Heaven Adjacent

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Alice poured herself a drink. A rather stiff one for ten twenty in the morning, Roseanna thought. About four fingers. Three if it were Roseanna’s stubby, sausage-like digits doing the measuring. Alice raised the bottle in a silent offer, and Roseanna nodded.

  “Not that much, though,” she added, this time in words.

  Alice set a glass of bourbon near Roseanna’s elbow and sat in her desk chair, spinning it around to face the window as well. They sat looking over the Midtown skyline together.

  For a surprising length of time, they did so in silence.

  “So how’s life?” Roseanna asked.

  It was a mildly sarcastic question. Clearly life was not so good, but Roseanna wasn’t sure if her friend wanted to talk about how good it wasn’t.

  “I was never a big fan,” Alice said.

  “Of life?”

  “Right.”

  “In general?”

  “Right.”

  They sat in silence for a couple of minutes more. Alice propped her Jimmy Choo heels up on the windowsill. Crossed one ankle over the other. Brushed her curly hair out of her eyes with one careless hand, meaning Roseanna would have to prompt her friend to check her hairdo in the mirror before the big meeting.

  They didn’t have all that much time to kill, either. Their appointment to meet with Tyler Brandt was only about seven minutes away. Roseanna kept an eye on her wristwatch as they sat. She wore it with its face on the inside of her wrist, an old habit that allowed her to glance at the time without tipping her hand, either literally or figuratively.

  “I got my heart broken,” Alice said, startling her slightly. “Yet again.”

  “Oh.” Then Roseanna was not quite sure where to go from there. Being someone’s shoulder to cry on had never been her strong suit. Then again, Alice wasn’t crying. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “But it’s okay.”

  “How can that be okay?”

  “It just is.”

  “Not in any world I ever lived in.”

  “I’m not just saying that to be stoic.”

  “I wasn’t calling you a liar. Just explain to me how getting your heart broken is okay. Because I’m not following that.”

  “Oh, come on, Roseanna. You’ve been through an acrimonious divorce, so what can I teach you about heartbreak?”

  “Maybe . . . how it can be okay?”

  Alice sighed. She spun back to her desk and pulled her battered soft-side leather briefcase out from under it. Slapped it hard onto the papers on the desktop.

  “It’s like this bag,” she said, sounding as though the liquor might be going to her head already. Then again, Roseanna had no way of knowing if this was her first glass. “My favorite bag. You know how much I love this bag.”

  “Your heart is like that bag?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think you’re a little in the bag yourself, hon.”

  “No, I’m making a serious point here.” Alice ran a hand over the straps and buckles. “How many times has Jerry told me I should get a new one of these?”

  “I’ve lost count.”

  “But I never replace it.”

  “No. You never do.”

  “Because it’s supposed to be beat up. That shows it’s had a life. That I used it. That I wasn’t afraid to put it through its paces. I didn’t just put it on a shelf and stare at it. It’s not for looks only.

  “It reminds me of . . . when I was a kid in Missouri . . . I don’t think I ever told you this, because I just now thought of it for the first time in years. My brother got into a big fight in a gas station, and I mean an actual fistfight. Our dad had to go downtown and bail him out of jail. And you know what the fight was about? Well, of course you don’t. Sorry. He told a local kid, a teenage guy he knew from his high school, that the guy’s truck was ‘disco.’ I’m really dating myself now, because nobody uses that term anymore. It means it was too clean. It was a jacked-up four-wheel-drive pickup. It’s not supposed to be clean. It’s supposed to be driven in the dirt. So those are fighting words, if you accuse someone of having a truck that’s too clean. It’s about more than just the truck. It means the person is a big phony. Like if a Texan says you’re all hat and no cattle. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so. You’re saying hearts are supposed to be broken. Not sure I agree, but . . .”

  “Right. Otherwise you’re not really using them. Which is a very cowardly way to live, don’t you think?”

  They sat in silence for a minute or so.

  Roseanna glanced at her watch to be sure they weren’t late for the Brandt meeting. “I didn’t even know you were seeing somebody,” she said after a time.

  “Not really for that long. And it was somebody . . . well . . . too young—that’s all I’m going to say about that. I should have my head examined. It’s embarrassing to talk about it even. But, you know. We’re at that age when we realize we have a few more wild oats left to sow.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Roseanna said, because she considered herself utterly oatless. “So what happened?”

  “Oh, the usual. I’m too married to my job.”

  “Only for two more years.”

  “That doesn’t work with the young ones, darling. It’s like saying ‘I’ll spend more time with you in your next life.’ The earth doesn’t spin as fast for them as it does for us.”

  It was nearly time to go. But Roseanna had one more burning question. And it didn’t seem to want to wait.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What? That I was seeing someone? Or that it didn’t pan out?”

  “Yes. That.”

  “Oh, well, what can I say, darling? We don’t really talk about private things like that. Do we? I didn’t think we did.”

  “But we’re best friends.”

  “True.”

  “That can’t be a good sign.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Roseanna; don’t read too much in. Being private people is not the worst thing in the world. But I’ll tell you what. After the Brandt meeting we’ll have a nice long three-martini lunch. And we’ll see what it is we’ve been missing about each other’s gossip. Maybe we can do better. Maybe you really can teach a couple of old dogs. You know.”

  “Okay,” Roseanna said. “That’s a deal. I’d like that.”

  And Roseanna would have liked that. Very much. She would have treasured such an opportunity, in fact, had it ever come to pass.

  THE MOVE, CONTINUED

  Chapter Ten

  Fishing—as Opposed to Catching—and Knowing What You’re Afraid Of

  Roseanna was on her way to the barn to do some welding when she noticed him. The young man. He was leaning on her fence, staring at the iron zoo. People did from time to time.

  She walked closer to him, but he was too caught up in the animal sculptures to notice.

  He looked barely twenty, if that, wearing a battered and faded hat with a brim. Not quite a cowboy hat, but something similar. He lifted it, squinting his eyes into the early afternoon sun. His hair was strangely short. Shaved, almost. He had a serious, intelligent-looking face. He scratched his nearly bare scalp and snugged the hat back into place. By his feet sat a massive backpack, the kind people lug with them when they go out into the wilderness for days at a time.

  Then he saw her standing nearby, and he removed the hat again, tipping it to her. “Morning, miss,” he called. “Or is it afternoon?”

  “Afternoon, I think,” she said.

  She walked closer, and leaned on the fence from the inside, and they stared at the animals together.

  “Interesting what you’ve done here,” he said. “Or I guess I shouldn’t assume. You make these yourself?”

  “Well, not all by myself. There’s a little girl who helped with the creative part of the process. But you don’t hand a welding torch to a five-year-old. So I’m the one who welded them together.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Big job, welding. Kind of a lost art these days. Don’t thin
k I ever met a woman welder, though it’s all good that you are.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call myself a welder,” Roseanna said. “I’m just learning. If you were to go closer, you’d see I’m quite a bit short of a pro.”

  “Mind if I do? Oh, not to check up on your work, miss. I didn’t mean it like that. I’d just like to see these things up close.”

  “Be my guest,” she said, and pointed toward the gate.

  The young man hefted his heavy pack onto his shoulders and walked toward the gate, which Roseanna held open. He held his hand out to her to shake before walking onto her property.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Where’re my manners? Nelson David. First name Nelson, last name David. People get that backwards a lot. And I appreciate it a lot if they don’t.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Nelson,” she said. “Rosie Chaldecott.”

  They walked together into the field with the elephant, and the lion, and the horse, and the giraffe, and the hippopotamus, and walked among them in silence.

  “Looks like good work to me,” Nelson said.

  “You can see all the welds.”

  “Holds together, though.”

  “Yes, in fact the little girl rides the horse daily.” Roseanna had welded the saddle-shaped seat of an ancient tractor onto its back. “Where’s home for you?”

  Nelson pointed to somewhere in the area of his own shoulder with a hooked thumb. Roseanna could only think he was indicating a vague direction, and did not understand.

  “Where?”

  “Pretty much here on my back,” he said. “Since I got out of the service, I’ve just been moving around.”

  “The service?”

  “Armed services. The Army.”

  “Ah. Got it.” That explains the haircut, Roseanna thought. “How long have you been out?”

  “’Bout four days.”

  They walked to the giraffe, and Nelson stared up its long neck, shielding his eyes when the midday sun poured in under his hat brim.

  “Still,” Roseanna said. “You must be from somewhere. Everybody is.”

  “True enough, miss. Everybody’s from somewhere. Me, I’m from North Carolina. But I’m not so sure I’d call it home.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Now that you say it, I can hear just a trace of the accent.”

  “Too bad. I did my best to shake it in my two years of duty. I guess I just wanted to leave all that behind me. Lived there with my parents from the day I was born till the day I turned eighteen. Then I joined up because I wanted to get away. Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents. They’re good people. Each on their own. But put them together and what you get is not good. They fight all the time. Every minute they’re together, seems like. And I could never understand why. Life’s too short for all that fighting. That’s how I see it, anyway.”

  They wandered over to the lion. Roseanna was particularly proud of the lion—the way she had welded the links of dozens of lengths of chain so they stood rigid in a curving pattern to form the gigantic ruff of mane.

  “Because they’re not happy,” she said.

  Nelson looked at her face briefly, then back at the lion. He offered no comment.

  “I’m starting to see that we make choices at an early age,” Roseanna continued, “when we’re too young to know what will make us happy. But they’re more or less permanent choices. They don’t have to be, I guess. But somehow we end up thinking they have to be. It’s hard to make a change after so many years, and we don’t want to let people down by breaking our promises. But what we do to those poor people is worse. We blame them for the fact that we’re not happy. Because that’s easier than blaming ourselves. Because if we blame ourselves, then we have to fix it, and that’s a tricky thing.”

  Nelson’s eyes came up to hers again. Briefly.

  “Well, I appreciate the close-up look at your work, miss. It’s quite . . . fanciful.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is that.”

  They moved off toward the gate together. Slowly. The young man didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.

  “Sure would like to see what’s involved in the process of welding,” he said.

  Roseanna lifted her heavy welder’s mask and wiped sweat off her brow. The interior of the barn was nicely shady, but did not have the benefit of a breeze. All she had done was weld two pieces of pipe together at an angle, and already she was hot and exhausted. She turned off the torch. The silence felt heavenly.

  “So this is something you really like to do,” Nelson said, carefully testing the pipes to see if they were cool enough to touch.

  “Not really. No. It’s summer, and it’s hot enough with no torch involved. And it makes my arms and shoulders ache. And the mask is heavy, and makes me feel like there’s not enough air.”

  “A bit of an obvious question,” the young man began, “but why, then?”

  “Because of this moment right here. When I lift up the mask and breathe cool air and turn off the torch. And then I look down and see that I’ve created something. A real something, that you can see and touch. Other than a meal, I haven’t made a lot of tangible things in my life. I guess I like it because it’s hard. I have to struggle for it. But then, when it’s done, I feel good about what I did. I feel gratified. And the fact that it was difficult makes it even better.”

  She looked up to see the young man nodding firmly. “Everything in life is like that,” he said.

  “You think so?”

  “Everything worth having. Thanks for showing me. I guess I should get out of your hair.”

  They stepped out of the barn together. Moved toward the gate.

  Nelson stopped, though, and pointed down the hill toward the creek. “If you don’t mind my asking, miss . . . is that your property down there?”

  “Down where?”

  “I’ve noticed the last couple miles—I can see from where I’ve been walking how there’s a nice deep creek flowing down that hill. I wanted to see if there’re fish in it, but I figured it’s all private property. Do you happen to know if there’s any good fishing down there?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “It’s my property. But I’ve never been down there.”

  “Never been down there?” He sounded genuinely shocked. “How is that possible? How can you own a piece of land you haven’t seen?”

  “I’ve only been here not two months. And I wasn’t in such great physical shape when I moved in. I’m working up to things slowly. It’s a steep hill. I guess I wasn’t relishing having to hike back up.”

  “Well, in my humble opinion, miss, you need to know if there’s good fishing on your own property. If you’ve got a year-round stream on your farm, you have to’ve seen it with your own eyes. Walk down there with me. If you have trouble coming back up, you can grab a strap on my pack, and I’ll tow you up like I was a draft horse. Sound fair enough?”

  “Sure,” Roseanna said. “That sounds fair enough.”

  “I think that’s probably true what you said about my parents,” Nelson said.

  They sat in the shade on one bank of the stream, in a spot where the water looked surprisingly deep, watching the ghostly shapes of three or four silvery fish dart back and forth under the surface of a slow pool.

  “And other people who’re like them,” he said when she didn’t respond. “I guess you were speaking more generally. So . . . hey. Not to overplay my hand here, miss, but I have a collapsible fishing rod in my pack. Mind if I try my hand at getting one of those?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “Take your best shot.”

  “I think I just got incredibly scared,” Roseanna said, after telling him the story of Alice’s sudden stroke.

  It was probably an hour later. They were still sitting in the shade, their backs up against the narrow trunks of their respective trees. He still had not caught anything.

  He didn’t answer, so she added, “It’s hard for me to admit that, but it’s true.”

  “We’re all going to die,” Nelson sa
id, leaning forward over his knees and staring down the end of his fishing pole. “So it doesn’t pay to go through life fearing death. Mind you, I realize as I say so . . . it’s one of those things that says easy and does hard.”

  “It’s not that. I don’t mean I’m afraid of dying. Well, I am, of course. Most people are. But that’s not the main thing.”

  “What’s the main thing?” he asked.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  This is how it is, she now realized, when you’re fishing. Most of the time is spent fishing, not catching. It’s not the most scintillating process. So you’d best be prepared to pass the time some other way. Good conversation if you’re not alone. Worthwhile thoughts if you are.

  “You know how . . . ,” she began, and then stalled briefly. “A person goes to the doctor. They think everything’s fine. Just some minor complaint. Doctor comes in with the X-rays or whatever and says, ‘Bad news. You only have a year to live.’ That person’s life changes completely in that moment. All of a sudden they realize they’re about to be out of time. They start thinking about how they want to live while they still can.”

  He waited briefly for her to go on. But she was hoping she wouldn’t need to.

  “But that didn’t happen to you. Did it?”

  “No. But why should it have to? I’m going to die. We all are. And we all know it. We like to think it’s eons in the future, but we could walk out in front of a truck tomorrow. Hell, today. And we all know that, too. But we waste our precious time. Why? Why do we live like we’re not going to die?”

  He mulled that over for a moment or two, flicking the end of the fishing rod up and down to try to tempt the trout, who were definitively not biting.

  “You would be asking the wrong person, miss,” he said. “I know less than nothing about human nature. I feel like I’ve spent my whole life staring at the people around me and thinking, ‘What am I missing?’”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “So you got scared that you weren’t going to live enough before you died.”

  “Exactly.”