“Maybe they resented having to feel emotions they weren’t accustomed to,” said Edith.
I glanced up at her, startled. “You might be right. That’s a more generous take than my own. I thought they just resented not being in control, which doesn’t happen to them very often. Ian kept shooting out his arm and glaring at his watch like he was waiting for a train and it was late.”
“Death. So inconsiderate.”
“Exactly. But I don’t think death was the only thing they were waiting for.”
“What else?”
I remembered the way they’d all jump when the landline rang or a car drove by—its tires crunching through the gravel of the country road, its headlights sweeping an arc across the oak-paneled walls. The way they would afterward seem angrier than ever.
“Zach’s sister, Ro, disappeared from that house when she was eighteen and he was a little boy. As strange as it sounds, I think all of them were each, in his own way, waiting for her to show up.”
“She didn’t.”
“No.”
“And Zach? Was he angry, too?”
I hung my head and nodded. “He behaved just like the rest of them. I hardly recognized him. And for the five days we were there, it was like he didn’t recognize me, either.”
“I’ve heard that happens with families. You think you’ve changed and then you go home and fall back into the same old roles. But that must have been hard for you.”
“It was terrible. It got so I couldn’t stand to touch him. I felt really bad about that. It’s awful, isn’t it? To shudder at the thought of touching your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“I hated every second of being there. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called the airlines, changed my flight, called a cab to take me to the airport, had my bag packed, all before I told Zach I was going. Which was unfair of me. Thoughtless. I should’ve told him.”
“Changing your plans sounds like an act of self-preservation. Maybe you thought he would say no.”
“Usually, he tries so hard to be nice, to be everything the rest of his family isn’t. But he wasn’t himself up at the lake house.”
“What happened next?”
What happened next was the part of the story I had never told, the part I’d tried to stop telling even myself.
The lake house was a big, fancy house pretending, with its log walls and goofy, creepy antler chandeliers, plaid furniture, wood-burning stoves, and floors of worn flagstone or pine boards, to be a humble one. But as big as it was, the Barfield men seemed to fill every room. Slamming a book shut here, pounding away at a laptop there, arguing about money and politics (even though they all seemed to be in agreement about such topics), cursing the spotty Wi-Fi, the whine of the wind outside, the paucity of channels on the television. They paced the floors with their heavy feet (they never took their shoes off to the point that I wondered if they slept in them). And even though they barely took notice of me, I grew to dread running into them. When I looked up from studying to find one of them in the room, the hair on the back of my neck bristled. When one unexpectedly spoke to me, I flinched.
So after I’d made all the arrangements for my early departure, I didn’t have the energy to go out into the house and risk bumping into a Barfield. Instead, I sat on the bed I supposedly shared with Zach—even though when it came to sleeping in it, the most we did was overlap by an hour or two, which was fine by me—with my coat on and my bags at my feet and my heart in my throat, and waited for my ride.
And then Zach walked into the room and saw me there, and in a low, dangerous, gritted-teeth voice said, “What the fuck is this?”
Because I felt small sitting, I stood up, planted my feet. “Look, I’m sorry, but I just can’t stay here.”
“What?”
“Zach, I’m not helping anyone here, not even you. You hardly speak to me. And the atmosphere, the air in this house feels poisoned. I’m going home.”
Zach snickered, the meanest sound I’d ever heard him make, and shook his head. “Yeah? Well, that’s where you’re wrong.”
“I changed my flight. I’ll see you whenever you get back, but I can’t be here anymore.”
“We’ll change it back.”
“You’re not hearing me. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m leaving.”
Without taking my eyes off Zach’s face, I leaned down and picked up my carry-on bag.
“Stop saying that you’re leaving!” he said, loudly.
And then Zach—sweet, joke-appreciating, tailgating-averse, gift-giving Zach—took one step toward me, his face rigid with rage, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, and fear started ringing in my ears like a siren. I’d seen Zach angry before, but never this angry, and never at me. I tried to remind myself that he loved me, but the fear just rang louder.
“Please don’t tell me what to say. Or do,” I said, my voice shaking. “I am leaving.”
“Shut up!” he hissed.
Then, he picked up my suitcase, tossed it onto the bed, unzipped it, and threw it against the wall. As the suitcase hit, it opened like a mouth and vomited out my clothes. For a second, I stood frozen, stunned, then some animal part of me kicked in, and I tore open the bedroom door and ran, down the hallway, out the front door, and blindly across the lawn, my teeth chattering, the frozen ground bone-jarring under the soles of my shoes.
I didn’t know for sure that he was following me until I heard his voice breaking raggedly through the dark and cold. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I swung around, brandishing, without really meaning to, my heavy carry-on bag. “Stay back!” I shouted.
But he had already stopped. He stood on the edge of the road, maybe twenty feet from me. When he dropped to his knees, a blade of moonlight lit up the tears on his face. The cold bit into my cheeks, my bare hands. The cloudy sky low as a basement ceiling overhead.
“Clare,” said Zach. “I don’t know what just happened, but I know I would never hurt you.”
He sounded so sad.
“The cab is coming soon,” I said, my voice shaking. “And I’m getting in it.”
He nodded. “Yes! Definitely, you should go home. I should never have brought you here, and I’m so sorry.”
I wrapped myself up in my own arms.
“I love you,” he said, starting to cry. “You’re the only person I love.”
He pressed his hands to his forehead. “I don’t love my father, but I can’t imagine him being dead or, like, a world without him in it. Isn’t that strange? It’s messing me up, this place, my family, his dying. I’m not myself.”
I could feel my fear ebbing and gentleness opening up inside me, but I didn’t let myself give in to it. “I realize that, but you can’t keep me here. You can’t try to scare me into staying. It’s just wrong.”
“I know. So wrong. I hate myself right now a lot more than you hate me.”
The despair in his voice coaxed the last bit of fear out of me. I walked over to where he sat. “I don’t hate you,” I said, softly. “I know you’re having a hard time.”
He didn’t look up, just ran a hand lightly down my shinbone, then let it fall onto the ground. “I love you so much. Nothing else matters to me.”
“I hear the cab coming,” I said. “I need to go. If you could just bring my clothes when you come back?”
He nodded, miserably. “Ugh, of course. I’m so sorry about your clothes and everything. I’m sorry about everything.”
As the cab pulled up, I rested my palm on top of his head, then combed his hair with my fingers. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
“More than I deserve,” he said, bitterly. “Thank you, Clare.”
He was still sitting there, eyes on the ground, when the cab drove away.
Just as I finished talking, a bird began fluting complicatedly on a nearby low-hanging tree branch, and since it would have been discourteous not to listen, we listened.
After the last firework trill dissolved
against the summer sky, Edith said, “Turdus polyglottos.”
“Excuse me?”
“An unfortunate name but the one Linnaeus bestowed on the northern mockingbird, and I do have a soft spot for Carl. However, I think the folks who later changed it to Mimus polyglottos made a wise choice.”
“I agree.”
“I think that particular member of the species must’ve spent some time listening to Mozart.”
Her eyes locked on mine. “Back to how you got here. If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s difficult to trace a clear path from that lake house story to this wedding day of yours.”
I sighed. “After his father died a few days later, he came straight to my apartment from the airport. He asked me to marry him as soon as possible. He would’ve eloped right then I think.”
“Was it his urgency that persuaded you? Urgency can do that.”
“Not only, although I’m sure that was part of it. But also he said I was his bright light, his life raft, his one hope of not being sucked back into the darkness of his family. He swore he could not, under any circumstances, be happy without me, and, as hyperbolic as that sounds, I knew he meant it.”
“You’re his blue sky. When everything else is darkness.”
I started. “Yes! Exactly.”
“But is he yours?”
“No one, not one person, has ever needed me like he does.” Even I could see how I’d swerved around her question, but in all the weeks leading up to this day, this had been my go-to answer to any question about Zach. Multipurpose, flexible, enough.
“Some may love you just as much. Although love’s not really the point.”
I blinked. “It’s not?”
“Usually, love is the point, almost always, but not this time.”
“So what is?”
She leaned toward me and took my two hands in hers, her coffee-colored eyes shining and deeply serious.
“No one should live with someone who scares her.”
I stopped breathing. And I know Edith’s statement might not have burst forth out of nowhere and streamed like a sizzling comet across everyone’s psyches. Some people might even have regarded it as too simple and obvious to matter. But it mattered to me. To me, this sentence was a revelation. Because the truth is that long before Zach burned holes in me with his glare and his words and hurled my suitcase against the wall, he had scared me. The anger that would seep like battery acid or flare like a gasoline fire at professors or other drivers or people on the news or (and especially) his father and his brother, Ian—part of me stayed wide awake always, keeping watch for it. Despite his general kindness—a kindness I knew he’d worked hard to achieve—Zach had scared me all along.
“You know what scares me more than his anger, though?” I said, slowly, looking at my lap. “How close he wants to be to me, all the time, every second. I realize closeness sounds like a good thing, but it’s like I can’t turn around or smile at something or read something or have an experience without his popping up, asking questions, relating. And I’m not even that private a person. I mean, here I am pouring out my secrets to someone I just met. But I miss keeping to myself what few things I actually ever kept to myself, without feeling like a traitor. I miss solitude, even though before this, I might have said I didn’t especially like being alone. I really miss having light and space around me. What scares me most is the thought that I never will again.”
“Oh, dear girl,” said Edith, softly.
Suddenly, a tremble went through the hedge to my left, and there stood Dev, in a dove-gray linen shirt so nicely cut and perfectly suited to him that I wondered if a girlfriend had chosen it. He’d been at the brunch, but I’d been so flustered, I hadn’t noticed the shirt before now. In one hand, Dev carried a white bowl.
“Stealing china from the hotel, I see,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, flushing a bit at the sight of Edith. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“I’m Edith.” She swiped her hand through the air in a windshield wiper wave.
“I’m Dev,” said Dev, swiping back and smiling. Then, he turned to me. “A few minutes ago, they put out these tiny cinnamon rolls, and I know how you have a thing for undersized food.”
He handed me the bowl, inside of which were nestled four cinnamon rolls the size of half-dollars.
“I figured I should steal you some because they were going like—” He paused, waiting for me to finish the simile.
“Undersized hotcakes?”
“Yup.”
“Well, thanks,” I said. “They’re adorable, like four curled-up baby hedgehogs.”
“Exactly what I thought.” Dev shook his head. “Weirdo.”
“You know, you could’ve just saved them for when I got back. You didn’t have to traipse all the way out here.”
“Okay, (a) I did not traipse. Like, at all. And (b)”—he shrugged, sheepishly—“I may have been sent on a mission to check on you.”
“My mother?”
“And Cornelia. I told them you were fine, that you’d probably abducted some nice person and dragged her into a hedge to talk her ears off, but they made me come anyway.”
I sighed. “I don’t know if fine is exactly the word I’d pick.”
Dev knitted his brows. “You need anything? Besides tiny pastries, I mean?”
I lifted my chin. “Nah. I’m okay. Go back and tell them I’m just getting some air and I’ll be back in a flash.”
Dev gave a thumbs-up. “Nice to meet you, Edith. Make her share.” He pointed to the bowl.
“If I have to wrestle her to the ground,” said Edith.
A snow-white burst of smile, a rustle of hedge, and Edith and I were alone again.
“Zach needs you,” she said. “What do you need?”
I squeaked out a laugh. “You don’t mess around, do you?”
Edith smiled. “All right, try this instead. You mentioned wanting light and space. It made me think of a room, an actual, physical place that is all yours. Do you have one?”
“Well, no. I had an apartment, but I gave it up when we got engaged. Anyway, it had stopped feeling like all mine a long time before.”
“Sometimes,” Edith mused, “in order to hold your own, you need a place of your own. Light and space to move around in safely. A place to breathe easy.”
“I used to.” I thought for a moment. “Or maybe what I mean is that I used to not need one because, for the last few years at least, I carried my safe place around with me, like a turtle. But now, I don’t anymore.”
“Oh, Clare. I am so very sorry you don’t anymore.”
I put the cinnamon roll bowl on the bench next to me, took Edith’s hand, and hung on for dear life.
“May I say something else?” she asked, after a long pause.
I nodded, numbly.
“I know the pull of a dark, complicated man, the kind who has trouble loving anyone but you. But let me tell you this: the ones who look like home are home.”
“What?” I stared at her, puzzled.
“They’re where you go.” I shook my head, not understanding, and she slid her gaze to the bowl next to me and then back.
“Oh! You mean Dev.”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
My body relaxed, and I smiled. “Oh, Dev. Dev is Dev. He was my first love, from the time we were thirteen until I graduated from high school. I don’t even know if it was love the way other people mean love.”
“No? Explain.”
I laughed. “We were so young. Sometimes, I think we were like those chicks in biology class. We imprinted on each other more than anything else.”
“Sounds to me like as good a description of love as any. But what happened? Why did it end?”
Surprised, I said, “People don’t usually ask that question. We were kids, each other’s first love. No one expects that to last.”
“Including you and Dev?” Her hand held mine as calmly as ever, but the entire rest of her seemed to bristle with skepticism. It occurr
ed to me to wonder if anyone had ever managed to lie to Edith in her entire life.
I shook my head. “No. We expected it to last forever. But then he went away for months and months, even though I asked him not to, and I was lost. I know that sounds trite—lost without him—but I was so directionless. I stumbled through my days like some kind of wounded animal. Sometimes, I’d be driving to someplace I’d been lots of times before, and I’d literally get lost.”
Suddenly, I had a thought. “Oh, gosh, you know what? He was my safe place.”
“Yes, it does sound that way. But you couldn’t carry him around like a turtle shell. When he was gone, the safe place went, too?”
“Yes. I’ve never thought of it that way before, but yes. I hated that I didn’t know who I was without him and that I couldn’t function. So when he got back, I left him. I told him I needed to grow up and figure out how to be a full-fledged, happy person without him.”
“That makes sense to me.”
I groaned. “Except look where it got me. Four years later, and here I am: cold feet on my wedding day, like some idiot cliché.” I covered my face with my hands and pressed hard against my eyes. “I’ve made a total mess of everything.”
“Or maybe it worked, the growing up,” said Edith, quietly. “Maybe it was all leading up to right now.”
I dropped my hands, turned my face to the blue sky, and sat completely still, listening to Edith as hard as I could, even though I knew her words just might upend my life like a table, sending everything crashing, so that I’d have to start over. Or maybe not “even though,” maybe “because.” With the state I was in, I couldn’t say for sure.
She went on, gathering steam. “Maybe this moment is the test. I have been watching you because I’m old and that’s what I do: sit outside of things and watch. I see that you’re a good person, a loving daughter, a true friend. What if it’s time to be your own friend, Clare? If your grown-up self took you by the hand right now, where would she lead you?”