"Okay, I'm in," Rob said.
"You're umping," Bill said, pointing. "We've got the bases covered, as they say. Nora had some Frisbees we can use. Problem is," he added, holding up the plastic ball, "this is white."
Harrison thought a minute. "I might have an idea," he said.
"We're out front when you're ready."
Harrison searched for the boy he'd seen the day before and found him in the dining room wearing a North Face fleece. He apologized to the parents for interrupting their breakfast and asked the boy if he still had the Magic Markers he'd been using the day before at the table. Harrison explained the game of snow-ball and invited the boy and the father to join them. As an afterthought, he invited the wife as well. She sighed and said a few minutes alone in the library would be heaven.
When Harrison returned to the hallway in his jacket and sneakers, the boy was already waiting for him with the box of markers. His father, he said, would follow in a minute. Harrison selected neon green. The boy seemed struck dumb with the gravity of being asked to play ball with grown men, and Harrison tried to draw him out — Are you having a good time here? Have you ever played Little League? Cool jacket. . . did you get that yesterday? — to little avail.
The two headed out the door and found Bill on a level bit of snow-covered lawn near the parking lot. Harrison brandished the marker, and Bill gave him the thumbs-up. Harrison colored the ball as best he could, getting nearly as much ink on his fingers as he did on the ball. He wondered idly if it would come off in time for the wedding.
"Okay, let's see," Bill said when everyone was assembled. "Harrison, you and Jerry and . . . what's your name?" he asked the boy.
"Michael," the boy said.
"Hi, Michael, I'm Bill." Bill walked toward the boy's father and held out his hand.
"Peter," the father said, shaking it.
"Okay, great," Bill said, turning to the group. "Peter, Michael, Harrison, and Jerry on one team. Me, Agnes, Matt, and Brian will be the other. Nora, you playing?"
Nora, her coat over her shoulders, looked down at them from the porch. "I'll watch for a minute," she said.
"Julie?"
Julie, in furs, leaned against the porch railing. She shook her head.
The brilliant sun caused a glare from the snow that was tough on the eyes. Everyone but the boy had on sunglasses.
Agnes was up first for her team. Jerry, in his sleek black jacket, went into his windup as if he were pitching to Ichiro Suzuki. The green neon ball whipped through the air and left its traces everywhere — on Jerry's fingers, on the bat, in little trails in the snow, like rabbit tracks. After several misses, Agnes hit a pop-up.
"High fly ball to center," Rob intoned, commentating as well as umping. "Branch making his way back to the warning track. Looks as if he's lost it in the sun. No, he's got it. Nice over-the-shoulder catch for Harrison Branch. One out. Matt Rodgers at the plate. Billy Ricci in the on-deck circle. Here's Leyden with the windup. Oooh, nice little sinker just cutting the corner. Rodgers whiffs, swinging for the outlets. Strike one."
Standing in what passed for the outfield and catching the green neon Wiffle ball produced in Harrison a sharp memory of street play as a kid. Players gathering at random, temporarily leaving and entering the game as their mothers called them in for supper and then sent them out again. He could see the vacant lot beside the candy store, the bases scored into the dirt with sticks, the wild swings, the sprints to the bases, the squabbles over close plays. The memory passed through Harrison like a whiff of pure air tinged with the scent of mown grass and rich soil.
"Ricci, who had a nice season last year with the Sox, makes his way to the plate," Rob said with the clipped patter of a sports announcer. "Jerry Leyden's looking for the sign. Good stop by Michael in the snow. Ball one."
Nora appeared and disappeared. Julie simply disappeared. Harrison, feeling absurdly proud of himself, hit a long fly ball none of the fielders could reach, resulting in a home run. The score grew ridiculously high. Bill thought it was 18-11. Harrison argued that it was 17-13. Rob admitted he wasn't keeping track, and both teams booed the ump. When Harrison turned around, he saw that the boy, Michael, had taken off with first base, using it as a sled to coast down the hill. The kid, legs in the air, got a good ride.
"Not a bad idea," Harrison said.
Sleds and saucers were produced from a storage shed under the porch, and Harrison thought of Nora's comment about men who hadn't been on sleds in years showing off to their wives and kids. He folded his legs into a saucer and took a spin down the hill. The snow was slippery, giving him a slick ride. Why was the pure play of childhood such a highly prized memory? Harrison wondered.
He tumbled from the saucer, narrowly missing a tree. He caught his breath, took hold of the rope, and lifted the lightweight aluminum disk up the hill. He jumped to one side as Bill careened past him, clearly out of control. Agnes, following close behind him, yelled at Harrison to get out of the way.
"You got a good run," Rob said when Harrison had reached the top of the slope.
"Here, take off your coat, give it a whirl. You can use my jacket."
"Can't," Rob said.
Harrison remembered the fingers. "You mind?"
"Sometimes."
Harrison glanced down the hill. Matt and Brian had improvise a two-foot jump. Bill, on a saucer, tried it, getting air and coming down hard on the other side.
"We'll have a groom on crutches," Rob said and turned toward the inn. "I better go get Josh before he strains his virtual fingers," he called over his shoulder.
Harrison heard Bill laughing from down below. He watched as Agnes climbed up the hill, short of breath at the top. "And I thought I was in shape," she said to Harrison.
Harrison contemplated the jump.
"Go for it," Agnes said.
"You think?"
"You're only young once."
"But I need to be middle-aged for quite a while."
He hopped on the saucer, dug his hands into the snow to get some speed, and saw the jump coming. It looked considerably taller from ground level than it had from the top of the hill.
Harrison sailed up and over, getting aiir, tumbling as he came down. For a minute, he lay on the snow, the wind knocked out of him. He stared at the sky and felt again the bliss of childish activities, a feeling akin to the joy he experienced when he fielded grounders from his boys or dared to get on the ice with them. Bill, heading up the hill with his sled, said, "Beautiful, Branch. Just beautiful."
Harrison rolled over, snow down the front of his jacket and packed inside his sneakers. He got up onto his knees and looked around. His saucer was halfway down the hill. His feet nearly numb, he fetched the saucer and made his way to the top.
'Quite a spill," Nora said when Harrison had reached the sum-mil. She had her coat wrapped over her shoulders, holding it closed with her gloved hands. Her sunglasses hid her eyes. "The game looked like fun," she added.
'You sound wistful," Harrison said.
'Every once in a while, I wish I was just a guest."
'Seriously?"
'Seriously."
Harrison looked down the hill. "Someone's going to hit that tree there," he said.
"I know. I've . . . I've thought about removing it, but it's such a beautiful tree. Especially in the fall."
"What kind is it?" Harrison asked.
"Sugar maple."
The lone tree at the bottom of the hill triggered a recollection. "Ethan Frome," Harrison said aloud, referring to the novel in which a man and his would-be lover try to commit suicide by sledding into a tree. "That was supposed to take place somewhere around here, no?"
"Starkfield."
"Not a real town."
"No."
Harrison had a further recollection. "In the early stage of your husband's career," he said, "he repeatedly praised Ethan Frome."
"Carl didn't like Wharton's other works."
"That's unusual, isn't it?" Harriso
n asked. "Most people who care for Wharton prefer the other books. The Age of Innocence and so on."
"In any event," Nora said, "he later changed his mind."
"Why?"
Nora moved slightly to one side. "Tepid, Carl said. Artificial. Clunky. A novel shouldn't have its architecture showing."
"And what do you think?" Harrison asked.
Nora shrugged. "It is what it is. A sparsely written novella that high school students can read. Carl. . . Carl admired it at the beginning of his career because he thought he might be a novelist. If you're a poet thinking of becoming a novelist, a sparsely written novella is just the ticket."
Harrison turned his head and studied her. "I was unaware of that."
"You're surprised by this," she said, looking up at him.
"Yes. Tremendously. Did he actually write a novel?"
Nora tucked her gloved hands under her arms. "He began one. He had me burn the pages when he knew he was dying."
"You're kidding."
"I suppose that's upsetting for an editor," she said.
"A bit" Harrison said with feeling. "I imagine his publisher would be upset as well. What was the novel about?"
"I don't know," Nora said, drawing her coat more tightly around her. "The first time I ever saw it was the day Carl told me where it was. I never took it out of the box. He made me burn it in the living room fireplace. He supervised from a chair. He was very secretive about his writing. When he was writing it, that is."
Harrison stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He kicked at the snow with his sneaker.
"I've really surprised you, haven't I?" she asked. "You're struck speechless."
"I was just thinking about the explorer Richard Burton. His wife burned all of his pornographic writings when he died." Harrison paused. "I suppose that's the widow's prerogative, isn't it? To protect the image of her husband?"
"Possibly," Nora said, glancing at her watch. "But in this case, the writer was protecting himself. I have to go."
"Don't," Harrison pleaded in mock distress, holding out his arms. "You're always leaving me."
Harrison meant this as a joke, but the words, once spoken, rang uncomfortably true.
"See you later?" she asked, and Harrison felt a small kick inside his chest. She drew away from him, walking backward in her boots, waving.
"Definitely," he said.
Harrison watched as Nora did a little run up the front steps and disappeared inside the front door. When he turned, Jerry Leyden's face was inches from his own.
"You can always tell when a guy's still carrying the torch," Jerry said.
"What?" Harrison asked. Jerry's nose was running. His teeth were the translucent blue of overwhitening.
"I once Googled my old girlfriend at Kidd. You remember Dawn Freeman? She's a sheep farmer now in Idaho. Whew, glad I didn't go there."
Harrison wished Jerry would back up a step. His breath stank of stale coffee.
"Hey, listen," Jerry said. "I didn't mean to jerk you around last night. About Stephen? 1 know you loved the guy."
Harrison said nothing.
"Just seems like we all got away with murder, you know what I mean?"
Harrison's hands were fists in his pockets. It was all he could do to keep them there. "You're an asshole, Leyden," Harrison said under his breath as he turned to walk away.
"Branch, wait a minute," Jerry said and caught the sleeve of Harrison's jacket. Harrison looked down at Jerry's fingers. Jerry let go of Harrison, and Harrison faced him.
"Look," Jerry said, "I don't know what happened that night at the beach. I've been needling you, and I really don't know why. To be perfectly honest, I think it's myself I'm angry at. That night, when I got back to the dorm and found out Stephen was missing, I felt so ... I don't know ..." Jerry looked down the hill and then back again at Harrison. "Helpless," he said. "Stephen was dead before we knew it, and there we all were — alive. Really alive." Jerry yanked off his gloves. "It was the same with 9/11. All those bodies falling, and there I was. Alive. I can't describe it. It makes you feel sick inside. Guilty, sure. Angry, you bet. But the really terrible feeling is helpless. I fucking hate feeling helpless."
Harrison took a long breath, and Jerry stuffed his gloves into his pockets.
"Stephen was a beautiful guy," Jerry said.
Harrison got behind the wheel of the Taurus and spun out of the parking lot. He had no destination, merely an urge to push the car forward, to have it make some noise.
The long drive to the inn had been plowed, but almost immediately Harrison realized he would have to slow down. He didn't want to end up in the trees at the side of the drive because of Jerry Leyden or Stephen Otis or anyone else from his past.
He shut Jerry's face and voice out of his mind. He hit the road that led to Nora's inn, skidded a bit in the turn, and followed it back to town. When he had driven to the inn the day before, he'd been searching for signposts and had paid little attention to the village. This time, he made note of a post office, a bookstore that looked promising, an elementary school that resembled a factory, and two other inns, both of which he viewed competitively, taking Nora's side. He didn't think she had much to worry about. The first was a pink-and-purple Victorian house that promised "all-you-can-eat" breakfasts. The second was a modest B and B unhappily situated next to a Mobil station.
Harrison parked the Ford on the main street and walked, hands in pockets, snow still melting inside his sneakers. He needed a pair of dry socks. He passed an odd structure and glanced at the sign on the porch. It was the town library, the Holy Grail of his profession. Actually not, Harrison reflected, remembering the bookstore, the true Holy Grail of his profession, with its sales and promise of profits. The library was a curiosity, though, a large yellow Victorian with rounded turrets and stone columns. He imagined the building, during an earlier age, as the home of one of the town's more prosperous citizens — the local doctor, a venerable judge. As Harrison climbed the steps, he tried to picture Carl Laski doing the same. Or stopping at the bookstore. Or nipping out for an early morning doughnut on the way to the college. Would Nora have been with him?
Once inside the library, Harrison headed for the poetry section. He hoped to find a copy of Laski's last volume, Burning Trees. The library was quiet on a late Saturday morning. Only a few patrons were sitting at computers or reading newspapers in the reading room. Harrison had always liked the hush of libraries, the antiquated notion that only in silence could one absorb words.
He surveyed the two shelves of poetry volumes (two out of five hundred shelves? a thousand?), and he wondered, not for the first time, why it was he had attached his own star — his work, his editing — to such a marginal enterprise as publishing literary works. Worse, to the most marginal practitioners of it. To date, Harrison had edited a half dozen biographies of poets and two slender volumes of verse: one from the American poet Audr Hein-rich, a venture that had brought the man, as well as Harrison's publishing house, some considerable renown, and the other from the Persian-Canadian poet Vashti Baker, a volume that had slipped so far below the radar screen, it had essentially vaporized itself. Of these books, however, Harrison was proud. Certainly prouder than he was of the various self-help books and thrillers he'd had to edit to help keep his company in the black.
Harrison pulled out the Laski volume and took a seat at a polished cherry reading table. He opened the book. He knew the man's work to be arresting and deceptively simple. Harrison skimmed the volume, looking for poems about women. Although he hadn't consciously realized it at the time, Harrison knew now that he was hoping to find, in the verse, references to Nora. The phrase "wet with water" caught his eye. He read the rest of the poem. It seemed to be about a woman washing her hair while a man watches, thinking about his son watching his own wife wash her hair.
Harrison fanned the pages of the book slowly, scanning the type, looking for key words and lines. It was a trick he'd learned as an editor. If
he suspected a repetition of a word in a text, he could find the first reference in seconds by using this technique. He fanned once again, starting from the back of the book. He saw the word "tongue." He flattened the book on the table.
The poem was entitled "Under the Canted Roof" and was graphic in its sexual details, somewhat more so than Laski's other works. The verse had the feel of reportage. Although Harrison had not read Laski's final collection, the poem seemed like something of a new direction for the man. The woman in the poem was blond, but Harrison had no doubt that Laski was referring to Nora. The narrow thigh; the asymmetrical smile. He thought of Nora's funny half smile.
Harrison closed his eyes, and a kind of prurient jealousy squeezed at him. He had no one to blame but himself. This was what he had unconsciously sought when he'd come into the library, something intimate about the marriage of Nora and Carl Laski. Harrison opened his eyes and read the poem again, as if, hidden among the words, Harrison would discover a detail even more revealing.
Though the poem was about sexuality, there was little joy. Within ecstasy lay the seeds of loss. Was this the glimpse of Nora's marriage Harrison had hoped for?
As Harrison examined the lines again, he remembered an accusation Evelyn had tossed his way during a fight they'd had some six years into their own marriage. He was insulated, she said. He did not know how to love someone else. She meant herself, of course, and Harrison recalled being stung by ithe criticism hurled in the heat of the argument, immediately taken back that evening. For he knew that something he'd thought resilient — his marriage — might now be subject to all sorts of criticism, as if open season had been declared. After Evelyn had left the bedroom, Harrison had lain on the bed, wondering if Evelyn was correct. Had he, somewhere along the line, lost the ability to love another person fully? But then he'd had the thought that his boys were someone elses, and he certainly loved them, and that realization had been immensely reassuring to him. He had even, he remembered, sat up, feeling a kind of pleasure at this vindication.
Harrison closed the book. He wouldn't be able to take it out. He had no library card, no way of obtaining one. He guessed, however, that the bookstore might have a copy of the volume. The town was, after all, a kind of mecca for devotees of Laski.