The Closing: A Whippoorwill Hollow novel (The Whippoorwill Hollow novels) (7 page)

It took Nate three hours to drive back home to Jeetersburg that night. He parked behind Sally’s Diner and walked down Lighthorse Street to Michie’s Place, his favorite watering hole when he was drinking. He stood outside, looking in the window and thinking about whiskey. After a long while he turned away from the window, crossed the street to Beauregard Park, and sat down on a bench.

It was a warm, humid night. He gazed at a fountain to the right of the park bench. Water spouted from the mouth of a lion’s head mounted on a stone wall and splashed in a circular pool below it. The sound of the water was peaceful, but Nate found no peace. He was lonely and steeped in self-pity. He wanted a drink.

At his lowest points, his thoughts always turned to Christine. He sought refuge from the miserable present in memories of his past. His favorite memories were his first experiences with her, when they were young, long before he hurt her, when she loved him completely, without reservations.

The first time he saw Christine he was a senior on the Jefferson State University cross-country team. It was the first meet of the fall season. He stood at the finish line of the women’s team race. The forest at the edge of a grass field was splashed with burnt orange, gold, and cardinal. A girl ran out of the trees wearing the colors of Jefferson State, a red top and blue shorts. She was short with long black hair that fanned out behind her as she ran. Her legs were spattered with mud from the stream beds that crisscrossed the course. She had the build of a sprinter and her stride was a sprinter’s stride—short, choppy, and powerful.

Two runners came out of the trees behind her. They were classic distance runners, tall with long, gliding, effortless strides. They pulled even with the short girl about twenty yards from the finish line, and she struggled to stay with them. Her running form broke down, but she mustered a final burst of speed and fell across the tape just ahead of the others.

She lay on the ground while her coach knelt beside her and tried to help her recover. Time passed. Most of the runners crossed the finish line, but the girl could not stand. After a long while, the coach helped her struggle to her feet and the two made their way toward the locker room. When the girl walked by Nate, she swept a strand of raven hair away from her face and her eyes met Nate’s. Her eyes were big and brown and filled with tears and wild with pride, anger, and pain. Nate felt something stir inside his chest.

They dated through the fall and winter, and Nate fell in love with her in the spring. He could pinpoint the exact moment when he realized he was in love. In April they spent a weekend together at his father’s log cabin on Jasper Lake. They lay together on the bed on a warm night. They made love. Later that night it rained. Nate got up and opened the window so they could hear the rain fall. The patter of the rain was steady and gentle and peaceful. The smell of it was fresh and clean.

He stood at the window and looked at Christine as she lay on the bed. There was no moon. He could barely see the outline of her hair spread over the pillow and the gentle curves of her body against the night-gray of the bedsheets. He lay down beside her, she on her back, he on his side. He draped his leg across her legs, rested his head on her breast, and listened to the beat of her heart. A sense of bliss and contentment came over him. In that moment he was whole, complete, fulfilled. There was nothing more he wanted in life than to be with her. So this is what it’s like to love someone, he thought. This is it.

The rain slowed and then stopped. For a while there was the sound of water dripping from the leaves to the ground, but that eventually stopped, too, and the night was still except for the beat of Christine’s heart.

“This is nice,” she said.

Nate rolled over and lay on his back beside her, their bodies touching all along one side. “I want you to meet my father.” It was a wish borne out of the realization that he was in love with her. It escaped his lips before he thought about it.

He felt her body tense. “That’s a big step. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

Nate worried that he was pushing her too hard, that he might scare her away, but what he had said was true. He wanted her to meet his father. He pressed on. “There’s not much time.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something I haven’t told you. I didn’t want to put pressure on you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My father has cancer. He’s dying.”

Christine drew her leg up to rest across Nate’s thighs and placed the palm of her hand on his chest. “I’m so sorry, Nate.”

“He’s very near the end. I told him about you. He asked to meet you. I know it’s unfair to you, but it would mean a lot to him . . . it would mean a lot to me if you would go with me to see him.”

She stroked his cheek. “How long before your father . . .”

“A month at best.”

He felt her warm tears on his chest.

The following Monday in the late afternoon they stood together in the hospital at one end of a long hall. Christine wore a beige blouse buttoned at the neck and a gray skirt that came to her knees. She clutched Nate’s arm. They walked down the corridor. His stomach was tight as it always was on these visits, and it grew tighter when they approached the doorway. The door was open. They stepped inside.

Nate’s father lay on a bed beside the window. The bed was cranked to an angle to enable him to see outside. A sheet was pulled up to his chest. The sunlight fell across his face. His face was a translucent leathery mask stretched thin over knobby bones. His gray hair was the consistency of a spider’s web. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. Nate would not have recognized him if he hadn’t watched the cancer suck the life out of him over the past year.

Nate’s father gazed at them through half-closed lids. His eyes fixed on Christine. Nate led her across the room. “This is Christine Smith, Dad.”

“I’m so happy to meet you, Mister Abbitt.”

Nate held his father’s hand. It felt like a crow’s claw. The cold hand squeezed Nate’s hand ever so weakly, but his father’s eyes never left Christine.

“Nate has told me so much about you,” she said.

Nate’s father looked at the oxygen mask and then at him.

“I guess it’s all right,” Nate said. He removed the mask.

Nate’s father said something but his voice was so low Nate could barely hear him. He leaned toward his father. “What did you say, Dad?”

“Want to talk to her alone.”

Nate was afraid for Christine. His father’s veins ran full with morphine. His mind wasn’t always clear. “You two don’t know each other,” Nate said.

“Please.”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“It’s all right,” Christine said.

Nate wanted to protect Christine but did not know how to dismiss his father’s request. “Are you sure?”

“It’s all right,” she said again.

Nate walked to the door and looked back at them. Christine took his father’s hand and leaned over him. He spoke to her. She said something in low tones and his father nodded.

Nate stepped outside. He was worried that he shouldn’t have done this. Christine’s feelings for him were not clear. She had mentioned other men she knew before she met him. She’d slept with a few of them and one of those relationships lasted for a while, but she didn’t view any of her prior relationships as serious. Nate knew she enjoyed his company, but he didn’t think she loved him. A private deathbed conversation seemed likely to frighten her away.

Christine came to the door. “He’s asleep now.”

Nate looked in the room. Christine had replaced the mask. His father’s eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell steadily.

“He’s resting,” Christine said. She took Nate’s arm and led him down the hall. She looked straight ahead. Tears slid down her cheeks. They walked to the parking lot in silence and got in the car.

“What did he say to you?”

“Let’s go back to the cabin. I’ll tell you there.”

They drove to the lake house. Christine stared straight ahead and didn’t say anything to Nate along the way. Several times her eyes pooled with tears and her lips trembled. Each time she clenched her fists and regained her composure. It was dusk when he stopped the car in front of the cabin. The sun hung low over the mountains, casting a long glistening silver streak across the surface of the lake. Cicadas clacked their din. A cool breeze swayed pine boughs.

“What did my father say to you?”

“He said you brought more joy to his life than he deserved. He said you are his proudest achievement. He said he loves you.”

Nate’s breath caught in his throat. When he could speak, he said, “I’m sorry I asked you to do this. I didn’t know he would want to talk to you alone.”

“It’s all right.”

“I shoved you into the middle of our relationship at our saddest moment. It was unfair to you. I know my father loves me. He’s told me so many times. He didn’t need to send a message to me through you. If he’d known what he was doing, he wouldn’t have put you through that. The morphine warps his thinking.”

“The morphine had nothing to do with it. He was thinking clearly. He had a reason to tell me about his love for you.”

“What reason?”

“He said he feared there would come a time in your life when you might doubt him, when you might need reassurance about his love for you. By asking me to tell you, he said he thought you would believe him no matter what happens in the future.”

Nate was surprised and perplexed. “Did he say why he thought I might question his feelings for me?”

“He said only that you might need reassurance, and he thought telling me would help you believe the sincerity of his love for you when that time came.”

Nate stared at the lake, unable to imagine an explanation for his father’s concern. “Did he say anything else?”

“There was one thing more.”

“What?”

Christine paused. “I can’t tell you about that.”

“Why?”

“It’s too awkward to discuss.”

“Awkward in what way?”

“Maybe some day I’ll tell you about it, but I can’t tell you now. I won’t. You’ll have to trust my judgment about this.”

Nate reluctantly dropped the subject, but he didn’t forget it.

Six years after his father’s death and five years after he and Christine married, they vacationed at the lake house in the winter. It snowed for two days. A crusty shelf of snow-covered ice extended from the shoreline a few feet into the lake. A blanket of white down covered the ground around the cabin and ice hung from the pine branches. The road to the house was impassable.

They had stocked the refrigerator and the liquor cabinet at the beginning of the week. They lit a fire in the fireplace. The cabin was warm and cozy, and they were happy to be snowed in. They ate, drank, laughed, and talked. On the day after the snowstorm, they made love twice—once in the morning when they awoke and once in the afternoon when he caught her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom with her kicking and screaming in mock protest.

That night they sat in easy chairs on either side of the fireplace. The pine logs popped and cracked and the flames licked high in the chimney. Nate was reading a murder mystery. He looked at Christine curled up in her chair writing an analysis of Chaucer for a class she taught at Jefferson State. She wore jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, Nate’s hunting socks, and the scent of jasmine. He was thinking about holding her again when he noticed the scene outside the window behind her. A dim outline of the car was visible through the falling snow. It was parked in the same place where she’d told him six years earlier about her private conversation with his father, and Nate was reminded of the unanswered question.

“What did my father tell you that day in the hospital?”

Christine looked up from her work. “What made you think about that?”

“In the car out there six years ago, you said you would tell me someday.”

“I said I
might
tell you someday.”

“I’ve held nothing back from you. It’s unfair for you to withhold my father’s last thoughts from me.”

“Your father said he loved you.”

“You told me that before. I want to know what else he said, the part you said was too awkward to discuss with me.”

Christine looked at the fire. “Sometimes there are things about people we love that we might be better off not knowing. This may be one of those times.”

“I want to know what he said to you, Christine.”

She set her work aside, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. “Your father said you were in love with me. He asked me if I loved you.”

Nate paused, surprised and a little fearful. “What did you say?”

“I said I liked you.”

“But you didn’t love me?”

“No.”

Nate’s uneasiness increased. “What did my father say when you told him you didn’t love me?”

“He asked me how long I planned to stay with you.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I didn’t know how long we would be together. I told him I enjoyed passing time with you, but I didn’t see us staying together in the long term. He asked me to be patient, to give you time to show me who you are before I made a decision to leave you.”

“So you agreed to wait.”

“Yes.”

Nate felt unsure of himself for the first time since they married. “Why did you agree to wait?”

“I felt sorry for him.” She looked away from Nate and stared into the fire. “I felt sorry for you, too.”

A flood of emotions ran through him. Love for his father filled his heart. His father used his last reservoir of energy and guile to bind Christine to Nate until he could win her over. A sense of guilt also washed over him because he realized that on some level he’d known he was likely to gain her sympathy, and therefore more time with her, from that meeting. But mostly he was fearful. He was afraid her pity might be the reason she married him. He didn’t want that. He wanted her to love him, not pity him.

“You told my father you didn’t love me,” he said. “Do you love me now?”

Christine stared at him for a moment. Then she arose and stood in front of him. She took off her clothes, put her hands on her hips, and looked down at him, her big brown eyes shining. She leaned forward, placed her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him long and hard. She sat on his lap and put her arms around his neck. “Well, I certainly like you. At least I like some things about you.”