The Spirit Wood

by Robert Masello

  Sixteen

  MEG'S DECISION TO go to New York that day, apparently made before Peter had even awakened, came as something of a surprise to him. She'd seemed, for the past couple of days, a little quieter than usual, a little distant, but he'd assumed she was absorbed in her work. Or simply, well, relaxed. In any event, it hadn't concerned him very much—he had his own work to do. That damned dissertation, stuck in the same place for over a week while he struggled to elucidate the connections between Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, only to find the whole thing, even what he thought were his most original points, laid out, item for item, in a monograph over twenty years old. What was the point, he thought, of sitting in that stuffy library all day, every day, grinding out dozens of pages of useless “scholarly” prose, to be read by dyspeptic Frank Dunlop, and three other people in the department, and then buried forever in the stacks of the university library. Why was he wasting his time, his mind, his life itself. When he'd tried to explain what he was doing to Leah, one day when she brought him his lunch on a tray, she'd regarded him with a look of such utter incomprehension—not confused, not respectful, not derogatory, just uncomprehending—that he'd been paralyzed in his chair for hours after. Maybe hers was the legitimate, the reasonable, reaction to what he was doing, the reaction of anyone who knew what life was all about—that it wasn't dropping into a chair each day, banished from the sun and the sky and the trees, to pound a tinny machine and clutter up sheets of paper. More and more, he had been feeling the urge to spend his time outdoors, to breathe the air off the water, to bask in the sun, even to run, barefoot, across the lawns and through the groves of trees. At night, in bed, he sometimes felt his legs twitching nervously, as if they were charged with unspent energies. Several times, he'd gotten up, stealthily, so as not to wake Meg, and gone out onto the balcony off their bedroom. More than once he could swear he'd heard, borne on the night wind, the distant sound of a flute, just a few fleeting notes, presumably Nikos tootling from his hammock. The moonlight, playing across the sculpted satyr below, at times imbued it with an eerie illusion of movement.

  Meg was going to meet with the New York dealer, she explained, at her gallery downtown, and see firsthand how her pieces were displayed there. Afterwards, she was going to go and visit her old friend Jackie, from the pottery co-op in Mercer, at Jackie's parents’ place, a townhouse on the Upper East Side. She'd catch a train back to Passet Bay sometime the next afternoon; she'd call and let him know exactly when.

  As they'd waited on the platform for the train to New York, Peter had finally brought up the question he'd been trying to decide all the way to the station: should Meg give his mother a call, or even try to see her, while she was in the city? On the one hand, he thought, it might be a nice surprise for his mother, and politically wise since she was still terribly upset about their occupying Arcadia; on the other hand, it didn't seem fair to Meg to make her face the brunt of his mother's displeasure alone. How did Meg feel about it, Peter had asked. Would it be worth the trouble, or would she just as soon skip the whole thing?

  Meg hadn't answered immediately. She'd turned her head away, to look down the track; the train was already a few minutes late. She seemed anxious to be on her way; she'd seemed in a hurry all morning. “Can I play it by ear,” she replied, “see how long it takes me at the gallery, see what time Jackie wants to get together, and then see if I have any time left?”

  Fine with him, Peter had said. Privately, he was just as happy not to have to make a decision either way. Let it be up to Meg; he could live with it, whatever happened. When the train did pull in, there was an awkward moment when they said good-bye, Meg ducking her head toward his for a quick kiss on the cheek, Peter, not expecting it, adjusting his sunglasses at just that moment. His knuckles had brushed her lip, and his glasses had become entangled in her hair. They'd both tried to laugh it off, self-consciously, and she'd had to jump onto the train while he fumbled to slip the earpiece back in place. It was funny, to find themselves so out of sync. Funny, too, to be left, alone, on the platform. There had been very few occasions, during the entire time they'd known each other, when they'd had to part at train stations or airports. Most trips, even short ones, they had taken together.

  At the house, everything was even quieter than usual now: Byron's door stood open, to keep his room aired; Dodger, left behind for the week, was asleep on his blue bath mat in the kitchen. Peter wondered where Leah was—not that her absence was out of the ordinary. He glanced down the short hall to her room; the white door was closed, as always, and not a sound came from behind it.

  For a while, he sat at his desk in the study, staring at his notes and papers. When, at one point, he checked his watch and realized that twenty minutes had passed and he hadn't done a jot of work—he couldn't even have said where his thoughts had been—he flicked off the light and pushed his chair away from the desk. He resented it, sitting chained to this chair, and his dissertation, frankly, bored him. The only way to get it out of the way, of course, was to finish the damned thing, to somehow find the energy and stamina to see it through. He eyes inadvertently focused on the solid black box—a pyxis, Byron had told him it was called—that he now kept behind the locked lattice-screen of the bookcase. The box was ancient, part of his grandfather's collection, but the contents of it, a little gift from Jack Caswell, were new—and used sparingly, could help him get the job done. But was that, he thought, any way to do it? Sure, he'd be able to write like the wind, but would what he wrote wind up making even the slightest bit of sense?

  Something else occurred to him, too—that in addition to feeling bored, he also felt, with Meg away for the day, like a kid in the classroom when the teacher's stepped out. He realized, not proudly, that a lot of what normally kept him there, cranking away, was knowing that Meg was around and about, and that he'd have to face her, and make up some excuse for not being at work, if he left the study. Not that she'd ever accuse him of anything like sloth, not that she'd lash him back upstairs and lock the study door behind him. Meg wasn't like that; she knew how sensitive he was on the subject of his work, and she wouldn't say anything. But that was just it—she wouldn't say anything; he'd have to find the disappointment in her eyes. And he'd see it there for sure, no matter how hard she tried to disguise it. She wanted him to do well, to complete his doctorate, to be content with himself. And sometimes, though he knew it was unreasonable, though he hated himself for it, he resented her, too—for her caring, her concern . . . and above all, for her knowledge of him. Seeing himself through her eyes, as he often did, he was stripped of the easy excuses, the self-justifications, the evasions, that he might otherwise have employed. She left him, oddly, feeling defenseless against himself.

  In just the same absentminded way that he'd lost twenty minutes staring at the same page on his desk, he now found himself shuffling down the front stairs. In the billiard room, he took three or four shots before losing interest in that, too, and leaving the cue laid flat across the table. He started to head into the kitchen, remembered that Dodger was in there, and not wanting to deal even with the dog just now, left the house through the massive front doors.

  The sun was shining in a cloudless sky; it would be another hot, bright, dry day, as most of the days had been so far. He stepped out of his shoes and left them, like lonely footprints, on the porch. Mincingly, he made his way along the gravel drive; the soles of his feet were tender, but it felt good to be barefoot, outdoors. He enjoyed the uneven feeling of the earth, the sharp pebbles, the hard-packed dirt, and then, when he came around the west wing of the house, the blades of grass springing up between his toes. Where was he going? To Nikos. He knew it, he realized, without ever having thought it. He was going to Nikos's cottage, to tell him there was shrubbery blocking a bend in the driveway—branches had brushed against the side of the car when he'd taken Meg to the station that morning. Most of the time, the unruly look of the place, the untrimmed hedges, the felled, but unremoved, tree trunks, didn't bother him; if any
thing, he'd come rather to like the ungoverned, natural profusion of the grounds. It struck him as original. But there had to be some practical limits to the wildness of the place; some things still needed to be done.

  As the summer had progressed, the garden plots around Nikos's cottage had blossomed into a dense green carpet of leaves and stalks and vines, dotted with deep-red tomatoes and yellow and purple wild flowers. The tree in the front yard, a huge and ancient oak, had grown heavy with foliage and seemed to have bent down and enclosed the house below in a cooling, shaded embrace. It was a scene out of a Hardy novel, Peter was thinking, all rustic simplicity, peace, and charm—until Fifi and Fritz, in the kennel in back, smelled him approaching and began to bark furiously. He could hear the rattling, too, of the wire fence as they hurled themselves against it.

  “Shut up!” Nikos called from inside the house.

  Peter rapped on the frame of the screen door; when there was no immediate response, he knocked again. The door rattled loosely, unlocked.

  “Nikos?” he said through the screen.

  There was another pause, then the sound of a wooden chair scraping against the floor. Then jangling—the open clasps on the familiar rubber boots. Something was said inside, in low tones, and Peter was just about to call Nikos's name again when a figure, thin and graceful, appeared to open the door. Leah.

  “Hello,” Peter said, feeling suddenly awkward. “Hi. I didn't expect to find you here.” Why it seemed so odd—Nikos, after all, was her father—he couldn't have said. This was probably where she disappeared to, more often than not.

  “Were you looking for me?” she asked, still framed in the half-open door.

  “No, I was actually hoping to talk to Nikos.”

  “Then come in and do it,” Nikos called boisterously from inside. “Leah, get out of the doorway and let the man in.”

  Leah stepped back, and Peter entered the house. He'd never been inside before; he and Nikos had always consulted at the main house, or out of doors. For a few seconds, he had to adjust his eyes to the dimness of the room; the ceiling was low, and criss- crossed by thick wooden beams; from them dangled strings of onions, red peppers, herbs with unfamiliar aromas that Peter could not identify. One of the strings grazed the top of his head.

  “That's rosemary,” Nikos said, pointing above where Peter stood. “I grow it myself.” Nikos was sitting on a yellow vinyl chair, part of a dinette set, and across the table from him, bare-chested except for a dirty towel around his neck, was Angelos. Newspapers were spread on the floor around his chair.

  “It's haircut day,” Nikos announced. Leah had already taken her place again, behind Angelos, with a scissors in her hand. “You can be next if you want.”

  “Might not be such a bad idea,” Peter joked, pulling at his own shaggy thatch.

  “Have a drink first,” Nikos said, pushing the third chair out from the table with one of his booted feet, “a welcome to my house.”

  Angelos sat stolidly, head bent forward, while Leah clipped away at the long, lank hair that hung down his neck. Peter poured a small portion of Nikos's familiar wine into an empty plastic tumbler. "Stin egiasoi,” Nikos said, raising his own glass.

  Peter repeated the salute as closely as he could. They drank the wine, and Nikos eagerly refilled Peter's glass.

  “I am honored to have you here,” Nikos said, indicating, by twitching one finger between Peter's glass and his own, that they should drink again. Though he didn't really want to—he'd meant to do at least a little more writing that afternoon—Peter lifted the glass and toasted once more. “But I have to ask myself,” Nikos continued with a little wink, "why you are here.”

  The effect of this wine, Peter noticed once again, was almost immediate; it left him feeling, not tipsy, not languorous, not sated, but open somehow, released. It seemed to expand his throat as he swallowed and course directly into his veins from there. After drinking enough of it, as he had that day in the billiard room with Jack Caswell, he'd become convinced that he could actually feel it, undiluted, surging beneath his skin. Angelos grunted, and Leah muttered an apology—she must have nicked him with the scissors.

  “It's nothing much,” Peter said. “There's some brush extending into the driveway, about a hundred yards short of the gate. I thought, when you've got a chance, if you could clear it away . . .” He still wasn't accustomed to issuing orders, instructions even, to anyone. They always wound up sounding more like suggestions.

  Nikos listened impassively; when he heard what had to be done, he glanced at Angelos, as if to be sure that Angelos understood the job. Leah pulled the barber towel away from his neck; his fat white chest was hairless, pulpy and soft looking. His nipples were small, colored an angry red, and more protuberant than most men's. Peter found him a very unappetizing sight.

  “It'll be done,” Nikos replied, laying one palm flat against the table, the stubby fingers splayed out and upwards. Angelos rose from the chair, his belly swinging forward over his jeans. Leah shook the towel over the newspapers, then knelt down to gather them together. Nikos stopped her.

  “There is one more still to do,” he said, one black rubber boot pinning the newspapers to the floor. “We promised our guest a haircut.” He smiled ingratiatingly at Peter, and with a broad flourish invited him to take Angelos's chair. Leah stayed where she was, staring up at Peter with solemn dark eyes.

  “Really, that's okay,” Peter said. “I do think it can wait at least a while longer. I've got some work to do right now, anyway.” He started to get up from his chair, but Angelos had lumbered around behind him, blocking the feeble light from the screen door; Nikos shook his head slowly and said disdainfully, “Work, work—work can wait. How often does a pretty girl like this offer to cut your hair—or maybe you don't think she is a pretty girl,” he said, raising his eyebrows quizzically.

  “No, of course I do,” Peter said, feeling obliged to come to Leah's defense. “It's just that I do have a lot to do this afternoon—”

  “Five minutes,” Nikos interrupted. “That's all it will take.” Angelos was already drawing his chair out from under him. “The sooner we start, the sooner you can get back to your work.” The word always took on an unpleasant ring in Nikos's mouth.

  Leah had resumed her position behind the chair, clearly knowing that Nikos would get his way. Peter, seeing no easy out, pasted a resigned smile on his face and padded around the table to the chair. Nikos only then noticed his bare feet. He regarded them the way one might an unexpected present.

  “You've left your shoes,” he said, highly amused. “Don't you like to wear your shoes anymore?” He looked to Leah and then the sullen Angelos, who had just pulled on a wrinkled T-shirt, as if seeking some kind of verification from them. “He's not wearing his shoes anymore,” he repeated to them, and laughed.

  Peter self-consciously wriggled his toes, as if he, too, were enjoying the joke. Leah arranged the towel around his neck; it smelled of sweat. Nikos squashed his canvas hat down on his head—Peter wondered if he ever took it off—while still reveling in the humor of his employer in bare feet. Leah's fingers touched the back of Peter's neck, gently tilting his head forward. She fluffed out the tight curls above his temples.

  “Would it make things easier if I took off my glasses?” Peter asked. His barber in Mercer always asked him to.

  “Yes, take them off,” Nikos answered abruptly. Leah said nothing. Peter slid them onto the plastic tablecloth. Nikos reached out and took them up; he waggled them between his fingers.

  “Why do you need these?” he asked. “Your grandfather never needed such things, even at the end.”

  “I'm blind without them.”

  Nikos grunted with disbelief. “You think you are blind without them.” He peered through the lenses, squinting, without actually putting the glasses on. It reminded Peter of the way an aborigine might treat such an item—with curiosity, and a touch of derision. Angelos burped.

  “You need these only because you sit inside in that
house too much,” Nikos continued, “reading those books. What's in those books, anyway? What are they good for?” While Nikos expatiated on the uselessness of books, and reading, and indoor life in general, Leah quietly unfurled one curl after another, snipping away with her silver scissors. Peter was very conscious of her proximity—her abdomen occasionally cushioned the back of his head; her cool fingers grazed his neck. With his face bowed forward, all he could see were her hands or elbows working around him, turning him this way or that, smoothing or drawing out his hair. That scent she had, that distinctively verdant aroma unlike any other perfume or cologne he'd ever known, surrounded him, overpowering even the rank odor of the towel across his shoulders. Angelos was leaning back on two legs of his chair, whittling with a penknife at a short wooden stick.

  “Your wife, doesn't she ever do this for you?” Nikos asked, finally tiring of his attack on the sedentary life.

  “Cut my hair?” Peter replied without looking up. “No—I don't think it's ever occurred to either one of us for her to do it.”