Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “Did you at least stop off for dinner somewhere?” I asked him. He shuffled me around in a clumsy kind of dance until I was up against the side of the pickup truck. He lifted me onto the running board. We were nearly the same height then, and I could feel the full weight of his body against mine.

  “I don’t remember,” he said, leaning over to kiss my neck. “I don’t care. Where have you been?”

  “We had a picnic up at the pond with Anne and—”

  “No,” he said. “I mean where have you been? Why haven’t we …”

  I knew what he meant, and I didn’t know the answer. Was it because we’d both been working so hard? He came home late; I tended to get up early. But we’d always had a way of making time before. Somehow, over the last few weeks, we just hadn’t found the right opportunity. Was that it? Or was it something more? We hadn’t really talked much since the family cookout two weeks back. It was deep summer now; a lush, almost tropical heat lay over the fields, the night was alive with the constant susurrus of cicadas and tree frogs. Suddenly, from the woods behind us came the strangled shriek of the barn owl. Though it had been hunting on our property on and off all summer, its voice still unnerved me every time I heard it. I knew it was just a birdcall, but it sounded so human: heart-rending and inconsolable, like a mother who’s lost a child.

  “Hey, okay … ,” Paul said when I pulled him closer. I’m very rarely the sexual aggressor; Paul usually calls the shots. I’m not sure what made me feel so brazen, but it had something to do with the heavy night heat, the owl’s cry, the blur of stars above us. And, yes, with Anne. With what she’d confided to me about her marriage; what I’d conceded to her in return. I knew I should tell Paul about the way things seemed to be shifting around me—and within me. But how could I explain that I was elated by Anne’s friendship, that I felt buoyant and special in a way I never had before? That I knew my success was somehow tied to this new person she allowed me to be? Up until now, Paul had been my only champion. My other. The one who completed me. But my thoughts were rarely free of Anne’s lingering presence these days, the sound of her quick, low voice whispering in my ear. She allowed me to see possibilities in myself and my life—what had once been empty spaces were now filled with my own blind yearning. I knew I was opening myself up to the unknown in a way I never dared to before. I should have been afraid, but instead I felt exhilarated.

  I was wearing a sundress, a floral-printed sheath that was silky and flimsy and tied in the back. I slid my underpants down. I heard the shocked intake of my husband’s breath. I was wet and ready. I was somebody else.

  “Jesus,” he said afterward, holding me in his arms. “I’m not complaining, but what’s gotten into you?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “The wine, I guess.” A part of me knew that I was wrong not to tell him. That, at the very least, he deserved my honesty. But I also believed that it could only hurt him, and that he would see that I was allowing Anne to come between us. Which was something I had long ago made him promise we would never let anybody do again.

  18

  “Searching … Searching … Searching …” the message crawled across the face of my cell phone. We have very patchy service in our area, and I suspected that the worsening weather wasn’t helping the reception any. It had been in the nineties all week, the longest hot spell of the summer, and so humid that our towels could hang on the clothesline all day and still feel damp. An earthy smell kept drifting up from the basement and insinuating itself into our bedsheets and towels. That morning, kissing the top of Beanie’s head when I dropped everyone off at Anne’s, I caught a whiff of it in her hair. I didn’t really mind the oppressive heat. What I dreaded was the thunderstorm that inevitably led to a break in the weather and which I’d been watching build on the western horizon for the last hour or so.

  I slipped the cell into the front pocket of my shoulder bag and went back inside the pretty Acorn modular I was showing the Walshes. I could hear their raised voices upstairs. I couldn’t make out what they were saying exactly, but the flow of their words had the staccato cadences of another argument. They were a couple in their late sixties, both recently retired teachers, who were in the midst of selling their Manhattan co-op in order to realize their long-cherished dream of a house in the country. But what they’d looked forward to as a joyful life transition was turning out to be an unexpected trial. They assured me that they usually agreed on everything. But they’d had almost polar opposite reactions to the dozen or so houses I’d shown them over the last couple of weeks.

  “Since when have you liked wallpaper, for heaven’s sakes?” I heard her ask as they came back down the stairs.

  “I’ve never disliked it per se. When it’s done right, the way that bedroom is, I think it can add a lot of charm.”

  “God, I think it looks so schmaltzy! This whole place feels faux to me. It’s pretending to be a sweet little cottage in a wildflower field but it’s really just some builder’s idea of one. Don’t you see: everything looks like it’s been designed by committee!”

  “If you mean that it looks well-thought-out, then, yes, I agree. Hey there, Maddie,” he said, seeing me by the door. “We’re going to need a little more time, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s fine. Wander around all you want. I’ll wait outside for you on the porch, okay?”

  “Which is a perfect example of what I’m saying,” she told him. “That wraparound porch with its perfect white railings? It looks like something out of the Andy Griffith Show. Straight out of some Hollywood back lot… .”

  “Well, I don’t know what the hell it is you’re looking for anymore … ,” I heard him say as the screen door closed behind me. I decided to walk down the steps and out into the field of black-eyed Susans and yellow tickseed that was starting to brown from nearly two weeks without rain. Dark clouds billowed above the hills, rapidly devouring the robin’s-egg-blue swath of sky above. Two shafts of sunlight slanted dramatically through the massing spectacle. I flipped open my cell phone and redialed Rachel’s number. Then I tried Anne’s:

  “Searching …”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, increasing my feeling of anxiety. My palms felt slick. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. Where the hell were my daughters? Why couldn’t I get through? How much longer could I put up with the Walshes and their ridiculous nit-picking? I felt an irrational anger toward them that I knew was really a symptom of panic on my part. I had an almost debilitating fear of thunderstorms, a fear that was rooted in being witness to the tornado that touched down in Red River when I was a girl.

  It had been a Sunday afternoon in August, and I’d been swimming with my cousins up at Indian Pond when my uncle Petie, my mother’s younger brother, whistled us all out of the water. He’d heard some thunder, he said, and besides, we’d been in the pond for over an hour. We sat on our towels on the beach and ate slices of watermelon that he cut for us with his Swiss Army knife. My uncle fascinated me. He had lost a hand in a stock car racing accident when he was a teenager, but was able to perform magic with his knobby stump. His three boys were around my age, though he and Aunt Adele were a decade younger than my parents. The whole family seemed carefree and adventurous in a way that my reserved, well-regulated home life was not. I spent as much time with them as my parents allowed and was brokenhearted when they moved to California a few years later.

  I remember Aunt Adele saying that she didn’t much like the look of the sky. We all went up and huddled under the lean-to. When the wind started to strengthen, Uncle Petie put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to his side. Aunt Adele had wrapped the boys up in the beach blanket, but I was still in my wet towel and I was shivering. It’s going to be okay. Everybody just hold on to each other tight, Uncle Petie said as the wind roared around us. A tree splintered and fell nearby and leaves tumbled through the air around us as though it was late autumn. Strange waves lapped against our tender little beach and sand swirled like snow onto the parking lot. A fiberglass c
anoe, flung upward by a powerful gust, sailed across the launching area like some enormous waterfowl and slammed into a tree trunk. I remember hearing Uncle Petie saying Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. And then, suddenly, the worst of the wind and the noise was over. It wasn’t until we all got back in the car and started down the road to town that we discovered the full extent of the devastation.

  “I guess we’re ready to go,” Dan Walsh called down to me from the porch. “Wow. Was that lightning?”

  “Yes. A storm’s coming,” I said. “I think if we head back now, we might be able to beat it. I just need to lock up. Where’s Beryl?”

  “She’s using the downstairs bathroom. She’ll be right out. You know, I really like this house. It’s the perfect size, and the setting is so nice. Looks like it would be really easy to keep up. And I think that’s important when you’ve lived in an apartment your whole adult life, don’t you? The price is in our range, too. I wish Beryl felt more the way I do, but I’m hoping she might come around. I think what I’m going to do is work on her this week when we’re back in the city, and next weekend we’ll come back for another—”

  “Is she about ready?” I asked. “I’d really like to get going before—”

  Thunder cracked across the blacked-out sky. The field had taken on an electric brightness against the backdrop of the gathering storm. I hurried up the steps, fishing in my bag for the keys. I could feel my fingers trembling as I pulled them free. It was about five miles back to Red River Realty, along winding narrow roads. I never drive in thunderstorms. I just freeze at the wheel. If, for whatever reason, I’m alone or with the girls when one hits, I pull off to the side of the road until it passes. But now a competing fear—one no doubt just as irrational—kept me from admitting my weakness to the Walshes and suggesting we wait things out in the house: I was certain that my daughters were in harm’s way. I don’t know why. Rachel’s so smart and practical. If they were up at the pond, she’d know what to do if the storm went in that direction. Lord knows, because of my own anxieties, I’ve drilled it into her enough times. One little roll of thunder, you understand me? And I want you out of that water.

  Once we were in the car, the Walshes settled down quietly in the back. I think they must have picked up on how nervous I was. Sitting forward in the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel, I tried to focus my eyes and thoughts on the road in front of me. I hadn’t noticed driving in, but the dirt road had a deep gully running along the right side, forcing me to drive on the left and directly into any oncoming traffic. I could feel the storm looming behind us, though some patches of daylight still glimmered through the trees ahead. If only I could go a little faster I might still be able to outrun things, I thought, but the treacherous turns and washed-out shoulder kept me down to about twenty miles an hour. In my mind’s eye, I kept picturing Indian Pond, the tree limbs thrashing, the surface of the water rippling in the wind.

  Once again, I tried to remember what Rachel had told me that morning about her plans for the day. Because of the heat, she was spending a lot of time with the children up at the pond. From what I gathered, Anne dropped them all off in the morning and then picked them up at the end of the afternoon. It occurred to me that, in this scenario, I didn’t know how they managed their lunch. Did Anne make sandwiches for them? Somehow, I couldn’t imagine her at the long granite counter in that beautiful but underutilized kitchen, laying out bread slices. No, Rachel probably packed the picnic, I realized. And gathered the towels and blankets. The changes of clothes for Katie and Max. The blow-up water toys, shovels, and balls. It was Rachel I trusted to take care of everything. Rachel who allowed me the peace of mind to work these often twelve-hour days without worrying about who was watching over my children. But it was Paul who noticed how this new responsibility was affecting her.

  “Does Rachel seem a little, I don’t know, kind of distant to you?” he’d asked me a couple of mornings back.

  “Not any more than usual,” I said. We were in our bathroom. I’d just gotten out of the shower and was toweling off. “I mean, you know how she is with me. I’m not exactly the first person she confides in.” Paul stepped behind me into the shower. I waited for him to turn on the water, but he didn’t. I turned around to look at him. He was just standing there, looking down at the tiles. “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know, really. I can’t put my finger on it. But it seems to me that she’s been withdrawn lately. Since about the time we went to see Luke, I guess. It’s not anything I can point to specifically. I just don’t feel—I don’t feel our old closeness. It’s like she’s holding something back from me. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “I’ve tried to tell you: that’s how she’s been with me for the last couple of years. But I think it’s normal. In fact, I think it’s good. She’s separating from us, starting her own life. I have to force myself not to breathe down her neck, to give her the privacy she needs.”

  “So you don’t think this has anything to do with Luke?” Paul asked. “I still feel like I screwed all that up big-time, that I let everybody down.” We hadn’t heard or seen anything from Luke since the afternoon Paul and the girls went over to his place and brought home the sunflower. Though I assured him that Anne had gone down to apologize and that the whole thing seemed to have blown over, Paul was convinced that, along with everything else, Luke now resented our meddling in his problems with the Zellers.

  “I think it’s a lot more likely that Aaron’s on her mind,” I told him. “I remember how it was when I was her age. You were all I could think about! And my poor parents. They had no idea. I don’t ever want Rachel to think that she has to lie to us about her feelings. I suppose you could say I’m taking a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach to the whole thing.”

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I just hope we’re not missing anything important by being hands-off. It’s really hard for me, though; it’s like I’m already having to let her go. And I miss her—even though she’s still here.”

  “It’s a stage,” I told him, turning to the mirror and starting to comb out my hair. “We just have to be patient.” I could hear the water splash on behind me.

  “So I was all you could think about, huh?” Paul said, leaning out of the shower and pinching my backside. “Why don’t you step back in here, little lady, and tell me about some of those thoughts?”

  That pleasant memory was shattered by a sudden lightning flash and crack of thunder—the noise so close and loud I automatically slammed on the brakes.

  “Should we turn back maybe?” Beryl asked, leaning forward. “Or pull off to the—”

  “Oh, no, this is nothing, really,” I said, though my throat was dry. When I stepped on the gas pedal again, I could feel that my whole leg was shaking. “You’ll get used to these when you live up here for a while.”

  When I’m driving clients from house to house, I usually like to get them talking about the pros and cons of the place they’ve just seen, or start preparing them for what’s next on the itinerary. Up until this point, the Walshes and I had kept up a lively and mostly nonstop conversation on the road. But now, as the storm crackled around us, a heavy silence filled the car. I knew I should be doing something to relieve the tension, but I was too nervous and preoccupied to care.

  How could I have been so negligent? In truth, I simply didn’t trust Anne to have noticed the worsening weather and go up to the pond to collect our kids. My reservations about her parenting skills had been growing slowly over the course of the summer. I found out that she let Katie and Max eat ice cream for breakfast, telling me with a laugh: “Oh, don’t look so shocked, Maddie, it’s chock-full of calcium, isn’t it?” I discovered that when Richard was away they all slept together, sprawled across the king-size mattress in the master bedroom, the kids staying up and watching late-night television with Anne. I could think of numerous other examples, large and small. But, perhaps, most sobering of all was the fact that I’d never, in all the ca
refree weeks I’d spent with Anne, heard her say no to her children. It was always yes, and why not, and last one in is a rotten egg! I finally had to face the fact that I didn’t trust her with my children. I’m not even sure that I trusted her with her own.

  By the time I dropped the Walshes off in the parking lot, the heavens had opened. I waited a minute or two, hoping the rain would let up, because I could barely see beyond my hood. Then, unable to contain my impatience any longer, I eased my way out of the parking lot and made the right onto Route 198, wipers at the fastest speed. It’s usually a ten-minute ride to our house; that afternoon, driving primarily by memory and intuition through a tunnel of water and wind, it took me at least twice that time. The house was dark when I pulled up in front of the garage, so I knew my daughters weren’t there. If they were home, at the very least the kitchen overheads would be shining onto the breezeway. I ran up the driveway and into the kitchen, pooling rainwater in my wake, grabbed the wall phone, and tried Rachel again. Then Anne, whose phone rang four times before a recording of Katie’s and Max’s voices announced: “We’ve been kidnapped by pirates, but if you want to leave a message …” I quickly checked the answering machine on the phone in our upstairs bedroom; the red light was blinking, but the two work-related calls were for Paul.

  I ran back out to the car, my anger and anxiety building. Surely by this point Anne should know how worried I would be. Why wasn’t she trying to reach me? Where were the children? I saw the revolving red lights of a police car ahead of me in the darkness. Oh God, please, I prayed, don’t let it be them! I slowed to a crawl, coming up beside the cruiser. Al Simonetti, wearing a bright yellow hooded slicker and carrying an electric torch, waved me to a stop. I lowered the window on the passenger side of the car and he leaned in:

  “Lightning knocked down a power line ahead. We got it cordoned off, but take it slow.”

  By the time I made the turn up Indian Mountain Road the rain seemed to have eased up a little, but the badly maintained track that wound up the mountain to the pond was teeming with treacherous runoff. Now I had to worry about the car sliding into a gully or getting stuck in the mud. I edged forward, taking the curves slowly. Then the rain picked up again, so hard and blinding that I was forced to stop; I couldn’t see a foot ahead of me. I turned on the hazards, pulled up on the emergency brake, got out and started to run.