Here to Stay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “You’re so quiet,” she said as they walked along the wine vendors’ booths, tasting.

  He shrugged and hooked his arm around her. “I’m just wordlessly happy.”

  A couple more times she asked if he was all right. On the ride home, she gave him a few sideways glances. Some puzzled. Some amused. He held her hand on his thigh. He played with her fourth finger but if she noticed, she didn’t say anything.

  Later, he sat on the bed, watching through the bathroom door as she washed her face at the small sink. Adorable in her underwear and his T-shirt. The fine hairs around her temples drawing up into little curls.

  He remembered making love in there on a November day fourteen years ago. Up against the wall of the shower. Swallowing steam and conquering their demons. Finding themselves again. It had been one of the last good times before they spiraled down into the dark.

  He got up and went in behind her.

  “Do you ever think about marrying me?” he said.

  She splashed her face and spit water out. “If I marry anyone, it’ll be you,” she said, and spit again. “Can you get me a towel?”

  He set one hand on the ledge of the sink, and held the other with the ring in front of her. He watched the mirror reflection as she groped at him, eyes shut. Her fingers touched the diamond and pulled back. Her eyes opened.

  “What is…?” Still bent over the basin, her breath caught in her throat.

  Erik held the ring still and slid his other arm around her waist.

  Her hand reached and stopped. She ran her damp palm along the front of her shirt, then reached again with shaking fingertips. She didn’t take the ring. She just touched it.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. Water dripped off her chin.

  “It’s yours,” he said.

  Her fingers extended. Down the fourth one, he slid the shining gold band with Astrid’s diamond. She pressed her hand to her chest and he covered it with his. Felt the beat of her life within.

  “I love you so much,” he said. But his voice was hoarse and the first two words got lost.

  You so much.

  It settled into his heart like a creed. He said it again. “You so much.”

  She turned her head up to him. “So much you,” she said.

  She turned all the way around, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “The bathroom,” she said, her mouth soft against his. “Seriously?”

  Laughing, he picked her up. Laughing, she wrapped her arms and legs around him as he carried her to the bed. He set her gently on her back, still wound up in her limbs.

  “Better?” he said, kissing her wet face.

  “Not yet.” She dragged his shirt over his head.

  Her skin slid along his. He thought her kiss had never been so sweet. Swore he had never sunk so deep into her body or known what the word wife truly meant until her hand came up to caress his face and his grandmother’s diamond caught the light.

  “Will you marry me?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s all I think about.”

  THE HOLIDAY SEASON ARRIVED and Erik fell into a state of celebration he hadn’t known since he was a child. It was Christmas. The world frosted with snow and outlined in white lights. Daisy busy with Nutcracker rehearsals. Carols in the background and the smell of wood smoke and pine in the crisp, thin air. Loved ones to shop for and the tree to decorate—together, as a couple. Cards to send with their engagement photo. Both their names on the return address:

  Erik Fiskare & Daisy Bianco

  Barbegazi

  Stevens Road

  Saint John, New Brunswick

  “You look happy,” Daisy said, grating orange zest for pepparkakor, the Swedish spice cookies.

  “I am.” Erik leaned on his elbows on the counter top, watching her, in love with his life again. “Do you think you’ll change your name?”

  “To Fiskare? Do you want me to?”

  He did, but at the same time, he respected how much investment she had in her maiden name. Thirty-five years as Daisy Bianco to her friends and loved ones. Her long stage career as Marguerite Bianco. And now Madame Bianco to her students. Erik knew the Madame was an earned honorific, not merely a French courtesy.

  “Not professionally,” he said. “I would never ask that.”

  “I actually like the sound of Madame Fiskare,” she said. “It sounds a little Russian.”

  “Just marry me,” he said, reaching to flick a bit of orange zest off her diamond. “I don’t care what you do with your name.”

  She leaned and kissed him, laughing. “Yes, you do.”

  He smiled against her face and breathed in the scent of oranges. “Stop knowing me.”

  They had three weeks off from work, then Erik was heading to Riverview with a car full of groceries and clean clothes. The engine of the old routine reluctantly turned over and coughed back to life. It chugged along, feeling old now. Reluctant and grouchy in the cold winter months. Worried about no end to the situation. Would they be living like this when they were married?

  They gritted their teeth and dealt with the separation, laughing at it, crying over it or bashing through it. Erik got his union card. His set designs were pulling excellent reviews in local papers. The dinner theater broke even then started pulling in a profit, to the point where Erik did a double-take at his bank balance one day. The euphoria died when he remembered he had to file taxes in both the United States and Canada.

  “Fucked two ways to Sunday,” he said to Will.

  “Yeah, you’re both countries’ bitch now.”

  In February, the Fredericton Playhouse called. They had just secured a $2 million grant to replace all their production equipment: sound, lighting, the works. With the new equipment, they’d be able to stage full-scale Broadway productions. The technical director was in desperate need of an assistant, preferably someone up-to-date with the latest technologies. Was Erik still interested?

  “Let me call you back,” Erik said.

  He hung up and texted Daisy: I’m coming home.

  For all his hard work and dedication at the dinner theater, Erik had been careful not to make himself too indispensable. He’d groomed his crew well and one young tech in particular was more than ready to take over at this moment’s notice.

  The dinner theater’s owner could only wish his young, exhausted friend well. Still, wanting to tie up all ends, Erik spent an insane month working in Moncton two days a week and Fredericton the other three. It was the only instance when Daisy got short with him for the hours he was clocking. And when he arrived home badly shaken one night, after nearly nodding off at the wheel, she lit into him like a dragon.

  “I didn’t get through twelve goddamn years and the last six months only to have you flip your car into a ditch,” she yelled, seizing two fists of his jacket and twisting them up toward his chin. “I will kill you if you die on me.”

  “I know,” he said, too freaked out to do anything but slide down the front door to sit on the floor, taking her with him. He put his head on his knees. “I’m sorry. I feel sick enough already, stop yelling at me.”

  “I’m not,” she cried, then clicked her teeth shut. “Yelling,” she said in her normal voice.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said to his kneecaps. “I’m so done.”

  She put her own back up against the door and exhaled heavily. “You are. I’m drawing the line now. You stay on this side.”

  He fell sideways into her lap and agreed.

  Spring takes its time coming to the Maritime Provinces, but one Sunday morning in late March was full of sunshine and promise. In only a light fleece jacket, Erik sat on the concrete slab outside Barbegazi with his big cup of tea, looking out over the water. Looking into his past and his future at the same time, leaving him in a perfect, present moment.

  The sun had sliced through the bathroom window that morning and he’d frozen with a mouthful of toothpaste, shocked at how the light glinted off the silver in the hair around his ears. Surely he wa
sn’t going that grey. He bent his head this way and that. No denying it: the stress of the past year had made its mark.

  Daisy burst out of the shed with the wheelbarrow. Crappy jeans, mud boots and a fleece. Her hair in braids under her wool hat.

  “Hello, fiancé,” she said.

  Erik raised his mug. “Hello, financier.”

  She laughed. “Damn straight.” She parked by one of the large island beds, waded in and started clearing it out with a vengeance, throwing handfuls of grasses into the wheelbarrow.

  Erik watched her, swelling with love. He was home on a perfect Sunday. Dais was doing her thing and leaving him free to unpack for good. Or he could just sit here and do nothing.

  He finished his tea and went to get his boxes of tools and supplies which had been in the garage all these months. Finally he’d set up the workbench which ran the length of the rear wall. The previous owner had been a tinkerer. And slightly OCD. Shapes for tools were outlined all along the pegboard on the wall. Erik followed precedent and put his things in the pre-designated places. For now. In time, he’d make it his own space.

  Plenty of time.

  “You in here?” Daisy called from the doors.

  “Here to stay,” he called back.

  SPRING LAMB WAS ON La Tarasque’s Easter table. Along with wedding plans.

  Francine passed the bowl of new potatoes to her daughter. “Have you thought about where you—”

  “Here,” Daisy said.

  Years ago, Joe and Francine had raised a beautiful new barn on the ridge overlooking the vineyards. Fully equipped and glossy with exposed wood, it made Bianco’s a sought-after venue for all kinds of celebrations. Caterers could use the farm’s produce and wines. For a nominal fee, Francine would do the flowers. Joe had amassed a collection of pedal tractors for younger guests. Brides and grooms often stayed in the carriage house on their wedding night.

  “How convenient for us,” Joe said, smiling. “But you—”

  “Here,” Erik said.

  “Of course, we’d love it,” Francine said. “But have you looked at other—“

  “Here,” they said.

  Joe shrugged and poured more wine into everyone’s glasses. “Here.”

  One April afternoon, Will’s father lay down for a nap and never awoke.

  Will was devastated, although he kept insisting, “If you have to go, that’s the way to go. Eat a nice lunch with your wife, lie down in your own bed and just slip away smiling.”

  But he cried hard, caught up in the arms of his mother and sisters. At the funeral home Erik watched all the Kaegers weep over the loss of their beloved joker, while Erik himself mourned one of the kindest men he’d ever known.

  A week passed in an exhausting blur of arrangements. Maurice was not only father and grandfather, but a popular and beloved professor at UNB. The line at the funeral home stretched for blocks with students past and present. The family had to extend two viewings to three. Runs were made to the airport, people needed to be shuttled here and there. Daisy covered the theater and Erik took time off from work to cover the home front.

  Finally the chaos dissolved back into a semblance of routine. Ségolène Kaeger went out to Vancouver with one of her daughters for a spell. His filial duties wound up, Will appeared at Barbegazi with a six-pack under his arm.

  “Mind if I use your dock?”

  “Go ahead,” Erik said. “You want company?”

  “I want to get drunk and contemplate this gaping hole in my life,” he said. “And I’d like to be looking at the water while I’m doing it.”

  “Take a blanket,” Daisy said, handing him one.

  He took himself out to the end of the dock where Erik and Daisy had set two Adirondack chairs and a little table.

  Erik texted Lucky. Have your husband in custody.

  She replied. Keep him safe. If he gets plowed, give him a ride or a bed. Thank you for everything. We’d be fucked without you.

  Erik kept wandering past the east windows, looking out to Will’s hunched silhouette. After one prolonged staring session, Daisy’s hand slid gently up his back. “Go,” she said. “He wants you, he just won’t say so.”

  So as the sun started to drop and turn the skies to creamsicle streaks, Erik took another six-pack and went down to the dock. He lit the citronella torches and sat in the vacant chair. Popped a beer. Clinked the neck against Will’s and they drank.

  “Dig me not smoking,” Will said. “Yet.”

  “Hand ‘em over.”

  “Bitch.” Will reached in his inside pocket and drew out a brand-new, still-sealed pack of Marlboros. “Fine, you hold them. I won’t if you won’t.”

  Erik set them by the leg of his chair. “Deal.”

  They sat in silence, drinking, watching the skies grow dark.

  “I can’t imagine doing this at eight years old,” Will said, the words slippery and thick. “How did you do it?”

  “He wasn’t dead.”

  “He was gone.”

  Erik tactfully decided not to debate the details. “I had my mom,” he said. “And I was really good at shutting down. As we all know too well.”

  Will gave a chuckled grunt.

  “Man, when that shit came out in therapy?” Erik said. “To just hold it in my hands and say out loud ‘I missed him’? I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t believe how fresh it was. I was like a little kid on the couch, bawling.”

  He went quiet. Tonight wasn’t about him.

  “Did I tell you,” Will said. “That when I was having my breakdown in Germany, my dad came?”

  Will hadn’t told Erik anything about what had happened in Germany, but it was beside the point. “Did he?” Erik said as he took Will’s empty bottle and passed him another.

  “He came for me. It was like a fucking Elton John song. Not that I ever doubted my old man loved me but he… Jesus, the next day he was on a plane. No questions. Just hold on, I’m coming, everything’s going to be all right. Flew across the ocean and stayed three weeks.”

  “It’s what you do,” Erik said. “If Jack ever made that call, you’d be on a plane too.”

  Will took a long swallow and then handed the bottle to Erik. “Cut me off. I’m done.”

  Erik pushed it back. “Play through. I’ll drive you home or you can take the guest room.”

  “Thank you,” Will said, taking another pull before setting the bottle down on the dock. He ran his hands over his head then hunched forward, elbows on knees, fingers woven tight in his hair. “Thank you for coming back. You weren’t at my wedding. You weren’t here when the kids came. But Jesus fuck, I needed you here now. Back when Lucky was in the dark and now Dad. I can’t talk about this shit with anyone else. I need you because you get it.”

  Erik put out a hand and rested it on Will’s shoulder. “I get it.”

  “Why’d you go?” Will said, his voice both hard with hurt and soft with sadness. “I mean, I know why you left Lancaster that night. Why did you stay away for good?”

  “I didn’t know any other way,” Erik said. “I was out of skills. Out of resources. It was like another shooting and I couldn’t… I didn’t know any other way to survive except to desert it. I’m sorry.”

  “I know.” Will exhaled and sprawled back in the chair, legs and arms flung wide. “I know all of this already. I’m just drunk and being morbid because I feel abandoned.”

  “I know.”

  “Check it out,” Will said, rolling up his sleeve. “Had it done this morning.” On the inside of his forearm was a new tattoo. A joker playing card, and beneath it the words Some people call me Maurice.

  “That’s awesome,” Erik said, laughing.

  “Nice, huh? Took me forever to find a joker image that didn’t look evil.”

  This prankster, in his hooded, quad-peaked cap, was holding a finger to his lips with a sly expression. A small smile within a beard quite reminiscent of Maurice Kaeger.

  “He’d love it,” Erik said.

  W
ill rolled his sleeve down, then pointed down the lake’s shore to the property next door. “See that house?”

  “I see that house every day, dumbass,” Erik said. It was a pretty Dutch colonial with an impressive deck facing the lake.

  “It’s coming up for sale,” Will said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the owner is a private client of my wife’s. And my wife, God love her, has been on a mission of ingratiating herself to said client. And I think it worked because she’s made an offer.”

  “Who made an offer?” Erik said. “The owner or Lucky?”

  “The owner offered to Lucky to make an offer.”

  Erik burst out laughing. “Dude, you are lit.”

  Will smiled. “The point being,” he said with careful enunciation. “How do you feel about me maybe being your neighbor? Not to get too ahead of the game, but for shits and giggles let’s say it happened.”

  “You can afford it?”

  “Maurice made sure of that.”

  “Really?”

  “I saw his lawyer before I went to the tattoo parlor.”

  Erik twisted around, surveying the distance between the houses. “Would you be able to see my bedroom window from yours?”

  “Oh, hell yeah.”

  Erik sat back. “How could I refuse?”

  They sat in the quiet, listening to the lake lap against the dock posts and the song of the spring peepers, called tinkletoes in New Brunswick.

  “Is it weird?” Will said. “The four of us?”

  “What about us?”

  “Wanting to live close together.”

  “No.”

  “It can’t be, right? We need each other. I mean, don’t tell me in the entire history of mankind, there’s never been a friendship like ours. We’re not weird. We’re probably nothing but typical.”

  Erik gazed at the vista opening before him: his best friend living yards, not miles away. Nights out on the dock like this. Dinners on Barbegazi’s screened-in porch if he ever got around to building it. The Kaeger kids running between the houses. Knowing if one family went away, the other would keep an eye on things. Help always at hand.