Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The little brass bell above the office door tingles, and even before Katherine peers around the computer monitor on her desk, she begins thinking of commissions and listings, a well-bred Pavlov’s pup, salivating for success.

  “Welcome to Hearth and Home Realty. How can I help—”

  Thomas stands on the doormat, white paper sack in one hand, one of those county-specific, free real estate magazines in the other. This month’s cover is red, for Christmas. “Kate.”

  “You can’t be here.”

  “I brought lunch,” he says, holding up the bag. Redtinged grease soaks through one corner. For Christmas, she thinks again, and would laugh if it didn’t mean her marriage might die in the process. She knows what’s in there, Thai curry, the first lunch he brought that day, when they made plans to meet at his in-laws’ empty house so Katherine could walk through, price, and list it. Susanna had asked Thomas to take care of the details; she was having a hard enough time with her father’s death and her mother now living with them. He kissed Katherine in the back bedroom, the one with no windows—more a crib room than anything else, but Susanna’s brother grew up in that room, the only boy in a family of five children and a three-bedroom, 1950s ranch. All four girls shared the largest room in two sets of bunk beds. Susanna’s parents crammed their bed into the other one, where they could open the door almost all the way but their dressers took up residence in the narrow hall. As he showed Katherine the room, Thomas told her how his mother-in-law slept on the side of the bed against the wall, and climbed in each night over the footboard because her husband, a postman who woke at four in the morning for work, went to bed first and she didn’t want to disturb him. Forty years, she did that, through pregnancies, arthritis, diabetes, a mastectomy. Even after he retired and sometimes went to bed late at night, even now, it was the only way she remembered to get into a bed. That’s love, he told her. And they found a few worn polyester blankets in the linen closet, and covered the worn olive carpet with them, the one she told him minutes before would need to be torn out if he wanted the house to sell, and their affair began.

  The property sold three weeks later, a bit over market value. So they met at the Holiday Inn a half hour from their town, or at business lunches in out-of-the-way restaurants, where she would bring her portfolio and he would bring photos of his family’s summer cabin, and they spent hours talking about everything their spouses had no patience for. Only once had they met at Katherine’s, but never again. It had been impossible to ignore the seriousness of their infidelity among the family photo collages, the half-folded pile of teen boy laundry on the rocking chair, the mound of sneakers and work boots at the door. And, for Katherine, the smell of years. She couldn’t get it out of her nostrils. Showing houses, she’d long come to recognize it, all the existing in a home mingled together into this one, distinct scent—deep and peppery and unattainable.

  Usually she only noticed it in the homes of others. There’s an immunity that comes from steeping in one’s own environment; people stop noticing all that’s obvious to everyone else. That missing spindle on the staircase, cut out when Evan’s head became stuck in the railing. The giraffe-shaped gouge on the wood floor, courtesy of Will’s attempt to move the television without help and it tumbled from his arms, shattering, marring the oak; they walk over it every day without giving it another thought, but every visitor asks, What happened there? All the cobwebs and chipped paint and fingerprints on the light switches. But Katherine had, that one time, been able to smell it at Birchbark Road because it was only home when she was the wife to Will and the mother to her two boys. Being there with Thomas had made her someone else. A stranger.

  “I’m not hungry,” she says.

  He ignores her protests, removes a round, dripping food container and, after flattening the bag to make a placemat, sets it on the desk in front of her. Napkins and plastic forks appear from his pockets like magic. This visit is all sleight of hand and manipulation, she knows it. Keep your eyes here, the illusionist says, watch closely, and he waves his hands while the real trick occurs behind his back. Oh, but Thomas looks so good, snow in his hair, legs long in slim Chinos. Katherine turns away from him, focuses on the framed picture beside her telephone, of the boys, taken four years ago at Sears, the last time they did family portraits. One of Bryce, one of Evan, this one of both, and one of all four of them. The woman behind the camera wanted to take another of her and Will, but Katherine said no. She always found it curious, adult couples having pictures taken together, without their children. Then again, maybe her discomfort stemmed from the fact she didn’t want to be stuck forever at that point in time, with Will, knowing how she felt about him and her marriage.

  “I’m here about a house. Really,” Thomas says. He opens the catalog to a dog-eared page somewhere near the middle, folds the covers over, and points to a circled listing. “This one.”

  She gives him what he calls her irony look, mouth scrunched small, left nostril and eyebrow lifted, cheek twitching from the odd positioning of her face. He laughs quietly with longing, and she dives into realtor mode to avoid feeling the same. She brings the listing up on the computer, an exquisite 1928 Craftsman-style home with original details and recently restored to perfection. She knows the one, having done a walk-through when it first went on the market early last month, only days before she left for Cleveland. She told Thomas about it while they were together, before either of them knew about the plane crash.

  “I didn’t know you and Susanna were looking to move.”

  “Not her. Just me. And you, too, if you wanted.”

  Now she stares, and Thomas holds up both his hands as if to say, Wait, stop, hear me out, but she plows over his silent plea with, “Have you lost your mind?”

  “No. Kate, listen. When you wouldn’t answer my calls, I told myself it was over and to let it go. But I can’t. I miss you. I want to be with you. We—”

  “I told Will.”

  Thomas stops. “When?”

  “A few days ago.”

  He swears. “What in God’s name were you thinking? He could tell Susanna.”

  “Two seconds ago you were leaving her.”

  “Two seconds ago you weren’t telling everyone in town about us.”

  “Good-bye, Thomas.”

  “Kate—”

  “I want my marriage. I don’t know if it can be fixed, but I’m sure as sugar going to try.”

  Thomas’s jaw clenches; he shifts it beneath his skin, mouth closed, chin swinging to the right. And then, with a deep breath, he steps out the door, bell singing the same song with his departure as his entrance, as if coming or going it made no difference.

  The house is dark, but she sees through the front window as she parks in the driveway, the television flickering in the living room. Will is in his recliner, glass of Diet Pepsi in one hand, plate of fried chicken in his lap, hole in the toe of his gray sport socks. On the screen some rerun plays, a detective show—there are so many now she can’t tell one from another—two police in an interrogation room, questioning a suspect. Good cop, bad cop. Bryce once said they played those same roles, Katherine the shrew, Will the softie. If he wanted something he sought out his father; if he wanted something done, he went to his mother. He’d been eight at the time.

  So perceptive.

  She’s tired of always moving toward completion, of her task-oriented life, but she’s been so long programmed that way she can’t imagine changing. It began with Evan, with his heart. Deal with the doctors, the therapists, the insurance companies. Order his feeding supplies, administer his medications, monitor his oxygen saturation levels. Do, do, do. She handled the medical end of things because Will was so easily overwhelmed—not by what had to be done, but by what it meant. His son was unwell. His empathy paralyzed him, and he’d tell Katherine to stop describing Evan’s interventions; he could feel those things in his own flesh. Searing pain between his ribs when he looked at the baby’s incisions. Tighteni
ng in his sternum as doctors showed them X-ray after X-ray of Evan’s lungs drowning in fluid. Nausea and cramping to the point of vomiting when Evan was unable to keep down his feeds. Eventually Katherine’s reports to him consisted of a few key phrases. Today was a good day. The doctors are concerned but for the moment are only watching. We have to go to the hospital immediately. There’s improvement and it looks like we’ll be discharged soon. And Will stayed home caring for Bryce and working a job he hated to keep insurance for Evan’s care while Katherine lived in a hospital room.

  When the crisis passed, she continued to do; her body no longer remembered how to be still, and her doing overtook her relationships. Will wanted to sit with her and watch a movie? She had meals to plan, and couldn’t concentrate in front of the television. A lovely night for a family walk around the block? Nope, she needed to finish planting her perennials. It wasn’t only her frenetic compulsion to stay busy that damaged her marriage, but she can admit now—to herself, to Will—it had played a part.

  They’ve not spoken in four days, since both admitted their affairs. She’s not sure the boys noticed; they didn’t mention it. This is what our lives have become, so disconnected no one hears the silence. If she hadn’t been carrying around her guilt, she might not have paid any attention to it either.

  Our normal.

  They all deserve more than that.

  She takes the glass from Will, sets it on the floor where she’ll inevitably forget it’s there and kick it over, and replaces it with her hand. Squeezes. He turns his head toward her, tiny television villains reflecting on his corneas. “I want this,” she says.

  Will reaches behind her head with his free arm, draws her close enough to kiss her forehead. Her eyebrows stick in his stubble. “Can it be fixed?”

  When Evan was small, they had a book of nursery rhymes and once, peeking around the corner of the stairway so they wouldn’t see her, she caught Bryce reading it to his brother in his bedroom. She wanted to delight in the sweet scene without them noticing so a shoving match didn’t begin, which was what usually happened when she caught the boys together in a moment of calm. Bryce couldn’t have been more than seven, so Evan was four and frail and still recovering from his most recent hospitalization. The older boy read the Wheels on the Bus with sound effects and motions, and his brother giggled for more. Please, please, piggy please? Bryce turned the page and began Humpty Dumpty.

  The panic rising in Katherine startled her, so much so the ditty was over and Bryce had moved on to Five Little Monkeys before she reacted, rushing into the room, snatching the book from his hands, and screaming, “Don’t ever read that again!”

  Evan started crying. Bryce sat, cross-legged and confused, staring at his empty hands. When she touched him, he jerked away, cowering into the plaid dust ruffle. She dropped to her knees and lassoed her arms around both of them, pulling them into her body, crying with her youngest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.” And she made their favorite for dessert, Jell-O pudding, not the instant kind, but the one cooked on the stove. She let Bryce pour in the milk and Evan lick the spatula, and they ate it still warm with frozen Cool Whip on top. And sprinkles? Evan asked. Katherine found an almost empty bottle of hundreds-and-thousands in the back of her baking cabinet and added them to the boys’ treat.

  She never told them why she reacted as she did, but it was the rhyme.

  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men?

  Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

  Evan. It made her think of her baby, broken, stitched together, and unable to be fixed. She tucked the boys into bed that night and Will found her, home from an overtime shift at the paper mill, tearing the Humpty Dumpty pages from the three books that included it, and scrambling through the others, looking, looking.

  “What the heck are you doing, Kate?”

  “I know he’s in Alice in Wonderland.”

  “Who? What is all this?”

  There were books sprawled over the floor where she’d thrown them, some spread-eagle, some in tepees, some in odd couplings, threes and fours, half under the ruffle of the wingback chair or on the slate hearth by the wood stove and freckled in ash.

  “He could die,” she said, and the sobs shook her so violently she heard her teeth knocking against one another, and she tucked her tongue to the back of her throat to keep from biting it. She hadn’t cried like this since Evan’s diagnosis as a newborn. She’d been knocked off her wall by a fictitious egg.

  “I know.” And Will had held her until she could see again, holding her hair back, wiping her face with weathered fingers.

  Now, eleven years later, they face one another, his fingers just as rough, her hair not nearly as long, both their shells fractured and the pieces trampled together by life. She squeezes his hand again. “We’re no Humpty Dumpty.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ada doesn’t tell Hortense she’s decided to go, knowing Julian’s friend will try to persuade her otherwise, knowing how easily persuaded she is. She has little to pack—three days’ worth of clothes, a toothbrush, her aqua vase and inside it, bundled in a scrap of his shirt, Julian’s wedding band, returned to her by the coroner. If she needs something else she can send for it later, though most of it won’t be allowed in the community, if she stays.

  She wants to take something more of Julian; since everything is him here, in his house, she has a difficult time choosing. She stands in the center of each room, spinning, eyes passing over each object. Upstairs. Then downstairs. Memories varnish each object. She finally lifts the five photographs from the hallway wall and wraps them in Sophie’s afghan.

  A storm is coming, according to the meteorologists. She’s not confident in her driving and won’t risk traveling in the snow, so she needs to leave soon. Within the hour. She hasn’t used the Jeep since someone from Union North brought it back from the airport parking lot, but it starts; she doesn’t know if there’s a reason for it not to, but she’s seen television shows where cars sputter and die from being left too long without attention, and from the cold—both circumstances at hand.

  She doesn’t know how to get home.

  Her telephone has a navigation device. She types in the name of the town; the community has no actual address, but once she drives into Eastley, she’ll be able to find it.

  Drive point three miles then turn left.

  She listens intently to the computer-like woman’s voice, maneuvering out of the city and onto the highway. Her mind wanders then. She worries about what she’s wearing. A skirt that isn’t nearly long enough, falling midshin instead of to her ankles. A sweater tapered at the waist and not three sizes too large. Boots Hortense bought her because she didn’t have footwear for the snow, brown leather with a one-inch heel, more stylish than she’d buy for herself. She admits to liking them more than anything she’d buy herself, too, and feels a bit Hortense-like when she slips them over her calves, like she can be beautiful too.

  She is still wearing skirts, though. She tried pants but felt so confined, her legs extruded like toothpaste snakes through the denim. Even sweatpants and Julian’s pajama bottoms.

  Her hair has been cut, one of the first things she did on her wedding night. She’d wanted to shower before the bedroom part, soaped her body from face to feet, and when she stepped over the lip of the tub into the steamy room she saw her outline in the full-length mirror, hanging on the back of the door. Her hands trembled as she wiped the condensation, and when she stood nose-to-nose with her image, the first thing she noticed was her hair, the longest strands curling at the back of her thighs, the rest pasted to her back, arms, hips, like grapevine. She thought of her father, grabbing her long tail of hair and pulling her around while she was on her knees in the dirt, scurrying to keep up. She did not need her crowning glory anymore.

  Julian’s nail scissors were in the medicine cabinet, gold with balled points. She held them
to her hair and let them chew, chew, chew away, bird-jaws opening and closing as she squeezed and released. It took time, the metal so dull, her hair so tough, and she thought of cutting through tree roots and umbilical cords.

  “Ada? You okay?”

  A knock on the door. She didn’t answer so Julian opened it a crack and looked in. She was naked, dead hair twisted at her feet, using something of his without having asked first. She crouched, covered with her arms and hair, turning her head away from him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  He shut the door.

  She shook and bit her lip, the hot tears squirming between her toes. Another knock, gentle this time, and Julian came in. He wrapped a towel over her shoulders like Noah’s sons, lifted her from the floor. “Julian, I’m so sorry. I should have—”

  “Shh,” he said, touching a finger to her lips. “You’ll never get the back straight. Let me help.”

  Ada nods and gives him the scissors.

  “These wouldn’t cut dental floss. I have better.” He showed her the heavy steel shears he took from the pocket of his faded jeans. She thought he wasn’t wearing anything else beneath them.

  He spread a towel on the closed toilet lid, and she sat, gooseflesh bubbling on her legs and upper arms. Julian noticed, turned the shower on again, as hot as possible, and the bathroom warmed. He combed her hair smooth. “How short?”

  “You decide.”

  “No. This is all you.”

  Still trembling, she touched her shoulder. “Here?”

  And Julian tugged and snipped, and then stood her in front of the mirror, his turn now to wipe away the condensate so she could see. His arms roped her to him, one of his hands on each of her upper arms, the back of her skull nestled between his collarbones, his chin scratching the top of her ear. Her heart raced like a startled rabbit, slowing, slowing as the mist thickened over the looking glass again and they both faded away to outlines, to phantasms, and then disappeared.