“Harris asked me to bring her in,” Madeleine apologizes.
This is the first time she has given them a glimpse of her personal life. Mark shoots a look at Harris, but he is blind to the message, distracted by his prolonged eye-lock with the child.
In their tradition of imagining the hidden lives of others, they have mused for weeks about their inscrutable shop assistant. She is always pleasant, but with the air of someone with a secret, they’ve concluded. According to Camille, her husband had been a coworker of Camille’s own ex-husband in Manhattan, but underwent a radical change after moving to the suburbs. She delivered this information in a breathy voice, but when pressed for more, demurred. Madeleine doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s been a challenge for her.
Through the fall and winter, Mark draws and redraws the elevations for the Ezekiel Slater house. The Von Maurens have offered an hourly rate rather than a lump sum, which has been quickly compounding in his favor. He has been straining for ideas. Perhaps the clients will ultimately lose patience and fire him. Perhaps this is his private hope. If he were released from this job, there would be nothing holding him here. All winter, the desire to leave has been expanding in him, crowding everything else. It has begun to push against his diaphragm, constricting his lungs. The air of this beautiful place, now so cold, so oxygenated and clean—this brisk vapor of the country rich—has begun to sear his individual cilia.
He approaches Harris one last time. It is a wet night in March, in the dead space before spring. The air is so raw that it invades the living room. Mark finds Harris bending at the fireplace in his dragon robe and sheepskin moccasins, clumsily arranging kindling. From behind, he looks corpulent, effete. Mark sits quietly on the Ghost chair. When Harris turns and sees him there, he smiles broadly, but the smile dims as Mark begins to speak.
“Well, tell me then,” Harris says gently, after a moment. He drags the shaggy ottoman closer to Mark and settles onto it. “Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” Mark hears the petulance in his own voice.
“It sounds to me like you’re down on yourself about the Von Maurens. You’re afraid they won’t like the work, and you’re coming up with a contingency plan. Am I right?”
“You know that’s not it. You know this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”
“Listen. How about we go volunteer somewhere for a couple of weeks so you can get it out of your system?”
Mark shakes his head. “That’s not enough. That’s not a life change.”
“I understand,” Harris says. “And it makes sense. It does. It makes sense for kids right out of college. It makes sense for retired people. But, honey, it doesn’t make sense for us.”
Mark stares at his fleshy cheeks, at the pink skin at his temple where the hair is thinning.
What if I became just like them?
What if I went away without you?
“But I’ve been thinking”—Harris touches Mark’s knee—“and I do agree that we should find a way to help others. I was thinking we could donate a share of the store’s proceeds to charity. Ten percent? You and I could pick a charity, or more than one.”
Mark listens. There is a click of satisfaction on a buried level inside him—donating to charity is a fine idea—but the rest of his being is unmoved. He stares at the hairline of his partner, his husband, and feels possessed by a single imperative.
“I’m sorry,” Mark mumbles. “It’s not enough.”
Harris takes his hands from Mark’s knee and lays them in his lap. A long moment passes. When Harris speaks again, he looks tired.
“Listen,” he says. “You can go if you want. If that’s what you really want. I’ll miss you, but I don’t want to be the one holding you back.”
Mark looks down at the Union Jack rug, that emblem of revolution and youth. A memory returns to him from their wedding night, lying naked on the sand of Race Point with a bottle of Tia Maria, beneath the stars at the tip of the land, suspended between sea and sky, spinning with the liquor and the hugeness of their future.
Harris pushes himself up slowly. There is an inward look on his face that means his knees are acting up. For an instant, Mark is ashamed. There is a soft concavity in the ottoman where Harris had been sitting. Mark listens to him go out of the room, hears the bathroom sink running.
Harris comes back into the living room, the sleeves of his dragon robe hanging limp, its silken sash taut around his middle.
“I meant to ask, have you seen the new shop where the chiropractor used to be?”
“No, what’s there now?”
“It’s a New Age thing. It’s called New Altitudes.”