Chapter II
My boys unleash themselves from the back, shove open their doors, and race across the dirt road to the silver slide. Their steps ring out on its metal rungs.
‘That’s old school,’ you say about the slide as we trail behind them.
Why are you here, is what I want to say.
The park is on a long finger of land that pokes into the Atlantic. The water glints and dances through the pines all around us.
Harry gets to the top first, Jack right behind him, grabbing onto his brother’s back. They drop down fast. Jack tumbles sideways off into the dirt and pulls Harry with him and they’re rolling and laughing. They’re five and seven, my boys.
You watch, shake your head. ‘That thing is way too high and way too steep. Are there no safety codes up here?’
‘I’ll have to check the paperwork on that, Mr. Cautious.’
You look at me and laugh. The boys get up from the ground and run back to climb up again. Jack makes it to the steps first.
I wait for you to say the things people like to say about Jack, about his speed, his fearlessness, how he’d soon be giving his older brother a run for his money.
‘They’re happy kids,’ you say as they slide down again.
‘You’ve been here less than two hours.’
‘I can tell. All my friends’ kids are fucked up. These ones seem okay.’
You bend down and pick up a brown pine needle off the ground. ‘God, when was the last time I saw one of these?’
As if I know.
‘Harry! Jack!’ You jog toward them. You had a runner’s body once, sharp glutes beneath the band of your gray sweats. Now it looks like things hurt. ‘Let’s climb one of these.’ You’re pointing to the pine trees behind the swings, silhouettes against the dark, sparkling ocean.
I don’t think Jack has climbed a tree yet. They look at me and I nod and they run to you. They each take a hand. Does this surprise you? Jack starts to skip. How easy they both are with you. They normally hold back with other men, men who aren’t their father.
You choose a tree. I’m stationed at its base. Up you all go. I have to lift Jack up to get his feet on the first branch and then he climbs like a spider monkey.
‘Higher?’ you say to them.
‘Higher!’ my boys chime.
There are creaks and snaps of tiny twigs and then you stop before I have to say anything and the boys climb up to where you are and stop, too.
‘Mumma, can you still see us?’ Jack says. He’s straddling a big limb, patting it like a horse. If he slips, I can easily catch him.
‘Barely,’ I say.
Your three faces are looking down on me, the bottoms of your sneakers swinging.
You tell them the story about Daphne fleeing from Apollo through the woods, running, running, calling to her father the river god for help, then her arms becoming branches and her feet roots.
You put your hand flat on the tree’s trunk.
‘And for a few seconds,’ you tell them, ‘Apollo can feel her heartbeat through the bark.’
The boys press their hands to the trunk, too.
A squirrel leaps from the tree next door onto a high branch, looks down, and leaps back in surprise. The three of you laugh and the tree’s needles tremble.
What do you know and why are you here?
You and the boys come down the tree.
‘My highest is eleven,’ Harry is saying.
‘What? That’s crazytown,’ you say.
‘Mine is nine and a half,’ Jack says.
‘A half?’ you say. ‘I want to see a half.’
Then you are all too far away to hear, sprinting toward the water, leaping down the little embankment of scrub grass. When you reach the wet sand the three of you slow down and start taking stooped steps, looking for flat stones.
A disheveled dog, barely bigger than a squirrel and a lot faster, starts running circles around me and yapping.
‘Fabio!’
An older woman comes across the playground with a thin leash. ‘I’m sorry. He slipped by me when I opened the car door.’
Fabio stops moving when she bends to clip on the leash. He even extends his tiny neck for her.
‘Cute dog,’ I say.
She straightens up and looks toward the water. ‘Cute kids.’
We watch the boys on the beach, their thick hair and wiry bodies.
They’re showing you their rock-skimming technique, arcing back on one foot, bending low, and releasing a flat stone across the surface just the way Silas taught them.
Jack jumps up and down on the sand. Harry cranks his arm around over his head.
You give it a try and up comes a great holler of surprise. You bend down low for their high fives.
‘Cute dad, too,’ the woman says.
‘He’s not their dad.’ I regret how sharply I say this.
She isn’t bothered. ‘You sure?’
I laugh. The three dark heads on the beach search for more flat stones. ‘First time I’ve seen him in years.’ Twenty-one years.
‘Ah.’
‘Yeah.’
I love how fast women get things.
Another cheer from the beach. Jack takes a victory lap then waves for me to come. I give Fabio a little scrub between the ears and head to the water.
In the car on the way home the boys are sleepy. You tell me about a book you read over the winter, a novel about Iceland and sheep. Silas has parked behind your rental in our driveway, so I park on the street. Jack’s friend Otis sticks his head into the open passenger window.
‘Crater time,’ he says. Then he notices you an inch from his face. ‘Who’s this?’
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He hustles Harry and Jack out of the car and they all run to his yard next door.
‘Crater?’ you say.
‘It’s a game they made up. I think it takes place on the moon.’
On our way to the house, you stop at your rental and pull your bag out of the back.
It’s the green duffel you brought to Paris.
Now it’s come to Maine. The sight of it is jarring.
I wish you would put it back in the car.
I wish I hadn’t offered you a place to stay on your trip up the coast to see friends.
Silas and I moved up here from Massachusetts before Harry was born. We sold our tiny apartment in Cambridge for more than the price of this three-bedroom in Portland. It’s an old house, low ceilings, horsehair poking out of the plaster, the remnants of a wooden latrine in the downstairs closet.
You follow me up onto the side porch and through the door. Our dogs skitter loudly across the pine floor of the kitchen to smell you. You squat to give them your full attention.
‘Who’s this?’ you say, mimicking Otis perfectly to our bulldog Nelson, who mashes her face into yours. ‘And who’s this?’ you say to Maxie the beagle while his hard tail thwaps loudly against the rungs of a chair. You look up at me. ‘I didn’t know you had dogs.’
I shrug. Why would you?
On cue, Lupe, who was in a crouch beneath the wood stove, struts across the kitchen and presses her forehead to your knee. ‘Or a woeful cat.’ You stroke her from tip to tail. ‘Your characters never have pets.’
I don’t know what of mine you’ve read.
I take your bag and put it by the stairs.
‘Wow,’ you say, looking left into the living room. ‘It’s like walking into the Breach House.’
‘Why?’
‘It just feels like it.’
I get two beers from the fridge and get you back outside.
Our house is nothing like the Breach. We sit in the two beat-up wicker chairs on our porch.
You answer my questions about your work and I answer yours about mine.
I barely know what I’m saying. It’s so strange you’re here, and so unnerving how familiar you are, the rhythm of your voice, the tilt of your head, the shifts of your body, the hair on your wrists, the scar on your lip.
Every now and then I can hear my boys next door and their voices keep some part of me rooted.
And some part of me is aware that Silas is home and hasn’t come down.
The house is too small for him not to know we’re back.
I wonder where he is and if it’s odd that I haven’t gone to find him and if that seems strange to you.
You tell me about a case you worked on for two years, a slam-dunk corruption suit against a school for the deaf that was extorting its students, only to have it be dismissed due to sexual misconduct by your assistant attorney.
‘He was sleeping with the head of the school,’ you say.
‘He’s still sleeping with her. I went to their wedding last month. ’
I laugh and shut my eyes and wish I could keep them shut. The familiarity is too much. It goes too deep. I don’t know why you’ve come. And I can’t hear the boys anymore. Where is Silas?
I stayed in Brooklyn with Carson for a week.
My oatmeal suitcase took up a quarter of her studio.
When the phone rang while she was at work, I didn’t answer it.
When she was home, I refused to speak to you.
Carson told me you told her bullshit things about savings and timing, about how your friend in publishing had left for a job in finance, how you could write a draft of a novel on the cheap in Atlanta, which was much more affordable than New York.
You tried out a Homeric allusion to the thread of fate.
‘Are you in or out?’ Carson asked.
You didn’t answer.
‘Then let her go,’ she said, and put down the phone.