Here to Stay (44 page)

Will smiled and shrugged. “Maybe that’s life. Trading in one tragedy for a better tragedy.”

Erik looked back to the stage where his wife was dancing and had to agree.

Being part of
Experience
helped heal Erik’s soul like nothing else. When the company took to the set in a rough, technical run-through, a pure, clean delight swept through him. The first unadulterated happiness he’d known since they lost Kees.

The rock ballet was a smash, selling out its three-week run. It earned Daisy and Will a prize for choreography at the Canadian Ballet Festival. The gala performance was staged at Fredericton Playhouse. From the lighting booth, through a raucous, standing ovation, Erik watched his wife and best friend collect their award.

He reached and pressed his palm flat to the glass. From the stage, Daisy touched her fingertips to her mouth and turned her palm back out to him.

Erik leaned his elbows on the console and leaned hard on the moment. Filled with the unwavering certainty that if life were going to throw tragedy at him, it would whether he embraced the joy of right now or not.

He might as well make out with it.

Take it to bed.

Get it pregnant.

Later that night, he told Daisy, “I want to try again. I’m ready if you are.”

She drew her breath in, slowly let it out. “If something happens this time,” she said. “I mean, if it doesn’t work, or we lose it… I think I’ll be done. I think my heart will have taken all it can.”

He nodded, brushing her hair back from her face. “I’m ready for that, too.”

“Of course, if nothing happens, if it all goes smoothly… I’ll be a fucking lunatic anyway.”

He gathered her close and smiled against her head. “Count me in.”

TRUDY DIED IN THE spring of 2010. A stroke took her fast. She didn’t suffer, Mike said.

Erik and Daisy drove to Clayton for the funeral and stayed at the Saint Lawrence Inn. Trudy was buried in Pettitte family plot in the village cemetery, next to her husband, Louis.

Kirsten looked stunned at the service. Her face gaunt, the vivid blue of her eyes cut in half. Erik could feel her bones when he hugged her. Beneath his chin, the tender pink of her scalp showed through her white hair.

Kirsten hugged Daisy then took her face between her wrinkled hands. She stared a moment. When she looked up at Erik, a bit of mischief was back in her expression.

“You did it again, didn’t you?” she said.

Erik ducked his head, acknowledging guilt.

“We were thinking,” Daisy said. “If we have a girl we—”

“Don’t you
dare,”
Kirsten said, her eyes flaring to life. She raised a warning finger, looking from Erik to Daisy and back. “Trudy hated her name. You name your daughter Gertrude, you will answer to
me.”

Chastised as young children, they scrapped the idea and promised.

The summer passed in construction. Giving fate, fear and superstition the finger, they blew out Barbegazi’s south wall and built a family room, with a new bedroom and bath on top of it.

In mid-October, a thick envelope addressed to Erik arrived in the mailbox, postmarked Alexandria Bay with Mike’s return address.

In it, a bundle of smaller envelopes, held with a paperclip and a note:

Erik,

Cleaning out Mom’s house, I found an old box of my papers. In it were three of the letters your dad wrote me. Reading them was bittersweet. But in a weird way, it felt like closure. I hope some of the same is in them for you.

I’m doing all right. Strange to be an orphan. It hits you at weird times, like on Sunday nights when you’re used to checking in. I still keep Mom’s number in my phone. Sometimes I send her a text. Hey, you never know…

Kirsten was up visiting a couple weeks ago. She seems diminished. One lonely pea in a pod. She and Mom really had an extraordinary friendship and I feel terrible for her. But she’s bravely planned a European cruise and even made a crack about having no competition in the casino. Maybe she’ll meet a nice fellow she can travel with. She deserves companionship. Someone like her isn’t meant to move about the world alone.

Give Dais a hug from me and I’ll talk to you, hopefully sooner than later.

Love ya,

Mike

Erik sat on an overturned bucket on the concrete slab to read. All around him were raised the studs of the new screened-in porch, which he was building himself. Red, yellow and orange foliage ringed the lake’s shore and reflected in its surface. He’d have to hustle to finish before cold weather came, seal it up and nail weatherproof plastic over the mesh openings.

May 17, 1974

Dear Mike,

Sorry I haven’t been in touch, but you probably heard the news from Trudy. Pete’s gone deaf. Apparently it was him having the mumps last year that did it. I had no idea it could affect your hearing. I thought it just one of those nuisance childhood illnesses you suffered through and came out the other side.

Anyway, we saw a half-dozen specialists in Rochester and the unanimous verdict is the damage is near total. As far as they can tell. A one-year-old can’t exactly raise their hand when you play a tone. They do turn their head toward sound but it’s not too scientific. We have to wait and see how bad it is. It kills me. Waiting for what you already know is bad news.

It’s devastated Chris, but Kirsten and Trudy have been shoring her up, alternating tea and booze. Listening and talking. One last, long cry in the bathroom and the next day Chris emerged like Clark Kent transformed into Superman. Cape on, head down, in pursuit of knowledge. She’s been at the library and on the phone finding out everything she can. She’s driven from Watertown to Potsdam, brought home fifty books and pamphlets on deaf education, hearing aids, speech therapy, sign language.

Meanwhile I’m angry.

Man to man, Mike, I’m so pissed off I’m useless. I feel like the floor had just gotten assembled under our feet after Xandro and Elsa died. Now this. My parents finally coming back to life a little. Now this. I’m caught between being a good father—hauling up roots and going back to Rochester where they have the best Pete could have… And being a good son and staying put to take care of my parents because I’m all they have. I end up being no good to anyone.

It’s not all grim. Dad’s been surprisingly helpful to me. We know he’s economic with words, even more with emotions. But we’ve had some good talks and he’s made me feel better. Which was a pleasant surprise—comfort coming from where you least expect it.

Mom…well, you know Astrid. She does, not says. I don’t think Chris has made dinner once since we got back from Rochester. We don’t run out of milk or eggs, the wash gets done. Without a word. Astrid works invisibly. You try to thank her for it and she brushes you off. “It’s nothing, älskling.”

It’s everything.

We’ll be all right. Pete’s still a happy kid. Follows Erik around everywhere. Reminds me of you.

You take care, cousin.

Byron

July 1, 1976

Dear Mike,

You’ve got to get a trip home. Clayton has been transported 200 years back in time. It’s unbelievable what the historical society has done for the bicentennial. Trudy says the atmosphere reminds her of when the war ended. Every night some kind of party, either planned or spontaneous. Music is playing constantly at the gazebo in the park. The river looks like a regatta. Little boys in tricorn hats, running around with their pants tucked into their socks. Fireworks every night on the river. You just go down around sunset and wait and eventually, they start going off. Pete loves them. Cripes, you never saw anything like his face with the colored lights in his eyes, and those little hands signing away. “Look, Mommy. Stars.”

Erik marched in the parade with his gang. Full colonial dress, tugging a cannon. The cannon was our masterpiece—we rigged it up to shoot candy into the crowd. Erik had a pack of girls in petticoats following him the whole route. He better get used to that. Hell, I should get used to that. Chris is going to be beating them off with a stick.

Pete’s doing well. He started nursery school two mornings a week and has an aide with him the whole while. He actually calls her his assistant. Ever hear a three-year-old bust out that word?

He wears a real strong aid in the left ear and a slightly less strong one in the right. They’re wired to a clumsy contraption that has to strap on his chest. It’s temperamental to moisture, gets full of static if you even think damp thoughts. But Chris is on top of all the latest research and says big advances have been made. They’re devloping multi-channel aids so you can change the amplification to match whatever environment you’re in.

Chris drove down to Syracuse back in June. She attended a talk given by some guy named Daniel Graupe who’s at the forefront of all this technology. Computers and microprocessors mean eventually, aids will be more powerful, but smaller. She saw a few prototypes for ones that fit inside a person’s ear rather than behind it. No trailing wires to a central device you have to haul around with you. Sounds all space age and far in the future. I want Pete to have these things now.

It’s hard.

But Pete’s signing all the time and thanks to speech therapy, he speaks well. Chris stays on top of him with diction. Erik, naturally, picked ASL up in about an hour. All right, I’m exaggerating. A week. Now I think he and Pete are devising their own secret version. They have each other.

I got all moody and despairing the other night, wondering what kind of life Pete is going to have, always dependent on others when others aren’t always dependable. Or even kind. Erik is both, though. He has my father’s dependability and his kindness reminds me of Uncle Emil. Emil and my dad always had each other. Peter will always have Erik. And that comforts me like nothing else.

Anyway, come home if you can. This place is fantastic this summer.

Miss you, kid

Byron

August 1, 1976

Dear Mike,

What started out as a celebration summer has turned bitter. I’ve had it. I tell you, Mike. I can’t take one more helping of shit served up on a plate and thrown onto my family’s table. And be expected to choke it down…

Pete has meningitis.

He’s so sick. So little.

He’s fighting, but he’s so little and

Plates get thrown down on your table and it’s

Sorry I was short on the phone. It wasn’t me. I’m not angry at you. You know that.

It’s not who I am. I can’t explain just

Sorry, Mike.

Sorry about that, kid. It was a tough night. I’m going to try to finish this.

I tell you, Mike, it’s hard to be a man when your child is suffering. Pete’s getting better—the fever is coming down which means the infection is clearing up. He smiled at us the other day. He’s alert and aware and he’s with us. But whatever hearing he had is gone. Left ear is now a total loss, and he hears only the most high- or low-pitched sounds in the right. He’s in silence now. The river got him and my heart’s broken.

You do everything and anything, Mike. You look at life as a system of points. I suffered X so I’m owed X amount of reprieve. The scales should balance. It’s only fair.

Nothing’s fair.

I lost my brother and Elsa to the river, the same river that took so much of my life away. I keep getting dragged back into the water, feeling I’m meant to pay for something I never bought. I paid. I still pay. We Fiskares paid, goddammit, but the bills keep coming. It’s never enough. What I did and what I do isn’t enough so now Pete has to pay. I can’t do

I got interrupted. Pete had a bad day. He’s in pain and I want to tear the world apart to stop it.

Chris is sleeping at the hospital tonight. I came home and talked with my dad a long time. Again and again, he surprises me. Comes through for me just when I think I can’t do anymore.