As Waters Gone By

by Cynthia Ruchti

  The microwave dinged. Emmalyn startled, a hand over her heart.

  “Are you okay?” Max’s brow furrowed. “If that noise gets to you, you would not survive one night on the unit.”

  He probably meant to lighten the tension. It didn’t work. Maybe they could save talk of what he’d been through until after he was home. Home. Free.

  “I’m stronger than I look, Max. I’ve had to be.”

  His expression sobered. “I wish I could have given you what you most needed.”

  “You weren’t capable of that.”

  “I know. I relive that reality every day in here.”

  Emmalyn stopped herself short of laying her hand on his knee. “Max, you can’t ever give me what I need most.”

  “Especially not now.” His voice faded like final breath sounds.

  “I need more.” Her responses wrote themselves while she watched from somewhere offstage. “I finally see how true that is.”

  How long would it be before she’d find the right words to tell people—to tell her husband—what she was slowly discovering? That a husband isn’t ever enough. That a child isn’t the ultimate solution to a relentless soul ache.

  “So, why did you take in Hope, then?”

  She reconnected to their conversation. What did he mean? “Because she needed a place to stay. And because she belongs to you.” Wasn’t that obvious?

  “With all you’ve been through—we’ve been through—I can’t imagine how rough that is for you, emotionally.”

  “Impossible.”

  His eyes showed white all around the pupils.

  “A couple of months ago, it would have been impossible. I’m afraid of very few things these days.”

  “Except rabid microwave oven timers,” Max said, nodding over his shoulder.

  “That,” she said, rubbing her palms on her knees, “was a simple startle reflex.”

  “Of course it was.” His eyes tracked the motion of her hands.

  She laced her fingers together. “Max, I’m not saying this is easy . . . with Hope. But I know it’s what I’m supposed to do right now. She needs you. But if she can’t have you, I guess I’m the next best thing.”

  “That’s not what I hear from her.”

  “We’ve had our differences of opinion. She is a pre-teen, after all. But I thought we were—”

  Max lifted his arms as if to reach for her, but stopped himself, turning the arms-in-mid-air stance into an elaborate hand signal impossible to decode. He dropped his hands to his lap and said, “Our words aren’t working well yet.”

  “No. They’re a little rusty.”

  He pantomimed oiling the hinge of his jaw. “Hope says you’re exactly what she needed. Disagreements notwithstanding.”

  “She told you that?” She crossed her ankles to keep her feet from dancing.

  He tugged at the dark gray fabric at his knees, straightening the imaginary creases in his pant legs. “And, yes. She used the word notwithstanding.”

  Laughter bubbled out. Before it died down, one of the guards shouted something Emmalyn didn’t understand. Max and the other inmates left where they’d been sitting and lined up against the wall. None of the other visitors panicked over the move. Reggie caught her eye. Nodded and mouthed, “It’s okay.”

  One of the four armed guards called off a name. That prisoner answered with his assigned number. Another name, then another, until all of the prisoners were accounted for. Emmalyn’s heart twisted when she heard Max calling out his identification number, as if that’s who he was. Emmalyn knew better. She hoped Max did, too. His attitude during the first year of his incarceration smacked of depression. Understandable. She’d thought it coldness, abandonment, disinterest in her. Now she wondered if he hadn’t become disinterested in life itself in those early days following his sentencing. And what had he wanted to confess to her?

  She watched him return to their little corner of a room that buzzed with noise like a squadron of B-52s at treetop level. He walked with a slight limp. Another story? One he could stomach telling?

  “Max, did you get the letters I sent when I didn’t know you were in the Special Housing Unit?”

  “I got them.”

  “You never answered.”

  His pause paced the room. “I couldn’t.”

  Emmalyn held both ends of a tug of war. Would it have mattered if he was prevented from responding or if it was a choice? Would it change anything now? His kiss hadn’t said, “I was ready to give up long ago.” It said, “Where have you been?” That’s what it meant, didn’t it?

  She tasted him still on her parched lips.

  “We have a lot of muck to wade through, Emmalyn. For years, I’ve rehearsed where to start, if I ever saw you again.”

  Me, too.

  “Now that you’re here, I can’t think.” He rubbed his hand over his short hair as if scrubbing something from his palm. “You’re more beautiful than ever.”

  I don’t need flattery, Max. That’s not why I came.

  “So . . . ”—he raised his hand as if to brush her cheek, but kept his prescribed distance—“ . . . intensely beautiful.”

  “It can’t be the lighting in here,” she joked. “Fluorescents do nothing for skin tone.”

  “You look content.” He stared at his feet, then off to the far corner of the ceiling behind her. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “It’s like new shoes,” she said, leaning to the side to catch his attention. “I can’t wear contentment too many hours each day. Building up my tolerance for it.”

  The comment was supposed to make him smile. Why was his jaw clenching like that? He was afraid of her conten—? A worm of worry bored its way into her soul. He was afraid she’d found contentment in a life without him.

  “Max.” She waited. His face showed evidence he couldn’t win the battle for composure this time. “Max, please look at me.”

  Turning his eyes to focus on hers seemed to exact a monumental toll from him. Shoulders slumped, head loose on its hinges, eyebrows raised in the middle of his forehead and drooped at the sides.

  She drew a deep breath. God, calm me. I’m lost here.

  “Do that again,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Breathe. I love to watch you breathe.”

  I’m your Rachel, aren’t I, Max? The one Jacob loved.

  “Visitation is over for today, folks.” The guard’s voice cut through the incessant cacophony of conversations. “Wrap it up. Let’s go.”

  “What? No!”

  “Emmalyn . . . ”

  “Sir? May I ask why we have to—?”

  Max shook his head. “Em, don’t.”

  Had he called her “Em” before? He used her full name, or Emi. She shook off his warning. “I’m just going to find out—”

  “They don’t need a reason.” The resignation on his face spoke of four and a half years of uncomfortable, demeaning experiences.

  “But I couldn’t come yesterday because of the fog.”

  “I know.” He stood.

  She joined him. “I can’t leave Hope very often to come back.” Realization dawned. “We have to talk about Hope!”

  He drew her to his chest for their sanctioned good-bye hug. “I’ll call when I can. And email . . . when I can. I’ll write.”

  “I’ll write too.”

  “Lean against me.”

  “I am.”

  “Breathe against me.”

  “I’m trying.”

  He bent to kiss her. The first four years of their marriage, she hadn’t thought to memorize his kiss. She would this time.

  As she exited the building with the sea of other visitors, pushed by guards with an efficiency complex, she watched for Reggie, but couldn’t find her through the blinding snow.

  * * *

  Max, you can’t give me my heart’s desire. You’ve become my heart’s desire.

  “Well, it looks as if the snow we predicted for later in the afternoon decided to show
up a little early,” the meteorologist said.

  Emmalyn snapped off the car radio. She didn’t need the Christmas tunes either, a reminder of who wouldn’t be with them for Christmas.

  Visibility issues kept her from enjoying the artistry of the fat flakes of snow kissing her windshield. She focused on the road ahead, which stretched long and barren ahead of her. If she could keep up the current pace, and reach Bayfield by six-thirty, and if she didn’t stop to eat, she could make the last ferry to Madeline Island that night.

  She could have spent another night in the motel. What would that have gained her? So far the snow melted on the roadways as it fell. If it started to accumulate, though, or drift . . .

  “And miles to go before I sleep.” So many miles.

  Her brain muddled, like the spots where saltwater and fresh- water meet. All they’d discussed rammed up against all they hadn’t discussed.

  Satellite learning for Hope. She had to have a decision on that soon. He’d objected initially. Was it for Hope’s sake or Emmalyn’s?

  Did they have a future? That might have been the next thing on their list if visitation hadn’t been cut short. A semi passed her, drowning her car in a white-out. She let up on the accelerator so she could drift farther back of the semi and see the highway again. Okay, so maybe a little snow did affect the ability of a tower guard to catch prisoner shenanigans.

  They hadn’t gotten to the heart of the transformation Max hinted at in his letter and his blog. He’d seemed restless and uneasy, though. Guilt-ridden or . . .

  Uncertain of her love.

  She couldn’t blame him for that, considering their four-year code of silence. And maybe he hadn’t noticed her cheeks warming every time he looked at her, the sweat that puddled in her palms, couldn’t hear her heart thumping like the rabbit’s hindfoot on the Bambi movie. Maybe he didn’t notice.

  But he caught her breathing.

  She tore the scarf from around her neck and threw it onto the passenger seat. She turned the heat so low it began to blow cold air at her face.

  He liked to watch her breathing.

  25

  She missed it by thirty-nine minutes. The last seventy miles felt like a slalom event at the Olympics, the snow underneath a threat to her ability to hug the road’s curves. She missed the last ferry of the day.

  Bougie hadn’t expected her until Monday morning, so the phone call didn’t hold the disappointment for her or Hope that it did for Emmalyn. Bougie gave her the address of a Bayfield friend who she said wouldn’t mind an overnight drop-in visitor.

  Emmalyn didn’t want to make conversation with a stranger. Or anyone she knew, either. She wanted a hot bath, a hot meal, and . . . her husband.

  She’d have to settle for two out of three.

  Emmalyn knew her Sunday night options in early December weren’t limitless in tourist-dependent Bayfield. The town didn’t shrink as significantly as Madeline Island did when the temperatures dipped and the calendar images held more white than color. She pulled a time-worn gift certificate from her purse. One night’s stay at the Old Rittenhouse Inn, courtesy of a drawing she hadn’t remembered entering until the certificate came in the mail. Emmalyn hadn’t planned to use it. But if the inn had a vacancy, it could be her answer for a night of anonymous solitude.

  A hostess ushered her into a room that oozed opulence—a dramatic contrast in every way to the correctional facility. Every way. Ornate fireplace. Soft carpet. Comfortable chairs—matching. Inviting bed. View of Lake Superior from three windows. Warm ambient lighting. Richly textured wallpaper. High quality linens. It smelled of sweet applewood in the fireplace, pumpkin, and nutmeg, for some reason. Emmalyn asked the hostess about the divine smells. She said the cook was pulling a fresh batch of pumpkin cookies from the oven. Was she interested?

  Emmalyn didn’t know she still had the energy to smile. When the hostess left the room, she sat in one of the chairs facing the lake view. There, across the expanse of snow-dappled dark water—the few brave lights of Madeline Island. So close, but so far.

  She hadn’t moved yet when a knock at the door told her the cookies were ready. And a pot of fresh coffee. Dinner service was over, but the cook had prepared a snack tray for her. The hostess set it on the round marble-topped table by the window and wished Emmalyn a pleasant evening.

  The opportunity to stay in an elegantly appointed mansion like this should have made her happy. The view should have made her happy. But her husband lay on a thin cot in a building that smelled like damp cement and the body odor of hundreds of inmates. The snack tray on the table would have seemed a decadent feast to him—a variety of cheeses and fresh fruit, a thick slice of homemade bread and pungent apple butter, pumpkin nutmeg cookies.

  The rich colors in the room might shock Max’s eyes after years of gray and off-white. How could she relax into what the room had to offer her when he stared at the underside of someone else’s bunk?

  She’d lost so much. And still she lived in an embarrassment of riches, by comparison. She considered stripping the quilt from the bed and curling up on the floor in honor of what Max was missing. But the soft rug and the sweet-smelling quilt would still be too much. Hungry, but for so much more than a cheese plate, she picked at the snacks and prayed for her husband.

  Hope called to say good night.

  Emmalyn climbed into the bed, propped herself among the bed pillows, and pulled a corner of the quilt over her body. “Talk to me, sweet child.”

  “Sorry. It’s me. Hope,” she said in her characteristic way-too-grown-up voice.

  “You are the sweetest child, Hope.” How had Hope escaped the bad decision gene of her mother? How had she developed wisdom her mother lacked? So, children can turn out great even if their parents have problems.

  “Bougie wants to know if you found a place to stay.”

  Emmalyn looked around the room again. Through the small door near the fireplace was a smaller room with a huge soaking tub. “I did find a place. Remember when I drove you past the Old Rittenhouse Inn when I brought you through Bayfield?”

  “No way!”

  She told Hope about the gift certificate and the marble-topped table, the fireplace and soaking tub and antique wallpaper.

  “You deserve it.”

  “No, honey. I don’t. I don’t even want to be here. I want to be there with you.”

  Hope’s sigh traveled well across the water. Emmalyn pictured her with at least one hand on a hip. “Will it help anybody if you don’t enjoy the gift?”

  “Bougie’s been talking to you about grace, hasn’t she.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Sleep well, Hope. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Hey, did you know that cat urine glows under a blacklight?”

  Emmalyn knew for sure she was close to home now. “That’s why we have a dog instead. Good night, Hope.”

  “You sleep well, too, after your appointment with the soaking tub and bath salts. Do they have bath salts? And take pictures of the room, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll grab the first ferry in the morning.”

  Hope hesitated. “Take the second one, will you? I’m sleeping in.”

  They ended the call. Emmalyn lay against the pillows another moment before throwing off the quilt and pouring herself a cup of coffee. She dunked half a pumpkin cookie in the dark brew and fought back a tear. It was going to be so hard to give that girl back to her real mom.

  * * *

  Bougie had enlisted Hope’s help wrapping napkins around silverware sets. “Math class,” Hope said as Emmalyn came close to give Hope a hug. The girl quickly added the stack of wrapped utensils. “Forty-two sets times three in each set. One hundred twenty-six.” She brandished the answer like a fencing sword.

  “No worries,” Emmalyn said, shrugging her coat and winking at Bougie. Lime tutu. Nice. “Any amount of time spent with Bougie is an education. And what are you wearing, young lady?” She stepped back to take it all in.

  “
My mom’s boots.”

  “I recognize that part of the outfit.”

  Bougie waltzed closer. “I took her shopping at my favorite vintage place Saturday. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “That’s vintage?”

  “Straight out of the Leave It to Beaver archives,” Bougie said.

  Hope stood. “Do you like it?” She twirled.

  “Do you have a crinoline under that skirt?”

  “Yeah,” Hope said. “That’s not a fun part. It itches.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Bougie said, turning back to her project. “Or you can do what I do. Wear another skirt underneath the crinoline.”

  “It’s . . . cute. Really. Not very practical.” Emmalyn measured her words.

  “Do I have to be practical all the time?”

  Bougie raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, waiting for an answer.

  “No” Emmalyn said. She relaxed her shoulders. “No. Not all the time. It’s adorable. We should take a picture to send to your dad. And mom.”

  “Neither of them are emotionally ready for this,” Hope said, flouncing her skirt and sinking back to her chair.

  Emmalyn shook her head, laughter easing another layer of the tension of the past three days.

  “Tell me about Dad,” Hope said. “Except for all the ‘Oh, he’s so handsome’ part.”

  “He is,” Emmalyn said, crossing the backs of her hands under her chin and exhaling an exaggerated sigh.

  Hope rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Anything else?”

  “He”—Emmalyn hugged Hope’s shoulders—“sends this. And this.” Emmalyn kissed the top of Hope’s head.

  “I don’t remember the last time he kissed or hugged me,” Hope said, her words featherlight and aching.

  I do. Emmalyn squeezed her eyes shut, reliving the moment.

  “Soooo . . . ” Bougie slapped her hands together. “Anyone interested in sour cream coffee cake? Hot out of the oven.”

  Emmalyn’s phone rang. An unfamiliar number. Her policy was to ignore unknown numbers on her cell phone. Something nudged her to answer this one.