by T. Greenwood
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m not really thinking about that right now,” he says, hurt. “How are things going up at the lake? Anything more with the girl?”
There is so much he doesn’t know. It feels like our lives have divided; after that night, mine continued on without him. (And his without me as well.) I wonder if this is what it feels like to split up. Just the decision and then the parting. And then I think that maybe it started a long time ago. A weak seam, the fabric slowly separating until one day you notice the rip. And it’s too late to repair. The damage too complete.
“The police have some leads. They’re looking for the guy in the truck,” I say. “They traced his plates. He’s actually from here. Springfield.”
“A tourist?” he says.
And I realize, the threads are gone. Nothing is holding this together. Us together.
People who’ve been together as long as we have usually have children. And even when their marriages fall apart, they stay. For the kids. But I wonder if that’s just an excuse. Because without children, I am still struggling to find reasons not to leave. It’s harder though, the reasons less compelling.
“When do you think you’ll leave?” he asks, and I don’t know whether he’s talking about Gormlaith or something else.
I turn to him, sigh, and shrug. I shake my head, and he looks at me sadly. He knows. He understands. These nuances, these gestures are unmistakable after all this time. A language that has grown over the last two decades.
“Do you love her?” I ask.
“Tessie,” he says, shaking his head.
“Do you love me?” I ask. This question is harder.
He frowns. Sighs. “We want different things,” he says. “We have always wanted different things.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
He looks sad. Like a boy.
“I was never enough for you,” he says.
“Of course you were,” I argue. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not the one who found someone else. Who fell in love with someone else.”
“Yes,” he says, smiling sadly. “You did.”
And I feel the tear, the rip down the center of me. The frayed edges.
The bartender watches us from the far end of the bar. I am crying now. Jake reaches over and grabs my hand, studies it like he’s seeing it for the first time. Like it’s something that belongs to him but that he’s forgotten.
“You want something that doesn’t exist,” he says. “That will never exist. No matter what I do, I can’t ever, ever give it to you. And I’m tired, Tess. I am so tired of failing.” His voice catches. And when I look up at him his eyes are full too.
“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. And I mean it. I am so full with remorse. With sorrow. Because I knew this. Felt his resistance and ambivalence. Yet I truly believed that it was something to be overcome. Something that he would simply get over. That once she was in his arms, in our lives, that all that reluctance would slip away. All along I knew this, yet I persisted. Insisted.
“Me too,” Jake says.
Someone opens the door, and the bar is filled momentarily with sunlight. It burns my eyes.
“I’m not coming home,” I say, and I don’t know whether it’s an assertion or a question until he nods. Agrees. No protestations. No pleading.
And just like that, it’s over. But instead of feeling angry or defeated, instead of clinging or raging, I feel only the tremendous release of finally, finally letting go. Of letting him go.
“Excuse me,” I say, leaning across the bar. “Can I get a couple of shots of Jameson?”
The bartender delivers the shots, and I push one in front of Jake, trying to lighten this moment. Treat this grim occasion as a cause for celebration. To offer him something to do with his hands. But he shakes his head.
“Come on,” I try, but already feel his silent disapproval, disappointment.
“I’m going back to the hospital,” he says, and then pauses. “Please, Tess. Don’t do this again.” He motions to the shot glasses.
And I feel ashamed, stupid. I consider nodding, leaving the shot glasses on the bar, and going with him. But that doesn’t seem like the right thing to do either.
“I’ll meet you back at the house later,” I say. “I’ll get a cab.”
“Okay,” he says, standing up. He plucks a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and sets it on the counter. “Thank you,” he says softly and kisses the top of my head.
And this, more than anything, hurts. As though my leaving him is a gift. Something he has been too afraid to ask for that has suddenly been presented to him, wrapped in a beautiful bow. My entire body aches.
After the door closes behind him, I drink both shots and study the Sox game on the TV. I leave the bar six beers and another shot later. When I stand up, the entire world seems to have tilted a bit. The bartender holds me up, righting me against the earth, which seems determined to spill me off its edges, and helps me into the waiting cab.
The cab drops me off at his parents’ house. Jake and his dad aren’t home yet. I let myself in with the key Shirley keeps under a flowerpot and stumble upstairs to the attic guest room where we stay when we are visiting. It is raining, and I fall asleep to the sound of the rain pattering against the roof.
A tangle of sheets, of legs. Our bodies knotted together in an intricate web. I remember the dewy filaments of us. The way we stretched and expanded. It felt both tenuous and, miraculously, invulnerable.
I loved you. Once.
It feels impossible to say this now without feeling both angry and sad. As though the truth of this has somehow been negated, as the years have been obliterated, by your simple, willful, careless act. And this infuriates me. Enrages me. How could you take this absolute, this historical truth (I loved you once) and make me wonder at its veracity? How can you call into question the one certainty I have left?
Do you remember our first apartment? The rust-ringed drain, the sticky floors? The pervasive drip, drip of the bathroom faucet, and the light? God, the light that fell through the one smoky stained glass window, that illuminated the ratty mattress we salvaged from the downstairs neighbor in a kaleidoscope of colors. I felt like a cat, curled into that spot of colored sunshine each morning. It was in this warm spot of light that I became privy to your secrets. The mundane details of your life, the habits somehow exotic to me. Even the way you rose out of bed so different from my own. The alarm startled you, but rather than slamming your hand against the snooze button, as I did, you shot up, your back erect. Like a soldier. Every movement had a purpose. There was an efficiency to you that thrilled me. A purposefulness. You’d sit on the edge of the bed, crack your back, first twisting to the right and then to the left. Then your neck. Crack, crack. I studied the architecture of your spine.
You showered and shaved.You unfolded the ironing board and ironed your clothes. I remember the hiss of steam, the delicious scent of starch.You were the one who made the coffee, prepared breakfast. I can still remember the sound of the blade on the wooden cutting board, the smell of strawberries. And while you readied yourself for the world, I would stay in that warm spot on the bed. Until the sun shifted, until the last possible moment. Only then would I rise. Grab the mug you’d set out for me on the counter, sit down at the small table where you’d have left me the paper.
You used to pack me a lunch. Do you remember that? I remember wrapping my robe around me and watching you from behind the newspaper, which I never really read, as you spread peanut butter on one slice of bread, jelly on the other. As you carefully sealed a plastic Baggie with crackers and cheese, apple slices, inside. I remember thinking, in those moments when you didn’t know I was watching, that someday you’d make a wonderful father.
Maybe it was then that I realized what I wanted. When it came to me, as surprising as a summer storm. When I understood what was missing. The one thing that would complete this portrait we’d begun to paint. A child. Maybe, a little girl.
Of
course I didn’t say anything then, not when everything was so new and fresh and fragile. But I knew. Though I also knew that I would need to be patient. That neither of us was ready yet. We needed stability in our careers. We needed to get married. We needed to buy a house. We needed to make money, save money. We were still so young.
But I loved you. The proof of this is in my silence. In my patience. In the moment when you gently extricated yourself from the web we’d spun, and I lay alone in a spot of sunlight content to wait. I thought then that we had all the time in the world. What I didn’t know then, couldn’t know then, was that love makes fools of us all.
Early in the morning, I tiptoe past Jake asleep on the couch. I leave a note asking him to call me, to keep me posted about his mom. To give her my love. On my way out the door, I look at Dick’s empty loafers sitting next to Shirley’s moccasins and feel a sadness so profound, it nearly brings me to my knees.
It’s really over, I think. Just like that. That aneurysm, that swollen pulsing thing, has burst. And now there is just the slow, awful bleed.
I grab a coffee and a sweet cake donut from the Dunkin’ Donuts on my way out of town. And as I drive back to the lake, it’s surprisingly not Jake that I’m thinking about. It’s not even Shirley on my mind. Instead, I keep checking my rearview mirror. Looking for that white truck. I wonder if Alfieri will be making a weekend visit to the lake. It’s Friday.
I drive straight back to Effie’s, but she and Plum are not there. Just like at Dick and Shirley’s, I know where to find the hidden key, but again I feel like a thief, like a trespasser, as I let myself into the empty camp.
The kitchen still carries the smells of morning: bacon, coffee, the sweet scent of soap and shampoo wafting from the bathroom. I can see that Effie has made a pile of ingredients on the counter (a shiny purple eggplant, three lemons, white pepper and cinnamon); I almost forgot that her friends Sam and Mena are coming tomorrow. I also forgot to tell Jake that I am finally going to get to meet Sam Mason.
This, I think, is grief: every little thing a reminder. I wonder how long it will take before I stop thinking about him. I smoked in college. When I finally quit, it took several months before I stopped thinking about it every day. And it wasn’t until the thoughts were gone that I realized I finally had it beat. But I’d only smoked for a few years. Jake and I have been together nearly twenty years now. The world has become a minefield of memories; I must be careful where I step.
Effie has left a note on the kitchen table.
Bookmobile this morning. If you get home by noon, meet us in town at the Miss Quimby Diner for lunch? My treat XOXO.
I am not sure what, if anything, I can do until I hear back from Strickland, and so I decide to go ahead and meet them in town. Maybe I can stop by and check in with Ryan.
The problem is that Strickland was not on duty when he found me outside the barn. He wasn’t supposed to be there either. And so in order to get a warrant, he’d have to come up with a pretty compelling explanation for why he and I were both trespassing on Lisa’s property at the same time. He asked me to give him a day to figure out the best way to proceed.
Part of me is grateful for the delay. Flashes of what I saw, or at least think I saw, in that barn are haunting me. If it was blood, then what happened in there? And where the hell did Lisa go? If she left, I wonder if Sharp has left too. And if they are gone, if they have the little girl, then what will happen to her?
It is hot and humid. The air is filled with electricity. There’s another storm coming, according to the weather reports. The sky feels swollen, ominous. It’s not raining yet, but I suspect it will be soon.
It’s only 11:30 when I get to the diner. I know how busy it gets at lunchtime though, so I secure a booth for us, tell the waitress that I’m meeting two other people, order an iced tea. Pretend to study the menu. I don’t need to though; I know it by heart.
I am hungover still from the whiskey. It hasn’t hit me until now. I am so grateful when the waitress brings over a large carafe of ice water with lemon slices suspended inside. I gulp down three glasses, feel the ice water cut through the nausea.
When Lieutenant Andrews walks into the diner, a shiver runs through my body, but I don’t know whether it’s from the ice water or something else. Thankfully, he doesn’t see me. He’s busy slapping some other local on the back, chatting up a storm like he’s running for mayor or something. I half expect him to pick up the baby that’s sitting in a high chair at the next booth over and take a selfie.
Finally, he sits down at the counter and picks up a newspaper someone has left behind. He shakes it out and starts to read, engrossed in the sports page, barely looking up when my waitress pours him a cup of coffee.
I stare out the window, study the sky, wonder if I have an umbrella in my car. And then all of a sudden, my heart stops.
The white truck. It’s parked across the street in front of the feed store. The dog’s head is sticking out of the passenger window. I struggle to see if anyone is sitting in the driver’s seat.
I reach into my purse and grab my wallet, pull out a five-dollar bill and leave it on the table.
I glance at my watch. 11:45. I need to get out of here without Andrews seeing me and before Effie and Plum show up, before Alfieri takes off again. I run down the wooden steps and into the dirt lot where my car is parked. I hear the rumble of thunder in the distance and feel a couple drops of cold rain on my bare arms. I duck into my car, watch and wait.
A couple of minutes later, the rain starts to come down hard, obscuring my view of the feed store parking lot across the street. I turn the key and start the windshield wipers. And then he emerges with a large bag of dog food, which he heaves into the back of his truck. As before, the back of the truck is still filled with landscaping gear. A lawn mower, a rake, a shovel, a half-dozen full lawn bags. It makes no sense. If he’s just arriving in Quimby, why would he already have bags full of clippings?
He climbs into the driver’s seat, and I slowly pull out of my parking spot. He backs the truck up, his tires spitting gravel in its wake, and I pull out after him.
I try to keep my distance as we drive through town. We pass the library just as Effie and Plum emerge from the heavy front doors. My heart thuds, hoping they don’t see me. Hoping they don’t try to stop me. But they don’t know I am back from Massachusetts yet, only that I would be back sometime today. Plum is carrying a bright purple umbrella, and she’s wearing matching rain boots. I am reminded again that the little girl is out there in only a tutu and a pair of rain boots, with a storm coming. And I think of Lisa, the ladybug rain boots inside her door. What the hell does she have to do with this? Where has she gone? And if she is gone, then why is Alfieri back here?
We come to the fork in the road that will take us on the route toward the lake. He idles at the stop sign, and then turns right. The way to the lake is to the left.
For a moment, I think about turning toward the lake. Forgetting about it. Going back to the camp. I consider just climbing into the bed in the guest cottage and sleeping off this hangover. Listening to the sound of the rain on the roof—now that I am sober, let all of this sink in. I have left my husband. I almost laugh at how peculiar that sounds. How strange and sad.
But my hands seem to have a will of their own, and I hear the tick-ticking of the signal before I realize that I have flicked the signal upward. Right. And then I am trailing behind him. Following him who knows where.
There are no other cars on the road, and it strikes me that all he has to do is look in the rearview mirror and see me and my New York plates to recognize me from that night. He had studied me at Hudson’s. And if he watched the local news or listened to the radio at all last weekend, he would have heard about me.
When Effie and I were teenagers, we used to ride our bikes out this way. There used to be a drive-in restaurant where we could buy maple creemees, greasy french fries. Other than that it’s all fields and farmland. Rolling hills spotted with ranch house
s. The occasional dilapidated barn. If you keep going, you’ll arrive at the road that will take you to the ski area. In high school we partied at the chairlift shack on Franklin Mountain.
The rain is coming down hard now, and the scenery is remembered rather than seen; my actual view is limited to the two half circles cleared by my windshield wipers, which are struggling to keep up with the rain.
Suddenly, the truck disappears, and I realize he has turned onto a dirt road. I worry at first that it’s a driveway, but then see it’s marked: BLACK FLY BOULEVARD. Vermonters and their wry sense of humor.
I slow down and give him time to think that I have passed before signaling right (for whom, I have no idea) and then turning down the road. It’s insane. I know this. But I have come this far. There’s no turning back now. And there literally is no turning back. The road is a rutted, dirt road, enclosed in a tunnel of foliage, barely wide enough for one car. If I wanted to leave, I’d probably have to throw the car in reverse and back up.
I drive slowly, second-guessing this decision even as I proceed.
The rain is rendering the road into a sea of mud. The leaves on the trees hang heavy, some of the branches low enough to scrape the hood of my car. I feel like I am being swallowed.
It dawns on me that there is the very distinct possibility that I will get stuck out here. This car is designed for city streets, for highways. What the fuck was I thinking? I reach over to my purse, which is sitting on the passenger seat. I grab my phone and turn it on. No signal. Of course not.
I keep driving slowly. The one thing that you can count on here is that all of these roads are connected, arterial. Labyrinthine but always leading somewhere. If you just keep driving, you’ll inevitably come to a road that is familiar. I remember bringing Jake here once when we started dating and getting lost. I’d been cavalier while he seemed slightly panicked. For an hour we bumped around on back roads, and then just as he was about to kill me for getting us lost, the road opened up and we were on pavement. On a main road that I knew would lead us, eventually, back to Quimby.
