And what was I actually afraid of? So Daniel had come on to me a little bit. Was that really such a big deal? I knew perfectly well that some men did that kind of thing as a matter of course. That this felt different to me—somehow deeper and more complicated—was probably just a result of my hypersensitive state of mind. If Cal halted the project now, wouldn’t it look as though I was running away from Daniel? Wouldn’t I seem like a woman who was simply too insecure or inexperienced to know how to gracefully deflect a man’s attention?
“What will you do about reimbursing him?”
“I’ll pay him for the plans, of course. And—I don’t know—I’ll have to check the contract, but I think I should at least give him some kind of a kill fee for the rest.”
“Oh, Cal. I feel badly about this.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well, so do I.”
Cal had a baseball game over in Red River that afternoon. Betsy and I used to always go with him—and then often out with a group of the guys and their families for drinks and dinner afterward. But I’ve been begging off a lot this summer. It isn’t, as I think Tessa believes, because the games are such a painful reminder of Betsy’s last day. It’s more the agony of seeing everyone carrying on with their lives, of knowing that the weeks, and now months, are passing.
I can understand why the Victorians used to stop their clocks at the moment of death. It feels as though a big part of me has stopped, actually. Or more that I’m willing it to stop—forcing time to stand still. If I don’t, then I know that, slowly but inevitably, Betsy will start to disappear. For now, though, because I work so hard at holding her memory close, she’s still alive for me. I can hear her voice—though less and less clearly these days. And it’s already the third week of June. It’s still daylight at eight o’clock in the evening.
I’m not sure how long I’d been sitting on the back steps, looking out over our view of fields and distant hills. But whatever startled me—shaking me out of my reverie—made me realize that the evening shadows had begun to lengthen across the sloping lawn. Mist lay over the wildflower field. Fireflies drifted through the updrafts with their sad little searchlights. Something stirred below me in the field. I sat up, alert. The whirring of cicadas filled the air.
I got up slowly, so as not to frighten whatever was there. I kicked off my sandals and made my way barefoot across the dew-dampened grass. What was it? I asked myself. But I knew. I knew! And then, suddenly, I couldn’t help it. I started to run toward her down the hill. The darkening world tilted toward me, and I felt almost weightless with joy. Mama! Mama! Did I actually hear those words, or was it only a great flapping of wings as one of the red-tailed hawks that hunts on our property rose, shrieking, from the far side of the field?
It wasn’t the first time I imagined I saw Betsy. Though it’s more sensing her presence than actually seeing her. These visitations never feel scary or crazy to me. For the brief seconds that I know she’s there—reaching out for me—everything actually feels right again. Normal. It’s the rest of my life that seems so out of kilter. It’s as though I exist in a constant state of vertigo. I’ve convinced myself that if I could just break through whatever it is that separates me from Betsy, my world could be righted again. Sometimes it feels so simple, as though all I need to do is find the right moment, push open that secret door.
Tonight, though, as I walked back up to the house, it came to me just how inadequate all my yearnings for my daughter are actually turning out to be. What am I doing, really, besides chasing phantoms? Wasting time? While every day the smell of her hair, or the exact feel of her skin, becomes a little bit harder to recall. How can I stop her from slipping ever further away? I knew that I had to do something radical—something real—soon.
There’s nothing more treacherous than longing. By the time Cal returned later that night and I told him that I’d changed my mind, that we should go ahead with Daniel’s plans after all, I’d actually managed to convince myself that I was doing the right thing.
I hadn’t been expecting a backhoe. It arrived on a flatbed truck about an hour after Cal left for work. At first, I thought it must have had something to do with the Ravitch project, that maybe one of Cal’s subcontractors had confused addresses and had come to our place rather than the construction site. I walked outside to set the driver straight. It was then that I noticed Daniel’s Lexus pulling up behind the flatbed. I stopped where I was on the front lawn while Daniel walked over to talk to the truck driver. A few minutes later, a pickup pulled in beside Daniel’s car. Two young men hopped out, wearing work boots, jeans, and gray T-shirts with “Brandt Landscape Design” emblazoned in blue across the front. They huddled around Daniel.
I watched while he gave the men instructions, pointing to the side lawn, laughing at something one of the younger workers said. It seems incredible to me that I’ve actually seen Daniel in person only three other times now. I know so little about him, really. And yet I’ve allowed him to seize such a large part of my imagination. I know it’s because so much of me feels damaged these days. Lost and alone. I’ve simply let Daniel—or whoever I fantasize Daniel might be—fill that vacuum. That’s all it is, I tell myself. There’s nothing real between us.
As the men started to unload the backhoe, Daniel walked across the lawn toward me. He was wearing jeans and a blue-and-white-striped shirt with the cuffs rolled back. Something about him had changed again. Was his hair a little shorter? Then I realized that he’d left a stubble of beard on his chin—like some male model or movie star. With anyone else, I might have assumed he just hadn’t gotten around to shaving that morning. But I was sure Daniel was too self-aware for that. And the salt-and-pepper stubble did make him look younger. Both rugged and a little reckless.
“You sure you want to be here for this?” he asked with a smile. I noticed that little gap between his front teeth again. Almost two weeks have passed since my birthday party, yet I can remember the brief pressure of his lips against mine as though he’d just kissed me. I was wearing cutoffs and an old T-shirt of Cal’s. As usual when I’m alone in the house, I wasn’t wearing a bra. The morning sun was in my eyes, but I could sense—rather than see—Daniel looking me over. I folded my arms across my chest.
“How bad is it going to be?” I asked.
“Well, we’re basically planning to level the whole back area. It’ll be noisy as hell, too.”
“Are you suggesting I leave?”
“In a way,” he said, tilting his head as if to take me in a little better. “I’m suggesting we both get out of here—and have lunch together. I’ll need an hour or two with the crew before we go, but we’ll just be in the way once the heavy lifting starts.”
My first impulse was to say no, of course, and I guess he saw that in my expression, because he went on before I had a chance to respond.
“No strings attached—I promise,” he said, raising both hands as if to show me he had nothing to hide. “I think—no, I know—we’ve gotten off to a kind of rocky start, you and I. But I’m really not the big, bad wolf you seem to think I am.”
He looked so harmless, so very unwolflike at that moment, that I almost laughed. A strand of hair had fallen across his forehead. Once again I wondered: just how old is he? And how does he manage to keep changing—size, shape, persona—almost before my eyes?
“Ah, an excellent sign: she’s smiling,” he said. “I’ll interpret that as a yes. Let’s say one o’clock. How about Deer Creek?”
“Sure,” I said, relaxing. You couldn’t ask for more of a fishbowl than Deer Creek Bistro at lunchtime. Besides all the Covington regulars, the restaurant was always busy in the summer with the second-home crowd and tourists.
The place was jammed, just as I’d thought it would be. Larry Bisel, the owner, looked distraught when he saw me. Larry and I have known and liked each other—in a passing sort of way—for years. He always makes a big deal of seating me at one of the better tables.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you
guys to wait in the bar for a while, Jenny,” he said, running his eye down the reservation list. “I have two whole busloads of ladies on their way up to Williamstown for the matinee. We’re a total madhouse today.”
“How about outside?” Daniel asked, pointing to the circle of small café tables on the terrace, an area usually reserved for evening cocktails. The umbrellas were furled and the chairs tilted against the tabletops. No one else was out there.
“Sure, if you don’t mind,” Larry said. “I can have them set things up in no time.”
It was either that or the dark intimacy of the bar, so I followed Daniel outside again, and we were soon sitting across from each other at a round metal table so small that, if I didn’t shift my legs to one side, our knees would have touched. I felt uncomfortable being in such close proximity to him, but I soon realized there was no need to worry. He seemed determined to set a friendly, breezy tone, and in a number of self-deprecating anecdotes that cast him in the role of clueless city slicker, he filled me in on how relocating to our area had affected him:
“I couldn’t get over the noise at first. Especially earlier in the summer. Those damn birds! All that squawking and calling and peep, peep, peep! Manhattan is an oasis of silence in comparison.”
“That’s probably because you keep your windows closed and the air conditioner going all the time,” I said, trying to get into the spirit of the thing. We’d finished our salads and quiches, and Daniel was nursing the last of his white wine. When the waiter came by to clear our plates, Daniel ordered an espresso.
“You sure you won’t have some dessert?” he asked me. “I’ve had the chocolate soufflé cake here. It’s addicting.”
“As I know all too well,” I said. “I had to join a twelve-step program to wean my way off of it.”
He laughed. Then he stopped laughing.
“What?” I asked as the waiter moved off.
“You have a beautiful smile, Jenny.”
“Please—”
“Okay. How about this: it’s really wonderful to see you smile. You should do it more often. Is that better? I told you I’d behave. Haven’t I been behaving?”
“Yes,” I said, my gaze shifting past the terrace, over the stores and homes along Route 32, to the fields beyond, blurring in the midday haze into the distant swell of hills. What was I doing here—flirting with this man? Or allowing him to flirt with me? There’s hardly any difference, really, and both are so unlike me. Jude’s the one who enjoys exciting men’s interest. She needs to be constantly looked at, looked over, desired. I think maybe my mother was the same way. One of my few clear memories of her is watching her put on lipstick using her compact mirror. We were waiting in some line together—for the movies, maybe, or at the fair-grounds—and I saw her wink into the compact at the man standing behind us. My own mother! I remember feeling so ashamed of her. Later, after she abandoned us, I wondered if maybe she’d been able to sense how I’d felt about her. Did my childish awareness of her shortcomings factor into her decision to move on? Sometimes, oddly, I find myself confusing my memories of Betsy—or more my sense of loss and longing—with those that I have of my mother. As if all tears trickle down into a single pool eventually—and all great sadnesses become one.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” Daniel said after the waiter had come by with the espresso and the check.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m not much fun.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he said. “I know what happened.”
“You do?” I asked, looking over at him. I was shocked. He’d never given any indication that he was aware of our tragedy. The very fact that he’d kissed me, that he seemed to be coming on to me, made me assume he didn’t know. But I realized—all in one clarifying moment—that I’ve actually been wanting him to ask me about it. Almost from the moment I met him, I’ve been longing to tell him. In fact, it’s clear to me now that every unspoken thing between us has been building up to this.
It didn’t take me long. Five minutes, maybe. By the time the waiter came back to pick up the bill folder and Daniel’s credit card, I’d told him the whole story. Or almost all of it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it’s a cliché, but life really isn’t fair, Jenny. I imagine that must be the hardest part of this for you in a way. Wondering why these things happen—why you and Cal?”
When we’d arrived at the restaurant, the parking lot had been full, and Daniel had been forced to park far in the back under a stand of hemlocks. By the time we left, the parking lot was almost empty again. We walked across the macadam in silence. Daniel unlocked the car and we both climbed in. It was then that I turned to him and said what I’d really been waiting to tell him all along:
“Actually, I know why it happened.”
“What?”
“I keep replaying those last moments I was with her over and over again in my head. I haven’t told anybody this.”
“You can tell me.”
“I haven’t even told Cal.”
“You can tell me.”
And I knew I could. Not because he was more sympathetic than Cal or Jude or Tessa. If anything, he was less so. He’d never met Betsy. He didn’t really understand what I’d lost. Or care about the unforgivable thing I might have done. He wouldn’t hold what I told him against me. I think he was just interested in what I’d been hiding from everyone. I believe my sense of guilt intrigued him—and that he found the depth of my anguish seductive in some way.
“I think—there’s a good chance—I didn’t finish strapping Betsy into the car seat. There are these two buckles that you need to secure—and I know I fixed the bottom one. But then I stood up and said something to my sister-in-law—and I can’t remember if I actually finished buckling the top one that straps her in at chest level. It’s the kind of thing that becomes such a routine, you know? I keep trying to remember clearly. I keep trying to separate out that last time, that one particular moment, from all the other times I did the same thing. But I can’t. I can’t remember. I rub my fingers together, trying—”
I didn’t realize what I was doing until Daniel grabbed hold of my fingertips—stopping me. Startled, I looked over at him. He took both my hands in his, held them tight for a moment, then, bending his head, turned my hands over and kissed my palms.
“I haven’t even told Cal,” I said again, knowing that this, more than letting Daniel kiss me now, was the true betrayal. This secret was the darkest thing I ever had to share with anyone—and I’d given it to this stranger.
11
Cal
“So what’s up with you and Eddie?” Kurt asked me, seemingly out of the blue. The two of us were driving back from a meeting outside Northridge with a prospective client, a couple Ravitch had generously referred us to. Sherry and Alan Faggiano. We met them at their mountaintop property to go over our numbers. The heavily wooded land went almost straight uphill and was embedded with a number of large limestone outcroppings. It was going to be a bitch to build on. But when Kurt started to point out some of the difficulties, Sherry Faggiano said that Lovell Construction hadn’t raised any such concerns. Fucking Danny Lovell had lowballed us out of at least two other projects in the past year. The Faggianos merely looked annoyed when Kurt mentioned Danny was being taken to court—something almost everybody in town already knew about—for shoddy workmanship.
It was so unlike Kurt to stoop to that kind of thing, but this was the first big project we’d been asked to bid on all summer. We didn’t talk about it on our way home. As usual, we carefully sidestepped any serious discussion about how badly things were going business-wise, but I think Kurt understood as well as I did that we could probably kiss the Faggianos good-bye.
“How do you mean?” I replied. Eddie and I had agreed to keep a tight lid on the lawsuit until Stephens, Stokes actually filed a claim, which could end up being months from now, apparently. It’s already been three weeks since our initial meeting and we’ve yet to hear
back from them on the forensic tests. I’m still feeling good about things, but I’m also starting to get a little antsy.
“You guys just seem to be talking to each other a lot more,” Kurt said.
“Yeah, well. What can I say? Things changed for me after Betsy died. I’m trying to get rid of a lot of old baggage. Reset my priorities.” I wasn’t going to lie straight-out to Kurt. But I know how he feels about going after Gannon, and I’m not eager to face off with him on the subject until I absolutely have to.
“That’s good to hear,” Kurt said, nodding at the road ahead. “That’s great. Sometimes I think all Edmund really needs is a pat on the back from time to time. I don’t think it’s any picnic working with Dad these days. I walked in on them at the store on Tuesday and Dad was reaming him out about something. They didn’t want to talk about it then, but Eddie told me later Dad’s getting really short-tempered.”
“Like that’s something new?”
“I got the feeling it’s getting worse. You noticing that at all?”
“Not really,” I answered. But I think we both know what the problem is: the old man just doesn’t seem to be getting any better. And it’s been almost a year now since his open-heart. When he complained recently about being so tired all the time, his doctor switched his medications around, but that only led to dizziness and nausea, and a quick change back to the original lineup. One of which is a blood thinner that makes him have to piss every other minute. I was driving him home a week or so ago when he had to ask me to pull over to the side of the road so that he could take a leak.
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