True Places(88)

Suzanne returned inside and considered where she would sleep. The beds, the floor, every surface was covered in dust and rodent droppings. Who knew what else was lurking in the corners, behind the furnishings? Snakes could have found their way between the chinks in the walls. No, she would sleep on the porch. A broom leaned against the fireplace. Suzanne retrieved it and caught sight of a piece of paper under the bench, where a shadow had kept it hidden. She picked it up and shook off the dust. The letter was dated September 20, 2016. The handwriting was different from those in the notebooks, angled and uneven. Suzanne skipped to the signature. LOVE ALWAYS, JIM. Iris’s father. He had been here last year. Suzanne read the letter from the beginning.

Dear Mary,

I don’t expect you’ll ever see this. I’ve been coming up when I could and knew you hadn’t been here for a while. Now that I’ve been here solid since June, I know you and Iris aren’t coming back.

I wanted to tell you to your face what happened to our son and how everything came apart after he died. I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I’m to blame for that, no one else. I’ve failed all of you.

I put up a marker for Ash where the white wake-robin grows. It was all I could think to do.

I’ve waited for you, for you and Iris, but there’s no use in waiting anymore. I miss you both so much but if I ever did deserve to have you, I don’t anymore.

Love always, Jim

The last lines were crooked, trailing to the edge of the page, the handwriting weak, as if Jim were fading, already on his way out the door and away from these woods. Suzanne read the note again, then lowered the paper to her side. The more she learned about Iris and her family, the less she understood. Suzanne glanced around the cabin, imagining the family there. Iris lying on the bottom bunk, probably. Ash would have insisted on the top bunk and, knowing Iris, she would have relinquished it. Suzanne imagined a boy, smiling and energetic, dangling his legs from the top bunk. He would be wise like Iris. How could you grow up here without wisdom? Maybe that was romantic idealism; Ash could have been stubborn and foolish, but Suzanne doubted it. Her heart fell as she realized the loss Iris must be feeling now, having been presented with unmistakable evidence of her brother’s death. Suzanne was perplexed as to why Iris would not have mentioned him. If Iris had believed he was alive, then why wouldn’t she want to find him, and if she had known he was dead, why the shock? It made no sense. The boy was as big a mystery now as before Suzanne knew he existed.

Suzanne turned toward the table and the hearth, picturing the mother, Mary, sorting through the herbs in her collecting basket, or making a fire to cook dinner on a winter night. Suzanne didn’t have a clear picture of Mary, and wondered why she had never asked Iris more about her. Suzanne had told herself she didn’t want to pry, was wary of spooking the girl, but the truth was more complicated. Suzanne could more easily replace a mother she knew little of. She could manage that.

And Jim. Iris had been so certain her father was dead, and yet he had been here last summer. Suzanne considered that she ought to have told Iris about Detective DeCelle’s lead on Jim Smith, despite the promise Suzanne had made. It might have given Iris hope. And if they had been able to find him, he could have delivered the news about Ash himself, instead of Iris stumbling upon a marker in the forest. Whit had lobbied for a more intensive investigation, which, Suzanne now understood, might have been in Iris’s best interests.

The cabin had become confining, even with the door wide open. Suzanne left the letter on the table and walked outside. How strange it was to be completely alone, not even tethered to her family—or to anyone—by the umbilicus of her phone. She felt odd, unmasked, but there was no one there to see her. If she had a mirror, she could hold it up to her face and perhaps see a change. But that wasn’t right. We are not meant to see ourselves so clearly; nor are we meant to be eternally reflected in others. It is far better, and undoubtedly the natural order of things, Suzanne thought, to be not only blind to ourselves, but oblivious. She watched the sky leak blue from the edges, paling in anticipation of night. Above, swallows traced arcs, wings outstretched, diving, twisting, slicing, in obedience to nature and oblivious to it. Suzanne’s wonder became understanding: We can temper the compulsion to see ourselves. We can opt to reject the boundary, the shell behind which we operate our lives, separate from the world, the world of dirt and leaf and sky in which we evolved, the true place that holds our essential nature. We can step out from behind the glass, and live.

This, Suzanne realized, was the life Iris yearned to return to, the only life in which she would find happiness. Suzanne had not done everything she could for Iris because of her own need to prove herself as a mother and to explore the possibility of solitude Iris knew so well and so easily. Suzanne could not keep Iris captive to Suzanne’s own failures or even hitch Iris to dreams that were not of her own making. That was, after all, what Whit had done to her, Suzanne: given her a safe place to hide, but not one in which to grow. She had remained underground, in the darkness, a Hydnora waiting for the rain. Whit had kept her there out of ambition, out of sympathy, and, ultimately, out of love. And she had allowed it. She had embraced the cool dark, telling herself she did not have the strength to break the surface.

Suzanne stepped off the porch and into the long grass. Behind the house, the ground sloped toward a narrow stream. How many times had Iris crouched there to drink, to fill a jug for her mother, to splash water on her face on a sweltering summer’s day? Suzanne decided to return to the stream later to clean up, but while she had the light she turned back, tracing the edge of the clearing. She listened to the birds call to each other in the approaching dusk and studied the cabin now and then as it blended more completely into the surroundings, her presence unnoticed.