“A while now,” he said, laughing.
“I guess I was sitting down at the Pickaxe. And a bit drunk to boot.”
He smiled. He pointed down Main. “I was at the shop, but we closed a little early today. You’re usually not here when I ride home.”
“No. I stayed later today,” she said, thinking, Does he look for me? She opened the door wider. “Do you want to come in? Are you hungry? I have some day-olds I was going to freeze.”
“I’m always hungry,” he said.
“You’ve come to the right place.”
He smiled, and Esther noticed a tender blue vein at his temple. She had the strange thought she would like to rest her thumb on that spot. Jesus, what was wrong with her? He had been her student.
They sat at a table in the break room, and she unwrapped the morning’s tray of leftover bear claws, apple fritters, and blueberry scones. He took one of each. She watched, a bit astonished, as he ate them one by one.
“These are delicious,” he said.
“I’m glad.”
He swallowed and wiped his mouth with a paper towel. “I’ve been wanting to ask you, why’d you decide to stop teaching?”
She waved her hand. “Oh, it was time. I’d been there twenty-three years. Literally half my life, and I was tired. I wasn’t doing the job I needed to be doing anymore. I looked around and realized I better figure something else out.”
“You were a great teacher,” he said. “Best one in the school. And you were so young to leave.”
“Thanks,” she said. “That’s nice to hear. About the teaching, not the youth. Although that’s nice, too.”
“It’s the truth.” He popped in the last bite of a scone. He looked at her, chewing, and then down at his hands. “I’ve often thought about you. Over the years.”
“Is that right.” Her pulse jumped, and she pressed two fingers against her throat. “That’s also nice to hear.”
“Okay.” He let out a shaky breath and checked his watch. “I guess I should get going. The memorial’s in two hours, and I should shower.”
“Right. I need to finish my banana bread.”
Neither of them moved.
He scratched his neck and then looked at her again. She looked, too, the heat wriggling around her belly.
“You’re thirteen years younger than me,” she said. “Is that right?”
“That’s right,” he said.
She rested her elbows on the table. He did the same, wadding up the paper towel between them. He clutched it, tearing at the edge. She watched the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.
He said, “I walk by in the mornings, or ride my bike when I deliver the paper. Early. I see you in here. The lights are on, so you can’t see me, but I see you.”
“You should have stopped.”
“You were working. I was working.” He shrugged. “Then you came into the Pickaxe, and I thought, Maybe it’s a sign.”
Esther smiled. She used to believe in signs.
“You were my student,” she said.
“A long time ago.”
“People will talk.” She gave a wry laugh. “Although, who cares, right? Since when do I care what people say?”
A rhetorical question, but she answered to herself: always. She heard Grandmother’s voice in her ear. You don’t watch it, you’re going to end up washed up, a fat spinster with no one but that queer friend of yours for company. You’re going to die alone.
She leaned away from him, her smile fading. “It’s nice to see you, Roberto.”
He nodded and looked toward the door, a flush on his cheek. He stood up, his lanky frame seeming to teeter. “I better get going.”
She blinked down at her lap.
Instead of walking out the door, he walked around the table and crouched next to her. She heard his knee joints crack. He reached out and touched her cheek, surprising her enough she sucked in her breath.
“Your heart is an inferno,” he said.
She pressed her cheek into his palm and let out a small sigh. How nice. How nice it was to be touched. “Is that from a poem?”
“No,” he said. He laughed. “That’s you. You said that once.”
“I did? You’re kidding. You remember that?”
“Sure. I was an impressionable kid.” He ran his hand down her neck, stroked her collarbone.
“Beto—”
“Roberto,” he said. “I’m not a kid anymore, Esther.”
“No.” And he wasn’t, was he? The look in his eyes was not of a wide-eyed boy with a crush but of a serious young man with desires about which she knew nothing. Really, she knew nothing of him, nor he of her. He might as well be a stranger, as far as they had moved from those past lives.
He shifted to kneel and leaned close to her neck. “You smell like butter. And bananas.”
“This is bananas,” she said.
He kissed her neck.
“Christ.” She turned her face to his.
Well, this was a first. Making out with a former student in her bakery. He got to his feet and pulled her up from the chair, pulled her against his lean young body. She lost her balance and flung out her arm, knocking a metal tray to the floor.
“Wait,” she said, almost panting. “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
Indeed. Why not? If it was a mistake, so what? So what, as Iris had said about Sam. The one thing she did know these days, pushing hard into middle age, was how much she didn’t know.
Roberto bent down, wrapped his arms around her waist, and lifted her, straight off the ground. She cried out, “Don’t!” but then he set her on the counter.
“There,” he said. “Face to face.”
She blinked. And what a face he had. That forehead. She reached out and put a thumb on that vein at his temple and then dropped her hands to his shoulders. Never in a million years could she have imagined this. She leaned in, and her heart gave a funny little cough. There you are, old gal, she thought. She laughed. What a word. What a life.
* * *
Dani put on her dress for the memorial, a simple black cotton one whose drooping hem she’d had to rig with double-sided tape. She scrunched up the toes of her flimsy black pantyhose and pulled them up her legs, hoping she wouldn’t snag the fabric on a fingernail. She slid on low black pumps whose scuff marks she’d filled in that morning with felt-tip pen.
When she looked in the mirror, she startled herself. Her hair, chopped off to her chin. Her eyes, lined like she’d seen in a fashion magazine while waiting for her hair appointment. That morning, she’d pulled out a stick of eyeliner, found a box of matches, and lit the end of the liner, smearing it hot across her lids. The sulfur from the match made her nostrils flare.
Don’t blink, Dani.
Jess had laughed. “Stop blinking. You’re making me smear it.” Dani had squeezed her eyes open and shut, feeling the liner and mascara wet on her cheekbones and brow bone. Jess laughed harder, her breath warm and minty. “Nice job, raccoon face,” she’d said, holding up the mirror, and Dani had laughed too, seeing the fat dark rings around her eyes and giddy with that new strange thing. Having a best friend. Being girly. “Now you,” Dani had said, picking up the eyeliner and the Bic. “Okay, now you don’t blink,” she’d said to Jess, and Jess said, “I won’t.” She’d held her eyes open.
But she’d missed everything anyway.
Dani blinked now, smoothing down her dress, turning sideways. She’d already messed up her makeup once today, crying on Paul’s shoulder out of the blue like a maniac. It had come up out of her like a wave. Like a flash flood. She got out the eyeliner and matches again and set to work repairing the mess. When she was finished, she pushed at the corner of her eyes and straightened her shoulders.
Time to go.
Dani climbed the steps to her mother’s front door. She stood on the porch of her childhood home in her worn funeral dress and peered in the sidelight window. She could see Hugh in the kitchen, lifting a steaming p
ot from the stove and carrying it to the sink. Her mother stood at the dining room window, looking out at the yard.
Her mother turned, smiling, probably at something Hugh said. For a moment, Dani almost didn’t recognize her. From that angle, she saw what she didn’t see in passing every day: time. The softening of the skin along the jawline, the puffiness of her cheeks, the slope at the top of her back, the silver at her temples. Her mother was growing old, and Dani had missed it.
Dani was about to knock, but her mother glanced at the front and saw Dani standing in the window. In that split second, Dani saw her mother’s whole face, her whole posture, change. In her mother’s face, Dani saw herself peering through a microscope for the first time, when the tiny unseen world suddenly snapped into sharp glorious focus. Oh! Look! Look at that! her mother’s face seemed to say. Dani realized now her mother had never stopped looking at her that way; Dani had missed that, too.
Her mother opened the door and smiled. “Dani,” she said. “You’re early.”
“I’m here,” she said.
“I’m glad,” she said. “Hugh!” she called. “Dani’s here.”
Hugh only had fifteen years on Dani, but he’d always seemed older than his age, puttering around the kitchen with hokey aprons that said things like “Kiss the Cook” or “Danger: Man in Kitchen.” About as exciting as sliced cheese, really, but innocuous. Plus, he made her mother smile like she was now, big and toothy.
“Well, there she is,” Hugh said. “Don’t you look nice.”
He put his arm around her mother’s shoulders, and Rachel leaned into him. That part had never gotten less strange, seeing her mother with another man, even after all this time. Those early images of her parents, embedded in her from infancy, had been difficult to shake. Mother, father, child. The family unit. Oddly she thought of images from the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. The explosion was so hot that the shadows of objects burned into the concrete. That was how it felt sometimes, that old bond, that old life. Burned straight into her, casting a permanent shadow.
Her mother smiled again at Dani in the doorway. “You really do look wonderful, sweetheart. Your hair. I do love it. It suits you.”
Her mother’s voice seemed to take on an exaggerated pitch when she spoke with Dani—to hide what Dani had believed was disapproval lurking below. But Dani understood now it was only awkwardness, her mother’s attempt to bridge the distance Dani had put between them when she’d walled herself off. Her mother, who’d taught her to use a microscope. Who’d first showed her the unseen world around her.
Dani did what she’d done earlier at the orchard. She flung herself at another human being and burst into tears.
“Okay.” Her mother held her. “Okay.”
“Oh, goodness,” Hugh said. He patted her shoulder. “Tea. I’ll make tea.”
“I can’t stop,” Dani said. “I can’t stop crying.”
“It’s okay,” her mother said. “I know.”
Dani relaxed in her mother’s arms.
“I failed,” Dani said. “I’m a failure. Me, smartest girl in school. Everyone must be having a good laugh.”
“No one’s laughing. And you’re not a failure.”
Dani lifted her head. “I’m a mess.”
Her mother laughed a little. “Your face is.”
“I know.” She started crying again. “See? I can’t stop.”
“So don’t,” her mother said. “Don’t stop. It’s okay.”
“I can’t go to the orchard like this. Will you tell Maud I’m sorry?” She hiccupped. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her—oh, I don’t know what to tell her.”
“I’ll tell her,” her mother said.
“She was my best friend,” Dani said, burying her face into her mother’s shoulder and smearing her with black. “My first real friend.”
“Yes, she was.” Her mother rubbed her back. “It might help to say good-bye.”
But Dani had already said good-bye.
As she’d lined her lids in the mirror again before she left her little guest house, she’d thought, How to begin?
With what was in front of her.
She’d said to the mirror, I live behind Ms. G’s house. Remember when we wondered if she and Mr. Manning were a couple? Um, no.
She said, I still live in Sycamore. I take people’s blood for a living. Go figure.
She said, I hated you for what you did. I hated you. I wanted you to be here so I could hate you some more. Blame you some more. You and my dad. But that’s not working out so hot for me. I always pictured someday being able to yell at you, to have it out again. To make you sorry. I always believed, really believed, you were out there. And some day, you would come home.
Then she’d had to redo her makeup again.
She’d said, Don’t blink, Jess. Blink and you miss it.
She said, I’ve missed too much now.
She said, I don’t know if I still look like him. I don’t know what he looks like anymore.
On the front porch, Dani let go of her mother. She said good-bye, went down the porch steps, and walked toward her guest house, on that old street in that old town she knew by heart.
She didn’t need any more good-byes.
How to begin?
* * *
He usually liked to paint this time of day. The bedroom he had turned into his studio faced west, but the oaks and pines filtered the sun. The soft, low light of late afternoon. But today he took a walk instead. Today, he wanted to be outside. She had liked to be outside, and since he could not be there to say a formal farewell, he would say one here.
He had almost gone down to Sycamore today. Maud had called him with the news, as promised, and he had not asked, but she had told him: “There’s a memorial. Out at Iris’s place.” She hadn’t invited him. He’d found the time and date in the paper, and he had written it on the calendar pinned up next to his desk. He’d thought he could go and stand in the back, stay hidden, but he knew he would not be welcome. And he had promised he would not bother Maud again. He could keep that promise. He would not interfere with a place that was no longer his.
This was his place now.
He walked through the forest behind the cabin, his shoes crunching on the pine needles. He had no destination, really, just to be outdoors. He reached the Griffith Spring Trail, and he thought the spring was as good a place as any for what he had in mind. He wanted to sit for a few minutes on a boulder and watch the sun sink behind the trees. It did not really matter where he sat, or that it happened at a certain time, or even that it happened today. He was not sure, actually, what it would change. But he found himself wanting the ritual. To mourn properly, with solemnity. To lay her, if not himself, to rest.
When he reached the spring, he sat down on a slanted boulder near the water, feeling the ache in his hips, in his left knee, knowing he would struggle to rise from this low position. The spring, full and lush this time of year after the summer storms, trailed downhill to fill Oak Creek and Pumphouse Wash to the south. Soon it would slow to a trickle, come to a standstill.
He had not prepared a speech. He had not thought about what he would say. So he sat, staring at the water. Really staring through the water, at the mossy rocks and silt below. How clear it was. How calm.
He took off his shoes, rolled up his pant legs, and stuck his bare feet in with a small gasp. He pushed himself off the rock and walked out into the spring, holding his arms out for balance and stepping carefully on the slippery rocks. When he reached the center, he stopped and looked around. He reached up and brushed back his hair. A yellow pencil fell out from behind his ear. He had forgotten it was there, again. He reached down and plucked the pencil from the water, slid it behind his ear. The water dripped on his neck.
You would have loved this place, he said to her. You might not have wanted to come here, but you should have lived to see it.
He waited, listening to the wind in the tops of the pines, listening to his own breath.
That was
all. That was all he had.
Nothing had changed that he could tell. The sadness was part of him now, so long had he lived with it.
He stepped out of the spring, rolled down his pant legs, slipped his shoes on, and headed to the cabin. Home. He still had plenty of light left. Perhaps he would go to the studio after all. Make dinner, a steak and salad, have a glass of wine, then get out the paints. Perhaps that was the way to end the day.
When he reached the cabin, the sun was low, near to setting, casting shadows across the house. He did not see her at first. She was sitting in one of the two rockers on the porch. Even when he did see her, even when she rose from the rocker and stood at the railing facing him, he did not immediately understand. Who was this woman with the dark short hair on his property? Was she lost, looking for a neighbor?
She lifted her hand to him, and still he did not know. Still.
And when he did recognize her, when he did finally see it was his daughter standing before him, he clenched his fists, digging his nails hard into his palms. To make sure. To make sure he was standing there. That she was.
She came around to the steps of the porch, in full view. A streak of light made its way through the trees and lit her. She looked straight at him. Right in the face. The child he once knew. The woman he did not. Both of those at once.
He did not know what to say. He opened his mouth and closed it. His throat tightened. She stepped closer, and he felt a shiver of alarm. What if she had come to berate him, to say the words he knew she had wanted to say but could not? Fine. If she must, she must. He braced his shoulders and swallowed hard. She stood a few feet in front of him now, her gaze steady behind the dark makeup around her eyes.
She said, “Hi, Dad.”
He laughed, almost a croak, startled by the simplicity. “Hi, Dani.”
She smiled a little, and he did, too.
He cleared his froggy throat. “You came.”
“I did.”
“I thought you’d be at the memorial.”
“I did, too.” She tilted her head. “You’ve gone gray.”
He touched his hair. “A while ago, yes.” He touched the pencil, pulled it from behind his ear. “You look well,” he said. She was grown, his daughter. So grown. Perfect is what he meant. So he said it. “Perfect.”
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