Take Me Back

by Sally Mandel

  Simon smiled at her. He would have liked to reach over and brush the tears from her cheeks, but they had pretty much dried by now.

  “What clay?” he said. “Show me.”

  Stella got up and waded to the bank. She dug into the earth, discarding the pebbles until she’d collected a lump of buff-colored clay. Simon held out his hand as she returned to him with it.

  “See how easy it is to shape?” Stella said. “Here. Make an ashtray. That’s the easiest.”

  She watched his hair fall across his forehead as he bent to the task, gratified that she’d distracted him from the pain she saw in his face when he spoke about his brother. “I liked making ballerinas,” she said after a while. “Only I could never keep their arms and legs from breaking off. That’s a really nice ashtray, you know, for your first try. Press a little indentation in the rim for the cigarette to rest on, like so. And we’ll let it dry in the sun. Tomorrow it’ll be perfect.” Tomorrow, she thought, I will see him.

  He laughed, a lovely deep chortle. “It’s for you,” he said. “In case you take up smoking cigars.”

  She settled in beside him again. “What do you do,” she asked. “For fun, I mean?”

  “Read.”

  “Read what?”

  “Poetry and fiction mostly. I like stories with a lot of characters.”

  “I get bored with reading.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been bored in my life.”

  “Well, what if you had to just sit here? Not do anything for, say, ten minutes?”

  He thought it over. “Look at that,” he said, pointing down at their feet.

  “What? Our feet?”

  “Look at the way the water flows over our toes,” he said. “The way the sun and the shadows splinter the light. It’s like jewels. Like a stained glass window. I could stare at that for hours.” He smiled again. “Although eventually, I suppose, our feet would freeze.”

  Tears stung her eyes, but these were different, so different from the ones before. She couldn’t explain it, but his words and his presence flooded her with something potent and physical. Her throat constricted, her skin tingled, her breath fluttered. She felt aware, as if more alive than ever before, of gratitude, of appreciation, for this moment so profound that she could feel her very bones absorbing the sounds of the water, the dappled light, the smell of damp earth, the soft accent of Simon’s voice, the two pairs of feet side by side.

  “Don’t go back to London,” she said.

  “Well, I won’t, not for a while,” he said.

  “No, I mean ever. Just don’t ever go back. You have to stay here forever.”

  With me, she thought. With me forever.

  Eleven Minutes

  Simon: 1953

  Listening to Professor Boyd read Othello was brain food for Simon. That’s what London meant—lit class, the museums, and now that he was older, an occasional concert or play. All that stimulation made him happy enough, but even so, some part of him was always loose in the wild country of Devonshire where he and his brother had spent their summers.

  So when their parents decided that it would be prudent, given Jeremy’s proclivity for misconduct at the rigid St. Stephen’s School, to move the boys to the country house permanently, Simon’s joy radiated all the way down to his toes. He could feel the river wash over his feet, feel the heat of the sun warm his bare limbs, smell the heady mixture of bog and sea air that swept across the endless vista of grass. Jeremy didn’t care one way or the other where he lived, but the city squeezed Simon. His clothes felt a little too tight there. People stood a little too close and sucked up his air. On the moors there was space to stretch and imagine. Their mother, who shared Simon’s feelings for the place, watched him with a smile as the news was announced at the dinner table by their American father. The twins would go to their uncle’s farm in Wisconsin for the summer, as usual, to acquire their annual dose of America, and then—freedom.

  When school was out and whenever weather permitted, their mother took them onto the moors. Grace Vanderwall had grown up trekking the vast reserve, having been raised only a few miles away in the eighteenth century pile of stone that she had inherited. At home, she played the part of the executive’s wife, hosting tea parties and dinners and wearing flowered dresses and high heeled shoes. But on walks with the twins, she plaited her hair, pulled on a pair of trousers and walking boots and shielded her face from the sun with a battered old hat. The moors transformed her, Simon thought. She was never more beautiful.

  There were rules about the walks, which she had been drumming into the boys since they were small. You always took your ordnance map so you could keep track of the bogs. The grassy surface looked benign enough, but in that very uniformity lay its treachery. Set a foot down a mere yard from solid ground and you would be up to your hips in swamp. And then, of course, there was the mist. It was easy enough on a good day to become disoriented by the sameness of the landscape, but once the fog skulked in, which it could do unexpectedly, you needed a reliable compass and a hefty dose of good fortune to get out again. It wasn’t for nothing that the famous Dartmoor Prison had been erected deep within the preserve to confine some of the country’s most dangerous criminals. Escape attempts were rare since even prison was preferable to the terrors of the fog-veiled swamps and the quicksand that stretched for miles in all directions. It wasn’t that you would be dragged down over your head the way they showed in movies, but you could easily go in up to your chest, and thereafter die of exposure.

  Simon’s mother knew that he respected the moors and also that he had an uncanny affinity for finding the paths that others, Jeremy included, found practically invisible. It wasn’t long before she was urging Simon to lead the way, and ultimately, in late autumn, she started letting them go on their own.

  One Saturday, the following March, Simon woke early. He had planned to sleep in, but as he had left his window open the night before, woke to the sound of birds busily twittering. He lay still, watching the shadows of bare branches dance against the wall and breathing in the smell of sea and heather that rolled in from the moors. He could smell spring in the air, and felt too roused to loll around in bed. He dropped his feet to the floor, stretched, and padded to the window. For three weeks now, he had been leaving seed out at night on the narrow windowsill. The birds, mostly sparrows and wrens, would materialize all at once, as if someone had rung the breakfast bell. Chattering and fluffing out indignant wings as they vied for space, they would gobble up a seed or two, then fly off to the nearby walnut tree to await another turn. Simon had noticed right away that one of the sparrows was injured. She could fly well enough, but one leg was twisted and foreshortened. She landed awkwardly and had difficulty competing with the others who nudged her out of the way before she could grab a seed. Simon began shooing the others away for her. At first, the wounded bird had fled as well, but a few days ago she had remained behind. They sized one another up, she and Simon, two sets of eyes locked, one pair gray, one pair tiny beaded black.

  “Come on,” he had whispered. “Come and get it.” She took a clumsy little hop. “That’s right. Hurry up,” he urged, “before those bullies come back.”

  And so she made it to the seeds, gobbling up four or five before flying off, rediscovering her grace. Simon had laughed out loud. And now, this morning, here she was again, not so far away from the others now, confident of her breakfast and blinking at him as if to say, “And just where have you been?” She ate her fill, and this time, came back again for more. “You little glutton,” Simon said, and obliged her by tapping the window at the others.

  Simon hadn’t told anyone about his small triumph. He had always shared everything with Jeremy, or almost. It felt good to have a small secret of his own, something almost sacred. He loved waking up in the morning now to his communion with the damaged little bird. One day soon, he would try to convince her to perch in his hand. He tried to imagine the soft weight of her, like a breat
h. That would be something.

  There was a hush in the house this morning. His mother’s friend, Lily Adams, had been visiting from the States and there had been, as usual, a great deal of laughter. Each reunion, some new childhood memory would surface. Last week they talked of when they were both living in Cairo with their families. The girls had dressed in nuns’ habits and hopped on the bus to the beach where they frolicked in the water and ate ice cream. Naturally, it had been his mother who acquired the outfits. She had lived next to a convent and managed to swipe the black robes from the daily laundry truck when nobody was looking. Simon enjoyed watching the two women revert to their youthful exuberance. On the other hand, he was perfectly content to see them off, Lily for America and her mother to meet his father in Brussels for the weekend.

  Simon yawned and scratched his head, then padded down the hall to his brother’s room. The house wasn’t, in fact, totally silent: his brother’s heartbeat was the usual muted accompaniment to his own. He stood a moment, watching his tousled twin sleep so peacefully with bare feet hanging off the end of the bed. Jeremy couldn’t sleep unless his feet were unencumbered, perhaps to facilitate his dreams of chasing around the soccer field. The blankets were chaotic. For Jeremy, even sleeping was an athletic event.

  “Rise up, rise up, and greet the day,” Simon said.

  “Go away,” Jeremy muttered.

  “We’re off to the moors.”

  “It’s winter. Go away.”

  “Not today it isn’t.” Simon yanked off the covers.

  “Nasty bastard,” Jeremy said, sitting up. “How do you propose to get there?”

  “We’ll take the motorbike,” Simon said.

  “On the road?”

  “You’ve been practicing long enough.”

  “Yeah, but just on the back field.” He thought a moment. “All right, I’m in,” Jeremy said. “But if we get caught, nobody’s ever going to believe it wasn’t me who thought it up.”

  “Exactly,” Simon said with a grin.

  The boys worked efficiently through their routine, Jeremy making sandwiches while Simon packed knapsacks—jackknife, first aid kit, map. He finished up and glanced at the pantry wall for his mother’s checklist. It wasn’t there, only the square of tape that had adhered it. He made a cursory search and decided that she must have taken it down for some reason. He closed his eyes, visualizing it. He ought to know it by now—Mumma had been drilling it into them before every walk for years. Yes, he had everything. He was quite sure.

  Out on the road, it was cool. But the thaw had been ongoing for almost three weeks now, and there was no denying the signs of winter’s defeat. Trees were softly furred with new growth. The air was thick with the scent of wet earth. Simon, behind his brother, threw his head back and howled, “Wooo-hooo!” He was the one who always toed the line. Stepping over it this morning inspired a delicious thrill that buzzed agreeably in his solar plexus.

  They parked the cycle at the foot of a popular trail. One of Simon’s earliest memories was of following his parents along here for a Sunday picnic and being so close to the ground that the ferns seemed like a jungle. He was the intrepid explorer, using his stick like a machete to whack away at the undergrowth. Now he watched his brother hurry ahead, and grinned as Jeremy passed under the arch of a tree, jumping to touch an overhanging branch. He missed by a good foot. Jeremy always thought of himself as taller than he actually was.

  Simon was surprised to see that the snow, except for patches here and there, had retreated almost entirely. Good news, he thought. His mother had declared the reserve off limits while its landmarks were buried. He and Simon walked north beside the river, which flowed in the opposite direction back toward the sea. The water tumbled raucously, rendering conversation impossible. The boys strode along in silence, working up a sweat. Three miles up, they arrived at a series of flat rocks. They shrugged off their knapsacks and sat staring silently at the water as they caught their breath.

  “I wish I knew how to kiss a girl,” Jeremy said. “I mean, a proper job of it.”

  Simon laughed. “Well, you’ve been working at it. At least that’s what Charlotte says.”

  “True. But I have no technique.”

  “What about Rose?” Simon suggested, then wished he hadn’t.

  “She’s in for heavier stuff than kissing.”

  “I saw her crying by the bridge.” She had been all alone, Simon remembered, leaning against the railing. He had wanted to speak to her, dry her tears, share his sandwich with her, something, but not knowing quite how to approach her, he passed her by. Now he felt sad every time he looked at her. As if to cast off his own inadequacy, he stood and shed his clothes. “Going in?”

  “You insane? I bet the ice just melted yesterday,” Jeremy said with uncharacteristic caution.

  “Just in and out.” Simon was enjoying today’s role as daredevil. He tugged at Jeremy’s shirt.

  Jeremy shook his head and stripped. The river was wide here and serene with small eddies dimpling the surface. The boys stood with their toes curled around the edge of the rock, gave a whoop and jumped in. The water was so cold that it felt gelatinous, barely this side of freezing. They splashed and shouted and were out within a minute. The rock was warm beneath them as they dozed, warming like two turtles in the sun, and gazing into a sky unmarred by the merest rag of cloud. For that bright handful of time, it seemed to Simon that there would never be a cloud, and that darkness would never fall again.

  Simon got up and stretched, eager to move on.

  “Want to go to The Circle?” Jeremy asked, in no particular hurry.

  “Sure. We can eat lunch out there.” Simon dragged his brother to his feet.

  “Okay, but for once let me lead the way,” Jeremy said.

  The trail, perpendicular to the river, started out wide enough but soon became overgrown. After an hour of following the thread of a path, they reached the high ground and stopped to gaze out at miles and miles of open moors, the grass brown from the winter, rolling away in identical undulating hills as far as the eye could see. The land seemed to rise and fall in the wind, heaving gently like the surface of a vast ocean.

  The sole landmark, in the distance, was Hag’s Tooth, one of the many granite outcroppings called tors that stood like sentinels on hilltops across the open country. Hag’s Tooth marked the outermost boundary for the boys’ newly unsupervised trips whenever they ventured out this far. Once they set out again, however, Jeremy quickly became disoriented by the sameness of the rolling horizon, and it wasn’t long before he made a misstep. Simon lunged forward, snagging Jeremy’s arm and yanking him back onto solid ground. “Not that way,” he said. “Bog.”

  “Damn.” Jeremy examined his foot, muddy past the ankle. He moved aside. “All right, genius. You first.”

  Simon, adrenaline pumping, edged past his brother on the narrow track.

  They walked for a moment in silence. “Anyway, the ground is still supposed to be frozen,” Jeremy grumbled after a while.

  “We’ve had a thaw for almost a month,” Simon said.

  “You could be wrong once in a while, you know,” Jeremy muttered. “It’s so annoying.”

  Simon shot back over his shoulder, “Older and wiser,” he said.

  “Older by what, four minutes?”

  “Eleven, to be exact.” The protectiveness Simon felt toward his brother was nothing new, but the ferocity of it caught him off guard. The first time was when the twins were four years old, playing in the bath together before bed. When the water had cooled and their mother had pulled the plug, Jeremy began to scream. He scrambled to Simon, slipping and falling, soon face down in the water. Simon and his mother hauled the choking, rigid child out and wrapped him in a towel. Grace kept asking Jeremy what happened, and Simon knew in the way that he knew everything else about his brother. He saw the drain in his mind the way Jeremy did, a yawning black whirlpool sucking him down, and while Simon didn’t feel the
terror, he understood it with something beyond empathy.

  There was the time Jeremy took that dive into a leaf pile from a tree in Wisconsin. Simon saw the grotesque angle of his brother’s wrist as he stumbled up off the ground, and felt the sickening pain in his own. Finding Jeremy’s suffering intolerable, Simon was always looking for how he might alleviate it. Simon’s job was to be his brother’s keeper; he did not resent it, nor did he wonder at its fairness. It was simply a fact of his particular existence, like looking older than his age.

  The boys reached their destination at about noon. Nestled among low mounds, The Circle was invisible until nearly upon it, a clearing strewn with boulders arranged in rings of decreasing size toward the center. As with many other places on the moors, there was an atmosphere of magic here that gave rise to superstition. The twins liked to think of The Circle as a forum for the wild ponies that roamed the countryside. They had surprised a pair of them once, grazing here among the rocks.

  Tired and hungry, they sat down with their backs against the sun-warmed boulders and ate, talking lazily.

  “I’m sending you a postcard,” Jeremy said. This was their code for the peculiar interchanges that often passed between them. They could “read” one another, almost as if they were looking at the same images on a screen or were flipping through the pages of a book together. As children, they had assumed that everyone did this until they realized that others found the process curious, even freakish. They had learned early on to keep it to themselves.

  Simon closed his eyes. When on the receiving end, he found it worked better if he didn’t try too hard. Shapes and colors gradually materialized, like a photograph in a chemical bath. “You still hungry, Jer?” he teased.

  Jeremy laughed. “What did you get?”

  “A platter. Blue ostriches on it. No, peacocks.”

  “And?”

  “A steak the size of Aunt Lulu’s backside. You want the other half of my sandwich?”