by Abby Frucht
“I have this feeling she couldn’t possibly have known what she was doing,” says Ben after a while. He looks at us questioningly over the mute top of Simon’s head, and Daniel and I nod, both of us thinking, At least she didn’t take Simon; she left him for Ben to hang on to. Most women do this, I’ve noticed. Later the three of us agree: naturally she must have been in some kind of a trance, because otherwise why would she have taken the barbell? Just to keep her arms in shape for throwing pots? Well, maybe.
And that’s how it goes; we sit there three hours, four, talking, not talking, never ever alert to the possibility of Leah’s step on the front porch because we know we won’t hear it. What’s possible is that maybe she’ll write Ben a letter, either soon or not, and tell him she misses him, because that’s what they do, usually. Certain people do. I know because I’ve seen quite a few such letters. That’s the thing about being a mailman in a town like this; people stand on their porches, open their letters, exclaim over them, and then, sometimes, they show the letters to me. It’s the uniform, I think. I fill the same need the hairdressers filled before the hair salon closed – a confidant, but anonymous, and never judgemental. I’m just doing my job. I take the proffered letters, look them over, hand them back sympathetically. The letters say: “Missing you. Come see me soon,” but then say neither where, nor when, nor how. All are postmarked in Erie, Pennsylvania, but Erie’s just a decoy, everyone knows. So I’m thinking, if Leah writes such a letter, do I deliver it to Ben, or should I spare him the grief?
Spare him, I think.
“Deliver it,” says Daniel, later on in bed. How innocent he is. He is truly astounded. “You don’t have a choice. You’re a mailman.”
“I’m a TLC,” I argue. Temporary Letter Carrier.
Daniel sighs, rolls over on his stomach, reconsiders, migrates, lays his head on my belly. Case closed. I don’t know. But maybe Leah won’t write Ben a letter. And how terrible that would be. It’s not impossible, considering the sunglasses and raincoat. An odd combination, more suitable for subterfuge, I’ve begun to realize, than for Oregon or Maine. The rain hat, too.
Ben was sitting on the couch when he got his last glimpse of her. She was climbing the steps. Going up. She was crossing the landing. It was half-past eight. Ben was reading Simon a favorite bedtime book-cartoons about slugs-and Leah went upstairs to get Simon’s pajamas. Simple enough. Through the living room archway he could watch her climb the stairs as usual. She was barefoot. Leah’s ankles are strong, erect, broad-boned. She wore a dress to mid-calf (I know this although Ben didn’t say), and the wood creaked under her step. Then the creaking ceased. Ben thought, She’s in the bathroom. Then he thought, She’s looking out the window in Simon’s room at some kids playing under the bridge in the creek. Then he thought, She’s reading something at the desk, some newspaper or something. She’s on the phone, he thought. She’s steaming her face. She can’t find any matching pajamas.
But Leah had never cared about matching pajamas, before.
He thought, She hit her head.
And he went up to take a look.
There’s a closet in their bedroom, under the eaves. The door is child-sized. The interior, slant-ceilinged space extends straight across the width of the house with room enough for boxes, crates, camp trunks, the floor rough-hewn, the rafters showing in the sides, no insulation, the air close and smelling of bats. After looking upstairs and finding no sign of Leah, and after looking downstairs, in the kitchen, in the basement, in the backyard whose barbecue still smoldered from dinner, and in the playroom, and then checking on Simon, and then checking the front porch and up and down the street and even over in the creek where the boys were still tossing stones, and after checking upstairs in the bathroom again and in Simon’s room behind the crib where she kept some of his clothing, Ben opened the door to the eaves and looked in there, first without a flashlight, then with. He showed the flashlight beam around and called, “Hey, Leah,” in what he described to us as a perfectly natural voice, because at the time it seemed entirely likely to him that she was in there. Then Simon started crying downstairs, and the telephone rang. It was me. I was calling to see if they wanted to go for a walk.
“I think Leah already went for a walk, or something,” Ben said.
“Oh. Is she headed this way?”
“She is?”
“What?”
“Is she headed your way?”
“I don’t know, Ben. How should I know? Let me see…” I took a look out the front door.
“Call me if she gets there,” Ben said. He sounded pissed off. I figured they’d been having an argument. Daniel and Stevie and I went out for our own walk, around the reservoir. The evening was humid, and there was still enough light that the turtles were basking, their small heads blindly lifted toward the sloping rays. Nobody was sitting on the bench, but there was popcorn scattered round it and pigeons eating. The pigeons roosted high up on the stone water tower, and we had seen them flock down on our way over.
We kept walking until it was dark, then started home along Plum Creek past Ben and Leah’s. Their porch light was off, but we could see Ben standing near the railing among the hanging spider plants, holding Simon in his arms. That in itself was a frightening sight, because Simon doesn’t like to be held in such heat. He’s a rambunctious baby. But he was not so much as tugging at the fronds of the plants, so the pots hung motionless. We were climbing the slope, slowly, pushing Stevie in the stroller, when Ben turned around and went inside. When we got there Simon was under the table with a cookie and Ben was washing dinner dishes. He had put on rubber gloves, but I could tell that the water was cold. I brought Simon upstairs, dressed him in his pajamas, ran a washcloth round his face and the palms of his hands, and put him in bed. I found a night light on a shelf and plugged it into its socket, but the fan on the dresser had already been switched on.
WHAT HURTS US most, I suppose, is that she left with the mystery still intact. Somehow we must all have believed that if the secret were revealed to one of us, it would be shared, or at the very least, suggested. A bus ticket stub might suffice, a canceled check, even a door left ajar might point us in the direction of understanding. As it is, we can’t be certain that she even used a door.
Which leaves me contemplating the very scariest possibility of all; that not even Leah can pinpoint the method of departure. Of transition. She might simply have ended up somewhere. In the Southwest, maybe, throwing pots in an adobe studio. She might be longing for us-for Simon, for Ben, but unable to draw herself away. A prisoner of desire. Of her own heart’s content.
Later on she’ll be wearing that trench coat, its collar turned up, her head erect inside it, her long legs scissoring under the hem. The day is sunstruck, the sidewalk leads her to a bank, a utilities office, and then, further north, along a roadside mall whose pay telephones she’ll pass without slowing, without thinking, even.
She’s not thinking about us. We can’t fault her for that; there’s no malice involved, no neglect, even. We don’t occur to her. That’s all. She’ll feel, as she passes the telephones, a little buzz of indecipherable concern.
And if it happened to Leah, what’s to stop it from happening to me?
I mention this to Daniel.
He doesn’t want to talk about it.
But he says, “That’s ridiculous. It’s not something that happened to her. It’s something she did.”
“Well,” I say, “What’s to stop me from doing it, too?”
“In spite of yourself?” says Daniel.
“In spite of myself,” I say.
I am holding Daniel’s hand. I give it a squeeze. After that we don’t move a muscle.
PART TWO
Danka’s Soup
SEVERAL YEARS AGO on the railroad tracks I found what I’d long since given up looking for; I’d searched at garage sales, flea markets, in newspaper classifieds, and finally drove out to a strip near the mall where there were some lighting stores. It was a pole lamp I
wanted, standard and practical, floor to ceiling, the three lamp shades cocked at complementary angles so the beams of light might commingle in the center of our living room. We’d been sitting in darkness, our reading illuminated only by a small table lamp handmade by one of Daniel’s brothers; the base a tree trunk, the shade, foliage. At the lighting stores I was told matter-of-factly that pole lamps were “out of stock “, “out of style”, and at the last store I visited, “out of season.”
“Out of season?” I asked.
The salesman was deadpan.
“Pole lamps start coming in around May,” he said. He started flipping through one of his catalogues.
Next day I found my pole lamp standing near the railroad tracks like someone waiting for a train. The trains had stopped passing through around 1949. Now saplings grew here and there among the ties, which followed a high ridge bordered by woods and tall brambles. There was a narrow plateau where the lamp stood waist-deep in grass. How serenely it stood, its three heads inclined to the east and west. A breeze started and stopped, and in the distance, from the far side of the brambles, came a frantic barking of dogs. The dogs were usual. There were tract houses back there, and then a highway, and then farmland, and the people kept hunting dogs penned in their yards along with pickups and old school buses. The pole lamp was burgundy, with a matching cord neatly coiled around its ankle. I carried it home, first on one shoulder, then on the other. In the living room I screwed in three bulbs, unwrapped the cord, plugged it in and flicked the three switches. It worked perfectly.
Today I’m looking to replace our Fiat’s right, front axle, which snapped in two several days ago. The Italian makers of Fiat no longer ship to the United States, and dealers here have gradually stopped servicing their models. Until now the car has handled well enough, and it’s been only minor parts-windshield wipers, gas caps, head lights-that we’ve had to special-order from Pittsburg through a parts store in town. Now the parts store has closed, and the dealer in Pittsburg has cut ties with the parent company, so we don’t know where to go. Overseas, maybe. I didn’t come to the ridge with the axle in mind, but when I’ve followed the tracks to the grassy plateau I find myself stopping, then spinning in slow circles all the while peering here and there among grasses and weeds until I realize just what I am doing. Stevie likes turning in circles. He’s on my back in the baby pack; his wide-brimmed sun hat throws its laughing shadow every place I look. No axle, though, and I am truly, confoundedly surprised. But then I see something else, something waxy and pale, up ahead where the train rails meet the horizon. Not far. There’s a hill, and at the crest is—what-the head of a doll, red-curled, blue-eyed, with eyelids that flutter when I pick it up, then close resolutely. Inside the head is a pebble; I shake it loose and hold the head upright again so the lashes pop open. The doll’s body is thirty feet or so down the tracks, half-buried in a pile of splintery woodchips, its little crotch-hole clogged with dirt. I rub it clean with a moistened finger, than spit on the finger again and try wiping the smudge off the knees. The fingers and toes have been chewed somewhat, but the head is a perfect fit.
“Hello,” I say. “Say hello to our new doll, Stevie.”
Stevie is quiet.
“Well,” I exclaim. “This is the kind of doll I’ve always hoped to find.”
“Why?” asks Stevie. It’s not a word exactly, but Stevie’s all-purpose squeal. Sometimes it means what he wants it to mean, and sometimes it means what we want it to mean, depending on who cares the most.
“Oh, I don’t know why,” I answer, and then, “She’s hollow. Now we can pick berries. We can fill her up with them.”
The berry bushes are back where we’d come from, behind the tract houses where the hunting dogs are barking. Mosquitoes are everywhere, and tiny spiders crouch among the cushions of the berries. The berries are sun-baked, their juices warm and explosive, and there is always a plumper one farther in, low down where the birds don’t see it.
Soon the doll’s head is heavy with fruit, and so is Stevie’s big sun hat, and so is Stevie, but I can’t find the rest of the doll.
“Stevie, do you see it?”
But Stevie is sleeping, suddenly, his purple mouth adrool on my shoulder. How long have we been picking? Half an hour, maybe, my gaze riveted upon berry after berry like a trucker’s upon the vanishing point of the road. I figure I am west of where I started, but if so I am facing the tracks from the wrong direction. Somehow I must have spun myself around so now I don’t know where’s east and where’s west, a fact that matters at the moment only because I want to find the rest of the doll. I’d placed it, still empty, gently on a rock and made my way gingerly through the brambles, always careful of the top of Stevie’s head among the thorns, and of his bare, tender ankles and flopping wrists. How heavy he is, almost twenty-three pounds, like a sack of mail. But I’m strong-backed, strong-shouldered, strong-hipped; I set off on my search with aplomb, thinking hopefully that if I don’t find the body then I might at least stumble unawares on a Fiat axle or something else I’ve been needing.
In a way, I do.
It’s Joe with the piercing eyes.
Having caught sight of him from a distance, I manage to back up into the shadows of some bushes so that he won’t catch sight of me. He’s not wearing his cap, but his head is still pale as a mushroom. He is carrying a slingshot and, knotted to a thong around his neck, a drawstring pouch of bulging leather. Stones, I guess. The slingshot is crude, just a forked stick fitted with a wide rubber band, but Joe grips it possessively by its straight end. Eva, his dog, leads the way down the tracks chug-chugging like a locomotive slowing for the station. Following, Joe steps carefully from railroad tie to railroad tie, and at a spot where the ties are missing, from imagined tie to imagined tie, always staying dead center between the rails. Eva’s not so sensitive; she weaves, trots sideways, sniffs, follows the scent, whatever it is. They are looking for something, too. Maybe a rabbit, or some tracks or droppings.
But Eva’s not a hunting dog; she looks nervous, confused, and keeps wanting to heel, so Joe has to shoo her away with the slingshot, first grabbing her collar and pointing her nose to the ground. He looks good in his T-shirt and cut-off sweatpants low slung under big love handles. He’s fat and unmindful of cleanliness. When he bends to pet the dog, the pants slide free of the small of his back, revealing the top of his crack amid a pattern of stretchmarks by which I can guess his bathing habits; the creases are dirty, the surrounding flesh healthy and pink. So, Joe washes, but doesn’t scrub, and it’s the dirt I want, suddenly, as much as the man himself. A piece of the ground he sleeps on, if, in the summer, he sleeps on the ground at all, and not in his car. Probably he does. Probably when it rains he stands naked with a bar of soap, yelling at the sky, which is what I’d like to do next time it rains-yell crazily right along with him, then lather his back with the hard, lardy soap. Soon I’m following him, secure in the belief that I can jump off the tracks should he mistake my footsteps for a rabbit’s and whip around to kill me. Besides, I’m downwind; I can smell Eva’s panting. She pokes her nose here in the grasses, there in the weeds, then turns to sniff under her tail, snarls, lies down on a cleared spot of earth, and, puzzled, snaps at her own rear paws. Joe bends over again, lifts Eva’s floppy ear and whispers something into it. Up she jumps ecstatically and at once finds something-what?-near a cluster of flat rocks. Sits down, thumps her tail, paws at the thing with her foot. It’s the body of the doll. Joe picks it up, examines it, sticks the slingshot in his waistband and carries the doll touchingly by the hand, the pad of his thumb nestled snugly in one chewed palm. Now man, dog, and doll continue on their way, from railroad tie to railroad tie, barely missing a beat and apparently not looking for anything else, as if the existence of a doll’s body might not necessarily indicate the possibility of the existence of a head. Joe’s big work boots, without laces, flop and wobble as he goes, revealing naked ankles. He is solitary-looking as a tree trunk, self-sufficient, barely touched even by
the moody caress of the weather-his neck toughened, his knuckles chapped, but the backs of his knees below the unhemmed cut-offs tender as new asparagus. No mosquito bites, even. Drawing closer from behind, I intend to catch up with him and bargain for the body of the doll-in exchange for some raspberries, maybe-but at that moment Eva veers off the train track through an opening in the brambles onto a trail I’ve never noticed that cuts to the right before dropping down steeply into some woods. Joe follows, then swivels abruptly to face me head on, one hand darting under his waistband and withdrawing his painter’s cap, which he puts on before looking me appraisingly up and down. After a minute, he grins, and shows his bad teeth. No surprise. In my imagined kisses I’ve often poked my tongue into the gaps in his mouth. He’s a Cro-Magnon man, about three-quarters civilized, tipping his cap, then cooing and wiggling his fingers in Stevie’s face.
“Hey Pebbles,” he says. “Your mom married?”
My spine tingles. He might drag me by the hair into a cave in the woods, show me the bisons he’s drawn on the walls.
“Sure am,” I say, and he’s off down the hill with his dark eyes aglitter, his unlaced boots flop-flopping along with the jingle of Eva’s collar.
Neither of us mentioned the doll.
AT HOME I say, “Look what we found,” and thrust the head, dripping purple berry juice, under Daniel’s nose. He reaches in through the neck hole, finds the one firm berry among the squashed others, pulls it out, bites off half of it, and puts the rest between my lips. I dump the raspberries into a bowl, shaking the head by its curls to get out the last of the seeds, then rinsing it clean in the sink and even sponging the soiled cheeks, the chewed nose, the matted, fluttering eyelashes, before laying it on the dish rack to drain. I spoon some dry tapioca into a bowlful of sugar, mix it together and stir the mixture into the berries to thicken. Only then do I find we have no shortening for the crust; we have flour, salt, but nothing to bind it together. So, leaving Stevie with Daniel I take my bike downtown past the vacant supermarket to the Epicurean, a cozy place with a European flair; around the few small tables are shelves laden with imported foodstuffs and barrels of flavorful teas. It’s expensive, of course, but the remaining supermarket is sixteen miles south on a truck route, too far to reach conveniently on our ramshackle bike. There’s a small cooler near the cash register in the Epicurean’s tea room, and in its depths, behind some wheels of Camembert, I find a tub of sweet creamery butter stamped with pictures of sailboats.