I take my leave of the library and drive away. When I see the pull-off into the woods north of our home, I make a split-second decision and veer in. Three other cars are parked in the small lot. I notice a man sits at the steering wheel in each one. I wonder what they’re waiting for. I walk east to the shore and then south, hoping to find a path that will loop back west so I can explore more rather than retracing my steps. As the daylight fades, I’m about to resign myself to turning around when I realize I’m higher above the water than I think. I reorient myself. I figure out I’m above the cave we’ve noticed north of our beach. I step-slide my way down to the entrance. I don’t think about how I’ll get back up. I duck into the grotto. I hear the dripping around me and look back out, unsure I should go farther inside. A sheer drop leads to the surf below. The light travels only as far as the shallow parts of the cave. In the dark, I can see writing and drawings on the wall. The layers of scribbling grow denser as I venture farther back. I cannot make any of it out. My eyes exhaust themselves. I hunt my pockets for my phone, but can’t find it. I wish I had my camera.
I look around the mouth of the cave to assess how I’ll get off the cliff. The trees above are spindly, held down by weak, rocky soil. I have nothing with which to lasso them. It starts to drizzle. I argue with myself if it would be better to make a go of the climb now, just as the rocks are getting slippery, or if I should wait to see if the rain clouds pass before the sun sets. I take a seat inside the lip of the cave. I lean against the rock. I close my eyes. I wait for an idea. When I open my eyes again, I am dozing in my rocking chair on the front of our wraparound porch. I ask Julie where I’ve been. She laughs. She tells me I haven’t moved from that chair since I got home from the library, even when she asked me if I wanted to go for a walk on the beach with her. I start to explain what I found out about the Kinslers.
She stops me. “You told me all of this when you got home.”
I am afraid to admit I don’t remember. Like a blacked-out drunk trying to cover for himself, I say, “Of course I did. I know.”
23
WHEN ANOTHER BRUISE appears down the length of my shin, I go to the doctor and he tells me I’m dangerously low on an array of vitamins. He writes down, “Iron, B, D, and E in concentrated doses,” and hands me the slip of paper.
I buy the vitamins and swallow them down each day, but the bruises still come. My inner thighs look as if they’ve been pummeled so I stop going to the beach to walk or swim and start wearing sweatpants to work because everything hurts. I stop James on his way to the living room and lift up my shirt to show him the bruise leaking down my chest, bleeding from my sternum to my belly button, and James says, “When did that one show up?”
“Today.”
He reaches out toward the bruise, placing his palm flat against me, gently, the bronze of his hand contrasting with my pale stomach, and the spot gets warm, as if his hand were a heating pad, and he pushes against my ribs a little harder, and the hum in the air swells louder, and it looks as if the bones were folding in, as if they’d turned to clay, but they don’t feel that way. It feels as if I’m getting better, stronger.
When he pulls his hand away, the ribs slowly rise again, like memory foam, and I tell myself the answer is breath.
24
“THEY SHOULD BE able to diagnose this, right? Bruises seem like a pretty straightforward symptom,” I say.
Julie leans down to turn another shovelful of dirt. “But I wonder how many times a physician is certain of his diagnosis and it’s actually wrong. I’d prefer no diagnosis to a wrong one.” She tugs with all her might at a plant whose leaves look like the blade of a saw. “This is a weed, right?” She answers her own question and pulls.
I glance around the yard. “Anything I can do?”
“Out here? Not yet. You can mow the lawn later. For now, you can start painting or you can replace the hardware on the sinks.”
“I can paint, but I think we need to call a plumber to do the other stuff.”
“Fine. Remember to tape all along the ceiling and baseboards … doors … windows.”
With one last tug, the roots of the plant show themselves. The fist of white tentacles is covered in dirt. It’s bigger, more bulbous, than I expected.
I try to remember what paint color goes where. The cans and supplies have been piled in the entryway since we returned from the hardware store. “Maybe we could paint together, though? I worry I’ll do the tape wrong.”
Julie stops for a moment, frustrated that I can’t take care of this on my own. She knows I’m right, though. “How about you finish pulling weeds, and I’ll get started taping?”
She is missing the point. I want us to be together, but I accept her offer. Flora is something I do know. Julie hands me her gloves. She turns to head inside.
“Wait.” I grab her around the waist. I kiss her. She kisses me back. When we pull away, her face shines ruddy with exertion.
“Thank you.” The smile fades fast as she focuses behind me. “Again!”
I follow her eyes to Rolf at his window, holding a mug. He looks as though he’s stopping on his way somewhere else. I wave. He doesn’t respond.
“I wonder how long he’s been watching,” Julie says, staring back.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “He doesn’t matter.”
25
I TAKE AN afternoon off. I tell Sam and Kim I have a doctor’s appointment back in the city. I complain about not having found someone local yet. Really, though, I head for the art museum to see a photography exhibit I missed before we moved. I don’t tell Julie. She’d be angry I’m using a vacation day. She’d try to tell me that I shouldn’t take a day off so soon after starting this new job. She’d want to come along. But I need an afternoon alone. I plan to get there and back in the span of the workday. That leaves me about two hours of museum time.
I spend the drive there clearing my head. I watch the rural farms turn to suburbs and then city gridlock.
In the modern wing, I stand before a black-and-white photo of a gentleman wrapped in thick foam. The material is what you’d use as a mattress if you didn’t have the time to save for springs and feathers. His head cranes back as if he’s bothered by something. He smokes. A long clothbound electrical cord winds through his arms, draped on the foam. Concrete walls him in.
I think about how smoking is a way of trying to satisfy each moment. It disregards the future. How many cigarettes must this man have already smoked? How many more will he smoke in his lifetime? Is there a way all the filters could connect end to end to bridge the gap between this man and me? This man—who I’ve assumed lives across the ocean because of the information on the placard—and I could be united by some superglue that would bind his cigarette filters together. They’d stretch up and over the ocean. Some magical force would suspend them. I know, though, that the shape of the earth would refuse this happening. I will never find this man. I will never ask him what was bothering him. My breath rushes in and out. Did this man make it through whatever issue caused his mouth to jack into such a sprawling smile? Neck strung tight. I want to tell that man that the smoke will never fill him up. Nothing will. The yellowing it leaves behind will get closer and darker. The thing he’s trying to expand will shrink into nothing. What he’s found is a way to close in on himself. I stand in front of that print. Sweat prickles my skin. A photo is reflections of light. Everything invisible comes together to show you something. My throat constricts. I start to laugh. My chest feels snug. A security guard comes closer. I lose my balance and vision and sound.
I wake up on a gurney, but refuse to go to the hospital. An EMT says into my cell phone, “Okay, he’s coming to, I’m going to put him on.”
It’s Julie. She wants to know if I’m okay. “What happened? Why are you all the way in the city?”