Virgil Wander

by Leif Enger

  “Sorry, Lydia,” Ann said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “You haven’t. We’re finished, I guess,” Lydia said. She thanked me for the croissant and marched away with a civil nod to Ann.

  Ann looked at me with a grave expression. She came in and shut the door.

  I’d been curious how this encounter would go.

  Ann looked away and said, “Lydia hates my idea.”

  “You aren’t enemies, Ann. She recruited you. She called you a concept gal.”

  “Do you hate my idea?”

  “Not at all. Hard luck is the only mine still producing. Have a croissant—Lily Pea brought them.”

  Ann looked at the rolls, then back at me. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable yesterday. I was visiting Adam.” Her cheeks flushed lightly; her dangly earrings came forward, along with a perfume like dried apples; her hair had been cut and she pushed it behind one ear. She said, “Do you think I am terrible now?”

  “Ann. Of course not.”

  She was clad in a yellow cashmere sweater which seemed to make her self-conscious. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, sure I’m all right.” If she were going to roll her eyes it would be now, but she didn’t. “You’re afraid Adam’s taking advantage, only he really isn’t. I’m a tough one, Virgil. You wouldn’t think so, but I’m sort of unbelievably tough.” She said so in a tone of wonder, as though this knowledge had only recently landed.

  “Can I ask you about Jerry?”

  She gave me a blank look.

  “I went and saw him at the Hoshaver. It isn’t ideal over there. He’s sleeping in a closet with mice.”

  “Jerry’s at the Hoshaver?” Ann was startled. “I didn’t know, Virgil—he hasn’t lived with me in a year.”

  Now I must’ve looked blank.

  “Fifteen months ago,” she explained. “We didn’t throw things or make a lot of noise. He just left. It isn’t official but will be someday. Do you know until he started working for Adam I was still buying his groceries and gas? Jerry is always broke.”

  “Where did he move to fifteen months ago?”

  “Little dumpy hunting shack on his brother Owen’s piece of swampland. One day he went out there and just stayed. He said I was bossy and a damn schemer—okay, but somebody better make plans or what ever gets done? He comes over Sunday afternoons, we have a meal together, and he begs me to take him back, but I can’t. I can’t do it, Virgil. Life is improved without Jerry around.”

  I was sorry to hear this news. Ann blinked a few times. She didn’t cry but commenced listing regrets. She regretted marrying Jerry instead of finishing her business degree years ago. She regretted Jerry’s deep sadness, though it did not persuade her to reconcile. She regretted that Lydia, whom she admired, now thought of her as a damn schemer, the way Jerry did. It wasn’t her fault she was goal-oriented. If Barrett hadn’t glommed onto Hard Luck Days she had twenty other ideas, most of them better. Ann talked quite a while, there in my office. Why am I still surprised when it turns out there is more to the story? There were still two croissants left so I slid the box toward her and she took one. Eventually she thanked me for listening and opened the door and went to her desk. Her phone rang and she answered politely. A person never knows what is next—I don’t, anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.

  8

  AFTER BJORN ARRIVED AT THE EMPRESS I CALLED NADINE AND SLIPPED over there for a visit. It was a cold night with damp wind rising off the lake, shaking the yellowed plastic lamppost angels. Every year the city considers new holiday decorations but never follows through. Even the cheesiest snowflakes, stars, or reindeer are a big investment for a town like Greenstone. Those angels remember Dick Nixon.

  The last time I was in Nadine’s house it still felt like Alec’s house too. He’d been gone half a year then, but his stuff remained everywhere—his blue flannel shirt on the doorknob, his Barbasol cream on the sink, and his moccasins in the carpeted hallway. It was as if he’d just popped out to the post office.

  A decade later much was changed. Nadine met me at the door and rushed me through the living room which was no longer dark-paneled but open and white as a canvas. Alec was absent except in a framed wedding photo on a side table and a family snapshot from when Bjorn was five or six, standing on a dock with a lake in the background.

  “Come on in the basement,” she called—she’d already disappeared through the kitchen and was heading downstairs. Alec had set up his neon equipment down there, I remembered, while the sign-painting and vinyl repairs were done in a chilly downtown garret rented from a florist named Bleeck. After Nadine decided to carry on the business, she told Bleeck farewell and worked from home.

  “Thanks for coming,” Nadine said, as I arrived downstairs. “I have to ship tomorrow, so you’re my only chance to brag.”

  The workshop was simple and small; the walls were whitewashed bedrock with gas lines running to torches and ribbon burners and homebuilt racks stacked with phosphor-coated glass tubes. I’d been down there when Alec repaired my marquee. Back then it was a vaguely ominous scene, with low buzzing fluorescents and an alleyway smell. Nadine by contrast liked a clean dry shop. It was crisp and lit up; she’d installed an egress window with a grass-level view of the backyard and a rectangle of sky framing the water tower two blocks away. Instead of an alley it smelled of drywall and paint. It wasn’t a scene but a workplace. On a tall bench were propped two neons in stages of repair—one a rocket ship with fins and round portholes, the other a sign saying breakfast in appealing handscript. Nadine’s bookstore creation was temporarily mounted above the bench. It looked like a ropy gray rectangle. No corpse is as dead as unlit neon.

  “Hang on.” She snapped off the overhead. In the darkness a mild vertigo made itself known, also the sound of my own breathing, a sense of space. Nadine stepped forward and threw a switch, and the sign smoldered up before us.

  Imagine a volume of bold proportions, a book you would struggle to lift—a Gutenberg Bible, an unabridged Webster’s lying open on its stand. It was outlined in blue that flared at the corners and glowed with subdued intensity. Its leaves were indicated by a strand of white neon, plump and curvaceous on top, the lower corner of the right-hand page curling upward as though caught by a breeze.

  She took hold of my arm. Lit dust loitered in the gloom.

  “Well?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I told her.

  “That’s it? I’m dying for compliments here.”

  “Hang on, I’m just taking it in. It’s balanced, you know? Bracing. Spare. But generous too—the way the pages curve at the top. Almost lavish.”

  She grinned at this contradictory and overblown description—she wanted some adjectives, after all. Still, she seemed to agree. She’d just received an order for eight neons from a barbecue chain headquartered in St. Paul. They’d called that afternoon.

  “What kind of designs?”

  “Pigs,” she replied. “They asked for pigs. It’s a rib joint. I went historical. A brave pig crossing the Delaware, a pig on the deck of Noah’s Ark. They liked my drawings.”

  “They’d be idiots not to,” I said, turning to face her. “You’re awfully good, Nadine.”

  She looked away and back to me. “Maybe I am.”

  We fell into a slow sort of talk. When happy or pleased with herself Nadine became very deliberate. She spoke in short sentences and made self-mocking faces. Her eyes drifted as if she were detached or distracted, but really she was taking her time absorbing whatever the happy thing was. Some people are natural bubble machines. Not Nadine. Her gladness needs a little room.

  So we went along slowly, standing in the soft radiance of the neon book. I felt more comfortable than I had since the accident. I forgot to wonder what Nadine thought of me and just enjoyed the rise and fall of her voice, her occasional glances, her agre
eable laugh reaching in my direction. She talked about burning her thumb on a hot glass tube, the proper sweetness of corn bread, an encounter last week with a family of voles who’d made big plans for her garage. Nadine laughed readily, an undervalued quality. Kate had been the opposite—she was annoyed by slow drivers, slow waiters, slow sentences that took a while to reach their destinations. A snag in the carpeting could undo her happiness.

  Nadine let her laughter subside. “Bjorn says you’re off-loading the vault.”

  I told her about Fergus Flint who might call any day, knock wood. I told her the Empress was for sale.

  “You’re getting ready,” she said brightly.

  I hadn’t considered it in those words—getting ready. I’d been thinking in terms of getting out, which cast me inevitably as a refugee. Getting ready was better. It sounded youthful. Youth had crept away from me but perhaps was still in sight. “Nadine,” said my voice. “You know how people daydream about the Bahamas, with the beaches and palm trees? I don’t know if they really do, no doubt it’s mostly advertising, but you’re the island I think about.”

  She’d been leaning gently against me but stepped back at this and looked at me straight on. I’d only been saying what was on my mind—just cruising along, no major declarations in mind. Now I recognized the tightrope onto which I had stepped.

  “Go ahead then,” Nadine said.

  “All right,” I said. “Great, all right. Since the accident I am stupid. You’ve seen it yourself. Words come and go. My timing is off. I see things and then they aren’t there. Loud noises bother me.”

  I could’ve kept going—it was a long list. Nadine had turned her face and wouldn’t look at me. “Any of this might be permanent,” I went on. “Nobody knows. But I think about you every day, and have almost forever. Even when I was seeing Kate I thought about you. Even before Alec flew away. You’ve been in my mind so long it’s like you were always there. I can’t remember when you weren’t. I know you aren’t really like an island. It’s a bad comparison. I understand if you are tired of men with stupid old torches. I’m sorry this became such a speech.”

  There was a quite lengthy silence.

  “I understand restraint,” she said, clearly exercising some, “but ten years, Virgil. This isn’t Remains of the Day.”

  I said, “It would’ve felt disloyal,” only to realize this statement, my guiding star and default position, had not been true in years. “There was so much competition,” I added—which likewise, spoken, became silly and beside the point. Burdens accrue in isolation. Pride, fear, stupidity, lassitude build up like layers of paint. I tried once more to get underneath and peel them all away. “I didn’t think you’d like me back.”

  With her face still turned she said, “Is this why you’re so good to Bjorn?”

  “Maybe it was at first.”

  She turned to me. Her face looked soft and her eyes dark and canny. Desire and curiosity seized me.

  “I always wondered what you thought,” I confessed, “about that time in the post office, years ago.”

  She looked away seeming not to remember, so I briefly recapped standing in line, my mind adrift until I sort of woke up and realized I was holding her hand, had reached for it without even thinking. “How disorienting that must have been for you,” I concluded, “and what you must’ve thought of me—inconsiderate, tactless, infantile, presumptuous …” I was so relieved to have this out in the open that I’d achieved a spontaneous adjective roll, but Nadine stiffened noticeably.

  “I hope you didn’t torment yourself about that.”

  “Less so recently,” I conceded.

  She said, “Virgil, you have been more stupid than you know, and for a longer time. You never took my hand that day.” She looked fierce and angry. “Idiot—I took yours.”

  Words deserted me. Nadine’s expression grew small and hard. She looked so mad I felt myself tumbling into a pit of new and formidable torments, involving missed chances and peak years wasted; I glimpsed an alternative time line in which I wasn’t alone, thus never acquired the lonely habit of photographing storms, thus never drove over the cliff. But I didn’t plunge far in this miserable vortex because Nadine’s tough hands were all tangled up in my hair and she was pulling me in for the sort of nourishing, soft yet forceful, escalating kiss the movies only now and then get right.

  “To be clear,” she said, long moments later, “this means I like you back.”

  It’s possible to perceive what is coming and still be dumbfounded when it happens. Even now I don’t remember a precise chain of events, only Nadine’s low voice, an awareness of her neck, its long smooth shadows, and a sense of things hidden and turning, as if the gears and springs that ease us forward hadn’t been suspended but were always ticking patiently behind the scenes. I guess after a while you stop expecting to be at home with another person. Fully home at last. It starts to seem not just against the odds but against physics. Yet for the moment we were clear as water, plain as yes and no. She hung on and anchored me when vertigo returned. There was very much to talk about, yet nothing needed saying—all the ground was new, yet none of it was strange. She kept looking away then back to me, as though at a nice surprise. This was maybe best of all. I never once expected to be someone’s nice surprise.

  When Bjorn called, her head was on my chest. She’d been talking in a soft voice and cleared her throat to reclaim her usual tone before answering the phone.

  I heard him say, “Mom? Is Virgil with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  She handed me the phone.

  “Hey, Mr. Wander.” Bjorn’s voice echoed slightly—he was in the auditorium. I could hear him pushing the clattery bucket down front. “I don’t want to spring anything on you, but can I take a couple of evenings off?”

  “What’s up, Bjorn?”

  “Job opportunity,” he said. “Nothing permanent, just a little painting. Probably take less than a week. But it pays pretty good.”

  Nadine still had her head on my chest. I could feel her smile. I said, “Are you jockeying for a raise, Bjorn? Because we can discuss this.”

  “No, just seeing if you can spare me pretty soon.”

  “What’s the job?”

  “It’s for Mr. Leer,” Bjorn said. “He came to the movie tonight and stayed around after. He needs a few rooms painted in his house. He really liked the work I did in here.”

  Nadine heard him say Mr. Leer and sat up straight. I said, “Is he there now, Bjorn?”

  “He left when I had to start cleaning up.”

  “I think you’ll want to run this past your mom.”

  “Right—just thought I’d ask you for the time off, first.”

  “We’ll talk about it.”

  I set the phone down. Just like that Nadine was apart from me—pulling her hair back, assembling herself. She moved fast. Her woolen coat was on a hook; she slid into it like armor. She pulled on leather boots. Her movements were aggressive and primitive. She might’ve been looking around for a crossbow.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Leer’s. Right now. Want to come?”

  “Yes.” I was confused but felt strong and not dizzy at all. I didn’t understand what had got hold of Nadine, but I trusted her. Maybe she was further down a road I’d just discovered.

  9

  HERE’S THE SHORT HISTORY AS I RECEIVED IT, ON THE ROAD TO ADAM Leer’s.

  Leer had done a brief stint in the torchlight brigade, as I already knew. His mode was overkill—champagne, live lobsters flown in from Maine. It was exciting after track coaches, but Nadine kept alert. She read his long-ago Esquire interview, watched his disquieting movie. In person he was appealing and hard to deter. She declined his presents, and her rebuff amused him. She said to slow down or at least to call first; he cheerfully refused to do either. He’d sit on the porch doing magic for Bjorn, spinning coins that twirled forever, plucking cards from the air. He was a dazzling mimic wit
h dead-on impressions of frantic old Mrs. Bloom next door and Bjorn’s fourth-grade teacher Mr. Saddiq. Bjorn laughed himself limp while Leer watched Nadine for clues. But she was conflicted. Leer seemed incomplete. She admitted his charm but where was his tragedy? He’d outlived his family and two wives, yet didn’t seem bowed in the slightest. He had full lips for a man of his age, his waist was still narrow, his hair wavy and thick. He wore his shirts open and his shoes without socks. He thinks he’s Lord Byron, she said to a friend, who replied, Then send him to me.

  In the thick of all this Nadine began dreaming, the images vivid but far away, blurred at the edges as if through a telescope. What tied the dreams together was Bjorn.

  He died in every one.

  He broke through the ice, he fell out of a window. He got an infection and shivered to death. Whether Nadine was awake or asleep the vignettes played at their own will—Bjorn crushed by a rockslide, stung by a bee so his throat buttoned up. In one striking episode his bones dissolved in rapid succession and he slid to the floor like a jellyfish.

  Then Leer departed for several months—to consult on a movie, he said. In his absence Bjorn regained poise, if not really strength. Nadine found she could rest. Her mind recharged. She ceased being ambushed by death tableaux. She planted a garden, took a management class at UMD. In time she put the siege out of her mind as though forgetting the worst of an illness.

  Life spun along until midsummer when she woke from a scene of Bjorn running. He was tall in the dream, with an easy long stride. Then he tripped and went down, rose, and bent panting over his knees. Color gathered at his lips like a bruise. She heard his striving lungs. “Mom,” he said quietly. She woke wrung out and couldn’t shake it. That afternoon the buzzer rang. Adam Leer stood on the porch—fresh from Mexico, brown as a penny, woven huaraches on his feet. He’d brought her a case of silver tequila and a live tarantula for Bjorn. She spoke to him through the screen—there’s nothing for you here, thanks for the effort, stay away from my boy. Leer was silent and patient. He seemed unmoved by her rejection. His face settled into the weeds. He drove off leaving the gifts. Bjorn would be home from school in ten minutes. She watered the grass with tequila and crushed the frantic spider in its box.