Everything (15 page)

This was the seed, maybe, the place where the rest of them started: that day. It all started there. From that first pencil portrait they grew and shifted shape and color, a few in crayon, a few in oils, each of them the same size, her size, maybe two feet tall and eighteen inches wide and each of them in the same silver frame, like looking into mirror after mirror: this one in bright blocky colors, the next almost a photograph. Each of them a likeness and a mood. It was like weather, the feelings shifting face-to-face, now stern, now sad, now secretly amused. She looked like she had a secret in many of them and it was strange to think that she did have a secret and it was a secret secret that not even Edgar knew, that nobody knew but her. It was strange to see her secret staring back at her out of each distorting mirror, each new version of her, looking back.

All this was fine, she supposed, a game almost. The small variations, the constant theme, it did after a while seem smart. Until the last.

* * *

At first she thought it was just a blank, a frame with black nothing in it, which seemed a clever finale. Then she saw her face emerge from the blackness, a coating of wax or crayon over the whole surface and the lines of her face emerging from deep scratches, down to the canvas. The face looked like it had been torn out of the darkness and the expression was one she recognized, she knew the feeling though she had never seen it on her own face, the sorrow torn from her, everything in loving him and not having him. The place of sorrow itself, where she touched, dead children frozen in the snow. All her dead children. How did he know this about her?

It’s beautiful, she said. I hate it.

Don’t say that.

I just feel … 
naked
, you know? You set me up.

I love you, Edgar said.

Yeah, but you set me up.

Suddenly Tom Champion was there between them and they were in a room again, with people again, the bubble burst. Some people I’d like you to meet, he said to Edgar. Sorry to break in but they’ve been here for a while—I want you to meet them before they leave.

Taking Edgar by the elbow, leading him toward the door, leaving Layla at the back of the room with only her black mirror for company. He looked back at her, a pleading look, and she knew that nothing had really been broken, not yet. She would forgive him for now. It was bad, this thing he had done. At the same time, a little
thrilling. It felt dangerous, declarative. Nobody here knew what the secret was, but everybody in the gallery that night would know there was a secret. Her secret. She looked again around the gallery, to see her own face looking back at her from every wall, in every mood and circumstance. Like the weather, she thought. I am just like the weather. Everybody talks about
me
.

Mexico: it could have been Morocco
, anywhere. They spread the brochures out on the dining room table—RL had gone to Wide World of Travel especially to get them—and shoulder to shoulder they pored over the possibilities. They didn’t speak of the impossibilities. Sparkling waters, palm trees and blue skies. Outside was sullen November night, a little above freezing, six inches of last week’s snow slowly melting only to freeze again in the small hours of the morning.

Betsy liked the looks of Puerto Vallarta though the snorkeling was probably better in Cabo. RL thought San Miguel de Allende looked pretty good. Anything. Anywhere but here. The chemo was to start up again the next day, the last round.

* * *

I’m always drunk when I see you, Betsy said. Why is that? I’m never drunk the rest of the time.

Whiskey makes me handsome and funny.

Does it work on me? she asked. Does it make me beautiful?

It does, he thought, yes, it does. But he didn’t say it. The long slow curve of her neck, her hips in the hippie skirt she wore. Actually, in the small light of the dining room, the skirt looked elegant, swank even. RL had the feeling of a broken promise in her elegance. He saw her as she was now and at the same time as she had been in her twenties, nothing birdlike or nervous but slow walking and intelligent. She would consider a long moment before she would respond to something he said, she would think before she spoke, which RL found unnerving. He was never careful. Their little time together, he remembered as one blunder after another. They could never get it right, neither one of them. He would start when she was stopped and then he would stop but she would be going again except in bed. There they shut up and let it go. His dick stirred at the memory of it, the nearness of Betsy.

You don’t need any help, he said. You’re pretty much beautiful all the time.

Don’t make me laugh, she said. Don’t make me cry.

I’m not kidding.

Then the whiskey is doing its wicked work, she said.

June walks through the front door
of her own house, and there is Howard Emerson sitting at the dining room table taking a call. Except that it doesn’t feel like her own house anymore or look like it. Her own furniture, everything she’s touched and stained and lived with, is in a ministorage unit out by the Wye, and Howard has moved Northern California in its place—at least what looks like Northern California—dark wood and ferns and faux Frank Lloyd Wright. Maybe it wasn’t California, it was hard to say. Not Montana, anyway. Nor June.

Howard snapped his phone shut and beamed at her. Everything went great, he said.

June said, You’re wearing your hat in the house again.

* * *

He blinked at her for a moment, a little angry, just a little. Then took his hat off and hung it on the chair back.

She asked, They’re going to buy the place?

Why are you angry at me? he asked. I’m just trying to do what you said you wanted me to do.

I’m not angry.

That’s peculiar, then, Howard said. Because you’re acting exactly like you are.

I’m just unsettled, baby. I just want … I don’t even know what I want. What happened with your clients?

June did know what she wanted, just then, which was to see him gone. But she knew, well, she didn’t know anything. If the feeling was still there in a week she’d have to do something about it. For the moment she just felt tired, tired.

I don’t think they’re the ones, he said. They don’t keep horses, and this place is really going to sell to somebody who wants the acreage, not just let it go to knapweed. But I could tell they were tempted. And they definitely have the money. Even at the price we’re asking, they come out of the Seattle market and everything looks like Mexico to them. Third world.

I’m scared, she said. The words surprised her coming out of her mouth but she couldn’t seem to stop.

* * *

I’m tired and I’m scared and I’m tired of taking care of myself, she said. I want you to be the man I want you to be, I want somebody to take care of me, I want—just for once—to feel safe.

She laughed, not in a pleasant way.

I don’t even know what that word means, she said.
Safe
.

A falling-down time, Howard said.

What does that even mean?

I had mine in Seattle, he said. Everybody gets a falling-down time. You can’t get up. You have to have somebody to help you get up.

Come to Jesus, June said.

A little bit, Howard said. A little bit of Jesus for me. Mostly it was my daughter and my ex-wife. It’s a funny thing, I can’t stand her now but she did save my life. And it wasn’t like we were getting along all that well back then, either. We were well on our way.

I don’t want to be
rescued
, she said. I’m not drowning, at least not yet.

That’s the problem, Howard said. You can’t be rescued until you’re actually drowning. Just thinking you might drown isn’t enough.

You’re always telling me the way things are, she said. The way the world works. And, you know, I wish I could just believe you. I
wish I could trust you. But then I think that might be letting go of things I need to hold on to, you know, like the way I need to protect myself. I can’t stop protecting myself even if I wanted to.

You can trust me, Howard said. I am who I am.

But that’s what I don’t know, she said. Are you even kind?

I am kind of kind, he said. Kind of.

June walked out on him then, into the kitchen with the stranger’s table and chairs and the stranger’s art on the walls and foreign plants. She’d given up on houseplants ten years back when she killed the last of them. Poured herself a nice big glass of wine and back into the dining room, where Howard was squinting into his phone again.

I’ll get myself a Coke in a minute, he said. Thanks.

I’m sorry, June said.

That’s all right.

I’m just like, there’s no place in this world where I belong anymore, she said. I didn’t use to be homeless, I’ve never known what it felt like until now. Homeless.

You’ve got a home. As long as I’ve got mine.

It’s not the same.

* * *

No, it isn’t, Howard said. I thought that was the point, I thought you’d about had it with the same. You’ve had the same for twenty years. Don’t get me wrong, I know. You’ve got that shell, and then you’ve got to break the shell, and it hurts.

You’ve got to be right even about being wrong, she said. I don’t even know how to screw my life up the right way.

Sorry, Howard said.

She had managed to hurt his feelings, she could see that. Somehow this felt all right to her. But she could see that they had to change the game if they wanted to last the night. Which she did. She was so tired of being alone that Howard seemed worth her while.

Let’s go out, she said. I’ll buy you a Shirley Temple.

No, you won’t.

No?

Not tonight, he said. Tonight you’ll buy me a scotch on the rocks, if you want to go out. I’m not saying it’s a good idea.

I’m a little tired of good ideas.

Let’s go, then, Howard Emerson said. Let’s go now.

Love in the whirlwind
. Love in the gutter. Love in the late morning early winter when the light slants cold and gray through hospital windows. Love, he thought, of an indeterminate kind. His love—his unlikely or possible love—lay sleeping, breathing, surrounded by machines. Oh, Betsy, Beth, Elizabeth.

He kissed her sleeping hand.

Baby baby baby baby
baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby, a Thermoscan in-ear thermometer, a six-month subscription to the cloth diaper service, a new book, a Thomas the Tank Engine video and six or eight new blankets and quilts, all of them in baby baby baby blue because this time IT’S A BOY!

Edgar removes himself. The space between inside and outside is expanding, farther and farther away from himself until he feels like he might just disappear into it, this mournful … All women anyway except one husband, some friend of Amy’s from work who hadn’t gotten the message somehow that he didn’t have to go to the baby shower. All clean well-scrubbed Rocky Mountain girls in the prime of life, skiers and runners and girls who fished, though not,
he had to say, like Layla fished. That girl could turn a fat trout in a bathtub.

Three thirty on a winter Sunday. Hard sunlight shining on the snow in the yard, too cold to melt. Almost too bright to look at. Snowmelt dripping from the boots by the kitchen door. The smell of coffee, the memory of Layla’s body stretched out the length of the bed. Breakfast in bed on the island, when she told him, the way he never quite got a look at her but just fragments and glimpses. She kept her face, her belly.

Edgar and Amy were going to have a son.

He poured a thimble of bourbon for himself and stood by the window, looking out at the hard sunlight.

Already he felt himself failing this boy. He would not allow himself. He would find a way back to Amy. She was a loving person and preoccupied with the child and the coming child and it was not a good time and Edgar reminded himself that he had loved her once. He saw the boy at ten, at thirteen, fatherless. Riding a bicycle alone through the gravel alleys. A pet, something to talk to. No clear way forward. Edgar would not allow this to happen. He carried that boy’s loneliness inside him still, a thing that time could not erase, nor marriage. That was where he and Layla touched, in that lonely place, he thought. Cold blinding light outside. In all the cold world she touched him. He must not, would not pass this loneliness on.

And here was Amy, standing in the doorway. Come on, she said. Come on out. Everybody’s here.

* * *

In a minute, he said.

Please.

I’ll be there in a minute, Edgar said. Just give me a minute. I’ll be right out.

Eggs and sausages by the side
of the stove, the big cast-iron griddle waiting for huckleberry pancakes, fresh-ground coffee from the Butterfly brewed with filtered water, a big bowl of halved oranges standing by the squeezer, real maple syrup and butter from organic cows, toast and tea in case she had switched over to tea, Layla was home.

Layla was asleep upstairs and RL was busy in the kitchen, listening to mandolins and Martin Dreadnaughts at background volume, more like a little color to the air than anything else, the air that smelled of fresh coffee, the light coming flat and gray from a winter Sunday, a patchwork of ice on the ground and low gray skies. The prodigal daughter, he thought, except not prodigal. The flight the night before had been delayed and then delayed again by ice-fog, and when they finally were allowed to land and driving back to
town the trees looked like white ghosts of themselves, each twig and branch encased in a skin of white ice.

Just to have her with him, under his roof, breathing the same air. He had not realized until he saw her down the jetway how lonely he had been. RL knew the drill and he was fine with it, more or less: you tied their shoes and taught them to drive and which fork to use when—he hoped he had gotten this one right—and then they up and left you. Like a dog, you bought a dog and you took care of it and you had fun with it and you let it all the way into your life and then the dog died. Kids were better. They only went away and got interested in parts of life that weren’t you, which was OK in principle—otherwise he would have gotten stuck in Ohio where his parents used to be—but in practice it was no good. The only game in town, he guessed. Still it was awfully nice to have her back.