by Dianne Dixon
These were things Caroline had never had. The lack of them had made her sick and rootless. And jealous.
She knew that people like Barton hadn’t been churned through a gauntlet of nameless men circling through their mothers’ beds in a sloppy parade, leaving nothing in their wake but bruises and broken promises.
People like Barton and Lily hadn’t been sent out into the world grasping for sanctuary and perpetually choking on fury.
Caroline was pretending to be busy with a magazine because she didn’t want Barton to know how much her envy of him humiliated her.
“So. Have you indeed sinned?” Barton asked. “Or did you only get as far as the outfit?”
Caroline laughed in spite of herself. “I only got as far as the outfit.”
“That’s what I suspected.” Barton put his arm around her and walked her over to the sofa. “Oh how I’m going to miss you, Caro.”
“Barton, I can’t believe I’m losing you. You’re my best friend. How am I supposed to survive you being in New York?”
“Look on the bright side. Perhaps I’ll be bounced into the street within moments of my arrival. Going from an associate rector to having my own church is a big step, but attempting to go from California Boy to Manhattanite is a leap of monumental proportions. It’s right up there with attempting to change gender. Or species.”
Barton and Caroline settled on the sofa and Caroline leaned against him. It was comfortable and easy, an old familiar pattern. For a moment, they were content not to speak. Then Caroline said: “I’m dressed up because I was going to meet Mitch.”
“He’s here?” Barton sounded startled.
“Across the street, at the Baldwin.”
“Caro, you’ve been down this road before, and it’s always been littered with land mines.”
“I know.” Her voice was profoundly weary. “I think I just wanted to have lunch and flirt … and maybe feel the kind of intensity that I used to have with Mitch … like I was the center of the world. Just for a couple of hours, I wanted to feel like everything hasn’t changed.”
“Some things haven’t changed.” Barton rested his arm lightly across the top of her shoulders. “You were the center of the world to Robert back then. And you still are. Perhaps he’s fallen out of the habit of telling you, but I know he adores being married to you.”
“Maybe he adores being married. But I don’t think he adores me. Being with me, when we’re alone.” Caroline wanted to explain that it wasn’t the routine daylight things that had failed to flourish between herself and Robert; it was the explosive visceral things of the nighttime.
Caroline shifted away from Barton. Her voice was quiet. “I don’t think you can have sex the way Robert and I do and feel like the center of the world.”
Several seconds passed before Barton said: “I have opened up a very private hurt, Caro. That wasn’t what I intended.” There was apology and concern in his voice. “Do you truly want to tell me about this? You don’t have to, you know.”
“But I’ve always told you everything. It would throw our balance off if you left not knowing all of it.” She pulled at a loose thread in the sofa cushion. It was a long time before she finished her thought. “And besides,” she said, “if I don’t tell it to you, I may never tell it to anybody.”
Caroline hesitated, searching for the right words. “When Robert and I have sex,” she said, “it’s like we just barely bump into each other and slide away. As if we never really make contact. He’s always so cautious, like I might break, or explode.” She waited, wanting Barton to have an answer to this unanswerable question: “How can Robert love me but never want me in a way that makes him hungry to be inside me?”
“Oh, my poor Caro.” Barton gently interlaced his fingers with hers.
Caroline’s sigh was full of sadness as she murmured: “I’m starting to hate it when he touches me. It makes me feel so alone that I want to die.” There was a brief silence; then she said, “You always know how to fix everything, Barton. But you can’t fix this. Even if I could keep you in California forever, you could never tell me how to fix this, could you?”
Barton turned her so that she was looking into his eyes. “I can tell you that Robert loves you,” he said. “And that your little girls love you. And that God loves you.”
Caroline dropped her gaze and Barton rested his cheek against the top of her head. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. “And I love you. No matter how hard it is, you can’t die, Caro. Because we all need you. Because I can’t imagine life without you.”
A tear had fallen onto Caroline’s cheek. As she wiped it away, she realized that it was not her own.
*
The exquisite peace Caroline had found with Barton vanished in the few minutes it had taken to leave the church, cross the street, and see Mitch standing on the steps of the hotel.
The sight of him jolted her. Nothing about him had changed. His eyes were still the clear blue of an Alaskan lake. His hair, like her own, was the color of chocolate. His clothes were impeccable. His body was trim. And he was smiling. It was the smile of man who would forever be a mischief-making boy.
When Caroline walked toward him, she was shivering. “I had changed my mind. I wasn’t going to meet you,” she said. “I only came back here for my car.”
“Uh-uh, you came for me. Because it’s quarter to two and I’ve been standing here since twelve-thirty, willing you to show up.” He pulled her into his arms and lifted her off the ground. “God, you feel good.” He buried his head in her shoulder and whispered, “Want to get naked?”
“No.”
He allowed her to slip out of his embrace. “Okay. Then let’s have lunch. I’m starving.”
“I can’t. I need to get home,” Caroline said. But as she said it, Mitch was already leading her toward the hotel. The etched-glass doorway was shimmering in the afternoon sun, like a column of diamonds.
*
By the time Caroline was back in her car, waiting to leave the hotel driveway, rush-hour traffic was braiding itself into gridlock.
Caroline knew that when she got home, she would have to face Mrs. Marston, the grandmotherly old lady who lived next door—she would be curious as to why her baby-sitting assignment had gone on for so long. The girls would be fretting about being late for trick-or-treating. And Mrs. Marston would see that Caroline had returned empty-handed, without a single box or bag to support the story that she had spent the day shopping.
She rested her head on the steering wheel, ashamed, thinking how Mrs. Marston would know the truth the minute she walked into the house. The old lady would see that in the space of an afternoon, Caroline had become a cliché: just another housewife leaving her children alone with a baby-sitter while she ferreted out a release from her own loneliness.
Caroline was suddenly frantic to get home, but she couldn’t see a break in the oncoming traffic. She pounded the horn, and there was a shriek of raucous laughter; a group of people in Halloween costumes was moving past her car. A man in a vampire suit lunged toward her, leering from behind a hideous mask. Caroline screamed. Almost immediately, someone was knocking on her window.
It took her a moment to realize that it was the hotel valet, who was smiling at her and saying: “That guy was a jerk. Don’t be scared. Everything’s cool.” He was showing her that a limousine was turning into the hotel driveway, interrupting the traffic and providing her with a means of escape.
Caroline had to go several blocks before she could find her way onto the freeway. When she made the turn, something inside her tightened. She sensed the overwhelming scope of what her single astonishing moment of impulse might have caused—and the staggering price it might ultimately require her to pay.
Justin
SANTA MONICA, LATE FALL 2005
*
The sand under Justin’s feet was warm. The air was cool and fresh. He was surrounded by sunlight as pale and yellow as hammered gold.
Justin plunged into the surf
and began to swim. Slow and steady. Concentrating only on the feel of the water and the lull of the quiet.
It was a moment of peace and beauty.
But in an instant—no more than a heartbeat—the peace and the beauty vanished and Justin was being paced, stroke for stroke, by absolute misery—by the discovery of the death of his parents, by the gunshot slam of his sister’s door, and by the image of his own name on a gravestone.
He tried to elude these things by thinking of Amy, by remembering each note of a mellow jazz trumpet playing “When I Fall in Love.” It was the music that had surrounded them the first time he kissed her.
The shadows kept flitting closer.
Before he could escape them, their weight hit him with stunning force. The impact was terrifying, and it was seductive: a combination of profound fear and a strange calm.
In the calm, he slowly surrendered to the fear. He let the water close over his head. It was as if he were being pulled down by something sweet and gentle. It was promising that, on the other side, the riddles and terror and pain would disappear and he would find peace.
After a while, his heart slowed to the point where it seemed to quietly stop.
He saw palaces of spinning light and heard the songs of whales vibrating, like church bells, deep in his brain.
The world briefly detonated into silence.
Then suddenly the water was churning with movement and noise. Someone was shouting his name. An arm came around his chest and he was being dragged backward through the waves.
Moments later, two men were staggering onto the beach, carrying him between them, his body loose and without volition, like something already dead.
*
One of the men who had pulled Justin from the surf had been Ari Silver, a new neighbor, whose terrace faced the beach. Justin and Amy had met him briefly on the day they’d moved in. Their town house was next door to his.
At Ari’s insistence, Justin underwent an exam at the local hospital and was released an hour later. The only prescription: a good night’s sleep. The near drowning, the doctor said, had done no lasting harm.
The incident had happened earlier that afternoon. Amy was still worried, and afraid.
Her uneasiness was making her glance at Justin, and hesitate, as she put each of the objects onto the bed. He had asked her to do this for him, but now she was waiting to see if he wanted her to stop.
When he remained silent, she continued laying out one item after the other, until she had arranged them in a neat semicircle—the things that had belonged to his father, the entire contents of the box Justin had been given at the convalescent hospital. There was a small radio and some cheap earphones, a battered brown wallet, a hairbrush, an old Timex watch, and a plastic-framed photograph of a towering Christmas tree. A family was standing in front of it: a blond man, a dark-haired woman, and two girls who seemed to be about ten years old—all of them sporting red sweaters and uncertain smiles.
Justin was lying on his back, his hands folded and resting on his stomach. He was wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and his hair still had traces of sand in it. He turned his gaze in the direction of the open balcony door and looked out toward the ocean. “That’s it?” he said. “That’s everything?”
Amy held up the empty box. “That’s everything.” Then she said, “Are you sorry you asked me to open it?”
Justin shook his head from side to side, very slowly. Amy could see the depth of his pain. It made her feel as if her heart was breaking.
He picked up the plastic-framed photograph as Amy began to repack the box. “Maybe I did die all those years ago,” he said. “And I went to hell. And that’s why I wasn’t available for the family Christmas portrait.” He let the photograph drop back onto the bed.
“Justin, I don’t understand all this weirdness, but there has to be a logical explanation. We just need to find it.” Amy finished repacking the box. Then she leaned over and kissed his forehead. His skin was smooth and cool; it smelled of the sun and the sea. It made Amy wince.
It was the same scent he’d had on him when he’d been dragged unconscious from the ocean a few hours ago—just as Amy was arriving home from a trip to the market with Zack and hearing frightened shouts coming from Rosa, the housekeeper. She was screaming: “Mr. Justin! Madre de Dios! Oh my God, what has happened to Mr. Justin!”
Rosa was in the living room, standing at the open patio doors, pointing toward the beach. In the time it had taken Amy to run out of the house and get to the water’s edge, Justin’s body had slipped from Ari Silver’s grasp and landed on the sand. Amy had struggled to pull Justin upright; his skin was waxy and cold.
In that moment, Amy had felt some essential part of Justin begin to recede. She could feel a strange shadow—the one that had been cast by their visit to the house on Lima Street—moving across the landscape of their lives and bringing a deadening chill.
Amy repositioned the box containing the old watch and wallet, then settled onto the bed close to Justin.
They lay side by side, perfectly still, like figures in a painting—a portrait of a young couple adrift in the master bedroom of their California town house, surrounded by open angular spaces and clean wood floors, wrapped in dazzling sunlight pouring through towering plate-glass windows.
It was Justin who broke the silence. “When you kissed me a few minutes ago,” he said, “why did you jump like that?”
“You were cold and I could smell the ocean in your hair.” Amy faltered, and then she said, “I guess it scared me … I can’t stand the thought of you ever going into the water alone again.”
“I know I’m messed up right now, but not as messed up as you think. You don’t need to worry that every time I go for a swim I’m going to die.” There was bitterness in his voice. “Hey. I’ve got the grave. I’ve got the headstone. Technically, I’m dead already.”
Amy angrily pushed away, glaring at him. “That’s not funny. There’s nothing about any of this that’s funny.”
“No. It isn’t funny. It’s fucking terrifying.” He rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes, shutting Amy out.
“Justin, please!” Amy took his hand. “That headstone is nothing more than an old piece of rock. It’s been in that cemetery for a long time. It was there when I met you in London. It was there the first time I slept with you and the day we got married and the morning Zack was born and the night we drank that bottle of crazy expensive champagne to celebrate you getting the job here in L.A.” Amy’s tone was fierce. “However that lump of stone got into that graveyard, we don’t need to let it derail our lives. Nothing changed when you found it, except that you found it. Your life is about now, about you, and me, and Zack. And our future. Nothing else matters.”
Justin opened his eyes and studied her for a moment. There was sadness in his voice, and something that sounded like embarrassment. “Amy. There are huge chunks of my life that are missing and I have no idea where they are. They’re just … gone. It’s so messed up. I’m me. I’m here now. I know that. But there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know. Stuff I can’t find.”
“Like what?” Amy asked.
“All kinds of things. Like I know that at one time I had a teacher who drove this really cool car. An old MG. He kept it in perfect condition, and it was green. British racing green.” Justin paused, took a deep breath. “And I have no idea what his name was or what grade I was in or what my school looked like. Or what I looked like.”
Amy’s response was something between a whisper and a murmur. “What do you mean?”
Justin’s voice was full of strain. “I don’t know.” He reached across Amy and picked up the box. “At times, it almost feels like I never existed,” he said.
He upended the box and allowed the contents to fall onto the bed. “These are the things my father had with him when he died. Do you see anything of me in here? Anywhere at all?”
The battered wallet landed in Justin’s lap; he picked it up and shook it. Its contents rained d
own onto the bed: a pair of credit cards, a five-dollar bill, a stained pharmacy receipt for two razors and a can of shaving cream, an expired driver’s license. And then, from a side compartment, came a small snapshot.
It was the creased, faded image of a beautiful girl. She was standing on a beach, flanked by two boys. One was tall, with coppery red hair; the other, blond and holding a surfboard. Both were looking toward the camera, smiling. The girl was glancing at the fourth person in the picture: a boy, lying in the sand at her feet, looking up at her and laughing.
Justin turned the photograph over. The back of it was blank except for a line of numbers: 768884. They looked hastily written, jotted down with what seemed to be a child’s green crayon.
*
Justin and Ari had been running, steadily increasing their pace, for the last forty-five minutes.
“Do you want to turn back?” Ari’s question came out between gasping breaths. “Or do you want to keep going and die?” He glanced over at Justin. And then he grinned.
Justin’s lungs were on fire and his legs felt like jelly. “I’m not stopping till you drop.”
“Ask and you shall receive.” Ari staggered to a halt and sat down. “I’m dropped, man. I am so dropped.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” Justin jogged to the water’s edge and flopped onto the sand. He lay on his back, letting the waves rush in around him and then pull away. The stinging cold of the water against the peppery heat of his body was delivering both pleasure and pain. It was a long time before Justin opened his eyes. When he did, Ari was standing over him, watching him.
“I’m in four inches of water,” Justin said. “Can’t have much of an accident in that, now can I?” He got up and jogged away. He didn’t look back at Ari; his tone made it clear he had no desire to pursue the subject.
