Sophie recalled this exchange. And Sophie recalled a single incident involving her and Kolk, long-forgotten by her as one might forget a bad dream, or a mouthful of something with a very bad taste.
Or maybe it was excitement Sophie felt. And the dread, that accompanies such excitement.
Matt hadn’t known. Sophie was reasonably sure that none of their friends had known. For Kolk wouldn’t have spoken of it.
They’d been on a stairway landing — the two of them alone together — the first time they’d been alone together for possibly Sophie had followed Kolk out onto the stairs for some reason long forgotten but recalled as urgent, crucial. And Sophie had reached out to touch Kolk’s arm — Kolk’s arm in a sleeve of his denim jacket — for Kolk was upset, to the point of tears — his face flushed and contorted in the effort not to succumb to tears — and so Sophie who wasn’t yet Matt Quinn’s young wife but the girl who lived in a graduate women’s residence but spent most of her time with Matt Quinn in his apartment on Henry Street reached out impulsively to touch Jeremiah Kolk — meaning to comfort him, that was all — and quickly Kolk pushed Sophie away, threw off her hand and turned and rapidly descended the stairs without a backward glance and that was the last time she’d seen him.
Sophie had been conscious of having made a mistake, a blunder — following after Matt’s friend, who was no longer Matt’s friend. Why she’d behaved so recklessly, out of character — why she’d risked being rebuffed or insulted by Kolk — she could not have said.
Of course, it was Matthew Quinn she’d loved. It was Matt she’d always loved. For the other, she’d felt no more than a fleeting/disquieting attraction.
After they were married and moved away from Madison, Wisconsin, and were living in New Haven, Connecticut, in the early 1970s — Matt was enrolled in the Yale Law School, Sophie was working on a master’s degree in art history — rumors came to them that Jeremiah Kolk had been badly injured in an accidental detonation of a “nail bomb” in a Milwaukee warehouse.
Or had Kolk been killed. He and two others had managed to escape the devastated warehouse but Kolk died of his injuries, in hiding in northern Wisconsin.
No arrests were ever made. Kolk’s name was never publicly linked to the explosion.
All that was known with certainty was that Jeremiah Kolk had never returned to study classics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, after he’d dropped out in 1969. Long before the bombing incident he’d broken off relations with his family. He’d broken off relations with his friends in Madison. He’d disappeared.
Years later when they were living in New Jersey, one morning at breakfast Sophie saw Matt staring at a photograph in the
The photograph hadn’t been of Kolk of course but of a stranger years younger than the living Kolk would have been, in 1989.
Her April plans! Now the
Thinking
These were reasonable thoughts. There was the wish to believe that these were reasonable thoughts.
From Newark Airport she would fly to Minneapolis and from Minneapolis she would take a small commuter plane to Grand Rapids and there Kolk would meet her and drive her to his place — not
By his reckoning it would take no more than three hours to drive this distance. If weather conditions were good.
Sophie asked if weather conditions there were frequently
Kolk said guardedly that there was a “range” of weather. His jeep had four-wheel drive. There wouldn’t be a problem.
Several letters had been exchanged. Sophie had covered pages in handwriting, baring her heart to Jeremiah Kolk as she’d never done to another person. For never had she written to her husband, always they’d been together.
Kolk had been more circumspect. Kolk’s hand-printed letters were brief, taciturn yet not unfriendly. He wanted Sophie to know, he said, that he lived a
In practical terms, Kolk worked for the Sourland Mountain State Preserve. He’d lived on a nine-acre property adjacent to the Preserve for the past seven years.
Speaking with Kolk over the phone was another matter. Sophie heard herself laughing nervously. For Kolk’s voice didn’t sound at all familiar — it was raw, guttural, oddly accented as if from disuse. Yet he’d said to her — he had tried to speak enthusiastically — “Sophie? That sounds like you.”
Sophie laughed nervously.
“Well. That sounds like
After years of estrangement, when each had ceased to exist for the other, what comfort there was in the most banal speech.
They fell silent. They began to speak at the same time. Sophie shut her eyes as she’d done as a young girl jumping — not diving, she’d never had the courage to dive — from a high board, into a pool of dark-glistening lake water. Thinking
Kolk had invited Sophie to visit him and to stay for a week at least and quickly Sophie said three days might be more practical. Kolk was silent for a long moment and Sophie worried that she’d offended him but then Kolk laughed as if Sophie had said something clever and riddlesome — “Three days is a start. Bring hiking clothes. If you like it here, you will want to stay longer.”
Sophie’s eyes were still shut. Sophie drew a deep breath.
“Well. Maybe.”
They would fall in love, Sophie reasoned. She would never leave Sourland.
She wanted to ask Kolk if he lived alone. (She assumed that he lived alone.) She wanted to ask if he’d been married. (She assumed that he’d never been married.) She wanted to ask how far his
Instead — boldly — impulsively as she’d reached out to touch Kolk years ago when they’d both been young — Sophie asked Kolk what she might bring him.
Quickly Kolk’s voice became wary, defensive.
“‘Bring me’ —? What do you mean?”
She’d blundered. She’d said the wrong thing. With a stab of dismay she saw Kolk — the figure that was Kolk — at the other end of the line in remote northern Minnesota — a man with a shadowy half-hidden face and soot-
