Safe from the Sea (16 page)

When he emerged again Nat was helping Olaf to a seat at the table.

Noah said, “When did you get here?”

“About a half hour ago.”

Olaf ladled creamy gruel from a plastic container.

“What’s that?” Noah said.

“This is black pot,” Olaf said. “What your grandmothers would have called
sort gryte
.” “I’m dying to hear about this,” Noah said, heading for the refrigerator. He added the smoked salmon to the feast.

“There’s not much to hear. I found this place online.” She searched for a paper bag under the cluttered countertop. “It’s called Kafe Forny. ‘Kafe’ with a K. I’m afraid it’s all cold.” She handed Noah the bag and an open bottle of beer. She offered Olaf a bottle, but he declined with a turned-down chin.

The label on the bag had a Duluth address under a Norwegian-flag logo. The beer bottle read,
HANSA-BORG’S BORG BOKKøL
. Noah tasted the beer. He looked at his father spooning the soupy black pot into his slack mouth, the look on his face giving away a deep satisfaction. “So you left Boston this morning, stopped at a Norwegian deli in Duluth, drove up here, and now you’re serving me a beer and something called black pot.” “And
lutefisk, lefse
, that cheese,
krumkake
for dessert.” “And radishes.”

“And radishes,” Nat confirmed. She set a plate of them on the table.

“Chrissakes, this is good eating,” Olaf said.

Natalie sat next to Noah. “Dig in,” she said.

A taste for these flavors had long been lost to Noah, but when he saw Natalie sprinkling sugar onto a buttered sheet of
lefse
, when he saw her slicing another piece of
Gjetost
cheese onto her plate, even when he saw her daring a quivering spoonful of lutefisk taken from a pan atop the stove, his appetite became tremendous. He ate everything. Olaf ate everything. Noah drank one and then another bottle of beer. Olaf suggested they turn on the radio, which they did, but when they found no station in the twilight hours they settled on old stories told around the table. Food stories all. Natalie recalled the always overcooked pork and dumplings stewed in cans of storebought soup from her childhood. Neither Noah nor Olaf could imagine it. Noah’s memories settled on Christmas cookies so fine they defied his
power of description. And for Olaf it was Thanksgiving turkeys cooked in the cavernous roasting pans of steamship ovens; his own mother’s
lefse
, made of nearly rotting potatoes for their sweetness; her own antique
krumkake
irons; and finally her homemade butter on the
lutefisk
she made every Friday night.

Natalie, despite her labor in setting the table and the still too-warm room, wore her favorite sweater of Norwegian wool. She looked wholly native to this spot in the woods, so far from Boston and their life and her cautionary and conservative upbringing. She looked, Noah thought as he sat back for the last sip of his beer, more like his wife in that instant than in any other moment of their life together. It wouldn’t have been possible for him to say that he loved her any better, but neither could he remember a moment in their history to match the intensity of his conviction that here was the woman whose wisdom in all things made
him
a finer man, finer for the life with her and finer for the child she would—he was suddenly convinced again—bear to this world and to their lives. With this thought came another: that whenever that child did come, Noah would no longer reign in the boundlessness of her love, that that domain was forfeit to the child.

When Nat unpacked the
krumkake
and offered to make coffee, both men declined. Instead they nibbled at the cookies with waning enthusiasm, Olaf admitting that his mother’s old recipe had nothing on the cookies from Kafe Forny. Enough food still lay on the table for another such feast, the black pot congealing in its cream, the gelatinous lutefisk in the pan, the
lefse
stacked like tortillas in a plastic bag.

They talked for an hour as if such gatherings were a weekly occurrence. Natalie was the most garrulous, telling Olaf about her work with her usual seriousness on the subject. Her intelligence was on fine display, and Noah could see that Olaf was impressed. When the
subject of Noah’s business came up—and when Olaf circled back to his original skepticism about the very idea of an antique map—Natalie offered her opinion, reiterating Noah’s point about them being artistic more than utilitarian but also explaining how purchasing the business fitted into their retirement years down the road and how, most importantly, it made Noah a happier man. Noah could tell her explanation was far more satisfying than his own had been those few days before.

It was well past dark when the conversation wound down.

“Well,” Olaf said, laboring up from the table after a lull in the conversation, “if I were younger, now’s the time I would have gone outside for a smoke. Might have finished the night with a finger of hooch. But I’ll be goddamned lucky to make it to bed. Natalie, I don’t have thanks enough. I’m off to bed if you two will clean this mess up.” He took a couple of steps toward his bedroom door, turned. “Noah could tell you how early I rise, but I sleep like I’m dead until then. Good night.” Noah and Nat said good-night together.

“Where does a girl go to the bathroom around here?”

“The outhouse is in the woods, up a path behind the shed. I’ll get the flashlight and go with you.” “You don’t need to go with me, just point me in the right direction.” W
HILE
N
OAH CLEARED
the table and put the food away, Natalie sat on the sofa with her feet tucked beneath her, a glass of water in her hand and the sweater folded beside her. She commented quietly on the inventory of the cabin. “What does he do up here?” “So far he fishes and tells stories.”

“Can you imagine living here?”

“There’s a radio show he listens to in the morning sometimes. I guess he reads a lot.” “Wouldn’t you get lonely?”

“Of course I would, but I’m not him.”

Nat looked at him. “You two aren’t so different.”

“Really?”

She looked at him again, a look to quell further comment if he read her right. “He was so sweet, Noah. While you were down at the lake we just sat here and talked like long-lost friends. We talked about everything. He’s got me scared of the bears and wolves. Did you know he makes himself pasties every Sunday night? I don’t even know what a pasty is.” Noah finished cleaning. He leaned on the counter, listening.

“He’s glad you’re here. That’s plain to see.” She took a small wooden box from the shelf behind the sofa. She opened it. Within were photographs, a pipe, a skeleton key. An old fountain pen.

Noah sat down next to her. “My grandpa carved that box, I’m sure of it. I think it was a gift for my mom. Maybe it was for Solveig.” Nat handed him the pictures. They were all of Noah’s mother. So beautiful. One of his parents on their wedding day. One with Solveig on her mother’s lap, little more than an infant. “Jesus, the things I’m finding around here,” Noah said. He put the pipe in his mouth.

Natalie took the pictures from him. She took the pipe. She re-packed the box and set it back on the shelf. She sipped her water. “So you’re not mad, are you?” Noah put his arm around her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Now that I’m here, I understand. If anyone should apologize, it’s me.” Noah leaned in and kissed her neck.

“This is so weird,” she said. “That’s the other bedroom right there? There’s not much room for privacy.” “We can be quiet.”

But how to be quiet on that bed, in that house so used to its own silence? How to be quiet when the only other sound was the stove fire and a dying gale outside in the woods? Noah had lit a candle, its amber glow left the last corner of the bedroom in darkness. He set it on the nightstand. At the foot of the bed they undressed, hanging their clothes on the bedposts for want of anyplace else to lay them. When they kissed—there at the foot of the bed—the touching of their lips seemed as loud as a drumbeat.

Natalie said again, “This is so weird.”

But Noah put his finger to her lips and led her to the side of the bed. He pulled back the covers. When Nat lay down the ancient bedsprings tolled. When she put her arms around him she also put her mouth to his ear, “Your skin is cold,” she said. “You smell good. Like the air up here.” “W
HAT TIME IS
it?”

Noah angled his watch toward the candlelight. “It’s only nine o’clock.” “God, it feels like three o’clock in the morning.”

“It’s always earlier than it seems up here.”

She took his hand under the quilt. “So, you think there’s anything going on down there?” She moved his hand to the bottom of her stomach. “The doctor said there were at least six follicles ready to release. We could have sextuplets.” “I’d take anything, but better to start with one.”

“What,” she said, shifting her weight up onto an elbow and looking at Noah, the candle aglow in her eyes, “don’t you think I’d make a capable mother of six? I thought my performance tonight with the Norwegian food was pretty impressive.” “Some of that food was awfully good.”

“I could eat
lefse
every day.”

Noah kissed her. “I don’t know where we’d find
lefse
in Boston.” She lay back down. The bedsprings creaked again.

“It was terrific, all the food. My dad loved it. So did I.” Outside, the gale was weakening. Noah listened to the trees still swaying gently. “Every night the wind dies down,” he said.

“Speaking of wind, you should have felt that plane land in Duluth this afternoon. It was terrible. But the view from the window was amazing. We circled out over Lake Superior. I could see the city below. There was a ship outside the harbor. We flew right over it. And there were these veins of reddish-brown water curlicuing from the shore out into the lake.” “Those are the creeks and rivers. Wherever they run into the lake they bring with them the color of the rocks and soil.” “It was so pretty. And I love Duluth. But cold.”

“That’s how everyone feels. The ‘but cold’ part.”

She snuggled next to him. “Not here, though.”

“Definitely not here.”

They lay silently for a while. Noah thought she had fallen asleep. He was about to get up and blow out the candle when she said, “I’m sure this isn’t even going to work, but it’s like I have to try. Why else are we on this earth?” Noah leaned up on his elbow now. “I’ve spent all day thinking about it. All this time trying, I guess it’s just taken it out of me. You,
too, I know. Of course you more than me.” He lay down. “I don’t know, I think all the failing, watching you be so sad all the time.” “You were sad, too.”

“Of course I was, but it’s different.”

Again they lay silently, Noah stroking her hair, and again he thought she’d fallen asleep.

“Anyway, even if it doesn’t work I’m glad I came.”

Noah squeezed her hand. “I had a realization today. If we do have a baby, when we have a baby, I realize that I won’t be the most important person in your life anymore. I’m okay with that.” “What in the world are you talking about?”

“I mean when we become parents things will be different. Children, they demand a lot of love. Especially if you’re a good parent, which you will be. That’s all.” “Only a man would say something like that. Only a man would be capable of thinking something like that.” “I didn’t mean for it to sound bad.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t love you any less if I had a million kids.” And now she did fall asleep. Noah rolled out of bed and blew out the candle.

S
OMETIME BEFORE DAWN
Noah lay in bed, the stillness all around incomprehensible. Even the stove fire’s hiss was absent. Even the sound of her breath. He ought to sleep, he knew, was tired enough to do so, but his thoughts kept him awake.

After a time he heard his father’s door open and his feet padding across the great-room floor. By his reckoning of the previous mornings, he made the time four or five. The first daylight was still two or
three hours away. He stepped out of bed, pulled the quilt up over Nat’s shoulder. She pushed her hair from her face but did not wake. He moved into the great room as the door outside closed with a quiet clap. From the window Noah watched his father cross the yard to the shed. Rather, he watched an apparition of his father, one blurred by the flashlight’s bouncing. The windows in the shed were soon bright. When Noah stepped outside he could feel the frost melting under his bare feet. There were stars enough to see a mile.

Inside, he put a kettle of water on the stove and two of the leftover
krumkake
on a plate. He wished he had a newspaper to read. When the water boiled he made coffee. He poured a cup and pulled the peacoat over his bare shoulders. He took the coffee and cookies to his father in the shed.

“I thought I heard you milling around,” Olaf said over his shoulder. He was separating two small piles of nuts and bolts on his workbench.

“I brought you some coffee.” Noah set the plate of cookies and the coffee on the bench. “This is it, huh?” he asked, gesturing toward the anchor.

Olaf nodded. “Thanks for the coffee. Didn’t want to wake you two.” “I figured as much.”

Olaf took a long drink of the coffee. He removed a cigar from a drawer at his knees and unwrapped it. He bit off the end but did not light it, though he held a match between his fingers. “You sleep okay?” “Yeah.”

“Natalie staying a while?”

“I’m afraid she has to leave this morning.”

Olaf smiled. A devilish look.

“I know,” Noah said.

“She’s about a hundred times the woman I remember from your wedding. What I remember from your wedding anyway.” “She’s the best.”

Olaf took another drink of coffee. “Well.”

“Well, I guess I’m going back to bed.”

“I’ll be out here for a while. We’ll have some oatmeal when you all wake up.” “Good.”

As Noah left the shed he could smell the first licks of cigar smoke.

He undressed and climbed back into bed. In a voice groggy and pleased, Natalie asked him what time it was.