by Ursula Hegi
Without Liz, his days felt too open. During all the years of their marriage, she had never mentioned anything to brace him for her leaving. At first he thought of her almost constantly, anticipating her voice when he came home from work, expecting her sleep-warmed body next to him in the morning. Each time he had to remind himself that she was no longer there, it was as though he lost her all over again. The house felt unfamiliar, and he kept bumping into door frames and cabinets, misjudging distances.
Eating alone in the kitchen they had wallpapered together, he’d wonder what she was doing. He forced himself to wait for her return with confidence and declined dinner invitations from two teachers at the school where he was the principal. After work he shopped for food, mowed the lawn or cleaned the house, cooked a late meal, and walked the dogs until he was too tired to do anything but sleep.
From the library he borrowed books on the psychology of women, trying to understand why Liz had left him. He found her type in most of the books: the woman who thought little of her abilities, who was afraid of success. When he’d first met her, she’d reminded him of the recruits he’d shaped in the late sixties, when he was a drill instructor for the army. During the few weeks in which he had them, he needed to break them down for their own survival—physically and mentally—taking away their essence before he could build them up as soldiers who would act identically in combat, who would trust the reflexes he’d instilled in them instead of relying on individual decisions. Not only were they equipped to kill, but they also knew how to die. Unquestioningly. He infused them with the kind of bravery that made them risk their lives for their buddies.
Though he didn’t approve of the war, he did his best to prepare them for Vietnam. When it became too painful to send them off and read the lists of those who had been killed, he begged to be transferred to Vietnam, but he was so effective as a drill instructor that the army refused his request. Aching with the premonition of the recruits’ deaths, he discovered their hidden cores, stripped them of their dignity, pushed their bodies beyond their limit of exertion. Very few of them understood that it was out of love when he took them down to where they were nothing, made them terrified of failing, and then rebuilt them. To do any less for them would have meant sending them off unprepared.
Liz had certainly been prepared when she had left him. She’d come into the marriage a shy, worried woman, a failed painter, and he’d scraped off her fears, her doubts, with infinite kindness and patience, until she no longer knew who she was. Only then, when she had become a blank canvas in his hands, could he draw a woman who was confident and poised, bold and successful. A few times he misjudged his timing, and she slipped from him.
“Stop pushing me,” she’d cry. “Stop persuading me that I’m someone I know I’m not.”
But gradually Liz came to embody this woman they both could be proud of. She returned to school, went to work for an advertising agency, and, the year before she moved out, opened her own firm. Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep late at night and asked him to hold her, she’d whisper to him of the wonderful changes he’d brought about in her, and they’d laugh fondly and reminisce about the woman he’d married as though she were a distant and embarrassing relative.
He spoke with Liz whenever she called, but he tried not to contact her, and it became easier because he could count on her need to talk with him at least once or twice a week. He’d agree to meet her for coffee at the Skylight Café, where they had often eaten brunch after a lazy Sunday morning in bed.
“I’m here for you,” he would promise her. “Any time.” He told her he wished she’d come home, but he followed the advice he found in the books: he never pressured her, and tried to ready himself for a life without her.
Though he determined it would be best for their marriage if he remained celibate, he went out to dinner with the science teacher, Sherrie Donalds, and invited his newly divorced neighbor, Ann Polk, to a concert. He bought a ticket to fly to New York for his college reunion, but the day before his departure, it struck him as absurd to travel anywhere until he had returned to Mexico and resolved what had happened there.
On his way to meet Liz for coffee, he traded in his New York ticket for a flight to Cabo San Lucas. She sat waiting for him at a table next to the salad bar, where a nativity scene had been set up below the plastic sneeze-guard—gaudy plaster figures surrounded by miniature churches with flickering lights. Someone had sprayed snowflakes on the sneeze guard and placed poinsettia plants at either end of the salad bar. Strings of red bulbs decorated the skylights and made Liz’s hair look pink, synthetic.
“Call me,” she said, “when you get back from your reunion.”
He didn’t tell her he was flying to Mexico instead. Exhilarated and afraid that she wouldn’t know where he would be, he sat across from her, close enough to touch.
He stayed at the last hotel on the Pacific side of the Baja, a low sequence of white buildings that respected the stark beauty of the land. The cats were still there, dozens of them, the color of the cliffs, dozing in the sand beneath the bushes, invisible until they stirred or darted away. Waves came in high and crashed down like shelves overcrowded with books—abrupt and massive.
Though he wasn’t able to get the room he’d had with Liz two years earlier, his was identical, with wrought-iron chairs, a woven bedspread, three wood-framed mirrors, and a terrace that faced the ocean. Red-tiled paths bled into his room—cool and smooth beneath his bare feet. In the narrow gap between the back of the hotel and the cliffs lay a garden of hibiscus bushes, palm trees, and cacti.
After he unpacked, he hiked south along the Pacific beach toward the two rock formations that stood between him and Playa de Amor, lovers’ beach, the only strip of sand open to both the Pacific and the Sea of Cortés, where he and Liz had snorkeled. A boat from the harbor had dropped them off one morning and picked them up at four, several hours later than expected. When the sun became unbearable, they’d retreated into a cave formed by huge yellow boulders that made them feel as though they were inside a cathedral.
This time he would approach the lovers’ beach on foot, arriving and leaving when he chose to. But when he reached the cliffs, they seemed impossible to cross. He discovered a scant trail of sand grains where people had climbed before him, and he used each crevice for leverage to push himself off. As he stood on the ridge where the tip of the peninsula met the ocean and the bay, swift winds stroked the surface of the water. He used to like this definite sense of geography, knowing exactly where he was in relationship to the rest of the earth. He had felt that certainty in his marriage too —being able to point to where he was —but now that had vanished, and this mass of land no longer felt secure to him either. A huge wave could wash over it at any moment, erode the sands and cliffs, the hotel.
He kept having dreams of his house sliding down the hill and folding upon itself at the bottom of the driveway. One night he dreamed of it filled with gaudy flames that unfurled like paper poppies; another night his assistant principal, who was far too lenient with the students, broke into his house and gave a party for the teachers and administrators. He’d wake up disoriented, depleted by sleep instead of restored, as if the place had chafed away at him during the night. Papaya juice would burn his throat, and the sun would make his eyes ache.
He bought sunglasses and a straw hat. Sometimes he talked to the old woman from Germany who had the room where he’d stayed with Liz. She’d sit in the sand for many hours, watching the waves, her gray hair loose on her shoulders. Her name was Frau Dönstetter, and the waiter who silently poured his coffee from an arm length’s distance—dignified and focused, as if he were performing surgery—liked to laugh and talk with the old woman when she ate her meals on the restaurant patio, feeding scraps to the cats that were all around her, swift shadows of the sand.
Early one morning Sam walked to the harbor and tried to locate the boat he’d chartered with Liz. When he couldn’t find it, he settled on a smaller fishing craft and rode the
calm waters of the bay past Playa de Amor and around the arch into the churning Pacific. The boat passed the beach where his hotel stood, its contours low and rounded like boulders worn smooth by the waters, and headed parallel to the shore toward the old lighthouse— el faro viejo. He caught only sailfish, bonitos, and cabrillas, and told the captain to keep the catch. That evening he walked the long, empty beach from his hotel to the northern outcropping of rocks, where a crumbling set of stone steps led up to the town that curved itself around the harbor and spilled across the hill until it was blocked by the Sea of Cortés.
In one of the bars he sat with a bottle of cerveza in front of him, a man alone—an oddity in this town that was crowded by men in groups of three or four who’d come from Europe and America to the end of the Baja for some of the best marlin-fishing in the world. They abandoned the town early in the mornings on chartered boats, but at night, in the bars, they traded fishing stories and invented their lives. “I’m in the film industry,” one man announced, keeping it vague whether he was a clerk or a producer. Another man bragged about renting a house on the Pedregal, the wealthy part of town, where tile-roofed villas clung to the stone cliffs like garnets. Sam drank quietly, and he pitied the men as they tried to impress one another: size of fish, size of boat, size of house.
In the morning he recognized the boat and captain from two years before. And on the other side of the stone arch he found his marlin as though it had summoned him. It charged out, paused, then changed its direction. He let it resist him, let it hurl itself from the water and strain against the line in its tremendous urge to stay alive. He felt the marlin’s will, separate from his. Whenever it halted its struggle, Sam regained the line and lured it closer. To keep it from eluding him, he had to tire it, let it play its game, wait it out without exhausting himself.
As he brought it against the boat, its stripes—bluish and black, iridescent—had already dulled. Gulls and cormorants circled the boat—vultures of the sea —and the mate stepped next to him, ready to gaff the marlin. Already Sam could see its massive body fastened to the back of the boat, could feel its cold skin with the flaky scales —coarse if he were to stroke his hand toward its spike, smooth if he were to rub his hand toward the tail —and all at once he wanted to release the fish before the color drained from it completely, watch it shimmer as it disappeared along the boat, think about it when he was back home, and know it still belonged to him in the depth of the Pacific.
“Wait.” He caught the mate’s arm and bent across the side to twist out the hook, but as the marlin turned dark and reached its point of nothingness, he could not abstain from pressing his hands against the taut skin as if to infuse the great fish with his spirit. For a moment, there, it felt as though the scales were coming off in his palms, leaving the outlines of his hands on the marlin, and as he let it go, it darted away, heaving itself into life—forever altered, its colors more radiant than before.
Lower Crossing
This June, the Spokane River is running higher than I’ve ever seen it, spilling in white torrents across the volcanic rocks, dragging trees into its current. The wishbone shapes of their branches trap the river in silver arrows, then release it, yield. Already, two people have drowned: a car mechanic who dived from the footbridge between the Jesuit college and the yuppie condos, and a student from Lewis and Clark who tied a rope between herself and her inflatable raft because she didn’t like life preservers.
The fitfulness of the river resonates throughout Spokane. When I take my old dog, Basil, for his walk early this morning, pools of shards glitter in the sun outside the gay bar on the corner of Monroe.
“Watch out.” I pull Basil away from the shattered glass. It has happened here before —some rednecks heaving bricks into the parked cars at night—and it pisses me off, makes me want to smash their windows too. “Damn rednecks,” I tell Basil.
He sways, and I press my palms against his yellow flanks, keep them there, murmur to him while he steadies himself.
“You know what we should do, you and I? Hold vigil here some night. Sit on the curb and wait for those rednecks. And if they ask if we’re here to make sure the perverts can dance, I’ll tell them that you and I are here to scare perverts like them away. All you have to do is growl at them. And look ferocious.”
As a young dog, Basil used to race toward me like a bullet-sleek and powerful, looking ferocious—yet always stopping himself inches before he could knock me over. So polite. But strangers were frightened when he came at them like that, because they had no idea how gentle he was.
“Damn rednecks.”
Throughout Basil’s body, I can feel how anxious he is about falling, as anxious as he has been lately about getting up. Often, his legs will splay outward, landing him flat on his belly like a seal. And here I am recruiting him in my attack-dog fantasies. He’s the kind of dog who doesn’t like looking foolish. That’s why he’ll hesitate before easing himself down the steps into our yard, before climbing into my sister Ev’s station wagon. Dignity is essential to Basil. Dignity and politeness. First thing every day he waits for me by the fridge, nudging me to dip my finger into his fudge jar and coat half an aspirin for him. He’ll lick my finger, my hand, lick hard and swallow. Without the fudge, he would spit out his medicine in a second. Whenever I wash his saliva from my hands, I feel sad for Basil. Sad for all I haven’t done for him. And fucking scared. For myself. Because he can’t last much longer.
“Hey, we’re almost there,” I tell him.
He shakes himself almost playfully, tries to run, to pull me along. Bad choice. Moments like this, when he forgets his aches and gets exuberant, I can still recognize the puppy in him. He’ll hear the crinkling of cellophane coming off a new rawhide bone, say, or watch me tie my Nikes, and hell try to leap up and down. Inevitably, though, hell get that puzzled expression on his face, because his body will remind him that he is an old dog.
As it does now. Bringing him to a stop. His chest is heaving, pumping, and when he moves forward along the sidewalk and across the street with me, it’s on legs that are stiff, so stiff. Twelve years ago, when Ev and I first saw him at the Spokanimal shelter, he was playing in a kennel with another gorgeous yellow pup, his brother, the two of them a sun-colored tangle of legs and tails until his brother spotted us and scurried across Basil to court us with yelps and with licks, showing off by standing on his hind legs and rolling on his back, reminding me of those popular kids way back in school who’d always seemed so sure they’d get picked first. Basil, however, made no effort to win us over, and when I told Ev he was the one I wanted to adopt and why, she smiled and nodded, because she had never been one of the popular kids either. And all along, Basil sat there quietly, one ear cocked, observing us with the dignity of a much older dog.
The dog he now has grown into.
At the Street Café, I slip the end of his leash around the iron leg of an outdoor table, as usual. “I’ll be right back with some water for you,” I promise, but when I return with my coffee and his water, he’s no longer there. I set both paper cups on the table, step into the road, whistle. “Basil… Basil?”
While I’m checking the rear parking lot, Moss, who works at the Street Café, sticks her head from the kitchen door. “Basil-boy …” she chants, breath warm with milk and granola. Her black hair is spiked, showing its blond roots. “Hey, Basilboy …”
Moss’s real name used to be Lucy. Lucy Ferdinand. That was before she left her family and went to divinity school at Yale, where she lasted seventeen months. Now Moss believes she is meant to meditate and cook in the Pacific Northwest. Her specialty is a tangy garbanzo stew with tons of curry and specks of unidentifiable green. When she serves your food, she stands so close you swear she’s in lust with you. It makes some customers real jumpy; but after you’ve been around her enough, you can see that she stands this close to everyone, women and men. If you step away, she only follows.
“I’ll help you look.” The screen door slams behind her.
Usually I stop halfway across this bridge: it’s the best spot to watch the rapids—on one side the lower falls, on the other the downriver gorge—where they plummet one hundred fifty feet in the center of Spokane. They’re almost entirely white—that’s how fast they are—coating my face with their cool breath as wind tunnels beneath them. For me, waterfalls are mesmerizing the way fires are, making it hard to look away. But today, I rush through their mist. On the other side of the bridge, two cars and a truck with a gun rack are waiting at a stop light.
“Basil.” I whistle. “Come here, good boy….” But the only one I see is Moss, leaping into my field of vision wherever I turn to search.
“Basil still has life in his eyes,” she tells me.
“He is old. And not very strong.”
When Basil was younger, I used to walk him on the river trail that starts at the falls and ends near the old Shriners Hospital. Halfway in between is our neighborhood, a handful of houses that sit high above the north bank, hidden by lush vegetation. Here, the bed of the river is wider than downtown, more lake than stream, the shape of a snake that swallowed a sheep. Though we live just a mile downstream from the falls and the stores, most people don’t realize our neighborhood exists. It’s so secluded that we might as well be hours away from the city. And we rather like that.