by Lee Woodruff
Margaret wiped the steam from the mirror, assessing the slackness of flesh, the still relatively muscular thighs at her advanced age, the droop of the puppet lines around her mouth. She sucked in her cheeks for a minute, watching the pucker lines gather around her lips, and she thought of cinching a kitchen trash bag and then, remarkably, of an anus. Now where had that come from? Good Lord, her pursed mouth in the shape of an anus. The outrageousness of this explicit thought made Margaret smile imperceptibly.
She plucked at the roots of her wet hair with her fingers, examining the areas where the larger streaks of gray were well hidden by the hairdresser. Although the skin on her arms was slack, the muscles underneath still held some definition from working in the garden and regular yoga classes at the YMCA. Her eyes flitted down to her stomach, soft and rounded, despite the exercises. The childbirths and the hysterectomy had finally, she supposed, simply worn those muscles out.
Looking between her legs made her think of Roger. He hadn’t touched her body, really touched her, in a very long while. How long had it actually been? she wondered, and where did desire go? When was the moment physical desire first started to recede? When had his mind wandered? How silly, she chided herself. What was wrong with her today, all of these randomly ridiculous and serious thoughts?
Roger had never parted with his emotions freely or been prone to introspection, but then neither had she. It simply wasn’t part of their generation, this need to talk about everything, to pick over each hangnail, slight, and feeling as if it were the center of the universe. People of their generation put up with things, they bucked up, they were disappointed at times and in turn would occasionally disappoint. They got on with life. If you spent all your time navel-gazing, you’d never accomplish anything, she reasoned. Besides, simply laying the very heavy things aside sometimes meant you could just plain get down to the business of living. Sometimes a person just needed to keep moving.
Margaret drew the terry-cloth bathrobe around her and tightened the soft belt. Moving downstairs and into the kitchen, she paused for a moment in the threshold of the sliding glass doors. The night was incredibly humid and still, and her skin remained pinkish from the bath. She poured a glass of wine and headed out into the garden to pick the last of the bolted lettuce for a dinner salad. She thought of the pack of cigarettes concealed in the shed and wondered how many were left. Perhaps she’d have another.
As she stood in the last pumpkin hue of the dusk, she saw it, one of the sticky traps she had laid under the broccoli plants just yesterday. Caught in the garish, yellow tar of the trap’s base was a chipmunk. He must have recently stumbled onto the trap, she thought, as he was still full of fight. His tail writhed and twisted, as it lay beyond the outline of the rectangular trap. Most of the underside of his body and three of his paws were firmly embedded in the goo.
In the corner of the garden fence, where it was reinforced over the wood with chicken wire, a small spade stood upright. It occurred to Margaret that she could end the small animal’s misery with one blow to the skull. She considered this distastefully for a moment and then rejected it. Let him squirm, she thought with a sudden fury, let him suffer. She pivoted abruptly, headed to the far corner of the plot where the last of the arugula sprouted. Perhaps she would tug out a scallion or two and poach an egg to accompany the salad. But first, she would have a cigarette.
9
“You forgot to bring in the mail yesterday.” Pete was already dressed for work, and his leather soles clicked on the hardwood floor as he entered the kitchen, tossing the stack on the polished stone counter. The pile hit with a slap and fanned out. “Looks like the boy wrote us another letter,” said Pete evenly. He didn’t look at her. There was the usual collection of catalogs, bills, and postcards with sale offers, and a light blue envelope on heavier card stock that Pete was already ripping open. She finished loading the last glass into the dishwasher from the sink and turned to observe him, leaning against the edge of the counter.
“What boy?” Maura said, somewhat defiantly. But she knew. She knew it must be the Hulburd kid. Shortly after the funeral, he had sent a note asking if he could come over and meet with them. They had both ignored it at the time. Pete had already unfolded the stationery and was reading the letter, his face impassive. She fought the urge to grab it out of his hands. Maura could see the slanted penmanship on the blue notepaper, letters like tiny swords, the words hard to distinguish from her vantage point. Pete read for another moment in silence.
“Read it, Pete.” He held up his hand, concentrating on the cramped penmanship. He handed it to her.
“You read it. It’s standard stuff. He’s sorry, wants to come over and meet us. Here.” Pete thrust it at her, and she threw it on the counter as if it were scorching.
“Hey, he’s trying, Maura,” said Pete vituperatively. “He’s trying something, right?” He ran his fingers through his hair with a sweeping motion and then tucked his pinstriped shirt tightly into the waistband of his suit pants. She noticed the gray was more prominent now on his temples, almost as if it had accumulated overnight. There was a smudge of shaving cream on the rim of his ear and his neck bulged slightly over the too-tight collar of his pale blue shirt, the slow softening of men in middle age.
“Imagine being him? One day you’re on your way to work at the golf club, school just got out, and then, wham, a kid rolls in front of you …” His voice trailed off.
“What, are you defending him, Pete? The boy had been drinking.” Maura looked directly at Pete and felt a hot flush rise up her neck. “You know it as well as I do, they found beer in his car.”
“Maura. It was a single empty beer can. Eight-thirty in the morning. The police found tiny traces of alcohol from the night before. None of that was related to the accident. You know all of this.” Pete moved in closer, but there was a reserve there now. They were both on dangerous territory.
“So you’re defending his drinking, Pete? Why aren’t I surprised? You can make excuses for anything. Even your son’s death.” Maura turned her back abruptly and opened the dishwasher, pulling out the top rack too quickly as all of the glasses rattled against one another, and she added her coffee cup, slamming the stainless steel door closed. She felt tears sting and wondered briefly if Ryan and Sarah were safely out of earshot.
“I think you need to get on top of your anger, Maura. It’s not going to help anything, especially with the kids.” Pete’s eyes strayed toward the family room, where Ryan and Sarah were watching TV. She would need to get them moving and out the door for school soon.
“I am angry. That Hulburd kid … if he hadn’t been—”
“Hadn’t been what?” Pete’s voice interrupting her was firm. “If he hadn’t been driving, if James hadn’t been on a bike, if you had been …” Pete’s voice trailed off, and she glanced up sharply and then looked down, her face burning. She didn’t want to meet his eyes, hadn’t been able to fully search his face since James had passed away.
“I’m going to do the decent thing here, Maura. I’m going to put the kid out of some of his misery. The rest of it, he’ll just have to learn to live with, I guess. But I’m not going to get any satisfaction out of making someone pay more than they already are.” He looked up at her seething, almost disgusted. “Don’t worry,” he added, holding out a stilled hand, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “I wouldn’t think of inviting him over here. I’ll call up his parents and tell them I’ll stop by their house. There’s no reason that all of this crap has to take two lives.” He stared at her a moment longer, and she still refused to meet his eyes. “I don’t need a pound of flesh, Maura.” Pete’s tone was more even and in control. “None of this is going to bring him back.” Without looking up, she heard his exasperated sigh and the sound of his footfalls on the hardwood floor, exiting the room.
Only after Pete had gone, when she’d heard the slam of the mudroom screen door and watched him navigate his car out of the garage and down the driveway, did Maura pick up the letter
on the counter.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Corrigan,
It’s really hard for me to think about what I have done to your family. I am so sorry and I don’t know exactly what to say. I want you to know that my life will never be the same because of this horrible event.
I understand that you don’t want to see me now, and I get that. It must be hard to think about me being alive and your own son being gone. I want you to know that I did everything to try to stop the car as fast as I could. It all happened really fast and I will always blame myself.
Sometime I hope you will be able to see me and I can tell you how sorry I am in person. But I understand if you won’t.
Alex Hulburd
Words, Maura thought dryly. His mother probably wrote the whole thing out for him first, and then he’d copied it. His life would never be the same? That was a joke. He was still walking around on this earth. With the passage of time the enormity of what he had done would no doubt begin to blur and recede. He would head off to college, join a fraternity, get stupid on beer, and graduate into the real world. James wasn’t truly real to him, they had never met. He was just some nine-year-old boy, and Alex Hulburd had no concept of what it meant to be cracked open and hurting. He had no idea of the depths of despair one felt in losing a child, the complexity of the love that springs whole from your heart when you become a parent.
Let Pete go visit him. Perhaps it was better to get that part over with. Odds were they couldn’t keep moving around in the orbit of their small suburban town and not ultimately run into the parents or the boy. Alicia and Ray Hulburd. By all accounts they were decent people, he was a banker and she was a stay-at-home mom. Their lives must be a different kind of hell, she thought. But they still had their son.
Pete could go over there and give the kid some kind of blessing, some symbolic gesture to relieve his guilt, if that’s what needed to be done. That would let the air out for them all, her parents and Pete’s included. She only knew that she would never go to see this boy, couldn’t imagine doling out forgiveness or absolving him of his pain. Right now it was simpler and far more comfortable to make him the target of the rage, sorrow, and guilt she felt inside.
10
The angry scene in the kitchen with Pete and then reading Alex’s letter had put them all behind schedule, especially for Sarah’s new morning preschool. By the time Maura had cleared their cereal bowls from the den and hustled Ryan upstairs to brush his teeth, school was starting.
Both boys had attended the same church-run toddler program in town three mornings a week, and Maura hadn’t hesitated to register her daughter last spring when life had looked completely different. Back then she had been excited at the prospect of unencumbered time, but when it was Sarah’s turn this fall, Maura had hesitated. Her first instinct had been to keep her baby home. “Sarah needs the socialization just as much as the boys did,” her mother had assured her when she waffled about her decision. “It’s only a three-hour stretch, and you can take some time for yourself.” But Maura suspected that some of her mother’s firm stance on preschool was her concern about Sarah kicking around in a house with a grieving mother. She had to agree that a few playful hours outside the home with children her own age would be the best thing for Sarah.
The crossing guard was long gone by the time they zoomed up to the front entrance of the elementary school. Even though it was only six blocks away, Maura had begun the school year driving. It was easier all around. Inside the protection of her van, she wouldn’t have to run into the other mothers, make small talk, or bear witness to their pitying looks. She had become accustomed to taking side streets to circumvent that stretch of Hawthorne Avenue where James had been hit. All these months later she still hadn’t driven down that section of the road.
At the preschool, Maura handed Sarah over to Mrs. Fleet in the “Twos” room, and she wriggled her chubby legs excitedly to get down. Arms outstretched, her daughter ran back to the dress-up area in the corner where the small cribs of baby dolls and stuffed animals were already strewn around the linoleum floor. Two of the other little girls and one of the boys were chattering away by the miniature kitchen set. Clearly, Sarah had already made the transition to her new surroundings.
Pulling her keys out of her purse as she headed to the van, Maura felt the weight of free time pressing down on her. She thought about her carefree days before the accident, humming with engagements and to-dos. The old Maura would be in a hurry to attack a long list of errands, but now the chasm of an empty, unstructured morning yawned ahead. Erin was at work. Her mother was no doubt weary of seeing her in this state, dejected and quiet. She had become a sort of project for her extended family.
Although the refrigerator was empty, the thought of going to the grocery store exhausted her. Stepping off the isolated promontory of her own grief could have unexpected and unpleasant consequences. There was always the chance she’d run into people she knew and have to stammer out replies that she was well, moving through, feeling better, whatever platitudes were required of her for decorum’s sake. Maura felt a sudden, spontaneous urge to go to the lake. Ten miles north of her commuter town, Gull’s Bay was rockier and less frequented than some of the other beaches. The woods hugged the shore on stretches of the bay, giving the beach a protective, hushed feel. This had been the place where she’d go to center herself, reach for a few moments of calm and serenity as she focused on the infinite vastness of Lake Michigan. But that was before. Now with all of the complicated and trailing memories associated with that beach, she wondered if it would have the same restorative powers. Was she ready to face that part of the past? Despite her ambiguity, she felt herself turning left on Forrest Avenue and heading in that direction as if the car were on autopilot.
The flag furled in front of the post office on the corner, and a sandwich board sign in front of the local boutique, Wits End, advertised a sale. Maura tried to imagine the person she had been in June, strolling purposefully along the sidewalks of her North Shore town before all of this had happened. Her cares then had been so different, her outlook full of optimism and possibility. The bakery sported a new green-and-white-striped awning, and she noticed that the leaves at the tips of the oak trees near the butcher were already showing the first yellow streaks of fall, although the daytime temperatures were still warm. Tent caterpillars had spun giant webbed cocoons in some of the branches, and she recalled how James had once asked her if they were clumps of cotton candy.
Maura maneuvered the car off the main street and down toward the water. She slowed to bump over the train tracks beside the brick station that led into downtown Chicago. She thought of her father, who had paid for a parking spot here for more than thirty years. There were many gifts that came with settling down in the familiar surroundings of your childhood, and yet today, the confines of her hometown felt limiting and constrictive. As she drove toward the water, the closely spaced quaint houses near town began to give way to more expansive lots and bigger residences, a few with stone pillar entrances. A large bird, a hawk perhaps, was soaring in an air current high above the shore. She turned north, continuing to follow the road along Lake Michigan, past the stone water tower and then the lighthouse that lay beyond the rock shoal marking the end of the public beach.
Outside the town limits the bends in the road became more frequent and dramatic, and she realized she’d been gripping the steering wheel with a sense of determination. She uncurled her fingers and sat back in a more relaxed position. She was absorbed in her memories, so the sign for Gull’s Bay rose up suddenly, partially obscured by a pine bough. She braked hard and set the blinker, her tires making a sharp noise as they rolled off the asphalt and hit gravel. Maura cut the engine and sat still in the parking area, fenced by mature fir, beech, and scrubbier brush. To her right, beside a stand of birches, was the sandy path leading to the shore. A break in the bank of foliage gave her an unobstructed view of the lake, and she sat mesmerized by the whitecapped waves, rolling forward at regular, angry inte
rvals.
The deciduous trees ringing the lake, with their large paintbrush splashes of primary colors, had begun to make the internal shift toward fall more quickly than the inland ones. With school back in session, the September beach was sparsely occupied. A few hundred yards down past the rock jetty, a couple perched on a blanket, and a lone figure walking a German shepherd bent into the wind. Here and there the sand and rocks were littered with an occasional empty plastic bottle or food wrapper. The warmth of the day, the bright sunlight, and the constant breeze offered a reminder of what she had missed this past summer, largely confining her grief to the four walls of their house. That one pivotal afternoon she had spent here in June had been a warmer, more hopeful echo of this one. Maura experienced a momentary sensation of time buckling and then, unsettled, she focused her attention on a rusty container ship at the lip of the horizon.
She sat down on the sand and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. Maura untied the black fleece at her waist and guided it over her head, where it snagged momentarily on her ponytail before she pulled it down and adjusted the zipper at her neck. The waves lapped rhythmically against the shore, and she drew a deep breath of freshwater air into her lungs, so distinct a smell and yet so much harder to articulate than the crisp salty scent of the ocean. A lake was more complicated and individual. The Great Lakes to her had always smelled mineral clean, a combination of pine and loam as impossible to replicate as the smell of rain.
Maura closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it had felt like to sit here at a much simpler time in her life. The sharp contrast of those memories brought a flush to her face and neck. She could recall, with the shame of hindsight, her most recent visits here, so full of the reckless surety that all of the pieces of her life were neatly curated, held together in a fine balance. In that stretch of time she had believed that she had everything she wanted. That Maura had been an entirely different person from the one who sat here now, she thought. How was it she had crossed such a giant dividing line? How had she and Pete drifted to this point? They had let apathy and atrophy and a hundred little things grind them down into a couple simply going through the motions. Long before James’s death they had begun to lose their language of intimacy, to adopt the varnished politeness one associated with acquaintances. Somewhere along the line, she wasn’t sure where, they had simply stopped trying to make each other better. This morning’s fight about Alex Hulburd was a perfect example, each of them clutching their intractable positions like pugilists in the corners of the kitchen.
