Here to Stay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Erik,” she said, one last time before her voice disintegrated. The spiral threaded out and his insides caved in after it. Teeth clenched, eyes screwed shut and the world exploding behind his eyelids, he dropped his head down on his chest as he came into her and she came down on him.

  “Stay awake,” she whispered in his arms afterward. “Let me fall asleep first.”

  He’d been about to ask for the same thing. Sleep was too much like leaving and he didn’t want to be awake without her. So they tried hard to fall together, breathing and blinking and eventually drifting away.

  The morning dawned grey and chilly and they moped over tea in the kitchen, picking at toast.

  “Don’t come with me to the airport,” Erik said. “It’ll be like fucking Casablanca and I can’t handle it. I don’t want you driving home upset afterward. Let Will take me.”

  “All right,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “I guess I’ll take the tree down.”

  “Oh, that’s not depressing,” he said, grimacing. “At all.”

  She shrugged. “Why be miserable when you can be wretched?”

  The last minutes slipped through their fingers like sand. He kissed every inch of her face. It was twisted up with bravery and despair and he was positive he was going to die walking out of here.

  “We’ll be all right,” she kept saying, her smile fighting to stay ahead of the tears. “We’ll figure it out. I know where you are now.”

  He touched her necklace, then her ears where the matching pearls he bought her for New Year’s hung from her lobes.

  Don’t leave me, he thought, even though he was the one going.

  How am I even doing this?

  He had come back to her, given her his heart, showered her with his love and his gifts, and now he was walking away again. He hated his life, wanted to trash it like a hotel room. The years thrown away were sour on his tongue. Regret was an iron cannonball in his stomach. Every hair on his forearms up like a barb and wailing don’t want to don’t want to don’t want to don’t want to…

  Both Will and Lucky came to Barbegazi to orchestrate the extraction.

  “Say goodbye now,” Lucky said gently, after one last hug on the porch, after the last one, after just one more. She put a firm arm around Daisy and took her inside. The door closed.

  Bag in hand, Erik trudged down the porch steps with the macho stoicism of a revolutionary going to the wall to be shot. It was starting to rain. Naturally.

  He got in the car, his face a stone. Will didn’t offer a word as he put it in gear and drove them away. For two miles Erik stared out the window, listening to the smeary scrape of the windshield wipers.

  “One of the rear tires on Daisy’s car looked low on air,” he said. “Remind her to fill it?”

  Will looked at him with a curt nod.

  Erik exhaled heavily and turned on the radio. The rest of the drive he made some innocuous chit-chat, but mostly he looked out the rain-beaded window and let all the songs make him feel like shit.

  “I’m tempted to put on Barry Manilow,” Will said. “Let it get really ugly.”

  Erik chuckled. “I’d open my jugular right here. Ruin your upholstery.”

  Will started to sing under his breath. “When will our eyes meet…?”

  “Shut up.”

  Will sang louder, leaning over the arm rest. “When can I touch you?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Erik said, laughing. “You put that song in my head, I’ll fucking kill you.”

  “Oh Mandy…”

  Erik smacked the back of his hand against Will’s arm. “Asshole.”

  “You know you can’t smile without me, Fish.”

  “That’s always been my problem.” And Erik was smiling. Still miserable and moody and contemplating throwing himself off a bridge. But smiling.

  Will pulled up to the departures terminal. They both got out, hugged and pounded each other’s backs at the curb.

  “Did I apologize for that phone call?” Erik asked the air over Will’s shoulder.

  “About thirty times.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.” Will stepped back. “Now don’t try anything funny because I’m circling this airport until I see your plane take off.”

  Erik smiled. “Watch my ass as I fly into the sunset?”

  “You wish.” Will’s hand landed in a soft swat on Erik’s face. “Bring that ass back soon or I’ll kill you.”

  “I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise,” Erik said. “I’m back.”

  Will ruffled Erik’s hair. “All right. Don’t fucking call me.”

  “Believe me, you miserable bitch, I won’t.”

  Will gave a stern flick of his jaw toward the airport doors. “Go.”

  Erik went. Feeling he hadn’t done enough and was leaving the best of himself behind.

  “DON’T BE NERVOUS,” Daisy said, laying a hand on his forearm.

  “I’m not nervous,” Erik said, his stomach burning.

  I’m flat out scared, he thought.

  The sun was starting its descent over the rolling hills of Lancaster County. The day had been suspiciously mild for January: one of winter’s smartass attempts to get you to drop your guard and think it won’t be so bad after all. Then she’d swoop in for the kill.

  “Remember where you’re going?” Daisy asked.

  “I remember,” Erik said. It was surreal how little directional prompting he needed. Left at the crossroads. Bear right at the gas station. He smiled at the yellow barn with the beautiful compass rose hex signs on its façade. He raised his fingers off the steering wheel at the huge Amish Quilts roadsign and its patchwork design.

  Hello. It’s me. I’m back.

  His heart kicked up as they cruised along a half-mile of split rail fence and another familiar road sign loomed ahead: Bianco’s: Farm to Market.

  He turned up the road, eyes sweeping the land. The Christmas trees were full-grown—they were saplings when Erik first saw them freshman year of college. More acres of them sprawled on his left. The bare orchard trees on the right looked bigger and more numerous. The grapevines were cut down to the ground, leaving only the supports lining the slopes like stunted telephone poles.

  A mailbox marked the Biancos’ private driveway. At its base squatted a funny little stone statue, like a small dragon pretending to be a turtle. La Tarasque: both the name and the sentry of Daisy’s parents’ house.

  Erik turned up the drive, his chest pounding hard. He parked, switched off the engine and clutched the steering wheel another nanosecond. Then found his balls and got out of the car. He straightened his shoulders and told his heart and stomach to knock it off. He was only seeing Daisy’s parents for the first time in thirteen years. After he’d walked out on their traumatized daughter and ignored her as she descended into a near-suicidal darkness.

  No big deal.

  “Welcome back,” Daisy said, closing the passenger door.

  To Erik’s staring eyes, La Tarasque looked unchanged. A beautiful farmhouse with a front porch that wrapped around both sides. Black shutters neat against grey shingles and a sunny yellow door. Three gable windows along the second story roof.

  Joe Bianco was sitting next to one, hands clasped in his lap. Looking like a small Buddha.

  “Dad?” Daisy said, laying a hand across her eyebrows and squinting into the sun’s rays.

  Joe freed one hand and raised it. “Hello.”

  “Dad, what are you doing?”

  “I’m laying an egg, what does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Are you stuck up there?”

  Joe flicked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ladder fell over.”

  “Where’s Mamou?”

  “At her book club.”

  “You were up on the ladder alone? Are you insane?”

  “Bon dieu de merde, this is going to take forever.”

  “You don’t have your phone with you?”

  “It’s in my tool
bag.”

  “Where’s your tool bag?”

  “Hanging on the ladder.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Dad. How long have you been sitting there?”

  “Stop asking him questions,” Erik said.

  “Thank you, Erique,” Joe said. “Perhaps you can get me the hell down from here before my wife returns? I’ve already pissed once off the roof and I think I splattered the patio.”

  Erik had already started walking around the side of the house to the back where, sure enough, the long extension ladder was lying on the ground.

  Here we go again, he thought.

  Daisy helped him get the ladder righted and braced properly against the roof.

  “All set,” Erik called, getting a foot on the bottom rung and his hands on the struts. To Daisy he said, “How about you give me a minute?”

  Daisy glanced up at the roof, then back at Erik.

  “I got this,” he said, and leaned to kiss her. Shaking her head and muttering, she walked off around the corner of the house.

  Joe started scooting down the roof’s incline on his butt. “Not one of my brighter ideas, hé?”

  “At least it didn’t fall while you were on it.”

  “Let’s not talk about that.” Carefully, Joe maneuvered himself backward and, with Erik’s guidance, got his foot on the top rung.

  “How the hell did you plan to do this yourself?” Erik asked, the sheer idiocy finally sinking in.

  “Shut up.”

  Erik closed his teeth around his tongue, shaking his head. He stepped aside as Joe neared the lower rungs, keeping one hand on a strut until Joe had both feet on the ground.

  Joe whacked one hand against the other and brushed off his jeans.

  “Laying an egg,” Erik said. “Good one.”

  “You like that? I had a couple hours to think up my lines. And reflect on my life in case my wife found me.”

  He seemed a little shorter than Erik remembered. The hair was all silver grey, combed back from a peaked hairline, and he was sporting a goatee. He took hold of the ladder as if to bring it down, then stopped and pointed at Erik.

  “Not a word of this to Francine.”

  “No, sir,” Erik said.

  For a moment they stared at each other. Then Joe’s pointing hand reached out and his palm came onto Erik’s face with a firm, familiar pat. Thumb and forefinger taking hold of Erik’s ear and tugging.

  “I’m sorry,” Erik said.

  “I know,” Joe said. “But you showed up just in time, Franci would have killed me. Now let’s put this ladder away and get the piss off the pavers.”

  “Dad.” Daisy was calling from the side of the house. “The patio is like a latrine. Did you even attempt to aim?”

  “Who’s this?” Erik asked Francine.

  She came closer, pulling her glasses from the top of her head onto her nose. Leaned and looked at the picture Erik was pointing to. A group shot of Francine, Daisy, Joe and a young man Erik didn’t recognize but felt like he should.

  “Oh,” Francine said. “That’s Joe’s son, Michel.”

  “You found him?” Erik said.

  Francine laughed. “He found us. Tombé du ciel, he rang on the telephone last fall, looking for Joe. We nearly dropped dead. He’s in the States now, working as a chef, and he came here for Thanksgiving.” Her hand reached to rub circles between Erik’s shoulder blades. “The same night you called. Isn’t that funny?”

  Erik smiled beneath her loving caress, studying the picture, noticing Michel had the signature Bianco eyes. His mother had gotten pregnant with him just before Joe left for Vietnam. Joe intended to marry her, but when his tours were up, he returned to France to find she had married someone else. Her husband made a campaign of cutting Joe off from his son. All communication was sporadic and secret—letters and pictures snuck in and out of France by a sympathetic grandmother.

  Now here he was, framed in silver and set proudly on an end table. Relaxed, confident and smiling under the drape of Joe’s arm. As if he had always belonged there.

  “And look at this,” Francine said, picking up a picture of Joe with a little blonde girl on his lap, reading a story. “Joe gets a son and an instant granddaughter. Isn’t she adorable?”

  “Did you eat her?”

  “Shamelessly,” Francine said, patting him again. “Not a scrap left.”

  “What’s it like having a brother all of a sudden?” Erik asked Daisy as they unpacked in the old carriage house. The upstairs had been converted into an apartment and it was always where Erik and Daisy slept during the college years.

  “Weird,” she said. “And wonderful. I’m still getting to know him but from the little time I’ve spent with him, I think he’s a lovely man. And it’s made Pop so happy.”

  “Talk about happy,” Erik said, pulling her tight against him. “I can’t believe I’m back in this room.”

  She wound her arms around his waist and set her cheek against his chest. “Neither can I,” she said. “I haven’t been up here since you left. Never slept in this room again after we broke up. John and I came to Pennsylvania for Christmas one year. I made my mother put us in the guest room.”

  “Really?”

  “To me, this was our room,” she said.

  “It’s still ours.” He tilted her chin up and kissed her. “I’ll prove it…”

  THEY DIDN’T MAKE ANY long-term plans. Didn’t discuss any scenarios of one of them moving to the other. They phoned every night, texted throughout every day. Arranged and rearranged however they could to get to each other.

  Daisy came to New York for a long weekend. Erik picked her up at Rochester airport and drove them over to his mother’s house for dinner.

  “Remember when I teased you down at my parents’ place? For being nervous?” Daisy asked as they got out of the car.

  “Yeah?”

  “I apologize.”

  He laughed and put his arm around her. “It’ll be fine.”

  And it was. Fred greeted them in the little front hall. Fred was always so smooth and unflappable. An effortless host who could make a corpse feel at home. He took their coats to hang away and they went into the kitchen.

  Christine, her hands in the soapy dishwater, looked over at the two of them standing in the doorway. Then looked up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly.

  “Jesus Christ, I’m bawling already.”

  “Great, Ma,” Erik said.

  “Look at you,” Christine said, drying off her hands and not looking at Erik. She walked over, her arms reaching. “Look who’s here…”

  She and Daisy hugged, rocking side to side a little. When it was clear neither was letting go, Erik retreated behind the refrigerator door, pretending to look for something.

  “So good to see you,” Christine said over and over.

  Daisy said something Erik couldn’t quite hear, but he was sure it was I’m sorry.

  “It was long ago,” Christine said. “Another life. You’re here now and he’s so happy. And that’s all I care about. All right?”

  Erik shut the door and straightened up. Fred strode into the kitchen and clapped his hands together. “Who wants a gin and tonic?”

  “Forget the tonic,” Daisy said, wiping her face with the dishtowel Christine handed her.

  The emotional scene concluded within one drink. Ten minutes later, Daisy was in an apron and showing Christine how to spatchcock a chicken.

  “Come again?” Fred said.

  “You cut the backbone out,” Daisy said. “Press it flat and roast it that way.”

  “She did this the first weekend Erik brought her home,” Christine said. “I had a chicken dinner all planned, then my hours got screwed up and I was going to be late getting home. I told them to order pizza. Instead, I get home and Daisy’s made the whole meal. But she did this with the chicken.”

  “I was showing off,” Daisy said, grimacing as she cut through a joint with the kitchen shears. “I’d watched my mother do it all the time but I
never tried. So I called her up and she talked me through it. Erik was holding the phone to my ear with one hand and signing to Pete with the other, trying to explain what I was doing.”

  “You had him at spatchcock,” Erik said. “He had to make up a new sign for it. It was like his favorite word for a year.”

  “I think it’s mine now,” Fred said. “What’s the benefit of doing it this way, rather than roasting it whole?”

  “The skin,” Erik and Christine said at the same time.

  “The skin,” Daisy said, smiling.

  “Every inch of it is crispy, salty and perfect,” Christine said. “We stood over the stove and tore it off with our fingers, remember? So disgustingly good.”

  “You want to make stock with this?” Daisy asked, indicating the excised backbone.

  “No,” Christine said. “I’ll never use it before we leave for Florida.”

  Daisy regarded the scrap regretfully before tossing it in the garbage. She looked over at Erik, blinked her eyes once then returned to her work.

  IN BROCKPORT, IT WAS Daisy’s turn to be shown around Erik’s world and introduced to friends and co-workers. They had lunch with Miles and Janey Kelly, the couple who had all but adopted Erik as their own. Afterward, Daisy asked to see where Erik lived when he was married to Melanie. He thought it a strange request, but he took her past the old Victorian in the historic district. She looked at it from the passenger side window, saying nothing for a long time.

  “Where did you get married?” she finally asked.

  “In Rochester. At the courthouse.”

  She nodded, still looking out the window.

  He took her hand and squeezed it. “What are you thinking?”

  She looked over at him. “I’m glad I didn’t know until now. Every time I thought about reaching out to you one more time, I just… I didn’t want to find you were with someone. It was easier not to know.” She looked out at the house again, drew her breath in and let it out. “I don’t want to pretend it never happened though. So I wanted to see where.”