The Outside of August

by Joanna Hershon

  But tonight she heard nothing.

  Tonight he was opening a letter. Tonight he was gazing at his father’s solid writing on the outside of the envelope. He was splitting open the top of the envelope with uncharacteristic patience and precision. He was sitting on his bed. He was unfolding a letter. He was standing in the center of his childhood room—sharks still tacked up on the walls. Tonight he was reading.

  By morning he’d be gone.

  8

  She started throwing away. There was only so much storage space in New York City. In the house, in a silence broken only by sibilant wind like the inside of a shell, Alice began sorting through it all. There were bags and there were bigger bags and all the bags were full, and then there were trips to the hardware store to get more bags and the garbage did not seem to end. There were blue bags, white bags, and hulking black ones, orange monsters with the faces of jack-o’-lanterns; Alice got to the point where she was alternating colors for fun. The potential garbage was everywhere and she wanted to slash and burn but she also wanted to keep everything, to always have a room or two for this past life, a room she could enter on a whim—desperate or not—and show an unknown someone; she’d lock him in and test whether he was bored, frightened, or merely interested in just what everything was.

  A pot made by Alice in ceramics class. A pair of antique snowshoes. A mason jar filled with stones. Bad seventies mysteries. Unused cold cream. She’d never keep another thing in her life.

  She was a mistress of another world, a cave of memory where she had to be careful of extending her stay for fear that she’d become disoriented and forget which way was out. She slept hard and the sleep was serious—no easy drift but a dive. Sometimes she clocked twelve, thirteen hours. She ate pots of spaghetti standing over the sink. When a break was needed she put on one of her father’s coats and ran as fast as she could through the winter wind, down to the brackish cold water. The dock was now no more than a plank fallen into the sea, no longer sturdy enough to support anyone.

  One morning she caught herself picking up a piece of blue beach glass and putting it in her father’s coat pocket, only to realize that it too had to have a justification for being kept. The coat would eventually be going into a pile for Goodwill, and then what of the beach glass? It was no longer a charming oddity idly pocketed, but one more item in a pile that was waiting to be disbanded and scattered amongst strangers. She carried the beach glass to the site of the poolhouse, where on occasion a purple or yellow wildflower might pop up, but usually was no more than a thick weedy tangle. There was, in addition, a foot-size piece of dark scarred wood that had somehow staked its claim. Alice had long ago stopped suggesting to her father that they make a garden there or plant a tree or place a memorial bench or something; after it was bulldozed, leveling the last of the charred remains, he’d never wanted it touched. As she tossed the beach glass into the choke of green and brown, a phrase rushed through her mind: If a chimney isn’t

  cleaned over the summer, sparks from the fire can ignite creosote buildup inside the flue. This phrase had insinuated itself into her thoughts over the course of her life and she never remembered ever having heard it or where she had heard it or who had thought to tell her.

  She tried to remember the exact dimensions of the little combustible house. Tiny sparks, even a single spark, had most likely traveled up the chimney. Those devilish embers, they’d risen in pitch darkness and—while seeming no more threatening than Italian cookie wrappers that you burned for luck and floated skyward—burst like bombs into flame.

  A cafe had opened even in this cranky town, and Alice headed there one night, driving around the cove, watching the streetlights come into focus. She stopped in the old bookstore, where she looked at all the books she wasn’t reading. She could not browse successfully. She could only imagine putting the books in boxes and sealing the boxes with packing tape. In the cafe there were people she recognized, and she did her best to say hello, but they seemed somehow offended.

  If it were a year ago she’d have been in a minuscule apartment on the Lower East Side, being entertained thoroughly, if predictably enough, by one of her students—a twenty-two-year-old fellow named Scotty, whom she’d literally bumped into late one night at one of the bars near the campus. He was tall and gangly-gorgeous, from Corpus Christi, with a shaved head and an always-evolving music collection. No matter what time of night they met up and no matter where, she could count on him having new CDs or mixed tapes strewn along the bottom of his great big Mylar messenger bag. If it were a year ago she’d have spent the day researching and writing, possibly teaching, working very hard indeed, and by nighttime she’d have been allowing herself his shy and mostly physical expressions. Alice supposed, looking back, that she’d been happy enough. However, it had been happiness inextricably linked to impermanence; happiness defined by the assumption that she was working toward a different, more sophisticated future. And she had been working. She’d been a young woman with drive who’d figured that by now her dissertation would have been completed and she would have been applying all over the country for academic positions, convincing herself of how a life in Indiana or Wyoming or Illinois could be a fulfilling existence. She’d pictured that by now she’d have been finally ready to make a serious move.

  Instead she was here, consumed with an inertia that seemed to abate even slightly only when she was driving. Not wanting to be back home just yet, Alice pulled over to the side of the road and looked at the coal-dark water. There were small pieces of light caught in the wake, light from the houses across the way and light from a few boats out even at this hour, even in this kind of chill. But mostly it was dark, and in its particular way it was calming. She could imagine driving the car into the water and letting it sink to the bottom, watching all the weeds and small schools of fish rise with her descent. This was why people enjoyed smoking, Alice thought, sitting still in the heated car with the window cracked wide open. This silence wouldn’t feel quite as lonely—in fact, it might be just a tad furtive—if there were a little edge of vice on her breath, in the air. She almost yearned for an addiction, for the ability to leave the house untended, to be fined and let the bills accumulate, to let the Realtors call and lawyers call and to say, I’m sorry but I can’t cope.

  When she’d woken in late November at seven A.M., she’d made coffee and waited for Gus to come downstairs. She was going to suggest that they go out for breakfast. She’d waited for forty minutes before she’d seen the note:

  Sell this house, tear it down, make a fortune, I don’t care. I just can’t stand being here. I love you, August.

  She could still feel the stillness of the night he’d left, when she was listening and hearing nothing. She’d known he was thinking of leaving soon, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d actually leave without saying good-bye. It definitely hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t call. She’d called. She’d called days later and not said a word after hearing his voice. Gus knew where she was; there was no question ofthat. He’d even written her a missive on a goddamned postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge. He didn’t want to talk? No talking then, no more tries. There was a point when even Alice knew where to draw the line.

  She drove on now, but instead of going home, she turned around in a private driveway and headed back into town. Alice had no destination but she was awake and the house was not— die tired house and its weary overflow were sucking away at her hard-won independence. She’d been a woman in her late twenties working toward a Ph.D., an apartment-owning, dinnerparty-going, participating-in-life sort of person. She’d published an article; she’d applied for grants; she’d had aspirations. The house was killing her urge to be more than what she was, but there was still so much to do and still so much of a private nature—such threads and beads and lists that she couldn’t bear a stranger—a friend, for that matter—to see. She was driving a litde too fast. The shops were closed; the top floor of a small office building hosted one pulsing fluorescent light,
and in an otherwise vacant church lot, one car was parked. Before she knew it, she was on the town’s peripheries, the back-road shortcut, the highway.

  ⋆.⋆.⋆

  The house waited up for her; it kept its hall light on. There used to be lights in the massive trees that illuminated the driveway. There used to be a porch swing, a sprinkler, a coat of white paint on the stairs. There’d been a few pots—red terracotta, carved gray stone—pots that, come springtime, could be counted on for color. There was at one time a weeded driveway, an attempt at a mowed lawn. As Alice exited the car, after sitting for who knew how long, she shivered from the cold, clear dark. She watched her heavy breath on the air and remembered how Charlotte would throw open the heavy door before guests had a chance to knock. Welcome, she would say. We’re a little shabby today. She’d said it with pride and a hint of an edgy laugh. The front porch was now covered in slices of peeled paint. Inside the front hall was nothingness. Alice turned on the light and imagined, if she were a real-estate broker, what she’d conceivably say. One might be surprised to know that at one time this house—this current mausoleum—possessed a subtle feminine grace. Even now(she’d possibly lower her voice here, attempt a sparkle in her eyes), during warmer months, if a rogue wind blows through the house there are traces of perfume— Must de Cartier—set free from the faded walls.

  And Alice sees that the house is broom-swept. As she goes from room to room she notes the rugs are rolled up and that the floors and surfaces are free from clutter. There is no clutter anywhere. There are only boxes, waiting. She has been through with packing for quite some time. It is February. When exactly did she finish? It is February, it is a new year, one that arrived without celebration.

  She is still in her coat, hat in her hand, when the phone rings. The phone is ringing; it is echoing loudly. The phone rarely rings here anymore. The boxes are waiting, the phone is ringing, it is one A.M., February.

  “Hello,” she says, half expecting the voice on the other end to be a heavy-breathing prank caller, and she thinks that if it is, she just might invite him over. She goes as far as imagining how his bearded face would feel against her inner thighs. “Hello?” She says, “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Alice.”

  How strange, Alice finds herself thinking, that she recognizes Cady’s voice so easily. She could be fifteen that very moment. If she closes her eyes she is fifteen. She can feel her body changing proportions in the long-distance silence. “Hello?”

  “Listen to me, Alice—”

  “I’m listening. What’s wrong?” Gus is dead.

  “You’ve got to get yourself on a plane.” Cady sounds so completely unlike herself. She sounds afraid.

  “What happened.”

  “Your fucking brother,” she says, and Alice feels a weight lifting—he isn’t dead at all. Dead, not dead, any minute this status could change. “Alice, do you know where I am? I’m in Mexico. I’m standing on a dirt road, at a pay phone, alone in Mexico. First we were in Oaxaca. Now we’re all the way down the Baja peninsula. I say ‘we,’ but he is never with me. He is either surfing or off alone, but you know I can’t quite believe that. He lied to me. When he got back from New York he made it out like he wanted to take some kind of honeymoon. He was adamant that I get some time off from work, and I somehow managed to convince them. Look, this is no honeymoon. And you know how I love him. I married him. …”

  “I know, Cady.”

  “He’s unreachable. He is hell-bent on not talking to me, and I think he is putting himself in danger. Listen to me,” Cady said, her voice on the rise, “something is going on. Alice, you have to come.”

  She feels for Cady; she really does. But Alice is looking down on this conversation from up above. There is nothing she can do. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “You don’t seem to understand,” Cady responds. There is an undercurrent of hazard built into her tone. “I know what he can be like—have you forgotten how well I know him? Don’t treat me—don’t treat this like I’m some new person in his life, in your life. I know him, I know you all, and this is not part of his propensity to … to general strangeness or irresponsibility.”

  “Cady, he left here without a word. He left me alone to do everything; he hasn’t called. I have to return to my life. I have a life.”

  “No one is doubting that. You have always said that kind of thing to me. I know you have a life, Alice. You’re a goddamn interesting individual, okay?”

  “I don’t need this—”

  “It’s about your mother,” she says, loud and clear.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whatever he’s not telling me. It’s about her.”

  “What are you talking about?” Heat shoots from her stomach through her throat and now her mouth tastes like blood. She quickly opens the closest door, gulping in cold air.

  Cady takes a breath. Alice thinks she hears a truck in the background. “I think there’s something going on with him, Alice. And I think it has something to do with your mother. I overheard him talking to someone in Oaxaca. I think that someone here knew her.”

  Alice writes it all down on the one white pad near the phone in the kitchen. There are instructions; there are names of towns she’s never before heard of. There are no telephone numbers, only some kind of post office where she is to leave a message as to what day she is coming and where she is to arrive, no later than five P.M. She looks at the words after hanging up the phone. She commits the words to memory as she calls the airlines. There’ll be no sleeping tonight. She turns back around and locks the door. She’ll leave it all behind and everyone will wait. This time everyone will wait for her.

  On the highway she drives slowly and watches the different trucks, the burned-out buildings and hopeful hibachis on the ledges of housing projects. In the middle-of-the-night darkness the storage warehouses look sinister and greedy for possessions. It’s impossible not to attempt an appealing vision of her brother having to do this for her. If he were driving on the LIE in the middle of the night before a last-minute flight, maybe he’d be thinking about nothing but plans, going for miles without noticing a thing, with the feeling that his was the only car on the highway, he was the only person alive. What she did know was that anonymity did not frighten him the way it frightened her. He was like their father in that regard—on good terms with the universe—on better terms with the looming future than with his inner self.

  And the streets preserve the quiet she has carried. It is before the sunrise, before the garbage trucks arrive and people move their cars from one side of the street to the other.

  Watch a woman pack in a floor-through apartment in Brooklyn, midwinter. She lays out pants on her queen-size bed like linen on a dining-room table. Here is Alice laying groundwork, again, for an impossible family feast. In every family there is usually one, the one who has to believe. Look at her packing. Forgive her. She’s a woman possessed with the useless and timeless notion that she is needed somewhere.

  9

  Pull up your window shade, love.

  Pay close attention to the takeoff.

  Watch the sky.

  Well, if you’re going to be that way about it, you might as well go ahead and have a Bloody Mary.

  Believe me when I tell you that you’re a tense creature, you always have been, and Fm only trying to help.

  Alice tried to sleep but was invaded by her mother’s scratch of a morning voice. As superstitious as it was, she couldn’t avoid the feeling of being watched, as she wasn’t quite convinced that in going to Mexico, she was making the right decision. But this was about much more than following—Alice had been telling herself since hanging up the phone with Cady—this was about the end of waiting. She’d made the decision to stop waiting and yes, to follow Gus the way she never could with Charlotte. She had, of course, always been suspicious of both of their senses of freedom—suspicious, worried, and jealous. Now she could be someone who booked a flight and boarded a plane without planning. She could see for
herself how each one did it, how both mother and son could practice such a pure form of selfishness.

  Her head hurt from lack of sleep. There seemed to Alice to be a lot of lonely people on the plane. Aside from a jocular bunch of deep-sea-fishing buddies and their wives, everyone seemed single and quietly miserable. Where were the Walkman-clad teenagers fighting with their parents? she wondered. Where were the screaming babies? Alice was one of many lonely people en route to a sunny place, eating an underripe banana and contemplating a cocktail. She was, for better or worse, high in the sky, selfish, well on her way.

  Her mother had boarded an airplane many years ago, ostensibly alone, with ideas and expectations. She often spoke about getting the name of a place in her mind (Hydra, Bruges, Elat) and not being able to ignore it until she’d seen the place. She didn’t claim to get the urges from anywhere mystical—Oaxaca had come from her gynecologist’s office, a framed picture of an outdoor market hung simply on a wood-paneled wall. When Alice had asked her what was so compelling about Oaxaca, why it was that she wanted to go, Charlotte had shrugged, mentioned something about courtyards and cobblestone and that the Aztecs there had been big on ritual human sacrifice. Charlotte had gone to Oaxaca (a nonsense word, a made-up children’s game) and she’d come home. She spent the car ride home speaking fondly if a bit too manically of various chiles, of tamales wrapped in green banana leaves, sweet vanilla flan, but she looked as if all she’d done for sustenance was drink nasty mescal, daring the little white worm to go on and poison her. Clearly nothing good had happened there, but death had eclipsed Charlotte’s long-ago travels and the mysteries therein. No matter what had upset her so, Charlotte was never coming back to explain anything to her daughter. Nothing too terrible could have happened, Alice remembered thinking, for she’d had the presence of mind to purchase souvenirs—a few area rugs and boxes of chocolate. But the rugs were left rolled up in the front hall, and the chocolates were clearly bought in the airport with the last of her pesos. Nobody in her family wanted to touch them.