Dive From Clausen's Pier (48 page)

I was in that spot, reading the newspaper, the sun slanting in over my right shoulder, when I began to feel uncomfortable. How can it be that your body knows when someone is behind you? There was no sound, not a change in shadow or light, but I felt in the middle of my back that I was about to flinch. I fought it for a while and then finally turned around, and there was Jamie, standing out on the sidewalk looking in.

I stood up. Clamped a hand over my mouth. Froze. By the time I had the front door open she was gone, and though I hurried out to the sidewalk and looked both ways, she had vanished.

I tried to settle at the table again, but I couldn’t. I drove to the Fletchers’ and knocked—no answer. I drove to Miffland for the first time since I’d been back, climbed the steps to her house, and knocked again: nothing. Leaving my mother’s car, I walked over to State Street and went into Cobra Copy. No Jamie.

Still, she’d come to see me. Maybe just to
see
me, but she’d come. I tried phoning her later that day—at her parents’ house, her place, Cobra Copy, Bill’s—but I couldn’t find her, and even as I was calling I understood
how absurd it was to think I’d be able to track her down: that I’d still even know where to try.

Then, sitting there with the phone in my hand, it hit me: Wellhaven. At Wellhaven, visiting her mother. My mother had said Mrs. Fletcher liked having visitors. Jamie had probably driven down for the afternoon. Maybe she’d taken off immediately after standing in front of my mother’s house; maybe her car had been idling at the curb while she looked. I imagined her alone in her little Geo, taking the interstate south toward Janesville. Sitting there at the wheel, her hair brushing her shoulders, the radio on loud. And a pit in her stomach, to think of where her mother was.

She was afraid of the world, Mrs. Fletcher. It was something I’d always known about her without ever articulating it. She wouldn’t drive on the interstate. Hated having any of the girls go on sleepovers when they were kids—that was why the Fletchers’ house was always sleepover central. When we were in high school she objected when Jamie stayed out past midnight, but in a tortured, pro forma way since Jamie was clearly going to win. Poor Mrs. Fletcher, sitting up all last summer, way past midnight, waiting for Lynn to get home. I thought of the day when I ran into her and Jamie, while I was having lunch with Ania.
Don’t be such a stranger
, she said to me afterward.

Mrs. Fraser had said the same thing to Kilroy as we were leaving his parents’ house. I remembered her thin hand on his coat, the way he looked down before reaching for the doorknob. Whom had he talked to, in the two and a half weeks I’d been gone. Anyone?

I wrote Jamie a note that evening, saying I’d seen her outside my mother’s and hoped she’d want to talk soon, and that I was going to visit her mother unless I heard back that she didn’t want me to.

I waited until Thursday and then drove down, on an afternoon of heavy gray clouds, the kind of afternoon when you have to hope for rain. The facility was low and modern, set far back in well-kept grounds. The lawn was plush as carpet.

At the desk I was told to limit my visit to half an hour. I sat on a bench and waited, the sharp smell of chemical cleansers reaching me from somewhere. I was wearing the nicest outfit I had, my black pants and velvet shirt. Again. Out of desperation I’d bought some underwear, and one day I’d even resorted to a dowdy flowered skirt from the box in my closet, but mostly I just rotated among the few things I’d brought with me, sicker and sicker of them.

Mrs. Fletcher appeared from a long corridor. Her hair was short and
thin, but she was neatly dressed in her customary skirt and blouse, and on her feet were her customary made-for-comfort pumps. She tilted her cheek to the side, and I stepped forward to kiss her.

“Let’s walk around,” she said. “I’ll show you the garden.”

We went through the building and out a back door that led to a courtyard. From there a gravel path took us to a well-groomed rose garden.

“Aren’t they lovely?” Mrs. Fletcher said. Like Mrs. Mayer, she had always been a dedicated gardener.

“Beautiful.”

“My girls are tending the roses at home.”

We continued on to a pair of wrought-iron chairs set at right angles under a tree. A uniformed attendant watched us from nearby.

“How are you feeling?” I said when we’d sat down. Her hands were tucked into the folds of her skirt.

“Oh, Carrie, you don’t know your children until the family is challenged in this way. I can really rest easy knowing my girls are taking care of their dad, and he’s taking care of them.”

I looked into Mrs. Fletcher’s face. I wondered what she meant by “this challenge,” how she characterized it to herself.

“The other day Jamie was here in that new yellow shirt of hers, do you know the one I mean, dear?”

I said I didn’t.

She pursed her lips. “I didn’t say anything to her just then, but would you tell her to be sure not to wash it with darks? It’s really important to separate out your yellows. Reds, too. I guess I should have told her myself.”

She began to cough, and when she brought a hand out of the folds of her skirt to cover her mouth, I saw that it was raw and red, with nails bitten down to the quick.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell her.”

Clouds had been massing and darkening since my arrival, and now, suddenly, it began to pour. Without looking at me Mrs. Fletcher got to her feet. She started back toward the building, ignoring the path and instead walking slowly across the thick grass. I followed after her, holding myself back to her pace. In moments I was soaked.

At the courtyard she stopped briefly and looked up at the sky, then continued into the building. She waited just inside the door for me, then slipped out of her pumps, picked them up with one hand, and headed for the lobby.

Near the exit, she held out her free hand. “You’re a dear to have
come,” she said. “I’m so glad Jamie’s got such a good friend in you.” She turned and walked away, and I watched until she was gone: her soaked hair, her mud-spattered hose, the water-darkened shoes dangling from her raw fingers.

Outside again, I hurried through the rain to my mother’s car. I sat inside and listened to it drum against the roof and the windows. I sat perfectly still, as if I were trying to hear something the slightest movement would drown out. I heard cars driving through puddles, a distant crack of thunder, and then I found myself thinking of something Dr. Spelman had said during Mike’s coma: that after a head injury, people sometimes seemed different.

That was Mrs. Fletcher. If you hadn’t known her before, you might assume she was the same sweet, maternal lady she’d always been. Only her family and a few others, maybe not even my mother, would think what I thought: that I’d just visited some other sweet, maternal lady, an imperfect copy of a woman who seemed to be missing.

The next day was May 1st, and before heading out the door for the Mayers’, I sat down and wrote Simon a check for the rent. I was down to a little over three hundred dollars, and I was going to have to get a job as soon as I got back to New York: temping, working at a library, something. I couldn’t stand to think about how much money I’d wasted missing classes at Parsons—eleven as of today.

The rainstorm had cleared the sky, and most of the trees were leafed out now, the new leaves curled and pale green, a delicate pale green that reached in and fingered my heart, it was that painful and exquisite. When I stopped to deposit Simon’s check in a mailbox, I peeled off my sweater and pushed up my shirt sleeves, pleased by the pressure of the cool air against my bare forearms.

Mrs. Mayer was waiting outside the house for me, her handbag looped over her wrist. I’d called and asked if she would show me how to use the van so I could take Mike out sometime, and though I’d meant the lift she handed me the keys and said she wanted to see me drive first.

I got in and she climbed in next to me. The gearshift rose up from the floor like a stiff plant. I’d never been behind the wheel of anything so high before, and I jerked out of the driveway a little roughly before heading up the street. At my side she was silent, gazing out her window at the familiar sights. We drove around town for a while, then she said I should go down to the Beltline.

“What were you thinking you might need the van for?”

I glanced over at her. Her perm had loosened, and it hung in waves around her face. She was staring straight ahead, both hands clamped on her purse.

“To go for lunch,” I said. “Or just out.”

She opened her purse, then snapped it closed again. “How long are you staying?”

I thought of Jamie, standing outside my mother’s house on Monday. Of Mike. “I’m not sure. Maybe another week.” I pictured Kilroy lying on his couch, his arms crossed over his chest, and I sighed.

Mrs. Mayer opened her purse again and pulled out a lipstick. She lowered the visor, flipped open the mirror, and rolled color over her lips, a light coral. She recapped the lipstick with a smart click. “Mr. Mayer and I have been parents for a long time, and it’s strange, the things that bother you and the things that don’t. I’ll tell you this only once. We both feel that you’re not reliable. We’re both reluctant to have you back in Michael’s life.”

My face burned. I stared at the road, the steady movement of the car ahead of me.

“Shall we turn around here?” she said. “You’re doing very well—I never knew you were such a careful driver.”

I signaled to get off the Beltline. I stopped for a light and then drove back through town. “OK,” she said once we were back in the driveway. “I’ll show you the lift now.”

C
HAPTER
37

“You’re not coming back,” Kilroy said, “are you?”

“I am.”

“You’re not. You just don’t know it yet.”

We were on the phone again, the day after my van lesson. I was in my mother’s kitchen, looking through the window at the edge of Rooster and Joan’s deck, where there was a row of clay pots planted with irises, tight sheaves of green spears. My mother had gone to have lunch with a friend.

Kilroy coughed, and I turned from the window. I wanted to go back, but not yet. I wanted to be with him, but I wanted to be friends with Mike: to
be there for him
.

If Kilroy were with me, I knew there’d be no question. He’d look at me and his face would say he knew me, and that would be that. He’d reach out a hand, veins raised and snaky, and that would be that.
Kilroy
. Of course I was going back.

“OK, when?” he said. “I want a date.”

Something heavy tumbled through me. Silence fell along the line. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, I am.”

He laughed sharply.

“What?”

“That’s your great dodge, isn’t it?” He elevated his voice to mimic me: “ ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

My heart thudded, reminding me of something: the sound of my own footfalls as I walked down a quiet Madison street in my New York boots. Thud, thud, thud. Sorry, sorry, sorry. True, true, true.

“Just say,” I said. I twisted the phone cord around my finger, then slid it off. “I mean, I’m not saying this, but what if I did want to stay here? There are temp agencies here; you could come here.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I live in New York,” he said in a tight, controlled voice. “I want to live in New York.”

“More than you want to be with me?”

“Is that an ultimatum?”

“Didn’t you just give me one?”

We talked a little longer, to no good effect. Afterward I climbed the stairs and lay on my bed. I felt dizzy. I thought of his hands on my arms, how they were just the right size for my arms, to smooth my arms. How they felt on my stomach, especially when they were cold, that exquisite chill. His hands on my legs. His hands on my breasts. I put my own hands on my breasts and they felt soft and flabby, they felt like nothing. Like pockets of flesh. How extraordinary, I thought, that someone could touch you and make you into something.

I took Mike out to lunch. Sandwiches one day, pizza another. In the van he was quiet, but once we were settled and eating, he grew animated. It was good to leave the Mayers’ house, their neighborhood. Sitting opposite me in a restaurant on Monroe Street one day, he looked across his pork chop, which he’d earlier asked me to cut into pieces for him, and said, “Mike Mayer eats his lunch with gusto.”

I smiled. “Mike Mayer does?”

“Yes, he does.”

We talked and ate, and the place emptied out until at last it was just us and two women in tennis clothes. We sat in the lacy sunlight filtering through the branches of a tree just outside the window. From the kitchen we could hear voices and the sound of plates clattering. Near the back, our waiter sat in a booth and ate a sandwich.

I told Mike the story of me and Jamie, going back to seeing Lynn at the Alley that night in August, and how I’d never told her about it.

“Boy,” he said when I was done. “Whew.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t have predicted this, but Jamie’s kept it completely to herself. Wouldn’t you have thought she’d at least hint? She and Bill came over the other night, and when I said something about your visit she made it seem like everything between you was OK.”

My visit.

“I guess she feels it’s private,” I said.

“It is,” he said. “But still.” He leaned over for a sip of water. “So what’s going on between you now?”

“Nothing at this point. When I first got back I’d go stand in Cobra Copy and look at her, and she’d ignore me. That happened five or six times. Half of me just wanted to yell, you know, ‘Should I do a cartwheel now? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’ ”

Mike smiled. “And the other half?”

I looked down at my paper placemat and traced its scalloped edge with my forefinger. “The other half felt she was justified.”

“But you know that’s crazy now, right?” he said. “I mean, yeah, maybe you should have told her about Lynn, but there’s no way it’s your fault.”

“Something is.” I stared at him for a moment, then couldn’t stand it any longer and looked away.