Sourland (39 page)

But
K.
wasn't offering condolences, or solace. Sophie didn't think so.

She remembered how, when she'd first met him, Matthew Quinn had been something of an outdoorsman. Not a hunter—no one in Matt's family had ever hunted—but a serious hiker and camper, as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, at Madison. He'd never taken Sophie with him—by the time they met Matt was nearly thirty and impatient to finish his Ph.D. in American constitutional law, and leave school. He'd been impatient to begin what he called adult life.

He'd made up his mind to marry Sophie, he told her afterward, at their first meeting. Sophie had asked was this
love at first sight
and Matt said
Something better, and more durable.

In Madison, Sophie had heard tales from Matt and his friends of their wilderness adventures, their camping trips to northern Wisconsin and on Drummond Island and in the Canadian wilds south of Elliot Lake, Ontario. Matt had belonged to the university sailing club, that sailed on Lake Mendota in the most turbulent winds. But these outdoor activities had begun to lose their appeal to Matt, at about the time Sophie entered his life.

She'd been twenty-two. Matt had been nearly thirty. In all ways he'd been older than Sophie: intellectually, politically, sexually.

Matt's friends were older, as well—Ph.D. candidates in such fields as history, politics, Russian studies. Most of them were political activists engaged in protesting the Vietnam War. For this was the late 1960s when the war had finally spread its poison everywhere. To be young was to be aroused, outraged. The university at Madison, Wisconsin, was a center of socialist dissent and political activism; there were highly vocal chapters here of SDS, Weathermen, and other left-wing organizations agitating for the overthrow of the hopelessly corrupt U.S. government. Matt had close friends in these organizations but whether he himself belonged, Sophie wasn't certain.

Not that Matt had secrets from her, exactly. But he was taciturn, reserved. To question him too directly was to risk offending him as Sophie had instinctively known, upon meeting him.

She
had not been very political. Of course she'd protested the Vietnam War in large campus marches with hundreds—thousands?—of others. She'd been disgusted by the official American politics of the time, like everyone else she knew. But the radical-left counterculture—was alien to her, temperamentally. She'd come to Madison to study nineteenth-century American literature, from Wells College in upstate New York; her father was a public school administrator, and her background was Protestant/secular. She'd been intimidated by other, older students in the graduate school as she'd been intimidated by the sprawling size and tempo of the university itself.

Just once, Matt had taken her along on a march to the state capitol building in downtown Madison, a risky venture since the leaders of the march had no permit and the National Guard shootings at Kent State had occurred the previous week. In the wake of young protestors' deaths in Ohio emblazoned in headlines across the country and in that single, iconic photograph they'd marched—two or three hundred protestors of varying ages—as uniformed Madison police officers and Wisconsin National Guard soldiers lined State Street brandishing billy clubs and Mace, their faces obscured by tinted visors. Matt had instructed Sophie that if the police charged, to try to get behind him; if they began
shooting, to get beneath him. He would shield her, he said. He'd spoken earnestly, sincerely. He'd been excited and frightened and exhilarated. Sophie had no doubt that they were in imminent danger, and that Matt would protect her from all harm. A strange reckless elation flooded her veins, a conviction of immortality she would never again feel in her life.

It happened that the protestors were greeted with sympathy by a sizable number of Wisconsin legislators—the demonstrators were made to feel placated and respected and the dangerous situation was defused. They didn't die! They didn't even get struck by billy clubs, their heads and faces bloodied. This was the first time—as it would be the last time—that Sophie would find herself in such a situation, in a crowded, public place without any knowledge of what might happen to her within the next half-hour.

Sophie checked the envelope from
K.
a second time—a folded sheet of yellow lined paper slipped out.

Next thing Sophie knew, she was lying on the floor.

It had seemed that the floor—hardwood, and very hard—swung up to strike her, on the side of the head. Like a billy club the floor struck her, with vehemence, malice. She'd had no time to put out her hand, to mitigate the force of the blow. How many minutes she lay there, part-conscious, she had no idea. Perhaps no time had passed. Perhaps a very long time had passed. By the time her strength returned, she'd forgotten where she was. She could not have said what day this was. Or where Matt was, that he hadn't heard her fall, and call out for him.

Hairs on the back of her neck stirred in fear. Something seemed to be crawling over her skin. Feathery-light these tiny things were, and very quick. She brushed at them, blindly. Her skin was clammy-cold, covered in sweat that had partly dried. And so some time must have
passed, the panic-sweat had partly dried.
No! no!
—she brushed at the crawling things. She was on her elbows now, lifting her head. Her dazed eyes saw that the hand-printed letter signed
KOLK
had fallen to the floor beside her.

3.

Matt? Where are you…

Waking in the dark, frightened and disoriented.

How many times, like one afflicted with a fairy-tale curse. Waking in the dark—calling for her husband—the absent husband—the
no longer existing
husband.

Sophie would confide in no one.

 

Nor would Sophie confide in anyone how on that November day when Matt had been hospitalized he'd wakened early to prepare IRS forms to send to their accountant in Hackensack.

He'd known that he was ill, and would need to be hospitalized. He had not known when he'd be back home, to complete the forms.

Sophie had wakened at their usual time—7
A.M
.—and still dark—knowing that something was wrong.
His side
of the bed was empty. Carefully the bedclothes had been turned back, Matt had slipped away without her knowledge.

He had not confided in her. Of course Matt would say, in his maddening way of brushing aside her concern, her anxiety—
Look. I didn't want to upset you.

And so barefoot and curious but not yet alarmed Sophie sought out her husband downstairs—she guessed he'd be in his study, working at his desk—as she approached the room on the first floor of the darkened house there was Matt just emerging in T-shirt and shorts which was his nighttime attire—his expression was strangely intense, a small fixed smile, a smile of a kind Sophie had not seen before—in his hands that were trembling—Sophie saw this, took note of this, with a part of her brain that had become immediately alert, aroused, yet
inarticulate—was a large FedEx envelope. (So Sophie told herself
This is all it is! Something for the IRS.
)

Thinking how like her husband to be so zealous, to behave so responsibly. Determined to send their joint financial papers off well before the deadline to their accountant in Hackensack who would include them with other documents and send everything on to the U.S. Treasury.
Sophie I will protect you! I promise.
It was an ordinary morning Sophie wished to think and yet with that preternaturally alert and aroused part of her brain she saw unmistakably that her husband was looking exhausted, his face was ashen, his lips so pale as to appear blue and his movements tentative like those of a man uncertain whether he can trust the floor beneath his feet. And that strange rasping sound—a sound Sophie would long recall, as the
surviving spouse
—of his labored breathing.

Yet calmly he spoke her name: “Sophie.”

And calmly he told her, in Matt's way of giving precise instructions that Sophie must not misunderstand or misconstrue, no matter how emotional she was to become: “Call FedEx to have a driver pick this up. I'm sorry, I need you to drive me to the hospital.”

Or had Matt said, “I'm sorry I need you to drive me to the hospital.”

Each way Sophie would hear. Like one entranced she would hear, and rehear. The
surviving spouse
would exhaust herself with just these two possibilities.

I'm sorry, I need you to drive me to the hospital.

I'm sorry I need you to drive me to the hospital.

No ambiguity about the word
hospital
!

Immediately Sophie knew, this had to be serious. Her husband wasn't a man who went willingly to the doctor. Through his adult life he'd been indifferent, even careless of his health, as if there were something unmanly in taking caution. And now, that bravado had vanished.

Sophie asked him what was wrong. He said, “I think—my heart.”

I think—my heart.
This too Sophie would hear, and rehear. A curi
ous phraseology.
My heart, I think
would have been a more natural way of speaking but there was nothing natural about her husband's behavior on that morning.

There would be other mornings in Matthew Quinn's life. Several more mornings in Matthew Quinn's life. But this was the final morning, of the life Sophie would share with him.

His heart! The previous summer Matt had had a bout of fibrillation—was that what the condition was called,
fibrillation
?—after protracted physical exertion in the New Jersey heat. Stubbornly he'd been mending their eroded flagstone terrace at the rear of the house and this time too he'd come to Sophie—rapped on the kitchen window to get her attention and said apologetically that his heart was behaving “weirdly” and he couldn't seem to “catch his breath” and would she drive him to their doctor?—which of course Sophie did, calling the doctor's office on her cell phone from the car; and from his doctor's office she'd driven him to the ER of the hospital which was less than a mile away and he'd been given an intravenous drug and sedated and in the morning successfully treated for his rapid and erratic heartbeat and by midday he'd been discharged, Sophie had driven him back home. And so now Sophie had every reason to think that the same thing would happen again. Telling herself
It's a routine procedure. We have gone through this before.

Hurriedly she'd dressed. That last morning of their lives together in haste assembling a traveling bag for Matt—underwear, toiletries—a clean shirt, socks—for possibly he'd be in the hospital overnight as he'd been the previous time. Sophie was chattering brightly, nervously. Sophie could not have said what she was telling Matt nor did Matt appear to be listening to her. He was fumbling to put on his trench coat—quickly Sophie came to help him. Strange to her, and disconcerting, that her husband was breathing as if he'd run up a flight of stairs.

Matt was fifty-six. Not a tall man but giving that impression. He'd become soft-bodied in the torso and midriff, he was overweight by perhaps fifteen pounds, the young lean husband she'd married in Madison, Wisconsin, had vanished. His dark hair had become sand-colored and
was thinning at the crown of his head. His somewhat small gray-brown eyes were creased at the corners with a fierce inward concentration.

Sophie saw that Matt had washed his face and damp-combed his hair but hadn't shaved. Metallic stubble shadowed his soft-jowled lower face like an encroaching shadow. She felt a stab of love for him—a stab of terror—for in love there is terror, at such times. She knew that if she went to kiss him he'd have stiffened, this wasn't a gesture he would have welcomed right now. He wouldn't have pushed her away but in his distracted state he'd have stiffened, drawn back. On his ghastly pale-blue lips a small fixed smile.

Worse yet: he'd have relented and kissed her to humor her. His lips would be icy, against her skin.

This had not happened. Yet Sophie felt the impress of the icy lips against her overheated cheek.

Still the wave of love for him flowed into her, like an electric current. She could not bear it, how she loved this man: the connection between them, that was in danger of breaking. Suddenly it was a possibility, the connection might be broken. Such desperate love Sophie felt for her doomed husband yearning and insubstantial as a tiny flame buffeted by wind. Such desperate love, she had to hide her face from him, that he wouldn't see, and chide her.

She slid her arm through his—he didn't resist, but leaned against her—surprising to Sophie, they were almost of a height as if the man who'd once been inches taller than she had become diminished overnight, aged.

She led him through the darkened downstairs of the house and to the door that led into the garage. Telling herself
Exactly as it was last time. So it will be this time.

In the car driving to the hospital she spoke calmly asking Matt how he felt, if his condition was the same or if he felt worse. She asked him please to fasten his seat belt but he seemed scarcely to hear. In subsequent days, weeks, months the
surviving spouse
would see herself behind the wheel of the car which was not her accustomed place when she was
with her husband for always her husband drove their car, not Sophie; she saw herself beside her stricken and distracted husband in their gleaming-white vehicle propelled forward by momentum as irresistible as the lunar tide or the sway of galaxies with not the slightest comprehension of where they were going or that their desperate journey was in one direction only, and could never be reversed. As time cannot be reversed. She would see herself as the bearer of Matthew Quinn to his grave. She would see herself as the person who betrayed him for never would he return again to their house. Never would he return to the life he'd so loved, in that house.