The Opposite of Drowning

by Erin McRae

  Meryl rose elegantly from the sofa she had somehow staked out entirely for herself and embraced Harry warmly. She kissed him chastely on the mouth. “Welcome, weary traveler.”

  Harry let himself be pulled down next to her and put his head on her shoulder. As awkward as their last meeting had been, in Italy they always knew exactly what they were about. “What have I missed?”

  “They’ve been arguing about who sleeps where,” Meryl said, her tone half amused and half exasperated.

  “Not enough bedrooms?” Harry surmised.

  “You know them. There never are. But don’t worry,” Meryl said as she played absently with his hair. “You can come to bed with me tonight.”

  He twisted his head to look up at her, torn between contentment and a sudden uneasiness. He’d been looking forward to being with Meryl and enjoying their usual time together away from home – in bed and out of it. But now he was here, and faced with the usually delightful prospect, he couldn’t help but be haunted by Eliza. He had no commitments to her, but he suspected he wouldn’t be able to banish her from his mind.

  THE NEXT MORNING HARRY sat at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee at his elbow and his laptop open in front of him. In the quiet dawn hours before anyone else was awake, it should have been peaceful. Transcendent, even. But all Harry could think about was how wretchedly jetlagged he was, how the damp of the old house made his hands ache, and how Anika was right and his Vienna book absolutely, positively sucked.

  He’d hoped that a re-read would restore his faith in it, or at least present him with a clear way forward. All he knew for sure, while he brewed another pot of coffee and tied his dressing gown more snugly, was that he was going to have to go back to Vienna. He wondered how he was going to swing that. His vacation time wasn’t unlimited. Perhaps he could work remotely, as annoying as that would be. After all, no one at the publisher ever saw Charley in the office. Perhaps it was time for Harry to become an international person of mystery too.

  He let his mind wander to Eliza; anything was better than dwelling on his clusterfuck of a manuscript. Her request and his promise to bring her here next time had only been a joke but perhaps a city was a city. Surely their joke – his wish – could accommodate Vienna as easily. He didn’t know if she’d been there before, but decided to assume so. Otherwise she’d find yet another way to make a fool of him.

  He leaned his chin on his hand and stared at the steam curling out of his fresh cup of coffee. He’d have to be particularly creative about the places he would show her. The Naschmarkt wouldn’t be enough; he’d have to know the right stalls in the open-air market to bring her to. St. Stephen’s and the daytime appeal of climbing its tower wouldn’t impress her at all, but perhaps its strange late-night existence, when most of the sanctuary was bathed in purple light, would intrigue her. In the right season, Rathausplatz transformed into an ice rink would offer more than enough charm, but that was predicated on either of them knowing how to skate. Maybe Eliza could, but Harry had no such faith in himself.

  He could see her now, sitting across from him at some restaurant, her fingers on the stem on a wine glass while they laughed about books they both hated. And then after dinner they would go back to their hotel, and Harry could thread his hands into her rich brown hair, and...

  He growled at himself and took a gulp of the too-hot coffee. Maybe the heat would shock him back to his sense. Because apparently fantasizing about going on holiday with his publishing company’s wunderkind digital marketing consultant was something he did now, regardless of the fact that he’d never been on anything that could be considered a romantic holiday in his life.

  But he wanted to be in her presence, whether that was at the office or in his home or wandering the streets of Vienna. In an effort to understand his own preoccupation, he paged through his memories. Eliza, curled up in the armchair in his office, her long fingers wrapped around a cup of tea and a teasing smile on her face. Eliza, cool and efficient in meetings. Eliza on the plane back from Frankfurt, her eyes closed in sleep and her breathing soft. Eliza the first time he’d met her, with her poise and her confidence and that strange familiarity that had unnerved him. No wonder he wanted her. His brain, his body... something in him was convinced he’d known her forever.

  Maybe it’s your soul a traitorous voice whispered from inside his own head.

  “What on earth are you doing out here?”

  Harry started. Meryl stood in the doorway to the kitchen, in silk pajamas and tousled hair. She’d been asleep when Harry slipped out of bed, and he’d tried not to wake her. But that had been hours ago. He waved blearily at his laptop and the cursor blinking maddeningly in the document that needed so much work.

  She sighed with fond exasperation as she crossed the room and dropped a hand on the back of his neck. “Come back.”

  “I have to....” He trailed off as Meryl kneaded his skin, her fingernails scratching gently. He had so much to do and no idea how to achieve any of it. Steven was at home in Connecticut because he was dying, and here Harry sat having middle-aged angst and inappropriate dreams.

  “Well, I’m going back to bed,” Meryl said archly. “You do you, but that manuscript will wait.”

  Eliza

  THE STORM THAT HAD almost delayed Harry’s flight to Italy had ended, but another was pounding the East Coast as Eliza took the train from New York to Boston. Thanks, climate change, she thought as she watched the snow and wind scour the bare trees. At least Christmas would be white this year.

  In Boston it was still snowing hard but the wind had calmed so that when she got off the train at South Station big, fluffy flakes settled in her hair and on her shoulders. Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she dragged her roller bag through the crowd of other passengers making their way off the platform and into the station. It was her sister, informing Eliza that she was waiting for her at the kiss & ride and to please hurry up before the weather worsened again.

  Eliza found the car and climbed gratefully into its warmth. She didn’t even manage to buckle her seatbelt before Marianne started rattling off the schedule for the week.

  “So we’re all having dinner with Cody’s family tonight, the engagement party is Saturday –”

  “I know that,” Eliza protested. Their mother had been emailing them both for a week about all the upcoming events.

  “– And Mom says to tell you the photographer is going to be at that too, but the actual posed shots for the newspaper announcement will be tomorrow and she’s already made you an appointment for a bridal salon in February so you need to make sure you’re in the country.”

  Eliza frowned. That, at least, was new data. “How are you?” she asked in lieu of responding. She hoped Marianne was as dismayed at being asked to relay all that information as Eliza felt to receive it.

  “Terrible,” her sister said.

  “Why?” Eliza was genuinely concerned, but also hopeful that Marianne would let her into a life more internal than they usually discussed.

  “Do you have any idea what it takes to get a child into the right preschool in the twenty-first century?”

  That would be no, then. Eliza shook her head. “I didn’t know there was any such thing as the right preschool. I mean, as long as it’s safe....”

  “Eliza!” Her sister was scandalized. “The right preschool is the right prep school is the right college. One wrong move and it’s all for naught.”

  Eliza was pretty sure that wasn’t true, and she swallowed down the urge to rattle off the studies linking childhood reading – not particular school facilities – to adult success. She didn’t want to get into an argument, and she had something she wanted to confess to someone.

  She took a calming breath and stared straight ahead. “I asked Harry to take me to Italy.”

  Marianne whipped her head around to look at her, briefly heedless of the road. “You can’t do things like that until you’ve been married at least five years!”

  “Are you joking?�
� Eliza asked, fairly certain she was not the least rational person in this car.

  “When our kid is in school full-time, I am definitely having an affair,” Marianne announced.

  So much for my secrets.

  ELIZA WAS MET AT THE door by her mother, Catherine, who welcomed her with literal open arms and an air kiss. Her father came to the door, too, a gin and tonic already in his hand and a reluctant smile on his face. Catherine bustled Eliza into the living room, asking her about the train ride and if she was tired and whether she wanted a cup of tea. The moment gave Eliza the peculiar sense of being welcomed home, victorious, from a battle on some distant field.

  Her father carried her bags upstairs for her, through neat rooms painted light grey with white baseboards and nickel-plated light fixtures that all matched aggressively. Eliza’s own bedroom was decorated the same way, and when her father opened the door, she saw that her mother had even replaced the slate-blue duvet cover on her bed with a grey-and-white-striped one that better suited the season’s style.

  As a girl, the room had been full of her things and marked with her own sense of taste. But as the years had passed her mother had redecorated it, bit by bit, to serve as another guest room. The duvet cover had been the last remaining thing Eliza had picked herself. The loss wasn’t surprising – the room wasn’t really hers anymore anyway – but it still made her melancholy.

  As she looked around the room her gaze fell on the only thing in it that didn’t feel as impersonal as a hotel: Her grandmother’s hope chest, set on the floor between the two windows with their deep window seats. Eliza had seen it thousands, of times, but right now the sight of the box, sealed with an iron lock whose key had long ago gone missing, arrested her.

  She felt a chill down her spine, as if the box was designed to hold her body and not her trousseau. She worried suddenly that the long-lost key might somehow materialize at the engagement party and pass not into her own hands but Cody’s.

  Eliza shook off the horror as best she could and turned to take her bags from her father with thanks. If nothing else, the thought of chests and locks reminded her she needed to give Cody the spare key to her apartment.

  She shooed her father out of the room so she could have a few minutes to gather herself before the madness of the holidays truly began. Then she pulled out her phone. But not to text Cody.

  How’s Italy? She messaged Harry as she sat down at her vanity to blot her makeup and retouch her hair.

  She tucked her phone into her clutch before she opened her door and slipped out to face the rest of the world. If she was going to survive tonight, she definitely wanted a dose of Harry’s snark and impatience in her pocket.

  THE DINNER WAS LESS dire than Eliza feared. No one produced a key to the hope chest and no one who didn’t understand publishing or the internet asked her too many questions about her job. Everyone was much more interested in the latest polling numbers for Cody’s campaign. While Eliza cared about politics, she could have done without the constant prognostication. Winning an election wasn’t a magic trick, but thanks to Cody she was surrounded by people who were sure that if the right offerings and utterances were made over and over again, the gods would reward them. Being around that was exhausting – even with occasional mental breaks provided by Harry’s texts complaining about Italy being cold and his friends being irritating.

  And being around that was what was expected of her. Constantly. Even with an entire life of her own in New York for at least the next year. People asked if she’d be campaigning for Cody on the weekends, if she’d be leading a Women for Cody Connor phone banking circle, and if she’d picked out her dress for election day yet.

  Eliza didn’t understand the question. “I haven’t thought about it. I don’t even know why I would think about it?” The pitch of her voice crept upward in something approaching panic.

  Cody slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “You know the media always films the candidate casting his vote.”

  “I do,” she said, “but I’m not running for anything!”

  “Well, you’ll come up to vote, sure.”

  “It’s a Tuesday. I have work. I requested an absentee ballot.’

  “A very responsible backup plan,” Cody announced with a laugh, even though it was no such thing. “But I know you’ll be asking for the day so you can pull that lever in person.”

  Eliza opened her mouth, made a vague squeaking sound, and closed it with a shrug.

  Around them, people commented on how adorable they were. Eliza wanted to scream.

  FOR AS RELATIVELY PLEASANT and normal as dinner had been – at least until the debacle about Eliza’s vote – the next day’s photo session felt anything but. Of the many rituals surrounding weddings and engagements, Eliza found engagement photos perhaps the most baffling. It wasn’t as if she and Cody had just gotten engaged, and the photos for the wedding itself would be much more elaborate. She especially didn’t understand a three-hour photo session with her mother, the photographer, and the photographer’s assistant in tow to half-a-dozen of Boston’s snow-blanketed spots of beauty or historical significance.

  “We look like a J. Crew ad,” Eliza muttered as she obligingly popped her knee to kiss Cody in front of the white-capped Ether Monument. Because nothing said romance like statuary celebrating the anesthetic properties of a class of organic compounds.

  By the time the shoot was over, Eliza was cold, her boots had leaked and her feet were freezing. She wanted nothing more than to go back to her parents’ house and curl in in her bedroom with a book. Or, better yet, her laptop. She needed to do some writing of her own and recover from so many hours of non-stop exposure to humans. But she couldn’t, because Cody was hosting a donor dinner and she, as the doting fiancée, was expected to be present.

  Harry

  STEVEN’S ABSENCE BECAME truly felt by the group two days before Christmas. Which didn’t mean that they all didn’t miss him before then. There were whispers in corners and quiet murmurs between conversation and bed partners about him. Harry was fairly sure every person there was carrying on their own private correspondence with Steven via email, text, and phone, but no one said anything to the group and no one sent anything to the mailing list, as if by keeping silent they could keep shadow at bay.

  It was Harry who broke the silence, unintentionally, at dinner. He started telling a story about some past dissipation with Steven, only to realize the entire table had ceased their side conversations and gone silent to listen.

  Dennis caught Harry’s eye for a split second. Then he reached across the table for the wine bottle and announced, “Oh for fuck’s sake, why the wailing and gnashing of teeth? He’s not dead yet.”

  “Sensitively worded as always,” Harry said. Really, he was relieved someone had spoken.

  “Well, what would you do instead?” Dennis demanded.

  “It’s a bit early to be having his wake,” Meryl pointed out.

  Dennis snorted. “Again, not dead yet. Get him on video chat, somebody. Let’s tell embarrassing stories about him while he’s still here to humiliate.”

  Late as it was in Italy, it was only early evening in Connecticut. Steven answered the video call with a blur of pixels that gradually coalesced into an expression of amusement and mild concern. Harry could hear the neighbor’s dog barking.

  “Miss me already?” Steven asked.

  Harry, who had seen him barely a month ago, was shocked at the change in his appearance. He was thinner, with his cheekbones standing out above grey stubble on his cheeks. The line of his nose was sharper than usual. For years he’d worn T-shirts throughout the winter, complaining that Mallory kept the house too warm for his taste, but now he wore a turtleneck under a thick sweatshirt.

  “We’ve been missing you for days,” Dennis said. “But we’re just all finally drunk enough to admit it.”

  “How are you?” Harry asked Steven.

  Steven looked annoyed, though at them or the universe Harry wasn
’t sure. “It’s December in Connecticut. I’m cold, damp, and irritated.”

  “It’s about the same here,” Harry offered unhelpfully.

  “Oh, to be irritated in Rome. I’m so sorry for you,” Steven shot back sharply.

  Harry wasn’t sure what to say; he wanted to bring the conversation back around to a kinder, or at least a lighter, place, but didn’t know how. Incipient death made none of them funnier. Next to him, Dennis fidgeted with his fork, his shoulders hunched.

  “All right,” Meryl said, picking the tablet off the table and carrying it into the sitting room. “We’ll give the boys a moment to cope with the fact that they’re having feelings in public. Steven, is there anything you want me to bring you from Italy? And what about Mallory?”

  THE CONVERSATION WITH Steven, though sobering to everyone in the house, did not seem to materially dampen anyone’s eagerness for exploits. If anything, after they ended the call everyone seemed to get a bit more wild. Harry found he had less patience with people’s shenanigans than usual.

  Dennis tried to get him to talk about Eliza at two in the morning while they sat, shoulders pressed together, in the dark living room. Anything, Harry suspected, to avoid talking about Steven for a little longer. The embers of the fire, glowing dully in the grate, gave off not nearly enough heat. Harry snagged the bottle of amaretto off the floor and topped up both their glasses. Perhaps he could outdrink his friend, and Dennis would pass out before Harry could confess any of his woe.