Cloudland

by Joseph Olshan

  I pondered his story for a moment and then I said, “Well, at face value it does make you sound cruel. But those situations are really hard. I can understand choosing not to marry her. And you were so young.”

  Anthony was momentarily too choked up to speak. Finally he said, “I’ve carried the guilt with me. Especially because she never met anybody else and still lives with her parents in Nova Scotia. And so when this whole thing happened with Emily I just figured it was payback.”

  I took this in and then said, “So you really loved Emily?”

  “I still love Emily,” he said just as a brigade of cyclists dressed in colorful spandex suddenly appeared, climbing the steep grade of Cloudland Road in a tight pack, their panting bursts of conversation preceding them.

  TWELVE

  WHEN I GOT HOME FROM ANTHONY’S that evening, before listening to the messages I scanned the list of calls that had come in: one from Burlington and the other Boston. The Burlington one was accompanied by the name Nan O’Brien, a name familiar to me but which I couldn’t immediately place. When I began playing the message I realized this was the clairvoyant the Burlington police had consulted regarding the abducted coed who was murdered in a rocky gorge, as well as the young student who’d mysteriously gone missing at Middlebury College at the same time that Angela Parker disappeared. The message was very simple. “I am Nan O’Brien. I work to find missing people. I need to speak to you about something in particular. If you could call me I’d appreciate it.” She left a number. It was nine-thirty in the evening, too late by Vermont standards to make a phone call, but my curiosity got the better of me.

  “Hello, Catherine Winslow,” answered a smoky voice. “I had a feeling it might be you.”

  Did she have caller ID? “I hope it’s not too late.”

  “I’m a late one,” she said.

  “Your message intrigued me,” I said. “How can I—”

  “No, how can I?” she interrupted. “I’ve been having this vision over and over. A vision about you. And a book that you’re trying to find. Does that have any meaning at all?”

  “There was a book I was trying to find, but I found it.”

  “Oh, well then I guess I’m a bit late. This can happen.”

  “Late but at least not incorrect.” I hesitated. “I don’t believe in psychic phenomena but I will say this is pretty interesting. Funny thing is that I recently read about you working with the police.”

  “Trying to. With the Middlebury boy, nobody is really listening to me.”

  “So you have a theory as to what happened to him?”

  There was a pause. “I’d rather not go into it, especially over the phone. Because it’s not exactly a straightforward theory. I get this information, but I don’t interpret it, necessarily. Anyway, I would love to meet you sometime. I’m a huge fan of your column.”

  “That might be something to hold against you.”

  She laughed heartily. “Well, I read you for pure pleasure. Your hundred-year-old recipes. Those sachets that keep mice away. But I will confess to you that I am a terrible housekeeper. I did try one of your recipes, though, a caramel sheet cake that was sent, I believe, by a reader out in Texas.”

  “Well, believe it or not, I’m not the greatest housekeeper myself. My daughter will vouch for that.”

  There was a short pause and then she said, “Look, I know you found the body. I read about it in the Burlington Free Press. If I was right about the book, I’d like to help you figure out who did it.”

  I felt suddenly woozy. “What makes you think I’m trying to solve it?”

  “I just assumed you were. You’re a journalist, right?”

  I laughed. “Sort of.”

  “I’d offer to drive down to you, but I hurt my foot going on the search for the woman who was murdered in Burlington. I fell between some rocks when we were sweeping Huntington Gorge.”

  I was intrigued and suddenly got an idea. “The Valley News. They’ve been bugging me to do something else for them. I’ve gotten out of the habit of doing profiles, but maybe I can do one on you.”

  “I’m not really looking for publicity,” the woman said. “I just would like to chat and possibly contribute.”

  “Why not try and make it official?” I suggested.

  “Okay. As long as you don’t mind trekking up here.”

  * * *

  The caller from Boston had left no message. But just after ten P.M. the phone rang and the same number flashed again. I stared at it, at first determined not to answer any unidentified person, but then with the sense that it was a wireless call I felt an eerie compulsion to pick up.

  I had no idea how I’d react when I finally heard from him. I guess it hardly surprised me when tears started and I had trouble speaking.

  “Hey, it’s okay, its okay,” he said gently. “Sorry I surprised you.”

  “I thought you promised not to call me until…” was all I could say under the pressure of the moment.

  “I’ve been worried.”

  Baloney, I thought.

  “I’m here now at my parents’ cabin. I arrived yesterday.”

  “When did you get back from Thailand again?”

  “In April.”

  Two months before he’d written to announce his return and to wonder how I was doing after having found a murdered woman. I thought I could hear him stretch, or imagined him stretching. “So why are you calling me now?”

  “I’ve been wanting to for ages. I have a feeling you’ve probably been through a difficult time.”

  Not nearly as difficult as the time I went through with you, I thought. “When I got your birthday letter I didn’t know what to think.”

  “So I guess you know what’s coming next.”

  I did, but said nothing.

  “It’s been over two years. I’m different now. In control of my life. I’m working pretty steadily. I have friends. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “I should not be alone with you, Matthew.”

  “I’ll bring someone, Catherine, if that makes you feel easier, but who shall I bring?”

  “Google ‘rent-a-chaperone.’ I’m sure there’s a branch office in Boston.”

  He guffawed. “God, I’ve missed that humor. I’ve missed you so fucking much. Have you even missed me?”

  I felt it would be wrong and encouraging to confess my terrible loneliness and how, plagued by the specter of the relationship, I still dreamed about him. So I said nothing.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m up here for a bit. I can get there in no time. Just say when.”

  Nothing in my head seemed to be stirring. “I need to think, Matthew. I need to get my wits around the idea. Please don’t call me or come here until you hear from me? Can you at least promise me that?”

  There was an anxious silence and finally he said, “I guess if I have to. Yeah, I promise.”

  “One way or another I’ll call you within a few days.”

  “In a few days … you swear?” he persisted in the manner that used to unnerve me.

  “I’ve got to get off the phone now,” I said, and told him good-bye.

  * * *

  My students all knew that I liked to have lunch at the bar of a certain tavern in downtown Burlington that served good pub food. Usually I took a copy of The New York Times, read it in its entirety, judging the articles, feeling bitterly competitive with some of my former colleagues whom I’d worked with at various magazines, dreaming about resurrecting my flatlined career as a journalist that had reached its peak when I wrote a well-regarded op-ed piece about my experience with Breck’s anorexia, something that generated bushels of compassionate mail. The burst of notoriety came at a price, however; Breck grew so furious at me for writing about her “disorder” that she barely spoke to me for six months. The Times continued to solicit me for mother/daughter articles and opinion pieces. Concerned about maintaining my relationship with Breck, I was forced to turn them down. The editors finally stopped calling.
/>   One day, I was at my favorite tavern nibbling on a hamburger that had gone cold due to my rapt enjoyment of a friend’s absolutely brilliant two-thousand-word piece on a professional tennis player when I felt somebody standing next to me. Matthew had shown up at the restaurant wearing an expensive-looking pressed white shirt with fine ribbing, tight jeans, and with his hair pulled back into a small hipster-like ponytail.

  “What brings you here?” I said to him congenially.

  “Months of waiting,” he said slowly and clearly.

  “Months of what?”

  He looked at me fixedly and almost seemed a bit impatient. “May I sit next to you?”

  “Sure, but I need to know what this is about.”

  “I don’t see how I can be any more obvious.”

  I was afraid of this. The anger was rising but I willed myself calm. “Oh, you certainly can, Matthew, you’re my … student.”

  “Former student,” he corrected me emphatically.

  “What’s happening here?”

  He sat down next to me, his leg just barely brushing up against mine. “I … I … I have this thing for you. I’ve had it ever since our first conference.”

  I moved my leg away from his, cursing myself for not trying harder to get rid of him early during the autumn semester.

  “Matthew. Not only am I your professor, I’m at least fifteen years older than you.”

  “That’s hardly anything,” he said. “You wouldn’t be thinking twice about it if the man were older.”

  I agreed that the older man/younger woman scenario was more usual. “Because not all, but many women don’t want to be involved with men a lot younger. Too much of a risk for them.”

  “For some women I suppose it is,” he agreed. Leaning a tad closer to me, Matthew went on. “So have you ever been involved with a younger guy?”

  “I don’t like this conversation.”

  “Please,” he said. “Just talk to me about this. That’s all I ask.”

  “Then quit leaning over me. Sit in your chair properly.” He straightened up. I took a moment to calm down, trying to recall when I was his age, full of my own exaggerated self-confidence and swagger, the years when I was still emotionally unbroken. “I guess it depends on what you mean by younger. A few years, yes. More than a decade, definitely no.”

  I was aware of the wonderful angular cast of his jaw and that his face, often prone to acne, was for once clear. His shirt slightly yet deliberately unbuttoned, the fabric resting against his tanned, youthful skin. And I think I must’ve shaken my head because he said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m practically old enough to be your mother.”

  “First of all, my mother is way older than you. Second of all, I look older than my age and you look younger. If we were walking down the street together, nobody who saw us would think twice. So sue me for liking … mature women.”

  “I always think it’s messy when professors get involved with their students. That’s why I’ve avoided it for the five years I’ve been here.”

  “But I’m a former student. A consenting adult who graduates in two months.”

  “Call me up when you graduate.” This was part audacity and still part brush-off.

  And yet despite myself, I’d cracked open the door, admitting a sliver of light.

  Matthew paused, dazzled by it. “I would have waited, but I just can’t any longer.”

  “Wait for what, Matthew?”

  Fixing his large, glossy, chestnut-colored eyes on me, he took a nervous, fluttering breath and spoke. “To tell you that you’re inside my head.” He floundered for a moment. “All the time. I know it sounds corny, but that’s the only way I can describe it.”

  “It doesn’t sound corny as much as it sounds worrisome.”

  “Don’t worry, just try and get to know me.”

  “Get to know … you’re really out of order here!” I snapped.

  At first he recoiled from the impact of the words, but then, undeterred, dared to reach forward and put a roughened hand (probably from playing hockey) over mine and squeeze boldly. He shivered and I somehow knew that he couldn’t help himself. It was a movement that seemed to have its own inevitability, its own sense of itself. While I worried that, at the bar of a restaurant I often frequented, we’d be seen by somebody who knew one or both of us, I felt completely disarmed by it, the way I did in class, the day he leaned back in his chair and stretched and I found myself unable to admonish him to sit properly. His hand was large and there were a few dark hairs on the top of it. I merely stared at it, admiring without trying to dislodge it. And heard myself say as though from a great distance, “What are you doing, Matthew?”

  “Just take me home with you, now,” he whispered, trembling.

  “I can’t do that,” I said in a not-very-convincing manner. “It’s wrong.”

  “You have no idea if it’s wrong until you see what it is.”

  And then something just gave way. In full knowledge of the risk I was taking, I couldn’t find it in myself to rebuff him anymore. I’d been struck and conquered by how single-minded he was; no one since my late husband had been so sure of himself in what he desired, in what he demanded. All my protective sarcasm fell away like scaffolding. “Just like that,” I said. “And then … what?”

  Softly yet resolutely, he said, “I have a much better idea of all this than you do.”

  “What idea?” I said. “Wait a minute. Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

  He shook his head. “I was dating a girl for a while when I was taking your class. There’s nobody really in my life now. Except possibly you,” he said.

  “I don’t think you hear what you’re actually saying.”

  And then he did the craziest, boldest thing. He touched me in a zone on the back of my neck that nobody but my philandering husband had discovered, the place that made every concern melt away. And at the time I think I must have equated the two men; caught up in the moment, perhaps, I was also afraid of what could certainly turn out to be the inevitable rejection.

  And after I allowed Matthew to follow me home, to lead me upstairs to my own bedroom and shuck off his shirt with a single bold movement, after I closed my eyes for a moment because his body, though obviously young, was powerful and manly, I knew that I’d ventured too far out into the current and there was no returning to any pillar of safety.

  And it was all compounded, heightened even, by the fact that he was trembling. At first I thought his nerves were making him cold, but then realized something was wrong and asked.

  “I’m great. I’m fine.” He seemed embarrassed suddenly. “I just get this way … remember how I wrote for you about having meningitis when I was a kid?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, whenever I get nervous, my hands and sometimes my chest begin to shake.” For somebody who appeared so strong and forceful, he suddenly looked utterly vulnerable. And this touched me. My momentary pity for him changed into fascination. I was nearly able to forget my fear that he’d find me, a woman fifteen years older, less attractive with my clothes off; and to his credit, he was somehow able to sense this insecurity swirling within my hesitation. “No, no, no,” he murmured in an almost paternal way. “You don’t understand. Just let me,” unbuttoning my shirt, then reaching behind and unclasping my bra and letting my breasts fall into his roughened hands. He was so gentle with them; feeling them, looking at them, he let out a pent-up groan, then looked at me, eyes sparking with fire. “You’ll never … understand how for so long I’ve wanted to do this. I just never believed I’d ever get to.” He sounded close to tears.

  His jittery intensity was overwhelming and I felt somehow I had to dispel it. “I get the distinct feeling that you’ve done this sort of thing before. Seduced much older women.”

  He smiled and, shaking his head, continuing to caress me, said, “No. This is the first time.”

  We were together for two hours, our lovemaking veering between the slaking of pure hunger to in
terludes of erotic gentleness where we just stroked each other, marveling. In the end I rested my head against his chest and felt his strength and listened to the steady thumping of his heart. I sensed many things about him: a kindness yet an impetuousness, but also clearly an obsessive desire that made sense in a child of such (as he described it in the essay he wrote for my eyes only) remote parents. This provoked a tenderness in me, the impulse to try and heal all wounds, the wounds of wounded children, but also a wariness that was compounded by the ache of my own loneliness that had persisted since my husband died and throughout the intervening years, during my many brief relationships with men. Rearing up like a monster with a mind of its own was the clenching anxiety of desire that feeds on physical contact, while killing the appetite, destroying the ability to concentrate, requiring a daily druglike fix of the other person in some form or another. Did I really want this?

  And what unlocked things between us even further was his remarkable self-confidence in lovemaking; our bodies fit together perfectly, and just as he’d inadvertently shown in the restaurant with his fingers grazing the back of my neck, time and again he divined exactly where to touch me—on the base of my spine, on the inside of my thigh, lightly and confidently nuzzling my cheek—that brought on a crush of emotion. I was the older woman but I had little to teach this twenty-four-year-old about sex. Thrilling though it was, it was also disconcerting, the compelling force of our physical love. I would battle against it, as well as his tenacity, throughout the entire relationship.

  And when we were done that afternoon, we lay there holding hands, gazing at the ceiling, silent. I was stunned by the immensity of what had just happened. It was as though a cyclone had sucked us up into its funnel and dropped us into another country, into a place where there were no simple answers to our questions, where there were no paths leading away from a center of chaos and recklessness. All I could see before me was a landscape that promised the great possibility of pain. And so I was mustering the courage to say it was a wonderful afternoon but that it could never happen ever again, when Matthew turned to me. “Remember what I told you at the restaurant.”