I didn’t blame myself.
I made it clear to the other members of my thesis committee that I would need time to clear my head. A brief leave of absence. That I would return when I felt ready. They were supportive of this. So I’ve been tucked away in Rockveil these last two weeks. Trying to forget that Max died where my mother died. That they both died in a place I’d loved; I’d seen it as magical before I knew the details of my mother’s death. And it’s a place she had seen as magical, too, before she and Moss and Mantis went there. The tree will go. I don’t want to be reminded of what happened there any more than I need to be.
Some part of me felt bad for the small part of Max who could be kind, generous, funny when he wanted to be. I am not heartless. I wanted to punish him, but that doesn’t mean I have no sense of humanity. If I felt nothing, I would be no better than Max.
I am better than Max.
The night he died, I let myself cry. For him. For Coral. For the way he destroyed her. For the way something she made destroyed him, ultimately. I even vomited. The cops hurried me into the powder room just in time. I puked until there was only yellow bile left. I was sweaty and clammy and sick and crying. I couldn’t shake it.
They ended up taking me to the hospital. The one in Greenville. The one I was born in. The one Cindy was born in. At the hospital, they cleaned me up, assessed me, gave me Valium for my panic. At around nine a.m., the cops finally came in to take my official statement. I told them my truth. They asked me how Max “seemed” over his last few days. I told them that he seemed himself, for the most part. That he was a little preoccupied on the ride up, which was true. A little distracted or nervous. Flipping the knife open and closed, open and closed on the way to my house. They were interested in the knife. Whose it was, where it came from. His, I told them. He—very uncharacteristically—bought it for himself when we stopped at the Dirigo Hill Trading Post. They jotted some notes down about that. They later checked that out and verified Max had indeed bought the knife himself. It made me glad Max had gotten bored and come into the trading post. When god closes a door…
I told them about our walk to the lake. I left out the part about getting him drunk and shoving him out into the lake in my rowboat. And the note at the shore, and Lance hunting him, shepherding him up to the clearing with the boulder and the birch. I left out Coral’s words. Her drawings. I left out Coral entirely. I left out our talk in the clearing, the bargain we made. I told them that we talked and hung out in the kitchen for a while after our hike and dinner, and then at around one thirty, I went to bed. I woke up a couple hours later and found his note. Then I found him.
They came and talked to me out at the house a few more times over the next few days, but it was clearly a crossing-t’s-and-dotting-i’s type thing. They even kept the kitchen note for a day or two but eventually returned it to me. It was a suicide, plain and simple. I hadn’t laid a finger on him, and everything about the circumstances of his death showed that. A washed-up, middle-aged artist who’d peaked many years ago and just couldn’t take it. A man who manipulated and slept with his students. A man with a temper. I mentioned what happened in my studio. I showed them the pictures, which they studied with concern. They told me I was lucky that he hadn’t turned his violence on me, that I should have called on them. I said I never imagined it would ever go this far, and that it had been scary and I hadn’t known what to do. They’d patted my shoulder, expressed their condolences, said they were just so glad I was alright.
In the meantime, I’ve played my part well. Devastated. Shell-shocked. Keeping to myself up in Rockveil. But in a few days’ time, I’ll be reuniting with Lance, perhaps a little earlier than he’d expected. For another funeral. One I’ll actually be able to attend. One I’m looking forward to attending. Lance’s uncle Marcus Peters, my unwitting pen pal, died in a hunting accident recently. He was wearing white gloves way out in the woods and someone—god only knows who—mistook him for a deer.
But these things happen. I’m sure he’d tell you that himself, if he could. Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.
It’s getting cold in the cab of my pickup. I start the engine and smear the heavy rain away, turn up the heat. I look down the block and see there are no more mourners trickling out of the basilica. I pull out of my parking space and just start driving. I find myself drawn toward the institute and let myself glide slowly by, water skidding away from my tires as I look up into the big, plate-glass windows that face out onto St. James Avenue.
I keep on going, heading for Storrow Drive, then I-95 North. Traffic is thin as I pass Exit 286. By the time I cross the state line into New Hampshire, the rain is letting up. By the time I cross the Piscataqua River Bridge into Maine, the sun is out and shining.
Fourteen
Pleased to Meet You
Juniper
February 7, 2019
It’s seven minutes past noon when I see the car finally pull into the driveway. I look through the curtains and watch her emerge from a not-very-new white Volvo, squinting into the bright winter day, sun hanging high and clear in the sky. I stay at the window, unable to move for a moment as she disappears from view around the front of the house to the door, carrying a laptop bag and a large portfolio. Any moment now, the bell will ring and I will have to face her. The last person to see my best friend alive. I will have to let her in. I close my eyes and take a deep breath and brace myself.
The bell rings loudly, and I move automatically to the door. When I get there, I open it and look at her through the outer glass. She’s wearing a stylish, black wool coat, dark skinny jeans. Her auburn hair lights her face like a sunburst, like a lion’s mane. She is beautiful. Her face is serious but not unfriendly. Since Max’s passing, we have corresponded only via email or on the phone. I volunteered to take over as her thesis advisor. It only felt right. He was my oldest and best friend. She was his star student. And she has been through so much. What happened up in Maine—it was terrible. I cannot imagine how she must feel.
I push the glass door out toward her, a rush of frigid air sweeping into the house.
“Audra,” I say, “come in.”
“President Switzer, hi. Thanks for having me,” she says, her eyes casting around my home. She’s a good sport to have driven all the way from Rockveil, Maine, to my home in Providence, Rhode Island. But we thought it would be best to conduct her thesis defense in person. One-on-one—no full committee. The girl has been through a lot; I have been willing and happy to make such allowances.
“Call me Dana, please,” I tell her, smiling in a way that I hope is warm. Welcoming.
We are quiet as she steps into the entryway and slides the shoes off her feet. The glass door falls shut behind her.
“I can take your coat,” I offer. “There’s a hook right here.” I gesture at the wall to my left.
“Alright,” she says and begins rearranging her things so she can slide it off. “Thank you.” I hang her coat. She then hangs up a lovely, deep-yellow scarf with black tassels on the ends on top of the coat. It feels familiar to me, but I can’t place it. I touch the fabric of the scarf slowly, as if moving under water, as it hangs from the hook. Audra studies me deeply, unflinchingly. I clear my throat and gather myself.
“It’s a lovely piece,” I tell her. She nods her thanks. “I have tea and coffee in here.” I lead her into the sitting room attached to the kitchen. As we walk, I glance over my shoulder and see her looking around the space with the interest most students have in seeing a teacher’s house, scanning for traces of a person above and outside of the one they are familiar with.
Audra sits on the couch before a coffee table set with crackers, cheese, cookies, a sliced pound cake, a pitcher of water, and two glasses. “Help yourself to this. Would you like coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please. Just a splash of milk.”
When I come back, Audra is eating a piece o
f the pound cake and has poured herself a glass of water. I set down her coffee and my tea. I take a seat in what my wife considers to be her easy chair, to the side of the couch.
“How are you doing?” I ask her, taking on the soothing purr of a therapist without meaning to. She shrugs and sighs; a deep sigh.
“Better. It’s been a tough time. A weird time. It’s a lot,” she responds. “It’s been about four months since everything happened, and sometimes it feels much longer than that. Other times, much shorter.” She shakes her head. It takes her a moment to meet my eyes, but then she does. I don’t see pain in her face. I was expecting to see pain.
“Of course. Of course, Audra.” I nod.
“And I appreciate you being so…flexible. And understanding about my situation. About my wanting to finish up a bit early. I just need to be done, you know?”
“I can completely understand that. There was no reason to be a stickler under such—well, awful—circumstances. If you feel ready, you feel ready.”
“I do.” Confident.
We get down to it soon after, Audra using her laptop to refer to her opening remarks as she talks me through how her focus shifted over the course of her thesis experience.
“When I first started, I was working in these landscapes of the enlarged. Taking everyday items—but ones with significance to me—and blowing them up to a size that intensified their gravitas as well as their visible landscapes. The topography and emotion of things. An apple becomes an overwhelming erotic expression. A lantern becomes a harrowing stand-in for the passage of time. Etcetera.” She takes a sip from her glass of water. “Meanwhile, there are these echoes—voices—within the objects themselves. Voices as objects; found objects.” Up on the easel I’ve brought down from my own studio for her, she points to myriad layered scraps of paper hidden under layers of paint, scrawled words peeking out here, there, in a haunting, whispering way.
Deep within me, something sparks.
“Which creates this interesting texture and also a complicating intermedia component. So, I did a bunch of these. A bunch. But that was all before Max—Professor Durant—died.” Her cheeks flush a little. “After that, I continued to fixate on the inanimate. In this case, the rope.” From her portfolio, she pulls a dramatic painting in whites, beiges, brown, blacks, and oxbloods, the object itself difficult to discern until you let your eyes adjust to the darkness of the palette. There is, indeed, a rope buried in there. “The rope Max used to—the rope Max used,” she settles on.
I feel alarm. Sadness. Sickness for my friend.
She goes on to show me iterations of this painting, one after the other, sometimes speaking, sometimes not. And as she goes along, something odd begins to happen. The rope is no longer a rope. The rope that was a rope is now Max. Somehow. A rope that evokes Max. A Max that evokes a rope. And then the rope that was a rope that became a Max becomes a Max hanging from a tree. It is, and it isn’t. It invokes but does not solidify into something graspable. It makes you conjure the terrible thing yourself. Fill in the blanks. Look what you’ve done. Look what you made.
I clasp my hands tightly to keep them from shaking. She keeps going.
“And then I had more. There was more in me.” I want to tell her to stop. To please stop. No more. But I don’t. I stay quiet. It is agony.
She starts to show me a new series. But a rope isn’t the primary object this time. It’s pair of white gloves in the first, and even the second, but elongated like wide-open plains. Then the white gloves that became plains becomes a deer, then becomes a woman, then becomes a man, a big man, then becomes some sort of insect, becomes a praying mantis.
For a long moment, all my senses evaporate to nothing. My heart pummels me from inside.
Audra has settled into her chair. She waits. Patiently. For questions. Further discussion. But I’m silent. Unable to create words. A smile cracks her face, the gap between her teeth on full display. I watch her reach into her jeans pocket and pull out a folded piece of newspaper. She tosses it at my feet. I swallow hard and slowly reach down and pick it up, afraid of what it might be. I unfold it, the thin paper shaking in my hands.
MARCUS ALVIN PETERS
1963–2018
Greenville—Marcus A. Peters, age 56, went to be with the Lord on October 28, 2018.
My stomach drops to my feet.
Mantis is dead?
Hot anguish and a confusing flood of relief overwhelm my every cell. My eyes skip through the paragraphs. Lived in Greenville his whole life…high school football star…survived by his brother David Peters, sister-in-law Paige Peters, and nephew Lance Peters…passed in a tragic hunting accident…was wearing white gloves…the negligent hunter responsible for Marcus’s death has yet to be apprehended. If you have any information, please call…
I lift my eyes from the obituary.
Audra looks pleased.
“First Moss, now Mantis. Whewww,” she whistles. My blood runs cold hearing the nicknames. Names that I haven’t heard spoken aloud in decades. “Bad run for Lupine Valley alum, huh?” White-hot fear streaks through me. But so does recognition. Who else could it be but her?
The shock of it stiffens me. I forget to breathe.
I look at the curve of her cheek, the shape of her eyes, the outline of her nose.
Eveline.
And Coral. She’s in there. Coral is in there.
Coral is in here—my home.
“I grieved your mom,” I say, voice a broken croak. Audra nods, patronizing. “What happened to her was terrible—”
“What did happen to my mom?” she asks, her voice low, quiet. A challenge. I feel a subconscious animal fear prickle the length of my back. “I bet you know,” she says now, crossing her arms in front of her. “You and Max were tight. Have been for decades. Since way back then. If that’s the case, I’m sure you know what happened to my mom.” We look at each other in silence. I swallow. My shaky hand reaches down for my water glass, nearly topples it. Then I manage to grasp it and take a few birdlike sips. Audra watches patiently.
“I—I didn’t find out the whole truth until much later. I was the one who found her, you know. When they came back, and she wasn’t with them—” My throat feels so tight. “I went and looked for her.” Tears are crowding my eyes.
“Oh, I know, Junie.” Her voice is controlled, so controlled. Like she’s speaking to a panicking child. Junie. Jesus Christ. “I’m not saying you did anything too terribly wrong. But those other two?” She gives me a knowing look. “Probably got what was coming to them.” A smile crinkles her face. I think of Ashley Pelletier. I think of the note Coral pinned to my door. My afternoon in the library, squinting at the microfiche. A baby strapped to my chest.
Eveline. Audra.
I press my fingers to my lips, sobs wanting to break inside of me.
“You’ve seen Animus.” Her voice is gentler now. Almost sad. “I have, too. That’s my mom. You must know that.” I close my eyes. I know the painting well. The piece that launched Max. As soon as I saw it, as soon as he showed me, I knew. We didn’t say it out loud, but I knew.
The door leading in from the garage bumps open, and we both jump. We look in the direction, on edge.
“It’s alright. That’s my wife,” I tell her, clearing my throat, blinking my glassy eyes. I need to gather myself. “We’re in here, Zeph,” I call to her. She’ll always be Zephyr to me. No longer has pink hair—it’s gray now. But the nose stud remains. We found our way back to each other twenty years after we split. Together now for ten. We kept our promise.
“Sorry, sorry for the ruckus,” she says sheepishly, wheeling around the corner, looking fresh and windblown. “I’m Zanibou. But I go by Zephyr most of the time.” Audra looks surprised, almost starstruck. She plasters a warm enough smile on her face, gets to her feet and shakes hands with Zephyr.
“Audra. Pleased to meet y
ou.”
“Sorry to interrupt—I know you’re in the middle of a thesis defense. Pretend like I’m not even here!” She smiles brightly, gives me a quick peck on the cheek, and then recedes upstairs with her phone and a shopping bag.
“Mom…left a metric ton of little notes behind.” Audra swallows. “She mentions a Zephyr—your girlfriend.” There is wonder in her voice.
“That’s her,” I say, a genuine smile coming to my face, some of the tension having been broken by Zephyr coming home, interrupting our rhythm. “She wrote those little poems all the time. Pinned them everywhere. All over the place.” The intervening years have softened the edges of those memories, made the scary or mean or frantic ones less acute. I remember more of the playful ones. The ones she more often left for Moss. For Max. We sit in silence for a long moment. “So where do we go from here?” I breathe, my overwhelming sense of disorientation and shock returning to me.
“We graduate me. And we end the story here, today,” she says. She is asking me to look the other way about what I know. Just as I did then. And she knows I will. Because no one ever really changes.
Epilogue
Happily Eveline After
Audra
Sunday, July 21, 2019
I’m in the Happily Eveline After about seventy-five yards off Kress Beach on Moosehead Lake. The air is hot and breezy. It’s July, and a more splendid Maine summer day has perhaps never before been seen. The sky is a faded lapis blue, the temperature is in the high seventies, the lake glints like sapphire. Motorboats and party boats speed and drift around the far side of the inlet, but over here it’s just me in my rowboat. And I am happy. Happy and light. I’d been living with a crushing weight since I found out the complete truth about my mother, and it only went away after Max and Marc died.
What I still wonder about is how long Max and Marc watched. How long they stayed.
All I knew growing up was that she had hanged herself out on the Lupine Valley property. But then the notes appeared as I started renovating, as I started doing upkeep and landscaping and tree care on the land. Sometimes I found one-offs inside doorframes or pressed inside a book or under drawer liners, sometimes I found entire caches shoved into caboodles, plastic bags, walls, in little plastic sacks in the tree house wall, up in the gutters of our buildings in little plastic Easter eggs, or inside nooks and crannies of the snaking rock wall in our field. As I found more that talked about Lupine Valley, I explored there, too. And the more I searched, the more I found.
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