(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (56 page)

While I listened and the fake smile on my face told the guys around me that I was enjoying their fun, my eyes watched Maggie, who had busied herself with cleaning the tables and the ice-cream machine. She tried to look helpful, look interested, look okay, but I knew her, and I knew that she was about ready to jump out of her skin and that when she did, tears wouldn't be far behind. She had held it together about as long as she could.

I threw my bowl away, looped my arm inside hers, and walked her slowly beneath the magnolia and along the grassy lawn that led down to Mr. Carter's duck pond. The shade felt good, the breeze felt better, and the farther we got from the tables, the more her shoulders relaxed and her breathing deepened. By the time we reached the pond, the wrinkle on her forehead had almost disappeared. We stood watching the ducks swim around the turtles and a few well-fed carp feed slowly through the weeds at the bank.

About ten minutes later, Amos and Amanda appeared behind us. Amos held an uncut watermelon on one shoulder. The four of us stood at the water, saying nothing and not feeling as though we had to. Maybe that's the sign of true friendship, when silence is not uncomfortable.

About twenty years ago, Mr. Carter had planted twelve weeping willows along the banks of his pond. Now they were tall, mature, and their branches swooped over and down into the water like Rapunzel's hair. We sat in the shade of one. I leaned against the tree trunk, and Maggie sat between my legs, leaning against me.

Amos drove his Benchmade down the middle of the melon, then cut out large chunks and passed them around. He sank his face into the heart and let the juice drip off his chin. Maggie did likewise, chewed, leaned back, and spit a seed out into the water.

Amos looked out across the pond. "The federal guys have put me in charge of the investigation here. We've got most every agent in the state trying to find them, which shouldn't be too hard to do given what they look like, but we haven't yet, and even when we do, we can't do anything, because technically, they haven't done anything wrong-at least that we can prove. It'd be Maggie's word against theirs, and we can question them but technically can't hold them.

"One more thing." Amos wiped his face, closed his eyes, and spoke as if it hurt. "Antonio and Felix were released from prison about three days before Amanda was kidnapped and tied to a tree in the woods two years ago."

We sat in the quiet a moment while the weight settled down into my stomach. He put his arm around Amanda, who seemed relatively unmoved by the admission. Evidently she'd heard this story before.

"A week later James received a postcard from Charleston. The front showed a picture of a rural country church that looked a lot like one that used to stand not too far from here. And on the back someone had drawn a stick figure wrapped around a tree."

"You think I should move Maggie someplace in town?"

Amos shrugged. "Hard to say. Criminals don't think like we do."

I stood and walked to the edge of the pond, dipping my fingers and then shaking them. I wiped them on my pants, plucked a tall weed from the bank, and began breaking it into smaller pieces.

I nodded. "You think they'll come back? I mean, to the house?"

"The cop in me doubts it." He tried to sound reassuring. "They're probably running now. I've known too many criminals who never make good on their word-even when it comes to revenge." He paused again and looked at Amanda. "But the husband in me does not."

Maggie looked at Amos. "Which one do you believe?"

"I believe ..." He looked at Amanda, then put his hand on her shoulder, "the one who loves her."

We were quiet a minute.

"I'd keep Papa's 12 handy for a while."

MAGGIE DIDN'T SAY MUCH ON THE WAY HOME. NEITHER did I.

I parked in front of the barn and told her I wanted to check on the house. When I walked up the back steps and into the kitchen, the light on the answering machine was blinking. I pushed play, turned down the volume, and lowered my ear next to the machine. Mr. Sawyer from the adoption agency said the committee had reached its decision and would be sending out a letter in the next couple of weeks. When he had finished speaking, I pressed delete and walked slowly down the drive to the mailbox. It was empty.

Like me.

BY MIDWEEK, I ADMITTED THAT SEVERAL THINGS were bothering me and I could not shake them. I didn't like having to live like two tramps in the barn; I was worried about Maggie; I couldn't make sense of anything right now; and I knew things were getting worse and not better. But at the top of the heap of things that bothered me most, that woke me up in a cold sweat at night, screaming out of the silence and calling me a liar, sat the story I'd written and given to Maggie. And with Maggie growing more detached by the minute, what troubled me was not what I'd left in but what I'd left out.

I leaned against the shower post and shut my eyes. The water dripped off my shoulders and cooled my skin amid the humid night. I didn't want to live this way. The wrinkle between my eyes told me what was bothering me, but it also said something else: it said I had grown angry and bitter that she had shut me out.

Pinky slammed her stall door, reminding me it was well past her dinnertime. I finally voiced to myself what I had been thinking for days but had not been willing to admit. When I looked at my life, at the torn and frayed quilted patchwork that had enveloped us, I wondered if any part of it could be sewn together again. Because as I studied it in my mind's eye, only tattered remnants remained.

I stood in the doorway, drying myself and studying the house. From the chipped paint to the squeaky screen door to the stick-and-twig ruins of Maggie's landscape design to the smell of Pinky's unkempt stall wafting across the back porch, the place looked and smelled the way I felt.

I leaned over the stall and looked down on Pinky, who was currently digging a hole to China in the corner. She looked at me, grunted through her snout, and flopped her ears forward.

I looked across the overgrown yard to the house and heard Maggie throwing things in the kitchen. I heard a glass break, a pause, then several more crashes for what I assumed was good measure. A door slammed. Blue looked at me, I shrugged, and his face told me what I already knew. We were nearing the end.

Something had been severed. It wasn't Maggie's voice that told me this. It was her eyes. When she looked at me, she was looking at the world beyond me where her dreams once lived. The brilliant light that had once been there was dim and flickering.

"What can heal the human soul?" I whispered.

Blue leaned against me and raised his cold nose to my hand. I stepped into my clothes and admitted that I had grown angry at something I could not see or touch. The irony of my life smacked me in the face: while I could protect Pastor John from a raging fire, I could not protect my wife from that which threatened to kill her.

I walked out the back of the barn along the edge of the corn and tried counting the stars. I felt little and insignificant-one amid the many.

My sense of helplessness pressed down on my shoulders, grew tighter across my chest, and squeezed out the air. I could not escape the sense of blame. Like a wave of vomit I could not control, the ache cut my knees out from under me, sent me to the dirt, and then exited my heart like a cannon shot. I knelt, clutching the earth, gasping for air, and trying not to let the split in my heart split me.

MIDNIGHT CAME, AND I CRAWLED OUT OF THE FIELD. THE large green leaves of the corn slapped at my arms, and the tasseled tops towered now some two feet above me. I crept toward the barn, slipped through the garden behind the azaleas, and stood next to the barn door staring at the staircase.

Blue looked up at me and even shook his head, but I scratched him between the ears and told him, "I'm just checking on her." I climbed up the stairs into the loft. The room was cold and dark, and I could hear Maggie sleeping in the silence. She lay in the bed, mounded beneath the covers, breathing heavily under the oral sedation she'd grown accustomed to.

I tiptoed to the bedside table, picked up her bottle of sleeping pills, and clicked off the lid. One left. There were five this time last night.

I knelt next to the bed and slid my hand beneath hers. It was limp, frail, and did not respond to mine. I slid my hands beneath the sheets and found her cold feet. I pulled some socks from my drawer, slipped them over her heels, and covered her up. The fan was spinning like a tornado, and the AC was set on "snow." I knew our power bill would shoot through the roof, but I didn't adjust a thing. If that's what she needed, then that's what she needed.

I climbed down, walked across the yard, and found the answering machine light blinking quietly in the dark. The red light reminded me of the hospital and the machines that had monitored Maggie. Maybe we'd escaped the confining walls, but the monitoring continued. I pushed the button and heard Dr. Frank's voice.

"Dylan, it's Frank Palmer. Just checking on Maggie. I'm working the graveyard shift, so call me anytime tonight."

I dialed the number of the delivery ward and asked for Dr. Frank, and the receptionist paged him. A few minutes later he picked up the phone.

"Hey, Dylan, how're things?"

"I'm not too sure."

"Any sign of her cycle starting?"

"I don't think so."

Dr. Frank took a deep breath. "I don't want to give you any false hope. If you don't see something tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, I think, well ..."

"I understand."

"How are her emotions? Is she on an even keel?"

I scratched my head. "No, not really."

"On a scale of one to ten, ten being really out of whack, where is she?"

"Reaching ten."

He paused as though he was checking his watch. "Today's Wednesday. Why don't you call the office Monday, and I'll tell the nurses to work her in. We probably ought to start her on a hormone replacement therapy. Like we discussed, it's routine for menopausal or sterile women."

The word sterile echoed through my head. "I'll call Monday."

He hung up, and I returned the phone to the receiver. When I turned around, Maggie was standing in the doorway, wrapped in a sheet. Her face was as white as a ghost, and she was barefooted. We stood looking at each other.

Finally she spoke. "What'd he say?"

Her eyes were dark and hollow. "Dr. Frank."

"He said he hoped we'd have a good weekend."

Maggie blinked and waited.

I shrugged. "He wants me to bring you in Monday."

"Why?"

"'Cause by the end of the weekend, we ought to know one way or the other."

Maggie's finger slid along the lines of the wall calendar. She reached what would be the end of the weekend, pulled the calendar off the wall, and pitched it into the trash. Then she turned and walked back to the barn.

I walked to the front porch and leaned against the screen door. The streetlight lit the mailbox and reminded me that I had not checked the mail in two days. I walked down the drive and filled my arms with junk mail, then walked back to the house. Sitting at the kitchen table, eyeing the barn door, I filtered through the pile.

The letter from the adoption agency was stuffed somewhere in the middle. I froze, eyed the hallway again, and then slit the top of the envelope.

"Dr and Mrs. Styles, We regret to inform you . . . "

It was signed "Sincerely," which I doubted, and then included a postscript, "You may appeal this decision in writing," and gave detailed instructions on how to do that. The following page was a check in the amount of my deposit.

Over the last few weeks, the facts of my life had festered like a splinter and were now tender to the slightest touch. The letter was like somebody rubbing the tip of the splinter with sandpaper.

I'd had just about enough of this committee. I folded the letter, stuck it in my pocket, and closed my eyes. I needed to work on my appeal, pay off my debt at the bank, and figure out what I was going to tell Maggie.

LAST JULY, AS THE HEAT OF SUMMER AND SWARMS of mosquitoes arrived in force, Maggie and I packed enough food for two or three days, whistled for Blue, and hopped on the raft. We shoved off, and I stood at the rear manning the rudder while Maggie lay across the deck tanning, talking with me, and dipping her feet in the river as Blue paced back and forth across the front spotting fish.