"He's right about the bug-eyed part."
"Fuck off, Karl. At least I'm here."
"Just trying to help a fella, Tiger. You need to get laid, relax, and get some sleep. Total reboot."
It pisses me off, hearing nothing from Karl for days, then he immediately starts in with telling me how I need to be more like him. "Fuck off with your stupid advice."
"Anyway, you got the place to yourself. Jack off in the living room if you want. Actually, never mind, don't get on my sofa with that shit."
I want to ask where he's been, and about the girlfriend. I consider telling Karl what I saw that night, the dark, his door left open. I remember, even if he doesn't. While I debate whether I should, Karl signs off, hangs up.
Back to my PC, the production list. I don't feel like drawing fixtures any more. I get up and walk outside, down the edge of the parking lot and around behind Constant's office. I find the corner of the yard with the best view of the river, away from solvent fumes and smoke from welding and plasma cutting. Also, the lowest likelihood of grit-caked meatheads bothering me.
I take out Michelle's letter.
It's shorter than I expect, just a single page, one-sided. Expensive textured cotton stationery. The ridiculous thing is, despite everything that's happened, the sight of her handwriting makes me think I might actually start to cry. I put the letter back in my pocket until this idea passes. Anger helps. Fucking engaged, so stupid. I breathe slow and deep, looking out across the water.
I pull out the letter again. This time I'll get through it, no problem.
The note is a sort of catalog, a series of points justifying Michelle's point of view, rationalizing a string of disparate acts as if they're somehow connected. Root causes of her withholding of intimacy. Why I had to leave the house. The reason divorce was the only answer. Her suggestion I keep paying the mortgage. The logic by which my books and CDs became hers. There's nothing in the letter about her recent engagement. Maybe she recognizes it for the doomed, irrational gesture it clearly is.
Michelle hopes I grasp her hopes, her intentions. I used to believe I did. Now, having read this note, I wonder.
One sentence sticks. "I will always love you, but can never say those words face-to-face or even on the phone, because I know you would misunderstand them as a kindness."
After, I'm able to see my ex-wife from a new, completely unfamiliar vantage point. This involves a bizarre sense of disorientation, following so many conversations, so much living, almost a quarter century of relationship and intimacy, and even these recent months of abjection, to become abruptly aware how delicate it all is, and must always have been. Maybe all I've ever needed to grant me this perspective was to read a letter like this one.
Yes, she's struggling to understand herself, to act her way toward life's next chapter. Wonderful. In that sense, we're the same. So why does this letter infuriate me? Why this uprising of anger toward myself, rather than her? Though I understand some of what she's trying to convey, it doesn't matter. She waited to share these secrets until they were no longer any use to me.
I stand at the corner of this rectangle of land studded with cranes and man-lifts, stacks of rusting steel plate and heavy chain, ranks of gear for welding, cutting, grinding. Beyond this, the wide river moves. I dare myself to cry, sincerely wish it to happen. I want this out of me, want to heave it up and feel cleansed. But no tears will come.
Chapter 10
A flow that never ends
When I return to the office, I feel changed. Cubicle walls can't touch me. I wonder if it shows, this transformation of mine.
Day shift hardhats stream into the office, punch out and leave for home. Payroll and HR follow. I'm anxious to get away too, but I'm waiting until Constant leaves, just because I’m trying to support the impression that I’m always reliably at my desk. Then I realize he must've already gone while I was outside, and just left his office light on. I switch it off, shut his door. I'm alone here.
On my way out it occurs to me that while I'm ready to leave, I don't actually want to go home. What else is there? As I near a front window made reflective by security spotlights, I approach someone who resembles me, but his eyes are dark, and a smear of blood obscures his mouth.
"Who the fuck?" I gasp, startled, and reflexively reach for my lips.
The reflection does the same. It's me. Fingers come away clean.
Out in my car, I lock myself in and angle the rear-view mirror to check my face. My skin is pale, almost transparent. Black circles under my eyes. I look sick, but there's no visible blood.
I need to change how I sustain myself. Not just food and sleep, but other ways. Unfamiliar pleasures, smells. New music and books. I'm not Karl. Instead of trying to be less myself, I should be more.
On Marine Drive, instead of turning left toward home, turn right toward I-5, then south into the city. I park off Burnside on NW 22nd, in the shadow of the first apartment building Michelle and I lived in when we returned to Portland after college. I explore 23rd as far as north as Lovejoy, come back on 21st, then head down Glisan toward the Pearl. Our old neighborhood is changed, though I've visited here lately enough it's not a complete surprise. I wander past restaurants, boutiques and coffee shops, letting ideas settle.
Drawn by smells into a new shop, Parfum de Nuit, I pick up candles scented with cardamom and bitter mandarin, cactus and vetiver, or clove and amber, colored orange, umber, green and gold. Next, incenses named "Fire Soil" and "Mystery of Night Skin." The woman behind the counter suggests a pale green cologne that smells of neroli, tart lime and white pepper. I can't read the bottle, but the scent makes me feel awake and excited. The proprietor says it's perfect for me. She pronounces the name, which I fail to catch, but I don't want to tell her I didn't understand.
Down to the tea vendor, where I find a gold cast iron Japanese tea pot covered with symbols, tins of pu erh and matcha teas, a local unsweet chai blend, and a hard-packed brick comprised of sticky clove, nettle and raspberry leaf.
Most of the music stores I used to visit are gone, but Everyday Music survives on Burnside and 14th, up the street from Powell's Books where I plan to stop last. It's hard to find music that means anything to me without being reminded of Michelle. That's my fault, that excess of interconnection. I settle on Michael Nyman's soundtracks for The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and The Draughtsman's Contract. I'm on my way to the register, but go back for Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians and LaMonte Young's Music On a Long Thin Wire. Each step in my process of selection feels like a deliberate act of tiptoeing through the milestones of Michelle's opinions, moving past them.
In line to pay, I murmur aloud, "I want my own."
In Powell's I find a tattered paperback of Russell Edson's surrealist prose poems, an affordable full-color Taschen edition of Joan Miró art reproductions and history, an ancient hardcover English translation of Icelandic Sagas, and a real treasure, Karl Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, which blends the subjects of alchemy and psychology. I'm ready to begin anew, with these items forming the blocks of my foundation. Michelle wouldn't buy any of these things, nor would Karl.
On my way out of Powell's, my mind drifts to the woman I saw by the river. I've been thinking of her a lot in a directionless, nonspecific way. I guess I imagine her a sort of counterbalance to Michelle, an unencumbered and mysterious antidote to all my wife's unnecessary complications and self-contradictions. As I push through swinging doors out to the sidewalk, I see her standing there. This can't be her, but it is. I recognize everything, and she seems to recognize me. I want to address her, but don't know her name. I'm about to try to justify myself, to grasp at her before she turns away, explain that we've seen each other before. We've spoken. Don't you remember, I'm about to ask. In that field among the trees, between the Kalama River and Colson's place?
Someone else pushes out of the door behind me, a freckled mother dragging twin children past me by the hands. They pass between us. I still haven't s
poken and I'm thinking there's still time, she's here, we're both here, but the intrusion breaks that initial connection.
Once the freckled mother and children are past, the dark haired woman looks at me again, and the friendly recognition I imagined I saw is entirely absent. Her face is different, unfamiliar. Not her. She was never here. This was always someone else.
"Sorry," I murmur, but she's already gone.
I walk away, heading west toward my car. Where else to go? I want to buy more than I can afford, find some new clothes, but my circumstances are limited. Next month I'll return. I have to begin slowly. It's up to me what kind of person I become. Not Michelle. If I just lay around waiting for her to pick me up off the ground, I'm in for a long wait. I have to make an effort. What kind of idiot doesn't at least try to rebuild himself?
I'm surprised how late it is when I get home. I should be hungry, but all I want is to sort through the things I bought. Candles, tea, music, books. I spread everything out, cover my bed. I want to lie among everything, absorb the smells, but I think I may actually be able to sleep.
I put the new books on the shelf beside the seventeen I managed to rescue from Michelle. Now I have twenty-one. I undress, turn off lights, put on the Reich CD. Everything is dark, not only my room. Only river sounds, until the quiet music begins.
Once I'm in bed, I keep thinking someone's here, like that other night. Karl's gone. She's here. Don't think about it.
I climb out of bed, creep into the hallway, push open Karl's door. This is how it was before. Not trying to intrude, just recreating conditions. Reach into the bathroom, flick on the switch, and watch reflected light spill into the hall.
A woman on the edge of the bed, feet together. She was there before. Not now.
Arrange it all the way it was. Balance light and dark, doors open and closed. I might bring her back, if everything's exactly the same. The sound of screaming. I thought it was pleasure.
I flick off the bathroom light and return to bed. Stop worrying about it. Just need to lie down.
When I was little and couldn't sleep, my mom told me, Just lie still, rest your eyes. It's supposed to be better to remain motionless and quiet in the dark. I doubt that's true. Every night I lie here, trying to rest, straining to keep my eyes closed. Then in the morning I feel like exhausted death and have to drag myself to work. Immobility is no help. Parents only say that about resting eyes and keeping quiet so kids will shut up and leave them alone.
I want to tell myself the same. Shut up. Stop crying. Leave me alone.
Nobody's listening.
Sometimes I catch thoughts conforming to strange shapes, blueprints imposed from outside myself. I believe I'm following a clear train of thought, that time is ticking past one second at a time. Then I realize something must've skipped. I've fallen asleep, reawakened. Or maybe everything has jumped far ahead and left me behind. Whatever mechanism keeps track, enforces forward movement, tallies sleeping and wakefulness, mine's somehow broken.
Think about thinking.
Listen to the sound of listening.
Try not to try to sleep.
These processes disconnect and work at cross purposes. Dream of thinking, dream of listening, dream of insomnia. I'm wondering why I can't conjure from imagination the primal sexuality of an unknown woman's cries. I'm not here. I'm somewhere else. That's all fantasy is.
Create a new life. Pour myself into it.
There's a sound from somewhere outside my room. I leap out of bed, go back to the door, look out. Lights are still off. Nobody's moving. Only the river.
I open my eyes and find I'm still in bed. I never got up, only thought I did. This loop is going to kill me.
Chapter 11
Faces clearly remembered yet never actually seen
This is actually not a dream. This is my inescapable obsession, a catalog of details from a possible future. If I choose correctly, things can still be set right. I only need to assemble the appropriate objects, component parts of my next self. What alternative do I have? What other end?
All along, I never considered the idea of killing myself. Lately, these merged-together nights, the possibility keeps repeating, an unwanted suggestion offered in a flat, toneless voice. I'm interested in specific details, a visual fantasia like an endless, garish slide show.
I'll use the knife Karl gave me. That grim old utilitarian hunk of steel, fragrant of blood and oil and decades-old rust. Slice open my belly, split myself apart and scoop out my insides. Offer my guts to the river.
What shape will I—
I use the blade without testing it first, find it sharp. I'm willing to cut.
Something dead floats away.
Blood on the ground, taste it in my mouth. Sticky hands, smeared lips. What is the source of this endlessly flowing blood? I hear rushing, a hot current. In the night, women float past, dark faces indistinct. Try to imagine details.
Michelle's long auburn hair tied back straight. Lips pursed around a tart secret.
In her place a taller blond whose face keeps shifting, unresolved. This is the shape from Karl's room, a woman I know because I've imagined her, though we've never met. Her body just an outline, details withheld by darkness. Her face invisible.
She doesn't belong to—
Another, new and different. What form will she take, my own design? She hides among trees, sleeps beside water, waits for me beneath open sky. She asks questions without words. Hair dark, eyes large, skin pale. We chose each other. Been waiting so long, holding on for some impetus outside myself. An offered invitation, or unequivocal arrival onstage.
Yes, I would give my blood.
Say it aloud, say I'll risk for you, I'll offer trade. Possess, devour.
Don't go yet, she says. Not until—
I wake, speaking around her essence, trying to conjure the lost name from a sound. Keep repeating the idea of her, circle around. Declare myself, stand forward. Fear can't resist forever the pull of desire.
The knife is so sharp.
Chapter 12
Drawn to the gap between trees
I'm driving before sunrise. No reason justifies such an early start. The cold, brittle morning hints at summer's end. Autumn will clear everything away.
Outside the barrier at the end of Cayson's driveway, birds speak their strange cries, scattering from high atop trees, heaving dense wings into flight. The sky becomes gray as the sun emerges behind an atmosphere heavy with mist. Prior visits, I remember different sounds. Places transform depending on hour or season. Minds change. In various stages of life, we switch between worlds, each as dissimilar from the last as the difference between waking life and dreams.
As I start up the gravel drive that cuts between narrow evergreens, I contemplate my plan for the day. Places I intend to go, events I hope might occur. First, to the river.
Why is it so hard to admit I want to see the woman again? Last time I came here, she was on my mind, but I never let myself admit it. When I finally faced her, only a few words were said. Too soon it was over. There should be no shame in admitting what I'm after. Fear is exhilarating, also empowering. I hope I find her, and if I do, I'll be first to speak. I want to know her name, want to look at her steadily, without flinching. See what she really looks like. It's too early now, but I'll go later, after fishing. That gives me plenty of time to prepare. When the right moment arrives, I'll find her outside. She'll know I'm coming. She'll be waiting.
Where Cayson's house comes into view, I leave the driveway and head toward the more active upper section of river where Karl first took me. I want to avoid the house, vaguely concerned someone might be home, though of course the barrier gate was locked. Whatever it was I saw last time near the house, I don't know how to categorize it. Maybe that's what I'm avoiding, the uncertainty of a figure darting, seeming to hide behind a thick oak. Then my realization the bark was adorned with carved lines. Reaching up into the hollow. Something wet inside. The powerful smell of death.
I reali
ze I'm carrying both sides of a conversation. It seems crazy, worrying so much over a small thing like talking to a woman. How complicated can it be? I know what Karl would say. Just demonstrate my interest, and see what develops.
This is what I'm doing, psyching myself up and at the same time trying to convince myself it's no big deal.
It's only when I see the river I realize I'm not carrying my fishing gear. Must be still in the car. I turn, intending to go back and get it, then doubt stops me. Did I even bring it along? Maybe I left everything at home.
I'm here. I'm not going away. Anyway, I didn't really come to fish. But this changes my plan for the day. At the very least I can locate the field again, get another look at her house, then maybe go down beside the river and think about what to do. I have to be careful she doesn't see me yet, not until I'm ready. I veer downstream toward the canyons, following the river. I don't want to go too far into the trees, or near the house. The trail winds along that strip of thin forest, then sharply curves. I recognize a wild barrier of blackberry canes overtaking a rock mound.
Beyond this is her field.
I pause, have to get control of my thoughts. I'm afraid she might hear what I'm thinking, discern my intentions.
"Don't be crazy," I whisper. My voice cracks.
I'm shivering, my arms prickling with goosebumps. It's barely September. The sun will come later, burn off the clouds. For now, it's freezing.
Right past this verge, I'll just sneak a look, then decide. What's so hard, admitting you want to see someone? Maybe she'll think it's strange that I came here not to fish, but just to see her. No, stop worrying. I have to talk to her. No going back now.
The field appears transformed, so much that I wonder if this is even the right place. The location is correct, relative to the driveway, the house and the river, but the geometry feels less flat and open than what I pictured. I feel a sense of convergence, of being surrounded by walls. It's the heavy, dark ocean of forest behind, focusing all attention toward the center. It's as if this field exerts gravity in all directions, draws everything inward from all sides, even from above. The ground drops away into the middle of the field, almost like a bowl. The roof of the A-frame is lower than the ground on which I'm standing, as if this field is sinking away, possibly trying to conceal itself from those who pass by.
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