by Holly LeCraw
But when he went to the kitchen to say good-bye he stopped in the doorway. She was standing at the counter, her back to him, her elbows pumping slowly up and down, and he realized she was rolling dough. She was wearing white shorts and a plain white T-shirt, and her hair was twisted up at the back of her head. There were a few tendrils curling at her neck.
He didn’t want her to be startled when she turned around, but this moment to look at her undisturbed seemed like a gift, and so he took it. She was barefoot. Her feet on the wooden floor were narrow, with a high, delicate arch. Her legs were slender—he’d noticed that already, but in this morning light they were not like a young girl’s legs—the skin was different, looser, not taut and smooth. He didn’t care. With her hair curling in the heat and the little song she was humming she was like a girl.
He cleared his throat.
“Oh,” she said, and turned, and the smile she gave him was happy and a little shy. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m making strudel. I hardly ever have someone to cook for.”
“It smells good,” he said, thinking, She’s not chasing me away. He hadn’t really expected that, but it would have been more intelligible to him.
Coffee was poured, he refused cream. The first batch of strudel came out of the oven and she sat him down at the table and gave him a piece. “I didn’t know anyone really made strudel,” he said.
“My grandmother used to make it. Or, rather, have it made. She had a Milanese cook, and Milan, you know, is not so far from Austria.” She looked down at her own plate in mock disapproval. “This isn’t real strudel. I do not have time for all those layers and layers of pastry. The real thing is very delicate. Although I suppose I do,” she said, and laughed. “I suppose I have nothing but time.”
A bell went off and she went to the oven and took out another tray. As she bent to reach he could see the swell of her knee, the tender stretch of her thigh above it. She was the sort of woman who would get thinner as she aged. She would be gray-haired and elegant. “I don’t know why I wanted to bake,” she said. “I’m heating up the kitchen, and it’s going to be a hot day anyway.” The kettle on the stove sang and he watched her carefully pour water into a little French press coffeepot. “There.”
“I’m sorry. I drank up all your coffee.”
“No, no. The pot is just too small.”
She sat across from him with her mug. She ate nothing herself. Her ease had been dissipating, it seemed, as she had talked, and now the silence descended. He looked at her slender hands encircling her mug. Not old, not young. “Are you a good cook?” he said.
“Yes.” She met his gaze, and they both smiled. She shrugged a little and said, “I see no reason to lie.”
But the silence came on again as he ate and a childish fear descended on him, that she had made the pastry to somehow make him go away, that any minute now she was going to put two or three pieces in a paper sack, still warm, and send him through the door like a lost boy, out into the wood, temporarily provisioned but still doomed. He forgot that he had been so eager to leave. He chewed very slowly.
“I was thinking we might go to the beach,” Marcella said. “It’s just so hot. For June.” Jed’s mouth was full and so he could get away with only nodding. He tried not to look too surprised. “Did you bring a bathing suit? Did you pack for wherever you were pretending to go?” She did not smile.
“Not really. But there’s a suit in the back of my car.”
“I don’t go that often during the day. I go later on, for a walk. When it’s cooler. But I can’t think what else to do on a day like today. Of course,” she said, fiddling with the handle of her mug, “you might rather go home. To your own beach. It’s a nice beach. I remember.”
Jed said, “What is a day like today?”
“I don’t know,” Marcella said. She did not meet his eyes.
MARCELLA DROVE THEM to the residents-only lot, and after Jed had taken the chairs out of the trunk before she could reach them, and the bag with the towels and books too, she laughed at her empty-handedness and then led the way down the narrow path to the beach. The trail was covered in fine gray sand and where it slipped in the sides of her sandals it was already hot. It was high tide, and the beach was crowded; they found a spot between two large extended families, encamped with portable cribs and ice chests and elaborate folding chairs with attached umbrellas. Beneath her sunglasses Marcella was blushing with embarrassment. Why hadn’t she checked the tide chart? Why had she brought him here, to bake on a Saturday among screaming children, when he could have done that as well in Mashantum? “At least the tide is going out,” she said.
“Is it? When was it high?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. She busied herself arranging her chair.
The night before, she had woken feeling that someone else had done it, woken her, that someone was in the room. But there was no one. Still, the house seemed alive to her, humming. She got out of bed and floated down the hall in her long nightgown to Toni’s room.
He had been there, asleep, on his back. The sheet was pulled up to his waist and his clothes were in a heap next to the bed, and with a catch to her breath she wondered if he was nude, and at the same time smiled at the little-boy slovenliness. He had not pulled down the shade of the window next to the bed, and moonlight was pouring through, so bright that the shadow of the crossed muntins fell on his chest. She had stood in the doorway and studied him for a long time. His body first but then his face, over and over, making a circuit of chin, mouth, cheekbones, forehead. She had seen Cecil in him earlier that evening but now she looked and looked and could find no trace. She had been amazed that he was only, purely himself. She had almost expected the force of her attention to rouse him, but it hadn’t.
And then she had awoken early, like it was the first day of school, and made him pastry, and then dragged him here. What had she been thinking? She had not been thinking, only acting. She was not so lonely and desperate that she would do anything for company. But probably that was what he thought. Well, that was safe enough, although her vanity was getting in the way, a feeling she’d forgotten about—she did not want to seem pitiful. She thought of his face the night before, how hard it had been. But underneath, pleading. Yes. When he had asked the question.
That, she thought, was why she had wanted to keep him here. She had not decided how to answer the question. If.
She realized she had been sitting with her book open on her knees, not turning the pages, for a long time. At the beach blanket next to them, a toddler was having a tantrum: his sandwich had fallen in the sand, and in his wrath he kicked over his sister’s castle. The wails rose to a crescendo and the harried mother rolled her eyes ruefully at Marcella. But in her daze it took Marcella too long to muster a sympathetic smile, and the mother turned away, rebuffed.
She looked down at Jed, beside her. He was lying on his stomach on a towel, his face turned away. His brown back gleamed. Such an expanse of skin. She made herself say, “I’m going for a swim.”
He turned his head and looked at her. Not Cecil’s face, and not a boy’s, but a man’s: she was surprised yet again. He kept changing. “This is nice,” he offered. “It’s a nice beach.”
“It’s hot and crowded. I’m sorry.”
“No, Mrs.—Marcella—”
“You were kind to come,” she said, and put down her book and sunglasses and hat and fled.
The water was cold and familiar and she walked out chest-deep, past the waves and the children on floats and the teenagers throwing Frisbees to the calm, cold depths. She sighted the seawall, down the beach, and put down her head and began to swim. She loved the water. She loved the idea of the ocean stretching past her, thousands of miles of cool darkness, like a cushion, and on the other side Europe, Italy, the idea of home if not the reality. She fell into the groove of her stroke, felt her hips and shoulders rolling as if to a slow, steady drumbeat. In the water her body took over. If she kept moving, she would come to no
harm.
She swam for a long time, not all the way to the seawall but close, and then turned back. Halfway there, she felt someone swimming beside her. She did not break her stroke but looked next to her as she breathed, and saw Jed’s brown arms in a shower of water. She could feel his pace uneven beside her and realized he was holding himself back to stay with her.
She stopped when she thought she was almost there, and sure enough when she stood up, breathing hard, she could see the blue sign marking the path to the parking lot. Jed had come up too, and was panting beside her. With his hair dark and wet against his head and the sun sharpening the wet planes of his face, his handsomeness seemed almost two-dimensional. She felt more relaxed than she had before. “You’re a good swimmer,” she said.
“Not as good as you.”
“I felt you slowing yourself down.”
“That’s because my stroke is uneven. I don’t have the right rhythm.”
“Do you love the ocean?”
“Not love,” he said. “I like looking at it.”
She said, “They say that looking at the ocean is calming because the horizon is clear. It’s something left from the ancient days—we are always on guard for the enemy, but if we have a clear horizon we can be truly peaceful.”
“You can’t see what’s under the water, though,” he said. “You can’t see what’s coming.” He lay down in the water on his back, and stroked away from her, looking up at the sky.
“No,” she said, although he couldn’t hear her. “I suppose not.”
At lunchtime they left the beach and Marcella took him to the farm stand to get sandwiches. “It’s a Connecticut farm stand,” she told him. She remembered her social voice. “It’s chichi.”
They had ceased to discuss when he would leave. Marcella wanted to ask him every moment; she had to stop herself. She would not, of course, beg him to stay but she needed to prepare herself for his leaving, try to figure out ahead of time how empty it would feel, why she would care, how she had become a different creature from the day before, when she had been content in her garden, alone. He had brought her closer to Cecil. He had pushed her farther away.
The woman at the wooden sandwich counter asked what they wanted and began to cut bread from a large brown loaf. “These are as good as you would make?” Jed said.
“Oh, better.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Marcella heard Cecil, or maybe it was just the South, in his voice: the trained, automatic charm. She knew that was what it was, she would take it at face value. She would remember the task at hand. A sandwich was good. He could take the bag in his car with him, go. “When you eat this on the road, be careful,” she said. “Don’t let everything drip into your lap and make a mess. Especially the tomatoes. Look at those tomatoes!” Jed looked at her sidelong but said nothing. She had to dismiss him, it was for the best. “I need to get a few things,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the register.”
She crossed to the other side of the room, where fruit was arranged in shallow baskets. The farm stand was built of weathered, unfinished wood, and the windows were open holes, their plywood covers propped away, awninglike, from the building. The wind blowing through them was hotter than ever. Marcella felt the dried salt and sand on her like a second skin. The colors of the produce shone against the wood. Blueberries were piled high in their green cardboard boxes. She would make something. A pie. A whole pie for herself. Too much. Damnit.
“Marcella.”
She flinched. Jed was next to her, close. “I came to tell you I’m leaving,” he said. “I know your house is just down the road. I’ll walk back. I’m sorry I bothered you. I really am.”
“Your sandwich,” Marcella breathed, idiotically.
“I’ve got them. Here.” He handed her a wax-papered cylinder. “Don’t pay for it. I mean, I already did.”
“I don’t want you to go,” Marcella said, in a rush. “I wasn’t trying to make you.”
“Are you sure about that?” he said, and he smiled, and his face changed completely.
He had not moved away, he was close enough that she could see the skim of salt at his hairline. “I know a nice place to go to eat these,” she said. “A pretty place. You could see it before you go.” She felt she was luring him to a trap.
She took him to a plot of conservation land, with a short path from the dusty pull-off and a picnic table at the end. Although they were less than a mile from the beach, there was no hint of the ocean; beyond them stretched rolling fields. “I’ve never seen anyone else here,” she said. “I don’t think anyone knows about it.”
“It’s beautiful. It’s getting hotter, though.”
“Yes. I think the wind has changed.”
They ate in silence for a while and Marcella was trying not to apologize again, about the heat, the sun, how exposed they were, when Jed said, abruptly, “I feel like I have a million things to say to you. Only I can’t start. If I start I’ll never stop.”
“What are they? What things?”
“I don’t know yet.” He turned to her.
She said, “I really barely know you, Jed,” but her hand almost reached up, of its own accord, to stroke his cheek. She felt them, her fingers with their own intentions, but then the expression on his face changed and he drew back, and she thought it was because of what she had said and then realized she was shaking her head. No. No no no. Something had made it move, some different, deep impulse for what was right. Thank God. She should be grateful. But instead she folded her arms on the table in front of her and buried her head inside, to make it stop.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Jed, you must listen.” She raised her head and held it very high, her back very straight, and looked out at the gold and green fields, wind blowing over them like a live thing. Her nonna had told her the dead could come to you on the wind. If she was not strong, if she was not honorable, she would make herself so now. “You asked me if I thought your father had killed your mother,” she said. “No, no, a thousand times no. I know this.” She took a breath. “I know this because on the night your mother died, your father was with me.”
VII
Jed had begun paying attention to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at age thirteen or so, in the manner of a boy who already knows that someday he will face college interviewers. He formed rudimentary opinions about various Supreme Court decisions, Middle Eastern politics, and Northern Ireland. He read about wildfires in the West and hurricanes in Florida.
But by the time he was done with the national and international news he was in a hurry to get to sports and the comics, and so he rarely read the Metro section. He was not interested in new local highways or the shenanigans of the Atlanta City Council. It didn’t occur to him that “current events” were also the sickening, ordinary tragedies: the coked-up teenager shaking every bit of sense, forever, out of his girlfriend’s baby; the bankrupt father strangling his own children in the back of the family van; the man staking out his own wife, crouching in his own shrubbery, leaving the neighbors to say, They seemed nice. Kept to themselves. And always, You don’t think it can happen on your own street.
When Betsy McClatchey was murdered, Cecil McClatchey was away, overnight, on a business trip. Jed and Callie, who went to the same college, were fetched by an aunt and uncle, and when they got home and finally saw their father, he looked utterly shattered. He cried at the funeral, and before, and after. Jed had never seen his father sob. He had been out of town, there had been a simple burglary, it had gone awry. That was that.
But then a maid at his hotel claimed his bed had not been slept in. His father said he had had trouble sleeping that night, had been driving around, and then he had come back and lain down on top of the covers. The cops thought he was hiding something. Asheville was not so far from Atlanta, and Cecil had been staying south of there; it was possible, just, to drive to Atlanta and back overnight. They did not say this to Jed, instead
asking him questions that were little more than insinuations: There’s nothing else you want to tell us? And finally once, point-blank, Any chance your father could have a lady friend? He had laughed out loud. His father? His broken, unadventurous father? “Of course not,” he had said. He had nothing else to tell them, and his father had never changed his story. There was never an indictment or a trial, there was no evidence whatsoever, except for that un-slept-in bed.
But as the investigation died down into the lull that would end with his father’s death, Jed found himself doing a strange thing. He found himself reading the paper again, and going to the local news first. He found himself hunting for stories of heartbreaking crime, and then, when he found them, as he always did, looking for clues and motives and orderly outlines. Someone owed money, someone did drugs. Someone had been abused and turned to crime themselves: elementary psychology. He absorbed all this data with a frantic hunger. He learned it was usually the men, even family men, with heretofore unblemished lives. They made an insane decision, they became convinced of its necessity, they followed through. Jed built himself a house of horrors, brick by brick, and entered it and lived there. Then his father died, a car crash late at night, no other cars involved. It was probably a heart attack, there was no note, but … and the door to the house slammed shut, with him inside.
MARCELLA AND JED DROVE BACK to the house in silence. When they walked up the front steps and into the little living room Jed was struck by how familiar it felt, as if he had spent his life there, not just one day. He felt, again, that if he were made to leave it would be a kind of exile. He knew he should be very angry at Marcella, maybe he was—he had a right to be scathing; but he was too tired to muster up such behavior. He looked at her and thought again that she was lovely, even though now she looked gray and twisted-out, something in her collapsed. He was surprised his father had been able to see her loveliness. Jed was not convinced that he had. Probably his father had seen only the typical side of her beauty—the legs and breasts and cheekbones. He would not have seen it all, her sadness, her thoughts. He would have seen only the things that were different from Jed’s mother.