We were dirt-poor, but Jane didn’t seem to notice or care. One night over dinner she clattered her fork and knife against the side of her chinet plate and smiled, her mouth full of cheap spaghetti. “Isn’t life wonderful?” she said. “Don’t we just have it all?”
That night she woke up screaming. I sat up, temporarily blind in the dark, and felt my way across the bed for her. “I dreamed that you died,” she said. “You drowned because of a problem with an oxygen tank in your diving gear. And I was left alone.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I said the first thing to come to mind. “We check all our gear.”
“That’s not it, Oliver. What if one of us dies? What happens then?”
I reached around and turned on the light to see the clock: 3:20 A.M. “I suppose we’d remarry.”
“Just like that!” Jane exploded. She sat up in bed, facing away from me. “You can’t just pick a wife off a shelf.”
“Of course not. I just meant that if I happened to die young I’d want you to be happy.”
“How could I be happy without you? When you get married, you make the biggest decision of your life; you say you’re going to spend eternity with one person. So what do you do if that person leaves? What do you do once you’ve already committed yourself?”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
And Jane looked at me and said, “I want you to live forever.”
I know now that I should have said, “I want you to live forever too,” or at least I should have thought it. But instead I retreated back to the security blanket of scientific discovery. I said, “Oh, Jane, ‘forever’ depends on gradients of time. It’s a relative term.”
She slept on the couch that night, wrapped in an extra sheet.
At this point, Mica interrupts me. “My uncle was hospitalized for a broken heart. Swear to God. After my Aunt Noreen was hit by a truck. Two days later, my uncle went into spasms.”
“Technically it was cardiac arrest,” I say.
“Like I said,” Mica insists, “a broken heart.” She arches her eyebrows, as if to say, I told you so. “What happened after that?”
“Nothing,” I tell her. Jane got up and made me lunch and kissed me goodbye like nothing had happened. And since neither of us died, we never had to test the theory.
“Look,” Mica says, “do you think you can fall in love more than once?”
“Of course.” Love has always seemed to me such an ethereal issue one cannot pin it down to singular circumstances.
“Do you think you fall in love more than one way?”
“Of course,” I say again. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t like talking about things like this.”
“There’s your problem right there, Oliver,” Mica insists. “If you’d given yourself a little more time to think about it, you wouldn’t be sitting in this stupid diner crying into your coffee.”
What does she know, I think. She’s a goddamned waitress. She watches soap operas. Mica walks around to the other side of the counter so that she is facing me. “Tell me what it was like in the house after she left.”
“It was nice, actually. I had a lot of free time, and I didn’t have to worry about letting my work get in the way of other things.”
“What other things?”
“Family things. Like Rebecca’s birthday, for instance.” I take a sip of coffee. “No, I really didn’t miss them much at all.” Of course I couldn’t get any work done, either, because I was crazed with anxiety. I couldn’t stop picturing Jane. I picked up and left an important research excursion just to get them back home.
Mica leans forward so that her lips are inches from mine. “You lie.” Then she pulls on her apron, and heads in the direction of Hugo. “I don’t listen to liars.”
But I’ve been waiting for her all day. I’ve been waiting for Mica to listen. “You can’t leave me.”
She turns around on her heel. “Can’t stand to be deserted twice, can you?”
“Do you want to know what it was really like without her there? I could still feel her in the house. I can now. The reason I won’t go to sleep is because sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can sense her, if that means anything. Sometimes when I’m alone I think she’s standing behind me, watching me. It’s like she never left. It’s like it always was.” Oh Jane. I lean my cheek against the cool counter. “For fifteen years I kissed her hello and goodbye and I didn’t make anything of it. It was a habit. I didn’t even notice when I was doing it. I couldn’t tell you what her skin feels like, if you asked. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s like to hold her hand.” All of a sudden I’m crying, something I haven’t done since I was a child. “I don’t have any memories of the important things.”
When my eyes focus again Mica is talking to Hugo, and pulling on her faux leather coat. “Come on,” she says, “I’m taking you back to my place. It’s in Southey, and it’s a hike, but you can make it.” She puts her arm around me, almost as tall as I am, and I lean on her to get off the stool. It takes us fifteen minutes to walk there and the whole way, as idiotic as I imagine I look, I can’t keep myself from crying.
Mica opens the door to the apartment and apologizes for the mess. Strewn across the floor are empty pizza cartons and textbooks. She leads me into a sideroom barely large enough to be a walk-in closet, which holds a white futon and a floor lamp. She loosens my tie. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she says.
I let her take off shoes and my belt and then I practically collapse onto the low futon. Mica gets a washcloth and a bowl of water and leans my head in her lap, sponging my temples. “Just relax. You need to get some sleep.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“Oliver,” Mica says, “I have to go to work. But I’ll be back. I promise you that.” She leans close to my face. “I have a good feeling about this.”
She waits until she thinks I am asleep, and then she edges my head off her lap and creeps out of the room. I’m pretending because I know she needs to go back to the diner. She needs the money. She turns off the lights and closes the front door behind her. I have every intention of getting up and walking around, but suddenly my body has become so heavy it is a hardship. I close my eyes and when I do I can perceive her there. “Jane?” I whisper.
Maybe this is the way it would be if you had died. Maybe I would be crying, wishing there had been one extra minute. Maybe I would spend my time and money contacting mediums, reading up on the spiritual world, in hopes of finding you so that I’d have the chance to tell you things I hadn’t. Maybe I would look twice in the reflection of mirrors and store windows, hoping to see your face again. Maybe I would lie in bed like I am now, with my fists clenched so hard, trying to convince myself you are standing, flesh and blood, before me. But in all likelihood, if you were dead, I wouldn’t have any chance at all. I would not get to tell you what I should have been telling you every day: that I love you.
49 JANE
With the moves of a practiced dancer, the man twists the ram onto its side, catching its haunch in the crook of his leg and rolling it, a cross between a pas de deux and a half-nelson. With the ram breathing evenly, he peels away the fleece. It falls away in one continuous piece. It’s white and clean, the underside.
When he finishes he tosses the shears on the ground. Pulling the ram to its feet, he leads it by the neck out of the fenced gate. He slaps its behind and it runs off, naked.
“Excuse me,” I say, “do you work here?”
The man smiles. “I suppose you could say that.”
I take a few steps closer, watching the wet hay to see that it doesn’t stick on my still-white sneakers. “Do you know someone named Joley Lipton?” I ask, looking up. “He works here too.”
The man nods. “I’ll take you to him in a minute, if you’d like. I’ve got one more to shear.”
“Oh,” I say. “All right.” He asks me to help, to make it go faster. He points to the door of the barn. I turn to Rebecca, mouthing, I don’t bel
ieve this. I follow him into the barn.
“Hey little lady,” the man whispers, “hey my pretty little lamb. I’m gonna come a little closer. I’m gonna come a little bit closer.” As he says this he is creeping forward, and then with a shout he sinks his hands into the wool of the sheep’s back. “Take this side. She’s young and feisty, and she’ll get away.”
I do what he has done, and hunch over with my fingers roped into the fleece. All three of us walk out to the brown mat. “Where would you like me to put this?” I ask, wondering if I should just go off on my own to find Joley. God only knows how long this will take.
“Put her over here,” the man says, nodding his chin several feet forward. He lets go of his side, and, following suit, I do the same. The sheep takes a quick look at me and runs away. “What are you doing! Catch her!” the man yells.
Rebecca lunges at the sheep but it darts in the other direction. The man stares at me, incredulous. “I thought it would just stay put,” I say, explaining. The least I can do is catch the damn thing. I run to a corner of the pen and try to sink my fists into the wool of the sheep’s neck again. But suddenly I’ve lost my balance and though I reach for the fence, for Rebecca, I grab at nothing at all. I fall with an audible squelch and gag. “Rebecca,” I choke out, “get over here.”
The man is laughing in the distance. He grabs the sheep like it is no trouble at all and hoists it onto the brown cloth mat. He shears the thing in seconds, while I am trying to shimmy sheep manure off of my legs. I can’t get away from the smell.
“Tough break,” the man says, walking over.
I’ve had about as much of this asshole as I can take. “I’m sure this isn’t appropriate behavior for a field hand,” I say, putting on my most educated cocktail-party voice. “When I tell Joley about this, he’ll report you to the person who runs the place.”
The man offers his hand to me, but takes it away when he sees what’s covering my fingers. “I’m not too worried about that. I’m Sam Hansen. You must be Joley’s sister.”
This idiot, I think, this fool who’s gone out of his way to humiliate-me; this is the Boy Wonder Joley raves about?
I turn away, from embarrassment or sheer anger or whatever, and whisper to Rebecca, “I want to clean up.”
Sam takes us up to the Big House, as he calls it, the modest mansion-of sorts that overlooks the hundred acres of apples. He rattles off dates and facts that I imagine are meant to impress us: it was built in the 1800s, it is filled with antiques, blah blah blah. He leads me up the spiral staircase to the second room on the right. “Your stuff still in the car?” he asks, as if this is my fault as well. “This was my parents’ room. You’ll fit into my mom’s stuff. Check in the closet.”
He walks out and closes the door behind him. It is a pretty room with a four-poster, a night table stacked with curly maple Shaker boxes, and curtains and a comforter in wide blue-and-white awning stripes. There are no dressers or bureaus or armoires. I lean against the wall and wonder where Sam’s parents put their clothes, and when I stand up again the wall juts open, hinged from the inside, pressing open into a hidden closet the size of a room itself. “How neat,” I say to myself. When you close the closet, the wallpaper matches so exactly-blue cornflowers-you’d never know there was a door. I press against the wall again and it springs off its magnetic hook. Inside are four or five sundresses and skirts, not half as dowdy as I’d imagined. I pick a pretty madras, which turns out to be two sizes too big, and I belt it with a bandanna that has been tied to a hook inside the closet.
I am tempted to leave the dirty clothes on the floor of this room but something tells me there won’t be maid service. So I gather them into my arms, inside out, and head downstairs. Rebecca and Sam are waiting. “What should I do with these?”
Sam looks at me. “Wash them,” he says, and then he turns and walks out the door.
“He’s a hell of a host,” I say to Rebecca.
“I think he’s pretty funny.” She shows me where the washing machine is.
“Thank God. I was expecting a scrub board.”
“Are you coming or what?” Sam yells through the screen door. “I don’t have all day.”
We follow him through the orchard, which I have to say really is beautiful. Trees spread their arms in octopus embraces, jeweled with waxy green leaves and bud necklaces. They are planted in neat, even rows, with plenty of room between them. Some have grown so big their branches entwine with the tree beside. Sam tells us which parts of the orchard are retail and which are commercial. Each patch of trees is cut by several roads, and the markers on the roads tell you what’s grown where and to whom it gets sold.
“Hey Hadley,” Sam yells approaching a tree, “come meet Joley’s relatives.”
A man steps off a ladder, which has been hidden by the trunk of the apple tree. He is tall, and he has an easygoing smile. I’d put him at the same age as Sam, by the looks of things. He grabs my hand and shakes it. “Hadley Slegg. It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Ma’am. Such decorum. He’s obviously not a close relative of Sam’s.
He walks with us towards the lower quarter of the orchard, where I imagine we’ll find Joley. I can’t wait to see him-it has been so long, really, I don’t know what to expect. Will his hair be longer? Will he speak first, or just hug me? Will he be different?
“So I hear you’ve done quite a bit of traveling,” Sam says.
I jump; I’ve forgotten he’s here. “Yes,” I tell him. “All across the country. Of course I’ve also been to Europe and South America, with my husband’s research.” I stumble a little over the word husband and I catch Sam looking at me. “Lots of interesting places, actually. Why? Do you travel?”
“All the time. In spirit, at least.” He leaves it like that, cryptic, for a moment, long enough to make me wonder if there is more to him than meets the eye. “I’ve never been outside of New England, but I’ve probably read more books on travel and exploring than anyone.”
“Why don’t you take a trip?”
“You don’t get time off when you run a place like this.” He has a nice smile; he just doesn’t seem to use it a lot. “The second I set foot away from here, I think about all the things that are going wrong. It’s easier now that your brother’s here. Between him and Hadley I’ve split a lot of the responsibility. But it’s not like a regular business. You can’t reschedule a tree bearing fruit like you’d reschedule an appointment.”
“I see,” I say, not really understanding at all. We walk a few yards without saying anything. “So where would you really like to go?”
“Tibet,” Sam says without hesitation. It surprises me. Most people say France or England. “I’d like to bring back some of the Asian strains of apples and propagate them in this climate. In a greenhouse, if need be.”
I find myself staring at him. He is young-younger than Joley- but he already has the beginnings of lines around the corners of his mouth. He has thick dark hair and a strong square chin and what looks like a perpetual tan. As for his eyes, you can’t tell anything from them. They are neon, really, blue but not like Oliver’s. They burn.
Sam looks up and, embarrassed, I turn away. “Joley tells us you’ve run away from home,” he says.
“Joley told you that?”
“Something about a fight with your husband.”
Sam is bluffing, I think. Joley wouldn’t tell people that. “I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
“Well, in a way it is. What you do is what you do, but I don’t want any trouble going on here.”
“Don’t worry. If Oliver shows up there won’t be a Tombstone showdown. No blood. I promise.”
“Too bad,” he says. “Blood’s good for fertilizer.” he starts to laugh, surprised that I don’t find this funny at all. He clears his throat. “So, what do you do for a living?”
I tell him I’m a speech pathologist. I look at him. “That means I go to schools in the San Diego area and diagnose children with speech p
roblems caused by lisps, cleft palates, what have you.”
“Believe it or not,” Sam says sarcastically, “I did go to school.” He shakes his head and walks faster.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “A lot of people don’t know what a speech pathologist does. I’ve just gotten used to explaining it.”
“Look, I know where you’re from. I know what you think about guys like me. And to tell you the truth I don’t give a shit.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“And you don’t know anything about me, ” Sam says. “So let’s just leave it at that. You want to come here to visit your brother, that’s fine. You want to stay a while, okay. Let’s just say I’ll do my thing, and you can do yours.”
“Fine!”
“Fine.”
I cross my arms and stare over the flat calm of the lake in the valley. “I want to know why you didn’t help me up back there.”
“In the manure?” Sam leans close to me and I can smell sweat and sheep and the honey of hay. “Because I knew exactly who you were.”
“What does that mean?” I call after him. He’s already begun to walk off, long carefree strides. “What the hell does that mean!” He squares his shoulders. “Pig,” I say, under my breath.
I take just two more steps and then I see the ladder propped against the tall budding tree. “It’s Joley,” I shout. “Joley!” I pick up the long skirt of Sam’s mother’s sundress and run across the field.
Joley is wrapping some kind of green electrical tape around a branch. His hair is still light and curling around his ears. He is wiry, strong, graceful. He opens his eyes, with their long dark lashes, and turns to me. “Jane!” he says, as if it truly is unexpected to find me standing there. He smiles, and the world turns inside out.
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