The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  An entryway, the size of a small closet-too small for a coat rack or a boot mat-gave onto the narrow living room. Along the longest wall a tweed sofa sat facing a pine cabinet, an entertainment center. The cabinet doors were shut tight; walking past it would hardly be possible otherwise. Houseplants-a big leafy fern hanging in the window, glossy ivies trailing down the frame of an ?tag?re, and lavish, hairy African violets erupting with blooms-imparted a green tinge to the room's white walls and beige carpet.

  Half a dozen magazines lay scattered across the glass coffee table. Two issues of People, two of Us, a year-old Rowing News, a recent Entertainment Weekly. I shuffled them into a pile on the corner of the table; I would take them with me. Clothing-a T-shirt, a pair of sweatpants-lay over the slumped back of the sofa. I hung them over my arm and tossed them into the bathroom hamper on the way to the bedroom.

  The bed was a disaster of twisted linen. It was a small bed-full-sized, surely, not queen-sized-and I couldn't believe Tory had ever slept in it comfortably. After sharing this narrow thing with Christa, sleeping in his enormous platform bed must feel like lying in the middle of a sweeping plain.

  In the closet I found a nylon duffel bag. I searched the chest of drawers. Underclothes in the top drawer, nightgowns in the bottom drawer, T-shirts and socks in the middle. I grabbed two of everything and stuffed it all into the duffel.

  A paperback book, a romance novel, lay on the nightstand. Her Majesty's Folly. On the cover a brutishly muscular, bare-chested man embraced a busty woman in a heavy violet gown or robe trimmed in gold. The colors were vibrant, saturated, nearly chimerical. A slip of paper marked a spot in the middle of the book. I tucked it into the duffel bag.

  Carrying the bag into the bathroom, I propped it on the edge of the sink. I put in everything I could lay my hands on: toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, cologne, comb, brush, blush, lipstick, eye shadow, mascara, styling gel, and finally the glasses in their black case.

  What else? I looked around. I kept my gaze low, avoiding my reflection in the mirror over the sink.

  Thick towels hung in tidy green rectangles. On the toilet tank, pink pisciform soaps lay in a white china dish. Even in Christa's bathroom the sweet scent of an orchard in springtime filled the air. My bathroom always smelled of mildew and stale laundry. In my house, decorative towels and soaps-had I bothered with either-would all wear a patina of dust.

  I closed the duffel and zipped it.

  But wait. What about leaving the hospital? She'd need street clothes. I set the duffel in the hallway and returned to the bedroom. In the closet I tugged a string, switched on the overhead light. A skirt, it seemed, would be just the thing. But which? This red wool plaid I'd never seen her wear? No, she'd look like one of the Catholic school girls. This gauzy beige dirndl? Too summery.

  Shoving aside denim and twill and corduroy and suede, I spotted a pile of magazines on one of the shelves. The stack had toppled; the glossy covers were as slick as oil. Playgirl. I had not seen a Playgirl since high school.

  On the cover a blond man grinned and flexed. He was brawny, tan, shaven, permed-groomed almost to the point of asepticism. I opened to the centerfold, where the blond man reclined on a chaise. Behind him shone the blue water of a swimming pool. Naked, prodigiously erect, he thrust his head back as if in unendurable pleasure. His tan lines were perfect, so sharp and clean that they might have been drawn in with drafting tools. It was unseemly, somehow, the way the narrow band of white skin framed his pale, hard cock.

  One tug at the top button of my jeans, and my fly opened. My erection sprang free and strained for its final inch. I studied the blond man. I stroked myself. On the next page he stood in profile, his arms hooked behind his head. His thighs were enormous, the curve of his ass white and ample.

  I turned the page and found the Fantasy Forum. In sepia photographs sprinkled among the columns, nude men wrapped their lean and tawny limbs around the china-white bodies of faceless women. Each tale bore a bold, lower-case title:

  alyssa/all work and no play

  marianne/up on the roof

  joanna/slave to the rhythm

  Slave, I thought. Slaves to sin are free from righteousness, but slaves to righteousness are free from sin.

  This was wrong, what I was doing. A sin.

  "Wrong," I said aloud. "Wrong."

  I tossed the magazine atop the pile, grabbed the dirndl, switched off the light, and backed out of the closet. Now, along with Christa's potpourri of flowers and fruit, I smelled my own sweat, my own lust, my own stench. Stuffing my irrepressible erection down the right leg of my jeans, buttoning my fly, I made for the door.

  "Slave to righteousness, free from sin," I chanted. "Slave to righteousness, free from sin."

  On the way out I gathered everything into my arms-the skirt, the duffel bag, the magazines from the coffee table. I took no time to put on my jacket. Instead, I tucked it under my arm.

  I stumbled through the door, closed and locked it behind me.

  The wind slapped my cheek. I breathed the freezing air, letting it sting my lungs.

  * * *

  22 - The Distant Beloved

  Someone had parked in the space next to mine. A scrim of white exhaust at first hid the car from my view. A breeze kicked up, and the mist trailed away, and I saw that the car was a silver Mercedes. Tory's Mercedes. The driver's side window slid down, and Tory leaned out.

  "I thought that was your car," he said. He nodded toward the Chevette.

  "None other."

  "Get in," he said. "It's cold out there."

  "I can't right now. Sorry. I have to-."

  "Please," he said. It sounded more like a demand than a plea. He leaned across the seat and opened the passenger's-side door.

  No letterman jacket today, I saw. No sweats or madras plaid. Today, he was dressed for work. Charcoal gray suit, crisp white shirt, paisley tie, houndstooth overcoat. He'd gotten a haircut since I'd last seen him. Where he'd parted his hair, slightly left of center, I could see a straight white line of scalp.

  I settled into the passenger's seat. Torrid air blasted my face. Tory closed his window. I set Christa's duffel bag on the floor between my feet. I laid my jacket across my lap.

  "How have you been?" I asked him.

  He shrugged. "Fair." He stared straight ahead, through or at the windshield. There was nothing to see, except for a row of leafless shrubs. Their limbs swayed in the breeze.

  With the windows closed and hot air blustering from the heater, the car became stuffy, arid. "Are you sick?" I asked him. "A cold? The flu?"

  He looked at me. "Sick?"

  "The heat. It's really hot in here. I wondered if maybe-. A fever? The chills-?"

  "Sorry." He tapped a button on the dash, and the heater tailed off. "Wasn't paying any attention."

  For a time we sat in silence. I watched his expressionless face, watched him stare at the shrubs, or at the windshield itself, or perhaps into infinite space. Cold air oozed through my window. I hugged my jacket to my chest.

  Almost at the same moment, we both said, "What are you doing here?" I laughed. Tory didn't.

  He beat his thumb against the steering wheel. "Why are you coming out of Christa's apartment at eight-thirty in the morning with an overnight bag?"

  "I was just-." I stopped myself. It hit me, all at once, what he meant, what he suspected. Dumbfounded, I stared at him. "Tory, you can't be thinking-."

  Again, more softly, he said, "Why were you coming out of Christa's at eight-thirty in the morning, carrying an overnight bag?"

  "She's not here, Tory. She had a car accident. She's in the hospital. I came to pick up a few things for her."

  His eyes widened. His jaw snapped shut. "Car accident? Is she okay? What happened?"

  I told him. Christa turning left, the bastard hitting her. The broken leg. Twenty four hours for observation. I didn't mention Peanut.

  He reached for the gearshift. At first I took it for an unthinking act. The news of
Christa's accident had knocked him senseless, I thought. He must be grasping for something-anything-solid. He must be trying to steady himself in any way he could.

  But then he popped the gearshift into reverse. The car lurched backward and to the right. He braked so hard that the car shuddered. He shifted into drive. Seconds later we were out of the parking lot, on the street, weaving through traffic. At Cleveland, he paused, and then-in plain defiance of a sign that read "NO TURN ON RED"-he rolled around the corner and tramped on the gas pedal. We were headed toward the river road.

  I was insensible now. I grasped for something-anything-to steady myself. The armrest, the dash, the seatbelt. I dug my heels into Christa's duffel bag, as a rider might thoughtlessly, reflexively dig his heels into the flanks of a runaway horse.

  "Which hospital?"

  "Tory, my car-. I-."

  "I'll take you back to your car. Which hospital?"

  "Saint Joe's."

  Abruptly he cut the wheel to the left and turned down Montreal. At Saint Paul Avenue, where there was a four-way stop, a baby-blue Cadillac coming from our left had stopped. It crept into the intersection. Tory pressed the center of his steering wheel, sounded the horn. The Cadillac halted and fishtailed. Tory rolled, then bolted, through the stop sign.

  "You say they're keeping her for observation?" he said. "For a broken leg?" The leather of his gloves creaked against the leather of the steering wheel. "That's kind of unusual, isn't it?"

  "It's because she's pr-." I clapped my hands over my mouth. His driving was erratic, but not so erratic that I should lose my mind and-for the second time in a day-blurt out something stupid about Peanut. I pretended to yawn. I dropped my hands. "Christa's probably-." What? Probably what? "She's probably got a slight concussion or something."

  He punched the accelerator. I clutched my armrest.

  Tory said, "Concussion?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Just a guess. No one said anything about-."

  He interrupted me. "She drives like a maniac. I'm not surprised this happened. She was turning left?"

  "That's what she said. She was hazy on the details."

  He pounded the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "Her fault, then."

  "But what if-?"

  He cut his eyes at me. "If she was turning left, it's almost certainly her fault."

  At Snelling, he sped through a red light. Behind us, the caterwaul of horns erupted and receded.

  I remembered that Luther and Erma lived at Snelling and Montreal. I looked back and saw their house, a modest Craftsman bungalow cut into a small hill. White Christmas lights-burning in the daylight, apparently forgotten-outlined the many large windows and the front door. Luther's white pickup truck sat in the driveway.

  It reminded me, passing Luther's house, that if his nasty lawyer letter to Tom's parents had gotten any results, I had yet to hear about it. Maybe he was still working on the letter. Maybe he'd forgotten about it. Surely he had more pressing concerns.

  We passed fields of snow, vast white blanks-Highland Park on the right, the golf course on the left.

  On the other side of Edgecumbe the street sloped sharply. At the bottom of the hill a line of cars sat waiting for a red light at Seventh. Clouds of exhaust rose and fell all around them.

  Tory stopped a few yards behind the last car in the line. He gunned the engine. He muttered, sighed, shifted his weight.

  "I'm sorry for what I said back there at Christa's," he said. The light changed. Traffic rolled forward, and he eased the car along. He looked at me. His eyes were wide and watery. He raked his fingers through his hair. "I don't know what I was thinking."

  I knew what he'd been thinking; I didn't know how he could have thought it. I cleared my throat. "Why were you there? You never told me."

  He swung the car in a wide left turn, onto Seventh, into the right lane. The cars ahead of us moved slowly.

  "Did you ever see a movie called Say Anything?"

  "Is that a movie where nothing happens?"

  "You keep saying that, like I'm supposed to know what it means. Is that a reference to something?"

  "It's nothing. Never mind."

  A few dozen yards ahead of us, in front of a Burger King, a brown Volvo slid sideways into the curb. Its hind end blocked our lane. The car behind it-a Volkswagen Beetle, a crumbling and noisy thing that appeared to be constructed mainly of rust and Bondo-skidded and struck the Volvo's right rear corner.

  "Fuck," Tory said, stretching the word to three or four syllables. He sank back into his seat.

  "Say Anything," I said. "What about it?"

  "There's a scene where John Cusack serenades-sort of serenades-his girlfriend. Ione Skye, I think. They were dating, but her father doesn't approve, and he's broken them up. John Cusack is beside himself. He gets a boom-box and stands out in front of her house and holds it up over his head and plays 'In Your Eyes.'"

  Tory steered into the left lane, into a narrow gap between two panel trucks. As we passed the Volvo and the VW, I watched out my window. It appeared that the Volvo had barely been scratched. The Bug, though, had lost its front bumper. Its hood had popped open. The drivers climbed out of their cars, shouting and waving their arms.

  Tory said, "That Peter Gabriel song, you know. 'In Your Eyes'?"

  We started to move again at a tolerable pace.

  "So what does-?" But then I understood. I turned and looked over my left shoulder. On the seat behind Tory, a boom-box lay on its back. "You were going to stand out in front of Christa's and play a Peter Gabriel song?"

  "Not a Peter Gabriel song. Not 'In Your Eyes.' It's a great song and all-." The truck in front of us slowed for a left turn. Tory grunted. "It's a good song, but I was thinking of playing An die ferne Geliebte."

  "An die ferne-?"

  "To the Distant Beloved. It's a song cycle Beethoven wrote-."

  "I know what it is," I said, though I hadn't known, until he'd begun to explain. "I don't think it's something Christa would-."

  We came to a red light. Tory stopped. "Not even the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recording?"

  "Fischer-Dieskau? How likely is it that Christa has heard of Fischer-Dieskau? And it's in German, isn't it? The song cycle is in German?"

  "I wrote out a translation," he said. "Made a little booklet out of it."

  It was sweet, really, what he'd planned-so sweet and so foolish that I nearly laughed. I bit my lip. At length I said, "I don't think it's the best choice."

  He dropped his chin to his chest, dropped his hands into his lap. "You're right."

  "Does it work?" I asked him. "In the movie? Holding up the boom-box, playing 'In Your Eyes'-does he get her back that way?"

  He clenched his jaw. He said, "Come to think of it, she hears the music, but just sort of rolls over in bed. They get together again, of course, but not right then."

  The light changed. Gripping the wheel tightly with both hands, he drove on. We passed the old Schmidt's brewery. A square, crenellated tower of red brick rose above a complex of other red brick buildings. A long skyway bridged the gap between the brick tower and a slightly taller structure, an ugly column of plain gray concrete.

  "What does unsternlicher Gelieber mean?" I asked him.

  "Unsternlicher Gelieber? Those aren't real words. Do you mean unsterblicher Geliebter? Immortal beloved?"

  "Immortal beloved. Ah."

  "But that's a male beloved. Unsterblicher, with the r on the end. Geliebter, also with an r. There's that famous letter Beethoven wrote to the immortal beloved, his unsterbliche Geliebte. Unsterbliche Geliebte, without the r's, that's the female beloved."

  So. Jesse had been McNamara's immortal beloved. Remarkable, that in 1954 he'd dedicated a book to a man, to his immortal beloved.

  Just past Jefferson, the street climbed. Far ahead and to the right, mostly obscured by a power plant, the Smith Avenue High Bridge appeared. Plain, unadorned-nothing more, really, than a highway overpass, a roadbed on tall concrete pilings and steel a
rches painted rust-red-and yet in the misty cold or at twilight, seen against the high snow-covered bluffs on the other side of the river, the bridge was majestic in its way. Whenever I saw it, I craved an excuse to drive over it. Now, I caught just a glimpse of it, and wished I could see more.

  "You know," I said to Tory. "ABBA would be a good choice. 'One of Us' maybe? 'Take a Chance on Me'? No, 'One of Us.' Definitely 'One of Us.' Tom had a bunch of their stuff. I'm sure I have a cassette somewhere with that song on it." Somewhere, I'd said, but I knew full well where the cassette was-in the box of bad influences. I'd told Eliot-I'd promised him-that I would discard the contents of the box, but I hadn't done it. "I don't-. I can't-. I haven't been listening to his music lately. Tom's music. You could have any or all of the ABBA stuff."

  He shook his head. "Thanks," Tory said, "but it was a stupid idea, the Say Anything idea. I haven't had the nerve to do it, anyway. I've been by there at every hour of the day. There's never been any sign that she's there. She does still live there, doesn't she?"

  "She's been staying with her mother recently."

  "Her mother? Why? What on earth for?"

  I could tell him anything but the truth, but the true story was the only one I could think of.

  "It's weird," he said. "Staying with her mother. What's going on? Have you talked to her?"

  "Things have been-. It's complicated, I think. I don't know all the-."

  Tory smiled-a doting, tolerant smile. "You're an incredibly bad liar, Jonah."

  "I-. I think that's a compliment?"

  "You're hiding something. Covering for her. That's fine. I'll get the story from her. I can't go on like this. I just can't."

  * * *

  Another patient had been brought into Christa's room. In the bed on the room's left-hand side, a young woman lay sleeping, open-mouthed, snoring softly. A straggle of dark hair lay on the pillow around her head.

  Christa was out of bed. She sat in a green recliner in the corner, her bum leg in its linen-white cast propped up on the leg rest, her good leg tucked underneath her. A sheet and blanket covered her from knee to chin. She dozed, her head drooping to one side.

  I set the duffel bag on the bed. I went to the chair and crouched down beside it. I touched her arm. She woke.

  "Did you think about what I suggested?" she asked me. She spoke urgently, as if, in all the time I'd been gone, the question had been the crux of her thoughts and even of her dreams.