If I Forget You(47)

Back downstairs, Henry does not want to sleep. He has this manic electric energy he used to associate with late-night sessions of writing, when the words seemed to come to him from somewhere else and he was just a repository for them, though he never told anyone that, for it always sounded pretentious to him and he wasn’t quite sure he believed it himself.

He walks outside onto the deck. The fire in the fireplace was totally for effect, for it is still midsummer-hot out on the mountain lake, and as he walks toward the railing, his towel falls, but he doesn’t care.

God, he loves this place. There are houses on the other side of the lake, but they are all darkened, as they often are, other than during the big weekends like the Fourth of July.

But every time he comes here, it is as if something goes out of him; all the petty concerns and work and the things that pick at him—big and small, from his inability to write anymore to the idea that he married the wrong woman—disappear as quickly as the sun vanishes over the hills.

Now, standing against the waist-high railing, Henry looks out at the black water stretching over to the peninsula, the trees on that narrow spit of land rising up darkly in contrast to the lighter sky. In the distance then, and all of sudden, he hears the coyotes, like the shrill cries of children on a playground, voices more ancient than Keats’s, rising higher and higher in an endless gyre.





Margot, 2012

The sun wakes her. Or it is the unmistakable smell of breakfast—coffee, bacon, and eggs—moving upstairs to where she lies?

Margot rolls onto her back. She runs her hand through her hair and considers the room. It is small and wood-paneled and musty and warm now from the sun pouring in through the shadeless window. There is not much to it. An old bureau with a mirror above it is the only furnishing other than the simple wood-framed double bed.

She is naked. Her bag, unzipped from when she carried it up the stairs yesterday afternoon, sits in a corner. The previous evening comes to her then, the wine and the food and the storm, but mostly the frantic sex before she fell asleep in front of the fire. She has a vague memory of Henry leading her upstairs. She has an even vaguer memory of him climbing into bed with her what seemed only a few hours ago, turning for a moment and seeing the misty dawn rise off the lake out the window behind her head before curling into him and falling back asleep. And now she is not sure she wants to leave this warmth. There is something pleasing about not moving, she thinks, for when you don’t move, there is no possibility you can ruin everything.

Margot reluctantly rises and dresses in shorts and slips a T-shirt over her head and makes her way downstairs. The room smells equally of bacon and woodsmoke. The big windows look out to the lake and a sunny day and the sliding glass door to the deck is open.

“Hey, you’re up,” Henry says, turning from the stove to look over his shoulder when she reaches the bottom step and enters the room.

“Barely,” Margot says, and she goes to him, wraps her arms around him where he stands scrambling eggs. “I would kiss you, but I am afraid my breath would melt a dragon.”

“I wouldn’t care,” Henry says.

“I would,” she says.

“You missed the coyotes.”

“Coyotes?”

“They were out last night. Magnificent. Everywhere.”

“Don’t tell me. I won’t go outside again.”

Henry laughs. “They’re more afraid of us. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

They eat breakfast at the outdoor table on the deck, the umbrella shielding them from the bright morning sun. There is a light wind and the sunlight plays off the water, and when Margot looks down the narrow expanse of lake from here, it is like thousands of tiny pieces of glass reflecting back at them.

Margot takes out her phone and it occurs to her that she has not looked at it once since she has been here. This must be a first, not being permanently tethered to it, and then she also realizes she doesn’t have a signal, and a slight feeling of panic comes over her and pulls her back to the rest of her life. What if Chad has been trying to reach her? Alex or Emma? Anyone?

“I need to call home,” she says.

“There’s a phone inside,” Henry says.

“No, I can’t use that. I’m supposed to be in Massachusetts. I won’t be able to explain the caller ID.”

“Of course,” says Henry. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I forgot we were being illicit.”

After breakfast, they go for a walk, the way they came in, up his narrow dirt road to the other dirt road. There is a hillside Henry knows about where you can get a cell signal. It is not far, he tells her, though they walk what feels like two miles, past old farmhouses tucked up tight on the sides of the road, unleashed dogs running up and barking at them as they walk. They go by another smaller lake, this one without houses, a wall of evergreens coming up to the shoreline on all sides except for the road that runs past it. Then they are climbing a road that is little more than a driveway, parts of it washed out from the rainfall last night, and at the top of it they find themselves in a broad, high meadow, with waist-high grass as far as the eye can see.

“Check now,” Henry says.

Margot removes her phone from her pocket.

“Two bars,” she says.

She has three texts. All of them are from Chad last night. The first one says, “How are u? Having fun?” The other two are simply question marks, as she didn’t answer the first.