Inukshuk (25 page)

What drawing?
he wondered, and tried to push the thought down. An assignment from some fourth- or fifth-grade final project on the Greek gods. He'd chosen Janus, the two-faced, as his subject. Used his mom to model for the drawing/cover art, and though he'd insisted it wasn't her, really—only certain details and basic shapes, coloring, hairstyle—she'd latched onto the finished thing like some kind of holy talisman, indisputable evidence of his being a child genius (
But you GOT me, really, truly . . . that's ME
), and, when he brought it home from school, never relinquished it. Hung it over her desk at work and bragged about it at any opportunity.

Through the exhilaration of eating, C fast-breaking, and the residual foggy numbness of the pills he glimpsed how he was going to feel about all of this later on—the lousy, tooth-gnashing, tear-your-skin-off hatred of everything, the impatience and frustration it was going to invoke for him; the screaming-little-kid-on-a-rampage senselessness. Why was she gone? Why had she left them? He might or might not be able to control any of these feelings, but for now it was interesting beholding them from afar, like turning a spyglass around and looking at your feet.
Mom,
he thought.
Who's mom? Who cares about you?

He set the letter down and listened. The furnace had gone quiet. What had changed was an icy presence in the room or just outside it, sucking away warmth. Not just the cold front, high-pressure Arctic air mass parked over the top of Alberta or whatever it was out there but something interior—in him, maybe, or in the house. Dead, radiant cold, like the negative-charged ions emanating from an iceberg, snowbank, not the icy currents racing around a leaky window casement. Cold like.... And then he heard them on the stairs. Their footsteps creaking down and a high-pitched moaning pinched to a stop before it said anything. The men had returned or had never left.
SOON AFTER HE AND JANE had more or less moved in together at the start of his senior year in college and she quit spending any time in her dorm room except the occasional study night, Franklin learned that one of his favorite things was returning from an afternoon of classes to find not Jane in his rented room off campus, but a note from her on his desk or on the communal kitchen table, signed in haste with
x
's and
o
's and some offhand remark about seeing him later. Dinner plans. Cryptic reminders to him, limericks or punning updates, references based around a growing cache of personal inside jokes; that feeling of ongoing connectedness with her, and separation, both at the same time, which so pleased him. For a time, he'd saved those notes, the better ones anyway, in an unmarked folder, bottom drawer, left-hand side of his desk. But somewhere along the line, they'd been lost or, just as likely, found by her and discarded. All those days' and mornings' activities cryptically rhymed and remarked upon by her, for him, all that annotation, gone—not that he'd ever likely be able to decipher most of the meanings anymore.

But before that, before the notes, she'd been the girl in the Tyler Alcove whose name he didn't know but whose study habits he'd watched and followed for most of a semester—fall semester, junior year—the better to cross paths with her regularly enough that he'd have an excuse to continue or extend the few conversations they'd begun on study breaks and once on the bus to downtown. Or barring that, just to catch her eye, looking up from a textbook, and to smile in a way he hoped showed affection, deference, and some comradely commiseration . . . or just to stare at her there in the light of the library's cathedral windows, legs outstretched, leg warmers bunched at her ankles, reading, sifting and twisting strands of her hair in her fingertips, nodding off, waking again, taking notes. The light reflected onto her face from the pages of her book seemed to him the embodiment of a live curiosity and focus, a tractor beam of engrossment or attention whose intensity he admired as much as he longed to break into it or cause it to include him. She was a good student. This he learned early. Better, though not necessarily smarter, than he was, and a year younger: music history and mathematics.
Plant sciences. Canadian and no, she'd never spent the night in an igloo. Some of what he learned came from friends of friends, but more and more from her directly, in greetings and conversations, until the handful of days at the end of that semester when they found themselves mostly alone in the Tyler Alcove—other students having finished all exams and vanished—and talking or passing notes at least as much as they were studying.
My ultimate fantasy?
he'd written her their last evening alone together, studying.
Always the same: I walk into my dorm room and she's there under the sheets, asleep or just waiting for me. Probably naked. Not sure about that. Juvenile, right?
He didn't tell her that the fantasy was vivid enough to him sometimes he was unable to stop himself from a trembling and irrationally heart-racing sprint up the dormitory stairs to see if it had come true, if she was really there waiting—as if his haste or general timing might play some role in causing it.

Who?
she'd responded.
Who is she?

He'd cocked his head, and after a moment wrote,
My secret. Can't tell
.

As soon as the semester ended, she was gone. No good-bye. Just gone. Back to Ottawa, he figured—back to her four older siblings and solitary widowed father. Back to her favorite Lebanese bakery and art galleries that beat the Earlham and surrounding area galleries to hell and back. Back to real winters and a multiparty form of government that made sense to her, and real health care. He tried to put her out of his mind. Couldn't. Wrote her dozens of letters, which he didn't send. Started calling her at least as many times. Didn't. Couldn't name what stopped him any better than he could articulate what it was about her, exactly, that compelled his interest. But he was increasingly sure, too, that he'd been gulled, at least a little. Tricked into always telling her more than he'd ever learned and giving away more of himself than he'd gotten back in return, all of which put him at a disadvantage and allowed her all control of what would or would not come next. Start of the final morning's exam period, he'd thought for sure he'd see her there at Runyan, picking up her Baroque music history final; if not then, on the way back
out. Pictured them having a send-off lunch, maybe inviting her back to his room, at least a lingering good-bye embrace. Hung around at the exit doors afterward, waiting, watching as the exam period wound down and the few remaining weary students straggled out, exam notebooks full of writing to hand in to proctors, honor-code pledges signed. No Jane. Often, in the weeks that followed, he would remember those final moments of waiting for her: sunlight harsh on the snow outside, eaves dripping, exam proctors eyeing him suspiciously but saying nothing.
OK to wait here a few minutes for a friend?
he'd asked, turning in his own exam notebooks.
Supposed to meet her here....
The embarrassment and dawning certainty that he'd been wronged, stood up somehow. He'd given away too much.

I had to figure out what I thought, and why this was your fantasy. I had to decide a few things,
she said the night, just over a month later, he found her in his room under the van Gogh posters and corkboard of images from his summer European sojourn, windows darkened, apparently naked under his sheets.
And I admit, at first I wasn't too keen on it. Kind of risky. What if you changed your mind? What if I couldn't sweet-talk one of your suite mates into letting me in? What if I read you wrong and it wasn't me in the first place? That was your challenge to me, wasn't it—see if I'd take the bait? But why would you do that—or, conversely, why tell me at all, if it wasn't me? It's not your usual macho fantasy, to be sure, and it's not your lost-little-boy-in-the-woods fantasy, either. In fact, I couldn't really tell you what kind of fantasy it is, so I decided finally the only way to find out . . . was just to do it. Take the risk. And I've always liked you a little . . . so, you know, why not? Right? So here I am
.

At first, he hadn't known how to respond. There were his unsent rambling letters to her in a pile at the edge of his desk, facedown and folded in half; he only hoped she hadn't read them. There was his bad breath from having sat too many hours after dinner in the library, studying, hoping to catch a glimpse of her or to cross paths again as easily as they'd done all the previous semester. Also his growing need to urinate, and the distracting noise of funkadelic music from his suite mate's room across the hall.

She nodded, shrugged. Expelled a breath and rolled her eyes.
Yes, John. What do you think I'm doing here? Naked in your bed? Jerk.

He puffed a breath.
True. Sorry
. He indicated the music with his chin, smiling ruefully.
Sorry about that, too
.

He struggled to recollect any of the tortured logic from his letters and unplaced phone calls to her, one righteous, vindictive sentence from those hours of endlessly looping interior monologue. Could not.
If you say so
.

Come
, she said, and held an arm out to him.
This is how it is now. This is right now
.

And through it all, shucking off clothes and slipping in beside her under the sheets, waiting, talking—her yielding heat; the smells and textures he'd anticipated so many weeks now—lay this splinter of worry or grief he couldn't quite name or lay aside: She hadn't said why. She hadn't said,
I'll never disappear like that again
. She'd smiled and sympathized and said she was sorry. So he had to know, from the first moment he lay beside her, that separation was and would always be one of the founding principles of some pact between them. She was with him now; she would not always be. He had to decide this was a given, was all right even, and that he would always let her go, but he'd also always wait for her return, however long.

Heat blasting his face and instantly causing his hairline to prickle with sweat, he stood in the living room doorway now, unopened letter from Jane in hand, and remembered; let this piece of recollection go through him, aspects of it engaging him as vividly as if the bygone
versions of himself and Jane were specters visiting from another dimension. The better to understand and anticipate his future a little, he told himself—protect himself, if possible, from whatever it was Jane had to say. Also, he needed to be careful not to base any decision or action with her too entirely on whatever did or did not transpire with Moira tonight, or any other night. These things were all separate and connected only in him—past, present, future—and were not manifestations of some inscrutable design or pattern. Not
fated
. The past was gone: no specters visiting from other dimensions, however persuasively the picture-making part of his brain might struggle to convince him otherwise. He knew this. Knew, too, the danger of using feelings for one woman to offset feelings for another—one to counteract the other. He loved Jane still. Of course. He always would. Yet, it was quite possibly, as Devon had said on the phone the night before,
time to get off the pot
—and if Moira's presence was the thing to help him do that, was that so bad? Regardless, whatever Jane's letter to him now related, he needed to do his best to read it as if there were no Moira. As best as he could, he needed to try to understand Jane as if Moira did not exist.

He tore aside the top of the envelope. Glanced a moment at her words to Thomas, beginning with his name,
Thomas! Dearest!
—the weight in those letters, the ink, and in all the words that followed—before setting that aside and unfolding the slimmer, single sheet of paper addressed to him: a new address and phone number where she could be reached. Balance of money owed her from the house sale still, minus amounts set aside for Devon's and Thomas's school funds, and the amount she was requesting now for her organization. A promise to be in touch more fully soon. That was all. At the bottom, one word from a poem they'd quoted to each other often in their early years, and which had eventually become their ritual sign off:
Without—
And her name:
Jane
.

The full line from the poem went,
Without you, there is no world to speak of
, but he was pretty sure she would no longer be inviting him to think of that. Not inviting him to consider her as having no world without him, or to revisit the old world that had been theirs
exclusively. She'd be sticking to custom specifically to avoid hurt feelings.

More heat flooded his temples and prickled his hairline. He had to call her and end things completely. Now. Soon. No point hanging on. Time to close the door and put an end to this miserable, prolonged hanging-on chapter of his life. If he could do it on the spot, if it were as simple as deciding and transferring the decision instantly into action, settlement and lawful agreement, he would do it. He was pretty sure.
Without
. Indeed. “Divorce,” he said out loud, just to hear it. “I am getting a divorce.” He nodded his head, folded the sheet back into its creases, and whipped it against his fingertips. Too mad.
Don't do anything in anger; you'll only live to regret it
. Wisdom from his own father, of all people, and though he supposed it was true, sometimes . . . maybe sometimes you wanted to stay mad long enough to get something done. He forced back the recollection of Jeremy Malloy—light, springy, pinned to the wall under his forearm and the desire to just bear down harder, harder, until his own rage expired or the boy broke in two. Not that kind of mad. Mad in order to make a little distance between yourself and whatever was wrong. The real problem for him would come with preserving his convictions, remembering tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, and sticking by them. No more Jane. For real. Could he?