Here to Stay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “You were a paragon of restraint,” she said, running a hand over his head. “And we’re all so proud of you.”

  When her back was turned again, Will winked at Erik.

  “Don’t wink at me,” Erik said.

  “What?” Daisy looked over the top of the refrigerator door.

  “What?” Will said.

  Lucky turned around. “William.”

  “What?”

  Lucky threw a dishtowel at him. “Did you lie to me about banging the manny?”

  Will deflected it back to her. “I didn’t bang the manny.”

  “You totally banged the manny,” Erik said.

  “You weren’t even here,” Will said. “All right? We’re talking 2004 BEC. Before Erik Came…Back. And I’m still mad at you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Erik said. The mood was light, but he was painfully aware of the lines still drawn and only how far jokes would get him. How some things might not be ready to be joked about.

  Will folded his napkin and tossed it on the table. “Suck my cock and we’ll talk about it.”

  “I won’t be able to answer.”

  Will stood up and pointed a finger at Erik. “I didn’t miss you. At all.”

  “Nope,” Lucky said. “He didn’t cry one tear.”

  “None of us,” Daisy said, coming to sit in Erik’s lap.

  He slid his arms around her waist, laid his forehead then his cheek against her. “Well, I did,” he said. “Cried every night. Buckets.”

  “Poor you,” Lucky said with a little snort. But as she leaned to collect more dishes, her hand settled soft on the back of Erik’s neck.

  ERIK TURNED IN THE rental car. The Nutcrackers were finished, the Imperial Theater was dark and Daisy was off from work until January. He didn’t need his own ride.

  They made a few plans. They’d spend Christmas Eve together, and Christmas Day with the Kaegers. If a babysitter could be found, the two couples might go out for New Year’s. Maybe. For the most, Erik and Daisy let the time come to them unplanned. Erik found the joy of being with her and doing absolutely nothing wasn’t something he could take for granted ever again.

  She did take him on small tours. It was cold for outdoor sightseeing, but she drove him up to see the Reversing Falls, where the Saint John River squeezed through a narrow gorge before emptying into the Bay of Fundy. Every twelve hours, the tides of the Bay forced the river current to reverse itself, resulting in a series of impressive rapids.

  “You get much snow here?” Erik asked.

  “Sure. But it rains a lot in winter, too, so the snow doesn’t stay around for long.”

  As he wandered with her around Saint John, he was introduced. To the bartender Nick at the Wharf Tavern. To the owner of Kate’s Bakery, where Daisy always got her breakfast. To company members and friends they passed on the street. The proprietor of a tiny restaurant greeted Daisy like a countess. “Madame Bianco, bonsoir,” he said, kissing her cheeks. And then turned to Erik with a smile and a hearty handshake. “Et monsieur. Bienvenue.”

  Erik liked the sound of monsieur. He felt welcome in this pretty city on the water, dressed up for the holidays. He liked being out and about, hearing the mix of English and French. But mostly, he liked being at Barbegazi. Just being.

  Daisy had never been an adventuress or party girl. “I like to be dancing,” she said when they first met. “Or I like to be at home.”

  As such, she lived at opposite ends of the physical spectrum: full out to the extremes of her capability, in magnificent movement, or still, doing small peaceful things. Still wiped out from all the emotional catchup, Erik was content to join her at the quiet end of the range. He played the piano. Daisy read. Something was always cooking on the stove or baking in the oven. They drank an obscene amount of tea. They built up the fire and did dopey things like play board games or tackle a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes they curled up on the couch and watched TV. But more often they were in the two mismatched armchairs, Edith and Archie, with their mugs of tea and snacks, talking and talking and talking.

  He moved easily through her house. When his suitcase was depleted, he did a couple loads of laundry. When they ran out of kitchen staples, he knew how to get to the corner market. He brought in wood and took out the garbage. Turned off lights and locked doors before they went to bed.

  Bed. Bed. When the sun went down they swung to the other side of the spectrum and made love like monsters. Desire was a subtraction, leaving them with less than what they had started with, desperate to connect again. One more time. All night long. Erik couldn’t get enough.

  Sometimes Daisy growled and clawed at his body, wanting him to make her scream. Other times they made nearly no noise and the skin of one melted to the other. Feelings and the words to describe them piled up like boulders at the back of Erik’s mouth. Too big for description or definition. He lay with Daisy in his arms, mute and choking on his own experience. Simultaneously pulled apart and pressed together by euphoria, despair, longing, pining, celebration and grief.

  One rainy day he passed a couple hours in the upstairs office, talking first with his mother on the phone, then with his brother on the computer. Signing off, he inhaled at the yummy smell wafting upstairs. Something was in the oven. Hoping it was roasted potatoes, he followed his nose down and heard Daisy talking in the kitchen. He presumed she was on the phone as well.

  She wasn’t.

  “It’s not a question of talent,” she said, opening the oven. “Her technique is supernatural but she has no imagination. This ballet requires a sense of drama she simply doesn’t have.”

  Amused, Erik shrank back from the doorway, watching as Daisy pulled the oven rack out and ran a spatula through whatever was on the baking tray. Listening as she kept talking.

  “Nice girl, don’t get me wrong.” Daisy slid the rack back in with a bang. “She’s beautiful in the classics, but for this kind of passionate, edgy work, she’s not who we want.” She shut the oven door and tossed the potholder mitt on the counter. “She can’t carry the music.”

  She turned around and jumped back as she saw Erik. He was leaning on the jamb now, arms and ankles crossed. His stomach filled with an amused, goofy love.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He smiled.

  Her tongue pushed at the inside of a cheek as she took a bunch of parsley and set it on the cutting board. She picked up her favorite chopping knife. “How much of that did you hear?”

  He shrugged. “It was adorable.”

  She cleared her throat and started running the blade through the leaves. “I’m used to living alone,” she said. “And I talk to myself a lot.”

  Something in her manner was beyond embarrassment and he downgraded his expression from teasing to kind. “I get it.”

  “I kind of forgot you were here,” she said, her voice tight around the words. “I mean, I didn’t forget but I…”

  “Dais, come on,” he said, walking over to the island. “It’s no big deal. I talk to myself too.”

  “I know.” She tried to smile, but her mouth constricted at the corners, fighting to fall down. She forced a laugh as her eyes overflowed. “Actually, no, I don’t know what this is,” she said, turning to wipe her face on her shoulder but only getting her chin. “I really don’t. Shit.” She put the knife down and picked up a dishtowel, swiped it at each cheek.

  “Dais.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “Not it’s n—”

  “I don’t know what this is,” she said, her voice now filled with alarm. “You overheard me nattering to myself, so what? Why the fuck do I feel like crying?”

  She was crying.

  “You’re here,” she said, picking up the knife and toying the point through the pile of parsley. “You can catch me talking to myself and think it’s adorable. That’s awesome. I should be happy.”

  He moved to her side. “Are you?”

  She sniffed. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know why I’m
so emotional.”

  He reached and set the backs of his fingers on her tear-tracks. His other hand dropped onto hers on the knife and made her let go the handle.

  “I think it’s because I can hear you,” he said softly.

  She turned into him, face in her palms, knuckles against his chest. His arms folded around her, his hands sliding into her hair. He made his body a tight hard scaffold around her quaking limbs. Knowing now she was weeping for the years of silence, when she talked at him, not to him. Talked into the air because her voice was the only company she had.

  “Do you love me,” she said into his heart, skinless and defenseless.

  He pulled her hands from her face and took her head. He kissed her. Forehead. Each cheek. Nose. Chin. Mouth.

  “I love you,” he whispered. “And I can hear you.”

  ERIK COULDN’T FALL ASLEEP that night. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling and silently mouthing, I can hear you. Thinking about the power of the human voice. Thinking about his brother.

  Peter Fiskare had been left profoundly deaf in infancy, when both he and Erik suffered a bout of mumps. After later contracting meningitis, the deafness was near total. Pete was learning to get by with hearing aids and extensive speech therapy when Byron Fiskare abruptly and mysteriously abandoned the family.

  Erik’s mode of survival was shutting down large swathes of his memory. Even now, at thirty-five, parts of his childhood were redacted in thick black ink, erased from the record. Pete chose silence. He tore off his hearing aids and with rare exceptions, refused to speak. He remained electivally mute through his young adulthood. He went to college. He took a year off to travel, moving easily through the world with sign language and guide dogs. He was barely twenty-four when he married. He and Laura ran a large dog shelter in Rochester and trained rescue canines for service therapy.

  After his kids were born—a daughter, Valerie, and a son, Aaron—Pete gradually began using his voice again. He got fitted for new aids and worked with a speech therapist. Four years ago, he elected to participate in clinical trials for a new type of cochlear implant.

  “Why now?” Erik asked, excited for his brother but curious about the decision.

  “Because I’m ready,” Pete said.

  Pete flew out to Chicago for the surgery and missed Erik’s wedding to Melanie. Three weeks later, Erik and his mother were invited to watch when the implant was activated. They squeezed into a little room with Laura and the kids as the device was ceremoniously turned up.

  Sitting in a chair next to the technician’s desk, Pete’s expression was one of wide-eyed anticipation, but he wasn’t terribly emotional. At points, he looked overwhelmed, partly from the onslaught of sound, and partly from all eyes being on him. For the most part, he kept his gaze on the technician, Beverly, who urged him to be patient as the device worked with his brain to sort out all the new stimuli.

  “What’s that?” he said as Beverly shuffled some papers around.

  “These are the insurance forms which—“

  “I mean, what’s that sound?” he said.

  “It’s the paper.” She moved the sheets through her hands, then separated one out and crumpled it. Pete stared as if she’d made a hundred dollar bill manifest from thin air.

  “Paper makes noise?”

  Beverly looked back at the family. “Every time,” she said. “Every time they ask and every time it blows my mind. Yes,” she said to Pete. “Paper makes noise.”

  She took a scrap and slowly tore it in half for him to hear. Pete took a half and tore it himself. Then crumpled the pieces and laughed. Stopped short. Laughed again.

  “That’s me laughing,” he said, putting fingers to his head. Then he touched his chest. “I can kind of hear my heartbeat,” he said. “It’s so weird.” He smiled at his small audience and took a deep inhale. “And I can hear my breath. How do you get anything done with all this noise?”

  Christine was crying, trying to hide it with laughter. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice a mess. “It’s just…” She gave up and pointed at Pete with the tissue box, almost as if she were about to throw it at him.

  “God, Ma, you sound worse than I do,” Pete said.

  Then Christine did throw the tissues. “I’ll spank you. I mean it.”

  Pete deftly caught the box and drummed his fingers on it. Cocked his head and drummed them again, listening. He smiled at his wife. Can’t wait to hear you in b-e-d, he signed.

  Laura smiled back. “You know the kids can s-p-e-l-l?”

  Erik had stayed quiet all this time, cross-armed in a corner of the room. Out of the way and observing. Finally, Pete set the tissue box aside and looked over at him.

  “What’s with you,” he said. “You never shut up.”

  Erik smiled but couldn’t think of anything.

  “Say something,” Pete said.

  At a loss, Erik swallowed and managed, “Hello?”

  Eyebrows wrinkled, Pete gestured louder.

  Erik cleared his throat. “Can you hear me?”

  Pete seemed to draw back a little. He nodded, his eyes welling up, staring at Erik like a little boy would at Spiderman.

  “You can hear me?” Erik said, taking a step closer.

  Pete nodded, hands twisting. “I can hear you,” he said. Every wall was down. He looked small in the chair, staring up at his brother.

  “How do I sound?” Erik said.

  The tears started to track down Pete’s face. Laura turned away. Christine, tissue-less, buried her face in her hands. Aaron and Valerie looked wide-eyed from their father to their uncle.

  “It’s me,” Erik said. “This is me.”

  “I can hear you,” Pete said.

  Erik crouched between his feet, his hands on Pete’s upper arms. “This is my voice.”

  Pete was crying then, bent over double in the chair. Erik shifted onto his knees, babbling nonsense just to keep his voice present.

  “I can hear you,” Pete said, his shoulders shaking, his hands fisted around Erik’s shirt. “I can hear you.”

  Now Erik rolled toward Daisy, conscious of the creak of springs and the whisper of cotton and quilting against skin. The watery click in his throat when he swallowed. His heartbeat muffled in the ear that was pressed into the pillow. The tiny sigh in Daisy’s chest when he touched the back of her neck.

  “Can you hear me?” he said.

  She sighed again.

  “I love you,” he said. And even after he knew she was asleep once more, he kept whispering little nonsense things. Just to keep his voice present.

  WILL TEXTED ERIK THE day before Christmas Eve.

  Want to grab a beer and a steak? And my ass?

  Erik replied. Is this the second date? I thought I blew it.

  Yeah, well, I’ve always been kind of stupid when it comes to you.

  As they drove into Saint John, their conversation flowed a little easier. Will played Jimi Hendrix on the stereo, which filled any awkward gaps with air guitar.

  “This is Are You Experienced?” Erik asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever listened to this album in its entirety.”

  “I rediscovered it when I was in Germany,” Will said. “I choreographed a solo to ‘Fire.’ Lately I’m thinking I could add to it. You know, like a rock ballet set entirely to Hendrix.”

  “Huh,” Erik said, air drumming now.

  They parked in a municipal lot and walked down King Street toward Market Square. The streets were lined with lighted trees and the air smelled of snow.

  Will’s phone pinged as they passed Lawton’s Pharmacy.

  “How does she do that?” Will said. “I swear, Lucky has a sixth sense for when I’m passing a drug store. And she always needs something.”

  “Maybe she’s put a tracker app on your phone.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Sends her an alert anytime I’m in range.”

  While Will collected his goods, Erik hung out in the magazine aisle, flipping through Sports Illustrated.

&n
bsp; “Dude. Check it out.” Will materialized by Erik’s shoulder and was pointing discreetly to the next aisle over.

  Erik glanced over the top of the display shelves. A third of the adjacent aisle was the family planning section and a young teenage boy was facing down the condoms. Clearly overwhelmed by the selection and nervous from the presence of a middle-aged woman two feet away, comparison shopping fiber supplements. The boy kept looking up nervously, shuffling his feet, then trying to study the display again.

  “Watch this.” Will walked briskly down their aisle, rounded the end and headed toward the boy. He stopped and regarded the shelves a few seconds.

  “Excuse me.” Without making eye contact, Will made a confident choice and walked off toward the registers. Erik flipped pages and watched the boy stare after Will. Then the boy reached and took the identical brand. Erik put the magazine back and headed to the front.

  “He get them?” Will said.

  “Yep.”

  “Same kind?”

  “Yep.”

  “My good deed for the day.” He held the bag up as they headed outside. “You got need of rubbers, my friend?”

  Erik shook his head. “No. But if you’re ready for some gory details, I got a story for you.”

  “So,” Erik said, when they were seated in a booth at the steak house and had ordered. “My marriage started disintegrating when we started trying to have kids.”

  Will held up a palm. “Time out. Let me just say I’m glad it didn’t happen. I suck and I think I’m about to suck even worse but go on.”

  “Well, nothing was happening so I got tested first and turns out I’m shooting blanks.”

  A long stare. “Do they know why?”

  “It might have been from the mumps when I was a kid. Might’ve been just a flukey thing. At the end of the day, they couldn’t point to any one reason. And I don’t exactly shoot blanks. My counts are low and whatever can be counted doesn’t swim. We tried to do IVF, but I had about four different procedures to extract sperm and they just never got anything viable.”

  He knew the general luxury of spilling your guts to a buddy. But he’d forgotten the particular comfort in slicing off a bit of a problem and handing it to Will to hold. Something in his chest seemed to both jump up in remembered joy and pass out in relief at the same time.