Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (22 page)

“And Selma's really dead, is she?” Lily was asking now.

Well, he thought, glancing out the window, now
there's
a tough question to answer.

“I mean, I'm sorry,” she went on, mistaking his silence for offense taken. “But to be honest, I hardly trust her even to be really dead.”

“Dead she is. You want to, maybe, do a little sitting
shiva
?”

“After what she did?” she said angrily. “
Please.
”

“Still mad, eh?”

“Hey. The more I've thought about you and me and her, sweetie, and what went wrong, the more I think it has a lot to do with her. Sometimes I feel like I'd like to mop the floor with her! The relationship between you and your mother should have been protected under the Helsinki Accords!”

“Ha! I love it!” He felt a stab of attraction to her, to the whole thing, and immediately felt guilty. And yet Lily's Selma-riff was enticing, appealing. Here, maybe, was an ally. He sat back, poured another Bushmills for them both, and said, “Tell me more.”

· 17 ·

Miranda was worried. Orville was supposed to have been there for dinner two hours ago. She sat by the phone at the kitchen table waiting, wondering if she dared call. I shouldn't bother him, she thought. But that just made her feel more trapped in the deference that she, as a woman, had been brought up to show a man. What to do?

Something about the fingernails of the wind on the windowpanes of the old house, the snow squall building to a steady storm, made her more worried than usual. He must be busy, too busy to call, she reasoned. She drummed her fingers on the wood, recalling the first time she'd gone through a panic about her son being late.

A year ago or so she'd let Nelda Jo take Cray and Maxie to a fiesta across the river in Athens and then to dinner with one of Nelda Jo's friends. Cray was due back by six thirty. At seven she tried to reach Nelda Jo or Henry. Nothing. Nelda Jo was usually meticulous about calling if there was any change in plans. Something must be wrong.

Seven thirty. Seven thirty-
four.
When do you actually call the police, the hospital? She envisioned the car going off the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Or a domestic explosion. A propane tank explosion. A breakage. A kidnapping. By nine, she had called the police and both Kinderhook Memorial Hospital and Catskill Osteopathic.

Tethered to the phone in the kitchen, she was shouting at it, sometimes crying, even once down on her knees praying. “Please, God, Cray is all I have. If he dies I'll kill myself, and you don't want
that
on your conscience, do you?”

Finally the phone rang. She snatched it up, clenched it. “Hello?”

“This is the Columbia police.” Her heart stopped. “It's about a Memorial Fund for—” She almost fainted, until she realized that the policeman was soliciting money for dead Columbian officers and their families.

It wasn't until after nine thirty that the phone rang again. Nelda Jo. Cheerily, she said, “Just lost track of time, honey, 'cause they were having such fun.”

Miranda exploded in tears and said over and over, “Thank God! Thank God!”

Nelda Jo was apologetic, puzzled, and a little annoyed. “Why, honey,” she said, “I'm never late. Don't you trust me?”

“It's
because
you're usually so trustable that I was scared!”

Now, thinking of that wait for Cray calmed her. This wait for Orville was nothing like that. Cray was right here, safe in the next room. End of comparison.

But another hour passed, and Cray was getting ready for bed and asking where Orville was. With the storm building, she got more anxious. It was unlike him not to call.

The last time she'd spoken with him had been that morning, on their daily check-in call. He had seemed down. She'd asked about it.

“Got another letter from my mother. It's not easy for me.”

“I know.” She was surprised. He hadn't mentioned Selma in a while.

“Do you?”

“Do I know what it's like to lose someone you love? I sure do.”

“Yeah. Dinner tonight?”

She offered to cook. He said he'd try to be there early. She said fat chance but do your best. They wished each other nice days and hung up.

Now, still waiting by the phone, Miranda was concerned. Whenever he received one of Selma's letters, he was in a foul mood. It would come out as a shortness with her or Cray or in the way he talked about his patients—a cynical, even contemptuous way she found disturbing, at odds with what she loved most about him, his compassion. She was all too familiar with the ups and downs of grief, of the mourning process. She wished she could help. Sometimes she'd ask about how he was doing with his mother's death, but he wouldn't talk about it. Maybe it was for the better. Maybe not.

“Mom,” Cray was saying to her, standing at the kitchen table. “I want to go to
bed.
Where's Orvy?”

“I don't know, honey. I'll call him.” She picked up the phone and dialed.

Orville and Lily were still in the kitchen, drinking and talking, when the phone rang. On the second ring, Orville looked at his watch.
Shit!
He let it ring again. He felt embarrassed, as if he were betraying Lily, not Miranda.

“Excuse me.” He hurried upstairs to take it in his turret bedroom.

“Hello?”

“Hi. I was worried. With the storm. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“I was waiting. Dinner and all. Why didn't you call?”

“I got, you know, busy. Lost track of time. Look, with the storm, there's no way I can get out there tonight.”

“What's wrong?”

“Um . . . nothing. Nothing's wrong.”

“Are you still upset about your mother's letter?”

“No, no, that's not it. I'm okay with that.”

“Then what is it?”

He paused. “My ex-wife showed up, out of the blue.”

Her heart slipped. She tried to hide her pain in silence.

“Miranda? Hello? Hello? You still there?”

“Sort of.”

“Look, I'm really sorry. She just arrived, you know, after two years she happened to be driving up to Albany, got caught in the storm, came here.”

“Fine,” she said coldly.

“Wait—it's not like that.”

“I'm not calling just for me,” she said. “It's Cray. He won't go to bed until he talks to you.”

Orville's heart slid somewhere awful. “Put him on.”

The phone, passed down two feet, crackled.

“Hi, Orvy.”

“Hi, Cray.”

“Aren't you gonna say ‘Oh, I
love
that word!'?”

“Oh, I
love
that word!”

“Can we do Animal Guessing Game?”

“It's late.”

“Just one? You think of the animal and I'll guess. Please?”

“Okay.”

“Got it?”

Orville counted silently to five. “Got it. But I'm warning you. It's a hard one.”

“Is it a . . . a . . . a peregrine falcon?”

Again, Orville counted to five. “Did you say a . . . peregrine falcon?”

“Yeah!”

“You didn't say a . . . a . . . a peregrine falcon, did you?”

“I did, I did! You
know
I did!”

“Unbelievable. It was a peregrine falcon.”

“I knew it.”

“How do you
do
that?”

Cray was silent for a few seconds. “Orvy, was it really?”

“Really.”

“I mean really, really?”

“Really, really, yep.”

Cray yawned, saying through the yawn, “I always get it with you. G'night.”

“Good night. Sleep tight.” Orville heard the phone, rising back up two feet to Miranda, crackle.

“Get your sleepies on, Cray, and I'll be up to read to you.” The boy went up to bed. “One of these days,” she said to Orville, “he's going to find you out.”

“And?” She said nothing. “You mean I shouldn't let him think that he has magical powers?”

“When he finds out the truth you're going to have a hard time getting him to trust you again.”

“Hey, c'mon, it's just a game.”

“Good night.”

“Wait. I love you. I'll call you later.”

“Thanks.” She hung up. Shaken, she made sure to take care in climbing the stairs.

Orville, feeling all torn up, went back down to Lily.

“What's her name?” Lily asked.

“Miranda.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes. And no.”

“Meaning?”

“Yes, as I'm able now. No, as I'm unable. Disabled.”

“Disabled in love?”

“I'm sure you'd agree.”

“Don't be so sure. It's been two years. A lot can change.” She smiled at him. “It's okay. I've got a banker. Net-net, we're both taken.”

He looked at Lily. An old warmth had come into her eyes. He could have sworn he saw a wetness there, as if something harsh and hard were melting. She looked back down into her Bushmills.

Their reminiscing about Dublin and their talking about Selma had stirred him up. They had avoided talking about the marriage and the divorce. It had been a clean break, fiscally. At the time, he had felt so guilty at his oafish behavior that he'd given Lily everything. He figured that his only hope lay in letting go of whatever was dear to him. He ran off with only his black bag, a backpack with a panda on its back proclaiming “
World Wildlife Fund,”
assorted toiletries and tranquilizers, a deluxe Swiss Army knife, and a bunch of credit cards.

If their shared nostalgia about Dublin had spread a little magic around the sorry kitchen, their talk of Selma had spread a little spite. Lily and he had shared a foxhole in the Selma Wars. Selma had won the war, but you never forget the buddy you lost it with. Orville knew that what they were saying about Selma would be intolerable to her and wondered if she would fly in for a guest appearance. Maybe Lily would be able to see her, too. From time to time he peered out the large old windows in the kitchen and up into the snowy sky. But no, weather conditions must have been too severe, even for Selma. The only spirits present were their own younger ones—and for him, Miranda. He felt terrible about how he'd been just now to her.

“It
is
remarkable,” Lily was saying, “what we had. For a while.”

“Yeah, it was,” he said, the past tense shooting out.

She didn't seem to notice and went on in a warm, almost whimsical way. “I mean, the dreams.” She sighed, less sadly then, as if comforted. “Bottom line? I wonder if
I
would try again.”

The Hamster.
Suddenly for him the hamster was the elephant in the room. The damn thing had sealed his sterility, crushed their dream of children. There it was, looming large, being ignored. Lily was looking at him expectantly. Was she serious? He felt trapped. With Lily it had all too often felt this way—the pressure on, he pinned at her sharp edges. Trapped in just this kind of moment where the room gets real still and the feelings are so intense that it seems you could reach out and run your fingers over them, but you dare not because if you so much as graze them the whole room—hell, the whole house—will collapse with all the comic breakage of a Columbian civic
soufflé
.
In such hopeful and hellish moments everything carries such intense meaning you dare not look away or toward, shift in your chair, even breathe. Everything hangs in the balance of a glance, a move, a word, a sound. It had been exhausting.

“C'mon,” she said, cheerily. “I just want to have some fun.” She rose, came over to him, bent down, and kissed him on the mouth. Then she sat on his lap. “It's great, after all these years, sweetie, to see your eyes. No more thick glasses! I forgot what a beautiful blue.
Good
move, contacts. Eyes are such a turn-on for me.”

“You look great, too. You're gorgeous. In great shape.”

“Yeah. I work on myself. Hard.”

She kissed him again, mouth open, her tongue exploring. Then she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her white silk blouse and took his hand and put it on her bra. He slipped his fingers under the satin, searched out the small, pointy hardness there, thinking, of all things,
Cork City.
He was getting aroused but trying to fight it.
You're in love with Miranda, you jerk! Cut it out!

But drunk and turned on, he felt a driving curiosity about Lily now. The old love was churning in his gut, and lower. Despite everything, he was opening up again to her, to this woman he'd loved longer and harder than anyone else, the first woman he'd let in under his shyness. He shivered, reminding him of how, at first, he used to shiver as they would begin to make love, a sympathetic nervous system response.

“What's wrong?” Lily was looking at him expectantly.

“Nothing.” He disentangled himself from her embrace.

“It's okay, you can tell me. What are you feeling?”

He was feeling dread, which prevented him from telling her what he was feeling. The little voice inside said,
Nothing good can come of my going into this. It's just a matter of how bad it'll be before it's over. And it'll never be over.
He said nothing.

“Can you tell me?”

“I'm thinking of the hamster. About how it finished us off.”

“
Hamster?
” She blinked, as if to clear her sight. “The hamster was a symptom.”

“Of what?”

“Neurosis. Mine, yours. Early childhood shit. I'm taking care of mine. On the couch. I'm in psychoanalysis. Taking care of business. I know where it comes from in me. I know who I am, what I want. Look how I initiated. I
never
did that before, right?”

“Right.”

“One thing I learned is that I don't need a kid to know who I am.”

Her statement, her being so strong and sure of herself, rocked him back on his heels. It made him wonder if
he
needed a kid to know who he was. Cray. He loved Cray. He knew that. He could tell her that, but she wasn't asking.