by Donnna Salli
He and I were on the curriculum committee then, which, like most committees, met late in the day. The first meeting after I’d heard he was seeing Claire, after we adjourned he showed up at my office. My briefcase was on the chair next to my desk, coat and lunch bucket stacked on top. It was obvious I was on my way out.
“Got a minute?” he said.
“Of course.”
I cleared off the chair, and he flopped onto it and crossed the ankle of one leg over the knee of the other. “So,” he said, “there’s this big animal in the room, and no one brings it up. It’s trumpeting, snorting chaff, you can’t see across the table for all the crap it’s blown in the air, but no one says, ‘What the hell?’ I thought you were going to, when you first came in. Just before the bell, I might add, as usual. I thought you were upfront enough to say something. You gave me that look, Toni’s winding up, and I thought, ‘She’s going to, she’s going to say it. Leave it to Toni, thank God.’” He studied me, not a hard look, but a wondering one. “But you didn’t.”
“Well.” I couldn’t think. What would be best to say? “It’s just . . . it’s . . . for crying out loud, Paul, I’d think you’d be the one. It’s your place. What do we know about it? ‘Collier’s seeing a student, what’s he thinking?’ What are we supposed to say?”
“Maybe ‘Say, Paul, I hear you’re seeing someone.’” He extended one hand toward me, palm up, giving me my entrée.
“Say,” I said, “I hear . . . you’re seeing someone.”
“I am. She’s fresh, alive. I guess I don’t have to say it’s complicated. . . . I’m the most content I’ve ever been.” The look on his face made me envious. I hadn’t been there in a long time.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m happy for you. Really, with all you’ve been through.”
“Forget all that.” He extended his hand again, offering a shake. I took it, and he said, “Thanks.” He stood and moved to the door, but instead of leaving, he stopped and leaned against the jamb. “I’m not being rash, Toni. I thought hard about it. Claire’s not in my department, she won’t be taking my classes. I’ve had my little talk with the dean, at my request, not hers. It matters to me, what some of you think.”
After he’d gone, I felt bad I hadn’t said something before I’d left the meeting. Sometimes, in fraught situations with people I don’t know well, my brain seizes and for lack of words I abdicate. It’s a poor strategy. Words withheld, when words are called for, are as bad as hard words spoken. Paul went on to marry Claire, but that marriage, too, ended up under the skids.
I don’t know Claire. She’s only recently showed up at the church, and Sam and I didn’t move in the same circles as she and Paul. We’d see them at faculty things, and once or twice spent the evening at the same dinner party, where Claire barely said a word. She was such a child. I’ve often wondered. How does someone that untried get through something like divorce?
During intermission, the big news was that Marcus Talbot was dead. A coronary, someone said. Marcus and his wife, Lucy, are mucky-mucks around town. Marcus is—was—the type you never get to know, no matter how long you’ve known him. One weekend, Sam and I drove down to the Hotel Fullerton to hear a jazz band, and who did we see but Marcus, squiring a petite woman in a sequined dress. She looked all of thirty. He saw us, but when our eyes met, he looked right through us. Then the following Sunday at church, he was his usual affable, ineffable self.
Sam and I never breathed a word. But after church that day on our way to brunch, we speculated. Actually, Sam started it. He was driving, and I was reading the paper. As he pulled into the parking spot at the restaurant, he gave the paper a whack. I hated when he did things like that. He said, “What do you think? What’s going on in that house on the hill?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” I folded the paper on my lap.
“Come on, Toni. Play with me. Who was the woman? Who was he with?”
“Who knows? Family friend? Relative? Inamorata?” I opened my door and stepped out.
“Inamorata?” Sam exclaimed from the driver’s seat. He hopped out and caught up. “Jesus, Toni. Where do you come up with those words?” He slipped an arm around my waist. “Baby, I’m guessing love nests on the side—for both Marcus and Lucy.”
“Sam. Someone will hear you.”
“No one’s around. Lucy’s a babe, and on the prowl. I’m telling you, it’s booty on every side.”
After I left the theatre, I stopped at my office and didn’t get home until after eleven. I’d been thinking all evening about Claire Collier—how ethereal she’d looked, I was still reacting on a visceral level—and also about the Talbots. I guess whenever someone dies, you feel a tug on the big web. Seeing Lucy and Marcus together, a person might not call them the apple of each other’s eye, but they also wouldn’t guess there were serious problems. After what Sam and I had seen, though, down at the Fullerton, I figured Lucy was jumping in the air and clicking her heels about now.
I’d been thinking hardest about my own quandary. If I took Sam back, we’d face some large new problems on top of what we’d already had. I kept asking myself, would it be too much? Could we even do it? That is, if he was still talking to me after the scene in the driveway.
I scuttled across the yard, clutching my coat against the wind. There was sleet in the forecast, and the front was moving in. The chimes on the patio were rippling, calling like a lost sea bird. I was almost to the door before I heard the phone ringing. Damn. I’d forgotten to turn on the machine. I hate that feeling. It might be someone you really want to talk to, and you’ve no idea if it’s the first ring or the twentieth. Whoever’s on the line could hang up at any second. What if it was Sam? My first impulse was, Screw it, don’t answer. But a second later, an image flashed through my mind—me, balanced on a high wire, just me—and I nearly stripped the lock getting the key in and out. I dropped my briefcase and lunged for the desk to grab the phone.
It was Rena. “Hi,” she said.
“Rena.” I had this vague sense of disappointment that must have come through on her end.
“You okay?” she said. “You sound a little down.”
“Just tired.”
“Ah. I’m tired myself. I won’t keep you.” She sounded like she’d had one of those days, too. “I’ve been trying to get you for an hour—even tried your office. Where have you been?”
“The play. Well, the office, too, but only for a few minutes.” “Uh-huh . . . the play. How was it?”
“Good, really good. You should have been there. Claire Collier was a Roman candle—the woman was all over the stage. It was like she was on something. She could have played the Midsummer Night’s fairies all by herself.”
“We’ve . . . we’ve been talking about seeing it. I suppose we will. You heard about Marcus?”
“Yeah, at the show.”
“Richard was with Lucy all evening. She found Marcus in the yard. He’d been splitting kindling, was already gone when she got there. Bugs and Naomi are with her—they’ll spend the night.” She sighed. “I’m glad she’s not there alone.”
“Me, too. I guess sometimes we get things right.” I couldn’t help but wonder. “Did Richard say . . . how Lucy’s taking it?”
“Hard. He said—” Her voice caught. “He said he hated to leave her and come home.”
“No kidding?” Lucy’s famous for riding herd on the church staff, so for Richard to stay with her a moment beyond what was necessary was something to contemplate.
We fell silent.
“So,” Rena said, “why I’m calling. Joey flies in tomorrow, and Lawrence will join him on Monday. He has a show this weekend at some big gallery, and he’ll take care of boarding their cats. The funeral will be on Tuesday. Can you help with the luncheon? Make some bars? Maybe help serve?”
I told her I would, anything she needed, and she said, “Thanks, that’ll . . . it’s a help. I’m running on half my cylinders. I’ve been . . . yeah.” She finished the thought only in her ow
n head. “I’m wiped. Call you tomorrow?”
“Sure. Or I can call you.”
“No. I’ll call. I . . . we . . . we need to talk.” For a few beats my heart tripped over itself. Oh, God. Had Richard told her? I knew he might, someday, he might have to, and we’d be living with the consequences, but . . . we live with consequences, either way. It wasn’t that, though. At least, I don’t think. Rena hesitated, I heard her breath suck in, and then she said, “Toni. Richard didn’t—he didn’t want to come home.”
Before I could say, “What?” the receiver hummed. She’d hung up.
I sat there, thinking about what Rena had said, about Richard. Something profound had happened—something had opened between us. She hadn’t said anything that real in years. A train whistle started to blow. Trains are so much a part of the landscape here we almost don’t hear them. But this one, I heard. It was a long, mournful howl. I propped my elbows on the desk, clasped my hands, and listened. I got lost in it. It came into my head the train was here for Marcus.
Then it was gone. The silence descended again, windswept, punctuated by chimes. I was completely alone in it, I was completely at home—and just like that, I knew. I knew what I wanted. No trauma, no drama. Who would know joy was so small? My hands flew up for a moment to my face, then I grabbed the highlighter and marked the day on the calendar. It was as if an angelic messenger opened a door and sang out, “Interior-gram for Antonia Sprague-Heller.” Only this time the angel wasn’t a janitor. It was a businesswoman, named Lucy—a woman who would not imagine herself angelic, who had unknowingly sent her grief.
I wanted Sam. He was where I needed to be. I wanted the years back, wanted the friend. I wanted that flimsy piece of paper. I wanted the ease of us, the maddening difficulty. I wanted the highs, the lows, the boredom even. We’d both sown some wild oats in our middle-aged dreams. We’d both taken risks. If I caught something from him—herpes, or worse—there’d be a poetic justice in it.
I lifted the phone and punched the numbers in. By magic, and fiber optics, the energy I pressed into the pad raced along the line. The world was holding its breath. The enormity of the decision and the moment increased with every ring. Ri-i-ing, ri-i-ing, ri-i-ing, ri-i-ing, ri-i-ing— The man was something else. He refused to buy an answering machine. Just as I was about to hang up, in absolute frustration, he picked up.
“Hello.” His dear voice was heavy with sleep.
“Hi. It’s me.”
Light
The town was moving toward sleep. Darkened storefront windows shimmied as the wind touched and moved past them. The main street was quiet now—vehicles moved with long spaces between them. A group of revelers stood at the pedestrian light on the corner by the convenience store, where the lights were still on. The signal light was against them. There was a break in the traffic, and one reveler stepped out, moved to cross against the light. Another drew him back. The group laughed and argued happily about traffic laws, huddling for warmth. The light changed, and they crossed.
In a residential part of town, the wind knocked over a spindly geranium on the porch of a house. Inside, a woman was on the phone—so engrossed in what she was saying, she didn’t hear the plant fall. The neighbor next door, coming home from a fraternal organization, heard the chimes in her yard and saw her through the window. Good, he thought. She’s home. He would tell his wife, and they would go to bed. They were retired but used their time. Their neighbor lived alone, her husband moved out, months now. They checked for her lights every night.
The train was outside the reach of the ear, moving through wind-driven countryside to the next pool of light. Out on the lake, the lights of a ship sailed past. It was a big ship, beyond the harbor.
Both would be back.
On the bluff above town, the wind vane on the roof of the church hummed steadily, with rapid starts and stops. In the blowing light from the parking lot, its wings seemed to have lifted now and were flapping, some sort of joy.
High, high above, like a single bead, the pelican flew.
Acknowledgments
Many have contributed to this book. My sister Diane Salli Crang, our family librarian, read and reread the manuscript, her hip and lucid comments and questions shining a light. My husband, Bruce Eastman, has supported me in every way, especially by lending his exacting poet’s eye, and my colleague Brandy Lindquist brought a scholar’s eye and knocked me off my coffee shop chair with her close attention to the manuscript.
I’m deeply grateful for the support and encouragement of arts organizations. This novel was made possible in part by a grant provided by the Five Wings Arts Council, with funds from the McKnight Foundation supplemented with Legacy funds. That grant supported my attending a novel-writing conference at the Loft Literary Center that proved a turning point as I worked on the book. I am further indebted to the Loft for its awarding me a Mentor Series Award. I was given a year to write, along with a talented and generous group of other young writers, to discuss our work, and to learn together from established poets and prose writers. Lastly, I am grateful to the Great Plains Theatre Conference, where I spent a week as a participating playwright and learned volumes about the art of a story.
A Notion of Pelicans could not exist, of course, without those who saw it into print. My agent and publicist, Krista Rolfzen Soukup, is a force, both knowledgeable and dynamic. The people at North Star Press, Anne Rasset, Corinne Dwyer, and Curtis Weinrich, have brought equal parts savvy and love to the book, and Chip Borkenhagen of Riverplace dreamed into being the ethereal cover art and also designed the novel’s cover and family tree. George Marsolek and the Central Lakes College Theatre Department lent their stage and lighting expertise for a photo shoot, and John Erickson, who wielded the camera, brought a unique artistry to the creation of my author portrait. Finally, Corey Kretsinger developed my website, creating around the novel an online world and tutoring me in its mysteries.