You Were Wrong (13 page)

He recognized the blades of swamp grass on the road near the house, though they were older now, or were the children of the blades he’d seen two months ago. He eased the Volvo up the pebbled drive beneath the undescended drawbridge of thick summer tree branches. There was that one gray tree that was still leaning and dying. Sorry, tree. Here came Arv on foot with the forward-leaning Arv gait that made him an inadvertent figure of fun. Sorry, Arv. Arv signaled Karl to roll down his window though it was already down. He wondered if Arv would at some point turn vicious as comedic men sometimes do.

“She’s a nasty piece of business and strong, too—bites, literally. Save yourself and leave her to Stony, he’s the only one who can handle her,” Arv said, leaning in toward Karl in his car. A plume of ancient halitosis issued from his mouth and enveloped Karl’s head, physically connecting the two men. Arv told Karl he had to go, and went, and Karl drove on. Arv’s remark and the sound each pebble made grinding against its brothers beneath the Volvo wheels and all the trees that lined the drive and everything that had happened in his life till now formed a prelude to the impending encounter.

She stood as if awaiting him, arms crossed, on the wide modernist front porch with no rails. The summer sun made her black hair shine, and made her pale face and pale, thin, strong arms glow. He had to remind himself she was black. He hadn’t seen her since he’d heard the news, or, of course, that other news. Her ankles were thicker than before. Maybe she was turning into Henrietta Jones as daughters are said to do and would soon be fully black, completing a transformation she’d already begun in his head.

They did not speak, she did not unfold her arms. They walked toward each other and met in the transitional space that was neither lawn nor driveway but contained elements of both. They did not touch. He stared at her in sorrow and amazement and tried to figure out what she was staring at him in—not happiness, not relaxation. She turned and walked down the hill at the side of the house and into the backyard. He followed her. She went briskly, arms folded, through the backyard and into the woods behind it, eyes front all the while. If the movements of her body had been a form of communication they’d have been a business memo calling for an emergency meeting. Staff must arrive together but have the feeling of being alone. Agenda: urgent yet uncertain. She stopped at more or less the spot she’d hugged him on, a power spot for her, he guessed. She turned and looked at him again. Her arms were crossed in the manner of a clamp on her restless middle. He wanted her to hug him now but knew it was hopeless. They were two people facing one another in a small wooded area with an insurmountable distance between them. Her eyes yelled.

“Say it,” she said.

“Don’t talk so loud, I’m right next to you.”

“Say it.”

“You’re marrying him.”

“Now ask your questions.”

“Why are you marrying him?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Do you want to?”

“Of course!”

“No you don’t.”

“Shut up.”

“Really? We’re at the
shut up
stage?”

“We
done
been at the
shut up
stage.”

“Oh, right, you’re black now too.”

“Since you like math: I’m a quarter African, a quarter Indian, a quarter French, a quarter Jew, a quarter Basque.”

“Wish you’d told me any of this.”

“Hi, my name is Sylvia and I’m in the upstairs hallway of your house and I’m black and will marry a man you don’t know and won’t like when you do, and your stepfather whom you will try to kill is my father, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Do you love him?”

“You disappear for two months and ask me that?”

Karl had always assumed it was other people who disappeared.

“Why are you marrying him?”

She abruptly stepped toward Karl, startling him, and thrust her arms to her sides as if to throw the reason she’d agreed to marry Stony down and break it on the forest floor. She stepped back, crossed her arms again, gripped her elbows tight.

“Don’t tell my father.”

“Why?”

“Don’t tell my mother, if you see her.”

“Why are you marrying him?”

“I’m pregnant.”

He looked down at his body as if to find the hole the news had made in it. He looked back up at her.

“Put your arms down,” he said.

Two seconds later, when it occurred to her to protest, she had already obeyed him. She was wearing just a plain old white T-shirt now, but, like anything she wore, it was imbued with Sylvianess. This happened not just with things that were on her but also with things that were near her, like the trees that were behind her, and, from Karl’s vantage, visually touched her.

“May I touch it?”

“‘It’?”

“The pregnancy—the baby—the fetus—your belly.”

Her answer was to stand still and look away. He slowly brought his palm to rest on the newly swelled place between her sternum and navel. It was softer and warmer than he expected any part of her to be. He was gelatinous, and trembled. He removed his hand, stepped back, and tried to gather himself into himself. He looked in the general vicinity of his feet, which also included Sylvia’s cutoff jeans, her luminous and muscular calves, her dirt-edged toes, green flip-flops, mulch, twigs, dirt.

“You’re marrying him because you’re pregnant? What is this, 1950?”

“No, if this were 1950 he’d set me up in a little slum apartment far away from him and send me monthly checks through a third party. Or he’d have me killed. Anyway, I didn’t say I’m marrying him
because
I’m pregnant. That’s only part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

“Even if I told you all the ostensible reasons, that wouldn’t fully explain it.”

“How stupid!” Karl looked desperately up at the sky, which the thick green canopy of leaves prevented him from seeing except in isolated shards. “Do you even like me?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“A lot!”

“Yes!”

“More than him?”

“I don’t like him!”

“Why not?”

“He’s gross.”

“That may be true, but, objectively, he’s of a higher value than I am in almost every category of desirability: height, handsomeness, hair length and texture, physical strength, real estate holdings, fanciness of car, confidence—”

“So why don’t
you
marry him?”

“You beat me to it.”

“You are truly a moron.”

“Exactly, and he’s not a moron.”

“He’s creepy!”

“Okay, so he’s not great in the morals department, there’s one little strike against him, but I’m not much better.”

“You’re a lot better.”

“I nearly killed your father.”

“He deserved it.”

She raised her eyebrows then, cinematically, as her father often did. Some unknown, unhappy feeling had entered her, and now it leapt across the forest air from her to him. The soft white birch trees that came up from behind her head had it in them too, and the furry blur of forest green that touched her arms’ soft skin.

“I’m sad,” he said.

“I know.”

“No, I mean that’s the only thing you’ve ever said you like about me, but it’s only being depressed that prevents me from being as active a crumb-bum as him: too much effort. ”

“That’s not true.”

“Is there
anything
else you like about me?”

“Oh, my sweet boy!” She leapt, as her unhappiness had done not long before, across the small swath of forest air between them, and took him in her arms. He surrendered to her, and to her chrysanthemum-anxiety smell. She slowly kissed his forehead and his cheek with that ecosystem, her mouth.

“So don’t marry him. I mean, come on, where’s the logic?”

“This isn’t a geometric proof, Karl. There’s no QED that precedes a big decision. The bigger the decision, the less logical it probably is.”

“Change your mind.”

“I can’t. There’re about twelve things making me do this, and in between the twelve things there’s glue gluing them together, and gluing me to him and to the decision to marry him.”

“I can’t tell if you’re bullshitting both yourself and me or just me.”

“Let me put it like this. When you were
bludgeoning my dad
, could you have stopped?”

“But you just said…That is completely different. That was an impulsive act that took a split second.”

“Well, some impulsive acts that take a split second last a lot longer than others.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Again you’re trying to measure human behavior with the ruler of ‘sense.’”

“Try to explain it to me anyway.”

“Our whole lives take a split second, in geological time.”

“That would be relevant if we were rocks.”

“I wish we were, then this all wouldn’t hurt so much.”

“What are the eleven other reasons?”

“Maybe there aren’t twelve.”

“How many then?”

“Man, are you not listening?”

“What are some of the other reasons? What’s one other reason?”

“I’m—embroiled. It’s complicated.”

“Everything with you is.”

“Yes! But I see a way out of it.”

“To marry him.”

“That’s part of it.”

“All explanations are partial with you.”

“Yes.”

“But all will be revealed in time, I suppose.”

“Never all. Will you be our witness?”

“In Krüog, next Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to bear witness but not tell anyone.”

“Not tell
them
.”

“Why then?”

“It will help me.”

“How?”

“Immeasurably.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll do it?”

“Shit.”

The tops of the trees above swayed in a passing breeze and their thousand rattling and rubbing leaves made a noise almost like rain. She placed her hand on his cheek, began to massage his scalp with her fingertips. He stepped away.