Stay

by Nicola Griffith

  “Very you,” she said as she looked over the simple, turn-of-the-nineteenth-century reproductions, the lever taps with white porcelain handles, the deep, claw-footed tub, the wide, white-enameled kitchen sink. “Modern faucets for the kitchen, though, right?”

  I nodded. “You can take authenticity too far.”

  We talked about bathrooms, how as a child she had longed for one like a pink palace, pink quartz floor, red gold taps with ruby inserts, pink fur rugs … “I’m not sure when the pink thing faded. A couple of years ago I wanted one of those industrial-looking places, you know: all steel and glass and straight lines. Black floor tiles, white porcelain.”

  Like a hospital room.

  “Now I’m thinking something warmer: terra-cotta tile, plants, big old tub.”

  “Did you and Dornan …” I didn’t finish the question. I had no idea why I’d begun it.

  “Talk about setting up house? No. He wanted to but he never brought it up. I’d have run a mile. Did you and Julia?”

  “No. It …” I shook my head. “No. It seemed so obvious we’d spend the rest of our lives together that we didn’t even discuss it.”

  “So, you would have got back from Norway and argued about bathroom furniture.”

  I picked up the catalogue and traced the picture of the tub with my finger. “She might not have liked this.”

  “Who would have won?” Tammy was smiling, and just for a moment my memories of Julia were happy ones—watching her face in the Oslo art gallery as she explained Norwegian neo-Romanticism; pulling her to me when I was in the tub; frying freshly caught fish—free of a hovering sense of doom, free of guilt, free of anything but happiness, and I was able to smile back.

  “She would.”

  “You want more coffee?”

  I didn’t, there was still the hardware store and Radio Shack to visit and the fixtures to load, but the sense of lightness and gladness, of being able to remember Julia without guilt, persisted, on and off, all afternoon: the perfect birthday gift.

  I took another sip of the Woodward Canyon Reserve chardonnay—Tammy’s choice; mine was rioja—and its smoky oak flavor distracted me for a minute from what the man standing opposite me near the fireplace was saying. His name was Henry something or other, an old-fashioned name for a man wearing aggressively fashionable glasses, slits that didn’t seem big enough to see through.

  “… those days, not like Adrian”—Dree’s mother—“and the rest of us.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Not as long as the women’s land collective. I came in ’79. We started with nothing, not even common sense.” He smiled as if to say, You know what it’s like to be young and foolish, and I realized that I had not thought about Karp or New York for at least an hour.

  “So how do you know Adrian?”

  “Oh, I’ve known of her for about twenty years, but she and the others were rabid lesbian separatists until the mid-eighties.” He gave the woman sitting on the tapestried couch on the other side of the room an affectionate look. Adrian was in her mid-fifties; her hand rested on the thigh of a man who appeared to be ten years her junior, and the looks they exchanged were frankly sexual. Now I understood Dree thinking her mother was getting, like, weird. “She’s changed a lot then?”

  “We all have.”

  There were about fifty people at the party, ranging in age from early sixties to early twenties, the older crowd’s children. The atmosphere was one of village get-together: people who had known each other for decades, and been through economic, political, and emotional change. I tried to imagine them in tie-dye and beards, or working naked on the land, getting stoned and talking about the power of the patriarchal military-industrial complex, but all I could see were accountants and psychotherapists, the sons and daughters of middle America finally leading the kind of lives their parents would at least have understood, if not wholly approved. For that there would have to have been more wedding rings, more socks, and some meat among the Brie and smoked salmon and vegetable dip in the dining room.

  I excused myself, and refilled my glass. Tammy stood to the right of Adrian’s couch, talking to a man and woman in their twenties who were hand in hand. The man’s blue eyes seemed vaguely familiar. I watched Tammy for a while; she wasn’t touching the man on the arm, or giving him extra big smiles, or arching her back so that her breasts pressed against her thin sweater; she wasn’t canting her hips and shoulders so that the woman was cut out of the conversation; she wasn’t just a couple of inches too close. I stepped forward and she saw me.

  “Aud!” She opened the circle. “This is Shari, and Ken, Dree’s brother.” That explained the eyes. I swapped my wine to my left hand and we exchanged handshakes and pleased-to-meet-you’s. “Ken works for a construction company—”

  “McCann, right?”

  He smiled. “How did you know that?”

  I pointed to my haircut. “Dree.”

  He smiled some more, but I saw how his hand stiffened in Shari’s and thought he must get tired of Dree talking about him and his affairs to all and sundry.

  “Like I was saying, Ken works for a construction company. I told him about the cabin and what kind of stove we were looking for, and he thinks he knows where we can find one. I told him we’d already tried that place on Merrimon.”

  Since when had there been a we?

  “Tammy tells us you want something you can cook with,” Shari said. She had long, honey-colored hair and beautifully shaped nails. “Maybe a wood-burning range is the way to go.”

  “Just a plain stove,” I said. “Something along the lines of an old Intrepid, that’ll heat the cabin—”

  “—and boil a pan of water if necessary.” Now Ken’s smile was real. “We had one of those our first couple years up the mountain. That’s all we had. Wonderful thing. Dree was just starting to crawl. I was seven. It was my job, while Mom was in endless collective meetings, to make sure Dree didn’t stick her hand on it. Those puppies get hot when they’re going! Wonder what happened to it.” He literally shook himself, like a dog trying to get dry. “There are a couple places along Emma Road you might try. They supply me when I do independent contracting. Tell them I sent you and they might give you a discount.”

  “I will. But I don’t know your last name.”

  “Johnson.”

  Son of John. “Bet Adrian didn’t like that.”

  He grinned. “She changed our names to Moon for a while after she left Dad and dragged us up here, but never got around to making it legal, so at school Dree and I were always Johnson, and it just crept back. How about you? You sound British.”

  “Norwegian. Aud Torvingen.”

  Shari’s mother, it turned out, was originally from Denmark. Shari had visited Copenhagen for the first time last year. Wonderful city. Did I know it?

  At midnight, we were the only vehicle on the road.

  “I liked that,” Tammy said.

  “Good.”

  “Did you?”

  I thought about it. “Yes.”

  “I liked it a lot,” she said. “I liked the people, the way it felt. It must be cool to live with people you’ve known for twenty or thirty years, to work in the same town where people went to school with your parents. Wonder what that feels like.”

  Stifling, probably.

  She said wistfully, “They seemed like a real community.”

  “I didn’t know you yearned for community.”

  “It just seemed … I don’t know. Nice. Like they were really in each other’s lives. It wasn’t just that they all belonged to the same gym or something. They’ve got history together. These people know each other: they remember when which kid had what illness, when who split up with who in junior high and why. Ken told me stories about how they had to share everything the first few years. How they still do, sort of. They grew up together. I can’t even remember the names of people I went to college with.”

  A community of necessity and proximity would probably
drive her screaming into the sunset. “Most real community comes from shared hardship.”

  “Still. I think I could live here.”

  If it hadn’t been such a narrow road, and dark, I would have turned to look at her. “I wouldn’t have thought there were a lot of business development opportunities here.”

  “Now that’s where you’re wrong. Asheville is hot. Did you meet Jonas? Tall guy, gangly, beaky nose? He’s a VP at Sonopress, and he was saying that the company gives money to the town, for stuff like the annual Bele Chere festival, and WCQS, and the local Arts Alliance, but that they want to do more, give the company a higher profile in the community. It sounds like a job I could do: get to know people, find out what people want, find a way to give it to them so everyone’s happy.”

  “Yes. You’d be good at that.”

  “And”—she sounded as though she were smiling—“Sonopress is part of Bertelsmann.”

  “So if you get bored you can move up the parental corporate chain?” It began to make a bit more sense.

  “Right. But it’s not just that. I could really do that job, and I’d like it. I could get them to expand the community liaison stuff to other things—getting some of the bands whose CDs they press, or stars whose movies they put on DVD, to come to the festivals, maybe persuading some of the software writers to donate time to local schools. Whatever. It wouldn’t be just about money.”

  “But meeting all those big names would be fun.”

  “Fun is good.” Definitely smiling. “And it would be fun to get to know people who live here. Business development is lots of smiles and promises, but when you’ve got them to sign that deal, phht, that’s it, you fly to another city and smile at someone else. This would be different, it would be the same people over and over. I’d be part of something. Yes”—out of the corner of my eye I saw her nodding to herself—“yes, I could live here.”

  Could I? Even if the police let me? I made the turn onto the ungraded mountain track. Stay in the world, Aud, she had said, and I had promised. I just wasn’t sure which part.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The rain beat steadily on the new windows and washed in a sheet over the handmade glass. Wavy water on wavy glass.

  “Makes me seasick to watch it,” Tammy said. “I still don’t see why you paid so much money for bad glass.”

  We’d been over it; I wanted the cabin to be as close as possible to the way it might originally have been built, using handmade materials where possible. But glass had improved in the last ninety years, and I was beginning to think she might be right. At least we were weathertight.

  “We should light a fire,” I said.

  “We don’t have the stove yet.”

  “It would test the chimney.”

  While I built the fire Tammy watched, standing by the long counter and dry sink of what at some point would become the kitchen. The tub and pedestal sink leaned against the wall of what would be the bathroom, once I’d installed a pump house and a combination of solar panels and generator to power it. If Eddie didn’t call. If Karp didn’t wake up.

  Smoke eeled up the chimney and disappeared satisfactorily. I added more kindling to the ancient cast-iron grate, waited for it to catch, and began to lay on logs. Four walls, a roof, sturdy door, glazed windows, and now heat. Almost livable. The flames grew, turned from blue to red at their center.

  “It works.”

  I nodded. So far.

  “Hey, we could eat here tonight, instead of the trailer. I’ll go see what there is to cook.”

  The door squeaked as she closed it behind her. It might be that the hinges were slightly out of true, or just that they needed oiling, and at some point I would have to fix it, but at this moment I was more interested in the fire; I wanted it to be perfect: symmetrical, lively, just the right shape and color.

  Tammy came back carrying the laundry basket; it was full of sacks of flour, and butter, some milk and bread and wine and what looked like my two cast-iron frying pans.

  “It’s a surprise,” she said. She set to work, flouring the kitchen counter, pouring and measuring and kneading.

  The fire roared. I used the tongs to unfold the iron bar hinged to the sidewall of the fireplace, and pulled it out across the flames. Like the fire, it gave me deep satisfaction. It had been a tricky bit of mortaring but now it was positioned just right to hang a pot or kettle over the flames—not that I’d need it once the kitchen had a range, or even when the stove was in place.

  Tammy seemed to be making some kind of flat cake. “How much longer until the coals are hot enough to cook with?”

  “Half an hour.”

  Runnel of rain on the roof, pop and hiss of green wood on the fire, slap and whisper of dough. I stretched out on the unfinished floor and let myself drift for a while. Noises from the kitchen counter changed: Tammy had half a dozen cakes lined up and had moved on to wrapping a variety of vegetables in aluminum foil.

  Hot yellow nuggets piled above and below the grate. I raked a few onto the front hearth. They began to cool to orange and go gray around the edges. I raked them back. “Ready when you are.”

  The vegetables went in first. She held up the silvery packages one by one, “Corn, onions, butternut squash, sweet peppers,” and put them in the fire. She got up again and brought back one of the skillets, covered with a wet cloth.

  “That’s my pillowcase.”

  “I had to get creative. I needed wet cloth.”

  Get creative. I could find out which hospital Karp was in. Go make sure he wouldn’t wake up.

  Tammy wrapped the cakes in the pillowcase, put them in the skillet, put the skillet to one side in the hearth, then raked a handful of coals and ash over the lot, just like something out of a Foxfire book.

  “The cakes and the vegetables should cook a bit before the bacon goes on,” she said. “I thought we’d have some wine.”

  I got up and found the bottle and glasses and corkscrew and brought them back to the fireplace. It was a good rioja. Tammy had been paying attention; it no longer surprised me.

  The smell of applewood and roasting corn mingled with red wine as I poured. I handed Tammy her glass.

  “To your cabin,” she said. “May you have many dinners in front of this fire, with people you care for.”

  I couldn’t see it, but I raised my glass, and drank.

  She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “It got warm fast.”

  “Wood’s a good insulator.” Now that the windows were glazed and the fire working, the place was more or less livable as it stood. Hook up the toilet to the septic system, flush it using buckets filled at the pump outside. You’d have to leave before the snows, though, or stay until spring …

  Karp’s hospital room might be guarded.

  “Tell me about those cakes you’re cooking.”

  “Ash cakes. Ken was telling me about them at the party. Some old toothless woman showed Adrian how, and Adrian showed Ken as soon as he could be trusted not to set the house on fire. That was when he was eight, he said. Or maybe nine. Anyhow, they’re supposed to taste good—if they don’t burn to a crisp. Which is where the wet pillowcase comes in. It sort of steams them at the same time, he said. Poor old Ken, keeping house at eight.”

  There were worse things. “What were you doing at that age?”

  “Eight? Eight was when I learned to ride a bike. And how to fall off a pony.” She laughed. “God, I wanted a pony so bad. Then my father took me to this riding school, where I found out that horses are big scary animals that stink and won’t do as they’re told, and it’s a long way down if you fall off.” She sighed. “I was Daddy’s princess. That’s what he called me, his princess. I think he liked it that I couldn’t ride. It kept me his on some level. What about you?”

  Self-analysis from Tammy. “I learned to ride when I was nine. In England. With the daughter of one of my mother’s friends.” Galloping over the Yorkshire moors, wild as a lynx, with Christie Horley. Another life I had left.

 
“You looked quite nostalgic for a while there.”

  “Nine is a good age,” I said. By then I had realized that although my mother behaved as if she loved me, and maybe even wished that she did, she didn’t. My father had been in Chicago that summer.

  Tammy was studying me.

  “What?”

  “You used to scare me. You always scared me, even when Dornan was there. Always judging, and usually not in other people’s favor. Not in mine, anyhow. But since you got back from—Since you got back, you’ve been different. That night, when—” She squirmed and glanced away. “It was a pretty sad seduction attempt, I know, totally embarrassing, but the way you reacted … I thought you were going to strangle me. You looked crazy. Not the kind of person you could ever imagine being nine years old. You seem more human now. And now I’ve embarrassed myself again. Jesus, it’s hot in here.” She put her glass down and pulled off her sweater. When she picked up her glass again, the wine was a rich red against the cream of her bodysuit—which, like the sweater and the wine, she had bought that morning in Asheville. It was strange, seeing her in clothes I had not bought or lent her, drinking wine she had selected without my advice, without needing me there.

  “You’re different, too.”

  “Yep. Since I—Well, I’ve learned plenty. The world can be big, and stink, and it hurts if you fall off, but hey, it’s worth trying, mostly, and what doesn’t kill you … Well, it doesn’t kill you.” She lifted her glass. “To learning experiences, even though they suck.”

  “To not being nine years old and at the mercy of the world.” Like Luz.

  She got up, came back with the second skillet. “Time to fry that bacon.”

  The bacon hissed and shrank and turned translucent, and when it browned we filled our plates with it, and corn and squash and onion, and the doughy-looking things that were the ash cakes. I tried one. It tasted of cinders. “It’s good,” I said. It’s easy to lie to people you’re leaving.