by Deb Caletti
“Okay,” she says. “That’d be great.”
“Tomorrow night?” he asks.
“The Bayshore?”
“Oh, no. Come over! I’ll cook.”
She barely knows him. He’s a stranger. But right then the girl goes into the library, and the dog’s owner (Nathan, the artist—he’s gotten older, but who hasn’t?) comes out, and a fat, white cloud passes across the sun and moves on. It’s a beautiful day. Someone has recently mowed a lawn. The air smells like grass. It’s spring, and strangers are friends you haven’t met yet, et cetera, et cetera.
“Terrific.”
After her second wedding anniversary, when Evan told her he thought they should see other people, Isabelle briefly saw a counselor. The counselor mostly sat back in her chair and listened, but she did say one thing that Isabelle hasn’t forgotten: It’s all about who you choose to bring into your life. And while this is no doubt true, it implies the wisdom of foresight. How is a person supposed to know? Sometimes the wolf looks enough like Granny that you let him in. You don’t notice the teeth until he’s close enough to bite down on your neck. You have to trust. You have to have faith—even if your trust/faith control panel has been known to throw sparks and even catch fire.
Henry reaches in, squeezes her hand. Isabelle’s heart thuds. Her stomach flips. Of course, these are the ways a body shouts about both the best things and the worst ones.
Chapter 4
It’s too early. He knows it is. But Professor Weary checks anyway. He’s curious. Fine, all right! He’s obsessed. The click-refresh is soothing and anxiety-provoking and hope-filled and disappointing, and he’s helpless against it. Who isn’t, with our phones and tablets and laptops? We’re all crows, tapping at the levers for the reward.
With a few strikes of the keys he’s there, at his favorite first stop. It’s called ShutR, and it’s a small and hardly used photo-sharing site. Henry North generally stays off social media, but he cannot resist the narcissistic joys of the Web entirely. How could he, Renaissance man that he is? Poet, intellectual, chef, photographer…Ugh. Please. He’s the kind of person who learns how to play the piano and speak several languages just to demonstrate that he can play the piano and speak several languages. The problem with narcissists is that it can be hard to see past the glare at first. Honestly, they’re sort of glorious and fun and magical until the deep and abiding assholery begins to show through.
Weary scrolls through the familiar images, the photos of forests and North’s solo trip to the desert, subpar sunset shots, blooming flowers, the usual fare for amateurs. Sarah is even in a few of the old ones. Professor Weary gazes at those longingly. Sometimes he misses Sarah so badly, his heart feels entirely absent; his chest is the dark and empty bottom of a ship still moving through the sea.
Henry North does not use his real name on ShutR. He uses an alias, Mr. Aperture. Cute, no? How adorable, though if Professor Weary were to choose, he’d pick another photographic term, like Mr. Aberration, or Mr. Distortion, or, wait, Blowup. Yes, how about that one! Blowup. Weary loves it. He chuckles. It matches his intent. It matches the rage that rises, rises, rises when the professor opens ShutR to check (too soon) and sees Sarah again, her long, dark hair blowing across her wide, hopeful smile. She and Henry are on a bluff on Spectacle Island, he thinks. They used to like to go out there, he remembers. Sarah wears a blue windbreaker. If he closes his eyes, he can almost be that wind, brushing her soft cheek. The edge of Henry’s finger is on the lens, so it’s bad as far as the photo goes, Mr. Aperture, but a lovely image of her. She looks so happy.
Anyway, there is nothing new on ShutR. The last photo is still that lavender crocus blossom, tender and open. Weary’s pretty sure the flower is from Sarah’s garden, taken just before that asshole sold the house and gathered up his money and left town. He had every legal right to do it, too. This makes Professor Weary furious. Sarah’s garden has been left behind, and so has her kitchen, and the bedroom she painted. Weary remembers the way her hands looked at work the next day, still splattered with yellow. She’s gone, and meanwhile, North tromps around on his merry way.
Someone needs to do something.
Someone is.
The professor first found Mr. Aperture on ShutR after searching for HNorthpoe, which by luck was his user name on the account. It’s the same moniker North sported for both a review of a kitchen knife on a shopping site and the one he had used for his old university email address. So, now, the professor types HNorthpoe into the search bar. Same old same old. Nothing new.
Weary leans back in his chair in his office on lush Mount Khogi. He likes to think his “office” extends all the way to Parc Provincial de la Rivière Bleue, even if the research facility is here. The windows are open and so is the door, because there is no air-conditioning. He takes a pluck of his shirt and waves it in and out for relief. A gecko shoots up the wall and disappears into a crack. The crack in the wall, the beautiful gecko that disappears—it makes him think of Sarah and Henry North, but what doesn’t? Think of how it all might have been different if they’d never met at that holiday party at the department head’s house. He lured her with his broken arm, his weakness, Weary is sure of it. Compassionate people are such vulnerable marks. He’s sick about it. She was completely gaga for North after that. Her own work in the lab suffered. It wasn’t a priority anymore. Professor Weary thought she had a passion, and not for British literature, nineteenth century, either. For birds. For Corvus, specifically. But look what happened.
He hates to admit it, but he was disappointed in her, letting her passions slide for love. He still is, a little. Those passions were a lot more loyal to her than Henry North ever was.
Weary thinks about how Virginia and Henry met, too, paddling in the bay in Sausalito, with two groups of friends. He lost an oar. Surprise, surprise, weakness again. Ginnie (this is what her friends called her) helped tow him back in. That tiny thing! She looks like she weighed maybe a hundred pounds. How powerful she must have felt for a short while, saving him on that first day.
See the theme? Get it? Well, there are only two instances, so it’s merely conjecture. Still, when Grande Terre’s Corvus moneduloides twice picked up a twig, stripped it of its bark, nibbled its end to make a tiny hook, everyone immediately understood it was no coincidence. Helplessness is Henry North’s hook, his modus operandi. Along with everything else, this theory would never hold up in court; Weary has no real proof. The broken arm was real, to be fair. But why be fair? He’s a hundred steps beyond fair. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
Professor Weary can still see North on campus with his arm in that sling, knocking over a stack of cups in the cafeteria, fumbling with his silverware. Broken wing display. Most often seen in shorebirds and waterfowl and plovers, the bird will cock his wing and feign injury to distract a predator from a nest. The most dramatic and conspicuous displays come when the investment is greatest. Great potential loss means it all gets as bad as high school theater. Hobbling and dragging, exaggerated shows of pathetic plights…It’s all about tricking the predator, making him look away from the hidden thing.
One can forget, though, that this behavior is aggressive, too. It says, Come and get me. It says, You just wait.
It can get confusing in the great big game of life, who is predator, who is prey, who initiates the standoff. Who contributes to their own demise, seals their own fate with passivity.
At any moment, one of Weary’s research assistants will be arriving. They’ll take the Jeep up the mountain to the Corvus roost. They’ll spend the long, thrilling day doing what Weary does best: waiting and watching.
So, now, he hurries. He checks the credit card bill, his final hope of the day, or at least, his final hope until he can get back here and check again. How he’s able to look at that credit card—he’s not telling! He shouldn’t tell anyway—my God, he certainly wouldn’t want anyone to be able to see his. Tip-tip-tip, tap-tap-tap, and there it is.
He scr
olls.
Mundane, mundane, mundane.
Gas. Ferry terminal. Coffee shop. Whatever, whatever.
Bookstore, pharmacy, who cares.
But, then…What?
What is that?
His heart drops. His hands actually start to tremble.
Can it be?
A grocery store. Front Street Market.
He feels a little sick. This is not usual, not at all. Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow. Weary feels giddy, true, but also suddenly anxious. Look at that. Look at it! He wants to shove back his chair and pace around with nerves and worry and the magnetic energy of possibility. Because this is no regular grocery bill. This is not the cereal and four-roll pack of TP and the single pink chicken breast of the lonely. This is not even the amount of a new arrival stocking his cupboard. It’s an extravagant figure, and knowing Henry North, it can only mean one thing.
Dinner for two.
Chapter 5
It smells fantastic in that house, garlic and butter and wine, the holy culinary trinity, in Isabelle’s opinion. She’d eat that smell if she could. She can’t remember the last time someone cooked for her. Maybe Jessa, back in Seattle, who was the last in a long line of friends who drifted off after having a baby. The only thing Evan could make was Kraft macaroni and cheese from a box, though truthfully, Isabelle loves the stuff.
Henry wears a denim shirt, and his brown hair is ruffled and relaxed, and he hasn’t shaven, and Isabelle likes that look. He’s all Sunday morning, but wearing cologne or some clean-smelling soap.
“Can I take your purse?”
She hands it to him along with her sweater. He sets them on the couch right next to where he stands and gives an apologetic grin. “The former renter turned the coat closet into some strange storage unit with long hooks.”
“For guitars, maybe? He was a musician.”
“Guitars! Well, if you’d brought one of those, I could hang it up.”
Isabelle forgot what a view this place had. She used to come here to babysit the Greggory girls when she was in college and home for summer break. It’s still light out, and she can see the waters of the sound stretching to forever. The house is glass and more glass, and its wide deck extends out over the bluff. There’s a trail, too, which hugs the hill, but you can’t see it from there. It’s all coming back, though—how exposed you could feel with all those windows, in spite of how secluded the house is.
“That view,” she says.
“Right?”
“Everything looks so great. I can’t believe you’re all unpacked already.”
“Oh, I barely had anything to do. Put my clothes in a drawer. Plugged in my laptop. The house came furnished. Previous tenant left all this, apparently. Can you imagine?”
“I think he was a musician-slash-dot-com guy. Lots of money. He painted the porch black and Remy kicked him out, and so he just left.”
“Does everyone know everything here?” He grimaces, but he’s joking.
“Island? Small?” She laughs. “So, tell me. You just popped a few clothes in a bag and took off? That sounds amazing.”
“Well, I got rid of a lot before I moved, and then I stuck the rest in storage. Why drag your old life behind you?”
“Ah. I envy that. Just picking up and going. It sounds heavenly.” Isabelle’s old stuff and her mother’s old stuff live together like spinsters. Most of her former life is now jammed into her mother’s garage. She wishes she could be free of all of it. Imagine how weightless you’d feel, ditching refrigerators and old outfits, small appliances and Christmas decorations. Things, she suddenly realizes, that have all been merely of use, or else burdened with false sentimentality. “You’ll be returning, though? Sabbatical, you said.”
“Well, sabbatical loosely used. I quit.”
“Oh, wow. Were you tenured?”
“Tenured, unhappy…So, why stay, right? Life is short.”
“Bold move.”
“Bold moves are necessary sometimes, don’t you think? I’m sure you get a lot of that—people starting a new life in a place like this? People flying in with a bag and a credit card…”
“Not really. We get families with multiple suitcases and guys with romantic intentions who forget their wallets.”
“Are you a pilot, too?”
“I’m not, but my mother was. It’s funny—I’ve been around the planes all my life, but I never really got to the point in my thinking where I understood they’d be mine one day.”
“Lucky you.”
“I guess so. The jury is still out. I may need my own bold move.”
“Wait. I have wine,” he says.
In spite of the black porch incident and the guitar coat closet, the musician had done great things with the house. His furniture looks beautiful. Remy’s floors are aged oak, and there’s a white rug and a black leather couch in a stylish, comfortable L. It’s sparse and contemporary, more mature than she’d expect from the guy, with his ripped jeans and retro Nirvana T-shirts.
Henry North hands her a glass of red wine. Music is playing at a tender volume, and the singer has the sort of raspy, moody voice that makes Isabelle feel as if she’s unfurling, like a fern in a thicket of moss. Well, it’s the wine now, too. Henry’s eyes are a little sad, yet he’s confident, and it’s the lethal combination. Why is that? Just one without the other would be too much of the thing, but like this—protector, needing protection—it entices. Kinda like Evan? her mother pipes in. Isabelle shuts her up with another sip of cabernet.
“It’s a little warm in here.” Henry slides open one of the large glass doors. She hopes he doesn’t go out on that deck, though. It looks like you could step right through the rot in some places, plunge to your death, or at least break an ankle.
“It smells amazing. What are you making?”
He sits beside her. The life-is-good, deep-water smell of the ocean wafts in and takes a spin with the garlic and butter. “Mesclun salad with burst tomatoes? Lobster capellini with leek sauce?”
“Oh, my God, really? I may just give you the car.”
“The car! I forgot all about it.”
“I drove it over, so you can see it and decide.”
“Wonderful.”
He rises again to bring them a cheese-and-charcuterie plate. The meats are laid out like a mosaic, and the wine loosens everything, and the sun begins to set, turning the sky gold and then pink. Isabelle has barely cooked for herself since she’s been back. The time spent on feeding her—it shows a kind of care, she thinks, a care she’s unfamiliar with.
“I think I may be in shock,” she says, gazing at the plate. “I was married before, briefly, and my former husband…He could throw together a tuna sandwich on a good day.”
“I’m glad this is a new experience. Wait. Something else I forgot.” Henry lifts his glass to hers. They clink a toast. “To us,” he says.
—
He has a great sense of humor. It almost surprises her, because he’s a little reserved. Maybe it’s the wine, but they laugh to the point of doubling over at his story about the first time he tried to ski. She confesses her general lack of athletic ability, bravely shares the incident with the hockey stick during high school PE. He tells her about his brothers and lacrosse; she tells him about her mother chasing her father down the street with a golf club. He laughs so hard that he slaps the table in hilarity, causing the silverware to jump and the lit candles to flicker. It’s an unexpected gesture, a regular-guy thing, and she likes him more because of it.
Isabelle knows this is a funny story. She uses it at parties and changes the details for effect (a nine iron, a rainstorm), and hauls it out during first meetings like this, because it’s old and reliable, but also because it says something about her. Something important, if anyone notices.
It’s not just a funny story for Isabelle, of course. She remembers the door slamming and the windows rattling, and her mother yelling, although she doesn’t recall exactly what was yelled. She remembers being afraid. Very afraid. S
he was scared that the golf club might do the same thing to her father’s head that Justin Frankle’s baseball bat did to their jack-o’-lantern the day after Halloween. Those slick pieces of pumpkin skidded across the asphalt of their cul-de-sac and splatted against the curb, and right then, her father gripped the sides of his own skull as he ran, in a feeble effort at protection. As soon as her parents’ fight began that day, Isabelle fled to her room. But when she heard the garage door slam and the screaming outside, she peeked through her venetian blinds. At the sight of the raised golf club, she actually hid in her closet and sat on the toy box and plugged her ears. She rocked and tried to name the fifty states. A few months later, her father moved to Florida. He’d finally had enough, because, of course, if a person threatens with a golf club, it isn’t their first time being threatening. She didn’t see her father much after he left. He fled. And then he died when she was in college.
Henry senses the layers, it seems, because he quiets. He stands then, and squeezes her shoulder and says, “How about dessert?”
It’s another good sign, this astute empathy. And now he brings in the dessert, presents it, as if they are celebrating a special occasion. It’s a chocolate torte, and it’s gorgeous, a perfect chocolate hat for a chocolate queen. “Tell me you didn’t make this, too,” Isabelle says. “Or I’ll have to slink home in shame. I can make brownies out of a box.”
“Front Street Market. I had it specially made.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” He offers her coffee, and when she declines, he empties the last of the wine into both of their glasses. “So.” She pretends to count. “You’re a professor of nineteenth-century literature. You’re writing a book. You took classes at Le Cordon Bleu, and you play the piano. What else?”
