‘Once upon a time, I was happy. Or if not happy, content. My life was the way I wanted it, orderly, neat, like an equal equation. And it was enough. Before that day, that party, an invitation to hell, when my order dissembled into disorder, all my carefully constructed equations tumbled, unequal and insolvable.’
She began pacing the room, circling the narrow oval table in the center. Finally, abandoning resistance, she folded into the chair. Her gaze drifted back up to the painting, fixed on a scene drawn by her mind’s eye; a recollection she had resisted for so long. Clair remembered.
Chapter 2
Clair five years earlier
The invitation sat on the kitchen counter, propped against a bowl of green apples. Looking at it she remembered a still life painting from the Dutch Renaissance she had seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam several years ago. Apples, wine bottle, blue ceramic vase with yellow dahlias. The promise of a quiet, simple, orderly life; day blending into week, into month, without disruption appealed to her. But this scene was different. Here was that note that had been crumpled up then smoothed out again, beckoning her attention. She stared hard at it while she poured another glass of the deep red.
It had been a long day. Overwrought graduate students, faculty with too much time on their hands and not enough imagination, constantly bombarded her quiet office space with questions and complaints. She didn’t want to go to the dinner party at the dean’s. As a member of the search committee for the new college president, it was an expectation, a duty. Still, she resented it. Why she had agreed to be on the search committee, she didn’t know. A moment of weakness? She was tenured so they couldn’t hold it against her. She had never engaged in social niceties. So why now? No time to speculate, she chided herself, upending her glass, swallowing the last of the wine. The phone chimed an incoming call.
‘Hello,’ she said, her annoyance audible. It was so seldom her phone rang.
‘Clair, are you coming tonight? This is Claudia, by the way. In case, you know, you don’t recognize my voice.’
Standing at the kitchen sink, looking out at the late fall garden, the last of the roses tilted upwards, straining for remnants of fading sunlight, she grimaced. She turned away, resisting the urge to go out there, stand still in the light, repelling the coming dark and inevitable evening that lay ahead.
‘Yes, I’m coming. Why? I mean, why do you want to know?’
‘Just seeing if you would like to walk to the dean’s with me. I’m just a few blocks over. I can be at your place in fifteen minutes?’
Clair thought at once that this was a plan to make sure she went. Phillip must have put Claudia up to it. Fight, flight, or freeze battled for primacy. Freeze won. More than anything she wanted a way out of this evening. Looking longingly at the half-empty bottle of Burgundy, at her couch and the book lying on the table, a paperweight holding it open to the last page she’d been reading, she sighed heavily, shoulders drawing back in an effort to steel herself.
‘All right then. I’ll meet you in front.’
She didn’t want Claudia, or anyone from the faculty, coming into her home, this sanctuary she had created for herself. When she closed the door, she could breathe. Be herself without artifice. No one visited or called, from work. The few people closest to her were fellow members of the string quartet she played cello with. But even they didn’t visit her at home, or socialize outside of practice and performances. And that was how she wanted it.
Clair poured another glass of wine, and carried it with her upstairs, to her bedroom. Throwing open the closet door, she scanned her meager options. Black pant suit, or navy? Long black dress, or gray? Clothes had never been important to her. She wore what she considered her uniform: dark suits with a white or pastel-colored button-down shirt. When she was lecturing in front of students she wanted them to focus only on what she was saying, not what she was wearing, or not wearing in the case of some of her female colleagues. Hair pulled back into a severe knot at the bottom of her crown, glasses, and only a blush of lip gloss, she was the picture of serious. Even her car, an older model dark blue Volvo wagon, spoke of her staidness.
There was one dress pushed to the back of the closet, a long emerald green slender sheath, with a deep, square neckline. Jodie, her sister-in-law, the one family member who refused to accept her efforts to estrange them, who consistently emailed, sent funny cards, odd gifts from around the world, wherever she and Ben – Clair’s older brother – happened to be working, had sent it to her from Thailand last Christmas. Both were members of Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders: he a pediatric trauma surgeon, she an obstetrician. Jodie had said the green would bring out the sparkle in her hazel eyes and the gold highlights in her brown hair. Eyes and hair that she had always considered dull brown. As she slipped on the green dress, enjoying the feel of the silky fabric against her skin, she ruminated on this invitation and the event ahead.
She couldn’t believe that the dean would be so certain she wouldn’t come as to send an escort. Was her presence so important? She was a well-known author, scholar, and yes, even to her own eyes, brilliant mathematician. Maybe she was needed to show off this side of Dalton College. Previously known mainly for its arts and letters, the science and math departments had become the biggest draw in the last few years, bringing in more money in tuition and grants than all the other departments combined.
Eyeing herself in the mirror over her dresser, she added a floral silk scarf, lightly draping it across her chest, leaving a hint of pale, smooth skin between the scarf’s edge and the crêpe neckline of the dress. Placing a pair of gold hoops in her ears, she considered letting her hair down but decided not to. It remained in its cloistered bun. She chose a pair of low black flats, not wanting to add to her height; at five foot ten she found she often towered over her co-workers, even most of the men in the math and science departments. It was growing cooler in the evenings so she tossed a dove gray cashmere sweater across her shoulders.
‘I’m a showpiece. Best dress the part then,’ she said aloud to herself in the mirror, before turning and heading downstairs and out the door to meet Claudia.
* * *
He was the first thing she heard and the first person she noticed when they walked into the already crowded room. Standing a head above the cluster of people pressed around him, his voice boomed over the background sound of soft Brazilian jazz, cutlery, crystal, and bodies shuffling around a small space. A burst of laughter followed his words, whatever he had said amusing to the group. He brushed his prematurely silver hair back from his face and glanced around the room, his eyes finding hers. She was standing at the entranceway, waiting for Claudia to hand her coat to a young woman, a graduate student most likely, serving as hostess. Clair held his gaze, something stirring deep inside her belly. Heat moving up causing her face to flush, she was helpless to stop it. She turned abruptly to the hostess, reaching beyond Claudia, and almost throwing her sweater at the girl. Breathing in deeply, she took a moment to reclaim her equanimity. Good God, she thought, what was that? When she turned back around, he was there, at her side, glass of champagne in his hand. She could feel his breath on her neck. A head taller, he stood close enough to almost touch, his body heat tangible.
‘I know you, but I don’t,’ he said, leaning towards her so that she caught a light scent of citrus and patchouli.
Clair felt the room collapse into just him, standing close to her, his heat causing the tiny hairs on her arms to quiver. She focused on taking the glass of champagne, sipping, and swallowing.
She smiled, hating that she had to look up. It made her feel somehow infantile. She turned slightly to the side, scanning the room, her breath beginning to find a pattern again. One long exhale and she was ready to engage in the glib sort of conversation she remembered these faculty events requiring.
‘I’m Clair Mercer, Science and Math. And you are?’ She knew who he
was, but she didn’t want to give that away.
‘Adam, Adam Gage, Theatrics.’
She liked his voice, low, deep, a fine baritone, she thought.
‘I know, yes, I have seen you on campus, usually surrounded by a group of students.’
‘Yes, well, goes with the territory. They all feel like this is their one big chance, to get a start, a leg up. It is only college but, for so many, it’s a chance.’
She expected him to be glib, sarcastic, demeaning even, but he wasn’t. He seemed to care about these students and their high hopes.
‘And what about you? Did you have your chance?’ she asked, looking sideways, not directly at him, but holding him in her space.
‘Now, that’s a story for another time. Can we have another time?’ he asked, his eyes, serious, contrasting with the smile on his face.
‘Yes,’ she said, wanting to end the back and forth. ‘I would like that.’
He didn’t leave her side the rest of the evening. And she remained with him, drinking more than she should, reeling under his attention. Adam Gage, head of the drama department, and with a reputation for attraction and seduction. Never with students, she had heard, but certainly with faculty, and with women from town who he directed in local theater productions. And now, here she was, caught up in his web, enticed, enthralled, and allowing it all to come to her. Claudia, a constant presence, circling and touching his arm in passing, made Clair wonder if perhaps she had been or was, one of these women. But she didn’t linger on the question. She surrendered to the attention and the feeling of sensuality it brought her.
After the party, he walked her home, the streets empty, dry leaves blowing along the sidewalk. The air was cold, brisk, smelling of fir. She huddled inside his long, dark wool coat, his arm around her, holding her tightly to his side. He reached up and untied her hair, saying, ‘Let it loose, feel the wind in your hair, in your veins.’
She turned to look at him, and he stopped walking, pulled her into his body, kissed her lips, cold and sweet. She kissed him back. When they arrived at her door, he entered, without a word and without hesitation, they began undressing in the hall, moving slowly and awkwardly toward the stairs, up the stairs, into the bedroom, onto the bed and into rapture. She didn’t know what had happened, she didn’t care. She felt herself opening, flowing, and feeling moved from deep within, unbounded and complete.
In the morning, he placed his palm against her bare belly. ‘I hope there’s nothing in here,’ he said, with a slight smile.
She met his gaze, amazed he was still there, in her bed. And now this. Unthought of.
Then she did think. Blinking away the brightness of the possibility, her mind leaping to a reality never before considered, she said, ‘I’ll have it of course, if there is.’
Chapter 3
Clair Present
Clair looked at Jet, the memory of that morning fresh as a wound. ‘And I did,’ she said quietly, hands clasping together as in prayer.
‘That’s enough for today, Clair, you did well,’ Jet said, standing and laying a hand on Clair’s shoulder. ‘I think we made a good start.’
Start on what? Clair wondered. My recovery? Conviction? Imprisonment after this hospitalization? Just what is starting? And for there to be a start, what has ended? She sat still, jumbled thoughts roiling in her mind, words and images tossed like pebbles caught in the white water as it merged with the sand. Adam eating the cheese toast, her driving to the cove, the water, cold, clean, healing. Oh, to be back in that space and time where everything made sense.
‘Are you OK? Can you find your way back to your room?’ Jet asked.
Clair, jolted from her reverie, nodded, rose from the chair, hands pressing down on the chair arms, feeling her way, bone against muscle against flesh.
‘I’ll be OK,’ she said, voice tremulous.
‘I believe you will too, Clair,’ Jet said. ‘But we have a lot more work to do. Will you join group today? I think it will help you.’
‘Maybe,’ Clair whispered.
‘Well, that’s better than no.’ Jet opened the door, allowing Clair to pass through.
Patients, bleary eyed from medications and too much sleep, stood with backs against the wall, waiting to be told what to do, where to go. One woman was running on a treadmill set up in a corner of the hallway, the rhythm of her footfalls creating a downbeat to the sounds of morning.
Clair caught the eye of a young man, his head lifted, mouth moving silently. Rather than being repelled by these fractured souls, she felt a closeness, a kinship. Having broken a universal taboo, the taking of another’s life, even though she failed, she had earned her place in this purgatory. She walked past patients and a few staff standing sentinel, into the community room where morning group was held, and found a seat in a corner, next to a long, wide window overlooking a wooded area. A residual smell of microwave popcorn from last night’s movie activity and old coffee from breakfast sitting in urns on a side table lingered in the still air.
Sun streamed in and, like a cat, she curled into the chair, wrapping her arms around her legs, eyes finding a spot on the horizon to fix upon. A patch of green, a meadow at the top of the woods, two deer grazing. Letting her body warm in the gentle heat, her thoughts settled there, with the deer. For a moment, she allowed herself to drift towards that meadow in the woods. Then a sound, harsh and wrenching, brought her back.
The woman sitting opposite Clair was crying. Big, gulping breaths, head held between hands, chipped nails, red polish creating patterns like blood splatter. Her hair hung in lank strands between long, slender fingers, dark roots showing through yellow. Clair felt that the woman consumed all the air in the small space, already dank with body odor, sweat, dirty feet, and fear.
‘Barbara, do you need to take a break?’ Jet asked.
Clair marveled at how calm her voice was, without showing any of the frustration or annoyance she must be feeling. Well, she is the therapist, Clair thought. Of course, she doesn’t show her true self in these group sessions. Or, in our private ones either, she considered. Clair wondered about Jet, about what she was really like. Maybe in another world, another time, we could have been friends.
‘No,’ Barbara murmured, getting hold of herself. She shook her head, making her body rock like a dog shaking off water. ‘I’m OK, I’ll be OK.’
Sitting, observing, Clair watched as the patients opened themselves up, baffled at their sheer lack of restraint. First Barbara, depressed. Then Rick, manic, speech like a firecracker barrage. Gabe over in the corner, hearing inner voices, tuning out everyone else’s. Three new admits overnight. Two young women, one with gauze dressings around her wrists, and an older man, eyes vacant and scared. It took a lot to get admitted to this locked unit, Clair knew. Back before, she had a couple of grad students end up here for treatment of depression. And now, here she was. A danger to herself and others. Well, one other.
Jet continued going around the room, for morning check-in. Each person had to rate their emotional and physical well-being on a zero to five scale. And the confidentiality statements, the respect for others, and on and on. Clair had heard it every morning for the past five days now, since joining morning group, sitting quietly, not sharing, not disrupting, just getting through it, waiting. For what, she wasn’t sure.
When Clair’s turn came, she passed. She had nothing to say to these people. In her misery, she couldn’t abide with those who only thought they knew what pain was. How she envied Gabe, living in his own world, where nothing could reach him. Sure, he had demons, but he could medicate them away. Or not, but at least he couldn’t love, not really. Unable to feel love, he couldn’t feel loss. And Barbara, what a waste, Clair mused. She has it all, or had it all before she threw it away. If only, I could go back, she thought. To before. To before I had anything.
She brought her attention back to th
e group. Jet was talking about something called ‘radical acceptance’. It was a way of making peace with themselves when they couldn’t control the events in their lives. It isn’t about condoning what has happened to us, to derail our lives and land us in a psych unit, but about accepting that it happened and move on. Move into a future that can be different from the past. The key, she said is to focus on this one moment, and then the next, and so on and not think too far ahead. Clair thought about this, about how she might use this information to get out of here. To finish what she had started and failed at. This time, she wouldn’t try and cover it up as anything but what it was, a revenge killing. She could accept that. She began to feel something besides despair, anaesthetized, frozen. A stirring inside her belly, a quickening of heart, breath, so much like the first time she felt Devon. A thing so small she almost didn’t notice. Hope.
She thought back to that morning, just six months ago, spring break. To before, when the worst thing had seemed to be his obsession with his latest romance. He loved all the shine and glitter of those early days, when everything was possible. She remembered how it had been for her. Oh, the waves of intense emotion that vibrated through her. Seismic shifts from elation to despair, all based on the sound of his voice, his touch, a look. She pitied the woman on the other end of his attentions, his current lover.
It was supposed to be a day off for them. A special family day. A day to reboot, to establish new patterns. Even one small change, just being able to enjoy a day away at the coast, might create better, happier ways of being together for them back home. It was possible, she knew that from her teaching. The butterfly effect. Small, iterative changes could have magnificent effects in all sorts of things, so why not in their relationship? Looking back, she saw that there had been such a change, but horrific in all ways. And still, the pain moves through her, looking for purchase. He had been anxious to leave. His anxiety became her anxiety. Oh, if only, if only. Remembering. She had been in the kitchen, packing a picnic lunch, bread, fruit, cheese, wine, all laid out on the blue-patterned tile table. She moved a vase of yellow daffodils, their blossoms lifted to greet the early morning light filtering in through the open window, to one side making room to lay out special snacks for Devon. Goldfish, fruit roll-ups, juice drinks. She had to be careful about his sugar intake but still, it was a holiday. She was so intent on her task she didn’t hear Adam come in.
The Wave Page 2