Here to Stay (23 page)

THE TEMPERATURE DROPPED THAT night and Erik built a fire. He sat in the leather chair, his feet up and Jack’s hug lingering on his neck. His fingers toying with the charms on his necklace.

He went to forever?

Were you sad?

Daisy was reading and eating oranges. The flames were fragrant with the peels she kept tossing into the hearth. When the kettle whistled in the kitchen, she put her book down and went in to make them tea.

Erik stared into the flames.

“Don’t touch the drill, Erik.” He could hear the voice perfectly. Accompanied by the woodsy smell of sawdust and the metallic heat of a still-spinning blade. He was seven and it was the summer his father knocked down the wall between Erik and Peter’s bedrooms. Over days and weeks, a forest playground emerged in the shared space.

The memory settled in his hands. Not an elusive feather but a full, plump bird, warm and alive. His young legs crouched down amidst the mess of construction. He reached to touch the Makita drill, wanting it. Coveting its solid, manly power and the things it could construct. He was on the verge of picking it up, intent on curling a finger around the trigger and setting the barber pole spiral of the bit into action. Then he glanced up. Byron’s sapphire blue gaze looked back at him. Amused, but firm. The slightest shake of his ash-blond head. The light through the window catching the grey above his ears. The gold chain rolling at his neck.

“When you’re ten,” he said.

Erik took his hand off the drill and off the memory. The bird flew away.

“What are you thinking about?” Daisy asked, setting his mug down.

“My father,” he said.

She settled in Edith, curling her legs up underneath her. “Do you want to find him?”

“I want…” Erik closed his eyes and let what he wanted float into his presence. Gently he pressed it down. “I want to know more about him. I liked hearing Vivian deWrenne tell me about him. I liked her stories. I guess I’d like to know what happened. Without having to have any contact with him. I want his story. Like if someone could just hand me a file folder and say ‘here.’”

“See pages forty-two through fifty. Call with questions.”

“Exactly. Let me hear the story, let me process it and see if any of it…”

“Resonates?”

“I guess. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to forgiveness with him, Dais. I know it’s the noble and enlightened thing to do, but I don’t know if I have it in me.”

“Nobody can fault you for that.”

“But maybe if I knew the story. And if I knew more about the Fiskares in general, so I could put the story into context. Then maybe not forgiveness but understanding?”

“Or simply to know. Finally stop wondering about it and have the truth. Be free of the unknown.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you afraid of what you’ll find out?”

“Sure.”

“What’s the worst? What would be a story that just breaks your heart?”

“That… He left because he didn’t love me. Didn’t want me. I don’t know, what the fuck, am I insane for making it about me?”

“What other perspective do you have?”

“I mean, Jesus, what makes a man leave? Not just leave but disappear, cut everything off and— All right, don’t look at me like that.”

Daisy hid her twitching mouth in her tea mug and kept her eyes away from his.

He laughed. “I walked into that bear trap, didn’t I?”

“Well,” she said. “Put it on the list. If we’re going to brainstorm, let’s brainstorm. What makes a man leave? He leaves because he’s hurt and wants to escape.”

“He leaves because he loves someone else,” Erik said.

“He leaves to protect. His presence brings danger. Real or imagined.”

Erik raised his eyebrows. “You’re good at this. Maybe he was a spy?”

Daisy twisted her mouth, rolling her eyes a little. “I confess I sometimes wondered if he saw something he shouldn’t have seen and went into the Federal Witness Protection Program. Far-fetched, I know, but I thought about it.”

“Hurt,” Erik said, ticking off on his raised fingers. “Love. Danger or to protect. What else?”

They both thought.

“Maybe,” Dais said slowly, “he leaves because he feels unworthy. Somehow. It’s sort of an offshoot of the protection theory. Not that he brings danger but he brings despair. No good can come of him being there. He’s failed and they’re better off without him.”

Erik sighed. “I don’t know, I can’t get my head wrapped around that one. I just don’t have any memory of him being a morose man. Or he and my mom being an unhappy couple. But God knows my memory isn’t the most trustworthy thing. Just because I didn’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.”

He stared into the flames, lost in thought. After a few minutes Dais stroked his forearm and opened her book again. Letting him be.

He looked down, scooping up the boat charm on his necklace.

Where did this one come from? What does it mean?

Who am I?

He gathered up all the charms in his hand, remembering when his mother had given him the necklace. He’d been about sixteen. And he didn’t want it.

“It belongs to your name,” Christine said, laying it in his palm and closing his fingers over it. “It’s an heirloom. Don’t let one asshole ruin it for you.”

He reached down and picked up his laptop. Opened an online maps application and typed in Clayton, New York. He zoomed in on the little peninsula jutting into the St. Lawrence River. Switching to satellite view, he scrolled northeast, looking for his block.

He found it, but didn’t recognize anything.

Let it come to you. Don’t grab at it.

Hugunin Street made up the block’s southern border. Erik lowered a fingertip and touched the second house on Hugunin’s south side. There. He lived there. He closed his eyes and remembered. Buff-colored shingles. One big triangular gable facing Hugunin and gables on the east and west sides. His window overlooked the driveway. On the other side of the driveway…

White feathers floated in his peripheral. His finger moved and touched Farmor’s house. He remembered. He was allowed to walk there alone. If he wanted to cross the street, he needed permission and a pair of eyes on him. If he wanted to go to the water, he needed an adult.

“I need to know where you are,” his mother always said.

With permission, his adult finger now crossed Hugunin Street. So many houses on its north side. He didn’t remember so many. Only the one on the corner and the gravel path alongside it. Someone lived in that house, someone belonging to him. He was allowed to use the footpath, cutting through to the hotel.

His eyebrows knitted together. So much of the big block appeared to be parking lot. He didn’t remember all this paving. He remembered grass and trees and flowers behind the hotel. It was still there, though, the L-shaped building. The map labeled it The Saint Lawrence Inn, which must be its new name. He closed his eyes.

The Fisher Hotel.

He held still and let it come to him. The building’s north side, the short end of the L, facing the water. Verandas on both the main and second floor. Three wide steps leading up to the porch. Erik’s chin lifted, as if looking up. He remembered the fish. Carved from wood and polished to a high gloss, it hung from two chains over the steps, welcoming the guests.

“Where are you?” Daisy said, her voice tiptoeing into his reverie. He blinked and focused on her hand, curled around the mug, the flames catching the edges of Astrid’s diamond. He looked at her face. Her eyes caught his and held. The clock ticked.

“How would you feel about taking a little trip?” he asked.

“THREE OPTIONS,” ERIK SAID. “We fly to Plattsburgh via Boston and drive three hours. Or we fly direct to Montreal and drive three hours. Or we fly to Watertown via Philadelphia and drive thirty minutes.”

“Watertown has an airport?”

“Watertown
International
Airport. Which only flies commercially to Philadelphia. But if you’re coming in from Europe on your private jet, you can land there. With two hours notice.”

“I’m sure a ton of rich jet-setters fly to Watertown all the time.” She put up her hands. “This is your expedition. You pick.”

They flew to Montreal and met Vivian for dinner. They had tickets to see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater—which Erik enjoyed more than he thought he would—and a room at the Intercontinental, which was impossible not to enjoy. In the morning, they picked up their rental car and headed southwest out of the city.

“It was so good last night,” he said, squeezing her hand on his leg.

“Alvin Ailey?”

“Well, that too.”

“Did you like
Revelations?”

“I did,” he said, playing with her diamond, feeling spectacularly fine. “I would gladly watch it again. In fact I’d like an entire replay of last night.”

She leaned over the console and put her face against his arm. “It was yummy.”

“God, when I had you… And you were… And…” His shoulders gave a little twitch remembering.

“That thing with the thing?”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah, I kind of lost my mind there,” she said, and then yawned against her fist. “I’m really quite sleepy.”

She always fell asleep on long drives, but he liked thinking he had something to do with her nodding off today. Once he negotiated his way out of Montreal and they were cruising along the A20, he turned on the radio and relaxed into the ride. By the time they crossed into Ontario and A20 became the Macdonald–Cartier Freeway, he had fallen into a zone which was half song lyrics and half stream of consciousness. With the occasional loving glance to the hand still curled on his leg and the sleeping face turned in his direction.

They stopped for lunch in Cornwall then continued along Highway 401 until the turnoff to Route 137, which would take them over the Thousand Islands Bridge and into New York.

“What’s scarier,” Daisy said, as they left border patrol. “That someone will recognize you or no one will?”

“Stop knowing me,” Erik said.

She was carefully putting their papers away. They had to travel with both American and Canadian documents and tended to call the little folder they kept them in The Football.

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

He touched his chest. “I’m a little…thumpy. Yeah.”

“When was the last time you were here?”

“I think I was twelve? Maybe thirteen? Probably a moody little fuck, not paying much attention to anything.”

“Unlike now,” she said.

Every nerve in his body was sitting up straight and taking notes. It was a straightforward drive. Down Route 12 into Clayton, two right turns and then they were parking on Riverside Drive. It was a postcard day, with stunning blue skies over the river and the bridge sparkling in the far distance.

“God, it’s beautiful,” Daisy said, her hand shielding her eyes. “This is a sweet little town.”

Erik said nothing as he stared across the street at the double-verandas of the Saint Lawrence Inn. “Holy shit,” he said.

The fish was still hanging over the stairs.

“It’s still here,” he said, catching Daisy’s hand as they crossed Riverside. At the foot of the front steps, he took a picture and texted it to Christine.

She texted back:
Touch the tail and make a wish. Long tradition.

Sure enough, as they mounted the wide steps, they saw the varnish on the tail was worn away and dulled from thousands of hands making wishes.

Erik’s phone pinged again.
I remember two wooden carved planters by the front door. Like fish. Flowers in their mouths. Still there?

The planters by the door were plain urns. Then Daisy pointed to the far end of the porch. “There’s one.”

In the corner by some wicker seating it stood. A beautifully carved fish perched upright on its tail fin. Its mouth full of geraniums. Erik snapped a picture and sent it.
Here’s one. Don’t see another.

Your father carved his initials in the tail of one of those planters,
Christine replied.

Rather than shove aside furniture and tip over private property to look for initials, they decided to go inside first. A cool dry breath of conditioned air greeted them.

“I have no memory of this place,” Erik whispered hoarsely, like Gandalf. Daisy elbowed him.

The lobby—chairs and couches and friendly bookshelves—was empty. No one was behind the front desk. It was quieter than a library. The solitude allowed them a few minutes to prowl. Erik frequently stopped and looked around, trying to get his bearings. Daisy went in search of a bathroom.

The stairs were in the same place at least. He remembered those. But he couldn’t seem to get the galaxy of the rest of the hotel to rotate around it the right way. He couldn’t remember. Left was right. Up was down. Vaguely, he recalled the dining area being open to the rest of the space. Now it was firmly partitioned off. As was the bar on the opposite side.

Daisy returned from the ladies’ room.

“Want a beer?” he asked.

“I do.”

They went into the bar and perched on two stools. The woman behind was in her fifties, blowsy and bleached-blonde. She dealt coasters like they were playing cards and pulled two beers without taking her eyes off the TV. Her voice was friendly though. “You two visiting for the weekend?”