Fellow Mortals: A Novel Page 18

  The pond feels deeper when she starts swimming back. She’s afraid of going under and afraid of getting out, treading water till her limbs can barely keep her up. Then she’s planted in the mud again. Something jabs her heel. She fishes out her bathing suit and tugs it on fast, drying off quickly with the damp, cold towel.

  Her nipples and her navel are apparent through the fabric and the suit keeps riding up the middle of her seat. It’s a long walk back and she’s obsessed with poison ivy, every little insect buzzing in her ear. At last she finds her things where she left them with the web. She retreats several steps but he isn’t here to meet her.

  Ava notices his chisel and his rasp near The Weaver. His sanding cloth dangles off the middle of the arm. She snap-folds her chair, takes her cooler and her bag, and carries all she has toward the cabin and the trail. When she makes it to the clearing, Sam’s sitting on a stump, head down, feet apart, hands clasped between his knees.

  The chair’s metal armrests cut against her ribs.

  “You’re leaving?” he asks.

  She checks her bag to find her keys. Once she’s certain that she has them, she continues on her way, never breaking stride until she’s made it to the shade. She pauses at the trail, daunted by the long walk out to reach the car, and when she turns around, expecting he’ll be standing right behind her, he’s very far away—still watching from the cabin.

  “Will I see you?” Sam asks, with an undertone of ever.

  She notices his boot, darkened from the water.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Henry’s here tomorrow. He’s been talking about you all week.”

  Sam takes a step, like he did beside the pond. She can almost feel the ripples moving in the air.

  “Thanks for letting me come,” she says. “I’m glad I got away.”

  “Ava…”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam says.

  For an instant she imagines dropping everything she has, but then she readjusts her load and says, “Accidents happen. It’s what I’ve been telling Henry all summer.”

  A band of sun cuts her eyes and then she’s fully in the trees, following the ruts and looking for the first real bend along the trail. The ice inside the cooler rattles off her hip. Even here she feels the motion of the water all around her and the suction of the mud when she tried to move her feet, and she doesn’t look back because she knows that he’ll be standing there, watching her the whole way out in case she stops.

  * * *

  She makes it home long before Henry. The house looks quiet from the middle of the street, but right inside the door, Wing scampers up around her, barking out loud and coiling like a slinky. But he’s nervous and his ears pin back around the kitchen where he’s pooped on the floor, two feet from the paper.

  “Close enough,” Ava says. “It’s okay … you’re okay!” and then he’s puppyish again, nuzzling at her leg. She lets him out, cleans the floor, and balls the paper into the trash. She gives him food and fills his water dish, and when he comes back in to eat and have a drink, she watches him and smiles.

  “You’re a good dog. Good dog,” Ava says.

  Suddenly she’s crying, and she kneels to let him kiss her on the cheeks and on the eyes. He waits at the top of the stairs when she goes to the basement, where she quickly undresses and drops her clothes directly into the washer. Upstairs she takes a two-minute shower, dries her hair, and stands in front of the mirror. There’s color in her skin where there should have been a suit, and when she slathers it in lotion, praying it’ll fade, the burn starts to tingle from the friction of her hand.

  She picks a dress Henry bought her that she never really liked—a housewife’s dress, square and oversimple. Wing leads the way downstairs, seeming to believe they’re up to something good, and everything she does satisfies him fully.

  Ava marinates chicken: better late than never. She cleans the table outside, carries silverware and plates, shucks corn and watches Wingnut gambol in the yard. He sniffs a holly bush and finds an old ball near the roots. Ava throws it for a while, and once they both tire of the catch, she opens a beer and they go to the front porch, where the sun’s like nectar on the columns and the floor.

  She thinks of how relaxing it’ll be this fall, how she’s missed the lazy weekends of board games and television, ironing his uniform every Sunday night. They’ll eat at restaurants again. Share a hobby. Go to movies. With the Finns finally gone, they can rearrange the house. Buy a woodstove. Maybe get a brand-new bed.

  She looks at Wing panting in the sun and tips her bottle. He waggles up close and licks a dribble of the beer. They sit erect, hip to hip, and watch the grackles and the finches, Wing feeding off her eagerness and looking up the street. Henry’s coming home any minute, any second. It’s his favorite time of day, the hour of reunion, when the family’s all together and it’s perfect, just perfect.

  21

  He hadn’t gone to swim. That was all he knew for sure.

  The week had seemed a month and then he’d felt it passing, standing there alone when she departed for the pond. Like his finger, barely healed whenever he examined it, notably improved the day that he forgot. Five days, forty hours—she had only just arrived, and then before he knew it she was leaving him for good.

  He’d found her towel on the ground beside a small heap of cloth, familiarly blue but not immediately obvious. There hadn’t been a rustle or a splash, not a sound. He’d picked the garment up, startled by its delicacy and form, like when he comes upon a snakeskin and wonders where the snake has gone.

  He thinks of telling Henry—we were both so embarrassed!—and he’s sure to get a laugh: what a gas, Ava skinny-dipping. What if it’s a secret, though, and Ava doesn’t tell him? What if Ava does and Henry waits for him to mention it?

  Any way it goes, he may have cost himself the Coopers. After this, weeks alone. Sporadic visits. Maybe none. Sculpture after sculpture after tree after tree. There’ll be frost in October, dead leaves, frozen weeds. Too cold to sculpt outside, too dark and unremitting. Then the true cabin fever of a season in the snow. He sees it coming in the dusk and the long slant of light, the void that opens up whenever he gazes at the stars before bed and sees directly into space, directly into nothing. Even summer’s like an accident, a meaningless reprieve.

  “Oh my God,” Sam says, clutching at his head.

  He can’t imagine staying here, can’t imagine not. He’s standing with The Weaver when he notices the chisel. It’s the one he cut his finger on, the one that shaped her leg. He picks it up without a thought and almost chucks it at the trees, and then he hacks The Weaver’s face until it’s hideously blank.

  He hears a siren in the distance. He’s been hearing it awhile. It’s not unusual for sounds to carry from the town—the whistle of a train, certain motorcycle engines—but it’s rare to catch a siren so distinctly. Must be close. Maybe on Arcadia, he thinks. Then it stops.

  * * *

  Henry reaches Arcadia Street and slumps. Despite his summer exercise, delivery’s worn him out. His shoulder throbs. He tries keeping pressure off the blisters on his feet and he’s as liable to cry from yawning as he is from seeing the Bailey lot. Ava’s car isn’t here. He’s been hoping every day he’ll catch her going out but she and Sam have holed up solid in the woods, and who can really blame them in a week like this?

  The temperature and sunlight, the hint of wood smoke seasoning the air … he almost feels nostalgic for the hour of the fire. The stillness has a late-day ripple of mirage, as if the summer is evaporating right before his eyes. He thinks about the Finns—the floral lace curtains, Joan’s figurines—and he can’t help smiling when he thinks about Nan, how she hit him with the dryer when he carried her to safety. He misses Sam now, too, and thinks of visiting tomorrow, but he can’t imagine getting out of bed and driving off, not with Ava staying home, lounging in her gown with her caramel-cream tan. They’ll fry some bacon and eggs, sit in the yard with Wing. He’ll surprise her
with a restaurant date, let her know with just enough time to get dressed. Maybe hit the drive-in. Maybe just park.

  He spots a yellow football stranded in a maple tree, high above the road in front of the Carmichaels’ house. Danny and Ethan meet him at the screen. They’ve gotten haircuts that make them look a full year older and they’re confident around him, like he’s actually their uncle.

  “Hey, guys,” Henry says, handing in the mail.

  “Hi, Mr. Cooper.”

  “Your football’s stuck.”

  Danny nods and says, “We know.”

  “Dad threw it up and couldn’t knock it down.”

  “We tried everything.”

  “Just monkey up and grab it,” Henry says, and then he smiles with a wink and adds, “You gotta be the best climbers in the neighborhood now.”

  Danny’s freckles seem to fade. He glances at his brother. They’re a well-matched team, sharing thoughts without words, but they’re not quite masters when it comes to keeping secrets.

  “What’s the matter?” Henry asks. “Something wrong with the tree house?”

  “No.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Henry hunches till his mailbag’s resting on the step.

  “What’s up?” he asks.

  “Mom says we can’t use it.”

  “We’re sorry, Mr. Cooper.”

  “Dad’s trying to change her mind.”

  “She really hates you,” Ethan adds. Danny whacks his arm.

  Henry lifts his bag. He stands erect, every muscle in his body grown taut, and then the brothers straighten, too, inspired by his posture.

  “It’s not your fault,” he says. “I’m sure she has her reasons.”

  “Yeah, crappy ones,” Danny tells him.

  “Come on, now,” he says. “She loves you more than anything.”

  They listen to her heels clacking up the hall.

  “Who are you talking to?” Peg asks, worried and annoyed, and when she sees him at the door her face snaps tighter than Saran wrap. “Get inside,” she tells the boys.

  “We are inside.”

  “Ethan.”

  “Mom.”

  “Ethan,” Peg says.

  “Fine. See ya, Mr. Cooper.”

  “Later, boys.” Henry waves, ignoring Peg and smiling at the twin set of cowlicks—the unaffected mosey of the brothers heading off.

  Peg claps the door and locks the hook and eye, glaring with her head dark and hazy through the screen.

  “I’ve already filed a complaint that you’re delivering my mail,” she says. “If they don’t listen, I’ll have to live with that. But when you’re here, you keep your mouth shut. You put the mail in the box. You walk away. Got it?”

  “Why don’t you let the boys use the tree house?”

  “The only reason it’s intact is that I promised Sam Bailey.”

  “What do you care about Sam?”

  “I pity him,” she says, proud of her emotion. “Has it ever occurred to you, while you’re out playing Boy Scout, that instead of all these useless gestures you could think of how other people feel? You gave the Finns a room, bravo. I got them a house. And this is my house, and these are my children. You want to drive someone nuts, go home to your wife. I pity her, believe you me.”

  Henry looks down, the only thought in his head how flimsy that aluminum looks around the lower portion of the door, how thunderous it would sound with a good hard kick. Instead he walks down to the tree, gives the trunk a pat, and lays his mailbag gently on the ground. He grabs the lowest branch and pulls himself into the crook, ten feet tall and agile as a boy.

  “What are you doing?” Peg asks. “Stop it.”

  “I’m getting that football.”

  “Oh, no you aren’t. Get down,” she says, stepping out as if to forcibly remove him. “That’s our tree.”

  “It’s past the sidewalk,” Henry says, pointing at the roots. “It’s a public tree.”

  “That doesn’t mean that you can climb it.”

  “Sure it does. I’m a public servant.”

  “I’m reporting this,” she tells him.

  “Go ahead,” Henry says.

  The branches crowd around him but it’s easier to climb, offering a better set of footholds and handles. It’s a healthy tree, well-pruned and cabled in the middle, and he wonders what Sam would make if he could sculpt it. Henry relishes the smell, the flickers of the sun, the vibrancy and busyness of several thousand leaves. He feels elated after days of flat-footed burden, gravity-defiant and relieved of obligation.

  Higher up he takes a rest, considering his options. The ball’s ten feet out, high above the road, wedged tightly in a fork so he can’t shake it down. But the branch feels solid and he crawls out lengthwise, bellying along until he’s close enough to reach.

  “Are you trying to impress me?” Peg asks him from the sidewalk.

  “No.”

  “Good, because you aren’t.”

  He wonders how he’ll justify his recklessness to Ava. Maybe Peg’s right: who’s he trying to impress? But that’s a good yellow football stranded in the tree. There’s simply no reason why a man wouldn’t try.

  “You’re going to kill yourself,” she says.

  “Better me than someone else.”

  He’s thinking of the boys, who might be brave enough to try it. Then he stretches too far and slips around the limb, swinging upside down and clamping with his thighs. Suddenly his heartbeat’s thumping in his head. It takes a second for his brain to reinterpret his position and it’s dazzling and alarming when the sun’s above his knees.

  He reaches for a long sturdy branch to his left, its crookedness reminding him of Wingnut’s tail. Peg’s shouting and her voice sounds scissory and bright. He can almost reach the tip—it scratches at his finger—but he needs a bigger lunge to grab it where it’s strong. The head rush is equally distracting and refreshing, heating up his ears and speeding up his thoughts. He hasn’t tried an ordinary sit-up in a decade but he tries one now, tightening his gut. Here it comes, the extra reach to get his hand around the branch, and then he has it and he smiles at the power in his arm. He’s looking at the sky beyond the dark green leaves, and the football’s there, right there, like a fruit.

  Then he’s falling headfirst. Henry doesn’t understand it. He can still feel the texture of the branch when he hits.

  * * *

  Sam stops the ATV and runs around the trailer, looking for Ava’s car amid the tumult in the street. There’s an ambulance, a paramedic, and a cop car right in front of his property. A policeman is talking to Peg, who hugs herself and looks to be in tears, and Sam continues jogging, thinking, No, not the boys.

  But there they are, safe and sound in the window of their house. They stare at him. He lifts a hand but neither waves back. The fear it seems to indicate disturbs him more than anything.

  Billy’s on the sidewalk, staring at the road. A couple more neighbors stand across the street. The ambulance is leaving but the siren and the lights are off. If not for the policeman, he’d be thinking false alarm.

  There’s blood in the road. It’s shaded by the tree—at first he took it for an oil stain—but closer to the curb it’s unmistakable and fresh. Billy turns around, looking stunned and even ashen, and before Sam has to ask he says:

  “It was Henry.”

  He’s explaining what he knows—the climb, the broken branch, Peg shouting in the road—and pointing at the football above them in the tree.

  “… dead,” Billy says. “… didn’t move and then…”

  Dead.

  Sam hears him but it’s cottony, a rumble in his ear. The grass along the road shifts tint, turning blue, and he can see the bits of the gravel in the concrete walk.

  Billy keeps him up and says, “Whoa, take it easy.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You want to sit?”

  “I’m all right,” Sam says. Hot-cold, up and down, trying not to heave—he takes a hold of Billy’
s arm and says, “A phone.”

  “What?”

  “I need your phone.”

  Next thing he knows he’s sitting on he ground, limp and hyperventilating, head between his knees. He has a cell phone now and can’t remember how he got it, can’t remember any numbers, let alone who to call.

  PART THREE

  22

  Late October, four weeks after Henry’s death, Nan and Joan sit in their kitchen with Bob Carmichael, drinking tea and sharing a plate of ladyfingers. They talk around Sam’s housewarming table, and the kettle steam and radiator ticks give the room a sleepy, twilit atmosphere even in the middle of the day. Outdoors the weather’s overcast, colored by the still-warm smolder of the trees, and they can see Danny and Ethan raking in the yard, red-cheeked with yellow leaves clinging to their corduroys.

  “How have they been?”

  “They’re doing all right, Nan. Doing all right,” Bob says. “School came at a good time. They’re out of the house, staying busy with their friends. The funeral helped a lot. They insisted on going and they both seemed calmer next day.”

  “They didn’t shy away.”

  “That’s right, exactly right.”

  Joan pours them each another cup of tea and offers the cookie plate to Bob, whose timid manner, so ingrained he won’t eat without permission, makes him like another of the boys instead of an adult.

  “I drove them to the church without telling Peg,” he says. “She thought it was morbid, like when they wouldn’t stop harping on the fire. But they’re resilient this age. Flexible, you know?”

  Nan’s seen a similar resilience in her sister. In their months of living with the Coopers, Nan came to rely on Ava’s teamwork more profoundly than she realized, and she found herself overwhelmed with housekeeping in the early weeks of living on their own. Joan stepped up in unprecedented ways, learning—and remembering—how to wash delicates, how to sauté, how to clean grout and use the cable DVR. There were hours Nan discovered they had nothing left to do and they could sit, Joan with a puzzle, Nan with a copy of Vanity Fair, for two or three hours of a pleasant afternoon. And it was Joan who first remembered Danny and Ethan, doubly shaken by the fire and Henry’s death, and suggested that they hire them and grossly overpay them.