The World Without You

by Joshua Henkin

  They head to Lilac Park, where they walk down the hill past the benches and the gazebo. The rain has stopped, and a girl of about thirteen is sitting on the grass playing the flute. At the bottom of the hill is a thicket of trees, and as they wander past the brush Thisbe feels as if she’s on a camping trip, taken blindfolded on a Girl Scout treasure hunt. There are no sounds, just the rhythmic thumping of their shoes making their soft imprint in the dirt; no sights either, save for the occasional fugitive headlight illuminating them, then casting them back into shadows.

  Lily makes a growling noise.

  “Very funny.”

  “I guess I’m not much of a mimic.”

  That had been Leo’s specialty. He could make the sound of a squeegee running up and down a window so that if you closed your eyes you thought he was a squeegee. And a vacuum cleaner and a garbage disposal and a popcorn maker and a blender. He did the world’s best cow; you let him loose in a pasture, and he would set off a chorus of lowing. “Me and my useless talents,” he said.

  But they hadn’t been useless. Senior year at Bowdoin, she’d had an alarm clock that woke you to the sound of your choice—waves, wind, brook, hummingbird—and when the alarm clock broke, catapulted across the bedroom one night, victim of overexuberant sex, Leo himself took on the role of alarm clock, waking up early to make hummingbird sounds for her. He would even do them over the phone, calling her from his offices at the Wesleyan Argus, where he’d been up all night putting the newspaper to bed. On weekends he would come in person, taking the roads through New Hampshire and Maine; sometimes he’d show up on weeknights too, having prevailed upon a fellow editor to fill in for him. Thisbe saw his body when it came home from Iraq; she pulled back the sheet and looked at him. He had been flown to D.C., and afterward, walking on the Mall, the Washington Monument suspended in the distance, she felt so dizzy she had to sit down. Why, she wondered, had she insisted on seeing the body? She didn’t have to be the one to identify him. But if she hadn’t done it, she’d have always wondered whether it had been a mistake, a different journalist killed, and perhaps this was another trick of his, a final act of ventriloquism by the grand ventriloquist, and maybe he would still come back to her.

  Nights in bed with Wyeth, falling into the fleshy slab of him, she can forget any of this ever happened. The whole Frankel family: they’re nothing but a mirage. But yesterday, when she stopped in town so Calder could pee, when she picked up orange juice at a convenience store, she thought she recognized someone, and there they were again, the stares, the whispers. It’s the Frankel boy’s wife. Over on Reservoir Road? The journalist? All it takes is putting her on a plane and depositing her in Massachusetts to make her feel that this country is an enormous slide propelling her along its slippery belly. She’s here once more—will she ever get away?—and of course it’s Leo she thinks about, and his parents, his sisters, everyone he knew.

  Now, treading with Lily on their makeshift path behind the park, doing the kinds of things she and Leo used to do, she’s thrown back to the life she left. Leo was a walking, talking bushwhacker. “They had to harness him,” Lily says. “My parents will deny it, but they led him around on a leash one summer.”

  She thinks of the noises Leo used to make—his squeegee, his showerhead, his toilet flush, his popcorn maker—recalls his soothing, whirring sounds as she fell asleep, her own private white-noise machine, so that in the weeks after his death she didn’t know how she would ever fall asleep again without his musical accompaniment.

  Here in the Berkshires, land of bears, instructions were tacked to the front of the house reminding the renters how to secure the tops of garbage bins. Yet there had been a black bear not thirty feet away late one night outside the house. It was an April weekend and the tourists hadn’t arrived yet, so Thisbe and Leo had the town to themselves. They were lying in the hammock strung like a pulley from the porch, half naked in the growing cold, a blanket tossed over them. Thisbe was in Leo’s Wesleyan sweatshirt; the marijuana smoke was warming them. An open jug of apple cider stood on the porch, and next to it sat a box of glazed doughnuts. Thisbe and Leo were swaying in the hammock, and the bear was looking at them directly, so still it was as if he’d already been mounted and stuffed.

  Thisbe laughed. Marijuana did that to you. It made you giddy: a laughter slut. She remembered what she’d been told. If you left a bear alone he’d leave you alone, but if you scared him he’d come after you.

  “Hey, Smokey!” Leo called out. “Want a toke?”

  “Leo!”

  “We’ll give that bear the munchies!”

  You didn’t need to give a bear the munchies. They were born that way; they came preprogrammed. Thisbe got out of the hammock and trundled inside, and Leo reluctantly followed her.

  But they forgot the doughnuts and the jug of apple cider, and the next morning everything was gone, the cider container pulverized, pieces of it drifting in juice. All that was left was the flap of the doughnut box, which skittered across the porch like a giant bug.

  “I guess bears like doughnuts,” Leo said. “Big surprise. He’s probably keeled over in the woods, victim of a doughnut-induced heart attack.”

  “We better be careful,” Thisbe said. “If we eat out here again, we’re liable to become food ourselves.”

  “You think that’s why that bear showed up?”

  Oh, Leo. She was menstruating, and Leo had this idea that bears could smell when a girl had her period. You would have thought he was twelve. They were twenty-one at the time, which, looking back, doesn’t seem much older. She’s thirty-three now, and she wonders whether in another twelve years she’ll regard the person she is today with the same resigned disbelief, whether she’ll always be disowning earlier versions of herself. It’s surprising that Leo didn’t die sooner, mauled by a bear with a bong in his paw, made to pay for his jubilance and high spirits. Not for the first time, she thinks it would have been easier if he’d died long ago, before she’d ever met him.

  It’s raining harder now. Lily holds her jacket like a tarp above their heads, but they continue to get wet, plunged over and again into the water as they emerge from beneath the trees into exposed air.

  They head down Sunset and reach the nursing home, where, Thisbe recalls, she walked one time with Leo and Gretchen. “That’s where you’re going to put me,” Gretchen said. “The old-age home.”

  “Are you kidding me, Grandma?” Leo said. “That’s where you’re going to put me.”

  They retrace their steps up the hill and back to town, past Bistro Zinc and Firefly, until they reach Lily’s van, on the corner of Franklin, sitting alone in the rain, looking like a figure in a diorama.

  Now, as promised, Lily is driving them toward Stockbridge and Great Barrington. They pass Monument Mountain Regional High School, where a huge American flag has been emblazoned onto the grass. Across from it is Monument Mountain itself.

  “How’s Wyeth?” Lily asks.

  “He’s good,” says Thisbe.

  Lily gives her a look. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

  “What more should I say? Wyeth is just like me. He was born to be a grad student. We sit in the library all day reading these obscure journals. I never realized we were such dorks.”

  “I meant how are you and Wyeth together?”

  “Oh,” Thisbe says. “We’re fine.”

  “That’s a short answer.”

  “Would you like a longer one?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  They’re stopped at a red light near the bowling lanes and miniature golf. Berkshire Bike and Board is up ahead. “Wyeth wants me to move in with him.”

  Lily’s quiet for a moment. “I didn’t realize that was in the cards.”

  “How could you have? I didn’t tell you.”

  “I mean, I knew you two were together, of course. I just thought …”

  “What?”

  “That it was a rebound relationship.”

  That, Thisbe thinks, is wh
at everyone assumes, and though she understands why, it offends her in a way. It’s as if people think she’s acting out, the grieving widow throwing herself at whoever comes her way, when she didn’t do that, not with Wyeth or anyone else. She’s surprised how quickly things have progressed with Wyeth, but then everything in her life has been a surprise (she certainly didn’t expect to marry her college boyfriend), so why should this be any different? It is a rebound relationship, she wants to say, but only in the sense that her life is a rebound life.

  “So it’s serious?”

  Thisbe hates that phrase. It makes it seem like a disease. But yes, she tells Lily, it’s serious.

  “Are you going to move in with him?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t even think about it till I get through this trip.”

  From behind the wheel Lily nods.

  “Wyeth’s not putting any pressure on me.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Lily says. “Malcolm and I used to call him Waveless Wyeth. He was as calm as the sea.”

  “He just doesn’t get jealous.”

  “That’s a good quality,” Lily says. “Though who is there for him to be jealous of, anyway? Leo’s dead.”

  “There’s his memory,” Thisbe says. “And there are you, Clarissa, and Noelle. Not to mention your parents. I don’t know what it is about being in California, but when I’m there and you’re here it’s easy to forget Leo and I’m just living my life. But I’m not just living my life, and as soon as I fly out here I’m back to where I was.” She hesitates.

  “What?”

  “Do you really want to hear this?”

  “I do,” Lily says. “I don’t like secrets. At least not ones that are kept from me. I’m tough, besides.” She raps her fist against her chin. She’s steering them now across a small bridge and onto Main Street in Great Barrington.

  “Calder was only two when Leo died, and those last few months, when Leo was in Iraq, he didn’t see him much.”

  “You’re saying he doesn’t remember him?”

  “He does,” Thisbe says, “but only because I’ve been such a pain about it.” Sometimes she wonders what the point of it all is. She has spent so much time showing Calder photos of Leo, telling him stories about his father, she’s half forgotten he was two when Leo died. She was careful to prepare Calder for Wyeth, introducing them slowly to each other and reassuring him that Wyeth would never replace his father. As if that was what concerned him. The fact is, Calder wants to replace his father. He’s embarrassed by Leo’s absence: all his friends have fathers, and he wants one, too. Though he can also, in the blunt way of three-year-olds, embarrass people with his forthrightness. More than once, he’s been asked by some unknowing soul where his father is, to which he has responded, cheerfully, “He’s dead!”

  “On Father’s Day,” Thisbe tells Lily, “I went out with Calder and Wyeth for brunch. We weren’t there to celebrate anything. We just didn’t have any food at home. But everyone in the restaurant was celebrating Father’s Day, and Calder starts saying Wyeth is his father, and when I try to explain the truth to him he won’t listen to me. He keeps on saying Wyeth is his father, shouting it through mouthfuls of French toast, and finally I can’t listen to it any longer and I run out. Waveless Wyeth, you call him? Well, you’re right. Because Wyeth just sat there patiently and cleaned Calder up and he didn’t care that everyone in the restaurant was staring at him. I don’t blame Calder. Leo was his father, but he’ll never know him.”

  They turn onto Railroad Street, and now, suddenly, Lily stops the car. She opens the door and steps out onto the sidewalk.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I just need to take a few figurative steps back. A few literal ones, actually.”

  “I know,” Thisbe says. “It’s a lot to digest.”

  Lily stands on the sidewalk for several seconds staring at a clothing shop across the street. Then she gets back into the car and refastens her seat belt. “Thisbe, I’m your sister-in-law. And Wyeth is my friend. If it’s going to be someone, I’m thrilled that it’s him. You’re right, it’s a lot to digest.”

  “But you’re digesting?”

  Lily gulps, as if to show that she is.

  “And to think this is the easy part.”

  “You’re worried about telling the rest of the family?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I guess I would.”

  They’ve parked the car, and now they’re walking down Railroad Street, past 20 Railroad and Club Helsinki. “You haven’t told anyone,” Thisbe says, “have you?”

  Lily shakes her head. “Nobody knows except for me and Malcolm.”

  “I was planning to tell your parents on this trip.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  “I keep thinking maybe I can hold off a little longer. If I told them in a year …”

  “Then it would be more respectable?”

  “It might be.”

  “There’s nothing unrespectable about it now.”

  “Anyway, I can’t tell them in a year because Wyeth and I might move in together. He’ll be on the phone machine. Even if he isn’t, they’ll find out anyway. I’m surprised they haven’t already found out.”

  “From Calder?”

  Thisbe nods. “He’s three years old, Lily. It’s not fair to ask a child to keep adult secrets.”

  “It will be good practice for when he’s older.”

  “I’d rather keep him out of practice.”

  Some of the stores look familiar to Thisbe, but others are gone now. The Deli has closed, which had, she still believes, the best sandwiches in the world. Leo would always get the Zonker Harris, and she would always get the Arlo. The summer she met Leo she saw Arlo Guthrie play at Club Helsinki. The show was okay, but she’s never been much of an Arlo Guthrie fan. She liked the sandwich better. In the end, she preferred to eat Arlo than to listen to him.

  Now, in the van, Lily drives in silence, and when they reach Stockbridge they come to a stop in front of the Norman Rockwell Museum. “Should we go in?”

  Thisbe laughs. “It’s after five, Lily. It’s probably not even open now.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  But they just sit there staring at the museum, which looms above them in the mist. Thisbe reaches into a bag of Veggie Booty; Lily takes a handful, too. It tastes like Styrofoam, but Thisbe keeps eating it; she realizes now how hungry she’s been. It’s what she and Calder subsisted on during their drive from the airport. Veggie Booty and grapes. Though she sneaked a cookie when Calder wasn’t watching. Do as I say is her motto, not as I do.

  “Years ago,” Lily says, “Leo and his friends used to steal into that museum.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “They weren’t very discriminating,” Lily says. “From ages ten to seventeen, it was one big experiment in breaking and entering.”

  And it hadn’t ended at seventeen, Thisbe thinks. One night, she and Leo hid in the Bowdoin library because you weren’t supposed to graduate from college without having had sex in the stacks. Could it possibly have been her idea? She’s afraid it was, though Leo, always happy to commit some infraction, didn’t require much coaxing. She’s been in libraries where the stacks are movable; if you’re not careful, you’ll wind up crushed. Which would have been their just deserts, flattened like sheet metal for their transgression, for their juvenile idea of what passed for fun. Once they were settled in the stacks, they realized they were stuck for the night, and so they spent their time reading, rising every few minutes to jump up and down between the light sensors so they wouldn’t be left in the dark. Leo was on a Studs Terkel kick; Thisbe was in the middle of Sara Sulieri’s Meatless Days, most of which she read lying on the floor, her head thrown back on Leo’s lap. Finally, she fell asleep with the book splayed across her stomach. Leo must have fallen asleep, too, because they were woken the next morning by the sound of the janitor, his key chain clanking
against his belt. They raced downstairs and outside, where the sun was beginning to ascend above Brunswick. When Thisbe got back to her dorm, she realized that her book was still in her coat pocket, realized, too, that she and Leo had stayed up all night and forgotten to have sex. It almost redeemed them.

  Now, back in Lenox, they stop on Main Street to get gas. Thisbe hands Lily her credit card, but Lily refuses it. “I’m treating,” she says. “It’s my car, and I’m the driver.”

  “But you’re driving me.”

  “Please, Thisbe. You’re a graduate student.”

  “And what are you? A public-interest lawyer?”

  “Believe me, I make more money than you.”

  “Not by much.”

  “Anyway, you flew out here. I didn’t have to pay for a ticket.”

  Reluctantly, Thisbe agrees. She waits in the passenger seat while the gas is being pumped, and now Lily has returned and is saying, “There, we’re replenished.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Thisbe says. “I could have paid. I’m doing fine.”

  “Are you? My parents tell me they try to send you checks, but you refuse to cash them. I hope your parents are helping you out.”

  “Not when I can avoid it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want them to help me.”

  “You might want to rethink your position on that. From what I understand, it’s hard enough to live on a graduate-student stipend even when you’re not supporting a child. I don’t imagine Wyeth has much money, either.”

  “Even if he did, I wouldn’t let him help.”

  “Why not?”

  “Lily, come on.”

  “You could ask Gretchen for money.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “She’d probably help you unsolicited. In fact, she prefers unsolicited. She finds solicitation distasteful.”

  “Gretchen, she’s …”

  “What?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I have time.”

  Thisbe hesitates. The Sugar Granny, Leo called Gretchen. Like the other siblings, he received a gift from her when he turned twenty-five. “Six figures,” he told Thisbe at the time. She didn’t think she could ask him to be more specific, but even at the low end, six figures seemed like a staggering sum. Yet she learned that the money could be spent quickly, especially in New York, where she and Leo had moved. Leo was freelancing, stringing for newspapers, not making enough money to pay the rent. She was making even less; she was waitressing at a French restaurant in Tribeca, but her hours were erratic, the tips just good enough to allow her to pretend she was supporting herself. New York, she discovered, was filled with young people like her, engaged in financial dissembling. Her parents sent her an occasional check. She racked up credit card debt. A few years removed from college, she seemed to believe she was still there. She waitressed nights, so her days were free. She took courses in poetry and conversational Italian; she went back to the piano, which she hadn’t played since she was a girl; she signed up for an Indian cooking class. She and Leo were living on the seamy outskirts of the Lower East Side in a fifth-floor walkup that was rent-stabilized, but on her nights off they ate out at expensive restaurants, invited by friends whose idea of expensive was different from theirs. Her friends would ask her what she was doing in New York, and she would answer with self-mockery and exaggerated drama that she was finding herself. Other times she gave up all pretense and simply said, “I’m consuming.” As if by making fun of how she lived she would earn a pass for doing so.