“Hello, Jess.” He picked up a rag from the workbench and wiped his hands. He wiped and wiped until there couldn’t have been a speck of anything left. He sat on the front bumper, his hands braced on his thighs. Then he looked straight at her. Hawk nose, hawklike intensity.
She understood then she hadn’t imagined the night on the deck. She knew why she hadn’t seen him since. He didn’t have to say it. It was there in the solemnness of his face, the furrowed brow, the pulled-down corners of his mouth. She locked her legs together and held the doorframe.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll go.”
He said, “It’s not your fault.”
“What isn’t?”
“You know what I mean,” he said. He sighed, long and hard, and he pressed down on the bumper, half lifting himself. “You’re the age of my child.”
“I’m not a child,” she said.
“You think you’re not.” He laughed a little.
At that laugh, the confusion of the past weeks—really of the past year—bloomed into anger. “Don’t laugh at me,” she said. “Don’t assume you know me. You don’t know me. I’m not your daughter. Just because you’ve been this age doesn’t mean you know me.”
He nodded and wiped his forehead, leaving a black streak. “Sorry. You’re right.”
Though her skin burned, her teeth began to chatter. She took a step closer to him.
“Stay over there,” he said.
“I wasn’t—”
“I’m Dani’s father. I’m a married man. I love my family. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said. She shook her head. She understood what he was saying but not what she was feeling. Her bones ached, as if they were growing right that minute, straining against the muscle. She pointed at him. “Is this even real? You’re sitting right there?”
“I’m here.”
“So what is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“I don’t know, Jess.” He slapped the rag against his leg.
“But I didn’t imagine it, right? You feel it, too?”
He twisted the rag. “We need to forget about this.”
The car rocked as he emphasized his words with the weight of his body. He clenched his jaw. He clenched the bumper, the veins in his hands popping. In his body, she saw the truth: it was real. Her first reaction was relief: she was not alone in this feeling. She hadn’t made it up. Someone else felt it, too.
He said, “We have to forget it. We have to go back to normal.”
Meaning this, what she was feeling, was abnormal. That she was abnormal. Wrong. Nothing new there.
Her initial relief turned to excruciating sadness, and tears stung her eyes—which made her furious. Fury that she didn’t understand her own emotions, or his, fury at her abnormality, fury at herself for that lustful shaking heat inside, for wanting something she knew to be wrong. All these conflicting emotions surged, combusted, strangely alchemic. She pulled herself to her full height, rising to her tiptoes. Her rear’d arm / crested the world.
“Go ahead, Adam,” she said, his name in her mouth for the first time. “Forget me.”
Maybe You Already Know
Hi love, it’s me. I’m back. I guess I don’t need to announce myself, although who knows. I thought I’d kicked this habit years ago, but here I am. I still have days when I want to talk to you, like we used to. Sit out on the deck after putting Paul to bed, mix up a gin and tonic, shoot the shit. The worst part is I’m having trouble hearing your voice. I can hear the crickets and cicadas and the fizz of the tonic, I can smell the lime, but I can’t remember your damn voice.
I’m out on the deck now. It’s late. I just got in. A long day. Lots to tell. The moon’s hanging low on the horizon, and the stars are out by the millions. The monsoon blew through earlier, and I can smell the damp grass. You better believe it’s pretty, buster. I hope you can see it. I think of you up there as particles, floating above me in some part of the universe. I figure you had to go somewhere. It’s like you always quoted Carl Sagan: We are all made of star stuff. I loved how you said that, imitating him. Starrrr stuff. That I can still hear.
Well, first off, Paul’s come home, with Sean. First time since Caryn died. Got here a couple of days ago. Maybe you already know. I don’t know how he’s doing because he won’t tell me anything. You should see him. He looks like my father, with those bushy caterpillar eyebrows. Maybe his will turn gray too. And he looks like you, of course. Those big old ears. Some days he’ll turn and I’ll see his profile and catch my breath. Smart as ever, but also lost. And angry. That tension still radiates from him. I guess you never saw that part of him, although maybe you know. Heaven forbid I ask him anything. Hates it when I fuss and worry. I hate it myself. I’ve turned into a big fat worrier, like my mother. I’ll bet you can guess how much I like admitting that.
After you died, I used to sneak into Paul’s room and stand over his bed and watch his chest rise and fall. I’d stand there in the dark and conjure elaborate scenarios of someone trying to hurt him, and I’d grow murderous in my imagination, punching and kicking at the air, at the fictional intruders, while he lay there sleeping, having exhausted himself from running god knows how many miles. Some nights he wouldn’t be there, and I knew he was sneaking out to meet Dani but I never busted him or let on I knew. I worried about him out there, but I worried more if I held too tight, he’d never come home. Well, he’s home now.
I know it’s not easy for him to be here, but the truth is, it’s not easy for me, either. Because it makes me think about you. About how much we lost, about what I’d thought my life was supposed to be. All those emotions I thought I’d buried come rushing back. Because I want to be done—I’m done grieving you, damn it. But that’s not how it works. Not for him. Not for me. Coming up on the nineteenth anniversary of me finding you out in the orchard, lying next to the trimmers like you were sleeping. Just taking a nap.
God, we were so young, weren’t we? A couple of idiot college dropouts, backpacking around the West, hitchhiking, sleeping under that great big moon, thinking we’d live forever and a day. When your granddad died, us thinking, yes, yes, let’s work the land. Another adventure. I remember those early days, here with Paul on my hip, shaking scorpions out of my shoes, whacking at the trees with a broomstick to get the pecans to fall, and thinking, Dear god, what have we done? And there I was not even that much later, a widow at forty-one. Now here I am, almost sixty, an old woman talking to herself out on the porch. Christ on a crutch, as Esther would say.