He wanted a break, that was all. It wasn’t his marriage or his children that he wanted to escape. It was his schedule.
It was eating breakfast in the car, running kids to school and preschool, arriving at work to the ringing bell. It was socializing with other couples who had children, visiting his widowed mother each Saturday, caring for the pets (one cat, two hamsters) and their accoutrements (a litter box, a wood-chip cage). It was the email in-box, the class prep, the marking, the arguments with Lauren, the (much worse) silent not-arguments with Lauren. It was her moods and cycles, her habits. (Lately she’d started putting yogurt on her face—something about the lactic acid and her pores.) It was worrying that her business would fail and they would be thousands of dollars in debt. It was worrying that her business would succeed and she would leave him. It was loving her but not having the energy to tell her so, or even to touch her. It was seeing the hurt in her yogurt-smeared face.
His was (Jen herself said so) a lovely life. He just wanted a respite from it. He wanted to meet Jen in a hotel somewhere, in a foreign city, a city they’d never seen, a city that existed only for a weekend.
Two days. Forty-eight hours. That was all he wanted in the world.
Jen slipped the watch back over his wrist, and her fingers on his skin made him dizzy. She fastened the clasp and asked again, “What do we do now?”
He didn’t know the answer. He didn’t even know what time it was. His watch had stopped, and anyway, he wasn’t looking at its face. He was looking at the strap, a simple metal band. It was heavy on his wrist. It was a gift.
The Nap
One afternoon they broke into a house with a long driveway and neglected garden. Steve smashed the latch on the screen door and picked the lock. Lauren had no idea he could do that. They’d met each other only a few months earlier and this was their first vacation together.
The hinges were rusty. Steve kicked open the door.
They wanted to make love—that was all they did in those days. They’d been driving up-island to a bed-and-breakfast they’d booked for the weekend, sharing a bag of chips and listening to eighties pop that made them nostalgic. Then Lauren shifted in the passenger seat and licked Steve’s neck, and he pulled over.
“This is no good,” said Steve as he unclipped her seat belt. “You deserve a bed. You deserve to be properly loved.”
She was a sucker for this kind of talk, so she didn’t say anything as he pulled her toward that locked-up house. It was a simple cottage, just a few rooms—probably someone’s summer home.
They knew little about each other, and nothing about what lay beyond the door. But Steve took Lauren’s hand and they stepped—full of fear, full of longing—into the strange house.
Lauren groped for the light switch, flicked it on, and gasped, delighted with the modern but earthy interior. It was simple, tasteful. Exactly what she would have done. “I love it,” she said.
Steve quickly found the bedroom and they didn’t turn on the lights or bother to remove all of their clothes. They made love in a dark room, on top of a bed that smelled of mildew and dust. Afterward, arms wrapped around each other, they fell asleep.
Lauren was the first to open her eyes. Her muscles were achy and stiff. She’d always had a tense body, a body that worried for her, but this brittleness was new. She stretched her arms above her head, and noticed the ring on her finger—a gold band with no jewels. It was simple, tasteful. She did not remember getting married.
She lay on the bed and listened to Steve’s breath. She knew the rhythm of his exhalations as though they were her own. She shook him, this stranger who had become her husband. “Hey. We fell asleep.”
They climbed groggily from the bed, their eyes sleep-crusted, their mouths dry. It felt like jet lag.
“I’m always like this after a nap,” said Lauren. Then she noticed the way Steve looked at her.
Her appearance shocked him. She was hunched, gray, with folds in the skin of her neck, clusters of age spots on her cheeks. Time had passed. Nearly fifty years.
“Forty-eight,” she corrected him.
He stared at her, his mouth open. “What’s happened?”
“It’s not like you look so great,” she said. “Where’s your hair?”
The room had become theirs, and it was clear from the framed pictures by the bed that they’d raised children. A son and daughter.
“Yes,” said Lauren, suddenly recalling. Cameron was a pediatrician. He was married to a woman who used an old-fashioned loom to weave $300 scarves that she sold on the Internet—what kind of job was that? And their daughter was a freelance writer who lived in Montreal. They worried about her. Ruby. She was such a lonely, guarded woman. She owned two parrots and talked to them as though they were human. She’d once told her mother that the birds would outlive her and Lauren had said, “That’s not true. That’s not possible.” She couldn’t believe that her daughter would die. Just like she couldn’t believe that this grown woman, Ruby, had once locked her tiny mouth to Lauren’s breast.
“They visit during holidays,” said Steve. It was coming back to him. This was their property, purchased when the kids were in school. Since that afternoon when they broke in, they’d fantasized about coming back. So years later, when they saw this house on the market, they bid on it immediately. It had been their summer home until they retired; now they lived here year-round.
They left the bedroom and entered the kitchen. The fridge was full—evidently, they’d become vegetarians, probably at Lauren’s insistence—but neither of them was hungry. In the cupboards they found a matching set of dishes. Lauren moved quickly to the next room, in her busy way, but Steve lingered over the dishes: white and blue bowls and plates. A creamer, a serving platter, a set of salt-and-pepper shakers. He held each object in his hand, feeling the weight of the ceramic, tracing the hairline cracks.
As he held his favorite mug, he noticed his hand. He knew that over time, a person’s chromosomal telomeres shorten. This can lead to damaging mutations, to strange errors in the replication of cells. Crucial proteins are no longer produced; DNA is not repaired. This can be expressed as something dramatic: a disease of one kind or another. Or it might be felt as a quiet, eerie loss of function—a waning. The joints of his fingers were stiff. His arm was weak. The mug, stained from years of coffee drinking, felt heavy. He set it on the counter.
He knew there were limits and that each species has its duration. Mayflies survive only a couple of minutes. Wild blueberry bushes live for thirteen thousand years. It is the usual, necessary, beautiful course of things. So why did he feel such grief?
Lauren came back into the kitchen. “You took up photography.”
Steve had no memory of this, but the chemistry of darkrooms had always fascinated him.
Lauren showed him a series of prints he must have taken of her. Photographs of when she was pregnant, when she was uncharacteristically chubby, and one where she was lying on a green lawn, laughing. She had been so beautiful. Why hadn’t she known it at the time?
“Look at me,” she said, meaning the photo. But Steve examined his wife, and her face still pleased him. Age had softened her. In some of the photos—particularly one taken in this kitchen, years before—she looked hollowed and drawn.
Steve held this last photo and said, “Were you ever unfaithful to me?”
Lauren couldn’t remember. “No. Never.” She considered asking him the same question, but wasn’t sure if the answer mattered.
Steve again picked up that mug.
Lauren was suddenly irritated (it was just like him to get sentimental over a few cracked dishes), so she left him standing by the kitchen counter. Her knees throbbed as she climbed to the attic.
There were no windows. She slid her palm along the wall to find the light switch.
This floor must have been their office; she opened a pine filing cabinet. Steve had been a middle school teacher and had won city- and province-wide awards. There were newspaper clippings that
had been proudly, carefully saved. Lauren had been many things: a clerk in the Sears window-treatments department, a sales rep for a condo corporation, a small-business owner, a large-business owner, and, on occasion, a corporate keynote speaker. A keynote speaker—what kind of job was that? She couldn’t remember being so confident, so audacious.
She leafed through old tax returns. What had it been like to sell window coverings at Sears? It had been fun, she thought. Then she had to sit down, because the memories came back in a rush. Waiting for the bus in the mornings, an umbrella over her head. Wearing those too-tight, fake-leather heels. Discovering a gift for salesmanship, the secret joy it gave her. Having a donut and black coffee in the mall’s food court each afternoon. Carrying binders full of curtain samples, the weight straining her arms.
She was glad that was done. What a relief. But then again, if she could, she’d do it all over. Everything. Her whole life. She’d live it again, just for the small but real pleasures of a donut and coffee, of holding her daughter in her arms, of making money, of sleeping late, of waking up.
She carried a stack of returns down to the kitchen—slowly, concerned about falling on the stairs—where she found Steve, staring at a sugar bowl.
She showed him their tax returns, which they’d always filed jointly. They looked at the paperwork and tried to piece it all together.
Here’s what they did not remember: The time Steve locked himself in the attic for six hours and refused, for no reason he could explain, to come out. The time Lauren smashed several of those blue and white dishes against the countertop, one by one. Their honeymoon in Hawaii. The hundreds of times they read Bartholomew and the Oobleck to Ruby before bed. The fall Steve took from his bike, the year Cam dressed as a penguin for Halloween, the time Ruby spilled grape juice on Lauren’s favorite raw-silk throw.
Here’s what they did remember: The time Cameron was colicky and Lauren was so tired she hallucinated. The time Ruby had her stomach pumped. The winter of the record snowfall, when Cam and Ruby built a snow fort in the backyard. The elaborate breakfasts Lauren prepared, the brand of chocolate bar Steve liked, the agony of trying to wake a teenage Ruby before noon. All four of them dancing in the living room to Prince’s 1999.
Life seemed so solid once, but now had melted like Dalí’s watch and slipped through their fingers. They read over their tax returns, looked at the photos, and decided they’d lived a good life, without tragedy or scandal. Did this make them a success? Had it been the goal? Was it enough?
The sun had gone down and the house was dark. They loved it here, though still had the feeling they were getting away with something. They looked at one another in that old, conspiratorial way. They knew a little about each other, and nothing about what lay beyond the door. But Steve put down the sugar bowl, and took Lauren’s hand. Then—full of fear, full of longing—they left the way they’d come in.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Earlier drafts of several of these stories appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, the Iowa Review, Lucky Peach, the Virginia Quarterly, and the The Walrus. Thank you to the editors of these magazines for their support.
Some of these stories required research and I am indebted to many sources. I couldn’t have written “Girlfriend on Mars” without reading the wonderfully strange Mars 1999 by Brian O’Leary. I couldn’t have written about crows and birds of prey without reading H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, Crow Country by Mark Cocker, Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich, In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson, and the North American Falconers’ Association’s A Bond with the Wild. Most of all, I couldn’t have written about the Hawk Man or his birds without having taken a class at The Raptors in Duncan, BC, where knowledgeable and dedicated staff educate the public about these incredible creatures.
A kernel of inspiration for the story “Last One to Leave” came from Corrie ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place; I read the book as a child and never forgot the idea of being thankful for the fleas. Peter Trower’s work was essential to the writing of “Last One to Leave,” especially his essays “From the Hill to the Spill” and “Sojourn at Junkie Log.” I’m grateful to Harbour Publishing for the way they preserve BC’s history, and to Lorna Jackson, whose inspired teaching at the University of Victoria showed me how to look to history when imagining fiction.
Many thanks to Serhy Yekelchyk, professor at the University of Victoria, who generously agreed to read an early version of “Hard Currency” with an eye to historical accuracy. His help was invaluable, and any remaining errors in the text are entirely mine.
I began the story “Flight” in Aaron Golbeck’s Downtown Eastside Studio Society workshop, and am so appreciative that Aaron and the PEERS participants welcomed me to those sessions.
Chris Erhard Luft recorded an audio version of “Steve and Lauren: Three Love Stories” in his Vancouver studio. Recording and producing the audio took an enormous amount of work; the fact that Chris found time for this project is a testament to his passion for the arts.
I did much of the work on these stories while I was a writer-in-residence. Thank you to the board of Historic Joy Kogawa House, especially Ann-Marie Metten, who is an organizational genius and a supportive friend. Thanks also to the teens and to the members of the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Center who attended my workshops in Vancouver; I’m honored you spent your time with me. A huge thank-you to Jackie Flanagan, Caitlynn Bailey-Cummings and the steering committee of the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program at the University of Calgary, a program that changed my life and introduced me to so many valued friends. Thank you also to Fundación Valparaiso, for their support during my residency in Mojácar, Spain.
To my agent, Tracy Bohan, thank you for your long-sighted and passionate work on my behalf. And thank you to Jacqueline Ko of the Wylie Agency, who has been tireless in her work for me in the U.S. Thank you to Maria Rogers, Steve Colca, Dave Cole, Erin Sinesky Lovett, and everyone at W. W. Norton, especially my editor, Jill Bialosky, whose insightful editorial feedback pushed me to deal with those niggling weak points in my stories. Thank you to Steve Myers and everyone at Penguin Random House, Canada, especially Nicole Winstanley, my editor and ideal reader, whose faith in my work makes all the difference.
Thank you to JoAnn McCaig, Kelsey Attard, and everyone at Freehand Books—I have the best job a writer could ask for. To the staff at Munro’s Books, I’m so grateful for your support. Thank you especially to Jim Munro, who has been my friend as well as a strong advocate for my work. Thank you to Ben Schwartzentruber for his support while I began work on this manuscript, and for his inspiring love of books.
I am grateful to my community of fellow writers who offered advice and edits and much-needed camaraderie: Marjorie Celona, Rhonda Collis, Naomi K. Lewis, Kat Main, Susette Mayr, Aaron Shepherd, Jeanne Shoemaker, Sarah L. Taggart, Aritha Van Herk, and Samantha Warwick. A huge thank-you to the Unmentionables—your feedback, support, and companionship are essential. Most of all, I need to thank Diana Svennes-Smith, who helped immeasurably with each story in this collection. Her quiet confidence in my work allowed me to finish these stories at a time when I had lost faith in them. Diana, thank you for your friendship and for sharing your editorial vision and wisdom with me.
My family has had such a positive influence on the creation of these stories. My mum, Pauline Willis, helps me in so many essential ways, including by acting as a sounding board and proofreader. My dad, Gary Willis, understands the peculiarities of the writer’s life and I so appreciate our conversations and his advice. My aunt, Charis Wahl, read an early version of this manuscript, told me—kindly, honestly—that it wasn’t working, and helped point the way forward.
Kris Demeanor makes me laugh and makes me breakfast, and I’m grateful every day for his commitment to thoughtful art, his intelligence, and his openheartedness.
ALSO BY DEBORAH WILLIS
Vanishing and Other Stories
Copyright © 2
017 by Deborah Willis
All rights reserved
First Edition
For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at
[email protected] or 800-233-4830
Book design by Brooke Koven
Production manager: Anna Oler
Jacket Design by Keith Hayes
Jacket Photograph by Robert Norbury/
Millenium Images, UK
ISBN 978-0-393-28589-5
ISBN 978-0-393-28590-1 (e-book)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS
The Dark and Other Love Stories Page 21