Surprise Me (31 page)

“But there was a plan in place that was so much bigger than me.”

“Really?”

“See, I had to stay there and get the car fixed, but I didn’t have the money for a new transmission, of course, and so I had to find some sort of job to make the money, you know, and there we had the same old problem of me finding a job, so what could I do? I hadda sorta start asking people on the street to help me.”

“You mean as in panhandling?”

“Well…that’s an old-fashioned word, Dad. Not so good.”

“Okay, how’s
begging
—is that better?”

Stefan put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, calm, not rising to the bait as he would have in years past. “Wait a minute, Dad, here’s where the story gets better.”

Daniel sat back in his chair and looked around for Bev. Maybe she could come over and bring them some more coffee or talk to Stefan about something else entirely, because Daniel distinctly didn’t want to hear the rest of this story. But Bev was busy with customers, and so Daniel had no choice but to say, “Well, I hope so.” And that sparked another nonstop monologue from his son.

“So I’m walking back and forth in front of this sort of restaurant holding a paper cup. You know, so people could put coins in, or if they’re really nice a dollar bill here and there, and this guy comes up to me and the first thing he does is put some change in my cup and then he says, ‘Have you eaten lately?’ You get that, Dad, he’s interested in whether I’ve had something to eat.”

“A kind person.”

“Yes!” And Stefan’s eyes were shining. “Exactly! So I go with him into the restaurant and he buys me lunch and then he takes me back to the place he works and shows me this sort of dormitory with lots of cots lined up in rows and tells me I can sleep there if I need to. And I did. I was, like, exhausted ’cause I’d been sleeping in doorways and out in parks, you know.”

Daniel was now even more uncomfortable with where this was going but he said nothing, and his son continued talking.

“So when I wake up, this guy, his name is Peter Fairchild, comes to get me and takes me to this meeting room, there in the building, and that’s when I find out that I have been rescued, in more ways than one, by this charity called Trustings.” And here Stefan spoke the next sentence like a mantra: “ ‘We trust ourselves, we trust each other.’ Have you heard of it?”

“Should I have?”

“Well, maybe not here in rural New Hampshire, but in any big city, sure. We’re nationwide!”

Daniel nodded, and that was enough for Stefan to continue describing what sounded suspiciously like a cult, or at least an offshoot of the seventies version of a cult, est, founded by that charlatan Werner Erhard.

Stefan had been living there since, taking “classes,” learning about the “personal blocks” to his success.

“That’s what they talk about a lot, Dad—what are our personal blocks to our success? How we all have unresolved issues, you know, things that keep us from the ultimate. That’s what we’re all striving for—‘the ultimate’—don’t you think, Dad? Like your personal blocks are pretty obvious.”

“Really?” If it were anyone else but his son, Daniel would have been up and out of Bev’s Bakery in a heartbeat—he doesn’t listen to this kind of psychobabble—but he didn’t move. He told himself that his son was reaching out and he had to stay put and listen.

“Well, your agoraphobia, for one. That’s a pretty big block.”

“And there’s more, I presume?”

“Well, yeah, and that’s why I’m here.”

“To list all my blocks?”

“No, no.” And here Stefan actually chuckled. “To help you get past one of your major blocks.”

“And that would be?”

“Alina.”

“Oh.” And just her name jolted Daniel, and Stefan saw it, and so sat back and was quiet for a minute, to let the air clear before his final statement.

“I’m here to broker a deal between you and Alina,” he said quietly, but with confidence. “That’s what we call it—‘broker a deal.’ ”

—

LATER THAT DAY DANIEL FINDS HIMSELF
sitting in Alina’s white-on-white living room, with Stefan on one side of him and Alina standing across the room, leaning against the fireplace, her arms crossed defiantly. Stefan is the only one of the three who is cheerful. Unnaturally so.

“Think of your own personal blocks like those blocks of stone that make up your fireplace, Alina.”

She says nothing. Her scowl deepens.

“They’re big,” Stefan continues, unfazed by his sister’s obvious hostility. “Sometimes they’re boulders, much too heavy to move by yourself. So we help each other move our personal blocks. Dad is your personal block—”

“Oh, please, Stefan,” Alina finally says. “If you expect me to participate in some kind of—”

“Let’s let Stefan finish,” Daniel says gently.

“Oh, thanks, Dad! I knew you’d see the sense of this!”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but you came all this way, so I think your sister and I should give you a fair hearing.”

“Okay, so Dad, you’re Alina’s personal block and she’s yours, and the only thing to do is for each of you to say why and then put your shoulders together to move the blocks.” Stefan says all this as if it’s self-evident. He’s smiling with accomplishment, so pleased with himself.

“Ladies first,” Daniel says.

“Stefan, this is complete drivel,” Alina says without a moment’s consideration. Case closed. Discussion over, as far as she’s concerned. And she walks swiftly across the room, reaches for the door into her studio, ready to be gone from this tinderbox of emotion.

But Stefan stops her. “Please,” he says, placing a hand on her arm, “we need to talk as a family. You need to tell Dad why you’re so mad at him.”

And Alina turns slowly, very slowly, and looks at her father, a large man with his forearms on his thighs, his hands hanging between his knees, his eyes searching out hers.

“Stefan, you don’t want to do this.” Her voice is low, heavy with warning.

“All three of us. It’s our work. It’s what we have to do. Tell Dad why you’re so angry.”

Alina shakes her head, but Stefan pushes. “Tell him! Go on! He can take it. You need to give it! Talk!”

“I’m not just angry at him, I’m furious, I’m livid, incensed, enraged, irate! Okay, you got it? You heard it? Now leave me alone.” And she tries to push past her brother, to escape into her studio, to be done with all this, but he won’t let her.

“You need to tell him why.”

“Why?” And it’s then that her tightly controlled demeanor cracks and words gush forth from her mouth like an explosion. “Because he left us! That’s why. Isn’t that enough for you? Abandonment!” She’s yelling now. “One day he was there and the next, gone! Without any explanation, without a thought for what we might have been feeling. You don’t remember because you were too young, but I remember! Every day, every hour I would pray to God—yes, I used to do that—please, God, if I am very good and cause no trouble to anyone and honor you and do my chores, then he”—and here she points at Daniel, sitting motionless, absorbing every vitriolic word she’s hurling—“he will come walking up the front path to our apartment house and open the front door and sweep me up into his arms and tell me it was all a mistake and he will be there forever and forever and he will never leave. But no! All that mattered was what he wanted. All that mattered was his life! We were just kids—we were expendable! He didn’t think of us when he upped and left, and we didn’t matter all those years after when we never heard from him and he almost never visited and he certainly never came and got us, now did he? Is that enough ‘why’ for you, Stefan?!” And with that, Alina shoves Stefan aside rudely and flees into her studio and slams the door shut.

Daniel hasn’t moved. Head down, shoulders bowed, his eyes on his shoes now, a picture of defeat.

Stefan comes over to him, sits beside him on the sofa, puts a hand on his shoulder, and says softly, “That’s not the whole story, Dad, I know that.”

And it’s then that tears fill Daniel’s eyes.

—

WHEN DANIEL DESCRIBED THE SCENE
in all its scathing detail to Isabelle, she was silent for quite a while. The phone line crackled with empty air while she tried to find the right response, both honest and as comforting as she could make it.

“She needed to say all that,” Isabelle said finally.

“Obviously.”

“What did you do?”

“Listened.”

“Did you respond? Did you try to show her your side of things?”

“She wouldn’t have been able to hear me.”

“No, you’re right, not with all that anger blocking the way.” Then: “But maybe one day she’ll be able to.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s what you can hope for, Daniel.”

“Yes.”

But the only thing that changed after Stefan’s visit was that Alina and Daniel became even more careful with each other, more buttoned up, both aware now of the tumult roiling away beneath Alina’s calm surface. Each working hard not to trigger an eruption, something that had mortified both of them.

—

ISABELLE WAS MORE THAN SURPRISED,
then, when, years later, the phone call she received was from Alina. But there was no decision to make, and Isabelle packed her bags and asked Michael to drive her to the Oakland airport and kissed him good-bye and thanked him for being so understanding, because she clearly knew how much he didn’t want her to go.

“I’m going to miss you,” is as much as he allows himself to say as they stand at the airport curb beside his murky-green Volvo. She is his center and his reason to get up in the morning and his delight at the end of the day when he finishes his work and comes home.

“I know,” Isabelle says. “I’ll miss you, too.” And she means it. Despite the fact that she is going to Daniel, she will miss Michael.

“You can do this,” he tells her, and she nods, even though she isn’t sure she’ll be able to. This time, on this trip, Daniel is the one in need, and she has to make sure she doesn’t buckle in the face of it.

As soon as the plane is at cruising altitude and the seat belt sign is turned off, Isabelle settles into her seat. She’s never completely confident that the tons of metal she’s encased in will make it up into the air, so she holds herself in anticipation until the plane has leveled out. Finally she allows herself a deep breath and lets Oakland and her life there drop away. Her thoughts turn to the last time she saw Daniel, so much easier to contemplate than what awaits her now.

In 2003, almost exactly three years after her first trip, she visited Daniel again in New Hampshire. Avi was eight and Michael wasn’t yet in her life. She had spent the past three years trying to do what Daniel had urged her to: write her own version of their connection. But she wasn’t at all sure she was on the right track. All she’d been able to get down on paper were snippets and isolated scenes and paragraphs that didn’t seem to go anywhere. How would all these disparate parts coalesce into a real story?

What she needed, she decided, was to pace across the wooden floor of Daniel’s cottage and read it all aloud to him and sneak glances to see how he was taking it in and then sit and wait for his verdict with her eyes on his face, the way she used to when she was his student. She wanted to be that student again, and so she flew to Winnock one more time.

She found a quietly confident Daniel, a bit tentative about the warm reception he had received for
Out of the Blue
—after all, he’d been through this dance before—but accepting enough of it to be able to continue writing.

He was working on a series of short stories about a fictional town in New Hampshire that was inspired by the place he now called home. And it was going well, and he welcomed Isabelle with a lightness of spirit that she was thrilled to see.

This time their days together were completely different. They had an ease with the other, a certainty about the place they occupied in each other’s life. They wanted nothing more than for all that to continue. And nothing else.

Daniel would stay in Winnock—that was clear. It was where he could breathe deeply and live simply and write without the anxiety that he knew was always crouched in a corner somewhere, lying in wait for him. He saw it as almost a physical being, a sleek black panther, deadly and silent. One false move and the cat would pounce.

Isabelle would stay in Oakland and raise her child where he needed to be, close to his grandparents and at home base for his wandering father. She would work out her relationship with Casey somehow, someday, and help Meir run the bookstore, and struggle to write. That’s how they would live their day-to-day lives, but they had each other whenever they needed. If they could count on that, they wouldn’t ask for more, because neither of them was certain that more would have been better. “As is” seemed perfectly fine.

They spent Isabelle’s visit in Daniel’s small cabin, which had been transformed since she was there last. Now it felt like someone had made it a home. There were beautiful white pine shelves and cabinets built into the walls surrounding the stone fireplace. And Daniel had filled them with the books he loved.

“Jesse’s work,” Daniel explained. “He lives with Alina now, it seems.” And then Daniel grinned at her. “He talks to me, even if she doesn’t.”

And Daniel had bought a sofa, deep blue and very comfortable. There were rugs on the floor and white curtains at the windows. And a real set of dishes stacked on the shelves in the kitchen. A handmade quilt of five pointed stars on the bed they shared. Orphan even had his own monogrammed dog bed, courtesy of L.L. Bean.

And Isabelle was able to walk across the cabin floor and read her pages out loud and watch Daniel’s face for a reaction and sit down in a kitchen chair when she was done and ask, “Well? Tell me.”

“Why does this story matter?” Daniel’s voice is gentle.

Isabelle sits motionless and contemplates what he has asked her. She doesn’t have an easy answer. And he waits. The wind outside fills the quiet. The birch tree limbs rub against each other in a sort of moaning.

Daniel is comfortable simply watching her try to find an answer and so he doesn’t say anything, and they sit like that, across the small room from each other, until finally Isabelle says, “Because I want to show how the most unlikely people can save each other’s lives.”