The Measures Between Us (8 page)

“You're welcome,” he said, turning from her, suddenly shy. “We'll have to come back sometime.” He thought about showing her his data on the wall, but he wasn't sure where, in the vast sea of maps and legends, it was. “Next time we'll figure out the weather.”

She looked confused, and he jerked his chin at the glass vitrine. “We'll program a big storm.”

“Does it do tsunamis?”

“I guess we'll have to find out.”

Field notes

Data entry: Jack C.

Low Water Records for the Sparhawk River at Grover's Crossing

(1) 1.20 ft. on Aug. 23, 1985

(2) 2.20 ft. on Sept. 16, 1975

(3) 2.38 ft. on Sept. 27, 1991

(4) 2.45 ft. on Oct. 10, 1992

(5) 2.78 ft. on Sept. 22, 1994

(6) 2.98 ft. on Oct. 13, 1983

(7) 3.01 ft. on Oct. 14, 1985

(8) 3.23 ft. on Nov. 23, 1978

(9) 3.41 ft. on Aug. 7, 1988

(10) 3.67 ft. on Nov. 1, 1989

Weekly maximum flow (CFS): 7893.0–15,997.0 (Jun.–Sept.)

Weekly maximum flow (CFS): 4238.0–8198.0 (Oct.–Dec.)

Henry's postdoc fellowship required him to teach one course, to first-year graduate students in psychology. In the months before the semester began he would get nervous because he felt somehow too inexperienced, too recent a PhD himself, to teach others. At night, unable to fall asleep, he'd lie in bed and imagine staring out at his students and going mute. There would be sentences scrolling by in his mind, as if on a teleprompter, but he couldn't force them out. It was, he suspected, a nightmare that panicky anchormen had. Yet his didn't end there: The students would go to the head of the department, ask to be transferred from his class. He had taught before, though always to undergraduates, many of whom were taking psychology courses to fulfill a core requirement. If he botched a fact or couldn't articulate a theory, it didn't matter. With graduate students the stakes were much higher. They were just starting their careers and he might derail them. He didn't want to be responsible for their undoing.

Henry also worried that the students wouldn't trust him, wouldn't see him as a mentor, the way he had looked up to his own professors a few years before. Not a single one of those teachers had been under forty, and several were in their sixties
and early seventies. They'd written books; they were constantly publishing in leading journals, had CVs that went on for pages. They'd been tenured when Henry was still in grade school, and their office walls were crowded with diplomas and awards. It wasn't uncommon for them to appear on television or to be quoted in magazines when a story called for an expert. How could he compete with that? Wouldn't the students feel gypped?

He shared his fears with Lucy, who told him it was nonsense. “Oh, they'll be so glad not to have someone old and fusty,” she assured him. “You're hungry. They'll see that and be grateful that you're so fresh and excited about everything.” He liked hearing this but remained skeptical, afraid she was driven to comfort him out of love more than anything else. Though he wanted to believe her, Lucy was hardly the academic type; she'd barely graduated college, scraping by on business and communications classes popular with football players. Academics weren't my thing, she used to say. I should have skipped it and had my parents use the money to buy me a car instead.

Though she disdained higher education, Lucy was a voracious reader, finishing dozens of novels and biographies each year. Her nightstand was always weighed down with a stack of books and a teetering pile of newspapers and magazines. Side by side they read, Henry studying index cards for exams, Lucy flipping the pages of her latest book. She loved movies too, everything from Hollywood blockbusters to obscure foreign films screened at museums and the local branch of the library.

She never questioned his career choice, but Henry knew how dismissive Lucy was of academia, an attitude that was all the more surprising considering she'd grown up, happily, in an academic family. Before he retired, her father was a sociology professor
and her mother was an art historian. In their home, in the back of the coat closet, hung two academic robes, and Lucy said her father still liked to walk in the convocation even after he'd stopped teaching. Commencement was one of his favorite days each year, the receptions, the thoughtful, grateful speeches by the honorary-degree recipients, the students bright with hope. Neither she nor her brother followed their parents into academia. Her brother was an investment banker in Seattle; Lucinda worked as a development officer for a small historical museum. “My parents couldn't deal with money. They thought it was crass to think about it or talk about it,” she used to say. “So of course my brother and I specialize in it for a living.”

Despite her cynicism, she supported Henry. When he had to cram for exams, she brewed him strong coffee and left him alone. When he competed for fellowships, she diligently organized and typed and mailed the complicated applications, racing to the post office closest to Logan Airport to beat a midnight postmark deadline. She even forgave his bad moods when something didn't come through, buying wine and his favorite Chinese takeout to distract from the disappointment, assuring him the decisions didn't reflect his intellect. He appreciated her efforts, though they were more like a delay, not a canceling, of the hurt that eventually settled in.

She even accompanied him to the endless, awkward faculty-student gatherings he was expected to attend. Occasionally at those functions the two of them would become separated. In the midst of a conversation with a colleague, Henry would glimpse his wife across the room, mingling comfortably. She laughed, listened intently when someone else was speaking. She talked about movies and books, and a hint of makeup under her eyes sparkled with the light from the chandeliers. He saw the curve of
her hip, a birthmark near her ankle he'd noticed the first night they'd had sex. Sometimes their gazes would meet, as if by accident, and Henry's body seized up for a moment, snagged in the grip of a random memory. The night before, perhaps only hours before. When they were freshly showered and they didn't care that they'd arrive a little late. The politicking could wait, and instead they found the bed, a chair, even the rim of the bathtub.

He was glad she was willing to go to the receptions for another, simpler reason: her beauty. Years into their marriage, he still watched her dress with awe. He liked seeing her pull her underwear on, hook her bra behind her back, flatten the shoulder straps, pull her dress down over her shoulders. She smoothed moisturizer onto her legs, she painted her toenails silvery red, orange in the summertime. He liked watching all the small adjustments a woman makes, and from time to time he simply sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at her while she brushed her hair in the mirror over her dresser. If she was feeling self-conscious, she would stop and say, You're making me nervous. But other times she just let him stare, and maybe she too found something important in these moments.

During the early months of their relationship, in their senior year of college, Henry never understood why she had chosen him, and often after a few drinks or a joint he confessed as much. “You're way too beautiful to be going out with me,” he told her. “When are you going to realize that? When are you going to break my heart?” Years ago, in high school, a girl he thought he loved slept with a good friend, a betrayal that still haunted him.

“Shut up,” Lucy said, punching him in the arm playfully.

“No, seriously, I know you're just slumming and soon it'll be back to the real men. The future rock stars and presidents.”

“If you keep saying that,” she said, “maybe I actually will dump your ass. No one likes a whiner.”

His insecurity made him want to please her. Relentlessly. He painted crude, sweet watercolors for her. He scoured the towns around their college for diners with the best pie, and he'd make her skip class and go there with him, and they'd be the only patrons under fifty. He bought her old zydeco 45s at garage sales and they danced to the music, skips and pops and all, in the dim light of her off-campus apartment while her downstairs neighbors banged on the ceiling with a broomstick. “Fuck you,” Lucy said to the floor. “We're dancing. Try it sometime, witch.” On Sundays, while she was still sleeping, he bought the thick newspaper and croissants and presented them to her as her eyes opened. They spent hours in that bedroom, listening to the radio, talking, or just watching the wind blow the shades in and then suck them back out. From the very beginning they could be quiet with each other.

When they had sex, Henry spent a lot of time touching her, with his hands, his mouth, his tongue. He kissed her from head to toe, and when he circled her belly button he paused, burying his nose against her skin, waiting until she quivered and raised up her stomach. A question and a demand. A thank you, and
please, more, please don't stop, more
. Then he moved downward, letting his lips linger on the insides of her thighs and then higher. He thought there was no better way to tell her how in love he was with her, how thankful and surprised and frightened he was that she had alighted on him from a world full of suitors, and how he never wanted to leave, never wanted her to leave, never wanted to be somewhere the two of them couldn't feel the breeze nose in and out through the open window.

He was almost certain that she didn't know how anxious he
constantly was, how he thought each week was their last, each date at the bar or diner pretext for a dreadful breakup conversation. There were times she said, “Henry …” and the blood drained from his face, felt like it was flooding out the soles of his feet. He tried to be graceful in his rush to please her, to give her everything she wanted, along with things she didn't know she wanted. Somehow he was able to camouflage his mania, not because of some natural elegance but because he thought that if he let on, it would be one more reason for her to bolt.

For her birthday that year, he drove her to the coast of Delaware, three hours south of their college in Pennsylvania. “Delaware?” Lucy said skeptically when they were on the highway and he revealed their destination. “Who goes to Delaware?”

“Exactly,” Henry told her. “That's why we're going.”

She put her hand on his knee and he had to struggle to keep his foot on the gas.

Once they arrived by the ocean, they found a seafood shack and ate spicy crabs they had to crack with wooden mallets and drank too many beers and smoked too many cigarettes. Each table had a red-and-white-checked tablecloth and bibs they were too vain to wear. “You're going to regret being so proud when you stain your shirts,” the waitress said. She knew immediately that they were from out of town, and Henry thought she had too many tables to cover, many of them filled with vacationers throwing around words like
mulligan, duff
, and
shank
. We must seem much too young to them, Henry thought, too young and too happy, too careless, too convinced, too mesmerized by moments. Outside the restaurant the water slapped at the hulls of boats. Little black birds hopped along thick ropes scattered about the pier. A lone fisherman cast a line into the bay, jerked it with small tugs.

Near closing time, after the golfers had cleared out, the waitress sat down with them. Henry poured her a mug of beer from their pitcher. “Thanks,” she said, smiling. “I didn't charge you for that one anyway.” The three of them toasted the warm evening and took long sips. The next day was gloriously far off.

The waitress lit a cigarette and said, “Thought all you college folk left last month, when spring break ended and you got on my last nerve.”

“We're late,” Lucy said. “Couldn't get our shit together.”

“It's her birthday,” Henry offered.

“Oh, really? Fuck the nice night. We should have drank to you.” She grabbed the pitcher and refilled everyone's glass. “In fact, here's to you.” They toasted again. “Happy birthday,” she said as she put her mug back on the table. “I don't want to know which one it is, 'cause it'll only make me feel jealous and old and sad.”

“Thank you,” said Lucy.

“Where'd you two come from?”

“Pennsylvania,” Henry answered.

“Damn, you drove all the way from Pennsylvania just for a birthday?” the waitress said. “Most I usually get is Olive Garden, and that's if he's really trying to make an effort.”

Lucy nodded.

“He must really love you,” said the waitress.

Henry looked into his lap. Mercifully, Lucy changed the subject, asking the waitress where she was from. “Cleveland,” she said, exhaling a stream of smoke. “The Mistake on the Lake.”

Thirty minutes later, they left, thanking the waitress for the free beer and leaving a mess of bills on top of the check, hoping it added up to too much. As they navigated their way through the tables and the busboy mopping the floor, Lucinda latched her
fingers tight to Henry's. With his free hand he shook out a cigarette and let it dangle from his mouth unlit. Once they were outside, she spotted a lighthouse and pointed to it.

“Come on,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“You know why,” she said.

From time to time, Henry's department functions sparked one of their arguments about academia. “I don't know, sometimes I think colleges are just places they made up because no one knew what to do with all the eighteen-year-olds once everyone stopped farming,” Lucinda said as they walked toward a restaurant after a lecture on campus. They were standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to change.

“What about the people who are genuinely interested in higher education, who want something more after high school?” Henry said. “Or should they go back to tilling the fields or apprenticing with a cobbler?”

“I'm not saying abolish it all,” Lucy clarified as they crossed the street. “I'd just drastically reduce the number of schools—and stop letting everyone in who qualifies for a loan. It's like everyone automatically goes to college now, without considering any other options. You know there's a whole profit motive to it, right? Colleges and universities make hundreds of millions of dollars.”