59
NOTHING. NOT WHAT I remember from my dream. Not what Julie saw when she found the neighbor here. We make our way to the back of the cave. The walls gape and drip. Blank. A clog in our sight.
Julie asks, “Where could all of that writing have gone?”
In the pauses, I stifle my worries. Maybe I did only dream what I saw. Maybe Julie’s mind made up a truth to affirm what I’d told her. Maybe she turned abstract shadows on the wall into some sort of language. Something imaginary can stick. Something false can feel real.
“The waves,” Julie says, “they must have washed it all away.”
I feel these words like a rusty wire through my veins. They rascal through. I know this impression of turning over inside myself. I know how it feels to speak a lie to make it sound more true.
60
WHEN I RETURN to work, Connie takes me to lunch. I fill her in. I have an idea of how she can help us, and I am prepared to ask for it.
I tell her everything she needs to know, sidestepping the most extreme parts, but touching on the basics: the cave, the missing neighbor, the police. “I mean, I know what this looks like. If it wasn’t clear before, I’ve certainly lost it now, right?”
“I think you’re a strong lady. I mean, I ran away when I thought you were being stubborn, and look at all you stick around for. You’re putting up with a lot of weird-ass shit.”
I exhale. “I know. But I can’t run because at least some of it is me. I have to admit that, but I’m starting to doubt myself. Is the house haunted? Or am I imagining things? Am I trying to manufacture some sort of tipping point so we can leave?”
“I don’t know, but you and James are welcome to come stay with me. Anytime. Come take a break and see how things go.”
This invitation sends an optimistic buzz through me; she has offered without my having to ask. “Really? We might take you up on that. I would love to feel normal again.”
“The perils of being a homeowner, huh?”
“My God, is that all it is?” I drain my beer.
“A second?”
I cock my head as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Connie laughs. “I believe you, Julie. I didn’t want to, but I do.”
That’s really the most I could ask from anyone: to hear someone say that I count more in her mind than logic. But I need to force myself out of thinking this is something so extraordinary that it merits that sort of attention. I roll my eyes. “Don’t let me take you down with me.”
61
I STOP AT the grocery store that night, and the checkout lady recognizes me. “That neighbor of yers is off missin’, huh?”
I swallow hard, a hockey puck through a drinking straw. “I guess so.” I try to force worry and sympathy into my voice. I have lost track of my concern for Rolf and turned it on myself.
“Must be Alz-hammers.” Her eyebrows are drawn on at a slant today, stopping short of curving down in the middle, so she has an expression of concern even though the rest of her face remains blank. “Shame that someone wasn’t takin’ care of him. Now he’s gone and got himself lost.”
I inhale, afraid to say more.
“Did he seem confused to yah?” She scans the bagels, coffee, frozen fish fillets, and glances up at me.
I allow my head the slimmest pivot right, then left.
“That’s how they say it goes: all there one minute, vanished in the maze of yer mind the next. It’s hard to understand it, but I guess that’s the point.”
“If the point is that it’s pointless,” I mumble, and slide my card.
She frowns and looks away. “Well, anyway, nice to see yah. I’ll say a prayer for yer neighbor. Take care now.”
I thank her and drive the dark road home, the canopy of trees having grown so dense with the summer rain it’s like driving through a tunnel. I allow myself to consider the possibility that Rolf had lost control of his mind before he lost himself to the woods or the water or wherever he might be. Even if this was true, I could still see a logic to his world, enough of a story that I could almost grab hold of it and imagine what filled the gaps.
Coming in the front door, I eye the photo of my stepmother as a little girl on the wall and then another of my step-grandmother as a teen right next to it, stained, blotched bright, as if the light is in the viewer’s eyes, like when you look at a person haloed against the sun and you can only see their faulty edges burned away by the shine.
When her mother died, I helped Carol clean out the house and found these photos in a box. I asked her if I could have them. “Sure,” she said. “They’re all muddled with water damage and fading. What would I do with them?”
“I’ll take them, then.” I tried not to feel judged.
I stand and watch as that stain shifts around the grandmother I have no claim to, her chin and left cheek disappearing to the burst, then surfacing again, the blemish hiding her other half.
“James, how can a stain move around a picture?”
He tilts his head.
“James, Connie offered for us to stay with her for a while to get away from here and see how we feel.”
James approaches the idea carefully. I watch him roll it around. “Yes,” he says. “Let’s try it.”
62
“PLEASE, PLEASE. Come in!” Connie wraps her arms around Julie. When they let go, there’s a moment of hesitation. Connie and I half hug. I inhale a few of her curls, but don’t acknowledge it. We release quickly. “I put new sheets on the bed in the guest room for you. You can have the bathroom next to it all to yourselves. Anything in the fridge? Yours! Don’t fuck up my DVR, though, okay? Welcome!”
We laugh. Connie invites us into the kitchen. She’s set out bagels, muffins, and fresh coffee. “Jeez, Connie, you’re not hosting a B and B here. You didn’t need to go to any trouble. This is too much.”
“It’s no trouble at all. I’ll be right back!” She disappears upstairs.
“This is really nice of her,” I say to Julie. “I was convinced she hated me. I wasn’t expecting this.”
Julie looks at me a little bewildered. “Me neither. And she doesn’t hate you; it’s just that she can’t see the full picture. She’s protective of me.”
I try not to feel defensive. “This blueberry muffin is mine.” I pour myself a cup of coffee.
Connie returns. “So, what’s on the docket? Should we sit on the back porch? It’s a beautiful day!”
“You don’t need to entertain us, Connie. I’m just going to read my book,” I say.
“Fine. Miss out on all the fun. What do you think, Julie: patio?” I notice the way the tip of Connie’s nose moves, ever so slightly, as she talks. When she closes her mouth, her nose pulls down a bit, like a bunny, sniffing.
Julie smiles sheepishly. “I know it’s early, but I could use a drink.”
“Eleven a.m. is five o’clock somewhere! You’re my kind of lady.” Connie stands up from her chair and goes to the corner cabinet. She pulls out a bottle of tequila. “How about some agua fresca? I have fresh watermelon in the fridge.”