Where he left me, p.20
Where He Left Me, page 20
One day, after she read the story of Jonah and the Whale, she asked what we had learned from Jonah’s adventures. The rest of the kids, who had been born and raised in church, gave answers straight from the textbook. Jonah learned about the importance of obedience, trust, faithfulness. But I was stuck on the final scene when Jonah went out of Nineveh and threw himself a pity party.
“God gave him a nap and a snack,” I said, almost without thinking.
There was a sort of stunned silence for a moment. And then that sweet Sunday school teacher hugged me close. “Aren’t you clever?” She laughed, but it was a happy, delighted sound, not mocking as I feared it would be. “Sometimes a little nap and a snack fix everything.”
It’s the only lesson that really stuck with me, and a philosophy I still cling to today—a biblical mandate for the not-so-surprising benefits of sleep and food. And after Finn is settled and safe, I gather the necessary elements for myself and Henry: the down comforters from our beds upstairs, more pillows. In the kitchen I find some cheddar cheese and multigrain crackers, then grab the rest of the orange juice, the last apple, and a jar of crunchy peanut butter.
Henry and I eat on the floor in front of the stove, voraciously. Apparently, a dangerous experience gives you an appetite, because we polish off the cheese and crackers in no time, then cut up the apple and slather the wedges in peanut butter. When the apple is gone, we take turns using the sides of our thumbs to scoop even more peanut butter straight off the knife and eat it plain. I feel full for the first time in days.
By the time we’re done with our makeshift picnic, we’re more or less comfortable, and unbearably exhausted. Henry keeps trying to swallow his yawns, but it’s no use, and after I assure him that some rest would do us all good, he rolls over and falls asleep almost instantly.
I’m weary down to my bones, but though I try to close my eyes and let the crackle of the fire soothe me, I can’t drift off. Maybe it’s because I feel responsible for Henry and Finn. Or guilty about trying to off-road in a blizzard. My mind is stuck in overdrive, revving between thoughts of Felix and these mysterious brothers and all the secrets that seem to hide behind every corner in Hemlock House. It’s an elaborate puzzle, and I simply can’t stand back far enough to get some perspective.
Finn Thomas. Henry had broken out several nicknames, trying to wake Finn, but that one felt real. Is Thomas his middle name? Last name? I wish I could type in a few internet searches while the boys sleep, and I slide my phone out of my back pocket to try. It’s little more than a hope and a prayer, and when I find that I still have no reception, I’m not surprised. Just disappointed.
Since I can’t sleep and it seems the brothers are both out cold, I quietly sneak out from beneath my duvet and tiptoe across the living room floor. I don’t want to wake them, but right now feels like the perfect chance to snoop through Felix’s childhood bedroom.
Upstairs it’s much colder. The window on the landing is starting to crust over with hoarfrost, a rime of ice particles that fan across the glass in exquisite, perfectly symmetrical patterns. How is it possible that just a few days ago I was working outside with my sleeves rolled up? I feel like I’ve stepped through the wardrobe in more ways than one. As I’m watching, a gust of wind blasts against the window and the whole house moans. It’s a reminder of how small I am. How fragile.
Felix’s old bedroom feels more compact than Gabi’s. Darker. There’s a bunk bed pushed against one wall and a low cabinet along the other. No desk or sitting area—there simply isn’t room for it—but beneath the dormer is a quaint, built-in window seat with room for one. I turn a slow circle in the center of the room, then sink to the flat, wooden bench and wrap my arms around myself to ward off the cold.
I can picture Felix here as a boy. I’ve seen a few pictures. Long limbs, shaggy hair, that one perfect dimple. It was more pronounced when his cheeks were rounded with youth. Even at a young age, there was a wise glint in his eye, a sparkle that somehow belied both his intelligence and that curious, intoxicating spark that still makes him irresistible. I wish I could have known him when he was just a kid. I think I would have loved him even then. Maybe especially then.
“Felix, Felix,” I whisper. I’m hoping, maybe, that I can summon him. My voice a signal through time and space that will alert him to the fact that I need him. Now and always. But the room remains still and empty.
So, I push myself up and open every drawer in the cabinet. It doesn’t take me long to realize that Felix’s childhood space is very different from Gabi’s. The drawers aren’t empty, but half-full of dusty old items left behind and forgotten. Grayish socks balled together, a few pairs of boxers, T-shirts worn thin and in a size that would never fit Felix today. I can almost picture him getting ready for college, packing his favorite things and leaving the rest behind. He didn’t know that when he left for Oregon State, he would never live at home again.
I rifle through everything like a cop with a search warrant, unconcerned about making a mess. In the closet I find some worn-out tennis shoes, an old pack of gum, and a cheap, empty wallet, but nothing that might tell me more about my husband, his family, or Hemlock House.
Why didn’t Felix want me in here?
I can’t quite bring myself to go back downstairs, even though I’m starting to shiver and my fingers feel numb. Blowing into my cupped hands, I pace the floor, squinting in the dim, ashy light that filters in through the window.
And that’s when it hits me. Spinning toward the chest of drawers, I yank the top one open. Socks, underwear, T-shirts. When I search the second drawer, I find more of the same, but the brands and styles are different. I grab a T-shirt from each drawer and find the tag, confirming that they’re different sizes, too. It’s as if two people lived in this room. Not one.
Looking with fresh eyes, I can see that there’s two of everything. The closet is loosely divided in half and the shoes on the floor are elevens (Felix’s size) and nines. There are even two beds. Why did Felix need a bunk bed?
Henry and Finn slept here last night and the beds are unmade, the sheets wrinkled and bunched. Because we pulled the duvets off to keep ourselves warm in the power outage, it’s easy for me to strip the bedding and search every inch for something that might offer a scrap of information about why it appears that Felix shared his room. My husband doesn’t have a brother.
I’ve almost given up when I feel something on the inside edge of the top bunk. There’s a gap between the mattress and the two-by-four that runs the length of the bed, and pressed into the wood are a handful of round-headed brass tacks. The thin crevice is the perfect place to hide secret things or maybe stash photos that Felix didn’t want his mother to see. But only one tack is holding something in place.
A flush of excitement warms my cheeks as I slide the metal from the wood. The paper it’s pinning in place feels thick and brittle, and I move slowly, not wanting to damage it in any way.
When the paper is loose, I hop down from the bunk bed and hurry over to the window seat where pallid daylight casts an eerie glow. I’m holding a photograph. A faded square with frayed edges that has obviously been well-loved. Someone looked at this picture often, his or her fingers tracing the corners and maybe smoothing the faces of the people who had once grinned for the camera. Two people stand in the frame, a boy with a mop of sandy-blond hair that falls nearly to his collar, and a girl with a long, dark braid. The girl is Gabi. Maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, her limbs lean and tanned, her eyes glinting at whoever was taking the photo. She’s wearing a pair of cut-off jean shorts over a red, one-piece swimming suit that, while modest, does nothing to hide her curves. Gabi looks gorgeous, and it’s no surprise that the boy with his arm around her waist is staring at her instead of the camera. His feelings are splayed across his face, plain as a billboard: love and lust and longing. It almost hurts to look at him.
It’s a sweet photograph, a snapshot that could have been taken at any beach along the Washington coast. The water is the color of slate, the sky a mix of sun and high, white clouds, a breeze scattering the loose hairs around Gabi’s face. They both look happy. At ease with each other. Who’s the boy?
He’s attractive, in a way. A bit too thin, maybe, his jawline chiseled and just this side of gaunt. But there’s something confident about his hand at Gabi’s waist, the slight pressure of it that scoops her hip toward his. “Mine,” he seems to say, his body language possessive, his head tilted as if he would like to press his lips to the high arch of her pretty forehead. For some reason, it fills me with dismay.
And that’s when I realize there’s another arm around Gabi—a hand reaching from her other side. One-third of the photograph has been folded over, a crease so clean and neat I hadn’t even noticed it. But when I peel the flap back to its original position, the picture is complete. Gabi in the middle with the blond boy on her right and Felix on her left.
The sight of Felix on the cusp of manhood (eighteen? nineteen?) is enough to undo me. A bad haircut, a bare, skinny chest. His collarbones jut out, and he’s awkward, unsmiling, his mouth half-open as if he is about to say something to the photographer.
The only person smiling is Gabi.
The photograph is a case study, a complicated story played out in the postures and facial expressions of the three subjects. Gabi, happy and oblivious. The blond boy, drawing her to him. And Felix, wishing it all away.
I’m glad to have found the picture, but it’s useless without context, a story. It doesn’t help me understand why Felix—gently but unswervingly—closed off rooms in Hemlock House. It doesn’t explain why Cleo called him flighty and seemed unconcerned about his disappearance. And it doesn’t offer one meaningful insight into where my husband might be now. And how Henry and Finn fit into it all. Because I’m becoming more and more convinced that they do.
I gently fold the photo again, tucking Felix against the back so that he is alone, facing away. I want to show it to him, ask him a dozen questions about what his life was like when there were no lines around his eyes and his hair wasn’t threaded through with gray. He suddenly feels like a stranger to me, and I hate it. I want to know him—every part.
I slide the photograph into my back pocket and then think better of it. Stepping onto the bottom bunk, I replace the photo where I found it, being sure to locate the old hole in the paper with the tack so that I don’t mar their beautiful faces. It feels like the picture belongs here, in this dark and secret space. Tucked away for decades now, as if whoever put it there had something to hide. And maybe I don’t want to know about it after all.
BEFORE
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13
WANING GIBBOUS MOON / PERSEIDS METEOR SHOWER / MOON AT PERIGEE
August was long and hot, so humid that Sadie discovered she was actually a curly girl. Alice had passed away in early June—only a couple of weeks after Sadie and Felix visited—and following the small funeral and the settling of Alice’s estate, Sadie found that she didn’t much care about things that had once seemed so important to her. She let her hair go natural, lived in running shorts and old T-shirts, and nearly stopped wearing makeup altogether. Because she didn’t even have the bandwidth to care about how Felix felt about her sudden transformation, she was surprised when he commented on it one day.
“I love it,” he said, wrapping the heft of her unruly waves around one of his fists. He tugged her head back gently and kissed the warm skin of her exposed neck.
“My hair?” Sadie gripped his shoulders as he tipped her even farther.
“The hair, your bare skin, all of it.”
Pushing Felix away, Sadie sank into one of the wicker chairs in her postcard-size backyard and stretched out her arms to study them. They were tanned from long morning walks in the hot, Iowa sun and afternoons spent in this exact spot, writing lesson plans on the cheap outdoor table Felix had picked up on clearance from Walmart. But her limbs were also dotted with freckles and sunspots, the skin of a middle-aged woman. It surprised her. In her heart she was forever young: a little girl wishing her mother would bring her close, a teenager longing to be pretty, a woman coming into her own in a world that assured her she wasn’t quite right. And here she was, past forty, and just beginning to figure herself out. For a moment, Sadie wished she could rewind the clock and do it all over again. Live her twenties and thirties knowing what she knew now. But then Felix winked at her before turning to lift the lid of the charcoal grill, and her life in this moment—her job, the manuscript she was working on, and Felix, flipping hamburgers as he hummed a tune she couldn’t quite place—was more than she deserved.
“I’m old,” she told him. “I’m wrinkled and graying and probably perimenopausal.”
“Bring it.” Felix grinned over his shoulder.
“But you missed the best parts. I was perfect when I was twenty-five and I didn’t even know it. Youth is wasted on the young.”
“I wouldn’t change a thing.” Burgers flipped, Felix replaced the lid and came to sit opposite Sadie. He reached across the table and drew a finger from one side of her forehead to the other. “I love this line best.”
“Stop it.” She slapped his hand away, but a smile played on her lips. “You’re no spring chicken, either.”
“And hallelujah for that.” Felix looked thoughtful. “Come on, Sadie. This isn’t you. I’m sure I would have loved you at twenty-five, but we’re grown-ups now. We know who we are and what we want. We don’t have to preen or pretend. And this”—he circled one hand before him, indicating the whole of her—“is perfect. This is Sadie in her natural element. Sadie undone. You’re wilding.”
“Wilding,” Sadie repeated, laughing.
“Returning to your natural state. Behaving in an unrestrained, organic manner.”
“Thanks, Mr. Merriam-Webster,” Sadie said. “I just stopped straightening my hair. It’s hardly a manifesto.”
But Felix was shaking his head. “It started when Alice died,” he told her. “You are becoming the woman you were always meant to be.”
Maybe he was right. At least a little bit. It was true that Sadie didn’t see her mother often in her waning years, and Alice’s influence over her life was certainly less than it had ever been, but just knowing that her mother existed in the world, thinking about Sadie and disapproving of her choices and decisions, was a burden that Sadie hadn’t even realized she carried. Alice had straightened Sadie’s hair when she was a child, so Sadie continued doing it for thirty years. Alice told her that her complexion was sallow, so Sadie never dreamed of leaving the house without blush. Alice complained that she was too loud or too quiet, too mousy or too bold, a show-off for getting an A+ on her English literature paper or “not college material” for only managing a C on her chemistry final. Too much and not enough, all at the same time, and never exactly who she was supposed to be.
“It’s kind of pathetic, isn’t it?” Sadie finally said, ruefully. “That it took me so long to figure it out.”
“Stop doing that to yourself. Life doesn’t come with a handbook. You’re just on time. We’re just on time.”
Felix was right. The evening was perfect, and they were perfect. Her hair, tangled from the wind and kinking a little crazily over shoulders, his forehead just a bit sunburnt and peeling at the hairline. The burgers were charred when they finally got around to eating them, and the tomato overripe. Sadie had a mosquito bite behind her knee that itched so badly it nearly drove her mad, but it—all of it—was everything she ever wanted.
* * *
It was a bad night for watching a meteor shower. The moon was not just waning gibbous—almost full and bright enough to fade the stars—it was near to perigee, the point when it orbited closest to earth and was therefore huge and luminous in the night sky. Sadie tried to beg out of their planned viewing on the roof of the science building at Newcastle, but Felix was uncharacteristically insistent.
“For me?” he finally asked, one degree shy of begging, and made his brown eyes wide and beseeching.
“Don’t do that,” Sadie moaned. “We’re the grown-ups, remember? We don’t pull out puppy eyes to coerce each other.”
But it worked, and they biked to Newcastle after midnight along abandoned streets that thrummed with the song of summer cicadas.
On the roof, through a door in the sticky, teeming greenhouse, they were at the highest point in Newcastle. The science building was on the edge of campus on the farthest perimeter of town, and cornfields stretched uninterrupted before them. No streetlamps obscured their view, and with a thigh-high brick wall around the flat rooftop, even if someone had been watching them from below, they would not have been able to see a thing. So, Felix drew Sadie into his arms and kissed her long and slow, his fingers tracing the dip of her spine beneath her T-shirt and his teeth nibbling her lips, her jawline, her earlobe.
“I thought we were here to watch the meteor shower,” Sadie gasped when it became apparent Felix had other activities in mind.
“Marry me,” he said in response.
That stopped her cold. Marry me? Marriage was something Sadie had long ago accepted would never happen for her. She’d stopped dreaming about children and grandchildren, someone to grow old with. Or maybe she had never dreamed of those things. If love always ends in death—and it always, always will—why love singularly at all? Sadie loved her students in a way, and felt safe in the familiar pattern of their coming and going, wave after wave on the beach where she was steady, immovable ground. She loved her late mother and what might have been. She loved classic literature and a perfect turn of phrase and a book that made her forget where she was. But this? Tethering herself to Felix? Trusting that he would be there when she woke up in the morning and curl up beside her at night? Merging their homes and their bank accounts and their schedules and their lives?
