You Were Here
Page 20
She watches Aidan now, the shadowed dips below his cheekbones, the strong line of his jaw, and wants, more than anything, to taste the wine on his lips. Does Robert feel this? The sway of something amiss, a flicker of intuition as if she’s just pulled back and the air between them has gone still.
20
Then
AT LAST they get their picnic. Four cottonwood trees are clustered near a bend in the river, right next to a rock that juts into the water, a perfect perch from which to cast their lines—though the fishing poles stay put, leaned against the tallest of the trees. A plaid blanket is spread upon a small grassy rise beneath the wide boughs, and in the basket are sandwiches and strawberries, biscuits from the diner they bought on their way out of town.
For a while they just lie upon the plaid, Eva curled into him, her arm across his chest, their food untouched. He stares up into a canopy that’s constant movement, braced by clouds in a slow swirl. Leaves chime and a bird’s call whittles through the air.
Soon the graceful rush of the river becomes a sound he mixes with the feel of her heart.
After they’ve eaten, William leans against the tree as Eva sits in its lowest crook, one bare foot dangling by his shoulder. The leaves above her turn, angled and doused with the tint of fading sun. She’d not eaten the crusts of her sandwich, had in fact smiled, eyes upon him, as she ate right up to their edges—the most wonderful way he’d ever seen a woman eat, he informed her—and now and then he tosses a chunk of the leftover bread into the water. You could be the worst fisherman ever, she’d told him as the first bit was pulled under.
“Don’t you think,” he says after she’s told him about Dr. Adams, “that if he had anything to report, I’d have heard by now? He didn’t see you leave the house. Fact is, I wasn’t home. Which is perfect, really. Maybe you needed a last-minute signature, and left when no one answered.”
“But why was he there?” With her toes, she lightly touches the back of his neck, working her way up, then nudging him behind his ear till he grabs her foot.
“I have neighbors. I’m sure he has friends,” he says, turning and kissing her toes. “He’s nosy but not malicious.”
She won’t tell him about calling his house, about speaking to his wife. Reckless, she thinks. There was no excuse for that risk. And that Claire had not said anything to him the entire week proves that Eva had been mistaken with her fear. Claire had meant something else, so why bring it up to William? Paranoid, she thinks. This situation, my guilt, has made me paranoid. When will that ease? In her mind the years unroll with no change, the constant bus rides, glances over shoulders, a house where she can’t leave a trace of herself behind.
But later that night—after such an absence—their routine is welcomed. Monopoly, the shadow of his drink spilled across Free Parking.
“Only second prize in a beauty contest?” she jokes as she places the Community Chest card at the bottom of the stack. The whole night the cards have been in his favor, the dice seemingly weighted toward his luck.
“Clearly I wasn’t a judge,” he says, and pulls on the metal lever in the ice cube tray. The cubes crack, then snap as they hit her drink. “I just started the water. Shall we?”
The bath, their Friday night of candles and bubbles and Sinatra. The second ice cube tray on a stool beside them, ready to save their drinks from the heat of the water.
Sunk deep into the bubbles, she watches him adjust the needle on the record. “William,” she says, “I want to hold your hand on the street.”
He turns to her, surprised.
She continues. “I don’t want to live like this. The guilt, the fear. All I could think of was Dr. Adams seeing me. That I’d done something wrong.”
He nods, then slowly gets in the water. The bubbles shift and shine.
“I feel the same,” he says. “The guilt has taken its toll. I’ve been waiting to bring this up.”
Her heart starts racing. As he leans back against the white tiles, her mind conjures his words: You’re right, we should stop this. And despite the silence in the room or the fact that his lips are sealed, she hears those words so clearly that she drops her head and shuts her eyes.
“Listen,” he says, “I don’t know how this is going to go over.”
He pauses, and Eva looks up, determined to make him say it to her, to look her in the eye as he speaks.
“But I think I’m going to leave Claire.”
Her back slams into the metal faucet behind her.
“Eva.” He laughs.
With one hand she reaches behind her to feel her skin, to make sure there’s no blood. All she feels is the thinness of water and the dampened ends of her hair.
“I don’t want to get your hopes up that this will be quick. I imagine it won’t be. But I’m not being fair to her or to you. No one’s getting what they deserve, and Claire”—he pauses briefly, as if the sound of his wife’s name spoken before Eva, naked, her legs mashed against his hips, comes with an echo—“is being hurt. I’d thought it wasn’t affecting her, but it is.”
She doesn’t break his gaze. More than anything she wants to hear him say the words. “And?” she says, daring, suddenly bold and wanting. “Why else do you want to be with me? Because . . .”
He doesn’t look away. “Yes,” he says. “More than anything.”
Still she watches him, though one corner of her mouth betrays her, angling toward a smile.
“Those words, Eva. I will say them to you. Because I do, I feel it every time I even think of you. But how can I say them and leave the next day?” He smiles. “So not yet. Not until I can hold your hand on the street.”
Claire has a plan. It’s wicked, she knows, born from Edith’s mind, the kind of plan other people have, not Claire. The way he’d looked at her. Just thinking of it makes her feel shamed. That unguarded, truthful, serrated moment.
She knows she’s about to lose him.
On the dining room table are the usual china, crystal, silver, but also the Lorelei vase William gave to her when courting, usually kept on a table against the wall. Lilac-blue pottery, its entirety is the shape of a woman, her shoulder and arm resting atop the mouth of the vase. A feeling of sullen enclosure, of mystery, mixed with a touch of seduction. Lorelei, Claire has decided, was a woman underestimated.
It’s Saturday and Claire’s not wearing the blue dress. She’s wearing a beige one, a dress that buttons up the front and was tight even when she was thinner. Now the buttons strain around her midsection, taut folds in the fabric like stripes across her waist. It’s impossible not to notice.
For lunch they’re having chicken and mashed potatoes and carrots. A huge meal, really, far too much for the middle of the day, but Claire requested the menu and is now actually craving it, hoping Ketty remembered to make gravy. She sits in her chair, hands folded on her stomach, her neck at a slightly awkward angle against the stiff wood back of the chair. All the yellow tulips she’d put in the vase this morning dip and lunge to the sides, not yet made sturdy by the intake of water.
A half an hour past when he usually arrives, Claire hears the front door open. “There you are,” she says when he enters the room. “I was getting worried.”
“I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry,” he says, pulling out his chair. “There was a wreck.”
She studies him, waiting for more, for details that might add truth to his statement. But he says nothing else, just glances behind her as the door swings open and Ketty enters with their dishes, steam swirling from the food. His eyes widen as Ketty places his lunch before him. “Thanksgiving already?”
She produces a laugh. “That’s chicken, not turkey.”
The fork’s already in his hand. “Shall we?”
“Go ahead.” She daintily cuts her chicken, thankful Ketty remembered the gravy, and carefully concocts the perfect bite: a small wedge of chicken atop a thin slice of carro
t, all with just a dash of gravy. This is how she eats when she’s with William—slowly, daintily, chewing her food contemplatively. She lifts her fork to her mouth and watches William eat like a man starved—or a man determined to not make conversation.
“So,” she says after a while, her knife on the knife rest, “I’ve got some big news.”
“What’s that?”
He’s still staring at his food, cutting another chunk of chicken. He doesn’t see her. He never sees her. And if he did now, he’d see her take a big breath and visibly force a smile onto her face. But he doesn’t. Claire holds the smile, her cheeks puffed and her eyes bright. This is the face of me joyous, she thinks.
“You’re going to be a father.”
Now William looks up at her, and as he does his arms lower to his sides, weighted with shock. He still holds the fork and knife and Claire knows bits of gravy are dripping onto the rug. She keeps her smile steady.
“A baby, we’re having a baby.”
She laughs, and for a second it feels real. The words, perhaps those particular words unlock some urge and instinct in all women, filling the body with euphoria, breathless delight. There are actual tears in her eyes. She’d not expected this, for it to feel so real, or for her to be happy about such a feeling. In a way, she wishes it were true. Maybe they should have a baby. Maybe she would learn to love it.
Though of course it’s not real, and for that she is suddenly thankful, as William’s face is still carved in shock, has not transitioned to happiness or anything else, for that matter.
“William?”
His mouth opens. He remembers the fork and knife and raises his arms, setting the silverware on his plate. His eyes go to the vase, the drooping tulips, and as he stands, the table shakes.
21
Now
THE OAK TREE HUMS, a low note of dread. One by one she sees them, bees emerging from a crack in the bark and settling on the plate before her like a thick, vibrating blanket. Suddenly the chair across from her moves, as if pulled from the table, but before she can see who’s there, she’s coughing, something caught in her throat, stabbing her tongue. Her mouth opens and a bee flies out.
At once, everything revolts. Gagging. Mouth swelling. More and more bees rise in her throat, clogging her mouth, trapped, buzzing louder and louder like screams she can’t get out.
And then mercy. She’s awake, ragged breath.
The room is black, it hurts to swallow. While asleep, she realizes, she’d been clutching at her throat, fingers deep into her own skin. Again the feeling that a thin layer has been pierced, that what her mind conjured should never have taken on a physicality. Lines are blurred, a barrier broken. But not only that. For the first time someone was there, the chair pulled out. She doesn’t want to think it, but at three AM her mind knows only the wrappings of dark thoughts: Could she have ended up exactly where she’s meant to be, the long-standing date about to appear?
From her bed she listens, the night quiet, but then she hears it, the sound of a car running, steady. She has to look. A peek through the window. Keeping her own lights off, she counts to three and then barely moves aside her drapes, just enough to see.
Headlights. Right there. Her eyes focus—it’s a police car, parked by Brittany’s driveway. Protection. And even though ten minutes later it’s gone, still she feels it, an assurance, a presence. Sent by Aidan, she knows, and just the fact that he would do this, that he’s thought of her enough to put in such a request is like resting beneath a watchful gaze, able to relax within the shelter of concern. Someone is looking out for her. Knowing this, feeling this, allows sleep to claim her once again, but this time her thoughts are of him, and even briefly she is unafraid.
—
One last box. The final possibility within her reach. In it she finds her mother’s and uncle’s childhood bits and pieces, report cards, drawings. Nothing helpful. Nothing that explains. Closing the lid, she feels anxiety pull within her. That was it. All she can do from here. Next would have to be a trip to Morrow Lake, if she can, to visit Eleanor Hadley, and then to Lake of the Isles, where her grandmother and Claire lived. Just the thought of visiting the Ballantine house unnerves her, a pin within her loosened, a creaking vibrato in her bones.
For a break she goes on a walk, hoping for some perspective. The dreams started long, long ago—they have nothing to do with the current situation in the town. She knows this now that the sun is out, now that the night hours don’t hold her captive in a dark palm. But it’s not just that. She’s torn. Not only between wanting Aidan or wanting Robert, but between believing what she’s feeling is right or wrong. Logically she understands she’s in murky territory just by spending time with Aidan, just from her thoughts, but nothing about wanting him feels wrong. Wrong is a conceit that fits entirely differently.
Suddenly a bee shoots from a stalk of white flowers and the dream slams into the day. Without looking she backs into the street, and it’s only when she feels her hand on the trunk of a parked car that she catches herself. This is not the dream. She stares up at the sun, the white burn of reminder. It has to stop. Somehow this has to stop.
There’s a meadow a few blocks from her house. An open space that was never developed, a spot where kids collect wildflowers and ladybugs, play games of tag after school. No one’s there, and she takes a seat on a rock, still unnerved by the dream’s insertion into her day. After a few minutes the quiet breaks with ringing—Robert. The list of all she wants to say is just as long as all she wishes to omit, and so far it’s been easier to not pick up the phone. Yesterday, she realizes, was the first day they’d not heard each other’s voices. An entire day, only text messages. She wonders if he noticed. The phone is still ringing. An entire day, that’s never happened before. She hits Answer. “Getting ready for your meeting?”
“In the car now. Abby, the noise yesterday. Do you feel safe?”
“It’s not—I swear, I’m just dramatic. The guy would be stupid to do anything now. There are cops everywhere.”
The moment she says it, she hears her mistake.
He takes a moment. “Maybe you should come back.”
“Early?”
“If it’s not good for you to be there . . .”
He lets his words drift, and even though she knows he’s talking about her report of the sound, her mind instead pictures Aidan. “Robert, I was grabbing at my own throat last night. Everything I have here I’ve looked at, and nothing’s stopped. But there are places to visit, something that might make a difference, and I can’t do that from L.A.”
“With him. You’re doing all this with him.”
There’s nothing good to say. She pulls in justifications, holding them against her, a flimsy cover. “He’s a cop—it might be the only way.”
“Abby. It’s not fair to do this to me when I’m not—” He stops.
“When you’re not what?”
“When I’m not there to fight for you.”
Everything in her sinks, a great collapse. “Robert, he’s a friend.” But even she doesn’t believe her words.
“Abby.”
“And you could’ve been here. I asked you to come. I needed you.”
“Just like you need a house. What do you think I’m doing here?”
At this she finds her anger. “I don’t need a house. Would one be nice? Yes, but is that a reason to stand still for the rest of our lives? No. It’s you, you’re the one who needs to have the impossible happen before you commit in any real way.”
Silence as Abby realizes what she said. Through the phone, the ticking of his turn signal.
“The impossible?” he finally asks.
“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”
“For you to say this, right before my meeting.”
And though she apologizes again before hanging up, a thought snakes behind her words: What upset h
im wasn’t that she felt their relationship was going nowhere, but that her saying so might impact his meeting.
For a while she sits with her eyes closed, the bright blaze of orange against her lids. When her phone rings she assumes it’s him, calling to make things right. She looks down at the phone’s display, the reflection of clouds behind Aidan’s name.
“Hi,” she says. A dragonfly lifts from the grass, turquoise on its tail.
“You okay?”
“Better now.”
“Good,” Aidan says. “Little update. The owners of your grandparents’ house are in Oregon—but we still have the Ballantine house to visit. I spoke to the owner, she’s game, just gotta figure out a time.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Here’s the best part: I just got cleared for twenty-four hours.”
“Off work? A whole day?”
“Starting today at two, then back tomorrow at two. Twenty-four amazing off-duty hours. It was supposed to be Harris, but he’s got too many things lined up tomorrow, so it fell to me. Gotta get us recharged, no one’s fresh.”
“I bet. Just one day?”
“Ideally it would be two, but they can’t swing them together, not yet. So off twenty-four, on a shift, off twenty-four. What I’m saying is we could fit in Morrow Lake. Leave today, back first in thing in the morning. Visit Eleanor tonight if we make good time, or first thing in the morning.”
Abby’s silent for a bit. “How far is it?”
“Almost five hours. I got us two hotel rooms in town. Fully cancelable if you don’t want to go.”
“You spoke to her?”
“No, but I got through to an owner of a house nearby. Guy said she’s a hermit and never answers her phone. Worst-case scenario, we talk to neighbors, see if she’s ever told stories. And I got the report on Claire. Not much we don’t know, but I can show you.” He pauses. “Honestly, the drive sounds good. Change of scenery. I could use a break.”