swam with tears. “I love Tristan. I don’t know what else to say.”

  Wendell watched her cry. The light from the window behind Kate’s desk was white and washed out everything in the room. It seemed colorless, transparent. “I love him too,” she said to Kate, and left before she cried her own tears.

  The nights she went to Tristan’s her father was at Aunt Jessie’s. They had both abandoned the house, their space, for other rooms and other lives.

  On the way to Tristan’s she stopped at Aunt Jessie’s for dinner. Her father stood at the kitchen sink, wearing his tan T-shirt and army green fatigues. He turned holding a glass of water, took a sip and offered one to her.

  It reminded her of Tag.

  She ran down the hall to her old room, yellow like sunshine, yellow like hope. Only now she had neither. She just wanted Tag.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Aunt Jessie came in, bent to her knees by the bed, just like always.

  “I miss him so much.”

  Aunt Jessie held her, sweet scent of lavender, soft shoulders, silky hair. Only now, she rubbed her shoulders, hard, and then got up. She walked to the bedroom door, opened it, and yelled, “Bastards! All of you are bastards!”

  She came back. “I’m sorry, honey, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  They had all coupled differently than expected. Tristan gave up the blond girl for Wendell. Wendell had fallen for the guy who taught her how not to leave first, and then he disappeared. Scott gave his heart to Jess, the woman who had raised his daughter in Lynnie’s absence. And his own.

  Each coupling had its complexities.

  Tristan didn’t give up the blond girl completely, because he knew in his heart Wendell wasn’t really his. He still wanted her to be, but he knew. Scott knew.

  Even though Tag wasn’t present, he was with Wendell almost all the time. Scott saw the signs. The slightly dazed look she had when she came in for breakfast. The way she rubbed her arms sometimes, it was obvious she was feeling that characteristic tingle. He suspected Tag’s presence was strongest at night, because Wendell began to look ragged and tired around the eyes.

  And Jess. She was a saint, mostly. She kept his secret and nursed him through the headaches, which were becoming more and more frequent. She loved him.

  There was no way to know if any of them would make it, if they would stay in love or the complications would kill their passion. No way to know if any of them would leave in anger or fear. They had lain themselves open to the whim of love and loss. There might be happy endings. There might not be.

  In the meantime they lived and loved and hurt and healed. That’s all he knew to say. That was everything he had learned.

  He did something only a father would do. He found out where Tag was and called him on the phone. “I’m not looking for details about what the hell you’re doing or who you’re doing it for. Just tell me what you want from her.”

  “I love her,” he said. “But you and I both know how it would play out.” He waited for Scott to respond.

  Scott cleared his throat. “I fucked it up in my day. Nothing I can tell you but it’s a delicate balance between what they want and what you have to give. But any woman who wants less than what pulls you up in a knot isn’t worth having, in the end.”

  “She’s worth having. It’s what my life would do to her that’s the question.”

  “Then you need to get ahold of yourself.” Scott’s voice deepened. “Leave her alone. You know what I mean.”

  He listened for Tag’s breathing, which quickened just a little.

  “I think you of all people know how much easier that is to say than do, sir.”

  Scott hung up.

  She took a new job. Site supervisor four days a week on a small dig at the edge of the Shenandoahs. She woke up early and worked all day. They were racing with winter, trying to get the excavation done before snowfall. She arrived at home nights with dirt-encrusted fingernails and just enough energy to eat dinner and fall into bed.

  She talked to Tristan the way she always had, shared the interesting bits of her days. He read aloud to her and she made love to him before falling asleep, ministered to his desire to a degree she never had before, wanting in some odd way to please him.

  She didn’t know what it meant. It wasn’t how love was supposed to work, but it did, in its way.

  Days off she spent hiking with her father, who still left her in the dust distance-wise, but said he reckoned one day that would change. The scale would shift, his age would bow to her youth, and he would be okay with it when it happened. She didn’t believe him. He was softer and happy, but he kept his edge. Once a week he made dinner for her and Aunt Jessie. Nothing fancy, but they ate it up and asked for seconds.

  Even now they could neither one get enough of him.

  It was nearing Christmas when he told her about the tumor. He drove her to the mountains, a certain place he loved, and after they’d stood for awhile and watched the light stream through the valley, noted the bare black branches of trees against the winter sky, he said it quietly, inside his head.

  She heard it but pretended she didn’t, and then he said it out loud.

  “I have a brain tumor.”

  She didn’t look at him and she thought he too was still looking straight ahead. She felt tears on her face, tickling in the cold. And she thought of armadillos, how they cry if you catch them by the tail.

  Christmas came more quickly than any of them expected. It was the first Christmas for the three of them, not counting the ones split up and portioned off. Wendell with Jess Christmas Eve, with him Christmas Day, or vice versa, depending on the year and the whim of the government.

  This year he was free and clear. There was truth between them. They planned the menu, when to open gifts, how to decorate the tree. Wendell wanted all white lights and Jess voted multi-colored. They expected him to cast the deciding vote and wisely he abstained.

  The women rolled their eyes and laughed and headed out the front door to go shopping, recalling the year the whole tree fell over. How they had tried to string popcorn but ate it all instead. Various and sundry memories that didn’t include him.

  There was a time he would have resented their closeness and let it get under his skin. Today he felt grateful and glad they had one another. That they would have one another when he was gone. Relieved Wendell had memories that made her laugh instead of cry.

  While they were out he left Jessie’s house and spent the afternoon at his place. Got in the mail, cleaned a few spoiled items out of the fridge, and began the room to room check he always did.

  He had not planned to go into Lynnie’s study. He left the door closed. A commotion in the back yard got his attention. He quietly picked up his 9 millimeter on the way out.

  It was the crows. They were on the grass
and in the trees, cawing over and over again. He stood there and then aimed the gun straight up. He shot seven times for Wendell and then seven times for his unnamed daughter. A single shot for her mother. Another for Lynnie. The crows flew at the first shot, and the silence in between each bullet was louder than the crows had been.

  He let his mind go where it wanted. He let down his guard.

  What came to him was Lynnie, sitting in the near-dark in her chair by their bed, writing by candlelight. He stayed there for awhile, standing on the grass, holding a gun, watching his dead wife write. Periodically she looked up at him. Her face was tense, her eyes soft with love.

  And then she closed the notebook and put it away, on a low shelf inside the wardrobe that still sat in their bedroom. The notebook was blue. He glimpsed the color when she put it on the shelf.

  The blue notebooks.

  He had never thought about them since she died. Never seen them. Never looked for them. He stood for a minute more and then walked in the house.

  The sun was low and came through the window in the kitchen making a row of shadows across the floor. He stepped over them on his way past. In the hallway he noted his footsteps, the sound of his shoes on the wood floor. He stopped outside her study and opened the door. The low sun threw a beam across the room. Dust motes spun across and disappeared.

  In the bedroom he sat down in the chair she used to sit in. He realized she had watched him sleep when he’d been home. When he’d been away, she’d watched an empty bed. He wondered what that felt like to her. What it might feel like not knowing where someone was. Well, he knew now, after Wendell’s trip. He knew some part of it, anyway.

  He sighed and reached over to the wardrobe. When he opened the lower door he saw them. Blue notebooks, lined up like targets on a range.

  He pulled out the first one and leaned back in the chair. Opened it. Her handwriting filled the pages. His eyes filled. He waited until they cleared and then began to read.