Bright Before Us (5 page)

Why had I told her what I had told her? It had just come out; it had seemed, unaccountably, like the right thing to say.

Greta fidgeted, rubbed her belly.
I understand, Frank.

I just feel a little worn out,
I said.

As she nodded, stretching her calves, I saw the rest of the day unfold: she and I both quiet, moving about the house like ghosts. Finally, we would settle on the couch, collapsing into a state of paralytic stasis: television, takeout, movies left maddeningly on pause as she chatted on the phone with her mother. The thought of what was surely to come—that halting, dulling day—drove me from where I sat on the bed; I went into the bathroom and started the shower, fighting the headache as it slipped into my stomach to become nausea. I would keep my promise, and go hiking with her in Glen Ellen at the historic Jack London estate.

 

The drive there was an hour of stretched bucolic highway, the orderly vineyards tapering into paved woodland and then a cement parking lot. I parked the car at the base of the main trail. A wall of heat hit us as we opened our doors. The microclimates of northern California could astonish the uninitiated—the penetrating, foggy chill of the city, the bone-dry sear further inland, the wet green lick of the North Coast. Yesterday, I had crouched in the rain; here, it was parched and desperate. We approached the visitors' center and, beyond it, the thick expanse of woods.

We held on to each other despite the heat. I grazed her stomach with my fingertips.
Are you up for this?

She squinted cheerfully into the sun.
It's barely a hike. It's a walk that curves.

The flat straightaway of the trail opened up beneath a canopy of trees, the sun needling through the branches. Despite two aspirin, the jostling steps cemented the pain in my head.

Thomas,
she said.
Thomas Mason. Thoughts?

It's stuffy,
I said.
Thomas wears tweed and sneaks Latin into conversation.

An elderly couple passed us, the man wheezing slightly. He hunched over, his arms out like feelers, and took an indulgent gulp out of his water bottle as they clamored past us.

William,
she said.

Mom would love it,
I said.
William was her dad's name.

Your parents aren't allowed around my baby,
Greta said, and we both snickered.

William is nasal and phlegmy.
I let go of her hand to rub my temples. Scores of black butterflies hovered above the trail, and we stepped carefully.

You know, when you touch a butterfly, it dies,
she said.

Like, ‘don't eat crayons,'
she said.

There had been a rash of it a few months earlier. They all went for the brown ones—burnt sienna, raw umber—I suppose because they looked like chocolate.

Even the simplest stuff, they just don't know,
I said. Then I reconsidered and shook my head.
But then they know all this other stuff. They hear shit and then just carry it around and spit it back out at the most random moments.

Like ‘butt sex,'
she said.

At lunch, there was a small group that ate with me at the multipurpose table. A few weeks earlier, we had each been digging into our unsatisfying meals and covetously eyeing Marisol's hand-delivered McDonald's, when it happened:
Butt sex,
Adrian said.
Yeah, butt sex,
Angelica chimed in. And then they had all looked up at me, and that was the weirdest and worst part: they didn't know
what
it meant, but they knew what it
meant
—that it was naughty, that it would produce a reaction.
Don't say that,
I had said lamely.
Don't say ‘butt sex' or any other kind of sex.

Greta's voice lowered.
Do you think they're freaked out about yesterday?

I don't know,
I said.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be—but can we please just not talk about it?

A sweaty old hippie passed by, beaming, as his armpit bouquet wafted toward us. She waited for him to be out of earshot before she continued.
Did anybody call the police? Did they try to talk her down?

I pictured how it would have happened.
Yeah,
I said, tentatively.
It seemed like she was set on the idea.

Why do people do anything?
I snapped.
Did I not just ask you to drop it?

Immediately, her face—how can I say this?—it crumpled, as though instead of barking at her I had taken her head in my hands and compressed it like a ball of paper. There was a tightness to her breathing, and I could almost
feel what was happening inside her body: that sensation like your chest cavity is filling with remorse and hurt. I had to look away.

And then, as ever, she tested the waters with her standard conciliation—one with a built-in response:

I love you,
she said.

I pulled back, examining her face once more. Now, the harsh moment behind us, she looked softened, illuminated. I wondered if that was the outdoor lighting or the pregnancy. I remembered back to when she had been pregnant before and tried to remember if she had looked different those times; whatever it was, I hadn't seen her this way in a while—I hadn't had this sort of thought about her in a while. I looked at her and thought about how I so rarely looked at her. I had one of those out-ofbody moments a marriage can provoke: this person is My Wife. Out of everybody in the world, she picked me. I had the impulse to thank her.

She searched my face.
I said I love you, Frank.

I love you too,
I said.

 

We approached the stone skeleton of London's home. It had begun to disintegrate with each earthquake and passing year and was now buttressed by steel scaffolding. A huge staircase flanked one side, built for visitors to ascend and view the ruin. We stepped up the staircase slowly, Greta in front of me. She placed one hand on her stomach and the other on the railing for balance. Greta carried herself, in those relatively early months of pregnancy, in the manner of a woman about to deliver. She often placed her hands soothingly on the small of her back and leaned as though
balancing an enormous load. As yet, however, she hadn't really begun to show. Her pants fit tighter, but only she and I noticed that. To the rest of the world she was a well-fed young woman, maybe bulbous around the middle but in a way that appeared healthy, nourished, like she could swing a baseball bat or give a nice volleyball serve. In truth, though, she was just weak—carrying groceries in from the car meant an aching back; this walk would knot her calves into fists. As we reached the top of the steps, she was winded.

I always forget how enormous this is,
she said. A mosquito investigated her face and she slapped it away.
How about Jack? Jack Mason. Jack is the guy who mans the grill. Jack is a good dancer.

Weeds sprouted in what had been the study. Twin chimneys rose at opposite ends of the house like goalposts. We stood there, done already: we always did that—drove forever and then stayed fifteen minutes.

Sure,
I said. I leaned into her, placed a hand on her hip, wanting to touch something soft.
Whatever you want,
I said.

 

Heading back, we came upon a little boy standing on the trail. Though he looked to be only six or seven, he was alone.

Where's your mommy and daddy?
Greta asked him.

I heard a woman's voice in the distance:
Avery! Avery!

Is your name Avery?
I said.

Avery nodded.

He's here,
I shouted back.
Over here!

Greta knelt and put an arm around him, her face grim; she awaited the parents' arrival, almost posed, as if they would show up and take a photo.
It's okay,
she said to the boy.
They'll be here in a minute.

The parents arrived and clutched Avery to their knees. They thanked us sheepishly, even as their eyes—you could see it—measured us, trying to decide how trustworthy we were.

Isn't that the worst panic there is?
Greta said.

Oh, absolutely,
the mother said, kissing Avery's head.
He's always running off. Do your kids do that too? Tell me it's a phase they outgrow!

Greta smiled into the distance.
Nice meeting you,
she said. The couple walked away, each holding one of the boy's hands.

We walked a while, stopping at the decades-old water fountain. Greta planted her feet, bending her torso at a sharp angle to avoid getting her shoes wet. I looked at the trail ahead, but turned around when I heard a sudden cry. Greta's hands were clamped to her face as she stumbled backward.

She was sputtering.
A spider! A spider came out of the tap!

I snickered. Her eyes went cold.

Frank,
she snarled.
It's not funny.

I'm sorry,
I said, not bothering to hide my smile.

She stormed toward the trail, leaving me behind, and in spite of every impulse to rejoin her, apologize, nip the argument in the bud, I did nothing to close up the gap. After a quarter mile I could no longer see her, and I let the heat wear down the tempo of my steps. Here and there, ridges were cut into the ground in improvised stairs, alleviating the natural incline. At the trail's fork I weighed my options, unsure if Greta had gone to the car or toward London's grave. We
usually skipped the grave site—it was a lot more walking, uphill at that, to see very little: a rock the size and shape of a sleeping dog, a half-rotted fence, a plaque we didn't read.

The things I had to do to fix a fight with her—the explaining, the backpedaling, ten thousand close-range reassurances that all missed their mark—would have felled me on that day. So I delayed, walking toward the grave, the blond fields darkening into moist woods. The walk was far enough that my throat went dry, my quads burned, and when I reached the grave site I rested my arms on the fence. It occurred to me that Greta might have left. She could be halfway to Sonoma right now, heading toward the blackened landing strip of the interstate. The thought was laced with dizzy exhilaration, a hope that she would almost reach home, remember what had happened the day before, and realize the insult she had added to my injury.

The plaque said London had been cremated, that his widow had poured the ashes here before the rock was placed above them. I wondered how many small pieces of London had broken free, floating to the visitors' center, the parking lot, the extravagant restaurants that lined the bottom of the hill.

I noticed something at my feet. I had forgotten—a few yards from London's grave were two others: two children, a girl and a boy, were buried there. Another small fence surrounded their redwood markers. The plaque said they had been buried there long before London bought the property. They had died the year he was born. My headache began suddenly to intensify, a string section reaching crescendo, and I leaned over and vomited on the edge of the fence. I braced myself against it, wiping my mouth.

Greta found me not long after, sitting on the ground, my head in my arms.

I've been waiting at the car,
she said tersely.
You're sick?

A cluster of birds flew over the grove and began to shriek. I felt my throat catch.
Yes,
I said. A thin, icy tide of bile rose inside me and I shuddered.
Yes,
I said again.

She squinted at me, suspicious.
Why?

I stopped myself. We had had this argument a thousand times. If I came home with a forty, she winced. If I ordered a second drink in a bar, she eyed it like it was a live grenade. She accused me once of being an alcoholic—we had just left her cousin's wedding, and by some unfair and temporary metabolic quirk my three flutes of champagne had rendered me fully drunk, careening into pillars and resting my head on the table during the toasts. I hadn't overindulged; I had, thanks to an empty stomach, gotten unlucky. She shouted it at me in the parking lot—
You're a fucking alcoholic!
—and I turned on my heel, stunned and amused:
I must be the world's only alcoholic who drinks once a month,
I said.

Above the graves, the birds approached frenzy and then passed by, the sound vanishing as though a conductor had lowered his wand.

You know what, strike that—it's not how much you drink,
Greta said.
It's why. You do it so you don't have to feel anything.

Make up your mind,
I said.
Do I drink too much or do I drink incorrectly?

She ignored me.
You don't ever deal with anything. You just push it down.

I looked away.

You ignore everything you don't want to see,
she said.

I felt myself detach, felt the lightness, the quickening, that always prefaced a lie.

I think it was Nora,
I said.

Silence.

She stared at me, expressionless.
That jumped, you mean.

Yes,
I said.

How?
she said coldly.
Why did you say you think?