“We thought we lost him for sure,” the man says. “Robo. What were you thinking?” He takes out a leash and snaps it on the dog, who turns to Elise, as if in apology.
“Beautiful dog,” says Elise, and then, struggling to keep her voice kind, “I’m so glad I found you guys. I didn’t know what to do with him.”
“Thank you,” the woman says, but with a tone of suspicion.
The man is less perceptive. “Yeah, we owe you. Ever since our daughter left for college, Robo here is pretty much our baby.”
“What kind of dog is he?”
“Mutt,” the man says. “He just showed up at our house one day, two years ago, starving.”
So I could have kept him, Elise thinks. Shit. She feels like a sucker. Ro whines. I’ve got to get out of here, Elise thinks, or I’ll kidnap that dog.
“You guys have a good day,” she says, heading to the car. On the drive back to the bed-and-breakfast, Elise considers her needs, what they might be. Is it a dog? Would a canine companion rein her in? Sometimes she fears that if someone, or something, doesn’t curb her new inclinations soon, she’ll head off the rails: wind up as a bartender in Vegas or one of those permanent backpackers she and Chris always made fun of in European airports: dreadlocks, wrinkled, sun-drenched skin, empty eyes.
* * *
Eight thousand miles apart from each other, en route to the Bombay airport, and walking through a small mountain town after lunch, Chris and Elise are deeply shaken by similar sights, though neither will ever think to mention it to the other: they each encounter a corpse. Chris sees a Hindu funeral: mourners, marigolds, the dead body being carried through the street. He glimpses the scene through his car window, shudders, and goes back to his yellow legal pad, where he is scrawling notes for an upcoming meeting with his boss, apprising him of the Bombay trip. On Main Street, after a chicken salad sandwich at a local café, walking down the street, Elise sees a woman lying on the sidewalk whose torso and lower body are covered in a sheet. There is a trickle of blood somewhere on her face. Later, Elise will not be able to recall where the blood was—at the corner of the mouth? On the forehead? Medics surround the woman, and beyond them, a scattered crowd of gawkers, half tourist, half local.
For some reason, Elise is certain that it is a suicide. The choice to kill herself radiates from the woman like the choice to marry coming from a bride. Elise does not cross the street to avoid the woman, but she does not look at the body as she passes the scene, either. No one in the horrified crowd is crying, only whispering. Elise walks back to her car in a trance. After seeing the dead woman, she thinks, I should want to go home, hold Leah tight, call Chris. But I don’t.
She pulls off the road at a sign for a lake, and wanders to the shore. Clouds have gathered and it is chilly, too late for swimming. Again, she curses herself for giving Ro back. She settles into the sand. Her own mother’s duties were clear. Across the lake, a dog barks. Elise does not know how to be a mother without putting on a straitjacket. A door slams. The darkness deepens. How to be so giving, every goddamn day. Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. Who am I to cut myself loose? What have I done to deserve that? Across the lake, light flickers on inside a house. Dinnertime.
Chris, sitting in 2A of a Northwest flight, removes a James Patterson novel from his briefcase and sips his gin and tonic. His tough-guy act has already faded; he felt it seeping away this morning, and by the time he got to the airport he was spent and nice again; he tipped the driver too much and didn’t cut anyone in line at the ticket counter, didn’t even protest when others cut him. He is lucky, he knows. There is no reason to demand anything from the world beyond that. It could scare the grace away. He pictures Elise and Leah, at the dinner table, Elise spooning mashed peas into Leah’s mouth.
Elise lies on the beach until the stars come out and she is shivering.
Leah wails in her crib. Even after Becky comes in to sing her to sleep, Leah is inconsolable: her bear has fallen below the bed.
* * *
He gets home before she does. The house is silent. He calls out both their names as the taxi drives away, knowing by the empty garage that they’re not there. But where are they? Why can’t she ever leave a note? He feels insecure; he wanted to hug both of them, to swirl Leah around, to hear her giggle. He wanted Elise to milk out all the stories about India from him, so that he could understand his trip better, feel her quiet sympathy. But instead it will be Chinese takeout and college basketball games. It’s the Sweet Sixteen, so it could be worse.
Elise eases in around ten. She looks caught. “You’re here!” she says to Chris. “I thought you were getting in tomorrow.”
“Where’s Leah?” Chris asks.
“Babysitter’s,” Elise says offhandedly.
“But if you’re here—”
“Shhh,” Elise says. “You’ve had a long trip.” And she brings him up to bed.
Her hunger makes him shy and despondent. She’s met someone. He’s sure. But his body reacts, almost against his will, and he finds himself drawn to this new, unfaithful Elise, even as he is gasping, she is gasping, and after he comes he doesn’t feel angry, just small and in need of protection.
She, too. They curl together like the stuffed animals that Leah arranges in her bed each night.
“Did you have a good trip?” Elise finally asks.
“Yes.” It’s hard for Chris to keep his voice from sounding bitter.
“I did too,” Elise says.
A pause, as Chris’s mind races. “What do you mean, you did too?”
Elise’s laugh is high, nervous, the way she used to laugh when she was speaking German. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’ve been going on trips as well, when you go away. I don’t know why. Just for the hell of it.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes. Not with Leah.” She hesitates and then adds: “But not with anyone else, either.”
Silence again, and then her voice, horribly kind: “Is that what you were worried about?”
He doesn’t reply. He wishes the light were on. Isn’t it easier for her to lie in the dark?
“I need it right now. I don’t know why.” She sounds almost angry.
“Why?” he asks, stupidly.
But she responds. “It has to do with being back here, in the States—”
“I thought you wanted to come back!”
“I do! These trips, short travels—it’s a good thing. I think it’s a good thing.”
“What about Leah?”
“She stays with Becky.”
“Great,” Chris says, his voice flat, furious.
They lie in the dark, each pricked by the stony silence of the other, throats tight with resentment and a creeping fear. Chris has the feeling he used to get in games his sophomore year at UGA, their worst season. Inevitably, a moment would arrive in the third or fourth quarter when it was clear their team was going to lose, that they would never make up the ten-point difference. Watching the clock wind down, the shots fall short.
“I don’t know, lately I just feel like traveling. Exploring. Like you,” Elise says, “with your business trips.”
“Like me? What do you think I do when I travel? Hang out? Go to the beach? I’m working my ass off, Elise. For us. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but it’s definitely not for us, and it’s certainly not for Leah.”
Too far. Elise turns her back to him, draws the covers over her like chain mail.
“Elise—”
“Look, you obviously don’t understand. So there’s no point staying up talking about it. I’m tired. Good night.”
She’s right. He doesn’t get it. He feels very, very tired and helpless, like when his calf died right before the county fair. His mother told him about it in the morning. Lucky was gone before Chris could see him one last time. That was the worst thing about it.
“Hold me?” he asks. He hates the strangled tone in his voice, hates himself for asking anything of her now. Wimp,
he hears in his head: from his father, from his coach, from that Singaporean Indian jerk on the park bench in Bombay.
But the request softens Elise. She turns to him and spoons his back, her small breasts pressed flat against his skin, both of their bodies still moist.
“Good night,” she says again after a while, more gently.
“Good night.”
He can’t sleep, of course. Typical jet lag—you enter the point of pure weariness and stay there, as if it were a cruising altitude. His thoughts are in several time zones, feverish. He keeps seeing the Indian hotel attendant with the flowers, bringing him good news. He pictures Elise on her “trips” with a shadowy stranger, and he tosses in bed, trying to erase the stranger from his thoughts, wanting to trust Elise, telling himself that he is lucky to be married to someone so independent. But by the time he falls asleep, at six a.m., as the neighbors’ sprinklers go on and dogs are being taken out for early walks, luck seems like its reverse, and he desperately wants something dire to happen, to bring them back together.
* * *
Two weeks later, sitting down at breakfast, Elise tries to coax Leah to eat her Cheerios. Chris has chosen to take off the morning from work. Wearing a UGA Bulldogs T-shirt and boxers, he luxuriates in this domestic scene. Finally Leah has swallowed enough cereal to satisfy Elise, and she is permitted to go watch Sesame Street in the living room. Elise and Chris turn to each other with strange, secretive expressions.
“What?” Elise asks.
“What?” says Chris.
“You go first,” Elise says.
“No, you.”
“I’m pregnant again,” Elise says after a long pause, looking out the window. “Let’s hope your news is better.”
Chris decides to ignore this last sentiment and lifts her up off her feet, swings her around, inadvertently banging her ankle on the kitchen counter. “That’s incredible,” he says. “I’m so happy to hear it.” He looks at her, concerned. “How about you?”
“Sure,” she says, rubbing her ankle. “I just need some time to get used to it.” Something in her drains away as she says this. Earlier that morning, making coffee, she had contemplated a new kind of field trip: to the gynecologist’s office, to get an abortion, without telling Chris. He would never agree to it, she knows. She forces a smile and allows herself to admit that she is, somewhere, excited about a second child.
“What’s your news?” she asks.
“England.” Chris says. “I’ve been promoted. They want me in London as soon as Jason Raleigh retires.”
Morning, Broken
Singapore, October 1996
Elise Kriegstein: 42, mother
Chris Kriegstein: 42, father
Leah Kriegstein: 15, elder daughter
Sophie Kriegstein: 13, younger daughter
James Alderman: 45, therapist
Setting: Therapist’s office in downtown Singapore. Neutral hues. A few framed watercolors on the wall depict local scenes with a distinctly colonial vibe, including a traditional “black and white” villa (the former residences of British civil servants), the Raffles hotel, and one amateurish botanical print of a Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid. Chris and Elise are seated on opposite ends of a camel-colored couch. Elise is scribbling something in a notebook; Chris is shuffling through papers, reviewing notes for an upcoming meeting. Leah is sitting on an overstuffed chocolate leather chair to their left, with a blanket over her goose-bumped knees (like most interior spaces in Singapore, the air-conditioning is going full blast). Sophie is perched on an office chair with wheels. The therapist is nowhere to be seen.
Sophie swivels around in the office chair, going faster and faster. There is something slightly wild and desperate about her movements, like those of a much younger child misbehaving to gain adult attention. But none of the other Kriegsteins react. Leah, in stark contrast to Sophie, is sitting incredibly still, holding herself tightly, so tightly she is unconsciously pinching her upper arms with her fingernails. The family’s silence is interrupted by the hurried entry of a slightly portly British therapist in a light blue shirt and a mint green sweater vest, who looks badly sunburned.
Therapist: Thank you all for waiting. Apologies on my part for the interruption—a client was confused. Thought it was Wednesday.
(Opens his notebook, composes himself.)
Well, let’s not waste any more time, shall we?
(Pause in which none of the Kriesgsteins speak. Therapist glances around, trying to gauge the mood.)
Let’s continue where we left off before the doorbell rang. Elise, you had just brought up the subject of your pregnancy with Sophie and the family’s move to England three years later. I would like to hear a bit more now from Leah about that time. Leah. What would you call your…most salient memories of England? You would have been five at that time, correct?
Leah (guarded): Yes, that’s right. You mean, what can I remember?
Therapist: Precisely.
Leah (considers the question for a beat): Not much. The raspberry bush out back. The plum tree. Lavender everywhere, leaning over sidewalks. Liverwurst. Ribena. Picnics with taramasolata. Pizza Express.
Elise: And what about your friends? Edith Norrell? Nigel Slater?
Leah: Nigel Slater? Mom, that’s the famous cook. I obviously wasn’t friends with him.
Elise: Nigel Saunders. That’s who I meant.
Leah: No, I don’t remember them. I remember trees in bloom in the park, and learning to read.
Therapist: Learning to read?
Leah: I kept mispronouncing “island” as “iz-land.” And fish and chips. And…the feeling.
Therapist: Of?
Leah: Of living in England.
Therapist: And what are your memories of Sophie from that time? How do you think she liked it there?
Sophie (jumping in): I can’t remember England at all.
The therapist does not react to Sophie’s response but continues waiting on Leah, intent on her answer. Oddly, his manner is not that of a therapist ignoring a client who has spoken out of turn (as Sophie just has), but rather that of someone who has not heard the client at all. It becomes apparent that Sophie’s presence is invisible to everyone else in the room, and her voice is equally undetectable.
Leah: My memories of Sophie? (Blanches.) I don’t know how she liked it there.
Sophie: I was just a baby, really.
Leah (voice overlapping): She was just a baby, really.
At the coincidence of their having said the same thing at the same time, Sophie looks at Leah in joyful astonishment and laughs out loud.
Sophie (shouting): Jinx! Personal jinx! One, two, three, four, five!
At Leah’s continued silence, Sophie rises from her chair, suddenly looking much older, graver, and goes to her sister, puts her arms around her neck, leaning her cheek against Leah’s. It is a consoling, sisterly gesture, yet one that Sophie never would have performed when she was alive: it is the gesture from one adult sister to another. At Sophie’s touch, tears begin flowing silently from Leah’s eyes.
Therapist: What is it?
Leah shrugs a grumpy teenager shrug, furious that her emotions are on such gaudy display for her parents and the therapist. Her voice, when she speaks, is heavy with sarcasm.
Leah: “What is it?” What do you think? Why do you think we’re sitting here? Because we miss London or Philadelphia or Atlanta? No. We’re here because Sophie’s dead. Or, to be more precise, that’s why they’re here (gesturing at Chris and Elise). I’m here because they made me come.
Sophie, sensing that her touch is overwhelming Leah, withdraws slowly and goes back to her chair. Leah shivers at Sophie’s departure and draws the blanket around her shoulders, calming herself. She looks out the window. Her face goes numb, distant.
Therapist (turns to Elise): What do you remember of the girls in England?
Elise (eager to speak, to smooth over the awkward silence): That’s where Sophie refused to wear anything but dresses. Every da
y. She would throw a fit if we tried to put her in overalls. And then, two years later, as soon as we moved to Atlanta, she was a tomboy who would have thrown every last dress in the trash if I’d let her. Those beautiful Laura Ashley patterns…
Sophie (looking at Elise): I can’t remember…
Elise: That’s where they both learned to ride a bike. Sophie nailed it in two seconds. And Leah, you took a lot longer, but you never gave up. You just picked yourself up again, and—
Leah (still looking out the window, her voice cold): I get it. I lacked coordination. I wasn’t “a natural.”
Elise: It was a compliment about being persistent, for God’s sake!
Chris (nearly growling, but with a note of pleading): Leah, come on.
Therapist: Chris, what do you remember of England?
Chris: The rain. My boss—he was a real asshole. Jordan Bark.
Sophie (looking around with a wide grin): Whoa! I can’t believe he said the A word!
Elise: Chris—please.
Leah: Mom, after everything we’ve been through in the last six months, I think I can handle a little swearing. In fact, I think it’s a good idea. (Turns to therapist.) How do I remember England? How do I remember Sophie there? I remember it, and all of us, as pre-fucked. As opposed to now. As opposed to all of us now being profoundly fucked.
Elise and Chris (in one, horrified voice): Leah!
Meanwhile, Sophie is laughing her head off at Leah’s display of rebellion—for any thirteen-year-old, even a dead one, hearing someone swear, particularly her straitlaced older sister, is hilarious.
Therapist (obviously made nervous by Leah’s dangerous mood): Elise, you haven’t mentioned which memories from London stand out to you in particular, aside from what you remember of Sophie and Leah there—
Elise (glares once more at Leah before speaking): Where do I start? England always felt right, even when it was raining, even when the woman at Harrods snubbed me because of my American accent. I was worried that I wouldn’t like London as much the second time, but instead it was even better. I was working part-time at a health food store. I was ecstatic. People assumed it was because I was American, the cheerfulness. They should have seen me on my worst days in Philadelphia.
Home Leave: A Novel Page 8