Bridge of Clay(124)

And Carey, of course, looked back at her, then kept her focus on Clay. The freckles no longer anxious. A smile recalling the sea. And of course, she’d said, “Of course.”

“I thought so,” said Abbey Hanley, and there was regret but no self-pity. “I guess my leaving your dad,” she explained, “was really my best mistake.”



* * *



—

After that, they did have tea, they couldn’t refuse, and Abbey had more coffee, and told them some of her history; she worked at one of the banks.

    “It’s all as boring as bat shit,” she said, and Clay, he felt the pang.

He said, “That’s what two of my brothers say—they say it about Matthew’s movies.”

Her smokiness slightly widened.

“How many brothers do you have?”

“There are five of us,” he said to her, “and five animals, including Achilles.”

“Achilles?”

“The mule.”

“The mule?”

He was actually starting to relax now, and Carey answered bluntly. “You’ve never seen a family like this,” and maybe Abbey could have been hurt by such things—by a life she’d never live—and maybe it could have gone wrong then, and so none of them tried their luck. They didn’t talk about Penny or Michael, and it was Abbey who put her cup down.

With genuine affection, she said, “Look at you two kids.”

She shook her head and laughed, at herself:

You remind me of me and him.

She thought it—he could tell—but didn’t say it.

She said, “I think I know why you came here, Clay.”

She left and came back with The Quarryman.

It was pale and bronze, and the spine was cracked, but the age of it only enhanced it. At the window it was growing darker; she turned the light on in the kitchen, and took a knife from the wall by the kettle.

Very gently, at the table, she made an incision, inside—precisely against the spine—to extract the very first page: the one with the author’s biography. Then she closed it, and gave it to Clay.

As to the page itself—she showed them. She said, “I’ll keep this one if you don’t mind,” and “Love and love and love, huh?” but she was wistful rather than flippant. “I think I always knew, you know—it was never mine to have.”

When they left, she saw them out, and they stood together, out by the lifts. Clay approached to shake her hand, but she refused, and said, “Here, just give me a hug.”

    It was strange how it felt to be held by her.

She was softer than she looked, and warm.

He could never explain how grateful he was, for the book and the flesh of her arms. He knew he would never see her again, that this was all there was. In the very last crack, before the lift went down, she smiled through the closing doors.





He would never see Abbey again:

Clay, of course, was wrong.

Once, in the tide—

Oh, fuck it—

See, at Carey Novac’s funeral, when we’d sat at the back of the church, he was wrong to think no one saw him—for between the genuine mourners, and the racing people and identities, a woman had also been there. She had sweet-smoke eyes and beautiful clothes, and a bob to knock your socks off.


Dear Clay—

I’m sorry for so many reasons.

I should have written to you much earlier.

I’m sorry for what happened to Carey.

One minute I was telling her to stop being such a smart mouth, and the next she was telling me his dog’s name…and next minute (even though more than a year had passed) there were all those people in the church. I was standing in the crowd in the doorway, and saw you at the back with your brothers.

For a moment I nearly came to you. I regret now that I didn’t.

When I met you both, I should have told you—that you reminded me of Michael and me. I could see by the way you were near each other, you were only an arm’s length away. You would save each other from me, or from anything else that might harm her. You looked so devastated in that church. I hope you’re doing okay.

     I won’t ask where your mother was, or your father, because I know what we keep to ourselves, especially withheld from our parents.

Don’t feel like you need to reply.

I won’t tell you to live how she’d want you to, but maybe to live how you have to.

But you do, I think, have to live.

I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn here, so please forgive me if I have.

Sincerely,

Abbey Hanley





It came a few days after Bernborough, when he’d stood on the track till sunrise. The letter was hand-delivered. No stamp and no address. Just Clay Dunbar and left in the letterbox.



* * *



—

A week later, he walked through the racing quarter, and the city, until he reached her. He refused to use the buzzer. He waited for another resident; he slipped through the entrance behind him, and took the lift to the eighteenth floor.

He balked when he reached her door, and took several minutes to knock, and even then he’d done it benignly. He was shocked when she came to open it.