by Susan Wilson
Finally he appeared, standing on the porch steps, shielding his eyes against the glare of the setting sun. He seemed to be waiting for me. Waiting for me to change my mind, to come take the argument to some more reasonable level. To say, It's okay, honey, you certainly deserve a girl on the side. I didn't move.
At last Sean turned and walked up the leaf-strewn path to the driveway. I heard with relief the sound of his car starting. I dived off the raft, instantly warmed by the water. My muscles relaxed as I swam, but the cool air touching my wet skin as I climbed out of the water started me shivering again. I ran into the cabin and grabbed a damp towel.
Sean had used the last of the hot water from the tiny water heater. Half rinsed and no warmer, I bundled into jeans and my sweatshirt and heated water for tea. Mug secured between my hands, I stared out through the big picture window at the growing darkness and ground my teeth against the gristle of my thoughts. This young woman, this secretary, had seen something in my husband I was blind to. But I must have seen it once. Had our lives become so separated that even the memory of the spark which had ignited us into a couple was so diminished I couldn't, twenty years later, recall it to mind? What had Sean displayed to this girl, that she would fall for a middle-aged, slightly overweight insurance salesman? What had I missed? Or thrown away?
I didn't want this to be about other people. About Eleanor or about Ben. I needed to keep my mind on what was happening between Sean and me, and how, somewhere along the way, we'd stopped being important to each other.
Thirty
I don't now how long I sat there. Long enough that my tea grew cold and the room dark. It was very quiet, quieter it seemed than any other night on the lake. Even the bullfrogs and the night birds kept still. I was listening and it seemed as though the isolating dark had stranded me from everyone. The cabin lacked even a noisy clock to remind me that I wasn't alone. My children were gone, their sudden departure without farewell leaving me with a disturbing sense of permanence. What if something happened? My straitlaced upbringing had not allowed for fanciful superstition, but my twenty years with the McCarthy family had exposed me to plenty of crossed fingers and knocks on wood. Never go to bed angry, always leave by the door you entered. It seemed to me that there was some aphorism about always say goodbye. I'd said goodbye to neither my children nor my husband. In this soul dark moment I could believe that I would never see any of them again. I imagined losing Lily and Tim to this corruption in their father's life. If anyone knew that I, too, had been corrupted, I might truly lose them.
I tried to stand and shake off the enervation. I needed to pack, to gather our belongings spread from one corner to the other of the cabin, load the big car, and go home. Yet I sat there, letting the dark cultivate my fears within its protective shield, a petri dish for my emotions and my fears. Within the dark I imagined a broken umbilical, like the lifeline to an astronaut. I saw myself floating away, reaching back, just grazing the fingertips of someone. I pinwheeled away and then suddenly noticed that the other astronaut was moving away from me. I must have dozed, the imagery so unchosen.
A light and fluid sound came to me then, I might almost have imagined it, so delicate and faint. Music. Sweet and hesitant, then stronger. A flute.
I stood and went to the porch, looking across the lake toward Ben's darkened cabin, the only light there his porch light, my Gatsby beacon. The flute music stopped and I heard the screen door screek open and bang closed.
I was cold again and suddenly desperately afraid of being alone, of letting my random thoughts control and frighten me. I took my fleece jacket off the peg and walked out of the cabin to the lakeside. Grace's canoe rested half in and half out of the water, the painter tied to the picnic bench to prevent it drifting away. I groped for the knot and untied it. The paddles were in the canoe and I used one to shove off.
I struck out for Ben's porch light, which glowed as it had every night since that first night in June when I sat on my porch, wondering if coming to Cameo Lake was a stupid idea, a selfish move, or if it was exactly what I needed to do. I stroked gently, soundlessly, across the expanse between our shores.
As I drew closer, I could see the tiny flicker of a citronella candle. The hyperacoustics of the lake brought the sharp sound of bottle against glass.
“You shouldn't be on the water without lights.” Ben's voice was a whisper, yet clearly audible.
“I know.”
“Is this a good idea?”
“Probably not.” I felt the bow of the canoe strike sand. I could just make him out, a dark shape coming toward me.
He bent down and hauled my canoe up onto the beach without my getting out. “Let's go inside.”
We walked side by side. I was acutely aware of the enfolding dark and Ben's hand around mine. As we crossed the porch, he picked up the bottle and glass beside his chair.
Inside, Ben lit a kerosene lamp on the piano and then took a second jelly glass out of the breakfront. Without asking, Ben filled my glass with scotch and dropped an ice cube in. “Sometimes drunk isn't a bad place to be.”
“Are you an alcoholic?”
“Occasionally I turn to drink. I did when Kevin died, I did when Talia . . .” He paused, unused to having someone know about Talia. “After her accident.”
“Ben.” I wanted him to stop this.
“Hey, I'm an ex–rock star, I'm not pure. Never pretended to be. Just because I maintain this quiet, controlled image . . .” He sat heavily into a chair and I realized that he was pretty well gone.
“Ben, what set you off tonight?”
“How can you ask that of me?” In the soft light of the lamp, his eyes were shadowed, impossibly deep in his face. Involuntarily, I thought of Heathcliff. “Haven't I already told you my secrets?”
“Not all of them, Ben. Not all your secrets. Not really.” I did sit next to him then, afraid of my own candor.
He was quiet. Whatever rage he had allowed me to see the tip of, was shoved back down into submission by the next gulp of scotch.
“Ben, please don't do this to yourself.” I rested my hand on the hand which held the glass. “Or at least tell me why.”
“Cleo.” He shook his head. “It would be the epitome of unfairness to burden you further.”
The first swallow of scotch had burned tears into my eyes. The second felt better, and I drained my jelly glass to feel warm and unstructured. It was a different calm than drinking wine.
“Are you going to divorce him?”
I fought the urge to lay my head down on Ben's lap. “I think it's what Sean wants.” Do you love her? I think I might. Abruptly I stood up, needing to quell the urge to seek the comfort I imagined Ben's hand stroking my hair would give. It seemed safer to be moving around the dim room, keeping some physical distance. The yellowish light from the kerosene lamp glittered off Talia's flute, lying on top of the closed lid of the baby grand, and I walked up to it. The gold mouthpiece reflected the light more warmly than the silver body of the instrument. Beside it, the photo I'd noticed before.
A little shrine, I thought. A Talia shrine. I must have said it out loud because Ben's voice, clear in the darkness, agreed with me. “I suppose it is. Occasionally I take it out and put my lips where hers spent so much time. It always tastes like metal. Like she often tasted. Unyielding.”
“Gold is soft.”
“Talia was cast iron.”
I pulled a rocking chair to face Ben, still sitting on the cluttered couch. He poured more scotch into my glass and then into his own.
I should have left then, before my judgment was any more clouded by the exhaustion of my spirit and the scotch. But I couldn't. He seemed so sad, like me, caught between anger and despair.
“What happened, Ben? Why do this to yourself tonight?”
He didn't say anything for a time and then laughed a short, mirthless laugh. “Your husband.”
“I don't understand.”
“You love him.”
“Why do you say that?�
��
“You stopped him from going off the west side of the raft.”
“And why does that bother you?”
“I didn't stop Talia from diving off.” Abruptly Ben stood up and began circling the small illuminated space in front of the piano. “I was on the raft when she went off. It was as dark as it is tonight, the moon gone down, and the motion of the raft under our feet was disorienting.”
I stayed in my chair, watching him appear and disappear through the ovoid pool of kerosene light.
“She wouldn't let me touch her. I thought that maybe she was afraid she'd lose her resolve to leave me if I touched her. She kept backing away.”
Ben suddenly came to a standstill and grasped the back of the rocking chair I was sitting in. I felt his shaking through the narrow spindles of the seat back.
“The odd thing was that, beneath all the anger, I believed that we would survive the moment, and that it would even maybe make us stronger. That this was the moment for us to begin to try harder. That there would be a second chance.”
Ben let go of the chair and I put a foot out to stop its rocking.
“She was just within reach. I could feel her breath on my arm and in the dark I could have reached out and held her. I could have reached my arms around her and held her against me and against any struggle. She realized it and said the last words she would ever say to me. ‘Don't touch me.’” Ben's voice was a soft hissing mimic of how Talia's must have sounded that night. “Then she turned and dived off the raft.”
Now I was on my feet, frantic to put my arms around him, to hold him safe against this haunting with my own need to be touched, to be held safe against the cruelty of love. He kept moving, as if propelled by the immensity of his story, unable to stop the headlong rush of words, as Talia was unable to halt the impetus of her dive against the rock.
“So, you see, the lake community is quite justified in shunning me. I did cause the accident. Only it wasn't that I physically pushed her, it was that I didn't put out a hand to stop her.” He stopped then and let me put my arms around him. “It was my fault.” His voice was cracked and hoarse as if he'd been screaming, but he wasn't weeping. I was.
“Ben, you can't say that. You know that's not true.”
“I knew what was going to happen. I knew the direction she was facing. Yet in that split second when I might have called out a warning or put out a hand, I didn't.”
“Ben, you were hurt and angry.”
“And in that moment, silent.” He pulled away from me and picked up his glass, taking a mouthful, closing his eyes against the burn. “And that's the difference between you and me.”
* * *
We were silent for some time, standing apart, on either side of a rag rug on the floor. The colors of the rug in the kerosene light were questionable gray or blue, white or yellow. I stared at them, trying to remember. Ben picked up the flute and took it apart, wiping each one of the three joints carefully with a cloth before setting it into its case.
“Maybe you will be able to write the flute part when she's gone.”
Ben kept rubbing the gold mouthpiece and said nothing. I hadn't meant to be cruel or outspoken, only truthful. Scotch truthful. For a moment I wondered why my parents were so inhibited if this is what scotch did for me. “I mean that maybe you haven't given up hope that she'll come back.”
He snapped the case shut and walked away from the piano. He went to the wood stove and put a match to an already laid pile of newspaper and kindling. Still quiet, he added two logs and then stood up, rubbing his long hands against his jeans.
“Do you want me to go?”
“I want you to stay.” He might have meant forever.
The dry wood popped and the kindling crackled. The sudden warmth in the chilly room felt good. We came together in front of the stove, reaching out to one another in a natural way, compassionate friends. Needing the affirmation we lent each other, needing the physical release from our overwhelming pain, we held on. They were separate pains, yet similar enough to be numbed by the simple act of touch. And comforting touch became loving touch and we gave in. The rag rug served as our oasis, the kerosene lamp flickered and failed as we sank to the floor. In the dark every sensation was heightened by its unexpectedness. I was aware of the rough surface of the rug, but absorbed into the feel of Ben's hands on my skin. For however long it was that we lay together, and I could not say how long, we built an impenetrable wall around ourselves, keeping our troubles outside and only our passion within.
As soon as we lay quiet, feeling the vibrations grow still and our pulses slow, the walls were breached and it all came back. Our separate guilts would now and forever be blended by our common sin.
“If we ever do this again, may I suggest we use a bed?”
I chuckled, amazed that either of us could make a joke. Amazed and certain that there would be no third time.
Thirty-one
It was harder than I could have imagined to leave. In a few short weeks, Cameo Lake felt as familiar and beloved to me as my own neighborhood. As I bundled up clean and dirty clothes and searched under beds for missing sandals, it felt like a safe harbor from the anticipated turmoil of my return to Providence. As much as I would associate Cameo Lake and this cabin with the anguish of Sean's betrayal, it would equally be the place where I had found some comfort.
I pressed thoughts of last night out of my head with fingertips. The scotch had left me queasy, the memory of last night made me dizzy with the vertiginous dance of guilt and joy. One minute I could blame Sean for driving me into another man's arms and the next be grateful to him. In lockstep with those conflicted thoughts was the steady tramp of knowing I might have done it anyway. At once I dropped onto the glider and burst into tears. I wanted to be with Ben yet I didn't trust my feelings, so certain that they were born of Sean's betrayal. I wanted to heal my marriage, but at the same time I didn't want to because it would mean losing Ben. The weeping ceased and I went into the bathroom to be sick.
* * *
The last thing I loaded into the SUV was my laptop. I had packed it into its protective case, inadvertently reminding myself of Ben putting the flute back so carefully. Treasured items. We had agreed, in the first gray light of day, that we would say our goodbyes then. We would not prolong something which neither of us could reliably say wouldn't be the last time we would see each other. In the hours when we had held on to each other, we had not talked about a future together, only our futures apart. “What will you do?” we had asked each other, and agreed that our central problems needed to be resolved before we dare trust this new thing between us. We didn't say it, but it was implied. Ben was waiting for Talia to die. Until then, he was entailed, voluntarily, willingly. As for me, I needed to decide, with Sean, if our marriage was worth holding on to. If Ben stayed a part of the equation, I could never decide fairly.
“Go home, Cleo, figure it out and whatever course you choose I'll abide by. And be happy for you.”
How had we come to understand each other in such a short time?
I intended to head straight down to Narragansett but didn't. Grace had taken the kids down there, so I knew that my house in Providence would be empty. Empty except for Sean, of course. I needed to talk to Alice, but I needed more, in that moment, to see my home. To sniff the air of my territory and lay claim to it. I'd head down late, join the family at suppertime, and after the dishes were done and the children put to bed, talk to Alice, divine from her the path to take. She had guided me through the difficult ordeal of making funeral arrangements for my parents. “A child shouldn't have to do this,” she said, although I was twenty-one and had never felt like a child. She agreed that we shouldn't delay the wedding, scheduled for less than two months later, stood up against those who raised an eyebrow: “This child needs stability and joy.” Even while my mother was still alive, Alice had mothered me. It hurt very much now to imagine life without her advocacy. If Sean and I split, how would she divide her love? He was blood, I
was not.
* * *
After the muted colors of the cabin, the brightness of my kitchen seemed glaring. Everything seemed smaller than memory and it took me a few minutes to adjust my perceptions. The house was neat, a little dusty but not horrible. I dragged the overstuffed bags into the laundry room and loaded the machine. That done, I wandered back through the kitchen to the living room. On the floor, in front of the CD player, was a CD jewel box. We'd been replacing LPs with CDs for years and I vaguely remembered Sean buying the Interior Angles' first album, the one with “Frozen Heart.” The box on the floor, lying there like a dueling glove cast down in challenge, was that CD box. Defiantly I put the CD into the player and let Ben's music loose in my empty house. I walked upstairs to the bedrooms and pulled open Sean's bureau drawers. They, too, were empty. Without any discussion, Sean seemed to have decided that I planned to throw him out. Or had decided he wanted to go. You will never, no never, be lost to my mind. Frozen forever in my heart.
Leaving the washing machine agitating through the first cycle, I climbed into my own minivan and backed out of the driveway. I needed to see my children and I needed to see Alice.
The traffic wasn't too bad at this time of day on a Saturday. The beach traffic was all heading home and the traffic heading for the beach was thin. I felt the strain of all the driving I'd done this day in the back of my neck, and I hoped that Siobhan would be there and give me one of her back rubs. When I turned down the short street where the cottages were, I could see that only Alice's Oldsmobile was in the drive. Everyone must have gone to the beach and suddenly I was afraid that I would be locked out. The back door, though, was open and Alice was in the kitchen. She was making a pot of tea, almost as if she'd been expecting me. “Hello, Cleo.” I fought back tears as Alice unselfishly gathered me to her in a big hug.