Jane Davies

© Copyright 2011 Douglas Nordfors.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4269-7127-3 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-7128-0 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-7129-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011908969

Trafford rev. 07/11/2011

Image355.JPG www.trafford.com

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CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

BOOK THREE

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Come with me, you should meet someone.

Edward could tell by the way Kelly slurred the words, not by her face or her body language, that she was extremely drunk. Thinking of how a strident opinion automatically implies its opposite, he felt her to be cold sober.

As for him, he had had one drink, and so he was neither here nor there. He obeyed his friend who had a handle on what exactly he should be doing at that point in her seemingly endless party.

They made their way out of the thick crowd in the living room, where Edward had been sitting on the empty couch, talking to no one, hoping that Kelly, his sole reason for being at the party, would leave whatever room she was in and come find him. Now he was no longer hoping. Now he was watching her shoulder blades underneath her light blue blouse. As they were passing the kitchen, she slowed down a bit, turned halfway around and said, Still with me?

She didn’t slur the words this time, and he felt her to be extremely and appropriately drunk. He realized he hadn’t congratulated her yet. So how does it feel to be Doctor Owen? Still, he hadn’t congratulated her.

She turned halfway around again. Thanks. I’m happy. And glad I’ve finally recovered enough to celebrate.

I’m glad, too.

They went through a sliding glass door and out onto the lawn overlooking the moonlit ocean. Edward had been there once, briefly, when he first arrived. He had gone back inside, it was clear to him now, to escape the half-hearted dusk. The night suited him.

He and Kelly kept moving, all the way to the far edge of the lawn, and stood on the bulkhead. It was just a short fall to the beach. Want to walk along the water?

No, no, Kelly said.

They turned around and faced the house.

Where did he go? Kelly said.

Edward had nearly forgotten that she wanted him to meet someone.

There he is, she said.

Edward saw a dark figure coming through the sliding glass door. So who is he?

Hold on.

They and the figure met each other halfway, at the center of the lawn.

This is Jeremy Davies, Kelly said. He’s from Long Island, from our hometown, actually. Neither of you know anybody here, so I thought…

Edward, Edward said, before Kelly could say his first and last name—he didn’t feel like having his whole self revealed.

Jeremy put his hand out. Edward took it.

After the handshake was over, Jeremy said, Nice to meet you.

He sounded, to Edward, neither sincere nor insincere, a tone suited to his utterly unfaded blue jeans and crisp white dress shirt. New clothes always struck Edward as neither owned by the store nor by the person who purchased them. Tonight, Edward was his usual mass of unrevealed, unchallenged notions. He had wanted to take a walk on the beach with Kelly and say something awful about doctors that she would laugh at and he would take back into his illuminated self.

Kelly was gone. It was just him and Jeremy.

So how do you know Kelly, Edward? Not Ed?

Please, no.

Sorry, Jeremy said.

He didn’t sound sorry at all.

We went to high school together, Edward said. How do you know her?

We worked in the same health clinic together, before she was a big shot, a little while before she moved up here.

You still live in our fair hometown? Edward said.

Yeah. You?

Yeah, unfortunately.

What’s wrong with it?

What Edward had meant as a joke had sounded like outright despondency to this idiot. Or maybe it was outright despondency—what was wrong with that? Nothing. It’s fine.

This house isn’t hers, right? Jeremy said.

"Right. She rented it for the occasion. She’s not rich yet."

She invited you? Jeremy said.

Edward couldn’t muster up the energy to be offended. She did, but I needed a little vacation. So it sort of killed two birds.

Jeremy looked confused.

With one stone, Edward said.

Sure, I know, Jeremy said. I happened to be up here, at a conference in Boston, and I remembered she was up here, so I called her and she told me about the party.

Good timing, Edward said, sure that Jeremy was wondering why he didn’t get an invitation, clueless as to whether Jeremy’s wondering was painful or painless.

Jeremy didn’t respond.

Edward couldn’t think of anything else to say. He wanted to go back inside to escape the night.

You need a haircut, Jeremy said, out of the blue.

For the first time, Edward noticed Jeremy’s close-cropped, reddish hair, and his thin nose that would never get wider no matter how much desire he put into desiring it to. You’re right. We all need a lot of things.

"No offense. It’s not that long. I just…"

It’s all right.

Sorry.

Once again, Jeremy didn’t sound sorry at all. Who was this person, to whom words were such a sham?

I’m going to go back inside and get a drink, Edward said. He almost said, Another drink, but his first and only had long ceased to affect his system. It was gone, gone as nothing—an empty couch, a woman’s concealed shoulder blades, a question (Still with me?), a walk on the beach that never happened—in his life was ever gone. Did he even need another drink? He was terribly confused.

I haven’t had one yet, either, Jeremy said.

Edward came to an understanding that he was lying face down, and that there were millions of grains of sand under his chest and stomach and legs. He had lost count of the number of drinks he had subjected to his system. He had lost consciousness for God knows how long. He had lost… just that: he had lost. There was nothing to do but flip over and grin at the sky.

The sky was—possibly—no closer to morning than it had been when he had lost consciousness. He began to count the stars, then stopped when he came to an understanding that Jeremy was standing over him. It might have been an optical illusion, but Jeremy was taller than the bulkhead. His hair was still severely short, as if not allowed to breathe, as if Jeremy’s hair, chin, arms, even his wristwatch, were all capable, if allowed, of breathing.

We meet again, Jeremy said.

Edward chose not to reply to the obvious. He sat up, dragged himself a few feet across the sand and leaned against the bulkhead.

Jeremy sat down, Indian-style, roughly where Edward had been lying.

How long was I lying there? Edward said.

I don’t know. I’ve been trying to make friends inside.

Any luck?

Not really. They’re all a bunch of big shots.

Drink any? Edward said, hoping that there was at least a glimmer of common ground between them.

"Did you?" Jeremy said.

You’re kidding, right?

Jeremy laughed a strange sort of laugh, like someone trying to come to grips with the role of humor in life.

Edward silently told his brain to register the feeling of his palms on the cold sand. It was as if all he had imbibed had created a raging river between himself and himself, and it was up to him—who else?—to create a bridge. He looked past Jeremy to the ocean, that much wider and much calmer river between himself and that horizontal straight line to nowhere, the horizon. Then he looked at the dark whiteness of Jeremy’s shirt, and asked what time it was.

Jeremy looked at his watch. 2:38 AM.

Edward laughed a laugh that caused him to feel his throat without telling his brain. How precise.

What’s wrong with that?

Edward took one hand off the sand and waved it in the air. Nothing.

With my job, Jeremy said, you have to be.

You still work at that clinic? Edward couldn’t believe that he had remembered that detail from their previous conversation. Then again, it wasn’t as if he wasn’t the same person he was back then.

I’ve been there ten years.

They must like you.

Jeremy looked confused.

Edward was pretty sure he had said what he had said, but he said it again to be absolutely sure.

I don’t know, Jeremy said. I do what they ask me to.

And what’s that?

A lot of things. But mostly I’m in charge of checking patient records. Making sure everything gets filled out right and filed right.

Preciseness, Edward said.

Right. So what do you do?

Small talk with Jeremy was keeping Edward cold sober in theory. Edward felt that without Jeremy there in front of him, telling him things he didn’t really care to know, he would tip over and curl up in the fetal position. I used to teach high school.

Used to?

Edward wondered if he had been happy back then. He didn’t really care to know. Used to.

What subject?

English.

Uh oh.

What?

You’re not going to correct my grammar, are you?

Edward tipped over and laughed without making a sound.

Jeremy made a move to help him up, but Edward stopped him with an outthrust palm, and sat back up to prevent any more intimations of help.

What do you do now? Jeremy said.

At first, Edward thought he meant right now… what hope was there right now to do anything, even sit up with his back against wood? Then he remembered how normal Jeremy was. I edit financial reference books.

That sounds interesting.

Edward couldn’t laugh, even silently. Sometimes.

Jeremy turned halfway around and looked at the ocean. Edward had stopped hearing the small waves a long time ago. Did Jeremy hear them? Edward couldn’t believe how sure he was that Jeremy had lost interest in him. Jeremy seemed to be the kind of person who demanded so little from life, and yet it seemed that, when it came to Edward, Jeremy’s expectations tripled, and naturally ended in defeat. Edward decided to ask Jeremy a question that Jeremy could only attempt to answer. So what’s your story?

Jeremy turned back around. Oh, boy. Good question. You mean my life?

That’s a good question, too.

Cut it out.

Jeremy sounded a little angry, like he was testing anger out to see if he liked it. Clearly, he didn’t.

No, really, Edward said, what is your story?

I’m not sure I have one. It’s pretty boring.

Can’t be.

Jeremy looked pleasantly confused.

What about your background? Edward said, thinking that the ocean that couldn’t be a river, not even a metaphorical one, was Jeremy’s background, the small waves—Edward could hear them again—trying to remove themselves from the whole, getting dragged back in.

That’s pretty interesting, actually. My father’s parents—my grandparents—died in the Blitz.

Edward was pretty sure what Jeremy was referring to, but he said anyway, The Blitz?

The Nazi bombing of London.

I know.

Jeremy should have looked confused, but he didn’t.

My father was three when it happened. When he was ten, he was sent here to relatives.

How did he survive?

The bombing?

Edward nodded.

He wasn’t there. Most of the children in London were evacuated.

Jeremy stopped there, as if he didn’t know much else, or as if giving Edward a minute to breathe.

Never in Edward’ s life, not even for a second, had he believed in past lives. And he still didn’t. He did, however, believe—for the first time?—in obsessions that can live in a person’s mind even though they were generated before that person was born. So what was the difference between his belief and a belief in past lives? He cared to know, but he didn’t know. Somehow, he was bound up in the bombing, standing out in the open in a city he had never set foot in, let alone in a time when his feet hadn’t been conceived, yes, standing out in the open in the guise of heavy smoke, and picking up a fragment of metal and placing its sharpness in the tightest corner of one of his lungs, so that when he breathed, the slight but terribly important pain made the tears in his eyes, there for so long, fall at last.

What’s so funny? Jeremy said.

Nothing’s funny.

You smiled.

I did.

Why?

Life is so damn interesting.

My life?

Edward wasn’t sure. Yes.

"So can I ask you something now?" Jeremy said.

I guess.

Who’s Denise?

Edward didn’t know if his face looked confused, but he knew he was confused inside, certainly not pleasantly confused, but not—maybe it was all the alcohol—bitterly, either. Did Kelly tell you her name?

No. As I was walking up to you, before you woke up, I heard you say it a couple of times. I thought you were saying, ‘This is neat, this is neat,’ but you sounded so sad. Then I figured out it was ‘Denise.’

I don’t remember, Edward said.

So who is she?

Edward took a deep breath and felt, actually felt, a nonexistent pain, more than slight. My wife.

Did she die?

No.

Jeremy hardly looked confused. There was a savage understanding in his eyes—maybe blue, maybe green. It was too difficult to tell.

Edward opened the door to the apartment, and wished each piece of furniture had his name on it, wished the whole place and everything in it wasn’t temporary—not because he liked it (he didn’t put his name only on things he liked), but because If it were permanent he could stop feeling that the walls were excluding him, that the floor was falling out from underneath him, that he was falling though somehow the carpet wasn’t, that the carpet was above him and he was in a dungeon so dark he couldn’t see the walls.

He couldn’t feel the presence of his friends who had loaned the apartment to him in May—it seemed like two cold years ago rather than one summer month and one spring month ago. The air was like the air inside a greenhouse. There were no plants and therefore no memorized detailed instructions in his head about when and how much to water them. There was no central air-conditioning, just an old window unit that took forever to reach full effectiveness—it was some consolation that forever eventually arrived.

In the bedroom, he took his bag off his shoulder and set it down on the bed. He couldn’t feel their presence—married, like him, but physically together, temporarily living in New Mexico to see if they wanted to live there permanently, to see if the climate would recognize them as lovers of it… something like that. It was a wonder anyone could live anywhere.

What disturbed Edward about his bland ideas was that they negated rather than dealt with despair. He wasn’t richly miserable over how inexplicable his life was, or how explicable it could be. No, he was declaring with no wonder at all that it was a wonder that a portion of everyone’s world was his.

To turn his mind off, he watched the news on TV, aware, despite his effort not to be, that he was avoiding looking through the stack of mail accumulated over the few days he had been gone, not to mention checking the answering machine.

Flooding in the Midwest. Houses—in terms of what was visible—reduced to roofs. A man and his dog rowing in a rowboat down Main Street—the dog rowing in theory, contributing to the cause with its pensive yet optimistic presence. The voice over godlike… and then the body of the voice appeared, a man in jeans and a green raincoat, giving the camera the information the camera demanded—or so it seemed to Edward, who demanded nothing. He cared, though. He saw himself ankle-deep in water, trying to express emotion by summoning up water through his drowned ankles and through the conduit of his spine detached from his ankles… he cared, but he couldn’t simply and clearly describe to himself his caring. Cut to the shoulders and head of a woman who had lost everything and was too awestruck to cry, apparently. What can you do? she said at least once, maybe twice. Edward believed it deserved to be said twice, and so maybe he imagined the second one. He believed it deserved to be said twice because the expression itself had no face, being mere words, and so could triumph in the face of helplessness.

It was only ten o’clock, too early to go to bed. Edward decided to go and pay a visit to his boss at home and tell him something very particular. Then Edward remembered—the truth was that he had never really forgotten—the stack of mail. Going through it wouldn’t take long. After he was finished, the night would still be young. No, he could wait and talk to his boss tomorrow. Besides, he didn’t know where his boss lived.

He turned his attention back to the news. The woman reporter in front of the White House looked beautifully concerned, as if she was talking to a school counselor about her troubled because gifted child. Edward believed her when she said the President wasn’t concerned about defamations of his character. Hairspray and mascara and immaculate clothes were necessary defenses against the taped earlier early evening illuminated by artificial light.

Edward just knew there was a letter for him in the stack of mail. After the reporter signed off and disappeared, Edward imagined he could see her reversion back to a regular person, see her gather herself back up within herself, herself her own child. He turned the TV off. He had had enough. He had learned a lot.

He went and got the stack of mail and sat back down in the same place, in front of the dead TV. The stack in his lap weighed far less than a woman’s foot.

Most of it—no surprise—was for the real tenants. He, the false tenant, had two pieces addressed to him, one with a yellow sticker indicating that it had been mailed to his previous address and then diverted to his new address, and one that got it right the first time. The half-failure—Edward wished it had failed all the way and never gotten to him—was an application for a credit card. Touching the envelope was like spending phantom money. He opened it, didn’t look inside, and set it down on the empty space next to him. The total success he feared to open. He set it down on top of the credit card application, and put his hand on top of both envelopes, smothering them. They never could breathe anyway. He stood up and put his fingertip on the layer of dust on top of the TV, plunged his fingertip into the layer of dust so shallow that when he removed his fingertip he could see all the way to the bottom.

He sat back down and opened the letter.

8/4/00

Dear Edward,

I thought I’d write another letter instead of calling. I think we’re tired of hearing each other’s voices. I shouldn’t speak for you, but you know what we’ve said, that this whole thing is as much your decision as it is mine.

Sorry to sound so calm. I’m tired, tired, tired.

It’s strange living with my parents again, of course. I drove my Dad into Miami today, to take him to his doctor. Just a check-up. He’s fine. As you know, he’s not too shy to take the opportunity when he’s alone with me to REALLY ask about you and me. But he didn’t. Mom avoids the subject, too. We made dinner together one night last week, like we used to do a long time ago. We used the cookbook you and I gave her a couple of years ago. I haven’t started looking for work yet.

I’m too tired to write.

I’m looking down at my hand moving across the page, and wondering what’s underneath all that skin—a lion’s paw? Your hand is inside my other hand, lying motionless on this desk I used as a teenager. I don’t know what’s outside the window. So long ago now, I used to get up in the middle of the night and look out and wonder who was climbing up the tree in search of me. I know the tree is still out there, but that knowledge doesn’t heal my knowing.

I’ll climb down now, and stop searching for myself.

I’m sorry for everything and everything.

Love, Denise

P.S. I WILL call soon.

Edward folded the letter back up, and kept it alive in his mind, thinking how it was just like her—calm, almost detached, and then apologetic, and then tearful under the mask of fatigue, and then composed and factual, and then aloft on the heights of a kind of craziness he aspired to, as it seemed to get to the heart of life, and then grandly apologetic, as if sorry that the heart hadn’t quite been found and never would be, and then—post-mortem—returning to what is simply possible.

He had always liked her parents, and felt he had good reason to believe they liked him, but he wasn’t sure what their silence over the matter of him and their daughter meant. Embarrassment in the face of love’s complexities? Silent approval for the way in which their daughter seemed to have sentenced the complexities to death? Mute confusion over whether anything had really been solved?

Edward felt he was spending answers he didn’t have, and paying for it now, not later—now: that mute confusion, that double negative. He knew he could pick up the phone, pick it up now, right now and call Denise’s parents—surely, one of them would answer, not Denise. It was their house. Surely, whichever parent answered wouldn’t receive Edward with silence. Then again, so much, too much, was possible.

It was his apartment. If he didn’t want to go to the phone, hanging where he would never have hung it, on the kitchen wall, and call Florida, he didn’t have to. He did, though, feel like he had to call someone, had to, or else his voice would die from lack of use. Speaking of dying, his whole body was dying, at 34, very slowly, his death a promise that would no doubt, eventually, become a conclusion, a howl at the moon existing outside his mouth, rising as it expires. And yet the idea of speaking out loud now, right now, spoke to him of immortality.

His sudden decision to call the real tenants made absolute sense to him. In New Mexico, it was two hours earlier, and so Edward, on the East Coast, was two hours into the next world beyond this one—absolute sense to him was what this made.

He went to the kitchen and memorized—at least for a few seconds—the number written on the notepad on the counter. As he dialed, he hoped Tiffany would answer, not Rob. He knew Tiffany much better.

After several rings, Rob answered.

It’s Edward. Is this a bad time?

No, not really. Is something wrong with the apartment?

No, not at all. I just wanted to check in and tell you guys everything’s fine.

Oh, good.

A good place to stop. All was right with the world. No theoretical wounds, and no need for language to be—theoretically—a salve.

We like it here more and more, Rob said. But don’t get your hopes up.

No, don’t worry about that. Is Tiffany there?

"Yeah. You want to speak to her?

Sure.

In the silence that followed, Edward wondered if Rob really hadn’t been stupid or rude—maybe all Edward really wanted was simply to know if Tiffany was there, not to actually speak to her. Maybe speaking to her would somehow make her not there, after all.

He heard her voice say, Hi. It was the voice of sheer reality, and he said, Hi back.

Did Rob say much? she said. About what?

About how we’re doing here. He said you like it more and more. Yeah, I suppose we do. But not really?

She hesitated. No, really. So you still like the apartment? Sure. It saves trouble. What do you mean?

I needed a rest from doing anything, even looking for an apartment.

How’s everybody at work? she said. I think I’m going to quit, like you did. What?

Don’t worry about the rent. I’ve got some money saved up. I’m not worried. I mean we may not be coming back. Really?

Don’t sound so hopeful. Did I sound hopeful?

O.K., sound hopeful. Have you spoken to Denise? I just got a letter from her when I got back tonight from Massachusetts.

What were you doing up there?

I told you a while ago that I was going to an old friend’s medical school graduation party. Oh, that’s right. So is she O.K.? Denise? Denise. I guess so.

Did the letter say anything? It wasn’t blank. Big surprise.

Edward laughed a little laugh that he felt didn’t express even a glimmer of happiness. So is everything all right with you and Rob?

Sure, of course.

Edward wanted so badly to repeat his little laugh, not to mock Tiffany, but to once again feel that he had the power to create total darkness. His laugh remained in the past, echoless. So you two really like it there?

Be hopeful. I better go. We’ll call soon.

Good.

Talk to you then.

O.K.

Bye.

Bye.

During the last few seconds of the conversation, Edward had been able to talk without ruminating, to just talk. That felt good. And his assignment was to be hopeful. Reasons to live were piling up quickly—life was like that sometimes. Now there was no one to talk to, and now his assignment had to be completed as well as received, but he was fine with all that. It was time to go to sleep—a self-given assignment so easy to complete that it softened life’s texture, turned two slabs of stone into two pillows, turned someone else’s soft mattress into his own.

He turned off the lights in the front hallway, the kitchen, the living room, went into the dark bedroom without switching on the light, undressed quickly and slipped between the sheets. It was too hot for a blanket. He didn’t even need a top sheet, except as some vague form of protection.

On his right side, his eyes closed, he regarded calling down to Florida as a task he had promised himself he would do, as a promise unfulfilled. What would he have said? He didn’t know. Big surprise… his life, his long letter to himself begun in the dark womb and with no end in sight, was blank. He also didn’t know whether quitting his job tomorrow would be an attempt to fill in the blank or make the white pillow under his head whiter. Be hopeful, he heard himself say. In time, the dark, dark apartment would be his.

Edward wished he hated his boss—it was easier for him to tell a boss he hated that he was quitting. In that department, he had some experience. He longed to repeat his experience, not venture into new territory. So he hesitated, staring at his computer screen, at the barely discernable reflection of his face.

He had yet to start working again after coming back from lunch. He forced himself to start, and then gave up after a few minutes. His boss’ office was one floor up. He took the stairs—he wasn’t lazy, just hesitant. So his mind was lazy? He didn’t feel much like thinking about it.

His boss’ appearance and the state of his boss’ office never went together. About today there was nothing new—his boss’ suit and tie were immaculate, as if he had been dressed by a team of servants, but his office smelled musty, and his desk was in disarray, as if his efforts to be utterly neat had been torn apart by an open window and a strong wind. None of the windows were open. Mustiness was breeding mustiness in an atmosphere of dead air. The disarray was human and unnatural.

Edward was standing in the open doorway, waiting to be noticed.

Edward. What can I do for you?

I wanted to talk to you.

His boss pointed to himself. I’m here.

I need to quit. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I’ve finally decided.

No, you’re kidding.

His boss said this so quickly, without thinking, apparently. What had Edward expected, that his boss would gaze wistfully out the window for a while before breaking into convulsive sobs, barely able to get no out, let alone you’re kidding?

Really, I do.

No quick response this time, but still no gazing out the window for a while before expressing emotion like an exceptional man, just gazing like a man in a suit and tie down at the surface of his desk for far less than a while before raising his eyes and calmly saying, Let’s go to lunch and talk about it.

I just got back.

Well, I say you can go again.

It struck Edward that this was the kind of thing people who don’t work do, go to lunch twice.

Meet me out front on the street, his boss said, in a few minutes.

Edward nodded, and left. There was no need for him to go back to his desk, so he went right to the designated meeting place, plunging down 15 floors in the elevator, acknowledging the security guard with a wave, and breaking out of the building and into open air.

How good it was to have a little time to breathe. He stood still, looking across the street at the three small clothing stores