Here to Stay

by Suanne Laqueur

  He crossed the gravel drive toward the house. He heard the soft whirring click of a camera shutter but didn’t look around to see where it came from. His eyes were only on the porch. He was two steps up the flagstone path between the garden beds when the front door opened. He stopped. Stood surrounded by wild flowers and dragonflies. He waited, drawing in his breath.

  Daisy came out.

  The breath caught tight in Erik’s lungs.

  She came down the steps, a bit of her skirt in her hand, a bouquet of daisies in the other.

  “Well, here you are,” she said.

  The air chugged out of Erik’s chest as his mouth began to curve up.

  “Here I am,” he said.

  Her dress was slim and simple. Her shoulders gorgeous in its halter top. Her hair pulled back in a low bun and from it flowed her veil, tumbling like froth over the clean lines of her skirt. As she came along the path through the flowers, her smile was trembling and her eyes shone a blue-green shade he’d never seen before.

  Erik’s gaze blurred. His feet took him forward to close the gap, his arms reaching. Her arm and its bouquet went around his shoulders. Her other hand wrapped her veil around them. He picked her up, turning in a slow circle until the veil wrapped itself around their legs as well.

  “Will you marry me,” he whispered.

  She nodded against his neck. “Today.”

  The photographer caught it beautifully, and the picture of them wound up in white against a bright tapestry of wildflowers would forever hang over the fireplace at Barbegazi.

  Cool cross-breezes blew through the big barn, yet within it was warm with love and music. At the center of every table was a round sphere vase filled with daisies. A bit of raffia wound around the rim, off which hung a fish cut out of tin.

  The band wound up its first set, and as guests drifted back to their tables, Will went up to the lead singer and took the microphone. Through the humming din came a single clink of a fork against a glass. Followed by another. It swelled into a tinkling chorus and broke apart when Erik and Daisy kissed.

  “Good evening,” Will said. A squeal of feedback and scattered laughter as Jacy began crawling across the empty dance floor, showing her ruffled butt. She stopped at her father’s feet and held up her arms. More laughter as she shook her head at Lucky’s beckoning. Will picked her up and tried to negotiate the mic, his notes and his champagne glass. “Oh screw it,” he said, and tossed the notes aside. “Welcome to life. I’ll improvise.”

  Loud applause. Jacy clapped her hands and blew kisses.

  “Most everyone knows I had a front row seat when Daisy and Erik were falling in love,” Will said. “People would always ask me… When Dais and I partnered onstage, people would ask, ‘What are you thinking up there with her? I mean, do you secretly love her? Do you have a story going in your head? What is that chemistry, what’s behind it, what’s the secret?’

  “And… First of all, anyone who knows me, knows I don’t keep love a secret. Second, I only know two men in the world who love Dais more than I do. One’s her father and—”

  Applause cut him off. Daisy stood up, touched her fingers to her mouth and then flung them out to Joe. Joe caught the air with both fists and pulled them to his heart.

  “And the other man,” Will said. “The other is her husband over there.”

  Louder applause. Erik stood up and planted one on his bride and the applause turned to shouting.

  “It’s so nice I have to say it twice. Her husband. And… What, honey?” Jacy was taking Will’s face and turning it firmly to her so she could kiss him.

  More laughter as Will hitched Jacy higher on his shoulder. “So the short answer to all those questions about my partnership with Daisy is indeed love. But love is also the longer answer. Because Erik…”

  His voice trailed off and the barn grew quiet and still. “Erik’s my best friend,” he said. “We throw those words around casually. Oh, sure, you’re my best friend. But what does it mean? To me, it’s the friend who makes you your best. Who makes the best come out in you. Dais made me the best dancer I could be, Erik made me the best man I could be. See what I did there?”

  The laughter was soft. All around the tables people reached for hands, drew children onto laps, and looked smiling at each other. Jacy laid her head on Will’s shoulder.

  “When your best friends are in love, it becomes inspiration. And while everyone knows I had a front row seat when Dais and Erik were falling in love, not many people know I took everything I saw and put it into my dancing. Our best performances together were from me being not a partner, but a mirror.” Will looked around, chewing on a bottom lip. “And now you’re all looking at me like I’m nuts. Oh, wait, you’re crying? Francine, you’re crying. That’s good.”

  Francine waved her hands, covered her tear-stained face, then lifted it out and blew Will a kiss. Jacy blew one back.

  “I’ll wrap this up,” Will said, laughing. “Love can bring out the best and worst in us. We’ve all been a jackass for love. But love makes us do amazing things. And if love drives us away, love is what brings us back. Love makes us pick up the phone. Love makes us listen. Love makes us say I’m sorry. Love makes us forgive. Love makes us better. Love makes us our best. And love makes more love…and…I forgot where I was going with this. Forget it. I’ll be in the corner making love, with a front row seat to Daisy and Erik. Raise your glass. I lost my glass. Waiter?”

  A new flute was rushed into his hand. “Raise your glass,” Will said, meeting Erik’s eyes. “And toast to my best friends. To the union of fishes and daisies. To love.”

  Glasses in hands rose up, a cloud of twinkling golden balloons. “To love.”

  After the reception, they rode from the barn to the carriage house on a tandem bicycle. Daisy skillfully tucked up her dress’s long skirt, revealing white Converse sneakers. A sign lettered JUST (STYLISHLY) MARRIED was tacked to the rear seat. With a ring of the bike’s bell they were off, the guests lining the road on either side, sparklers in hand and singing “Daisy Bell.” The picture the photographer caught would live on top of the upright piano at Barbegazi.

  “Hello, wife,” Erik said as they braked to a stop.

  “Hello, husband.”

  He got off and held the bike still while she dismounted, then leaned it up against the carriage house wall. He pulled her into his arms and they kissed. His hands ran down her back, along the length of smooth satin. Then a little further and they stopped.

  “What are you wearing under here?”

  “Not a damn thing,” she said, running her finger along his bottom lip.

  “Really?”

  She tossed her head back a little. “Never wear panties to a party. Have I taught you nothing?”

  He looked back at the people lining the road, the last sparklers fizzing out. “Is everyone going home now?”

  “Everyone? No,” she said. “Private after-party on the porch. Panties optional.”

  He looked back at her, ran his hand along her cheek. “Did I tell you that you look beautiful?”

  She blinked at him and her smile turned down a little. “Not in the last five minutes.”

  He slid his hand around the back of her neck. “You look beautiful,” he whispered against her mouth. He kissed her. Kissed her again. Slower. Her mouth opened to his. Her hands came up to his face. Happiness pulled his chest apart and started stirring things below the belt.

  “Get a room,” someone bellowed from up the road.

  “I’d love to,” Erik muttered.

  “You will,” she said, taking his hand and starting toward the house. “All night long. Or for the rest of your life, whichever comes first.”

  “You come first,” he said, bringing the back of her ringed fingers up to his lips.

  Will sent one last text: Cock ring is a little too snug. Next time get me the extra-large.

  Erik replied. Sorry. I got myself the extra-large and figured you were one size down.

  Fuck you.


  Can’t, I’m married. But thanks for asking.

  Don’t call me.

  Believe me, tonight? I won’t.

  “YOU LIKE BEETS?” Francine said, smiling.

  Erik shrugged a shoulder and made one corner of his mouth smile back. He didn’t outright hate beets, but they weren’t what he’d go for on the buffet line. Still, he’d learned long ago Francine treated picky eaters over the age of five as a personal challenge. Saying you didn’t like something was a surefire way to find a boatload of it on your plate later.

  “I like anything you make,” he said. Which was the truth. Francine could make a bundle of sticks taste good. With unfeigned interest, Erik watched her nature-dyed fingers generously salt and pepper the glistening chunks of red and golden beets.

  She reached to her knife block and plucked out her kitchen shears. “Herb garden,” she said. “Cut me a big handful of thyme. The lemon kind. You know what it is?”

  “I know,” Erik said, and shouldered out the screen door with the odd sense of importance he always felt when Francine entrusted him with a kitchen chore.

  After a budget honeymoon in Key West—frequent flier miles and the use of Christine and Fred’s condo—the newlyweds came back to La Tarasque for two weeks.

  “You’re supposed to be on vacation,” Francine said, protesting as Daisy and Erik pulled on boots and gloves, picked up hoes and rakes and marched into farm life.

  “I love it here,” Erik said. “It is a vacation.”

  “When you don’t have to do it, you love it,” Joe said.

  True, they weren’t up at rooster crow and heading out to the fields. They slept in and shagged and got up when it suited them. Then they headed for the fields and were swept up in the buzzing activity of farm and orchard.

  The hard, outdoor work made Erik hungry. Hungry as the summer he was fifteen and had grown four inches overnight. When his young bones ached and his stomach was a constant gnawing knot of hunger. He could feel himself growing, stretching and arranging and shoving things around to make room.

  He remembered fifteen being an insatiable year of extremes. He was exhausted, starving, needing, wanting, stretched from one end of his limited universe to the other. A quivering bundle of muscle and nerve, a moody hair-trigger, a speechless porcupine of desires. He wanted his mother then suffocated in her arms. He pushed her away so she would track him down. Girls irritated him to distraction. He fled from their giggling double talk and passive aggressive tactics and then lay awake in the dark of his room, utterly consumed. Hard and frustrated with thoughts of skin and mouths and kissing and sex. And food. Never enough food.

  “Good appetite,” Francine said, beaming at this man-boy as she filled his plate with more roasted beets.

  He liked the beets. He liked growing them and being the “to” in farm-to-table. He knew what lemon thyme was, just as he knew a fresh duck egg had a bright orange yolk and an almost powdery shell. He knew you let the garden dictate what was for lunch or dinner, and La Tarasque in late summer was a benevolent despot. Poached eggs laid half an hour before. Tomatoes still warm from the sun. String beans no bigger than matchsticks. Corn that barely needed a kiss of boiling water. Potatoes dug and scrubbed, then roasted crisp outside and velvet inside. Meatless days passed in simple food of the earth with no violence attached. And then a local cattle farm would butcher and Erik would find himself devouring perfectly-grilled steak and drinking the bloody pan juices like a vampire.

  “Good appetite,” Daisy whispered in the dark as he took her again and again, his plate un-fillable. Consumed with a different hunger. Marriage was sweet, savory and spicy on his tongue and he couldn’t get enough. Couldn’t sate the desire to sink into her body and gorge on her attention. To stuff the lost years down his throat and feast on what had been returned to him.

  Forever.

  He loved his wife. He ate. He cleared the table then he shouldered out the screen door and went back to whatever task was allotted him. He found the work on the farm grounding. A connection to a simpler way of life. It was good work. Hard work, but everything was hard. Erik often paused and looked around at the property, wondering if maybe it were time for a different kind of hard.

  Watering and weeding and harvesting, he daydreamed. Imagined a time when Dais would retire, hang up her pointe shoes entirely and she and Erik would move down here to Pennsylvania and slowly take over La Tarasque. He thought how it would be different though, if they had children.

  He admitted it freely: whether here or in Canada, being just a couple allowed them to live an indulgent existence. Long hours of uninterrupted work or play. Bedtimes negotiable or ignored. Potato chips and beer for dinner. Sex wherever they felt like dropping their pants. No stopping to feed, change or tend to others. Just them and what they wanted when they wanted it.

  I just want us.

  I want her to myself.

  I want to be the center of her universe and not share her with anyone.

  Ever.

  But little moments kept intruding on the greedy reverie. Sitting around the table with Joe and Francine, Erik would look for a high chair. Or stare at Francine’s empty lap. Or look at Joe with a dish towel thrown over his shoulder and think it ought to be a baby.

  I want a family. Someday.

  We can’t wait too long.

  But I want her to myself.

  Back and forth between the two wants he was volleyed like a ball.

  I want so much.

  I want everything and I wasted so many years.

  I want my youth back.

  I hate what I did.

  I want.

  THEY CAME HOME TO Barbegazi and slipped into their routine. The seasons turned, birthdays and holidays passed. Then came the cold, dark months of early winter.

  Talk of children was casual and hypothetical. Couched in somedays, whens and ifs. Truth was, in watching and listening to the men closest to him who were parents, Erik felt in no burning rush to join the club. Pete Fiskare was out of his mind with worry over his son Aaron, whose daily struggles with dyslexia and ADHD were a never-ending source of anxiety. His daughter Valerie, on the other hand, was a Renaissance woman of effortless talents and intelligence, yet she was devoted to being a world-class underachiever.

  “Aaron wants the world,” Pete said. “Val’s pursuing a degree in bare minimum. I want to swathe him in bubble wrap and throw her out the window.”

  Next door, Will and Lucky were occupied with finding a speech therapist for little Sara.

  “Speech therapist?” Erik said. “She never stops talking.”

  “I know,” Will said, his eyes shadowed with worry. “But she’s not saying anything.”

  At her kindergarten registration, questions were raised about “developmental milestones” and now the Kaegers were running around getting her evaluated. Meanwhile, Jack’s second-grade class was having a bullying issue and Jack was a nervous wreck, often flat-out refusing to go to school.

  Lurking behind the promise of day-to-day logistical stress, out beyond the occasional health alarms, the pressing emotional issues and the complex social dramas, was the most sinister threat of all: the phone call.

  Joe and Francine, Maurice and Ségolène, Christine and Fred and even Judy Dare—they all got The Call.

  There’s been an incident.

  Your child was involved.

  You need to come.

  Erik observed, gathering intelligence and analyzing hard truths: to become a parent was to go around with your heart flayed open for the rest of your life. Moving the earth and giving your best for your kids, with no guarantee your best would be enough to keep them safe.

  Fuck this, his genes thought. Me, Dais and the cat. That’s enough.

  Except it wasn’t.

  He chewed at it through the winter, more and more conscious he was chasing down forty now.

  “You’ll know, mon pote,” Joe said.

  “You’ll know,” Fred said. “It’s like love. It sneaks up
on you.”

  It’s just one of those things, Mike Pettitte texted in one of their frequent electronic exchanges. You do it because you know.

  “Dude, you’ll just know,” Will said.

  “I know I’ll know,” Erik said to them all.

  One March morning, they awoke to three feet of snow with more coming down. The roads closed and a bank holiday was upon them. Will and Erik took Jack and Sara outside to build a fort. They fought a merciless snowball war and then trooped back into Barbegazi’s kitchen, numb-fingered and runny-nosed and ravenous. Lucky and Daisy were baking. The tea kettle sang. They bellied up to the kitchen table and dug into the bread and treats.

  Jacy woke up from her nap and came stumbling in, her blonde curls smashed flat along one side of her head, a blanket dragged behind. She climbed into Daisy’s lap and put her thumb in her mouth. Daisy kissed the tousled head and reached arms around to butter a slice of bread. Jacy closed her eyes and rested her temple at the V of Daisy’s sweater.

  Erik stared, his mug frozen halfway to his mouth.

  Daisy kept the child perfectly balanced in her lap as she poured and sliced and arranged for the others, laughing and talking. She siphoned some of her tea into a clean mug and topped it off with milk. Then held the cup for Jacy to sip. Buttered another piece of bread. Like a trusting newborn bird the little girl accepted food and drink, then laid her head against Daisy again.

  Erik stared.

  Jacy caught his penetrating gaze, smiled around her thumb then reached out her arms.

  “Careful, honey,” Daisy said, shifting a leg to balance her. “What do you want, you want Uncle Erik?”

  Jacy never wanted him. Now her arms reached further across the gap. Erik took her on his lap. She burrowed into his chest, her little fingers curling around his shirt cuff, playing with the buttons.

  He was steel. Her head was a magnet. Slowly his chin lowered and he inhaled the smell of her hair. Powder. Sleep. An indescribable sweetness. His heart pounded slow and steady against the plump, warm weight in his lap.

  The overhead lamp splashed a circle of gold across the feast. Steam rose from tea mugs, weaving with the talk and chatter to make a wreath around the two families. Jack’s arms crossed around Will’s neck from behind, chin on his father’s shoulder. Will’s hand laced carelessly with Lucky’s on the table. Sara rocked in Lucky’s lap, eating a cookie. Daisy poured and sliced and fed. Her hands busy. Her lap empty.