Cascade (23 page)

She hesitated outside Room 4, knuckles poised. She’d come this far, she thought. And it was still early in the day; maybe he wasn’t even in. She knocked.

The door opened almost immediately. “Oh,” Stan said.

“I happened to be in the hotel,” she explained. “I just thought I’d say hello.” She was about to invite him to talk in the lobby—maybe he was embarrassed by her presence so close to where he slept—but he said, “I was hoping I’d see you again,” and stepped backward to invite her into the sitting room with a gesture that was clumsy and eager to please. “You’ve become famous since I saw you last. Come in, come in.”

The first-floor suites were large, originally intended for guests who traveled with servants and required space. The sitting room, entirely proper for entertaining, contained two overstuffed chairs, a divan, and a desk where Stan had been working. She noted his pencils, lined up neatly on the desk, a dozen folders. Through a far door, she spied his brown fedora sitting on an ivory bedspread.

“How do you like it here?”

“The view is nice,” he said, following her gaze out across the croquet lawn to the playhouse. He liked watching the river, he said, the ducks that pecked around the bank.

“I was on my way to check on things there,” she said, nodding toward the playhouse. “And I thought I’d say a quick hello. Invite you to visit my studio someday—maybe you could bring your wife and son. Since you showed such interest.”

He loved the idea. In fact, he said, he’d just been talking to his wife, Ethel. “I said if there’s one thing I’m going to do before this day is over it’s get myself over to Stein’s and buy a frame for that portrait.” He eyed a stack of plans and papers on his desk. “I’ve been trying to get to it but I’ve been busy.”

“How are the tests going?”

“Well, sit, sit,” he said, gesturing to the window seat. Then he himself took a seat at the desk, crossing one leg over the other and cupping his chin in his hand. She imagined he was thinking, at first, that it was best not to say anything, but Dez was now more of a friend, wasn’t she? That was what he seemed to decide.

“The fellows are saying that over by Pine Point the water runs funny, that it’s indicative of a lot of ledge under Cascade.”

As Asa hoped. Something inside her began deflating.

“We already know there’s ledge east of Maple Street,” he said. “Not that we can’t blast it out, but if Whistling Falls is easier, why not? It would save a lot of time and money.”

A door opened and shut somewhere down the hall. Out on the common, a dog barked. “You can’t trust what you see up there,” she heard herself say.

Stan cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“There are funny little invisible inlets along the river that divert water. Up in that whole Pine Point area,” she said, the words barely out of her mouth than she began to regret them. She couldn’t interfere with Asa’s plans, couldn’t betray him so blatantly. She couldn’t betray him at all! “But don’t pay any attention to me. What do I know?”

And to her relief, Stan simply shrugged. “I’m sure the engineers know what they’re doing,” he said, turning his attention toward the door, where the steamy smell of the boiled-ham-and-cabbage supper had begun to drift down the hallway.

Dez walked home with her hands dug deep into the rickracked pockets of her dress. So Whistling Falls, a sparsely populated town, would likely be chosen, which made sense. The Cascade postcard series would have to be cut short. The
Postcards from America
project could still go on, but she couldn’t possibly take the job. Even though when she imagined being there, meeting Mr. Washburn, working and taking classes at the Art
Students League, being around like-minded friends again, her heart raced like a train.

She told Asa she had never considered divorce and she meant it. But was she really so against it, or did the idea just seem overwhelming? They’d not been married long, but their lives were already completely blended, tangibly and legally. How did you actually go into a house and separate the life inside into objects and possessions? How did you decide what was yours, and what did you do with it all?

Dez didn’t own a whole lot, but like anyone else, in all actuality, she was burdened by her possessions, by her four seasons’ worth of clothes and shoes, by her books, her paintings, her studio full of supplies. By the bowls and platters that had memories of her mother and Rose all over them. Her mother’s things: the pink velvet sewing box, her piano music, the Saucony lace wedding veil that Dez wore at her own wedding, the perfume atomizer, dried sticky-yellow inside but still smelling faintly of
muguet des bois
. And never mind all the big items: the sideboard that once belonged to her great-grandparents and which occupied the space in the hall under the banjo clock. The baby chair that belonged to her grandmother and which Asa hoped to bring down from the attic—Asa, who had no idea that such calculating thoughts were going through his wife’s mind. Her father’s English steamer trunk, her mother’s Minton vase. All of them things you didn’t pack into a suitcase and lug on a train down to the YWCA. She would have to store those things somewhere—the only place being the playhouse, which legally belonged to Asa and which she would essentially be abandoning, too. Breaking promises and vows all over the place.

She stopped on the bridge over the Cascade Falls. How smooth and slippery the surface of the water appeared as it curved over the dam, yet seconds later that same water was ferocious, churning, white. She positioned herself against the rail so that the wind tossed her hair, so that the falls sprayed a fine mist on her face.

Suddenly she heard a shrieking from high above the falls. She tilted her head back and searched the sky. Two eagles, talons hooked together,
cartwheeled and circled groundward, part of their courtship ritual. She’d seen it only once before; it was a rare sight. What did it mean, to see that dizzying sight now? That desire must be pursued? Or that desire was exhilarating but ultimately dangerous?

That was the thing about signs. You could read them any way you liked.

A
sa drove away on Wednesday morning as Dez watched uneasily from the kitchen window. She rolled the washing machine, squeaking and protesting, over to the sink and fastened the hose to the tap. Water spilled into the barrel while she sorted the laundry, lights and darks. At breakfast, it seemed impossible that Asa couldn’t read her face, her mind, couldn’t see the turmoil there. Had he forgotten about Jacob’s visit? It seemed so.

The second load was agitating and she was upstairs brushing her teeth when she heard Jacob’s truck bouncing and squeaking down the rutted drive. Anxiety bloomed inside her chest. She spat out the toothpaste, checked her hair in the mirror, and rushed downstairs and out the screen door, arriving on the porch just as he opened the car door. He stepped out onto the running board, hopped down, and waved, a casual, nonchalant wave that calmed her. He stood with his hands on his hips as she walked toward him, his manner relaxed, as if nothing awkward had ever happened.

She said something purposefully neutral. “I can’t believe it’s your last visit.”

“Actually, I couldn’t fit everything for Al into the truck, after all, so I’ll have to make another trip or two.”

“Oh,” she said. Did that mean this wasn’t the last visit? He didn’t say, and because he didn’t, she didn’t like to ask.

“I brought you a little going-away gift,” he said, walking around to the back of the truck and opening the double doors. He lifted out a small square canvas and held it to his chest so she couldn’t see what it was. The thought that he might have painted her portrait soothed the sting of realizing that no, he must not be intending to fit in a River Road art-talk visit again.

Inside, he set the painting on her worktable, facedown. “I’ve got something else, too,” he said. “Just a little thing. From Chinatown.” He handed her a small paper fortune.

An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.—
Ancient Chinese Belief

“It reminded me of you,” he said.

“Did it?”

“I think we were meant to meet. Don’t you?”

How dispassionately, how maddeningly, he was able to say passionate things. “Yes, of course I do.” She wanted more, more declaration—more sharing of what really went on inside his mind. But it was so hard to ask for more, so hard to speak.

“You enriched my life, Dez,” he said, which sounded so terribly past tense. Then he turned the painting around and she recognized it, with disappointment, as the work Dr. Proulx had commissioned before he died. The subject was a grim woman sitting in a ladder-back chair, lit by a high side window. The painting was dramatic, well executed, but she knew the model was Jacob’s mother, who looked as forbidding as Dez had imagined. It seemed an odd choice of gift, though the work was compelling, as she found all of Jacob’s work to be—low-keyed, painted in harsh browns and blacks, with thick yet controlled brushstrokes. Its perspective was somewhat skewed—looking downward from near the ceiling, which
made the focus of the painting Jacob’s mother’s eyes as she raised them and looked directly at the viewer: at Dez.

Dr. Proulx had wanted an example of “Jewish art.”
Whatever that means
, Jacob had said. “What makes it Jewish?” she asked now.

“Nothing, really,” he said. “Except it’s showing the two sets of dishes.”

The dark background contained two glass-fronted hutches, each filled with plates.

“One for meat, one for dairy,” he added, with a look that said he realized she probably had no idea what that meant. She didn’t. And she was suddenly despondent and didn’t care. Whatever it meant, it illustrated the differences between them—differences she had not really appreciated. She saw that he was setting the tone, that they were not going to talk about what happened, that they were going to pretend that nothing had happened. He would leave. They would write now and again. Whistling Falls would be chosen. She would tell Mr. Washburn she wasn’t coming to New York after all. Abby would take the job she decided she’d better not mention. She didn’t want him thinking she had initiated it, that she was chasing after him.

“What makes it Jewish,” he said, “is what makes it not Jewish.”

“I see,” she said, though she didn’t see at all. “But you should keep it in your family. It’s your mother, after all.”

“No, I want you to have it. It’s one of my favorites, and it was meant for Dr. Proulx so I’d like to keep it in Cascade. I want someone who will appreciate it to have it.”

Someone
, as if she was any old someone. He was standing right beside her but the partition between them was back and it was hard to believe he’d ever kissed and touched her.

“And what if the W.P.A. doesn’t hire you? Will you come back?”

She had spoken too harshly. He stiffened. “Well, no. I’ll have sold everything off.”

“What about Ruth?”

He looked at her then with candor. He took off his hat and sat on the sofa; he tapped the brim against the palm of his hand. “Ruth’s upset.”

Of course she was. “Does that surprise you?”

“I never led her to believe that we were going to do anything more than go to the pictures now and then this past year.”

“Women…expect things.”

“I know. I know they do.” His gaze met hers and flickered away briefly before returning with a look that was disappointing, even irritating, in its solemnity. “And I had no right to come on to you the way I did, and I apologize.”

I didn’t mind, she wanted to say.

“Honestly, I didn’t think you would ever want to see me again. I was so grateful when I got that telegram.”

“Really?” There was relief to hear that. Relief like rain. Why had he assumed the worst? And why did he have to look so grim now? “I wasn’t sorry it happened, Jacob.”

“I was, am. You’re married.” He dropped his head and studied the backs of his hands. “I felt so sordid when I saw Asa.”

She wished he hadn’t used that word. Wished he hadn’t tainted the memory.

“What about before you saw Asa? How did you really feel? How would you feel if there was no Asa?” Her sense of irritation stronger than her timidity, pushing her to speak openly.
It’s too easy to express predictable, socially mandated remorse. How did you really feel?

She willed him to lift his head and look in her eyes, to speak openly, too. But the seconds ticked by and she realized he was not going to say anything.

“Asa told me he’s been too modern about our friendship, that he doesn’t want you to come here anymore.”

Jacob jerked his head up. “What am I doing here, then?”

“I—”

“I completely understand.” He got to his feet. “It’s his house.”

“It’s my house, too.”

“What if he came home right now? How uncomfortable would that be?”

“He won’t,” she said, his panic coming across as slightly, dismayingly spineless. She was sorry she’d said anything. “Don’t leave. If this is really your last visit, we can’t waste it.”

“Then let’s go for a walk or something. Let me move my truck. Let’s just get out of here.”