Evenfall (10 page)

This isn’t the first time she’s left me. It’s not even the most
painful. The first day of fall term, when I was twelve, her hair rippled down her back like creek water, light brown shot through with strands of gold. I opened my mouth to say hello, but she brushed past me without a glance, leaving me gaping in her wake.

There weren’t many in my youth who wouldn’t pause to say hello to a Wildermuth. Abe and I both had our pick of seatmates at school, the girls vying to settle next to us when they opened their lunch pails. They’d pull out cookies and candy bars, home-baked breads and bottles of pop, as if we were as easy to attract as the flies that buzzed around the classroom. All the while, Gert would be sitting up front, her face buried behind some book. Princess, the other fellows called her behind her back, but they’d have come running if she’d looked their way; we all would have. But she never did.

To us she was as cool and remote as the moon. She glided through her days in Hartman as if she were biding her time, as if she knew better things were coming. Ask how she was and she’d hold your eyes with that steady gaze and thank you, all the while making you twist inside.

Clara was just the opposite. She came to class one day about a year after Gert had left for Boston. Clara was easy to look at back then, all softness and curves, with a halo of curls that framed her face and set off the blue of her eyes. Sliding into her seat, her hip caught the edge of her book bag, knocking it to the floor. Girls were always doing that, but this time it looked real, so I picked it up. I had a notion to ask her how her sister was, but when she reached to take
the satchel from me, I saw the bruise, the size of a handprint, on her wrist.

She saw where I was looking and flushed, shaking her sleeve down to cover her arm. “I was helping my pa out around the farm last night and banged it, is all,” she said. “You know how it is.”

I did know. Jack Murphy had once worked for my father, who fired him not so much for sleeping on the job as for being a mean, loudmouth drunk. I carried her books home that day, or as close to her house as anyone ever got. That’s how it started.

She was younger than me by almost three years. A baby, really. She knew what it was like to be left behind, so we had that in common. By then Abe had been gone for more than a year, and with my father passed, it was just me and Mother at home. Abe wasn’t a big letter writer—we probably got one a month from him—and when he did write it was mostly about what he needed, like laces for his boots, more socks, things like that. My mother spent her days haunting the mailbox, and then like as not when she did get a letter she was disappointed. Either way, Abe was all I heard about, and it drove me crazy.

Clara was in the same boat. Gert didn’t write much either, she told me, and when she did it was all about her classes and how hard they were, or how money was tight and she couldn’t see herself coming home for the holidays. Clara didn’t blame her, but their mother was upset. What with the old man, Clara and her mother were pretty close.

We’d fallen into a routine by then. I’d walk her home
most days, stopping about a quarter mile from the house. We’d talk about class or homework or the weather, little nothings that kept us from silence. Sometimes I’d slip in a few questions about Gert, thinking I was so slick, but Clara never wanted to talk much about her. On weekends, if there was nothing better to do, I’d swing by and take her for a ride into town, or along some of the less bumpy country roads in the fall to see the leaves change, and Clara would cut bittersweet to sell. It grows wild around here, and city folks still pay good money for its bright red berries. But it’s a parasite, really. Cut it back and it twines around a tree twice as fast, holding on so tight that it chokes the life out of it.

For her sixteenth birthday I got her a Rollei I’d found in a pawnshop in New London. It was used but in good condition, with a couple of scratches on the camera itself that made the price right. When she saw it she squealed and threw her arms around my neck. Her lips were inches from mine, and her eyes so big and blue there was nothing for it but to kiss her. Gert had faded for me by then. I thought what I’d felt was nothing more than a schoolboy’s idle crush, until she came back home.

If Abe had been home, or if my father had been alive, things would have turned out differently. That’s what I tell myself, anyhow. I’d have had something to do, somebody else to talk to. I wasn’t looking for romance so much as filling time. But I guess Clara didn’t see it that way. I don’t blame her, although I can’t say I haven’t tried.

I breathe on the glass of the attic window and watch her name appear in thick cursive script:
Gert
. The day I died, my
grief filled the air like a gray cloud. I’d thought death would be the quiet shutting of a door, but it’s more as if someone torched my house to the ground. All the chances, the days to come—there’s nothing left beyond a few smoldering embers. Touch them and you’ll burn your hands.

IT’S not as if she’s nervous, Andie tells herself. It’s just that dinner with Cort is a bad idea all around. She’s picked up the phone a dozen times since last Saturday to cancel, but something always stops her. And now it’s too late.

To distract herself from the disaster the evening is sure to be, she’s focusing on what to wear. For the past forty-five minutes, she’s been digging madly through her closet, tossing aside paint-stained shirts and ripped shorts in hopes of finding something suitable. Part of the problem is that she has no idea where they’re going. If her date was Neal, her choice would be simple: the sexiest item she owned, preferably designer, the better to keep his attention at the intimate party or hot new restaurant he’d most recently discovered. But in Hartman, there’s only the pizza joint and Johnny’s
Bar and Grill, the kind of dive where the parking lot is still filled with pickup trucks at two in the morning and if you drive by after last call, you’re liable to see somebody peeing in the bushes. Neither offer a great first date setting.

“But it isn’t a date,” Andie says aloud. She rests her hand on a black dress that has spaghetti straps and an open back. It’s the nicest thing she’s brought, and just for a second she thinks about wearing it. Then she pictures the expression on Cort’s face and reluctantly leaves it on the hanger.

Instead, she settles on a dressed-up version of her regular jeans and T-shirt. She pulls on a straight denim skirt that falls just below her knees, wiggles into a black tank top, and drapes a black cotton sweater over her shoulders.

The phone rings and Andie has half a mind to ignore it. At Evenfall, there’s only one phone jack, and it’s in the kitchen. There have been a half dozen calls this week, and every time Andie has scrambled to answer it, only to find no one there. Her cell phone is useless in the States, and she hasn’t bothered to pick up another one, since there’s no one here for her to call, at least until she starts sending out her CV. But then it occurs to her that the caller could be Cort, so she races down the stairs in her bare feet. The phone is on its eighth ring when, breathless, she lifts the receiver, only to hear the line go dead.

“Hello?” she says anyway. “Hello?”

There’s no answer, just the faint buzzing of the line.

“Asshole,” Andie says to no one in particular, then hangs up. She glances at the kitchen clock as she walks out the door, automatically calculating the time in Italy. Almost
midnight. If she were there, she and Neal would be going to bed, sleepy after a bottle or two of red wine. Loneliness floods her in a wave, making it hard to breathe. She leans her forehead against the cool hallway wall, then pulls back, startled. There’s a faint humming noise. She leans in again and listens. Nothing. There must be a hive somewhere, she thinks, pushing thoughts of Neal away as she climbs the stairs.

The bedroom’s ancient mirror hangs over the bureau, and when Andie gazes into it her reflection is wavy, as if she’s peering through water. She frowns, and her image scowls back, an angry mer-twin. She rifles through the top drawer of the bureau until she finds the earrings she bought last year in Rome, tiny pearls set inside circles of silver. Smooth and cool in her palm, the earrings are almost weightless. She puts them on and looks again, twisting her hair up with one hand into an easy knot. Better.

Shoes are the only thing left to decide, and that should be easy. Her mules are right in front of the closet. She’s reaching for them when she catches sight of a pair of black spiky heels, thrown near the back with her hiking boots. The toes of the shoes are open, and the straps wrap around her calves almost to the knees.

Neal called them her “fuck-me shoes,” since whenever she wore them that’s what they ended up doing, hurrying home from whatever club or party they’d been to, stopping only to press against each other in the dark, twisting alleys that led to her flat. She tries not to think about the last time she wore them, the cool night air, his hands under the thin
fabric of her shirt…She puts the shoes down, then picks them up again. She’s still hesitating when she hears Cort’s truck bumping down the driveway.

By the time she’s laced them up and made it down the stairs, he’s cut the engine. The kitchen window is open, and from her place in the hall she can hear the car door slam, then the soft pad of footsteps on the walk. He’s whistling softly, something that could be Bruce Springsteen, she’s not sure. She feels silly suddenly, like a teenager waiting for her boyfriend, her pulse thumping in her ears as if she’s been running.

Even though she’s expecting it, his knock on the door makes her jump, and a strand of hair falls across her face. She brushes it away irritably. She’s just about had it with herself and the whole idea of going out tonight. But it’s a little late to cancel, so she reaches for the doorknob.

There’s an awkward pause when they’re face-to-face through the partially open door. It lasts about five seconds, the amount of time it takes Nina to squirm through the door, pushing it the rest of the way open with her body. She wriggles behind Andie’s knees, whining, and almost knocks her over.

Cort reaches out a hand to brace her. “Guess she missed you.”

“Looks that way,” Andie says. “Though I can’t imagine why.”

Nina twists her way between them all the way to the truck, so that Andie stumbles and Cort grabs her arm. He’s wearing khakis and a pressed white shirt, and when her nose
bumps his shoulder he smells of heat and fabric softener. His hand on her bare arm is very clean, and Andie’s glad she dressed up a little.

At the pickup, he shoos Nina away from the passenger door. She stops wagging her tail and puts her head down, but her ears prick up when Cort reaches behind the seat and pulls out a newspaper-wrapped package. Opening it carefully, he drops its contents to the ground. It’s a long white marrow bone.

“Ugh.” Andie wrinkles her nose as Nina swiftly picks it up and retreats to the side of the house, tail wagging once again. “I don’t even want to know where you got that.”

“No, you probably don’t,” he agrees. He balls the newspaper up and throws it into the back of the truck. Andie, who has been wondering how to navigate the distance between the ground and the pickup’s seat in her skirt, takes this opportunity to swing herself up using the grab strap above the door frame. When Cort turns around, she’s sitting in the front, knees primly together.

He eyes her for a second, and she gives him a demure smile.

“Nice shoes,” he says, then shuts the passenger door.

ANDIE wasn’t expecting the ride to be so quiet. After the initial small talk about where to eat, Cort seems content to let her gaze out the window. He’s whistling softly again, eyes on the road, as she watches the scenery slide by.

Cort’s silence is so unlike what she’d come to expect
from Neal, with his aptitude for easy conversation, that she doesn’t know whether to be amused or insulted. But it’s a comfortable quiet, she decides, one that takes the pressure off and lets her simply enjoy the ride.

The landscape between Hartman and Franklin is familiar yet strange, like the aging face of a friend after a long absence. The road that runs between the two towns is still dotted with dairy farms and vegetable stands, but now there are also banks, coffee shops, and gas stations. Andie even spots a mini strip mall, complete with a Laundromat and a Dairy Queen.

In Franklin, the huge brick mill stands forlorn, the broken windows of its outer office gaping like teeth. A huge plastic banner across the building’s side proclaims “Quality Space For Rent!” but graffiti takes up almost as much space as the lettering.

Cort noses the truck between the two pillars that mark the entrance to the mill’s courtyard, and the seats jounce a bit on the uneven surface.

“Um, what’s this?” Andie asks, peering out the window.

“This,” says Cort, bringing the truck to a stop, “is where we’re having dinner.”

There’s a huge stack of firewood outside one of the mill doors. Weedy shrubs dot the foundation, and a crumpled scrap of paper drifts across the courtyard. But the lot is filled with cars and she can see lights on inside the building, so she shrugs and lets Cort open her door.

“It doesn’t look like much on the outside,” he says, as if she hadn’t noticed. He offers his arm to guide her down, and
after a glance at the cobblestones beneath her feet, Andie takes it. Her hiking boots wouldn’t have been out of place here.

She’s unprepared for the din that leaps out when Cort opens the restaurant door. There’s a small entryway, just large enough for two couples to stand in, with heavy green velvet curtains at the end. She pushes past them and they give way to a room with soaring ceilings. Aside from the wooden beams overhead, the entire space is exposed brick.

To her left, a long wooden bar is just visible through the crowd milling around it. On the other side of the room, a huge adobe oven spits fire. A teenager not much younger than Cort wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, picks up a long wooden pole, and slides a pizza round into the flames.

Cort shoulders his way through the crowd to the hostess stand. After a few seconds of animated conversation with the skinny blonde behind it, he beckons Andie to follow him.