Almost Dark

by Letitia Trent

  Claire liked to visit a local café some mornings for coffee and a piece of pie. The café was right next to the library, and it had a greasy, homey, lack of self-consciousness about it that made her think of cafés in movies, places where people in town gathered and smiled and knew each other by name. Claire knew the people in the café by sight, but not by name. They smiled and nodded at her, but they didn’t speak to her, not usually, unless it was somebody from the library, a regular who spent their lunch break reading magazines or browsing the stacks.

  “Do you know what you’d like?”

  A girl not more than seventeen or eighteen was at Claire’s elbow. Her apron was splattered with orange grease and her badly dyed hair was held up in the back with a pencil.

  “Just a coffee and some peach pie.”

  As the girl turned and walked away, Claire saw Marcus walk through the door, the little bell on a string jingling against the glass behind him. He smiled at her before she could get up and leave, could sneak out the back door into the little alley between the café and the dry cleaners. She forced herself to smile at him. When he smiled in return, his face lifted and lit up and she felt sorry all over again for what she had done to him. She waved him over.

  We’ll be friends, he had said the night she asked him to leave. It wasn’t a question, but a plea. He had held her hands tight between his. He’d even cried, in a silent, involuntary way that made her feel even worse than audible sobs would have. She had, right then and there, wanted to take what she had said back and invite him to unpack his clothes from his shiny, never-used luggage. It was a handsome leather set he had gotten from his mother as a college graduation present, in anticipation of a year of post-college travel. The travel never happened, and that night he had stuffed his clothes—soiled, clean, folded, balled up, some still on the hangers—in the sweet-smelling bags, pulling out balled-up filler paper as he went.

  Of course we’ll be friends, she’d said. You are one of my best friends. You always will be.

  She hadn’t spoken to him in five months. At first, he left messages on her phone. Then, the messages ended, and she’d assumed that he was angry with her, that he didn’t want to try anymore, and she was grateful. Obviously, she’d told a lie that he should have understood as such—they couldn’t be friends.

  “Claire, it’s so good to see you!”

  Marcus opened his arms and she stood, accepting his embrace. He smelled good, like toothpaste and shampoo. Marcus had dark, almost black hair and eyes the colour of slate—he was the only grey-eyed person she had ever met. Though he was at least six inches taller than her, he stooped, which made him seem shorter and somehow friendlier than most tall men. She learned after commenting on his stoop that he corrected his height to match whomever he happened to be with. He didn’t like to make people uncomfortable, he had told her, though he knew that slouching was bad posture and that he’d probably pay for it someday.

  This was what she had loved about him: his give. It was also why she made him leave.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” Claire said, as the waitress returned and set down her coffee and pie.

  “Would you like something, sir?” The waitress looked irritably at Marcus and poised her pen above the pad in exaggerated readiness. She didn’t like surprises, Claire thought. She knew the feeling.

  Marcus smiled. He didn’t see that he had annoyed the waitress—he didn’t notice things like that. He assumed that most people were pleasant, inviting, and did not harbour irrational anger. Claire had often admired his ability to not notice other people’s moods while also being completely irritated by it. How wonderful it would be, she often thought, to only have your own emotions to worry about.

  “I’ll take a coffee and a number three,” he said.

  The waitress nodded and left them alone. Marcus turned his smile back to Claire. He gave it away freely, that smile. He was, Claire thought, the kindest person she had ever known. He probably had no ulterior motive for coming to sit with her that morning.

  “How’ve you been, Marcus? How’s work?”

  Marcus worked at the municipal building. He was the grant coordinator and spent his days writing extremely logical, orderly, and almost indecipherable documents to beg various government organizations to give Farmington money. Claire used to go to his office on her lunch break, as the municipal building was only a few blocks from the library. His office was in the basement, in a small, windowless room that had once belonged to the town’s short-lived peak oil committee.

  “It’s the same as always,” Marcus said. “Nobody wants to give us money. The office is completely bare now because I finally got the all-clear to throw away all the peak oil stuff.”

  Claire smiled. “You should hang up a motivational poster or something. A kitten hanging from a tree limb, you know, hang in there, baby, or one of those aerial photos of Farmington they sell at the fair.”

  Marcus thanked the waitress, who set a cup of coffee by his elbow and a plate of eggs and bacon in the middle of the table.

  Claire wondered if the girl thought they were on some strange, morning date. They probably seemed, from an outsider, like people who did not know each other very well—smiling awkwardly, making weak jokes, searching for words as they stared at their food. Claire speared a chunk of her peach pie and chewed it. The crust was soggy and gummy, and the peaches tasted like cheap jelly. Now that Marcus had destroyed her calm, she wondered why she’d ever found the place charming.

  “But how are you, Claire?”

  She cleared her throat and sipped her coffee. When she had asked Marcus to leave, she told him that she felt her life was stuck and stunted, and that she was good for nobody until she found out why and how to dig herself out. And then, she’d explained that she missed feeling strongly for him. She didn’t say I don’t love you anymore, but this is what she had meant. She said that he deserved better, and that he was the best person she had ever known. She had meant that part.

  He had looked at her with the same concern he seemed to have now, only then it had been touched with confusion and anger. He hadn’t known dissatisfaction as intimately as most people, and had been surprised by her decision to end the relationship.

  Are you depressed? he’d asked her, grasping for words to attach to what she was feeling. Claire didn’t know how to answer. She liked her job. She felt a satisfaction in her everyday life, the humming from thing to thing, in walking down the sidewalked streets, but still she felt that she should let Marcus go. He was comfortable in the way her big, king-sized bed was comfortable. She loved that bed because she had gotten it cheap and it was an easy thing to sink into. And that was her problem with Marcus, too.

  No, she had told him, I’m not depressed. I’m just in a rut. I just need to be alone for a while.

  “Oh, the same as always,” she said. “I teach the elderly how to surf the Internet. I shelve books. I pet the cat. I’m the same Claire I’ve always been.”

  Marcus chewed and looked at her thoughtfully. “I’m glad to hear you’re the same,” he said. “That Claire was always good enough for me.”

  She looked down at her pie.

  “I was thinking lately of what you said, about feeling stuck,” he said. Claire wondered why Marcus had been thinking about her life or things she’d said. She had scarcely thought about him at all.

  “Have you ever thought of leaving Farmington? Of living somewhere new?”

  Claire looked up from her pie, the broken mess on her plate that she couldn’t bear to finish. She looked out the window, at the sun flooding the streets, the people as they rolled down their sleeves, feeling the edge of autumn on their exposed skin. She watched a little girl, maybe six, with a metallic purse, skip by her mother’s legs, which switched back and forth, back and forth.

  Farmington was her town. She loved it here. She loved it because it was as familiar as her own body. And sometimes, l
ike her own body, she wanted to leave it behind for good.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t. This is where I live.”

  “But it doesn’t make you happy to be here, does it?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  Claire tried to imagine herself in another place. She had visited other places, of course. New York City as a college student, and Boston as a child and teenager—her parents took her and Sam there each summer to show them pieces of history, plaques and museums, like the ones in Farmington, only bearing the names of people she had read about in history books. They were nice to visit, but being away from Farmington made her restless. She wished for her own bed, for the view from her window, the streets she recognized. She loved Farmington. Every place she walked now was a place she’d walked as a child. She had seen the CVS turn into the organic food store, then into the tuxedo rental store.

  But there were other reasons, too. It wasn’t her parents, whom she loved the way that most people loved their parents, but no more. It was Sam, of course. He was still here. She had lost him here. The idea of leaving meant leaving Sam behind.

  Marcus picked up a piece of bacon with his fingers. “I don’t think this town is good for you,” he said. “Too many ghosts. Too much past.” He chewed and swallowed, not taking his eyes from her. She had the urge to put her hands over her ears like a child, to block out his voice, but she didn’t. She stared back at him. At least she had her anger.

  “I don’t want to leave my ghosts,” she said. “I don’t think my ghosts are a problem. I love my ghosts.”

  Marcus shook his head. “When you forget for just a minute, I can see it, you know? Your face clears, and you’re really looking at things again. But that happens so rarely.” Marcus reached his hand across the table and took hers. His hand was dry and cool, and she felt no passion in his grip. He felt sorry for her—that was all. She felt a faint prickle of sadness, somewhere in her stomach, at this change. Once, he had been angry at her, had left shouting messages on her voicemail, and now all he felt for her was pity for the person he believed she had become—almost middle-aged, a cat-lady without even the ambition to have more than one cat. Even her eccentricities weren’t impressive.

  She closed her eyes and hoped that she would not cry. She didn’t like public displays of emotion—they seemed cheap and unreal, and she didn’t want people in the café to know that the librarian had been weeping in the local greasy spoon at eight thirty in the morning.

  “I like it here,” she said. “That’s all. It makes me happy. I don’t need your pity.” He tightened his grip. His face registered disbelief. Christ, how does he see me?

  Maybe I should leave, she thought, just to see what it’s like. Just to see how I would be in another place. She slid her hand from under Marcus’s. She imagined herself in a place with no winters, in a strapless sundress, her hair lighter and longer; her body collapsed in the loose weave of a deckchair, like in a commercial for a cruise ship. She looked over his head and away from his concerned face, suddenly pleased with this image of herself—this other self, doing nothing at all in a sandy, sunny landscape that shimmered with the possibility of beauty in some form she couldn’t even imagine. She hadn’t entertained such an idea of herself before. She was not the kind of person who travelled. Nor was she the kind of person who made plans on a whim. But she could be. Maybe it was time. She said none of this to Marcus.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just don’t see the point of this conversation right now. I don’t need advice. I’d just like to have breakfast with you, okay?”

  Marcus nodded. They finished their breakfasts and exchanged more cordial questions and responses. She imagined that he had a new lover—that would explain it. A new lover would allow him to speak to her the way he had, with brotherly concern instead of passion. It would allow him to feel sorry for her without being angry.

  They hugged goodbye. The embrace was tight but cold.

  She hoped she wouldn’t see him again. All his generous pity. His brotherly concern.

  She continued to dream every night that she could save Sam. Sometimes the dream was preceded by others, dreams that were clearly misfirings in her mind, as most dreams were—where she was flying, or falling or had shown up to a college classroom for a test without any preparation. But then, she was always back at the factory again, Sam running ahead of her, heedless to her cries. And every morning, she woke with the thought that it was possible to save him, if only she could stay in the dream longer.

  The dreams were a constant buzz in the back of her mind, an inner alarm going off, telling her that something had to be done. Sometimes she even came home from work during her lunch break and wandered the apartment, lifting envelopes and pieces of paper from her coffee table, picking through the trash, looking for something that her mind insisted she had forgotten. She checked the stove, the bathroom for an iron plugged into the wall. She had daydreams of her apartment burning while she was filing away books, the cat darting under chairs and tables, smoke filling the rooms. Her hands shook. She bought another pack of cigarettes and kept them in her glove box to take the edge off.

  After a week of dreams, a week of restlessness, Claire woke one morning and saw the front page of the Farmington Banner, which proclaimed that the Beans construction and remodelling of the old factory was about to begin. The local construction company, Daily Brothers, had been awarded the contract. The article emphasized that Beans, according to district manager Justin Hemmings, would be trying its best to work with local businesses and community members. He said that the company wanted to practise business in a way that gives back to the community that it depends upon. Justin Hemmings spoke in perfect sound bites, Claire thought. She wondered if he had visited the factory—she thought that a visit would have dispelled him of any notion that a business could be run in that building, that people would willingly go in and out of those doors. A photograph of the factory, empty, the chains on its front door visible, took up a full fourth of the newspaper page—pointlessly, as everybody in town already knew exactly which factory it was.

  That night, she dreamed again of Sam and the fire. This time, she had stood back and watched from about five feet away as he lowered himself into the hole, smiled up at her, and disappeared. The slate shingles seemed to hiss and steam and turn slightly orange with heat. She stayed back, though her body told her to go to him. She refused to give the dream what it wanted. She clenched her fists at her side. She didn’t move as the flames shot from the window, as the wind blew and rattled the hanging chains against the door.

  I will stop this, she thought. But not on these terms.

  She woke weeping, her face feverish in the otherwise cool room.

  That morning, she drank her coffee in the kitchen, over the sink, the windows open, blowing damp air through the house.

  I can’t make it go away, she thought. I can’t stop it on my own. She imagined the factory opened, redecorated, people walking the floors, laughing and talking and sipping expensive coffee, and closed her eyes. The image was unbearable. She would talk to Miriam Hastings.

  II

  Even before the fire, parents had told their children not to play out past where the sidewalk ended, where Factory Street became Route 9 and spread out, the road banked in tangled weeds, plastic wrappers, and faded soda cans and beer bottles twisted in the mess of green. But it wasn’t just because the factory was at the end of town, at the place where it became farmland and wilderness. The factory also pushed up against the edge of the river—behind the factory, the ground dropped in a steep, grassy hill that ended at a short, muddy, rock-dotted shore where the river began. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t a deep river, but the bed was littered with boulders, and if you fell from the top of the hill, you would most likely bust your head on a rock, or at least break a bone. Every few years a teenager, drunk or just stupid, would try to jump into what looked like a deep part of the river
and break their body on the rocks.

  Soon after the factory was first built, children began to tell stories about it. When the dirt in the entrance was still crisscrossed with wheelbarrow imprints and footsteps, the children whispered that the missing girl, Sally Shaw, had been buried there—you could see a spot where the earth was piled in a little Sally-sized lump, where somebody had stomped their boots down to smooth the dirt. Like all children, they were sometimes pitiless, fascinated by what terrified adults—murder, ghosts, blood, a child buried just feet away from where they played.

  Long after Sally, during the war, children whispered that at night, if you went past the factory, you might see the man who lived in the basement—he crawled in at night to sleep. It wasn’t that he’d done anything wrong, anything criminal; it was that he was crazy, and though he might seem normal for long stretches of time—he might even accept help, an invitation to dinner, or a warm winter blanket—he was always really on the verge of something violent and unexpected. Though the children didn’t know much about madness, they had seen insanity in movies. The mad shuffled and bit, they screamed, they pulled their hair and hurt themselves: they could not be trusted.

  The parents, their minds less adept at telling stories, made vague noises about why the children should avoid the place. The air is damp there, was a common reason. It’s damp and cold, near that river, all of those bugs, all of those rocks, the nails and boards, the sharp drop out behind that place, you could break your arm, you could break your skull . . . But the parents heard the stories that the children told, and they matched not what they knew, but what they imagined: yes, it seemed like the kind of place where a child might be buried under the loose dirt and furrows, where somebody might lunge at you from the darkness with a broken beer bottle.

  So the stories continued, though there was nothing specific to pin them on, no central image to bind them—not until the fire. Then there were ghosts to match the place. Women who crawled from the basement windows to grasp your ankles with their dusty, charred hands; women who crawled from the river (where they slept to cool their flaming skin) and squelched after you, their feet bloated with river water, their burned skin forever sloughing off.