by Gian Sardar
“Belligerence is common in dementia,” the nurse, Marjorie, says when they stop before a door. Eleanor, her gold plaque says. “She can be testy, depending on the day. And she’s in the later stages, so you know the disorientation is pretty pronounced. But she has her moments.”
“And she was living at Morrow Lake before she came here? Right up to a year ago?” Aidan asks.
The nurse nods. “Sure was. In a cabin all by herself. We forget—they come from a different era. Their parents used candles when they were younger, pumped their own water. Some, like her, don’t even have birth records. We’ve got one gentleman who was born on the boat over, and since nothing official was drawn up, he tells people he’s from the Atlantic.” She knocks on Eleanor’s door. “I’ll go in first. Honey,” she says loudly. “It’s Marjorie.”
There’s a sound, a faint sound, which Marjorie interprets as a yes. She opens the door and goes in, leaving it ajar. When she calls to them, both Aidan and Abby step carefully inside, walking as if on glass. A little kitchen area sprouts to the right. A bowl of cereal, untouched, sits by the sink.
As they’re about to enter the living room Aidan places his hand on the small of Abby’s back and feels her take a deep breath. Some people aren’t good with the elderly, and he remembers Abby mentioning she never got along with her grandmother. He’s assuming that she’ll freeze up, awkward, and so he steps into the room prepared to be the one to do most of the talking. Eleanor is by a large window, facing the other direction, talking to Marjorie, who’s raced ahead to provide some warning, some information: You’re Eleanor, and there are people to see you, the people we talked about. Eleanor’s hair is swept up, loose, held by a mother-of-pearl clip, and her posture is that of someone made to balance books on their heads, trained to sit without slumping, someone taught poise.
But when Eleanor turns, facing them, it’s Aidan who stiffens and holds back. There’s something about her that suddenly makes him uncomfortable. He can’t look at her. He feels exposed, as if with one glance she would see everything in him—though so far she’s not even seen him, her gaze still fixed on Abby.
“No,” Eleanor says, and then over and over again: “No. No, no, no.”
She’s agitated. Beside him Abby instinctively takes a few steps back, her face weighted with shock, mouth slightly open. For a moment he thinks she’s about to leave, to hurry from the room and give up before a word is spoken.
In a beat Marjorie is there, holding on to Eleanor’s thin shoulders. “Okay, Ellie, okay. They’re just here to talk. Abby,” she says, and reaches for Abby’s hand, as if to prove she’s friendly, “is your friend Edith’s granddaughter. Do you remember Edith? Edith Walters?”
And Aidan sees it, words landing in a place of recognition. Eleanor’s face softens as she searches Abby for her ancestry. Abby in return smiles hesitantly, as if trying to break from whatever it was that held her.
“My grandmother,” she says, “sold you her cabin for a dollar. You must’ve been close?”
He can’t tell if Eleanor’s heard or not. She’s smiling—dazed, it seems—and so he looks away, at the window, which is clouded and dirty, rendering the outside world faded, a memory gone to seed. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Eleanor says, still studying Abby. “After what happened.”
Abby glances at him. It was in the paper, he remembers, and looks to the small dining room table, expecting to see one there. But there’s just a wall calendar, lying open to a month long past.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Abby says. “Well, thanks to him.” She motions toward Aidan.
Eleanor must not have seen Aidan before, because when she does, she takes a sharp breath and suddenly her shoulders crumple, her head lowered.
Marjorie just nods, as if this is how it goes. “Like I said. She has good days, but this doesn’t appear to be one of them. We had a big day today, a birthday party for her friend Virginia, who turned ninety-eight. Someone had three cupcakes,” she adds, as if perhaps the sugar overdose explains the current confusion, as if Eleanor is a child who broke into the pantry. Then, with a lowered voice, she explains to Aidan, “Virginia mostly sleeps, so we let Ellie have her cupcake, since she’s so good to her.”
After a bit Eleanor looks back up, right into Aidan’s eyes. He forces himself to hold her gaze. It’s unnerving, those wet blue eyes. What they’ve seen, he thinks, no one will know. All those memories locked inside a mind that’s collapsing.
Finally she looks away. “She was tough as nails.”
“Who?” Abby asks quickly. “Edith?”
Eleanor nods. “Tough as nails.”
Abby smiles. “I agree.”
“Especially after.”
“After . . . after Claire disappeared? Her neighbor?”
“No. No.” She pauses, looking up at the light fixtures, eyes watering. “I couldn’t sleep there. I’d never sleep again.”
“Where? At Morrow Lake?”
But Eleanor’s no longer listening, she’s back to looking at Aidan. “You broke my heart.” Tears silently fall, catching in the lines of her face.
“Okay,” Marjorie says. “The confusion gets to her sometimes. Let’s let her be.”
Aidan takes Abby’s hand, pulling her to him. He knows she’s disappointed, knows there’s an entire list of questions she’s not able to ask, will never be able to ask. He squeezes her hand and then kisses the top of her head: It’ll be okay.
He turns back to say good-bye, but the words catch in his throat as he sees Eleanor staring at their hands. Stricken.
Abby sees it, too, and pulls away, but Eleanor’s eyes follow her ring, the lines in her face seeming to deepen. When at last she looks up, her gaze is slow, as if refocusing, adjusting the picture before her. The stricken expression smooths to understanding. She looks to Aidan. “I’m happy for you.” Then to Abby: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Abby shrugs. “It’s okay. I appreciate you trying. Thank you.”
Eleanor’s eyes fill again, the reflection of the lights like words just out of reach.
46
Then
ONLY HER CLOTHES ARE PACKED, some books. Claire is anxious to leave most everything behind, even her kiln, her wheel. She won’t allow herself that love—any love—anymore. With the door to her studio shut, she stands in the hall, unable to let go of the glass doorknob. This is it, the last connection. But then a distant part of the house settles with a shriek, and quickly she lets go. It’s been happening a lot, noises that Claire feels in her bones. As she turns, the floor wails.
—
The day before she’s to leave, she steps onto the path and winds her way through the red grief of geraniums to Edith’s house, the curtains all drawn. When Claire knocks, she sees a flutter in the fabric.
“I wanted to be sure it was you,” Edith says, the door barely held ajar. Her eyes are beautifully made up, but her lips are naked and forgotten, and her chest is weighted with at least five necklaces. Claire follows her into the darkened parlor and thinks of her children, soon to return, children who will one day forget how their mother used to be.
“Take the tea set,” Claire says, trying not to stare at Edith’s tangled layer of necklaces. “And my jewelry. I’ll get you everything. Sell what you can, and now and then I’d appreciate it if you could send me some money. William’s giving me a sum, but I don’t want to ask for more. I can’t be in contact with him—he needs me gone.” She touches her lips with her fingers. “I don’t know how this works. How much I’ll need.”
“I’ll give you the coat off my back,” Edith says. “This is my fault.”
“No. It’s not. And I can’t hear you say that.”
“Your mother seems like an inventory taker. She’ll notice what’s missing.”
Claire looks to the window, the curtain heavy, a split of light where the panels fail to meet. “Tomorrow night you ca
ll the police. Say you heard it. Two shots—one they’ll see missed, a bullet in the wall. The other—they’ll assume. William will be at a dinner, and when he comes home, the police will be in the house, and he’ll tell them what’s missing. My jewelry stolen. A few other things, his family’s silverware.” Then she looks down at her hand, fingers bare, and reaches into her pocket. The box, black velvet. “Edith. Please.”
“No. Absolutely not. I’ve got so many rings.” She flutters her bare fingers. “And I can’t sell it. I can’t wear it—people will recognize it. You keep it.”
Claire keeps her hand out, the ring, the most beautiful ring she’d ever seen, braced silently in black. “I can’t look at it. Give it to Dorothy when she’s old enough. Or her daughter, when she has one. It’s a promise, Edith. A promise of a life that never happened.”
She goes to place the ring box atop the piano, and that’s when she sees the butterfly container. Dried leaves, mostly bare sticks, the water in the vases clouded. A world already long ago. From the lid of the container hang a dozen empty chrysalises, which means the butterflies hatched. For a moment Claire feels a leap of hope—until she takes a step closer and sees the floor of the cage, littered with lifeless wings.
—
Early the next morning they left. It wasn’t a long drive, and they took it in silence. There was nothing to say. Their life together had gone horribly wrong, and though in a way that united them, bound them with regret and sorrow, it also enhanced that which they would like to forget. Complementary cuts of misfortune that slid together to form a whole clear, sad picture. No one could bring about the feeling of loss as the other could. And so they faced forward, silently watching darkness release the road in small stretches at a time.
At almost six AM they arrive, the landscape still dark. Black forms of trees are just beginning to cut into a suddenly lightened orange sky. She doesn’t know what to expect of the cottage. No one in her family has been here in years, and everyone else she knows stopped summering there, choosing instead the view of expansive oceans or cities with buildings that scrape the sky. And now the cottage has traded hands again, from Claire to Edith, though Edith had protested. If it makes you feel better, Claire had said, one day you can sell it back to me. For a dollar. She’d laughed, though Edith stayed silent.
William stops the car, and that’s when they hear the loons. Ghostly cries. An eerie, haunting accompaniment to life on a lake. Every culture has a tale of them. The Swedish family who lived in cottage number three had said that in Norse myth the cries were riddles, chilling conundrums that quickened a traveler’s pace. And the old Cree man who taught them to recognize birdcalls told them in scattered English that the loons were messengers from the beyond. As a child, Claire had heard their cries mostly as laughter, but now she agrees. Calls from the other side, unsettling shrieks slicing through the silence. A life of this will forever conjure faces in grains of wood, blinking eyes in darkness, brushing fingertips in the wind. But this was also the sound of her childhood, she reminds herself, and then it was graceful, majestic, romantic even. And really, it’s nothing more than the call of a bird, a bird that can barely walk on land.
The pebble path crunches beneath her feet. August, the month when each cottage teemed with children, small footprints in the sand, is not the same. Only a couple of cottages appear to be occupied, most likely locals whom Claire has never met, identical porch lights on, while the rest sit vacant or derelict. When she spots her family’s, the last in the row, she refuses to look at William, afraid to agree with any expression he wears. The screen door is sealed with grime, the green paint all but missing, and years of leaves piled on every surface.
Thankfully, the inside fared better. Her first impression is that of dust, nothing a good cleaning won’t fix, but then the world begins to brighten, and with it comes yellow stains on the walls and ceiling, a leaky roof’s ominous watercolor. William does what he can, removing a squirrel’s skeleton near the window—white, snagged streaks in the screen from its claw marks, desperate attempts for freedom—and knocking down the spiderwebs that shroud several corners.
“The roof, Claire,” he says as he stands at the door, determined to disappear before the neighbors wake. “That’s the first to address, before it rains. I’ll find someone in the area, and call them—don’t worry, I’ll use the name Davis. Electricity, plumbing. The fireplace needs to be checked before you use it.”
“Give me their name. I’ll contact them. I don’t want to be associated with anyone. Anyone real, that is. I’ll have a new name.”
“And that is?”
She pauses, almost not wanting him to have this, the extension to her new self. But at last she knows he must, if only for practical reasons. “Eleanor,” she says. “Eleanor Hadley.”
He nods, then looks around, one last time. “If you need anything, you should ask for it now. Soon I won’t be able to help.”
“I’ll be fine. I have Edith. If something changes, she can let you know.”
“No, Claire. I won’t be around.” He pauses, as if debating further explanation, but says nothing more.
She looks at him, William, her William, whom she’s tried to love a little less with every day. She can’t let him see her face, how she’s failed. She turns toward the screened porch. Without looking at him again—a decision she’ll often question later, as would one last steady look have hurt? One additional remembrance to carry her forever?—she steps away and onto the green-painted wood planks, the water before her overwhelmed with color, the sky burning orange and pink, a sky of daydreams and desire. Out here the lake is full of life, splashing wings, cries and calls of birds whose names return to her. Loons, warblers, waterthrush. This will be her life. The sounds of her world.
And at night the noises will change, the beauty gone, and never will she forget why.
The morning air is cold despite the warm glow, and it’s as she’s watching the water that she hears the door close. Just like that, he’s gone.
47
Now
HE WAS THERE. And still is. By her side as often as he can be.
But Robert. Things need to be settled between them, figured out and made clear. Best done in person, she’s decided, and so the silences between them are long, words caught along the way.
“I had a strange dream last night,” he says when he calls, as if hoping that treading on her territory will engage her.
“What was it?”
“It was one of those dreams where I was me, but I wasn’t me. And I guess I’d been in a hospital for a while, because I woke up and found out Marlene Dietrich had visited. While I was asleep. I was so pissed. But then I wanted to go home. I remember that. Just to be home. Someone asked me where that was and I said ‘lovin’.’ Maybe I was from the South. I don’t know.”
“Marlene Dietrich?”
“I watched Judgment at Nuremberg a couple nights ago, I guess she was on my mind.”
Acquiescing, that’s how he’s been. Walking softly, afraid to wake the sleeping giant. At least this is what she thinks, until he continues.
“Abby. I fucked up. If I’d gotten on that plane with you none of this would’ve happened. I think about that every day.”
“Robert, that’s not—”
“I know. My idea of being ready for marriage, I thought I was doing that. But I wasn’t. I see that now. But I think we can get back. Can you just remember how we used to be?”
“I remember. And I’ll come home soon, I promise.”
And she will. Even if it’s simply to have a face-to-face conversation, to move her things from one side of the dresser to a box on the floor.
—
Outside, kids jump into the hotel pool and a car door slams. Summer is almost back to normal. Bikes tear down streets, soccer balls are kicked into nets, the scent of charcoal again warming the evenings. Little feet once more find toeholds in the
bases of trees, the world seen as if through green glass, leaves bright with sun. But mothers watch a bit closer from porches, and locks click shut in the evening. Almost back to normal.
“I’ve been thinking of going to the Cities,” Aidan tells her. “Moving back. I want you to come with me.”
“Us,” she says, running her fingertips along his wrist, then up his arm, “in Minneapolis together. Maybe near the lakes. A little place.”
“Just ours.”
This, she knows, is right. She could work in estate jewelry here, maybe start her own business. Perhaps one day she’d come across more pieces by I&I, learn their stories. Write it down, don’t let them end. The ring is still on her hand, and in its flash she once again sees the brazen red of truth. What would she write? What would be the words she’d print for this, her own story?
With this ring, a wrong was made right.
—
Pulling away from Makade, she feels as though she’s leaving a piece of herself, convinced she could turn around and see the former Abby, left behind. Yet strangely the one that’s replaced her feels more innocent—trusting—as if a reset button has been pressed. They don’t call it “a new lease on life” for nothing, her mother said. But it’s more than this.
Return the car. Return to life. Hard conversations. Movement. Though part of her wants to stay in limbo, maybe in Minneapolis, where only Aidan would know to find her, where she’d not be forced to face anything. Her hands are on the steering wheel, eyes steady on the distant silhouette of the airport. And then, in one smooth motion, she veers off the highway and toward the lake district, knowing she’ll cut her flight close, but deciding to leave things up to chance, to offer her day, her life, like a petal in her palm. If it catches a breeze, so be it.