by Peter Geye
“Don’t apologize. Now that I’m here, I understand. If anyone should apologize, it’s me.” Noah leaned in and kissed her neck.
“This is so weird,” she said. “That’s the other bedroom right there? There’s not much room for privacy.” “We can be quiet.”
But how to be quiet on that bed, in that house so used to its own silence? How to be quiet when the only other sound was the stove fire and a dying gale outside in the woods? Noah had lit a candle, its amber glow left the last corner of the bedroom in darkness. He set it on the nightstand. At the foot of the bed they undressed, hanging their clothes on the bedposts for want of anyplace else to lay them. When they kissed—there at the foot of the bed—the touching of their lips seemed as loud as a drumbeat.
Natalie said again, “This is so weird.”
But Noah put his finger to her lips and led her to the side of the bed. He pulled back the covers. When Nat lay down the ancient bedsprings tolled. When she put her arms around him she also put her mouth to his ear, “Your skin is cold,” she said. “You smell good. Like the air up here.” “WHAT TIME IS it?”
Noah angled his watch toward the candlelight. “It’s only nine o’clock.” “God, it feels like three o’clock in the morning.”
“It’s always earlier than it seems up here.”
She took his hand under the quilt. “So, you think there’s anything going on down there?” She moved his hand to the bottom of her stomach. “The doctor said there were at least six follicles ready to release. We could have sextuplets.” “I’d take anything, but better to start with one.”
“What,” she said, shifting her weight up onto an elbow and looking at Noah, the candle aglow in her eyes, “don’t you think I’d make a capable mother of six? I thought my performance tonight with the Norwegian food was pretty impressive.” “Some of that food was awfully good.”
“I could eat lefse every day.”
Noah kissed her. “I don’t know where we’d find lefse in Boston.” She lay back down. The bedsprings creaked again.
“It was terrific, all the food. My dad loved it. So did I.” Outside, the gale was weakening. Noah listened to the trees still swaying gently. “Every night the wind dies down,” he said.
“Speaking of wind, you should have felt that plane land in Duluth this afternoon. It was terrible. But the view from the window was amazing. We circled out over Lake Superior. I could see the city below. There was a ship outside the harbor. We flew right over it. And there were these veins of reddish-brown water curlicuing from the shore out into the lake.” “Those are the creeks and rivers. Wherever they run into the lake they bring with them the color of the rocks and soil.” “It was so pretty. And I love Duluth. But cold.”
“That’s how everyone feels. The ‘but cold’ part.”
She snuggled next to him. “Not here, though.”
“Definitely not here.”
They lay silently for a while. Noah thought she had fallen asleep. He was about to get up and blow out the candle when she said, “I’m sure this isn’t even going to work, but it’s like I have to try. Why else are we on this earth?” Noah leaned up on his elbow now. “I’ve spent all day thinking about it. All this time trying, I guess it’s just taken it out of me. You, too, I know. Of course you more than me.” He lay down. “I don’t know, I think all the failing, watching you be so sad all the time.” “You were sad, too.”
“Of course I was, but it’s different.”
Again they lay silently, Noah stroking her hair, and again he thought she’d fallen asleep.
“Anyway, even if it doesn’t work I’m glad I came.”
Noah squeezed her hand. “I had a realization today. If we do have a baby, when we have a baby, I realize that I won’t be the most important person in your life anymore. I’m okay with that.” “What in the world are you talking about?”
“I mean when we become parents things will be different. Children, they demand a lot of love. Especially if you’re a good parent, which you will be. That’s all.” “Only a man would say something like that. Only a man would be capable of thinking something like that.” “I didn’t mean for it to sound bad.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t love you any less if I had a million kids.” And now she did fall asleep. Noah rolled out of bed and blew out the candle.
SOMETIME BEFORE DAWN Noah lay in bed, the stillness all around incomprehensible. Even the stove fire’s hiss was absent. Even the sound of her breath. He ought to sleep, he knew, was tired enough to do so, but his thoughts kept him awake.
After a time he heard his father’s door open and his feet padding across the great-room floor. By his reckoning of the previous mornings, he made the time four or five. The first daylight was still two or three hours away. He stepped out of bed, pulled the quilt up over Nat’s shoulder. She pushed her hair from her face but did not wake. He moved into the great room as the door outside closed with a quiet clap. From the window Noah watched his father cross the yard to the shed. Rather, he watched an apparition of his father, one blurred by the flashlight’s bouncing. The windows in the shed were soon bright. When Noah stepped outside he could feel the frost melting under his bare feet. There were stars enough to see a mile.
Inside, he put a kettle of water on the stove and two of the leftover krumkake on a plate. He wished he had a newspaper to read. When the water boiled he made coffee. He poured a cup and pulled the peacoat over his bare shoulders. He took the coffee and cookies to his father in the shed.
“I thought I heard you milling around,” Olaf said over his shoulder. He was separating two small piles of nuts and bolts on his workbench.
“I brought you some coffee.” Noah set the plate of cookies and the coffee on the bench. “This is it, huh?” he asked, gesturing toward the anchor.
Olaf nodded. “Thanks for the coffee. Didn’t want to wake you two.” “I figured as much.”
Olaf took a long drink of the coffee. He removed a cigar from a drawer at his knees and unwrapped it. He bit off the end but did not light it, though he held a match between his fingers. “You sleep okay?” “Yeah.”
“Natalie staying a while?”
“I’m afraid she has to leave this morning.”
Olaf smiled. A devilish look.
“I know,” Noah said.
“She’s about a hundred times the woman I remember from your wedding. What I remember from your wedding anyway.” “She’s the best.”
Olaf took another drink of coffee. “Well.”
“Well, I guess I’m going back to bed.”
“I’ll be out here for a while. We’ll have some oatmeal when you all wake up.” “Good.”
As Noah left the shed he could smell the first licks of cigar smoke.
He undressed and climbed back into bed. In a voice groggy and pleased, Natalie asked him what time it was.
“A little after five o’clock. Go back to sleep.”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing, go back to sleep.”
He had almost fallen asleep himself when he heard her whisper, “Look at all those stars still out.” Noah put his arm around her.
“Is your father still sleeping?”
“No, he’s out working in his shed.”
“I have terrible breath,” she said.
“That’s okay,” he said, and again they made love.
When they’d finished Nat took her pillow from behind her head and put it under her bottom. There was a light beyond the stars in the window now, and they looked upon it. They lay so for a long time, both of them awake and silent. Her hair still smelled of its shampoo. Her skin so soft under his hands. He was exhausted but oddly restored next to her there in bed. He felt gluttonous. It was, perhaps, the most luxuriant hour of his year.
Finally Noah said, “What time do you have to leave?” “My flight’s at one. I guess I should leave by nine.”
Noah didn’t say anything, only held her.
“Unless you need me to stay for anything.” She rolled over to look at his face, put her pillow back under her head.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I could help you take care of him. We could try to bring him to the hospital. Whatever.” “He’ll never go to the hospital, and I don’t blame him anymore. It’s his life. We’ll be okay. I can take care of him.” “What about your sister?”
“She’s going to come when she can. She can’t just leave at a moment’s notice. Tom is busy. The kids are busy.” “I feel so weird leaving like this. Your father must think it so strange.” “He knows what’s going on.”
“I guess this all worked out.”
“It did. I hope it did.”
“How long are you going to stay? What’s your plan?”
“I have no idea.”
AFTER BREAKFAST NAT was ready to leave. She stood at the open door of her rental car and bade Olaf thanks. Noah tossed her bag into the backseat of the car. She kissed Olaf on the cheek. She kissed Noah on the lips. She squeezed his hand.
“Stay over on the right side of the road here,” Olaf said, pointing to the side of the trail up from the cabin with the most traction. “That track’s damn near washed out. And be careful driving back to Duluth on 61. The deer will be out for breakfast themselves. They sit in the ditch next to the road.” Olaf moved toward the house. “I’m going inside. It was good to see you. Thanks again for supper last night. It beat hell out of instant mashed potatoes.” “We’ll do it again sometime,” Nat said.
Olaf nodded. “Good-bye.”
Nat smiled. “Well, I better get going. It’s two lefts and a right, right?” “A right at Lake Superior.” He handed her the package holding the agate. “Open this on the plane. It’s no big deal.” She put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him. He hugged her back very hard. Her car trundled up the road, slipping into the ruts, the wheels spinning, but she was gone in a moment.
EIGHT
All day Olaf slept while Noah split and stacked wood. Vikar had emerged from the woods to watch, and at noon Noah fed him a bucket of food. His own lunch he took to the top of the ski jump again, leftover black pot and unbuttered lefse, the remains of the smoked salmon. Vikar followed him but would not climb the scaffold. After lunch he went back to the gulch to inspect the oak. He tried to devise a plan but realized he needed a much bigger saw, it was as simple as that. He would ask his father about it.
He checked on his father at one o’clock. The old man still slept, deeply but with great agitation. Noah went down to the lake to fish. He rowed across the lake to the spot off the cliff. He cast his line, waited, and jerked the jig across the bottom of the first step. For two hours he cast his line up the step. And for the second time in as many efforts he didn’t catch a thing.
THE SUV PARKED in the yard had North Dakota plates.
Inside, Solveig sat on the sofa beside their father, her arm around him. Olaf, his eyes glassy, his hair messed from the long day of sleep, looked both thrilled and desperate. “I wish you wouldn’t have asked her to come,” Olaf said before either of his children could speak.
“I didn’t ask her to come.”
“Of course I’d come, Dad.” She put her hand through his hair.
“Well, there’s no need to sulk,” Olaf said.
“Come on, Dad,” Noah said.
“I’m okay,” Solveig almost sang. “I’m glad I’m here.”
“When did you get here?”
“Just now. I can only stay for a couple days. The kids are with Tom’s folks.” She took a deep breath, trying, Noah saw, to stave off tears.
“You just missed Nat—it’s a long story. But this is great,” he said. “Here we all are.”
As pleasant as the previous night had been, this night was dour. Solveig, for her part, seemed immobilized by her grief at the sight of the old man. No question he had worsened from the day before, but even Noah thought his sister’s worry exaggerated. Olaf could hardly stand it. The thought occurred to Noah that Solveig—with her fretting melodrama—was handling her father’s illness much as his mother had handled the morning of the wreck so many years ago. Though in many ways she was as sweet and incorruptible as his mother, Solveig was also the child of a different generation, and what had been forgivable in his mother was less so in his sister.
Instead of eating dinner the three of them snacked intermittently on leftovers from the night before. They seemed incapable of coherent conversation. Finally Olaf asked Noah to bring the piano in from the porch.
The old Acrosonic sat in a corner, buried beneath mounds of junk—a fishing net, empty boot boxes, a telescope with a cracked lens, empty bags of dog food, a spare truck tire—against the lake wall. Noah cleared a path, unlocked the wheels on the legs of the piano, and rolled it into the living room. A long time ago, Noah remembered, the piano had been refinished with a deep, wine-colored varnish. Now the glassy finish was obscured and gauzelike.
“It’s a ghost piano,” Noah said. “Doesn’t it look like a ghost?”
“Been on that porch for the better part of ten years,” Olaf said. “I should have taken better care of it.”
“It’s not as if you play, Dad,” Solveig said. “And besides, this house isn’t exactly built for a piano. They take up a lot of room.”
“Even so,” Olaf said, “it’s a shame.”
Noah had wheeled it across the floor and was positioning it against the wall. “Toss me a dishrag,” he said to Solveig, who stood at the kitchen counter now with her hands on her hips. She flipped him the rag.
Noah had hoped that dusting it off and getting it in the soft lamplight might restore some of its luster. But it looked perhaps even worse. When he lifted the cover off the keys and stood over them playing “Chopsticks,” its wail startled him. Every third or fourth key failed to strike any note at all, and the keys that did hit the strings sounded more like shrieks than music.
He looked over his shoulder at Solveig, who covered her ears with her hands. “We’ll get a piano tuner up here. You can’t play on this now.” He stood, closed the keyboard cover, and wiped his hands on his pants.
“Good luck getting a piano tuner up here,” Olaf said. “You’re in Misquah, not Boston or Fargo.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Noah said as he headed back onto the porch to retrieve the bench. “We’ll find a piano tuner.”
As he rummaged through the mounds of rubbish he could hear Solveig giving the piano another try, some wail approximating a classical number. By the time he’d found the bench under an old kerosene stove, Solveig had mercifully quit playing. He lugged the bench into the living room, set it before the piano, and wiped his hands. “We’ve got to clean that porch up,” Noah said.
Olaf said nothing, a look of despondency conveying all. He stood, kissed Solveig atop the head, and adjourned to his bedroom.
Noah and Solveig sat opposite each other on the sofa. Noah was flushed again from the heat of the fire. He felt exhausted beyond sleep. “I’m not wrong about this, am I?” he said. “He’s as bad as I thought, right?”
“I think so,” Solveig said. Her voice quavered, but she kept from crying.
“He’s building some goddamn contraption out in the shed.”
“I know. He told me that he wants you to bury him in the lake.” She paused. “We can’t bury him in the lake, Noah.”
Noah nodded half yes, half no.
“I told him we would bury him properly in a cemetery. I told him he didn’t need to do an eternal penance for something that happened so long ago and was entirely out of his control.”
“I bet he loved hearing that.”
“He didn’t say anything.”
“Of course he didn’t.”
She folded the afghan and draped it over the back of the sofa. “I talked to Tom about having him come stay with us. He was wonderful. He said he’d do whatever I wanted, that we could hire a nurse to live with us.”
“That’s awfully
generous.”
“I’m sure there’s no way Dad’ll do it, though,” she said. “He’s got other plans in mind now. I can see that clearly.”
Olaf came out of his bedroom. He stepped outside and returned in a moment. He prepared the water and effervescing tablets for his teeth. He said good-night again.
“Where were we?” Solveig said.
“We were getting nowhere,” Noah replied.
They talked for a couple of hours about what to do before they went to bed. Solveig was inconsolable. Noah finally realized how necessary sleep was. His body ached. Somewhere in the intersection of his fatigue and forlornness he caught a glimpse of the old man’s reason, saw how it might all play out.
THE PATTER OF rainwater on the roof woke him the next morning. As he strained to hear his father or sister stirring in their bedrooms he could make out only the thumping in his own head. The rain streaming over the gutters and cascading down the windows blurred the morning. He thought of going back to sleep, even rolled over to do so, but decided he’d already slept too long and too hard. He rose from the sofa, felt the entirety of his fatigue, remembered his labor the day before. He remembered his dreams, too, and he replayed them with a child’s intuitiveness, but their meaning never arrived.
Both of the bedrooms were empty, both beds made. The fire was as temperate as it had been since he’d arrived. He looked out the window and saw that his sister’s truck was gone. He wondered where they were for a moment but gave up on the thought of them and felt an enormous relief in their absence. Given the weather, he could justify a day on the couch.
The morning had risen with more showers. All of the pine trees sagged under the deluge. Even the hardwoods—the poplar and aspen and birch—were limp of limb in the near and distant woods. The wind, though, was gone; he imagined the rain had quelled it, had drowned it.
Since he’d been here he’d felt a nearly constant sense of responsibility. Any moment not spent doing something was one spent wondering what he ought to be doing. Now, though, as his shoulders loosened, he felt no obligation whatever.