The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  I swam back into “Away from Home” and learned where Robbie’s obsession about living in small spaces had come from. In the house in which she had grown up, there were too many rooms where one could get lost, where a sickened, skeletal mother could die alone in an enormous bed at the end of a long, long hall, and a sister, grieving and despondent at twenty, could find a gun inside an old shoebox inside a rarely used closet and do away with herself, hours passing before anyone noticed she was missing, found only when her blood had turned to sheets of red ice. I read the last paragraphs:

  They are tired from the long post-honeymoon flight, and Luke finally agrees to sleep at Robbie’s place, saying, “Now that we’re married, we’re going to combine our lives, clothes, books, and all the rest of our crap, right?” and she closes her eyes to memorize the sweep of his mouth.

  When he stirs at dawn, Robbie wills her breath shallow and steady, her eyelids still, her forehead smooth and unwrinkled. He is out of bed quickly, as always, except when they were in Bora Bora. Yellow light from the bathroom cuts the darkness, shower steam blues the air. Robbie rolls over into the imprint Luke left behind, wishing she possessed the exquisite ability of fish to transform the elements in their domain, but she doesn’t. She has been too damaged for years. She will kick him out and not return his calls, will sign the divorce papers when they come, will send them back with a note that reads: Love cannot save a single trapped soul.

  Single trapped souls. I knew I was one of them, and then I was thinking about transformation, about how Ashby’s stories were taking up residence inside of me, her fictional worlds somehow truer than real life, a hurricane that turned the familiar upside down in a way that made such sense to me. If I could get my bearings, perhaps there existed a different universe in which I, too, could truly be myself. For months, the physicality of my mother’s collections had exceeded their actual dimensions in my life. I had concentrated on my interviews, on drafts of new articles, on the state of my professional life, on the state of the world, taking up with women I knew I would not love, anything to ignore Ashby’s work. But when I left my bed, with her book in my hand, I was identifying the myriad themes in Other Small Spaces, no longer keeping anything at bay.

  I put the book on the coffee table and took stock of my fridge—an unopened half-and-half, jars of peanut butter and jalapeno olives, a stick of picked-at butter, a bent package of moldy bacon, the heel of a loaf of wheat bread, an old container of cream cheese. Not a single breakfast ingredient for a man weighted down by a hard penance.

  In my menu drawer was a flyer from a place I’d never tried, called Lucky Star. A deeply cadenced voice answered the phone and took my order, and twenty minutes later, the delivery boy was at my door. His hair was black and brush-cut, his eyes big and round, and his clothes—pressed jeans that sat high on his waist and ended a few inches above his black-laced shoes, his socks bleached white, a collared shirt under a bright-red windbreaker with Lucky Star stamped off-kilter across the heart—were too neat for him to have been born here.

  When he said, “Hello, sir,” I heard the singsong Indian uplift to his words.

  “I have performed a magical feat, sir. Nestled your late breakfast or early lunch under my jacket so as to deliver it in perfect condition. Despite what is happening to the world.”

  I apologized for asking for delivery in such rotten weather. “No problem at all, sir,” and he unzipped his windbreaker and handed me a bag that was hot and dry. I paid and then tried to hand him an extra five, but he shook his said. “My father would say that amount is dearly inappropriate. He would say two dollars is sufficient.”

  I said, “Please take it. It’s really awful out there.”

  He looked at me carefully, then said, “Very true, sir. I will no longer fight you.” He pocketed the tip and leaned over the transom, looked around slowly, as if he had no other place to be. “Very nice home, sir. It is warm, yes, and out of the cold and rain. I find it very comforting.”

  I turned and looked into the immense open space of my apartment, the great room, as the real estate agent had called it when I bought the place, that lately deflated me, made me feel I was back in a shapeless adolescence, without hope for a sharply delineated future.

  Light blue walls. Twin blue couches facing each other across the mirrored coffee table reflecting the dark clouds outside. My favorite blue armchair aimed at the far wall, where a red antique Chinese cabinet hid stereo, speakers, and wiring. The flat-screen television above it, flanked by large art photographs, each three feet by two feet, of a busy Istanbul marketplace, and Egyptian pyramids under a hazy, thin white moon, though I could not recall how I came to have those photographs. My desk near the front door, a long slab of wood, my laptop flat as an old vinyl record, a folder containing my rejected book proposal, folders with my failed stories, my tall shelves along the adjacent short wall, the books looking like crammed teeth, the recessed ceiling lights on low, the two standing lamps at either end of the room, the open-plan kitchen, and that entire wall of windows.

  “Thanks,” I finally said.

  “Yes. Very nicely furnished. I feel like I am in the sea. Comforting though, is the word that first comes to mind. A place for the making of a good life, I think.”

  Such a different assessment from my own, and before I could think of a response, he pointed to Other Small Spaces on the coffee table.

  “And you are reading, which is good for the brain and the soul. I will not disturb you further, except for you to know this. My name is Kartar. Call me anytime. We always deliver.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Kartar smiled and his teeth, so straight and white, looked more adult than the rest of him. I thought he was sixteen or seventeen, still in high school, although he had none of the traits of the native-born, no teenage swagger or hostile vocabulary. His clothing and his calm, rhythmic walk down the hallway to the elevator suggested that he ignored whatever his classmates might have tried to teach him, that he was continuing to walk the path intended for him at birth.

  When the elevator door closed, I left the Lucky Star bag on the counter and looked down from the windows. Double-parked on the car-dense street was a little red car with a short man standing valetlike at the passenger door. His stomach, shoulders, and face enveloped by an enormous red umbrella also stamped Lucky Star. I could read it clearly from where I stood. I saw Kartar run down the walkway, leap the flowing gutters, throw himself inside. The short man slammed Kartar’s door, ran around to the other side, javelined the umbrella into the backseat, and jumped behind the wheel. The engine revved and the car shot forward, skidding on the slick pavement, then correcting. I heard two toots of the horn as the car turned the corner.

  I returned to the kitchen, unpacked the containers, flattened the bag, and wrote Kartar across the front because he was a memorable kid and I might call Lucky Star in the future.

  I sat at the counter, turned on the Weather Channel, and ate the omelet and the strips of crispy bacon, which left behind a pleasant aroma. I perked up when the newscaster said, “Hey, Susanna, it’s Saturday, Columbus Day weekend. Most of the country has temperate weather, sunshine, turning leaves, but that’s not true here in our nation’s capital, so what can you tell us?”

  Susanna stood in front of a color-coded map of America. I always liked watching her plushy pink lips, her pointed feline tongue that darted out from behind her blinding smile, her round breasts snuggled so tight beneath her conservative red or navy sweater.

  “Well, Jed, there’s light precipitation in the surrounding suburbs, but we’re facing a rare weather phenomenon, an unprecedented storm, previously untracked, that has taken up residence over the capital. Our meteorologists are hard at work analyzing it, but expect severe atmospheric disturbances, lightning, dangerous gusts, rain, hail, you name it. All you capital folks, you’re going to be underwater soon. Stay home, stay dry, and if you have to go out, just a warning, galoshes and umbrellas won’t cut it. Hope you’re all good swimmers.
”

  So, I thought, my mother could actually alter the weather. I cleaned up after myself, figured noon was a good time for a large scotch, and spread out on a couch with the book open on my chest, the drink at hand. Rain battered away at the thick glass, groans rose from the old casements when the thunder cracked. Despite what Weather Channel Susanna had said, I was sure the rain would stop the next day, and the sun would shine fast, and it seemed to me then that the weather was like life, how it unfolded was impossible to predict. I turned to the next story in Ashby’s first collection, titled “Glorious Summer,” and buckled back down.

  Esme sits quietly on the porch of the summer cottage and listens to the words her heart would say if it could speak. On Friday evenings, when Howard returns for the weekends, says, “Hi all my lovelies. What’s new?” Esme’s heart betrays her, goes silent when it should scream.

  The girls are down at the lake, Howard is due around seven, and this summer feels like all their previous summers, except now that Aster is nearly eight and Orlanna, at the end of July, will turn thirteen, they have found a common ground, a renewed sororal language.

  Otherwise nothing is different since Howard said, “Changes,” at the end of last summer. Rather, nothing yet has been altered. When this summer ends, the life Esme and Howard built over these last fifteen years will no longer exist, except in pictures and memories. Since the end of last summer, Howard has said, “I’m sorry. I never imagined I would want this. It has nothing to do with my love for you.” For nearly a year, he has tried to expand, explain, rationalize, and summarize his undefined need to tear apart their world, but she can’t make sense of any of it.

  Last summer, the sky dazzled blue, pink wisteria bloomed, butterflies and bees darted among the flowers, and on weekends, the family raced in the lake, played Shark near the sandbar where the silt dropped into the deep, Howard so convincing that both girls yelled and flailed, headed straight for Esme, her open arms ready to save them. Lunches and dinners on the shore. Grand dinners at the cottage when Howard grilled steaks and uncorked bottles of thick red wine. There were nights when they finished two bottles just the two of them, and the next morning yelled to the girls, “Feed yourselves breakfast and go down to the lake. We’ll meet you there later,” and then they would screw in that unclear hungover way for hours. In early August, they had repainted the cottage. When the house was no longer a sad beige, but a sprightly light green, they debated whether the shade would hold up during the long pitiless winters.

  Last summer, the day after Labor Day, they had returned to Buffalo, and the next morning began preparing for the new school year. The girls tried on their old school uniforms, prancing proudly in their cotton underwear in Orlanna’s room. Aster’s arms had become muscular from paddling after Esme when she swam her laps in the lake. And Orlanna had budding mounds she showed off. When Esme had sprouted at fourteen, a full year and a half older than Orlanna, it had been awkwardness and humiliation, a disgust with the way her mother’s “friends” would comment about what was suddenly beneath Esme’s blouses. When the girls were dressed again in their ratty summer shorts and T-shirts stained from dripping Bomb-Pops, they had helped Esme stow away what no longer fit and planned the next day’s itinerary—uniform shop, sporting-goods store, dance shop, the Paper Barn out on the highway for school supplies. Later, the girls had washed faces, brushed teeth, donned nightgowns, read books, and bookmarked their places without their pre-summer bickering. Aster still reached for Esme, nuzzling against her mother’s cheek, calling out, “Mommy, I love you,” when Esme turned off the lamp. But Orlanna had yielded too, slinging her arms around Esme’s neck and kissing her back. Turning twelve had inexplicably returned Orlanna to her cuddlier self, cooing into Esme’s neck, saying, “I love you so much, Mommy.” Esme had known this version of her older daughter would soon disappear in the push-pull of the next years, but right then, when the future was completely irrelevant, Esme had thanked the stars up in the sky that held off the coming world. It had been a glorious summer at the lake and her children loved their mother still. Everything was as imperfectly perfect as she could ever want.

  The hallway was filled with family pictures: the promise of Howard’s handsomeness becoming less theoretical; her own beauty settling over her cheekbones, illuminating her skin; the girls as smiling infants in paddle wings, then toddlers in sundresses. First-day-of-school pictures. Soccer pictures in which Aster looked ferocious, even at five. Orlanna’s body lengthening over yearly ballet recitals. Pictures from the newly finished summer would end up on the walls: Howard and the girls splashing in the lake; Orlanna’s birthday party dinner on the lawn, the candelabra flickering in the dark as if they had thrown a party for a noble Russian child; the homeless cat Aster named Friendless licking a plate of frosting with Aster’s smile lighting up in the flash; she and Howard on their fourteenth wedding anniversary, underneath the flowering arch, posing for the girls who traded the camera back and forth. Howard had bent down to kiss her while the girls called out, “Smile now!” and Howard had whispered in her ear, “My bride still.”

  During the final weekends at the lake, their usual intimacy had fallen away. Esme had not taken the initiative, and Howard had been unfocused, elsewhere, and when they arrived back home, they had been exhausted from packing and driving and unpacking and feeding hungry, tired children. It was time they picked up where they had left off. In their bedroom, she had found Howard at the window, staring into their backyard, still dressed. She stopped in her tracks and heard him say, “It has absolutely nothing to do with you, but I can’t be married anymore.”

  I heard the gunning rain over Howard’s words. Words that must have struck Esme like bullets, the shrapnel sundering her heart, cracking open their life, revealing layers of unstable sediment, and yet, to me, his words evidenced a strength of character. He didn’t say he had fallen in love with someone else, or discovered he was dying, or gay, only that he couldn’t be married anymore. I thought it brave to cease living a particular life, to slam the brakes on the known, to want something else in its place. How strong his need must have been to so drastically change course. Ashby had not written him as a man eager to do damage, and I understood that as something Ashby herself might believe in—that there was a purity in searching for one’s true life, no matter what might need discarding, the explicit, if unintentional, pain inflicted on others by such an act. Howard was much older than me, a father to two young girls, and still he was going to do what his spirit required.

  I could change course without answering to anyone, without altering anyone’s expectations, there was no one relying on me, and the thought that I could follow Howard’s lead heated me up from the inside out. I rose from the couch and opened one of the vertical panes. Cold windy air rushed through the room and cleared out the warmth. Raindrops hit my face.

  Howard had said to Esme he never imagined this, and I wondered how he had found the vitality hiding inside of him to create the life he needed to be living.

  I needed some sign of my own internal life force and I dropped to the floor, did five push-ups, did five more, remembered when I could do fifty, did do fifty every morning. I hoisted myself back up and the couch sunk under my sudden weight. I picked up the book and continued on to the last page of the story.

  On a snowy afternoon when they were dating, Howard had said to Esme, “Read me the names from the phone book in that mellifluous voice of yours.” She found the directory in his kitchen and stretched her long legs out on his couch. “Abbott, Abelard, Acer,” she began. At the start of the B’s, Howard said, “If you’re willing, I’d like to give you mine.”

  Now she avoids using the last name he gave her during their intimate wedding, no longer calls him Howard. To say either aloud makes her feel she has agreed to his decision. He calls her love, darling, sweetheart on the summer weekends, endearments devoid of all meaning, and when he says Esme, she can’t imagine who that might be. When he plays games with their girls in the lake, she recoi
ls from the knowledge that this is the last of us, we, our family.

  In the cottage bedroom they share as if nothing has changed, she says, “Everything you do this summer will end up as memories the girls will examine microscopically. Filling in the blurred edges of what was happening precisely when those memories solidified into photographic truth.” She says, “In the years to come, our daughters will try to work out the end of our marriage with the men who enter their lives, their bedrooms, their bodies.”

  “Please,” Howard says, palming his ears. “Please don’t paint any pictures.” But she ignores him, wants him hurt. “To be clear, you are forming their suspicion of love, allowing the reality of being left and abandoned into their lives.”

  His eyes are blurry when he says, “There’s no abandonment here. I’ll always do right by the three of you. But I have to go before it’s too late.”

  She’s given up trying to figure out what he means. She does not know what would have kept them intact. She fears the coming search for something she will never discover. She hates that she will miss him forever.