The Possible World

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  Prior Washburn arrived in midmorning, carrying a basket. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of me.

  “You must be hungry,” he said, stepping up the path that had emerged under my scythe and hoe. I accepted the basket eagerly, peeking in: eggs, fruit, butter, more cheese and bread. “We expected you back last night.”

  I gave him a tour of the little cottage and the land around it, pointing out the sunny place I planned for the garden.

  “You can’t mean to stay here,” he said, looking around. Through his eyes, I saw how paltry was my progress. The house interior might be free of the piles and drifts of dirt, but the windowpanes were still black. The tall weeds in the yard had been hacked down and removed to a gigantic wilting mound outside the wall, but that had only revealed a tough carpet of chickweed and bittercress and dandelion that surged, springy and dense, in all directions. The lumpy mattress sagged in the sun. I’d need to repair the porch. I’d need to find, or dig out, a cellar. Everywhere I looked, a different massive project waited.

  I felt a stab of panic, then closed my eyes and quelled it. I’d pick the seams of the ticking and wash it, and restuff the mattress. I’d dig each weed out of the earth, root by root, and I’d turn the soil. I’d wash the windows. One square foot at a time, it all could be done.

  “It’s been one day,” I said. “You promised me a year.”

  “So I did. Although that was probably not wise.”

  “I can do this.” Gritting my teeth, ignoring the cacophony of need calling from every corner of the landscape.

  “It may not be possible,” he said.

  “Then I’ll find that out,” I said.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT I was simply too tired to pull the mattress back into the house. I pushed it down from its slant against the wall to land on the weeds with a giant puff of dust. At that point I was almost more dirt than skin, and beyond caring about such niceties as bed linens. I crawled onto it and fell asleep immediately.

  I awoke sometime later, under a dome of stars. There was no wind. Something walked in the grass nearby, but I felt neither curiosity nor fear, and I had no urge to move. Flat against the earth, I felt a deep sense of belonging. No past or present, not even a person but a soul, liquid and blank. Unmoving, I was yet moving with everything on the earth, no boundaries between me and the stars and the ground and the grass and whatever roamed or hunted nearby. No sorrow, no hope or fear. I felt Bradley, gone and also with me, against my chest and slowly leaving, evaporating from my grasp. My sweet boy. The tears were for the joy of him, back in my arms to tell me not good-bye, but the opposite—that I could join him if I wanted. I closed my eyes, released my hold on the world. Wait for me.

  * * *

  I AWOKE AGAIN in the wee hours. It was as though I’d had a fever that had crescendoed and left me weaker but well. It was more: as though I’d had an invisible companion, one who’d accompanied me my entire life, and who was now gone. Leaving me alone, but also relieved of the worry and care that comes with love. Now the world was emptier, less rich, but also simpler.

  I heard a distant crack, like a twig breaking under a footstep, and was instantly alert. I realized that I had never actually been alone at night. Now I was more alone than I had thought it possible to be, totally vulnerable, at the mercy of any passerby. I thought of the shotgun I’d seen in the shed; even if I had it with me, I wouldn’t have known how to use it.

  I lay stiff and listening while the predawn splashed a rim of amber above the distant trees. I didn’t move until the sky was cobalt and the ball of sun was molten behind the tree line. I rose then with a fresh determination: I would get the bedroom habitable and pull the mattress back in there. No more sleeping in the open. And I’d learn how to use that gun.

  I hauled water into the kitchen, bucket after bucket to fill the deep tin tub I’d found in the shed, and washed my filthy self in water so cold it turned my arms numb. I put the flannel shirt and overalls on again, emptied the black water from the tub and left it upside down to dry in the yard, then fetched kindling to make a fire in the woodstove and boil myself an egg.

  In the afternoon a wheelbarrow arrived, pushed by a redheaded St. Will’s lad with a freckled face. It bore a set of bedsheets, a bar of soap, a hairbrush and comb, a lantern, and a container of lamp oil. There was also a wide-brimmed hat with a note pinned to it. Your nose is sunburning, it said, and Keep the barrow.

  * * *

  AFTER TWO WEEKS, the house was reasonably clean, the soil for the garden was turned, and the roses had been pruned and fed with a compost tea I’d brewed in a bucket, following what I could remember of my mother’s recipe.

  I took the shotgun and the box of shells from the shed and went a good distance into the field behind the cottage, setting some cracked jars on a stump for targets. My first shots went wide and wide and wide, wasting shells and raising a bruised place on my shoulder. I pushed the hat from my face, let it hang by its ribbon against my back while I aimed carefully, closing one eye. At last! One of the jars flew into pieces.

  Through the ringing in my ears, I became aware of a new sound, repetitive and distant. I looked around for its source and saw a flash beside the stone cottage, then the sound again. Who was at Roscommon, and what was he doing? I walked swiftly in that direction, carrying the gun.

  As I got closer, I could see that the flashing was the sun reflecting off an ax blade, rising and falling. Someone was chopping wood. Not one of the schoolboys from next door as I might have expected, but a grown man. Perhaps thirty, clean-shaven, with dark wavy hair.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He brought the ax whistling down.

  “Was that you shooting on my land?” he said, not looking at me, rocking the blade out of the wood.

  I was confused. Was this man making claim to Roscommon? After all my work?

  “This is your land?”

  “I own the farm next door,” he said, indicating the direction with his chin. “That big rock over there is the boundary.” He raised his arms high again. Crack, two quarter logs jumping apart and falling on either side.

  “I didn’t mean to trespass,” I said. He nodded. Crack. “What are you doing?”

  “Firewood,” he said. Crack.

  “Why?”

  “It’ll be winter before long. You’ll need a lot of it.” Now he looked at me, holding the ax and waiting, to see if I had more questions.

  “Oh. Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  He split logs every afternoon for a few days, until the firewood pile stretched the length of the building and all the way up to the roof. In time, I’d teach myself to chop my own firewood, and I’d be a tolerable shot too. But that was my first year at Roscommon, and I wouldn’t have had any chance to make it through the winter without that wood. The farmer had asked nothing from me. I didn’t know who sent him, or why he might have wanted to help, but I accepted the kindness as something given, human to human. From now on, I would leave God out of everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  Leo

  JENESSA, THE AIDE, TAKES ME to the library. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile. She walks me around the corner and down two blocks.

  “Shoot,” she says, puffing, when we come into view of the place. She is pretty fat. “I thought libraries had to have like stone lions and shit. That’s just a house.”

  It does look like a house, yellow clapboard, a long set of steps reaching down from the white front door to the parking lot. A small sign stuck in the grass at the foot of the steps says Public Library.

  I’m almost to the top of the steps before I realize Jenessa’s not with me. She’s seated herself on a bench near the sidewalk. She looks up and sees me waiting.

  “You go on in,” she calls, bringing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of her patterned smock. “Gonna get some fresh air.”

  * * *

  IT LOOKS LIKE just one room at first. There are rolling
carts of books against the far walls and I head toward those.

  “Well, hello there!” A voice drops from somewhere I can’t see. “Are you all by yourself?”

  “Jenessa’s outside,” I say as a lady stands up behind the counter. She’s got a frozen-looking puff of light yellow hair and square glasses.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  I can see now that this is just the middle room, with wide doorways on either side. The room through the doorway to the right has a long table and the room on the other side is bigger and filled with bookshelves. There’s a long line of television sets on desks with chairs in front of them, and a huge stuffed dragon in one corner.

  The library lady is looking at me with a thinking expression on her face.

  “I sense a discriminating reader,” she says. She beckons, and I follow her into the dragon room. “Here,” she says, handing me a book with a boy’s face on the cover, pine trees and a wolf in the distance behind him. “Have you read this one?”

  I shake my head.

  “And if you like that,” she says, reaching to another shelf and handing me another. She pulls a third book out and considers, holding it. “Is that too many? You’ll have two weeks to read them.”

  “I don’t have a card,” I say.

  “Oh, you do need one of those.” She looks really disappointed. “You can still read the books while you’re here, though. You just can’t take them out.”

  I point to one of the televisions.

  “Can you show me how to use that?”

  She raises her eyebrows, as if surprised. “Certainly.”

  She pulls out one of the chairs and I climb up. The screen is blue, with a box that says Log In.

  “The log-in information is on a sticky here.” She points to a yellow flap of paper stuck to the frame of the screen. “First, use the mouse to put the cursor in the box.”

  The mouse. I shake my head.

  “This is the mouse.” She moves a plastic oval on the desk with a freckled bony hand. “You move it like this, and it moves the cursor.” She makes a click and there’s a thin blinking bar in the Log In box.

  “Now you can type,” she says.

  I press the keys for the letters and numbers and then Return when she tells me; the Log In box is replaced with a white screen.

  “You got it,” she says. “Now, is there a project that I can help you with?”

  “I thought this was television,” I say.

  Again, that faint surprise washing from her. “Well, you can watch television on it,” she says. “But in the library, we don’t do that.”

  “Can it play games?” I am thinking about the big boy and the Nintendo.

  “It can, but in the library people mostly use it to look things up,” she says. She moves the mouse again, clicks it. “To learn more about something. You type in what you’re looking for.” She has a thought. “Are you homeschooled?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  We share a puzzled moment before she puts her hand lightly on my shoulder.

  “Okay, well. What would you like to look up?” She leans close over my shoulder, reading the screen as I type. “Hmm. I think you might need a spelling adjustment.” She taps the Delete key, then taps another letter into the word and clicks Go. The screen flashes white before new text furls down.

  “That’s a long way from here,” she says.

  I hadn’t considered that.

  * * *

  WHEN I COME out of the library, Jenessa is sitting on the bus-stop bench next to the street, looking intently at her phone. I jump down the steps. She doesn’t notice me until I am right beside her.

  “You don’t have any books,” she says accusingly. Tobacco reeks from her in a sweet musk. “What were you doing that whole time?”

  “I can’t take books out ’cause I don’t have a card. If you bring me back, I can finish the book I was reading.”

  “Fine with me,” she says, gathering the cigarette box and lighter from beside her on the bench and standing up. “Beats emptying bedpans.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  * * *

  Lucy

  IT IS THE SAME DREAM I have had many times before. There’s an intruder roaming around the apartment. In my dream, I slip out of bed; as I go from room to room he is just ahead of me, a dark shape passing through a doorway or in front of a window. In the last room, I am alone. Suddenly there is a noise behind me. I whirl and he is there, not more than a foot away.

  Usually this is where the dream ends, but this time he lifts his hand and I see the gun in it. There is nothing but air between its muzzle and my chest. I can feel the burning of the place where the wound will open in my sternum. I am not looking at the gun, I am looking at the face of the intruder, waiting for the explosion.

  Lucy. A man’s voice, but it’s a little boy who runs toward me. Ben? Don’t be scared, he says. He reaches up, slips his hand into mine.

  I awaken with my heart pounding. The call room is dark, filled with looming unfamiliar shapes—is that a person there, by the window? My chest squeezes; I turn on the flashlight from my phone and see that it’s my white coat on a hanger, unalive, unfrightening. It’s just past midnight. I’ve stayed up all day, trying to turn my schedule around for the day off tomorrow. Which is actually today.

  I touch the screen of my phone, once and then again; it collapses into blackness Connecting . . . Is the phone ringing beside the bed? Perhaps he’s not in the apartment. At the thought, I almost end the call, but then he answers.

  “What’s wrong?” A whisper. So as not to wake the woman beside him?

  “I had a bad dream.” It is a familiar statement, one with which I awakened him several times over the years.

  “Oh, sweet pea.” There’s rustling from his end. Is he getting out of bed and going into another room? Already the burning in my chest is fading, the images are sinking away from my memory. “It was just a dream,” he says. “It wasn’t real.”

  I close my eyes: I could be home, he could be beside me, about to draw me into an embrace, my brow against his collarbone, his chest hair tickling my nose. Both arms solidly around me.

  “Are you home?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  We are silent for a minute.

  “How are you?” I ask.

  “I’m okay. No, I’m not. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.”

  The cover of night, it seems, or maybe just the disorientation of disturbed sleep, has peeled away our shells of anger and disappointment, and freed the softer truths.

  “Sweet pea. What are we going to do?” he says. And then, “Come over.”

  Voices crowd into my mind: Giles’s What an ass and my stepmother’s gentle Maybe you two just need to talk, honey. Then the Texas twang of Mr. Barber: Is he a good man?

  I wash my face and brush my teeth. The uncompromising rectangle of mirror in the bathroom reflects me back in all my hollow-eyed glory. My hair is brown but my lashes are blond, invisible. I used to wear mascara and lip gloss. That was then, this is now.

  When Joe opens the door, candlelight flickers against the apartment walls behind him. He’s been lighting the candles while I’ve been driving.

  “I’m glad you came,” he says, stepping back so I can go past him into the apartment. Dark, tidy. No sign of the mess I made when I was here last time. “I opened some wine. I wasn’t sure what shift you’re on.”

  “It’s Death Month. I have the day off tomorrow.”

  I can barely speak for the rushing in my ears, my thoughts so loud it feels that he must hear them: how I love you, how I’ve missed you.

  He pours and I take the glass. We bought these when we lived in New York, full lead crystal and so beautiful, but only two left on the clearance shelf. I’d said, Who buys two wineglasses? and he’d said, That’s all we need, and put them in our basket.

  I sit on the desk chair, t
he only other place to sit besides the bed. He sits on the end of the bed and puts the wine bottle on the floor.

  “I almost called you a thousand times,” he says.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I guess I didn’t know where to start.”

  “Just start.”

  He looks into his glass. “She was there, you weren’t.” She. It’s a jolt to hear the pronoun. “I know that’s no excuse,” he adds, although I haven’t said anything. “It’s just been—” He shuts his eyes, opens them again. “Waiting for you all the time. Tiptoeing around while you’re sleeping. Do you know how long it’s been since we had fun?”

  Were we ever fun? We were intense. We fell headlong into each other, it was destiny, it was passion.

  “Is she fun?” I ask.

  He looks at me sharply, but he sees that I’m really just asking, there’s no antagonism in it, and he takes a sip of wine and then says, “She’s a good listener.” Thinks for another moment. “She’s nice.”

  “I’m nice,” I say, and I hear the comedy in it, the cartoon character shouting I’m not angry!

  He smiles just a little.

  “Well, I used to be nice,” I say, and correct myself again. “I used to be nicer.”

  I remember gunshot Mrs. Ortiz cursing, her husband’s insistence: she doesn’t even know those words.

  “You can be nice,” he concedes. “But you’re not nice all the time.”

  The word is starting to sound like nonsense. Nice. Nice. Repetition is crushing the meaning out of it. Who’s nice all the time?

  “I’m not trying to make it sound like your fault,” he says. “But it started to feel like we were enemies.”

  “I never felt that way.” But if I’d had all that time alone, maybe I would have. “But this is just the for worse part. You know, for better or for worse?”

  “Those are just words,” he says. “Like the Pledge of Allegiance. No one actually thinks about what they mean when they’re saying them.”