Oslo, Maine

by Marcia Butler

  Claude lay across Pierre’s bed in a fetal position, his knees clamped to his chest, praying that Luc had buried that dead moose calf today. Dust from his work clothes had migrated to the bedspread, and he knew this would disturb his boy. Pierre didn’t like anyone messing with his room, which was organized in a way Claude found frightening. He got up and brushed the debris onto the floor, then scuffed it under the bed. He straightened out the covers and fluffed the pillow. Satisfied that his presence would go undetected, Claude stomped through the new addition of the house. He stopped short of Celine’s bedroom, took a few preparatory breaths, and braced for what he might find. He eased the door open. There she was, asleep. Naked and posed like a pole dancer, her arms tangled above her head and legs bent at improbable angles. Her face was aimed toward Claude’s, almost like she was expecting him. He leaned in, inspecting the entirety of the woman he wanted to be with till the end of days.

  She didn’t need to tweeze her eyebrows, her arches still as shapely as the crescent moons he’d likened them to when they’d first dated. Back then, he believed such imagery was his only chance to get her into bed. After about a week of struggling for fresh material, the quality of which had fallen off directly after the moon idea, Celine told him not to bother—she liked him just fine. Still, she’d held off sex till the honeymoon and Claude had never desired another woman since.

  Snoring had become a new habit for Celine. Now, her wet snuffle sounded feminine, almost sexy. Claude grabbed a tissue and wiped her nose of snot. She squirmed and licked her Kewpie lips. And he wondered why she bothered with the dozen-or-so lipsticks stacked three-deep in the medicine cabinet. In fact, makeup in general served no earthly purpose on Celine. The way she appeared right now, even in this stoned sleep, was about as good as any sight God had ever created.

  She threw out a phlegmy cough and stretched mightily, craning her neck. Though beginning to mottle, that neck was always his starting point when they made love. Kissing the skin just under her chin made Celine laugh like a hyena, a sound he hadn’t heard for weeks. His eyes then traveled to her nipples, which had darkened from breastfeeding Pierre twelve years earlier and remained so. Claude had been jealous of this particular attention to their infant son, an absurd notion, he knew, and was still ashamed to admit. Now, he’d give anything to return to that time. When their house had just the original four rooms, and Claude had installed a rocking chair in each so she could nurse Pierre anywhere. And now, he couldn’t help but stare at her pubic area, and for a second felt like a sick voyeur because his dick grew chubby. But mon Dieu, Celine was still as beautiful as a chiseled Venus-de-whoever. Still, his dear wife.

  Since Pierre’s accident and the subsequent weeks of Celine’s decline, Claude wouldn’t let himself call her an addict, because she still managed some very good days. But a lack of hygiene seemed her latest slip. She’d discontinued daily showers and had taken to wearing the same clothes every day, maybe even the same underwear for all he knew. Even so, it wasn’t so bad, because Claude still wanted her. He’d inhale her underarms, her oily hair, and her sweet funk, which always both surprised and reassured him. He’d ignore the dirt under her chipped fingernails and tolerate the scratch of her unshaven legs. He’d even forgive that she’d let her bikini-wax grow in, something he’d gradually gotten used to and now preferred. Mostly, he’d be happy if she’d just wake up, right now, and show him the same bright and hopeful expression from the previous night, when she’d bowed to Jesus and promised to Claude that she was done with the pilules.

  Celine stretched, moving like molasses. With her eyes still shut she repositioned herself to face the wall. Claude floated a blanket over her. He settled next to the bed in the sole surviving rocking chair. Exhausted and lulled by the staggered breathing of his wife, Claude fell asleep.

  Dusk had filtered through the room when Claude woke. Celine, now sitting on her bed wrapped in her robe, was watching him.

  “Get out,” she hissed.

  “I was just checking your pulse.”

  “Sometimes I wish I were dead.” Celine whispered the words into her lap.

  “Where’s Pierre?”

  “He’s not here?” Her lips trembled and she began to tear up.

  “You’ve nothing to do all day except raise our son.”

  Celine began to climb off the bed but Claude stopped her with the toe of his boot. She slumped back against the wall and he felt like a brute. Then he remembered the violets.

  “Where is my boy?” Claude asked evenly.

  Celine primly adjusted her robe. “I fell asleep after I picked him up from school. Probably with Sandra?”

  “Wonderful,” he said, shaking his head at the ceiling.

  “She cares about him.”

  “She’s snoopy. Sneaky.”

  They stared at each other and he wondered how to proceed with the least amount of blood. Claude thought, Uncle, and kissed at her through the air. She swatted it back.

  “When does he visit that brain quack again?” Claude asked.

  “He’s called a neurologist. In a day or two, I think.”

  “My God. This so-called recovery has been going on for weeks,” Claude whined.

  “He needs to rest and heal. You can’t control this one.”

  “Let me lie with you?” It popped out as if to no one in particular. Claude fully expected to meet a pout, but she granted him a quarter smile and he crawled in next to her. They spooned. He was grateful. And for about thirty seconds, sex seemed possible. Then, she slipped her feet into a pair of Michael Kors and scuffed down the hall.

  Claude followed Celine to the kitchen and sat at the table while she foraged around for food. He rubbed his fingers over the table’s rough surface. Maybe he’d sand it down and then shellac it, something Celine had been bugging him to do for over a year. Maybe he’d have her pick the stain color. Maybe Pierre would help, or simply hand him the different grades of sandpaper as needed. The idea of home improvements family style buoyed his mood, until he realized he might as well make plans to win the Maine Megabucks lottery.

  “Aren’t you gonna at least call Saint Kimbrough? See if he’s with her?” He’d be damned if he phoned that household.

  She had her head stuck in the refrigerator and pulled out a platter of something. That she didn’t notice the lasagna was gone was some relief. The microwave dinged and Celine divided the meal onto two plates. The food stared at him, light brown in color. Was this beef or chicken? Claude, ravenous, stuffed in a mouthful. It singed the roof of his mouth, and his eyes teared from the pain. He threw his fork on top of the food. It wiggled.

  “Okay, so don’t call. But who cleaned this place up?” he asked.

  “Pierre is clearly with Sandra,” she said with a sigh.

  “Well, it’s getting dark. He shouldn’t be out this late. It’s a school night.”

  “School’s finished.”

  “Since when?” Claude stared at her.

  “Crawl back under your rock. Please.”

  His fingers twitched, not so much from the conversation, which was circling the drain fast, but because his craving for a smoke was driving him mental. He rubbed his face vigorously, scratched his mustache and shook out his hands—anything to confuse the jones. Celine gave him a sympathetic smile, reached into the cabinet beneath the sink, and pulled out a pack of Camels from Claude’s hidden stash. She tossed the pack at him. He caught it with two fingers.

  “Your little ‘secret,’” Celine said, making air quotes.

  “Busted,” Claude said as he plucked one from the pack and lit up.

  He stretched out his legs, sucking deeply, and observed her from across the table as she picked at her food. Her robe had sloughed open and now he noticed that the gold heart on a chain he’d given her the night before they married was missing. She’d never taken it off as far as he knew, even to shower. He searched her face and wondered whether this was the correct moment to be offended or even curious. Then she gathered the lapels of her r
obe together with her fists and leveled her eyes at him.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” he said quietly, trying to head her off at the pass.

  “Don’t give me that!” She shot up from her chair and rocked on the balls of her feet. Her body looked taut and unpredictable, and Claude instinctively raised his arms like a defensive boxer.

  “What do you want from me? I wasn’t there when it happened,” he repeated emphatically, then paused several beats. “I can’t do this again, Celine.”

  She sat back down and took a breath with gargantuan effort, then released the air slowly like a leaking bicycle tire. She made a pretense of wiping the corners of her mouth of food; she’d barely taken a bite. While she went through this ritual meant to calm herself, Claude braced.

  “All your time at the March, no one so much as breathes without you knowing.”

  “You think too much of me.”

  Celine slammed her palm on the table. “Pierre has ‘fallen’ at the March. You have no idea how it happened. That’s just not possible.”

  “He’ll get better. You said yourself, he just needs time,” Claude said.

  “And I’m going batshit crazy.” Celine scooped up his cigarette pack and let them trickle to the floor.

  Claude listened to the scrape of her heels diminish until she stepped into the bathroom and slammed the door. The medicine cabinet didn’t screech as he expected, and the sink faucet remained silent. Shortly, the toilet flushed. Claude hoped she’d recede to the other end of the house.

  “You tell me what happened right now,” she demanded, sitting back down.

  “I told you. I wasn’t there.”

  “I’m going to watch you hurt for this,” she said.

  He shrugged weakly and felt a thick shudder power through his body. The urge to run out of the house, the town, the state, the country, was frightening, because she’d never threatened him this way before. Since Pierre’s accident, the more Claude had tried to convince her he wasn’t responsible for his injury, the more she’d dug in. And her persistence surprised him, because their marriage was one of the good ones. Especially in the way they tacitly agreed to an ebb and flow of marital accommodation. And no matter how improbably stretched those agreements were at times, he mostly did his part and Celine always did hers.

  Claude sank to his knees and scooted around the table. He pried her legs open and pressed his torso close to her body. The contact lacked any pulse of sex. In fact, right then he felt as ignorant of the world as a newborn. She allowed his face to settled at her belly and he breathed in the smell of her robe, a cagey combination of laundry soap and week-old sweat. Celine then pulled his face up toward hers and touched her nose to his. She clawed her fingers through the tangles in his overgrown hair and let out that hyena laugh. Claude groaned.

  “You need a cut.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow,” he promised.

  And just like that his world pivoted on how Celine still loved him, and how he desperately needed her to believe him. Because the story he’d told, again and again, was the truth. He hadn’t been there. Claude could repeat those words to Celine any time of the day or night, and not be a liar. But, of course, Claude knew exactly what had happened and that his illegal trapping business was at the center of it all. And now he heard the Saint’s motorbike approaching fast, almost like a thin army battalion, and knew that his son was aboard. It slowed, and Claude was relieved when the noise grew again as she sped away. Pierre opened the door and smiled at them.

  “Where you been, honey?” Celine asked.

  “Out for a ride.”

  “What’d you do?” she pressed.

  “Some stuff. Really fun stuff.”

  Whatever he’d done and wherever he’d been, the boy didn’t remember a damned thing. Claude was certain of it. Just a while longer, he thought. Then I’ll stop the business.

  He squeezed Celine closer and gestured for Pierre. The boy raced toward them and they had a group hug. Celine started to sing the song “Hallelujah.” Pierre joined. Singing had been a bedtime ritual for them when he was younger, the Leonard Cohen a favorite. Pierre’s soprano range hovered over Celine’s quiet mezzo, which made the song sound innocent. It was a word Celine would approve of and a word Claude would normally fight about. But innocent, he was not. Claude was just grateful that right now, Pierre seemed to remember that his parents still loved each other.

  NOBODY’S HOME

  EDNA SIBLEY STOOD ON HER WRAPAROUND porch and stretched out over the railing while simultaneously peering down the winding driveway. Not that she could see very far. Her house stood purposely secluded, sited among a variety of large firs and wildly overgrown hydrangea trees. Despite seeing nothing, she was usually able to hear anyone approach from a one-mile radius, whether by car at the front, or via boat on the lake side. Years ago, she’d done the math and clocked it. Since most in Oslo knew every pothole and bend on the lake road approaching her home, speed was typically thirty miles per hour. With this assumption in place, Edna calculated a generous two-minute lead time. More than ample to scoop up a soiled glass or two, straighten the growing stack of New Yorker magazines she’d recently neglected, crimp loose wisps of hair into her bun, and smudge on some lipstick. Even swap out her garden mucksters for pumps, if she sensed it might be desirable.

  Luc occasionally performed the odd errand for Claude, and Edna assumed this was the reason he was now late for dinner. Though more frequent of late, she could easily forgive these delays, because Claude had become an important male role model for her grandson—in fact the only one he’d ever known. Edna, being a woman and so much older, questioned her ability to guide Luc appropriately, and so in this respect she had much to be grateful for in Claude Roy, who had agreed to provide that authoritative presence. Even so, she couldn’t help but fret about Luc’s current tardiness. Rather than sit for lunch at the March cafeteria, she knew that on most days Luc raided the candy machines that littered the hallways, substituting countless chocolate bars throughout the day for a proper mid-shift meal. Candy was a terrible habit, of course, but her real concern was that when Luc did arrive late for dinner, he’d be ravenous. Hunger often triggered his tremors.

  Waiting well over an hour now, and with Luc still nowhere within sight or even earshot, Edna worried the pearls at her neck. To distract herself, she stepped into the house to check on the table setting. Standing at one end of the dining room, Edna admired how the embroidered Irish linen runner, a treasured gift from her late husband, was sufficiently long to span the fourteen-foot cherrywood table and still drape the appropriate eight-inch excess at either end. Two salad servings, consisting of chopped iceberg lettuce, carrot scrapings, and razor-sliced radishes for zest, sat to the side of Wedgwood dinner plates. Edna liked this blue-and-white pattern for everyday meals. A chest-on-chest cabinet housed her eighty-piece set of eighteenth-century Sèvres china, though Edna hadn’t brought that out since her daughter, Samantha, was alive.

  Sammy, as she was called, had been a terribly picky eater, refusing most meats and even the standard vegetables: peas, carrots, and the like. When Edna discovered that her six-year-old found delight in the elaborate red dragon painted at the center of every Sèvres piece, she used the fragile tableware as an enticement. Sammy quickly devoured her meal so that the creature could emerge from beneath the food. Then she’d invent intricate stories about the dragon, who soon became her imaginary best friend. Edna sacrificed too many plates to breakage, but Sammy ate.

  Luc, thankfully, hadn’t inherited his mother’s persnickety eating issues. But aside from that, there wasn’t a reason in the world to use that china now. The smart dinner parties she and Edgar hosted were long-ago memories, and even the thought of such an event now tired Edna. She palmed a streak of dust from the table surface and wondered if the local thrift store would take such an enormous grouping of dinnerware, albeit incomplete. No, they’d most likely break it up for the convenience of multiple sales. She’d wait to place the entire col
lection with the right person, someone who really understood the aesthetic and historic significance.

  But details of any meal still required Edna’s close attention, a rite she hewed to, what with being raised in a Boston Brahmin family. Hidden Valley Ranch was Luc’s favorite salad dressing. She preferred generic Thousand Island, which she then enhanced with minced pickles. Both had been puddled into Japanese dipping bowls with tiny spoons canted on the edge, now resting near their respective salads. Edna wouldn’t allow the ketchup bottle anywhere near the dining table until Luc had finished his salad and was poised to tackle the meat portion of the meal. If left to his whims he’d use that condiment on virtually all food—steak, pork, fowl, fish, eggs, toast. Even certain donuts. The mere existence of plastic bottles (much less one sitting on the table), not only went against her patrician upbringing, but Edgar, too, would have had a fit. The least she could do to honor his memory was return the ketchup to the kitchen immediately after Luc drowned whatever food was on his plate.

  Throughout dinner preparations that afternoon, Edna had taken breaks to lounge on her private dock by the lake. She finished the final entry of The Diary of a Nobody, a book that had begun at a snail’s pace but eventually drew her in. Edna was known in Oslo as a voracious reader, and Celine had asked her to vet “controversial” books for Pierre. His interests had recently expanded well beyond his years, and Celine admitted she was out of her depth as to what to allow. Privately, Edna didn’t believe in filtering what a child showed interest in. These constructs and restrictions were more indicative of adult limitations, though in Celine’s case, she was very bright—just not a reader. Edna had given a solid thumbs-up on all the Salinger titles without rereading them, her own silent protest. In any event, she’d spent the last few days previewing Nobody for Pierre, who’d expressed skepticism about the very idea of a living person being a nobody. Also, Pierre posited, if someone were truly a nobody, he doubted their so-called diary would get published in the first place. Edna admired the first notion, which skirted concepts of existentialism, and she couldn’t disagree with his doubt regarding the logic of publication. And now that Nobody, in fact, proved harmless, Edna found herself eager for Pierre to read the book so they could discuss such satire. In so many ways, Pierre Roy was a delight to have around. He pushed her envelopes much the way Sammy had.