The Paper Palace(86)
* * *
—
“Peter?” I call out now.
“Sec,” he calls back. He emerges from a billow of steam, a plush hotel towel wrapped around his waist. “The prodigal alcoholic returns.” He leaps on top of me and kisses me. “Hi, wife.” He sniffs me. “You smell of baby-sick. Might want to take off those shoes. The splatter.”
“Oh god.”
He reaches down and takes them off me, one at a time, throws them in the wastebasket. “You’ll never wear them again, anyway. White satin heels? You’d look like a hooker at Charing Cross.”
“Did I puke at the party? In front of everyone?”
“No, no. Just the hotel staff and the limo driver. It took three liveried bellhops to carry you into the elevator.”
“They carried me?”
“I insisted you were luggage.”
“I need a cheeseburger,” I groan.
“For my beautiful blackout-drunk bride, anything.” Peter wipes my hair back from my brow.
“It was the champagne. I can’t drink champagne. It’s the sugar. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Watching you throw your garter to my father was the highlight of the day.”
“I’m going to shoot myself.”
“That, and marrying the woman of my dreams.”
I reach up and put my arms around his neck, look deep into his eyes. “I need to brush my teeth.”
* * *
—
When I wake much later, a dream lingers on the tip of my mind. I’m on a cloud, scudding across the sky. Below me the sea is bright blue, infinite. A pod of whales migrates north, grandly oblivious to the smaller creatures in their wake. A white sail appears, riding fast on the chop. There are two children on the boat. Behind them, an enormous sperm whale dives, sounds the depths. I am underwater. I watch as the whale torpedoes toward the surface, aiming for the triangular shadow of the boat. A house floats by. Red ribbons flow through a broken screen door.
The room service tray is on the bedside table. Peter is passed out next to me, a smudge of ketchup on the corner of his mouth. Most of the fries are gone. I am married.
1997. February, the Back Woods.
Two months after the honeymoon I get a call from Anna. At first I’m not certain it’s her—she’s crying so hard I can’t make out what she’s saying, and Anna doesn’t cry.
“Slow down,” I say. “I can’t hear you.”
I listen to her sobs for a moment or two before she hangs up the phone. When I try to call back, it rings and rings until the machine picks up. I call Jeremy at his office.
“She’s good,” he says brightly. “She’s been doing a lot of work on herself.”
My throat constricts in knee-jerk disgust. “That’s great.” I force myself to keep the judgment out of my voice. “She sounded pretty upset when she called me just now.”
“She had group therapy today. That might have loosened up some silt.”
“When you get home tell her to call me, okay?” I loathe him.
“So, how’s it going?” he says, not taking his cue to hang up.
“Fine. Great.”
“You certainly had a good time at your wedding.”
“Tell her to call me,” I say.
* * *
—
The highway is desolate, barren—a cindery streak, salted for black ice, its sandy verges frozen hard and flat. A few dark pines punctuate the woods, but most of the trees here are bare, their last remaining leaves, rattle-dead brown, waiting sorrowfully to be taken by the next icy gust. It’s not even three p.m., but already the winter light is fading. Anna hasn’t spoken since I picked her up at Logan airport in a rental car. She looks haggard, empty, her eyes rubbed red. Anna is tough. A rock. Caustic and funny. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. This is not my sister. I listen to the swish of tires on wet road, the salt spray. Fiddle with the radio. Nothing but AM. I hate the Cape in winter.
Every house we pass on our way into the woods is closed up for the season. Not a single sign of life. Just beyond the turnoff for Dixon’s house, a fox runs across the road in front of the car carrying a small animal in its mouth. It freezes in our headlights, looks at us for a moment, before moving on.
The pond is thick ice. Hoarfrost covers the dead brush, bright red berries on a thin silvery branch. The camp looks naked, all its faults exposed. I pull in next to the back door, turn off the engine. We sit there in the quiet, the warmth, the deepening hues. Anna rests her head against the window glass.
“Stay in the car. I’ll get the heat on.”
The back door is padlocked. I go around the side of the house, wade through a pileup of dead leaves, reach up under the eaves. Even after all the years, I’m always amazed and relieved when my fingers find it—a single key hanging on a rusty nail. The same key to the same ancient Master Lock that has been here since we were children.
“Got it,” I shout to Anna. I open the door, stumble over the doorsill into the dark pantry, make my way to the fuse box on the far wall. My fingers feel their way down the braille of circuit breakers until they find one switch thicker than the others—the main. It takes a bit of force to turn it over from left to right. The refrigerator has been propped open with a broom to keep it from moldering, and the interior light goes on as it rumbles to life. The living room is clean-swept, empty of color, the sofa pillows and throws stored inside big black contractor bags. It feels colder inside than out, like a walk-in freezer, filled with the boxed-in chill of dead air. The water has been turned off, so the pipes don’t freeze. I’ll have to wait until the house has warmed up before flushing out the antifreeze and getting the water going. For tonight, we will get water from the pond.