Catherine disappears into the bedroom, and Mark brings the food and flowers outdoors. He’s pouring wine into her glass when she joins him.
“Looks professional.” Catherine takes a seat.
“I have many talents you don’t know about.”
Mark serves them both. Catherine is acting more engaged but not saying much. To break the silence, he says, “I was talking to Giulia. Her nephew was here for the day.”
“I think I saw him as I was driving out.”
“Yeah. He has some kind of windsurfing thing he does. I asked Giulia what it was, and she said, ‘Eh, he enjoys this, like all the lovers of the wind.’ Funny turn of phrase.”
“It is. It’s a little bit off somehow, yet you know what she means.”
They eat in silence except for a few compliments, seemingly genuine, from Catherine. When they’re through, Mark says, “Let’s leave this and take our wine and the candles—I put matches in my pocket here somewhere—and go sit over there and watch the sunset.”
Catherine moves the pair of lounge chairs to face west. “What an evening. Look at that color on the water.” Smudges of burgundy shimmer on the surface of the sea like blood spilled from the ruddy face of the sun.
Mark sits in the chair next to her and sighs, stretching his legs out, crossing his ankles and folding his hands behind his head. As the low, wispy clouds grow more bloodshot, everything takes on an eerie coppery flush. “Cath?”
“Mmm?”
“We can’t keep going like this. Not talking. It’s been like living with a shadow the last few days. Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”
Catherine sips her wine and holds the nearly empty glass toward the sun. Rotating the stem between her fingers, she opens and closes one eye, then the other. Tiny red pixies of light play on her cheeks and nose. Abruptly, they look to Mark like spatters of blood. He squeezes his eyes shut. When he reopens them, the gory droplets are sparkles again.
“Are you never going to talk to me again?”
She puts the glass down. “No. It’s not that. I’m not trying to freeze you out or anything. I just . . .” She turns her head away and appears lost in thought.
“Don’t stop there.”
“It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about why. I mean, I accept that you’ve seen Nico now. I don’t think that changes the fact that he’s a ghost. But I don’t get why you would do what you say you did as a joke. It makes no sense. You’re not cruel, and that would be such a cruel thing to do, I—”
“I tried to explain—”
“I don’t see you making sadistic jokes. But I don’t really see you claiming that you did if you didn’t. That’s every bit as heartless. So, I have to accept that one way or the other, you’ve lied, and one way or the other, you’ve been cruel.”
The sun is almost set now, and Mark lights the pair of candles he has placed on the low table between them, the slight tremor in his hand a remnant of his shock at the sight of Catherine’s blood-flecked face. No longer painted by the dramatic sunset, Catherine’s skin now appears monochrome in the dim flicker of candlelight. Mark lowers his hands to his sides and grips the chair’s armrests. “You’re right. I wouldn’t play a stupid, hurtful joke like that. And I didn’t.” He can’t read anything on her face. Has she understood him? “I did see Nico—both those times. I didn’t deny it as a joke, but because—I said it because you were growing so attached to him. And I was straight-up afraid of losing you. Jealous, maybe? I don’t know. That sounds petty. And maybe it was.”
He waits, her silence unnerving him more and more by the minute. “I didn’t plan it. The thought of—well, of lying like that—it never crossed my mind. I just did it. Like a knee-jerk reaction to a sudden danger I felt—to you and to me. I didn’t want to lose us, Catherine. I did it because I cared so much about you. Care—I still care.”
Catherine draws her knees up under her chin and wraps her arms around her legs. “You always come to a new place and expect to find things. But not something like this.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What you said—it’s like finding a different Mark.”
She sounds sad, not angry as he’d been expecting. And he feels checked, uncertain of how to make matters better, not worse. He waits, but Catherine doesn’t look at him, much less speak. “Is that all you can say?”
“I think you know I care about you too. About us. I’ve loved you since about fifteen minutes after we first met. I can’t even tell you how much I want to believe that you did what you did out of caring for me. For us.”
“Believe it, then.”
“God, Mark. Don’t try to make it sound simple. As if this is something I’m doing. Something I can choose to fix or wish away. When you ‘came clean’ the other day, now I know it was only partway. You kept some of the story to yourself. And that’s the good interpretation. Better than the other—that you make it up as you need it.”
“Catherine, please, I swear. You have to believe me. I’ve put it all out there now.”
“How can I believe that? How will I not always wonder what else you’re either hiding or ready to invent to suit your purposes? Honestly, I’m lost. Some days, I make myself try to ignore it. I pretend that there hasn’t been this gigantic earthquake in our lives. I—I act happy to be happy, you know? Because I want it to go away. But other days . . .” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I feel like a widow. The loss—it’s—it’s devastating. I know then that I can’t really wish it away.”
“I got us into this. What can I do to get us out? Please—tell me.”
“So you can make up a story you think I want to hear?” She sighs. “I wonder, did I ever really know you? I can’t even tell anymore.”
Mark opens his eyes to feel Catherine stroking his cheek, exploring his face. Even in the total darkness, his first instinct is to smile, but then his stomach drops, and his smile ebbs away. Something is off. How can her hand be reaching from the right when she’s sleeping to his left?
“Cath?” He thinks he’s spoken, but he can’t be sure. Lying perfectly still on his back, he tries again. “Catherine?” This time, the memory lingers in his throat. He lifts his left arm and makes a slow, cautious pass through the space between them. He touches nothing, finds no arm reaching over his body.
Cold sweat erupts on his neck, chest, and face. The exploring hands are on his mouth now, touching his lips, covering his nose a whisper too long to be comfortable. These are small hands. They bring a whiff of the outdoors, of the sea and the earth—the salty, unwashed scent of childhood. Nico? He’d locked the door himself before bed. Nico couldn’t have gotten in. It must be a dream, that’s all. He’ll wake up soon enough. But he doesn’t, and the hands continue their fierce intrusion.
His attempt to sit up is met with a rush of movement, and now there’s a weight on his chest. Oh God, what if this is a heart attack? Or a stroke? It’s as if all the air has bled from the room. Gasping, suffocating, he struggles, and a warm dampness appears on his cheeks. He must be crying. But now, a familiar wet-coin odor reaches his nostrils. Blood. It’s blood. He squelches an overpowering urge to vomit as the hands slowly, slowly, slowly paint his face with the warm, sticky liquid. Again he tries calling out to Catherine but can’t. He howls, but no sound comes. The blood is in his mouth now, and in his eyes and nose. His internal frenzy and outward thrashing grow as leaden terror settles itself in his heart. He feels gagged, bound, blindfolded, and is about to admit defeat—to whom? for what?—when, without warning, the hands stop and the weight lifts from his chest. Bursting from the bed, he fights his way against nothing to the bathroom, where he scrabbles for the light switch and runs to the mirror. His eyes are grotesque with terror and panic, and sweat coats his face and neck, forming runnels on his cheeks and forehead. Th
e moisture soaks his T-shirt. But there is no blood. Was it a nightmare? A hallucination? Still breathing like a drowning man, he looks out into the bedroom. In the shaft of light from the bathroom, he can see that, at least now, no one is there, no one but Catherine, who is still sound asleep. He closes the door without a sound, slips to the bathroom floor, laces his fingers in his hair, and weeps.
Sitting across the breakfast table from Catherine, Mark wonders how he must look to her these days. He doesn’t even recognize himself in the mirror anymore, especially after the horrible event of a few nights ago. “Event”—that’s all he can bring himself to call it. Not that he ever plans to talk about it.
Catherine puts aside the letter she’s been reading. “Stefano says everything is moving along. It’s looking set for next summer.”
“Good.” He almost said it will be nice for her to be back here, but then Catherine would launch into her speech about how she’s not leaving. They haven’t talked about it much. They haven’t talked about anything much. She’s suspicious of whatever Mark says anyway, and her main focus has been—of course—Nico. The boy hasn’t been back to see Catherine all week, which is fine with Mark but appears to be killing Catherine.
“Mark?”
“Hmm?”
“When was the last time you shaved? Are you out of blades or something?”
Mark rubs his chin and cheeks, and the stiff bristles scratch his fingers. “Out? No. I still have a lot of what I brought.” In fact, the box is still at least half-full. With a shudder, he fights off the momentary image of running his finger across the steely edges of a phalanx of blades, his flesh shredding to threads, blood pooling in the bottom of the box. This isn’t the first impromptu gruesome thought that has come into his head recently, another reason to get out of this place, the sooner the better.
“Are you growing a beard, then?”
For some reason, these questions are getting to him, and there’s no reason they should be. “I’m taking a break. Taking advantage of a week at home. What’s the big deal?” The short answer, really, is “Who gives a shit?” but maybe Catherine does. She is showing some interest in him now. That’s refreshing.
“Mark, you’re sure there isn’t something else—some other reason?”
“What’s with all the questions? Are there a lot more? Because maybe I should get an attorney before we go on.”
“I just wanted to be sure there isn’t . . . You seem not yourself. Depressed, maybe.”
“I simply haven’t felt like bothering. OK?”
“Well, would you mind shaving, then? For me? Because, I’m afraid when Nico comes back, he might not recognize you and get scared before I can explain.”
Mark laughs—too loudly, he can tell. Catherine looks like a puritan in a porn shop, a thought that only makes him laugh more.
“Mark, stop!”
He slams both palms on the table, causing Catherine to jump. “OK. No more laughing.” The crazy man promising not to laugh at the crazy woman. If their life doesn’t qualify as a shambles, what does?
“I’m glad you find it all so amusing.”
Mark leans back in his chair. “Well, maybe it was that I mistook your concern for Nico as concern for me.”
“I am concerned about you, but I don’t know what to say anymore.”
“But you’re more concerned about Nico.”
“Not more. I’m worried about him. That’s all. It’s been—”
“I know, I know, I know. Nearly a week.”
“What if something happened to him?”
“Now that’s funny. What can happen to a ghost? Didn’t it all pretty much happen already?”
Catherine looks away.
“Do you realize all you talk about is Nico? A kid who had nothing better to do for a while, and now he’s gone back to his friends. Let it go, Catherine.”
“He’s important to me.”
“Important. He’s important. Cooking is important. Baking, knitting, dressing like some Sicilian peasant from the eighteen hundreds—all important. Me? That’s a laugh. I don’t have any idea what the hell is wrong with you. I don’t know what happened to the sophisticated woman I married. You know, the one I could take with me to meet important people around Italy without being embarrassed. The one who would fit in, not stand out like a sore thumb and talk about nothing but her latest backward obsession.”
“I know you’re angry, Mark. And depressed. I see that. I’m not even going to engage with you about what you just said. Maybe later when—”
“But you’d talk about little fucking Nico any old time, right?”
“We can help him.”
Mark stands up, walks to the couch, and drops down, lying flat on his back, holding both sides of his throbbing head. “We? Where are you getting this ‘we’ from? This is one hundred percent about you. I want nothing to do with it.”
“I know you won’t feel that way as soon as you get to know him.”
Mark walks back to the table in a few long strides. He leans down, palms on the surface, and looks straight into Catherine’s eyes. “I will never change my mind. And here’s why.” He makes no attempt to control the ugliness of his anger. “You haven’t seen Nico all week? Well, you know what? I have. Several times. Mostly outside, but once he was in the barn, and you didn’t even know. Once—” He straightens up and paces. “Once he was in our bedroom.”
Catherine gasps and covers her mouth with both hands.
“And what’s worse? I’ve seen him all over the fucking place ever since that first day in the barn, when I said he wasn’t there.” Even he can hear his tone playing around the edges of raving. “He must not have liked it, because he has followed me every-damn-where I’ve gone. Riposto, Etna, Segesta, Marsala—oh, and Erice. He was all over Erice.”
Catherine hasn’t moved. “He stands there and looks at me with that stare. It’s threatening, Catherine. I don’t know who or what he is, but I am so damn strung out about it, I can’t even sleep anymore.” He pushes his hair back from his forehead, blotting sweat with his sleeve. “He’s stalking me. Your sweet little waif is stalking me.”
Jumping up from the table, Catherine stares at Mark, taking several steps backward. The look on her face is one of recognition—recognition and repulsion. Buy why? She turns and walks out of the house. Mark drops into a chair at the table and holds his head in his hands, shaking like a man on a five-day drunk.
THIRTY-ONE
Seth
March 1, 1993
Dear Notebook,
You’ve been great. I’ve been kind of dramatic sometimes, but you never laughed. Thanks. But I’m through. There’s nothing left that I want or care about. Including myself.
I’m really pretty calm about it so I know it’s the right decision. I never did go back to Dr W but that wouldn’t have helped. I called after hours today and left a message. Press 2 to leave a non-urgent message—that struck me funny. Just made for someone like me. He won’t hear the message until tomorrow and it will be too late but I wanted him to know none of this is his fault. Nothing can fix a loser. Maybe if anybody cares they’ll give you to him, Notebook, and he’ll read this and see how badly I screwed everything up.
Speaking of being a loser, this is almost funny. I decided to do it today because it would be exactly one year since the fire. February 29, 1992. But you know what I didn’t think of? There is no February 29 this year. Only in leap years. So I even managed to fuck that up. Well what difference does it really make anyway? Just a little less drama.
I sent Catherine a letter so she knows it wasn’t her fault either. I sent it to her house because hell I don’t know they probably monitor her campus mail and it wouldn’t even get there to her. I said that backwards. Get to her there. Yeah, I�
�ve had a lot of scotch. Pretty good scotch and in a few minutes those pills I have left from Dr W are going to be put to good use.
What a meaningless little turd of a life I lived. And I really fixed it up at the end. I can’t even tell anymore what the fuck happened. Maybe Catherine’s husband—Mark the Arkitekt ha ha—maybe he’s right. Maybe I did stalk him and don’t remember. Just how screwed up is that? But even if he made all that part up I still blew it big time with Catherine and school. And let’s not forget my family. Better to shuffle off now before I meet someone else to take down. Or find another way to make a total ass of myself.
So, Notebook, this is it. It’s been real.
Seth
Total since I started keeping track
Plane crashes: 1067
Natural disasters: 5078
Other disasters: 1638 (7 they say from some bomb in the World Trade Center)
Fucked Up Life: 1
THIRTY-TWO
Catherine
Kayaking here has dissipated some of the adrenaline surge from the morning’s revelations. “He’s stalking me.” Mark’s very words. Familiar words. Does he know that? She’s not sure he knows where the truth begins and ends anymore. She is sure he’s doing his best to make her feel she has no choice but to leave Nico and this incredible place behind for the sake of Mark’s safety. He’s resorted to guilt, sure that it would work because—as she now understands for the first time—it had worked before.
When Seth had continued to send letters and gifts, Catherine told Mark she planned to talk to Seth face-to-face. In his last letter, he’d said he was in therapy, and she worried that he felt wronged, given that she’d cut him off so abruptly. Maybe he needed to work something out with her to help him move on and progress toward getting well. But Mark had been opposed. Seth could be dangerous, he’d said, and Catherine should keep her priorities straight, not taking risks for someone she knew almost nothing about. Mark had seemed put out when she wasn’t convinced, so she’d promised to think it over before doing anything, but she’d never gotten the chance.
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