Torch: A Novel Part 19

"What?" she asked, pulling her jean jacket more tightly around herself.

"Did you ... was it fun?"

"Fun?" She thought of Bruce then, wondering if David was right, that he was out having fun.

"Yes, fun," he said. "Nice?"

"It was ... It wasn't like it is with us."

"Huh," he spat.

"It wasn't!"

"There is nothing with us."

She couldn't dispute this, at least when it came to s.e.x.

"Did you come?" he hissed.

They heard the approach of another car on the road. They both turned toward it and back to each other, grateful that it wasn't Bruce or Joshua. Maybe they're dead, Claire thought. She thought that often these days, that if her mother could die, anyone could, and would.

"Did you?" he demanded.

It took her several moments to answer. She had. That very afternoon.

"Sometimes, but ..."

"f.u.c.k you," he shouted, standing. "I would never f.u.c.king do this to you. Never!" He began to walk away from her and then he bent over with his hands on his knees and sobbed. He'd left his cigarette behind, burning in the little dish, and she picked it up and took a drag, then crushed it out and stood up.

"I ..."

"Never!" he screamed again.

She thought of his ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth. He'd cheated on her for nearly a year with a string of women, though she'd never found out about it. In the end, he'd been the one to break up with her, telling her he needed to focus on his dissertation, though, within a month, he was dating Claire. She almost reminded him of Elizabeth now but decided against it. She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she'd made her confession, though she didn't regret having confessed. Perhaps that was what had been wrong with her all along. Now that the lie wasn't between them anymore, maybe she could love him again. She placed her hand on his back, hoping this was true. He allowed her to inch one hand up under his s.h.i.+rt and then she kissed his neck and his lips and he allowed that too. He remained distant, not kissing her back or even seeming to notice that she was kissing him for several moments and then he relented and held her to him. He removed her jacket and s.h.i.+rt and they got down on the ground and took everything else off, making a bed of their clothes.

As they f.u.c.ked, she could feel the copper b.u.t.ton she'd recently sewn into her jacket digging into her, imprinting its mysterious Chinese symbol into her flesh.

"I want us to go away together," she said afterward, a fantasy playing in her mind. They would go live somewhere entirely different from here: New Mexico, Was.h.i.+ngton, Connecticut. The names of faraway places made her ache with an excruciating longing. Here was where she could never forget her mother. She wanted to forget her mother. The sudden clarity of it was like ice on her tongue.

"I think we need some time," said David, s.h.i.+fting off of her. He pulled his s.h.i.+rt from beneath her rump.

"Time?" She sat up and wrapped her arms around her legs to stay warm.

"To think about us. Whether there is such a thing as us." He was nearly dressed now, finding his clothes in the dark, pulling them away from hers.

"There's an us," she said.

"Not really, Claire," he said bitterly.

A hush came over her, inside of her. It hadn't occurred to her that David would break up with her. All this time that she'd been silent and sad and distant, without joy or l.u.s.t, she'd expected him to stay, or perhaps, it occurred to her now, she'd been daring him to leave all along, taunting him to go. The truth took shape and turned solid inside of her: he would stop loving her. Of course he would. How easy it was not to love her.

"It doesn't have to end," she said. She began to get dressed, tugging numbly at her clothes. David's s.e.m.e.n gushed out of her when she stood.

"Don't put this on me," he said, anger edging his voice again. "It isn't what I want. It's what you brought on, Claire. I want you to remember that. This is your own doing."

She nodded, not caring whether he could see her nod in the dark or not. Tears stung her nose, but she wasn't about to start crying now.

"I can go to Blake's," he said, as if he'd planned this out already, his escape. "His housemate is moving out and he needs someone." He reached into his pocket and took out another cigarette and lit it. "Don't worry about rent. I can still pay my half until our lease is up in August. I got that fellows.h.i.+p and-"

"I don't need your f.u.c.king money," she said savagely, though she did. It pained her that he could so quickly allow himself to think about the logistics, but then her mind went in that direction too-what he would take with him, what she would keep. Until her mother got sick, she and David had spent most of their weekends shopping at garage sales and thrift stores, buying things together: old coats they both wore and sets of dishes, magazine racks, and rickety tables that they had no actual use for. They purchased a set of gla.s.s jars, in which they'd planned to store foods that they were too busy or lazy to purchase, let alone make into anything that would actually become edible: dried beans and seeds, flour and sugar. They'd even bought a rocking chair with a wide comfortable seat. Claire had been fool enough to imagine herself in it, rocking their future babies to sleep.

"There's your dad," David said, turning toward the lights coming up the driveway. She reached for his cigarette and took a drag and handed it back. With that, they made a silent pact to pretend at least for this moment that they were still a couple.

"Bruuuce," she called when he got out of his truck, crooning his name like a song.

"I was hoping David would stay for the day. It's been a while," Bruce said the next morning. He seemed to be looking closely at Claire, suspecting more than she wanted him to.

"He had to get back to work on his dissertation. It's a lot, you know. The equivalent of writing a book." She stood near the counter with a spatula in her hand, frosting Joshua's birthday cake. She'd been up since five, when David woke her, enraged about Bill all over again. They'd fought again and broken up again, more certainly this time, whispering fiercely in the tent. They decided he should leave immediately for Minneapolis, to pack up his things so he wouldn't be in their apartment when she returned late that night. After he drove away, she'd come into the house and quietly baked the cake and then sat watching it cool until Bruce woke up.

"Well, I better get out and feed the animals," said Bruce, without moving from his place at the table. He gestured toward the ceiling, upstairs where Joshua was still sleeping. He'd come home last night after everyone had gone to bed. "I can probably get the stalls cleaned before Prince Charming wakes up."

"And then we'll have our little celebration," Claire said, without looking at him. She didn't want him to notice that her face was puffy from having wept a few hours before. While the cake baked, she'd pressed a cool washcloth against the lids of her eyes.

"So, how was Duluth?" Bruce asked.

"Fine." She set the spatula down and turned the cake from side to side to make sure she'd covered all the bare spots. It was their tradition to eat cake for breakfast on their birthdays. "Actually, it's there." She pointed to the box of her mother's ashes, which sat inside the curio cabinet. After David left, she had placed it there, among her mother's best things, among the breakables and fragiles that she had purchased at flea markets over the years and a few worthless family heirlooms. There was a collection of dinner bells and half a dozen porcelain birds and a single open fan, made of white feathers tipped in black, that had once belonged to a relative that Claire couldn't name. As a child Claire used to beg to be allowed to play with this fan and would sometimes be granted permission. She would twirl it before her face, then peep coquettishly over it, pretending to be a beautiful debutante at a ball, vigorously fanning herself with it until her bangs lifted from her forehead.

Bruce went to the cabinet and looked in, but he didn't open the door to touch the box.

"I was thinking we could spread the ashes next weekend," she said.

Bruce nodded and pulled his boots on and went outside.

Claire walked through the house, picking things up, wiping the surfaces of tabletops and shelves whether they needed it or not, arranging the pillows neatly on the couch. She stopped at the doorway of her mother and Bruce's bedroom-it was only Bruce's now, but still she thought of it as theirs-and looked in at the unmade bed. Dust had settled on all of the surfaces; this room and Joshua's were the only two that Claire left untouched each weekend. She stepped inside and lay down on the bed, remembering the nights she had slept there when her mother and Bruce were at the hospital and Joshua was G.o.d knows where. She had thought those were the worst nights of her life. But now she knew how wrong she'd been. How sweet they were, those nights when her mother was still alive, when in the mornings Claire could drive to the hospital and see her and say h.e.l.lo, to ask how did you sleep or did you have breakfast, or to be asked these things and to answer in return. She lay staring at the objects on the table on her mother's side of the bed-a green lamp shaped like a tulip, an alarm clock, and a tune box that Bruce had put there after Teresa died. Claire sat up and opened the little drawer beneath the table.

"What are you looking for?" Joshua asked, standing in the door.

"Nothing," she said. She shut the drawer. His face was still sleepy, his feet bare. He wore a T-s.h.i.+rt that had MIDDEN MONARCHS printed on the front, a relic from their childhood, back when the Midden school team was still the Monarchs, before the school in Two Falls closed down and all the students had to transfer to Midden and together they became the Pioneers.

"You're snooping around again."

"Not snooping. Looking."

"For what?" he said.

"For things," she said nonchalantly, though the question rattled her. What was she looking for? It hadn't occurred to her until this very moment that looking was what she'd been doing every weekend since her mother died. Searching for something she would never find.

"Mom had this vibrator thing that was like the size of a lipstick," said Joshua. He paused, waiting for Claire to react. When she didn't, he continued on. "I found it in a s...o...b..x in the closet."

She turned to the closed doors of her mother's closet, stunned that Joshua had gotten there before her.

"I wasn't snooping like you, though. I just needed the box," he said, as if reading her thoughts. "It's all still there for you to explore."

She felt a strange grat.i.tude. She had to keep herself from pulling the doors open this very instant, continuing the search.

"I thought David was coming up with you."

"He was. I mean, he did, and ..." A temptation to tell him the truth pulsed through her, but then she waved her hand as if the story was too complicated to explain. "He had to get back to the Cities."

He nodded.

Claire looked at the painting at the end of the bed, the one their mother had done, The Woods of Coltrap County, and then Joshua turned to it as well. She didn't know if he remembered that the three trees represented the three of them-she and her mother and Joshua. She didn't know what he remembered or knew or what his life was like now. Until recently she'd always believed she'd known-what he did, what he thought, who he liked and didn't like. She hadn't had to work at knowing these things. They'd been, all her life, on full display, and in more recent years, when she hadn't looked closely, hadn't even really wanted to know who her brother was, it had been telegraphed to her through her mother and Bruce.

"Aren't you going to say happy birthday?" he asked.

"I did." She stood. "When you first came in. But happy birthday again," she said, thumping him on the shoulder as she walked past.

He followed her into the kitchen. It had begun to rain, and the house had grown dark though it was only ten in the morning, a storm moving in. Claire reached to close the window over the kitchen sink. Outside the tree branches were waving violently in the wind. "So what does it feel like?" she asked Joshua. "Being eighteen."

"Like normal," he said.

She wanted to say something meaningful about him being grownup now, but she couldn't think of what exactly to say, so she said nothing.

Bruce came running in the door, wet from the rain and the dogs wet too, running in behind him. A loud clap of thunder sounded and then the rain began in earnest, beating hard against the roof. "Your tent's getting soaked," he said to Claire.

"What tent?" asked Joshua.

Together they went to the window and looked out. She'd neglected to zip the tent door entirely shut, she saw now. A pool of water was forming on its nylon roof. She thought of David in Minneapolis, packing his things. Maybe he was watching this same rain, thinking about her, she thought. Maybe he would be waiting for her when she arrived at their apartment tonight and they'd take back all the things they'd said. They'd pull their contract out and read it over, vowing to obey it this time.

"I'm ready for cake," said Joshua.

"Me too," said Bruce. "Happy birthday, by the way."

Claire got a tube of icing from the refrigerator to put the final touches on the cake.

"So guess what?" Bruce asked lightly as he poured himself a cup of coffee. "I joined the softball team. The Jake's team."

"Jake's?" Claire asked suspiciously, pausing in her work to look at him.

"Yeah."

"Since when did you like softball?" asked Joshua.

"I always liked softball," he answered, unconvincingly, stirring the sugar into his cup. "And Jake's needed more players, so I thought, well, it's something to do. I have to keep myself busy or I get depressed."

"What's wrong with being depressed?" asked Claire. "Of course you're depressed. Something horrible just happened. That's how we're supposed to be. Plus, you seem to be coping," she said. "You're back at work."

"Which is my point. If I stay busy, then I'm fine. Softball gives me something to do when I'm not at work."

"What about your knees?" asked Joshua.

"My knees are fine," he said defensively. "It's softball, for Christ's sake. Why would it hurt my knees?" He looked helplessly at each of them. "It's something to keep me occupied."

"Leonard is going to be p.i.s.sed," said Joshua.

"That's what I was wondering," agreed Claire, a.s.sessing her cake. "What Leonard and Mardell will think."

"Why would they think anything?" he asked them, and then continued without waiting for a reply. "If you mean will he be mad about why I'm not playing on his team, I think you're being ridiculous."

Claire set the cake on the table and forced a smile onto her face.

"There you go, cowpoke," Bruce said.

The cake was covered with yellow frosting and on its round surface there was a giant smiling face, a black stripe for a mouth and two black dots for eyes. "I was going to write happy birthday," she explained, "but then I thought this would look more cheery."

"It does," said Joshua.

There was a long silence. Claire regretted now not having written Happy Birthday Joshua on it, the way they always had. She felt the presence of her mother so strongly now, even more strongly than before, as if the box that contained her ashes wasn't sitting in the curio cabinet but on her chest.

"With all this cake, it's too bad David isn't here to help us," Bruce said.

"I'll bring a piece home for him," Claire said.

"Is Lisa coming over?" Bruce asked Joshua. "I mean, later."

Joshua shook his head and tilted back in his chair. "She's gotta work."

"We could ask Kathy Tyson if she wanted to come over for cake," Bruce suggested, obviously straining to sound casual but trying so hard that Joshua and Claire abruptly looked up.

"Kathy Tyson?" Claire asked. She said the name distinctly, as if she'd never spoken it before, a sick panic filling her. Instantly, she remembered having sat next to Kathy at a wedding reception the year before. How eager Kathy had been to find a man. Claire had egged her on, giving her ideas, laughing and lamenting about men in the intimate way she did with her best women friends, though Kathy was almost as old as her mother. "Why would we invite Kathy?" She took a butcher knife from its block and set it near Joshua on the table.

"To be neighborly."

"What about the other neighbors?" Joshua asked.

"We could invite them too," Bruce said falsely. "It's that we have all this cake."

He had never worried about having too much cake before, Claire thought. She felt that Bruce was emitting a sort of heat that rose to a vibration, and it occurred to her for the first time that he was different now, that the Bruce without her mother would not be who the Bruce with her mother had been.

"Do you two have something going on?" she blurted, feeling tears rise into her eyes. She shook white candles from a tiny box onto the table and began to push them one by one into the cake.

"We've become friends," he said, too gently. "She's been very good to me."

"How so?" Joshua asked.

"She's been a friend, you know. She's there for me when I need to talk."

Claire could feel Bruce watching her, waiting for her to say something, to press the subject harder, so the entire truth would come out. To do what she now realized she always did with him, and with Joshua too, to ask and ask until he said whatever it was he was too afraid to say all by himself. But she wouldn't, she couldn't. This was going to be a normal birthday party. This was going to be like it had always been before. She concentrated on arranging the candles in a formation that went all the way around the rim of the cake, her hands trembling. Satisfied with the candles at last, she looked up. "Who has a light?"