by Anita Shreve
He stops suddenly at one photograph, can go no further. It’s of Siân and a baby. She looks to be in her late twenties or early thirties, and she’s cradling the baby in her arms, as if she were nursing the infant. This has to be the son who died.
He puts the packet of photographs in his lap, looks across at the far wall.
“It hurts that this is you, and I wasn’t there,” he says.
He hands the photographs back to her. He can feel the pressure of the minutes left to them. He glances surreptitiously at his watch, but she sees him.
“What time is it?” she asks.
“I don’t want to tell you,” he says.
“I’ll have to know,” she says.
“I was hoping we could go back to the room, but I know you can’t.”
“We’ll come back here.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure. It’ll be hard to get away.”
“But we have to.”
“Yes.”
“Can I call you?”
She looks down at her hands. She raises her head, sighs. “He’s almost never in the house between four and five,” she says. “But I have Lily then. It won’t be easy.”
As he pays the bill, she gathers her coat around her. They leave the dining room. He puts his hands in the pockets of his pants, hunches his shoulders against the cold. He’s left his overcoat back in the room, will have to retrieve it when she has left. They walk together across the parking lot to her car, the small black Volkswagen.
“If we think about what might have been,” she says, taking his arm, “we’ll drive ourselves mad.”
They reach her car. She puts the key in the lock. She looks up at him. He is aware only that within seconds she will leave him.
“Will we be allowed to do this?” she asks.
“I can’t conceive of not doing this,” he says, answering her.
He puts his arms around her, brings her head into his shoulder. As he does so, a car pulls into the parking lot. The driver, making the turn, is an older woman with short, graying hair, a waitress perhaps, or a chef in the kitchen. The woman looks at him, smiles broadly, gives him a thumbs-up sign. He smiles back at her.
“This is it,” he says to Siân.
Minutes later, entering the room to retrieve his coat, he sees the bed, still unmade, still rumpled. He sits at the edge of the bed, notices a stain on the bottom sheet. He touches the stain with his fingers, closes his eyes. How can they be apart, he wonders, with this evidence of their union?
The girl knew, on the second day, that the boy would speak to her. All the afternoon before—inside the rooms of the old mansion and out on the lawns, and even by the pool when finally they had been allowed a swim—she knew that he was watching her. He wore red bathing trunks and dove with his body pointed like a knife, and when he came up, his hair, though short, was flattened, and he was looking at her.
On the second day, just before noon, she left the art room, where the others were, and walked along the path to the lake. Such a walk was not on the schedule, but it was not forbidden either. She was not a recluse necessarily, though she did often prefer to be alone.
Walking from the wide lawn into the thicket of trees was, she thought, like entering a cathedral where the walls were made of tall pines rather than the large hand-cut stones of the Catholic church near her home. The breeze from the lake drifted up the path through the trees and the walk was dark in shadow, sheltered from the glare of the midday sun She made her way with her hands in her pockets, and when she heard the footfalls behind her, she kept her pace steady, did not hesitate or turn around. She entered the clearing, walked along the aisle between the wooden benches, sat at the one closest to the water. In front of her was the cross, and beyond that, the surface of the lake stretched to the other shore. Her being at this camp, she knew, was not about the cross. She understood already, even at fourteen, that the cross was historical, that it was but one of several ways the adults around her had seized upon to define hope, though she liked the discipline and the ritual of her church, the cadence of the Latin words.
He sat on a bench not far from hers, facing toward the water as she was. He said Hi in a shy voice, glancing at her sideways, and she said Hi too, looking at him quickly. He told her his name, and she said hers, though each knew the other’s already. He asked her where she was from, and she asked him where he was from, and they gave their answers casually, not knowing that these answers sealed their fate. He seemed like her, she thought, not withdrawn, but someone comfortable with his own company. He said he’d left the room where the others were because he already had a wallet and couldn’t see the sense of making another, not one held together with gimp anyway. She nodded and smiled. She said she wasn’t much for crafts herself. She preferred other activities—the swimming and the archery, badminton. He said, smiling at his own cockiness, tempting fate, that he was pretty good at badminton and that they ought to play sometime. She said then, matching his self-mocking tone, that she was all right herself, and she might, if he was lucky, give him a game. They sat silently then, looking out at the water, both with smiles still left on their faces, until the smiles, after a time, faded.
He stood up, moved over to her bench. He sat beside her. He held a stick, etched figures in the dirt beneath their feet. They talked of their families and their schools, their new counselors, the routine at camp, each knowing that the casual questions and answers masked another dialogue, one spoken with averted eyes, small gestures. She crossed her legs; he scratched his arm.
The lake was not for swimming. At the shoreline, the bottom turned dark with roots and weeds. There were fish in the lake, and sitting there, even under the hot sun, they could sometimes see the movement of a bass or a perch at the surface. A bell rang a melody, tolled twelve chimes, signaling lunch. They could not be away for this event, would be looked for, spoken to. She thought she might not mind that, except that then the others would know they had been found together and would be watching them.
She stood first and said they would have to go up the path now to the dining room. He flung the stick into the water. She watched it sail and fall. It was understood already, even on this first meeting, that they must return separately, and so he said, chivalrously, that he just wanted to inspect the boathouse before going back—allowing her to walk up the lawn first, accepting for himself the greater risk.
She hesitated, then acquiesced. She knew he saw her hesitation, that he knew she did not want to leave the clearing, this tentative beginning. He put his hands in his pockets, made markings in the soft dry dirt with the toe of his sneaker. Beyond them up the hill, they could hear the slap of a screen door, the muffled clatter of the others.
This afternoon, he said, and she nodded.
When we were children, you held my hand. And later, when we lay together on the damp, rumpled sheet, when I said, This is overtaking us, you said to me, This is only holding your hand.
The summer that I met you I began to bleed. The winter that I met you again, I stopped. I used to think that that was what we had missed together—my womanhood.
At the room at the inn, the room that used to be a dormitory room, you slid your fingers inside me, and I thought to myself: This is as intimate as I have ever been.
At the room at the inn, I lay under you. Your face was over mine. I looked up at you, at your mouth and at your eyes, and I thought: I know this man. It was the shock of recognition.
I brought pictures to the inn, to show you who I’d been, but I saw at once my mistake, the hurt in your eyes, and you said, It hurts that I wasn’t with you.
You sat in a chair in the room. I sat astride you and looked at your face. You were wearing a blue-striped shirt, a red tie loosened at the collar. I looked at the outline of your face, the elegant jaw, the brown eyes, the mouth, the straight lower lip, and I saw the boy who had left me, the young man I had never known.
I watched you sit at the edge of the bed and bend to put your shoes on. I was
standing behind you, and you didn’t know I was watching. I saw the curve of your long back, the vulnerability of that long back, and I thought: I will always love this man.
I wanted to ask you questions, but could not. Did you know when you made your babies? Did you kiss your wife when she was in labor? When did you tell your wife that you loved her? Did you think your wife was beautiful?
And now I wonder this: To what extent does time distort memory?
HE IS AWARE, as he stands in line, that he is an object of scrutiny. He is not certain, however, if the cause is his unshaven appearance or if it stems from something else altogether—a demeanor that is both distracted and focused, is lost and yet edgy. He has been up all night writing letters, four of which he now holds inside a large manila envelope. He slept only two hours, after the kids left the house this morning, on the couch in his clothes. Since returning home from The Ridge, he has been unable to enter his and Harriet’s bedroom, to look at the marriage bed, as if to do so were a kind of double betrayal—both to his wife and to the woman he made love to yesterday.
He feels trapped, third in line, at least seven people behind him. Possibly, he thinks, the reason everyone is staring at him is that they know he has lost his office, will almost certainly lose his house soon. Another recession casualty. Even Harriet has lately been attributing his bizarre behavior to his financial difficulties—an attribution that makes him feel both relieved and guilty. She no longer even asks why he doesn’t come to bed, why he doesn’t eat, as if she had decided to let this minor breakdown take its course.
He has come to the post office at the worst imaginable time, twelve-fifteen, lunch hour, and in the pre-Christmas rush too. He thinks of leaving, returning later, but he knows he must get these letters out of the house, get them off to Siân. Moving up to second in line, he reaches to the counter, snags an Express Mail address label, finds his pen in a jacket pocket. He thinks, as he has done all morning, of what they were doing at precisely this hour yesterday, reliving the day in fifteen-minute intervals. At twelve-fifteen, he recalls, they were still in bed, hadn’t gone down to lunch yet. His mind swims with erotic images. Today he will call her at four. He needs to hear her voice.
The elderly woman in front of him puts her purse on the counter, removes her wallet, and painstakingly counts, in coins and bills, the cost of her transactions. Even Noonan, normally stoic, looks impatiently at his watch and then at the long line that has opened the door, letting in the cold, and sighs.
“Callahan,” he says, nodding slowly over the woman’s head.
“Harry,” Charles says.
“Cold out there.”
“Bitter.”
“Whatya got there?”
“Express,” Charles says.
The woman in front of Charles moves away. Charles puts his packet on the counter. He wonders what Noonan will think about the address. The second time this week—an address he’s been writing to all fall. Noonan looks at the package, weighs it, begins to attach the Express Mail label Charles has filled out.
The idea comes to him then. He looks at the long line of people behind him, glances at Noonan across the counter. Noonan has just indicated an amount of money, is waiting for Charles to pay.
No one will understand this, he knows. But she will. She will.
“Hold it a minute there, Harry.”
Charles strips off his topcoat, then his suit jacket underneath, lays these garments on the counter. He loosens his tie, slips it through his collar. He unbuttons the front of his shirt, then the cuffs. He takes the shirt off, folds it into as compact a bundle as he can manage. He reaches across the counter, stuffs the shirt inside the packet with the letters, seals it again, slides the packet back to Noonan. Noonan looks at Charles. Charles puts his jacket and his topcoat back on, slips the tie into a pocket. He buttons the overcoat all the way up to the collar. He takes out his wallet.
“What do I owe you now?” he asks Harry Noonan.
Four
The air was soft and moist, the early morning air of a day that later would be hot but now was cool from a breeze off the water. She liked best, she thought, the way the pink light filtered through the leaves and highlighted the foliage along the banks. It was the third day or the fourth, and they had found a way each day to be together. He had said the night before to meet him early, at the boathouse.
He was there already. She could see him through the wide entrance, a white shirt in the shadows, bending to a boat, wrestling with a line. She walked beneath the wooden canopy to the dock. When they arranged to be together, neither ever said, We shouldn’t be here, or, We might get caught. She had left her room before the others had awakened.
He rowed from the center of the boat while she sat in the stern. She liked the smooth rotation of his arms as he pulled the oars, though sometimes, in his haste, the oars slapped the water, spraying them. Once, when he shifted in his seat, their knees touched, his through the cotton of his slacks, hers bare. He looked up at her quickly then, glanced away. He rowed to the middle of the lake, then let them drift out of sight toward the westward shore. He banked the oars in the boat and rested.
A sweat had broken out already around his neck and on his forehead. He took off his shoes and socks. He handed her his watch, and when he dove into the water, she thought later that he had done it as much to break the tension as to cool himself. He came up laughing and told her that if he drowned, she should give the watch to his little brother. She smiled. She wished that she could dive in with him, but she knew that they could not both go back with wet clothes, and besides, she reasoned, they couldn’t abandon the boat, not without a line or a mooring.
He swam away, then back again. He swam on his side, then cut the water with a crawl. The water around them was dark in the early morning light, though away from them, the surface had a pink shimmer.
He returned to the boat, circled it on his back. He looked happy; his swimming seemed effortless. He spouted water like a whale, enjoyed showing off. He asked her questions, questions that were easier to ask from the water: Had she ever done anything really bad? Did she have a boyfriend at home? And she answered him. She did not have a boyfriend, she said, and once she had hitched a ride on the highway with a truckdriver.
What happened? he asked her, hanging on to the side of the boat with one hand.
He drove me to the next town.
Then what? he asked.
She was sorry now that she had chosen this story to tell.
He tried to kiss me, she said.
The word hung between them, a charged word at fourteen, a word that lay at the center of their thoughts. He looked stricken, would not ask the next question, though she knew she had to answer it.
I didn’t let him, she said. I ran away from the truck, walked all the way home.
How long? he asked.
Five miles.
He flung himself back into the water, sank down as if with relief, bobbed up again.
That’s not something bad that you did, he said.
Sure it is, she said. I got into the truck, didn’t I?
He seemed to think about this. Well, that was stupid, but it wasn’t bad, he said.
I thought it was bad, she said.
Did you tell your parents? he asked.
Of course not, she said.
I’ll bet you told it at confession, he said. I’ll bet you thought it was a sin.
He grabbed hold of the side of the boat, hoisted himself in. His shirt was a translucent peach, stuck to his skin. His pants were molded to the contours of his body. She looked away.
She was slightly irritated: She had thought it was a sin. Did still. She had put herself in jeopardy.
He rowed quickly, came in close to the shore. She could see the boathouse and the cross. Soon the others would be down, for morning chapel. She wondered then what Cal would do about his wet clothes.
When he entered the dock underneath the cover of the boathouse, she handed him his watch. She could not see h
is face in the gloom, not with the sun off the water behind him, but she knew that he could see hers. She felt his fingers briefly in the exchange with the watch.
You’re like me, he said to her.
When the others came for chapel, she was sitting on a bench already. A friend asked her why she had missed breakfast, and she answered that she’d gone for a walk. The others were noisy, took seats, changed seats. She leaned slightly sideways on her bench, her arm outstretched to prop her up, as if she were tired, waiting for the priest. In this way, she saved a space, so that when Cal came, she sat up straight and he sat down beside her. His hair was wet, but his shirt and pants were dry. They didn’t speak.
The priest entered the clearing, stood beside the cross. The children rose and knelt and sat again. She looked out toward the water, noticed that the pink had turned to blue. Her hands were clasped loosely on her lap. She thought that she could feel the warmth of the boy through the sleeve of her blouse.
With one swift movement then, as if it had been rehearsed, thought about, practiced in the mind, the boy swept her hand off her lap and held it on the bench between them. His hand was cool and dry from the swimming, though she felt it tremble. He held her hand more tightly to stop the trembling. She felt something flutter deep inside her abdomen and knew that her face was hot. She looked at her feet, heard the priest intone his words. The water and the sun spun around her.
THE SKY IS HEAVY and gray, a fine snow beginning, like ashes from a fire. He has been waiting in the parking lot for more than half an hour, is worried that she won’t arrive before the storm begins in earnest. He has listened to weather reports at least half a dozen times this morning, has determined that since the storm is moving in from the west, she’s probably been in it for some time. The prediction is for heavy accumulation, the first substantial snow this season. His children at breakfast were hoping for a day off from school, though they will begin their Christmas vacation tomorrow. He thinks of Harriet in her pink flannel nightgown this morning, of the way she walked him to the door, wished him a good trip, worried over his driving in the bad weather, and he winces. He has had to tell her he had business in western Connecticut, will have to stay overnight.