––––––––
At some point during the night I had fallen asleep. Without any discussion, Jeremy chose to stay over—whether for his comfort or mine, I couldn’t tell. Neither of us ate any dinner, and we immersed ourselves in silent domestic chores, coordinating a polite dance around one another as we straightened the house, swept floors, vacuumed the upstairs carpeting. Whatever solace we hoped to find in these mundane, familiar activities didn’t manifest. My body moved, but I felt like a hollow shell, the life within me withered and turning to dust. Neither of us bothered with niceties or made attempt at conversation. And when we finally worked our way into the bedroom, undressed, and slipped under the covers, I reached for Jeremy, not with any expectation of passion but to soak up physical warmth, responding to some basic primal need that equated warmth with safety; yet, that safety eluded me as well.
Jeremy lay on his back—the way he always slept—and stared out the window that faced the hills, without speaking. Curled on my side, I draped my arm and leg over him, wanting to spill out the details of my fight with my mother. But we’d had too many arguments in this bed, and in recent months this sanctuary of our love had morphed into a battlefield, contaminated with our barbed words that detonated hurtful accusations. I wondered, as I held him there, if the contagion would ever dissipate or if it would taint us the rest of our lives, casting a shroud of discomfort every time we made love—if we ever would again.
Through my hand on his chest, Jeremy’s heartbeat thumped so quietly I could barely feel it. His breathing was shallow. He seemed hardly alive—as if his entire biological system was winding down in entropy. I thought of how some scientists believed that once the universe stopped expanding, it would reverse course and collapse in on itself, imploding in an instant of time—the converse of the Big Bang. Jeremy’s stillness belied something just as portentous, his manner duplicitous and masked. My fear grew as the hours passed. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, but I don’t think I fooled Jeremy, and I don’t think he cared.
In the morning haze, when I uncurled my body amid the tangled covers, I touched Jeremy’s side of the bed. The sheet was cool and the house ominously quiet. I found the bedside clock and was surprised it read nine fifteen. How had I slept so deeply? I hardly felt rested. I made my way to the window and looked down at the driveway.
Jeremy’s truck was gone. I had no idea if he’d be back. Being Thursday, I assumed he had headed to the feed store to work. My back muscles ached from my frenetic activity around the barn yesterday, so I took a scalding hot shower, then forced myself to eat a piece of toast and two fried eggs. Eating did little to calm my fluttery stomach. I kept my distance from the counter, where the postal notice lay beside the phone, but I dared glance over to test my nerve, knowing I’d have to make the trip to the post office at some point and sign for the letter. To my chagrin, the small slip of brown paper was gone.
Before I could run through the meaning of the paper’s disappearance—I had misplaced it, Jeremy had thrown it out, Buster had knocked it to the floor with his curious nose—Jeremy’s truck came barreling up the driveway, sliding to a stop with such abruptness that gravel flew in all directions under a cloud of dust.
Jeremy moved with so much fury that I flung the front door open, afraid he would splinter it with the force of his anger. I instinctively cowered, curling into myself, not knowing what to expect. I was thoroughly acquainted with the magnitude of his sheer energy; just his size alone gave his emotions weight and clout. One look told me he wasn’t angry at me at all, but that did little to relieve my terror.
In a brisk gesture, he slapped a priority mail envelope on the kitchen island counter. He shook his head, at a loss for words. I could tell he’d been railing in his truck, something he told me he did from time to time—screamed at his windshield as he drove, where no one could hear him. His hair was damp, his face beaded with perspiration, even though the morning was cool and foggy. He looked as if he had used up all his words and now nothing would come out of his mouth. I knew he was waiting for me to open the envelope and read what my mother’s business manager had sent us.
I moved cautiously to the counter. Jeremy’s breath came out in spurts through his nostrils, but he stood there, stiff and unmoving. It was apparent we had received more than just a rent notice. I didn’t dare look in his eyes.
I pulled the letter from its sheath. A single sheet of paper. The kitchen silence enwrapped me. Outside, the dogs were roughhousing; the goats clamored for breakfast. The sounds of a normal morning went on beyond the walls of my house, muted, distant, as if the rest of my existence was blocked by some invisible force field. I was underwater again, in that pool, drifting down the concrete slope, staring up at the world through the rippling surface, knowing I was sliding to my doom without anyone noticing. If you scream underwater, can anyone up above hear you?
My hand shook as I held the paper to read it. Just the imposing letterhead with its official businesslike appearance set my gut wrenching. I had to read the scant three paragraphs four times before the words strung together in some sort of coherence. Nouns linked to verbs, triggering the synapses in my brain, but I grasped for some sense of it as if I were translating Latin. Yet, the words were simple and void of legalese. They stated quite plainly that Ruth Sitteroff, out of financial necessity, had sold the property located at 328 Rural Route C to Blake Enterprises. The occupants were to consider this document their thirty-day notice to vacate the premises.
Blake Enterprises. Harv Blake—my mother’s business manager. The occupants were listed by name: Jeremy and Lisa Bolton. They sounded like strangers to me. Thirty days—how long was that?
Vacate. Leave. Move.
My head reeled in denial. This was a joke, right? My mother’s attempt to rattle us into submission, to one-up me for trumping her two days ago. My eyes asked these questions, but when I directed them unspoken to Jeremy, his expression gave me the answer I dreaded. I shook my head almost spastically.
“No. This is wrong. She would never—she can’t do this, can she?” My voice cracked, coming out in broken pieces from a broken heart. I never expected anything like this—never in a million years. There had to a mistake. The letter was sent to the wrong people. The property listed was in error.
Thirty days? To leave?
My mind flashed over the years of labor we had put into our home—the hours compiled beyond my ability to guess. I thought about my dozen residents in the barn. Where would we go? Would I have to find homes for my animals? Visions of packing up boxes and hauling furniture into a big U-Haul truck barraged my mind. I batted each image away as it attacked. They flew at me from all directions, these horrible fractals of my home, my haven and retreat, being dismantled. And then I pictured some people—faceless, shapeless—being handed the key to my front door, a handshake, a smile. A voice saying, “Oh, look, honey, what beautiful roses, and a pond! And I hear frogs—isn’t that quaint?”
I wanted to scream and shatter the pictures, but my voice was gone. Some sudden illness had ripped it from my throat—the same malady that had struck Jeremy. We were in a nightmare, that moment when you have to cry out but can’t. Where you need to flee, but your feet are frozen to the ground. Where you are naked and exposed and everyone can see you and they laugh and you can’t do a damned thing about it.
I heard my mother’s laughter and I covered my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut and found myself falling, falling off a cliff, my feet pedaling for purchase but finding none. I collapsed to the kitchen floor, needing Jeremy to hold me, to gather me up, to tell me he had a plan, had worked it all out. Would make it go away, this madness.
Jeremy’s voice made its way through my gloom. His tone was even. I expected to hear much more—defeat, anger, panic. The sound of his voice chilled my heart, its lack of emotion, something beyond resignation.
“I spoke with that lawyer. Dropped by his office after getting the letter at the post office.” Jeremy paused and looked out the window toward the rose garden. His eyes were vacant, as if he had already put this place, our home, behind him. What I saw frightened me to my core. “He said, at this point, there’s absolutely nothing we can do. We could try . . . in time, to . . .” He gulped in a breath of air and cleared his throat. “Push for some legal action, some remuneration. That, maybe in months or years, we could be reimbursed—”
“But what about this notice, that we have to move? Can’t we refuse? Can’t we—”
“No. We could stall. Wait until we’re evicted. That would buy us a little time.” He turned and faced me, but it seemed he looked past me, to something distant. I almost wanted to follow his gaze, try to see what he was staring at, but I was afraid I’d see what he saw.
“Lisa, it doesn’t matter. Your mother won. I give up.”
“What do you mean, you give up? You’re going to just, what, walk away? Hand her our house on a—”
“Dammit, Lisa! It’s not our house any longer. It never was! This was her plan all along. Why she never let us buy the place, put our names on the title. You just don’t get it, do you?”
I tried to get up from the floor but had no strength. I looked up at my husband, who seemed to tower over me. “Jer, please. We’ve got to try. There has to be something . . .” My throat clamped shut, preventing anything else from coming out. A rock the size of a grapefruit lodged in my throat. I rubbed it to try to ease the pain.
I watched Jeremy take a long look around him. His gaze traveled across the kitchen, out the window, over to the front door. The calm that draped over him alarmed me. I shook uncontrollably, but not a muscle twitched on Jeremy’s body. He was like the living dead from some horror movie.
“That’s it, then. I’m done. I’m outta here.”
Before I had a chance to respond, get my voice working again and force words past the lump in my throat, he was out the front door and in his truck. I yelled at my legs to move, but they didn’t hear me. No one heard me, no one listened. I was screaming at the bottom of the pool, desperate for air, for rescue, and everyone in the world above was going on their merry way, oblivious to the danger I was in, to the few seconds I had left before I drowned.
After some time I got to my feet and stumbled out the front door. Buster and Angel trotted back through the settling dust on the driveway, their faces animated and exuberant after chasing Jeremy’s truck to the street. How could they know that they were soon to be ripped away from their home?
Thirty days? Where would I go? That wasn’t enough time. Jeremy was wrong. My mother would change her mind, back down. Give in. We would refuse to leave. Harv Blake could try to evict us, but we wouldn’t budge. We’d get a lawyer to put together some sort of stop order—something to prevent the eviction until the legal matters were settled. Maybe Jeremy’s lawyer was wrong, unfamiliar with this type of situation. Maybe he specialized in water rights or something irrelevant.
I pictured Harv Blake’s smug face. His beady eyes and bulbous nose. I thought back to the day my mother had been “working” at his place, the night I set the house on fire and my mother didn’t come home for hours. “Harv wouldn’t let me leave,” she said. As if any man could restrain my mother from doing what she wanted.
The word collusion came to mind. What’s done can’t be undone. Macbeth and his wife, whispering plans, murdering one innocent after another. I would be added to the list of vanquished—alongside my father, my brother, my husband. I pictured my mother carving another notch on her belt with a blunt knife and smiling.
I went inside and left a message on Anne’s home answering machine. I needed to talk to someone, but not over the phone. Anne would be at work until five. I asked her to please come right over, as soon as she was able. Anne would be my voice of logic, my clear head. She would have advice, know what I could and couldn’t do. How to proceed. “And should I then presume? And how should I begin?”
I moped the entire day. I could do nothing but wander through my house, letting my hand light on the walls and furniture, but nothing felt solid or familiar. I took the dogs for a walk over the hills, unaware of the temperature, unable to tell if I was cold or hot, uncertain how many miles I walked before I wended my way home with my feet blistered and aching. I fed all the animals and took the little doe, Sassy’s baby, into my lap. She balanced on my legs and butted my hand as I scratched her head. I couldn’t even cry as I thought about finding homes for my charges. Maybe I could get a place to rent with a fenced yard and some shelter. I snorted. How likely was that? It would be hard enough to find a place that would allow dogs, let alone sheep, goats, and a lame horse.
As evening descended, I wondered about Jeremy. Would he come back here or return to Daniel’s? Did I dare call him at work? Had he even gone to work? I pictured him driving, screaming in the car, pounding the dash with his fist, the way he had pounded the wall those few weeks ago, before he moved out. That argument now seemed so long ago—years. I tried to imagine how he felt, what he would do now. Would he sell the store and move back to Montana, leaving me behind? What did he mean by “I’m done. I’m outta here”? Done with me, our marriage? Did he mean here, as in our home, or did his words imply some larger concept that I just couldn’t grasp?
I went into the house. The message light blinked on the answering machine. The first message was from Anne. She was on her way. She noted the time in her message, which meant she’d be arriving shortly. The second message was from Daniel, wondering what was up with Jeremy. My husband had come into work, locked himself in his office briefly, then left the store without a word. Daniel needed to find him, to ask about a purchase order, and did I know how to reach him.
Did I? Apparently, I didn’t. I had no clue how to reach Jeremy—literally or emotionally. I figured Jeremy needed time alone, to sort this all out, if it could be sorted.
I had a sudden image of Raff and Kyle, over at Anne’s house, working on their play adaption of Dante’s Inferno. The two boys would try out scenes on Anne and me, their captive audience. Raff would tell us to hush, that this was serious stuff, but how could we keep straight faces when Raff, dressed in a ridiculous costume made of sheets, spouted lines from The Divine Comedy, the stilted translation reworked into modern slang? And what was with that title, anyway? What was so comedic about nine circles of hell, where all manner of horrors awaited those in the underworld—beatings, burnings, being buried in ice up to your neck, buried headfirst in the ground while your feet roasted in flames? I heard Raff’s voice, but this time the words haunted rather than amused me.
“All hope abandon, ye who enter in.” No problem—done.
Dante was in a crisis. He had strayed from his path and found himself lost in a dark wood. “Death could hardly be more severe,” he noted. After straying down a hill, he realized he had just survived a night of sorrow, that he had endured the pass that never had let any man survive. I pictured Jeremy as Dante, facing the bearded ferryman Charon at the riverbank. The ferryman told Dante and Virgil they would not be permitted to cross—that only dead people were allowed to enter his boat and travel to the other side. And then I heard Jeremy say, “I’m already dead. You must let me cross.”
I shook my head, dispelling these rancid thoughts. My brain was wandering crazy paths in order to avoid reality. I called Daniel’s number and he answered. He told me he hadn’t seen or heard from Jeremy. I asked him to call me if he got word. And then I heard a rumble on the driveway. Anne’s car materialized in the twilight.
Anne pushed Buster down as she got out of her car. For someone with great compassion for mistreated children, she had zero affection for animals. That made no sense to me. But maybe it wasn’t a motherly instinct that made her protective of her state charges. Maybe it was her love of justice and equity that impassioned her. I realized I had never heard her speak longingly for a family of her own. Maybe she had no interest in getting married and having kids. Funny that I didn’t really know how she felt about that.
I could tell from her clothing that she had rushed out of her house to come over. Usually, she never wasted a minute changing out of her work clothes and into comfortable jeans and sneakers. That simple act of loyalty touched my hurting heart.
“What gives?” she asked, studying my face as she approached the front door, where I stood.
All I could do was shake my head. We hugged for a long moment. “Thanks for coming, Anne. I know this is a long way for you to drive—”
She scolded me with her snarl, but I knew it was an attempt to lighten my heavy mood. “Like I have some hot, heavy date on the horizon? Well, even if I did, you know I’d cancel. You look a mess. Where’s Jeremy?”
I sighed and gestured her to come in. While I put some water in the kettle to boil for tea, she made herself at home, rummaging through my fridge and finding a carton of yogurt. I’d never thought anything of it—the way we freely fed ourselves at each other’s homes, but we’d been doing it since kindergarten. It struck me that she seemed more at ease in my house at that moment than I did.
I showed her the letter and she whistled and smoothed back her hair from her forehead. She collapsed into one of the dining chairs and devoured the carton of yogurt while making disapproving grunting noises. The letter had a similar effect on Anne—stole away her words. I waited in desperate anticipation for her to say something, anything, that might give me a shred of hope. She wasn’t a lawyer, but she knew lawyers—plenty of them. And she knew how the court system worked, knew every municipal and superior court judge.
I told her I couldn’t count on Jeremy to battle alongside me, but I was not ready to call it quits. Not without a fight—whatever the cost. What did I have to lose now, at this point? I’d already lost my family’s love—if I ever really had it at all. I grunted in self-condemnation. So much for my altruist endeavor to solve my father’s death—in the hope of bringing my family closer, of rescuing Raff from the clutches of his Jabberwock. I saw now the futility and naivety of my mission.
We spoke in subdued tones for about an hour. Anne looked weary and exhausted as she kicked around ideas with me. She stood to leave a little after nine, assuring me she would bring to bear all the resources at her disposal, and call in favors from friends and coworkers. She tried to sound hopeful and positive, but I knew she was just as befuddled as I. We had just been broadsided by a car coming out of nowhere and were stumbling dazed and injured across a highway, trying to get our bearings. She held me a long time in a bear hug, then wiped her face and drove off. Not a minute had passed, when the phone rang.
I tensed, resisting answering. What if it was my mother—or Harv Blake? Then again, it could be Jeremy. I let it ring two more times, thinking the machine would pick up. I stared at the phone, then watched the recording light come on. I heard my pat instructions to leave a message after the beep.
I didn’t recognize the male voice. “Hello, I’m trying to reach Lisa Bolton. This is Officer Sean Wilson with the Marin County Sheriff’s—”
I grabbed the receiver and clicked off the machine. “I’m Lisa Bolton. Who are—what are you calling about?” I had images of a sheriff’s car zooming up my driveway, telling me I had to get out of my house, that I didn’t live there anymore and had no business being there. I then figured out it was probably another one of those calls for donations—to help fund the extraneous events the local sheriff’s department sponsored. I was in no mood to sit through a pitch about buying tickets for some corny country-western concert. “I’m sorry, could you call back another time? I’m not—”
The voice cut through my speech. “Mrs. Bolton? I need to speak with you about your husband, Jeremy Bolton. Mrs. Bolton?”
I pulled the receiver away and shook my head as if I had water in my ear. I could hear the officer’s voice as I stared at the receiver in my hand. “Mrs. Bolton, are you there? Your husband’s been in an accident—”