The Meaning of Isolated Objects Read online

  Her father was down the hall. The low murmur of TV and the creak in his recliner reminded her. He was close and she was safe.

  Aunt Jessie always sat in the bathroom at her house and talked while Wendell bathed, just us girls, she said, mug of tea in her hands while she kept Wendell company. She lived mostly with Aunt Jessie because her father was gone so much.

  But her father was home now, so she was at his house, lonely and cold, shivering on the blue mat with nothing to wrap up in. There were no towels in the bathroom closet.

  “Dad, I need towels in here!”

  He stopped outside the doorway and handed the towels in around the door frame. She wound the green one around her body like a dress. “Dad, I forgot to tell you the dream I had last night.”

  He stepped into the door and waited while she wrapped her hair up turban-style like Aunt Jessie had taught her. Aunt Jessie made a game of this and held one end while Wendell twirled into the other.

  She picked up her favorite purple comb to untangle her wet curls. “There was this armadillo. I was in a car with a man.”

  The comb got stuck and she tried to wrestle it out of the mass of hair. “Here, you try.” He took the comb and began to unravel it. Aunt Jessie was an expert and did it quickly, with no pain, but he didn’t know how, he had to do one tiny section at a time. “I had to tell him something. I think I had to warn him about something.”

  Her father’s big hands fumbled with the comb and locks of hair, his breath blew in shorter bursts that smelled of whiskey and something she couldn’t name. The way he would taste was how she thought of it. He was combing faster, like he was in a hurry.

  The TV still rambled in the living room. Through the wet coils of her hair his lips pursed and relaxed, closer as he reached to the back of her head, and she leaned in to kiss him, the way she had kissed the man in the dream, lips to lips, something powerful passing between.

  He pushed her away. “Stop that.” His voice was hard and mean suddenly. “Listen to me, Wendell. You can’t go off with strange men. You never know what they might be looking for.”

  He disappeared down the long, dark hall. She squeezed the tears back. He liked her to be brave. But this was too much. She gave in to the chill and ran toward the light near the back door.

  He wasn’t there, and then she heard the gunshots out back. Aunt Jessie had told her to call if he ever got out the guns, but she didn’t. She listened, not knowing what it meant, whether he was shooting someone bad, or himself, or deer, or if, and this was the worst:

  What if he’s shooting at nothing and pretending it’s me?

  The next morning he woke her up early. “You want to take a trip?”

  They went to Aunt Jessie’s house, and after negotiating the details, he sat on Wendell’s twin bed while she packed. As many books as she could fit: Nancy Drew, Jack London, Walter Farley. Some pants and shirts, her blue toothbrush. Aunt Jessie handed over a smaller bag as they walked out the door, one she’d filled with socks and underwear, pajamas, an extra pair of shoes. Toothpaste and hairbrush. Always a little treat, cookies or a chocolate bar.

  Her father organized the two of them in his truck. The carefully folded maps he collected but never seemed to need. Snacks. Blank paper and colored pencils, the kind you peeled with a string instead of sharpened. She drew pictures while they drove, guesses at where they’d end up by nightfall. He used to check them when they arrived, shaking his head in wonder because she almost always got it right.

  They rarely had a plan. He kept a tent and two sleeping bags in the space behind the seats. They stopped whenever either of them felt like it. He took the back roads.

  “Are we lost?” She sat up hopefully, peering out at the passing landscape. Her drawing was a grid of lines, with circles. At the top of the page squiggly lines went up, a smoke signal. He laughed.

  “Sorry, Wendell, I recognize this stretch. We’ll make a turn at the next crossroad, you pick.”

  “Right,” she sang out, or “left.” He made the turn while she crossed her fingers it was someplace he didn’t know. She wanted desperately to see his eyes change from wariness to surprise, but he retained the same steady gaze.

  They found a country store with two rocking chairs and a checkerboard in front of a wood stove. Cokes and potato chips and he beat her three times but she won the grand championship checker game, winner takes all. He emptied the change from his pockets into her cupped hands.

  “Look what you did.” He pulled out the drawing she’d made and unfolded it. He pointed to the checkerboard and to the chimney of the woodstove. “You’re a natural.”

  At the end of the day, they stopped to camp. He pitched the tent while she unrolled the sleeping bags. At dark, he lit the lantern and let her read until she fell asleep, something Aunt Jessie never did. She awakened in the night to the smell of him, wood smoke and bourbon and pine. She breathed it in as though inhaling medicine, and it was: assurance and safety, remedies for what hurt.

  What hurt both of them was no secret, but she never spoke of it to her father. A few weeks earlier she had taken a different trip with Aunt Jessie. They’d driven to the little town where her mother had grown up.

  Aunt Jessie had held her hand as they walked through the grey rectangle forest. In Wendell’s other hand was a basket of white tulips. The tender new grass beneath their feet was soft and spongy, birds chirped as the sun warmed her face. Aunt Jessie’s face was sad. Wendell squeezed her hand and they walked faster.

  Each year they went to her mother’s resting place, their visit timed to coincide with spring, all things made new, said Aunt Jessie, as she told the story of Wendell’s mother growing lemon trees from seeds scavenged from the trash can when they were girls, watermelons from black seeds Aunt Jessie spit at her one July Fourth, poppies from tiny seeds Lynnie had collected at an aging neighbor’s abandoned flower bed.

  We’re sad in February, Aunt Jessie told Wendell, but in April we celebrate the growing things. We rejoice in Lynnie’s memory.

  Wendell placed the basket of tulips near the base of the stone marker. Aunt Jessie laid her hands flat against the cool granite, as though listening with her palms for some sign or message.

  “There!” she exclaimed, as her hair and Wendell’s blew across their faces. “That’s Lynnie, sending kisses.”

  Wendell peeped through the opening in the tent and watched her father outside, sitting by the fire, drinking from a small bottle. He needed to do something to remember her mother. All he did so far was try to forget her. She didn’t know how to tell him that, or if he’d listen if she did.

  The next day they drove further, windows down, listening to the radio when they found a station. He wasn’t as talkative as he’d been the first day, and she spent most of her time sketching and watching the road curve ahead of them.

  When the sun got low, they found a motel, rustic with tiny rooms and no TV, but when he pulled in and parked, her father changed his mind. “I don’t like this one, let’s head back to the city.”

  They drove on past dark, until they got to lights and he drove to the fanciest hotel he could find. “This one’s better, what do you think?”

  She nodded. He needed her to say yes and be happy. “It looks great, Dad.”

  They checked in and went up to the room. “Let’s order room service. I’m starved.” Her father handed her the menu.

  She knew this game. They had played it since she was little. “Can I get anything I want, Daddy?”

  “Anything, Wendell-girl. The sky’s the limit.”

  Rebo held my hand and turned it over. “Miss Lynnie, tell me your dream while I look at your lines.”

  I told her about the ship and the man. The secret I had told him but couldn’t remember. I wanted her to tell me what it all meant, but she didn’t.

  “Were there any smells in your dream?”

  I was surprised at her question, but I did remember. The man had smelled like campfires and whiskey and pine needles. Rebo nodded.
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  “You remember that smell, girl. That’s how you’ll know him when you find him again.”

  Rebo put some dried up leaves in a bowl and had me stir them around. When I was done she held the bowl up close to her eyes and squinted. “That looks like a crow to me.” She held it over to Mig, who said, “Or a raven.”

  “Same thing,” Rebo said. “They’re both birds that see what isn’t yet there.”

  “You watch out for crows,” she told me. “They’ll let you know when to pay attention.”

  Fanny came around the table and handed me a cup of milk and a cookie. “This ain’t scaring you, is it?”

  “No ma’am.” I wanted to tell her how much I wanted to hear more, but Mig interrupted.

  Mig had a quiet voice and a shy look about her. She looked at me and then ducked her head. “Rebo, give her something for good luck. She needs a charm to carry.”

  Rebo reached for a big cloth bag and began to dig around inside. She pulled out a little statue of a soldier. “Here he is. This one’ll keep you safe. You just keep that, now. And remember, you’re a seer. There’s signs anywhere a seer looks.”

  All the way home I held the little soldier in my hand, squeezed tight. On the other side was Jessie, walking more slowly because she was getting tired. Fanny offered to let Jessie ride piggyback, but Jessie shook her head and kept walking. She always wanted to do whatever I did. And right then, I could tell she was mad she didn’t get a charm of her own to carry.

  “Does Jessie need one too?” I held up the soldier and Fanny stopped.

  “Well, now, is that what this is?” She walked over to the side of the road and squatted down, brushing through the grass with her fingers. “Here you go.” She walked over to Jessie and handed her a stone the size of a quarter. “This is special, Miss Jessie. It means you’re as solid as a rock. From the earth itself. It’s just for you.”

  Jessie took the stone and put it in her pocket. She smiled and marched on ahead.

  “That one worships the ground you walk on.” Fanny looked at me and shook her finger. “But that might get her in trouble one day. Now, don’t look so scary. I don’t mean nothing bad by that. Just she has to find her own way. Not follow yours.”

  When we got home Fanny tucked us in together. Jessie was still smiling over her rock. I fell asleep with the soldier in my hand.

  Eight years later I was walking along a sidewalk, struggling with an overstuffed book bag. When I started up the stone steps, I lost my balance and almost tipped backwards. I managed to get the book bag off my shoulder before it carried me down again.

  “Need some help?”

  I smelled something familiar, woodsmoke and whiskey and pine. When I looked up he was there, the familiar face. He put his arm around me and his breath touched my cheek.

  “I know you.” He was laughing and I laughed too. Hearing his voice for the first time. It was like filling in a sketch.

  “I’m Scott. And you’re –“

  “Lynnie.”

  That night he took me out to dinner, and I told him about the dream.

  “So what is this secret you’re supposed to tell me?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

  We laughed. All night long we laughed. When I got back to my room I wanted to call Jessie and tell her, but stopped. In a moment that seemed crazy and jealous, I fretted she might want Scott too.

  I was a psychology major, studying Carl Jung, fascinated with dreams and symbols and synchronicity. Doing a kind of therapy called sandplay, where the therapist had shelves of miniatures and rectangular trays of sand. I couldn’t get enough of doing the trays. It felt like I was looking for something in the sand.

  The night Scott proposed, we were walking downtown. He told me he was in training in Williamsburg, that his work was secret and would take him away much of the time.

  “Anyone I love will spend a lot of time waiting. I want you to know that.”

  “Are you talking about someone in particular?” I asked.

  He looked so serious. “I want you to be the one waiting.”

  That was how he asked me to marry him. I had already been waiting, for years.

  At the end of that semester, I decided not to continue at the university.

  Looking back, I’m not sure why we made that choice. Scott needed to live in Culpeper because of work, but we could have figured that out.

  He didn’t ask me to quit school. I wanted to be Scott’s wife. I wanted to have his children. And I chose the girlhood dream I had not quite reconstructed in the sand.

  When I said goodbye the therapist gave me two things: a sailing ship, which was made of wood and had white sails that billowed, almost like an ocean breeze was coming through the window, and a blue notebook.

  “Record your dreams,” she told me. “Write down the things you think about and everything you see and feel. Your dreams. You’ll learn as much doing that as being in here.”

  Only a few days later, Scott had to go. I was the one who found the little house in Culpeper, and moved in without him, the wedding on hold until he got back.

  Two days before she’d decided to leave Charlottesville, Wendell’s father had called early in the morning to say he was leaving the country again. You’d think she’d be used to it after twenty-six years, the sudden goodbyes on airport tarmacs, front porches, over the telephone. Now he did it on voicemail and it was so much easier that way. For him, at least.

  As usual, she wondered where he was going. It had to be the Middle East, with all the chaos in that part of the world. It was unspoken after all these years that he worked for the CIA, and owned weapons the average deer hunter in Culpeper, Virginia didn’t. That he’d left so many times there was no tracking the number. His clothes smelled funny when he came home. She had catalogued those smells as a little girl, not knowing for sure where each belonged, but recognizing them and thinking, he’s been there again, the place that smelled of burnt almond. Or dust. Incense she had never found in a store. This was all she knew of what he did.

  Her little kitchen was quiet, the white tulips like ghosts against the dark wood of the table. He was supposed to be sitting there, eating the dinner she’d invited him to share. She had the makings for lasagna, one of his favorites, and brandy. The tulips and coffee ice cream.

  Her disappointment had bolted into action. Everything but the ice cream would endure the drive to his house in Culpeper. She would make him dinner in her mother’s kitchen and then, after she had filled his belly with carbohydrates and brandy, she would make him talk.

  The radio kept her company on the familiar roads. She had driven the route from Charlottesville to Culpeper so many times she could have done it in her sleep. The rushing of air into the open car window whooshed and whispered, pushing her along. Encouraging her.

  When she got to his house the familiar black bag was packed and waiting by the door.

  He was in the living room asleep in his recliner. A bottle of Scotch was on the table, empty. The TV was on, hiss of video at the end of its loop, remote in his left hand. In his right, a pen held in the relaxed grip of someone exhausted or drunk or both. He had been working crossword puzzles. The most difficult ones.

  A stack of catalogs was on the table by the Glenmorangie: Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, pages folded at the corners, items circled in black ink, an oak worktable, a beveled mirror oval like the keyhole in the door of an old house.

  On the back of an envelope he had sketched a tiny car driving north, denoted by a capital N and an arrow pointing upward. A little face behind the wheel, coils of long hair streaming in the breeze of the open window. Little machines that looked like two-headed hammers striking the ground. She dismissed the drawings. He had always done them, and they reminded her of his near constant distraction. He could never do just one thing at a time. His mind was too busy.

  She couldn’t bring herself to wake him; didn’t want him to know she had seen him that way, shopping for a dead
woman, shopping for the daughter he had just stood up for dinner. The odd sketches he’d made. She wanted to forget the sight of him drunk in the chair, the weak man she never saw until moments like this. There had not been many of them.

  Instead of making dinner, she backed quietly out of the room and left. He never even knew she was there.

  Her name, Wendell, meant wanderer, and that’s what she was, although certain people in her life would have said what she was doing was running.

  They were wrong.

  She was looking for something.

  Back in Charlottesville, she bypassed her apartment and headed to Tristan’s house. Tristan had been her best friend since college, as well as her sometime lover. He was already asleep and she unpacked the food into his kitchen, taking time to place each item in the correct cupboard. She thought about making tea and then thought about having a shot of vodka, but instead she climbed beneath his sheets and waited for the comfort he offered. Tristan was predictable. All she had to do was soak him in.

  He stirred and opened his arm so she could get closer. She had never admitted to Tristan that she had dreamed about him when she was a girl. That his comfort had an edge to it. Something she didn’t understand.

  But the comfort didn’t happen. She waited, forced herself to be still beside him when really what she wanted to do was wake him up and hear his voice. Hours passed, and his breathing in the night rubbed at her ears, the heaviness of the quilt made her want to throw it off. The light through the mini-blinds was too white, sharp in the dim room. She got up and pulled on the same clothes she had taken off only a few hours before.

  Sitting outside on Tristan’s porch she heard spring peepers. Surely that couldn’t be, it was too early in the year. A walk through the neighborhood revealed still more: the tubular green heads of bulbs rose like arrows through the soil, a barely visible shimmer of green across lawns that hadn’t been there two days earlier.