The Smoke Jumper (26 page)

Ed wasn’t the only one having to learn a new way of living. Though they were nothing by comparison with Ed’s, there were many minor readjustments that Julia too had to make. Such as remembering not to leave things lying around in odd places where he might trip or knock them over, not to leave doors or cupboards ajar in case he walked into them, always to put things back in exactly the same place so that he could find them. By far the most difficult thing she had to learn was the fine line between when to help him and when not to. It was painful to stand by while he got frustrated and furious with himself, to watch him fumble or even fall, but she knew that sometimes she must. By the time winter came, however, they had worked most things out and these bad moments were fewer and farther between.

It was Julia’s first Montana winter and it gave little compromise. The first snow came in October and kept topping itself up like an overattentive waiter. Far from feeling trapped or isolated or even depressed by it, as she had feared she might, Julia loved it. They wrapped up warm and went for long walks under clear alpine skies. They even tried cross country skiing, Julia going first with a set of bear bells pinned to her back and Ed trying to follow the sound. He kept going too fast and crashing into her and they wiped out in some truly spectacular falls but ached more afterward from laughing so much.

Their evenings were spent cocooned together on the couch by the big log fire, reading and listening to music or, if Ed insisted, watching a favorite old western or musical on TV. He would make her give a running commentary about what was happening on the screen. Sometimes she would tease him by inventing characters or pieces of action, but he knew most of the movies so well that he would cotton on right away and grab her and tickle her and make her beg for mercy.

Thanks to the generosity of Ed’s father and to the smoke jumper insurance money, they had few financial worries. Julia hadn’t worked since giving up her job in Boston the previous spring and although she intended to find a new job, she was still relishing the freedom to read and potter and to get back to some serious painting, which she did most mornings in the barn studio. Ed, however, was a lot less comfortable about relying on charity (especially his father’s) and was keen to demonstrate that he could support himself. The long-term plan was still, of course, to make it as a composer, but meanwhile he was determined to go on teaching piano.

Back in the fall he’d put an ad into
The Missoulian
and it conjured over a dozen would-be pupils. Word-of-mouth soon conjured more than he could handle. Nearly all were children who came to the house after school. And having them around the place, hearing their voices and their laughter and seeing how much fun Ed had with them, Julia knew it wouldn’t be long before he raised the subject of having children of their own.

It happened on the night after Thanksgiving. They had made love on the couch beside the fire and were lying in each other’s arms. Julia was watching the snow fall in slow, fat flakes outside on the deck.

‘So, what do you think?’ he said.

‘You mean out of ten? Mmm, I’d give you a four, maybe five.’

He dug his fingers under her arms. ‘You know what I mean.’

She did, though quite how was a mystery. She often seemed able to read his thoughts and only hoped it wasn’t mutual.

‘Isn’t it a little early? I mean, shouldn’t we get a little more settled?’

‘I don’t know. I feel pretty settled.’

‘Well, so do I, but ...’

‘Listen, if you’re not sure, that’s cool. We’ll wait.’

She thought about it all night and all the next day. She wanted children just as much as he did. What was the point in waiting? They had always used condoms and the next time they made love, she silently stopped him as he reached for one. Neither of them said another word about it, as if by some tacit accord that to do so might jeopardize their efforts.

Now, more than four months later, Julia still hadn’t conceived. And although she knew that these things took time and that some couples could indeed spend years trying, an irrational voice had started to nag her that there was something wrong. Having started unsure, by now she could feel herself becoming almost obsessed with having a child. And ten days ago, without telling Ed, she had gone to see her doctor and had him run some tests. Today she was going to find out the results.

The omens that early April morning all seemed good. Ed woke her with a cup of coffee and she lay in bed with the sun streaming in and Neil Young booming on the downstairs stereo while Ed did his morning workout. Then he cooked some delicious blueberry pancakes for breakfast and they ate them in the sunshine at the long pine table and talked about the summer and where they might go for a vacation. Ed liked to start his workday by playing something on the piano and today he chose one of her favorite pieces of Schubert. Julia cleared the dishes and put on her boots and coat and kissed him goodbye, saying she was going into Missoula. It was a Friday, when she normally did the weekly food shopping, so he didn’t ask her why. Outside, for the first time, there was a palpable stirring of spring. The snow had all but gone and crocuses were pushing through the weathered grass.

The clinic was in a long, low building on the south side of town, not far from the mall. In her eagerness, she arrived twenty minutes early, before the place had opened, so she walked over to the mall for a cup of coffee and a newspaper and came back to wait in the car.

She looked first, as now she always did, for any stories about Bosnia. She prayed every night for Connor’s safety. All they had heard from him since the wedding was a couple of postcards, the last one from Sarajevo just before Christmas. Both were brief and chatty and gave nothing away. Last week Julia had seen a report on the TV news about what was now being called ‘ethnic cleansing’ and how in Sarajevo snipers were randomly killing civilians. But today there was nothing in the paper and although she knew it was silly she decided to take this as another good omen.

One of her mother’s many homilies was that a woman should always have a female doctor and that if for some reason you absolutely had to have a male, you should make certain to get a young, goodlooking one, because all the old, ugly ones were frustrated and lecherous. Julia’s was suave and handsome but pushing sixty and she didn’t know where that left her. His name was Henry Rumbold, which Ed said reminded him of one of those old-fashioned cure-all tinctures they used to sell from the back of wagons in the days of the Wild West -
Dr Henry T. Rumbold’s Remarkable Throat, Bowel and Boil Remedy.
Julia had never since been able to look at the man without thinking of it.

The waiting room had been given an early spring makeover in primrose yellow and still smelled of fresh paint. Apart from a woman with a small child who had a streaming nose and a rather unsettling rash, Julia was the only one there. Dr Rumbold came out to find her and ushered her into his office, asking how she was and how Ed was and saying, thank the Lord, it seemed as if winter was at last on its way out. He motioned to Julia to sit down in front of his desk and settled himself on the other side of it. He put on some rimless spectacles and, for what seemed an eternity, shuffled through the papers before him. Julia sat and watched, deciding that her mother was right, at least in part. Dr Rumbold was clearly a frustrated thespian. He surely knew already what the damn notes said, so all this fussing around was purely for dramatic suspense. At last he looked up over his glasses and delicately placed his hands flat on the notes.

‘Well, we’ve got the test results back,’ he said.

What an asshole, she thought. ‘And?’ she said sweetly.

‘Frankly, Julia, you’re in great shape.’

‘Hey! You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

She immediately forgave him everything.

He went through the details with her but Julia was too elated to pay much attention. He wound up by giving her all the usual guff about how being anxious could often make it more difficult to conceive and Julia made a feeble joke about how she would try not to get anxious about getting anxious. And that was it. He showed her to the door.

‘Of course, it takes two to tango,’ he said, almost, it seemed, as an afterthought. ‘And if it still isn’t happening, maybe Ed should come in and we could run a few tests on him too.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I’m sure you’ll find that won’t be necessary.’

‘No. Right. If we tango enough.’

She tramped around the supermarket, trying to find her earlier high spirits, as if they might be stacked on a shelf somewhere, but they seemed to have sold out. She filled the cart with all kinds of things they didn’t really need, telling herself to cheer up, for pete’s sake, she’d gotten a double thumbs-up, she was a proper, paid-up, functioning female.

By the time she reached the checkout she was feeling a little happier. She waited in line, watching the other women, all of them older than her, waiting patiently with their loaded carts. Maybe it was time she quit being a lady of leisure and got herself a job. After all, Ed was fit now and working and knew the house well enough not to need her hovering over him all day. He had said so himself. Maybe she would start looking. The decision made her feel better still.

‘Julia?’

She looked around. A young man was standing behind her, next in line. He was tall and cute, with long dark hair, and he was vaguely familiar but Julia couldn’t place him. He grinned.

‘Hey, it is you. I thought it was.’

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘Mitch.’

As he said it, she recognized him and she tried to look pleased to see him.

‘Hey, Mitch! I’m sorry. Your hair’s different. Longer.’

‘Yours sure isn’t.’

‘Oh. No. So how’ve you been?’

‘Okay.’

‘Are you working?’

‘Yeah. It sucks. I’m getting a band together.’

Somehow it didn’t surprise her. They chatted while Julia went through checkout and she remembered how much she disliked him. Until the band got famous, he was working in a garage where he was supposed to be learning how to be a mechanic. All the people there were apparently either dead-beats or assholes. Julia toyed with the idea of asking him for twenty alternatives to that. He walked with her across the parking lot and stood watching while she loaded the groceries into the back of the Jeep and climbed into the driver’s seat.

‘So, did you have to go to jail or anything?’ he said.

‘What?’ She wondered if she’d heard him right.

‘You know, for what happened with Skye and all.’

‘Go to
jail
?’

‘Well, you were the one supposed to be in charge.’

Julia looked away across the parking lot for a moment and took a breath.

‘No, Mitch. No one went to jail. I’ll see you around.’

She started the engine and shut the door. As she drove away she saw he was grinning.

 

Sometimes the silence was good.

Such as now, when he was alone and calm and the morning sun was slanting warmly in on his face through the glass doors and he could just sit there, dead still, at the piano and picture the particles of dust hanging and glinting in the beam.

Of course, it was never truly silence. The house was always talking to itself, the creaking of wood and pipework as they swelled or shrank, the click of the kitchen clock, the periodic jump-start judder and whir of the refrigerator. Outside, he could hear the drip, drip, drip of snowmelt from the roof and every now and then, out on the road, the whoosh of a passing car or the rumble of a logging truck.

Then there were those times when the silence wasn’t so good.

When it seemed to close in on him like a murderer with a pillow come to smother him and he’d have to do something quick before it got to him, sing or yell or scream or clang the keyboard like a mad organist in a horror movie. Oddly, it happened less when he was alone than when there were people around.

Early on, when he was recovering at Grassland, it had been fairly frequent. He and his parents and Julia, and sometimes his brothers too and their wives, might all be sitting at the dinner table and there would be a lull in the conversation. And in those few brief moments of silence Ed would suddenly feel the panic rising in his chest like a tide of black and he would start jabbering like an idiot, talking utter nonsense or cracking terrible, self-flagellating jokes, comparing himself with Job or Jude the Obscure. Even though they laughed politely, nobody - not even he - thought it remotely funny, but he had to do it just to save himself from drowning.

He knew it had worried the hell out of his parents and Julia too. They probably all thought he was going crazy, but he couldn’t help it. He’d tried once to explain it to Julia, but the closest analogy he could find was that it was a little like claustrophobia.

These moments were rare now. In fact, he hadn’t had a serious one since they moved to Montana. He was aware, however, that his constant babble and banter with Julia was a precautionary defense against them. He had always talked too much, but now he sometimes caught himself, heard himself, going into overdrive. Julia always seemed to sense it. And if she were near she would reach out and lay a hand on him or come across the room to him and hold him and say hush, I’m here, it’s okay.

It wasn’t just to do with staving off those black, life-denying silences. Ed was aware of how ‘wonderfully’ everyone thought he had ‘coped’ with what had happened to him. Of how impressed they were with his ‘bravery’ and constant ‘high spirits.’ Of course, he could have simply collapsed in a heap and sobbed all day long or shot himself. And, heaven knew, there had been many times when he had felt like doing all of those things. But the truth was, he didn’t really see the point. He knew that his greatest enemy wasn’t blindness. After all, he’d discovered at an early age, with his diabetes, that his body could let him down. No. Despite the grim jokes about Job and Jude, he knew that his greatest enemy by far was self-pity.