by Gian Sardar
“I’ve never needed a wedding. What I’ve wanted was a marriage.”
“I know. Abby, I wish—”
“You’re the one with the list. I’d go to Vegas tomorrow.”
“Abby, I know, and I wish this was just about that. But there’s so much more riding . . .” He stops himself. Triangles of light spread through the top of the fence, reaching into new shapes. “Let’s forget it. I don’t want to do this. How was the reunion?”
Wonderful. I spent the entire night wanting to kiss another man. “It was fine.”
“Reunions are usually a letdown.”
“I wasn’t let down. I was on Benadryl and wine.”
“Not a good combo there. You know that.”
Would it kill him to be concerned? Instead he immediately jumps to judgmental. And worse, she hears him typing on his keyboard, a patterned tapping that tells her she has only part of his attention. “Luckily this guy I know drove me home.” A reaction, childish, but for even one second she wants him not to think of her as a given. She waits, silence.
“Good,” he finally says. “I love you, I don’t want you driving like that.”
And though she hears the distraction in his voice, she now also hears the faith. Never would he think it anything other than good that Abby made it home safely. And this breaks something within her, because he has no idea.
—
Ghosts. The usual reason for fears of basements, attics, or closets at the ends of long halls. But Abby’s never believed in ghosts. Nothing flits in the corner of her eye; her rocking chair never moved on its own. For her, the fear is suffocation, breath faster and shorter, world compressing, everything heavier and heavier till she’s gasping, an openmouthed futile plea. Once, when hiking with some friends, she thought she actually tasted dirt in her mouth, though it could have been the iron in her blood from biting her cheek. She’d stood at the open mouth of the cave as she watched her friends go inside. Darkness. One look and she felt how easily the earth could shift and the dirt ceiling would no longer be a ceiling—just that was enough to unleash the panic. Still, it’s accepted. That fear. Claustrophobia, Robert said when they searched for apartments and she’d requested no ground floors—a demand that made sense to him, in the land of earthquakes. But she’s looked it up; usually people have a fear of restricted space as well as a fear of suffocation. She only fears suffocation. MRI tubes, small closets during hide-and-seek—nothing like that has bothered her. Her fear is a smothering collapse from above—dirt, floorboards, sand, there’s a myriad of ways the world can come crashing down.
The day has gone dark, overcast. She stands at the top step of the basement, box cutter in hand. It’s just a room. She takes a step. No earthquakes here, no sinkholes, no reason to be trapped. Another step. Tornadoes? The sky looked ominous. No, it’s fine. Then another and another until she’s hit with the smell. Must, a damp soil scent combined with the odor of old, hidden things. She feels faint. The blade of the box cutter, even sheathed, blooms with heat. Just walk down the damn steps.
She forces herself the rest of the way, the smell of dark earthy secrets caught in her throat. And there they are, at the far end of the basement. Just four boxes from her grandmother. Abby had thought there’d be more. House sold, belongings scattered, and all that remains is packed away into four little boxes, forgotten in a basement. But at least they were kept; someone had reason to store the boxes, tucked away though they may be. If Abby died today, who would keep her journals, her photo albums? Maybe Robert, for a bit, but he’d have no reason to mourn for long, no reason to be saddled with a dead woman’s belongings, a dead woman who’s not even his wife. Her mother would keep them, of course, but then what about when she passes? The sense of impermanence is overwhelming. This is why people have kids, Abby thinks, so someone keeps your boxes.
The first one is not very heavy, and Abby lowers it to the floor and presses the blade of the cutter into shiny beige tape. Dorothy and Ted’s baby books, a few framed photos, a lot of stuff she’d like to go through at some point. Then she sees letters. Under old linens, dozens and dozens. And beneath them, a large velvet box. Pistachio green with swirled brass designs in the corners. At one point there was a lock and the indentation is still present, velvet missing where bolts had been, but now the lid opens easily. A sewing box, she sees, mother-of-pearl tools, scissors and hooks, all held in place on the inside of the green-satin-lined lid. In the box is a small cloisonné container—yellow and red flowers against a black background—a round rock, and a little glass vial, capped on either end with copper, a necklace chain melded onto the top. Beneath everything are more papers. She reaches for the necklace and holds it toward the light. The glass spins—within it a solitary monarch butterfly wing. Carefully she puts it on and the glass vial sits against her chest, making it appear as if the wing emerges from her skin.
The rock. It couldn’t have belonged to her grandmother, who wouldn’t have cared for something so bland and base, and she wonders why it was kept. And the cloisonné box—pennies inside, at least a dozen of them. The dates are all from the early 1900s, one even an Indian head. There’s a smell, she notices, from the inside. That musty, out-of-sight smell combined with something else. A hint of jasmine? Just as she identifies it, it’s gone, and for a moment she wonders if what she’d breathed in was the exact air from her mother’s childhood.
The letters. The aged, gritty rubber band that holds them together gives up and snaps into fragments, the letters scattering as they hit the cement floor. One is left in her hand, addressed to her grandmother’s sister, from her grandmother, returned with others after Edith’s sister died. The date in the corner is from a time when Abby’s mother was still a baby. Unable to resist, she opens the envelope, reads the first couple of paragraphs and is immediately struck by the fact that her grandmother was happy. Never did Abby know her as happy. Suspicious, paranoid, angry, always a victim in some way—but happy? Even her handwriting was different, soft swirls of l’s, smooth crescendos of r’s, everything rising and falling from some uplifted part of a young Edith’s spirit that for some reason wouldn’t last, that Abby now realizes was fragile and limited and would soon be gone. When you wrote this, you didn’t know who you’d be. Whatever happened was still to come. The tragedy of hindsight, the anguish of knowledge, markers of meaning glimpsed only in the landscape of an entire lifetime.
Her cell phone rings, left at the top of the stairs where there’s reception. Without thinking she stands too quickly and the basement splinters before her eyes. She lowers her head to her chest, but all at once being down there is too much. The smell, the feeling on her skin—dank, clammy, pressing. Within seconds she’s at the stairs and climbing. Go. Just go. Go fast.
Even as she grabs the phone she feels oddly disconnected, as if part of herself has been left behind, rifling through letters. Through the living room windows she sees dark gray clouds, fists of water not yet opened.
“It’s Aidan Mackenzie. Did you get your car?”
She smiles, his voice winding her back in until she feels the walls of herself, the soles of her feet now upon the kitchen tiles. “I did not get it. It’s a seriously ugly rental and there’s a very good chance I may never get it.”
Her mother, standing at the stove, turns when Abby walks in, but immediately freezes, her expression an odd mix of longing and alarm.
“What?” Abby asks, feeling someone behind her. In a flash she sees the way her flesh would split, the rise of red.
“What’s wrong?” Aidan says, having caught the fear in her voice.
“That necklace,” her mother’s saying. She’s reaching toward her, lifting the glass vial with the butterfly wing, studying it as if expecting it to quiver with life.
Abby sighs, relieved. “Jesus, Mom. Okay. So you remember it?”
“Butterflies. She raised them. I haven’t thought of that till now.”
“Abby?” Aidan says.
“Sorry. I found this necklace, these letters of my grandmother’s. Family research. What were you saying?”
She takes a seat at the table and a crack of thunder shakes the house.
He knows he shouldn’t do this. Knows he should simply remind her where her car is, that he gave her mom the keys, maybe even suggest some Gatorade. That’s it. He knows that. But he’s seeing her legs in the hall, how she’d pried off her shoes and kicked them across the linoleum, completely lacking an edit button and so unaffected by the usual female protocol he tends to encounter, agendas and games and suffocating ego. And the way she’d smelled, the whole time he wanted to lean closer. And that lace, just the edge.
Lightning flashes, the sky reverberating brightness, gradations of energy. “Do you need coffee? Because I do. Bring the letters.”
Abby doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t fill the silence. He’s learned that if you do the talking, you never hear what you need. A glance outside. The storm is about to unleash.
Finally she speaks. “Why?”
More proof of who she is, refreshingly unfiltered—and he surprises himself by responding in turn, unfiltered. “Because I’d like to see you again.” He quickly adds, “And because I need to eat. The coffee shop has red velvet cupcakes.”
She laughs. “I can’t deny an honest man a cupcake.”
—
Halfway to Abby’s house the sky gives up, rain hurled with the ferocity of something held back. Even with the wipers on high he can see only in second-long intervals, at one point even pulling to the curb to wait it out. Rain pummels his car, tall grass at the edge of the road bent in the force.
When at last he pulls into her driveway, he sees her in the window. A blue bandanna holds back a mass of curls, and in a crack of recognition he knows that this is how he will always remember her, this blurred image seen through a softened haze of rain, her face in the window, hair held in blue.
She spots him, but he motions her to stay there, then goes to the back of the sedan, finds the umbrella, and meets her at the door. Despite the little arc of shelter, the ends of her hair immediately bead with water, a sprinkling of light, and again he smells the perfume or shampoo she uses, that scent that pulls at something within him.
Inside the car he allows himself a moment to look at her. Curly hair. That’s who she reminds him of—Lila McCale, the same spirals, the case never far from his mind. He pictures the other victims, all straight hair, but the photos he’d seen of the Marshall women were all driver’s license photos, not truly representative of day to day. They need varied pictures, or they could be missing a key similarity.
“Your hair is curly,” he says, because he’s been staring.
“And you drive an unmarked Crown Vic. What are you, undercover?”
“Detective.”
“You are not.”
“I told you.”
“You said cop.”
“Detectives are cops.”
Mouth open, she shakes her head. “You are so full of shit. You know how cool that is.”
A little laugh. “I guess I forget.” He looks over his shoulder as he reverses, taking the opportunity to glance at her again. Along with the bandanna she’s wearing an oversize blue sweater, jeans, and white Converse sneakers. This, he decides, is his favorite look on a woman.
Within minutes they’re at the café. He takes the umbrella to her side and holds it out to her, leaving himself exposed, pelted by the rain.
“Get in here,” she says. “What are you doing?” She grabs a fistful of his shirt and pulls him toward her so they’re both under the umbrella, pressed against each other. Instinctively he puts his arm around her and the action is so natural that for a moment he wants to stop, say good-bye, and head back to the station, where the only thing he must think of is not getting food on his keyboard. “On the count of three,” he says, and they awkwardly run to the door.
The café is really a diner. Thick plates lined in blue, chipped coffee mugs. It’s not a truck stop, but the truckers have discovered it, leaving their rigs in the vacant lot behind the building, and there’s always at least three or four of them lined up along the counter. Thick backs, overgrown hair. A testament to good food, Aidan’s always thought.
He points to a booth by the window and they ease their way in, the rain a gray curtain. She looks around the diner. “If we were in L.A. and you suggested coffee, we’d be in some place with retro couches and reclaimed wood walls and a dozen screenwriters on their laptops.”
“Reclaimed wood walls?”
“Those are the places Robert—” she stops, and picks up the trifold advertisement for pies.
Aidan watches her. Instead of changing the subject, she simply chose to stop talking, as if perhaps he’d think he’d imagined her talking in the first place. He smiles as she concentrates on the dessert selection. “Robert?” he asks.
She doesn’t look up. “My boyfriend.”
There’s no music in the diner, just the sound of rain. She has a boyfriend. He keeps going, thrown, though maybe he shouldn’t be. The assumption was clearly just on his part—though he can tell by the way she keeps looking down that the attraction is mutual. “And he likes those coffee shops. With the walls.”
Now she looks up, almost apologetically. “He’s a screenwriter. No screenwriter can work at home—I don’t know why. It’s like they have to prove they’re writing.”
“How long have you been together?”
“Bit over four years.”
He’s surprised. “That’s a long time. No ring?”
“No, the ultimate irony from the woman who sells rings. There’s a list of things we need to get done first. Why rush.”
“So he’s not ready?”
Now it’s she who’s surprised. “It’s that obvious?”
“That he’s an idiot? Yes, very obvious. Clear right off the bat.” He smiles. “At some point, though, you just want it and put the list away. If you want it.”
She bites her lip, as if deciding what to do with the comment.
“I know the routine,” he says. “Excuses when you’re not ready. You look beautiful like that, by the way.”
Her flush is sudden and deep. “Like what?”
“Bandanna. Wet hair. Slightly accusatory stare.”
“Thank you.” As if needing to break the moment, she reaches into her bag and produces letters and an old green velvet box. “So. A little background.”
Dreams that started long ago. The name Claire Ballantine a new addition. A woman who disappeared in 1948, an event that forever impacted her grandmother. He listens to her talk about the nightmares and sees she’s trying to both summarize and minimize her experience. The tightening in her jaw and the way she swallows—with effort, as if something’s caught in her throat—tells him the dreams are not something she talks about.
“So neither one of us is sleeping now,” he says.
She smiles. “At least you can catch your reason. Make it go away.”
“You’ve got potential here. Let’s see,” he says, motioning to the stack. She hands him half and he glances at the addresses. “How’d you get these? Most of these are from your grandmother.”
“Her sister gave them to us. Or her kids did, when she died. I can’t remember. Nobody wanted them.”
“Afternoon,” the waitress, Carol, says. Carol, who always gives him free dessert. Smoker’s voice and orange nail polish. “Get you something to drink?”
“Beer?” Abby asks.
Carol cuts him a quick look. “Pabst, Michelob, or MGD.”
“Oh,” Abby says. “Really?”
Now he laughs, and Carol glares at him. A betrayal, he knows. A broken allegiance. As Abby asks for an MGD and a bowl of chicken soup, his eyes go to her lips.
“And you, Detective?”
He looks back to Carol. “Just the soup. And a cupcake. And coffee. Thanks, Carol.”
Abby waits till they’re alone again. “You don’t have to read these. I don’t know why I brought—” She stops as Carol returns with a coffee. Waiting, she looks down at the table. At last, “You don’t want to do more work.”
“This,” he says, motioning to the letters, “is a welcome distraction, and something I like doing.” He opens a letter, reads the first line, and pretends he doesn’t feel her smiling from across the table.
What Aidan can tell is that Abby’s family’s past was different than anything he’s known. Luster glares from the pages, a world of oyster shells and caviar, balls and country clubs and maids. But then, in 1949, something changed. The handwriting becomes starkly different, words sloping drastically, crowded.
“Look,” he says, “this must be about Claire. ‘I’ve lost everything. My best friend gone.’ Even her spacing changes. She disappeared in ’48, right? The lines are practically on top of each other. Confusion. Just two years prior and her writing’s fluid, letters rounded. Lines straight.”
Abby leans in, reading the older letter Aidan holds out. “It says Claire had her appendix out. Where’s your appendix? I have a birthmark on my stomach that looks like a scar.”
“Let me see.”
“What?”
“Your scar.”
“It’s not a scar.”
“Your birthmark.”
“You just want me to lift up my shirt.”
He grins, and she does something completely surprising, and stands. The look on her face tells him this has surprised her, too, as if her mind has just caught up to her actions. But there she is, raising her sweater as he slowly lowers his gaze—a bit too slowly, but it seems he’s allowed. The eyes of the restaurant are on them, but he doesn’t care, he’s enjoying this, a public striptease meant only for him. Then he sees it. A mark. A line in pale skin.
Behind Abby he catches Carol by the counter, watching them, hand resting on a slung-out hip. Definitely no free dessert after today. But then he sees River Man a few stools over, and it’s so jarring to see him here, so disorienting, that for a second he forgets Abby in front of him. Then he realizes that River Man doesn’t even see him—he’s staring at Abby’s back, her exposed waist. Abby, noticing Aidan’s distraction, turns and quickly drops her sweater.