4B woke alone the next morning in Nora’s bed with Java curled up behind her knees and a pillow pulled to her chest. The pillow smelled of Nora and she clung to it, trying to invoke the real woman from the sheer want of her. 4B hadn’t slept very well, waking at every gust of wind or creak of old wood, hoping it was Nora coming home, falling back onto the mattress when she realized she hadn’t. Every time she woke, it took longer for her to go back to sleep. In the morning gray, the frustrated sadness of the night before had become an anxious thread of fear. If Nora wasn’t home, it meant the plane was stuck, either having been snowed in somewhere, or due to some sort of emergency. Nora didn’t like either possibility, but she was far more worried about the later.
Crystal had explained how the provision drop-off worked. That people who lived far out of town needed provisions brought to them, so they often had short landing strips for airplanes, pads for helicopters, or lakes for the airplanes called “puddle jumpers” to land on. They hired people like Tack to bring them the provisions they couldn’t make or hunt for, like aspirin, books, gunpowder and spices; and sometimes luxuries, like soft toilet paper, ice cream and new underwear. It was a harsh life, but they liked it out there, and 4B could even see a sort of allure in living so simply. She didn’t want to try it, but she could appreciate how some people would want to.
4B pictured Nora waiting for the snow to stop so she and Tack could shovel a landing strip wherever they had been snowed in. An image of Nora came unbidden—sad, anxious and heartbroken, missing her aunt, missing her. 4B’s entire being ached to make it better. Most of all, 4B hoped Nora wasn’t out there feeling worse because of her. She pulled the pillow to her again and shut her eyes. Maybe she could sleep until Nora made it back home.
Early afternoon roused her, though it seemed much later due to the darkness of the day. Snow pelted the windows, and the weight of the lethargy that wound itself around 4B grew stronger the longer she stayed in bed. She couldn’t make herself get up. She could barely summon enough energy to roll over. She buried her face in the pillow that smelled like Nora and shut her eyes again.
It was the meowing of a hungry cat that finally pulled her from her morose lie-in. She stumbled out of bed, took a long shower, pulled on her new jeans, along with one of Nora’s thermal shirts that went under one of the new country-style shirts she’d purchased from the Mercantile, and went down to dish up some kibble. All the while, Java wound around her ankles. When the cat was fed she made herself some coffee and toast. She wasn’t hungry, but she couldn’t remember how long ago she’d last eaten. As the coffee dripped, she paced until she came to stand at the great front window, her arms wrapped around herself, watching the snow come down heavy and fat.
The house across the yard was just a hulking shadow in the gray and white day. Under the blanket of snow, it was dark and still. 4B wondered if the mourners from the night before had all gone home. A feeling of solitude slipped over her and she imagined Nora spending her winters here. She tried to think of the active woman snowed in and had a hard time imagining her idle. Nora had said she and Aunt Mace played a lot of cards in the winter. But Aunt Mace wasn’t there anymore. Remembering made her heart break again for Nora. The coffee pot finished its cycle and she fixed herself a cup. She sat down at the tiny breakfast table, sipping the hot brew, ignoring the toast. Alone and with nothing to keep her occupied, 4B missed Nora with an acute and painful longing.
Trying not to acknowledge the fear she felt about Nora’s absence 4B scanned the open room. She’d never been there by herself. The place felt different without Nora. Unable to stay seated, she got up from the table, cradling her coffee mug, and began to explore the cabin to see and touch the things she hadn’t had time to investigate before. She walked through the small house and tried to see it through Nora’s eyes, starting with the books. An entire wall downstairs was covered with shelves, and books covered every inch of them, some shelves two stacks deep. There was another smaller bookcase under the stairs and small stacks of books were neatly perched on flat surfaces throughout the house. Nora’s tastes in reading were diverse.
4B sat down with a book about Alaska, but like the last time she’d tried to read at Nora’s house, she couldn’t concentrate. Before it had been because she couldn’t keep her hands off of Nora. This time it was because she couldn’t keep her mind off of her. Everywhere she turned, she was reminded of Nora, and she missed her with a fierceness she couldn’t control. She returned the book to the shelf where she’d found it, and started to explore again, trying to feel close to Nora.
In the space below the stairs, in a small nook 4B had never noticed, there was a rack containing a dozen harmonicas. 4B could almost hear the plaintive notes of Nora playing and it took her back to the time they had spent waiting to be rescued. Near the shelf was a short door. 4B opened it, expecting storage or a pantry, but only saw darkness. She pulled the string hanging from a bare light bulb and a short set of stairs was illuminated. She crouched and stepped down, and then around, stopping in a low cellar under the cabin. It was a large area. The space was the size of the bottom story of the cabin. She was standing under the living room, in what she found was a fairly large wine cellar and every rack was fully stocked. A stack of folded wine boxes was lying in a corner along with packing tape and a label maker. 4B remembered Nora had mentioned she traded in wine, but she had expected a few bottles here and there. It looked like she was running a decent-sized business. 4B remembered getting drunk on tiny bottles of airline wine with Nora and waking up wrapped around her on a pallet of pine needles. Longing shot through her again and she started to cry.
It seemed, every time she turned around, she was discovering another aspect to the woman she had fallen in love with, and a brief bout with regret that she hadn’t gotten a chance to find out more tried to sneak into her thoughts. But she pushed it away. She was determined to find out all of the little secrets that made Nora who she was. She just needed her to get back to fill in the missing details.
4B emerged from the wine cellar and wandered over to Nora’s desk. Nora hadn’t worked much in the days following their rescue. She’d explained what she’d been doing when she checked in just long enough to look at Aunt Mace’s website and to scan her email. 4B smiled at the memory of watching Nora work. She’d tried to be patient, but she hadn’t been able to refrain from keeping a safe distance, and when Nora had tugged at her hand, she had fallen onto her lap without complaint. Nora had worked half-heartedly with 4B in her lap, and she had described what she was doing. But 4B had been too occupied kissing Nora’s neck to really hear what Nora had been saying. Remembering, 4B wasn’t sure Nora had accomplished any of the checking she had intended to do, because it wasn’t long before 4B had swung her leg over to straddle her, pulling Nora’s hand to the heat she pressed into her.
4B sighed at the memory and sat down in the chair. She caressed the soft leather arms and imagined Nora sitting there. On the polished wood desk in front of her was an impressive array of monitors, all of them dark. Just a line of blinking dots, indicating they were actually on, just waiting for the command to come to life. A line of computer towers Nora had told her were servers hummed on a low shelf behind the chair. A time zone chart was printed out on a piece of paper and taped to one of the terminals, converting Juneau’s time to Massachusetts time. 4B let her finger slide over the columns and a twinge of longing pierced her. She wished she could just pick up her phone and call her. But she’d tried that already. The calls had gone directly to voicemail. She was sure she would have felt something if anything bad had happened to Nora, but the nothingness she felt was almost worse.
The snow dumped and let up, off and on, for the next couple of days, as 4B wandered aimlessly through Nora’s house, waiting and hoping. During that time, 4B made frequent trips over to Aunt Mace’s house, especially when the waiting became too painful to do alone. The party at Aunt Mace’s house never completely ended as the community mourned the loss of a beloved friend and 4B w
asn’t sure when the wake became a lookout party for Nora and Tack, but eventually the question came up more and more often, and 4B heard people making plans to launch search parties up near the last drop site as soon as the snow stopped. Radio calls to the last site had confirmed that Tack and Nora had taken off for the airpark shortly before the snow had hit. That news had threatened to steal 4B’s hope, and she struggled to maintain positive about Nora’s return. When it became too hard to hope, she called her mother, who always seemed to help, urging her never to give up.
People came and went at Aunt Mace’s, and 4B asked everyone if they had heard from Nora or Tack. But no one had. At first, everyone told her not to worry. Tack knew what he was doing. He’d probably set down to wait out the storm. They’d both be taxiing down the tarmac when the snow let up a little. But after a couple of days, even the most confident of those who said that Tack and Nora were fine started to wring their hands. The day Nora overheard Santa Claus telling Elphie that they could have hiked out by now, the rock of fear sitting in 4B’s stomach was joined by an avalanche of others, and 4B began to fear she’d never see Nora again. Still, Nora’s friends tried to ease 4B’s concern by continuing to tell her that Tack knew what he was doing, and getting grounded while doing drops happened all the time. But they had no answer when she asked about the lack of radio contact, and after a while, words were replaced by compassionate eyes, an offer of strong liquor, and pats on the shoulder.
To ease the waiting, 4B sat down to play cards with Elphie and Ship a few times and found that, although she could do without the constant bickering, the more time she spent with them, the more she liked the two women. Ship had slowed down a little on her drinking, at least during the day, but Elphie still had to pour her into bed each night. And 4B’s beginner’s luck—which she found was bonafide once she regained her memory—continued, which irked Elphie more than it did Ship. So, 4B had to keep an eye out for Elphie’s sleight of hand—the cheating Elphie preferred to call “evening the playing field”, and which Ship called “‘fucking criminal”. 4B soon found herself in the mediator role that she had watched Aunt Mace play. It was sometimes tiresome, but it never grew boring. 4B was grateful for the distraction. Heeding Nora’s advice, she didn’t play for money. No matter how often they asked. And they asked often.
Eventually, even the distraction of the card games wasn’t enough.
The snow didn’t dump, but after a few lulls, it kept coming at a steady pace, and 4B didn’t try to go down to The Strut, but others who came by the house did, and each time, there was still no word from Nora. By the end of the third full day, 4B was numb with worry and feeling very alone. She was also going stir crazy. The quiet in Nora’s little house was almost deafening, but she didn’t always want to be at Aunt Mace’s, where the noise and constant speculation about Nora and Tack were even more difficult to bear. She barely knew most of the people she saw over there, but they took her in like one of their own. She wondered if it had something to do with the bonding power of grief and fear.
The waiting and the quiet became too much for her. She was alone at Nora’s and needed something to do. Her mother was back in Washington and she had to wait until later that evening to call. Finally, she picked up a pen and looked for a notebook. Journaling had been an outlet before. She sat down at the desk to find a pad of paper. A yellow-paged legal pad was in the first drawer she tried. She dropped it on the desk and flipped through pages of hastily penned snippets of code, sketches of webpage layouts, and crude little drawings of cats. It looked like Nora often turned to pen and paper when her agile fingers weren’t flying over a keyboard.
4B lingered over some of the doodles, longing to see the woman who had probably sat right where she was sitting on long quiet afternoons. On a page somewhere in the middle of the pad, 4B saw a little heart and the initials N.K. + E.T. scrawled in it. But the E.T. had been crossed out, and 4B had been written next to it, along with a sideways smiley face—the doodled emoticon showed how much more time Nora spent on the computer than with a pen and paper.
4B flipped the page and came across two folded pieces of paper nestled between the pages of the notepad. One had been torn from the notebook and was half-filled with writing, dated the morning of Nora’s last trip. It was addressed to her. Her heart stood still in her chest. She opened the other folded page and saw the sketch she had drawn of Nora printed out on it. She stared at the beloved face, alive with wonder and discovery. The longing that filled her was painful and a tear slipped down her cheek. She impatiently wiped it away and told herself she would not start crying. If she started now, she would never stop. She placed the drawing on the desk and began to read the letter addressed to her.
Dear 4B
Yes. 4B is who you are to me. Not Grace or Elizabeth. Just 4B.
Actually, you’re way more than that to me, but it’s what I have right now.
You once told me you liked that your entire memory started with me. I liked that, too. At first it was selfish. I wanted to be everything to you. I still do. But, then I realized all of my important memories are of you, and it just seems right to want to start my life where ‘we’ began. I just hope I get a chance at that, a chance that consists of more than picking what name I want to call you.
But you have your memory back, and you’ve been spoken for by the life you had before. How can ‘we’ stand up to your entire life and the people who already claim you?
I think the fear of that is what allowed me to even entertain the things I brought up on the phone yesterday morning. You must think I watch too many soap operas or something, crafting such an elaborate story from such flimsy data. In development speak, they call it not following a logical path. In doctor speak, it’s called making a poor diagnostic impression. Either way, I didn’t consult the source, and I allowed my imagination and fear to run away from me. Now, I know I was just looking for something to help me separate from you, because the prospect of losing you is too painful to compute.
I do that. Push things away when they hurt too much. Stop thinking about them when it gets too hard. I ran away from my dad, I ran away from my career, and then I ran away from my failed marriage and life in Denver. It’s what I do. I don’t want to do it with you.
You said you weren’t keeping any of the things we spoke of away from me on purpose. Just like I’ll never know what series of events allowed 33 of us to be tossed out almost unscathed from the airplane, I’ll probably never know what series of events led up to where we are today. But I have no other choice but to believe you. And I do.
I hope I get a chance to talk to you about all of this. But for now I want to give you the space you need to work it all through as you put your life back on track. I have nothing else to offer you, except what I already have, but I can give you freedom to do what you need to do. I’ll always be here for you.
So, I’m writing this letter, which I will probably just tear up when Tack and I get back from our trip today. I just wanted to download my thoughts so, hopefully, I can speak clearly with you if—no, when—I get another chance.
I wish you were here. I have so much to say to you, so much to tell you.
Above all else, I’m not sure I can handle losing you and Aunt Mace at the same time.
I’ll wait however long it takes.
There was no signature or sign off. It just ended.
4B reread the letter, and her heart ached. 4B had been so focused on whether Nora felt betrayed that she hadn’t thought that Nora was only trying to be strong for her. Again. Nora was always the rock. She wanted to be Nora’s rock this time. Her yearning was so intense it bent her double. She begged the Universe to give her another chance.
That evening, 4B looked down the slope of Aunt Mace’s backyard toward the creek from her perch on the wooden stoop of Aunt Mace’s back porch. It was already dark, and fairly cold, although the snowfall had stopped late that afternoon after having dropped about three feet over the last three days. The sky was clear, finally, and the
quarter moon illuminated the shadow landscape before her in silver. She sat in a square of yellow light pouring from the kitchen window behind her.
A cup of coffee was cradled in her hands and she huddled over it watching the landscape through the tendrils of heat snaking from its caramel colored surface. She’d been drinking too much coffee, but it was the only comfort she knew. However, at the moment, besides warming her hands, it wasn’t doing much for her except exacerbating the anxiety trying to shatter her. Even so, she was numb with unanswered hope and exhausted from worry. She heard someone come out through the back door.
“Hey, squirt. Ain’t your backside freezing down there?” asked Ship.
4B took another sip of her coffee and crooked her head to see the figure standing just behind her. Ship carried a coffee mug, too. 4B hadn’t seen her drink anything other than coffee all afternoon and she wondered if Ship’s bender had come to an end. The cold didn’t seem to bother Ship very much even though she was clad in only jeans and a flannel shirt worn over a thermal pullover. 4B noticed no one complained about the snow or cold in Alaska. They just accepted it, like everything else. Ship’s boots were still unlaced, and 4B knew she’d slipped them on just to come out there, to check on her. She realized Ship and Elphie were watching out for her now, and the realization gave her comfort.
“It went numb about fifteen minutes ago, so I’m fine. There’s room if you want to sit with me,” offered 4B, indicating the wooden step beside her.
“I think I’ll just lean on the rail. At my age you get piles sitting in the cold like that. You mind if I smoke?” Ship brushed snow from the wood railing and placed her coffee mug on the cleared spot. She dug into one of the breast pockets of her shirt until she pulled out a red and white package of cigarettes.
Chasing Mercury Page 40