Inside

by Alix Ohlin

  The drive to Brantford wound through farm country, with silver silos and red barns and cows here and there. The day was gray and drizzly. Grace felt a tightening in her chest, her heart seized by the dreary prettiness of the landscape. She crossed from Quebec into Ontario, the farms neat and well tended, the fruit trees black in the rain. Things Tug would never see again.

  Feeling sick, she stopped at a gas station and let her stomach empty itself out, as if some interior part of her wanted to escape. Afterward, she sat in the car with the wipers on, their rhythmic sweep soothing her. It was Saturday. There was nowhere she had to be.

  Tug’s parents were listed in the phone book, and she pulled up in front of a two-story house, red brick with black shutters, as well kept as the farms she’d passed. His father was a retired chemist; his mother had never worked outside the home. In the years Tug had been abroad, they had always stayed in Brantford, rarely traveling. “They never wanted to see the world,” Tug once said, and the disapproval in his voice rang clear. Now that she’d arrived, Grace was tempted to turn around and drive back to Montreal. Maybe all she’d wanted was to see the childhood home of a man she’d loved, to know that it still existed, some remnant of him in the world.

  A woman in a yellow rain slicker walked her dog past the car, frowning in the few seconds she looked at Grace. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where you could just sit in a car without attracting notice. Everybody here must know everybody else, and which cars they drove. Still, she didn’t move. In the warmth of her car, an exhaustion came over her that was strangely close to contentment. Was this enough? Had she already gotten what she’d come for? She turned on the radio, leaned back in her seat, and closed her eyes. The CBC was playing opera, and a woman’s voice tripped light and high through an aria Grace didn’t recognize.

  She could sleep here a few minutes, she thought, before going home.

  The sound of a door closing made her open her eyes. And there was Tug’s mother, a little old lady stepping down the cobbled pathway that led from the house to the street. Wearing a dark red raincoat, her head bent against the rain, she was clutching her purse to her stomach as if she, too, felt sick. She was heading for the maroon Honda that Grace had parked behind, but with her head down and the rain starting to fall harder, she wasn’t likely to notice her sitting there. Then the front door opened again and another woman came out—this one blond, pretty, and much younger—and Grace’s stomach bucked again. She had seen Marcie at the funeral service too.

  As if she could hear Grace’s thoughts, Marcie glanced down the street at her car. Barely seeming to register the rain, she looked right at Grace, her expression indecipherable. All Grace could think was how pretty she was.

  When the wipers swished, clearing the windshield, Marcie’s eyes met Grace’s, and she stepped off the path, walked over to the car, and knocked on the driver’s-side window. And Grace—feeling as though this were a dream—rolled it down.

  “I recognize you,” Marcie said. “You were at the service.”

  Grace nodded, her tongue gummy and thick. Marcie was waiting for her to say something, her eyebrows knitted.

  Swallowing, Grace said, “I was a friend of Tug’s.”

  Marcie grimaced. “I’ll bet,” she said.

  It wasn’t what Grace was expecting. “Excuse me?” she said.

  The other woman glanced at Tug’s mother’s car; the engine was on, the taillights glowing red in the rain. When she looked back at Grace, she shrugged in a strangely airy way. “You know,” she said, “my husband had a lot of friends.”

  Grace didn’t know what this meant, and didn’t want to, either. “I see,” she said softly.

  “Oh, do you?” Marcie was still standing there bent over, her head down at Grace’s level, a position that couldn’t possibly have been comfortable. Her cheeks were flushed. Rain was dripping into the car. “That’s good,” she went on. “I’m so glad you see.”

  Grace flushed now herself. In her grief over Tug, in her need to see where he came from and trace his roots in the world, she had forgotten that those roots were, of course, planted in other people. “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” she said.

  “Right,” Marcie said.

  Grace wondered what she was doing here, and where she was going with Tug’s mother. Tug had told her that when the marriage had fallen apart she’d gone to live with her parents in Hudson.

  “I’ll be going,” Grace said.

  “So soon?” said Marcie. “We just met.”

  “What?” Grace said.

  “Did you come from Montreal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Grace had no idea how to answer. All she felt was embarrassment and regret. The woman’s voice was taut with anger, and her eyes burned feverishly. She kept staring at some spot just to the right of Grace. It was as if she knew that Tug had once sat in the passenger seat, slumped against the door.

  “I think I’d better go,” Grace said, waiting for Marcie to step back so she could roll up the window and back away. But instead, Marcie moved her head even closer, and Grace could see that her eyes were ringed with dark circles or maybe smeared mascara. In front of them, the taillights on the other car faded, and Tug’s mother got out and walked over.

  Marcie straightened up. “Joy,” she said with a bright, false smile, “this woman is a friend of Tug’s.”

  Grace was mortified. She hadn’t really planned what she might say to Tug’s parents—if anything—but whatever fantasy existed in her head, this wasn’t it. A sick feeling washed over her like the sudden onset of flu, and she clenched her abdominal muscles and prayed to be delivered from this moment. As the older woman bent down, her face next to Marcie’s, Grace turned her head and retched onto the passenger seat.

  “Oh, dear,” said Tug’s mother. “You’d better come in.”

  Fifteen minutes later she was sitting on the sofa in Tug’s childhood home, cradling a cup of tea in her hands while three strangers sat around her in postures of fake repose. It was pouring outside, the rain loudly lashing the windows, and Grace was nauseous and hot. No one spoke. Tug’s father, a tall, rangy man with short-cropped white hair, kept glancing longingly toward the den, where an afternoon hockey game was playing on TV, the sound of the crowd rising and ebbing in the background.

  Grace looked around the room. She couldn’t imagine Tug sitting on this furniture or running through this room as a child. The couches were dark pink and flowered, and white vases sprouting plastic flowers sat on doilies on the side tables. Everything smelled of Lysol.

  One night, in bed, Grace had told Tug about her divorce, and about how Mitch had moved his things out of their apartment so quickly and thoroughly that she’d felt like she was being robbed. When she saw his frantic packing she resorted to stealing a few small things from his boxes—a photograph of him as a child, a teapot that had belonged to his mother—just so she wouldn’t feel like the entire world they’d built together was disintegrating completely. And then he put his stuff in storage and went off to the Arctic, leaving no phone or contact information, and she felt doubly bereft: both divorced and abandoned. Tug had shrugged. “When you realize you’re in the wrong place,” he’d said, “it makes sense to get out.”

  His mother now peered at her. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some aspirin?”

  “No, thank you,” Grace said.

  The politeness was epidemic. At least with Tug’s parents. Marcie sat in an armchair and glowered, her legs crossed tightly.

  Grace had already apologized several times, and now sat with her head swimming, wishing she had stayed at home. “Do you have any saltines?” she said.

  “Let me check, dear,” Tug’s mother said. She practically ran into the kitchen, delighted to have a mission, and Grace could hear her opening and closing cupboards. Joy was a short, round woman with kindly green eyes. Tug resembled her more than his father—the same curly hair, the same sloped shoulders. Amid the nausea, another physical pa
ng coursed through Grace’s chest. She missed his body, the warmth of his arm flung over her in sleep, the smell of his hair and skin.

  Joy came back with a plate of Peek Freans cookies fanned decoratively on a plate. “Will this do?” she said. “I’m afraid we don’t have any crackers.”

  “Perfect,” Grace said. “I’m so sorry about this.”

  “We told you to stop saying that,” Tug’s father said gently. For all his kindness he was also appraising her, keeping his distance, much as Tug always had. He waited while she slowly ate a cookie, forcing it down. “So,” he said once she’d finished, “how did you know him?”

  Grace bowed her head. Of course she would tell them everything; that was the price of being here. “I met him skiing one day, on the mountain. We became … friends.”

  Marcie sighed, a long, sad whistle.

  Tug’s mother ignored her. She was sitting very straight in her chair, her hands cupped together in her lap. Her dignity was immense; so was her pain. “My son was very fond of skiing,” she said.

  “Yes,” Grace said. “We went a few times later, too. This winter.”

  “You were with him,” Joy said slowly. “This winter.”

  “Yes,” Grace said again.

  At this Tug’s mother and Marcie exchanged a look.

  Grace was deeply at sea, lacking any footing in the conversation, and wished desperately that she hadn’t come. She blamed Tug for not telling her much about his family, for being so mysterious, for being gone. Yet seeing his parents in front of her, the crazy quilt of features that had combined to produce him, was for a moment like having him in the room, and she was glad of that.

  “Well, now we know,” Marcie said.

  She wasn’t speaking to Grace, who answered anyway. “Know what?”

  Marcie’s gaze was a slicing blade. “Where my husband was before he died,” she said.

  In the silence following this remark, Grace sat perfectly still on the sofa, as if this might lessen her emotional exposure. But she couldn’t stop herself from eyeing the front door, trying to plan her exit. What had she wanted from all this? Not a confrontation with his family. She’d had so little of Tug, his presence in her life had been so glancing, that maybe she just wanted a picture of him as a child. Some tiny memento like that. She was like a beggar at this house, panhandling for loose change.

  Just then a clicking sound came down the hallway and the Dachshund she had met that first night came ambling into the room, blinking his eyes drowsily. He made straight for Grace’s lap and settled himself there, just as he had in Tug’s apartment, and Grace began to cry quietly, small unstoppable tears.

  “Oh, dear,” Joy said again.

  “Sparky, come here,” Marcie said sharply.

  The Dachshund slowly abandoned Grace’s lap and padded over to his owner.

  Was Marcie living here? Grace felt she had no right to ask any questions. With an internal shrug, she let go of everything, including whatever dignity she had left. “I’m sorry I came here,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I just … ”

  She could feel Marcie’s eyes on her, their almost palpable heat.

  “I don’t know anybody else who knew him,” she said.

  When she looked up, Tug’s mother was crying. There was so much pain in the room, and so little to say about it.

  “So you thought you’d come rub my face in it, is that it?” Marcie said, her voice raspy with anger.

  “Marcie,” Tug’s father said.

  “Come on, Will. She shows up here looking for sympathy? The girlfriend? What am I supposed to do, give her a hug?”

  “Let’s just stay calm,” Joy said, smiling weakly.

  Grace couldn’t imagine that he had come from this place, the sad-eyed man of the world she’d known; his cynicism, his lust to see the world, his practicality, all of it seemed totally alien to this house of doilies and chintz. Which, she supposed, was as good an explanation as any of how people became who they were. In reaction to the homes where they were raised.

  “When you came and wanted to spend time here, Marcie,” Tug’s father said, “we didn’t question it.”

  Marcie’s eyes flashed around the room. “Are you comparing me to her?”

  “Let’s have some more tea,” Joy said.

  Shaking her head, Grace stood up. With a couple of cookies in her stomach she felt better, stronger, finally able to take command of the situation. “I’ll leave now,” she said, then turned to Marcie and looked her, with some difficulty, in the eye. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  She walked to the front door and opened it, but then Joy was beside her, putting a small, almost weightless hand on her arm. “Please,” she said. “Tell me how it was, at the end.”

  It turned out that there were things all of them wanted to know, gaps they all needed to fill. Though of course no one could fill the greatest gap, that of Tug’s absence from their present and future lives. Still, thinking they could tell one another something useful, they forged a tentative alliance. Joy made a pot of tea, Grace thinking that there was comfort in rituals, in places set at the table, the tinkle of china and spoons. Then quietness stole into the room, and everyone took a deep breath.

  Except Marcie, who looked at her in-laws as if they were traitors and left the room, taking the dog with her.

  Tug’s father brought out a bottle of whiskey and poured a slug into his tea. His wife didn’t scold him. He tipped the bottle in Grace’s direction, but she declined. There was a secret lying inside her, only a few weeks old. Would she tell them? She didn’t know. She lifted a filigreed teacup to her lips and drank.

  At first, Joy did most of the talking. Something in her seemed to have been released—whether by the tea, or by Grace’s presence, or by Marcie’s absence. As the three of them sat around the dining-room table, she spoke for almost ten minutes, an undammed flood of reminiscences that, Grace could tell, kept him alive for her.

  “Johnny always had his eye on faraway places,” she said, “even as a child.”

  For a moment Grace was disoriented, being used to his nickname, which had seemed so fully to suit him, his thoughts and memories always tugging him somewhere else. But of course he had been given a Christian name, had been a little kid, here in this very house, with these parents.

  “He always loved maps. And books about pirates, and space travel, and India. His head was full of different facts, things I couldn’t hardly keep track of. I’d be in the kitchen working and he’d come in and tell me these stories about all the places he’d read about, and it was amazing, like he’d been there himself.”

  Grace couldn’t help reaching across the table to touch her hand. But Joy didn’t meet her eyes, and her hand was cool and inert; she didn’t want to be touched. Flushing, Grace put her hand back in her lap and kept her eyes on the tablecloth. It felt like a prayer circle, like grace before a meal.

  “His sister was always different. She was a little Suzy Homemaker, playing with her Easy-Bake Oven. She never wanted to leave home, not even to go to school. Her favorite thing was to help me cook dinner and then set the table. Mind you, Johnny was good around the house too. They both were. I always said I was lucky with my children.” At this point her voice broke slightly, but she swallowed and composed herself. “It’s been hard on Marcie,” she said.

  Grace didn’t look up.

  “When they lost the baby she was just heartbroken,” Joy said. “Her parents are good people, but they want her to move on and start thinking about the future. She came to stay with us for a little while, until she gets her feet back under her. You know, it’s brought us all together, I think, going through this.”

  Grace would never have considered, at any point in her marriage, moving in with her mother-in-law; then again, she had never experienced any of this. For a moment she remembered playing cards and drinking tea with Mitch’s mother, a thought that made her grimace and smile at the same time. And then Joy’s words resounded in her mind. When they lost
the baby. Tug hadn’t told her anything about that.

  “I know my son wasn’t perfect,” Joy went on, as if to twist the world even further off-kilter. “Marcie says he strayed more than once. But he helped so many people. He was a good person, a truly good person, I know he was.”

  Grace sat knitting her fingers together. She had half a stranger inside her.

  Joy was still talking, the words coming slowly and evenly, dripping like an IV into Grace’s veins, regular and numbing. She was talking about having seen Tug and Marcie together a month or so ago, when he came to visit and they all had dinner. She knew he wasn’t happy—he had seen so much and worked so hard—but he was talking about switching careers, maybe going to law school.

  He was in this room, Grace thought, maybe sitting in this exact chair. Shivering, she reached across the table for the whiskey and poured some into her tea. Tug’s father nodded at her imperceptibly. Under different circumstances, she thought, they would have liked each other. Or maybe his silence just reminded her of Tug’s, and thus felt familiar.

  The whiskey warmed her and settled her stomach.

  Joy was looking at her, her eyes pale, watery, and unfocused. “Please, tell me about him.”

  Grace paused a long while. “He was unhappy,” she finally said. “He couldn’t shake the things he’d seen.”

  Tug’s mother nodded, and Grace could see her shifting the blame over to those things and the places where he’d seen them, making compartments for this blame, cabinets in which to store it away. But even as she watched the process unfold, Grace began doubting herself. She didn’t know if Rwanda had anything to do with it. The darkness that had led to his death might have been inside him all along; it could have been what sent him abroad in the first place, along with his restlessness, his sparks of anger, his desire to escape. It seemed as though he had always felt hemmed in.