Acts of God (33 page)

I was puzzling over this clipping, wondering if there was any reason why it had been placed among my things, when there was a knock at the door. I stuffed everything back in the envelope and stuck it in the kitchen drawer by the sink, which was already filled with recipes and flyers for men who wanted to help me plant shrubs. Bruno stood in my doorway, staring at me, dripping wet. “Tess,” he said, “are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“Well, you look like you've seen a ghost.”

“Just a cougar,” I said.

“Are you sure you're all right?” He looked genuinely concerned.

“I'm fine,” I told him. Suddenly I wanted to cradle him in my arms, hold him as if he were my child and not someone else's.

“Look,” he said, waving a sheet of paper in my face, “I found it, I found it.”

“Come in, Bruno. I really should shower.” I reached for a kitchen towel and began wiping myself off.

“The poem, ‘Desire Paths.' It was in some old papers, some drafts. I found it in the Santa Cruz library. Now I have the whole poem.”

He handed it to me and I read it.

D
ESIRE
P
ATHS

From the unfinished manuscript of Francis Cantwell Eagger

Along the wind-racked bluffs

We have made our way

To the edge and back again

So many times

That we have made a path,

Worn down weeds and shrubs.

We tried other routes

Through sharper rocks and

Steeper climbs

But this trail was the best by far

We forged the way

Of our longing.

Desire paths, these are called

Because this was the way we had to come

As if no other path presented itself

To the edge of this raw world

Where there is nothing left to do

But look down, then walk away.

“It's beautiful, Bruno,” I said. “It's actually a very beautiful poem.” And in truth it was the first poem by Francis Eagger that truly moved me. “It's great for your dissertation, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “And I'm going to write some journal articles. This will help me get a job.”

Holding the poem in my hands, I read it again. The way of our longing. Then I sat down in the breakfast nook and wept. I lay my head on the table and cried and cried. Bruno sat beside me, trying to comfort me.

“Tess, what is it? You can talk to me.”

My body shook and I could not stop. “I think I've killed someone,” I said. “I think I'm the reason that someone is dead.”

“Are you sure…”

And then I told him about Margaret and Nick and how she had died. Then Bruno reached out for me and pulled me in. He held me tightly and I was amazed at the strength in his arms. It was the hug of a man, not a boy, but there was nothing improper in it. He held me for a very long time, then he pulled away, looking me square in the eyes. “Tess,” he said, “you are also the reason someone is alive.”

“I am?” I said, wiping my eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “You saved me.”

“I did?”

He nodded solemnly. “You don't even know it,” he said, “but you did.”

*   *   *

That night strange dreams overwhelmed me. I woke up shaking, feeling alone. I dreamed of sleepers in pods, wrapped in sheets, unable to extricate themselves. I dreamed of Jade as a little girl, going off to star in a Broadway show. I wanted to accompany her, but I was dressed in a nightgown and a robe. But the strangest dreams were always those of the two men. One was dark and clever, the other blond and simple. One was good and the other evil, but I was never sure which one it was. You'd think the clever one would be evil, the simple man good, but there was something in his simpleness that stifled me, something in the other's cleverness that uplifted me. I woke, knowing that I knew nothing of myself and never would.

After I had my coffee and sat in the breakfast nook for a while, it occurred to me that somehow these dreams were not my own. They belonged to someone else—to the troubled poet who lived here before me. Surely these haunted dreams were not mine.

Night after night I stayed up drinking. I couldn't sleep and the quiet of the house unsettled me. The children came and went but mostly they were gone. When they were away, I drank to try and sleep, then fell into a sleep that brought no rest. Nothing could save me. I tried to conjure Bruno's hug, but it too was slipping away. Nick wasn't returning my calls and Margaret was dead and I was lost as surely as if I'd wandered off into the wilderness alone.

I couldn't stand being alone in the house so I headed out into the pitch darkness along the cliffs where the poet who had drunk himself to death had lost his own son. I found the desire paths the poet had made and trudged along, finding my way. Branches cut against my face. A razor-sharp thorn tore at my sleeve. I could feel blood trickling down my arm, but I kept going. It was the blackest of nights and all I could do was follow the roar of the sea.

I walked until I came to the edge with the sea crashing below me. It was high tide and the beach was almost gone. It would be so easy to slip, to fall. Everyone would think it was an accident. They would say I had been despondent, but they'd never be sure, the way they had never been sure with Francis Cantwell Eagger's son. Or with that Wisconsin man in the clipping Margaret had given me. Not like with Margaret. They were sure about her. If I slipped and fell here, no one would know if it was what I'd intended. It would remain a big question, something people—my children, my brothers, Nick, the neighbors, even Betsy—would talk about for years to come.

My own thoughts frightened me. I'd never quite had these thoughts before. I had to fight them, fight them back. I took a deep breath. The air smelled fresh, almost lemony with the scent of eucalyptus. Then I saw it, halfway down the bluff. The hunchback tree from Francis Eagger's poem, bent over, its arms offering protection. The tree bent back in the wind. It was the one Bruno had been looking for. It had probably fallen down the cliff due to erosion. Now I stepped away. I eased my way back from the cliffs and, following the paths Francis Eagger had shaped in his own despair, made my way home.

The next night the phone rang and it was Nick. He had some business to finish up in San Francisco and he wanted to talk to me. “Tess,” he said, “I'll be there next week. I think I owe you an explanation.”

41

The following Friday Nick
drove down to meet me at Half Moon Bay. We met at a Thai restaurant and sat in a corner booth on red vinyl seats where it was dark and rather quiet. Large tropical fish swam in tanks above our heads. No one bothered us. He looked tired and haggard. His face seemed jowly and he was not the same boisterous man I had known. In fact he slumped and seemed old. We ordered drinks, but Nick said he wasn't hungry. “I don't have much of an appetite these days.”

I nodded. “I can imagine. How are things? How's Danielle?”

“Not so good. She's silent, then she blows up. I don't know what I'm going to do.”

“She blows up? How?”

“She hits people. For no reason.” Nick shook his head back and forth like a man who had reached the end of his rope.

“She needs a mother.”

“She had a mother,” Nick said, the bitterness unmistakable in his voice. “I will never understand this.” He reached across the table for my hands. “Tessie, I wanted things to be different. I didn't want it to work out this way. I don't know why she did this. I don't know why it happened. I just know that at least for now we can't be together. I'm not going to be able to look at you and not think of her.” He turned my hands in his. “I can't look at your face and not see Margaret's. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand. Maybe she wanted it that way. Maybe she did it on purpose.” I was angry and wished I hadn't said what I just did.

“I don't know why she did it. She seemed to take it all in stride. She didn't want to stay married any more than I did. I don't know what it was. Honestly it's a mystery to us all. I never thought she'd leave Danielle; that's the part that makes no sense. But somehow I don't think it was about us. Not entirely anyway.”

“Then what was it about?”

He shook his head again and he looked pathetic and small. “I keep thinking about the note. What was she waiting for or who? What did it mean? That she'd waited as long as she could?”

“Maybe it will be better in time,” I said, wrapping my fingers more tightly around his.

“Maybe,” he said, but he did not sound convinced.

“I was thinking I could move home, be near you and Danielle.”

Nick raised his hands. “Oh, no, don't do that. Not on my account.”

We were silent for a moment and I understood that it was no use. It was over. He planned to go on with his life and I was to go on with mine and that was how it was to be.

I signaled the waitress for the check. As we waited for it to come, I said, “Nick, may I ask you something?”

“Of course you can.”

“Did Margaret ever talk to you about her father? She used to talk to me about him. She always seemed to be waiting for him to come and get her.”

“She certainly wasn't waiting for him.” Nick looked perplexed. “I was sure you knew. He died when she was a little girl.”

“He did? She told me he was in Wisconsin.” I couldn't bear to contemplate where all those gifts had come from. The clothes, the car.

“I don't think she was waiting. He was dead a long time before she ever moved to Winonah.”

“But she told me…”

Nick downed his beer and kissed me lightly on the cheek. I couldn't let him go so easily. I reached up, my hands searching his face. My lips reached for his. If I could only, like some skilled fishermen, pull him in gently, bring him back to where we had been, but he was like someone with no memory of anything before. His eyes were red and watery. “I've got to go,” he said. “I'll always care for you, Tess.”

Standing up, he reached across, placing his hand on my cheek, and I let my face rest in it for a moment. Then when I looked up, he was gone.

*   *   *

Over the next few days, the mail built up, one letter after the next. I opened a few bills, then put them away. The creditors could take my house. I didn't care. I sat reading the complete works of Francis Cantwell Eagger. I felt I owed it to this house before I put it on the market to know the work of the man who lived here.

The children were away. Ted had gone back to Sabe. Jade was with her dad in San Francisco, looking for more substantial work. I found myself with nothing to do. Nowhere that I had to be. It was good because I seemed to be so tired. I had never felt so tired and thought this would be a good time to sleep. I slept perhaps for a day or so. I lost track of the time, just slipping in and out of bed to go to the bathroom, to get a bite to eat.

At first I had cereal, big bowls of it, until I ran out of milk. Then I ate carrots, small salads, crackers. Dishes piled up in the sink. The bed went unmade. I sat up in my pajamas in bed, reading. I read through and through the collected works of Francis Cantwell Eagger. Once in a while I'd check the refrigerator. I should eat something, I'd tell myself. I knew I should eat. I even had a memory of eating. Certain foods came to me, like fried chicken, olives, ice cream, but when I opened the refrigerator nothing appealed to me, nothing made sense. There were eggs, bread, beans, onions, jam, but I had no desire to combine these ingredients—to make a sandwich, a bowl of soup.

I had tea, cups of it, and when I ran out of tea, I sipped water with lemon. I stopped answering the phone or the door. There was no one I wanted to talk to, no one I wanted to see. I don't remember eating, though I do remember drinking at night, long sips of brandy. I drank until I was drowsy. Some nights I walked the cliffs, half inebriated. I am becoming the poet whose house I inhabit, I said to myself one night as I fell asleep in my chair, the Winonah centennial blanket draped over me. All day long and sometimes all night I read his work, one poem after the other, even the half-baked poems that somehow contained my own sorry dreams.

The days folded one into the next. Sometimes I slept when it was light out; often at night I read, then slept with my light on. I had lost track of time, the hours. I was sure there were things I was supposed to do, but I couldn't seem to remember what they were or why I had to do them. I was so tired. I couldn't seem to sleep enough, but I'd sleep, wake up tired, then sleep again.

One afternoon there was a knock at the door. I ignored it, went back to sleep. But the knocking kept coming. It was an insistent, almost angry knock. Betsy, my neighbor, stood there in blue jeans, a sweater, her dog on a leash. Betsy, infertile, in a second dead-end marriage, her pathetic life conveyed to me over crossed wires, held the door back and stared at me as if she'd expected to find someone else. I thought she was going to complain about the crossed wires or hand me a piece of my junk mail she had received. Instead she looked shocked to see me. “Your daughter phoned me,” she said. “She's worried about you. She says you haven't been answering your phone.” Then she looked me up and down again. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” I said, “I've just been very tired.” But Betsy kept looking at me with concern.

“You don't look fine,” she said.

“No, really, I am.”

She tied the dog up. I noticed that it was an obedient dog. When she told it to sit, it just sat. Then she came inside. She saw the mess. “Are you ill?”

“I don't know. I don't think so.”