Marry or Burn

by Valerie Trueblood

  “Right,” said Ray Rollins. “Right. So you’re a friend of Rosalie’s. Jeez I’m embarrassed.”

  All right. He knew her. Stark said, “Drive over from Seattle?”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “Quite a way,” Stark said. It was a three-and-a-half-hour drive if you did it fast.

  “Had to leave in rush hour, had to work.” Stark could see the man placing him: older guy, white-collar, someone who left before rush hour.

  “Well, hmm, what shall we do?” said the woman, Beverly. She had sat down on one of the stools Rosalie had had made to line the counter. The stools had arms, you could swivel in them and see the whole house spread out with its comforts. Open Plan. For months the words had echoed in their lives as they made trips to watch the place go up. “Not my room,” Lynn had said, at twelve. “I want to be downstairs. I want the Closed Plan.” Now Lynn was what, twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Older than this solid girl on the stool.

  Stark waited for Rollins to answer her. He was going to back down, Stark could tell. He was the one who had made the mistake; Stark had received the key from Rosalie’s hand that very afternoon. She couldn’t have already lent it, if that was the only key she had.

  It came to him slowly, as he was thinking of the key. He was bending, in his mind, to pick it up from the sticky floor of the men’s room. It came to him who the man was. He raised his eyes from the counter where the girl had wrapped her square hands around the basket of river rocks Rosalie kept there. The man had stepped away from her, scowling. It was the fireman.

  We were going to go this weekend.

  So he had come anyway, the fireman. He had come without Rosalie. With a girl instead. He must have his own key. He had brought a girl to Rosalie’s cabin.

  Beverly said, “I’m sure we can find a motel in town.” Hearing the word gave Stark a rude pleasure. Motel. Where this kind of thing belonged. Not in Rosalie’s cabin, where Rosalie must have come more than once with the fireman, the bastard.

  Ray slapped his hands together. “I need a phone book.” His moment of shame and confusion was over. “And more important, where’s the bathroom?” He grinned. Of course he knew where they were, phone book and bathroom.

  “Oh gosh. But it doesn’t matter.” Beverly stretched and smiled. “I know the area, I worked up north of here one summer, with the Forest Service. I was a smoke jumper.” So. It was out. Firemen, both of them. Firefighters. The bastard had brought a girl from work.

  Hey, want to go over to a great place on the Methow River?

  Hey, why not?

  “No kidding,” Stark said. He never said “no kidding.” But he was Phil Bernstein. “That must be rough work.”

  “I liked it. I was young,” she said, in the nostalgic way young people had of saying that. “They kinda made me prove myself a few extra times. But I like that.” When she smiled the plumpness of her cheeks made the lower lids spring up and almost close her eyes. On one side she had a deep dimple. “You don’t even want to know how much retardant is up there in some of those stands of Doug fir.”

  Without deciding he was going to do it, Stark said, “Why not just stay here. This is a big house. I have the room down the hall, there.” It was Lynn’s room. He hadn’t wanted to go upstairs. “There’s a big second floor. Four rooms.”

  She said, “Really? That would be great!” Ray was coming back. He walked with his hands on his legs, on the seams of the tight jeans, and a dreamy, private look on his face.

  “Did you hear that?” the girl asked him. “Mr. Bernstein doesn’t mind if we stay here tonight, if we want. It’s late maybe, d’you think, to get a motel? We could do it tomorrow?”

  “Jeez, I hate to do that. I don’t know how I got this so turned around. What a dumb shit thing to do, excuse me.” As if Stark were an old fogy.

  Stark said nothing. He was doing it for the girl, with her dimple. It was the kind of thing Katya would do, and if he stopped there, if he didn’t expose the guy, punish him, he would still be in the region of the kind of caprice that was Katya’s. Katya did harm but she tended her victims. When she had her accident, for instance, a few days later she tracked down the driver of the other car. Not because the man was hurt; he was up and around and he was the aggrieved party, since Katya was a danger behind the wheel. She was trying to find out what the connection was between them.

  “I don’t know, Bev . . .” Stark could see the guy wanted to be let off the hook for bringing her here when somebody else had the place. He wanted persuasion, the bastard. “That would be . . . I don’t think we . . .”

  “I bet your neighbor just got confused about who was when,” Beverly said.

  “So Rosalie’s your neighbor, is she?” Stark said heartily.

  “No, no, I’m the one,” said Ray, ignoring him. “I’m the one who screwed up. I bet it was next weekend. Jeez.” He grimaced.

  Stark was tempted to let him go on in this vein, getting himself into trouble. But Beverly said, “So, can I go get my stuff out of the car?”

  “OK, I guess,” said Ray, with a defeated look at Stark.

  “HEY, LOOK WHO’S here.” She had come down the path in the dark, by herself. “Look at this river.”

  Stark said, “This isn’t the river. This is a spur. New.”

  “‘Well it’s not deep nor wide,” she sang, “‘but it’s a mean piece of water, my friend.’ You know that song?”

  “I do not,” he said.

  “‘Kern River.’ Merle Haggard. ‘I’ll never swim Kern River again,’” she sang. “‘It was there that I met her, there that I lost my best friend.’ I was awake. I looked out the window and I saw you out there. Then I didn’t see you. I thought, Gotta be a path goes down that hill because he’s gone. I don’t know, I got a creepy feeling. You can hear this thing really loud in our room. The room we’re in, at the front.”

  “The river’s high,” he said patiently. He was going to have to talk to her. If a woman got up in the middle of the night, you would have to talk to her. “It’s made a whole new channel.”

  “Look at that moon. Ah.” She held up her arms. “You’ve been here before. A new channel, you say.”

  Clouds had swept apart to show the lopsided moon, hanging at the top of a cottonwood, so bright it seemed it had arrived with a hiss, like a lantern. The woods were thin here, and the moon was so bright it had dropped black shadows into them.

  “There are pictures of you, in our room.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the water.

  “What’s that?” he said, as if he couldn’t hear.

  “Pictures. Under the glass top of the dresser.” So the guy hadn’t taken her into the master bedroom, where he must have been before. They were in Kelly’s old room. Kelly, the little one, the sentimentalist, with her photo collages and scrapbooks. “You know the ones I mean?”

  “What ones?”

  “All these family pictures. Two kids. Girls.”

  “Is that right?”

  “They look like they live here. The man looks like you, a younger you.”

  He sighed.

  “It is you.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Is this your place?”

  “No.”

  “Whose place is it?”

  “Rosalie’s.”

  “Rosalie who? I don’t know her, Ray knows her.”

  “He appears to.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “Rosalie is a good friend of mine,” he said.

  “Why did you come down here?” she said sternly. He could hear the voice of the firefighter. Climb down. Do as I tell you. “Were you going to jump in the river?”

  “Was I—? Maybe I still am.”

  “I have my EMT,” she said.

  “That’s good, if I do.”

  “I told Ray I got the feeling you were going to jump in the river.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said you weren’t. He said you probably came to finish some repor
t.”

  “And that would be pretty lame, in his opinion,” Stark said. “For a guy to do. Only you decide the guy is going to drown himself.”

  “You never know what somebody will or won’t do. I used to guide on the Colorado. Some people—seems like they fell in on purpose. And fur-ther-more, ha ha, I figured it out. You’re the husband, right?”

  “I was. You’re on the case. Are you a private investigator?”

  “Yeah. I’m whatshername. Prime Suspect. Actually I’m a firefighter.”

  “I’m willing to bet he is too.”

  “Yeah. It’ll be hard on our kids.”

  “Your kids.”

  “We’re getting married.”

  “No kidding. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a tuck of the dimple. “How about you? What do you do, Phil? It’s Phil, isn’t it?”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “I knew it,” she said.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “How do you know when a lawyer’s lying? He’s moving his lips. Sorry. Lawyers can’t get a break. But hey, the ones I know are great guys.” The dimple kept coming and going, but a girl like this, however she carried on in her own life, could be suddenly, mercilessly intolerant and proper. Yes, his daughters had taught him this, and a young woman or two who had turned on him.

  “Lying would be something you frown on,” he said.

  “Not really,” she said airily. She was getting into the spirit of things. She was not as simple as he had thought.

  “Did Ray see the pictures?”

  “No. I put my stuff on the dresser.”

  “Why didn’t you show him?”

  “I didn’t feel like it. Why didn’t you say you were married to Rosalie?”

  “I’m not.”

  “She has a different name. I’ve heard it. I don’t know what it is but it isn’t Bernstein.”

  “I know that.”

  “So she took her own name back?”

  “You’re a very curious young lady.”

  “Nosy.” She grinned. “I am. I’m whatshername.” She put on a British accent. “Get me everything we have on the Bern-steins. And a shot of Scotch.” Then she said, “You were down at the river when we got here. You used to come here a lot, I bet. I know you did. It’s in the pictures. There was a beach.”

  “Out there, underwater. The river is supposed to be on the other side of that, where you see the cottonwoods. It’s still coming up.”

  “Snow melt. We had that hot week. That’s all it takes, up in the snowpack. River ever get all the way up to the house?”

  “It never got anywhere near this high. Global warming.”

  She eyed him. “Ray doesn’t believe in global warming.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “What? You just now met Ray. Everybody likes Ray. Everybody.”

  “Especially you. You’re going to marry him. You’re going to marry a jerk.” He was as surprised as if Katya had come up behind them and growled the word.

  “Wait a minute. You don’t know Ray and you don’t know me. What is this? What’s your problem?” Still she didn’t walk away.

  “The guy’s a jerk.”

  “You better explain that.”

  “Just ask him. When you leave tomorrow. Ask him if he’s a jerk. See what he says.”

  “No,” she said.

  “You’re asking for it, if you marry him.”

  “Wait a minute, buddy. You know nothing about this man. You have no idea how brave he is, how he’ll risk himself. Why am I talking to you? Hey, you’re a lawyer. What do you know about anything good?”

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “Quit it.”

  “Jerk.”

  “I don’t like that,” she said. She stepped close, the way a man in a bar would, to start a fight. He knew that from movies; no one had ever squared off with him in a bar. “I don’t like that one bit.” She poked him in the collarbone with her fingers straight, as if she were playing a scene in a movie. She seemed to be kidding, or at least half kidding.

  “Nevertheless,” he said.

  “Nevertheless?” she said, crowding him. “Nevertheless?” She was bigger than he was. She poked him again. He stepped back, off-balance, and the next thing he knew he had stepped into water knee-deep and slipped. He had gone sideways. How had that happened? But he was getting his footing. Then he couldn’t get his balance at all and he was off his feet, going over.

  His whole body gasped at the cold. First floundering and then rolling and then the thing swallowed him.

  “Your feet!” He could hear her yelling. “Get your feet out front!” That was it. So the feet would hit and not the head. The time it would take to turn himself bore no relation to the speed of water. Ahead, this water was going to join the full force of the river. Something whacked him in the shoulder but it was too late to grab for it. He couldn’t see and water had filled his throat. He was a thing to be filled. His legs crossed and recrossed, the feet were wrong, not in front of him. His shoes were off. Something with an edge tore past one leg. Tree stumps. The draw was where the stumps were. He knew where he was but now he was choking. It was too late. His shoulder ran against something loose and clashing, snagged on it.

  A weight bore against him, rolling him up. She was in the water with him. “Gotcha!” she said. With arms like pliers, she was dragging him. From the splashing she seemed to be wading.

  “Beaver dam!” At least she was out of breath. She had him splayed on the ground, with stones under his back. “Old beaver dam! So—yeah! So hey, the river has so been up this high. Beavers!” His eyes were glued shut. From the sound of it she was hanging over him, panting, stripping water down the legs of her jeans with her palms. She sat down. “I beat you to the dam! You had some close contact. Got some scratches. That’s fast water.”

  He lay there with his limbs contracting and letting go. He wasn’t cold. He got his wet eyelashes apart. He was in a half circle of flagpoles. No. Aspen: slim trunks pale as X-rays. Against the dark pines—the river had come up to the woods and some way in—the aspen showed tiny half-clenched leaves. The moon straight up was so bright he squinted.

  “Hey, don’t sue me,” Beverly said, vigorously rubbing her arms. “Hey, Phil. Don’t say I pushed you in a river and you lost your ability to earn your living as an attorney-at-law.”

  Why should a remark like that have a steadying effect? It seemed a way she might have hit on to comfort him.

  “My shoes,” he said.

  “Forget the shoes,” she said. For a moment it seemed there might be enough comfort in the world to get him through.

  “Jesus!” It was Ray, running and shouting. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “See? I was right,” Beverly said calmly. “He jumped in.”

  “I mean you!” Ray yanked her up and against him. “Bev! You lived out here, goddamn it. Flood stage, baby. You heard the radio. There’s range cattle going down that river. You could both—be in there—right now.” He was rocking her from side to side. “Jesus,” he said finally, holding her at arm’s length. “Jesus, Bev. You had to do it. I know that.”

  He let her go and squatted beside Stark. “Hey, fella,” he said. “You. Hear me?” Stark coughed and rolled his head. Water ran out of his ears. “Sure, cough. Puke. You’re OK. Thanks to her. Do you know that? I want to say something to you. Do you see what you were up to here? You don’t do that. No. You got it all wrong.”

  “Ray,” said Beverly, not really chiding him. She smiled down at Stark with a bold cheerfulness. She had gone in, after all. She had done that, gone into fast water, pulled him out. With the little pit in her cheek she smiled at the matter of the beaver dam that would have caught him anyway, the matter of her having pushed him.

  “I don’t know,” said Ray, shaking his head. “Jeez. You need help.”

  Now Beverly had squatted too, to rough his wet hair back and forth, the way a coach might after a ga
me. Ray rocked back on his haunches. “Nothing’s so bad you have to jump in a river, buddy.” He squeezed Stark’s shoulder.

  Stark let out a moan. Now he was cold, but he wasn’t going to get up. He was going to lie there awhile before he made any effort. He was the one on the ground, the one in trouble. He couldn’t think how long it had been since he was the one lying down, with somebody bending over him, figuring out what the hell was wrong.

  Phantom Father

  SHE WAS A young married woman who fell in love.

  The man desperately wanted to take the place of her husband. He made scenes: he pled, commanded, threatened suicide. The trouble was that although she had fallen in love so suddenly, she also loved the man she had married, who was in the dark about what was happening and didn’t even know the time had come for scenes.

  Love, love. The same word for different things. Who can be sure what it is that is being felt? Love, like so much helium blown into a balloon. The further trouble was that, of three balloons, her husband had been blown fullest, stretched thinnest.

  Having no way of knowing this, and weighed on by the truth, she confessed everything to him, even her suspicion that the miscarriage they were grieving, away in his family’s place by the lake, had been the lover’s baby and not his.

  It was summer, the war was going on, and she was away for a last weekend with her husband before he was to go overseas. But in the morning, when he put on his uniform, instead of leaving for his train he drove the car down the boat ramp, where it lolled onto its back and sank to the bottom of the lake.

  After the funeral, filled with horror, grief, and a remorse that overpowered her feelings for her lover at first, she asked for six months to go away alone. When she came back, her lover had married someone else.