All That's Left to Tell(33)

Her words hung in the air, and he cleared his throat.

“Or because they know they never will be,” he said.

“Maybe that, too.”

She stood up then, walked to the door, opened it, and said something to Saabir. He seemed to protest, but she insisted, and then pushed the door closed again.

“Saabir won’t be standing guard for a short time, just so you know. He understands more English than you probably realize.”

Marc heard her settle in the chair across from him.

“So I’ve been thinking about the stories you’ve told about Claire,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Well, almost every one you’ve told was when she was slightly older. At twelve when she cut herself. Fourteen when you kissed her. Sixteen when she stole and went camping. Every story a time when she was on the verge of something. Or you were.”

“Those are the stories you remember. Those are the ones that collide, like Genevieve said about her mom.” He caught himself thinking about Genevieve as a living, breathing person.

“I know,” she said. “I remember. But you’ve never described her as a small child.”

Reflexively, he tried to recall an image of her at that age, but most of what he remembered he knew were photographs that Lynne had stored in albums that, at various ages, he’d find Claire occasionally leafing through.

“She was—” But he stopped himself, since he was about to resort to the words anyone would use: beautiful, so bright, so sweet, precious, precocious, when in truth, more and more, what he understood was the slow, cold creep of the word was.

“This,” he started. “This story—” he said again, and swallowed down whatever was attempting to rise. “It’s more Lynne’s story than mine. I mean, she was the one who told it to me. About Claire. I’m not sure why it occurs to me, other than it’s partly about a woman who wanted a child. But maybe it’s because of the story of your friend. How it’s about something that happened, and after that how things never felt the same again.”

“Like all stories.”

“I guess. Claire was probably about five years old. The summer before her first year of school. Kindergarten. And Lynne, at that point, well, she’d stopped working when Claire was born. And because soon Claire would be in school full time, she’d finally be able to go back. By then—well, it’s not like she’d had her fill of child-rearing, but maybe it was something close to that. Like a lot of mothers, she missed the world of adults, and that summer she was pretty much at her wit’s end trying to find things to do that would keep Claire entertained until school started. One day she took Claire to the park, and Lynne had a friend with her. A woman she’d known since college who was back in town for the week. The park had a pond, almost as big as a small lake, really, filled with lily pads and a few ducks and geese, probably domestic ones that the township brought in. We took Claire there a few times a year. They even had those machines, you know, where for a quarter you could buy a few pellets of food so the kids could feed the birds.

“Anyway, Claire had fed the ducks and was sitting between Lynne and her friend. Beth, that was her name. The sun was beating down, and there was no wind, and the smell of the pond was probably rank. Claire’s cheeks would have been flushed red, and her hair was still strawberry-blond at that age, probably curling in the humidity. And according to Lynne, Beth, who’d been married for a couple of years now, was telling her she would be unable to have children. That’s not a great tragedy in this age, but the woman had wanted babies as long as she could remember. She had been the kind of little girl who loved playing with dolls, and, when she got older, would save every one she ever owned and keep each in a proper place on the shelf in her closet, hidden away so her friends couldn’t see how much she still loved them. So she was crying when she was telling Lynne about it. Whatever the problem was physiologically, it was with her, and not her husband, who also wanted kids. Lynne said Beth was having trouble stifling her sobs, but that when she glanced down at Claire, she was looking at her own feet, bobbing them up and down to a tune she must have been hearing in her head. Oblivious, Lynne thought.

“There was a rule at the park that any dog had to be on a leash. With the kids running around, and birds, it made perfect sense. But that afternoon, some guy materializes out of nowhere with his dog at his heels, and throws a ball into the pond, and of course the dog dives into the lily pads to retrieve it. The ducks and geese on the water, pretty well fattened on all of the pellets the kids were constantly feeding them, squawk and flap awkwardly in the other direction, trying to get away. A woman stands up from a nearby bench and hollers, ‘Hey! Where’s the goddamn leash?’ But the guy just kind of shrugs his shoulders while his dog paddles back to shore. And of course, the second after it drops the ball and shakes the water from its hide, it takes off after one of the geese, one of those white ones, you know, that you used to see on a farm, so it’s not much of a chase. The dog has it by the neck within a few seconds, gives it a few shakes, and of course it’s dead. The other geese and ducks are honking and quacking from the other side of the pond, flapping their wings, raising their bills and shaking their heads. And the woman from the bench is shouting, ‘You fucking asshole! Now see what you’ve done? That poor thing!’ And the whole time Lynne is watching from the bench with Beth, when she suddenly remembers that Claire is sitting beside her, witnessing everything, and she pulls her off the bench, and the three of them head back to the car.”