A Peculiar Grace

by Jeffrey Lent

  So, a plan. If ever there was a need for one. No winging it today.

  Four hours. Breakfast, and reminding himself to keep it light, to let the hangover work itself out on its own and not try to pack it down with protein. Besides, he’d recalled clearly enough where he was bound when he packed and so had an old pair of swim trunks in the suitcase. A long hard swim would be the best curative of all.

  He dressed and went out toward the East Lake Road and found a bagel shop where he ordered two plain with butter no cream cheese, two large orange juices and a coffee. Almost fifteen goddamn dollars but the juice was freshly squeezed and drinking it he felt as if the poisons were already being expelled. The bagels also felt right, carbohydrates he imagined soaking up and nullifying the residual bile coating his stomach.

  The park was for children and families, with picnic tables and permanent grills all locked into concrete footings. Then it sloped down to meet the small waves of the lake, the pebbly shore. The swimming area was defined by nylon ropes and buoy balls, alternating orange and red. There was a small lifeguard tower. Hewitt walked down in his trunks and talked to the girl perched there. His head was at the level of her seat, her knees inches from his face. She wore a sunshade hat and dark glasses and a neon green one-piece suit. It was not yet July and she was brown as almond butter. He guessed she had a few prework sessions at a local tanning salon.

  “Morning,” he said.

  Her head turned an inch from her steady gaze out on to the water. Where only a small handful of children were in the water. It was early. She was a beautiful girl too well aware of it and behind her mirror-blue shades she was taking him in. He also knew her averted gaze was as much as he was going to get for the moment.

  He kept it short. “I’m traveling. And I need a long hard swim this morning. So I guess you don’t have a problem if I go around the kids and swim across the lake and back.” It was only about a quarter mile over. Perhaps a third. Nothing he couldn’t do.

  She kept those blue metallic eyes upon him for a moment. Then said, “Once you’re outside the designated area I’m not responsible.”

  He smiled and nodded and said, “Of course not. Thanks.”

  As he went down the five feet to the edge of the lake she spoke again, just loud enough for him to hear. “Watch out for the motor-boats. They sure won’t be watching for you.”

  He didn’t look back but raised a hand and made a circle of thumb and first finger high over his shoulder. Then waded into the water which was colder than expected and rendered a slipping smooth dive and came up blowing, already in a deep pacing crawl. He slid under the buoys and went on. He reminded himself, not just his briefly exposed ears but all of him to be attuned to the deep vibratory thrash of inboard or outboard engines. And he did try to look around. But mostly he swam hard and strong. When he came up on the opposite shore he was in front of a cottage, near a dock with a pair of boats moored and a man standing watching him. Hewitt stood in the waist-deep water a moment, breathing in and out fully. Then he turned and began the return swim. This time stroking even harder as he felt his body coming together into the rhythm of muscle and movement. So much so that partway across he rolled on to his back and went a distance in a lazy backstroke, the sky dome cloudless, the hills either side visible and the water had replenished him and he felt the best he had in days. Far to the south but gaining under a steady breeze he saw a group of sailboats approaching. So he rolled and again began the hard precision of the crawl. Something returning of the best of his time here.

  He slowed and stroked in among more children than before. Their shrieks of pleasure and mock terror somehow the perfect conclusion to his swim. When he stood and walked out of the water he passed the lifeguard and nodded to her. She said, “You’ve got power but your stroke’s a little ragged.”

  He paused and looked up at her. Those insect sunglasses were pushed up on her forehead and she had pretty brown eyes. He said, “Tell you what. When you’re forty-three come make the same swim and see how you do.”

  It was eleven thirty.

  He drove back to the motel and hung the trunks on the shower curtain rod and changed again. Nothing fancy this time. Green frayed Carhartts and a short sleeved denim shirt and his old black sneakers.

  * * *

  AT FIVE MINUTES past noon he walked up the steps to her porch and found the door open and heard music. Still pumped from his swim he was cheered not so much because she’d put music on but from the choice. Bach’s cello suites. Somber and elegant, comforting and uplifting.

  He stuck his head in the door and called her name.

  Her voice seemed to slip through the cello. “Down the hall to the end, Hewitt.”

  He went in and walked toward her, purposefully trying not to take in too much of the house. Except the lovely woodwork which had never been screwed with and so was gleaming and dense, the sort of wood impossible to build with today. A thick old runner on the hall floor. Doors opening into rooms registered as he passed—living room, dining room, a library with floor to ceiling built-in shelves. Along the hall framed photographs, which he walked past the way he swam through the small waves of the lake. Then he was in the kitchen and so was she.

  Emily was moving back and forth between the stove, refrigerator and table. Pulling containers from the fridge and peeling back the lids to inspect and sometimes smell before she made a decision. Hewitt realized they were about to eat the food of the dead, not simply what had been brought at the time of the tragedy but much that had arrived since.

  She wore a dark blue sleeveless dress with faint green and gold oblong outlines. A professional dress that could be seen as somber or lacking flamboyance. It fit her loosely. He stood in the doorway and saw all of her and realized the dress was brilliant as a stained glass window. Her hair, captured summer sunlight, was pulled back and held in place behind her ears.

  She looked in one last container and said, “Yuck,” and threw it back into the fridge and turned to face Hewitt. Who was motionless in the doorway with his hands cupped before him. His face he hoped a blank screen, a neutral thing free of intent.

  The table had two plates on it and silverware haphazard on the plates. Four or five containers of food were open on the table.

  She stood across the table, her face incredible with unknown animation and said, “My children aren’t here. Which is the only thing that makes this possible. John’s at sailing day camp and Nora has a little bay mare she keeps out at the farm and works summers to pay board. She bikes out mornings and often Dad brings her home with the bike in the back of the pickup after dark. She’s fourteen so in the next year or so we’re going to learn if this is only a phase. Jesus you had a bucket of balls just walking up and knocking on my door. If it was just me I could have handled it but the children—you don’t have children, do you Hewitt?”

  “No.”

  “Children by their nature are unable to comprehend any lives their parents may have had before they became parents. Because their parents are the one steady certain thing in their lives. In some way they don’t even believe their parents existed before they were born. And you know what, Hewitt?”

  He said, “They’re right?”

  She sat and motioned for him. She said, “I’m serious—I only have an hour. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the clinic. I’m just the resident therapist and can’t imagine at this point trying to find a doctor to step in full-time. The fellow who filled in for vacations is helping out now but he’s in a practice with his own partners in Rochester. So I can’t just close things down for as long as I’d like. And to tell the truth, the work helps. Because there’s nothing else I could be doing right now anyway. Except taking care of the children but they’re both at ages where their hurt is so profound they’re either walking stones or completely crumbled and boy do they hate to have me see them crumble. I tend to think Nora’s having the hardest time because she’s holding up the best. Tough Danes, you know. And I apologize for John’s behavior las
t night but he’s the most open with his anger and surges pretty much between being seven and thirty. So you see how it is here. How are you, Hewitt?”

  She hadn’t made the effort to move food from the containers to her plate and Hewitt hadn’t either. He said, “I’m alright. I’m doing well, well enough.” He paused and with kind but firm emphasis said, “And you?”

  She reached and snagged a stalk of celery and crunched a bite. She said, “I’m fine. I’m holding up, doing the best I … Oh screw it. I’m all fucked-up and not sure whether to thank God for the kids and the practice or if I wish I could fall apart and lie around the house and try to sort out what this means. This. Jesus, Hewitt. This being my husband suddenly and without warning dead and in the ground. Martin was a good man. And more important than that, he tried hard to be a good man. He was a good father, a good doctor, a good husband …”

  Hewitt noted the order but was determined not to attach importance to it. Emily went on. “—and we worked hard together, as colleagues and parents. Yes we’d been going through a hard time which I was sure we’d come out of. But Hewitt there’s not a person in town doesn’t know he was on his way home from his weekly Tuesday night poker game with the boys, as he called it, and was stinking drunk and everyone in town knows that because—”

  “Because it’s a small town and everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  And she picked up one of the containers of food and with a deadly overhand sent it wheeling through the air against the refrigerator and the contents and container stuck to the door a moment and slid down.

  Emily said, “Because the only poker that was going on those Tuesday nights was him out in Guyanoga fucking my sister Elsa. And I don’t have the first idea how many people know that. The sheriff. Some of his deputies. Certainly others. Elsa, of course. So I walk through this grief and feel surrounded by lies and eyes studying me to try and catch what I know and don’t know. If it was anybody other than my sister it wouldn’t be so bad. But that’s bullshit, don’t you think?”

  Hewitt paused, taking his time. Absorbing this and also waiting to see if she was done or if this was an interlude before she began again. Because if there was one person she could tell any and all to, he wanted to be that person.

  Finally he said, “Men are as complicated as women, Emily. Sometimes just different ways.”

  “I thought because it was my sister in the end it was less likely to be anything other than what it seemed to be. Don’t forget, I work with people fucked up by life. The least likely men and women are the one’s that’ll surprise you. And the real bitch of it is I feel sorry for her. Not that I’m not ready to tear her head off. She came to the service but that was self-preservation as much as anything else. She burst out crying and held on to me. As if, what? I was supposed to console her? I tell you Hewitt, what a fucking mess.”

  Emily took up a handful of carrots shaved to resemble small kindling wood. She tilted her head as she chewed. Oh she was lovely. And a woman in the middle of her life who was turned inside out. She said, “I know you’re not married. Ever been?”

  “I came close.” He paused. “A couple of times.”

  She didn’t ask what happened—perhaps she didn’t want to hear the answer. She said, “As terrible as the shock of Martin’s death, what I fear most is the children will learn the truth behind it. If it was simply an Other Woman sort of thing I could probably get through it. I could help John and Nora understand it was a wretched thing, and wrong, but people make mistakes and I loved their father and he loved me. In other words, everything would have been fine. There were no divorce flags on the horizon. I would’ve made his life miserable for a while but he deserved that. And Martin would’ve been determined to set things right. But this is a different twist. It’s not just their father’s betrayal but their beloved aunt as well. Elsa is a strange woman, a genuine eccentric I guess would be the word. She has this little farm in the valley and raises goats and makes cheese and has a huge herb garden and is famous for her garlic and lives on no money. You remember her, don’t you?”

  “Not that well. Emily, she was barely in her teens when we split up. But even then I could tell she was always going to be trying to catch up to you.”

  “And I guess she did,” Emily said. “You’re not eating.”

  He said, “I had a late breakfast and a swim.”

  She set down the carrots. She put both hands on the edge of the table and leaned toward him. “Right now,” she said. “Right now I’m trying to figure out if I should sit down and unload the entire thing on them and just deal with the fallout. I’d lose a sister and they’d lose an aunt in the process and God knows what the ramifications would be within the family. Or, the other course is no action and just wait and see what happens. Simply wait and hope for the best.”

  “Look, Emily. At some point they’ll find out. So their father and aunt will go way off their map, at least for a while. But you’ll be the one to stand up and face them and while they might be angry with you at first, at least they’ll have heard it from you. So that trust won’t be violated.”

  She gazed across the table. “God. It’s just not something I want to do.”

  He was silent, not needing to point out that life was full of things a person didn’t want but still had to do.

  She said, “Elsa has a deep survival instinct and believes she can get away with most anything. Or at least can get through it. But she’s got to be aware how all this would impact if it came out. So I don’t know.”

  “Not married?”

  “Twice, for about a day. She lives by her own rules. Which does not make a marriage. People like Elsa, they have fences a mile wide and a mile deep between themselves and the world. On the other hand, this might be the point where she realizes she’s gone too far.”

  Hewitt considered carefully and then said, “If you’d like, I’d go check on her.”

  “You will not.”

  They both sat silent. Hewitt serious as could be except far inside was a jittery disbelief this was actually occurring.

  Then Emily said, “All I really care about right now are my babies. The truth is I am absolutely totally pissed off at Marty. For all of it. Everything. For fucking my sister, for drinking too much and driving, for being so drunk he didn’t see a cow, a goddamn fucking big cow and getting himself killed. For being dead. Gone. Just like that. For doing that to himself and for doing it to the children and for doing it to me. I don’t care it was an accident. What the fuck is an accident, Hewitt? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He drove off one evening and that was that. He had a choice. He was too smart not to know he was taking big chances. Shit, if he’d just been banged up and survived I don’t know if I would’ve taken him back or not. I trusted him. I trusted him to do what he was supposed to do and now there’s no trust, none at all. Dead and buried and what do I feel? That bastard violated me, tore something right out of me. Was he so sure of what I’d put up with that he could do that and think I’d forgive him? I would’ve pitched him out on his fucking ear and let him explain it to the children. I would’ve cleaned his clock every which way from Sunday. That son of a bitch took it away, took away every chance I should have had. I’d like to think he’s burning in hell right now but all he is is a dead man in a hole in the ground. Maybe someday I’ll be able to look back and think what a shame it was to lose him but right now I don’t feel anything except rage, fucking rage he’d do this to me, leaving me with, … with …”

  She put her elbows on the table and held her face in her hands and cried.

  Hewitt sat until he realized he was holding his breath and slowly exhaling and drawing air he scraped back his chair and went around the table and stood behind her and ever so gently rested his hands on her shoulders, shivering once as he touched her and then pinched his eyes tight and focused on the top of her head as he tenderly rubbed the strung muscles of her lower neck and shoulders. They remained like that a long while, as her sobs slowed and subsided
and she rested her head on her hands and sank slightly beneath but not away from his hands.

  Gently he lifted his hands away and she stood and turned and came against him.

  As he held her every fiber and filament and smallest cell of blood was dancing like winter starshine. And he told himself, This could be the last time. This could be it but it could be the last time. Don’t expect. Don’t ask. Try to be what she needs. And so held her and smelled her and absorbed her into him and then, before she could, he stepped back. His hands now touching her face her head stroking her cheeks her nose her hair her ears her chin one finger running over her lips almost as if to shush her instead of himself. Then she tucked her head to one side as she wiped her face.

  She stepped to the sink and splashed water over her face and surprised him by coming back and holding his elbows with her hands. She said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been holding all that in.”

  “I kinda figured that out.”

  They were quiet a moment, although she hadn’t let go of him. He reached and held her upper arms.

  “Hewitt?”

  “Emily.”

  “Why did you come?”

  He paused. Then again simply said, “Emily.”

  “Oh, no. Hewitt.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  She leaned forward. “How’d you know? Did someone call you?”

  And Hewitt knew she was talking about her mother, who had liked him, the two of them had liked each other. Enough so, on that terrible last morning, after he left Emily he’d still stopped by the farm to see Ellen Soren and say goodbye. Something Emily certainly knew.

  “Nobody called me,” he said. “But I’ve been getting the weekly paper from here for Oh quite a few years. Which was why I couldn’t just send a condolence card or come to the service or something like that.”