The From-Aways

by CJ Hauser

  “It is.” Henry blinks and presses lightly on the pedal, creeping the car over the hill so that the moon springs up. Though shining furiously, it is now comfortably distant from us, and the vehicle, once more. I watch Henry’s face. “I thought we were gonna hit it,” Henry says. “I braked.”

  I think that in this moment of improbability I might be able to get away with what needs to be said. I say, “Your mom wouldn’t have wanted you to sell the boat.”

  “How would you know?” Henry says. “For Christ sake, Leah. Don’t say dumb shit about things you don’t know about, all right?” He is staring at the moon.

  This feels like my insides have been carved out. Everything about tonight hurts. Here is this man in the car beside me, who I am married to, who did not tell me the first thing about his life here until he had to. Who tried to keep a whole wing of himself from me.

  “Henry,” I say, “you need to tell me these things. About your family, and the town, and YOU and Carter Marks and, just, everything. So I can understand you. So I can be ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “For them!” I say.

  For loving you properly, inclusively, cumulatively, I think.

  “For Charley and everyone in this town who smiles at you for coming back and gives me looks like I’m the reason it didn’t happen sooner and the Star is rotting on the Deeps’ wharf.”

  Henry’s face twists at my mention of the rotting boat. “I’m ready.” He sighs. “You don’t need to worry about them. I’m ready enough for both of us.”

  This has obviously been working splendidly so far.

  “But we need to be ready together, that’s the whole point!” I say. “It’s like those guys in the action movies, where they’re handcuffed together, or to the suitcase or whatever? And they have to jump out of the plane with the parachute and they say ‘one two three go’?”

  I’ve lost the thread of what I was trying to say. How can I explain it? The way we need to be a team, to know each other completely, for this to work and for me not to feel alone—but I can’t find the right words. “You know,” I say, “and sometimes the first guy’s not ready and so they say ‘one two three go’ again. And then the second guy’s not ready and so they have to wait, until both of them are ready to jump. You have to wait. To jump.”

  Henry gives me a look. “You’re pretty crazy, you know that?”

  “Are you only realizing this now?” I say. “Vows were made! You promised to love my crazy ass until death! What did you think you were signing on for?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry says. I am horrified to see on his face that he really did not consider this question until now. “Eating together. Sleeping together. Maybe kids? I don’t know. What did you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Henry eases his foot off the brake and we climb the rest of the way over the hill. We drive on.

  Henry says, “What is it you wanna know about Carter Marks, exactly?”

  ON MONDAY, HENRY drops me off at work in his newly redecorated car. Charley comes out of the office. She stands in the doorway as I get out of the lobster pot. Henry waves from the driver’s seat. I hold my breath as Charley takes the spectacle in. I’m sure destroying her father’s car is just one more thing she can add to my rap sheet. She circles the woody. Her lips are pinched together and it looks like she’s trying not to throw up. When she reads THE MENAMON STAR, she guffaws in a wicked way. She is not mad, I realize. Charley thinks this is hilarious.

  “How do you like taking this out, Hen?” she says. “The guys at the docks appreciate her?” Henry glares. Because they do. Over the weekend his dad’s old friends spotted the car and they think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. New Englanders believe in comeuppance.

  “I don’t wanna hear it,” says Henry. “Not from you.”

  Charley turns to me. “It’s some nice work,” she says, and offers me the flat of her hand, raised high.

  “What’s that?” I say, wary, not trusting the gesture.

  “That, Leah, is an up-top,” says Charley.

  I smack her hand and enjoy the look on Henry’s face.

  Winter

  16

  Quinn

  I haven’t heard a word from that rat bastard. I left the bait of my name on the article about the cats and now it’s December, a month for the lonely to slit their wrists to the tune of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and he hasn’t said a word.

  Yesterday, it snowed.

  Our one-pipe heating system groans like a ghost in Rosie’s room, and the rest of the apartment is freezing. I’m rolled up in my blanket like a damn caterpillar cocoon, trying to accumulate body heat. I tried to walk in quietly tonight; Rosie says when I come home late it disturbs her slumber. But I’ve been lying here shivering for half an hour and it’s too quiet for her to be anything but wide-awake. Then I hear Rosie in the next room, praying. Her door is cracked just wide enough for me to hear.

  “Dear Jesus,” Rosie says, like she’s writing Him a fucking letter. “Dear Jesus, please keep my father safe from alligators and watch over my mother, who seldom applies a strong enough SPF. May they not meet their end in a retirement home, and if they do may it not be in the accursed state of Florida, which I hope You don’t mind me saying, as it was Your Father’s doing, though of course some of God’s creation is meant to try us.”

  I wriggle onto my back and stare at the ceiling. I exhale out my nose, trying to warm it. I’d tell her to pipe down, but it’s three A.M. and I just got in and I’m afraid that she’s awake now because I have disturbed her slumber.

  “Dear Jesus, please forgive me for my sins such as not charging the full dollar amount on some customers’ fried eggs and giving them extra hollandaise for free even though it’s supposed to be fifty cents. These are trying economic times and a lot of that sauce gets thrown out anyway.”

  Saint Rosalind, crazy as a loon.

  “Also, please look out for Carter Marks, even though Quinn hates his guts. He might make a good man yet, as he’s already a good tipper and a good musician.”

  That’s it. I’m sick of Rosie talking about Carter like some kind of local hero. She’s supposed to be on my side here, God knows no one else is, so I’m going to bust in there and tell her exactly what a jerk he is. But before I can get free from the blanket, she goes on.

  “Also, Jesus, please take care of Quinn Winters. Let her see the light and understand that we must form a band. She is blinded to the way because she suffers much and says nothing, in the cold, the cold from which, if it is too much to bear, I hope she will seek refuge in my bed.”

  I hear her get up off her knees and slide under the covers.

  For a moment I lie very still, because if I make the slightest noise I won’t be able to hear and I’m suddenly awfully interested in prayer. But Rosie’s done now.

  I wait, but I’ve never been very good at waiting, so then I crawl out of my blanket cocoon. I am shaking all over, and before I can think about it any more I run into Rosie’s room and jump under the covers.

  Rosie is lying with her back to me. Her eyes are closed. She says, “Can we start a band?”

  “Rosie—”

  “Band!”

  “To Whom It May Concern,” I say, “I will help Rosie start a band.”

  “Amen,” she says. “Now get closer. We need to conserve body heat.”

  “Amen,” I say, and make myself the big spoon, wrapping my arm around her waist.

  We lie there. At first, I barely move. I’m terrified Rosie’s actually going to fall asleep with me in her damn bed. Could this really be about the heat? My arm starts to ache, the way it’s draped over her, dead still, so I give in. I run my hand over her stomach, which is soft. I slide over her hips. Then I skim down to her waist again, as if down a half-pipe, and my hand gains momentum and runs up the other side to her rib cage, over her T-shirt, so my fingers rest against the soft bulge of her breast. I press my nose into Rosie hair and I smel
l the back of her head and her neck and I kiss her there, my one arm squeezing around her shoulders, the other moving down to cup her belly. As I noisily breathe in her smell, she arches back, pressing her ass up against me, getting closer.

  I feel like my heart is running too fast, like it might burn out at any moment, but I just keep smelling her hair, and hoping I won’t spook her, like some rabbit in the brush, who will let me keep being this near if I just stay still enough. I keep rubbing my hands all over her belly and up to her breasts, not so slowly anymore, not so gently, until I can’t take it anymore and I tug at the waistband of her underwear, feeling it ping against her as I let it go. I’m still wearing shorts but Rosie reaches a hand behind her back so it’s flat between my legs. She doesn’t move it, just wedges it there, and as I press my body against her I’m bumping up against her palm and fingers and I rock my hips a little to do it more on purpose. And still Rosie’s there. She’s not going anywhere, I realize.

  She shifts her hips forward a little, and I slide my fingers down past the elastic and around the curve of her. Rosie is wet and it feels like she’s about a million degrees inside. I don’t move at first, because I just want to feel that heat. And then, even then, as I slide up to rub her, I try to move slowly, like I’m not even doing anything on purpose. Like who knows how my hand got down there rubbing her up and down. Rosie makes little noises, sounds deeper than her normal voice but quiet too, and she twists her head to push her face into the pillow to muffle them. But I hear her. And I keep rubbing her like that until she shudders and she grabs my wrist to hold it there. Her grip is serious, telling me not to move anymore, and I don’t. I stay entirely still until Rosie is no longer shuddering, and her body goes from arched to loose, and only then do I slowly slide my hand out of her underwear and trail it, fingers damp, up and down her back.

  We lie like that for a while, still not facing each other. Rosie frees her hand and squeezes my leg. I could lie like this with her a long time, but there is one thing I am desperately curious about. I lift the covers up over us like a tent and peek underneath, and as I do so cold air rushes in and Rosie starts and yelps, “Hey!”

  But I’m already laughing and once I’m started I can’t stop.

  Rosie sits up and turns to face me, sitting cross-legged on the bed. She is flushed in the cheeks still, and as she watches me laughing and laughing she frowns. “What’s so funny? What?” She claps a hand over my mouth to stop me laughing. “This is serious, don’t spoil it!” she says, but I lick her palm and she lets go. And that’s when I kiss her, and it’s a real, true kiss with a lot of emotional wattage going behind it, but if I’m honest, it’s probably lousy in the way of kissing because even as I do it I’m still laughing.

  Because Saint Rosalind wears plain white underwear, pure as the driven snow, and it’s just too good, too good, too good.

  IT’S THE THIRD week of December that Carter Marks sends a letter to the fucking editor. It’s addressed to Charley, not me, so she’s in her office reading it because she’s keen on torturing people.

  I open the door a crack just wide enough for me to fit my lips in. “I got you that interview with him, didn’t I?”

  Charley doesn’t even look up. “Out, Winters. I’m reading.”

  I slam the door and go sit on Leah’s desk. “How long can it take to read a fucking letter?” I say. She pats my knee but keeps editing.

  Charley comes out of her office. “He’s giving us tips,” she says. “Which is presumptuous and obviously runs along bloodlines.”

  She hands me the letter. It’s handwritten and the gist of it is that Carter thinks that I, that Quinn Winters, as he writes, should do a piece about the injustice of a recent town sanction and corresponding fine received by Cliff Frame of Derby Run Road for his inflatable Christmas display. Carter writes that certain thematic similarities between this story and my previous piece lead him to believe a continuity of reporting style, his fucking words, is in order.

  This week the town ordered Frame to take down his display or pay a hefty fine. The town said it had to do with not properly housing the electrical apparatus for a semipermanent structure, but Carter suspects, and he’s probably right, that it had more to do with his proximity to Elm Park and the quote unquote taste level of the display. At my urging, writes Carter, Frame is refusing to take down the display and will thusly incur a fine, which I will pay.

  “He’s got this big heart, you know?” I say to Charley, shaking the letter in the air. “Big fucking heart.”

  “So you’ll write it, right?” Charley says.

  “Of course I’ll write it, but we’re getting the story from Cliff on Monday. Right now I have to go. It’s Friday fucking night and I have band practice.”

  OUR BAND IS called Cassandra Galápagos and the Aged Tortoise, and while we didn’t spell out particular roles, I’m pretty sure I know who’s who. Rosie’s glammed up. Her hair is crimped, which means she wore braids to work, and she’s got on eyeliner, which I’ve never seen before. “Hey, lady, we’re not a band yet,” I say.

  “Notebook,” Rosie says.

  I’ve brought out the slim green notebook with my songs in it. I try, fail, try, to hand it to Rosie, the way you work up the nerve to jump off a cliff.

  Rosie snatches the notebook from me and pages through breezily, which is excruciating. She meditates on some songs and dismisses others entirely. I hold my breath. I wonder what Carter would think if he knew I was writing songs. Did he ever have an embarrassing notebook, one he had to work up the nerve to show Marta, his song for her tucked away in there? That must have been worse, now that I think about it, because Marta never spared a word for the sake of someone’s feelings ever. Sharing anything personal and possibly inadequate with Marta was stone terrifying.

  Rosie snaps my notebook shut. “I can’t read music,” she says. “You’re going to have to sing them to me.”

  Once I’ve taught her the melodies and strummed through the music a few times, Rosie starts singing. She has a breathy little voice, and though sometimes it’s flat or sharp, she always sounds haunting. She makes songs I thought were half-assed sound big, and when she sings her face contorts into fantastic ugly shapes. My fingers hurt because I don’t normally play this much, but I keep going so I can watch Rosie.

  And just like that, she stops singing, and looks at me. I stop strumming. I would have played all night, I realize, if she didn’t stop me.

  I shake my hand loose. “You sound like a fucking beautiful little bird, Rosie. You know that?”

  She rubs her eyes like she’s just waking up and smudges her eyeliner. “I’ve always wanted to be in a band,” she says.

  ROSIE SAYS THE season demands a tree. December, so fucking pushy! We’re at Arden Nursery to pick one out. A ferret-faced boy in a Santa cap gives us cocoa in wax-paper cups. A man’s footsteps creak in the snow. As we sip our cocoa Henry approaches. He’s a little bowlegged, and wearing a red hoodie that says MR. LYNCH on the breast. The hood is up. His smile is a good one, no less good for being snaggletoothed. He grasps a saw in his left hand. I wonder if he saw my handprint on his car.

  “Quinn Winters,” I say. “I work with your sister and drink with your wife.”

  “I remember,” he says.

  “This is Rosie,” I say.

  Rosie says, “We know each other. From school.” Then she curtsies. Rosie was in junior high when Henry was a senior.

  Henry vigorously rubs his ears through his hood. “How big a tree you looking for?” he asks.

  “Our room is not capacious,” Rosie says.

  He gestures and we follow him into the forest. It’s dark out, but strung across the rows are wires hung with steel-caged lanterns, illuminating spots on the snowy ground. Rosie leaps from one light spot to another. I do a big double foot hop onto a patch, which surfaces on my sneakers. Henry looks over his shoulder to see what we’re up to and I feel ashamed, like he might roll his eyes at our silliness.

  “Never can squash
them out, can you?” He concedes a snaggle smile. He points at a tree. “This your size?”

  “I think so,” I say, but Rosie is walking the aisle now, appraising the trees’ relative virtues.

  Henry scans the row of firs. “Last year,” he says to me, “in New York, I tried to talk Leah into getting one of these.” He gestures at the little trees. “They were selling them in front of the drugstore. It had snowed, so they were sopping wet, but lit up nice. So we go look at them but Leah keeps shaking her head and saying they’re too tiny.”

  I laugh, because I can imagine Leah scoffing at these four-foot shrubs. “How’d things work out for you?” I say.

  “She said she wanted to be able to stare up at it. For it to feel big like the tree in that Nutcracker ballet. So she goes ahead and pays for a ten-footer.” Henry has this look on his face like he’s marveling at the idea even now. The audacity. The stubbornness. How much he loved it, in spite of himself.

  I say, “How tall were her ceilings?”

  “Eight fucking feet,” Henry says, shaking his head and grinning. “I spent an hour sawing off the top of it, getting it straight, and she was crying and saying it wasn’t going to look the way she wanted, but in the end it was all right. You know, with the top sawed off it looked like that tree was growing right through the ceiling. She liked that. Said it was magical.”

  “You picked a crazy one,” I say.

  “It’s not that she’s crazy,” Henry says, carefully. He swipes his hood off. “She just imagines things better than they actually are. And it rubs off. That’s what gets me about her. Things usually look pretty shitty, the way I see them. Boring, at least. But hanging around Leah, you get to see things her way. I wanted to keep that up, and to help her keep imagining things the way she wanted.”

  “So you married her?” I say.

  “No regrets,” Henry says, smiling.

  “I found the one!” Rosie yells. We tromp over. “This one,” she says, “is perfectly imperfect.” Henry raises his saw to cut it down but Rosie says, “Wait!”