Eleanor: A Novel

by Jason Gurley

  He puts his palm on her cheek, the first time he has touched her tenderly in years. The warmth is fading from her skin. He can feel it going. He thinks that some of it might enter him, that she will carry on, a part of him.

  He traces his fingertips over her skin and moves a wisp of hair away from her eyes. She stares through him. He can see himself in the dark of her eyes. He gently touches her eyes closed, and it is as if she is sleeping beside him, the way she once did. For the briefest moment he remembers his wife the way she was, the memories swimming up from the deep, turning colors in the air, uncovered for the first time in a decade. He remembers when she smiled at him, when she whispered with him in this very room as the light faded, her voice growing thick with sleep, but the words still coming.

  I wish I could hear your voice again, Paul thinks. I wish we could go back.

  The room grows dim, and outside the wind swells and roars like a dragon curling around the house, and as the world pulls itself apart around them, Paul dips his head forward and softly kisses Agnes’s forehead. He rests his head against hers, and breathes in, her scent alive and fresh for the first time in so very long.

  He doesn’t wonder what he will do next.

  He lies there, in the dark, as her heat dissipates.

  He is the last of his family. He has lost them all. He has been losing them for fifteen years.

  A weight rises from him, and he feels as if he might float away. The blanket lifts into the air soundlessly, and blackness seeps into the room as the window breaks, and the curtains billow up to the ceiling, and the great storm consumes the Witt house as Paul descends calmly into a restful sleep.

  Reset.

  The rowboat is lashed to the pier beside the beach. By all rights it should not be—as best Jack can imagine, Eleanor must have left it on the shore of the island. He thinks back to the last time he saw her. She’d saved his life, somehow brought him home. And then she had left him again, left him forever. He remembers the last thing he said to her, and wishes he had been thinking clearly enough to say so much more.

  Wait, he had said.

  I love you, don’t go, he should have said. Would have said.

  But she had taken his bicycle and disappeared.

  Maybe not forever.

  He has dreamed of her since her last disappearance. Dreamed that she has climbed into his room through the window, the rain at her heels, spattering his face and waking him. Dreamed that she slides into his bed and turns her back to him, dreams that he holds her, and tells her he won’t ever let go.

  Dreams are all he has now.

  He unties the bristly rope and climbs down into the boat. The old oars are gone, replaced with new ones. Plastic ones, or some kind of polycarbonate thing. Maybe someone found the boat on the island and brought it back. Maybe Eleanor didn’t pull it far enough ashore, and it slipped out with the rising sea, and some fisherman recognized it and towed it home.

  He never told a soul that Eleanor had taken it out that last day. Never told them that she’d rescued him from the cold sea. The news headlines had tapered off, and now only the occasional reminder appeared in the form of a new MISSING poster tacked to a street post. The red-haired girl was yesterday’s news now.

  It is raining. It always seems to be raining now, but today’s rain is peculiar. Today’s rain is—what?

  It is like pieces of her.

  He does not know what he expects to find on the island. The rational voice in his skull warns him off. You’ll only find a body, if anything, that voice says to him. She’ll be washed up and decaying on the rocks. Do you really want to remember her that way?

  But part of him believes everything that she told him, crazy as it may have sounded. Part of him knows he will find only the abandoned shore of the island, the lonely cliff, the empty waters below.

  And that is what he finds.

  He pulls the boat ashore, tugging it as far up the rocks as he can. The rain falls harder now, and the ocean is gray and hard, and the sky is falling black against the horizon. He doesn’t want to lose the boat.

  You won’t need it again.

  The skeptical voice inside him is silent. The other voice—the one that believes everything Eleanor said—whispers to him gently.

  It can wash away. You won’t need it.

  He climbs the path, the last mortal earth that Eleanor’s feet would have touched. He takes his shoes off, clenches his toes against the grit and sand. He wants to feel every last thing that she did. He pulls his shirt over his head. The rain comes down hard, creating faint red welts where it hits his bare skin.

  When he crests the last rise, he stops and exhales in awe.

  The sky is a void. Utterly black, with misty, cottony edges that twist against the dying daylight.

  The rain is warm. The wind leans into him, and he almost staggers off the path.

  She was here, the quiet voice says inside.

  “I know,” Jack whispers back.

  He sits on the edge of the cliff, bare feet and shoulders, and watches the black storm consume the sea. He knows exactly what he is seeing. Whatever Eleanor disappeared for, whatever she went to do, she has done. He knows then, with complete certainty, that the girl he loves is no more. She has become. Become something different, something changed, something essential. The storm is here to signal her victory.

  Jack takes a long, deep, slow breath, and closes his eyes.

  When he opens them again, the storm is at his feet, the sea below resisting and thrashing against the relentless black.

  Jack stares into its depths, wondering if Eleanor is on the other side, looking back at him.

  “I love you,” he says, and the storm advances. “I always have.”

  Reset.

  Eleanor sits in the breakfast nook and watches the rain fall.

  The tree that her husband and daughter planted two summers ago bends sideways in the wind. If the storm gets much worse, the little tree will be uprooted by the stiff gale. The house is buffeted by it, rain lashing against the windows. The glass in the back door rattles. The attic groans like a ghost.

  She imagines what Hob will say when he comes downstairs.

  No swimming today.

  He would say it hopefully, lift his eyebrows, search her face for disagreement. He forgets, now and then, that the doctor has already set that rule.

  Eleanor gently rubs her belly, thinking of the child inside—Patricia, Patrick. Thinking of her daughter upstairs. Of Hob.

  While her family sleeps, she gathers her housecoat around herself, takes Hob’s keys, goes outside into the storm, and climbs into his old Ford.

  The sky is dim, the sun tucked away behind a curtain of clouds. Eleanor sits behind the wheel of the pickup, one hand resting on her small, pregnant belly, one arm resting on the window. She pushes her fingers idly through the short hair at her temple, again and again.

  The rain hammers the old truck like a thousand thrown stones. She closes her eyes and listens.

  She falls asleep.

  Not for long, only a few minutes.

  When she opens her eyes again, the rain is thunderous, vicious.

  Impulsively, she opens the door. The keys dangle in the ignition. She steps into the rain, tugging her housecoat more tightly around her swollen middle. The coat is drenched in only a moment, and turns to lead.

  Another pickup truck is parked at the far end of the beach lot. She doesn’t recognize it, can barely make out the shape of a person behind the glass. The person lifts an arm. She raises her hand tentatively, then walks across the beach.

  The beach stones are wet and black and almost sparkle in the pale dawn. She walks carefully, her feet bare. A tiny crab shuffles away from her, and sandpipers pace by the water’s edge, exploring. Hunting.

  Eleanor walks close enough that the rising tide laps at her toes, the water slate-gray, grainy, depositing tongues of foam on the rocks. She stands there, feeling the sea tug at her, the rain like needles on her skin.

  She thin
ks of Hob for a moment. His pleasant face. His kind way. His devotion.

  She thinks of the child in her belly, the stranger who has imprisoned her, who has taken her away from her beloved sea.

  She thinks of Agnes: her knotted hair, soft, plump cheeks, dark eyes.

  Behind her, she hears the stranger’s car door shut, and a voice calls down to her.

  She ignores it. She can’t make it out anyway.

  The stairs are soft under her feet.

  She takes them slowly, one at a time, planting each heel against the back of the previous stair, pretending she is a tiny child robot.

  “Meep,” she says, once for each stair. “Meep. Meep. Meep.”

  All the lights in the house are out, which is unusual. Normally when Agnes comes downstairs in the morning, the kitchen glows orange, and her father makes breakfast, and she sits beside her mother and asks for a sip of coffee, which her mother always allows. She doesn’t know why she asks. The coffee tastes like dirt. She knows the taste of dirt because of the time she fell in the garden and bit her tongue, and cried, and some dirt got in her mouth, between her teeth.

  She walks through the dining room, through the den. The house is still, as if she is the only person alive in the entire world. Agnes thinks that such a thing might scare any other child, but she’s proud that she is not afraid. She sometimes thinks about what she might do if everybody else in the world disappeared. She would go to the grocery, the one that her father takes her to on Saturday mornings, and she would get two pieces of candy from the bin, and she would have a Coca-Cola, and then she would take a loaf of bread and go to the pond behind the school and feed the mallards.

  But this is not that day.

  Her father sits quietly in the breakfast nook, a cup of coffee steaming between his palms.

  She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just watches him. He stares out the window at the falling rain, his shoulders slumped, his posture bowed. Her father has always seemed older to her than her mother, as if he had somehow seen more of the world, had more stories. But if he did, they were bottled up inside him. He never told stories, not like her mother did.

  He looks over and sees her then. “Well, hello there,” he says.

  “Why is it dark?” Agnes asks.

  “Power’s out,” he says.

  “Can you turn it on?”

  Her father shakes his head. “Whole block, at least. Maybe the town.”

  “Good,” Agnes says.

  “You like it dark like this?”

  She nods, and climbs up into her mother’s seat, opposite him. “I like the way it feels,” she says.

  “How does it feel?” he asks.

  “Private,” she says.

  “Private, huh,” he says, and sips his coffee. “I see that.”

  Agnes swings her feet, too short to touch the floor.

  “Where’s Mom?” she asks, finally.

  “Truck’s gone,” her father says. “She probably had to go to the store. Power’s probably out there, too.”

  Agnes nods seriously.

  “Can I have a sip?” she asks.

  Her father shakes his head. “Maybe not,” he says. “Coffee’s kind of a grown-up drink.”

  “Mom lets me.”

  “I know. But I’m not Mom.”

  “When do you think she’ll be home?” Agnes asks.

  “When do you think she’ll be home?” her father asks.

  Agnes sticks her tongue out and thinks. “In one minute,” she says. “When do you think?”

  Her father sips his coffee again, then screws up his face in thought. Finally he says, “Now.”

  The back door opens, and the storm blows in, scattering rain across the tile floor. The power returns, and the kitchen glows bright like a painting, and Hob and Agnes turn to look.

  “Mom!” Agnes chirps brightly.

  Eleanor stands dripping in the doorway, one hand on her round belly, and smiles.

  Dear Reader,

  It isn’t an easy thing, taking a chance on an unknown author, particularly a self-published one. That you did exactly that is something worth celebrating, for both our sakes. Thank you so much.

  The book you’ve just read is extraordinarily special to me. Of all my books, it has taken the greatest amount of time to find its way into your hands. I began writing Eleanor’s story thirteen years ago, in 2001. The novel was composed in many different places: Klamath Falls and Portland, Oregon; Reno, Nevada; Yelm, Washington; Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, and Arroyo Grande, California. It was written on planes, on vacations, on lunch breaks, in apartments, in cabins, in the wee hours of the morning, and often in tiny bursts of activity followed by days of silence. I wrote it in longhand, published excerpts and character sketches on various blogs over the years, and amassed a half-million words over the various drafts and false starts. This novel has outlasted six or seven different computers, and people have entered and exited my life during the many years of Eleanor’s gestation.

  I grew up quite a bit during those thirteen years, and so did Eleanor. Her story transformed, mutating from my original vision into something far more complex and interesting. As I became a father, and my wife became a mother, and our parents became grandparents, I began to feel Eleanor’s story more deeply. I believe they call that life experience, and it only made the novel more trustworthy and true.

  After all these years, all I have to do now is figure out what’s next. I hope you’ll come along for whatever it is.

  Jg

  Portland, Oregon

  June 2014

  Acknowledgments

  Over the course of so many years, an inordinate number of people have bumped into me and this novel. Many of them influenced the book that it eventually became, whether they realized this or not. If I attempt to name them all here, I will surely fail. But I’m going to try. I apologize to anyone I have overlooked. It is not easy to remember thirteen years’ worth of names and faces!

  My family is owed my greatest debt of gratitude and appreciation. For years, they’ve listened patiently to me talk about this story, and have graciously allowed me to test ideas on them time and again. My wife, Felicia, believed in Eleanor—and in me—when I was all but certain I would never finish the book. For years she would pack me away to Oregon on writing vacations, supplying me with road trip snacks and handwritten notes of encouragement. My daughter, Squish, has no idea now who Eleanor is. But I hope one day she will read this novel and be proud of what I’ve attempted to do here. Her enthusiastic hugs and kisses, in the meantime, are enough to fuel one thousand novels. My parents, Mike and Brenda, taught me to love books, and since I wrote my first (quite atrocious) novel, they’ve encouraged me to continue, despite the hundreds of rejection letters I began accumulating early on. My sister, Elizabeth, was one of Eleanor’s earliest readers, and often dozed while I read pages aloud.

  I am deeply indebted to David Gatewood, my editor, whose sure hand and keen eye and acerbic wit kept this novel from being nothing more than a doorstop. I spent thirteen years writing this novel, but it was in the last few weeks that David helped me bring it home. I’m also grateful for the X-ray vision of Krista Slavin, my proofreader.

  Many friends along the way have contributed their valuable time to this book, reading one of its many incarnations over the years: Garrett Braun, Lisa Braun, Mark Nguyen, Tyler Hiteshew, Jason Fuhrman, Katherine Arline, Lila Guzman, and countless others. The readers of my long-dead blog, Deeplyshallow, must also be thanked for their enthusiasm for the Eleanor sketches I published irregularly for years and years. For a brief time, as I experimented with Eleanor as a graphic novel, many people read and supported my efforts: Jacques Nyemb, Brian Amey, Jesse Young, Robert James Russell, Tony D’Amato, Sarah Mensinga, Gabriel Rodriguez and a handful of readers who patiently waited for every new page, and have been waiting now for two years for this novel to end the story for them. Special thanks goes to Cat Bordhi, who has been a very wonderful advocate for this book, and whose knittin
g retreat served as one of my most creative homes-away-from-home.

  Since I began self-publishing in just 2013, I’ve met the most lovely readers from all over the world, many of whom have championed this novel since learning about it. I’m grateful for their passion, which continually rekindled my own. Many of these readers also read early drafts of Eleanor, and offered invaluable insights that led to the book becoming what you’ve just read. Each of them deserves far more than a simple mention here, but I hope that my sincere thanks for their time and fervor will suffice. My humble gratitude is due David Adams, Eamon Ambrose, Alan Bester, Rita Bodiford, Robert Box, David Bruns, Idella Burmester, Nancy Butler, John Capps, Terry Chase, Joshua Cooper, Carlos Correa, Shanna Cushing, Kathy Czarnecki, W.J. Davies, Diego de los Santos, Glen Dickinson, Ron Dillon, Annette Drake, Michael Engard, Patrice Fitzgerald, Jason Fuhrman, Heidi Garrett, Hollie Gerk, Sheryl Ginsberg, Max Handelman, Tim Harding, John Hindmarsh, Tyler Hiteshew, Kevin Hopper, CeeCee James, Elizabeth Kay, Kari Kilgore, Samantha Kluth, Helen Kuhnsman, Jen Leigh, Richard Leslie, Jason Lockwood, Candy Lowd, Linda Maepa, Roxanne Masters, Marla Mazalan, Gretchen McNeely, Anthony Meek, Sarah Mensinga, Jordan Murphy, Dian Napier, Angela Neff, Elizabeth Phillips, Christine Reyes, Thomas Robins, Cynthia Rose, Mr. and Mrs. Josh Rosen, Stefano Scaglione, Terry Schulze, Jachin Sheehy, Elizabeth Shelton, Andy Sherwood, Keith Skillin, Amelia Smith, Jeremy Smith, Lesley Smith, Janet Stanley, Jed Sutter, Will Swardstrom, Matt Thyer, Birdie Tracy, Scott Tracy, Nicole Tuttle, David Uebel, Sarana VerLin-Myers, Don Walker, Charles Wertz, Joanna Wilbur, Terry Wilson, Eve Wittenmyer, Brian Zinnbauer, Ken Zufall and a lovely fellow named Paul who never told me his last name.

  I also would not be anywhere today without the support of the talented authors and editors who have shared their knowledge, their readers, their experience and their encouragement with this newcomer: John Joseph Adams, Annie Bellet, Russell Blake, Michael Bunker, Peter Cawdron, Kate Danley, Will Hertling, Hugh Howey, Ted Kosmatka, Ernie Lindsey, Matthew Mather, MeiLin Miranda, Sean Platt, Neal Pollack, A.G. Riddle, Ed Robertson, Brian Spangler, Johnny Truant, Erik Wecks and David Wright.