“My father’s never been able to deal with it,” Charlie told me again as we drove to pick up Eli in Pocasset. “It doesn’t compute with him, he always just pushed it off to the side and let my mom handle it.”
“Maybe now that she’s gone he’ll have to,” I said. As little as I’d interacted with Mr. Moss so far, I still found it hard to believe he wouldn’t take over his wife’s job as primary caretaker of all things Eli.
Charlie nodded, his hands firm on the steering wheel. Over the years I would learn how it felt to visit or collect someone from a mental hospital; the way you brace yourself for profound and awkward unhappiness. It was especially sad seeing this in Charlie. The only time the weight of the world ever touched him was through Eli. And later, sometimes, me. Charlie talked a little more, telling me about the struggles they’d had with Eli since that night seven years ago when he’d jumped off the roof, jumped from one kind of life—normal and promising—into another.
“Well,” I said, as if no one had come up with this solution yet, “he just has to stay on his meds.”
“The meds suck,” Charlie said. “They turn him into a zombie. A fat zombie. And they make him impotent.”
An image came into my head, Wendy sitting in Eli’s lap around a crowded table at the Rio. I’d run into her a few times after Eli left school. Once outside of Hellems, she’d broken down and cried. “It’s so sad,” she said when I told her I hadn’t heard from Eli. “I always thought what a great dad he would be.”
Back then, when he was dating Wendy, Eli had told me about the chemicals your body produces when you’re in love. Pheromones and oxytocin. Those early days with Charlie, I was living on those chemicals, their fumes surrounding me every second, and I couldn’t even consider the concept of impotence.
“If you could just talk to him,” I said, “and really let him know what he’s like when he’s off his meds.”
“That’s the last thing he needs to hear right now.” Charlie returned his attention to driving. “He’ll already feel like shit about himself. His self-esteem will be at less than nowhere. It’ll only make him feel like we’re against him if we paint a picture of him at his worst.”
I didn’t say anything at all about how I worried Eli at his worst could be dangerous. My hands stayed firmly in my lap, resisting the urge to touch my forehead. Maybe all those years ago he hadn’t meant to hurt me. And Charlie—he had meant to hurt himself more than Eli had done him any violence. I reached over and stroked the back of Charlie’s head, the tiny bumps where his stitches had been ever so slightly detectable beneath my fingertips. And I remembered the way Eli had held his head in his hands, as if measuring the damage.
THE FIRST THING ELI wanted was a pack of cigarettes. The second was to see their mother’s grave. She was buried in the Blue Creek cemetery, a bucolic piece of land despite its proximity to a busy street. Even the whoosh of constant cars took on a calming rhythm, like the wind soughing through the maple leaves and the crash of the waves from over the hill. The mound of earth over Sarah Moss’s grave—swollen and fresh a few weeks ago—had already been tamped down by rains. Somebody had left a white plastic flowerpot, meant to look like a wicker basket, leaning against the stone, dried and wilted calla lilies poked into sodden Styrofoam. I picked it up and stood back. Charlie knelt and placed a little bottle filled with colored sea glass where the arrangement had been. He stood again, the two brothers shoulder to shoulder, staring at the grave as if the inscription were long and involved, not just a name and dates. Finally Eli broke the stillness by lighting a cigarette. He curved a tremoring hand around his lighter to block it from the wind. The smoke settled in around us, a defeated and outlaw scent. Eli’s hair looked faded, almost brown, as if his time in the hospital had drained it of its brightness. It flopped across his forehead as he leaned into the cigarette, and I wondered if his mother had been the last person to cut it.
“It’s crazy,” Eli said, the emotionless voice I would come to find comforting. “It would be easier to believe she was there, down under my feet, if I’d seen it. You know? Seen her die. Seen her buried.”
“I’m really sorry,” Charlie said.
“Crazy,” Eli said again. He flicked the ash from his cigarette. I waited for it to land on the grave, but it didn’t, just blew toward the road, fading out to invisibility on its way.
“You want to walk down to the beach?” Charlie said.
“No. I think I’ll sit here a while. You guys go ahead, I’ll meet you.”
Charlie took my hand and we headed toward the spot where the road turned into a brambled beach path. October now, with leaves and beach plums mulching into a cidery scent that mingled with the approaching ocean, both of us in sweaters and sneakers, I didn’t think Charlie would swim. I didn’t know yet, how he swam one day every month, and in order for it to count he had to dive under the waves at least three times.
“I want to say thank you,” Charlie said, as he started taking off his clothes. “Because you’ve been right here whenever I need you. Loving me.”
A kind of glow washed over me, as if I’d stumbled on a key so naturally. That was all I had to do—love him—and everything would be all right.
“You’re my rock,” Charlie said.
He kissed me and then ran off to dive into the frigid waves. By the time Eli lumbered down to join us—a shuffling, Frankenstein gait that had nothing to do with his old self—Charlie was bundled back into his clothing, his hair still wet, freezing Atlantic seawater beading at the base of his neck and dampening the collar of his sweater. I moved in closer when he put his arm around me, hoping I could transfer a little warmth. Eli walked down the shoreline wearing Charlie’s field coat, smoking and looking out across the water. I kept waiting for the stream of voices to begin, to make their way across the rocks and sand to us; but whatever went on inside his head, for now it all stayed quiet.
BEHIND THE RED-AND-IVORY TAPESTRY in my bedroom with Charlie, the air persisted, still hanging thick with oxytocin and pheromones. On the other side lurked Eli, the cigarettes he wasn’t supposed to smoke in the apartment, my lavender soap operating as a low base note after he showered, but beaten down within hours by the sour, sickly scent—a kind of ruined sweat—that clung to him in every temperature. Mostly Eli slept, shirtless in the living room, my mother’s itchy nylon afghan sliding off over his belly—growing almost like a pregnancy, as if the enforced sanity were something that had to incubate. Despite promises from Mr. Moss to collect him, Eli stayed on my couch till the weather turned too cold for a throw, and it was an old down sleeping bag that failed to cover his nakedness when I crept out of my room in the morning. I could hear him snoring as I made coffee and showered, as I tried to be quiet as possible. He seemed less like an old friend than a convalescing stepchild. Meanwhile, Tab had abandoned me within days of his appearance, joining me in the kitchen only for her morning can of Fancy Feast and then immediately returning to her spot on his chest.
Was I afraid of Eli, during those days? Never once, never at all. Even in his heavily tranquilized sleep he would lift a hand to stroke the cat. I thought about his theory, human hands, as the cat’s eyes glazed, her lids at ecstatic half-mast, and I felt sad that he couldn’t ever be a vet, let alone a doctor. Then I would close the door quietly behind me with my hair damp, because I didn’t want the blow-dryer to wake anyone, and return toward late afternoon with a bag full of groceries for Charlie to prepare our dinner.
“JUST PROMISE ME YOU won’t marry him,” my mother said.
We sat across from each other at the Black Sheep coffee shop, the rich chocolate cake she’d insisted on buying sitting untouched between us. I sipped my coffee to avoid answering, and she handed me her fork. “Eat,” she said. “You look thin.”
It was true. Despite Charlie’s meals I was losing weight, the effort of loving him, of accommodating him, burning more calories than I could possibly take in. I picked up the fork and ate a small bite. My mother watched me, her brow furrowed.
Fading freckles obscured whatever lines marred her forehead. She had blue eyes and fair skin. Her hair used to be red, and she’d let it fade to dark gray, still curly and abundant, pulled off her forehead with a silver barrette in a way that should have looked girlish but didn’t. As one day few people would take Sarah and me for mother and daughter, so it had always been with the two of us.
Mom sat back, placing her broad, freckled hands flat on the table. “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” she said. This was the posture she always assumed when posing questions to her class. Measured questions, meant to incite conversation and even argument. She would float them out and then sit back, waiting to observe and assess the reaction.
To stall, I took another bite. She wouldn’t understand anything I told her. If my mother ever went on a single date after my father died, I couldn’t remember it. I could only remember my serious, widowed, tenured mother. Two simple missions in life: raising me and teaching literature. Specializing in Yeats and Coleridge, all the romance in her life existing in the poems she studied. I couldn’t say that Charlie was my Sue Dickinson, because she didn’t agree with my theory. So instead I used Yeats’s muse.
“He’s my Maud Gonne,” I said.
My mother removed her hands from the table and tilted her head with a loud and exasperated exhalation. “That,” she said, “only works for poets. Not even for them. Just their work. And honestly I’m not sure it works for that post – nineteenth century.”
A group of college girls banged noisily into the shop, laughing with each other and then with the baristas. My mother watched them find a table at the far side of the cafe. I took the opportunity to examine her face. She looked more worried than angry, but I also thought she looked the tiniest bit relieved that she hadn’t found me in an even worse situation. In the stretch of time between Ladd’s phone call to her and now, I’d avoided her, returning calls when I knew I’d get her voice mail. She had waited until fall break to make the ninety-minute drive from Randall and show up on my doorstep. Unfortunately, Eli had answered.
“Well,” I said, when the girls’ chatter was far enough away, and it looked like my mother wasn’t going to break the relative silence. “No one’s brought up marriage. So it’s not a worry for right now.”
“What about Ladd?”
“He hates me now.”
Another deep intake of breath from her, this one more mournful than frustrated. I’d ruined everything.
“Listen,” she said. She retrieved her fork and took a bite of the cake, then frowned at its sweetness. “I’ve been offered a teaching fellowship at University College Cork. It’s a three-year position.”
“That’s great,” I said. She’d always wanted to go to Ireland.
“I’m not sure I should take it now.”
“Oh, Mom. Take it. I’ll be fine.”
“How long will his brother stay with you?”
“Not much longer,” I said. “A few more days.”
“Because I’m really not comfortable with this arrangement.”
“It’s not an arrangement,” I promised. “It’s just a visit.”
Abruptly, as if we’d agreed on a specific time for this coffee date to end and she realized that time had arrived, she pushed back her chair and stood. As I followed her out of the cafe, a notice on the community bulletin board caught my eye, written on lined notebook paper. A kennel just outside town looking for a live-in employee. I ripped off one of the phone number tabs.
By the time I got outside my mother had already headed across the street to Sweetser Park. She sat on the edge of the fountain, staring at the tumbling water. I sat down next to her and said, “I’m sorry.” She nodded as if apologizing were perfectly reasonable. She’d been so looking forward to the idea of me and Ladd, her daughter happy and rich and taken care of.
“I was thinking of selling the house,” Mom said. “And moving in someplace smaller, an apartment maybe, when I get back. But now I’m thinking I’ll just rent it. Maybe I can find someone on a month-to-month lease, so you’ll have a place to go, if you need one.”
Part of me wanted to protest, but I didn’t. The loss of the house where I’d grown up—its book-lined walls and my mother’s overgrown garden—would be great enough to want to forestall. Today, when Mom had arrived at my apartment, after Eli let her in, she’d spent less than five minutes talking to Charlie. Apparently that was enough time to convince her that one day I might need to run from him, or perhaps more accurately, that I would need a place to recover after he ran from me.
She said, needing me to urge her more than once, “Or maybe I shouldn’t go at all.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t be silly. I’m a grown woman. I’ll be fine.”
My mother frowned. “Just promise me you won’t marry him,” she said again, her voice so low she might have been speaking to herself more than me.
“Oh, Mom,” I said, not wanting to say, But I love him so much. Instead I said, “You barely spoke to him five minutes.”
“I know,” she admitted. “But I’ve spent a lot of years with young people. I can read them. That one, Charlie, he’s the kind of person who’d only come to every other class.”
My lips twitched with the effort not to smile. Of course she was exactly right. Whereas Ladd would attend every single class, arriving on time, if not early.
“Okay,” I said. “I promise I won’t marry him.”
On my left hand, the reverse tan line created by Ladd’s ring had already become invisible. A few blocks away, at that very moment, he was packing up his house, probably making sure to discard any objects that held trace memories of me.
CHARLIE TOLD ME HE loved me in odd moments, not nearly as often as I wanted to tell him. If my life had become an effort not to complain—about Eli’s remaining on my couch, about Charlie’s running out of money and my TA stipend’s feeding all three of us—the greater effort lay in not announcing my own feelings every time I saw him. I drank up every intimation of his possible love for me, the food he prepared, the broad hands he laid upon me so carefully, and—best of all—the smile that erupted at the sight of me. In all the world, I wanted one thing, to keep him with me. I had to prevent myself making any false moves, from frightening him away with the sheer degree of everything I felt.
As for Eli, he barely registered interest when I gave him the number of the kennel, but he did call. I helped him pick out what to wear for his interview. “Use lots of soap,” I told him, before he showered, and he did, emerging damp, a towel wrapped around his growing midsection, the sour odor very nearly masked. I ironed a pair of khaki pants and a blue plaid shirt, clothes that took the interview seriously enough yet indicated a willingness to be muddied by dog paws. On the drive over I didn’t say anything when Eli lit a cigarette, having already ceded victory in that particular battle. His hands shook, ever so slightly, as the flame caught the paper. It almost made me want to light it for him. He rolled down the window and sent the stream of smoke outside.
“Are you nervous?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “To tell you the truth, it’s hard to feel much of anything these days.” His brows did a funny little twitch, toward each other. It could have been anger or else an expression of nerves he didn’t realize he felt. I wanted to reach out and touch him, close my hand around his forearm, or place it on his shoulder. Something. On the other side of the wall from where he slept, Charlie and I existed in a world of skin on skin. Whereas Eli’s only physical contact was with the cat. Once again, his cat.
I pulled up in front of the kennel. It would be a noisy place to live, with dogs constantly barking. But there was a nice white clapboard office—I guessed the apartment was on its second floor. Its windows looked right out on the dogs. Probably the cats boarded inside and Eli would be able to sneak one out at night and take it to sleep with him if he got the job. I didn’t consider letting him take Tab. My generosity always stopped just short of enough.
“Do you want me to come in with y
ou?” I asked, as he stepped out of the car. Maybe they would take me for his girlfriend; I could confer the needed degree of normal.
“No, it’s okay. I can do it.”
“Break a leg,” I said, and he smiled a little, a rare glimpse of the old Eli, the appreciative crinkle around his eyes.
While Eli interviewed, I sat in the car reading Austin and Mabel, the tangled account of Emily Dickinson’s brother and the woman he became involved with after his marriage to Sue began to crumble. Every page I turned, every minute that ticked by, felt like a good sign. After about a half hour, Eli emerged with a plump gray-haired woman who appeared to be giving him a tour. Another good sign. I stepped out of the car to stretch my legs. A black-and-white collie took note and barked ferociously, a high-pitched warning. Eli reached through the wire and offered her a hand, and the dog quieted, trotting over to him.
“Hey,” Eli said when he came back to the car. “I got the job.”
I walked around to hug him. His fingers trembled at my back. “Good work, Eli,” I said. “Congratulations.”
By the time we returned to my apartment to collect his scant belongings, Charlie was there and came with us to install Eli in his new home.
“I love you,” Charlie told me as the two of us drove away, the sound of barking dogs fading behind us. He reached out, covered my hand with his and added, “Thank you.”
YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS next. After fall gave way to winter, and winter to spring. After Eli worked a few months at the kennel and then abandoned his meds and wandered the streets for weeks before landing back in the hospital. After my mother left the country. On an evening still cool enough for cardigans, Charlie and I carried a bottle of wine across the street and sat on the bench at the Homestead. He knew I liked to be there after dusk—not far from where the Poet herself used to garden, once the light had faded and she knew she wouldn’t be seen.
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