The Stories We Tell

by Patti Callahan Henry

  I hear the words beneath the words: Your husband is one of our most influential customers; you shouldn’t be changing things around. Maybe I’m making this up, but then again, maybe I’m not.

  Mr. Bush reaches into a filing cabinet and pulls out some papers. “These must be signed, dated, and notarized before any changes are made.”

  I take a pen from a tortoiseshell holder on Mr. Bush’s desk. When I’m done filling out all the blanks, I look up. “It’s just me. I am the only authorized user right now, until we can get this figured out.”

  “Not your other employees?”

  “No. Just me.” I stand and hand the papers to Mr. Bush.

  “These need to be notarized,” he says.

  “Then notarize them.”

  “My notary isn’t in today.” He stares at me without standing.

  “You’re kidding, right? I mean, you are a witness standing here watching me. This is my money, my company. Authorize it now.”

  He takes the papers from my hand, the papers I am waving at him as if fanning him for the heatstroke he looks like he might have. “Thank you, Mrs. Morrison.”

  I turn to leave, but then at his door I stop to look at him one more time. “Thanks for your time.”

  The rain starts just as I slam shut my car door and see the fluttering white paper on my windshield: a parking ticket. Five minutes past my meter time. Just perfect.

  I’ve avoided eye contact with anger for most of my life. When I feel it coming, I run or hide into something more appropriate. Gentleness, I was taught, brings the best results. Yet ever since shattering the wineglass on the kitchen floor, something red-faced and boisterous was released in me. I feel it now staring at the wet and fluttering parking ticket, seeing Mr. Bush’s righteous eyebrow lifting. I drop the F bomb as loudly as I can inside my empty car, then slam my fist onto the steering wheel.

  I returned to the studio in less than the twenty minutes it took me to drive to the bank. My heart slows and I calm down. I’ll talk to Cooper tonight. There must be a reasonable explanation. He accidentally moved it and then put it back. He bought me a gift. He was planning a surprise and … No. None of it makes sense. I run out of reasonable quickly.

  I walk into the studio, to find Max, and I realize that he’s the reason I’ve driven so fast, the reason I came straight back here. He turns when he hears me, and I reach his side to see what he is looking at with such intent. It’s number eight: Find Adventure. “What do you see for the design?” he asks.

  “Huh?”

  “When you think Find Adventure, what do you see?”

  “This one is tough,” I say, sitting to look up at him. His dark hair is a mess; an ink smear runs across his forehead, where he’s been brushing his hair all day. My hand reaches across the space between us to wipe off the ink.

  He draws back and away when my fingers touch his forehead. Embarrassment flutters through me with sharp-tipped wings.

  A long silence grows between us, and I’m not willing to fill it or answer his reaction with my own. He speaks first. “I see something like two people walking through the forest, where anything at all is possible.”

  I nod and rest my hands one on top of the other in my lap. “That’s nice.”

  Nice—what an inane thing to say.

  When I first met him, Max was attending SCAD. In three short years, he had his degree in book arts, with a minor in folklore and mythology. His parents could pay for only three years of college, so he did everything he could to shove four years into three. His love of ancient stories often rises up in imagery. “There’s this story,” he’ll say. Which is exactly what he’s saying now.

  “And?” I ask, still refusing to look at him, at the ink smear I want to clear.

  “There are dreams that are usually called ‘the dream of the predator’—you know, when someone is after you, chasing you.”

  “Willa has one.” I look at him now, and he smiles. “She keeps having a dream like that.”

  “They’re really normal dreams. One of the most famous folklore tales is the one about the bride who goes into the woods.” He takes a breath and looks off, as if the story is written on the far stall’s wall. “There’s this bride. It’s her wedding night and she gets that thing—that intuition that tells you that something is just not right. She suspects something is wrong with her groom, but she’s not sure. Every night, he sneaks into the woods and returns quietly. So the night before her wedding, she goes into the same woods and hides in the high branches of a tree and waits.” Max pauses, picking up the charcoal pencil and sketching a tree, naked at first but filling with leaves as continues the story.

  “It was dark and the tree hid her well with its dense leaves. She waited and waited, finally falling asleep in the crook of a branch. But then she was startled and awoke, to see her groom below the tree, digging a hole and singing a song about how he would bury his bride there.” He stops and leans back to look at me and then sings in a low voice, not his own. “Good-bye, my love. Good-bye, sweetheart. Sleep well and long.…” Max draws out the last word.

  “Stop.” I say. “You’re creeping me out. You’ve told much better stories.” Laughter gathers at the edge of my voice. “That’s terrible and sad.”

  “No, that’s a great story,” he says. “She went on an adventure and found out the truth and didn’t marry him. Otherwise…” He pauses and slashes the edge of his palm against his throat and rolls his eyes back into his head, imitating death, but with a smile.

  “Got it,” I say. “So, yes, a forest is good, but let’s not have her hide up in a tree.”

  “Agreed,” he says. “Adventure means going out into something new, right?”

  “Something unknown,” I say. “And what’s more unknown than a forest?”

  “Especially a maritime forest, like around here, where you might end up in dense woods or the river, depending which way you turn.”

  “Yes! Add a river in the background, a hint of water in the middle of the trees and dark.”

  “This is where we need Francie,” he says, loudly enough for her to hear.

  “Moi?” she asks, looking over her shoulder.

  Francie comes to us. We catch her up with our idea. “Awesome and all that. But I’m late for a gig tonight. I’ll start in the morning, okay?”

  “What gig?” I ask.

  “Playing at the coffee shop. Nothing big.” She waves a dismissive hand and gathers her things to leave. “See you tomorrow.”

  Max and I sit there, again alone with our designs and stories and thoughts. As the studio doors slide shut, he stands, and I think he’ll leave, but he walks to the steel cabinet and pulls out a bottle of Jameson and two glasses I bought at an antique show when I meant to buy carved-wood fonts.

  He returns to the table and sits, pouring a glass for each of us.

  “No way,” I say. “I haven’t slept in days. I can’t drink dark liquor or I’ll…”

  “You’ll what?” he asks.

  “Regret it.”

  “Or find adventure,” he says, and pours a half inch into my glass.

  “Adventure.” I lift the whiskey and tilt my head back, allowing the liquid to burn past my tongue and down my throat, past the ache in my chest. Tears spring to my eyes. “That story you told,” I say through a cough. “You didn’t just mean it for the card line, right? You meant it about Willa, too.”

  Max drinks his whiskey. “Yes … probably.”

  “It’s not that easy—like hiding in the wood to wait for the answer. Memory isn’t like that. It’s not some time line like in history class. It’s not some fact sheet, and it’s certainly not linear. Memory is mixed and messy even in the best minds. I see pictures from my childhood and I think, Oh, I remember that day. But do I only remember it because of the photo? Is it even a real memory? Add getting hit in the head and weird dreams and … how could she possibly make sense of anything?”

  My hand rests on the table and Max places his hand over mine, hiding it com
pletely. “What is a real memory anyway? But we can make some sense of it, right? We can find out the best we can for her,” he says.

  The Jameson is loosening my thoughts. “All we can know is what we know.”

  “No,” he says softly.

  “How, then?”

  “There are things I don’t know yet. Things you don’t know yet.”

  I stare at my empty shot glass and wonder how many people have drunk from this old glass. How many to celebrate or, like me, forget?

  Max speaks first. “For now, though, let’s go hear Francie sing. What do you think?”

  “That is by far the best idea you’ve had all day.”

  “Wow, thanks. Not the forest or the tree or coming to work at five A.M. to avoid full-on warfare with one of our esteemed clients—”

  “Not those at all.”

  “Well, did I tell you my idea for world peace?”

  “Yep, right after you told me how you planned to cure the common cold.”

  “By drowning it?” And with that smart-ass remark, he pours an inch of whiskey into his glass and takes a big swallow. Then he fully grasps my hand underneath his, no longer resting his palm, but surrounding my hand with his. My body relaxes with an exhale of tension and tight control. I look at him and he at me. Then he lifts my hand and brings it to his forehead, to the place I tried only moments before to touch. Using his own hand, he runs my fingers across his forehead, only further smearing the ink: an apology of sorts. Then just as quickly he drops my hand and stands to look down at me. “Ready? Let’s go. You’ll really like this. Francie is good.”

  “It’s bad that I haven’t heard her sing, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t try to find something to feel bad about.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Not just a little bit?”

  “No comment.”

  Together, we walk outside. “I’ll drive,” I say. “You’re a shot or two ahead of me.”

  He locks the studio doors, shaking them for security. Close by, an owl hoots, an echo. We both look toward the trees and then back at each other. “Owls aren’t usually out right now,” he says.

  “Me, neither,” I say, suppressing a smile.

  “Well then, wonders never cease.”

  “Dingle,” I say, settling into the driver’s seat.

  He laughs before asking, “Did everything work out okay at the bank?”

  “Yes. Sure. Yes. Everything is fine.”

  fifteen

  The coffee shop is a songwriter’s haven. A string of lights dangles from the ceiling, corner to corner, crisscross; the aroma of coffee permeates the air, along with the faint smell of rosemary; a podium and speakers are set up in the back corner. Chairs and café tables are scattered in a messy arrangement around the room, and there are only a few empty places. Couples hold hands and lean toward one another, while groups of college kids sit in circles, laughing too loudly. Max and I find a wiggling corner table in the back and settle in. “Can I get you a drink?” he asks over the din of the crowd.

  “Yes, another of what we started.”

  “Sure thing.”

  When he’s gone, I pull my cell from my purse, staring at the screen to see missed calls from Cooper and a text that reads “Out with clients. They’re killing me. Home late. Love you.”

  Max returns and sets down the glass filled with brown liquid. I drink it slowly, allowing the sharp taste to stay in my mouth, wash over my tongue. Max has only water. The music begins and I focus on the front of the room. A young boy plays a mandolin and sings about living on a farm. I whisper to Max, “I bet Francie loves this.”

  “I think she’s shy about it. For all her bravado, she gets pretty nervous about performing.”

  “I think we’re all more comfortable behind the scenes. Probably why we hide in a barn all day.”

  “I know, but I keep telling her that her light is too bright to hide. All those great lines she puts on the cards? Well, they’re even better in a song.”

  “You’ve heard her often?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  I feel left out, twelve years old in the middle school cafeteria with nowhere to sit. I know it’s ridiculous, but there you have it.

  Francie walks out from behind the bar area and moves to the microphone. The guitar strap stretches across her left shoulder. Her long hair is pulled back. “Hey, everyone,” she says.

  The microphone screeches and she readjusts it, a nervous laugh echoing off the walls. “Technology.” She rolls her eyes.

  A man in jeans and a baseball hat comes from the side and readjusts the wires, pulling the speaker farther away from Francie. “Go ahead,” he says. “You’re on, darlin’.”

  Francie swings her guitar to the front and plucks a few strings before speaking. “Thanks for coming tonight, y’all. I’ll play a few songs. The first one is about an old heartbreak, but not mine. I’ve had plenty of those, but this one is called ‘Someone Else’s Heartbreak.’”

  Max leans forward as Francie’s voice rings through the room, a mid-alto with such depth coming from such a tiny girl that the room falls silent, conversations stopped in midsentence.

  She sings about wanting a relationship to work out and knowing it won’t, about watching it from afar and her desire to fix something for someone else. She sings about trying to find the right thing to say to mend “someone else’s heartbreak,” but finding herself unable. It’s beautiful and full of deep melancholy, and I have the thought that I will one day lose her to this career.

  Everyone claps, a few people stand, and Francie gives a quick bow of her head before delving into her next song. Max notices my empty glass and signals a waitress for another; I don’t stop him.

  Francie sings three more songs—the limit on open-mike night—and then wanders over to our table. “Eve, when did you get here?” she asks, leaning down to hug me.

  People work their way across the room to approach Francie and talk to her. “I’ve been here the whole time. You’re amazing,” I say. “But don’t talk to me. Go talk to your fans.”

  She looks to Max and then me before turning to speak to the people who’ve followed her, hoping to meet her. I lean across the table. “We should go?” I ask Max, draining the remains of my drink.

  Together, we walk outside. The whiskey slackens my limbs, my mind. I stop in the middle of the brick sidewalk and look up at the sky, leaning backward to see the few visible stars and a waxing three-quarter moon.

  “Savannah,” I say, speaking to the sky and city. “I think I need to walk around you before I go home.”

  Max laughs. “Can I join you and Savannah?”

  “Hmm…” I say. “Let me think about it. Hmm … yes, I’d love for you to join us.”

  Our silence is restful, a place to sink into without the frantic need for filling space and time. Four blocks down Broughton and almost to the riverfront. I say, “My parents always wanted to live down here.”

  “Why didn’t they?”

  “They couldn’t afford it.”

  “You miss them.”

  “I do. And I regret how they left me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure they died believing I was going to burn in an everlasting hell. We got in a terrible argument right before they passed away.”

  “They didn’t really believe that, right? I mean, they were just mad.”

  I stop on the brick sidewalk, and under a gas lantern, I shake my head. “No. A real hell.”

  He doesn’t try to answer this assertion, or fix it, or manage it with a cliché. He drops his hand onto my left shoulder. “Eve.”

  It’s a simple saying of my name, a soft utterance, kind. I’m falling into this peaceful place with Max and I need to wrest myself from him, from his touch. His shadow falls across my body, stretching behind, as if eradicating my shadow from the sidewalk. I step back and Max’s hand falls to his side.

  “Had they ever been mad like that before … at you?”

  “Onc
e. When they found those commandments and threatened to make me live with another family for a little while.”

  “Who?” he asks quietly.

  “A family that was part of the church.” I take a breath, stepping sideways so that I can again see my shadow on the sidewalk, feel a separate person. “I’ve forgotten their names. I wanted to forget their names. I wanted to forget everything about it. I could barely stand the thought of being cut off from my family. If they’d sent me, I would have run away to home. It was Willa who wanted to run away from home.”

  “If that happened to me, I’d be afraid, for all my life; I’d be afraid of losing my family.”

  “Well, that didn’t happen to me. We got past it.”

  “And you’re still afraid of losing your family,” he says, so quietly that I’m not sure he said it at all. But he did. And then a single word: “Again.”

  “Stop,” I say, feeling the groundlessness that comes with his soft voice. “I don’t think much about it at all, so stop looking at me so sadly. You tell me a story. Your turn.”

  “Matchstick girl. You know that one?”

  “Probably, but tell me anyway.”

  “If I ever imagine you as a little girl, it’s as the matchstick girl.”

  “Why? Was she usually covered in mud from the river and hiding under her bed with her sister?” I laugh and turn around, walking backward to face Max.

  “Something like that.”

  “Go ahead, tell me.”

  “It’s a Danish story,” he says. “About a little girl all alone in the world. It’s New Year’s Eve and it’s freezing outside. The snow is everywhere, and this little girl has only a few matchsticks, just a few. She’s trying to sell them, but instead she lights them one by one and watches her fantasies in each tiny little fire.”

  “Uses them for dreams,” I say, and stop walking backward to turn and walk with Max, side by side.

  “Exactly.”

  “At least that story doesn’t end as sadly as almost all your folktales do.”

  He laughs. “That’s because that’s not the end.”

  I groan. “Of course it’s not. Go ahead. Ruin her life.”

  “So she burns them, staring into the flames, until she thinks she sees her dead grandmother, the only one who ever loved the little matchstick girl. She stares into the last match flame, the very last one … and her grandmother comes to her.”