Surprise Me (33 page)

“Let me see how things go,” Isabelle says, and Alina nods, satisfied.

—

AS SHE WALKS ACROSS THE GORGEOUSLY
blooming meadow separating the barn and Daniel’s cottage, Isabelle searches frantically for something to say, for the
right
something to say, but comes up completely empty. There’s no way to make this better, and there’s no way that the Daniel she’s known and loved for twenty years would stand for one false sentiment from her. Words fail her. Her heart is pounding. She’s afraid of what she will find. She’s afraid she’ll be inadequate in the face of it.

She doesn’t knock but opens the wooden door softly, stooping a little as she crosses into the cabin. She sees him immediately. He’s asleep on the blue sofa, covered with a blue-and-white afghan that Bev probably knitted. An oxygen cannula rests in his nostrils, and the clear plastic tubing is looped around his ears to hold it in place. The line travels to a large green canister positioned by the fireplace.

He’s gaunt, having lost so much weight that the bones of his shoulders seem to push through his skin, and there’s a shadow over his face, a caul, which tells her he’s dying. She moves soundlessly and takes a straight-backed kitchen chair and positions it alongside the sofa, so that when Daniel wakes, he will see her sitting there. And then she waits.

The light from the long windows begins to turn purple as the day moves into evening and the sounds of the country, which are so unfamiliar to her, fill up the air—the ruffle of the water against the banks of Foyle’s Pond, the harsh call of a bird of prey, maybe a hawk. And then, in the distance, the howling of what must be a coyote and the answering call from another farther away. Mournful and unnerving.

Isabelle sits without moving and watches Daniel sleep. His breaths take effort, but they are consistent and rhythmic. She’s grateful to find her panic subsiding in the quiet room, pushing ahead of it the worst of her fear. He’s still Daniel. She still loves him. If she can hold on to those facts, she might be able to do this. And then he opens his eyes, when she is as ready as she’s ever going to be.

“Isabelle,” he says, but not with affection. “What are you doing here?” An accusation. He’s not smiling. In fact, she can see he’s angry, but she won’t be intimidated.

“I couldn’t take one more e-mail telling me how impossible it is for you to finish your book. On and on, e-mail after e-mail. I’m here to do something about it.”

He pushes himself up onto an elbow, moves his legs over the edge of the couch slowly, with difficulty, so he’s sitting up and facing her. “A wasted trip, then.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little too soon for that judgment?”

He shakes his head. He’s not engaging with her. He struggles to stand up.

“What do you want? I’ll get it for you.”

“I was going to make a cup of tea.”

“I’ll do it.”

And Isabelle takes the kettle from the small stove, fills it with water. “Since when did you start drinking tea?”

“Since I got sick.”

And the fact lies there between them. Daniel watches her set the kettle on the burner and turn the flame up to high, her back to him. She’s buying time. She doesn’t know what to say, how to approach him. He can see that, but he’s not helping her. He can’t bear it that she’s come all this way to watch him die. He wants to do it in private, alone, unobserved, and now Isabelle is here. Why should she have to experience all this with him when she has decades of life ahead of her? Years and years before all this sickness and dying and regrets and sorrow have to infiltrate her life.

“Talk to me about the book,” she says now as she turns to face him, leaning her back against the kitchen countertop.

“No,” Daniel says firmly. “I’ve put it away.”

“Well, can I read the pages you’ve done?”

“No.”

“Because they’re terrible?”

“Awful.”

“Okay, I’ve read awful before, years and years of awful. You forget how long it took me to finish my first book. I’m a pro.”

“No, Isabelle. I’ve stopped writing.”

“That’s what I’m here to fix.”

“It’s unfixable.”

Isabelle shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I’m dying, Isabelle!” It’s a cry, and the words hang in the air, suspended between them. Isabelle can almost see the letters written across the dimming afternoon light:
I’m dying…

She waits, then walks back to him, sits down in the kitchen chair opposite him, and takes one of his hands. He doesn’t object, but he doesn’t look at her. The skin is papery and thin, bruised-looking, but it is Daniel’s hand, large and warm.

“But not today, Daniel,” Isabelle says softly. “Today I’m here.”

“Go home, Isabelle.”

—

“
WE HAD TEA,
”
ISABELLE TELLS ALINA AND BEV
when she gets back to the barn, just as twilight descends. The women are sitting on Alina’s white sofa, a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table in front of them. The light from a table lamp is pooling amber, providing just enough illumination for Bev to embroider a riot of flowers onto a plump pillow—reds, yellows, purple, the colors startling in the severe whiteness that is Alina’s house.

It is Bev who gets up, finds another wineglass, and pours Isabelle a glass. Alina seems incapable of that simple act of hospitality. “Come sit with us,” Bev says, and Isabelle finds herself suddenly exhausted, all but collapsing into a white slip-covered armchair positioned next to the couch.

“He told me to go home.”

“But you’re not, are you?” This from Alina, an edge of panic in her voice.

“He wants to finish his book. He didn’t say so—in fact he said the opposite—but I know him well enough to know that.”

“Yes, of course,” is almost a murmur from Bev.

“Then what are you going to do?” Alina needs to know there’s a plan—something, anything that might work.

“I don’t know. Come back tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.”

And at that reassurance, Alina relaxes a bit. She allows her back to sink into the soft cushions of the sofa, reaches for her wine. “He’s being impossible,” she says. “Stubborn and contrary.”

Runs in the family,
almost pops out of Isabelle’s mouth, but she restrains herself.

“He pushes people away,” is Alina’s final judgment.

“Let’s see,” says Isabelle. “We’ll take it a day at a time.”

—

AND THAT
’
S WHAT THEY DO.
Each morning Bev drives the two miles from town and deposits Isabelle on the gravel driveway before she races back to open the bakery, later than she’d like, but everyone in town knows that Daniel is sick and Bev is taking care of him and so there is a patient line of customers snaking along the sidewalk, waiting for the
OPEN
sign to appear in the front window.

Some mornings Isabelle will have a cup of coffee with Alina before she makes her way to Daniel’s cabin. In those early-morning conversations she hears about the resentments Alina can’t free herself from, the legacy of Daniel’s transgressions as a father, which his daughter still needs to air.

“Did your mother make it hard for him to see you?” Isabelle suggests as a counterpoint to all the accusations.

“That’s no excuse.”

“No, but maybe an explanation.”

“Not enough of one.”

And the topic is closed for that day, and Isabelle makes her way across the meadow to do battle with an even more worthy adversary.

Daniel makes sure he’s up and shaved and dressed by the time Isabelle gets there. Now he has a reason to get out of bed, not that he tells her that. Instead he starts each morning’s conversation with, “Let’s make this your last day here.”

“Mmmm,” Isabelle will usually say, then busy herself making tea for them both. Even though she’d like another cup of coffee, she drinks tea with Daniel.

“Doesn’t your husband want you home?” Daniel says this morning, a week into Isabelle’s visit, when they’ve had time to develop a routine.

“I’m sure he does.”

“I’m glad you didn’t marry that global do-gooder.”

And Isabelle laughs: such a reductionist labeling of Casey. But not inaccurate.

“Me, too, but that was never an option.” Then: “I married the right man.”

And Daniel nods but doesn’t say anything. From what she’s told him about Michael, he agrees with her.

This morning he’s feeling strong enough to go outside with her. They switch his oxygen to a portable canister with wheels and take it with them. Daniel manages to walk to a bench Bev has set up for him at the edge of Foyle’s Pond, overlooking the meadow. By the time he settles himself down on the bench, his chest is heaving with the effort of walking and breathing at the same time. And he is coughing, a hacking sound that’s hard to hear. Isabelle waits for it to quiet, for Daniel to return to himself.

They sit in the sun, the lush panorama of wildflowers in front of them—the mountain lupines, which come back every year, the sunny black-eyed Susans, and the delicate white lace of the tall yarrow heads that sway with every whisper of a breeze.

A portion of the meadow closest to the barn has been converted into a vegetable garden in the years since Isabelle has been here, with a handsome wood-and-wire fence enclosing it to deter the deer and other woodland creatures—Jesse’s work, she’s sure. And inside the fence Isabelle can see obsessively straight rows of seedlings, a bamboo teepee for pole beans, a trellis for cucumbers and one for peas, mounds of zucchini and yellow squash plants just starting to sprawl, squares measured out for basil and peppers of all kinds. Everything as neatly composed as Alina’s living quarters.

And she is there, on her knees in the garden, weeding carefully around the fledgling plants. She doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge them, as consumed in this task as she is when sitting at her potter’s wheel.

Daniel watches his daughter while his breathing slows and stabilizes. He manages to get out the one word that defines his daughter, he feels—
fierce
—and Isabelle nods in agreement and sits quietly beside him, waiting for his heaving chest to quiet before she starts the conversation she wants to have.

“Talk to me about the book.”

“Don’t you ever give up?”

“You taught me not to.”

“Totally unfair answer.” His voice is gruff, and he turns away from her.

“Fairness has nothing to do with what we’re doing here. Tell me.”

“No.”

And then there’s a hard-edged silence between them. Daniel’s
No
is unequivocal, and Isabelle sits there scurrying around in her mind, trying to find a lateral strategy, a way to sneak up on the answer she needs.

“Does Bev know what it’s about?”

“Not this one. If she had known, she wouldn’t have called you.”

“Alina called me, not Bev.”

And that piece of information startles him. She can see it. He watches his daughter move from plant to plant, lovingly clearing the soil around each one, before he says, “I wouldn’t have thought she cared enough.”

“Oh, Daniel, sometimes you can be so dense.”

—

ISABELLE MAKES LUNCH FOR THE TWO
of them. Daniel eats very little, and unlike Bev, she doesn’t push him to eat more. She just wraps up the untouched food and puts it back in the refrigerator. Then he settles down on the sofa. Isabelle covers him with Bev’s afghan and settles herself into one of the old armchairs. She reads to him until he falls asleep—today it’s from Colm Tóibín’s
Brooklyn,
a novel she’s recently read and thinks he’ll respond to. It’s a plain-speaking work and very moving—both attributes Daniel admires.

This is his favorite time of the day. Isabelle is here. She’s asking nothing from him. He can listen to her voice and drift. He knows she will be there when he wakes.

While Daniel sleeps, Isabelle walks. At first she varied her route, exploring the land around the O’Malleys’ complex, but once she found the beaver dam, she felt compelled to return to it every day. Now she makes her way through the shade of the dense forest growth, across the bright sunlight of open fields, often scattering flocks of wild turkeys, which cackle in protest as she passes, then down the two-lane road and up to a much larger pond than Foyle’s whose name she doesn’t know.

The beavers are always there—a family, she’s decided, and everyone pitches in. The parents take on the trees surrounding the pond, chipping out a wedge of wood from the trunks with their large orange front teeth, gnawing over and over again until it looks like a woodsman has been hacking away with an ax. When a tree topples of its own weight, right into the water with a resounding and satisfying splash, Isabelle feels like cheering.

The younger beavers’ job seems to be bringing up stones from the bottom of the pond and fitting them under the fallen trunks, solidifying the base of the dam. The entire family of four is responsible for diving to the bottom and scooping up sediment. Their tiny paws look amazingly like human hands as they push and pat the mud into place, cementing the branches, twigs, and larger tree trunks together. More twigs and limbs are brought into the water and positioned just so. More mud is brought up. The barrier grows. Each day Isabelle can see how much progress has been made in the intervening twenty-four hours. It’s astonishing to her how hard the beavers work and how ceaseless they are in their activity, and especially how they know exactly what to do, with no hesitation.

She could watch them for hours, but she always makes sure to wear a watch and to be back in the cottage before Daniel wakes up, so that when he opens his eyes, he will see her sitting there.

She’ll make him tea then and they’ll talk about some safe subject—the coming fall elections or the Boston Red Sox’s season now that Daniel has become a fan. They’re the kind of team he likes—tough, aggressive players—but despite winning the World Series in 2013, the team seems to be off to a bad start this year, and Daniel has concerns.

Isabelle knows a little about baseball; Michael is a San Francisco Giants fan, and she’s picked up some rudimentary knowledge from half listening to the broadcast games he seems to keep on all spring and summer. She knows enough to listen to Daniel’s indignation with the way the Sox are going and sympathize.