by Anita Shreve
A few minutes ago, a meat truck rumbled down the road and sent from its wheels an enormous cloud of dust. In this cloud, there seemed to be a small creature hopping, like a large bird in preflight. When the dust cleared, however, I saw that it was just a boy chasing the truck with his basket. The truck stopped, and the boy held out his basket and waited for it to be filled with scraps not good enough for the market, the quality of which doesn’t bear thinking about. I could have gone out onto the road to watch this scene more closely, but couldn’t summon the energy to do so. I’d rather catch a scene midflight, imagining other realities. Is this what it means to be a writer? And on what level of life is this a valid enterprise? What can such an exercise offer to anyone, except easy distortions? To give a reader something of substance, I would have to chronicle the scene with precise detail as a historian would do, or reconstruct it so that it presented some truth about the nature of women and small boys and meat vendors. Which I cannot do.
I thought it was you who loved me more. But it is not true. It’s me who loves you more.
I cry all the time now. I’m just as glad you’re far away and can’t see this. Peter is baffled, as well he might be. I have let him think it’s an overlong bout of hormones. He doesn’t deserve any of this.
I will leave a message for you on the message board. You will be called Roger, myself Gabrielle. I have always wanted a more exotic name.
L.
______
He was dozing fully clothed in the bed when the ibises woke him. Dozing because he had willed himself to sleep, unable to tolerate all the hours of the afternoon, which seemed to stretch interminably, leading up to the time when he and Regina could get into the Escort and drive to the Intercontinental Hotel for the party. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to write, his thoughts preoccupied, his nerves frayed. This after returning to Karen from town, where he had searched for and found a note to Roger from Gabrielle on the message board at the Thorn Tree. My darling, she had written, and he had felt the thrill of the endearment even as he had known it was a pose she would be trying on, in keeping with the Gabrielle, having a bit of fun, if fun could be had in such a desperate situation. Thin fun. Meager fun. Were there people, he wondered, who had genuine, more-or-less continuous fun when they fell in love? It didn’t seem possible, the enterprise too fraught to sustain the lightheartedness fun required. My darling, she had written, I am counting the hours until I see you tonight. Folly even to contemplate. But I shall be there. Your Gabrielle.
And he had written back: My darling Gabrielle, No man ever loved a woman more. Roger.
The dogs from next door, Gypsy and Torca, were asleep in the kitchen as they often were. Regina cooked bones for them and let them in and had made beds for them in the corner, maternal instinct gone awry; though Thomas liked the dogs and had to admit that their owners seemed largely indifferent to their pets, who enjoyed the pampering, just as people do. Through the window, Thomas could see Michael sitting on a rock, unemployed, eating cooked meat he had just unwrapped from a paper packet. The grass was brown, the trees had dropped their leaves, there was nothing for a gardener to do. The entire country was waiting for rain.
Thomas turned on the tap in the kitchen (thinking of a cup of tea) and a dozen ants slid out, drowning themselves in the waterfall. In the dry season, there were always too many ants. They irritated the dogs when they tried to sleep under the trees, and sometimes when he entered the bathroom, he would see a trail of ants that Regina had squished with her thumb. Where was Regina, anyway? It was unlike her to be so late. She who had been known to spend an hour and a half getting ready for a dinner party.
But Regina was generally baffling these days. Not normally a baffling or complicated person, she seemed lighter, as if she’d lost weight or had learned how to levitate. Her voice a near lilt, even as she had said, during an argument regarding the wisdom of so publicly supporting Ndegwa’s cause, Do what you want. You always have. Causing Thomas to wonder, genuinely, had he? The question suddenly interesting, as if he’d discovered that someone had taken a film of his life and had invited him to watch it. For it seemed to Thomas that he’d been mostly thwarted from doing as he pleased, even though he couldn’t have said with any accuracy exactly what it was that would have pleased him.
He laid his clothes out on the bed. He would dress with care tonight. He’d bought a suit for the occasion — a gray suit with a new white shirt — having realized that his laundered and line-dried blazer wouldn’t do for a gala cocktail party. He had no idea what he would say to Kennedy, that defrocked priest. A man all the more engaging, Thomas thought, for his trials and tribulations, far more interesting than he’d have been without them, even with that prodigious legacy. Kennedy wouldn’t remember him; Thomas had been only eighteen or nineteen when he’d met the man. It was after Jack had died — Robert, too, for that matter — power distilled and concentrated in the one remaining brother. Thomas’s father — closet Catholic within the household tyranny of his mother’s aggressive Calvinism — did penance by way of politics, raising large sums of money from unlikely Democrats, wealthy bankers and entrepreneurs from the South Shore of Boston. Sums large enough to warrant gratitude and a royal visit. Thomas, summoned by his father, had come home from school — Cambridge no great distance from Hull — and had watched the senator at dinner and been rendered nearly mute by the obvious lack of any political fiber of his own.
On his writing desk, anchoring a corner of the bedroom, the Kisii stone box sat brazenly, as if naked. He’d picked it up on safari, he’d told Regina. When Rich bought that figure of a woman, remember? Yes, Regina thought she might remember. The box had arrived with a tiny chip in it, which made it all the more dear to Thomas — why, he couldn’t have said; the imperfection, he supposed, causing it to seem like something Linda had used. He’d thought, briefly, of hiding the box and putting her letters in it, a foolish idea he’d abandoned in the next instant, knowing a hidden box would almost certainly invite inspection. He’d put the letters in the one place Regina would never look for them — amongst the hundreds of pages of the drafts to his poems, his poetry being just about the last thing Regina would want to poke through. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Thomas’s gifts; she did, in her way. It was just that poetry bored her, the repetitious drafts of the poems tedious beyond endurance.
They were waiting for the rains. The country so dry now it seemed to crackle. They said that cattle were dying and that soon the reservoirs would be empty. Already, there were headlines: WATER CRISIS SHUTS HOTELS . He’d begun, like everyone else, to dream of rain, to lift his face to it in his sleep. Unifying the country in a way nothing else quite could do (or couldn’t do at all); the mzungus and the Asians and the warring tribes all searching for a stray cloud, ready to celebrate with cocktails or dancing in the bush the minute the skies opened up. It was atavistic the way the longing got under the skin and into the bones, so that nothing seemed quite so luxurious as water falling from the heavens. The dust was everywhere — on his shoes, on the dogs (red with murram sometimes), in his nostrils, in his hair. Water was rationed to one bathtub a day. Thomas had taken to sponge baths to give Regina a half-tub of it at least. Though sometimes he’d ask her not to drain the tub so that he could get a good wash (washing in the leavings of someone else’s water just about the height of intimacy, he thought). He’d planned in fact to do that today, in preparation for the party, but Regina was so late — it was already half past five — he wondered if he oughtn’t to just draw a bath for himself, give Regina the leavings, which seemed, on second thought, in that dry season, unchivalrous in the extreme.
Would they be giving baths at the Norfolk? He thought of Linda in a hotel room with boyishly handsome Peter, getting ready for the party. He couldn’t see her as calm, though he wanted to; instead, he saw her on the verge of tears. Her letters had an odd, desperate quality that worried him; she seemed to be unraveling faster than he was, if such a thing were possible. Their situation was intolerab
le — more than intolerable, it seemed dishonorable, as though by staying with Regina, and she with Peter, they lacked honor or courage. But that soon would have to change. Though he dreaded the chaos, confessions were inevitable: one day he would tell Regina (he couldn’t even imagine the horror of that), and Linda would tell Peter, who seemed like someone who might take the news with dignity, might even shrug it off in his boyishly handsome way (self-serving fantasy). What was Thomas waiting for? For a moment when Regina seemed sturdy enough to survive without disintegrating, without spiraling off into shrieking hysteria? A moment that might not ever come, even with her new levitating lilt. Though people, he knew, did not actually disintegrate, did not actually come apart into bits. They survived. They told themselves they were better off, didn’t they?
He was buttoning his shirt when he heard Regina’s car on the brick-like dirt beside the cottage. So unlike Regina to be so late, she who would have wanted an hour anyway to put herself together. He braced himself for panic, or at least for a whine about being stuck in a terrible traffic jam. The roads had simply crumbled, she would say; there’d been a dust storm on the AI.
But that was not her news.
—I’m pregnant, his wife said from the doorway. Flushed and radiant, as if, even in the car, she’d been running toward him with her blessed announcement. She looked beautiful, the burst secret giving her a color and a gaiety he hadn’t seen in, literally, years. We won’t have absolute results until Friday, but Dr. Wagmari thinks I’m three months along.
Thomas stood, unmoving.
The tide, responding to a crack in the universe, drained from the pool that he had, until that moment, thought of as his life, his essence, his soul, though he hadn’t been absolutely certain of the existence of the latter until this moment. The loss, the physical sensation of loss, was devastating and utterly complete. And oddly comforting, like a truly sad thought. He couldn’t move or speak, even knowing that not speaking was unforgivable, would never be forgiven. And in the silence, he felt the cry beginning, a silent wail tearing through him, obliterating in an instant the odd comforting sensation, replacing it with a soundless scream. His life was over. It was that simple. Even as a new life was beginning.
—What’s wrong with you? Regina asked, perhaps hearing a faint and distant echo of the silent scream. You’re just standing there.
—I’m . . . Words deserted him. His system, trying to save itself, was shutting down bit by bit.
—You’re stunned, she said.
Still he couldn’t move. To move was to go on with the other life, the one he would have after this one. How hideous that it should be such joyous news that hurt so much. Yes, he managed.
It was, apparently, enough. Regina moved to embrace him, petrified statue, and his arms, involuntary appendages, responded with something like an embrace on his part.
—Oh, I’m stunned, too! she cried. I never thought. Oh, God, isn’t it fabulous?
His hand, without signal from his brain, gently patted her back.
—It’s what we’ve always wanted, she said, burying her face into his shoulder and beginning to sob.
Tears popped to the lower lids of his own eyes as well, horrifying him, and he tried to blink them back. They seemed treacherous, beside the point now. Though they, too, would be misread, might be taken for joy.
She pulled away from him, remembering the hour, ordinary things, already having crossed over into the new life.
—I’m so late, she crowed happily.
______
He sat on the bed in his underwear and socks, his shirt half buttoned, left unfinished by the natural disaster, as women holding cooking pots had been found at Pompeii. Thinking half-sentences from time to time, not often, the rest a misty white blank. I need to warn and If only I hadn’t. Thinking, in particularly lucid moments, and as all men will inevitably try to calculate, The night of Roland’s party. Having obeyed the biological clock, he and Regina were being rewarded with a child. But then the mist furled, and the fog swamped him, and he wanted never to have to move again. Bitter irony. Had he not just said he would do the honorable and courageous thing? Unthinkable now. Not possible. Honor and courage flipped head over heels.
Regina emerged from the bathroom, more awed than annoyed by his immobility, the half-buttoned shirt. My God, she said. You really are stunned.
She was radiant. In a simple black dress with thin straps. Her breasts pushed somehow out and up so that their smooth white crests were exposed. Voluptuous Regina, who would become more voluptuous now. With his child.
—How do I look? she asked, spinning happily.
______
They were late. He might have said embarrassingly late, though embarrassment belonged to his other life. They ascended stairs and emerged into a crowd, voices already risen past a decent decibel. The party seemed to be held in a series of rooms, like chambers in a museum — the drinks in here, the food in there. White-coated waiters, diplomatically not African, moved from room to room with silver trays. Regina, beside him, turned heads, as she did not normally do, her glow like plutonium, the radiation high. His own radar tuned elsewhere, a personal early warning system deploying. Needing to find Linda before Regina crowed. He searched for blond hair and a cross, found blond hair more often than it occurred in nature, but not a cross. As disastrous as the circumstances were, he wanted nothing more than to see Linda — if only a glimpse — though that would simply fuel desire. And he was surprised by how much it hurt, this returning to life. Numbed limbs remembering pain.
Thomas, not discovering Linda, found his Marine instead. The man looking uncharacteristically deflated, a defeated Marine a sorry sight. Introductions were offered and received, Regina towering over the Marine’s wife, a diminutive dun-colored woman in a royal-blue suit.
—Your boy’s not here, the embassy official said.
Thomas, at first not understanding the reference to “your boy,” thought the man had the wrong person. And then, suddenly, he comprehended. Kennedy? he asked.
—Not coming. The Marine took a large swallow of what looked to be straight scotch. No ice. His face was white and hollow-cheeked.
—What happened?
—Scheduling conflict. So they say. The Marine spoke through tight lips. Bearing up. Though the wife looked as though she had been crushed long ago.
—He’s in the country? Thomas asked.
—No, the man said, aggrieved. That’s the point.
There seemed nothing to say but I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Thomas said.
—It’s your gig, the unhappy official said.
Thomas, out of politeness — manners instilled from long ago, seemingly irrelevant now — lingered with the Marine as one would with a man who’d just been fired or lost a valuable contract. All the while scanning the crowd, unable to help himself, breaching irrelevant manners with his sporadic inattention. Regina, contrary to expectation, kept her secret to herself, though to be fair, she didn’t know the embassy wife at all. Still, Thomas had expected a joyous blurting out. Had braced himself for an announcement that couldn’t fail to reach unwilling ears. Perhaps Regina was simply being prudent, waiting for confirmation. She had, after all, already lost one child late into the game. Or possibly his wife was superstitious, a trait he’d failed to notice before.
When it was feasible, Thomas excused himself from the crestfallen embassy official (Regina remaining, the wife and she apparently having found something in common) and made a more determined search for Linda. Though the event was not black-tie, everyone was attired just a notch down from that, so that there were many long dresses and dark suits. He saw his editor across the floor and might have tried to part the crowd to get to him, the editor being nearly the most interesting person Thomas knew. But Thomas, a man with a mission, merely waved instead. He spotted Roland, who did not, mercifully, see him, as well as a journalist he knew from somewhere — the university or the Thorn Tree. Men and women seemed locked in conversations that required shouting. Tho
mas took a glass of champagne from a silver tray and guessed the waiters were Marines. Was that possible? He entertained for a moment the notion they were spies — an idea abandoned in the next minute with the realization there’d be little of value to spy on. Still he could not find Linda. From the center of the room, Mary Ndegwa waved to him. Thomas gravitated to her, as a subject will be drawn toward a royal personage. She was holding court in a gold headdress with a caftan of a similar color that made him think of frankincense and myrrh. Thomas could not suppress the thought that Ndegwa’s imprisonment had freed the wife and mother. Freed her to become what had perhaps all along been her nature: a leader with a following. Which raised the question: What would happen if and when Ndegwa were ever released?
