Photographic (41 page)

“Yes?”

“If I ever do make my way out…get away from the money and start doing the arty stuff, if you might let me have one of those for a show. I could blow one up, or use a head shot. I think they’re amazing. It’s interesting, because she isn’t really…”

“What?”

“Well…pretty. In the usual way. That can be so boring, you know. She’s wild underneath. Different. I know why you chose her. I didn’t quite understand, at first. But you have to admit, your life would be easier with someone else, who wasn’t so naive.” Marta took her hand and wobbled it back and forth. “I’m better suited. You like honesty. I’m honest. I could handle anything. Any kind of life. I’ll be around, you know, if things don’t work out. I like Jane, but sometimes things don’t work out. It’s no one’s fault.”

“I’m figuring her out as I go. I like…” he wobbled his hand back and forth; made a motion as if he were catching a firefly and brought it to his chest. “But you’ve made a mistake, Marta. It’s me you’ve described. Not Jane. She’s as even as they come. It takes a depth charge to blow her up. I’m very lucky.” He smiled to himself, thinking of her.

Her time was up. 

Marta grimaced by way of a smile, allowed herself to be guided outside to her car. He opened her door for her; then in one breathtaking moment before she got in, when she was wedged in the corner of the open door—he swept her into a quick, hard, hug—then kissed her: once on the left cheek, once on the right. 

The next thing she could remember she was driving away, toward the gates, and she felt a faint imprint on each cheekbone, where he’d marked her with the sign of his approbation, a sign of belonging. She knew he would open the gates for her just as she approached, at the right moment. As she rolled closer to the entrance, the symbolism of the intertwining Celtic knots struck her for the first time, like a blow to the stomach. The knots were two, essences bound up together in endless swirls and concentricities, and what they stood for she did not doubt, even as the blush faded from his kisses.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

A
S
I
AN
ATTACKED
the defunct garden out back, hoeing up the matted weeds and grass that had grown over the deep rich soil, he saw Jane come out of the barn with a pitchfork in her hand. He paused in his labors to watch her, in her tied shirt and cut-off shorts, tromp across the gravel drive and through the waving uncut grass to where he stood. She had large suede gloves on her hands. Propping the pitchfork in the dirt, she leaned on it, regarding the large patch of overgrown earth. With a smile and a good-humored lift of the eyebrows, she hefted the pitchfork and dug into a corner of the earth, untangling strands of growth from the dirt. He watched her a while, then returned to his work with the hoe.

After about an hour they’d accomplished a good portion of the garden dethatching. They had worked from opposite sides; about a third in the center remained to be done. They took a break, again leaning on their garden implements at first, then by unspoken agreement taking a seat a little away from the large pile of vegetation they had pulled up. It felt good to sit down, even on the hard ground. 

Propped on arms outstretched behind them, they looked off in the direction of the lake. Little glints were visible through the white oak screening it.

“I have
Bourbon Street
in September.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m wondering if either I could get out of it, or if you and Tam could come with me.”

“Oh. Gee.”

“It’s one or the other.” He rolled forward and sat cross-legged “I don’t know which is a better option.”

“Tam will be in second grade. Are you thinking for her to go to school somewhere else, or what?”

“New Orleans. A tutor or we could find a school, maybe, if we think that’s better. She’s pretty darn adaptable.”

“I know. I don’t want to take advantage of that, though.”

“Yeah, but Jane, it’s more important for us to be together than for us to worry about scarring Tam by moving her around.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes, I do. And I say that as the child of parents who moved us around. It would have been better to be in one place, but parents are more important. You and me. We’re what she’s got.”

Jane had a little stick and she scraped lines in the bits of dirt visible through the silky grass. “That sounds right. But when she’s sixteen and needs psychotherapy I’m sending her straight to you.”

“Oh, no. Blame equally shared in this nuthouse.”

She pressed the point of the stick into her palm, hard, not looking at him. “I know it can’t be how it was. That’s unacceptable. So together has to be better. I’m scared. I’m really scared to leave here. I don’t know what it will be like every day, you know? But I’m more afraid of every day being the same, and going along numb, than being scared and finding out what happens now I’ve started to feel things again.”

“I know. We’ll take a chance.” He paused for a moment, squinting off toward the lake. “After I’ve fulfilled this, I don’t have anything concrete I’m signed on for yet, since that Western fell through, so I have options. I can decide how much I work. We can really change things if we want to. I can work one time a year or only in the summer, so we can all travel together and she won’t have to miss school. Of course, I’m counting eggs here. I don’t know how my career’s going to be affected. I might need to follow up on my old dream, and start up a playhouse. Develop and grow a repertory company. I’d love that.”

“It’s not movies.”

“No, it’s not movies; but movies aren’t the stage. There’s nothing like rehearsal. The luxury of that, when it’s your own company, being able to do it right, prepare the whole thing right, choose the material. It would be a joy.”

Jane broke her concentrated stare at the ground and looked up at him. She nodded. She broke the stick in half and laid down the pieces. “I don’t mind being a little scared. It means the unknown. It means I don’t know what tomorrow is going to be. It means my circle is expanding. It reaches wider than I ever thought it could. London showed me I could be comfortable there, with Tam. She could fit in and be happy there, and I could, too. Our circle of comfort could reach that far and wide. All the way across the globe. It made me wonder. Maybe wherever we are, it just reaches out beyond us, out in every direction, like this invisible forcefield. It’s a ray of joy outward, around the world and back again, and it zooms as quick as thought, keeping us safe, like gravity keeps us pulled close to the earth. It encircles us like a band of light.” She shrugged. “It makes me feel good to think of it that way.”

Ian took the hand where she’d pressed the point of the stick and kissed the indentation in her palm. “It’s a beautiful thought. Maybe that’s why they called people “stars” in the first place. Because they seemed to radiate light.”

“Speaking of radiating light and joy, time to go inside and see what Miss Tamsin Seraphim is up to.”

“Before we do, there’s something I want to give you.”

“Oh?”

She pulled something out of the back pocket of her jeans pocket. It was a crumpled piece of paper. She handed it to him and looked away. He frowned in puzzlement, at her awkwardness in giving it to him. He blinked at the handwritten words on the paper.

The focus, the light, 

the whispers, the night

all the magnification.

Careless the light 

shines ceaseless, 

shines bright

you bring it all

I can’t keep it away.

I stand in the sun 

and let the burn come

for falseness has stripped

and bereft me.

If I return 

I know it will burn. 

Die in the sun

or take the dark run?

I know each one 

has its damning.

Knowing myself 

I’ll crawl between hells

with the last breath in my body.

To walk in the sun

with the love I have won.

For the love in my blood, 

for the love in my bones, 

for the one man I’ll 

never be leaving.

He blinked at her. “Between hells?”

“To the blessed place.”

“When did you write the second part?”

She smiled at him then, her fullest, widest smile, giving him a heady, ecstatic sensation along with the weepiness he felt because, for the first time in his life, the Romantic in him, the birthright of his parents, felt wholly sated. 

“In Berlin. It started out as a song but it became something else. I hoped one day I’d want to give you the poem complete.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

S
HE
HADN
’
T
SEEN
Hank for the first week after they got home. They were so busy settling in and finding each other again, in this new configuration of three, at home, without the hollowness that had ricocheted before. The house had a new vitality and noise. Tam ran between her parents like a agitated chick, trying to get fed from one, then the other: the love, attention, and assurances that these conditions would last. 

Finally, on the Sunday week after they arrived, Jane walked over to Hank’s, across the same field she had once fled for his comfort. This time she took her time, studying the crumbled cocoa-hued earth beneath her feet, inhaling the faint smell of greenery and late summer blooms, searching the distant tree line for signs of birds or other visitors. By the time she was close to Hank’s low-slung white farmhouse, a simple L, she listened for signs of music. The yard was silent.

At the screen door, she pressed her face against the screen, indenting it as she searched for signs of Hank. All was quiet. Just as she was about to call out to him, she heard,

“Come in, stranger.”

She smiled and pulled the door open. In the wide dark room she couldn’t see him at first. At last she saw he was at the far end of the room, seated in a leather chair she hadn’t seen him sit in before, facing an empty grate.

“Have a seat.”

She walked down the long room, her loafers making a tapping noise on the floor, and took the chair next to his, canted toward the fireplace, in front of a low, round, rose-colored marble table she had never noticed before. They’d never used this end of the room.

He was staring into the empty fireplace, wearing his usual denim summer garb with a white t-shirt, no jacket. His hair looked a little longer than usual. On one side of the fireplace were ornamental brass poker, sweeper, and hook, on a stand designed to look like a windmill. 

Jane sat with her feet together, hands on her lap. 

Time passed.

“You’ve come home,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And.”

Now Jane looked into the blackened interior of the fireplace, instead of at Hank, whose face was etched with new lines.

“And we’re becoming a family again.”

He nodded. “Tam?”

“She’s like a lightbulb somebody turned on. You have to see her.” She thought about Tam. “I ask you, how can she be a Daddy’s girl when
I
practically raised her?” She wanted Hank to smile.

“I’d like to see her. Will you bring her over? Tomorrow, bring her over?”

“Of course. But why don’t you come over? Ian wants to see you, too.”

“Ian and I are like oil and vinegar. Better we stay on our own sides.”

Jane sat considering this. “We’re neighbors, Hank. I know Ian likes you. Do you really dislike him so much? Did he do something to offend you?”

“Nope.” He shook his head in an exaggerated tilting motion. “You ever hated someone just because of their existence?”

“You hate Ian?”

“I don’t hate who he is. I hate what he is.” For the first time he turned his head to face her. “Understand?”

“No, Hank, I don’t, and it shocks me to hear you talk so about him. I know you know pretty much everything that went on. I depended on you as a friend. But there’s such a thing as an error in judgment, and such a thing as forgiveness. And I don’t see why you should take it more to heart than I have.”

“I have your best interests as heart, but that’s not why. I do forgive him for what he did.”

“Then I don’t understand you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time a woman didn’t.”

Jane stiffened. “And I guess it wouldn’t be the first time you drove a woman out of the room with a comment like that.”

She saw Hank’s shoulders slump a little. “Just bring her by.”

He got up out of his chair to see her out. She rose reluctantly and he took her elbow. They processed toward the door. She wanted to stop, to say something, but his solemnity and purpose were so intent they overmastered her impulses. 

At the door, she appealed to him. “Will you play for me tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” He touched her hand and she found herself outside.

The next day, around 8 a.m., Jane got a call. The caller didn’t identify himself, but she thought she recognized the voice, and context soon clarified the mystery.

“Don’t bring her today.”

“Hank?”

“You come. Don’t bring her.”

His voice was different. He sounded sick, his voice gravelly. Jane decided to go right over, as soon as she made some chicken soup from a can and got it in a thermos.

When she got in the vicinity, she could smell the problem wasn’t illness of the viral or bacterial variety. She pulled open the screen door like it might blow off its hinges and walked in.

“Hank.”

“Yep.” He leaned in the doorway to the kitchen.