Stranger, Father, Beloved

by Taylor Larsen

  She had found her mother’s high school yearbook in Max’s room, and she had it open alongside the other, examining the smile of each of the students. Toward the back of the book were the messages written by her mother’s friends. One said, “I’ll never quite figure out what you’ve done to me.” She couldn’t make out the name under the signature. That was certainly a very out of the ordinary thing to say, especially to her mother, who seemed incapable of sparking such a profound and enigmatic comment from another person. Jill had often mentioned to her that there are some people who lead lives in which they merely graze the surface of their potential. Her mother must be one of those people—untapped. What treasures did she have? Ryan could not imagine any, although, looking around the room at the tiny comforts provided by her mother, such as the blue cashmere blanket folded at Max’s feet, should he need extra covering in the middle of the night, she was overtaken by a sense that there was something. It was clear that her mother had known the blanket’s extra softness would calm his anxiety.

  She saw a photo of Max and herself, her arms wrapped around him, which her mother had framed and set beside his bed. Her mother would never put a photo of herself and Max on display; she would consider that vain. Yet she had shown the yearbook to Max to entertain him. Maybe humility was both her mother’s gift and her source of failure?

  Along the same lines, Jill was always talking about how crucial it was to manifest one’s potential and it was her best and worst trait. Ryan was sickened by a woman of Jill’s age having so much ambition but nothing to show for it. All she had was her hearty laugh and dumb earnestness. And yet, if it were possible, Ryan would spend every free moment with her. She mattered to Jill.

  She looked over at the shape of Max’s body under the comforter. His right arm was extended out over his comforter, revealing the sleeve of his favorite red flannel pajamas. She recognized the vague outline of the green squares on the red background, even in the dark. The only time he didn’t wear them was when they were crumpled in the bottom of the hamper in the laundry room. Seeing his tiny face asleep, a face that would be handsome if it weren’t so tense and compressed, she felt love for him flow easily through her. She wondered if he was aware that she was there with him. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine what he might be dreaming. It must be something rough, jagged but not scary, because she was convinced that nothing was scary to her brother, not because he was brave but because he was worn out. He seemed aged though he was so small and only six years old, as he lay absorbed in another world. He held his raggedy brown teddy bear to his chest as he always did.

  But now he was sleeping. She was glad for him, grateful for these moments of peace, when she could sit with him in silence. She knew that the older he became, the more problems he would face. He would grow to be awkward-looking and scrawny and would suffer because of it. He would be unathletic because of his asthma—a painfully withdrawn, hidden person.

  This was probably his best time. For with a child so many flaws were overlooked, pardoned. It was his family’s responsibility to make sure these years were as joyful as possible.

  Before leaving Max’s room, Ryan peered out his bedroom window at the dark yard. The lights from the living room shone onto the lawn, illuminating patches of grass with yellow light. She looked for the skinny little lone fox that had taken an interest in their property and could sometimes be seen hanging around the bushes at night. He had killed a few of the wild rabbits that lived in the bushes. Ryan had noticed that even though he had managed to eat, the fox was quite skinny, and when she saw him, often at dusk, when the yard filled with shadows, he would stop and stare at her with those intense, electric-green eyes before disappearing fully into a bush. He walked as if his joints ached, and he held himself in a dignified way; there was something noble about his solitary life. He didn’t appear that night. She would leave some fruit out for him in the morning by one of the far bushes in the yard. He would eat fruit if he came across it and perhaps the sight of those skinny ribs would disappear beneath a fuller body. He seemed to prefer to walk alone at night and keep to the dark bushes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “The Peninsula,” as both locals and tourists called it, stretched about twenty miles into the ocean from the mainland of Rhode Island. The Peninsula’s nucleus was skewed, its only town located at its base nearest the mainland. If you traveled farther out onto it, you encountered only random shops and the occasional lonely bar or restaurant. Once you passed the town of Orin, the road stretched uninterrupted for miles and you entered a kind of wilderness. From the edge of the “highway,” the main road that ran around the edge of all three sides of the Peninsula, you saw rocky coast and water on your left and woods on your right. The center of the Peninsula consisted of deep forest, and, buried within this forest, a network of narrow, winding roads led to a small number of privileged houses, maybe thirty in total, all of them large, enfolded within the privacy of the woods.

  Property in the center of the Peninsula was hard to purchase, as most of the houses rarely went up for sale. Once people owned, they generally stayed put. Though it was wild and touristy, Michael liked to think of this little section of Earth as the most desirable part of Rhode Island. Sure, areas such as Newport were beautiful and full of wealth, but the peninsula known as Orin’s Island was something special—the mix of the forest and the sea reminded him of what he thought rural, coastal Japan would look like, from the books he had read on Japanese culture back in college. Even other wealthy New England residents would venture here for a dinner out or a weekend by the ocean, wearing their finest.

  In the winter, the Peninsula became a ghost town. The beach town of Orin shut down; empty ice-cream stands and towel and T-shirt shops remained in darkness until the summer. The north side of the Peninsula was especially cold and desolate during the winter months. Fog settled in most mornings, obscuring the roads, so every mile or so a deer carcass that had been hit by an unsuspecting driver lay decaying on the edge of the road. There were only three real beaches on the Peninsula; the rest was jagged rock and water.

  Two famous writers, a man and a woman, lived on the north side of the woods, about five miles from each other, in extreme seclusion. Rumor had it that they would consult with each other every week to share work or take a break from their solitary lives. Every now and then, an entourage of friends and family would travel down the roads to the north side, sometimes in a gleaming town car, until they reached their destination. Michael had gone to a couple of the readings they held once a year. One was in a converted barn, Old Barn House, a historic site atop a hill by the ocean. Hearing each of them read from their novels while it rained and the wind moaned outside had created a magical evening, cementing his desire to be a novelist himself.

  Five minutes down the road from the Old Barn House, farther away from the rocky dramatic coastline, Michael’s home sat on one of the privileged plots of land within the forest and could be reached by the winding little roads to the east or, to the west from the mainland, by two short turns off the highway. After passing the local restaurant Sammy’s, open year-round, about three miles down, a right turn brought you into the woods. One and a half miles later, a sharp left led to the driveway and past a grove of pine trees that afforded a bit of privacy, then to their pretty dark gray house. Though it was in the forest, he could still smell the sea on most nights.

  Men who lived on the Peninsula commuted forty-five minutes to the city of Providence every workday. It took a good twenty minutes to get through Orin with its stop signs and slow speed limits. Once through, they were finally off the Peninsula and onto the highway to the city. The majority of women stayed at home and cared for their children.

  There were many birds on the Peninsula, along with rabbits, foxes, and coyotes. The rabbits lived in the bushes that ran rampant over the land and would come out onto the lawn to nibble timidly before looking around with terrified eyes and scurrying away. In the past couple of y
ears, there had been fewer rabbits, as builders were cutting the brush down to expand homes and yards. With no brush to conceal them, many rabbits were eaten by coyotes or foxes. They could still be seen from time to time, but their numbers were nothing like they used to be. When she was younger, Ryan would set traps for them with carrots attached to string under propped-up cardboard boxes. She’d hide out and wait for one to venture under a box. Coyotes could sometimes be seen scurrying to the side of the road with their loose-legged gait.

  Michael was always struck by how silent his land was, as if it were waiting with held breath, waiting for some turn of events to take place. Sometimes he would see the place he lived as if he were viewing it in relation to a gigantic map of the country. The Peninsula would appear as nothing more than a tiny hair sticking out from the right side of the massive continent. This little stretch of land, isolated as it was, had a shore that trembled as the ocean crashed into it from three different sides. The heart of the land, the forest, was the stillest, as if it had once received a good beating and now knew better. The interior of the land was deathly quiet, and, although its summers could be bleached bright with sun, the rest of the year it was often shrouded in clouds and mist.

  * * *

  Since he found himself awake at dawn most mornings, Michael used the time to sneak to the guest room for a bath. It was his secret routine, one that he was embarrassed to admit to, so he would walk quietly to the other part of the house, confident that he pulled it off without anyone else knowing. But since the party, he had not been so sure. On his way to that corridor of the house, he heard a sound from within as he tiptoed past Ryan’s room. He thought he heard her door close a minute later and perhaps footsteps outside the bathroom door, which he now had closed. Was she listening through the bathroom door, curious? Could she hear him as he ran the shower water and filled up the tub to make it sound like he was showering instead of bathing? Did she hear the tiny movement of him sitting down into the water and the absence of sound while he simply soaked there? If so, the fact that he went to so much trouble just to take a bath in secrecy must have disturbed her greatly.

  He thought it over. Ryan knew of his insomnia and that it must be at least partially responsible for behavior like this, but maybe she was beginning to wonder if there was also some other reason. Maybe she was beginning to catch on that her father was mentally disturbed. Perhaps she had found his medication and asked a pharmacist what it was for? As she showered in her own bathroom, Michael thought that she must have felt ill at ease, knowing he was just sitting there in the other part of the house, naked and motionless.

  Michael lay in the water with his face slack. Light was pouring in above him from the skylight they had installed in the guest bath. The pleasantly dim room began to shift to an insistent quiet illumination as the day emerged. He was once again confronted with the image of his body spread out before him—his long legs and bony chest, and his long, thin toes that had always embarrassed him. He looked at his reflection in the polished knob of the bathtub spout. Was he handsome? He could never be sure. There had been people in his life who had found him strikingly handsome, but the average person did not seem to have that reaction. His daughter was beautiful and resembled him, and that surely meant he himself possessed a source of beauty that had been distributed.

  She was in this house right now, yet a whole day might go by without his seeing her. He reflected upon how irritating it was that she had refused to come down from her room for the party, in spite of the fact that everyone had been eager to see her. When she had scooted from her seat in the TV room and trotted upstairs to her room, Michael had noticed that her long brown hair was disheveled and she was wearing a light blue T-shirt that was several sizes too small. “I’ll be in my room,” she had said, avoiding his eyes. She knew the guests would have been eager to feast their eyes on her and thus considered herself rare and prized. She had developed a vanity that allowed her to deny others the right even to look at her.

  He had noticed she had suddenly become a flirt and begun tilting her head to the side when she spoke to a man. Once, at a restaurant, the maitre d’ had chatted with her as they waited for their table, and her physicality had instantly changed—she’d cocked her head to the side and balanced differently on her legs, and a playful smile had appeared on her lips.

  Other times when men paid her attention, she would become sullen and glance distractedly at anyone and anything except the man speaking with her. She would refuse to indulge the man in any kind of exchange or would answer in clipped noes and yeses to questions. It would be horrible when she met someone she actually liked and toward whom she would unleash her full attention, her full arsenal of charms. The simple act of her pulling her hair loose from a ponytail snapped men to attention as the brown hair spilled over her shoulders.

  People were less interested in his son, Max. He was adorable, as most little kids were, but apparently less fascinating than his pretty daughter. Max had been born with deep and chronic asthma of such an extreme nature that the doctors were amazed that he had not cried constantly as an infant. Now he could be heard wheezing all over the house, going from room to room in his little stick-figure body, taking exhausting breaths with a fierce patience other people would never understand. They had all gotten used to the sound of the snap and release of his numerous inhalers, and also to the sight of them littering the house in their candy pastel colors—soft blue, yellow, shy green.

  Michael thought again of Nancy and the man from the party. What was his name? He felt sure he was about to remember it, and then it would evaporate into some distant room in his mind.

  Michael had filled the bath with very hot water, so that his submerged skin was now a deep pink. He did so for a reason, though: the hot water made him tired; it sometimes even pulled all the energy out of him at first light and let him have a precious little nap. He got to his feet, dried off with a towel, then wrapped himself in a big robe and lay on the bath mat with his head on a little pillow he had brought in for such a purpose. He was drowsy, and today it might work. He lay curled up and remembered his wife’s face during the party, lit up with an easy kind of laughter. In that moment, as she had looked years younger, a brightness and innocence had reappeared that had been present when he had first met her. These days, she was always so careful around him, so unnatural. Yet he could remember what it had been like at the beginning of their courtship and could recall the reasons he had married her.

  Nancy had remained with him through hard times. When he had just started taking his medication, she had been the only person, besides his mother, whom he had told about his mental condition. At the time, after telling her that day sitting there in the living room, he immediately regretted it. He felt he had told her too much. Things had gotten worse from there. Exposed and irritable, he had begun yelling at her, and had even gone so far as to call her a fool. After he had caused a scene, Nancy had quietly stood up, gotten her coat and purse, and made for the door. She had left soundlessly, shutting the door gently behind her.

  With horror, Michael had realized he might never see her again, that she could tell everyone that he was mentally unstable and that her brief fling with a brilliant student had amounted to nothing. She was only a babysitter and had never been to college—perhaps she had set her sights on another young student and was already beginning to forget about him? He had known it must be over.

  Michael had berated himself for telling her such private things, of his being on the line between neurotic and psychotic, of the trouble the doctors had had in diagnosing him just a year prior. Carried away by her understanding nature, he had even mentioned his nervous breakdown and that he had gone to stay at a mental hospital for six weeks before sophomore year at college. On some level, he had felt it added to his mystique. It had been a relief to tell her, but then he could not bear her knowing. He could not bear to have his weaknesses so visible. Since he was only in his sophomore year, if it got out,
he would have to spend two more years surrounded by looks that were pregnant with disapproval from the other students. He had opened a bottle of scotch and started on his first drink, knowing full well that he was not allowed to drink on his medication, and let his head reel at the memory of his horrible utterances.

  But forty-five minutes later, he had heard a light knock on the door. When he had opened it, he had seen Nancy, smiling at him from his front stoop. He had stood there in shock as she walked in carrying a bag of hot food. She had gone to the kitchen without saying a word, and it was at that moment he realized how hungry he had been and hadn’t even noticed. She had set before him a plate of warm chicken, potatoes, and green beans, and he had devoured it.

  After making herself a cup of tea, she had sat down across from him and sipped it silently. Without either of them saying it, Michael had suddenly understood that she was his, that she would never leave him if he chose to take her. In the silence, he had been able to get his head clear, and he had been grateful to her for knowing what to do, for not talking, for her little kindnesses. He had begun to think it might be wise to align himself with someone who knew how to attend to the basics of life, such as food, with such care and ease. She was the wife—this was her domain, feeding, soothing, and tending to.

  That night Michael had discovered that Nancy was someone who could be trusted with his secrets. He felt a strong compulsion to repay her, to give her the beautiful house and expensive things that she had never had, to take her devotion and build a structure around it. The people he had loved most in his life were those who knew when to be quiet, for in the silence, his mind could finally settle down to a peaceful rhythm as his thoughts sorted themselves out.