It seemed to him that she blushed faintly, though more likely it was only the flames that had roared up in front of his eyes. “I guess my room would be better,” she continued. “When and if Franz ever starts to snore, Mother is sure to be out prowling for you.”
They had put her in what they called the Rose Room, though except for the faint pinkish tone of the walls and the splendid four-poster, it was deliciously austere.
He perched on the chaise, in the muted light of the small
lamp next to it, his lovely, dark farmhouse floating near him, the night just beyond the room’s closed shutters … Perhaps the nervous American schoolteacher was sitting on her balcony like a sentinel at the prow of a ship keeping them from harm … How many wonders there used to be for him! The miraculous human landscapes! Long, brilliant nights … Was there never to be one of those again? Whatever role he’d been assigned in the girl’s drama—her drama of triumph, her drama of degradation—it was certain to be a despicable or ridiculous one. There was no chance—at least almost no chance—that she would receive from him what he so longed to provide: even a tiny portion of pleasure or solace. And when she remembered him, no doubt she would remember him with contempt.
Briefly he closed his eyes, luxuriating in the purity of her face and body, the glowing skein of sensation she was causing the air to spin out around him, his sharp thrill of longing—everything, in short, he was waiting (like a bride!) to lose. Lazily, as though moving into a trance, she dropped one piece of clothing, then another, on the floor.
When Kate awoke, it was already late. She opened her shutters and brightness was everywhere.
The night before, she’d sat for a long while on her balcony. The sky was extraordinary—terrifying, really, with great, flaring starbursts. How long had all those blades of cold light traveled in order to cross here and pass on through this one night’s heart? she wondered. Trillions and trillions of years.
She would have liked to be able to return to the cozy bar for the comfort of voices around her and a glass of something soothing. But for all she knew, the Reitzes were still there.
And the fact is, women of her age were conspicuous on their own. People tended to pity even fear you. In any case, she was hardly the sort of person who could sit alone in such a room at this hour; one more drink could be a disaster. Oh, and worst of all—the kindness of the waiters!
So she listened to the sea altering the rocks below her, the wind around her shaping the trees, as the starlight shot past. Time itself made no sound at all.
Baker had told her about Norman—he was desperately sorry, he said, his beautiful, dark eyes imploring her not to turn away; but there was nothing to be done. And there she was at the edge of a cliff. She’d been walking along, and just where she was about to take her next step, in that instant there was nothing.
So she went back to school to get a teaching degree, and then there was far too much to do to brood about Baker. Only sometimes at night she’d awaken as if falling from a ledge, crying out—landing hard against what her life had turned out to be, her bedclothes limp with sweat and tears.
After Baker had been living with Norman for a while, it was as if he’d always lived with Norman. There was only a residue of feeling when she and Baker met, exchanging the children or going about their separate lives—a sort of cold ash that faintly recorded their footsteps.
She had been luckier than a lot of her friends, as she learned bit by bit; Norman was wonderful with the children—so forthcoming, so understanding … and often when he came by to drop them off he’d sit in the kitchen with her, chatting over a leisurely beer. Through the years, in fact, they’d become truly close.
Terrible, the body’s yearning, terrible. But you could always outwait it. First, there had been nothing in front of her,
then—however ineptly—she, the children, Baker, and Norman wove together a swaying bridge, crossing step by cautious step over the awful chasm. And here, on the other side, Baker was dying.
The morning lobby was bright and busy. Harry was waiting to say goodbye to her, evidently, and the Reitzes were there, too. Harry put down the newspaper he seemed to have been trying to read, and stood to greet her, his arms open. “My dear! We’ve only just finished breakfast. We kept hoping you’d deign to join us.”
“Yes, I slept and slept,” she said.
“The sleep of the just!” Mr. Reitz said. “Like me!”
“And will we meet again?” Harry said to Kate. “Ah, who can say, who can say …”
In the bright light Mrs. Reitz’s skin looked dry and fragile, as she lingered near Harry. “Now, promise me,” she was saying to him, “the next time you’re in Zurich—”
“Can we go now?” The girl, who had been standing at the door watching the cars pull up and depart, turned. “I’m sorry,” she said to Kate, “but they always say I’m holding them up. And I’ve been waiting for hours!”
Kate smiled at the childish intensity of the girl’s distress, and just caught herself before smoothing back the girl’s hair as she used to Blair’s when Blair would get herself into a state over some passing trifle. “Be patient,” she used to say. “Be patient. It will be over soon, it will be better tomorrow, next week you won’t even remember …”
Noah is settled down on his little blanket, and Alma has given him some spoons to play with. High up, a few feet away, Alma and Kristina drink coffee at the kitchen table. Noah, thank heavens, has been subdued since Alma opened the door to them, no trouble at all.
In this new place he seems peculiarly vivid—not entirely familiar, as if the way Alma sees him were trickling into Kristina’s vision. Kristina contemplates his look of gentle inquiry, his delicate eyebrows, gold against his darker skin, his springy little ringlets. He looks distantly monumental in his beauty, like an idol at the center of a serene pond, sending out quiet ripples.
“You better do something about that cold of his. He looks like he’s got a little fever,” Alma says, exhaling smoke carefully away from him. “Or is that asthma?”
Kristina’s gaze transfers to Alma’s face.
“Does he have asthma?” Alma says.
“He’ll be better now we’re out of the car,” Kristina says.
Yesterday afternoon and last night, and most of today, too, nothing but driving in rain, pulling over for patchy sleep, Noah waking again and again, crying, as he does these days coming out of naps, bad dreams sticking to him. Or maybe he’s torn from good ones.
Or maybe dreams are new to him in general and it’s frightening—one life sinking into the shadows, the forgotten one rising up. How would she know? He’s talking pretty well now—he’s got new words every day—but he doesn’t quite have the idea yet of conversation and its uses.
Driving up, Kristina saw water just out back of the house, and tangled brush still bare of leaves, but Alma has taped plastic over her kitchen window to keep out the cold, and the plastic is blurry, and denting in the wind. All that’s visible are vague, dark blotches, spreading, twisting, and disappearing. Anyone could be walking along the shore out in the gathering dark, looking in, and you wouldn’t know.
Alma’s saying that her friend Gerry is going to come by and then they’re going out to grab a bite. “I won’t be back too late, I guess.” She glances at Kristina as impersonally as if she were checking something on a chart. “I’ll pick up something at work tomorrow for the baby’s cough.” A psychiatric facility is what she called the place she works, but it sounds like a hospital.
A clattering over by the fridge makes Kristina’s heart bounce, and there’s a large man—stopping short in the doorway.
“Gerry, my sister Kristina,” Alma says. “Kristina, Gerry.”
“Your sister?” is what the man finds to say.
Alma reddens fast to an unpleasant color and looks down at her coffee cup. “Close enough. The guy who was my dad? Seems he was her dad, too.”
“Hey,” Gerry says, and gives Alma a little pat. But it’s too late. Kristina was always the pretty one.
Gerry has a full, frowzy beard and a sheepish, tentative manner, as if it’s his lot to knock over liquids or splinter chairs when he sits. Kristina picks up Noah to get him out from underfoot. “Can you say hi?” she asks him.
He observes Gerry soberly while Gerry waves, then burrows his head against her shoulder.
“Cute,” Gerry says to Kristina. “Yours?”
Alma sighs. “No, ours.” And then it’s Gerry’s turn to become red.
“Is there a store near here where I can get some milk and things for him?” Kristina asks. “We kind of ran out on the way.”
Alma grinds her cigarette out on her saucer, staring at it levelly. “I would have stocked up if I’d known you were coming,” she says.
“I tried to call from the road,” Kristina says.
“McClure’s will still be open,” Gerry says.
Alma looks at him without altering her expression, and turns back to Kristina. “Gas station type place a few miles down. Not the answer to your dreams, maybe, but you’ll find the essentials.”
“Which way do I go?” Kristina asks.
Alma looks at her for a long moment. “If the car goes glub glub? Try turning around.”
By the time Kristina returns from McClure’s, Alma and Gerry are gone. Entering the house for a second time, this time with a key, juggling Noah and a bag of supplies, Kristina could practically be coming home. The mailbox says she is; that’s her name there—a durable memento from the man who slid out of Alma’s life soon after Alma was born and about a decade later, when Kristina was born, slid out of hers.
When Kristina first saw the house this afternoon, she had felt the sort of shame that accompanies making an error. She hadn’t realized she’d been expecting anything specific, but clearly there’d been a dwelling in her mind that was larger or
brighter—more cheerful. Still, it’s what a person needs, four walls and a roof, shelter.
She supplements the graham crackers from McClure’s with a festive-looking package of microwave lasagna that was sitting in the freezer. “Isn’t this fun?” she says to Noah. “All we have to do is push the button.”
Noah stares intently. Behind the window in the glossy white box, plastic wrap and Styrofoam revolve turbulently as intense, artificial smells pour out into the room. Shadows move in Noah’s dark eyes, and he turns away.
“What?” she says.
He leans against her leg and says something. She has to bend down to hear.
“Not today. Thumb, Noah,” she says as he puts his into his mouth. “No doggies today.”
Alma might have thought of canceling her date with Gerry, Kristina thinks. It’s been years since the two of them have seen each other, and it would be awfully nice to have some company. But there’s Noah to concentrate on, anyhow. She urges him to eat, but he doesn’t seem to be hungry. For that matter, neither is she. She spreads a sheet out on the futon that she and Alma dragged from the couch frame onto the floor, and there—she and Noah have their bed.
Outside, the wind is still hurtling clumsily by, thrashing through the branches and low, twiggy growth, groaning and pleading in the language of another world. But she and Noah are hidden under the blankets. She’ll turn out the light, the night will be a deep blue swatch, Noah’s cold will die down, and in the morning the wind will be gone and the sun will shine. She reaches up to the switch.
The whoosh of darkness brings Eli—surging around her from the four corners of the earth, bursting Alma’s tinny little house apart.
She gasps for breath and flings aside the churning covers; she stumbles into the kitchen where she stands naked at the window. A dull splotch of moonlight on the plastic expands and contracts in the wind.
“Kissy?” a tiny, hoarse voice says behind her.
The small form hovers in the shifting darkness. It holds out its arms to be picked up. The blank dark pools of its eye sockets face her.
“Go back to sleep,” she says as calmly as she can. Fatigue is making her heart race and stirring up a muddy swirl of worries. Little discomforts and pains are piping up here and there in her body. “Now, please.” She turns resolutely away and sits down at the kitchen table. After a few seconds she hears him pad away.
Fortunately, there’s an open pack of Alma’s cigarettes out on the table. Her hands shake slightly but manage to activate a match. Flame from sulfur, matter into clouds …
Everything that happens is out there waiting for you to come to it. One little turn, then another, then another—and by the time you think to wonder where you are and how you got there, it’s dark.
She can’t see back. It’s like looking into a well. She sees her long hair ripple forward. There’s nothing in front of her. But then rising up behind her, the moving shadows of trees, of the muddy road, of cars, of faces—Nonie, Roger, Liz, the girls from the distant farms, Eli … At the dark center of the water her own face is indistinct.
And then there she is, standing indecisively at the bus station, over a year and a half ago, in the grimy little city where she grew up. She was a whole year out of high school, and there had been nothing but dead-end clubs and drugs, and
dead-end jobs. Years before, Alma had told her, go to college, go to college, but when the time came she couldn’t see it—the loans and the drudgery to repay them and then what, anyhow. There was talk of modeling—someone she met—but she was too lanky and maybe a little strange for catalog work, it turned out, and too something else for serious fashion. Narrow shoulders, and the wrong attitude, they said; no attitude, apparently. So for a while, instead of putting clothes on for the photos it had been taking them off, and after that it was working in a store that sold shoes and purses.
When she was little there had been moments like promises, disclosures—glimpses of radiant things to come that were so clear and sharp they seemed like erupting memories. A sudden scent, a sudden slant of light, and a blur of pictures would stream past. It was as if she’d been born out of a bright, fragrant world into the soiled, boarded up room of her life. She chose the town for its name from the list of destinations at the bus station.
Soft hills flowed in distant rings around the little country town, and a chick-colored sun shone over it. Out in front of the pretty white houses were bright, round-petaled flowers. Sheep drifted across the meadows like clouds.
Every day she awoke to the white houses and the gentle hills, and it was like looking down at a tender, miniature world. The sky was pure; the planet spun in it brightly, like a marble.
Tourists came on the weekends for the charged air, and the old-fashioned inns. With so many people coming to play, it had been easy to get work.
The White Rabbit … with that poor animal, its petrified red glass eyes staring down at her and Nonie from over the bar. It wasn’t enough they shot it and stuffed it, Nonie had said; they had to plunk it down right here to listen to Frank’s sickening jokes.
A pouty Angora mewed up at them from its cushion near Kristina’s ankle. Good thing they didn’t call this place The White Cat, huh, you, she’d said, and just then Frank craned into the dining room. Girls—ladies. A lull is not a holiday. A lull is when we wipe down tables, make salads, roll silver …
Or The White Guy, Nonie said.
Nonie—all that crazy, crimpy hair—energy crackling right out from it! Her new friend. Nonie had a laugh like little colored blocks of wood toppling.
It wasn’t long before she moved into a room in the pretty white house Nonie and Munsen were renting. Nonie was still waiting tables on weekends then, saving up; she was planning to buy a bakery Nonie and Munsen were hoping to have a baby.
How nice it had been when Munsen came home on his lunch breaks to hang out in the kitchen, and they were all three together. Munsen, looking for all the world like a stoopy plant, draped in the aroma of butter, smiling, blinking behind his gold-rimmed specs, drinking his coffee, sometimes a beer.
And Nonie—that was a sight to see! Little Nonie, slapping the dough around, waking the dormant yeast as if she were officiating at the beginning of the world.
How had Nonie figured out to do that, she’d wanted to know.
No figuring involved, Nonie told her; when she was a kid she was always just sort of rolling around in the flour.
She’d given Kristina a little hug. Never mind, she said. You’ll find something to roll around in.
Anyhow, Munsen said, it’s overrated.
Sure, Nonie said, but it what?
Munsen had sighed. It all, he said.
One star and then another detached from its place and flamed across the dark. The skies were dense with constellations. Whole galaxies streamed toward the porch where she sat with Nonie and Munsen on her nights off, watching the coded messages from her future, light years away.
She helped, but maybe she slowed things down a bit. Well, she did, though Nonie never would have said. So while Nonie carried on in the kitchen, she would take Nonie’s rattly old car and deliver orders of bread and pastries to various inns and restaurants. And Nonie and Munsen let her have her room for free.
Save those pennies! Nonie said.
For what? she had thought; uh-oh.
Every day there were new effects, modulations of colors and light, as if something were being perfected at the core. Going from day to day was like unwrapping the real day from other days made out of splendid, fragile, colored tissue.
The tourists started swarming in for the drama of the changing leaves. Every weekend the town bulged with tourists. Someone named Roger took her to dinner on one of her nights off, to The Mill Wheel, where she subbed sometimes.
Roger had waxy, poreless skin, as if he’d spent years packed in a box, and his blue eyes shone with joyous, childlike gluttony, lighting now on booty, now on tribute.