Improbable Solution

by Judith B. Glad

  "Good God!" Gus eyed the innocuous little book. "What is it? A book of spells? The revelation of some terrible family secret?"

  He wondered if he'd slipped into one of those Gothic mysteries Marilyn used to read, where some mysterious force loomed threateningly over the characters.

  "It's a diary. Or a journal. I don't know what it says. I've never read it." She continued to trace the circle. At last she lifted her chin and looked at him. "My aunt Trudy is a lawyer. She's like you in that if she can't taste it, touch it, measure it, it probably doesn't exist. But this book scared her enough to drive her away from home and keep her away."

  "You say you've never read it? Why not?"

  "I forgot about it," she admitted, looking a little sheepish. "After you...made me take a look at myself. Then I called T.J. and heard about Carousel, and went off to Portland, and... Well, I just never gave it a thought. But this afternoon, for some reason, I remembered it." She frowned, tapped one finger on the book's cover. "No, more than that. I had a strong feeling that if I didn't bring it, something really awful would happen."

  Gus stared at her over his steepled fingers. He was beyond believing in coincidence where Whiterock was concerned. Tomorrow he might return to skepticism, but tonight...? Tonight he would suspend disbelief.

  "Let's read it." He stretched out his hand.

  Sally clutched the book to her chest. "You think this has something to do with what happened to you today, don't you?"

  "I've never been more certain of anything in my life."

  She held it out.

  He took it. The book's cover felt rough under his fingertips. A faint, musty smell assailed his nose, as if it had been stored in a damp, airless place for a long time. This time he was the one tracing a circle on the cover as he hesitated, oddly reluctant to open it.

  The hell with this crap! He opened the book.

  The writing on the first page was spidery, elegant, with flowing, ornate capitals: LORENA MACGREGOR CARRUTHERS, HER JOURNAL, 1904. Sally came and perched on the arm of his chair, bringing her flowery scent to tease his nostrils and drive away the mustiness. Her hair tickled his cheek as she leaned close, to read over his shoulder.

  "Nineteen-oh-four? I think that's the year she ran away."

  "Ran away? As in abandoned her family? That's why his aunts raised your grandfather?" He turned the page.

  "Uh-huh. Look, it starts on New Year's Day."

  They read silently through a dozen pages of minutiae that took them to early March. Lorena Carruthers had not been a faithful diarist, and her occasional entries were mostly about how she felt. Headaches, nervous exhaustion caused by the stress of caring for a rambunctious boy-child and a colicky infant, and vaguely described aches and pains were the most common topics.

  Once she complained about her husband's refusing to take her to Ontario to shop. The J.C Penney catalogue, he'd insisted, was all she needed. Often she wrote of small disagreements with her sisters-in-law, who apparently did most of the caring for her children. Lorena resented their help but accepted it, because of her nerves.

  Then came an entry written in a sloppy scrawl, recognizably Lorena's but as if she was in a great hurry.

  It's happening again. IT tries to convince me to be happy here. I won't!!!!

  Nothing for a week, until another scrawled entry:

  Sam wants another child. It's too soon. Yet I couldn't say no to him. IT made me submit. I hated it. Sam doesn't care how I feel.

  Another, much longer than usual:

  Father Abner scolded me today. He says I should stop trying to get Sam to go away for a holiday. There's nowhere better to be than Whiterock, he says, but that's because he hasn't been anywhere farther than Vale for years. How can he know what it's like out in the world? He's never seen a moving picture, or heard good music. He thinks that awful horse print in the dining room is great art. Millie and Martha aren't any better. I don't think either of them has read a newspaper in her life. I'd give anything for a week—just one week—away from here!!!

  "How sad," Sally murmured. "She feels so trapped."

  Gus turned several pages, each with only a few words about Lorena's ailments.

  Then came one with a great black blot over half of it. Under the spread of ink was written, in a hand hardly recognizable as Lorena's:

  I must get away, while I still can. I can feel IT taking over my mind. IT doesn't want me to go.

  "The poor woman. She sounds on the edge."

  "I wonder..."

  Gus flipped to the next page. Empty. And the one after that. But then there was one last page, once again written in the smooth, ornate script that had been on the title page.

  Sam refuses to withdraw. He came to me last night, and God help me, I welcomed him. His passion overwhelms me, until I have no will. And so I submit. I am not pregnant yet, but I know I will be soon. How will I bear it? Weeks of nausea, of lassitude, then months of hideousness as my body swells into grotesque parody of muliebrity.

  What is worse is that the passion comes from outside me. I am not a passionate woman. All my life I have been reasonable, placid and refined, not given to emotional display.

  Until I came to Whiterock.

  Now whenever Sam touches me, I feel a galvanic shock. And I desire him, with an overpowering hunger.

  I am convinced IT is the cause. IT needs passion. Whenever Sam makes love to me, I feel IT growing stronger, as if it feeds off our emotions.

  Yet today I feel nothing from IT. Perhaps because I am melancholy. The winter has gone on so long. The world is drab and gray, just like my soul. I am trapped in this bleak little town.

  I MUST escape!

  There was nothing else.

  Gus handed Sally the book.

  "See if I missed anything, will you?"

  He walked to the window and pushed open the sheer drapes. Beyond the narrow lawn, the Boise River was a restless current sparkling in the gleam from the lamps lighting the path along its shore. The water talked to itself as it tumbled over the rocks lining its bed, and its murmur seemed to carry secrets not to be shared with mere humans.

  God! I am going over the deep end! Next thing I'll be seeing fairies under toadstools.

  He turned back to where Sally sat in his chair. She'd closed the book and was staring into space.

  "So, what d' you think?"

  "I feel very sorry for her. Somewhere I read that some women go temporarily insane after childbirth. Poor Grandmother Lorena. She certainly wasn't in her right mind when she wrote this. I don't understand why Aunt Trudy found this scary, unless she believed she'd inherited whatever it was that disturbed Lorena so."

  "My God! I don't believe this! You're denying everything you've read? Everything that's happened? The evidence of your own eyes?" He snatched the book from her hands and flipped through. "This time listen to what it says. Then think about what it means. 'I feel a galvanic shock. And I desire him, with an overpowering hunger...' Does that sound familiar?"

  Sally's eyes grew enormous. "The electricity..."

  "Exactly." He paced the length of the room. "I didn't tell you what happened to me today before I went to the mine, did I?"

  Her hair swirled silkily as she shook her head.

  He told her, in great detail, retracing his route with precision, making sure she understood how he had missed turnoffs he'd taken a hundred times, how perfectly straight roads had wound into mazes.

  "Something didn't want me to leave Whiterock." As he spoke the words, he realized how fantastic, how unbelievable they sounded.

  "IT?"

  "I don't think so. At least not the inimical IT your grandmother imagined. I didn't feel threatened." Again he paced to the end of the room and back, stopping before the chair in which she sat. "I didn't pay much attention to anything but getting out of town. I was running again, and all I could think of was getting away from your..." He cleared his throat. "Your questions."

  Her eyebrow lifted.

  "All right, damn it! I w
as trying to run away from the answers. I didn't want to think about Emily, about the mess I'd made of my life."

  "I can't blame you. But are you sure the guilt hasn't become a habit? Do you feel the loss as strongly now as you did at first?"

  "Of course I... No. No, I don't. Most of the time it's almost as if it all happened to someone else." Did that mean he was forgetting his daughter? God! He hoped not. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  "I remember feeling guilty when I stopped missing Mom so much. It seemed disloyal or something. But now I think it's healthy. We can't grieve forever." She was drawing those invisible circles on the cover of the book again. "You said you think you had a glimpse of the future. What did you see?"

  Gus did his best to bring the scenes he'd viewed into focus, but they were vague, shadowy, like a quickly fading dream.

  "You were there. Older, I think. And a child...children? Shit! I can't remember." Flinging himself into the chair, he bent forward and rubbed his temples. Eyes closed, he sought the elusive memory. "And the town. Renewed, busy. There was a festival. The May Fest? I don't think so. Something was going on, because there were lots of people on the streets."

  "Did you hear anything? Did anything... Did anything speak to you?" Now she was twisting her hands, as he'd seen her do when she was uncertain or ill at ease.

  "Just people I met. You, maybe. I tell you, I can't remember!"

  Her hands went up in a gesture of self-protection. "Okay, okay, I was just trying to see if your dream was anything like the ones I was having for a while before Pop died. As if someone...something...was trying to get me to stay in Whiterock. I wrote them off to the stress I was under, but now, after reading what Grandmother Lorena wrote, I wonder."

  "So you do believe there's something influencing us." Gus wasn't sure why he was so intent on her sharing his suspicions. Maybe because if she did, it would prove he wasn't crazy.

  Sally sat silent for so long, he was about to demand she answer his implied question. Before he could, she said, "Pop always said that Grandfather Abner—the one who founded Whiterock—was right. That Carrutherses and Whiterock belonged together. But he'd never explain. When I was old enough to question it, I decided it was his way of saying he felt more at home here than anywhere else. But what if...?"

  "What if he was influenced to feel that way? What if this IT that Lorena talks about really can compel people to stay there? That might explain her husband's refusal to go even as far as Vale."

  "That's imposs—" Sally bit her lip. "What was that you said earlier. 'When you have eliminated the impossible...'?"

  "'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,'" he quoted, sure of himself this time. "We can't eliminate the impossible, because we have no real proof that anything impossible happened. But it's all damned improbable."

  He was sick of this discussion. They weren't getting anywhere, just rehashing the same old stuff, over and over. Trouble was, he doubted they'd ever get anywhere, because they were trying to quantify the uncountable, describe the indescribable and pin down the insubstantial.

  "What about your father? Everything I've heard indicated he was pretty ordinary."

  "Oh, he was. He traveled quite a lot in his younger days, but I don't think he ever thought of living anywhere but Whiterock. When he came home after his ramblings, he stayed, except for an occasional vacation."

  She started twisting her fingers together again. Her voice quavered when she finally said, "I just remembered something, Gus. I think he and my mother may have experienced the same thing we did."

  In an instant he was at her knees, clasping her hands, stilling them. "What do you mean?"

  "Mom came to visit a cousin. She met Pop at a church social. They were married three weeks later. Mom always said it was like lightning had struck them." She leaned back and closed her eyes. "I think that eliminates the impossible," she whispered. "Whiterock is alive."

  "Bullshit!"

  "But you said—"

  "I was trying to get your attention." Impatiently, he slid onto the couch beside her. "Look, Sally, we've talked this thing to death. Let's get some rest. Maybe in the morning we'll think of some logical explanation."

  For some reason, now that she was buying into his preposterous idea he was determined to disprove it.

  He pulled her close and kissed her, gently at first, and then with increasing demand. As always, he wanted her the instant he touched her, but tonight his desire was a sweet and tender thing, not fiery, demanding passion.

  She responded, just as gently. Yet the very gentleness of her answering caresses aroused him in a way he had never experienced with her. The fire was there, but it was controlled, not a raging conflagration of the senses.

  Always before their clothing had been an impediment to their joining, best removed as quickly as possible. Now he found the feel of her soft cotton T-shirt erotic, the slightly rough texture of her white jeans arousing. His hands explored every inch of her, finally slipping under her shirt and cupping her nylon-covered breasts. The slick fabric was cool, until his palms warmed it. Her nipples flowered, pebbly and hot under his fingers. He covered one with his mouth, wetting the nylon, and discovered yet another new sensation.

  After a while he lifted her, carried her into the larger bedroom where a king-size bed awaited them. The blankets were turned down and fancy chocolates waited on each pillow. He lowered her slowly, letting her body slide against his.

  Sally slipped her hands under Gus's shirt, loving the warmth of his skin. Slowly, she peeled the shirt up and, when he lifted his arms, worked it over his head. His chest, gilded in the light from a single bedside lamp, was well-muscled, his abdomen tight and firm. How could I ever have thought him paunchy?

  He stood, quietly tense, as she kissed her way from collarbone to belt buckle and back again. But when she laid her fingers on his buckle, he stopped her.

  "Not yet," he said.

  Then it was Sally's turn to endure his teasing tongue and teeth as he removed her shirt and bra, covered every inch of her upper body with slow, nibbling kisses. When her knees threatened to give way, she whispered, "No more! Oh, please, Gus!"

  Once more he lifted her, this time to lay her on the bed with exquisite tenderness. He knelt above her and stroked his big, hard hands softly along her arms, down the sides of her torso, not quite touching her breasts, and along her legs. When he reached her feet, he slipped her sneakers off and tossed them on the floor. A fraction of an inch at a time, he removed her socks, kissing her ankles as they were revealed. When his teeth lightly caught a fold of skin on her instep, she shivered. And when he kissed his way back to her knees, along her thighs, she writhed in delight.

  His breath was hot on her lower belly, his tongue rough in the indentation of her navel. His mouth closed over her nipple, suckling, tugging, until she felt as if her whole self was being pulled to that hot, throbbing point.

  "Gus!" Her voice was high, thin.

  Yet she was content to enjoy, not to demand, as she always had before. We have all night.

  Gus kissed, licked, nibbled and laved behind her ears, in the hollows of her ankles, inner elbows and backs of knees, wherever the skin was soft, sensitive, sweet. He tasted her in ways he never had before, because this time there was none of the frantic urgency to couple of their earlier joinings.

  At some point Sally worked him out of his pants. From then on, it was almost a race—a slow, sensuous, everybody-wins race—to the inevitable end. Her hands and mouth on him drove him to the edge of culmination again and again, while he took her to the peak and held her there time after time.

  Her fingers closed around him at the same time her teeth nipped at his earlobe, and he knew there was no turning back. He sheathed himself in her wet heat and drove deeply. Once. Twice. And with the third lunge, he came apart, just as her high, keening cry told him she was with him every flaming, soaring measure of the way.

  He turne
d on his side, holding her close, and kissed her once before he fell into oblivion.

  The aroma of coffee lured her out of a delicious dream. It slipped away before she could catch it, but Sally knew that, this morning, reality was as good as the best of dreams.

  "Good morning," she said, without opening her eyes.

  The bed dipped, and Gus's mouth touched hers lightly.

  "Mmmm. You taste of coffee." She opened her eyes. "Do I have to wake up?"

  "Checkout time's eleven. It's ten now. Do you want to stay another night?"

  She rolled to one side and glared at the clock.

  "I really should get home. It's going to take some getting used to, having deadlines to meet." Sighing, she pushed herself upright. "Have I got time for a shower?"

  "Sure. We can check out, have breakfast after."

  * * * *

  They opted for breakfast on the go, picking up donuts and more coffee on their way out of town. Gus didn't say he was in a hurry, but somehow she got that impression. That was why she was surprised when he turned off the freeway and headed south on US 93. The detour would add an hour to their trip home. She said nothing, however, nor did he.

  Last night's conversation replayed over and over in her head. If they were both crazy, then so was Pop. And his father and grandfather as well.

  Hereditary insanity? She doubted it.

  Gus left the highway and followed a secondary road to a high bluff overlooking the Snake River. Once parked, he turned to her, draped his left arm on the steering wheel. "Well? Any new ideas?"

  She shook her head.

  "No. In fact, I feel more confused than I did last night when you first sprung this on me." She looked away from him, stared out across the river at the rolling, sagebrush-covered hills beyond. "It's just so fantastic."