“You never did that.”
“Of course not…I couldn’t.” She didn’t quite know where to look now, and settled for directly ahead. “God, you just don’t get it, do you?”
That last one was like a death knell—a truth so quiet and brutal. The effort it took had weakened her, if only momentarily, and she slid back down upon him, her cheek like stone on his neck. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
But for some reason, he went on with it.
Maybe to welcome the nearing defeat.
“Just tell me.” The taste of his voice. It was dry and sandy, and those bricks had been thrown up to him, and he swallowed them each in turn. “Just tell me how to fix it.”
The act of breathing was suddenly an Olympic final, and where was Emil Zátopek when he needed him? Why hadn’t he trained like that lunatic Czech? An athlete with that sort of endurance could surely stand up to a night like this.
But could Michael?
Again:
“Just tell me, I’ll fix it.”
“But that’s it.”
Abbey’s voice was horizontal, put there, dropped on his chest. No anxiety, no labor.
No desire to fix or be fixed:
“Maybe there is nothing,” she said. “Maybe it’s.” She full-stopped. She began. “Maybe we’re just—not right, the way we thought.”
His last gasp now, final breath:
“But I—…” He cut off; he trailed. “So much.”
“I know you do,” and there was such pity in her, but a ruthless kind. “I do too, but maybe it’s not enough.”
Had she ended it with a pinprick, he’d have bled to death in bed.
The night ahead, having slept so long and hard during the day, was as wretched and restless as the last. He looked through the wooden box, and thought back to the morning porch: The milk jumping the rail.
The jugular in my neck.
He saw Achilles and Tommy, Henry and Rory.
And Carey.
Of course he thought of Carey, and Saturday, and if she might go to The Surrounds anyway. He’d die to know, but would never ask her, and then he stopped and fully realized—a final forceful acknowledgment.
He got up and leaned forward on the desk.
You’re gone, he thought.
You left.
* * *
— Soon after dawn the Murderer was up, too, and they walked the river like a road; they hiked up from the house.
At first there was a general slant, as the riverbed rose in altitude.
After a few hours, though, they were climbing giant, crestfallen boulders, and holding on to willows and river gums. Whether steep or gradual, one thing never changed; they could always see the power. The banks had a sort of girth. There was an obvious history of debris.
“Look at this,” the Murderer said. They were in a heavily wooded section; there were ladders of sunlight, hung up high in the shade, all in varied directions. His foot on an uprooted tree. A jacket of moss, and foliage.
And this, thought Clay.
He was next to an enormous rock, which appeared to have been dislodged.
They climbed more than half the day like that, and ate lunch on a long, granite overhang. They looked across the ranges.
The Murderer unpacked his bag.
Water. Bread and oranges. Cheese and dark chocolate. All of it passed from hand to hand, but nothing much more was said. Clay was sure there were similar thoughts, though—of the river, its showing of force: So this is what we’re up against.
* * *
— Through afternoon, they walked back down. Now and then a hand would reach up, to help the other, and when they returned, in darkness, in the riverbed, nothing more yet was spoken.
But surely it was now.
If ever there was a time to begin, it was this.
It wasn’t.
Not really:
There were still too many questions, too much memory—but one of them had to make a start, and the Murderer, rightfully, cracked first. If anyone was to attempt a sense of partnership, it should be him. They’d walked many miles together that day, and so he looked at him, and asked: “You want to build a bridge?”
Clay nodded but looked away.
“Thanks,” said Michael.
“For what?”
“For coming.”
“I didn’t come here for you.”
Family bonding, the Clay way.
In many ways, I guess it’s true, that even bad times are full of good times (and great times) and the time of their demise was no different. There were still those Sunday mornings, when she’d ask him to read to her in bed, and she’d kiss him with her morning breath, and Michael could only surrender. He’d gladly read The Quarryman. He’d first run a finger on the lettering.
She’d say, “What was the name of that place again, where he learned about marble, and stone?”
Quietly, he’d answer.
The town was Settignano.
Or, “Read what it says about the Prisoners again.”
Page 265:
“They were wild and twisted—unfashioned, incomplete—but they were colossal, monumental anyway, and would fight, it seemed, for forever.”
“For forever?” She’d roll onto him and kiss his stomach; she’d always loved his stomach. “Is that a misprint, do you think?”
“No, I think he meant it. He’s gambling on us thinking it’s a mistake…imperfect, like the Slaves.”
“Huh.” She’d kiss and kiss again, across and over, up toward his ribcage. “I love it when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Fight for what you love.”
* * *
—
But he couldn’t fight for her.
Or at least, not how she wanted.
To be fair, there was nothing malicious in Abbey Dunbar, but as time widened and the good moments shortened, it became clearer, each day, that their lives were going separate ways. More to the point, she was changing, he stayed the same. Abbey never took aim or attacked him. It just got slippery, the hanging on.
Looking back, Michael remembered movies. He remembered times when the entire Friday-night cinema laughed, when he laughed, and Abbey sat watching, unfazed. Then, when the whole brigade of moviegoers was dead silent, Abbey would smile at something private, just her and the screen. If only he could have laughed when she did, maybe they’d have been okay— But he stopped himself.
That was ridiculous.
Movies and plastic popcorn don’t increase the chances of decimation, do they? No, it was more a compilation: a greatest hits of two people who’d traveled as far as they could together, to fade away.
* * *
—
Sometimes she had friends over from work.
They had clean fingernails.
Both women and men.
It was a long way from construction zones.
Michael was painting a lot in the garage, too, so his hands were either powdery or stubbed with color. He drank coffee from the kettle, they drank it from machines.
As for Abbey, her hair was increasingly cropped, her smile business-like, and in the end, she was brave enough to leave. She could touch his arm like years gone by, with a comment or a quip. Or joke and wink and smile at him—but each time was less convincing. He knew very well that later on, they’d be in separate states of the bed.
“Good night.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Often, he’d get up.
He’d go to the garage and paint, but his hands were so damn heavy, as if caked, cemented in. Often, he took The Quarryman, too, and read pages like a kind of prescription; each word to ease the pain. He would read and work till his eyes burned, and a truth beside, then on him.
There was he and Buonarroti.
One artist in the room.
* * *
—
Maybe if they’d argued.
Maybe that’s what was missing.
Some volatility.
Or maybe just more cleaning up.
No, it was pure and simple fact: Life was pointed elsewhere for Abbey Dunbar now, and a boy she once loved, behind her. Where once he painted her and she loved him for it, now it seemed only a lifeline. He could capture her laughing over the dishes. Or standing by the sea, with surfers at her back, post-wave. They were still lovely and rich, those paintings, but where once there was only love in them, now it was love and neediness. It was nostalgia; love and loss.
* * *
—
Then one day, she stopped, midsentence.
She whispered, “It’s a shame…”