Cascade

by Maryanne O'Hara

  An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.—Ancient Chinese Belief

  “It reminded me of you,” he said.

  “Did it?”

  “I think we were meant to meet. Don’t you?”

  How dispassionately, how maddeningly, he was able to say passionate things. “Yes, of course I do.” She wanted more, more declaration—more sharing of what really went on inside his mind. But it was so hard to ask for more, so hard to speak.

  “You enriched my life, Dez,” he said, which sounded so terribly past tense. Then he turned the painting around and she recognized it, with disappointment, as the work Dr. Proulx had commissioned before he died. The subject was a grim woman sitting in a ladder-back chair, lit by a high side window. The painting was dramatic, well executed, but she knew the model was Jacob’s mother, who looked as forbidding as Dez had imagined. It seemed an odd choice of gift, though the work was compelling, as she found all of Jacob’s work to be—low-keyed, painted in harsh browns and blacks, with thick yet controlled brushstrokes. Its perspective was somewhat skewed—looking downward from near the ceiling, which made the focus of the painting Jacob’s mother’s eyes as she raised them and looked directly at the viewer: at Dez.

  Dr. Proulx had wanted an example of “Jewish art.” Whatever that means, Jacob had said. “What makes it Jewish?” she asked now.

  “Nothing, really,” he said. “Except it’s showing the two sets of dishes.”

  The dark background contained two glass-fronted hutches, each filled with plates.

  “One for meat, one for dairy,” he added, with a look that said he realized she probably had no idea what that meant. She didn’t. And she was suddenly despondent and didn’t care. Whatever it meant, it illustrated the differences between them—differences she had not really appreciated. She saw that he was setting the tone, that they were not going to talk about what happened, that they were going to pretend that nothing had happened. He would leave. They would write now and again. Whistling Falls would be chosen. She would tell Mr. Washburn she wasn’t coming to New York after all. Abby would take the job she decided she’d better not mention. She didn’t want him thinking she had initiated it, that she was chasing after him.

  “What makes it Jewish,” he said, “is what makes it not Jewish.”

  “I see,” she said, though she didn’t see at all. “But you should keep it in your family. It’s your mother, after all.”

  “No, I want you to have it. It’s one of my favorites, and it was meant for Dr. Proulx so I’d like to keep it in Cascade. I want someone who will appreciate it to have it.”

  Someone, as if she was any old someone. He was standing right beside her but the partition between them was back and it was hard to believe he’d ever kissed and touched her.

  “And what if the W.P.A. doesn’t hire you? Will you come back?”

  She had spoken too harshly. He stiffened. “Well, no. I’ll have sold everything off.”

  “What about Ruth?”

  He looked at her then with candor. He took off his hat and sat on the sofa; he tapped the brim against the palm of his hand. “Ruth’s upset.”

  Of course she was. “Does that surprise you?”

  “I never led her to believe that we were going to do anything more than go to the pictures now and then this past year.”

  “Women…expect things.”

  “I know. I know they do.” His gaze met hers and flickered away briefly before returning with a look that was disappointing, even irritating, in its solemnity. “And I had no right to come on to you the way I did, and I apologize.”

  I didn’t mind, she wanted to say.

  “Honestly, I didn’t think you would ever want to see me again. I was so grateful when I got that telegram.”

  “Really?” There was relief to hear that. Relief like rain. Why had he assumed the worst? And why did he have to look so grim now? “I wasn’t sorry it happened, Jacob.”

  “I was, am. You’re married.” He dropped his head and studied the backs of his hands. “I felt so sordid when I saw Asa.”

  She wished he hadn’t used that word. Wished he hadn’t tainted the memory.

  “What about before you saw Asa? How did you really feel? How would you feel if there was no Asa?” Her sense of irritation stronger than her timidity, pushing her to speak openly. It’s too easy to express predictable, socially mandated remorse. How did you really feel?

  She willed him to lift his head and look in her eyes, to speak openly, too. But the seconds ticked by and she realized he was not going to say anything.

  “Asa told me he’s been too modern about our friendship, that he doesn’t want you to come here anymore.”

  Jacob jerked his head up. “What am I doing here, then?”

  “I—”

  “I completely understand.” He got to his feet. “It’s his house.”

  “It’s my house, too.”

  “What if he came home right now? How uncomfortable would that be?”

  “He won’t,” she said, his panic coming across as slightly, dismayingly spineless. She was sorry she’d said anything. “Don’t leave. If this is really your last visit, we can’t waste it.”

  “Then let’s go for a walk or something. Let me move my truck. Let’s just get out of here.”

  So that was how they ended up moving his truck down the street, behind the carriage house belonging to Richard Harcourt’s abandoned summer house. That was how they ended up going for the walk in the woods.

  20

  The Spaulding land, all forty-two acres, most of it forest, was cool and quiet, last year’s pine needles a soft, rusty carpet underfoot. The path out to Pine Point was well worn, thick with roots, the air heavy with the smell of pine pitch and river water. On the eastern trail, Jacob tried to bring up the subject of Asa; he understood Asa’s position, he said, but Dez pointed out a pink lady slipper, growing quietly in the shade of an ancient oak. “Look, they’re very rare,” she said.

  Like the subject of Ruth, she didn’t want to talk about Asa.

  Something rustled through the undergrowth, a flash of gray fur. “Squirrel,” Jacob said. The squirrel triggered the bursting of a flock of birds from a tree, beating their wings and flapping toward the sky.

  They watched until the birds were out of sight.

  “I feel so contented,” Dez said, “when I’m in the woods.”

  She wasn’t really content. She said that because it sounded nice, because it fit the moment, because she wanted it to be true. She wondered if she should tell him about New York. If only she had Rose or a mother to offer advice—to say, Yes, go ahead and tell him about New York. Or, No, dear, it’s best not to speak. He might think you’re chasing him.

  She told him how the summer before the flu came, she and her mother found a spring deep in these woods. “It was somewhere near Whistling Falls. And in the middle of the spring there was this frog, just sitting on a lily pad. He stared at us with these hooded, bulbous eyes.” She paused to imitate the frog—his stillness, his watchfulness. She had been newly conscious of herself as alive, as someone with an eye for composition. “I had my little sketchbook,” she said, patting her skirt pocket. “My mother was the one who got me into the habit of carrying one all the time. She sewed pockets on all my clothes. She watched while I drew him, and swore I’d bewitched the frog. I was little; I believed her.” It was easier to talk while walking, to look ahead, to feel cocooned inside your moving body, inside the sound of your voice. “But the strange thing was, this frog really did seem to pose. He never moved, just looked straight at me. And as soon as I was done, he leaped off the lily pad and disappeared.”

  “And then just a year later, she was gone and my father was so—” She tried to summon the right word. Morose, despairing, angry; none of them adequately described the grieving her father had gone through. “He was staging a particularly blood
y production of Macbeth and I was left to run wild. I spent an entire three days trying to find that spring. I tried retracing our steps, and when that didn’t work, I walked a grid north, east, south, west, trying to find it. I found old stone walls and old foundations, and lots of Indian arrowheads. But I could never find that spring again.”

  “You were looking for your mother.”

  “I guess I was.” She wished she could take his hand. Knowing she couldn’t made her voice hard. “We people take up space, and then when we’re gone, there’s just the space left, and sometimes you can’t quite comprehend how that can happen.”

  He turned to her. “Yes,” he said. “I think that’s why so many of us are driven to create something tangible, something that will assert itself as us after we’re gone.”

  This was why, Dez thought. This was why she loved him.

  “Most people do it by having children, of course,” she said. “It’s normal to want a part of yourself to live on. But with children, I think you get diluted over time. Who knows much about his great-great-or-greater grandparent? Never mind farther back than that? Art, books, music. Those are the things that last.”

  “If they’re lucky.”

  Well, of course, there had always been wars and natural disasters, she conceded. “But look how much has lasted already, and the world we live in, our civilization, isn’t even all that old. We’ve got the First Folio, countless paintings. Music.”

  “True. But I think it might be memory that matters most,” he said.

  She thought about that. “Well, true. But where does memory come from? I think it comes back to the same thing. We have to record our existence somehow, some way, if anyone is ever going to remember it. Oral histories—do they really work anymore, in this modern world? People read books, they go to the pictures, they move far away from their original homes.”

  It seemed the right time to tell him about New York, but they had arrived at a fork, a fork marked by a giant boulder left by some ancient retreating glacier. If they turned right, they would find themselves at the parking area at Pine Point. They would emerge onto River Road. The sun would be bright in their eyes. Jacob would look at his watch and think about all he had to do and their walk would come to an end. If they turned left, they would travel deeper and deeper into the woods toward Secret Pond. She would get to spend at least an extra hour with him.

  “Let’s go left,” she said. “It’s beautiful. There’s a pond up ahead that’s so hard to find it’s called Secret Pond.”

  Who wouldn’t be tempted, who wouldn’t want to see a place with a name like that?

  So at the fork, they turned left. A simple choice, left instead of right.

  21

  When they entered the clearing to Secret Pond, Jacob drew in his breath, like everyone who saw it for the first time—the pond spread out like an illustration from a children’s storybook, overhead branches forming a canopy that allowed golden, diffuse light to filter down through the thick foliage. High in the trees, birds called and flew among the boughs.

  “Let’s sit here,” Dez said, heading for a nearby grouping of flat rocks. But instead of continuing with the conversation Dez was finding so exhilarating, Jacob craned his neck to peer across the pond. “What’s that?”

  “It’s just an old dam.”

  “Really? Let’s take a look,” he said, walking off before she could reply. On the other side of the pond, he stood with his hands on his hips, inspecting the way the dam had been built. Why was it there, he wanted to know? Who would have built a funny little dam in the middle of the woods?

  Dez explained its history but she didn’t let on that Asa’s family had built it. She didn’t let on that they were on Spaulding land.

  The stone-and-mortar dam stood only about seven feet tall but ran about fifteen feet wide. The top was flat, and wide enough to walk on. From the riverside, water flowed along a tributary that was camouflaged by brush and brambles. Normally, the water bumped up against the dam and flowed back to the river because a solid wooden floodgate kept the dam closed. But now the floodgate had been raised. It hung from a hoisting platform, poised between rusty chains, just below the rim of the dam.

  Jacob climbed the embankment to get a closer look; Dez tagged after him. They looked down into the gap of the dam, where the river sloshed back and forth, passing through the lock and into Secret Pond.

  It was clear that Asa’s diversion had been successful, and was, as he had said, near invisible from the river. Stan himself had said the flow appeared stronger up at Whistling Falls.

  “It’s been opened recently,” Jacob said, pointing out the bottom two-thirds of the floodgate, stained dark with muck from years of being closed up tight. “I wonder why?”

  “Probably the water people.”

  “But why?” Jacob crouched to peer down into the gap. “It doesn’t make any sense. Opening this took work.”

  “I don’t know.” Dez wanted to go back into the cool, quiet sanctuary of the woods, back to the conversation they’d been enjoying. “Supposedly the water men are saying the water runs funny near Pine Point. Maybe it’s something to do with that. Checking water flow or something.”

  “Do you have your sketchbook?”

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to draw it.”

  She suppressed an urge to sigh and pulled the pad from her pocket as he positioned himself down onto the edge of the gap. He gestured for her to sit beside him, even though she had to squeeze into the space. As he began to draw, Dez was conscious of her leg and hip pressing against his.

  “When I was young,” he said, “oh, about twelve, I was completely fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci and all those perfect, precise drawings he did. The hydraulic machines, the tanks. Did you know he even played a part in the development of the dams and canals that made Milan so prosperous? Such genius.”

  “No.” Dez didn’t. And how could she really care, when his arm kept brushing hers? It was more than she could stand. She looked at him helplessly.

  He paused and met her gaze. Something intimate passed between them even as he continued to talk. “I loved that he was always trying to think of a better way to do things. And I love that some long-ago farmer came up with this.”

  “Me, too,” she said. The unspoken something allowing her to prop her chin atop his arm casually, as if she always had such access to his body. She watched his fingers, wrapped around her pencil, taking such care to document each detail—the links that made up the chain bolted to the floodgate, the steel hook-and-pulley system, the rope that led from the pulley to the hoisting platform, ending in a sailor’s knot wrapped around two cleats. A light breeze lifted his hair; she wanted to smooth it back in place. When he finished and put the sketch in his pocket and got to his feet, he reached down to help her up.

  She was conscious of her hand in his, conscious of the way he held it a few moments longer than necessary. Then he tugged on the rope.

  “I’d love to give it a go,” he said. “Want to?”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? I’d like to see if it operates as smoothly as it would appear to.”

  She hesitated. She couldn’t fool with Asa’s dam. But was there really any harm in closing it then opening it right back up again? There probably wasn’t even any harm in closing it. The pond was already filled.

  Jacob crouched to get a closer look at the gap. “Look at those grooves.” She could see the twelve-year-old boy in him, and the sight was endearing. He pointed to the channels carved into the mortar on either side of the spillway. “See how carefully cut they were? I think we just need to make sure the grooves in the floodgate match up.”

  He took off his jacket, unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves and flexed his hands, then positioned Dez in front of him, five fingers on each shoulder that jolted through her like lightning. “You hold here,” he said, demonstrating with two fists gripping the rope. “As soon as I’ve released the rope, I’ll pull hard from the top, but you h
ave to be ready. You have to be already pulling.”

  Dez grabbed tight, conscious of the smell of rope fibers and the starch from Jacob’s shirt. His chin grazed her shoulder, the points of his collar pricked the back of her neck. She wondered if his heart was beating as rapidly as hers.

  “Okay, pull,” he said.

  They pulled the rope hard to keep the floodgate from hurtling down, and it was inevitable, the way her back had to grind against his chest. Surely he was aware of what was happening. The floodgate, the act of closing it, was a contrivance, for both of them, wasn’t it?

  The floodgate dropped a few inches and stopped.

  “It’s stuck,” he said.

  “You’re right, it needs to seat into those grooves.”

  “Forget it,” he said. His lips brushed her ear, his voice vibrating her eardrum. “It’s too much for you.”

  “No.” She didn’t want to stop. “Try again. We have to be synchronized here. I think we have to raise it a bit then be sure it slides evenly down, inside the grooves.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She was far from hurt; she was exhilarated. She could do this forever, stand with him behind her, holding her, his mouth so close to her hair, the nape of her neck. “I won’t. Don’t worry. The key is to not let it go flying. Let’s count to three, come on.” They counted aloud—one, two, three!—pulling on the rope with just enough balancing leverage to position, then release it gently. The floodgate creaked and grunted, sliding reluctantly along the grooves. The rope burned into her palms but she ignored that. One, two, three, again! Down the floodgate came, another few inches, then half a foot, then suddenly free and gliding along the grooves rapidly, sliding down, down, until it sealed itself tight like a guillotine.

  They let go of the rope at the same time, laughing, breathless. “Now to hoist it back up again,” she said.

  “There’s not a chance the two of us can heft that back up again. Whoever did that must have done it with a few men.”