I see you everywhere (17 page)

“You know, I really wonder about you,” I say. What I really wonder, for an instant, is why I didn’t say
worry about you.
I wonder if, when it comes to Hugh, I am past worrying. That in itself is a worry. Hugh looks at me for a moment as if he’s waiting for an answer. At last he says quietly, “So what exactly do you wonder?”

“Stop throwing my questions back at me. Please get dressed. Dad left for work ages ago, and Mom expects us to meet her at the beach club for lunch in an hour.”

“That’s fine,” says Hugh. “I don’t need breakfast.”

“I’m going back to the hayloft. Your striped shirt is on a hanger in the closet. Mom says to please keep the showers short. It’s barn laundry day.” I resist the temptation to tell him that the day’s events do not revolve around him and his need for meals. The truth is, I’d be a lot happier if the day, or anything—like my heart or my soul—did revolve around Hugh.

∞

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My parents’ barn is twice the size of their house. This is why they bought the place thirty years ago. With room to spare, it currently shelters two horses; a makeshift greenhouse for my father’s floral pursuits (his dream is to graft and name a rose of his own); a large, accidental population of cats; and, in the hayloft, two facing fortresses, one of baled hay, the other of boxes containing ancestral photographs, old clothing and uniforms, sabers and medals, books, toys, school papers spanning at least three generations, stuffed animals, outmoded polyester curtains, outmoded stereo equipment, glassware too delicate for everyday use, screws and doorknobs and tools of indeterminate provenance and utility. The good thing about their being up here, out of sight and mind, is that for decades it has prevented a war between my mother, who is practical and unsentimental, and my father, whose family motto must surely be whatever’s Latin for
You never know when it will come in handy!
Not that you could find it if it ever did—or remember you had it, whatever it was. The only direct ventilation in this space is a wide double door at one end, under the peaked roof, that opens into thin air one story up from the driveway. My sister, when we were little, called it the door to the sky. As a guardrail, Dad nailed a pair of two-by-fours across the inner frame, but still I see it as a treacherous maw. If I have to open the doors, I unlatch them, step back, and push them ajar from a distance, using a broom. The breeze smells strongly of ocean. The warmer the day, the stronger the smell. For that reason alone, high summer is my favorite time of year in this place.

It is not, however, an ideal time of year to be ordered by your mother to “please clear out all your old moth-eaten stuff or prepare to have it cleared out for you.” Especially when you live in a New York apartment with no storage space whatsoever, let alone a hayloft the size of Bryant Park. Especially when you are not sure about the state of your marriage, and your husband is the one with the lease.

It’s not as if my parents are moving or remodeling or doing anything for which they need that extra space, the modest corners occupied by my two dozen boxes of life souvenirs. It’s more like they’re sending me a message.

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Julia Glass

You’re a grown-up, Louisa, did you know that?
The thing is, I do know that, and the knowledge is weighing me down. Four years ago, I married Hugh on the lawn I’d be able to see from up here if I weren’t afraid of standing anywhere near the door to the view. My dad’s roses were in high, plush bloom, brandishing their fragrance in the soft humidity of June. Also present in colorful abundance were my dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins from down south, the clan my father left behind when he came north to college. They crank up any occasion till it feels like an affair of state.

I married Hugh less than a year after taking over his job. It’s a family joke:
She got Hugh’s job and then she got Hugh.
He was a good boss, and when he left the magazine to teach at a private school, I stepped into his shoes. Almost instantly I missed him. I understood why he’d been such a good managing editor, and I understood just what “managing” really meant. Hugh knew how to keep people calm and efficient in the face of contention (and we are talking art people, people with absurdly towering egos, with short tempers that someone’s decided are justified by socalled creativity). This retrospective admiration of Hugh’s diplomacy and patience made me ponder what a good husband and father he’d make. I was thinking about my girlfriends, the ones who were panicking about not being married as we all closed in on thirty. I did that thing where you fix the guy up with the woman you see as his ideal match and then, the morning after their first date, she phones you to say that you’re right about the ideal part, but he’s ideal for
you.
Other friends meet him and volunteer parallel opinions; they consult with more of your friends and come to a joint conclusion. The conclusion is, Don’t blow it! Then, weirdly, you find out somehow that all of
his
friends who’ve met you at
his
parties arrived at that conclusion, too.

One day you look at each other and you know. You might even laugh out loud. It’s obvious, it’s
easy.
How silly that you didn’t notice before the rest of the world around you.

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Parties are thrown in your honor; the circle of approval grows; the toasts (many about your adorable, shared obtuseness) evolve toward an eloquence that makes you feel as if you are in the benevolent presence of Destiny itself. (Hugh’s best man wrote a comic ballad called “Much Ado About Lou and Hugh.” No one but my sister is allowed to call me Lou. Still, it drew a standing ovation at the rehearsal dinner. My Confederate cousins whistled and stamped.)

Your parents like one another; my goodness, they drive the same car!

Same year, same
color
! Turns out you went to his father’s alma mater. Like your dad, the other dad played lacrosse. (Is it conceivable the two men actually crossed sticks back in 1951?) The whole thing comes together like a jigsaw puzzle, just the way my mother insists you proceed: Put the edge together first, then work your way toward the center, organizing the pieces into groups by color and, within color, by shape. A few rows in, you see that it’s going to get much easier—it has to—because you’re finding the right place for each piece faster and faster. The picture will be finished and perfect in no time. (Never mind that after all your hard work, it will go back in the box.)

My mother buys our family a puzzle every Christmas—not too hard, not too easy, always intricate with color; an opulent Dutch bouquet or a clamorous sporting print—so I know the routine. In fact, I’m incapable of having fun with a puzzle that’s put together any other way. I’m that well trained.

Today is like the opposite of Christmas. I’m opening all these boxes, their contents often a mystery even though they’re already mine, but what I need to do (as sweat pours down my spine and soaks the waistband of my shorts) is to make myself discard things, not add them to my already cluttered life. So far this weekend, I’ve saved a few of my favorite reports from grade school (one on volcanoes, one on the ritual sun dance of the Sioux, one on photosynthesis), a few precociously detailed stilllife drawings (seashells, daffodils, a taxidermied wood duck, a kerosene lantern), and the only Barbie doll whose hair wasn’t harvested for nesting by a family of mice that must have eluded the cat patrol. Steeling myself Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 114 114

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against sentiment, I’ve stuffed mounds of brittle composition paper and limp stuffed animals into garbage bags.

I am working my way toward a stack of wooden crates I would give anything not to open. They contain the last vases and bowls I made before I gave up on pottery, before I moved in with Hugh, even before I became the managing editor of
Artbeat.
(I can’t blame the surrender of my own art on Hugh.) They are not supposed to be here, in my parents’

barn, but I sneaked them in on one of our visits when, as usual, my mother was so busy fussing over Hugh’s arrival that she didn’t notice me open the trunk and stagger into the barn with my loot. But here is a cardboard carton of childhood books: Dr. Seuss, Mike Mulligan, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, Ferdinand, Charlotte. Classics all—

saved, presumably, for children of my own, though they smell so unspeakably musty that the concept of holding them anywhere near a child’s face seems laughably perilous. Hugh owns a box containing almost exactly the same collection of books; I know this because it’s in the back of our bedroom closet. Probably, I think with irrational resentment, they are in much better shape for having received this preferential treatment. If I believe we will honor our vows and stay together forever, the choice here is obvious, isn’t it? (Though I’ve made the excuse to myself that if we have two children, why not have two copies of all our favorite childhood stories for them to inherit?)

I close this box and drag it toward the steep wooden stairs. I scare a cat from behind a rusty sled; it darts down the stairs and out of sight. When my sister and I lived here, the cats were friendly because we played in this loft with our friends. It was more than a warehouse; it was a catacomb, an imaginary village, a lesser Narnia. My mother feeds and worms the cats, she has them fixed and takes them to the vet if they’re injured, but they no longer get much human affection. Their residence here is a business deal: Friskies and shelter for mice. A dead rodent on the doorstep is as good as a rent check.

I suppose, in retrospect, that once we’d passed the Narnia stage, Clem met boys up here. More than a few, I suspect. Hugh and I, after we were Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 115
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engaged, had one literal roll in the hay. It seemed like something we had to check off the list of courtship rites, something permissibly naughty. After I’ve finished with the books, four boxes in all (from which I salvage a dozen yellowed art books and a copy of
Moby-Dick
filled with endearingly naïve notations, made for the soulful eyes of the teacher on whom I had the biggest crush of all time), I head back to the house. My mother is in the paddock with two of her students, lithe freckled girls who, if they lived in New York, would be loitering about Lincoln Center in leotards and metallic ballet flats. Here, in semirural Rhode Island, they wear black leather boots, skintight buttermilk jodhpurs, and velvet hard hats. Their faces are pink from the heat, but they look happy. Their horses are having a water break, drinking deeply at the trough.

“Never clutch the pommel,” my mother is saying to one girl. “Have confidence in the reins and in your seat; hold on to the mane when you gallop. But hands off that saddle, young lady!”

I never took to riding, not in any daring way. I liked our horses, but they were big dogs to me. To pet them, feed them, watch them roll in the grass, that was enough. I did not like cantering or jumping fences any more than I like heights. My sister got the horse gene, along with the daring gene. She rode for most of her childhood. Now she skis and scuba dives. She marches fearlessly into forests where predators lurk. I am sitting alone at a table overlooking the club pool and, beyond it, the beach. I decided to walk here on my own, to get some exercise; I expected Mom and Hugh to pass me in the car. They are already ten minutes late, and I’ve made the mistake of ordering a glass of wine, which is going straight to my head. The lifeguard is half my age and very, very cute. I think of Clem, who would be chatting him up right now if she were here. She would not be sitting here so passively: bored, annoyed, separating the lamination from the menu.

“Hugh is one strong fellow!” my mother calls out, startling me from my funk. She’s exchanged her riding clothes for a light blue linen dress, Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 116 116

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tapered and sleeveless, that shows off her impressively solid curves and her athletic limbs.

Hugh smiles at me over her shoulder; it’s too vague a smile for me to interpret. I don’t expect Mom to apologize for being late, but Hugh has manners (here he is now, pulling out a chair for her). That’s one thing he’s got in spades. A few twigs of hay cling to his shirt. I reach across the table and brush them off.

“I’m glad he was helpful,” I say.

“Helpful and
strong,
” she insists. “Do you know how strong your husband is?” She is waving at the waiter. “Chip! My son-in-law would love to try that local brew. He’s earned it!” Chip will already know what to bring her.

“Did your father call? I left him a message. Is he joining us?” Mom glances at the menu and sets it down. “Chip,” she says when the drinks arrive, “the chicken salad special: is that white meat? Yes? Then that’s what I’ll have, but regular lettuce, please, instead of spinach. Raw spinach makes my tongue feel furry.” She turns to Hugh and touches his arm. “Order whatever you want. If you like lobster, the bisque is tops.”

I wedge myself into the sphere of her attention. “Dad’s caught up with the harbormaster. Something about fireworks for a wedding on the bluff tonight.”

“He volunteered for that boating safety committee again. Glutton for punishment, that’s your father.” Mom smiles at Hugh. “Have my roll, please.” She puts her roll on his bread plate, giving it a brief pat as if it might fly away.

Hugh hasn’t said a word. This is typical, my mother’s domination notwithstanding. I’m not even sure what lifting or dragging job she enlisted him for—something in the barn, obviously, and though I’m curious, I don’t want to ask, because it will draw out an endless story involving people from the foxhunt or the 4-H or her spoiled-princess riding pupils, someone who let her down so that Hugh could stand in as last-minute hero.

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