The smell of hot chips nearly killed him.
He walked up to the railway, changed at Town Hall, then counted the stops and walked. He’d have crawled if he’d had to, to the racing quarter. There was one place, at least, he could go.
* * *
—
When he got there, way up on that hilltop, for the first time in a long time, he paid proper notice to the gravestone:
PENELOPE DUNBAR
A MANY-NAMED WOMAN:
the Mistake Maker, the Birthday Girl, the Broken-Nosed Bride, and Penny
MUCH LOVED BY EVERYONE
BUT ESPECIALLY
THE DUNBAR BOYS
When he read it, he dropped to a crouch.
He smiled hardest at the last part, and our brother lay down, cheek-first on the ground, and he stayed there alone a long time. He cried silently, nearly an hour—
And these days, so often, I think of it, and I wish that I just could have been there. As the one who’d be next to beat him up, and bring him down, and punish him hard for his sins, I wish I’d somehow known everything.
I’d have held him, and quietly told him.
I’d have said to him, Clay, come home.
And so they’d be married.
Penelope Lesciuszko and Michael Dunbar.
In terms of time, it took approximately a year and seven months.
In other terms more difficult to measure, it was a garageful of portraits, and paintwork at the piano.
It was a right-hand turn and a car crash.
And a shape—the geometry of blood.
* * *
—
Mostly it comes in glimpses, that period.
Time shrunk down to moments.
Sometimes they’re scattered broadly—like winter, and her learning to drive. Or September, and hours of music. There’s a whole November of his clumsy attempts at her language, and then December through February to April, and a few visits at least, to the town he grew up in, and its sweat and surging heat.
In between, of course, there were movies (and he didn’t check her for laughter), and a love she found for video—likely her greatest teacher. When movies were on TV, she recorded them for practicing English: a 1980s catalogue, from E.T. to Out of Africa, Amadeus to Fatal Attraction.
There was continuing The Iliad and The Odyssey. Cricket games on TV. (Could it really last five whole days?) And countless salted ferry rides on that bright, whitecapped water.
There were the slipstreams, too, of doubt, when she’d see him disappearing, to some place, held doggedly, within. The inner terrain of not-Abbey again, a landscape both vast and barren. She’d be calling his name from next to him: “Michael. Michael?”
He’d be startled. “What?”
They stood at the borders of anger, or foot holes of small irritation; both sensing how soon they could deepen. But just when she thought he might say to her, “Don’t come for me, don’t call,” he’d place a hand down onto her forearm. Her fears, through the months, were calmed.
* * *
—
Sometimes, though, the moments stretch out.
They stop, and unfold completely.
For Clay, they were the ones Penny told him about in the last few months of her life—when she was high and hot on morphine, and desperate to get everything right. Most memorable was a pair of them, and both occurring in evening; and exactly twelve months between them.
Penelope saw them as titles:
The Night He Finally Showed Me.
And Paintwork at the Piano.
* * *
—
The date was December 23, the eve of Christmas Eve.
The first year, they’d eaten together in Michael’s kitchen, and just as they’d finished, he’d said to her: “Here, I’m going to show you.”
They walked out into the garage.
It was strange that in all the months they’d known each other, she’d never set foot inside it. Instead of taking the side entrance, he used the roller door out at the front. A noise the sound of a train.
Inside, when he hit the light, and removed the curtain of sheets, Penny was amazed—for amongst the kernels of floating dust there were countless sheets of canvas, all stretched over wooden frames. Some were enormous. Some the size of a sketch pad. On each of them was Abbey, and sometimes she was a woman, sometimes a girl. She could be mischievous, or buttoned-up. Often her hair ran all the way to her waist. In others it was cut to her neckline; she held the streams of it in her arms. Always, though, she was a life force, and she never left you for long. Penelope realized that anyone who looked at these paintings would know that whoever painted them felt even more than the portraits could suggest. It was in every stroke before you, and every one left out. It was the precision of the canvas stretch, and the mistakes kept perfectly intact—like a drip of mauve at her ankle, or an ear that floated next to her, a millimeter from her face.
Its perfection didn’t matter:
All of it was right.
In one painting, the biggest one, where her feet sank into the sand, Penny felt like she could ask for the shoes she held out, in her open, generous palm. As she looked, Michael sat by the gaping doorway, his back against the wall, and when Penny had seen enough, she sat herself down beside him. Their knees and elbows touched.
“Abbey Dunbar?” she asked.
Michael nodded. “Formerly Hanley—and now, I have no idea.”
She could feel her heart rise then, and quicken in her throat. She forced it slowly back.
“I—” He almost stopped himself. “I’m sorry I didn’t show you earlier.”
“You can paint?”
“I could. Not anymore.”
At first she pondered her next thought, or move—but now she flatly refused it. She didn’t ask if he might paint her instead; no, she would never compete with that woman, and now she touched his hair. She ran her hand through, and said, “So just don’t ever paint me.” She fought to find the nerve. “Do other things instead….”
It was a memory Clay held dear, for it was hard for her to tell him all this (but death was a hell of a motivator); how Michael had come up to meet her, and she’d led him directly over—to the place where Abbey had left him, where he’d lain, undone, on the floor.
“I said to him,” she’d said to the boy, and she was in such a withering state. “I said, ‘Take me where you were exactly’—and he did it straightaway.”
Yes, they’d gone there and they’d held and gave and hurt and fought, and forced everything unwanted away. There was the breath of her, the sound of her, and a flooding of what they’d become; and they did so for as long as it took—and between each turn, they lay and talked; Penelope often spoke first. She’d said she was lonely as a child, and wanted at least five children, and Michael said all right. He even joked and said, “God, I hope we don’t get five boys!” He really should have been more careful.
“We’ll get married.”
It was him—it just came out.
They were grazed by then, and bruised; their arms, their knees and shoulder blades.
He went on. “I’ll find a way to ask you. Maybe this time next year.”
And she shifted below, holding tightly.
“Of course,” she said, “okay,” and she kissed him and turned him over. Then a final, near-silent “Again.”
* * *
—
And the next year came the second title.
Paintwork at the Piano.
December 23.
It was Monday night, with the light turning red outside.
The noise of neighborhood boys came in, playing handball.
Penelope had just walked by them.
On Mondays, she always came home around this time, a little after eight-thirty; she’d finished the last of her cleaning jobs, a lawyer’s office, and on this night, she did as always: She dropped her bag down by the door.
She walked to the piano and sat—but this time something was different. She opened the lid and saw the words, on the keys, and they were lettered there simply, yet beautifully:
He’d remembered.
He’d remembered, and how her hand covered her mouth, and how she smiled, and burned in the eyes; all doubt driven far, even gone for now, as she wavered above the letters. She didn’t want to disturb them, or smear the paint. Even if it was dry for hours.