Acts of God

by Mary Morris

  Margaret, frozen in time. She wouldn’t wear reading glasses or see her hair turn gray. She wouldn’t get those little wrinkles I was starting to get around the mouth, those furrows on the brow that Jade said came from frowning in your sleep. You look angry, Jade tells me, when you sleep. Margaret would just stay right there, the way she was.

  Turning to the back of the yearbook I read what had been inscribed: “To Tess from Margaret, don’t read what I’ve written in the corner.” She had dog-eared a corner of the page. I opened this and read, “Only rats look in corners.”

  * * *

  When the kids got home from work that night, Jade took one look at me. “What is it, Mom? What’s wrong? You look terrible.”

  Then I told them about Margaret. It all poured out.

  “What was it?” Ted asked. “What did it say?”

  “It said that she’d waited as long as she could.”

  “What did she mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was waiting for Nick to come back to her. I don’t know.”

  Jade was very upset. “Mom,” she said, “what’re you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I told them, “be patient. Wait.” A chill passed through me as I said that. Wait for how long? Wasn’t that just what Margaret had tried to do?

  “God,” Ted said, “did she kill herself because of you?”

  Jade motioned for him to be quiet, but that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? She’d killed herself because of me. “Yes,” I said, “I believe she did. And she left behind her child.”

  I stayed up that night, drinking. It wasn’t something I normally did, but I could not sleep. I longed for Nick, but made a promise to myself that I would not call. I’d hear from him when he was ready. And with time I felt certain he would be.

  But finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to hear his voice. In the morning when I picked up the phone to dial, my neighbor Betsy was on the line. She was talking to a doctor’s office, setting up an appointment. I didn’t want to listen, but I did. Infertility. She had tried everything to have a child.

  The next day when I saw Betsy, I gave her a wave. I thought perhaps I’d have her over for coffee someday.

  Later that night when I couldn’t sleep, I poured myself a brandy. Then I picked up the phone and called Nick. I let it ring three, four times. Night after night I phoned, thinking he would be waiting by the phone, that he would know it was me.

  But he never answered. I left messages, but he never called me back. I found I still could not sleep. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. I had dreams of him at night, of his hands on my body, of his body looming above mine. I found myself raw and exposed as I hadn’t been since I was a child.

  Once I phoned and Danielle answered. I heard her voice on the other end, insistent, almost in a rage. “Who’s there,” she shouted into the phone and I hung up.

  * * *

  In the paths in the hills above my house wildflowers grow. At certain times of the year after heavy rains the hills are carpeted in small blue and white flowers, thick patches of yellow, tiny shades of rose. It was that time of year now. I thought if I forced myself to get up early and go for a run, I’d be able to sleep at night. I began getting up before seven and heading into the hills. I’d run several miles, making a loop that brought me home. Each day I ran farther and farther, as if I had to get away. Morning after morning I would be gone an hour, then two. The path I took was paved, but it quickly turned to dirt. Wildflowers lined the path. Trees dropped back after the first mile or so. Higher up, the landscape turned to desert; scrub pine, thistle weed grew in abundance. I ran until I couldn’t see the highway or any houses. Sometimes I thought I could just keep going and never stop.

  One morning, the air was brisk, the ground firm beneath my feet. I ran for a mile or so, then higher. At the point where I should have turned back, I kept going, my body unwilling to return. I was soaring. I was flying and climbing as if I could just keep going. As if there was nothing to stop me.

  In the hills the day was warmer and sweat dripped, evaporating as soon as it hit the air. So this was what it felt like to be free, to be a bird. My body flying through the air. My body flying like the wind. I went up higher into the hills, way above Salinas, behind my heels was a trail of dust. I kicked up the dirt as I climbed into the scrub pine, the desolate places where nothing will grow.

  I was high above the ocean and I couldn’t even tell it was an ocean anymore. It was as if the sky started just there at the shore, which was now the horizon. I didn’t hear a thing except my heart and my feet pounding. My breathing was a steady pant and sweat poured down me, my T-shirt clung to my breasts. If someone wanted to rape me, I always told myself as I ran up here, he’d have to catch me first. So far no one had tried. I never saw anybody up here. There used to be a guy who trained in these hills but I hadn’t seen him in a long time and anyway, we didn’t run at the same time of the day. I was running on straight to a grove of pines, like nothing would stop me or could stop me, and then I saw her.

  Those yellow eyes fixed on me. A dead stare. It took everything in me to stop. Stop cold. I thought my heart would burst. I’d die right there. It is a fitting end, I thought. Looking her in the eyes. Our eyes fixed on each other. She was in a branch, a low branch, and poised. Ten yards farther and she would have pounced on my neck. Now it’s this standoff, I think, and if I move, I’m dinner. Or maybe I’m dinner no matter what I do. I’m a dead woman right here. I’m going to be eaten alive and they’ll only know it’s me from the dental records if they find my teeth. One of us has got to move and I know it won’t be me.

  Then I saw it. Her shoulder twitched. Just a tiny twitch but enough to tell me she was ready to make her move. She jumped down and all those yellow muscles rippled and her flesh moved like sound waves, like foam rubber. Muscles moving and with a thud and four rising waves of dust, she hit the ground, her yellow eyes never off me.

  My heart pounded in my chest. Hairs bristled on my arms and I couldn’t catch my breath. I stood there, staring straight at her as she stared at me. I vowed I would not be the first to move. Then suddenly, with all those powerful yellow muscles rippling, she turned and walked away.

  * * *

  I arrived home, panting, hot, dripping wet. Though I’d walked the last half mile home, my heart was still pounding, my hands shaking as I opened the mailbox. There was the usual assortment of junk mail, bills I couldn’t pay, solicitations from organizations that I made nominal contributions to. Walking into the kitchen, I threw the mail down on the counter and poured myself a glass of herbal ice tea. I downed the tea, pressed an ice cube to my temple. Then I opened a drawer to look for some Tylenol.

  There in the drawer where I kept recipes and over-the-counter drugs was the envelope Margaret had given me the last time I saw her—the one that contained my old dog tag, bird feathers, and the Chicago Cubs T-shirt. I sat down in the breakfast nook with my herbal tea and opened the envelope once more, spreading the items in front of me.

  I kept the feathers in front of me, moved the dog tag and T-shirt to the side. The clipping the feathers were wrapped in was from an old Kenosha newspaper, dated some forty years ago. It was yellow and tattered, almost crumbling in my hands. I hadn’t noticed it when Margaret first gave me the envelope, but now I unfolded and read it. On the back was an advertisement for soap. A notice about a missing dog. On the other side were obituaries. One was for a schoolteacher from Milwaukee who had been a believer in equal education. The other was for a Wisconsin man who had jumped or fallen to his death off a railroad bridge when he was forty-nine years old. Then it gave the funeral arrangements, and that was all.

  I was puzzling over this clipping, wondering if there was any reason why it had been placed among my things, when there was a knock at the door. I stuffed everything back in the envelope and stuck it in the kitchen drawer by the sink, which was already filled with recipes and flyers for men who wanted to help me plant shrubs. Bruno
stood in my doorway, staring at me, dripping wet. “Tess,” he said, “are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Just a cougar,” I said.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” He looked genuinely concerned.

  “I’m fine,” I told him. Suddenly I wanted to cradle him in my arms, hold him as if he were my child and not someone else’s.

  “Look,” he said, waving a sheet of paper in my face, “I found it, I found it.”

  “Come in, Bruno. I really should shower.” I reached for a kitchen towel and began wiping myself off.

  “The poem, ‘Desire Paths.’ It was in some old papers, some drafts. I found it in the Santa Cruz library. Now I have the whole poem.”

  He handed it to me and I read it.

  DESIRE PATHS

  From the unfinished manuscript of Francis Cantwell Eagger

  Along the wind-racked bluffs

  We have made our way

  To the edge and back again

  So many times

  That we have made a path,

  Worn down weeds and shrubs.

  We tried other routes

  Through sharper rocks and

  Steeper climbs

  But this trail was the best by far

  We forged the way

  Of our longing.

  Desire paths, these are called

  Because this was the way we had to come

  As if no other path presented itself

  To the edge of this raw world

  Where there is nothing left to do

  But look down, then walk away.

  “It’s beautiful, Bruno,” I said. “It’s actually a very beautiful poem.” And in truth it was the first poem by Francis Eagger that truly moved me. “It’s great for your dissertation, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “And I’m going to write some journal articles. This will help me get a job.”

  Holding the poem in my hands, I read it again. The way of our longing. Then I sat down in the breakfast nook and wept. I lay my head on the table and cried and cried. Bruno sat beside me, trying to comfort me.

  “Tess, what is it? You can talk to me.”

  My body shook and I could not stop. “I think I’ve killed someone,” I said. “I think I’m the reason that someone is dead.”

  “Are you sure…”

  And then I told him about Margaret and Nick and how she had died. Then Bruno reached out for me and pulled me in. He held me tightly and I was amazed at the strength in his arms. It was the hug of a man, not a boy, but there was nothing improper in it. He held me for a very long time, then he pulled away, looking me square in the eyes. “Tess,” he said, “you are also the reason someone is alive.”

  “I am?” I said, wiping my eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. “You saved me.”

  “I did?”

  He nodded solemnly. “You don’t even know it,” he said, “but you did.”

  * * *

  That night strange dreams overwhelmed me. I woke up shaking, feeling alone. I dreamed of sleepers in pods, wrapped in sheets, unable to extricate themselves. I dreamed of Jade as a little girl, going off to star in a Broadway show. I wanted to accompany her, but I was dressed in a nightgown and a robe. But the strangest dreams were always those of the two men. One was dark and clever, the other blond and simple. One was good and the other evil, but I was never sure which one it was. You’d think the clever one would be evil, the simple man good, but there was something in his simpleness that stifled me, something in the other’s cleverness that uplifted me. I woke, knowing that I knew nothing of myself and never would.

  After I had my coffee and sat in the breakfast nook for a while, it occurred to me that somehow these dreams were not my own. They belonged to someone else—to the troubled poet who lived here before me. Surely these haunted dreams were not mine.

  Night after night I stayed up drinking. I couldn’t sleep and the quiet of the house unsettled me. The children came and went but mostly they were gone. When they were away, I drank to try and sleep, then fell into a sleep that brought no rest. Nothing could save me. I tried to conjure Bruno’s hug, but it too was slipping away. Nick wasn’t returning my calls and Margaret was dead and I was lost as surely as if I’d wandered off into the wilderness alone.

  I couldn’t stand being alone in the house so I headed out into the pitch darkness along the cliffs where the poet who had drunk himself to death had lost his own son. I found the desire paths the poet had made and trudged along, finding my way. Branches cut against my face. A razor-sharp thorn tore at my sleeve. I could feel blood trickling down my arm, but I kept going. It was the blackest of nights and all I could do was follow the roar of the sea.

  I walked until I came to the edge with the sea crashing below me. It was high tide and the beach was almost gone. It would be so easy to slip, to fall. Everyone would think it was an accident. They would say I had been despondent, but they’d never be sure, the way they had never been sure with Francis Cantwell Eagger’s son. Or with that Wisconsin man in the clipping Margaret had given me. Not like with Margaret. They were sure about her. If I slipped and fell here, no one would know if it was what I’d intended. It would remain a big question, something people—my children, my brothers, Nick, the neighbors, even Betsy—would talk about for years to come.

  My own thoughts frightened me. I’d never quite had these thoughts before. I had to fight them, fight them back. I took a deep breath. The air smelled fresh, almost lemony with the scent of eucalyptus. Then I saw it, halfway down the bluff. The hunchback tree from Francis Eagger’s poem, bent over, its arms offering protection. The tree bent back in the wind. It was the one Bruno had been looking for. It had probably fallen down the cliff due to erosion. Now I stepped away. I eased my way back from the cliffs and, following the paths Francis Eagger had shaped in his own despair, made my way home.

  The next night the phone rang and it was Nick. He had some business to finish up in San Francisco and he wanted to talk to me. “Tess,” he said, “I’ll be there next week. I think I owe you an explanation.”

  41

  The following Friday Nick drove down to meet me at Half Moon Bay. We met at a Thai restaurant and sat in a corner booth on red vinyl seats where it was dark and rather quiet. Large tropical fish swam in tanks above our heads. No one bothered us. He looked tired and haggard. His face seemed jowly and he was not the same boisterous man I had known. In fact he slumped and seemed old. We ordered drinks, but Nick said he wasn’t hungry. “I don’t have much of an appetite these days.”

  I nodded. “I can imagine. How are things? How’s Danielle?”

  “Not so good. She’s silent, then she blows up. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “She blows up? How?”

  “She hits people. For no reason.” Nick shook his head back and forth like a man who had reached the end of his rope.

  “She needs a mother.”

  “She had a mother,” Nick said, the bitterness unmistakable in his voice. “I will never understand this.” He reached across the table for my hands. “Tessie, I wanted things to be different. I didn’t want it to work out this way. I don’t know why she did this. I don’t know why it happened. I just know that at least for now we can’t be together. I’m not going to be able to look at you and not think of her.” He turned my hands in his. “I can’t look at your face and not see Margaret’s. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. Maybe she wanted it that way. Maybe she did it on purpose.” I was angry and wished I hadn’t said what I just did.

  “I don’t know why she did it. She seemed to take it all in stride. She didn’t want to stay married any more than I did. I don’t know what it was. Honestly it’s a mystery to us all. I never thought she’d leave Danielle; that’s the part that makes no sense. But somehow I don’t think it was about us. Not entirely anyway.”

  “Then what was it about
?”

  He shook his head again and he looked pathetic and small. “I keep thinking about the note. What was she waiting for or who? What did it mean? That she’d waited as long as she could?”

  “Maybe it will be better in time,” I said, wrapping my fingers more tightly around his.

  “Maybe,” he said, but he did not sound convinced.

  “I was thinking I could move home, be near you and Danielle.”

  Nick raised his hands. “Oh, no, don’t do that. Not on my account.”

  We were silent for a moment and I understood that it was no use. It was over. He planned to go on with his life and I was to go on with mine and that was how it was to be.

  I signaled the waitress for the check. As we waited for it to come, I said, “Nick, may I ask you something?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Did Margaret ever talk to you about her father? She used to talk to me about him. She always seemed to be waiting for him to come and get her.”

  “She certainly wasn’t waiting for him.” Nick looked perplexed. “I was sure you knew. He died when she was a little girl.”

  “He did? She told me he was in Wisconsin.” I couldn’t bear to contemplate where all those gifts had come from. The clothes, the car.

  “I don’t think she was waiting. He was dead a long time before she ever moved to Winonah.”

  “But she told me…”

  Nick downed his beer and kissed me lightly on the cheek. I couldn’t let him go so easily. I reached up, my hands searching his face. My lips reached for his. If I could only, like some skilled fishermen, pull him in gently, bring him back to where we had been, but he was like someone with no memory of anything before. His eyes were red and watery. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ll always care for you, Tess.”

  Standing up, he reached across, placing his hand on my cheek, and I let my face rest in it for a moment. Then when I looked up, he was gone.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, the mail built up, one letter after the next. I opened a few bills, then put them away. The creditors could take my house. I didn’t care. I sat reading the complete works of Francis Cantwell Eagger. I felt I owed it to this house before I put it on the market to know the work of the man who lived here.