You Were Here Read online

  Winter is what she wants, what she misses, which is not something people in Minnesota do. Trees outlined in white, ice skating, bursts of cloudy breaths, delicate chimes of ice. But especially the sweaters and long sleeves, able to disguise the fact that she’s put on weight, not that anyone’s said anything or even noticed, for all she knows.

  Less than two years they’ve been married. Never tumultuous, never a voice raised in anger, and so it made sense that the change she’d noticed was civil as well. A look she’d caught almost eight months ago, on a beautiful fall afternoon, a look she’s seen many times since. Distracted. He’d stopped before the window, smiling, a mosaic of brilliant leaves just beyond the glass—but she’d watched him and realized there was no focus to his gaze. What he saw was in his mind. And it was then she realized that the happiness she bore witness to had nothing to do with the color of the season, and nothing to do with her.

  The next morning she took an extra slice of bread. From Wednesday to Saturday she’s by herself, and the food that once had been a reward—you’ve earned this, enduring this house all alone—soon became a punishment. You’ve never been good enough for him, and now it will show. Entire lists of items she’ll eat one by one, starting perhaps with the grasshopper pie or coconut cake, then leading to the zucchini bread baked fresh the other day. Only when she’s physically, undeniably ill, will she stop. After that, later in the day or even during the next, her steps are slowed, the anticipation turned to dread, yet still she’s compelled, her mind held hostage by the simple fact that eating like this is an option. On Fridays she’s relieved, a flagellant whose whip is taken away. It will be over. Her husband will be back. Saturdays are the day of his return. Saturdays are when it stops.

  After all these months of eating like this, her body has begun to change, her waist thick, the angles of her face no longer precise. When she works at the potter’s wheel, her arms press against the protrusion of her stomach. All of her body is in the way, and she worries someone will ask her if she’s with child—an embarrassment from which she might never recover.

  Through the trees the water moves, doused in moonlight. What would it be like to drown? What would it feel like, water rushing into your lungs, every gulp for air heavy and weighted? Or maybe, just for a moment, your body would recall its inception, and perhaps there would be a feeling of recognition and peace?

  This is how I started, this is how I end.

  The most radiant stars stay firm and fixed, but Eva’s convinced the smaller ones are disappearing before her eyes, swallowed by the black sky just as she captures them in her gaze. A trick of vision, but maybe not. Maybe she is witnessing their disappearance. The thought gives new weight to staring at the sky, and she straightens as she takes the pastime more seriously.

  It’s the beginning of June, and the night air is scented with an awkward mixture of lilacs and morels, opened earth from nearby farms and the marshy scent of the settled lake. Rochester is less than two hours south of Minneapolis, yet she imagines the air up there to be completely different, a mesh of street smells and perfume curled with the heat of ambition. Time, too, would feel faster, she’s sure, marked by the hands of a clock rather than the slant of the sun or the curl in certain leaves.

  Though it’s dark, anyone could see her, just sitting on the steps and staring at the stars, waiting. It’s not a smart place for her to sit, being so visible, but the other option is the porch at the back of the house, and that faces the woods, woods that during the day are pretty and green and don’t extend too far, but have multiplied and thickened in the falling darkness, have become an entire forest teeming with the hidden possibilities of night. No, she can’t stare at the woods. Not by herself. She’d spend the whole time waiting for something to emerge. If he were with her, however, it would be different. Pulse-quickening in a delicious way.

  He’d warned her he would be late, and then she lost her key. Worse, tonight’s one of those romantic nights you don’t need a sweater for, the kind that hangs on to the heat like someone too happy to stop smiling. No doubt he’s strolling leisurely. Taking his time, admiring lawns and porches and tree houses.

  At last there’s a crunch on the gravel. Eva stands, excited, watching the moonlight release him one step at a time. Broad, straight shoulders—she hates sloping; a man with sloping shoulders is frail and too easily swayed, which is just no fun—dark, almost black hair, a strong, square jaw, and sturdy cheekbones. Really, everything about him is dark and unnervingly handsome.

  He’s got his keys ready by the time he reaches the steps. “Why are you outside?” Even when he’s annoyed his voice is without edges, like Orson Welles or Gregory Peck.

  “I must have left my key at home. But it’s warm. I was all right.”

  As she steps past him, hoping he’s not too mad, the night scent of flowers and earth and cooling water disappears, replaced by him and only him. Clean soapiness, a touch of musk, the slight scent of sawdust he can never shake from work—the smell of progress.

  Inside, William closes the door. “That’s the third key. And the weather’s not the point. You were in view for all of Rochester to see.”

  “It was fine,” she says. “I was—” but then she stops speaking, because he’s pushed her up against the door, his end-of-the-day scruff against her skin, his determined and warm hand beneath her blouse.

  —

  There’s not much food in the house, mostly canned goods, so as usual they’ll start the next morning at the Princess Café and then head to the market for two days’ worth of produce and another bottle of milk. The milk is for her, and because she is twenty-four years old it embarrasses her that she wants it, but she does. Milk and cows and youth and farms—all things best left behind, best forgotten.

  But now, now they’re on the back porch, the moon caught in the tips of the pine trees, tomato soup from a can in bowls they balance on their laps. The porch is painted green, like grass, and they each have their spot on the floor at the top of the stairs, her back against the left post, his against the right. In between them is a Monopoly game William found in a closet, prewar with metal pieces and nicely cut wooden hotels and houses. The porch light brightens as they play. Their drinks chime, shadows reach. Out here there’s the faint scent of green onions that flower purple at the base of the wood railing. Out here they could do anything, their world without witness.

  “Did you miss me?” she asks.

  He smiles as he rolls the dice. “Always.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  “I know you did.”

  “You’re arrogant.”

  “I know I am.” He looks at her, his eyes devouring. “A new blouse. I like you in red.”

  She touches the buttons, carved Bakelite roses. “I only sewed these on this morning. One of which you knocked off. Ten minutes it took me to find it on the stairs.”

  He smiles. “Entirely worth it. Remind me to buy you a few sets.”

  When the moon is high, the bath is running and the soup bowls are stacked in the kitchen sink. The board game doesn’t get put away. Everything is left in place, money and cards weighted down with rocks, tokens stilled in their journey, a continuation always imminent, concessions and defeat leading only to the start of a new game. She finds The Voice of Frank Sinatra and sets the needle. This is what they’ll listen to the rest of the night, a long-playing record that will force him out of the tub only once to start the music again. Her clothes are on the floor by the bed, the loose button on the nightstand. The bathroom’s begun to fog. She tests the water with her toe. When at last she hears the first few notes begin, Frank’s slow, smooth voice sliding into the room, the candles are lit and she’s sunk deep into the bubbles, one leg up, foot by the faucet. Pale skin and red nail polish. White, slick tiles. Her dark hair is wet at the ends. There are crickets through the open window.

  He’s got a brandy for himself, and for her a highball
of whiskey and ginger ale. She takes it from him and presses the cold glass to her chest, against the heat of her skin. She watches him watch her. He swirls his drink. The world flickers.

  “I’m sorry about the key,” she says.

  “I’m sorry I was late.”

  There’s really not room for him, but it doesn’t matter. The water rises with his weight. She leans back against the tiles, feeling a drop snake down her neck, and scoops up a handful of bubbles, admiring them in the light. Thousands of reflections. Colors swim and shine and burst.

  “I saw a double rainbow as I drove down from Minneapolis,” he says, watching her. “Just this morning.”

  “Aren’t you lucky.”

  He nudges her with his foot. “I am.”

  She grins, then blows into her hand. A storm of bubbles rises into the air, a world of drifting light. He leans back, his smile that of a man entranced. One cluster has landed on a tile beside her. In it she sees herself, fractured and glassy, and tries, more than anything, not to think of where he was last night.

  On Saturday morning, William searches for his belt. Behind the chair, by the bathroom, behind the door. Finally he looks up at the bed. Eva lies with one hand above her head on the pillow, the other absent-mindedly playing with the blanket, fingers kneading.

  “Eva,” he says, and watches her smile to the ceiling. Somehow she’s positioned herself within a beam of sun from the window, and the light seems to lift her from the rest of the room.

  She shakes her head, but then relents and pulls the belt from under her pillow. He leans down for a quick kiss and then forces himself away. Saturdays are when they say good-bye. Twisted sheets. Coffee in chipped porcelain. Pillow-whispered promises. The inevitable rush against the clock.

  The bedroom, like the rest of the house, is small and decorated in the former owner’s feminine Victorian style: crowds of tiny flowers on wallpaper, scattered pastel hand-hooked wool rugs. It was never supposed to be anything more than a rental—furnished, walking distance to downtown but also across from Silver Lake, function and pleasure. When he finally agreed to purchase it, the owner—an old woman with impatience in her eyes and a catch in her throat that chopped up everything she said—had been more than happy to leave all her former possessions, taste, and dreams exactly where they were.

  It’s 1948 and men have started wearing casual shirts without jackets, shirttails flapping even on the streets of New York, but William still loves his suits. Wool or tweed now that the war is over, the cuts wider, more generous with fabric. A good suit can do wonders, and the ones he has are some of the finest. At first he’d worn them to work as well—after all, he is the owner, and he’d thought that’s what owners do—but Rochester, for all its big-belly growth, was still a small town and construction was still construction whether you’re the owner or not. So now he wears a suit only while in Minneapolis and—because Eva loves them—when readying to return to Minneapolis, a sight to leave her with. She studies the lapels, the pleats of the trousers, stitching she says she could never duplicate.

  Now he catches her watching him in the mirror. Their eyes lock and she smiles in a way that makes it hard to find his reflection again.

  “I found a good spot for a picnic on the river,” she says. “Not a person to be seen. We could pack an early dinner. It’s warm enough. And I saw fish jumping—we could bring poles.”

  “You are the only woman I know who’d suggest fishing on a date.”

  “And you are the only man I know who must not be familiar with how long it takes to catch a fish. There’s plenty of time for other things.” One of her arms is above her on the pillow, and when she sighs, her chest rises. He forces himself to look away.

  “Fishing it is,” he says. “But, for now, my dear, we’re late.” He finishes his thought by motioning to her train case by the window, open and unpacked. Tucked inside the satin pouch that lines the lid is a note, something he knows she’ll look for later when she’s unpacking, wishing she weren’t alone. Little thoughts scrawled on torn paper, sneaked into the case when she’s not looking—though by now he suspects she looks away just to afford him the chance.

  You sleep sideways and claim almost the entire bed . . . but I’m honored to be the one hanging on. —Me

  —

  The café is close and the menu never changes. His spoon’s in hand as the waitress leaves the kitchen, and the second the oatmeal is placed in front of him he drizzles maple syrup on top in a perfect spiral. Then they’re driving past the outer edges of Silver Lake Park, and more than anything he wishes he could stop the car, a Saturday for once luxurious with time. The lake gleams. The water at this time of day is the same shade as her eyes, a fresh, wicked blue.

  “Miss me,” she says quietly when they stand at the station. About a dozen other people are also waiting, scattered about as if directionless and ready to board whatever bus stops closest.

  He puts his hand in his pocket and nods. “You’ll get some chocolate if you’re good.”

  “I’m always good.”

  His voice is low. “I can actually attest that you’re not.” He tips an imaginary hat.

  Her train case hits the door as she boards the bus. Once he sees she’s found her seat, he jiggles his car keys in his pocket and waits till the bus aches into gear and pulls away.

  —

  Truth be told, William likes to drive, and would like it even more if he had his other car, a Series 62 convertible, his buttercup-yellow dream. But the Cadillac draws looks. So he drives the Chevy Coupe, reliable and boring in beige. You have a what in Minneapolis? she’d asked when he’d told her, and he could see her mind juggling facts and statements. It’s too flashy, he’d said. And it’s not a car to visit sites in, not unless I want her dinged up and covered in dirt. Which I don’t.

  As he heads up the state, there are tumults of scenes, fast like passing, frantic thoughts. Dizzying corn, lakes, rivers, all part of the land he really doesn’t know, as he’s always lived in the Twin Cities. Sure, there are lakes there, but their banks are hemmed with roads, dotted with houses that seem to increase in number each year, growing thicker like something that’s finally taken hold, a development started in part by his father’s father, who’d seen the future, or so everyone said, and along with acres in scattered parts of the state had snatched up huge parcels of land at Lake Harriet, Lake Calhoun, and Lake of the Isles, the eventual sale of which amassed a fortune that spilled over and echoed clinking sounds in all of Minneapolis’s ears. William’s father, Irwin, a man whose humility challenged and confused everyone around him, had never joined in William’s grandfather’s business, but still was in part responsible for the change in landscape. As soon as he could, Irwin broke from his gilded life and joined in the Great War’s fight, an impressive, unnecessary decision, only to return and shun his father’s business. The fact that Irwin returned from the war at all, whole and generally the same, was seen as reward for being who he was, as the good are deserving. But that his own business then became successful—the inspired decision to pave the roads for the invasion of cars, followed by the magic wand of Coolidge’s tax breaks—all that was simply proof that he was in fact a great man, as the righteous will shine like the sun.

  It was not easy being the son of someone like this. Nor was it easy being his wife, William always heard. William’s mother, Isadora, liked to joke that Irwin’s existence counteracted her own, as if their lives were nullified by their differences. While every Thursday for twenty-five years Irwin went to Ray’s Barber & Style Shop and listened, without the slightest impatience, to Ray talk of his sons, both killed in the Great War—the fog of which rolled from Ray’s mind into Irwin’s before being left again at the barbershop door—Isadora sought top stylists, Parisian men with long fingernails and snarled gazes. She was a woman used to life’s finest, an unapologetic epicurean, but her generosity was lavish and her Christmas list pages long
and specific to each person, drawing upon comments made throughout the year that no one thought she’d even heard. More than anything, however, she was fiercely loyal to her husband. She will always be the seven-year-old who stole the candy canes off her parents’ tree, Irwin often said, and gave them to me with a kiss.

  Eva, though, she knows the land. Prettier than a pinup girl, but her childhood as a tomboy comes through now and then, like a glimpse of burlap under a sea of lace. A confused, charming combination. She can name flowers and birds and weeds, an ability at which William marvels. That and her eagerness, her tourist-like excitement for things he finds mundane or has overlooked. The Zumbro River, for instance, which now sits languidly on his right. Catfish and walleyes and saugers and smallmouth bass, she’d rattled off the other day right before she’d leaned in to say, I heard it was called the River of Obstruction. She sat back. That was its French name. Her lower lip, slightly fuller than the top, drives him mad. Rivière des Embarras, they called it, he’d replied, and her mouth, with that ripe, plum-stained lip, had opened just a touch before she’d asked him to say it again and then again. That he could do that to her, with that one small phrase, brought him a pride he’d not felt the rest of the week.

  —

  When William reaches Minneapolis, there is the familiar collision of emotions. This is the day he doesn’t like. Saturday. The edge of worlds, the border, the deep trench where there is nothing but a wish to be on the other side—either side. It’s mostly just the first hours of being home, the adjustment from one life to the other, of going from a small clapboard house he’s never cared for—pure function, a place to sleep—to his childhood home, which is sprawling and relates to function about as much as a chandelier in a barn. Brownish red stones, a red tile roof, a large turret, and a wrought-iron fence that lines the expansive lawn. There are nine bedrooms, five fireplaces, a den, a sunroom, a billiards room, and a library. There’s even a tunnel that stretches from the basement to the carriage house, left over from Prohibition, when his parents’ guests needed assurance of an exit. Not that anyone used it. As a child he’d loved it. Calls would sound from either entrance, the whole household searching for him as he sat in darkness, smiling at dirt he couldn’t see.