21
Sunday, 5 July
Day Fourteen
Earlier in the week at Reception Point, Kate had sent a prepared email to Clara, careful not to let anyone else in the van see.
Today, Kate’s third Sunday in Newfoundland, at the best cafe in Springdale—the closest town to Andre Hjem—she enjoyed a generous lunch while taking care of personal as well as administrative tasks. Jorunn sat across from her, quietly doing the same. Jess’s Cafe welcomed the Andre Hjem team’s frequent hours-long stays; the archaeologists tipped well.
The first two weeks had flashed by. Kate had forgotten how fast paced the field season was, especially for staff. The work, including the staff’s regular jobs, never stopped. Ben was almost always on his laptop.
But however busy and exhausted they were, there were pockets of time, like today, that people carved out for themselves. Kate and Jorunn drove to town alone in Erik’s SUV and made the day one big friend date. Mostly a working date, but they also did some necessary shopping, had a coffee by Halls Bay, and chatted about anything but work.
As Kate ate her lunch, Clara replied.
Kate stifled a groan.
Clara didn’t sign off on the email, hadn’t for years. Their email chains were an ongoing conversation, layer upon layer, going back fifteen years but sporadic, only updating when one of them was away and had something interesting to share or something to whine about.
Kate took her time typing a response.
She took a picture of the cafe, then a selfie, then stretched her arm out to take a photo of both her and a smiling Jorunn. Next, she attached photos of sunrises, scenery, and the huevos rancheros Erik had prepared for the entire camp one morning.
Kate had no photos of her and Ben together, nor any of him smiling or at rest. Just work photos. Fixing the sifter, examining an artifact, and a candid one she’d snuck during the hike. In all of them, he was either scowling or expressionless. She needed to remedy this lack of happy photos of him.
Sent.
Jorunn laughed, winning Kate’s attention. The woman was absolutely gorgeous, especially when she smiled the way she was smiling now, typing away at her laptop.
“It can’t possibly be work making you smile like that,” Kate said.
“Hm?” The woman looked up, the corners of her mouth and eyes creased with delight. “Oh, no. My wife, Sylvi, sent a photo of our dogs.”
Jorunn turned the laptop around, and Kate was offered a view of two puppies with speckled bellies, big floppy ears upturned, and paws in the air. A dark-haired, pale woman lay on the floor with them.
“Cute,” Kate confirmed.
Jorunn turned her laptop back around. “You have pets?”
“No. But maybe someday.”
“I have been telling Esben to adopt a cat. He loves cats. But he would need a sweet one, one to sit on his lap. The only problem is he comes here for the summer. But while he is home, I think a cat would be good for him.”
“Pets are supposed to be comforting. Good for the mood. Ben did mention he was having problems. His daughter and Lina.”
Jorunn hummed and nodded as she ate a fry. “He has had a difficult few years. Family problems hurt more than the rest. Plus his back thing.”
“How’s your back doing?”
“Fine, mostly. It is my knees that bother me. Erik’s neck. Alex, he is young, so no complaints, but give him time.”
Kate laughed. “Every part of me has its moment of pain these days. My knees—crackle-pop.”
“Then it is good you are doing yoga.”
The cafe door opened, and in walked Sam with a small crowd of students, trailed by Ben and Alex. As Kate caught Ben’s attention and waved him over, her laptop chimed with the arrival of a new email. When she saw who it was from, her smile disappeared.
—
The wooden chair was much too small for Esben. The posts at the back curved around too tightly, jamming into his hips, and he spilled over the borders of the seat. He hated this otherwise excellent cafe for this reason, but Alex had spotted Kate and Jorunn and suggested they lunch there.
He had quickly and purposely taken the seat next to Jorunn. As much as he would have liked to sit next to Kate, he felt especially large in chairs such as these and wanted to be exposed as little as possible. At least from this angle, Kate couldn’t see his lower half, and he could look at her without it being weird.
“Look!” Jorunn said, turning her laptop for him and Alex to see. “Puppies!”
Kate was reading something on her own laptop, scrolling. After a waitress came to take his and Alex’s orders, Kate’s neutral expression crashed. She snapped her laptop closed, stared at it, then looked across the table at Jorunn to ask her, “Do you want to go back to camp?”
“So soon?” Jorunn was still eating and smiling at puppy photos.
Kate looked like she was ready to spontaneously combust.
“I will drive back with you,” Esben said. Kate stared at him. To Jorunn, he said, “We will take the SUV, leave the van with you?” She nodded absentmindedly. “Right. I will change my order to takeaway.”
As they left the cafe, Kate was silent, lifeless—a husk. The difference from her typical self was staggering. When she got into Erik’s SUV, her gaze fixed onto the dashboard. Esben almost asked if she was alright but stopped himself. She wasn’t. And he worried she would be like Frida or Lina and answer with Fine, thus ending the conversation.
An idea surfaced. He found the auxiliary audio cable and handed it to Kate. She accepted it.
“Play music,” he said. “If you want. Or a podcast? Whatever you like.”
She looked at him blankly, then plugged the jack into her phone and poked at the screen. A song blasted from the SUV speakers, scratchy electric guitars and heavy drums, jarring him. He turned down the volume a tick.
The song quickly grew on him. He tapped out its rhythm against his thigh and imagined how Kate, on a better day, might have done the same. As it was, he let her inwardly rage. She needed to be alone. And so, he left her alone.
—
My faves on shuffle, Kate thought. Suck it, Nikki.
Between bites of his sandwich, Ben had taken to lightly drumming against his right thigh. Now and then, he bobbed his head in time to the music, particularly when he chewed. And, particularly, when the one country song in the mix came on.
What had ever happened to his father’s cowboy hat?
She looked away, at the roadside foliage blurring by. Could Ben sense her mood? The depths of her anger and violation? Her self-worth in a futile tailspin?
Selfish. Anxious. Clingy. Whiny. Messy.
She turned up the music volume.
Selfish, anxious, clingy, whiny, messy. Selfish anxious clingy whiny messy!
Her chest tightened. Her brow prickled.
“Kate?”
Drowning, sinking into the sea.
“Kate.”
She leaned forward and gasped for air, choking on sobs.
Music off. Tick of the indicator. Pulling over, parked. Hand on her shoulder.
She held the door handle and reached for Ben, clutched him.
“Breathe through your nose, Kate. That’s it. You’re alright. Breathe, hold for ten, exhale.”
He breathed deep, controlled breaths with her. Slower, slower, until the dizzying darkness subsided. Her hand gripping the door fell to her thigh. Her hand gripping Ben remained, and he covered it with his. When she looked at him, his brow was knotted, his mouth tight. He looked terrified.
“I’m okay,” she whispered before pulling away. “Thank you.”
Ben had a doubtful glint in his eye. Doubt that she was okay. Doubt that she was in any way normal. But he nodded, then returned to the highway.
Kate turned the music back on. Chaos and anger were comforting.
When a less angry song came on, Ben hummed. Just two notes at the beginning, as if he’d recognized it. Her gaze settled on his right hand, at the thumb tapping out a rhythm. She focused on the tattoo on his forearm, the roots branching out from the Tree of Life, knotting together stylized animals and runes. To the side of the deer was a pink mark, an indentation the size and shape of her thumbnail.
“Is your arm okay?” she asked, rubbing her palm over the wound she’d given him.
He flexed his forearm. “I will survive.”
—
Esben’s arm hurt, the shallow fingernail wounds stinging. Kate couldn’t see the crescents on the underside of his forearm carved into the trunk of the World Tree. He hoped the symbol had helped ground her.
“Thank you for driving,” she said.
“Of course.”
A song he didn’t recognize began to play. Smooth but peppered with bouts of anger. He liked it.
“I like this,” he said, pointing at the radio. “The song.”
“It’s Aerosmith.” Kate’s voice was soft and far away as she retreated into herself again.
And he had another idea.
“There is a place at camp,” he said. “A copse on a hillside. Not far, but removed. Far enough to be alone. Nice view of the lake. I go there often.”
“You like to be alone often?”
He nodded. “Need to, sometimes. Only Jorunn knows where it is. I will show you, if you like.”
“You’d share your sanctuary with me?” she asked, her lips upticked in a teasing half-smile.
He returned his gaze to the road. “You seem in need of a sanctuary.”
Quietly, she said, “Okay.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence, save for Kate’s music. When they arrived at camp, Esben retrieved his walking stick and a water bottle, then they began the short, easy hike to his hideaway.
This view of the serene lake valley had always calmed him. Occasionally he would see the local wildlife from afar. Birds and caribou, foxes, once a black bear. He liked to imagine living here as a settling Viking—this hill might have made an excellent sentry post.
The trees offered substantial shade, and the moss and grass were cool despite the warm, sunny day. Esben leaned against his favorite tree, one standing at a slight angle, enough so that sitting didn’t discomfort him.
Kate brushed her palms across the trunks of birches and evergreens, scratched at their bark with her fingernails. He recognized the internal turmoil she was no doubt going through. A rejected grant, perhaps, or departmental funding issues. Or worse.
Existing in the same space as others who didn’t know you were secretly aching to cry, scream, die was torture. And because Kate was in pain, it might not have been safe for her to be alone.
In time, she settled next to him, resting her elbows on her knees. Esben missed being able to sit like that.
He hoped she would finally say what was troubling her, but instead, she handed her phone to him with an email displayed.
Subject: Hey. Sender: Marissa.
Esben’s gut tightened, and his ears grew hot. How could this Marissa person think an email like this was helpful? He set the phone on the grass between him and Kate as she hugged her knees, rocking gently back and forth.
Seeing similar words that Lina had said to him, one after another…it hurt. But this was about Kate, not him. She was hurting here and now. His pain, the bulk of it, was in the past. But he had been where Kate was, more or less, and he was determined to help her through this.
Help. Something he hadn’t had but also hadn’t sought.
“Who is Marissa?” he asked.
“Nikki’s closest friend.” Her voice was heavy and nasal from crying. “I thought she and I were friends, too.” She looked at him. “Did I tell you what happened?”
“No.”
She nodded, then redid her ponytail. “I’d been called up to northern Colorado to help the FBI with skeletons someone found.”
“Forensic archaeology.”
“Yeah.” She ran her fingers through her ponytail, caught a snag, combed it out. “I stayed in a hotel there. While I was away, Nikki never returned my texts. When I got home, she wasn’t there. The door… My key didn’t work. It was raining…” She curled into herself and took a shaking breath. “Nikki put all my stuff into storage. I don’t know where she went.”
“And I suppose she has stopped communicating with you.”
“Nothing.” Kate sounded small and distant, though she sat only an arm’s length away. “This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Being discarded, I mean. The list—” She laughed, sniffled. “The list is new, though.” She wiped away a tear with the back of her fingers. “In high school, I had these friends. We would play games together. Mainly Dungeons & Dragons, this role-playing—”
“I know D&D.”
“Yeah?”
The look in her eyes was hopeful. He nodded.
“For two years,” she said, “we played every other weekend. During our senior year, we kept rescheduling. I found out through a friend that they weren’t rescheduling anything. They’d been playing the whole time without me for weeks. I never confronted them. Didn’t matter. We all graduated, moved on. Turned out, there was a rumor about me going around high school, and I guess that’s what led to them dumping me.”
“What rumor?”
“That I was gay. Apparently, that wasn’t such a cool thing to be in high school in the 90s, even in Greenfield, Massachusetts. But I didn’t realize or admit I was attracted to women until college. Guess others figured it out before I did.”
He had no idea Kate had struggled with her sexuality. “I’m sorry that happened,” he said.
She sniffled and wiped her forearm across her nose. “Then, in grad school, in London, a lot of the students in my cohort started to ignore me in class or shoot down my ideas. I felt, I dunno, put in my place or devalued. Invisible. I remember feeling stupid. Eventually, I just stopped talking in class. I did my work, in a group if I had to, but I wasn’t part of anything anymore, didn’t hang out with anyone aside from my partner at the time. I’d been pushed away again by people I thought were friends.” She rested her chin on her knee. “I never did figure out why that happened. Something I did, something I said. Maybe I was the asshole.”
Self-blame. It hurt to learn that Kate was experiencing this as well.
“I should’ve expected this to happen, for whatever I had with Nikki to self-destruct.” She grabbed her phone. “I thought I was good at noticing the moment a relationship dies, like in a game of Scrabble or chess when you realize it’s all over and there’s nothing you can do but bow out. I started to see that with friends, so I would back off, give them space. Because there’s something about me…” She huffed. “All my relationships have an expiration date. So I wait for that day to arrive—a way to avoid being overly heartbroken, I guess.”
Esben’s shoulders strained against the weight of regret and guilt. Had he let his and Kate’s friendship expire? Did she believe it was her fault?
“Am I really this awful?” She stared at her phone, at the email. “Is that who, what I am? Am I manipulative? Do I grate on people so much that I become this disposable, toxic person? Hell, I should ask Clara.”
“Who is Clara?”
“Friend. Colleague at Boulder. She studies misogyny and sexual predation, its presence in academia.”
“Wow. I like Clara.”
Kate smiled. “I guess you could say she’s my closest friend. For over a decade now. Maybe my only close friend, aside from her wife.”
Esben was grateful that Kate had at least one good friend, but chided himself—it would have been so easy to stay connected with her online. But at the conference in Austin, with temptation edging in, he had forced himself to keep a distance even digitally. And then he had shut nearly everyone out.
Kate let her phone slump to the grass between them, and he picked it up. He considered what he could or should say, then read through the email again.
“Kate,” he began carefully, “I don’t think anyone, or most anyone, deserves to be left like that—without explanation. That is not how relationships work.” His mouth went dry, and he swallowed hard. “Even friendships,” he added. “And, no, you aren’t awful or toxic. Everyone has something about them that others don’t like. No one is loved or hated by everyone across the board. And perhaps you have some faults. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.”
“Selfish,” she said. “I keep thinking about that. Worry about it.”
“You aren’t selfish.” He set the phone down. “Not that I have seen. I heard the same from Lina.”
“Selfish? You?” She scoffed. “Hardly.”
“I was selfish for eating food she claimed to pay for despite me doing most of the shopping. Selfish for trying to get Frida interested in archaeology or history or geology by giving her books on the subjects. Selfish for being away for work, and yet I didn’t work enough or have a ‘real’ job. Playing in sand, she called it. It was an impossible and unfair standard.”
“Fuck’s sake. Of the two of us, Ben, you’re by far the least selfish.”
“And yet here you are, helping me for the summer.”
Of course, his reason for inviting Kate to Andre Hjem had been somewhat selfish.
“Everyone is a little bit selfish,” he said. “Knowing their own value and not breaking themselves for another. Perhaps, sometimes, someone calling another selfish means they themselves won’t compromise. I think when you do not like someone, whatever the reason, anything they do, big or small, will be an annoyance. Just as when you do like someone…” He settled his nerves with a deep breath and stared at his hands. “Those things might make you like them more.”
“I think Nikki didn’t like me at all. The real me. Wanted me to be someone different.”
“I wonder the same about Lina.”
“But you were with her for so long.”
“Thirteen years.”
“And you loved her? Despite differences?”
He sighed through his nose. “I did. Very much.”
Kate curled into herself. “I shouldn’t have been with Nikki. I think I stayed because I wanted to be in a relationship.” Her voice became muffled by her knees. “Did Lina write you a list?”
His left wrist itched. He scratched it, then clenched his right hand to stop himself. He released the tension by grabbing at grass, ripping it out.
“No. Not a list. But there were words. A lot of what you mentioned. I felt devalued. But I learned from therapy that you can’t control what others think about you, only what you think about yourself and others. This is easy to say, though. Not so easy to do.”
“You went to therapy?”
“For a while, yes.”
Kate tugged at the tongue of her right sneaker. “I should go to therapy again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. After my parents died, I went to bereavement counseling. Not the same, but this keeps happening—being dumped. I need help to understand why.” She turned to him. “Do I talk down to people? Correct them when they’re wrong?”
“You are an educator. I haven’t seen you be rude about it.”
He looked at the tattoo on his right arm, at his guardian eagle atop the World Tree, at Níðhöggr nibbling at Yggdrasil’s roots. He remembered Lina crying, laying guilt onto him.
“Nikki may have truly felt like she was wronged by you,” he said. “Those feelings are hers. Just like Lina felt wronged by me—I cannot tell her that she wasn’t, even if I disagree. Since Nikki will not talk to you about it, it is difficult to defend yourself, to counter her claims. But all I know is what I see, and I see that you are a good person.”
Birds overhead chirped up a storm, then moved on in a fluttering flourish. A breeze swept over Kate’s ponytail, and shorter wisps danced until the breeze passed.
“Delete it for me,” she said, her gaze at her feet. “The email.”
“You are sure?”
“I’ve already studied it. Tried to memorize it. I know if I could, I would obsess over it. Delete it for me. Please. From the inbox and the trash.”
He watched her, waited for her to change her mind, then picked up the phone. Seconds later, the email was gone. He turned the screen off and returned the phone. When she took it, she let it tumble the small distance to the ground and grasped his hand.
The sudden touch came as a shock, just as her touches always did. His next breaths came as ragged huffs and he almost pulled away, but she had curled her fingers around his. Their clasped hands came to rest on the grass between them. And Esben, letting go of all reservations, caressed her with his thumb.
Another breeze rustled the boughs above as Kate watched the lake.
“You’re right,” she said, not pulling away. “This is a nice spot.” Then, she did pull away. But not abruptly. Politely, as if leaving his space before wearing out her welcome. “Play some music?” she said, voice shaking. “Something quiet.”
He played her one of his favorites.