As Waters Gone By

by Cynthia Ruchti

  She removed her dog shoulder pad and set it on the top step while she stood. It blinked awake and looked at her as if awaiting further instructions.

  “Come on. Let’s find out where you came from, so I can get back to . . . ” To her monastery room at The Wild Iris. “Come on.”

  She led the way to the beach, eyeing the sand for paw prints. None. The animal must have taken a path through the woods. The leaf-strewn yard yielded no clues. “Dog, you have to go home.” She pointed in a wide circle. “Wherever that is.”

  The dog followed when she walked and sat at her feet when she stopped.

  “You didn’t parachute out of the sky. You had to have come from somewhere. We all do.”

  That reminded her. Her mother and sisters were coming. Soon. Too soon. If the cottage wasn’t ready, they’d be forced to stay in LaPointe. Or Bayfield. Tempting, but inhospitable of her. If the dog stayed, The Allergic would need a room in town. Time to shake the dog from her feet and move from onsite to offsite planning.

  And a cup of strong tea.

  She locked the cottage door, nodded goodnight to the beach as had become her habit, and told the dog to stay while she climbed behind the wheel of her car. She lowered the driver’s side window and pointed at the fluff pile and its melted chocolate eyes with another firm, “Stay!”

  It did.

  That meant she was alone on the drive back to The Wild Iris. More alone than usual.

  10

  The day of inevitability had dawned. Endless cleanup and detail painting at the cottage took a hiatus for a few hours while Emmalyn Ross perched on a vinyl chair, listening for the coin-operated washing machines to signal they had finished their loads. Her loads.

  Not a scene she envisioned witnessing much less living. Her clothes sloshed and thumped their way through the cycles while she breathed through the weighted smell of laundry detergent, fabric softeners of various ilks, and toasted dryer lint. She should have asked Bougie to loan her a book to read. Too many hands had pawed through the dog-eared magazines on the counter. The only book in Emmalyn’s room was the obligatory Bible on the dresser, the room’s guest log, and the “Letters to Max” journal Cora gave her. She’d brought the journal for the sloshing duration.

  Dear Max,

  I’m living a public laundry life.

  The words stared back at her from the page. True on so many levels. The undies of their inability to have children together had hung on the lines of the neighborhood and eventually the local press. Different reason. Now she sat in a windowed room with institutional washing machines and commercial dryers tossing her bras and panties, her blouses and slacks, in front of their round glass doors. The cottage had no room for a washer and dryer. Even after she moved in, this scene would be part of her routine from now on.

  At one time, she might have found it socially demeaning—right or wrong. Now, having a place to clean her clothes felt like a gift, despite the lack of ambiance. A—there was that word again—blessing.

  The rhythm of the giant dryers hypnotizes me, Max. Why? Something I can count on, I guess. Around and around and around. I wonder if you ever got another promotion in the prison laundry, like you hoped. Wish I could ask you.

  And she did. She couldn’t deny that she wished she could ask him. Her heart bumped unevenly like a tennis shoe in an empty dryer drum. She didn’t mind being alone as much as she minded being without him.

  Dangerous thoughts. Time to focus on the task at hand—creating a list for her trip to the mainland on the weekend. Bougie said she should check out the coffee shop in Bayfield and take time to visit the artists’ co-op gallery across the street. It would be fun to find local artwork for the walls of the cottage.

  Fun. She tested the word again. She’d used it without thinking—a word she’d retired from her vocabulary so long ago it tasted dusty now.

  The Great Lake air was getting to her. The freshwater sea—less than a block away from the smell of dryer sheets and . . . oh, too funny . . . Tide.

  * * *

  “Roasted beet salad?” Bougie’s question substituted for, “Welcome home. How was your day?”

  “Sounds great.” Emmalyn’s response floated on laughter. “Bougie, you’ve spoiled me so thoroughly, it’s going to be a shock to my system when I have to go back to cooking for myself.”

  “Goat cheese. Lemon basil vinaigrette. Arugula.”

  “Stop! I’m sold already. I must say it’s an unusual late-evening snack.”

  Bougie adjusted the heather scarf looped around her neck. “I tried it out on the church crowd tonight.”

  “How did that go over?”

  “Too many meat eaters among them. Not enough root vegetable appreciators.” She released the disappointment with a flick of her hand. “I have hope for you, though.”

  Emmalyn snatched the pottery mug with M on its base and headed for the fireplace table. “Because I’m an ex-caterer?”

  Bougie planted her hands on the back of the opposite chair. “About that . . . ” Eyebrows raised, a corner of her bottom lip caught between her teeth, head tilted to one side. Her expression said, “I might as well start with the apology part.”

  “What is it?”

  “Let me get your salad. I had mine with a cup of our tomato bisque.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Then we’ll talk.”

  “Let me help.”

  “Hold that thought.” Bougie disappeared into the kitchen and left Emmalyn alone with the aqua canning jar of late-season wildflowers in the middle of the table, a small chalkboard leaning against its base. On the chalkboard, Bougie’s flourished penmanship had written, “Hope lives here. Even here.”

  She could replicate that look on a greeting card—old school framed chalkboard—and mail the message to Max. Could. Should. Would. Even after all this time, he might not open mail from her. But she had to send it. He needed to hear it.

  She needed to hear it.

  Even here.

  “Sleeping, praying, or contemplating?” Bougie placed a long, narrow, rectangular plate before her.

  She didn’t remember closing her eyes, or leaning her head against the wing of the chair. If prayer could take the form of a soul-deep sigh, then . . .

  “Contemplating.”

  “This is one of my favorite spots for that activity,” Bougie said. “When the day quiets. With the fire chasing the chill.” Her face brightened. “I have the most decadent hot chocolate for later. It’s as rich as pudding. Impossibly soothing.”

  Half woman/half sage. What a fascinating mix. A candle. A sparkplug. A new definition of friend?

  A small white cup on the rectangular plate held the tomato bisque. The cup slid on the plate when Emmalyn touched it. “Have you tried using a square of nori under the soup cup? To keep it from scooting?”

  “See?” Bougie directed her question to the ceiling. “I knew it!” She opened her arms, palms up. “Thank you.”

  Was Emmalyn supposed to say, “You’re welcome”? Such a small tidbit of advice. Was Bougie even talking to her?

  “That’s exactly the kind of help I was hoping to get. Oh. You should have stopped me. Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “You know. That’s a great idea. Save grace for after the meal. I do that sometimes, too. Adds a new depth of meaning. Nothing holy should ever be automatic. Dedication? Yes. Routine? No.”

  Emmalyn kept an eye on Bougie and dipped her spoon into the soup. How did the woman draw such depth of flavor from such simple ingredients? “Do you have roasted red peppers blended in this, too?”

  “Shh,” Bougie warned. “Some of my customers think they don’t like red peppers. But they love the tomato bisque. A culinary secret isn’t a sin, is it?”

  Why would she ask Emmalyn? The young woman presumed a much deeper connection with issues of divine importance than Emmalyn could boast. She smiled. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  Bougie pushed up the sleeves of what looked like thermal underwea
r. The perfect accompaniment to her ecru crocheted peasant skirt. The fashion intricacies she pulled off . . .

  “M, your secret would be safe with me, too.”

  “My tomato bisque seems amateurish compared to yours.”

  “I don’t mean soup secrets.”

  The fire crackled as if the logs were real, the flames consuming them. Yet they remained unchanged—a dead giveaway of their insincerity. Their pretend status. Emmalyn turned her head and stared into the flames that tried so hard to make people think they were real.

  “If I’m going to hire you,” Bougie said, softer now, “I don’t need to know your whole story. But I think I’m entitled to bits of it as your friend.”

  She’d used the word friend, too.

  “What story?” Emmalyn poured her visual attention into the soup.

  “You’re the Emmalyn Ross. Here’s the apology part. I detectived you.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what my little brother used to call it when he investigated something.”

  Emmalyn set aside the soup spoon. “You had me followed?”

  “Well, that wouldn’t take much on an island this small, would it? No, I used the Internet.” Bougie smiled broadly and arched her back, as if relishing her accomplishment.

  “And you discovered . . . ?”

  “That you didn’t just ‘do a little catering.’ Executive chef at Balow’s? M, why didn’t you say something?”

  All the weariness of the day’s labor, which included the ever-present stare of a small canine project foreman, gathered itself into a heap and hung like a dental X-ray drape on her chest. “That was a past life.”

  “I didn’t have to look long to find plenty about your culinary exploits. And here, I’ve been serving you ordinary Wild Iris fare.” Bougie pointed to the as yet unfinished soup.

  “This is anything but ordinary, Bougie. You have a nice thing going. You’ve got a keen sense of taste, and an obvious talent for this.”

  Bougie clasped her hands together and wedged them between her knees. “I knew there was more to your story. And there still is.”

  Emmalyn waited. If she’d been online . . .

  “I don’t need to know your whole story,” she repeated. “But I think you need to tell. Don’t you? We’re all broken. All of us. What does that look like for you?”

  Emmalyn waited for the typical hardening in her stomach, the familiar tightening in her lungs and throat, for the suppressed growl alarm that signaled someone had gotten too close to her truth. She’d been known to abandon family bonds over less than what Bougie asked. She waited for the crisp, crackling words that would shut down the conversation to burst from her mouth. They too had taken the night off. She was left alone with the truth and a friend’s listening ear.

  “My husband’s in prison.”

  Bougie leaned forward, not back, as expected. “What put him there?”

  Emmalyn sipped her tea and breathed courage in its jasmine aroma. If Bougie were as thorough at detectiving as Cora, she had to know most of it. “A freak accident. The court couldn’t prove Max intended to ram the fertility clinic with our SUV. There was an issue with the accelerator—massive recall just weeks after the accident. And the court assumed the homeless man leaning on the wall of the clinic that night wasn’t a target but ‘collateral damage’ from Max’s intoxication, although Max wasn’t a drinker. But he was deemed responsible.”

  “Your Max believes it was his fault?”

  “We all know it was his fault.” Emmalyn would have retracted the flatline of her words, but they hung in the air like swamp fog.

  “What a heavy load for him.” Bougie rubbed her upper arms then tugged the sleeves of her thermal top to the wrists.

  “For him?”

  Bougie reached to smooth the tablecloth in front of her. “Guilt quadruples gravity’s effect. It’s not easy staying upright with that kind of pressure pushing against a person.” She used her palms like a panini press. “How’s he handling it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  At that, Bougie leaned back in her chair, clutched her hands together and pressed her thumbnails against her lips. Eventually, she lowered her hands and whispered, “He got a prison divorce? Such a sadness that it’s so easy for the incarcerated to divorce a spouse. A handful of dollars and it’s done. What if our prisons invested in—?”

  “Bougie! We’re not divorced. He suggested it four years ago. I said no.”

  “He could have pushed it through anyway. With or without your consent.”

  For a split second, Emmalyn let the faint comfort linger. “How do you know so much about details like that?”

  “I know too many things.”

  “And yet, you keep soaring.”

  Bougie’s smile bloomed and spread, folding the skin near her eyes into starbursts. “Grace always outweighs gravity.”

  A sweet sentiment. Miles away from Emmalyn’s reality. “He won’t let me contact him.”

  “Like he has much say in that.” Bougie’s laughter effervesced the entire room.

  “He asked me not to contact him.”

  “What made you agree to that ridiculous request?”

  “You were supposed to say, ‘Oh, that’s too bad.’ ” Emmalyn stabbed a roasted beet from the plate of salad. She painted a deep red smear with it on the bright white surface of the plate.

  “Part of the dichotomy. I empathize. But I empathize too much not to tell it straight. And part of your dichotomy is loving a man who tells you he doesn’t want you to. And you believed him.” She shook her head, the attendant tsk-tsk silent.

  “I don’t know how to sustain a marriage with this much . . . distance . . . between us.”

  “And neither does he, apparently.” Bougie reached to rub Emmalyn’s shoulder.

  “What’s that phrase? ‘If you love it, let it go’?” Emmalyn affected nonchalance.

  Bougie’s mouth formed a shape a trombone player would envy. Her eyebrows showed her intent to speak before the words came out. “ ‘If you love it, set it free.’ Not the same thing.”

  Emmalyn stifled the wholly inappropriate grin over Bougie’s facial expressions. “Sounds the same.”

  Trombone lips became trumpet lips. Then flute. “Not the same.”

  “There’s more to the story.” Emmalyn’s neck itched with heat.

  “I’d have been surprised if there weren’t.”

  “Max is . . . ” She paused. Why would her mouth not stop the hemorrhage of information? “Max is the reason we’ll never have a child.”

  “The sole reason?”

  Between the effects of the tea and the soup, her internal temperature rose several degrees. She should push away from the table, away from Bougie’s prying questions, and retreat to her room. Her instincts told her to go . . . and told her to stay. How do you reconcile a war like that?

  The sole reason? No. It was partly her. Partly him. Them. Their insanely busy schedules early in their marriage. Their dwindling resources from failed fertility attempts . . . their carefully orchestrated five-year-plan that turned into three years of trying plus a five-year prison sentence.

  And the unspoken expense—the child support he—they—paid. An indiscretion and dissolved relationship shortly before he met Emmalyn netted Max a daughter he supported but rarely saw. A daughter who reminded Emmalyn daily that Max’s ex-girlfriend gave him a child and Emmalyn never would. Capped by yet another complication her gynecologist suspected was premenopause that flirted with Emmalyn just as their fertility counselor started to form the question, “Do you think there’s any point in our continuing this pursuit?”

  The sole reason? No. “Hope was slim. Max’s incarceration guaranteed even that wafer-thin chance was taken away.”

  “If only you didn’t love him . . . ” Bougie let the words hover, swirl in the air around them, show their true colors.

  Her nose burned. Her vision blurred. Tears she’d repressed scalded her eyes on their way out. Rising
tides propelled by a strong current break through human attempts to sandbag. Bougie left her, but returned with a peace offering—tissues. Plural. How did she know one wouldn’t be enough?

  Emmalyn spent a couple of years’ worth of tears before her vision cleared. Bougie’s small, caring hand must have rested on her forearm the whole time. It was still there, rubbing and patting in no particular rhythm. The young woman hadn’t attempted to say anything while Emmalyn cried. Where had Bougie learned the gift of wordlessness at a time like this? What had she been through that trained her in the art of comfort?

  Emmalyn sniffed, blew her nose, sniffed again. “There goes my reputation for refinement and sophistication.”

  “Good. Now you can be real.”

  Emmalyn lifted her head to look Bougie in the eyes. Tears glistened on her young friend’s cheeks. Emmalyn meant the refinement statement as a joke. “I’ve thought about writing to him again.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  If she hung a shingle, Bougie could get paid good money to drag people’s emotions through her obstacle courses.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. No matter what he says.”

  “And? Don’t think about it. First thing that pops into your mind.”

  “And I miss him.”

  The look of satisfaction on Bougie’s face forced a fit of laughter from a well within Emmalyn as deep as her repository of tears. She held the sides of her head and closed her eyes, letting the laughter exhaust itself. “I miss him. Which means I love him. Which means I’m a fool if I don’t fight to get him back.”

  “And there you go.” Bougie’s exaggerated Greek accent started the laughter again. “Have you seen the sea caves, M?”

  How could that question in any way relate to—? By now, Emmalyn knew that in Bougie’s mind, they connected seamlessly. “When Max and I were in the area years ago. Early in our marriage. Impressive.”

  “Deep caverns carved into solid rock by this.” She dipped a finger into her tea and let a drop of it fall back into the mug.

  “Tea did that?” Emmalyn nodded a skeptical agreement.

  “The water. Water cut wide pockets out of solid rock. Rooms full of wonder from the action of this”—she dipped her finger again—“on this.” She tapped the fireplace rock behind them.