The Meaning of Isolated Objects Page 6

She paused before typing the next response.

  I’m taking a little break from C’ville. What do you think about the letters?

  Tristan:

  So the gist of this missive is that some guy has the hots for you, what else is new? And you’ve convinced yourself there’s a mystery, something to figure out. The only difference between this and a dozen other times is that you’re in some nameless fucking place and I’m in Charlottesville. Too far away to slide into your bed and make you forget the letter, too far away to make sure this guy, whoever he is, isn’t some pervert. Too far away to insert myself into this little picture. Which is probably why you’ve run off in the first place.

  A funny feeling sat on her heart, like a little weight perched there, but she decided to ignore it.

  Why are you so grumpy?

  Tristan:

  I’ve gone hard, Wendell. Not cold but hard. An experiment, my own test. Not unlike yours, the test of leaving, of absence. Mine is this: what happens if I don’t give you what you don’t know you need?

  Tristan, come out here. Get in your car and drive. I miss you.

  She stopped before typing the next line.

  I need you.

  His reply came back faster than she thought possible.

  No.

  Click. She pushed one button and the laptop screen went dark.

  She decided to find out more about the man she’d met. She was already on her way to town: the phone number inked onto the wrinkled receipt, purse, cash. She was heading out to a pay phone. She was sure Tristan was emailing more lengthy lectures but she didn’t check, on purpose, because whatever he said would change her intentions in this moment and she was tired tired tired of Tristan’s effect on her intentions.

  The man who answered the phone when she dialed the number laughed when she said she was the redhead from Wheatsville Co-op and Sixth Street. He told her his name was Grayson and that he owned an art gallery, which was the number he’d given her and yes, he was there, and perhaps she would like to come on by and go for a drink.

  He met her at the door with the same slow lazy drawl from before. “I know a good place for margaritas.”

  He locked up and they walked together to his car. He opened the door for her, and bent to tuck the hem of her skirt inside before closing it. He smiled when he started the car. “Listen,” he said. The sound of the engine was low and smooth. He pulled away from the curb.

  “Where is this place?”

  “By the riverfront, the Cedar Door, which does have one, as a matter of fact, and the best margaritas in town.”

  The bar was small and lively, and Grayson found a table on the deck where it was quieter. “You like margaritas, right?”

  He ordered them by the shaker and they came with glasses garnished with skewers of green olives.

  “I’m glad you decided to call.”

  He leaned back a little in his chair. Grayson had crinkly eyes when he smiled, and with his bulk, suddenly reminded her of a Buddha. He talked about his gallery, which specialized in Texan folk art, and about the hill country, which he loved. Every few minutes he took a drink and just before each sip, ran his tongue around the rim of the glass, licking the salt off.

  “I got another anonymous letter in my mailbox. Go on and tell me it was you. They’re really poetic. I love them.”

  “Wish I’d been the one to write them, then, but I didn’t.”

  She watched his face when he said it, and then his hands. From the tone of his voice, to the nonverbal cues, everything fit. She didn’t think he was lying. She still wondered about the letters, but for the moment, Grayson was pretty intriguing himself.

  Right after last call he reached across the table and tapped her arm.

  “I’ll drive you home. You’ve had too many to drive.”

  “You’ve had as many as me.”

  “I have the advantage of some weight.”

  They crossed the street to the riverfront before getting in his car. It was quiet and the water sloshed slowly along the banks. She wanted to kiss him, but they weren’t standing close enough. She would have to take a step, and that seemed too large a gesture.

  “Let’s head on out.”

  Once outside Austin, Grayson was, and there was no other word for it, motoring his big brown Jaguar down the road. The Texas night careened past. They had the windows open, Blondie cranked up loud. She had flirted outrageously all night long. It was time to back off a little. Still, she kept thinking of him without clothes, his fleshiness.

  He made the turn with no prompt, navigated the long drive, and swung the car in a circle so he was pointed the right way out. “Wendell, it’s been my pleasure.” He held out his hand. “I’ll come get you tomorrow and take you back to your car.”

  She watched from the front porch. His taillights flickered in and out of sight as he braked along the curve of the driveway.

  She didn’t check email. She climbed in bed and thought of Grayson’s body. He was right to leave. If he’d stayed the whole thing would have been over by now.

  Sometime in the middle of the night she awakened for no reason she could fathom, maybe in response to a noise, but by the time she realized she was sitting up and listening it was silent. After a few minutes listening to nothing, she got up and checked her email. There was nothing from Tristan.

  It was warm in the house, so she opened the front door to see if there was a breeze, and ended up outside.

  The stars were incredible from the front steps. Her father had taught her the constellations when she was little. She still remembered most of them. Sometimes when she got in just the right mood she did something she used to do when he was gone.

  Closed her eyes, like this, breathed slow and deep, like this. Emptied her mind and then saw her father.

  He was in a room with candles and shadows of sex on the wall. A chair someplace beneath the sky. And then he stood and began to walk.

  The path he took was difficult; he had to climb mountains and cross rivers, find his way through forests and tromp through bogs, endure cold and rain and even snow, but none of it slowed him down or stopped him.

  The whistle of a bullet that missed. He wiped the dust from his eyes and walked on.

  It was a long process, it could take an hour or even two, but in the end she brought him home. He heard her calling him, inside his heart, and he came.

  Breakfast was espresso with steamed soymilk and a Luna bar on her back steps. Tristan hadn’t emailed, still. She was pondering this incongruous fact when Grayson called her name from the front yard.

  In the light of this day he wasn’t quite as appealing, but there was something about his L.L. Bean hiking shorts and checked shirt, the way he sat on the steps so his thigh touched hers and said no to her offer of coffee.

  “You been to Enchanted Rock yet?”

  Ten minutes, tops, and instead of going back to town to get her car, they were on the way to this rock in his. Grayson cut into a convenient store parking lot, slammed on brakes about three feet from the front door, and grinned. “Time to stock up.” He bought a cheap Styrofoam cooler and ice, sent her for water and soda and beer, while he walked the aisles grabbing assorted bags of chips, chocolate bars, cheese and crackers. Anything he saw and wanted, apparently.

  He set everything within easy reach in the backseat and they climbed in front. “We’ll be there in a couple of hours. Grab me a Coke.”

  She ate potato chips until her tongue hurt and then had some cheese. Grayson put on Norah Jones and swiped one hand through his hair. She reached over and cranked the volume.

  When they got to the park he angled the Jaguar at the very end of the lot so no one could get too close. She walked ahead and he followed with water bottles stuffed into a navy pack buckled around his waist. The sun was bright and strong, mid-day. Her skin was already pinking up.

  “I forgot sunscreen.”

  He raised a finger and headed back to the car. “I keep some in the glove box.”

  He came
back with the sunscreen and she rubbed it on while they walked.

  From the car driving in, Enchanted Rock had seemed one big pink mound rising from the earth. But as they approached on foot, it stretched into folds of solid pink, nothing but rock surface. Like walking on a pink planet. Grayson incanted. “Six hundred and some odd acres of pink granite. One of the largest batholiths in the United States.”

  They walked past mesquite, which she had already looked up since arriving in Texas, and prickly pear. The bluebonnets. “What’s that?”

  Grayson shaded his eyes and followed her gaze. “Agarita. And over there persimmon.”

  She stopped to breathe. The heat from the granite made little waves in the sun. “Whoever named it was right, it is enchanted.”

  “The Tonkawa Indians. They thought it was haunted. They saw ghost fires at the top. Heard strange moaning sounds late at night. It’s a sacred place. It’s church to me, coming here.”

  They spent the day exploring. Grayson was all about comfort. They walked for an hour and a half, enjoying the view of Turkey Peak and a number of runners who seemed to be getting their workout going up and down the granite slope. They went back to the car for shade and refreshment before setting out again. She liked how he watched her. Several times he reached out when he thought she might lose her balance.

  “Let me take you to dinner.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Somewhere sinfully expensive.”

  She convinced him, easy enough to do, to stay until nightfall and sneak back in to be alone with the rock.

  After the sun went down she undressed and lay flat on the granite, stretched long beneath the open night sky. Every part of her touched the rock. The heat seemed to rise through her bones as it left the granite. The cool of evening fell, but still the heat seeped slowly from below, deep in the earth and up through her. She brought her hands together beneath her chin and closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing, Wendell?” Grayson leaned close, eyelids crinkled at the corners.

  “Praying to the great granite god.”

  Nothing but Grayson’s breath on her temple, no words. She was sure it was him. The man from her dreams.

  “This is holy ground.”

  I knew Scott loved me, it wasn’t that. It was that I wanted more of him than he could give. He always kept a part of himself separate. Held it back. His own fear, not so different from mine perhaps.

  Where does he go when he’s not here? Where do you go, Scott? I dreamed last night that he was in a dust storm, trying to find his way home. His head was wrapped against the dust, his eyes covered by a fold of cloth.

  Sometimes I get out the atlas and let my fingers roam until they stop of their own accord. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan. These countries are slightly faded on the page where my fingers have rubbed across them so many times. I don’t really know if I’m right about him being there. But I think so.

  We got married in Williamsburg. Both our parents are gone, so it was just me and Scott, a few friends of his, and Jessie. We got married outdoors, in a little garden. It was beautiful and very quiet.

  Scott took me to an inn in the mountains for our honeymoon. We walked and held hands. A train passed below and we stopped to listen. We ate dinner in the dining room; he asked for dessert to be brought to the private porch off our room. We sat side by side and he fed me the cake from his fork. I licked his finger, touched his face.

  After awhile I went inside and changed into the white gown I’d bought. It was the fanciest thing I’d ever owned, and when he saw it he smiled. I felt brave wearing that gown, and bold. Scott liked how I shifted, not so shy. We did things we hadn’t done before. There were no words between us. Just eyes and touches. I don’t know where it was we went together. Someplace that bound him to me in a physical way, a way he needed. It was important. It was something between us that mattered.

  It was because of that night that the gown turned into a ritual for his homecomings. I hadn’t expected it to be so hard when he left and came home again, but it was. He seemed gruff sometimes when he first got home, and I felt shy again, shyer even than when we first met, because I didn’t know what it meant. The dark moods.

  At some point I realized he just needed something to help him transition, and the white gown became that thing. When he saw it, each time he returned and we went to bed, he made a soft sound deep in his throat. It was the sound of desire and something else, something I still don’t know the name of.

  We made love and he told me he’d missed me. He folded me into his smell, his safety. There was no fear with Scott. Some nights when he was gone I heard noises outside. I tried to write things in the notebooks when he was home; paragraphs that might comfort me later, in his absences. Notes about his strength, the hard shell of protection he cast.

  Look at him, the muscle of his upper arm, the set of his jaw even while sleeping. The slightest creak of a tree limb in the wind and he raises his head, listening. Lynnie? Where are you? Here, I say, I’m right here. Come back to bed, babe. And he holds a hand out, lifts the blanket so I can crawl back in.

  Tell me, I whispered. What? That you’ll always take care of me. Course I will. His voice in the room. The echo that lasts the nights until he comes home again.

  When he was home we acted like we were on vacation. It wasn’t ever like what Melly described about her husband, going to work and coming home every day, with routine and assurance. She described it as monotony, something that she wished could change sometimes. She craved excitement and fun.

  With Scott, we started all over every time he left and returned. I wore the white gown and it gave me courage. Which settled him in. Then we were all over each other, barely able to stop touching even long enough for one of us to go the bathroom. Like newlyweds, like we had just met and couldn’t get enough. And then he’d have to leave again and it would be terrible, like tearing part of myself away and hugging it goodbye.

  And then getting used to being on my own again, for awhile.

  “How do you stand it?” Jessie asked one night when she was staying with me. A sister weekend.

  “I just do. I don’t really know how.”

  Jessie had begged me not to marry him. She worried he wouldn’t be there for me, and now she reminds me that he isn’t, but what Jessie doesn’t know is that it is enough. The time he’s home is enough. Well, almost.

  “Couldn’t you have finished college? You wanted to be a therapist. You wanted to do that sandplay thing.”

  We were in the study and she took a little blue whale off the shelf and set it down on the table. “Your big wide ocean became a pond, Lynnie.”

  I had to laugh at that. “But Jessie, I’m happy here.”

  She didn’t believe me. And part of her was right. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to go back, get a graduate degree. Set up an office. There have been times I considered doing just that. But there have been more dreams. I don’t know where they come from. A rowan tree, and ravens. An armadillo. A little girl crying.

  Rebo would say I need to stay here and listen. She might say I was never meant to have my dream. That Jessie took it and made it hers.

  Jessie’s about to graduate with a psychology degree. She wants to go to graduate school in a few years.

  I watched the tulips today, pink and yellow in the back bed. They are so perfect. I planted those last fall when Scott was gone. The tulips are timepieces. Things I planted when he was gone that come into bloom when he’s home.

  Every flower means something. Every tree. I’ve been reading about that, what the different ones mean, the symbols and stories. I planted an apple tree two weeks ago, thinking that by the time it bears fruit maybe Scott will be done with this job.

  I asked him tonight, will you ever quit? And he got quiet. Thinking it over. Hell no, he said. I knew the answer before I asked, but it was a relief to finally hear him say it out loud.

  Emails.

  Aunt Jessie: Honey, you come home as soon as you can. We miss you here.
>
  Wendell missed Aunt Jessie too, but wasn’t planning on going home anytime soon. She’d been waiting half her life to get out of Virginia, dying to be the one who left, the one adventuring, far enough away that no one interfered. A clean canvas.

  Tristan: He’s home, he’s calling.

  And of course Tris being who he was didn’t tell her father anything. She’d have liked more words from Tristan. He was seeing Kate, she could tell by everything he wasn’t saying. Kate was more his type, blond and willowy and quieter than Wendell. Kate let him be in charge and he loved that. She spoke the old languages, Greek, and he loved that too. She could hear Kate whispering to him while they made love. He connected with Kate, but only part-way, deeper in he was listening for his computer, which talked to him like a beloved assistant. Little pings and sing-song noises that told Tristan he had email, or updates, or whatever it was he was tracking these days.

  So he was inside Kate, and moving, and beneath him Kate sensed the part that was not. She whispered in Greek and pulled him in. Kate knew how to stay with Tristan. Kate didn’t have any reason to run away.

  Dad: Let’s take a drive out west, Wendell-girl. I’ve got some time.

  She just bet he had time, home from wherever it was he’d been, the smell of god knows what in his luggage.

  Now he knew how it felt, being left behind.

  She had not intended to make that happen, but since it had, she enjoyed it a little. It was true she was angry with him. He had done so much leaving in her life. She knew the empty place that came from her mother. It was contained, in a way, bound by the permanence of death. The empty places that came from her father, though, were fluid. They shifted and moved. She never knew when the emptiness might take her over.

  He had tried too hard when he’d come home. They had never enjoyed what she thought of as normal time. The kind of time she had with Aunt Jessie, the kind of time she saw when she spent nights with friends. Her father had either been gone or he had been totally, almost unnaturally, focused on her. There had been no in between.