We ate dinner shortly after that, then Peter went to the den to watch television while Marie and I cleaned up the kitchen.
“What exactly are you working on now?” she asked.
“A library for a little town in Massachusetts,” I answered.
She looked surprised. “And that’s what kept you at the office tonight?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Mr. Lowe has a personal interest in the project. It’s for his hometown, and so I want it to be right before he sees it.”
The real reason for my being late in coming home swam into my mind, and I saw Rebecca’s face staring at me questioningly. I remembered the request she’d made for more information about my father’s life, the chronology she was trying to construct, her interest in his army records.
“Do you remember when Aunt Edna died, and we went to her house, and found that box of papers that had belonged to my father?”
Marie nodded.
“You took it out of the car when we got back,” I reminded her. “Do you remember what you did with it?”
“It’s in the basement,” Marie answered. “I wrote ‘Somerset’ on the side of it. I think it’s on the top shelf.” She looked at me curiously. “Why?”
“I thought I might look through it,” I answered. “I never have.”
Marie smiled half-mockingly. “You’re not gearing up for a midlife crisis, are you, Steve?” she asked. “You know, trying to get in touch with yourself, going back over things?” The smile broadened. “Reliving your ‘significant life experiences,’ that sort of thing?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m just curious about what’s in the box.”
My answer appeared to satisfy her. She turned to another subject, something about Peter wanting to try out for the school basketball team, and not long after that she joined him in the den. I could hear them laughing together at whatever it was they were watching.
I walked down the corridor to the stairs that led to the basement. The box was exactly where Marie had said it would be, on the top shelf, the word SOMERSET marked in large, block letters. I dragged it down and carried it back upstairs to my own small office.
I put the box on my desk and opened it. Inside, I could see a disordered mound of papers. They were all that remained of my father, a scattering of letters, documents, a few photographs. I doubted that there could be anything among them that Rebecca would find useful.
I started to reach for the first of the papers when I glanced up and saw Marie at my office door.
She was looking at the box. “Well, you sure didn’t waste any time finding it,” she said.
“It was where you said it would be.”
She smiled. “Peter wants you to come into the den.”
“Why?”
“So we can all watch his favorite show together.”
I didn’t move.
“You got home very late tonight,” Marie added. “I think he sort of missed you.” She stretched her hand toward me. “Come on,” she said softly.
I rose slowly, reluctantly, and went with her. We walked down the corridor together. In the family room, I watched television with my wife and son, talking occasionally, laughing when they laughed, but only out of duty. The force that had once compelled me to such small acts of devotion was already losing speed.
We left the house at around ten the next morning. The drive north toward the Massachusetts border was along winding, country roads. Peter sat in the back, working with a portable video game, while Marie leaned against the door on the passenger side, the window open, the rush of air continually blowing through the red highlights in her hair.
Was she beautiful?
Marie would insist that I say no. She would insist that I admit that it was beauty which formed the grim core of what happened in the end, her own beauty either faded or familiar, Rebecca’s either new or in full bloom. She would insist that it was desire which drove me forward, desire alone, since, as she would say to me that final night, “It was never love …”
We arrived at her parents’ small country house only an hour or so after leaving Old Salsbury. It was a medium- sized, wooden house, painted white, with a large, wraparound porch. In his retirement, Carl had taken up furniture making, and in typical style, had overdone the labor, making far more plain wooden rocking chairs than were strictly needed. As I pulled into the unpaved driveway, I could see several of them on the front porch or scattered randomly about the lawn, rocking eerily when a strong burst of wind swept down from the mountains.
For all the abundance of empty chairs, Carl was sitting on the front steps of the house when we pulled up. Marie had called her mother earlier that morning and let Amelia know that we were coming, but from the pleasantly surprised look on Carl’s face, I realized that she’d never gotten around to telling him to expect us.
He rose slowly, pulling himself up by one of the wooden banisters which bordered the stairs, then waved broadly as we all got out of the car. He was a tall man, with narrow shoulders and long, thin legs. He wore a pair of light brown flannel work pants and a short-sleeved checkered shirt. From a distance he appeared to have a thick head of snowy white hair, but up close, his pink scalp easily showed through it. I’d first met him only a month or so after meeting Marie, the two of us driving up from New York City. He’d tried his best to be light-hearted that evening, but even then, he’d had the aging factory worker’s sense of the bulkiness of things, their ironclad inflexibility.
Marie made it to him first, pressing herself into his arms, then kissing him lightly on the cheek.
