I opened my palm; the child deposited a red chunk in it.
“Lick wish,” she said in her tiny voice.
I tried to make sense of the word, one probably mangled by my hearing problem.
The mother smiled. “Licorice,” she said. “It’s her favorite.”
Lick wish. A Lucy word. The familiar pain of grief stirred in my sternum. More memories surfaced, ambushing me. I managed to mumble my thanks, then grabbed my groceries and walked away, leaving in my wake a buzz of conversation, the voices of the teenage clerk and the woman, and then the higher voice of the girl. And then, just as I reached the automatic doors, a surprising ribbon of laughter, light and joy-filled, floated to me, and I knew without looking that it was the mother.
Even before I had crossed the parking lot, I discarded the sticky red chunk. Lick wish. In the car, I rummaged through the glove box until I found a tissue. I wiped my palm clean of the moist residue, but the vision of the woman, the weight of the infant in my arms, remained, and with it memory and the ever-present pain. I drove home in a cloud of despair, one that carried with it a hopelessness more powerful than any I had ever felt. I could not see a future that held more than this. Terrible solitude and utter isolation. It was a future I wasn’t sure I could any longer bear to face. Certainly I was unable to return to the emptiness of the house that awaited me. In the driveway, I left the groceries in the car, the frozen dinners to melt in the heat, and walked away. My stride was fast, although I had no destination, not walking toward anything, just away from something. Move on. Pick up the pieces and get on with life. The directives echoed in my head. Others were quick with advice. One person had even told me it was unhealthy to stay stuck. You wouldn’t believe the things people said. Maybe you are thinking of them too. Perhaps you want me to get on with it, but unless your life has been rent with violence, you cannot imagine how thoroughly it destroys the foundation.
I passed familiar places—the Crow’s Nest, the market, the town’s historical museum, and next to it the art museum. I passed, too, new places—a yoga studio where there had once been a dentist, a yarn shop. I continued past the town line and went on with no destination in mind. For the rest of the morning, I walked. And into the afternoon. I walked past hunger and thirst. My feet grew sore and my breath more labored, but still I kept going. Twice a cramp seized my left calf, a sign I knew indicated dehydration, but I did not stop for water. Twice, cars stopped, and each time a familiar face asked if I needed a lift home, offers I refused. Later, I would trace the route in my car and discover I had walked for more than thirty miles.
At last, well after dark, nearly disoriented with exhaustion and dehydration, I walked toward the next open business I saw, a gas station and convenience store. I went in and called for a taxi. Even exhaustion had not lessened or numbed the despair, despair as thoroughly a part of me as muscle and marrow.
At home, I managed to climb the stairs to my room and fell fully clothed on the bed. Just as I closed my eyes, the scene from the market played out behind my lids. I saw the woman from the market and saw again the moment the baby had slipped from her arms, my own reflexive action in reaching for the child, the damp weight in my arms. I recalled how the woman’s shock so quickly turned to gratitude and how her eyes had looked into mine holding both serenity and something very much like sorrow. Again a twinge of recognition hit me, something faint about her expression, her eyes, but it eluded me. And then I recalled the ribbon of her laughter following me as I left the market. At last I escaped into a fitful sleep.
I woke at dawn and knew a half-conscious and too-brief moment of peace before awareness snapped in. Another long and pointless day stretched in front of me. More than one person had told me it would get better, that time did heal. As if such a thing were possible. Did pain ever become bearable? Fainter? I couldn’t imagine.
I forced myself to move, to go through the morning routine. Shaved. Made coffee. Toast. I poured a second mug and carried it with me up to the studio where the oyster painting waited on the easel. Work I knew I would never finish. I straightened my worktable, cleaned brushes, moved about my space seeking purpose. I sorted through a stack of CDs, rejecting Schumann and Saint-Sa?ns, Bizet and Barber, settling at last on Chopin. I sat in the chair by the window and closed my eyes as the notes of the Concerto No. 2 filled the room. I stayed there for long moments. A ray of the morning sun cut through the pane and heated a stripe across my legs. Finally, I stirred and retrieved a sketch pad and drawing pencil. I have often wondered what led my actions that morning, for looking back I recall my sense of feeling almost in a trance. Certainly it was nothing I planned.
I hadn’t attempted a portrait in months, and the work was halting at first. Outside, a car horn sounded, but absorbed in my task, I barely heard it. Gradually, my gestures grew sure, and an image appeared on the page as if rising up from beneath the surface of the paper. Raven hair framed a face more round than oval; the eyes, too, were round. And dark. There was something faintly foreign about her, suggesting a heritage either Portuguese or Italian. The likeness was not exact; I saw this even before it was completed. I was working from memory, and the line of the jaw was not precise, the arch of the brow not quite right, but I had captured something there that I had seen in the woman’s features, the face both serene and sad.
“Will?”
I was so startled my hand jerked on the pad and left a ragged pencil line. I looked up and saw Sophie in the doorway.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I phoned but I guess you didn’t hear.”
“No.”
“I don’t mean to disturb your work.”
“You didn’t. I was taking a break.” I set the drawing on the table, fought a growing dread. Were we going to argue again?
She was wearing a summery dress in some kind of gossamer material that danced around her as she approached the easel and looked at the abandoned still life. “This is good,” she said. “Remember the critic who said you understood light like the masters did? It was in that feature in the Times, I think. Remember?”
“Yes.” So long ago. Before.
“He was right. You do.”
I didn’t tell her I no longer cared about the painting.
She picked out a brush from a jar of brushes and rolled the handle in her fingers, a delaying tactic. I realized she was nervous.
“What is it, Sophie?”
“I’m going to go away for a while.”
“Where?” I kept my voice steady although the shock of her words ran through me.
“Maine.”
“How long?”
She played with the brush, smoothed the bristles. “Two months.”
“For the summer then.”
“Maybe longer.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not going to Amy’s. I’m going with a friend.”