Holding Lies (11 page)

Her hair was longer in front than in back and curved down to her chin and was shiny and clean, hair he'd only seen in photographs. He was stunned a bit, as if a celebrity was sitting in his kitchen. She was wearing mascara, her only makeup, or rather the only makeup he
could detect, and it lent her eyes a compelling vivacity; it was hard to look elsewhere. And there was her perfume: vanilla and warm. And she slouched in a new way, in a manner refined but casual. Now both her elbows sat on the table, just a couple inches apart, her hands up and feeding her mouth, which chewed and spoke at once, her face suspended there, unflappable. That's what it was about her: Her whole aura was slender and majestic, a whitetail doe in summer—so unlike the puffy, clumsy pubescent who'd come to stay with him last. Whereas she used to remind him of an overdressed Wooly Bugger, now she was a low-water Lady Caroline.

She was waiting for him to answer.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm just so shocked that you're actually here.”

“So am I.”

He didn't know what to say, how to respond.

She broke the silence. “Can we sit outside? I love that there's no humidity here.”

He nodded. Whatever she wanted. His daughter, with him again.

*

T
HEY SPENT THE
late afternoon at the house, on the small porch that extended from his bedroom. From there, they could hear the highway below, and between cars, the rustle of the river. A woodpecker was deconstructing the dead oak just down the hill. And honeybees buzzed in and out of their woody cavern.

She worked sixty-hour weeks, she told him, and had been surprised by how fulfilled she could be in the “private sector.” She spoke fast, and he listened intently; no one around here spoke like this. “In graduate school, they lead you to think an academic position is the only option. They're pushing you in that direction, helping you carve out a niche of your own, but not just any niche, you know; it's got to be a marketable niche. Doesn't matter if you're doing something innovative, say arguing to reframe the discussions of Heidegger, if your cutting edge isn't part of the new collective direction, you won't find a position. I was deep into
Buber, which was my problem. Or so my advisor said. Buber, all of existentialism really, is passé. There is so much that is passé now. You have to be doing something in environmental, feminist, or language to find an academic job these days. Even logic is dead. Imagine that: a philosophy department without a logician. Amazing!”

“I can't imagine.”

“But the private jobs? They're booming. Especially these ethicist gigs. Everybody needs an ethicist now.”

“So, what is it you do exactly?”

“Preempt disputes, prepare for disputes, advise disputers, construct policies that will avoid future disputes. Really, pay me now and I'll save you millions in attorney fees later. That's what it boils down to. That and everybody wants to lunch with a philosopher; nobody wants to lunch with a lawyer.”

She frequently pulled a device from her purse, checked it, pushed some buttons, tucked it back in her purse. Only later would Hank learn she was actually communicating with her associates back at the hospital. She was working.

“Like right before I left. A surgeon did something he shouldn't have, and now I'm helping reconstruct the hospital's policy to cover its ass in the future—and ensure the policy remains ethical, of course, whatever that means. It's part politics, part law, part common sense. Mostly, what I do is find the best bad option.”

“Do you like what you do?” He couldn't believe that anyone in the entire universe—especially his own progeny—would like to spend her days doing this.

“I do. I love it. I love how busy it keeps my mind. There's always something to think about, a problem to work out, a question to answer. It's its own universe, this job, and that's what I love about it. A whole system of thought and code and significance. I could spend my life wrapped up in it.”

“Huh.”

“Hey,” she said suddenly. “I want to take you out for dinner. Someplace nice. My treat.”

He nodded at the kitchen. “I've got something marinating.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow? Let's have somebody else do our cooking. My treat.”

*

S
O, HE RINSED
the marinade off the meat while she freshened up in her room, and they drove the twenty-two minutes to the four-star Campwater Lodge, to the restaurant there, and asked the exquisitely tailored host for seats that overlooked the river. The Lodge, as it was known locally, had an international reputation among anglers, and drew legions of high rollers every summer. Most of Hank's clients stayed there. A few of the especially gracious would invite him for dinner after the trip, an invitation he usually accepted, so long as he didn't have plans with Caroline. “This is the only gourmet restaurant in the world that lets you wear studded boots inside.”

“What's a studded boot?”

Their table overlooked some of the most storied steelhead water in the world, runs that Hank fished infrequently these days because of all the joes that swarmed there. He pointed out an osprey and they watched as it tucked its wings and dove into the green pool. “Wow,” she said.

“This place is in your blood,” he said. “I'm a transplant, but you're a native. Did I ever show you where you were conceived?”

“Jeez, Hank.”

“No, it's a beautiful place. You'll appreciate it. You've got legacy here.”

She checked the device in her purse, pushed a couple buttons. Sipped her water. Pushed more buttons. “Sorry,” she said. “I'll shut this thing off.” But then she didn't.

The server came with a napkin over her arm, and held a bottle of wine for them to see. Annie barely acknowledged the person, but nodded at the wine. After a test pour, Annie sipped it and said, “Leave the bottle.” She didn't say thank you.

Hank said it for her. “What would you like to do while you're here?” Meaning: anything else besides looking at that device?

She tucked the thing back in her purse. “I'd love to hike and raft and do all those outdoorsy things that I never get to do back home. And I'd really like to fish with you one day, you know, a guided trip, like I am one of your clients.”

“Nah. We can definitely fish if you want but—”

“No,” she said. “I want to see you in action. I want to know who you are when you're at work. Thad, my … my friend, he's a pediatric surgeon, and he has no idea who I am at work. It just seems strange. How could we think we know our intimates if we never see them at work, where they spent most of their waking energy?”

The inclusion here of Thad had seemed forced to Hank, almost as if she had been awaiting a chance to mention him. Hank tossed her a bone and asked about this Thad fellow, how long they'd been together, what they did together, all questions disguised as being about Thad when really he was just trying to elicit more information about her. But she was categorically restrained on the subject, providing bland and factual information that did little to color in his impressions of their lives. Like she was keeping something from him.

“Do you live together?” he asked bluntly, his suspicion getting the better of him.

“We do.”

“Good,” he said, though he hadn't the foggiest idea whether it was good or not. “People rush into marriage too frequently these days.”

She glanced down at her plate, hiding her eyes, and he should have guessed what she would say next. But he didn't, and it rocked him. “Actually Hank, we are married. We got married in May.”

The river, the osprey, the breeze through the firs. “Oh, I see.”

She put her hand on his. “It wasn't a big service or anything. We had it at this tiny bed-and-breakfast in Thad's hometown, in North Carolina.” She was awaiting his reply.

“I'm so happy for you. Congratulations. Really. Was your mom there?”

She nodded.

He nodded too, looking down at the water but seeing nothing. “Wow. Married. My daughter. How wonderful.”

“But it was a tiny service and it was on short notice. It was a weekend whim, really.” Then, the killer: “I was thinking of you the whole time.”

He leaned back in his chair, tried his best to smile naturally. She would feel shabby for not inviting him, so he said, “No way I could've made it anyway. May is a busy time.” A lie. May was the slowest month of his guiding year.

“That's what I thought.” She hid her mouth behind the wineglass.

He'd never felt more alone, more pathetic, more undeserving. She hadn't wanted him there, that was the only explanation. “So that's why you've come? To tell me you're married?”

“No. I mean, that's part of it. But it's been so long, hasn't it? Too long. That's why I'm here. I want to learn you.”

He thought of what he'd been doing in May, of the lonely days he'd spent tying flies while Caroline was on that meditation retreat in California. “You could have brought Thad. I'd like to meet him.”

“I'll bring Thad next time. I wanted some quality time with my pop.”

He swallowed whatever this feeling was, and leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Congratulations. My little girl, a married woman. How is it? He must make you laugh.”

“I'm sorry, Hank. I should have called you. I should have invited you, even if it was on a whim. Even if we hadn't talked in like forever.”

He brushed this aside. “Don't think twice. I'm just glad you found someone who makes you happy.”

As their meals came, as he forced himself to eat, as they laughed about this and that, he saw and turned over each of his failings as a parent, as a man. If Caroline had been there, he would have grabbed her and begged her to start a family with him, to start fresh and do it right from the beginning. He would do it now, could do it now, because now he realized: there was nothing else.

When the bill came, the server placed it by Hank and he reached for his wallet.

“No, absolutely not.” Annie snapped it away. “This is my treat.”

“Bullshit,” Hank said, surprising even himself with the sudden and too-loud profanity. People turned and looked. “My treat. A late wedding present.”

“It was my idea and I won't allow it.”

Hank opened his wallet, intent to pay the server, before Annie could extract her credit card from her purse. But he found only thirty-eight dollars, less than half of what was needed. And by then, thank god the server had taken Annie's card.

Annie smiled and said softly, “Let me do this for you.”

I
T WASN'T LIKE
this great error of his life had occurred in the capsule of a single moment, some apex scene where the bright sun disappears over the dark horizon and that's it. His great error was in fact a million little errors that had assembled slowly and imperceptibly, accumulating like a glacier's ice pack and measured like one too: not in days or even years, but in decades. What was life but a disorienting progression of fragmented ambiguities that resisted any attempts at ordering—until viewed through the fictionalizing lens of hindsight? Then, and only then, could sense be made of it. And by then, what was the point? Nothing could be amended.

Life wasn't like a river, no matter how many stupid pop songs said it was. A river could be known, its channel could be learned, so that even on the foggiest
predawn
morning, a person could pick the right line, one move at a time. No metaphor could capture or illuminate life's chaotic unknowns, its swift determinism, its painful irrevocability. No, life was a precarious balancing act between enjoying the time you had left and surviving the mistakes you couldn't quite identify. Of this much, Hank was sure.

*

H
E AND ROSEMARY
had been struggling for years. They'd dovetailed well enough when they were both single, unattached riverfolk. Put them in a boat, give them a sunny afternoon, and they kept each other amused and giggling all the way past midnight. That was the thing: Being happy riverfolk was about keeping the stakes low. Once the stakes got high, the island of merriment that was the river vanished. Then the river either became a mechanism for procurement or was relegated to scenic backdrop status.

Rosemary had been all too ready to relegate the river, and their former selves, to backdrop status, the panorama behind their new, ultimate-stakes lives. It was time, in her words, “to grow up.” For Rosemary, the river life had been little more than a fun stop on the otherwise calculated trajectory of her existence. A short-lived rebellion from a life that had been scripted long before, by whom Hank wasn't sure.

That was the difference between them. She was of money and so needed to procure more; he was of nothing and so was content with less. Her pangs of insufficiency would be resolved, she thought, by a prestigious career; his would be resolved by a better understanding of his role in this place.

Riffle came as the turning point, the moment that definitively ended the rebellion.

But for Hank, there wasn't a road that led away from the river. The river was the river, which was to say, it was everything. If she wanted to call this a rebellion, she clearly didn't understand rivers.

The sun was orbited by the planets, the planets encased by their oceans, and the oceans fed by their rivers. There was a straight line, as far as Hank was concerned, between the river under his feet and the universe over his head. Everything flowed into the river, and the river flowed all the way to the Center. You could turn outward toward the arbitrary hubbub of concrete and career, or you could turn inward toward the infinite connection of water and gravity. When he explained this, Rosemary called him an escapist, which was exactly what he would have called her had he thought of it. He also would
have said that only in a private moment of connection with a river and its creatures could the outer world so fully diffuse into the rumble of the nearby currents that the nearby currents could fuse with the ecological systems encompassing all; only in this moment would the complete cosmic reality condense and expand at once and render a single infinity of timeless divine. For Hank, for Caroline, for Walter, for Danny, no single moment provided this reward in such sprawling proportions as when a steelhead rose to a dry fly. It was that simple, and it was that complex. Maybe his life was “petty,” as she had said, but if so, then he had fundamental disagreements with her unit of measure.