by Deb Caletti
“It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t mean I think you actually did something. It’s just, wow. It’s high, up here.”
“Let’s just drop it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no…”
“I’m doing the best I can. I’m human, Henry. We’re hiking. You guys were hiking. Anyone would have the thought.”
“Well, my darling, for your information, I’m not going to shove you off this cliff. You have the car keys.”
“Shit.” She laughs.
And he laughs, too. He squeezes her hand.
“Let’s go home,” he says.
“Let’s.”
The mood is shaky as they head down. I don’t know if I can do this, she thinks. And he’s so sensitive to any withdrawal on her part that she knows he’s just read her mind. She feels it in their clasped hands. She feels it in the thick, weird energy between them. She might as well have spoken her doubts aloud, by the tightness that appears in his jawline. It’s hard to know what’s him, and what’s him in this situation, but it’s like he’s poised, watching and listening for rejection. It’s all quarter-inch moves and undercurrents; he reads paragraphs into her averted eyes or the slightest insincerity in her tone. But he’s right, isn’t he? Her laugh wasn’t entirely a laugh, and he knows it. She swears she can lie awake at night with a doubt or a question, and he’ll awaken and curve his body against hers to answer. He’s right, so no wonder.
After what he’s been through, it’s understandable that he needs her loyalty above all else. She forgives him things because of it. She slips her hand free.
“Race you down,” she says.
—
When they get home, the air between them has lightened. They got burgers at The Dive on the way back. Isabelle believes in the power of burgers plus onion rings to make most any day better. Now Henry is writing. This means he is locked away in his office, typing on his laptop in rapid bursts, long pauses in between.
Sometimes, Isabelle thinks of this as “writing,” quote-unquote. It’s disrespectful, really, but she allows it of herself, because Henry takes himself so seriously. He doesn’t want to be interrupted and he needs utter silence, as if he’s involved in delicate negotiations to prevent global catastrophe. He emerges a while later, satisfied but secretive. Still, she keeps her mouth shut. It’s his creative path. People get to express themselves any way they want. He loves the writing in some weird tormented way, same as all writers, and that’s what’s most important. His ego about it—maybe it just jabs at hers. Her past publishing job, as insignificant as it was, is the one place where she’s the competent one, the more experienced one. Maybe people in love shouldn’t have these small, unspoken competitions, but she’s pretty sure that most couples do. There will always be little splinters.
Night is coming earlier now that it’s fall, and outside the big windows of Remy’s house, it’s dusk. Isabelle stands at the glass; she’s in her socks, and her hands are tucked into the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She watches the sky, because she sees them—the few small dots of black coming, growing in numbers. Now the crows are overhead, and the long line of them stretches over the water. It’s been a while since she’s really taken them in, stood underneath them and listened to the puff-puff of wings. It’s wrong, to let something that majestic and strange become just another overlooked event.
She opens the sliding door, which screeches along its track.
“Don’t go out there, Isabelle! That deck!” Henry calls from down the hall.
He’s right. They really need to talk to Remy about replacing those rotting boards. She sticks her head outside instead. Sometimes the crows are high, high up, and sometimes lower, like tonight, low enough that you can see the ribs in their wings and their thick, round bodies, shiny and satin-black. They seem especially eerie but also especially right in this fall evening sky. You could see this hundreds of times and it would still give you a little shiver.
Mystery of mysteries!
When the crows are gone, Isabelle takes her phone into the bathroom. She locks the door. She looks up the mystery line. She’s been looking up everything lately—all furtive, clandestine searches for reassurance. It’s the sort of hunting for information that’s actually hope that you won’t find what you fear you’ll find. She locates the poem. It bothers her that it’s called “Spirits of the Dead.”
You are hiding in your own bathroom, Maggie points out.
Why is she even here with him? She can’t do this. She is not generous and trusting enough to handle any of this. What if she is not generous and trusting enough to handle any relationship? Her mother wasn’t.
Henry is reading her mind again, through the walls of his office this time, because there he is. He’s coming out of one door and she’s coming out of another, and he takes her in his arms in the hall.
“Writing is like exercise, isn’t it? You always feel so much better after you’ve done it. Thanks for your understanding, love.” He kisses her neck. He’s told her a million times that this, this phase right now, is an adjustment period. Learning to accept his past, forgiving him for lying, even moving in together at all. There will be rocky patches. It will take time. They’ll get through it together.
The word phase—listen, it’s a warning sign.
—
When the sun drops, it gets cold fast. He brings her one of her own blankets and wraps it around her shoulders where she sits on the couch. He’s attentive this way. Her mother would have said smothering. Clearly, she likes smothering. He makes a beautiful fettuccine. There is chewy sourdough and a lovely salad with a tart vinaigrette. She is seduced with butter. She shoves away that stupid poem as they eat—that poem with its spirits who never go away, whose red orbs are like a burning and a fever that will cling to you forever.
They do something unusual. They leave the dishes. Henry hates to have a messy kitchen in the morning. But this night, he takes her hand, and they drop clothes along the way to their bedroom. Her worries drop away, too, and her incessant thoughts quiet. It’s just her naked self and his, animals in their den, mates. His eyes catch hers in the dark and hold. She sees who he really is in there, thank goodness. That’s Henry, and God, Henry feels so good.
“I love you,” he whispers.
“I love you, too,” she says. He can tell she means it because she does mean it. She means it thoroughly and completely. She’s crazy about that man, even if people might say she’s just plain crazy. She’s sick and tired of people and what they say. All people—the sensible voices in her head, and her mother, and Virginia and Sarah, and newspapers, and Jane and Eddie, and detectives. All of this worry and weirdness is worth it. He’s right. It’s an adjustment period. It’s hard, but in the end what matters is that it’s the two of them getting through this together.
There will come a day when this strange time is in the past. Isabelle forgets, though, that both strange times and the past are a burning and a fever that can cling to you forever.
—
While both Isabelle and Henry are more likely to be reading than watching sports, Henry occasionally likes to catch a game on TV, especially now that the New England Patriots are playing the Seattle Seahawks, meaning Henry’s brothers are texting him various bets and taunts and he is texting them back bigger ones and so forth and so on. Before this day, Isabelle would not know a Patriot from a Bruin, but Henry has appointed Isabelle his Seattle rival, surprising her with her first-ever sports jersey. While Evan would watch sports alone or with his friends (including Heather the Snowboarder, probably), Henry has made it all good, American fun. He wraps tiny sausages in biscuits, and he has made a three-layer dip. There are hot wings coming.
Midway, Isabelle wishes she had a book, even if Henry is explaining all the parts that make it entertaining—one player’s sad childhood, another’s inspirational comeback after an injury. There is lining up and crashing and more lining up and crashing and that announcer voice and shrill crowd hum that make her
brain feel like it’s a blinking fluorescent light.
Henry looks adorable in his Patriots shirt, though, and she jabs his ribs with her feet from her end of the couch. He grabs her ankles and scoots her on her butt as she shrieks.
“Looking for trouble, Missy?”
“Your players are losers.” She knows nothing about it. He yanks her ponytail and then tickles her madly and she tries to get him back and then they start kissing, and then he flips her around so that she’s on his lap.
“I make football better, right?” It’s the perfect Sunday.
“You are the official pain in my ass.”
She gets him again, with her elbows and fingertips, and the crowd cheers and they miss a big play.
“Aw, shit, what’d we miss?” he asks, but it doesn’t matter. In two seconds, his pants are down, and her new jersey is off, and her mouth is on him, and no one cares about any game. It’s over fast, the great kind of fast, hard and physical, same as smashing players. He collapses on her. Oh, they are sweaty.
“Look at us,” she says. She feels so happy. They’re half on the couch, half off, and there are napkins dotted orange from wings tossed on the floor, and strewn pillows and clothes. Her hair is bunching from the band.
“We win this game,” he says. He strokes her face, but then suddenly he lifts off of her. “Stay right here. Hell with it. I was going to wait until some big, important moment, but why? This is perfect. This is what I most love about us.” This last part he shouts from the far-off land of the inside of their closet.
He’s back. He’s naked. She’s sitting up, panties back on, clutching her shirt. “Just a sec,” he says. He shoves on his pants, belt dangling. Of course, she sees what’s in his hand.
“Be my wife,” he says.
My. Something Evan never said. Maybe something nobody ever said, certainly not her own disappearing father, or even her mother, whose my was more mine, or even me, indicating ownership, and giving her the sense that she was a Christmas tree laden with ornaments and tinsel and popcorn strings and blinking lights and non-blinking lights, still required to be merry in spite of the weight and the fire hazard.
But Henry’s my feels—right then, anyway—like the softest, most safe version of my. A longed-for version. The coziest belonging, the big dream fulfilled, a merging without suffocation.
My, though. My at all…Well, never mind that right now, she thinks.
He slips the ring on her finger. They admire it and smile at each other. The smile is an answer, Henry knows. Look at her, with a diamond ring! She and Evan bought plain gold bands at an online store. He’d take his off to shower and leave it on the sink for days. How strange and old-fashioned this ring feels, like she’s completed something in a way she never had with Evan. It’s beautiful. She’s never been a jewelry person, but she loves how it glints like the tips of waves do on a sunny day. And, you know, she has time, she tells herself. She has time to let her questions resolve themselves. Right now, she can just enjoy this strange, new weight on her finger. Right now, she can just sink into this relieving feeling of her uncertain future, settled.
“It looks a little big for you, actually,” he says.
Chapter 18
Sometimes, it seems there really is a tiny cartoon devil and a tiny cartoon angel on his shoulders, like in those bad movies. Probably, Weary would have two identical ravens instead. The birds would be messengers from heaven and hell, and you couldn’t tell which was which, same as in Poe’s most famous poem. In spite of the complicated mess of his actions, though, the point is—Weary believes in goodness and in justice. He believes in making things right, even his own wrongdoings.
He sometimes has guilt, in other words.
He sometimes has misgivings.
A beautiful word, really, misgivings. He imagines the strange gifts crows bestow on humans they come to have affection for—screws and bottle caps and dead bugs, shiny, sharp glass, fishing lures, and small Matchbox cars plucked from yards. They are mis-givings, but special givings, too.
Well, crows do love their shiny things.
Shiny things like diamond rings, he sings to himself. It’s both a cheerful and sickening song. Weary saw the Visa bill. Tiffany’s, wow. Spare no expense, Mr. Marvelous. Sarah’s ring was some vintage thing. No sense getting jealous on Sarah’s behalf, but still.
Weary walks up the many, many steps into the Cathédrale St. Joseph Nouméa. He crosses the doorway, with its two rectangular spires on either side. Each has a clock set high up in their stone, and the Virgin Mary holds infant Jesus in a lofty cupola between them. Weary chooses this large, busy place over the smaller mission church for privacy. Services are over. It’s nearing late afternoon. Inside, it is smaller than it looks from out, just two rows of wood pews and one chandelier, which resembles a double-tiered wedding cake made from iron. It’s quiet, except for the click of his sandals on the floor and the whispers of tourists, who snap photos. It smells all warm wood and wax in there. Above Weary’s head, the structure of the dome looks like a splayed bird wing.
Weary kneels on a padded bench. What he says is between him and God, but the basics are: He asks for forgiveness. He has done much wrong, that’s for sure. He most definitely requires an understanding God. Weary has always tried hard at religion, ever since he was a child. He used to kneel by his bed with his little hands folded and his eyes clamped shut, even when his parents didn’t require it. You can be a scientist who does not strictly believe, yet you can still hope there is some being in the world who will comprehend your muddled motivations, see past your criminal turns, who knows your heart.
He lights a candle for Virginia and for Sarah. Then he lights a third for Isabelle.
Back outside, Weary winds his way through the streets. He hurries past the large hotels out near the marina where the cruise ships come in, and the stacked apartments with their overhanging balconies, and pastel-colored shops. He rushes around tourists in their shorts and tank tops, who stroll and pluck in the outdoor Le Marché de Nouméa. He passes that hideous McDonald’s. See? He lacks for nothing if he goes into the city, even Quarter Pounders. The lush quiet of the mountain and his tucked-away home is good, but big and busy is good, too.
Especially today. This city visit is for prayers and practical needs and tending to a generalized passion with no usual outlet. In an enterprise like this, one requires people who lend a hand and keep your confidences, a single person you can trust, either because they care about you, like Weary’s dear Gavin Gray, or because they are maybe without conscience, like Jean-Marie. Weary calls Jean-Marie petit chief, because he acts like a little chief, the way he can get anyone to do anything.
Weary waits for Jean-Marie outside Le Bilboquet, at one of the tables under the green striped awning. Weary orders a shot of liquor. It’s too early, but he needs the courage. The alcohol spirals with the heat of the day, though, and makes Weary’s head feel strange. He watches the building. Watches, watches, until—there. Yes, finally. Jean-Marie has appeared on his balcony. He is smoking a cigarette. He has a movie-star profile.
It’s the signal. The last thing Weary needs is to be seen with someone like that in public. He slips a few francs under the bill and crosses the busy street. A taxi honks at him. The lobby of the apartment building is sweltering. You’d think Jean-Marie could afford a place with air-conditioning.
Weary rides the elevator up. Then he is at Jean-Marie’s door. It’s open just a crack, and Weary pushes inside.
“Cela fait longtemps,” Jean-Marie says. It’s been a while.
“I have—” Weary removes the folded sheet from his pocket. It’s a list. The things he’ll need next, and the things he’ll eventually need. Now that a ring is in the picture, he has to get a move on. These matters take time, even if Jean-Marie can get anybody anything.
“Put it there.”
Weary sets the list on a table. There is a large Kanak print hanging over it, a woodcut image of an octopus, white and black, with tentacles reaching. W
hat is creature and what is water is unclear.
“Venez ici.” Come here.
In the States, one might call this one-stop shopping. Jean-Marie is likely a sociopath, but he is a handsome one. What’s a person to do? And Jean-Marie keeps his mouth shut. They have…an alliance, Weary might call it.
In seconds, Weary’s tunic is off, and so are his shorts. God, it’s hot. They are on Jean-Marie’s bed, under the ceiling fan, which whir-whir-whirs and wobbles unnervingly. It’s quick, but after so long, that’s how it works. Weary still has needs. In spite of his preoccupation with justice, his body still hums and then hums louder until the hum must be addressed. Addressed, dear Jesus, Jean-Marie is gorgeous and incredible, a psycho-God.
And Weary…Well, yes, there are the small vanities, the physical truths: the gray streaks appearing in his hair, the imperfect parts of his body in spite of the laps in the pool, but so what. He is beautiful enough. He still has a pulse; he still feels the pulse deep within him. In spite of all the heartache over Sarah…Well, come on. He’s not dead yet.
Chapter 19
The season shifts again. The leaves drop, clog up drainpipes. Torrents of rain whoosh down, forming small rivers in the gutters and big splashy pools around the street corners. Those months in the Northwest soak everything—lawns and socks and tree limbs, which drip drops on your head. Big windstorms pass through, shedding pine needles and tossing branches like angry cavemen throwing their clubs. They lose power for a few days, and while Isabelle is used to this and gathers the candles and flashlights and blankets, Henry is not. Every time he hits the light switch out of habit and only gets the impotent flick, he swears.
This season of gray is hard for new residents. Everyone else is accustomed to the monotone curtain that falls sometime in October and stays down until spring. Locals welcome it. Sure, it’s an endless wetness across the spectrum from drizzle to downpour, but it’s the tucking-in season. You put on your sweater and you get stuff done. Who would do anything if it were sunny all the time? Who would ever get down to business? Sun in the Northwest means play. This gray means head-down productivity, plus the best, most cozy weekends of books and movies and pajamas worn at all hours. Maybe breakfast in a café with windows dribbling rain. Because who wants to hike and sail and climb and road trip in this? Ah, fall. Locals drudge through the drops, happy to have their months of complaining back again. The birds look miserable, and everything is back as it should be after that brief, wild sun-party.
