A Peculiar Grace Page 19

  “The paper?” she said.

  “Mostly what I’ve done is hope you were having a good life. The few things that popped up in the paper made me believe it was true.” He let go of her and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.” And turned toward the hall.

  When he was at the doorway into the hall he realized he wasn’t sorry and was going nowhere. Even if it meant a melancholy week of silence in the motel. So he paused at the kitchen door at which moment something hard and wet struck his back and he turned slowly and looked down at a mess of food on the floor and felt the wet in the middle of his back.

  “Don’t you dare walk out on me right now.”

  He looked at her.

  “What do you want, Hewitt? What do you expect? Should I take you to bed?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Well, you’re right. It’s not even a possibility. There are no possibilities, Hewitt.”

  He said, “I think I should go now. Do you know it’s half past one?”

  “Oh fuck. Hewitt, why’d you come? Don’t answer that. I can’t handle you, Hewitt. Please go home.”

  “It’s not that bad a motel.”

  She wrapped her arms around her breasts and for a moment looked nineteen again and with her mouth working cried out, “How much am I supposed to stand?”

  And Hewitt, knowing he was doing the worst thing but knowing it was now finally beyond any control, stood in her house and years of words fell forth.

  “You’ve never left me, Emily. I went truly crazy for several years. I drank so much that for no reason but plain old bald-ass luck I should be dead. Then it only became a smaller insanity I could manage. It means I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll wait as long as you need. I’m a middle-aged man who knows better but still believe you’re my twin, my missing half. And I know once upon a time you felt the same about me. And here we are. I know I’ve come crashing in on you when you want it the least but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t come to you. All of which I promised myself I would not say. But it’s how I am and how I expect I’ll always be. I’m not a practical man. I don’t believe I ever had a choice in the matter but if I did it was when I met you but I live by passion. And passion is cruel but the most true thing. Christ I’m really fucking up. My lovely Emily. Life is unbearably sweet and shorter every day and maybe I should’ve waited another month or a year or sent you a letter or maybe even just left you be. But I couldn’t. I love you, Emily. God help me but I do. And always will.”

  There was a silence hanging in the room. Then, as if having waited to make sure he was finished, Emily stepped back a couple of paces. Watching this, he knew he’d said what had to be said and knew also it was impossible for Emily to see him as anything but totally mad, an insane unfeeling toad dropped from the sky.

  She said, “Hewitt—”

  “I know,” he said. And turned and walked in long deep strides out of her kitchen and down her hall and out of her house on to her porch. He heard her speak his name again but the tone was low and he thought Don’t stop now. He could not imagine worse behavior than what he’d just done. He could not imagine otherwise. Oh Emily. It had, in some ways, always been like this.

  The boy was sitting on the hood of the Thunderbird. In long shorts and an armless T-shirt and his hair wind and water swept. A small backpack on the ground at his feet.

  Hewitt walked down on to the peastone and said, “Get off my car. And take a walk around the block. Your mother needs a few minutes alone.”

  John remained where he was, looking at Hewitt. Then ever so slowly slid off the car and bent for his backpack. Hewitt went around the car and got in. The boy stood upright and stepped away from the front to the driver’s side. Face to face with Hewitt. John said, “Who the fuck are you?”

  Hewitt pumped the gas and turned the key and the Bird roared and shivered and Hewitt pumped the gas some more. And raised his voice so he could be heard and said, “Nobody. Nobody at all.” And shoved the car into gear and, foot deep on the gas, screamed down the slippery drive toward the street. Hearing the small stones thrown up by the rear wheels striking and bouncing off the body. He came to a hard sliding brake at the end of the driveway and then aloud said, “Fuck it,” and pressed on out into the avenue with no idea if there was traffic or not. The car hit the pavement with a surge as the tires purchased and he was going down the street toward the lake with the Bird out of control, sliding and whip-tailing back and forth down the suddenly narrow pavement.

  Halfway down the next block he removed his foot from the gas and let the car drift to the side of the street. Came to a stop and he sat there for a moment. And then put the car in first and drove away, drifting up into second as the tears started silent from his eyes. The only thing he knew was he had to get home.

  BACK AT THE motel he paced the room. He was desperately angry with himself. He’d intended to present himself as an old and balanced friend in a time of need but failed to realize Emily would never be able to see him as such. And he’d misbehaved accordingly. His need for truth was a clear violation. Even the thought that she might, if not now at some point, respect that honesty would not change a thing. Not content to be the proverbial bull, he’d driven a herd of cattle into the fragile porcelain of her mind and heart and stood back in the triumph of his own anguish. Fool, fool, bloody fool.

  For all his prattle about passion he’d been selfish. That was the bottom line. An idiocy of supreme violations. Christ. He smacked his forehead with his hand and then turned and drove his fist into the painted cinderblock wall.

  AN HOUR LATER, with a hand towel wrapped around his torn and bleeding knuckles he carried his suitcase down to the car and waited there until the delivery boy arrived with a small pizza and large coffee. He set them on the passenger seat and went back up the stairs for his last sweep of the room.

  The message light was blinking. He stood a long time staring at it but finally decided against listening. He needed no one to tell him it was time to go, no one to beg him to be left alone. So he discarded the towel in the sink and studied his hand. The bleeding had stopped, his knuckles were crusting over. He went to the office to settle up and then drove the Thunderbird across the street and filled the tank. And bought a bottle of water for later and a roll of paper towels to keep pizza grease off the leather interior.

  At the first thruway service area he calmly walked to the restroom and threw up the half-digested pizza. Rinsed his face and mouth at the sink. It was dusk and he was on his way home.

  Five

  Along night drive with the windows down as his handful of ashes dribbled bit by bit out into the passing night and then were altogether swept away. By the time he crossed into Vermont it was past midnight and his jaw and head ached from the unending grinding of his teeth. Which even when he became aware of, he was unable to stop. As if he might chew through himself, chew himself down. So he’d have something to spit out.

  His father had liked Emily but after her first visit told Hewitt she would break his heart. To which Hewitt replied, “She already has.” Standing in the living room alone with his father on a September evening after Hewitt’s first summer with Timothy Farrell—Hewitt just having returned from driving Emily home after her long Labor Day visit. Sharing cans of Narragansett beer. And Thomas Pearce looked at his son and in a voice so mild and emotionally complete it halted Hewitt altogether his father said, “I hope you’re right. I truly do.”

  It would be almost three months before Hewitt got the first clue of what his father was saying. And another twenty-three years till, on that black drive in the floating car on the pitched-awry night, before he would fully comprehend his father had not been warning him but offering in succinct words, Thomas Pearce’s tender concern for his son.

  He stopped at the all-night diner in Rutland and ate a plate of corned beef hash and poached eggs. An hour to go and he wanted to slide into the house silent without waking anyone. Swipe a bottle and go sit in the forge with
the exhausted furies working their peculiar energy upon him. The food had no taste because his mouth was smacking for whisky. But he cleaned his plate, mopping the last of the egg yolk and ketchup on to the soft white toast.

  It was quarter past two and a very bad time for him to be out on the road. Sure enough a cruiser followed him all the way through Rutland up into Mendon and then up the mountain and only dropped back and disappeared when he turned off on to Route 100, a road that almost led to nowhere unless you were patient and then came out into the valleys of the White River and not so many miles past that the turnoff running north all the way to Canada but only a half-dozen miles to Lympus.

  He glided in with the lights and engine off. There was a light in the kitchen window and the yard light was on which was a good thing because otherwise he would’ve coasted into the Volkswagen. Which was a heap of dead elephant. Only when he stepped out of the Thunderbird did he realize what he was looking at: the Bug coated in gray primer and all the chrome and windows wrapped and taped with newspaper. The car was being painted. He guessed Walter was behind this, if only in the efficiency of the preparations. There was mild assurance that the job was being done right out in the yard and not, say, tucked up in the haymow or behind the barn. Whatever was up he didn’t have to waste time worrying over. He stood on the ground beside the clicking cooling Bird and looked toward the house. He ran a hand over his forehead still wet with sweat from the cruiser that now seemed a ghost of fears. And bent his head back and looked for the stars. But the warm night should’ve alerted him and none were visible. He drank air deep through his nose and knew by morning it would rain.

  Fuck. He was shaky from the road.

  But there was nothing for it and, silently cursing whoever hadn’t paid attention to the weather, opened the driver’s door and let down the parking brake, fiddled with the shift knob and as suspected easily slipped the car out of gear. The VW didn’t care about the clutch and he reminded himself to tell Jessica or Walter they might want to crawl underneath and take a look at the linkage. He held the door open and put his shoulder against the roof and with a slow rocking start got the car moving and rolled it into the shed. Hearing newspaper rip free here and there. Better than the whole effort soaked with rain in the morning.

  And stood outside the shed with his back to the shelter and almost laughed. Vitriolic clamor chugging in his chest. Goddamn but he’d finally done what was clearly a good deed for the day. Even if today was actually tomorrow.

  Hewitt had never really been able to comprehend the notion of irony. Sarcasm, yes. The upheaval of circumstance also. But irony. Once accepted then all life was ironic. And he doubted that. Tremendously. Still, as he crept soundless as could be into his own house and lifted the bottle from the pantry and then back outside, he suspected the ironic. Stealing into and out of his own house.

  In the dark he went down the steps of the forge. He found the box of farmer’s matches and struck one and went through the drawer under the workbench for the handful of candle stubs. He pulled one free and lit it and stuck the cold end in the pritchel hole of the smaller anvil, knowing tomorrow he’d have to scrape the dripped wax free. The light flicked and quivered. And he broke the fifteen-year-old seal and tipped the bottle into the smeared dirty glass kept forever in the forge. He drank half the glass and took up the iron egg resting there and turned it around in his hand, feeling and seeing at the same time. It was close to done.

  He laid the iron egg back down and took his glass and the bottle to the bench next to the vise and set them on the heavy planks and then hoisted himself up and sat. He was home.

  IT WAS RAINING and the bottle was half-empty when he came out of the forge into the pale predawn light and his body ached as if he were an old man.

  He stood in the yard, the light drizzle upon his upturned head, the muted birdsong, the yard, buildings, trees and gardens in the gray gloom of old known ghosts that were in fact his life. And once and forever swore that he wouldn’t allow ever again the idea, come late that night, that Emily had grown up and he had not. He was not letting himself off the hook. But the ticket only allows so many revolutions upon the carousel and by God he was going to pay attention to his ride. Recalling how his father at so much younger an age than himself had to again step back on to the earth. How easy it would’ve been for that man to have locked himself away into his past, a literal fire of all he knew and loved. For many years Hewitt had thought his father a stronger man than himself. And perhaps he had been. Or perhaps Hewitt was just arriving. Each person has their own juncture. His face wet with the rain he realized it didn’t matter one Goddamn when this becomes clear—the point was the clarity. Recognition.

  He went to the house. Out of the lilac grove flushed the fifty or so mourning doves roosting there, the birds whipping away in flights of eight or ten at a time, their cries almost like owls, small whoops of sadness trailing after them and then gone in the streaking rain. Their cries how they’d gained their name. Hewitt was sorry to disturb them although he finally understood the contradiction between the lovely birds and their nomenclature. How much else, he wondered, his hand wiping his wet face, do we corrupt with our needs and failings?

  HE WOKE CLOSE to noon. Outside now settled into steady rain, water that would seep deep into the soil but not so drenching it would swell brooks and rivers to muddy whirling chutes of limbs and washed-away riverbank trash. He rolled over to check the time and saw the framed photograph of that long-ago teenaged girl. A color photograph so time and sunlight had dimmed the brightness of her eyes and made even more white the blond of her hair. She was wearing the Black Watch flannel shirt. Her head tilted to one side, hair swept over her shoulders. Smiling into the camera as responding to a joke. He remembered the day he took that picture. He placed the photograph back on the nightstand.

  He’d worn that shirt apart. Until the day he stretched up and it tore clear across the back, buttons already gone, the pocket also long ripped away. Late that night he’d placed the remains in an old shirt box and climbed on snowshoes up the hill to the stone chamber. Each fall he stacked dry cordwood along one side, covered with an ancient waxed tarp. So there was wood ready for a fire whenever he wanted. Which sometimes then was two or three times a week. With his mittens he brushed and scooped the snow from the outside fireplace and lit a fire and nursed it slowly as the wet from the snow residue died and the fire grew, feeble at first and then, Hewitt sitting back on a cold rock and the whisky running free as a mythic horse, stick by stick the fire turned to a hot steady blaze of leaping twisting flame. The night sky almost chirping.

  He never could remember when exactly he placed the box and shirt on the fire.

  Now, rain washing down, he lay in bed and remembered how for weeks after he’d raged within, having lost the central memory of a grand ceremonial.

  And was close to laughing over this suddenly explicit nonevent when he caught himself. Remembering those long wonderful winter childhood evenings with his mother and Beth and his father gathered around the fireplace, both children assuming their father was absorbed in the beauty of the fire as they were. When certainly many nights that man was watching something else altogether.

  He took up once more the photograph. He resolved at some vague point in the future he owed her at least a letter. It would be a long one. Or a simple paragraph. He’d know when the time was right.

  IN THE KITCHEN was the most wonderful gift—a fresh pot of coffee all set up and ready to go. He peered out the window. The Thunderbird was gone but Walter’s old rust and red jeep was in its place. On the table a note—Welcome home. We’ve gone to the auto parts store for paint and some other shit we need for the Bug. Thanks for pushing it under cover, neither one of us guessed it was going to rain. Be back early afternoon. Love Jessica. PS I think your friend Julie is pissed off at you.

  So he stood with a hot mug over the answering machine, the number 3 blinking steadily. He sipped and took a deep breath and pressed play.

  “Mr.
Pearce this is Jim Ralston returning your call—” Hewitt deleted this, having no desire to hear condolences for anyone, real or imagined.

  “Hewitt, it’s Julie. Don’t ever call me from a bar late at night. There’s nothing more pathetic than a drunk asking to get married and thanks to you I was up most of the night assuring my dear loving partner that you and I are only old friends who spend time talking shop every now and then. You sounded really fucked-up. I thought you were pretty much over that. When the time comes I’ll give you a buzz or stop in when I get down that way. Bye.”

  The third call was a hang-up. But in his own way, Hewitt had learned how to patch the off-day and off-time announcements of the machine to the day and time he lived within. So he knew that long silence and the dead buzz of dial tone had been recorded the night before. Probably about the time he was vomiting pizza.

  But what was working most foul was the message from Julie. Julie Korplanski. He didn’t even want to recall the night in the bar and could not for his life recollect what his message had been. One more fuckup in a long fucked-up couple of days. Ah Julie. Ten years younger then Hewitt so when they first met he was cast in the role of teacher. She was cautious enough at first to keep their focus on pounding metal. Even as they rounded out very quickly to long evenings eating and drinking and sweaty sex that left the bed a mess and both of them curled tight together in delightful sleep. Driving down from Hardwick to spend an afternoon in the forge and then the evening with a good dinner before repairing to bed. Where mighty repair was made. He’d made the drive to Hardwick a few times and loved the pretty spot where she’d built a small passive solar house and a somewhat larger forge and workshop. She needed more work space than Hewitt because she’d settled into a never-ending exploration of the equine form. Which was where she eclipsed him. And he knew it and was proud of her. Her horses were crafted from any and all types of metal but despite the methods of assemblage one could walk around and around one of her horses and see nothing but horse.