The Weight of an Infinite Sky

by Carrie La Seur

  Anthony came around the hood, ready with a greeting, but Chance was already turning toward the house. The proffered handshake met his back. Anthony stopped short and pretended he’d been reaching to smooth his hair, in case anyone was watching. “You know me well, cousin,” he said.

  Chance let the door slam behind him. Faced with the eloquence of cold body language, Anthony thought back over the winter’s phone conversations and wondered at his own capacity for self-deception. He should have heard a difference. It was so obvious now. Some men might settle this sort of thing with blows, but knowing Chance, Anthony doubted he’d ever get the catharsis of a nice hard right hook. That this cool distance might be all he’d ever have again of the man who used to be his best friend in the world caught him suddenly, a hook in the belly.

  Like the origins of all great mistakes, he’d had the best intentions. As Hilary lay in bed that despairing spring, Anthony had brought her food—all her favorites, even his sad attempts at her mama’s southern recipes—but she wouldn’t eat. He set up an easel and paints in the bedroom but she refused to touch them. He begged her to come into Billings with him and see a therapist, any therapist. Those were the times she ordered him to get out, leave her alone—behavior that now made sense. There came a point where you knew no one could help you.

  At first Anthony couldn’t understand why Chance had turned away from Hilary when she needed him most, but gradually, as he watched them together, it came clear. He was there one evening when Chance carried Mae into the house squalling for the bottle Jayne had prepared. Anthony was in the chair beside the bed, reading aloud from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

  “You still here?” Chance asked gruffly. He’d forgotten to take off his boots again and Anthony saw the muddy prints on the hall carpet—prints he’d have to clean so that Hilary wouldn’t see them the next time she tried to get up and become so dispirited by the mess that she’d go back to bed for days.

  “Just about to head down,” Anthony said. “How’s Mae doing?”

  “She needs her mother.” Chance caught the glance at his boots and managed to lever them off before entering the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and said to Hilary, “Would you like to feed her? I’ve got the bottle here in my shirt so it’s still warm.”

  Hilary pushed into a sitting position and let Chance shape her arm around the bundle of two-month-old Mae. The baby gurgled and grabbed her mother’s shirt as Chance put the bottle in Hilary’s hand and guided it to Mae’s mouth. For a moment, as he backed into the doorway, Anthony could squint and almost see a real family. Then Hilary’s eyes met Chance’s and read something there. Her eyes shut, her hand slid away, and Chance had to grab at both baby and bottle to keep them from rolling off the side of the bed.

  “That’s okay, we’ll try again later,” he said as he turned back toward the living room, but as Chance’s head came up Anthony caught the look of pure despair that Hilary must also have seen. Chance had given up.

  Before that day Anthony had never seen Chance give up on anything, and Anthony had never admired any woman as much as he admired Hilary. The realization that their marriage and this fragile family were over almost before they’d begun was a semitruck crashing through highway barriers in his mind—catastrophic, devastating, never to be recovered from. He had believed in them utterly, and it had been nothing but a sad delusion.

  Thinking these things, Anthony opened the screen door and stepped into the dim interior. Chance had stopped a few feet inside the door, waiting without turning around. They hadn’t really talked for weeks, but Chance being gruff and noncommittal on the phone was nothing out of the ordinary. Looking at his stiff back, Anthony had no idea what Chance was thinking. The man was a stranger.

  Chance cleared his throat and crossed his arms but didn’t turn around. “You said you wanted to talk?”

  With the benefit of knowledge, Anthony felt the fullness of Chance’s disappointment in him. If disappointment was all that was left, their friendship was truly finished. Anger, at least, left some hope.

  Anthony took a small step so that the screen could shut behind him and edged toward one side of Chance the way he’d sidle up to a skittish horse. “I owe you an apology,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “Hilary told me she told you. I never wanted you to know. I’m sorry. I was young and stupid and I’ve regretted it every minute since.”

  Chance didn’t respond. The silence grew long. Anthony’s eyes adjusted to the light and showed him a house strewn with Hilary’s paintings, scarves, weavings, art supplies, even wind chimes, all of it steeped in incense. The chimes had spooked the horses last time Hilary was here so that eventually Jayne came as a gentle emissary to convince her to take them off the eaves. Anthony was astonished that Chance had let them go up again, even inside. Hilary could be right: Chance might be seeking compromises, thinking about a reconciliation—or he figured she’d be gone so fast it wasn’t worth a fight.

  Beneath the layer of Hilary, the house was as Anthony remembered, a cross between a sparse bachelor apartment and an old lady house, generic box-store furnishings and no decor except for Jayne’s homemade chintz curtains on every window, an afghan folded over the back of a recliner familiar from Jayne and Ed’s living room years ago, and a bear rug named Bert, taken by Ed in defense of the herd decades ago.

  Someone—likely Chance now that Hilary’s cleaning frenzies were a thing of the past—had scrubbed the linoleum so often and vigorously in its short life that the color of the pattern was gone and only the imprints remained. Anthony had seen Chance bring animals inside to nurse them through cold nights, so he appreciated the cleaning efforts, but along with the sparse furnishings, they left the place looking more like a sterilized hospital ward than a home. He wondered if Chance was able to see how it would look through Hilary’s eyes, if he understood her even that far. At least he’d let her decorate.

  Finally the silence was too much for Anthony. “Look, I know it’s no excuse, but you’ve got to know—I found her barefoot in the barn in the freezing cold one day with a rope hanging from the rafters, looking for something to climb onto. I promised her I wouldn’t tell you, but I would have done anything—anything—to keep that from happening again. I knew I had to get her out of Montana before it killed her and the thing—what went on between me and her, it made it so she’d get dressed and listen to me. We made a deal that I’d go, too, to New York. I know it sounds stupid but it was like we were fugitives. It felt like we were outside the law.” It was like being caught in a landslide, he wanted to say. Everything had happened so fast at the end. He’d been caught up in the urgency of saving Hilary by any means necessary.

  By the end of the summer Anthony had gotten himself to New York, believing in his innocence that Chance would never have to feel the scorpion sting in the tail of the story. Anthony rubbed his itchy eyes and tried to slow his hands from working at the rings. What he’d never tell Chance was how in love he’d been. He’d sat day after day into summer with Hilary, working the early hours for Dean to free up the afternoons when she was awake, not as much because he was worried about her but because in her presence he was happier than he’d ever been. Mingled with her collapse were upside-down days when she grew wings. In manic phases she was painting murals again, using up her oil paints on the living room walls—efforts now painted over in an off-white no doubt sold in bulk at the hardware store. Reggae had thumped on the speakers as he pushed through the screen on the first truly hot day that June, an afternoon he’d never bring himself to regret.

  “There you are! Oh, baby, wait until you see what I’ve got going on!” Hilary had rushed over and wrapped her arms around him, such a jubilant, longed-for sensation that his brain didn’t register the normal reservations when she pulled back, smiled at him like he’d come down from heaven, and kissed him full and long on the lips. She was warm and thrilled at her own fresh energy and he was so thrilled himself at the change that the words Chance’s wife did not
in fact cross his mind until later when they lay together in bed, panting and staring at the ceiling in mutual shock. He knew the rules. These violent delights have violent ends.

  Finally Chance went to the kitchen and started fiddling with the coffeemaker, put in a fresh filter, pulled a coffee can from the cupboard in slow motion as if buying time to compose himself. Coffee was emphatically not what Anthony needed. “Got any beer?” he asked and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  “I might. You drinking again?”

  “Guess so.”

  “None of my business, but booze hasn’t worked out too well for you in the past.” A light swipe, nothing damaging. Anthony’s mind returned to a few scenes that would have turned out better without alcohol involved: a blown audition or two, a drunk-driving citation, women he shouldn’t have gone near, a lost job he hadn’t wanted anyway—but all that was under the bridge. Denying himself a beer this afternoon, when he badly needed one to face both Chance and Sarah, wouldn’t change history.

  Chance pulled a growler from the fridge and filled glasses. Anthony stepped up to the end of the bar separating the kitchen and eating area to observe his cousin more closely, looking for changes that would tell him what Chance never would. His nose was sunburned like always, and he’d gained a limp in his left leg since Anthony last saw him. Chance was ten years older—thirty-eight to Anthony’s twenty-eight—and just beginning to resemble the old-timers who were more distinctive for their scars than for their original features. For the first time Anthony saw that Chance was no longer truly young, with fine lines on his forehead and a few sparkling strands of hair at his temples when he uncovered his messy, cowlicked head. The return to Montana must have been a tough change for him, too, Anthony reflected. A few years ago he’d been rocketing through the hierarchy at a tech company with a buzzword name Anthony found immediately forgettable, and now he was taking over for his dad like he’d never left. Strain showed around his eyes.

  Chance returned the once-over, letting his gaze linger on the flip-flops.

  “Where’s Mae?” Anthony asked.

  Chance gestured down the hill. “She was playing tag with the rest of the kids last time I saw her. She’s got two dozen babysitters.”

  Anthony picked up a recent photograph framed on the counter, Mae on Chance’s shoulders, beaming down at her daddy. “She’s getting big.”

  “Turned three this year. She’s talking like an auctioneer these days, more questions than you can answer. And I’m teaching her how to use this.” Chance picked up a machete as long as his forearm from its place on the windowsill.

  Anthony came over to take it out of Chance’s hand. He slid the big knife from its decorated leather scabbard. “What the hell? Where did this come from?”

  The corner of Chance’s mouth snuck upward at the sight of the blade, as if it pleased him on a fundamental level. “A friend brought a bunch back from Guatemala. Very useful item. I’m kind of tempted to carry it in a holster like they do down there. People have been seeing a big cat wandering around lately. We can teach Mae to shoot when she’s a little older, but until then, I tell her to keep an eye out and carry that when she walks down by herself to see the folks.”

  Mae Murphy, Anthony was sure, would be a woman to reckon with. This was more like the exchanges they used to have. He began to wonder if Chance would ever say a word in response to his apology. Was this a thing they could never speak of even as they picked up the old friendship? Anthony put the machete in its place and returned to the far side of the counter as he sipped his beer and Chance poured himself coffee.

  “I don’t think we’ve seen each other since that wild horse sale a few weeks before I took off. You remember that?” Anthony asked.

  Chance contemplated his mug with great seriousness, as if he might not acknowledge the shared memory. The friendship had been intact then, a tight bond after the tunnel they’d both come through, even with the secret Anthony had decided to carry under his skin like a tumor. If only Anthony could put them back in that moment of trust, or another of the many horse sales throughout their long history. Chance had become Anthony’s hero at a sale when Anthony was five and small enough to stand under the bleachers and trot his toy horses along the planks supporting the men’s feet. Chance was big enough that year to sit with the grown-ups rather than explore all the hiding places of the exhibition barn.

  “You’re too big for toys,” Dean had warned him, but Anthony snuck the bag in under his jacket. When Dean’s eye fell on the contraband clutched in his small son’s fist, his face changed in a second from admiration of a smooth gait in the arena to fury at being disobeyed. The next thing Anthony knew the horses were in the trash and Dean was towing him to the pickup by the collar of his denim jacket. It felt like an eternity that Anthony stifled wet sobs alone in the jump seat, but probably only ten or fifteen minutes passed before the door opened. Chance looked furtively behind him, handed up the bag, and was gone. That was what Anthony remembered—Chance on his side, always.

  “I remember,” Chance said at last.

  It was all Anthony was going to get for now. He stood silent, rolling his rings around his fingers, longing to receive the condemnation he deserved. A nonexpression settled on Chance’s face—a deliberate lack of engagement that spoke volumes. Anthony sipped and the beer tasted sour. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  “You seem different,” Chance said after a long pause, the silence gone sticky. “Don’t you hum anymore?”

  Surprised by the change in direction, Anthony said, “Hum? I hum?”

  “You always used to. Don’t you remember? You were humming or singing something all the time. It was like having the radio on, having you around. Now you’re quiet.”

  Anthony rubbed his neck where it had gone tight. “Sorry. That must have been annoying.”

  “I liked it,” Chance said. He pushed away his coffee mug almost full. His beer sat untouched. “Let’s head on down. Your mom has some news, if you haven’t heard already.”

  An involuntary gut clench rumbled the beer Anthony had put down in spite of the taste. “What is it?”

  At last Chance met his eyes with a glance that chilled him. “I think it’s better you hear from her.”

  Act 2, Scene 4

  The walk down to the party was quiet. Ed had been cutting hay in the low flood-irrigated pastures between the Little m headquarters and the Terrebonnes’ place. Now that people were arriving he climbed down from his tractor and walked through knee-deep green and gold, a lumbering pastoral figure in faded blue coveralls coming to them as a prodigal returns across the wide land. Anthony and Chance slowed to watch him ramble at the pace of cows or sheep under a big straw hat stained dark around the band with years of sweat. As he came through the alfalfa near the house, every hundred yards or so Ed paused and bent to separate a handful of soft stems from the plant to roll through his fingers, smell, and gradually sow back to earth as he walked. A red-tailed hawk flew low over the field and Ed stopped to watch. There was no hurry in him, and no slack, either. Anthony was transfixed by the sight of the man coming steadily over the land, in the gate, and up the back steps of the house to wash, responding to his summons as if there weren’t another thing in the world he might do and no other or better way of doing it.

  A few steps behind his cousin as he had been all through childhood, safe in the protective shadow that now felt more like darkness cast upon him, Anthony scanned the crowd until he spotted Sarah. She was sitting with Neal at the farthest table in an unusually crisp white shirt. Anthony thought he detected—but surely not—a touch of lipstick. When she noticed him looking her way, Sarah waved him over. He pinched his lips and hesitated, but Chance gripped his elbow and shoved him forward. “You’ll have to deal with them sooner or later.”

  Anthony wished for another beer or a doorway to another dimension, but it was nothing but tables to the edge of the mowed swath and more neighbors arriving behind him, wanting to catch up no doubt. Chance vector
ed off toward Alma, tall and narrow with tightly folded arms, worry on her like a string of sparkling beads, eye-catching in its intensity even at this distance as she watched Brittany launch herself into a rough soccer game.

  The old-timers said this country was hell on women and horses, but the women who stuck it out, the descendants’ descendants, had a radiant solidity. Anthony knew and loved the look they got in their eyes—clear and cold, no hint of retreat—as the next soul-crushing calamity emerged on the horizon. Alma came from that stock, every inch of her, as did Chance. Near the food tables Hilary trailed Mae and watched her ex-husband whisper into Alma’s ear. Alma brushed Chance’s hand with hers, the lightest touch, and clasped her hands behind her back.

  Sarah was making her way across the meadow on Neal’s arm, putting more weight on him than Anthony would have expected, a show of dependency. “Anthony!” she called out and stopped to let him come to her. He approached obediently, aware of the crowd watching. While he was still held tight in her hug, she whispered, “I have to tell you something.”

  He planted his feet. Whatever she’d been working up to keep him with her this time, he wasn’t falling for it. “Yes?”

  She looked to Neal. “Your uncle and I went into town this morning and . . . we got married.” Something passed between them like nothing Anthony had ever seen on either of their faces—a beam of youth, transforming. He yanked away. “You what?”

  “Don’t be angry, honey. We wanted to invite family, but then it would have been too big a production, and we thought with the picnic tonight we could celebrate all the same. Be happy for us.” Sarah threw a little smile in Neal’s direction, but her eyes came quickly back to Anthony, searching for some anticipated response in his face. She looked crestfallen not to find it.

  Anthony looked at Neal, who watched flat-eyed, expecting a challenge, and back to Sarah. “What are you thinking, Mom? Dad’s been dead three months.”