by Holly LeCraw
It would be dusk. The pool would be perfectly still and clear. The leaves would rustle and the blue hydrangeas would glow in the deepening light and she would feel herself uncurling, relaxing, expanding back into the best, happiest places, the ones that had been invaded and ravaged and that now lay fallow and dark. The wall that had bricked up happiness, that had somehow built itself during the nights in the hospital as she fitfully dozed, the barrier of leaden fear that felt like nothing, like pure absence, would melt away.
Her mother had loved that pool. She saw her mother, swimming back and forth in her daily laps, her determination not hard or brutal but strong, calm, constant. And like her mother Callie would plunge into the water and be engulfed, and then her head would break the surface, she would breathe deep, she would be herself again. She dreamed it, rocking in her chair. She knew it would be true.
But then she had come to the Cape and nothing changed. Her parents were still not here. And because nothing changed, it was all worse. Although Grace nursed constantly now, she was not growing fast enough. This could only be Callie’s own fault. As for herself, Callie craved only sleep. But if she slept she would dream, the new dreams where she broke Grace’s little limbs or bit off her tiny fingers. She would lie in bed exhausted but then her mind would start to revolve until it was a black blur she could not control, and she did not know if she was awake or asleep and she knew that the baby would wake any minute anyway and the minutes would slow down again until they were endless. She knew nothing would ever change.
Jamie walked and talked, he was not to be ignored, but even he seemed to be always hovering several feet from her, untouchable. Her love for Grace was an island far away. She could see it hazy in the distance but could not reach it.
But she was not alone. She had Toni—ha. She had Billy, on the weekends, Billy who loved her simply and wholeheartedly. She had let herself fall in love with him in the first place because he seemed like someone whom tragedy would never touch. And it hadn’t: Grace was okay, he would remind her, looking baffled. She was fine, and wasn’t modern medicine incredible? Weren’t they lucky?
Yes, she would agree, they were.
But she also had Jed. Jed whom she needed most. She had called him, and he had come.
She stood in the sunny kitchen of the house where she had spent every summer of her life, trying to remember what she was supposed to do. She was good at pretending; she could fool anyone. There had been an order, but it had fallen apart. Jed had left but he would be back soon, Jed who knew her best, Jed whom, maybe, she could not fool after all. Jed was the only one who could put it back together.
V
Marcella put Jed in Toni’s room for the night. It was mostly pink, with a satin bedcover and fluffy pink and purple pillows. But it was too neat and spare; it seemed to him to ooze wistfulness. “Do you have everything you need?” Marcella said, from the door. “I’ll get you another pillow.”
“Really,” Jed said, “I’m fine. You don’t—” But Marcella had disappeared, and in a moment came back with two more pillows, in plain white cases. “Well. Thank you.” He went to the doorway to take them from her.
“Good night.”
“Good night,” Jed replied, but she was already turning away.
As soon as she had gone into her room across the hall and closed the door, he ducked down the hall to the bathroom. He tried to make as little noise as possible, to touch nothing—which of course was ridiculous; but he felt like he was breaking and entering. He resisted the impulse to examine the contents of her medicine cabinet and instead helped himself to only a minuscule dot of toothpaste, used his finger for a brush, and rinsed his mouth by drinking straight from the faucet.
Back in Toni’s room, he slid between the pink sheets and turned out the light. The moon shone through the window next to the bed. He lifted up his hand; the light was so bright his fingers cast otherworldly shadows. He was wide awake.
The day he’d found the bathing suit, he’d paid more attention to Toni than usual. He’d known he was doing a terrible thing, as her eyes grew warmer and her laughter louder, but he was on a mission, and he nudged the conversation until the prize fell in his lap like an apple: the name of the town where Marcella Atkinson lived.
He told Callie he was going to see an old college friend that weekend, in Manhattan. “I knew you’d get bored here,” she said shortly.
“I’m not bored. Nick Satterthwaite isn’t going to quit bugging me until I visit him. I might as well get it over with.”
“Fine.”
“Cal, I won’t leave till Friday afternoon. Billy and I will pass each other on the highway—”
“Just go. Have fun.”
He hadn’t explained any further and if Callie seemed surprised she was no more surprised than he, huddled around the little flame of his weird secret, furiously protecting it, even though he was not exactly sure what the secret was.
And now here he was lying in Toni’s bed, Marcella Atkinson just feet away, through a couple of thin walls. He was on a strange little vacation. A vacation from a vacation—no one would wake him up tomorrow. He was like a dad himself these days, getting up with Jamie or Grace at first light, because he would hear them and he couldn’t go back to sleep anyway. He understood, he thought, a little, how Callie felt, how tired she was. He, too, always wanted a little more sleep, was always operating on a slight deficit. He did not resent it, but he did wonder if Callie fully appreciated him. And it was odd, more than odd, that she had not scolded him about leaving work, about being irresponsible. Odder still that his taking a whole summer off really had been her idea, although if he had put it to her that way she would not have agreed. And since she hadn’t brought it up, he wouldn’t either.
Sleep. Now was his chance. Before he closed his eyes, he looked out the window at the moon, already high, clearly visible above the trees. Its light poured down. It was not quite full, and he wondered if it was waxing or waning. He could never remember which way it went.
CALLIE HAD CALLED HIM IN EARLY JUNE, at his office. It must have been about ten. He had been about to go get himself yet another cup of coffee; he had been at his desk since seven, which was not unusual. “Jeddy?” she had said, as soon as he picked up. He hadn’t noticed anything unusual in her voice, although it must have been there, he had just not wanted to hear it. She had said, “I’m going to Mashantum tomorrow.”
“That’s great,” he had said. “For how long?”
“All summer.”
“Oh.” He had put down his pen. “Billy can get that kind of time off?”
“He’s not coming. That is, he’s installing us. Me and the kids and the nanny. He’s going to come on weekends. He’s promised he won’t work any Saturdays,” she said defensively.
“You have a nanny?”
She told him about Toni Atkinson, the fact of her only—her hours, when she was starting—and he sensed her determination. She said, “I thought maybe you could come up.”
“I do have a job.”
“I know.” She cleared her throat. “I know. Just—sometime.”
“Well, I’ve already used a lot of time,” he said, trying to soften his voice. He had spent more than a week in Connecticut after Grace was born, shuttling Callie back and forth to the hospital. “I guess I could talk to HR,” he said. “Callie—you need to go for the whole summer? Without Billy?”
“Yes. I just do. I miss her,” she said, and she started to cry. “I miss her.”
She had been so weepy since the baby was born. Had she been like this with Jamie? Jed couldn’t remember. He sighed. “I know,” he said.
“She’s so beautiful, Jeddy.”
“She—?”
“Gracie.”
“Yes. Yes, she is. She’s beautiful, Cal.” He hesitated. “Mom would have thought so too,” he said. Callie didn’t answer. “Look, I’ll try to set something up. Okay?” He rubbed his eyes. Coffee wouldn’t help, but if he didn’t have it, it would be worse.
&
nbsp; “Okay.” Her voice quavered but there was a hardness in it too, and he pictured her face working at the other end. She must have fought and won, because next thing she said, “All right, Jed,” like she was closing a deal.
Although he had been swamped that day, like all days, as soon as he hung up with Callie he had called Billy. He’d met Billy in law school; he had introduced him to Callie. Billy was an Atlanta boy too. It had never occurred to Jed that Billy would want to go after a bigdeal job in New York, but that was what he had done, a year after graduation, and taken Callie and Jamie up to Greenwich with him. Jamie had just been starting to walk then. Jed remembered him reaching up for his two forefingers, insisting on endless stiff-legged circuits around Callie and Billy’s little house in Virginia Highlands. And Jed had complied, surprising even himself with his patience.
He had told Billy he shouldn’t take Callie away. “It’s just for a few years,” Billy had said. “Then I can come back here and be the big New York hotshot.”
“You won’t come back,” Jed had said.
“Sure, we will! What are you talking about?” Billy had cried, but in his normally merry eyes there had been an apprehension Jed hadn’t seen before, and he had known Billy was lying, known that he was simply trying to put miles between his new family and the McClatchey sorrow. As if that would work.
But now, on the phone, Billy was saying, “I can’t talk any sense into her.” There was nothing merry in his tone. “She is absolutely determined. I told her I can’t be there. I don’t know what to do.”
Jed eyed the open file folders on his desk. He said, “You could be there if you wanted to.”
“Sure. And the nice men in suits could foreclose on the house and repossess the cars. Don’t give me that liberated-man bullshit,” he muttered, and Jed wondered if Billy was going to start crying too.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. A little strung out. Full of energy though. She’s amazing. No sleep, but she’s zooming around with Jamie, running in the mornings, all that.” Billy’s voice swelled with pride and Jed felt a bit mollified: Billy worshipped her, he really did. “Look, bro,” Billy continued, “I don’t want her to go. I don’t want her to take the kids.”
“You told her that.”
“Yeah, I told her that.” He sighed again. “Shit, Jed. I’m sorry I brought her up here. I am. But—”
“You’re there now.”
“Nothin’ you can do,” Billy said. Jed knew Billy wanted him to agree, about the simple linearity of life and a man’s obligation in it. But he didn’t answer. “Jed?”
“I’ll talk to her,” he had said.
Jed had hung up fully intending to call Callie again and talk her down. He’d promise her another weekend, he’d try to get away in August. August—when it was sweltering in Atlanta but already cooling down in Mashantum, when the beach was still warm during the day but you had to use a blanket at night, and you lay in bed under that blanket knowing it meant summer was almost over. Over. August. Two months away.
He picked up the handset again, but instead of punching a free line, his finger hovered over the buttons. Then, slowly, he set the phone back into its cradle. He gathered the papers on his desk into a neater pile and folded his hands on top of them and sat there without moving for several minutes.
He had been a good soldier, a good little orphan boy who had graduated from college in spite of it all, gone to law school, gave no one pause about his state of mind. There had been no either-or: he had just done it. And now there was nothing wrong with his profession or with his job, except that he did not remember ever having picked them. The people working alongside him for the days that stretched into nights seemed to be doing it because they wanted something, very badly. It could even be—he was fairly sure about this—that in some cases the things they wanted had nothing to do with the law; but maybe a partnership seemed as good a stand-in as anything.
But he wanted nothing. His job was a stand-in for nothing. He simply existed in it and lately it seemed to have less and less to actually do with him. This was true of any number of things—his job, his apartment, the women he dated, all of whom he eventually just quit calling. The last one had beaten him to the punch. I can’t be with you, she had said, because you’re not with me. I don’t know where you are. He didn’t really care, but he knew most men would have.
But as he sat at his desk and stared at his phone he knew that finally there was something he wanted. He wanted to go to Mashantum. And he knew, too, that when he had been talking to Callie, his nerve endings had been quivering, like an animal’s before a storm. Something in her voice was wrong. He needed to be with her. Now.
Afterward, he was not quite sure how much of this he had said out loud. He had gone to see his boss that same afternoon, and the man, give him credit, had tried to be kind: This is an excellent firm, he had said, you can’t afford to quit, it will be a permanent black mark, Jed—but Jed heard the fatherly tone in his voice and it was a supreme effort not to turn his back and leave right then, slamming the door behind him. He seemed to be regressing. He knew that this man, along with everyone in Atlanta, had seen the McClatchey name in the paper, on the news, over and over, years before, and that they still remembered. He had always known this, of course, and been bothered, but now he felt full-blown disgust. He hated the pity and knew it would always follow him. Hatred for his own father bubbled in the back of Jed’s throat. He could not have spoken if he had wanted to and so he let the man go on, being magnanimous: Jed would be given a leave. As long as necessary (what was necessary?), unpaid, but with benefits. Jed let him spin off into details, until he finally wound down and stopped, and Jed realized it was his turn to speak. “Thank you,” he said.
But he felt no gratitude. Belatedly, he held out his hand and the other man took it in both of his own, like a preacher at the end of a service, and Jed suppressed what he knew would have been a maniacal laugh: go in peace to love and serve, yes, indeed! His boss was looking at him sympathetically, and Jed extracted his hand. It immediately curled, on its own, into a fist. He hadn’t seen that particular look, so undisguised, in a while. He hated that look. He wished he would never see it again.
He had gone straight back to his office then, ignoring his secretary’s inquiring stare, and closed the door. Under the coat hook was a small mirror. He rarely used it, but there was no coat hanging there that day to block it, and he found himself looking into his own eyes. They had been furious, his face twisted, unfamiliar.
And then he had been looking into a different mirror. He had been tying his tie. It was the morning of his father’s funeral, one episode emerging distinct, acute, from the blur of that day. He was standing at the mirror in his childhood bedroom, and Callie was coming in without knocking. She was saying, “Your tie’s stained.”
He was saying, “All my ties look like crap.”
“Why don’t I get you one of Dad’s?”
“No.” He was thinking, in the weird third person that had begun to descend on him at odd times, His hands were at his own throat, and his fingers stiffened and lost their place. “Damnit.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Callie said, “Here,” and she stepped forward and began to tie it for him. He had known she would do this and he held still. She had often tied their father’s tie, or at least straightened it. Their father had been a man who liked to be tended to; maybe she was looking for Cecil in him even now. Well, Jed thought grimly, she won’t find him.
But he in turn eyed his sister’s black dress, her black stockings and shoes. He knew he was searching for their mother, and from certain angles he could see her but not enough, and then she was gone and he saw only Callie, straightbacked and stern, deep circles under her eyes. Callie would ignore any goddamn pathos and instead tie the ties, turn the wheels, keep this operation together by sheer willpower. She would not acknowledge their difference, would not mention again that she had wanted him to wear their father’s tie and he had refused, that
he blamed and hated their father and she did not. “I know what you’re thinking,” Callie said.
He didn’t answer.
“Well, you’re right,” she said. “This is the same fucking dress.”
Then he felt it, what he had been expecting for days, for months. Rage descended on him, and for one black, eternal moment he was engulfed, smothered, but then he ripped it off and kicked it away like some filthy garment. He would not, could not, put it back on. If he did, he would lose himself in it, and he refused to lose one more thing. Ever.
He held his chin up for Callie and looked at a patch of light on the wall. A sunny day. His mother’s funeral had been rainy. Could muse on the unfairness of that. Wouldn’t.
Her voice broke in. “Jeddy,” she said. “I can’t do this.”
Her hands had gone away but he had known she didn’t mean his tie. He had reached up and tightened the knot. Their elemental disagreement had hung in the air, but they had needed each other even more than they had needed to agree.
“You won’t have to,” he had said, and offered his arm, and she had taken it. “After today,” he had said, “you will never have to do this again.”
VI
Jed woke to the warm, bitter smell of coffee. For a moment he didn’t know where he was, and then he saw all the pink around him and remembered. Once he had finally drifted off, his sleep had seemed deep and long, but the clock on the bedside table said seven-thirty, which made him feel unexpectedly virtuous. The poignancy of the underused room was diminished in the morning light. He lay in bed a moment before getting up, feeling both embarrassed that he had actually stayed the night and somehow peaceful. He liked the idea that no one knew where he was.
Now he slipped out of bed and put on his clothes from the day before. He didn’t want to use the silver brush displayed on the dresser, and instead combed his hair with his fingers. He glanced in the mirror and decided he was passable. A quick trip to the bathroom, and he would go. What in the world, after all, did he have left to say to Marcella Atkinson?