Bridge of Clay(30)

But she couldn’t.

What she could understand, though, without a moment’s hesitation, was the way to see him off, and quietly, she pleaded. Gentle but matter-of-fact: “Don’t do it, Clay, don’t go, don’t leave me…but go.”

Had she been a character in one of Homer’s epics, she’d have been the clear-eyed Carey Novac, or Carey of the valuable eyes. This time she let him know exactly how much she’d miss him, but also that she expected—or more so, demanded—that he do what he had to do.

Don’t do it, Clay, don’t leave me…but go.



* * *



—

As she left back then, she realized:

In the middle of Archer Street, the girl turned.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

The boy, from in front of the porch. “It’s Clay.”

A silence.

“And? You don’t want to know my name?”

But she spoke like she’d known him always, and Clay remembered himself, and asked, and the girl came walking back.

“It’s Carey,” she said, and left again, when Clay called out an afterthought.

    “Hey, how do you spell that?”

And now she jogged over, she took the plate.

With her finger, she wrote her name, carefully, amongst the crumbs, then laughed when it was hard to decipher it—but they both knew the letters were in there.

Then she smiled at him, brief but warmly, and crossed the road for home.



* * *



—

For twenty minutes more, they stayed and they were quiet; and The Surrounds was quiet around them.

And this was always the worst of it:

Carey Novac leaned away.

She sat at the edge of the mattress, but when she stood to leave, she crouched. She kneeled at the side of the bed, where she’d paused upon arrival, and held a package now, wrapped in newspaper; and slowly, she put it down, she placed it against his ribs. Nothing more was spoken.

There was no Here, I brought you this.

Or Take it.

Or a Thank you said from Clay.

Only when she was gone did he lift himself up and open it, and reel at what lay within.





For Penelope, everything was going nicely.

The years flowed in, and by.

She’d been out of the camp a long time now, living alone in a ground-floor unit, on a road called Pepper Street. She loved the name.

She worked with other women now, too: a Stella, a Marion, a Lynn.

They worked in different pairings, traveling the city to clean. Of course, she’d been saving for a used piano in that time, too, waiting patiently to go and buy it. In her small apartment on Pepper Street, she kept a shoebox under the bed, with the rolled-up cash inside.

She continued mastering the English language as well, feeling it closer every night. Her ambition of reading both The Iliad and The Odyssey from cover to cover seemed an increasingly real possibility. Often she sat well beyond midnight, with a dictionary by her side. Many times she fell asleep like that, in the kitchen, her face all creased and sideways, against the warmth of pages; it was her constant immigrant Everest.

How typical, then, and perfect.

This, after all, was Penelope.

As the feat loomed up before her, the world came down in front of it.



* * *



—

It was like that pair of books, really.

Just when a war was there to be won, a god would get in the way. In this case, obliteration:

    A letter arrived.

It informed her; he’d died outside.

His body was toppled next to an old park bench. Apparently, his face was half-covered in snow, and his hand was a fist, and sunken across his heart. It was not a patriotic gesture.

The funeral predated the letter.

A quiet affair. He was dead.



* * *



—

Her kitchen was full of sun that afternoon, and when she dropped it, the letter swayed, like a pendulum made of paper. It skimmed beneath the fridge, and she spent many minutes, hands and knees, reaching under, and in, to retrieve it.

Jesus, Penny.

There you were.

There you were with your knees all pinched and stretched, and the table cluttered behind you. There you were with your blurry eyes and crestfallen chest, your face on the floor—a cheek and an ear—your bony backside up in the air.

Thank God you did what you did next.

We loved what you did next.





It was like this that night, when Carey left The Surrounds, and Clay unraveled the paper: He peeled off the sticky tape gently.

He folded the Herald’s racing section flat, and tucked it under his leg. Only then did he look at the present itself—an old wooden box—and hold it in both hands, chestnut-brown and scuffed. It was the size of an old hardcover book, with rusty hinges and a broken latch.

Around him, The Surrounds was airy, and open.

Barely a breeze.

A weightlessness.

He opened the small wooden door on top, and it creaked like a floorboard, and dropped.

Inside was another gift.

A gift within a gift.

And a letter.



* * *



—

Usually, Clay would read the letter first, but to get to it he lifted the lighter; it was a Zippo, made of pewter, about the size and shape of a matchbox.