Landscape: Memory (28 page)

The woods were dark by now and as full of frightening sounds as ever before that evening, but somehow I didn't hear them. My mind was too full of bewildered anger, and relief at finding Duncan, to focus on rustling leaves. We both walked on with an ease that belied our earlier worry. The cold air kept coming in over the hills and blew the fog away, opening up a clear black sky above us and letting moonlight down into the woods. The animal paths made for easy walking and our various preoccupations kept us from worrying over choices and direction. Within an hour or maybe more we'd found the road again and sat down to set a fire, breaking the stupid box into kindling to start the flames.

19 OCTOBER 1915

I got on Mr. Brown about stories again today.

"I always forget things if they don't fit somewhere, like when it's in a story," I offered boldly. "Don't you think every memory's part of some made-up story? How else could you remember it?"

Mr. Brown wasn't so fond of me as Mr. Spengler had been. The problem, I realized, was my failure to learn anything he was trying to teach, except for Guillio Cammilo, the sixteenth-century Mnemonist. I got an "A" for what I wrote about Guillio Cammilo. Everything else has been a bust.

"I believe, Mr. Kosegarten, we've covered at least a half dozen 'other ways' one might remember, other than creating fictions."

"I didn't mean strictly fictions, Mr. Brown, and I'm sorry if I missed something. I just meant any stories, any kind, true ones or whatever." I remembered something from last week. "Like Aristotle's all for making up stories, even if they're true or whatever they are. That's what I mean by stories." The Aristotle part seemed to perk him up a bit.

"Make a note of it, Mr. Kosegarten, work out your position on paper and bring it in," and he squinched his nose all quick like a wink, the way he did whenever he meant "Let's move on," and so we did.

Duncan and I went to the movies, sitting down in the lovely enveloping dark, racking up against the hardwood flip-front chairs in time for three of the four serials and a feature. Duncan kept his leg pushed in against mine and I mine against his and we watched the slow decay of innocent Blanche Sweet (performing as twins) under the evil spell of opium in
The Secret Sin.
Blanche played the good twin and the bad twin by some magic trick of the cinema, often appearing on screen in both roles at once. We stayed in to catch the serial we'd missed on the next time around, emerging into the gloam of evening all silent and sore from sitting so long.

26 OCTOBER 1915

I tried it out on him in the evening, while we did our work, during our hour or so together before bed. He was sitting in the bay where the beds had been, doing calculus and humming a bouncy Sousa tune. I'd thought very carefully about the best way of putting things, not wanting him to feel I was forcing it all upon him.

"Where do you imagine traveling to, in the U.S.A.?" I asked, to get him thinking on the right track.

"Just fantasy, you mean?" He poked his forehead with his lumpy eraser.

"No, actually, if you really were going to." I leaned up on my elbows, stretched out sideways across the bed on my stomach.

Duncan pushed the eraser all bent against his head and thought for a while.

"I'd go to the desert."

This wasn't the answer I wanted.

"I don't mean outdoors stuff or adventures. I meant like on a train trip or going to see the sights." I hoped this would clarify matters.

"But you said actually, what I'd actually do. That's what I'd actually do, go to the desert," he explained reasonably.

"Right, I know that. But I'm rephrasing it. What if it was a train trip somewhere and not for outdoors stuff, where would you go?" That seemed to narrow things enough.

"I don't know if I'd actually do that."

"Just imagining, then."

He brought his feet up on to the chair and squinched down into it, thinking still.

"I guess I'd go back East, go see the big cities."

"Like what? New York, or Boston?" I prompted.

"Yeah, and Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. My dad says we have relations in Washington, D.C." He looked back into his calculus book.

"I'd love to see Boston," I pushed on. "I'd love to see all the snow in the winter."

He looked up from his book again and stared out the window, imagining, I hoped, the lovely white drifts of snow, it falling thick from the sky and ivying up and down the rough-brick-walled buildings.

"What's the quadratic equation?" he asked.

It was the one thing I'd memorized in math: " *X' equals 'negative b' plus or minus the square root of 'b squared,' minus 'four ac' all over 'two a,' " I told him as fast as I possibly could. "Now come on. What about the snow in Boston?"

He looked over at me and thought, pushing his eraser in under his upper lip now.

"Oh, yeah, the snow. That'd be something else. I'd love that."

"Yeah, me too," I agreed. "Can you imagine living there?"

He penciled some things onto his paper, then brought his eraser down, wiping it dry on his shirtsleeve first. I paused, hoping I wouldn't have to prompt him further.

"Well, living there? I don't know. I bet it gets so cold for so long. We'd probably die from freezing." And he looked up at me and shivered. "You thinking of moving?"

"What?" I said, wishing he hadn't asked.

"Are you thinking of moving there, to Boston?" He kept his gaze steady and even, looking at my eyes.

I turned over on my back and stared out the window at the stars in the dark sky.

"I wouldn't move there if you didn't," I said honestly. "I couldn't possibly." I felt his weight smushing onto the bed next to me.

"I
know
that," he said. "I asked if you were thinking of moving there, whether it was something you'd been thinking about." He poked at my back with his eraser.

"Well, Mother's been talking about eastern schools," I began. "She's sent for some catalogs."

"So
she's
thinking of going back East?" he asked, being a bit too persistent about all this.

"No, she's not thinking of going back East. She knows we're not perfectly happy with things here so she's just trying to help by finding out about other places." I turned over to look at him.

"And
are
you thinking about going?"

"I already said I wouldn't go if you didn't." We lay there for some moments in a confrontational silence, the small space between our bodies fairly alive with minute drawings toward and away.

"Well, good," he finally put in. "Because I'm not going anywhere back East."

I looked at him, me chewing at my lip and glancing all around his face, keeping clear of his eyes.

"And I'd appreciate your keeping me up to date on what you're thinking about doing," he finished, poking me a bit in the belly.

"That's what I was doing," I explained. "I was trying to tell you about the catalogs and the different possible things but you got all huffy about it."

He shook his head and rolled away from me onto his back.

"You did not try to tell me," he said up into the ceiling. "You started asking me if I wanted to travel anywhere and then you kept wheedling around to Boston is what you did."

I wished he wouldn't say that. I wished he'd just roll back and bury me in his arms and mouth and kiss me into oblivion. I felt sort of shaky lying there near him and knowing what he said was true. I couldn't think what to say in my defense. He got up off the bed and went back to his chair and his homework.

After our conversation we both worked a bit longer, me on my memory book and him on calculus, and we went to bed without so much as a word regarding anything but toothbrushes, lights and morning alarms.

Then we were at each other so fast it was scary. I guess we simply had a lot to say and knew somewhere inside us that talking more would only lead to trouble. I can feel it welling up like laughter inside me when I've got to get to him. And if I open my mouth the only sound that comes up is that buzzing growl of a song my throat makes when I let it loose. I push my mouth against his sweet skin and sing that song into his body.

When I do speak, my mouth reduces down around the smallest words to say. I need you. Love me. More words string out like fences, clamoring around in a dizzying jumble of dangerous meanings and slips and slides.

3 NOVEMBER 1915

As I speak less and less, and I do, losing my words to the fear I have of forever ruining the difficult, exquisite landscape Duncan and I roll around in together. As I speak less and less, my walking, waking time loses weight and floats free in air, never quite dropping down into me, never quite feeling solidly part of me until I see it written. Here, written. And I turn the page and it's shut down in and felt.

My painting gets thicker with each layer. They all stay present, lurking in the surface. These pages turn, flipping past. They layer in only on the surface I make by memory. Those dim shadows of hundreds of thousands of written words are left lurking in my mind, worked on by time and mysterious tides. I'll be sending notes to Father soon, if I keep on like this.

10 NOVEMBER 1915

Duncan baked two pies, one for us and one for the Dunphys, this morning while the rain beat in buckets against that high wide window and everywhere else too. They were plum pies with plums Mrs. Dunphy canned this summer and flaky crust like Mother showed Duncan how to make because of his loving pie so much. They had a light sprinkle of sharp Cheddar cheese melted on the top. I watched them coming out of the oven piping hot. Duncan and I had two hot slices and saved the rest for later. The Dunphys let theirs be, Mrs. Dunphy insisting she wanted to serve it to guests at the dinner they've planned for the evening.

17 NOVEMBER 1915

I'd just come from the musty Latin wing, out into the drizzly day, when I was tackled and knocked to the ground by Duncan. He goosed me all over and generally made a scene, right there in public view. No one did anything to rescue me, though he might have been a maniac for all they knew, molesting innocent freshmen as they emerged from the stupor of declensions.

It was almost eleven and so time for that dreaded marching in the open field. I was on my way to have coffee with Flora, as was my custom during the war exercises, so Duncan's friendly attack was a mixed blessing. I wasn't sure if it was a disguised form of conscription.

"Where's the pacifistics meeting today?" he asked cheerfully, beating leaves off my back with sweeps of his dirty hands.

"Oh, somewhere," I said vaguely.

"Yeah? Fomenting revolution?" he inquired.

"We'll be discussing the death of Rupert Brooke over coffee, in a secret anarchist's den somewhere underground." I thought it might sound attractive, more mysterious and romantic than banging about on the soggy turf. "Care to join us?"

"Yes," he answered straightaway and to my surprise. "I could use some coffee."

"And the army?" I asked. "Won't they fall into chaos and confusion?"

"Let them," he gave in, recklessly. "I've had enough of wet shoes for today. I take it Flora will be there."

"Yes, yes. Flora and possibly Unt if she finishes with her cello and makes it back home in time."

"Oh," he said in recognition. "That anarchist's den."

''That anarchist's den," I confirmed, meaning the home of Mrs. Meekshtais, avowed anarchist and alleged correspondent of Emma Goldman.

We walked down College to Parker, the blue breaking through in patches above us and the air blowing warm with a dry wind in from the south. Flora was home and Unt wasn't. Duncan told Flora he'd come as a counterrevolutionary and would make us march all the way to Devil's Island, but Flora had other plans.

"We're going on a picnic," she announced, getting the heavy basket from off the kitchen table and pointing me toward a pile of blankets and towels she'd stacked in the vestibule. "We'll drive to Lake Anza and spend the day."

"But I have my Memory class," I complained.

"Forget it," Flora recommended.

"And my English class," Duncan reminded her.

"We're ill," she said, setting him straight. "Sick in the head." She turned us both around and pushed forward toward the door, poking me a reminder to pick up the blankets as we passed through the vestibule and out into the brightening day.

The sky had cleared up in the hills and Lake Anza was empty, free of boats, swimmers or walkers, all discouraged, we figured, by the gray morning. Flora had packed some favorite foods and brought the bulky Rochester as well, its box all finely dusted with Bolinas and smelling of the warm sweet dirt that kicked up off the roads there. Flora, setting the tone, stripped promptly and ran headlong into the clear blue water, splashing about furiously and then simply floating on her back, her round breasts breaking the water and her thick hair spreading loose and dark around her peaceful face. I did the same, and Duncan too.

It was a long queer afternoon, too much like the past to feel entirely present. Our minds were in such entirely different places, so far as I could tell, that I felt the sad calm of being alone in the woods, though Flora and Duncan were stretched out there beside me. Flora, I imagined, was just as she always was, stable and entirely present. I was not, and Duncan slept. As in Bolinas, we didn't talk much. But now, I felt, there was so much not being said. Our picnic was filled with silence, not merely silent.

I finally fell asleep, waking up after a few hours with a chill shivering through me and Duncan rolled up against my side. Flora stood close by with the camera, recording it all for posterity. The lake was busy with birds. A small fleet of merganser cruised close to our shore and one belted kingfisher kept swinging out from the trees and down into the water. Walkers came through but we were smartly clothed, having toweled down and dressed after the initial plunge.

It was an odd displaced moment for me, that long silent afternoon, too high up in the hills to be Bolinas. Everything seemed strange down below, busy with buildings and foreign tongues and the carefully turned patterns of the marching drill, drumming on across the field. Our wheels were all turning in different directions, even while we slept together, there by the shore.

The weather had come blowing in again. Thick gray fog was rolling up the dusky hills now, and we packed our things in Flora's car and motored back down below.