Crossing Tinker's Knob

by Cooper, Inglath

  Sacrifice

  We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

  - Anaïs Nin

  Now

  It is easy to feel sorry for Aaron. In all that has happened, he’s been as much a victim as anyone, his only crime in this life that of loving my sister.

  By any definition, his offer to marry Becca and give Abby a name was a selfless one. But in truth, the only way he could ever have had her. I think he must have known this when he drove to Ohio that winter where Becca and I had gone to stay with Mama’s sister for the duration of my pregnancy.

  In most eyes, Aaron’s offer to marry her and give Abby a name could be considered an act of chivalry. It certainly made our coming back to Virginia an easier thing for Mama and Daddy to bear. I wonder though if he knew when he made that offer how great the cost would be. That the sacrifice would be his own heart.

  The truth is that she was never really his to have. I think he had to know this on some level, that there are things we are intuitively aware of, although we can’t let ourselves admit them out loud. Sometimes we want something so desperately that we never consider the possible outcome. Maybe it’s out of desperation that we force the pieces together, even when the joints don’t quite fit, so that in the end there is really no chance for permanence.

  40

  Too Far Gone

  Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together.

  - Author Unknown

  Now

  The clock on the end table by the sofa read nine-thirty. Matt had spent the past two hours sitting in front of his laptop under a pretense of losing himself in work. So far, the effort had been a wasted one. He couldn’t get his thoughts off the afternoon at the lake with Becca.

  He heard the car turn into the driveway, saw the lights flick off outside the front window of the house. Hope surged up inside him.

  He opened the front door of his grandmother’s house to find his wife poised in mid-knock, a look of uncertainty marring her normally confident features.

  “Hey,” she said, hands shoved inside the pockets of a light jacket.

  She normally wore her dark hair pulled back in a clip of some sort, but she’d left it down tonight. It hung against her shoulders, thick and glossy in the way he’d once liked for her to wear it. “Phoebe, what are you doing here?”

  She glanced away, as if gathering reserve strength for what she was about to say. “I came because I think you need someone, Matt.”

  He ran a hand down the back of his neck and tried to keep his irritation in check. “If I did, what would possibly make you think it would be you?” His voice reverberated with a low anger, and he instantly saw the imprint of it on her face, as if he had physically slapped her. He couldn’t deny wanting to hurt her, even as he hated himself for succumbing to the base instinct.

  “May I come in? I don’t have to stay, but can we at least talk?”

  Matt didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to look at her, much less listen to her. They’d attempted the irrelevant effort of explanation a number of times in past weeks, and for him, it had led nowhere that offered anything resembling enlightenment.

  Down the street a dog barked, and a door opened, then closed. His own sense of decency prevented him from immediately sending her on her way. “Five minutes,” he said, stepping back and waving her in.

  “Thank you, Matt,” she said, pressing a hand to his arm.

  Matt recoiled as if she had touched a hot iron to his skin. He saw the rejection register in her eyes, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He led her to the kitchen since it was the most neutral place in the house. He’d brought her home only once when they’d first started dating. Gran had already moved to the nursing home, and they’d spent a single night here. Phoebe complained about the aging appliances and the fact that there wasn’t even a microwave to heat up the cold pizza they’d picked up on the way. “How could anyone live without a microwave?” she’d asked.

  Matt had read enough about the radiating of food not to care if he ever subjected his own to it again. But Phoebe argued the path of convenience, and they agreed to disagree that night. As they had done so many other times.

  Ironically enough, this was the conversation that surfaced the day he’d stood in his office and finally put together the pieces of her affair. That evening after work, he’d walked straight into their kitchen and yanked the power cord to the oversize microwave out of the wall, then carried the thing out to the curb where it would later be rescued by two teenage boys on bicycles before it ever made it to the trash truck. Phoebe had only stared after him and never said a word about it. He wondered now if they’d done virtually that same thing for the duration of their marriage, dodged their differences with alternating concessions, trying too hard to be what the other wanted instead of what they really were.

  He leaned against the sink counter and folded his arms across his chest. “Why are you really here?”

  She hung her purse on the back of a chair and swallowed once, a hand to her throat. “May I have some water?”

  He opened a cabinet door, handed her a glass, which she filled from the faucet. She took a long sip and then set it on the counter and turned to face him. “I don’t expect you to ever forgive me for what I did, Matt. But people make mistakes. I made a mistake. My God, we’ve been married for ten years. Can’t you at least let me try to make up for it?”

  He looked at her for a long time before he said anything, a half-dozen answers that were nothing resembling kind springing to his tongue. But he bit them back, reaching for something that wouldn’t leave the taste of bitterness in his mouth once he’d said it.

  The refrigerator clicked on, humming an off-key note of advanced age. “I’ve tried to figure out the why,” he said finally. “Gone over and over the possibilities. There has to be a why. People don’t do things without motivation. But for the life of me, I haven’t been able to figure out yours.”

  “Matt—”

  “Subterfuge isn’t you, Phoebe,” he interrupted. “We both know it. If something is bothering you, you print it on a big flag and run it up the pole until it gets noticed.”

  “I waved that flag in front of your face for a very long time,” she said, her voice breaking at the edges. “You just didn’t see it.”

  Denial instantly sprang up and then wavered beneath a memory. A Saturday morning when Phoebe had gotten up earlier than usual and driven to Starbucks for coffee and chocolate cream cheese muffins. She’d brought them back upstairs to their bed on a large silver tray, but he’d already been up, planning to go in to work. When she’d offered to join him in the shower, he’d said he didn’t have time.

  Looking at her now, he felt a rush of guilt for the fact that there had been nothing urgent waiting for him at the office that morning. Memories of other mornings, other nights when she’d made similar efforts scattered through his consciousness like marbles on a wood floor. And under the onslaught, his own indignation suddenly wilted.

  She stared at him and then shook her head. “We were both to blame, Matt,” she said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “It’s too far gone, Phoebe.”

  She stared at him, not letting her eyes leave his. “Is it?”

  The refrigerator kicked off, the room going suddenly silent. He didn’t answer. Couldn’t have said in that moment why he didn’t.

  She moved close and splayed her hand in the center of his chest, staring at the back of it as if she could see through it to his beating heart. She looked up then. “Matt,” she said. She leaned in and kissed him, the touch more question than promise.

  When he didn’t pull away, she deepened the kiss. He let her, all the anger draining out of him, and in its place a deep-rooted weariness. He let his wife kiss him while thoughts of that afternoon with Becca taunted him. He’d never really left her.

  He knew the futility of the path they’d started down
by meeting at the lake house, had seen it written clearly in her regretful eyes when she’d told him she had to go. It wasn’t that he thought she was wrong. After all, what kind of idiot saw the land-mines-ahead sign posted clearly in front of him and just kept walking as if there were no possibility of one exploding beneath his feet?

  He slid his arms around Phoebe’s waist and pulled her to him, replacing her initiative with an unyielding resolve to put himself back in a place he understood. Even if it wasn’t a perfect place, his heart had taken this hit and survived. He understood this place.

  With Becca, he’d taken a hit of an altogether different magnitude, and that, he had thought he wouldn’t survive. That was a place he couldn’t go again.

  He bent and slipped an arm around the back of Phoebe’s legs, lifting her without letting his mouth leave hers. He carried her to the stairs and then up, until they reached the door to his room. He’d left a lamp on earlier, and the circle of light touched her face and the tears in her eyes.

  He placed her on the bed, and she sat up, her legs over the side. She reached out and began to unbutton his shirt, her fingers clumsy at first, and then finding a steady rhythm. When the last one was undone, she pushed the shirt from his shoulders and unbuckled his belt. Becca’s face flashed across his vision. Becca, laughing. Becca, leaving. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned down, one hand on either side of Phoebe. He kissed her again, while she unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged out of it.

  On the bed, he stretched out alongside her and slid his palm into the curve of her stomach. She made a soft moaning sound and changed the pace of the kiss to something far more urgent. He followed her, removing the rest of her clothes and then his own. And it was only after they were both lying naked side by side that it hit him in a sudden swoop of realization that they were both trying to fight their way back to a place of understanding.

  He pulled away and looked down at her, pushing the hair from her face with a sudden tenderness marked by acceptance and regret.

  She began to cry then, tears sliding down her cheeks and onto the white sheets beneath them.

  He reached out a thumb and rubbed one away. “Shh.”

  “He asked me to marry him,” she said.

  Matt dropped back against the pillow, one arm across his forehead. “And we’ve both just figured out your answer.”

  “Oh, Matt. If this could work—”

  “But it can’t,” he said.

  “It can’t.”

  They lay there for a while longer, quiet. Finally, Phoebe got up and slid her clothes on. She stood at the side of the bed, buttoning her blouse without looking at him. She slipped her shoes on and then sat down on the edge of the mattress, running the back of her hand across the center of his chest.

  “For you, the only why that really matters, Matt, is yours. And I suspect the answer is here in this place. That’s where your heart is. I think it always has been.” She leaned in and kissed the side of his face. “I hope you figure out what it is. I really do.”

  She got up then, and without looking back, walked out of the room and down the stairs, the front door clicking open and then closed in a sound as defining as it was final.

  41

  Promises

  Choices are the hinges of destiny.

  - Pythagoras

  Now

  On the morning following her afternoon with Matt at the lake, Becca carried Emmy’s breakfast tray upstairs to her room. She opened the door to find her sister curled up in a tight ball at the center of her bed, quietly sobbing.

  “Emmy?” Becca set the tray down on the nightstand and slid across the mattress to put a hand on her shoulder. “What is it? Are you all right?”

  Emmy stiffened at her touch, but did not answer. Becca lifted Emmy’s chin and looked into her eyes, red-rimmed and swollen, as if she hadn’t slept at all.

  Becca went to the closet, pulled out a dress and shoes, went back to the bed, and helped her sister sit up. “Come on, Emmy. I think we need to go see the doctor today.”

  Emmy followed each of Becca’s gentle instructions, putting her arms into the sleeves of her dress, her head hanging as Becca helped her with her shoes. All the while, she cried as if someone had opened a valve inside her, as if she simply could not stem the flow.

  The door to the room opened, and Martha stepped inside, assessing the two of them and then closing it quickly behind her. “What is it, Becca?”

  “Emmy needs to see Dr. Hayes,” she said, resolve in her voice.

  “Becca. I think you’re overreacting. This will pass.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “And you don’t know that it won’t.”

  Becca turned then, unable to keep her voice even when she said, “How many days should we wait? A week? A month? She’s suffering, Mama. She needs help.”

  “And have the doctors really helped her the other times? This medication you insist she needs. Has it done any good at all? Has it helped her have a normal life?”

  “There is no shame in needing help, Mama.” Becca reached for calm, opening a dresser drawer and retrieving Emmy’s brush before looking at her mother again. “Sometimes, the medications need to be changed,” she said, repeating what Dr. Hayes had told her the other times when this had happened. “Sometimes, they stop working.”

  Martha started to say something, then pressed her lips together, a look of utter weariness coming over her.

  For a moment, Becca’s determination softened, and she questioned herself, not for the first time. “Will you help me get her downstairs?”

  But Martha didn’t answer, instead turning and leaving the room.

  “I’ll be right back,” Becca said to Emmy, going down the hall to Abby’s room. She knocked once, then stepped inside. Abby was already dressed and brushing her teeth.

  “It’s Emmy,” Becca said. “She’s not doing so well this morning. I think her medicine may need to be changed.”

  “You’re taking her to the doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Abby said.

  “You have school today, honey.”

  “I can miss it. It’s no big deal.”

  Becca reached for Abby’s hand, squeezed it once. “We’ll be fine, okay? I just need some help getting her downstairs.”

  With each of them on either side of Emmy, they eased their way out of the house and into the truck. Emmy sat where they put her, the seat belt secured at her waist, tears still streaming freely down her face.

  Becca turned to Abby. “Want me to drop you at school?”

  Abby glanced away and then back again, something close to apology in her voice. “Beau’s picking me up this morning.”

  “Ah,” Becca said. “Abby, your father still doesn’t know about this.”

  “No,” Abby said.

  Becca sighed once, leaning in to kiss Abby’s forehead. “You know this won’t be easy.”

  “I know.”

  A look of understanding passed between them.

  “He’s really important to you,” Becca said.

  “He is.”

  “Sometimes we don’t get the chance to remake our choices. Be sure, okay?”

  Abby leaned in and pressed her cheek to Becca’s chest, the same as she had as a little girl. Becca put a hand to the back of her head, wishing for the capacity to offer her the guarantees and reassurance for which she was silently asking.

  Becca glanced inside the truck at her sister and then back at Abby. In her eyes, she saw the same question she’d asked at Abby’s age.

  “Sometimes, it isn’t enough, sweetheart,” Becca said. “It just isn’t enough.”

  ∞

  Then

  THE REMAINING WEEKS of the summer flew by.

  Becca grew to dread going to bed at night, knowing the next morning would bring them one day closer to Matt’s leaving for school.

  At first, they just didn’t talk about it, letting it loom like some enormous genie hovering above them, r
eady to zap the happiness they’d found with one another into the starkest kind of loneliness.

  But one Saturday night when they’d driven into Roanoke to eat at a restaurant downtown, Becca talked less than normal, leaving most of her sandwich and chips on her plate. Matt had tried several different threads of conversation, but she heard the heaviness in his voice and realized he was feeling the same things she was feeling.

  He reached across the table and took her hand, squeezing once. “Hey,” he said, “the summer’s not over yet.”

  “I know,” she said, trying to smile.

  He signaled a waitress and paid their bill, then led her outside to his grandmother’s station wagon, holding her door and waiting until she slid inside before closing it.

  He drove down Jefferson Street, taking a left and crossing the bridge that led to Mill Mountain. They took the winding road to the top and pulled into the parking lot behind the city’s well-known landmark star.

  “I’ve never seen it this close,” Becca said. “It’s so tall.”

  “Close to ninety feet if I remember right,” Matt said.

  She leaned forward to look out the windshield at the view of the Roanoke valley below. “It’s beautiful from here.”

  Matt turned in his seat, touched her face with his hand. “Hey.”

  She looked at him then, biting her lip to keep from losing the composure she’d worked so hard to maintain all night.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said.

  “Oh, Matt,” she said, shaking her head.

  He reached for her then, folding her into his arms and pressing his face against her neck. “It really is. It’s up to us, you know.”

  She let herself take comfort in his embrace, tried to believe it was that simple. But doubt had crept its way into her every thought these past weeks, and she could no more shake it now than she could turn herself into something other than what she was. She pulled back to look at him. “Are we kidding ourselves about this?”