What Burns Away (13 page)

Pulling out of the driveway, headed to Mommy and Me swim class, I examined the cars parked along the snowbank on our street and scouted for signs of Dean's silver SUV, thinking about the Polaroid he sent, the image taken the day after my father died.

“Stop it,” I ordered myself.

“Stop it!” Jonah mimicked.

He yanked off his hat and tossed his mittens onto the floor.

In the pool at the YWCA, Jonah and I swam away from the steps, and as we became buoyant, I immersed myself in the present. We bounced through the water making motorboat sounds, and my mind drifted. I thought about which dress to wear to a party I was to attend with Miles that night, honoring my husband's students, the MD–PhD candidates at the university. “Try and make the best of things here,” I convinced myself.

Along the edge of the pool, the instructor asked us to line up our toddlers. I admired my son's gorgeous, plump belly and his simple energy as he stomped his feet in the puddles along the perimeter of the pool. I was lucky to have this time with my boy, and as he stood there waiting to leap, I felt overwhelmed with adoration.

The audience of mothers and one stay-at-home dad counted as a group: “One, two, three—”

I couldn't contain myself as our babies leaped into our arms. To Jonah, I hollered, “I love you, Ducky!”

“Splash!” he responded and slapped his hands on the surface of the water.

In the shallow end of the pool, we held tight to one another.

I whispered in his ear, “Mama knows how good her life is, Jonah.”

We bobbed behind the other parents while I explained myself to my son.

“Mommy is sorry she hasn't been happy here, Ducky. She will do better. That's a promise. Daddy and I are so lucky we can afford for me to be home with you. We have so much. We live in a beautiful, safe place, and we have our health. But I'm just lonely, Ducky. Mommy is sorry for being so lonely.”

“Sorry,” Jonah repeated. He patted my face and kissed my cheek. “My mommy,” he said, and as we reached the concrete steps, he took my hand. Together, my best little buddy and I, we walked up the stairs to the locker room, where we bundled up before we headed out into the cold.

Against a wind that whipped through our coats and sweaters, we walked like astronauts in spacesuits. The gusts were more brutal than the snow squalls trailing behind them, and as we made our way to the car, the predicted flurries began their frenzied descent.

I dug in my pocket for keys, and when I looked toward my station wagon, I saw a silhouette at my driver's side door. I attempted to recall the last chance occasion Miles had joined us for lunch, and seeing him, I grew excited, hoping the fire and the closing of the investigation had put things in perspective for my husband, and brought him back to us.

“Miles!” I shouted.

Like us, he was bundled from head to toe, and through the windstorm I waved to my husband like some girl on a parade float. He waved back triumphantly with both hands, and my earlier worries concerning his missed calls settled down.

“Dada!” Jonah said.

A foot from the car, Jonah reached for him, and as we ran toward his outstretched arms, I noticed a long, blond strand of hair blowing out from under his cap. The man was not my husband; it was Dean.

Picking up Jonah, disconcerted that he would find us there, I walked back toward the doors of the YWCA.

“Claire!” he called.

I scooted between vehicles veiled in white, Jonah's head bobbing as I carried him. He whimpered, “Mommy's car?”

Dean's boots squeaked behind us on the packed snow. “Where are you going, Claire?” he called. “I just want to talk.”

I looked around for the possibility of my husband. Flakes stuck to my lashes; the lot was motionless and, besides the three of us, unoccupied.

“I'm sorry, Dean. I just—” I paused, glancing around again. He was leaving soon, and I thought, what harm could it do, agreeing to it. “Okay, yes, let's talk, then. We could take a drive while Jonah naps in the car.”

Maybe noting the tension in my grip, Jonah started to cry as we marched against the wind back to my Subaru.

Dean followed at our heels.

“Cheesy crackers?” I offered, trying to comfort Jonah, strapping him into his car seat.

Jonah sniffled. “Milk?”

I cleaned the clear stream of snot running from his nose, then handed the milk to him.

“Adorable kid,” Dean said, nonchalantly taking a seat up front, careful not to rush me, but falling in line with my haste to leave and my baseless paranoia that today would be the fluke instance that Miles would surprise us for lunch.

I buckled up, shifted into reverse, and we fishtailed out of the lot.

“I appreciate you taking the time,” said Dean. “I know you didn't exactly invite me here.”

Driving past the university, I said, “That's my husband's clinic.” I pointed out the brick hospital building, the medical campus a sort of compound.

“Looks like a fortress,” Dean said.

I vented. “More like a prison. They barely let him out. He puts in fourteen-hour days, sometimes more than eighty-hour weeks, like Rapunzel locked in the tower. Then there's call, every third night and every other weekend. He's totally distracted, obsessed with publishing, with discovery, the way I used to be. He's always talking about medical device innovations, new catheters this, new pacers that.”

Glimpsing my husband's car in the hospital lot, I relaxed, stopped talking so fast, and settled into the hush of the falling snow. We drove beyond the university medical center and the emergency vehicles racing past, out along the lake through neighborhoods not my own.

The boulevard became desolate.

And after some time, Dean broke the quiet and told me gently, “You're still so beautiful.” He reached to touch a strand of my hair, as if he couldn't help it, then rested his hand lightly on my knee, leaving it there when I didn't protest.

I stared straight ahead, failing to push back the enticement he triggered.

Winding through town, past the capital, talk radio played at a murmur and Jonah fell off to sleep as I knew he would, exhausted by our swim.

“So here's the story,” Dean said finally. “You ready?”

And with the question, I was catapulted back into the old thrill of being in it with him, together. “Ready,” I said.

He cleared his throat. “My trouble is that the Quayside house is underwater, way underwater. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. It's been a really hard few years,” he said, inhaling deeply through his nose. “The property is only appraising at $420,000. I paid $950,000 when I bought it, and the taxes alone are $37,000 a year. I do okay, but I don't do
that
okay. If I sell it now in this fallen market, I'll lose my business. I'll lose everything.

“And I know it's crazy to barge into your life like this, but I'm desperate. I just needed to get away from everything. I didn't know where to turn. I needed to see you. It's probably wrong for me to be here, but sometimes all I can picture is us, walking the beach again. Claire, come east for a few days with me, please. It'll be my belated birthday gift to you. I'll take care of everything.”

I thought about his money troubles, how he couldn't possibly afford to do such a thing, how there was no way I could just leave Miles and Jonah like that and go. “Dean, I can't. For so many reasons.”

“Why not? There're a million reasons to go. Bring your little boy. Come home, come see the ocean. Visit your sister. Eat scallops. Think about it a bit,” Dean insisted gently, his hand massaging my knee. “The inn is super kid-friendly. They have those Pack 'n Play things. You guys could dig some clams like we did as kids. I've got everything you'd ever need.”

I looped the last stretch along the lake, then turned back toward town, slowing as we reached the parking lot of the YMCA, not saying a word more.

Dean took his hand off my leg to silence the buzz of his cell phone, but I still sensed the heat of his touch, even after it was gone.

When he got home, I told Miles that I didn't feel well, that I couldn't go to the party.

“You're not one to miss a party,” he said. He put his hand to my forehead. “You're feeling pretty bad?”

I pressed my head against his palm, wishing Miles could somehow enchant me, the way I felt driving beside Dean, and I hated myself for all of it.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was looking forward to meeting everyone.”

Miles moved his hand to my cheek, and I let my head fall against his chest.

He said, “You don't feel warm.”

“Stomach,” I whispered.

But in reality, I was drained. And as much as I wanted to stop myself, I couldn't keep my mind from turning over Dean's invitation, the pull of the ocean, the familiar things there. And despite the immediacy of my refusal, it hadn't sounded convincing, even to me, when on the drive back toward the YWCA, Dean had smiled at the silence between us as if he were recalling some fond memory.

While I was linking the cuffs of Miles's sleeves and straightening out his bow tie, that silence was all I could think about.

Beside us, Jonah steered a tiny train across Miles's dress shoe and over the hardwood floor of the bedroom, the television behind him declaring an Amber Alert for a little girl missing somewhere outside Milwaukee.

Miles and I looked at each other, acknowledging the same parental fear. My husband shook his head gravely, making it a point to touch my shoulder before he turned off the TV and kneeled down next to our boy. “If you go anywhere tonight with Jonah,” he told me, “promise me you'll be vigilant. You've been preoccupied, and I worry about you guys too, you know, about something happening here when I'm gone.”

As he said this, I imagined rummaging through the baby book to choose a photo for media outlets if our son was ever taken from us. It's the fear I fought throughout my pregnancy—a constant worry that my child might go missing. Maybe it was anxiety grown out of my own youth, when as kids, during the days following my parents' separation, we spent our few hours with our mother collecting provisions for the school week, always lagging in the dairy section among the milk cartons that created a billboard of missing children.

There, Mom pulled Kara and me into a huddle, saying, “Check and see if you recognize any of them.” We watched her turn all the faces toward the aisle as she retold the story of Gretchen Carlota, the little girl who was stolen from Hartford Hospital during Mom's shift, shortly after Mom moved in with her boyfriend.

“We were so understaffed and I was so distracted,” she explained again and again, “and one night some sicko went into the little girl's room and walked her right out the door.” She squeezed us tight. “I'd die without you girls,” she said, yet she had chosen to leave us all the same.

Miles ushered me to bed. “Go up to rest. I'll put Jonah down before I leave and bring you up some chamomile.”

I watched my husband in his tuxedo play on the floor with our son. Together they counted the small trains Jonah attempted to link together.

What
are
you
thinking
, I asked myself. I didn't want to lose the father I saw in Miles, and even more so, I don't want to lose Jonah the way my mother lost me.

In fact, the last time I really believed my mother was mine, she was sitting on the floor beside me, just as Miles was with Jonah that evening. But with Mom and me, it was on the overcast morning of April 11, 1986, Dean's eighteenth birthday. That evening an unseen Halley's comet would make its closest pass of the Earth amid overcast skies. Mom no longer lived with us, but she had come to my father's house to pick me up for our freshman class trip to Mystic Seaport.

She had volunteered to chaperone in an effort to spend more time with me and arrived early, before I was dressed, with a tray of coffees, one for herself, one for my dad, and one for Uncle G, her brother, who had become a fixture in our house after Mom's departure. She did her best to be kind to my father when their paths crossed, even though her gestures were often perceived as charity acts by Dad, who took the steaming cups from her and, as we watched, poured them down the sink.

Mom did not react, but tiptoed upstairs ahead of me to peek in on Kara who was still asleep in her bed. From behind her, I admired Mom's low ponytail that fell down her back over her short-sleeved angora sweater, paired with pin-striped Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, the back pockets of which were dusted with little rhinestones. She looked skinny to me, and in those days she seemed to grow younger by the day, dressing less like the moms on our cul-de-sac in their sweatshirts and corduroys, and more like the college girls that Uncle G and Dad whistled at from the porch.

In my parents' old bedroom, Mom sat Indian-style on the braided rug while I changed outfits once, twice, then a third time in front of the full-length mirror. Mom sipped her decaf, watching me examine myself over each shoulder, and asked finally: “Besides the field trip, what are you dressing for?”

Her direct questioning always disarmed me. There was no judgment in her voice, no attempt to uncover a secret (although she was often intuitive about when to probe), and her inquiries were presented practically, as if she were speaking to an adult. Because of this, she was always the parent with whom I was most likely to divulge the truth.

“It's my boyfriend's birthday,” I blurted. “So I was going to skip the bus ride home and have him pick me up for a concert in New London. I told Dad the trip goes late.”

Mom responded as candidly as she'd asked. “Then wear the black jeans.”

She pulled them from a pile of crumpled clothes and smoothed them out before us, matching them with different tops, as we knelt on floor together in the way I imagined a real mother and daughter would—for the last time I can really remember.

And before sending Miles off to his party alone, I lingered in the doorway. I watched my boys link the caboose to their line of passenger cars, and I considered, for the first time, a confession, revealing the truth to Miles about the Facebook flirtations, about Dean's coming here and his invitation to fly me home, and taking responsibility for all of it. I consider what it would mean to disclose this truth to Miles, to ask for his forgiveness and move forward.

But because I had left too much of my history untold, so many details of my past life hidden from him, and with things so shaky between us, I guessed that the truth might come with its own threats, offering little protection and too much to wager. So I headed straight to bed without reaching for him at all.

• • •

At midnight, the second evening in a row, the house phone rang. And even though I was home alone, I didn't answer it, believing that Dean was calling for an answer.

It rang again at one. Then two. Then three.

Miles was still not in bed following the last call. He had left for the dinner party hours earlier, and although the event itself would never go that late, I had foreseen my husband talking about databases and patents and hospital policies, and drinking scotch from a flask in the lab with the post-docs until sunrise. I also knew that if he indulged in more than a single cocktail, he would never risk driving home, but would instead curl up on the couch in his office to sleep for the night. I checked my cell phone just in case he'd tried to contact me and found no text messages, which was his preferred mode of communication. Slightly worried, I tossed and turned.

At four a.m. I woke abruptly on my own and called Miles's cell phone.

It rang from the floor beside the bed where he must've left it in the pocket of his white coat.

By six in the morning, I woke again. Panicked and pacing the rooms of our house, I opened Miles's office door, where I found my husband still in his tuxedo jacket and asleep at his computer. EKGs and files from the fire investigation were scattered on the floor. A sense of relief and frustration washed over me, my worry wasted on what I should have already known—Miles was working, and this time right here at home.

While I stood in front of him, the landline rang for the fourth and final time. I picked up the phone on his desk and said nothing.

The caller held the line.

Miles didn't stir.

“Dean?” I whispered. “I want to go home with you.”

• • •

That morning, when I emerged from the house to head out for milk, Miles's car was long gone. I opened the door of my Subaru with my son perched on my hip and strapped him inside.

Jonah pointed.

I startled.

Against the bumper of my car, his back to us, Dean smoked a cigarette and sipped from a thermos.

I slammed the door. “You scared me,” I shouted.

He turned, calm, Romanesque in stature, and smiled.

I envisioned Vulcanus, the god of benevolent and hindering flames, and in that sober light of morning I became uncertain of my decision and disgusted with myself. “You know—” I began.

“Claire,” Dean interrupted, sensing my hesitation, “I'm not trying to complicate your life. You wanted to be rescued, remember?” He lowered his voice and moved closer. “It'll do you good,” he reassured me. His eyes watered from the cold, and he wiped them on the unfastened sleeves of his coat.

• • •

Something about his gesture prompted a recollection of the clean-shaven boy I remembered—Dean genuflecting in the aisle at my father's funeral, weeping into his hands before making the sign of the cross. How he touched my waist and shuffled us into the pew, where he stood between Kara and me, his arms draped over our shoulders, pulling us in tight, a gesture I had seen him do with his own sisters when they were brokenhearted over boys.

His grip never softened during the opening hymn, “Be Not Afraid,” sung by Uncle G, who wore Dad's only tie. The casket was draped with an American flag in front of the altar, and in the pew in front of us, my mother clasped her husband's hand so tightly that her knuckles went white. And during Uncle G's shuddering through the last lines of the song, I cried into the sleeve of Dean's linen sport coat, which was held in place by two silver safety pins where the sleeve buttons had gone missing.

Nuzzling his face into my hair, then looking up toward the ceiling, Dean said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Spruce. I promise to always look after Claire.”

Then, in front of Father Motta, in front of my mother and her husband and all the guys from Dad's heyday, before all the cousins and aunties and uncles and neighbors who had come to grieve with us in disbelief, Dean escorted Kara and me from the church into the black stretch limo that chauffeured us to the cemetery blooming with tiger lilies, delphinium, and irises, among which a dark hole had been hollowed into the ground.

At the reception that followed, Dean nodded solemnly to my mother and lifted my sister up off her feet for one last hug before he took my luggage upstairs to the guest bedroom in Craig Stackpole's house. Standing beside the window, overlooking the spot where it happened, the charred wreckage of the barn like a dark wound in the dry grass, we made love through my weeping. The salt of my tears was in our mouths, my sobs soaking the strands of hair around my face.

With the pinned-together cuff of his linen coat sleeve, Dean wiped my face, as he loved me in the guest bedroom, one that would later become my bedroom until I left for good. He told me simply, “I'm sorry for everything.”

• • •

Jonah banged on the car window, jarring me from the reverie, while my old protector snuffed out his cigarette in the driveway.

There was no reason for me to believe that Dean was wrong.

He said, “A few days alone might be good for Miles too. Plus, I'm desperate. You're desperate too. I can see it. You can't lie to me.”

He was right. I couldn't. And clearly he had come to protect me, to keep his promise to my dad, this time safeguarding me from loneliness.

Thankful for it, I reluctantly resolved myself to the trip. “I'll come. I could use the break to think. But I'll need some time to figure out the details before I go.”

Dean rested his thermos on the hood of his car and bent toward me, our faces close enough to kiss. He drew a document from his inner jacket pocket and placed it in my hand.

“I've given you time,” he said softly. “You've emailed me for weeks, and I'm here because you asked for help. Flight itinerary is in the envelope. You take off Monday, and there's an additional ticket for the little guy.”

We stared at each other, and as we did, I surrendered to the teenaged boy who'd held me up as they lowered my father's body into the ground and the grown man who had come all this way to reclaim the memory of the girl I used to be.

He added, “I've arranged for everything.”

Worried about the money and about how he could afford to do such a thing, I said, “That's too generous a gift. And what am I supposed I tell Miles?”

“The truth. Tell him you're homesick, that it'll do you good to get out of here for a few days. Moving is stressful. And your husband is never home anyway. Who knows, maybe it will do you both some good.”

I scrabbled for some vestige of an excuse to refuse an invitation I so badly wanted to take and told Dean, “I'll need to discuss it with my husband first,” rationalizing to myself that all Miles's professional stressors only seemed to propel him further out of my orbit.

Dean nodded. “It will be good for you.”

Then, feeling it was complicated by my part in what had brought Dean there, I folded the envelope into my coat pocket, and my throat tightened with the deep-rooted affection and attraction I have always felt for him.

Dean's fingertips grazed my cheek.

Miles
will
barely
know
we're gone
, I reasoned, and almost believed it myself.