Picture This, page 11
“What color is the word ‘widow’?” asked Rocky. “I mean, what color was it?” She knew that, to the synesthetic, all letters come in particular colors and that the colors of some words are unique. She was sure that Tess would say “black,” because that was what the word felt like to her.
“Green, a dense forest green like the kind you see in old boatyards. W’s are always green, but it’s not just that. Green is the most absorbent color. It sucks the most light out of the spectrum. It fits the word, don’t you think?”
Rocky picked up some yellow onions with papery skins and pretended to compare them. “I don’t want to be the widow. I hate it. I’m too young. Bob was too young. And now I’ll always be a widow. Bob did that.”
Tess took the onions away from her. “It’s a powerful word, and it’s meant to be. You can’t dodge it. And you don’t know how to pick out onions.” Tess moved on to the pasta aisle, her back straight and her joints loose. She turned back to Rocky and said, “And personally, I think you’ve been too rash about Hill.”
The mention of his name gave Rocky an unexpected ache. Was it true that memories and consciousness lurk everywhere—in the palms of our hands, the cells along our necks, the tips of our ears? Does a breast have a memory, an awareness of its own? Her body, wise and primal, had already recorded the warm scent of Hill and made room for him in her bloodstream, the capillaries carrying images of his arm bones and nose cartilage straight to her brain stem. That was where all the trouble was brewing—in her brain stem. Rocky was about to split in half, with her bodily desires seeming to have a spectacular advantage.
Why couldn’t the girl be Bob’s daughter? She wanted to surge ahead and sweep Natalie into her life. It was as if Bob had sent her, with all her war wounds, right to Rocky’s door, and suddenly Hill didn’t fit as cozily as he had before. She wanted to marshal all her efforts to scoop up this girl and make a family. Why else would she suddenly buy a house badly in need of renovation? The two events had come together like interlocking gears. How could Hill understand?
As if Tess had been listening to Rocky’s thoughts, she said, “He’s the best choice for an archery teacher for Danielle. I fully agree with that.”
Tess shook her head and grabbed a bag of penne.
They brought their Italian booty home to Rocky’s cottage, and under Tess’s tutelage they made a vegetarian pasta dish with a mountain of mushrooms. It was done by midafternoon. They sipped a red wine that the grocery store owner had suggested and finished off the meal with blueberries in cream.
“If Natalie comes back from job hunting, she could join us,” said Rocky. Aside from the brief respite in the grocery store, she had thought of nothing but Natalie all day.
Tess tilted her head back and slid a spoonful of blueberries into her mouth. She hummed with pleasure.
“I saw Melissa the other day, and she looked a little bereft. Don’t forget the rest of us. You’re some sort of role model for Melissa, although I can’t tell you why. It would help her if she saw that you savor food, that you have a passion for it.” Tess rubbed her bare toes along Cooper’s spine. He had just eaten the heel of a baguette and lay near Rocky. “I was meant to live in Italy, I’m sure of it,” sighed Tess.
The first week with Natalie left Rocky itching and as vigilant as she’d been taking in Cooper when he was an unknown to her, just a dog recovering from surgery. At night she heard every noise from the other bedroom. She woke suddenly if there was a suspicious absence of noise. Was the girl still breathing? Had she come here to die? If she was truly Bob’s daughter, then that would be just like him, landing in Rocky’s life and expiring. There, she heard the symphonic creaking of the bed; the girl must still be breathing because she’d rolled over.
Cooper stationed himself close to Rocky’s bedroom door, as he always did, but something was different about him: a zing of electricity traveled beneath his loose skin, sort of a yellow alert on the domestic terrorism scale. Either the dog had picked up on her anxiety or he was also having trouble adjusting to a houseguest. Cooper seemed a bit edgy. Once, when Rocky peeked at the digital clock, the numbers glowed 2:31. Cooper picked up his head and looked at her, his eyes catching the green of the clock.
“What?” whispered Rocky. “Just because I can’t sleep doesn’t mean you have to stay awake too.” The dog sighed and rolled completely to one side, stretching out his body to catch whatever coolness he could from the floor. She caught a glimmer of night shine from Peterson’s eyes from her perch on the dresser. Apparently no one was sleeping. It was the first week in July, and the nights were filled with a symphony of sound: nocturnal creatures rustled and searched for food, insects heralded each other with mating calls, and even the plant life grew with such abundance that Rocky feared it would shake the cottage.
During the days, Natalie went into Portland to look for jobs and had even looked into the local college just in case Portland turned out to be the place she wanted to live. Rocky understood the permeable, inexact nature of someone her age. Natalie could move anywhere because nothing held her.
“July is a hard time to find a job,” said Rocky when the girl came back empty-handed each day. “Most of the summer jobs were taken back in May.”
They had agreed that Natalie could as easily stay at Rocky’s until they found out for sure about her parentage—or more precisely, her paternal genesis. But time had begun to morph and flip over; there was something redemptive about having the girl sleep in the next room, and Rocky didn’t want new information, either confirming or denying the paternal line, to disturb the balance.
She had finally stopped listening for every tiny creak in the house and fallen back to sleep, the night sounds having turned into a drowsy comfort. The snap of crickets, the ping of bats, and Cooper’s breathing were sounds of well-being wrapped around her. She was suddenly yanked from the depth of sleep by Cooper’s wet nose pressed into her face. He had given a high sound to reach her.
“What?” she said, reluctantly reaching up out of her slumber.
The bathroom was between the two bedrooms. When Rocky first arrived on the island, she had been soothed by the plain linear construction of the cottage: rectangular, small, with each bedroom barely large enough to contain the beds and dressers. Rocky heard a sound unlike the crickets or the bats or anything from Peterson’s Guide to Mammals of North America. Natalie was in the bathroom, and a strange sound slipped under the door, carried by the night.
Rocky sat up and looked at Cooper, who was at full alert—not intruder alert, but standing, ears up, tail in a very slow wag.
“Okay,” she said, getting up to go stand outside the bathroom door, afraid to knock, afraid not to, stuck in a dry, hollow fear of the eighteen-year-old girl huddled in the bathroom. Cooper nudged her hand with his snout. She tapped with one knuckle on the thin door.
“Natalie, we’ve got lousy acoustics in this house. You sound like something’s wrong. Can I come in?”
The crying sound stopped, and Rocky heard only her own heartbeat.
“I guess,” said Natalie. “I guess you can.”
Rocky turned the dented metal doorknob and pushed open the door, gently, as if a baby were in the house and she didn’t want to wake it. Natalie sat on the toilet lid, one knee pulled up, her arm crooked around the knee. The tender skin around her eyes was scorched raw and red, scratched up by the salt of crying. Her head rested sideways on the point of her knee.
With her clients, who sometimes cried during therapy, Rocky had learned a steady approach. She handed them a box of tissues and then waited. When she first began her clinical internship, a crying client had instantly ignited tears in Rocky’s eyes. She confessed this problem to her supervisor, who said, “You’re responding like a friend. They have friends. What they need is a therapist. Don’t try to stop the tears and don’t hug them. Give them a box of tissues and a space to cry. This may be their only place to cry.”
Natalie was not a client. She was a girl in Rocky’s bathroom who might be Bob’s daughter. The girl had fallen from the sky, crashed through the roof, and here she was, lighting up a maternal subset of Rocky’s organs that had never been tapped before. Rocky had no idea what to do. Tissues were not needed; Natalie had used half of the roll of toilet paper and filled the small rattan wastebasket.
Rocky stepped into the tiny room and sat on the rim of the white fiberglass bathtub. Cooper lay down in the doorway, blocking any last-minute decision to bail out. There had to be something that she could say. The wall clock in the kitchen echoed in sharp clacks.
“Life is . . . ,” started Rocky, searching for a soothing word, a verbal ointment to apply to the girl. Whatever she said was going to be wrong, she already knew that.
Natalie reached out with her right hand and took Rocky’s unassuming fist and held on. They sat together in the bathroom holding hands, saying nothing, not looking at each other, while the space inside Rocky where children were conjured long before they were conceived lit up with a soft phosphorescent glow.
Chapter 20
“You’ve been walking in the garden of the dead again,” said Isaiah.
This was the first time Isaiah had been in Rocky’s newly purchased house since she’d signed the papers. She had asked for his advice about local contractors.
“That completely does not sound like an old Maine proverb,” said Rocky.
Isaiah’s face and arms turned darker in the summer, the sun painting his skin somewhere between a rich mahogany and walnut. The white hairs along his brow stood out in amplified contrast.
“When my mother’s people came from the Dominican Republic, they brought a saying for every occasion, but most of the sayings had to do with birth, sex, or death. I’m going to spare you the fables about sex. But am I right about the garden of death?” he asked.
Rocky had been pulling back old brown lineoleum in the kitchen, only to reveal more old lineolum. She knew exactly what he meant by the garden of death.
“How did you know?” she asked.
Isaiah bent down, took out his pocketknife, and cut through a loose flap of dried-out flooring. He held it up to the light and examined it. Rocky felt the house twitch under such close inspection, the way dogs do when they first meet each other.
“Isn’t it odd how things have their own time in glory when everyone wants them and we can’t see beyond them? Like this god-awful kitchen flooring that a woman thought was beautiful at one time,” Isaiah said. “Asbestos house siding, there’s another example. These were once grand and admired, and people were proud to have them in their homes. Now they’re dreaded by homeowners who can’t wait to rip them out. They had a beginning and an end, a life span,” he said as he tossed a section of the lineoleum out the kitchen door. He turned his head slightly to look at her, and one bushy eyebrow rose.
“You don’t exactly have a poker face when it comes to emotions. No wonder Tess and her little granddaughter can beat the daylights out of you at poker,” said Isaiah.
Rocky paused and leaned into the long handle. “How did you hear that I lost at poker? That was only two days ago.”
“Two days ago? In island time, that’s old news. Now everyone wants to play poker with you. Don’t accept any poker invitations where they play with real money,” he said. “You’re as easy to read as a seven-year-old kid. Oh, that’s right—you got beat by a seven-year-old,” he added, letting a laugh ruffle up through the deep registers of his chest and echo off the walls of the empty house.
Rocky shoved the scraper along the floor with renewed energy. “I think they cheat. That would be just like Tess. She’s probably teaching Danielle a slick move with synesthesia.”
“Poker is a game of skill and good fortune, combined with the ability to refrain from telegraphing every thought. But you, Madam Dogcatcher, are not good at masking your feelings. You either got very little sleep or distressed sleep. You’ve just made one of the most anxiety-provoking decisions of your life. Buying a house is right up there with the holy trinity of death, divorce, and public speaking. The dead often visit us when we make huge decisions. They also visit us when we take in wayward children.”
Rocky had a red-and-white cooler near the door to the basement filled with Coke and beer. She pulled open the lid, put her hand on two Cokes, and offered an inquiring look toward Isaiah. She had hoped that they would skip the conversation about wayward children.
“Sure, I’ll have one too, although Charlotte says the only safe thing for me to drink is water. We’ve got diabetes in our family, and all this sugar is tempting fate,” he said, reaching for the cold can.
Rocky popped the lid on her can. “I know why I’ve been thinking so much about Bob again. This is the first time I’ve had to make this kind of decision without him. I’m not just ticking off time while a job waits for me back in Massachusetts. I’ve bought a house, such as it is, and there is no job waiting for me, since I let go of a perfectly good position that I actually loved, complete with health insurance, dental, an eventual pension, and all the accoutrements that American workers long for,” said Rocky.
“What would Bob think? That’s the question. I need to get you a bumper sticker that says WHAT WOULD BOB THINK?”
“I don’t need the bumper sticker because it’s already stamped on my brain and I wish it wasn’t. It shouldn’t matter so much what he thinks. This is my life without him,” she said.
Even as she talked with Isaiah, some of the nocturnal dread poured off her. Her lungs expanded and she exhaled deeply.
“You’re a full-service friend, not to mention former Methodist minister, boss, and public works director. I’m skipping some of your professions. What I really wanted to know was, who would you recommend to do a remodel on this place? You know everyone. Let’s take a break outside while you pontificate.”
The two friends walked out the kitchen door and stood in the driveway, looking at the white exterior of the old house as if information could be read from the clapboards. The side entrance to the house opened on the kitchen, and Rocky knew that everyone except company came in through the kitchen, not the larger entrance from the front porch. She wondered if Isaiah could feel the house pulse with expectation. Rocky wanted to make sure she found a carpenter who understood the old house and took time to work with it respectfully.
Without a pause, Isaiah said, “Russell Barry. Good, solid carpenter, as long as you’re not in a hurry. And he writes poetry that I can understand. I’ll call you with his phone number tonight.” The older man surveyed the house, looking at it from top to bottom. “The skeleton of the house looks solid. I’m guessing it was built early in the twentieth century. Those were good building years. They used good wood and they didn’t skimp.
“Remodeling this house might be a good way for you to focus your energy,” he remarked. “You’ve got a lot going on, and I can’t figure out how you keep everything sorted out. Where’s your handsome archery instructor these days? I haven’t seen him lately. Hill is a teacher, and he’s levelheaded. I like him. He works with all kinds of teenagers and could offer advice about teenagers appearing on your doorstep looking for a biological father.”
Isaiah shaded his eyes with his hand, his skin glistening with the fog, soon to be followed by brilliant sun. “By my reckoning, school is out, unless Brunswick goes by a different calendar.” He glanced at Rocky, and a sting of tears erupted in her eyes.
Rocky wanted to say that Hill was teaching a summer course, or that he had never come back from the camping trip, but too many beats had already passed. Isaiah picked up the crowbar and sledgehammer that he had just brought Rocky to use on the house. Even without a contractor’s advice, Rocky had said she wanted the old wallboard taken out.
Rocky kicked a white plastic bucket, and it skittered along the gravel drive.
“That’s only a partial answer,” said her friend. “Now use your big girl words. No more kicking defenseless buckets aside.”
Rocky set the bucket upright. She wore shorts, a tank top covered by a thick blue workshirt, and hiking boots.
“Since you already knew that I lost at poker, I thought you knew about Hill.” Rocky noted new admiration for Melissa: she had not spread juicy romantic gossip when she had the chance. “He’s back in touch with his supposedly soon-to-be-ex-wife, Julie. I would never have gotten involved with him if I’d thought there was even a tiny chance of them getting back together,” said Rocky.
Isaiah tilted his head and looked up at the treetops, as if absorbed in the process of divination. He picked up a bag from the building supply store and nodded toward the house. They went back inside.
“It was too soon after Bob’s death for me to start up with someone new. I made a mistake, thinking that I could skate through the labyrinth of grief and fall in love. I know that was against the rules of inevitable agony.” She turned away from her friend, pulled up her shirt, and wiped her eyes.
“Okay, the real thing is, I didn’t see it coming,” she admitted. “I mean, she’d been gone for so long, and I thought I could tell if the chemistry was good and solid. Now I have to factor in that my relationship radar is shot,” Rocky said, going straight for the long crowbar, drawn to it like a moth to a porch light.
“You knew he was married right from the start, even if they hadn’t lived together for nearly three years. Those were the facts, and he didn’t hide them. I brought you some protective eye goggles. If you’re going to do demolition work, which is not the best idea you’ve ever had, then you need to wear them. You’re mad and hurt, and now you’re going to swing a crowbar around at the walls. Did Hill tell you he was going back to his wife? I thought they both had lawyers.”
