The From-Aways

by CJ Hauser

  Most of this house spooks me most of the time, and I love it. Back in the city, when Henry and I talked about moving to Maine, we ran our mouths until it sounded like something we’d talk about forever but never actually do. His stories about Menamon grew and grew in my mind. A place with lobsters so thick in the sea you could barely go swimming, he said, tweaking me all over, a thousand lobster claws pinching. A place where lifelong grudges were held over stolen pie recipes and county fair ribbons. A place where children were tough; they raised animals for 4-H and butchered them too. They worked on boats and in fields and in shops. They learned to build things and to shoot, the value of money and how to behave at a funeral. And they were happy, these children, because no one had allergies or learning disabilities or nannies. No one? I said. Surely some—

  No one, Henry said, his eyes lit up, twinkling.

  He talked about his parents’ house, and we dreamed about living there, but we’d have had to pay the bank a fair amount to get it, and the amount just seemed too much. So we gave up on that idea and I tried to find something on Craigslist. The people of Hancock County, it seemed, did not often use Craigslist. And then, one day, Henry showed up with a stack of photos and a ring of keys, a green ribbon tied around them. These are for you, he said. He was grinning, beaming, prouder than I’d ever seen him. Embarrassed too for being so proud. They were the photos of this house, his parents’ house. The keys, to open its doors. How did you— I said, and Henry just told me he’d worked, saved, found the money to pay off the bank. He’d made it work, he said.

  You are giving me a house? I said. We’re really going? I have never been good at receiving gifts, they make me feel awkward and guilty and shy, and this was such an enormous gift I felt unequal to it. But whatever discomfort I felt at the hugeness of what Henry had done, the wonder of it was greater. Henry was magical. He had swum through seas of lobsters and worked since the womb and never had allergies and he had, not an apartment, but a whole house, and we were going to live in it together. We were going to have an adventure. I was holding a tinkling ring of keys in my hand.

  The wonder of it has not dissipated. I still have trouble remembering that this house is mine. When I cook in June’s kitchen and ask Henry if he would like salt in his eggs, I feel like I am playacting. Who is this grown-up Leah Lynch in a house with a husband cooking eggs? This woman who thanks Henry for taking out the garbage? What happened to Leah Gold, who worked all night and had an encyclopedia of delivery places in her phone?

  I look at Henry now, sitting on the couch, huge papers on the coffee table, sketching the gardens of the casa grande into existence. He has not been shaving much and has scruff coming in all over his face. He moves his hands over the table papers to smooth them, erases something, and fills in something different. He makes a low, grumbling thinking sound like a growl, so deep you can barely hear it. But I listen for that noise. I try to catch it whenever I can.

  I sit in Henry’s lap and wrinkle all of his papers. He sticks his pencil behind his ear and wraps his arms around me. He slides a hand into the back of my jeans and snaps the elastic of my underwear, then picks me up from the hips and sets me on my feet. He follows me to the bedroom.

  THE FIRST TIME I ever slept with Henry was in the morning. I had spent the night at his Brooklyn apartment (Brooklyn! It was a brave new borough, I’d known nothing off the island). We’d been seeing each other for two months and hadn’t slept together yet. I was holding out, tormenting him, in part because I knew you never got that chance again, but also because Henry was an unknown entity: met at a bar, was from another state, lived out of borough. He had no papers.

  He slept under a quilt, a yellow patchwork affair so earnestly a defense against the cold how could I not want to crawl under it? We slept in our underwear and in the morning I opened my eyes and there was Henry with his warm expanse of furred chest. Henry under this dainty quilt. I pushed up against him. From the living room came the muffled sound of grunts and whistles and penalties announced. It was winter, and his roommate seemed intent on watching every game of the football season from their living room couch.

  Good morning, I said, and Henry shushed me. Snapped the elastic of my underwear. We were, for a while, like teenagers: he discreetly pressed himself against my leg while I hid my face by his ear so he could hear me breathing. I bit his earlobe and our bodies radiated the heat of a night spent under covers, and when we wriggled out of our underwear and slid together, I gasped and Henry put his palm over my mouth.

  Shhh, he said again, and his face looked worried, so I bit him, and when he took his hand away I said, Don’t you shut me up.

  We moved like clock hands that circle away from each other and then meet again so it is incredible and inevitable both. His roommate shouted from outside, Hey, what’re you up to? Want to watch the game?

  Henry shouted back, No. We’re playing Scrabble.

  On the TV, a whistle was blown.

  Who’s winning? his roommate said.

  Both of us, Henry said. And we laughed and snorted and Henry promised he would get his roommate tickets to see a game one of these days. Would get him out of the apartment. He said, I’ll get him tickets to the damn Super Bowl if I have to.

  WE ARE STILL in bed, bow to stern, half naked and reading to each other from the newspaper, when Quinn calls.

  She shouts into the receiver, “You’re not going to believe this shit! Come to the office now.”

  12

  Quinn

  I’m pitching Charley the story of the Menamonian century when Leah walks in. “The Georges live in the Elm Park development. They moved in a month ago. They brought their cat with them.”

  “What’s the cat’s name?” Leah says, first thing. That wench.

  “Derek Jeter,” I say. “But that’s not the point.”

  “The cat’s name is Derek Jeter?” Charley says. “I hate these people already.”

  “They have an eight-year-old son who always wanted a dog but got a cat instead and they let him name it and so he named it Derek Jeter—Leah, if you write that down in your fucking notebook—”

  She flashes me the notebook. She has, in fact, written down:

  DEREK JETER = cat. Breed??

  I say, “He went missing a week ago, and this morning they found him on the front step, dead.”

  “Coyote?” Charley says.

  “The cat was taxidermied.”

  “What the fuck,” says Charley. “Like a belated Halloween stunt?”

  “There was a note. It said ‘Go home.’ ”

  “That’s sick,” Leah says. “Who would do that to someone’s pet?”

  “We know who,” I remind her. “The gentleman lobster?” The first good story since I got here, and it’s about Carter. No way would Woodward give it up, so I’m not giving it up—but that means I’ve got to come clean.

  “Carter Marks,” Leah says.

  “That guy?” Charley says.

  I take a deep breath. “That guy,” I say, “is my father.”

  “Then you’ll have no problem getting an interview with him,” Charley says. She heads into her office to fill out advertising paperwork without another word. I watch her in there, sorting through her papers, and I realize she is pretending to be busy, avoiding me. Which also means, I realize, that she knows. That Charley already fucking knew.

  “Your father?” Leah says. “Is he a taxidermist?”

  “Way fucking off, Leah,” Charley shouts from her office. She’s still not looking at me.

  “Can we go get a drink?” I say. I feel nauseous.

  “We’ll get the story and then get a drink.” Leah’s face is mottled with uneven flush. “You seriously never told me that your actual, literal father lives in town?”

  Leah looks pitiful and crushed, but I’m going to get this story. She and Charley aren’t the only ones with something to contribute around here.

  I leave, slamming the door behind me. I jump into my car and start the engine. Hit autol
ock. Leah bangs out of the office, raps on my car window. She raps again, mouthing, I’m coming too, but I crank the engine and leave her.

  MY CAR DING-DING-DINGS at me, letting me know that the door is still open and that I have as yet to successfully climb out of it. Things are not going as planned. I’m not wearing the right pants and I don’t have his guitar and what the hell am I going to say? In the name of the shittiest local paper in Hancock County, I charge you with one count of cat slaughter and two counts of amateur taxidermy? You never loved her and then you wrote a song telling all the world you did? I almost wish I had brought Leah with me. She’d know how I should handle Carter.

  I stare at his slanting shack of a house. I wait until I’m angry enough. I think about my mother and Billy and those poor fucking cats. I even think about me. Then, when I’ve got a slow burn started, I jump out of the car, sprint to the door, and wail on the flimsy brass knocker before I can change my mind.

  The man who answers the door is the man on the album jackets. I don’t know why I expected otherwise. He is older, though; pretty damn old, as a matter of fact. His face is long and the slanting angles of his cheekbones are weirdly refined. They are the cheekbones of a Russian ballerina or perhaps the Penobscot ancestor he claims. His skin is loose, a little slack under the chin. His pores are so big they look like shadowy freckles across the bridge of his nose. His hair is chestnut and gray, mixed in equal parts. His nose is a bird’s. It has a noble curve to it that is mysterious from the front and makes him hawkish in profile. He is tall, taller than I thought. The album covers always had him sitting, holding his guitar.

  “Yes?” he says. “Can I help you?” But I don’t have my shit together yet. He watches me watching him. I am greedily inventorying everything I see. He is wearing a faded denim buttondown, Carhartt pants, and no shoes. I stare at his bare feet on the wood-planked floor. There is a largish freckle at the softly crinkled arch of his left foot. Everything else I can deal with but this one thing I cannot handle: he is not wearing shoes. It implies to me somehow that he is not ready for me. For this moment. I wouldn’t want to face a moment like this without shoes.

  “Can I help you?” he says again, and that’s the part of him I know best, his voice, which I have been listening to for years, through various layers of record grime and dust and scratches, and now here it is, that voice, which tells me I really know nothing at all.

  “Leah Lynch,” I lie. “From the Menamon Star?” Because if I can be Leah, be competent and stubborn like she is, then I think I’ll be able to say all the things I need to.

  “I forgot about that,” he says. “Hold up.”

  Forgot about what? My existence? I feel a jolt of terror as he leaves, even though he’s only going deeper into this ramshackle house. When he returns, a minute later, he pulls ten bucks out of a wallet that has some beading on the front. He hands it to me.

  “What is this?” I say.

  “This is about my subscription, isn’t it?” he says.

  “No,” I say. “It’s about skinning cats.”

  His eyes widen and I feel pleased to have surprised him. “Fair enough,” he says, and takes the ten dollars back. “I expect you want to be invited inside so you can harass me in my own home?”

  “I’d like that,” I say, making sure to convey that I’ll relish it.

  Just like that, I’m inside this house I’ve been picturing for months. For how shoddy it looks outside, it’s clean and warm. The living room and kitchen share a space and there are a half-dozen copperware pots, kettles, and pans hanging tails up from a ceiling rack. There’s a fire. The logs crack and resettle. There is a long wall of books, records, and CDs. There is only one chair, which makes me think about “Norwegian Wood,” that Beatles song where the journeyer can’t find anywhere to sit, and I wonder if this is the sort of thing Carter would be proud of if he knew I was thinking it. I scan the vinyl for Rubber Soul, for a sign. Next to the chair is a pile of newspapers and several inordinately large pinecones, and suddenly, inexplicably, I am enraged. I’d wanted to find him in some sad state of bachelordom. I’d wanted his life to look incomplete, like it was crying out for Marta, for me, and here instead are these fucking pinecones.

  “Just ’cause I’m offering you a chair doesn’t mean we’re on good terms yet, all right?” Carter says, and grabs a wooden chair from the kitchen for himself. I sit in the big forest-green armchair, next to the fucking pinecones. My feet do not reach the floor.

  Carter leans forward on his knees and says, “So what can I tell you?” His forearms are thick and his sleeves are rolled up and the soft hairs on his forearms all lie the same direction, like reeds underwater leaning with the tide. His hands are the eighth wonder of the world. The tendons dance up and down with his slightest movement. I can see exactly how much blood is going where and through what channel. Blue veins pop out along the backs of them. His nails are short and thick.

  “You shouldn’t do that to people’s cats,” I say feebly.

  Carter pinches his stubbly chin between finger and thumb and worries the scruff there. His face is ragged, but not quite bad-looking. “They shouldn’t be pushing people out of their homes and stores like that,” he says. “Joseph Deep is a friend of mine, not that he has anything to do with this, don’t write that down.” It occurs to me that I haven’t brought my steno pad with me. I can’t write anything down. How will I face Leah without any notes? I really wish my feet reached the ground.

  I say, “I saw him—Derek Jeter. You’re not very subtle.” On crime TV they always refer to the victims by name, to humanize them.

  “Are you referring to his posture or expression?” Carter says. “I think ‘hackles up’ conveys exactly what I wanted to say.”

  “I mean I don’t think it’s subtle to put a gentleman lobster above the shop counter at Deep’s and then think you can get away with cat slaughter.”

  “Joseph has that still?” He chuckles. “The gentleman lobster. What a sentimental fool, keeping that around.” There is something a little dreamy about his demeanor. I imagine Carter and Marta together, high out of their minds and rolling around on the orange rug beneath my chair, laughing.

  “What first interested you in the slaughter and preservation of family pets?” I say, because I’m a reporter. I’m asking questions.

  “The trappings of taxidermy fascinate me, if I’m honest.” Carter stands and goes into the other room, and when he comes back he has a cardboard box. He hands it to me. Inside about fifty glass eyes are rattling around, staring at me from every which kind of pupil. I see the slitty eyes of an owl. The Coca-Cola brown of a deer’s eye, chestnut-sized. Some regal green peas, translucent black slice in the center, make cats’ eyes. The keen yellow flickering one must be for a fox.

  “Special order,” Carter says. “You want one?”

  “Why would I?” I ask, even though I do.

  “The Turks wear evil eyes. Why not one of these?”

  And so it is that after my name, the second thing my father gives me is a sightless animal’s eye. I slip the marble of a fake fox eye into my pocket and let my fingers linger there a moment. On the first day of first grade I accidentally called my teacher Mom and got heckled for the rest of the year. I’m terrified of making a slip like that here. The word Dad could just slip off my tongue. This isn’t working. I resolve to try a new tack.

  “Mr. Marks,” I say.

  “Carter,” he says, which is equally weird.

  “Carter,” I say. “If you could be either Woodward or Bernstein, who would you be?” He looks confused. “Woodward and Bernstein as played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film All the President’s Men,” I clarify.

  “The Watergate guys? Either, I guess.” But he’s not done mulling this over yet. Unbelievably, he’s taken my question seriously. This is not a man who balks. In fact, he seems to be exactly the sort of person Marta needed in her life. A man who could encompass her crazy and love her anyway. I tried to be that person for
her, but I was always coming up short. Here, here is what she was missing. The third figure in the portrait to balance us out.

  Carter says, “I’ve always thought of it as more of a Butch Cassidy versus the Sundance Kid situation. Wouldn’t you know I always wanted to be Sundance? My whole life. But I’m a Cassidy through and through. Just can’t shut up.”

  I almost tell him everything, right then. Not just because he’s taking me seriously, but because he’s right. I’d never really considered it before, but there are parallels. Woodward’s a bit like Sundance. Stoic. And maybe an inability to blab about your feelings doesn’t necessarily mean you’re broken. It’s too much. I’ve got to get us back on track.

  “Why Elm Park?” I ask Carter.

  “Ms. Lynch, I was born here. I’ve been back over twenty years, and all the good things I remember from growing up are changing. The town budget has never been voted down before, and with the recent purchase of the Penobscot lots, the majority of the town’s waterfront is now controlled by out-of-staters. Are you aware that the owners of that new house control the property all the way through Neversink Park? The carousel and park have been maintained by the Sanford family for the past sixty years. Now the Sanfords live in North Carolina. Who’s going to maintain that park, Ms. Lynch? Summer people who aren’t here three-quarters of the year?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. Every time he calls me Lynch I feel a twist in my guts. He looks at me then, his head cocked, like he knows me from somewhere he can’t recall. I can’t stand it. I look away. There’s a set of big glass doors looking out on his backyard, and through them I see a cat. A tabby with a bell, rubbing against the doorframe.

  “Is that Derek Jeter?” I say.

  “There are a lot cats around here,” Carter says. “I put out food. They come and go.”

  I get up and open the door. The cat comes in and circles my ankles, purring loud. I pick it up and look at the license. Derek Jeter.