You Were Here

by Gian Sardar

  Hands on the keyboard, she pauses for just a moment and then types his first name. Then the last—how to spell? Ballantine. Ballentine. Ballintine. Ballantyne. She closes her eyes and types, her fingers selecting the first spelling for her. A slew of images come up, faces from today and yesterday and years and years ago, insurance salesmen and teachers and a man in the Navy and someone with spectacles. She scrolls down the page, not sure what she’s looking for. Could she search by date? She’s about to do this, but then stops.

  Right there. A face. Dark hair, a strong jaw, heart-racingly handsome. Intense. More than anything, it’s the intensity about him that makes her feel spent, unnerved, as if her gaze is returned and he, too, is studying her. But there’s no name, just an image. This might not even be him, just a man she’s drawn to. In a way she doesn’t want to know. Wants to leave him here, anonymous, so in her mind he can always be William Ballantine. Ridiculous, she thinks, to protect an idea of someone you’ve never met. Just look.

  At last she clicks on the picture and for a moment there’s nothing, as if the power has been flipped, the screen black, though around her, lights blaze. A pulse and there he is, larger than before, staring at her, steady. A slight five o’clock shadow—she can almost feel the bristle on his cheek.

  She looks at his name: William S. Ballantine, from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  His obituary.

  At once her skin chills. Someone, she understands, is watching her. She looks up, but the window before her reflects only the room. Her own face stares back. Whatever it is must be kept at bay by the light, but can see her plain as day. Quickly she forces herself to stand and pulls the chain of the lamp, dousing the room in darkness, her steps hurried, the weight of someone’s stare whooshing behind her, focused and intent.

  6

  Then

  STANDING IN THE BEDROOM WINDOW, Claire looks into her neighbor’s yard. Her friend Edith and her children live there, Dorothy and Teddy. While Teddy picks flowers and weeds, Dorothy plays with a large marble, attempting to roll it toward a glass vase set in the middle of the garden path. The arrangement within the vase is ungainly, an explosion of vegetation, but when Edith appears, she beams at the creation as if it were carved in ivory. Claire loves Edith, and in the last two years Edith has become her closest friend, a woman who would stand upon an etiquette book if it allowed her to see something she shouldn’t.

  She watches as Edith shows her wrist to the children, who quickly run to her side. At the base of her thumb is a monarch butterfly, and even from her second-story perch Claire can see the wings unfold and refold, unfold and refold. Last summer Claire watched as the weather warmed and Edith and her children searched beneath milkweed leaves in their yard and at the lake’s edge, hunting for eggs and tiny striped caterpillars. Everything that’s found is brought into Edith’s parlor, kept in a large screened container, clippings of milkweed sprouting from crystal vases. Claire knows that this one upon Edith’s wrist is feeling the sun for the first time. Twenty-four hours after they hatch, Edith once told her, and then I let them out. Then they need to eat. Though she added that in nature the time affords them the chance to find a nectar source, Claire preferred to think of it as a break—all that work they’ve done, the skin-splitting, magnificent change, and for one day they are simply able to exist, to take in the world with new eyes. She’s thinking of this when suddenly the butterfly on Edith’s wrist lifts into the air, wobbly at first, unsure of its flight, then soaring on a breeze. The children clap as it sails above the rooftop.

  Claire turns from the window. She won’t stay upstairs by herself, not if she can help it. The second William leaves, the house goes silent, as if he were the sole reason it was warm and welcoming, and now that he’s gone, it lies still and sullen and cold till his return. It’s like a living creature, Claire thinks as she makes her way down to her studio, a big unwieldy creature with deep aches and groans and a preference for one particular owner. Sleeping alone is the worst, because though she falls asleep easily, the hours at the end of the night come loose, unhooked by little sounds and distant noises, and for untold minutes she’ll lie there, praying for the sun to rise, trying not to let her mind wander to the tunnel that starts just two floors below. If she thinks of that, the noises she hears clutch at her breath, taunting, until she feels the tunnel, humid and pounding.

  It’s silly, she knows, to be afraid of a tunnel. Only once has she gone in there, and that was when William was “introducing” her to the house, when she’d first moved in. Roots sprouted like claws into damp air, catching your hair or scraping your arm. And though both ends of the tunnel are now locked, the sheer existence of it unnerves her, like a man perched in a chair beside you, watching as you sleep.

  It was months before she figured it out—the fear of the tunnel, the instinctive terror that went back years and years to an instance she’s told no one, as it really seemed like nothing to tell. Claire’s family did not start off as William’s had; the rise to wealth was made not by previous generations, but rather by her own father. She was five when her parents bought a house they could barely afford, a house they would grow into, her mother used to say, which really meant there was shopping in her future. A majestic Tudor with a round picture window on the second floor. Up and down the street, velvet curtains opened and closed as her family arrived, pale faces peering from windows. Her mother, Charlotte, wore her best dress for the occasion and made wide, swooping motions with her arms, trilling instructions into the gray afternoon like someone orchestrating happiness. Off to the side was Virginia, Claire’s older sister, on a blanket on the lawn, writing a letter to a friend in her tight, perfect cursive.

  At one point, Claire followed her father inside the house, up the dark stairs, and through the hall. What she’d wanted was to see the picture window. The glass looked like candy, the hardened pieces of sugar bark her grandmother made that turned her tongue colors and dyed her fingertips, and she’d wanted to touch it, to see if it was sticky. So strange, Claire thinks now, that it can all be traced back to that. The desire to touch the glass.

  When her father disappeared into a room, she did the same, but he was gone. She was in a room with two doors. She picked one, went through it, and was in a room with three doors. All were closed. She knew she’d go through another and it would keep going, becoming smaller and smaller like the many horrifying mirrors at the carnival.

  The only reason she stayed calm was because she had her doll, a Raggedy Ann she’d renamed Ellie, always held tight against her despite the fact that her mother had recently tried to keep her on the bed and only on the bed. As far as Claire knew, she had only ever existed with Ellie; in her mind she and the doll came into the world at the same time, joined from the start. Naturally, by this time Ellie was worn, her yarn hair decorated with crumbled bits of leaves that never let go—becoming slightly smaller only if the effort was made—her white apron dingy and in no way white, her mouth unraveling, making it look as though she was talking, constantly chattering away.

  So Claire stood in the silent, empty room and studied the doors, and as she did, she held Ellie, breathing in her earthy, peppery smell. Instantly she calmed. She forced herself back the way she thought she came, and when she finally found the hall with the stairs, she stumbled down toward the light, toward the wide-open front door.

  Charlotte was on the narrow porch, beside her a tall, bony woman. Claire ran to her mother and wrapped her arms around her legs, her face in the fabric of her dress.

  “My,” her mother said with a laugh, and shook her leg slightly.

  When Claire stepped back, the bony lady looked down at Claire, her eyes like a blackbird’s. “How nice to meet you, Claire,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Hadley. I have a daughter just your age. Ada. Won’t that be nice, to have a friend just down the street.” Then there was a pause, and the woman angled her head slightly. “How precious.”

  And that was when her moth
er saw the doll.

  The next day Claire awoke to find her mother sitting on her bed. As usual, Claire reached for Ellie, a motion as habitual as pulling back the covers. But Ellie was gone.

  “Come with me,” Charlotte said, and Claire knew this meant she’d get Ellie, so she followed her into the kitchen, where her mother opened a door and led her down narrow stairs to the basement. The floor was dirt, the ceiling low, the smell like wash that refused to dry. In the center of the room a hole had been dug. Beside it was a box.

  Charlotte led her to the hole in the ground and then turned to face her. “Claire, when someone dies, you have a funeral. This is Ellie’s funeral. Ellie is dead.”

  Charlotte went to the box and opened it for her to see. Inside was Ellie, black eyes wide open and staring. She was fine. Relief fanned through Claire and she stretched her arms to take Ellie, but her mother took Ellie away. She smashed the lid on the box tight, covering Ellie’s face, and dropped it in the hole in the ground. Claire didn’t understand. With her foot, her mother swept at the mound of dirt, and it was as the clods pounded the box that Claire was hit with understanding so hard she couldn’t find her breath. The rough dirt scraped her knee as she fell, and then there was dirt against her cheek, a small pebble pressed hard at her temple. When finally she found the ability to cry, her mother was already stomping on the dirt, packing it in tight.

  That was the first night Claire had the dream. It stayed with her throughout her childhood, forcing her eyes open in the dark, making her afraid of sleep. The dream is not elaborate, but rather consistent in its simplicity. She’s in a box. The smell of cardboard is suffocating. A soft, scattering sound; landing dirt. Then pounding, footsteps packing in soil, growing distant, filtered, as the pounding of her own heart grows louder and louder till it echoes furiously, frantically in her ears.

  It used to be the basement in which she was buried, but now it’s the tunnel, and she’s angry at the house for giving new life to her nightmare, for unleashing it after years of peace. Some nights she wakes and William stirs, as if the outer edges of his mind had heard her breathing change. But she’s never told him, as that would mean once there was a doll, and once it was ragged and old, and once her mother had had reason to be ashamed.

  Now she wonders, if he’s having an affair, could it be her fault? She kept her past wounds covered, sectioned off parts of herself she’d never show her own husband. Denied from the start, he was, warded off from her entirety. Did he do the same to her? Of course now she knows she has only part of him. But what has he given the other woman? Does he notice at night when her breathing changes? Does he wake to ask about her dreams?

  Monday evening. Set apart in its routine by the fact that they’re together, a long week due to problems with a job that blessedly forced him back to Rochester early. This is what Monday looks like in Rochester, Eva thinks, with him. That feeling of the first, heart-leaping day of a childhood summer, when so much joy was simply from the promise of more. More days. More hours. The ambrosia of anticipation.

  On the back porch, by the Monopoly game, she watches a moth fling itself repeatedly at the light, confused and manic. When William appears, changed from his work clothes, holding a plate of cookies, she’s standing there, ready.

  “Can you turn this off?” she asks. He flips the switch and the moth settles on the glass shade, a brief respite. Quickly she brushes it into her hand, then walks to the far end of the porch, away from the bright kitchen windows. Her hand is cupped and its wings beat against her palm. The moment she uncurls her fingers, the moth lifts into the air, finally released from its lure, able to join the dark.

  When she turns, William is in his spot, watching her. She wipes her hand on her dress and flips the switch back on, the porch filling with light and shadows. He nods to the game, to a stretch of his hotels. “My dear, you’ve a rough road ahead of you.”

  She rolls the dice—seven—lands on a railroad, and smiles. “I do love trains.”

  “Keep in mind, our doors are always open.”

  It’s when he reaches for the dice that they see it: his wedding ring. Usually it’s left on the dresser, never on his hand when he’s with her. Quickly he rises. “I’m sorry.”

  When he returns, she’s standing, watching the woods, and feels his hand on her shoulder. The frenzied song of a bird punctuates the night, and she places her hand atop his, letting her fingers glide against his skin. “When robins wake,” she says, “they sing. Streetlights wake them, and loud sounds, like thunder. Someone told me that in London, during the war, the bombs would wake them.”

  “Everything destroyed, and yet a bird sings like it’s a brand-new day.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “My grandfather,” he says, “had lovebirds. Always nestled together, practically one, these beautiful orange and green birds. After a while he kept them in separate cages, one room away from each other.”

  “What? Why? They must have been so lonely.”

  “They were,” he says, brushing her hair from her shoulder, kissing the space he’s cleared. “That was why he did it. They would call to each other, and the sound of their heartbreak was more beautiful than that of their happiness.”

  She turns to him, stricken.

  “One day,” he continues, “I opened a cage and a window to the yard. When I went to the next room, one bird had already seen the other in the tree. Their calls changed. Hope, maybe. It was different.” Gently he traces the line of her neck with his hand. “It didn’t take long, when I let the other one out, for them to find each other on the branch. And then, for the first time, they were silent.”

  He lowers his head and his lips brush hers, lightly.

  “Did you get in trouble?” she whispers.

  “I did.”

  She smiles, and once more hears the bird call into the night.

  —

  The week dips in temperature, and rain lets loose from thick, pigeon-gray clouds. No picnic, but a fire keeps them warm, the Monopoly game on the floor by its heat. Then Friday everything shifts and the temperature is back to warm, the air invigorated with the fresh scent of flowering trees: chokecherry, wild plum, and crab apple. Orange honeysuckle burns bright in the bush at the base of the drive, and sparrows shake the branches, the flowers quivering.

  Eva is wearing a summer dress, one that hits a bit below her knees but has an enticing V neck she’s extended by neglecting to button the top button. The air is a bit humid from the lake and the recent rain, and the revealed hollow of skin shines in certain lights. Now and then, as they walk through town, William glances at her and she smiles, her lips painted red, knowing full well what the oversight with the button has done. He can’t do anything, not in public, but she can see in his eyes what he’s thinking.

  “Eva,” he says as two men turn the corner, their heads tilted toward her chest. “Best care for that button.”

  Eva stops, turns toward him, and while looking him in the eye, very, very slowly hooks the button into the loop. William angles his smile toward the sidewalk, then follows her up the steps to the Drive-ette diner. She scans the luncheonette for only a moment before locating a couple of empty stools at the far corner.

  “What can I get you?” the waitress asks. Her dress is stained with grease, her fingers puffy.

  “You first,” Eva says to William.

  William looks from the waitress’s hands to the soda fountain. “Just a turkey sandwich, no mayo or butter. Plain, really. And a Coke, please.”

  Eva nods to the counter behind the waitress. “Apple?”

  “Apple, pecan, lemon meringue.”

  “Slice of apple and a root beer, please.”

  The waitress doesn’t write their orders, just taps her pencil on the pad a couple of times as if beating the selections to memory, and then turns to the cook’s counter.

  “You’re going to ruin your app
etite with that pie,” William says as he straightens the salt and pepper shakers, aligning them perpendicular to his napkins.

  “Better that than I don’t want dessert.” She grins, and moves the saltshaker closer to her plate, and then the pepper, adjusting everything three inches to the left. “You know, I’ve never thought about that.”

  “About what?”

  “You. Being jealous of me. I mean, I have reason to be jealous of you, but it never occurred to me that you might wonder about other men.”

  “I try not to think about it,” he says as the waitress returns with their drinks. He nods a thank-you and turns to Eva, when suddenly there’s a man with his hand on William’s shoulder.

  “Mr. Ballantine.”

  Eva looks back at the man—short, wire glasses, eyes like shiny brown pebbles—and is about to say No, you must be mistaken, this is William Davis, but William is already speaking, smiling and not confused.

  “Dr. Adams. How nice to see you. Please, this is Mrs. Eva Marten. Mrs. Marten’s just come into possession of some land I’m looking at. Mrs. Marten, this is Dr. Riley Adams.”

  Eva’s heart is suddenly beating too fast. Mrs. Eva Marten?

  “It’s a pleasure,” Dr. Adams says, reaching for her hand. “Be warned, my dear, he comes from a long line of real estate sharks.”

  William laughs. “You’re in town visiting, then?”

  “I’ve actually accepted a position at St. Mary’s.” He nods in the direction of the hospital across the street.

  “You’ve left the Twin Cities?”

  “Sold the house to a couple from Maine. Why you’d go from Maine to Minnesota is beyond me, though clearly they’ve an affinity for snow.”

  “Property value will be on the rise. You might have been wise to hold on to it.”

  “Well, now, depends on who you talk to and where that property is. You at Lake of the Isles, I would never sell. I unfortunately did not choose so wisely. Besides, there’s something about being back in a small town I rather prefer.”