A Peculiar Grace (37 page)

“Shoot, girl. You already know half the people’ll be there.”

“You say. Maybe it’s the other half I’m worried about. Or maybe it’s the half know me I’m worried about.”

“Now what the hell does that mean?”

“You know as well as I, Hewitt Pearce. There is nothing like a party for someone or another to let loose whatever little bit’s been itching away at them.”

He paused over that, taking a long swallow of beer. “Yup. But those types, most of em anyway, all you have to do is nod and smile. It’d be one of the older ones would presume on you so. People get to a certain age they think they can stick their nose in anywhere like it’s a God given right, delivered to em in the mail. I don’t think you have a thing to worry about.”

She considered this. And then said, “I don’t have any choice but to go, do I?”

“Yup. I’m happy to say you’re sick in bed with the summer flu.”

“And that won’t fool even the fools.”

He grinned at her. “We don’t have any fools in Lympus. Just the righteous and the strange. And then the ones you think are most boring and normal until you find out about the man who prefers panty hose to longjohns or the woman who taught school for forty-five years and lived all that time with her female cousin except for the little snag that they weren’t ever related.” He paused and laughed. “Sort of like you and me, but also not. See what I mean?”

“Hold on,” she said, leaning forward in her lawn chair. “Who’s the man wears panty hose?”

“Not telling.”

“Summer too? Does he go back to boxers or whatever or does he switch to panties?”

“Don’t know.”

“Come on, Hewitt.”

He stood up. It was almost cool, the sun down, bats streaming from the barn. “Let’s go dig up some supper. And no, I’ve got no idea what he does in the summer. I never asked him.”

Eight

He settled on the Strafford job, a pair of horse hitching posts. Anne Corning, the woman with the farm, was a casual social friend, told him what she wanted was something all his own and she didn’t care when. Hewitt admired Anne. Of others importing studs from Germany or Holland and breeding them to imported mares to drop foals worth twenty thousand dollars when they hit the ground, she was stubbornly scornful. Anne kept three blooded Thoroughbred studs from Kentucky and near twenty big grade Belgian and Percheron brood mares and had a reputation for producing some of the finest hunters in New England. If one of her foals worked out as a dressage prospect that was fine with her but not a goal. Not one of her horses could be registered. But once ridden most of her customers couldn’t care less. And for those that did she was happy to provide referrals to other stables. As she told Hewitt, “You can’t ride paper although that doesn’t stop jackasses from trying.”

Hitching posts. There were a couple of basic designs for such things but both were cast and ugly besides, so other than being models for what he wouldn’t do were worthless. He sketched, floating ideas right off the front of his brain without pausing to consider them. It was an interesting exercise and was going to take a while to work out.

Midafternoon he heard the Volkswagen pull out. He kept working until he had a heap of scrap paper on the floor to burn off in the forge and nothing to show for the effort, except half a dozen ideas discarded, which meant he was that much closer to something that
would work. It was enough for the day. He left the forge and walked to the house, wondering vaguely about something to eat and if it was too early for a beer. In the kitchen he discovered it was past six, as well as a note on the table.

Gone to see Roger about some work. I might go shoot some pool or something. Be back tonight sometime. Probably. Jess

He smiled and wondered if she’d prefer to be called Jess, walking toward the fridge for a beer and to peer inside and think about dinner. Then with as little thought as changing his mind and deciding on water he turned and went to sit at the telephone table and called directory assistance, jotted down the number and dialed. The phone was already ringing when he considered the possibility one of her children might answer and almost hung up but for the idea she’d somehow know who the caller had been.

She said, “Hello?”

“Emily, it’s Hewitt. I was just calling to see how you’re doing.”

A silence and then, “I’m well enough, thank you. I’m surprised you called.”

She was neutral, nigh flat. He said, “If this is a bad time, if you’re eating dinner or whatever, you can hang up. Okay? But honest to God I hadn’t thought about this at all but I came in from working and simply walked over and called you. I only wanted to say hello and let you know I think about you and hope you’re doing all right.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, Emily, it pretty much is.”

“What am I going to do about you, Hewitt?”

“Not a thing. Not anything at all. But I guess I wanted to let you know I’m here. Meaning if you ever need an ear, just someone to blow off steam to, you can call me. I’m not going to show up on your doorstep again. No need to worry about that. And I won’t call again. But there’s one thing I’d like to say, if you’d give me the chance.”

A longer pause and then she said, “What?”

“I want to be exactly clear, here, Emily. I don’t want or expect you to forgive me. Nothing I can say will change what I did. I know that. But every day of my life the fact that I hit you, that I struck you, has eaten at me something wicked. As it should. And I only want to say I’m sorry. Sorry for all the pain I caused you, sorry for not figuring things out sooner, sorry for what I did. Nothing can change it, but there you go. I wanted you to know.”

She said, “It was a long time ago, Hewitt. I’ve got to go.”

The line went dead.

He got a beer and then returned it to the fridge. He made a quick jog down cellar and pulled out a ten-year-old California cabernet—something he’d bought a case of and was ordinary at the time although he’d sensed promise. He had no idea if it was a good label or year but had enjoyed the couple of bottles sampled from the case years past. Upstairs he pulled the cork and carried the bottle and a glass out to the stone bench in the garden, poured a glass and let it rest. It was strange but he was exhilarated. He tried the wine and it was fine and would get better. If nothing else, forgetting the earlier episodes of the summer, her blasting phone call, even her abrupt hang-up this evening, he’d finally done what he’d wanted to do. And he’d done it well, as well as he could. He’d finally closed as much as could be the circular everlasting wound opened in himself all those years ago. He’d said what could be said.

At dusk he carried the half-finished wine down to the house. Jessica wasn’t back and he hadn’t expected her and somewhat to his surprise the house exuded a tranquility—some extension of his mood certainly but also the solitude was welcome. Enough evening air came through the windows so the house was comfortable, pleasant but not hot as it had been the past weeks. As he walked through turning on select lights the pools below the lamps enhanced the mood. Both cats trailed him, one or the other twining about a leg whenever he paused. In the living room he considered music but could think of nothing and let it go. Walking back to the kitchen and the wine he understood
that part of the attraction of the quiet was its temporality; the house even in hush was suffused with the presence of Jessica.

He was pouring wine and jumped when the gong of the phone sounded, imploding his mind with all the distinction of a late evening phone call—too late to be a client or even the few friends who might call. He overfilled the glass as he turned and reached to sweep up the receiver, knowing it was trouble of some sort.

“Lo?”

“Jesus Christ I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Emily?”

“I didn’t want to talk about it Hewitt. So I hung up. Sides I was already late for Dad’s birthday party at the cottage, his seventy-fifth, a big deal and he’s starting to look his age but Christ he had all the kids, all the grandkids out fishing or sailing and the girls have a slumber party and John’s going home with his buddy Peter and I wasn’t in the best mood anyway when I got there. Then Elsa swooped in and cranked up the blender and yeah we managed to make nice while avoiding each other in between passes at the margaritas and I’m wandering around thinking There’s old Hewitt, bashing himself all around the barn for walloping me across the head twenty years ago and he doesn’t know shit. Hey, how you doing, Hewitt?”

“Had some margaritas?”

“This is not a courage call, okay?” She laughed without humor. “How bout you?”

“I’ve got a glass of wine.”

“Oh the drugs just aren’t as much fun as they used to be, are they?”

“You sound fine to me. I quit the hard booze a while back. I still smoke a little now and then.”

“Ah, Hewitt. Well, I have to take a pee test every couple of months. State law. I am not drunk but Hewitt the time has come to end your fantasy of me, of who you think I am. You don’t have the first idea. So let me enlighten you to the true Emily, the girl you once thought you loved. You ready?”

“You alluded to my not knowing shit.”

He heard her swallow. She said, “Sorry old pal. Some things die harder than others. Maybe I’m talking bout myself, maybe you. Sure I loved you Hewitt. But life goes on. And there we were that winter doing nothing living with a bunch of folks ten years older also doing nothing and it was time to change, time to grow up and you, you were happy as could be until you realized I wasn’t but that’s not how it works, Hewitt. I’d already gone ahead and contacted Cornell and they were happy to have me start in January and that’s what I wanted. Not to freeze my ass off in the big old house smoking dope and waiting tables and not coming back to Vermont with you and sitting on my ass while you got your life in order. Hewitt, I was gone, already gone long before I told you.”

“I figured that out.”

“No, you did not have shit figured out. Because you still don’t because you can’t but you’re going to now. Hewitt, you remember when you were sitting out in your car and I came and rescued you from freezing to death and I wanted for an hour or two not to let you go and then the next day you went on your way and six weeks later, two months later I’m a late freshman trying like crazy to catch up and there I am pregnant again.”

“Emily—” The faintest edge of the bombshell going off.

“I was too young, too young was all I could think, maybe it’s that age or maybe not thinking things through all the way, maybe the times, maybe I was fucking terrified, maybe I was just a selfish bitch but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. And I didn’t. So there you go Hewitt. But wait. It gets better. I closed that problem like a door, like nothing at all except not getting even further behind and went right straight along and I was golden, Hewitt, I was fucking golden. So golden the next year.” She paused and he heard her drink, Hewitt now the central explosion: another child, another, two of them. She raced ahead. “The next year I was taking premed courses and flying. And I went straight through until my first year of medical school I fell in love with
Marty who was in his second year. I brought him home and we talked about a clinic together and he had the whole thing worked out in his head before I was done with my tour of the town. But then, you know, then Hewitt, at the beginning of my second year I forgot about my diaphragm one night—”

“You know what, Emily? I don’t want to hear about this.”

“You know what, Hewitt? Too bad. And there I was knocked up a third time and I sat down and it all rolled over me like a wave I never even saw coming. And Marty wanted me to abort. And God, it was hard, Hewitt. But you know what? I was done. I couldn’t do it again. We were already in off-campus housing and we got married and I quit school. And held up a household while he finished and had another baby while he was in residency and then we came back here and I was raising two babies while Marty was doing alone what I’d thought we’d do together. Understand, Hewitt, I love my kids and can’t imagine life without them. And so I held in there and when they were old enough I went back to school and got my master’s in psych and set up shop, trying to help people make sense of their lives. Hey, maybe it was what I was meant to do …” She laughed that caustic laugh again. “What am I saying? It’s what I do. But you see, you see Hewitt? You see how it started? It was accidents, Hewitt. It was accidents, and then, and then it wasn’t.”

She fell quiet. He could hear her breathing. Heard the rim of a glass hit the phone and then her swallowing. He stared at a knot whorl on the desktop, his own breathing measured, biting deep in his lungs. Finally as she took a deep breath, about to speak, he spoke, flatly level to contain himself, anger coiled tight.

“For years,” he said, “I thought of that baby, that child we could have had. That would’ve come from the two of us. I gave up trying to imagine it, boy or girl, but I always thought somewhere out there was a child of ours, the one who could’ve been. And what it would’ve been like having that child, you and me. How different life would’ve been, what we would’ve made of it. That was your first baby, Emily. With
me. And now you tell me it wasn’t one but two. Two babies, Emily. Two children. Two accidents you say. Accidents? Fucking accidents, Emily? Those weren’t accidents, not then and not now. Never. But hey, at least our children made you quit at two. I’m sorry about those accidents, Emily. I am. Oh Emily I certainly am. Who the fuck do you think you are? You want to know how it feels to me? Right now tonight?”

She was silent.

“As if for twenty-three years I was standing in a summer garden watching a certain firefly wink on and off and all that time instead it’s not a firefly but a pair of fucking headlights screaming toward me. And I’m frozen there. I can’t get out of the way. Run right over. That’s how I feel.”

She had to have her hand over the mouthpiece but he could hear her crying. He said, “Good night, Emily.”

H
E SAT FOR
time uncountable gazing at nothing. Nothing seeped and seethed around him as the house settled from the heat toward night, nothing some bleak version of peaceful despair, of funereal quietude. Nothing dribbled through his hands like some form of water, heavy water, mercury, some invisible poison that pooled around his feet and upward through his heart and mind. Nothing in his soul. And then wondered what that phone call had cost Emily, if she’d won what she’d set out to or not and knew she hadn’t, knew his anger however taut was nothing to match her own upon herself. That those two lost children lay heavy upon her as they did now him but in ways worse—all the years not only with those two lost children but the two living—not replacements or substitutes but surely in black moments grim reminders of those others. That she too lived with those holes and always had and always would.