When he turns my face to his, I can’t help wondering if he really wants to kiss me or if he just wants me to stop talking. Either way, it has the same effect.
“And, of course,” I say thoughtfully, “I never pictured myself making love in the back of a ’seventy-one El Camino.”
He laughs. “You’re shameless. I think that’s my favorite thing about you.”
The hollow drumming of rain on the roof wakes me early Sunday morning. So much for hiking up Mount Constitution. In the kitchen the linoleum is cool and ridged under my feet. I get some orange juice and stand at the sink looking out into the woods. Dripping leaves and needles glow iridescent green against the shiny black of wet bark, and the slate sky seems close enough to touch.
I rinse the glass and go back to the bedroom. Mac wakes up long enough to make room for me under the covers and I curl up next to him and drift back to sleep.
When I open my eyes again, he’s not in bed. I smell coffee. I pull socks over my cold feet and pad into the kitchen. He’s buttering toast, and I stand behind him, resting my face against his back.
“Mmm. My favorite morning smell.”
“Coffee? Or toast?”
“You,” I say. He turns and kisses me.
I pull my chef out for a progress check. It’s doubled in volume, soupy and roiling with life. I remember Jean-Marc saying that the wetter the starter, the more sour the bread. I pinch off a piece and put it on my tongue, savoring the vinegary bite. Mac peers over my shoulder.
“What’s in it?”
“Just flour and water.”
“So why is it bubbling?”
“Because it’s now home to a passel of potent microoganisms.”
“How many microorganisms does it take to make a passel?”
“More than you’d care to count. Isn’t it amazing? All they need is a little food and a place to have sex, and they just show up and start reproducing.”
“That’s not so amazing. I would do that.” He puts his arms around my waist. “Watching all this unbridled sexual activity makes me horny.”
“Well, I’ve never known anyone to actually become aroused while watching a sourdough starter.” I turn and hop up into his arms, wrapping my legs around him. “But I suppose there’s always that first time.”
By the time we get around to breakfast, the toast is cold, so we heat it in the oven. We pull on sweatshirts and eat out on the porch, watching the rain on the meadow and slapping the occasional mosquito.
I put down my coffee cup and arrange myself at one end of the love seat, facing him. “We’re going to do an experiment. We’re each going to tell one hitherto-unknown fact. About ourselves. No discussing the mating rituals of rainbow trout or anything like that. Okay?”
He shifts position slightly. “And what is this experiment designed to prove?”
I keep my eyes tight on his. “That we can, and that the seas do not open and swallow us up when we tell about ourselves. Okay?” I don’t wait for him to answer. “I’ll go first. For a long time after my father died, I couldn’t cry.”
“What does that feel like?”
“It feels a lot like not being able to have an orgasm.”
“That bad?”
“It’s the same general principle. There’s a buildup of tension and instead of a quick release, it just dissipates, slowly and uncomfortably.”
“Sounds kind of unhealthy,” he says.
I shrug. “Lots of men never cry. In fact, I have this theory. My theory is that the reason a lot of men are so obsessed with sex is because they can’t cry.”
“What?”
“It’s their only release.”
“Well, my theory is that the reason a lot of men are so obsessed with sex is that they’re not getting any.”
“I think my theory is much more interesting. Okay, now you have to tell me something.”
“I flunked senior English.”
“Bullshit.”
He laughs. “Okay, I got an incomplete. I had to go back after graduation and make it up before they’d give me my diploma.”
“Not a very interesting fact, McLeod.”
“You didn’t say it had to be interesting. You want to know why I got an incomplete?”
“No.” I take a sip of coffee. “I want to know about your brother.”
“That’s not a fact about me,” he says evenly.
“Yeah, I think it is.”
A shadow passes over his face, like the smallest ripple on a still pond. “What about him?”
“All about him. Name, age, occupation, where he lives…the usual stuff.”
He sighs. “Kevin Douglas McLeod. Born January 12, 1956.”
“What does he look like?”
“Nothing like me.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“He looks like a football player. Which he was. In high school.” He lays his arm along the back of the love seat. “Remember the day we had breakfast at Steve’s…those two little boys fighting over the crayons?”
“Of course. I distinctly remember you taking on that vicious seven-year-old.”
“That vicious seven-year-old was Kevin.”
“So, what does he do? For a living, I mean, and is he married? Does he have kids? Where is he?”
“We haven’t talked in a long time.” He stands up. “You want some more coffee?”
“What I want is for you to tell me why you always get that deer in the headlights look whenever I ask about your brother. Why you don’t have any pictures—not one single photograph of him. Or your father. Or Suzanne.”
For a minute he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even look at me. Finally he sits back down.
“Kevin was handsome. Smart. He was a great football player. President of his class. He made it all look easy. Girls. They were always calling the house. Suzanne used to get so pissed.”
“But, all this stuff is so…trivial. There’s life after high school, you know. Maybe he’s changed. Maybe if you just called him—you know, just to say hi or—”
“He’s dead.” His voice is quiet and flat and almost relieved. “Kevin’s dead.”
I swallow my coffee and wait for it to find its way down. “When?”
“1974.”
“But you said—” I stop, realizing how stupid it would sound. But you said he was a lawyer. “He was only eighteen? What happened?”
He puts the coffee cup to his mouth, then realizes it’s empty. When he sets it down, the table tilts toward its shortest leg. “It was on a Friday night, the last football game of the year. There was a party afterward. He was a senior; I was a junior. Everybody was drinking. On the way home…there was an accident. This guy in a van ran the red light. Kevin was killed instantly.”
“Oh, Mac.” I feel so stupid, but I can’t think of anything else to say.
“She had all these big plans for him.”
“Your mother?”
He nods. “I don’t think she ever forgave me.”
“For what?”
“For being the one who walked away with a broken arm.”
“For God’s sake, didn’t the two of you ever talk about it?”
“Not much. By the time I graduated from high school, she was living in her bedroom with a bottle of vodka.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m really…so sorry. But why didn’t you just tell me? All those times when I asked about him? About her?”
“It’s not something I talk about.”
“Why?”
He shrugs slightly, not looking at me. “I don’t know why. I guess I just never felt like explaining it. Going through the whole…” He waits for the right word, but it doesn’t come. “It was easier to make up a story. Maybe after a while I started to halfway believe it myself. I honestly don’t know.”
“How terrible. You must have been—” My voice falters.
“I don’t know.” Now he looks in my direction, but his focus is somewhere beyond me. “The thing is, in
my head I’m still having the same stupid arguments with him. That’s the hardest part. There’s no resolution. We can’t just have it out.”
“Things don’t always get resolved even when everybody’s present in the same room. You know that.” When I reach for his hand, he stands up again.
“True.” He walks to the porch rail and stands there watching the meadow grass nod under the soft rain. Then abruptly he turns back. “Much as I hate to say it, we better get packed up and get down to the ferry landing.”
“Mac, come on. You can’t just turn it off.”
“Yes, I can. And I have to. I shouldn’t have told you.”
I look at him, stunned. “But I think you’d have to tell someone. You can’t walk around with something like that stuffed down inside you.”
He leans against the porch rail. “There’s a common misconception that you can focus on one terrible thing and say, this is it. This is the problem. You speak its name and acknowledge it, and you set yourself free. But that’s not how it works. What happens is, you let it out and it’s…like opening Pandora’s box.”
He pushes off the rail. “And now we really need to go. I’m working tonight.”
The drive back to Seattle is gray and depressing. He puts on a tape of really funky blues—the singers all sound like ninety-year-old black men with no teeth and I can’t understand any of the lyrics—to discourage any further conversation, I’m sure. It works just fine.
Then, just as we cross the line into King County, I realize that I didn’t bring the chef. My starter. I put it in the refrigerator to slow down the yeast, intending to pull it out at the last minute, but in our rush to get to the ferry, I forgot it.
nine
The silence between us fills up the week.
Finally, on Friday, he calls. “I thought you’d like to know that Roz had the baby Tuesday. Seven pounds, three ounces and her name is Sarah.”
“Oh. That’s great. When will they be home?”
“Today, I think.”
“Maybe we could go by and see her this weekend.”
“Sure.”
“I was thinking about coming down to Bailey’s on Saturday night—about ten?”
“Sure.”
I look into my mug of rapidly cooling tea. Half full, I remind myself, not half empty. Still warm, not almost cold. Mac pulls a chair out with his foot and sits down, setting two steaming mugs on the table.
It’s Saturday night, actually Sunday morning. Bailey’s is closed, Mac and Kenny have cleaned up, shut down, locked the money in the safe. Now Kenny has gone home to Roz and baby Sarah, the shutters are closed, and the room’s only light comes from the fire and the one lamp hanging over the table where we’re sitting.
“I put honey in yours.” He looks at the fire.
I’ve been here since about ten-thirty, drinking wine, switching to tea when my head started to buzz. I pull the spoon out of my mug, still smoothly coated with thick, golden honey. I watch it drip off the end, then stir it again. I look up at him.
We’ve crossed the border now, Mac and I. We’re in a different territory and there’s no going back. It’s like being on a jury when the judge tells you to disregard some piece of evidence that’s been presented.
I wanted information and I got it. But I also got the emotional carry-on baggage. The genuine easiness of being with him has been replaced by a sort of forced lightness in which we both carefully avoid acknowledging that I now know what I know.
He reaches for my hand, but it’s an automatic gesture. His mind is elsewhere.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Sure. Why?”
“Well, for one thing, everytime I ask you a question these days, you say, ‘Sure.’”
“I’m just tired.”
“Tired of what?”
He gives me a sharp look. “Not of anything. Just tired. I haven’t slept much the last couple of nights. Don’t make something out of nothing.”
I want to ask why he’s not sleeping, but it doesn’t seem like a safe line of inquiry. Suddenly I can’t think of anything that is safe to say to him, and the space yawns between us like the Grand Canyon.
“I guess I don’t understand you sometimes.”
He smiles. “It’s just that we have different ways of dealing with the fact that the universe is sliding inexorably into chaos.”
“Can you please just stop this?” I fold my arms on the table and rest my forehead on them. I just want to go home, go to bed, make love, fall asleep with his arms around me.
“Stop what?”
“This defense thing that you do. Don’t you ever let your hands down?” My voice is muffled in my sweatshirt.
“Don’t you ever get tired of trying to fix me?”
I sit up quickly. “I’m not trying to fix you. I’m trying to understand you.”
“Why do you need to understand me?”
Because I love you, stupid.
No, I don’t actually say it. Mrs. Morrison didn’t raise no dummies. But when I look at him, I know he sees it, as clearly as if it were tattooed on my forehead.
The lamp hanging over the table seems to swing in a barely perceptible arc, picking up some minute tremor, an earthquake too small to feel.
He pulls me out of the chair and onto his lap. He unfastens my hair, loosens it with his fingers, and I rest my cheek against his forehead.
We sit like that for a long time. I don’t know how long, but long enough for the fire to completely burn away into a bed of papery ash and a few red coals. He just holds me, breathing into my hair and not saying anything.
Sunday is a heartbreakingly beautiful spring day. Our first stop is the bakery to pick up a box of cream scones with currants, and triberry muffins, to take over to Roz and Kenny’s house in Green Lake.
The baby smell hits you as soon as the door opens. Kenny looks like he’s been up all night, which he probably has. Red eyed, unshaven, shoeless, shirttail out, burp rag on his shoulder.
“Welcome to Babyland.” He smiles weakly, but perks up when Mac hands him the bakery box. “I’ll go put some coffee on. The queen and the princess are in the living room.”
Roz, looking tired but serene, is propped against a pillow, feet up, adrift in a sea of pastel blankets and stuffed toys. Curled up on her stomach is a small, pink-swathed bundle. All I can see of the baby is a face the size of a latte cup, tiny perfect nose, lashless eyelids, the miniature rosebud mouth puckered in sleep and sporting a delicate tracery of drool.
“Lady Madonna.” Mac grins and kisses the top of her head. I kneel down for a better view of Sarah.
“Damn, girlfriend, you do good work.” I run the back of my index finger over the impossibly soft cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, tired. Sore. Happy. Stupid.”
“Why stupid?” Mac lays my jeans jacket over the back of a club chair and sits down.
“’Cause you don’t find out what all you don’t know about babies till you get one.” Kenny comes in from the kitchen carrying a plate mounded with scones and muffins in one hand and four coffee mugs in the other. He pushes a stack of books by Dr. Spock and Barry Braselton to the end of the coffee table with his foot and sets the load down.
Mac laughs. “Nice trick. What else can you do?”
Kenny sighs. “I have the feeling I’m gonna find out.”
“Oh, listen to you.” Roz rolls her eyes. “I’m the one who has to get up for every feeding.”
“Thank God I don’t have the equipment.”
Her laugh changes to a grimace. “Owie. My stitches still hurt. Honey, you don’t have to wear the burp rag when you’re not holding her.”
“Hey, this is my medal of honor.” He pats his shoulder. “It proves I’ve been through the baby wars. No way am I taking it off.” He heads back to the kitchen and we hear the buzz of the coffee grinder.
Sarah’s pale eyelids twitch minutely. “She does that a lot,” Roz says. “I think she’s dreaming. Like a puppy.”
&nb
sp; “Which was harder,” I ask, “having the baby or training the husband?”
She grins. “Having the baby was a piece of cake.” She twists a little against the pillow. “Honey, can you come take her so I can visit the comfort station?”
“Yup,” Kenny hollers back. “Just let me get the coffee started.”
“Give her to me.” I surprise myself with the realization that I can’t wait to hold her.
“Oh thanks, Wyn. Here, just lean back and I’ll…”
Sleeping Sarah lies on my shoulder like a small, warm beanbag, smelling of baby powder and milk. Her fist is curled up next to her mouth, thumb slightly extended, as if she’s practicing to hitch a ride.
Kenny arrives with the sugar and cream. He grins when he sees me. “Uh-oh. Looks like a natural to me.” Mac doesn’t laugh.
When Roz returns from the bathroom, I hand Sarah back. My shoulder feels empty and a little cold. Probably due to the tiny spot of drool on my shirt.
We pass a pleasant hour of scones and coffee and Sarah stories. Kenny shows us the nursery, all pink and white, painted with fairytale characters. Roz opens the present I brought, a yellow terry-cloth sleeper with a duck pocket and webbed feet. We talk about having brunch when the initial flurry of confusion and novelty settles down. Then Mac stands up.
“Well, we should get going.”
“No need to rush off,” Kenny says, but he yawns as he lets us out the door.
Mac takes my hand as we walk down the brick steps. “How about a ferryboat ride?”
“Okay.” When I turn my head to look at him, I can still smell Sarah on my shoulder.
The mountain is out. That’s what the locals say on days like today when Rainier looks close enough to touch. I love the way it appears to hover, unattached, over the water, white cap of snow shimmering in the sun like a mirage. Tourists run around with their point-and-shoot cameras, snapping it from every angle, while the natives exchange sly smiles. They know that on days like this you can shoot a whole roll from any angle, using any exposure, but if you don’t have a polarizing filter, the tricks of light and haze will render the mountain as invisible as a vampire in a mirror.
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