Traveling Light (13 page)

“It’s great to hear your voice.” She felt his warmth.

“Sorry about not being able to make your conference in New York.”

“That’s okay; I’m not going to make it either,” she quipped.

“What?”

“I’m taking some time off.”

“You’re missing your own conference?” He paused. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes and no,” she said. “How’s Jeannine?”

“Recovering.”

“Oh my goodness, from what?”

“Didn’t you get my e-mail?” he asked. “She took a bad spill about a month ago on the bike, broke her ankle.”

It was probably buried in the hundreds Paula had neglected to open.

“Shattered a couple of bones. I figured it was time to retire anyway. She’s always hated Caly. It was time years ago. I’m just a stubborn old Canuck. So we came back to what we used to call our ‘summer house’ and now we’re staying.”

Fotis was nose to nose with another dog at the next picnic table. Their bodies were stiff as they sniffed each other and then started to wag their tails.

“How is she doing?”

“The boot comes off in a few weeks. She had surgery, pins, but she’ll be fine. A bit of physical therapy and she’ll be back on that damned bike of hers.”

“I’m so sorry I missed your e-mail; I would have called.”

“We were just talking about your conference. We’re back up in Thunder Bay. Ontario. Followed our three kids,” he explained. “We’ve got seven grandchildren. We’re busy spoiling the heck out of them, turning them into brats to get back at our kids.”

She could see it. Bernie always made her feel safe; he and Jeannine were like kin.

“So tell me why you’re missing your own conference.”

“Oh Bernie.” She felt about to cry. “I’m taking a bit of leave, don’t know for how long.”

“I wondered how long you could keep up that pace,” he said. “You’re always running.”

The words stopped her in her tracks. He’d never said anything like that before. How long had she been running? Her tears indicted her. Years she could never get back time spent striving for recognition, working tirelessly, when all she really wanted was Roger. It felt like she’d awakened to find that someone had died.

She closed her eyes and rested her forehead in her hand. Fotis sniffed the top of her head. The words hurt. Bernie wouldn’t have known about Roger; he couldn’t have. Yet in one sentence he’d identified the core of her dilemma.

“I think maybe you’re right,” she said, struggling to gain composure. “So I’m taking time off.” She paused. “Driving out west to surprise you and Jeannine, maybe look up Karen Richards and John Timmelman, too.”

“Well, we’re sorry that we’ll miss you. Jeannine’ll be disappointed. You two always clicked,” he said. “It’s wonderful being back, though. Beautiful country up here, Paula; I’d forgotten. Who else are you planning on seeing in Caly?”

“Uhhh, just really you.” She felt embarrassed and crushed.

“Where are you?”

“Pennsylvania. Just approaching the Pocono Mountains exits,” she said. “You know, honeymoon country.” She tried to make it sound funny.

“Is your schedule flexible?”

She laughed out loud at the question, thinking of Roger in France.

“Very.”

“Well, how ’bout coming up to see us?”

“Really?”

“When you get to Chicago, head north and spend some time with us.” She could hear the Canadian accent replenishing itself. “We’ve got plenty of room. Mind you, it’s a long drive—”

“I’m already on a long drive, Bernie.”

“Perfect. So it’s decided.”

“Yes.”

She heard Jeannine’s voice in the background.

“Jeannine wants to know if you have your passport.”

Everything was back at Roger’s. But wait. Unzipping a compartment in her purse, she felt the sharp edge of the passport cover. She closed her eyes and sighed. Thank God she’d forgotten to give it to Roger after she and Eleni returned from Greece. Funny he hadn’t asked for it; Roger liked to keep all the documents.

“I almost can’t believe it, Bernie,” she said, surprised by her good luck. “But I do—I have it.”

“Good. Then you’ll come.”

“Yes. Thanks. I will.”

“Then it’s settled. Head north to Wisconsin when you get to Chicago. Call me if you get lost.” He chuckled. She’d spent years in graduate school driving around California, lost. A direction disaster, she used to call herself.

“Drive through Wisconsin until you hit Lake Superior. You’ll know when you hit it because you’ll run out of land,” he joked.

“Yuk, yuk, you think I’m some kind of city idiot, don’t you.”

“You said it,” he teased.

“I have GPS, Bernie,” she said, looking at the Escape.

“Oh my, I don’t believe it,” he said. “Paula has GPS,” he called to his wife. “She says, ‘Thank God.’”

“So what happens when I run out of land?”

“Go west along the lake to Duluth,” he explained. “Follow the lake on Sixty-two all the way up the north shore. You’ll hit Two Harbors, Silver Bay, Grand Marais; keep going. Then up into the Boundary Waters and into Canada and we’re the first big city. Your GPS’ll take you right to our door. You can’t miss it.”

Paula felt like she was going home. They’d feed her, take care of her; she’d tell Bernie everything.

“It’s about seven hundred miles from Chicago,” he said. “Probably more than twelve hours. Now don’t try to tackle it all in one day.”

“I won’t.”

“Plenty of places to stay.”

“Okay.”

“That’ll give us time to get clean sheets on the bed.”

“I’m bringing my dog.”

“Ooo,” Bernie said. “Now that might complicate things at the border. You wouldn’t happen to have his current rabies vaccine papers, would you?”

She looked at Fotis and thought of Theo. “As a matter of fact I do, Bernie.” Buried in the Vuitton duffel bag in the back of the Escape (she now felt worried about the “dusty” lining) were Fotis’ papers from the shelter, including the proof of vaccine.

“Wonderful. How fortuitous.”

“How fortuitous indeed.”

“How perfect that you got a dog,” Bernie said.

Paula smiled in a puzzled way. What a funny thing to say. And Bernie hadn’t asked about Roger. Getting back in the car, she braced herself and dialed Eleni’s number. Now was as good a time as any to explain.

CHAPTER 6

Black birds with massive wingspans soared above the tree line on either side of I-80. She saw Fotis’ profile in the mirror. “Ti vlepis?”

Fotis had seen the birds, too. She reached back and scratched his cheek as he leaned into her hand.

“Einai omorfos, neh?”

The birds captivated her. She watched them bank off the wind; hand out the window, she angled her fingers trying to simulate how the birds used air currents with their wingtip feathers. With the slightest shift they’d plummet and then swoop back up, gliding in what she knew were thermal pockets. How huge they must be in order to be visible from so far away.

Maybe they were eagles. Or maybe “just turkey vultures,” as Roger used to say. They’d see large dark birds circling on the drive to a Long Island beach house owned by one of his colleagues. Roger would say it as if belonging to their particular species was a bad habit rather than an adaptive niche. “You always know there’s carrion nearby.” He’d wrinkle his nose disapprovingly.

Billboards along the Pocono exits portrayed dewy-eyed, giggling young couples clinking champagne glasses in red heart-shaped tubs. Paula thought of how Heavenly and Tony had gone to the Poconos. Maybe that had been the key to their happiness—they had the same sense of humor. “Fall in Love with Us!” or “Rediscover Each Other,” showing older couples (more champagne), with bleached-white teeth and salt-and-pepper hair. Their faces seemed to exclaim,
Hey, we’re old, but damn it, we still know how to have fun in a heart-shaped bathtub!

Paula pushed her platinum wedding band down to the end of her finger, goading it to slip off out the window. It was a reckless dare; she felt a strange mix of excitement and fear. Not trusting her mood and whatever sick little taunt was egging her on, she reached into her purse, unzipping the side pocket, and let the ring fall in.

Heavenly had warned against making snap decisions, but removing the ring wasn’t a decision; it was a breather. Still, guilt oozed through the cracks in Paula’s logic. She looked at the empty finger; the skin looked younger.

This wasn’t about Roger. Why did it have to be “about” anything other than taking a long drive? Roger was the one who’d chosen to lock her out of the bedroom that first week, deciding not to share his bed or get help when she’d asked him to. She couldn’t sleep on that rose-colored mohair couch another night if her life depended on it.

She’d warned him five years ago that her feelings were changing. “We need to go to a counselor,” she’d warned. But acknowledge and ignore—that was Roger’s strategy, thinking he could smile in that adorable way of his and pull his wife back whenever he wanted her. He’d tap her shoulder on late Sunday afternoons (after she’d already eaten too much ice cream) and invite her up to lie down with him on a space he’d cleared for lovemaking. She’d cringe, try to break down her defenses, conjure up a mystery man in a fantasy that would get her through however long it would take. “You’re so beautiful,” he’d say every time as if that were the only phrase he knew. But still, her heart rushing blindly with hope—
he loves me.
Even when it was more like masturbating on each other’s bodies, she’d stare at the plaster medallion on the ceiling rather than face the disintegration of their marriage.

*   *   *

Early on in their marriage when Roger had been at a particle physics conference in Frankfurt, she’d gotten a call from the Staten Island Police. A neighbor had lodged a complaint about shutters banging against a house after a windstorm. Paula had known that Roger owned investment property there but had never seen it. So she phoned Roger, who told her to call the property management company. She asked about a key. “They have one if they need to enter,” he said briskly, “But they won’t need to; it’s the outside shutters.”

After a phone call, the company insisted on meeting her at the house where their representative would assess the damage. She could have picked it out even without an address. The downstairs curtains were drawn; towels were tacked over the upstairs windows. A new roof and gutters had been put on earlier that season after Roger had received a citation. From time to time he’d get notices from the authorities, neighbors fed up with the abandoned house that was an eyesore. This time it had been an easy fix. The company reattached the loosened shutter to satisfy the complaint from the neighbors, and as their truck pulled away, Paula had stood watching the house until a few minutes later, wondering what she was waiting for to happen.

During the first weeks of their marriage Roger caught Paula “snooping” around the brownstone. She’d hoped to find something of his mother’s, since he spoke so highly of her. The mountains of his parents’ belongings seemed to be layered with antiques.

She followed a “burrow” path into a side room and discovered a box containing delicately embroidered tablecloths and napkins. Sifting through the box, she pulled out an embroidered table runner; chilly puffs of mildew made her turn and cough. The linen had been marked with the tracings of mice teeth, and the runner fell open in her hands like a cut-out string of paper dolls. Elation turned to disappointment after she found that the whole box had been similarly chewed and stained with mouse urine.

“What are you doing?” Roger had asked in a voice that startled her.

“Oh.” She’d dropped the cloth and yanked out her hand, hopping back down onto the burrow path. She’d looked up at him and smiled, trying to regain her poise. “Just looking around. I live here now, remember?” she’d kidded, thinking humor might diffuse the strangeness. “Did your mother embroider these?”

“Just leave it all,” he’d said. “I’m taking care of it.”

She looked at the box. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to display some of your parents’ antiques?”

But Roger didn’t answer. While he’d made strides, moving around boxes in those first few months, she often wondered where he’d put them. Nothing ever seemed to end up on the curb. The attic was locked. When she asked he’d say, “You don’t have to worry about it.”

“I’m not worried.” She’d offer to help, but he’d refuse with a look that was both pained and fearful. Then after another breakdown, followed by weeks of him hiding in his darkened bedroom watching the science-fiction channel, the boxes slowly migrated back downstairs.

“Give me a weekend and a Dumpster and I’ll clear this place out,” she’d shouted.

“Don’t even think about it,” he’d yelled back, his voice trembling, his bottom chin quivering. That was the moment when she knew she’d pushed as far as she could push.

*   *   *

Coming up to one of the last exits for the Poconos, she thought back to her first marriage, at eighteen years old, to Joey, an ironworker. When Eleni had tried to bribe her into coming to work for the furrier, Paula instead went to work at Pet World, her dream job since second grade.

She lost her virginity on her first date with Joey, a guy she’d met on the bus. The next week he proposed.
Better take it,
she’d thought at the time.
No one else’ll want you now.
Eleni had always been far more worried about what was between Paula’s legs than between her ears. It was an Island thing, remnants of a past Eleni had drummed into her daughter’s head since girlhood. Even the use of tampons was prohibited, as was bike riding, lest it make her a “bad” girl.

Sex was love. Paula and Joey married within the month.

The problem with Joey was that after the rings slipped on, the gloves came off. Unable to sustain an erection on their wedding night, he put his fist through the plasterboard above her head.

“That’s okay; don’t worry about it,” she’d tried to console.

“Shut up,” he’d yelled.

“Why are you getting mad? It’ll be okay,” she cooed, only it seemed to make him even angrier. Too bad his bout with impotency hadn’t struck on the first date before all that cervix-banging sex.