Someplace Like This Page 2

  I turn my head quickly, pull a magazine into my lap. I snatch my arm back in, protectively, defensively, then lift the magazine so that if he is still watching, he will see that I am not looking at them.

  When I peek back in their direction, the back of a young waiter blocks my view. He is blonde and young, blonder and younger, even, than Evan, I think. His shirt, sleeves rolled up, is fitted, his body tapered; his jeans, faded, are worn, tight. His butt is high and rounded and the white strings of his apron are draped across it like thin, celebratory garlands. I am suddenly aware, very aware, of a warmth in my lap, a flush in my cheeks.

  Perhaps there is some life to me yet.

  The boy turns briefly and glances towards the street. I get a quick glimpse of his face, scrubbed clean, and I wonder if he is gay. So many are. Then, he is gone.

  The tourists have spoken their needs to that third party and now, it seems, they will gaze out to the street until their food arrives. They do not look in my direction.

  Across the street, the white half-door opens and Evan steps out, a bag in each arm and, before I know it, he is at the car door.

  The smaller bag will fit in a hole behind the seat, and he sets it there with a grunt; then he moves up front. He reaches into the second bag, pulls something out, and then hands the bag to me from across the driver’s seat.

  “No room back there,” he says.

  While I settle the bag down on my lap, he hands me a can of cold soda and smiles. I take it from him and it feels good in my palm.

  “Thanks.”

  “Welcome.” The exchange is familiar and easy. And he is seated again.

  I set the soda on the dash and shift the bag downwards on my legs. My eyes land inside the restaurant a last time. There is nothing of interest going on there, and Evan pulls from the curb.

  There have been even more changes on the highway itself. More buildings than before, more businesses. Touristy hype spots. A huge, maybe papier mâché, animal, a giant mouse, perhaps, something grey; a thin wicker form dressed only in a tee-shirt, something emblazoned on its chest.

  But the turnoff is recognizable. Along the road here, few of the homes have been altered. A fence here, a new wood or shingled house there, small changes, not many. But we have to go further back towards the shore to get to our house, which is hidden and drenched in trees and shade which lead out to the water. Suddenly I am hungry for it, for the peace that I can recall of it, and Evan is not driving nearly fast enough.

  We hit the shore road and turn up, double back towards the tip again, and the old man’s shack comes into view among the trees. I had forgotten about the ramshackle house and the old man who is supposed to live there, out from the sand, out in the shallow, passive waves. The shack is on a tiny island of its own, peculiar, far enough to have to row if the tide is in, but visible, clearly visible, looking as though it were easily within reach. I wonder if the old man still lives there. In all the years, I have never seen him. The story is that local boys bring him magazines, newspapers, matches, bottles of red wine that they either steal or buy with their allowance and some smooth talk from the old couple at the tiny market down off the primary road here. They bring him those things, gifts, offerings, his being a strange god, living alone there, so foreign, so different from anything they have absorbed from their parents, a novelty, a risk. I wonder how old the man is, how that shack stays upright. It’s a mystery, the old man’s life, and his strange house is a forever place, a myth. I will bring him cigarettes, I tell myself, and these magazines. I will buy him wine, make friends.

  All myths are built on something.

  II

  THE HOUSE

  The widow has been cashing the checks.

  “Figured it was owed,” she said, friendly, open, standing up and wiping her muddy hands on her apron, then offering something leafy, gray-green, and tough-looking to Evan with fingers still gloved in shiny black dirt. The garden had been worked. The local soil is not rich; it is sandy, dull. I watched her fingers; she wore no ring, felt at ease with the ground. “Since he’s passed,” she went on, “I’ve got to do it all myself.” She looked directly at Evan when she spoke, her back, her eyes, strong, as though she could stand it, too, if Evan were suddenly to disappear.

  Evan wanted to rant. He wanted to accuse the old woman, but I could see that, actually, he was afraid of her.

  “I did you fine, anyway,” she said loudly after us, still mopping at her hands with the lap of her apron.

  Evan said slowly, “Son-of-a-bitch.” She wasn’t supposed to hear it.

  “She signed his name,” he says later, adamantly. He is incensed. I nod and say nothing. I cannot decide whose side I am on; after all, the woman is by herself. The old man died shortly after he’d made the arrangement with Evan. He’d spent only a day or so, three at the most, working on our lot—not much time to make a mark after two years’ rampant growth. His wife said she’d found him in their kitchen, milk spilled near his outstretched hand, the carton empty on its side, the stove burner on low. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said. She did what she thought best, said she’d earned the money from those checks. Yes, she told Evan, she’d known about the instructions, but she’d worked in the house, not in the yard, since “it was people coming to live, not livestock.” She was right, of course. There was no way to tell her that we hadn’t been inside the house, that at the first glimpse of the unkempt grounds Evan had flown apart, had come to her war-ready and hot.

  Evan is behind the car striking out at clods of dirt, at weeds. I can see him in the rearview mirror. He runs his fingers through his sweaty hair. His shirt is spotted, clinging like plastic wrap to his chest, his back. He doesn’t know where to put his frustration. He is furious, devastated, humiliated. Mostly humiliated. The ride back to the house was dead silent. Evan’s hands were tight on the wheel.

  I could tell him that it doesn’t matter, that the yard is fine the way it is, and that we haven’t even looked inside yet. I could tell him that we’ll have the satisfaction, now, of feeling the changes in the palms of our own hands, cutting it down, building it up again ourselves—what he planned to do to the house, he could do to the yard. Make it all ours, like a cat pissing, marking out its territory.

  When it seems that the bulk of his disappointment is spent, I get out of the car. He won’t look at me; he is a child, embarrassed, tall and pink and soft. I take his hand and pull him away from the sight of the yard, down the overgrown path, towards the beach. He follows behind; he is limp. I am aching for the breeze beyond the trees. Evan is speechless, tired. We are a pair.

  It is a short walk, but difficult. No one has walked this way in ages; it used to be clear. We must bend and dodge to keep from being stabbed by the thin, whippish branches, the thorny tangles; to keep our feet from getting snagged, we must step high. When we reach the sand we walk straight towards the water.

  The beach is taupe-colored and firm. The salt sparkles in the late afternoon sun and our footprints, just audibly, snap into the crisp, thin surface, and then lie silent. There is no debris on the beach, no garbage. It is beautiful, orderly. A feather. A piece of shell. A small black stone.

  I lead Evan right up to the water’s edge where a thin skirt of froth slides forward towards our shoes. Letting go of him, I step back a few feet, squat, and fall backwards, awkwardly, onto the sand. I turn my face upwards into the cool of the salt breeze and then untie my shoes, motion to him to come along, to do the same, and, reluctantly and still without a word, he does. His feet, like white wax, look ill at ease in the sand. We take the time to roll up our jeans, leisurely, and I take his hand again and we walk the short way into the water which is shallow and turns cloudy at our steps. The sting of the hot sand, of the long day, is replaced by the cold chafe of water and sand together. It is pleasant, painful.

  I am tempted to kick up some water, a bit of foam, onto Evan’s pants, onto his bare arms, to draw him out of himself, to get him to laugh, but I know better. First he must work out his
disappointment, then he will shore himself up. In the meantime he stands tall, still, and looks out over the surface, towards what I can’t guess, while the small waves roll at his ankles.

  I poke at the water with my foot, picking up small scoops of sand on my toes. I imagine that I am key to a viable cycle, throwing that sand back, knowing shades of it will wash up over and over again no matter how insistently I toss it back. It is comforting and I could go on doing it forever, enjoying the rhythm, earthy, fluid, but I can see that Evan has become restless and wants to go back to the house. He is back to business already. I should be pleased, really, that I got him to come this far. We drag our feet through the sand, bury them to dry, then brush them off again, and slip them back into our shoes.

  The walk back is not much less difficult. The good breeze is blocked again as soon as we enter the grove and head back towards the house.

  If I did not know the movers were coming tomorrow, I would say that we were here as we used to be, for a week, for two; these boxes and bags we have piled on the porch look impermanent at best.

  Evan, I think, cannot bring himself to go into the house. After taking the second of the two grocery bags out of the car, he sets it on the steps and shakes his head. He’s forgotten something in town. Gin. He sounds relieved when he tells me, as though he’s found a solution to something, some problem that had been bothering him. He says he’ll “run back in.” He needs some time, I guess, time to gather himself back, to redouble his effort. And we both could use a drink. It is understood that he will go alone. I will take in the bags, a few of the smaller boxes we have unloaded. I, too, don’t mind a little time to myself right now.

  It’s hard to tell, really, what bothers him most—the state of the grounds, the old woman’s cashing the checks, or the sheer audacity of the old caretaker, the grim insolence of his death when he’d taken on, promised to do, the work here for us. Evan is furious with fate. It has tricked him again; it has not delivered despite his well laid plans. He will take it out on the road for a while; then we’ll sit together and have our drink. But he will never forgive the old man. He would never say that, but I know it is true.

  Poor Evan, he is at such odds. I can only watch him, though; I cannot help him. I can barely help myself. All he said is true. The yard is wild, deserted-looking. But I cannot say that I am unhappy about the way it looks. It is weeds, branches, wildflowers, a crazy quilt of texture and color. Of all things, this can be dealt with, the growth. It is no major obstacle. It is raw here now. We will cultivate it, I am certain.

  With Evan gone, there is time to look around. This is what I needed, time to enter slowly, to get used to it, like easing into a mountain swimming hole or the ocean in December.

  The house is a salve, a balm, and its quiet fills me. I absorb it, take it in through my eyes, through my skin. The old woman has promised: the inside will be clean and ready. From the outside the house is gray and weathered, the way I remember it. It is a pleasure, the familiarity.

  My God, how quiet it is here.

  I don’t remember this stillness. Where is the chatter? Can noise left alone too long die off? Does it burn out like a light bulb? Or is this simply a silent time of day? I cannot for the life of me remember.

  But from the porch I can see the sun lowering itself, feel the air cooling. In the yard stretched out in front of me, the grass grows in comforting profusion; it grows where it did not, where it would not have dared if someone had been here to tend the grounds. It gives me a good feeling.

  Honeymoon, dusk. Cream blues, honeyed pinks, a tablet of color, dissolving, steaming above. Rustic, melancholy. Like new love.

  “Listen,” Evan whispers, then cocks his head, that head I crave, need, that face that I would like to eat, swallow whole. “The water’s waiting.” He grabs my hand and we run, run as fast as we can manage together, through the clean clipped flood of grass that hushes our steps, past the trees, down to the water’s edge. “Listen,” he says, and I listen very hard.

  Just after we were married, Evan’s mother died. Much later I figured out that Evan’s father had bullied, pushed, and molded her to such an extent that she had no shape left, no recognizable thing that was her own. She just turned in on herself, collapsed.

  It is our first meeting. Evan’s father introduces me. “Dore,” he says soberly—this is an audience—“this is my wife, Mrs. Dover, Mrs. Matthew Dover, Evan’s mother.” I am Dore, still. She is Mrs. Matthew. She looks like a root, borne above ground, twisted, seeking water. She is thin, wizened, old-looking for what must be her age, as though the life has been sucked out of her. I don’t learn her first name, never think about it until the Will is read. Alia Dover has left the summer house to me and to Evan. It shocks Evan’s father, my name in that Will. And I decide that Alia Dover has finally taken a stand. It was hers to give. She gave.

  Slivers rise up, thorns, from the wooden boards as I climb the porch stairs, finger the old handrail that leans beneath the weight of my hand. But the front door, the old wood door with the small, high window of bevelled glass, is strong, straight, the glass clean. As I enter, there is no echo despite the emptiness downstairs. I am purposefully quiet.

  And I am curious.

  The wallpaper has faded, but the windows are bright and gleaming; they let the sun stream in, full, intense. The musty, pungent odor of washed wood, disinfectant, rises as powerfully as would the less biting scent of cut grass. The room in its bareness is immaculate, rich with the homey smell of hard work. I can feel the weight of it in my nostrils. She has worked in here, the old widow, worked long. She was right: she did us fine.

  I am drawn in. The entry is wide; the stairway is sturdy.

  Upstairs, too, the floors are bare. The carpets must have mildewed, rotted, been thrown out. The wood is soft; the old woman has scrubbed up here, too, and the smell is bracing. I turn through an open doorway. Colors, the wood of the walls, have blended, become a little softer, more muted, now more the texture of barn-wood, comforting, cool.

  We will have this large room again, Evan and I, this one with the hearth and bay that faces the water. We will sleep here tonight; sleep well, I hope. The smaller rooms shall be made up for company, fresh and simple for friends who come to visit—a day, a week, more, to shake the city soot from their bones. That is, if Evan doesn’t fell the rooms like trees, if he doesn’t take them away, change things completely.

  It’s a foolish thought, unsettling.

  Evan and I will be at home here. Again.

  From this window, the water does not look as I remember. It looks deeper, wetter. Our old trail is indistinguishable from the rest of the meadow now. The edging of poppies that, all those summers, we worked so hard to keep in line has dispersed, and, widespread now, as if we were never here, orange dots the broad expanse of green.

  It’s early morning; he has on that hat, that silly hat he wears only here. Stooping patiently, back bent, as though I am a child, he lets me fix a flower there, among the fishing flies, the silly flashy silver lures, none of which he knows how to use. Chapeau d’ambience, he calls it. Chapeau d’ambience. When we get to the water, the bloom is still there, stem tucked tightly beneath the hat’s narrow band.

  I lean on the mantel and feel it give way—not fall, but give, tilt, as though it considered giving way and then did not. I straighten quickly, then make my way back down the stairway. This bannister, too, will have to be made steady, though today its polish alone makes it seem strong.

  Evan stands below at the dark and varnished entry. “We’ll be back before dusk,” he says, grabbing, with one hand, the basket of lunch things, and pushing me lightly towards the front door with the other. “We’ll be starved, I promise you.”

  We are always starved.

  Late, we come home caked with dried sand and mud, tired, pleased to be back. I crawl up the stairs and fall on to the stark white sheets of our bed while Evan showers. I am fast asleep before supper.

  The light in the kitchen is strong; the
floor is uneven, still damp. It is a large room and airy; the brightness will do well in here. It’s lovely. I will be happy in this kitchen. I will brew rich, black coffee, I’ll have Evan buy the beans in the city; their aroma will fill the air and make this seem like home again.

  I check the fixtures at the sink. Water; no rust, no surprise. The old sink has been bleached to a mottled sheen, like shell. In Evan’s restoration it will be made new, chromed and sparkling, even though it is fine now, clean and workable; the floors of this room will be plastic, patterned and shiny, instead of this rough planked wood. It will be open, crisp, antiseptic. I turn from the window.

  The kitchen door is latched. I flip the metal clip and cross the back porch, sidestep the short stairway and jump. I can feel the soft ground swell up around the soles of my shoes so that, for a moment, I am stuck. When I lift my foot, my shoe makes a popping noise. I walk to the wall and turn on the outside tap. This, too, is working. It is gloriously wild back here as well. There is no garden, no manicured bed of bright flowers. I am freer here than I have been anywhere in a long, long while. I rustle through the grasses, enjoying the whisper, an animal, grazing. I shift my weight and, again, feel the earth come up to meet my shoes. I enjoy the sucky noise as I pull them out, flatfooted to heighten the effect.

  The mud slithers up between my toes, a dark silk slime that makes me laugh. Sometimes I fall; sometimes Evan catches me, teases me, holds tightly beneath my arms, rings my chest, and dip and up and dip, threatening to let me drop. Smiling, he saves me, most of the time, but when he does let me slip, he is gentle, playful, and my fanny plops loudly into the shallow water.

  “Shhhhh,” he says, “don’t scare the ducks.” He laughs softly and pulls me out, silently, slowly. And I am very still and very quiet while I stand and let the water lap my feet.