Outside the Ordinary World (26 page)

“If dear John can’t keep up with the repairs, he ought to sell the place,” she remarks, setting the bread on the table. My stomach twists. Is she really so far gone? Or was it just a slip?

“You mean
Nathan,
” I correct. Her aqua eyes drift to mine. “Nathan and I own the house now, Roz.” I catch myself speaking as if she’s hearing impaired.

She turns to retrieve the boiling kettle, forgetting the oven mitt and scorching her hand, which she shakes rapidly in the air.

“Here, I’ll get it,” I offer. “Why don’t you sit—I bet you’ve been working all morning.”

“I’m just fine, my dear.” But she sits anyways, sucking the burnt finger. “You’re the one who needs to relax.”

I laugh as I fill the teapot with steaming water. “That’s probably true.” I bring our mugs, the pot, the honey and milk to her round table. Steam curls between us.

“Of course it’s true—just look at you. Your aura’s all muddied.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” I smile, offering her some bread.

“Well, it is. You’re the one with the divided life line—I remember now.”

“Yes, Roz—I’m Sylvia.” I reach across the table, touch her wrist. I had no idea it was this bad. She takes my sore hand and turns it, just as she did before, staring into my palm. Then she reaches for my left hand and does the same.

“Plenty of passion, but changeable, divided,” she mutters. “You do like to complicate things. The heart line’s broken—see these three shooting up from it?” She nods, sucking her front teeth. “Two lines of attachment—hmm. The past has more sway than it ought. And you’ve got this vertical one cutting deeply through your life line. I’ve not seen one like that before. Did you say you were a Pisces?”

“Leo.”

“Well, the two hands are distinctly different, so there’s hope.” She releases my hand and blows on her tea. “Everything you’ve been running from is before you.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, becoming interested.

Her eyes, unblinking, start to water. “You have work to do.”

I sip my tea, shifting in my seat. “You know, my hands often hurt,” I tell her, hoping for some grain of insight, despite my skepticism.

“Mmm. The hands are self-expression, dear. Creativity, efficacy, change…” She moves her own root-like hand through the air as if to shape it.

“So, what do you think it might mean, one’s hands aching?” I try again.

“You have work to do,” she concludes unsatisfactorily. I sigh, setting down my cup. I want to tell her that I have
literal
work to do—I must clean the studio, balance my books, prepare for winter workshops, which start next week. But I’m afraid my to-do list would read like Arabic to her. As I’m preparing to make a cordial exit, she startles from her seat.

“Where’s Lucy?” she asks, beginning to search around the small room.

“You mean one of your goats?”

“No, no, my girl.” She’s suddenly frantic, peering under the table, behind the ratty couch in the adjoining room, then back to the kitchen, grasping her rough skirt.

“Who are you looking for, Rosalyn?” I stand, unsure if I should offer to help, or call someone. Should I take my leave now, while she’s so distracted?

“Lucy—Lucy Kauffman,” she snaps, swishing past me and peering into the bathroom, the mudroom, the hall closet. “She was here just a moment ago!”

It hits me, finally, and I understand that she’s stalking a child’s ghost. Haunted by memory. When she sweeps by me again, I reach for her elbow, try to hold her steady.

“Do you mean John Kauffman’s daughter?” I ask. “Is that who you’re looking for?”

“Here she was, just a moment ago—you mustn’t let them take her!” My heart contracts with pity as I guide her back to her seat, both of us breathing hard.

“It’s okay, Rosalyn. The Kauffmans don’t live here anymore.” I rub her forearm, trying to hide my own alarm. “Let’s finish our tea.” She continues to glance around the room with a folded brow, presses her left hand over her face.

“What did you say your name was?” she whispers, receding into the chair cushions.

“Sylvia.” I sit beside her, a fast chill rolling along my spine. “Listen, Roz, that was a long, long time ago,” I try. “Lucy’s safe now, she’s—she’s safe,” I stammer.

After another moment, she stands briskly—all business now—and retrieves something from one of the high shelves near the fridge. “Here, Sylvia,” she says, clear as glass, and hands me a small bundle wrapped in brown paper, tied with green string. “I’ve been meaning to give this to you.”

“What is it?” I ask, but I can already smell the familiar strong scent.

“White sage.” Then she begins to clear our dishes, though I haven’t finished my tea or touched my bread. “It’s for energy cleansing. You’ll need to burn it around the foundation. You’ll certainly need to do that.”

“Thank you.” I’m at a loss, flabbergasted by the seismic shifts in her demeanor. I bring my cup to the sink, pour out the leftover tea, shaking my head.

“And now, my dear, if you’ll excuse me, I should really milk my poor goats.”

“Yes, of course.” I retrieve my coat from the chair back. “Thanks for the tea, Rosalyn.”

As I’m making my way through the snow to my van, she appears in the side doorway, wiping her hands on a lavender dish towel. “Give my love to John,” she warbles. I turn, my lips parting to correct her—then I stop myself.

“Did you know him well?” I ask instead. She cocks her head, so I try again, “Do you know the Kauffmans well?”

“Oh, yes.” She’s shutting her eyes on the morning’s white brilliance, nodding. “He was my lover,” she says, clutching her tea towel; then she slips back into the kitchen.

My mind is buzzing as I bump down Roz’s long driveway, take a left onto Route 112. As the pieces of the puzzle clunk into place, I reach for the phone, wanting to tell Nathan what I’ve discovered. I can just imagine him shaking his head, chuckling.
So Kauffman was doing Roz Benton—the old devil….
Then I remember I have no cell service up here, and maybe it’s for the best. The implications of what I’ve learned are troubling indeed. Did Jennie Kauffman know that her husband was having an affair? Is
that
why she drove herself and Lucy into the lake? Did Kauffman stay on all those years out of grief or inertia, or because he was in love with Roz and wanted to be near her? I imagine the two of them, slowly going mad in their cocoon of secrecy and remorse, losing track of years while the house and grounds fell to rubble around them. I laugh aloud, though it’s not the slightest bit funny.

Approaching the turnoff to Plainfield, I’m overwhelmed by the need to see Tai. With no time to hesitate or reason, I swing sharply, dangerously onto State Highway 116.
Just for a moment,
I tell myself.
Just for one cup of tea and a talk—that’s all, Sylvie. That’s all you can have.

But I’m already regretting it as I spot four cars in his driveway. Aside from Tai’s Saab and landscaping truck, there’s a Ford Ranger and a CR-V. He’s talking to two young men in work clothes; they’re all staring down at oversized sheets of paper rolled out on the hood of his car—blueprints for something, I’m guessing. I’m about to turn around when he spots me and comes forward, frowning. I crack my window. “Sorry,” I say. “I was going to turn around.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he responds. “These guys are about to leave—I’ll just be a few minutes.”

“It doesn’t seem like a good idea, Tai. I was just being impulsive.”

“I like your impulses. Can you give me five minutes?”

I park near the shed, then wander behind the house, not wanting to engage with his workers, not wanting them to consider me or my errand. I pick my way across his stone patio and down the narrow garden paths, recently shoveled. The sun heats my shoulders; the snow is melting into tiny rivulets that run wild through his winter garden, the breeze unseasonably warm. Before me, the Berkshires roll west in a thousand shades of mauve and gray and chocolate.

I stop beside the labyrinth, which he’s cleared of snow. It’s a huge, circular, mazelike structure, about a foot high, and looks ancient, though of course it’s not. Perhaps that’s the appeal, I muse—a shape that recalls some piece of our deep, communal past. I imagine how he milled each stone from the earth, contemplated and shaped each before adding it to the pattern—it must have taken months. I’m making my way toward the entrance when I hear him crunching up behind me. Yuki appears and stuffs her cold nose into my ungloved hand, then bounds over the landscape, stopping here and there to poke her tongue into dissolving snow.

“It’s so warm today,” I say, squinting into the shining east as he comes near. “Must be January thaw—seems to happen every year around now.”

“It’s global warming, darling, as sure as I have this annoying hard-on,” Tai says in his loamy chuckle. “What brings you?” He reaches to push a curl off my face—a routine gesture that suddenly irks me. I bat his hand away, resisting the urge to kiss him. It’s been twenty-eight days and my heart is stomping, energy shooting through the soles of my feet, scorching the frozen ground.

“I’m not suggesting climate change is a liberal hoax.” I smile. “But
this
is a typical New England January thaw.” I can’t fathom why I’m talking about the weather. I’d thought I wanted to tell him about Roz and the Kauffmans, but now that I’m here the idea of such gossip seems ludicrous. “There’s a storm predicted for tonight,” I say brainlessly.

“Did you drive all the way up here to give me the forecast?” He laughs, hands shoved in his pockets, slow rocking on his boot soles. I know his habitual tics and poses, know this body—each vertebrae and pockmark, slight indentation of the breastbone, the dark nipples and well-muscled thighs, the pale appendectomy scar above the sudden sharp swell of his cock. Sometimes, I’m frightened by the sense that I’m breathing beneath his skin instead of my own.

“I was thinking I might walk the labyrinth.”

“Oh—good. Well, here it is.” He indicates the entrance with a mock-cordial sweep of his hand. “Help yourself.” I nod, wondering if we can pull off some sort of friendship, pull ourselves back from the precipice we’d been inching toward.

I hesitate by the first snow-dusted stones.

“Is this like a maze? Are there choices about which way to go?” The naked arms of surrounding oaks weave in a sudden gust, as if warning me away.

“It isn’t a maze—there are no wrong turns,” he tells me. “There’s just the next step.” Yuki trots to his side, panting. As he reaches out instinctively to stroke her, I feel an insane stab of envy. His love for this animal is so unquestioned, so un-cluttered.

“But where’s the exit?” I ask. “Where will I come out?”

“You come out the same way you go in,” he explains. “The entrance and the exit are the same. You follow it all the way in to the center before you come back.”

“I see. Is that supposed to be a metaphor for something?”

“Sure, if you like.” He grins inscrutably, placing one warm hand in the small of my back, urging me forward. “Some people get into the symbolism,” he says, “and others just do it for the experience—sort of a walking meditation.” I catch a scrap of his lush, earthy scent. A shaft of sunlight sears through his glasses, illuminating the otherworldly green of an iris.

“No one should have eyes like yours.”

“The idea is to walk mindfully,” he states as he ignores my comment. “Just stay open and notice each step, each thought, then let it go.”

“Okay. Mindfulness.” I take a tentative step. But the truth is, I don’t want to do this meditative walk, this labyrinth thing. We’re fools to pretend like this when all I really want is to take his hand, pull him up the stone path, across his deck, into the cottage glowing with early light.

“Some people say that when you get to the center, you’ll find what you need to let go of. But I’m sure you’ll get your own meaning.” He comes up behind me, gives another little shove, but I don’t go. Instead, I turn to face him; there are inches between my mouth and his throat.

“I don’t want to do it,” I breathe.

He steps back, nudges up his glasses. “Why not?”

“I already know what I need to let go of.” I stare at the full rise of his upper lip.

“Okay. Then, why are you here, Sylvia?”

It’s a good question. I want to say that it’s not right, ending things over the phone, but none of this has ever been right. Maybe I’ve come to say goodbye; only, that doesn’t make sense either, since I’m yearning for the stillness of his white room, that sensation of floating together just outside the ordinary world. I feel anxious to resolve or revisit something. Or is this just an excuse for bad behavior?

“It’s more complicated than I thought,” I say.

He inhales long and sharp, then blows out slowly, head falling back until he’s staring at the sky—in frustration? Surrender? His Adam’s apple looks painful against the rough brown skin of his neck, and I find myself thinking how easy it would be, really, to kill a man.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” he growls, looking me in the eye.

“Yes, you do.”

At this he turns and walks to the cottage, Yuki tripping on his heels, and I feel like a dirty, unwelcome child, standing alone in the midst of his frozen garden. I can’t believe it’s come to this—me, a forty-two-year-old mother, wife and business owner.

“Come have some tea,” he calls from the deck before disappearing inside. “Let’s talk.”

But we don’t talk much—at least not right away—it being twenty-eight days and January, with the sun streaming onto his futon, the fireplace crackling with birch bark. We leave our mugs of tea to cool on the table. By the time we get back to them, they’ll be ice cold.

Still, it’s different this time. He’s jagged and greedy in a way I’ve not experienced him. I feel raw and exposed afterward, sickened by our lack of restraint. Sprawled across his sunlit sheets before noon, I can’t see how we’ll ever have the strength to end this. And not for the first time, I watch the ugly scenarios unfold: Nathan’s heartbreak and grim fury, the girls choosing sides, mediation perhaps, the house sold off and our assets divided, extended family splintering…. I’ll need to enlist my mother’s help just to afford the narrow, south-facing apartment over some professor’s garage where I’ll live with my part-time children: Mondays through Wednesdays and every other weekend? Every other Thanksgiving and Christmas? I imagine them huddled in the backseat, driving to and from their dad’s place, duffle bags in hand, Emmie clutching Pink Bunny, Hannah’s withering glances.