Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (31 page)

It had always seemed to Lauren the important decisions in life stored themselves up until the last possible moment: a woman is offered a new job the day after her boss gives her a big bonus and a promise for a raise; a couple spends years looking for their first home, then discovers they have to make an offer within a few hours or they’ll lose their chance; a man about to purchase an engagement ring discovers that his old girlfriend is back in town, looking for him.

The hours passed; she and Will dozed more than slept. She couldn’t quite believe how easy it was to fall asleep beside him, how safe she felt there. She would remember this—the smooth weight of his knee between hers—on some future night when a nor’easter was blowing up the coast and her apartment was dark and cold. She got up and put her feet on the floor softly, not to wake him. She padded down the hall. Her body was sore and chafed.

She caught a glimpse of herself in a dark mirror, her own reflection superimposed on the peeling white paint of the barn behind the
house. And she saw what a mess she was, swollen lips, beard-burned face, mussed hair. With Will, she’d been sloppy and needy and entirely unhinged. She could never have been that way with Edward, who was never fully out of control in anything he did. She ran a hand down over her breast and found how much more she wanted—from Will, from Richmond, from everything. How much she reveled in possibility. Her return trip to Albany should have been thrilling, since she was up for a promotion and since returning home was essentially all she needed to do to achieve her dreams. But instead, the journey hung over her head like a heavy cloud.

Since her phone call with Burt, her life’s work had been weighing on her mind. He’d told her in certain terms that he considered her above the charities that gathered evidence and arguments to free convicted men. Exonerating criminals wasn’t glamorous or well paying; many of the lawyers who worked such cases were volunteers or students, and those who did have a salary often needed to supplement it with something else, such as teaching or writing. And yet the notion that she might join a group of people who understood wrongful conviction left her feeling energized, ready, challenged—and full of self-doubt. It was only hours ago she’d been firmly committed to returning to her life in Albany. Now, fresh from Will’s bed, she wanted something else.

She went to the kitchen sink, filled a glass with water from the faucet. It was cool, and she drank thirstily. She couldn’t sleep. She put her glass of water on the counter, then decided that, rather than toss and turn for the remainder of the night and keep Will awake, she would do a little research about exoneration projects—if only to rule them out and reassure herself that her future was fixed firmly in the halls of her Albany office.

She went looking for Will’s computer. He had to have an office somewhere. She knew he wouldn’t mind. She could be quicker if
she wasn’t limited to the small screen of her cell phone. She peeked into his living room, where his key collection hung in shadows, a dozen little mysteries pegged to a board. She found his dining room—it could have been in a living history museum—and she even opened a random door only to find herself staring at a closet, before she headed upstairs. By the time she realized what she’d done wrong, it was already too late.

She flipped on the light switch, and then she knew.

She stopped, shaken.

The second floor of Will’s house may have had a bathroom. Bedrooms. Maybe even an office. But what showed of the floor was just a narrow trail between precarious piles of things, like a deer path through brambles. She peered into the room across the hall. The windows had no curtains. There was no furniture to be seen in any of the rooms, though here and there Lauren thought she could discern the choked shape of a dresser or bed. There was only junk that looked like garbage—piles and piles like the kind she had seen in so many outbuildings, accretion that strangled itself. The smell of dust hung in the air.

She was afraid.

She hurried downstairs as silently as she could, cursing the steps that creaked under her toes. A moment after she returned to the kitchen, to stare at her glass of water blankly while her mind worked, Will appeared, sleepy and with a lopsided smile. He wore boxers, nothing more. She was glad for the dark. He came to her, kissed her softly on the lips, wrapped his arms around her waist so that his T-shirt rode higher on her hips and she felt the night air on her bottom.

“Nice shirt,” he said when he pulled away.

She smiled. “I’ve always had good taste.”

“Clearly.”

She laughed, lifted her water to drink. All the time she’d spent trying to puzzle Will out—and now she had more information about him than she knew what to do with.

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

The answer came with embarrassing quickness. “I don’t know. I guess I should probably get going.”

“At”—he glanced at green numerals on the microwave clock—“three a.m.?”

She was quiet. She didn’t really want to leave. But the tides of wood, and plastic, and metal, and dust upstairs—with all the startling wildness and chaos of a junkyard—had lodged in her mind. She needed perspective, distance. She didn’t know what to make of his secret—or whether she had any right to make anything of it at all.

He squeezed her and clasped his hands at the small of her back. “You don’t have to go.”

“No?” she asked, wanting him to convince her.

He kissed her lightly—a kiss that felt like he’d tugged her toward him, though in fact his touch had been light. “I think you can stay.”

She looked into his eyes, which were so unguarded, so pleased to be looking back at her, and her heart warmed. She smiled when he smiled.

Surprise receded. The urge to retreat collapsed.

Will had taken pains to hide his story from her, from the world. And yet now that the mystery had been solved, she felt even more intrigued by him. She wanted him to know that he could unburden himself with her, and that she could be strong enough to hear anything he might have to say. She wanted to understand and—maybe—help. But they had only this one night. Such a short time for pleasure. And she loved so much seeing the light in his eyes.

She touched his cheek, the dry stubble. “You know what? You’re right. The day will be here soon enough.”

“The day can wait.”

She was barefoot, and as she reached up to kiss him, her weight rolled to the edge of her toes and she suddenly found herself coming off the ground. Will had sat her on the counter. She pushed her fingers through his hair; he pulled her shirt—his shirt—over her head. Instead of kissing him again, she drew him to her, wrapped her arms around him. His cheek pressed her chest. She held him hard, her heart full of a thousand wishes for him, full to bursting.

“Don’t go in the morning either,” he said.

“Mmm.”

“It’s your last day in Richmond. Spend it with me.”

She didn’t answer; he bent his head, found her breast. The heart-bursting feeling of protectiveness was infused with waves of deep pleasure, and she thought,
My God, this is why people fall in love.
She grasped at sanity. “It’s not fair to ask me to think rationally when you’re doing that.”

“I don’t want you to think rationally,” he said. He tugged her forward by the backs of her knees. “I don’t want you to think at all.”

She closed her eyes as he kissed her neck.
One day
. Her groggy and sex-drugged brain could hardly process it.
One day with Will
. One day that would belong to her, fully. Not her work. Not her boss. Not her father. Just her. And just Will.

She thought again of all the years of clutter upstairs. She thought of how difficult it must have been for him to shoulder all those things—emotionally, physically—on his own. And she wanted to tell him everything would be okay.

“Say yes,” he said, easing her back.

She smiled at him, bowed with desire and exhaustion both. “Yes,” she said.

  *  *  *  

Sometimes, in prison, it was easy for Arlen to imagine that he was not alone. His imagination was vivid. He could smell in his dreams. Taste. He could see colors in detail: pine green, mint green, pea green, the green of spring grass. So intense were his dreams that on certain nights he opened his eyes to the white, white walls of his cell, and yet the dream continued, going on in the semidarkness, his brain making improbable and nonsensical connections between the world his eyes saw and the fantasy that still lingered in his mind. The result was that his dreams sometimes seemed superimposed, briefly, on his cell, the way that cartoonists would pencil the muted colors of a background and then draw their characters overlaid. He saw his mother standing in the cell, looking down at him. He saw his old dog, sitting on the floor and wagging his tail, waiting to be taken out. He saw Eula, leaning her hands on the little sink and staring at herself in a mirror that wasn’t there.

At one point, the dreams had come so often that he was compelled at times to question his own sanity. But Arlen knew that he was fully awake on Monday morning when Eula came through the door of the antiques shop—although it seemed to him that she was apart from the background that framed her, that she stood out from it and apart from it as if she were a dream. Her hair was neatly turned under at her chin—a fine, warm brown shot through with almond. She wore high black heels and a white satin shirt with no sleeves.

“Hi, Arlen,” she said.

He felt the hard, swift jolt of panic, a collar tugging his throat, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. Eula waited, looking at him, perched on those high heels and with those breasts that were larger than he remembered. He had lost weight in the time that had passed, and she had gained it. The curviness suited her; she was more beautiful than he remembered.

“I heard you were here,” she said.

“Yep,” he said. “I am.”

His heart pounded. He wanted to ask her:
Why’d you come to see me? What do you want?
But such questions were too big to ask right up front. And yet, some smaller comment, like,
Did you hit traffic on the way over?
also seemed wrong.

She began to look nervous, her lips pursed and her gaze darting. “Arlen . . . ?” She was shifting from foot to foot. “I . . . Are you mad that I’m here?”

“No,” he said. “I went to see you. You waved to me.”

“That was you standing across the street?”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry. It’s been such a long time. You look so different now. You look good. Not that you didn’t look good before. But—yeah—you look good.”

His fingernails were pressing into the skin of his palm. He wanted to be angry, and yet, there was no reason for anger. Whether she’d divorced him or not, they wouldn’t have been together. The divorce decree hadn’t changed things: it simply had reflected what was.

Arlen tried to sound as normal as possible. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, fine. Just fine. I’m manager at the bank now.”

“The same bank?” Arlen drew his lips into the shape of a smile. “Good. Good.” He wanted to ask if she was with anyone. If she was married. But of course he could not. “And your family?”

“My sister’s married. Got two kids. Mom’s doing okay. She’s in a home now—doesn’t always know what’s going on. She’s got her good days and bad.”

“Don’t we all,” Arlen said.

Eula was quiet, her heels close together as if she was trying to take up as little space as possible. “Are you . . . are you having better days? Now that it’s over?”

He looked at her for a long while before he answered. He wanted to go to her. To feel the warmth and plush softness of her against him. He wanted her to wrap her arms around him and squeeze him as hard as she could. But this was more than tender fondness: this was desire. For her. Everything about him that had felt old, felt young again. He took in a deep breath. He told her: “Things are looking better every day.”

“Arlen . . . She had tears in her eyes. She walked toward him, her hands clasped before her. He remained still. “Oh, Arlen.”

He took a risk, said, “Come here.”

And then she opened her arms and wrapped them around his middle, until all of her was pressed up against him. She smelled of jasmine, not like he remembered, but beneath her perfume there remained the smell that was so familiar, so
her
, that it broke his heart. She pressed her face to his chest and he knew she was crying. His strong, strong Eula, who never cried. He held her as she shook.

“I’m so sorry . . . ” she started.

But he cut her off. “None of that now. None of that.”

He closed his eyes, giving himself over to the feel of her, of the two of them alone, and the deep familiarity of a moment that he’d never known before. In prison he’d imagined their reunion a thousand times. A million. And though he knew there was no promise of anything more, that this was as close to her as he might be ever again, for now it was everything he’d dreamed—only better, because it was real.

Lauren passed the morning hours in Will’s bed. They slept and not, at the whim of the sunshine and shadow moving along the floor. Lauren marveled at the way hours flew as quickly when there was nothing to do as when there was much to be done. They lay naked
under the sheets, hands always seeking and finding, no lines to mark beginnings or endings, to distinguish when they were making love and when they had stopped. At ten a.m., Lauren looked at the clock with the feeling that the whole night had been a dream. It occurred to her, while she was in the shower and Will traced soaped hands along her waist, she hadn’t thought of Edward once.