by Deb Caletti
“Oh, she was smart, all right,” Jerry says. “Driven like you wouldn’t believe. She’s probably married some millionaire and is living on a fabulous ranch in Montana. I never liked her. She was calculating.”
“Jerry,” Mark says.
“And, my God, are we saying anything tonight about the one we really wonder about? That professor? The bird guy? We saw it with our own eyes at that holiday party.” Jerry leans in toward Isabelle. “Henry and Sarah had this big festive event for their university friends…We brought the kids for Christmas. Swear to God, this man…Was he her boss? I can’t quite recall, but he was completely leering, and she wasn’t doing anything to discourage it, that’s for sure.”
“Can you incompletely leer?” Mark asks.
“You saw it. She loved it.”
“Jerry, come on. Stop.”
Henry is right. It feels shameful to bash her.
“The guy was good-looking, I admit. He had some sort of charisma, but Jesus. And you know what else? She was cold. Total disinterest in the children. The girls did everything to get her attention, and zero. Zilch. Nothing. Like they didn’t exist.”
“Not everyone is maternal,” Dr. Mark says.
“Complicated,” Henry says. “She was complicated.”
“We don’t know what happened, all right? We only know what didn’t happen,” Dr. Mark says.
“She was drinking. We argued. She was upset. She was there, and then she wasn’t. That boat was gone…The water was rough that night,” Henry says. He hasn’t eaten anything, either. His slab of halibut is untouched, and so are those glistening summer vegetables. His roll is missing one small bite. “But I’ll never know for sure, do you see? I will never know.”
“She probably had a plan. She probably had someone waiting for her. That guy…A plan that went very wrong.”
“We don’t know,” Dr. Mark says. “I don’t think it’s helpful to go all conspiracy theory, Jerry. You know how I feel about that. It’s not where the evidence points. Drinking, anger, a boat? It seems clear. And, Henry, you’d probably rather think she’s alive somewhere, but that’s just not likely. You do know, Henry. We’ve never heard a word. Not a peep. Maybe it’s time to finally accept the truth.”
“It’s awful. It’s just awful,” Jerry says. “If she went overboard, this man never even had a chance to mourn, the way they were after him. Can you imagine?” She looks at Isabelle hard.
Isabelle shakes her head. She can’t imagine. Actually, she can’t at all.
“Our whole family has been broken by this. Devastated. I feel so sad for my brother.”
Mark does look broken and devastated. He quietly leans back in his chair, away from Isabelle, as if he doesn’t know what else to say. He sighs. And it’s a true and honest sigh, an exhale of painful years and sleepless nights.
What else is there to say? Because, if Henry really hasn’t harmed anyone, then this is the worst nightmare. He is the most tragic kind of victim, one who has lost loved ones and his own life. If Henry is an innocent man, Isabelle herself is just one more person in a line of people who has wrongly persecuted him.
Her heart squeezes. It feels like—she doesn’t have any idea. Maybe grief? Grief for the women and Henry and herself and all humans, up against the awful shit life brings?
No one speaks. There is just restaurant noise—the din of conversation and the clink of silverware and glass. The weight of the silence is immense. The weight of the loss is.
“Does anyone else need another drink? Because I sure as hell do,” Dr. Mark says. They all relief-laugh. All of them, even Isabelle. Because who doesn’t need a drink after this? They order aperitifs and a dessert to share. Jerry chooses the peach tart. It’s another deplorable choice, Sarah’s specialty, but no one corrects her.
The drinks arrive. “This is crazy, but I want to make a toast,” Dr. Mark says. They lift their tiny glasses. “To the future.”
They clink. They empty their glasses and Henry orders another round. Isabelle loves aperitifs. She loves the miniature vessels and the liquid, thick as a potion, and she loves the word itself. Maybe it’s just the alcohol softening her heart and nerves, but something feels cleared away. Her spirit has ever so slightly lifted. There is this doctor, a pediatrician, a man who is trusted with what’s most precious in our world, and there is that doctor’s own trust, placed in Henry. There’s a family, and a brother. Henry is an uncle to their two daughters. There is, she can see it between them, love.
There is belief.
She is pleasantly intoxicated. She should’ve eaten something if she was going to down these drinks. But, God, the fuzz and warmth feel so good. It feels like such a relief.
Under the table, Henry takes the tips of her fingers in his hand.
The peach tart arrives. Mark and Jerry dive in. Like crows on a carcass, she thinks.
Her mind is being dramatic. Stirring up trouble. Acting complicated. Stop it, she tells herself. It’s just a dessert!
Jesus, Isabelle. I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, Maggie says.
But they’re in The Bayshore, where Isabelle went to dinner before homecoming in her junior year. She suddenly remembers her date in his awkward suit, the boutonniere with its stem wrapped in green tape, and the pin with a fake pearl on the end. Now, there is some argument over the bill. Henry wins and pays. He helps her with her sweater. There are no evil men with shoving hands here. No demons with glowing eyes.
Outside, the fog has come back. They stand under the restaurant’s red awning. Jerry blows into her hands as if the summer night has turned frigid. The fog has swooped low, hovers thick over the water and the docks so that only the red wharf lamps and a few haloed streetlights can be seen. The sailboats clank and groan in the mist.
Mark and Jerry hug Isabelle goodbye.
“He’s a sweetheart,” Jerry says. “For God’s sake, he’s a poet.”
“He needs you,” Mark whispers to Isabelle, squeezing her shoulder.
Mark takes Jerry’s arm and they head to Maggie’s old car, parked across the street. Unlike Maggie, the car, a dim, mystical outline, is keeping its opinions to itself. Mark and Jerry disappear like apparitions, giving Isabelle and Henry a moment alone.
“I’m starving,” he says.
They both laugh. It is such a normal thing to say.
“Me, too.”
“You met my brother.”
“I like your brother.”
“Jerry takes some getting used to.”
“I think this is probably true.”
“I want to take you out again. Soon. Can I reintroduce myself? Start over, since I fucked this up so bad?”
“I don’t know, Henry. I have some thinking to do. You lied to me. That doesn’t just go away. None of this can just go away that easily.”
“I lied to you, and I’ll never forgive myself for it. God, I hope you can understand why I did. How do you handle something like this? I don’t know, Isabelle. Clearly, I didn’t handle it well. It just felt so good to be ordinary, if you can understand that. Please say we’ll at least have dinner.”
“Jesus, Henry. This is a lot. It’s all a lot to take in.”
“Please. Dinner! Just that.”
His face, his blue shirt, the glowing yellow windows of The Bayshore, they are the only thing she can see clearly in this fog. She smells his familiar scent, and the boozy warmth from their breath.
“All right.”
Isabelle! You fucking fool! Maggie says. Isabelle’s friend Anne would say it, too, and Jane will when she hears about it, Eddie will, any sensible person who is told the story will. She can hear the chorus: What an idiot! How pathetic! How stupid! Who would do that? I would never believe him! I would never do something that insane! I would never, I would never, I would never, say the righteous.
And why is it that her fury blooms so full and magnificently bitter there, in her own mind? She can box and punch in that barbed garden, spread poison at the roots, fling bolts that sin
ge every little shrub in sight. She can fight with herself, because her opponent is weak. You never once placed your trust somewhere questionable? Isabelle silently shouts back to the choir. You never once made a dubious choice in the name of love? You have never decided to maybe forgive a lie? Well, congrat-u-fucking-lations. You are incredible! You deserve a medal! Judge away! Sit high up on that throne of righteousness. Just be careful you don’t fall.
She should have stopped at aperitif number one.
—
The ceiling swirls in Jane’s guest room. It’s been a night of bad idea upon bad idea, because, back at Jane’s, she remembers a bottle of Baileys in the high cupboard of Jane’s kitchen. Why not have another? Now, the cream-and-alcohol spin, and she’s on a teacup ride on that bed. Life is a teacup ride, Isabelle thinks, but she’s drunk.
Some reasonable part of her lays out a calm plan: She’ll take her time to decide. She’ll wait and see what she feels about this horrible situation with Henry. She can walk away anytime she likes.
But another piece of her, a quiet, dangerous piece, the piece she wouldn’t admit to having in a million years, just watches Jane’s ceiling make another revolution around her sun, knowing Henry may be her fate. She desires things—she doesn’t even know what, just large things. Fast rides on motorcycles, careless sex, foreign lands, something. Something not this. Something not Isabelle Austen, self. Her drunk head plus the darkest parts of her soul decide. It’s your worst nightmare of an election, where the crazy write-in wins. Anne and the sensible people in her head groan. But Isabelle believes that even Anne and the sensible people have secret longings for wild open air and speeding scenery, for the fear and hope in unfamiliar skin.
Well, she’ll end up with either the love or the punishment she deserves, for sure.
Chapter 16
Matias’s eyebrows are like two magnets, attracting, repelling. “Visually restricting string tests…horizontal mirror…green dog toy,” he says, sitting across the desk from Weary. These are the words that zip out, anyway, from the hum and drone of the rest. They buzz in front of Weary’s face like an annoying fly that he wishes he could swat away. Matias is a nice young man with sincere eyes, a nest of black hair, and one of those beards that takes itself too seriously. Weary forgets what those beards are called. Only men over forty wear them in the States, but that news hasn’t made it to New Caledonia yet.
“I think it’s potentially an important discovery, Dr. Weary. It’s early yet, but—”
“I’m sorry?”
“These clusters of perineuronal satellite oligodendroglia in the telencephala of healthy NC crows.”
“Yes, yes. That’s very exciting. Thrilling, Matias. Thrilling.”
“In humans, low numbers are linked to—”
The window is open, and a warm breeze drifts through, but so does laughter. It’s Lotto and Yann.
“Mieux surveiller, ourson…” Yann says, in a teasing, singsong voice. Better watch out, bear cub. He sounds drunk.
“Tais-toi. Tais-toi cr…tin!” Shut up. Shut up, moron.
“Pauvre, professeur solitaire. L’admettre, tu crois qu’il est sexy.” Poor, lonely professor. Admit it, you think he’s sexy.
Terrific. Wonderful. Just great. Weary understands immediately that he is the butt of this joke. He is the lonely professor, hot for a “bear cub,” which is French slang for a young and hairy gay man.
Matias blushes. He is crimson. For God’s sake. Get with the times! But these things are not spoken about in this region, let alone accepted. The people here are traditional and private. This behavior of Yann’s will have to be addressed, even if Weary has heard the whispers about himself before. He knows what a lot of people call him. Discret. A reserved and closeted homosexual.
Well, so what, there are rumors. Of course there are. Weary knows he must seem like an odd, solitary bachelor who keeps to himself. They will talk and guess, because he is keeping secrets. They don’t know about Sarah. Gossip all you want. He knows who he is, and what he wants, though lately what he wants most is interfering with regular life.
Those new photos—they are the cause of his current problems. He can’t focus on his work. He can barely concentrate on anything. He is so, so close to his heart’s desire that his mind can only hold this single thought, which everything else swirls around like a cyclone: Soon. He left the water running in his bathroom sink at home. He locked himself out of his house and had to climb in through the kitchen window. Soon, soon, soon.
Right now, the file folder with Matias’s study information sits open before him. This research aims to challenge the previous claims that cognition of NC crows is linked to enlargement of associative regions such as the mesopallium or increased foliation…
It looks like Chinese. Weary can’t make sense of it. It’s so much blah blah blah that it makes his head throb. Yann is still laughing loudly outside, but he’s moved on to sexy-sexy comments about Aimée now. Weary hates assholes like that. Yann’s days are numbered.
“Are you all right, Professor?”
Matias’s eyebrows now huddle in concern, two fuzzy family members at an intervention. Weary realizes he’s snapped a pencil in half. The two pieces are gripped in his palm. “Of course, Matias. Perfectly fine. Fine.”
“Perhaps we should wrap up? Maybe, uh, we can speak more another day—”
“Yes, yes. Onward! Excellent work. Until Monday, then. You know where you can find me, should the NC’s start using the string to knit sweaters, ha-ha.”
“Ha-ha,” Matias chuckles politely. He looks nervous. He hurries out of there. This Henry North business better resolve quickly before Weary loses his job.
Goatee. That’s the word for Matias’s beard.
—
Back at home that evening, a real insect buzzes. A mosquito, his abdomen fat with blood. Dengue fever exists in New Caledonia, so Weary does not want to take chances. He chases the brute with his slipper. It zzz’s in front of his face, taunting, then scoots to a high corner. Weary stands on a chair and waves a broom, but no luck.
Fine. It’s a distraction, anyway, from the lure of the computer. He tells himself not to do it, but he can’t seem to stop. Isn’t it strange, all this time spent looking at other people’s lives instead of living our own? Peering and lurking and comparing? He doesn’t know why other people do it. He doubts their goals are similar to his. He checks again. His old pal, ShutR. Surprise, surprise. There have been no new photos in the last day, no new photos in the last twelve hours, six hours, one hour, ten minutes, five minutes, two, since Weary last looked. He has no idea how many times he’s refreshed that page today alone.
A hundred? That sounds crazy. It sounds insane.
Could anyone blame him, though? Weary’s plan has been two years, almost three now in the making. He’s ready for his next move, by God! No wonder he clicks and clicks on his variable interval schedule, waiting for the reinforcement he is dreaming of, the yes–go–it’s time! While he still clicks and waits, clicks and waits, though, it’s weird, it truly is, how day by day, events seem to follow right along the path he assumed they would, step by tragic step, much to his delight, dread, and utter terror. Isabelle knows about Henry, Weary is sure, and she is with him regardless, and those photos are proof. You can start to feel a little like a magician or like God, big hands on the keyboard, imagining the storyline that then comes alive.
He glares at that mosquito, clinging now to a lampshade. A roach (so many of them here) scurries under the desk and disappears, but who cares. It won’t kill anyone like that mosquito might. “You think so, do you?” he says aloud. He grabs his nightshirt, whacks. The mosquito flits off, and the shade tilts.
The words plan, plot, scheme make him feel evil, even when he just thinks them. He is not evil. He’s not crazy or obsessed. Okay, he’s obsessed. But he reminds himself that this whole…what? Thing, situation, mess, reason for living…It did not begin as a plan. Not this plan. He was only coping with the terrible and shocking
loss of Sarah, the shaking horror, making his way moment to moment through the slow recuperation to a time when he could even sleep again.
And then one night, he finally did sleep, but he woke with a start as if he’d been slapped from a dream. His eyes popped open and he suddenly had an understanding, a dawn of realization. A midnight strike of genius.
He knew what had to be done. He knew what could be done, if.
After that, the long watch began. And Henry North helped everything along, just by being Henry North, and doing what Henry North does. First came the migration, his move to Parrish. Then came the courtship displays. Henry faced the female and fluffed his feathers. He spread his wings and tail and proceeded to bow repeatedly while uttering a brief rattling song. Interrupted by a frightening predator, the female took flight. But now there’s more fluffing and bowing, and the mating resumes.
There is no guarantee, none, that any of Weary’s efforts will even pay off. In spite of the way the storyline ticks along, it’s all a long shot. Weary tries not to think about how long of a shot it actually is. Instead, he must focus on what he understands about human and animal behavior. He must use his critical eye to study the images for the smallest detail, the tiny indication that it’s time. Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior, but where is that moment where the two intersect? Where is that point in the center of the X, where past and future is now?
His house has grown dark and he hasn’t even noticed. He doesn’t bother turning on the lights even when he goes to the kitchen to refill his wineglass. He’s back again. Refresh. Nothing. It’s still that last image that appeared a few days ago.