Before his flight Santiago did something he had not done in years; he went to the airport chapel. Most people did not know that many airports had churches. But Santiago had been raised a strict Catholic, and his grandmother always insisted that he stop inside and pray for safe delivery before taking off. He never did, though he would promise her dutifully, but he always scanned the terminal signs for the chapel icon and crossed himself just in case.
LAX’s chapel was a long, unadorned room with two rows of wooden pews and a simple altar. The smell was what he noticed first. He could walk into any Catholic church blindfolded and know exactly where he was. From Lima to Los Angeles, they smelled the same. The lingering scent of incense and flowers, Murphy’s oil soap, furniture polish, candle wax, the cheap newsprint of the missalettes, and something musty and indistinct that was simply time. The room was cool and dark, empty of people. A message board informed him that they performed Mass every evening, but he had just missed the last one. He didn’t mind. He preferred to talk to God alone.
He squeezed into one of the pews and knelt. It had been a long time since he had been here. What should he say? Phrases from his childhood came to him, dusty and inchoate. Out of habit, he began reciting the Lord’s prayer, but the real thoughts, his actual prayers, interrupted before he finished. He asked for his grandmother to rest in eternal peace. He asked for God to watch over his parents. He prayed that Cleo not be in pain. He prayed for her and Frank to be happy again. He asked for mercy for Anders. He prayed that Lila be allowed to dance, wherever she was. His grandmother had always told him not to pray for himself, but at the very end he did. He prayed for the courage to talk to Dominique. He asked for love to come to him again. Finally, he humbly asked God for the strength to bear his hungry heart, the heaviest weight of all to bear.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Late March
Upstate, what little snow was left had hardened to ice. Cleo had pretended to sleep for most of the train ride from the city, eventually slipping into a shallow, dreamless doze for the last few stops. Frank had alternated between anxiously staring out of the window, anxiously staring at his phone, and anxiously staring at Cleo. She had been released from hospital that morning.
They took a taxi from the train station, passing frosted white fields and quietly dilapidated houses in silence. One of the houses they passed was surrounded by a shoulder-height pronged metal fence. Hanging over the side was something brown and furry. As they came closer, it became clear that a deer had unsuccessfully attempted to jump over it, lacerating its stomach on one of the sharp spikes in the process. It was torn wide open down the middle, suspended in a drooping arc, its front legs hanging over one side and its hind legs trailing down the other.
“Was that what I think it was?” asked Frank, craning round to get another look as they rushed past.
“It was if you thought it was a dead deer,” said the driver.
Cleo put a hand to her mouth.
“Is that normal?” asked Frank. “Is that a normal thing to happen? For a deer to commit suicide on your property?”
The driver chuckled. “I don’t know if it’s normal,” he said. “But it happened.”
It was late afternoon, and the sky had blanched to an anemic shade of gray by the time they arrived at Frank’s cabin. The taxi pulled away, and the two of them looked at each other in uneasy silence. They were uncomfortable alone with each other, Frank thought as he turned to unlock the front door. Cleo’s accident, the ensuing days apart, had dissolved whatever easy intimacy they had fostered over the past year.
He had visited her all seven days she was held under psychiatric observation, but they had done little more than exchange small talk about his work and the weather. He had imagined his visits would be punctuated by violent outbursts from the other patients or the chaotic ramblings of the palpably mad, but in fact the place was oppressively quiet. Most patients, it seemed, passed their days sleeping or staring into the air in front of them. Life seemed to stand still within the ward’s walls. Frank hoped that now she was free, Cleo would open up a little. But it appeared she had nothing to say.
Inside, the house was dark and silent, with the thick, still quality air that develops when it has not been disturbed for many weeks. Cleo stood in the entranceway, shivering, and pulled her coat tighter around her.
“It’s colder in here than out there,” she said.
“The power’s out,” said Frank, toggling the light switch on and off. He walked into the kitchen and checked the taps. “The hot water works, at least. It must have just gone.”
“Lucky us,” said Cleo.
“We’re in the country.” Frank sighed. “It happens. It should come back on tomorrow.”
Cleo thought that this suggested knowledge of country living was pretty rich, coming from a man who had just had paroxysms over the sight of a dead deer, but she decided against mentioning it.
“Do you have candles at least?” she asked.
“In the credenza. I’ll make a fire.”
Cleo looked at him over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “You know how?”
Frank shrugged off this slight. “If the cavemen managed it,” he said.
The cabin was not grand, just a living room, kitchen, and eating area with two sparse bedrooms upstairs. It was a summer house really, built for the warmer months, with a simple, unadorned interior designed to lead the eye outside, through the large windows, down the tree-studded hill in the back to the sparkling body of water that lay beyond. Frank had bought it over a decade ago mostly for this view of the lake, which was spectacular. Today, however, the water was covered in a layer of ice the flat, dirty gray of uncooked shrimp. It did not sparkle. Cleo returned with some tapered candles and a bag of tea lights. She looked around the room at the scuffed brown leather sofa, balding beanbag chair, and plain wooden coffee table.
“It’s different than I remember,” she said sadly.
Frank felt a mixture of defensiveness and deflation for this house, the first piece of property he’d ever owned.
“We’ll make it cozy,” he said.
They both fell silent, thinking of the last time they had come here, that happy sunlit weekend in May. It was as if they could dip their hands beneath the surface of the day and feel the current of that other life, only nine months earlier, running just beneath it. There was Cleo running naked through the living room, dripping lake water across the floor, and Frank laughing just behind her, trying to grab her slippery limbs. Here was the kitchen where they had eaten fresh fruit, cereal, or sandwiches for every meal because neither of them could cook. There was Frank dozing on the sofa, a book tented on his bare chest, and Cleo gently setting it aside to lay her head in its place. It was on the train home that he had asked her to marry him. She’d lifted her cheek from his shoulder in wonder. How did you know that was what I wanted? He’d laughed. So that’s a yes? Yes, she’d said, a thousand yeses, yes. And it had felt like the beginning of everything.