The Singing Forest

by Judith McCormack

  But these are known quantities — habits of his, things that are familiar. Things she has even adopted, not as her own, rather as shared operations, joint labours. Adding anything else into this mix — especially something unpredictable — would be a form of lunacy. This is a man who bounds along the surface of his life, who avoids getting wet at all costs.

  Although perhaps he is becoming better at this business of being a person. She looks at his eyes now, greyish-blue, clever, warm. The colour of iron, of rain. And he can be utterly disarming, a brother-in-arms.

  No. This is not something to pursue, or even to acknowledge. This is something to be ignored, to be kept at a distance. She is simply at loose ends, her emotions scrambled by the firing, she is deluding herself.

  This is nothing, anyway. A humming, a surge of bass notes. Something that can be pushed aside.

  He gestures towards the bottle of wine in her hand, and she pours some into his glass, watching him as he leans back and takes a swallow, his throat exposed. She feels an urge to stroke his windpipe, to trace the lines of his collarbone. The bone most frequently broken, Rudy said once — he reads the text that goes with his illustrations. No need for it to be hit dead on — it can be broken by falling on a shoulder, a hand, the impact travelling back.

  Ignore this. Stifle this.

  Why?

  Because she knows him, he is too fitful, too haphazard with people — they swim in and out of his focus. Because it might ruin their friendship, even their working relationship — if they ever have one again. Because he is entirely plausible, entirely convincing, until the ruthless side of him turns up, like a prankster of some kind. Even then, it seems like an aberration, an exception, too easy to explain away. Until the next time.

  All good reasons. Very good reasons.

  This is nothing, anyway.

  ···

  She wakes up suddenly, her mind still crowded with pieces of dreams. She tries to catch hold of them, to hang on to them, but they evaporate too quickly, vanishing around corners before she can see what they are. This makes her feel a little lost, as if these scraps are small parts of herself that are disappearing — strange, fine parts that are too fleeting to survive.

  But Nate’s breath is on her shoulder, his warmth beside her — he seems unusually real, even in his sleep the pores on his skin, his shoulder muscles stand out. Perhaps she can borrow pieces of his dreams, perhaps they are hardier than hers, less likely to dissolve so quickly. How will she know if they are worth borrowing, though? What if they are bad dreams, what if they are ugly, threadbare?

  She rolls over.

  No. His dreams would be like him. Last night — a dry sweetness in the palms of his hands, his fingertips, his lips — something that seemed to expand, to rise and fall. His eyes hazy, as he touched and stroked her skin, exploring the hollows and bones of her body, sliding between her legs. Then his face twisted with urgency, as he pushed himself inside her, as she clutched his back, so many sensations at once, all exquisitely different, the rhythm of his movements making her gasp and arch.

  Afterwards, she fell asleep suddenly, dropping into a quiet stream of darkness.

  And now?

  She looks around. His place is crowded with things, even the air seems full — traces of his cooking, garlic, blackened peppers. He is a collector, an accumulator of odds and ends — objects, clues, beliefs. A sepia photograph of elderly twins. A figurine of three mice riding a giant white radish. A quirky theory of combustion.

  Look, he will say, showing her a wind-up ostrich stalking around in a circle.

  She has wondered — even before this — if she is part of this collection, lurching around on wind-up feet. But she swipes away the thought each time. If it isn’t entirely untrue, it is untrue enough.

  And now, she thinks, now for the hazards. The possibility that this delicate, tentative web between them will evaporate, that they will stumble over unlovely things about each other, that they will fall down holes of yearning and misunderstanding. That they will find quarrelling more appealing, more satisfying than peace. That there will be a host of injuries, large and small.

  But these things seem remote now, at a great distance. Instead, she is filled with a soft euphoria, she is saturated with him, with a curious delight in him.

  Nate, she says to herself again, to remind herself. Nate.

  But he has already become someone else.

  Perhaps she can get a clearer image, not of him, but of this thing between them instead, its edges, its furrows and folds. Something distinctive, unmistakable, spelled out by their arms and legs.

  But this, too, is formless, this tender fog, impossible to grasp. If she waits awhile, it will take on shape, its contours will be revealed. In the meantime, its shapelessness is tranquil, mesmerizing.

  ···

  Surely her exile will not be permanent. Surely Louis is trying to teach her a lesson. Of course he will relent.

  No sign of it, says Nate wearily. He has spoken to Louis again, urging him to reconsider. We need the help. She knows the cases.

  Isabel tried, too, says Nate. She cornered him in his office, and gave him hell in that withering Spanish accent.

  This is a foolish thing. You know yourself this is wrong.

  Louis is adamant, though, unmoved.

  Why? Leah says.

  I have to be able to trust the people I work with.

  Trust. An unruly thing, changing shape from moment to moment. Always a risk to trust some person, some circumstance. A necessary bet, though. Otherwise, paralysis would set in — people unable to take another step without some assurance that the ground would not collapse.

  But trust doesn’t require mindless obedience, she says. Trust doesn’t require docility — if anything, a failing in a lawyer. Law is too tricky, too many-sided for that. Even trust is too tricky for that.

  You’re fired, he says again.

  Owen. Is it possible he might intervene on her behalf, might explain that he had put her on the spot? But asking him would be dangerous, might only stir up the situation further. And why would he intervene, this man who is an expert non-combatant? A man who is above all cautious — only ever engaged to the extent he can retreat.

  I underestimated how quick he is, she says to Nate. I admit it. And my attempts to sidestep the issue — not very adept. Perhaps his conclusions suited me. Perhaps Louis has some reason for being annoyed. But this?

  From Louis, a man normally so hard-headed, says Nate. Self-satisfied, yes, but not a martinet.

  More than that, she says, thinking of his flickers of warmth.

  A four-year-old at the office one weekend, running up and down the hall, windmilling his arms, shouting gleefully. Louis scoops him up and begins singing to him, a children’s ditty, his voice surprisingly musical, the child quieting down. He turns around and sees her, and stops singing abruptly.

  He has his moments, says Nate cautiously.

  Do you think this is another sign of some brain problem, some neural slipperiness? she says.

  Possibly. Or maybe you hit a sensitive spot. A valuable client, too, a source of future cases.

  Or perhaps he is more of a dictator than I thought. Maybe I’m better off without him, she says.

  But she doesn’t really believe that.

  ···

  Her mother is humming again, so faintly as to be almost imperceptible. Fiddle dee dee, fiddle dee dee, the fly has married the bumblebee.

  ···

  A job, this is her goal now. No more dolce far niente. But this is a daunting proposition without a reference. She needs an explanation for this event that is wholly inexplicable, something she can offer a potential employer.

  We had a difference of opinion. Insubordinate, they will think.

  We had a misunderstanding. Stupid, they will think.

  I made a mistake.
It must have been serious.

  I did nothing wrong. She sounds like a client.

  He was a difficult person. She sounds petulant.

  No one will want a junior who might sidestep directions.

  Why not start your own firm? says Malcolm, so pleased to have her in the ranks of the fired that he is full of useless ideas.

  It takes too long, she says. Too long to build up a client list, too long to produce an income.

  Could she evade the questions, claim to have done something untraceable for the last year — a lengthy trip? Ah, lies, there they are again, but she is without the desperate circumstances of her clients to justify them. And she has almost a physical distaste for lying herself, real lies, that is, not white lies. Something growing up with Malcolm had instilled, watching his lies ricochet around them.

  She has nothing like his knack, his skill with them, either. A lie like this would call for agility, for practice. Deceit is a muscle as much as a skill, she thinks, something that requires strengthening, maintenance. And a good lie needs commitment — to vigilance, to consistency, to specific details, to auxiliary lies. Things even Malcolm was often too lazy to provide.

  But perhaps her reluctance to lie is only a form of squeamishness. Maybe she is indulging a sense of integrity at the expense of her uncles, an income, she thinks. Is this really a matter of her concerns about virtue, about doing right? Or is it possible her preoccupation with the idea of doing right is part of a bribe, a bribe to luck? Does she secretly think that if she promises to be good — whatever that might be — this will ward off any strokes of random disaster? A modern form of superstition. Or a form of moral protection money.

  Then she realizes that lying about a trip is not possible in any event. Too many lawyers, potential employers have seen her in court over the last year, with Louis and without him.

  There are other jobs, though, other lines of work. Perhaps she can get a position in something else. But part of her rebels at the thought. So unwilling to come to terms with law at first, she is reluctant to abandon it now. And people, potential employers would be puzzled, so many of them impressed — in spite of themselves — by law. Why would someone abandon this, they will think — had she been expelled, even disbarred?

  If there are some people who are impressed by law, she thinks, there are others who are fascinated by it. No matter how many laws there are, they want more, and no amount will satisfy them, will relieve the craving. They are addicted, they want laws about everything — sexual acts in ravines, purple loosestrife in marshes, bulk spices. About barking dogs, about keeping rats, about where the cremated ashes of dead people can be scattered. They are intoxicated by the extraordinary trick of power that law offers, the possibility of changing the constellation of things, of changing the results.

  She is startled to find that she is becoming one of them.

  ···

  The strings, she says, as her aunt pulls the bedcovers over her small body, turns on the night light. The ones holding up the birds. What happens if they break? Do the birds fall out of the sky? Or do they float on air?

  Flying, floating, falling, says her aunt. You think those are the only possibilities?

  ···

  Val, small, round-faced, quiet as milk, rooting through the kitchen cupboards for tea. She is everywhere, smelling of light sweat and talcum powder. Soothing, a little white moon of a person. A voice faintly husked by smoking, she begins doing some of the cooking, baked apples, leek and potato soup, custard pie, food as quiet as she is. So mild a person, so innocuous, but threatening to break apart this small sphere of existence.

  Leah has had her suspicions, she has seen the signs in Gus — the minute upgrades in grooming, a new razor, a polished belt buckle, a different soap.

  Don’t leave.

  I might not get another chance.

  They would never say things like this, this is not the way they talk to each other. This is not the way Gus talks to anyone, but she has learned to avoid any unnecessary words with him. The result? Their conversations take place in a mute language that runs under the surface, a language full of stale repetitions.

  Don’t leave.

  This might be my only chance.

  Is he really thinking about it?

  They all think about it sometimes. About separating themselves from this mismatch of people, marooned together by inertia, by a lack of money, by doubts about what else might be possible. More than that — by all the unseen filaments that grow between people, slowly, silently over the years, whether they want them to or not.

  The rules of affinity and consanguinity, says Nate.

  So far these thoughts of leaving have usually amounted only to half-formed calculations, vague daydreams — nothing as concrete as an announcement, a departure. At least not since Malcolm came back, decree nisi in hand. But Gus is the most likely defector now — the most presentable, the most apt to be liked or adopted by other people. He has friends, too, the bowling team, the pub.

  Don’t leave.

  Val’s cooking is certainly an improvement, she has to admit this, even though she is still resentful. You can’t buy Gus with food, she wants to say to her. But perhaps she can. Even she herself has a hard time resisting — she eats a piece of shortbread irritably, annoyed at her lack of self-restraint.

  Be fair, she says to herself. Be objective. Isn’t Gus entitled to this?

  No. Maybe. But who gets what they are entitled to, anyway?

  Be smart, then. Be patient. These things have blown over before. Give her a chance, she means well.

  Or perhaps she is taking advantage of his burly good nature, trying to wriggle her small moon self into this counterfeit family.

  She’s turning him into a spaniel, says Malcolm.

  Jealous, he is strongly of the view that if anyone should have a girlfriend, it should be him, the man who even had a wife at one point. But he is such a blend of sincerity and deception, he loses people as quickly as he attracts them. A day trader in people, a speculator in human beings — not someone who can sustain even a friendship.

  Isn’t she something? Gus says, surprised into talking.

  Yes, says Rudy, who almost flirts with her himself in his own rusty way.

  But Gus leaving would be a disaster. She tries to be glad on his behalf, but feels only dismay.

  Of course, she has thought about leaving herself, of course she has. This is the expected thing, the usual thing — children grow up and leave. Although perhaps these are children who are not charged with ensuring certain people will not vanish, who are not involved in a loss prevention operation with respect to particular human beings.

  What about that guy? says Gus silently.

  What about him? Wiry hair, blunt as a bone. Off to the International Court in The Hague, a prestigious internship. A man who needed no decoding, no solving — an easy, knowable person. So easy that even this break — announced calmly — seemed easy, instinctive at the time. Together for seven months, gone now for three months, she has occasional moments of achiness. She tries to keep him locked away in a vault in her psyche, but even there, he is mouldering gently, producing odourless gases that seep through once in a while.

  But if leaving is a possibility for her at some point, that some point is not now. Not this cluttered present. Not this moment in time — or the next, or the next — when a change like that would open up lines of contingency, lines of random circumstances. Things that might lead anywhere, that might land anywhere.

  The doctrine of foreseeability. A man jumps onto a train leaving the station, boosted by a railway worker. He drops a package of fireworks, which then explodes, causing a coin-operated weigh scale to fall over and hit a woman standing on the platform. The woman sues the railway in tort and wins twice in the lower courts, then loses on appeal. There was no negligence in law because the railway worker could not have f
oreseen these events. Negligence in the abstract is surely not a tort, says Chief Justice Cardozo, if indeed it is understandable at all.

  I know this is none of my business, she starts to say to Gus.

  That’s right, says Gus.

  ···

  An apology. Apologizing to Louis would be a lie as well, but this is her lie to have, something private, about her own thoughts. Thoughts so crowded, so fleeting that anything might be almost true for a moment. And she feels entitled to this kind of lie, although she is not sure why. But how many apologies are entirely truthful?

  I’m sorry, she says to the mirror, pushing out the words with an effort.

  Too tepid. She will have to sound more convincing.

  I’m sorry. I apologize. Wholeheartedly. It won’t happen again.

  Wholeheartedly?

  Thoroughly. Thoroughly sorry. I truly regret this.

  Does she? She certainly regrets the loss of her job. And apologies are peculiar creatures — many-headed, many-footed. We regret to say. Widespread now, everywhere, for small sins, sweeping injustices, for tiny blunders, vast tragedies. A massive traffic in remorse.

  This idea that mere words can heal or repair something — where does it come from? That a ritual of speech can have such an effect. An appealing thought for a lawyer — a person who gambles everything on the power of language.

  Drozd. What if he had expressed regret, had admitted his wrongdoing? She is becoming convinced of his guilt, his complicity. As flawed as the affidavits are, together they have a persuasive mass. What if he had apologized at some point, a genuine expression of repentance? Even if he were capable of this, what would be the effect? Would the dead bodies of people be transformed, skin growing back over their skeletons? Would their crumbling torsos begin solidifying, filling in with organs, nerves regenerating? Would the lives they would have lived reconstitute themselves backwards, like a living jigsaw puzzle?

  No. Some things cannot be erased. Some things cannot be undone.