It’s seven minutes past noon when I see the car finally pull into the driveway. I look through the curtains and watch her emerge from a not-very-new white Volvo, squinting into the bright winter day, sun hanging high and clear in the sky. I stay at the window, unable to move for a moment as she disappears from view around the front of the house to the door, carrying a laptop bag and a large portfolio. Any moment now, the bell will ring and I will have to face her. The last person to see my best friend alive. I will have to let her in. I close my eyes and take a deep breath and brace myself.
The bell rings loudly, and I move automatically to the door. When I get there, I open it and look at her through the outer glass. She’s wearing a stylish, black wool coat, dark skinny jeans. Her auburn hair lights her face like a sunburst, like a lion’s mane. She is beautiful. Her face is serious but not unfriendly. Since Max’s passing, we have corresponded only via email or on the phone. I volunteered to take over as her thesis advisor. It only felt right. He was my oldest and best friend. She was his star student. And she has been through so much. What happened up in Maine—it was terrible. I cannot imagine how she must feel.
I push the glass door out toward her, a rush of frigid air sweeping into the house.
“Audra,” I say, “come in.”
“President Switzer, hi. Thanks for having me,” she says, her eyes casting around my home. She’s a good sport to have driven all the way from Rockveil, Maine, to my home in Providence, Rhode Island. But we thought it would be best to conduct her thesis defense in person. One-on-one—no full committee. The girl has been through a lot; I have been willing and happy to make such allowances.
“Call me Dana, please,” I tell her, smiling in a way that I hope is warm. Welcoming.
We are quiet as she steps into the entryway and slides the shoes off her feet. The glass door falls shut behind her.
“I can take your coat,” I offer. “There’s a hook right here.” I gesture at the wall to my left.
“Alright,” she says and begins rearranging her things so she can slide it off. “Thank you.” I hang her coat. She then hangs up a lovely, deep-yellow scarf with black tassels on the ends on top of the coat. It feels familiar to me, but I can’t place it. I touch the fabric of the scarf slowly, as if moving under water, as it hangs from the hook. Audra studies me deeply, unflinchingly. I clear my throat and gather myself.
“It’s a lovely piece,” I tell her. She nods her thanks. “I have tea and coffee in here.” I lead her into the sitting room attached to the kitchen. As we walk, I glance over my shoulder and see her looking around the space with the interest most students have in seeing a teacher’s house, scanning for traces of a person above and outside of the one they are familiar with.
Audra sits on the couch before a coffee table set with crackers, cheese, cookies, a sliced pound cake, a pitcher of water, and two glasses. “Help yourself to this. Would you like coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please. Just a splash of milk.”
When I come back, Audra is eating a piece of the pound cake and has poured herself a glass of water. I set down her coffee and my tea. I take a seat in what my wife considers to be her easy chair, to the side of the couch.
“How are you doing?” I ask her, taking on the soothing purr of a therapist without meaning to. She shrugs and sighs; a deep sigh.
“Better. It’s been a tough time. A weird time. It’s a lot,” she responds. “It’s been about four months since everything happened, and sometimes it feels much longer than that. Other times, much shorter.” She shakes her head. It takes her a moment to meet my eyes, but then she does. I don’t see pain in her face. I was expecting to see pain.
“Of course. Of course, Audra.” I nod.
“And I appreciate you being so…flexible. And understanding about my situation. About my wanting to finish up a bit early. I just need to be done, you know?”
“I can completely understand that. There was no reason to be a stickler under such—well, awful—circumstances. If you feel ready, you feel ready.”
“I do.” Confident.
We get down to it soon after, Audra using her laptop to refer to her opening remarks as she talks me through how her focus shifted over the course of her thesis experience.
“When I first started, I was working in these landscapes of the enlarged. Taking everyday items—but ones with significance to me—and blowing them up to a size that intensified their gravitas as well as their visible landscapes. The topography and emotion of things. An apple becomes an overwhelming erotic expression. A lantern becomes a harrowing stand-in for the passage of time. Etcetera.” She takes a sip from her glass of water. “Meanwhile, there are these echoes—voices—within the objects themselves. Voices as objects; found objects.” Up on the easel I’ve brought down from my own studio for her, she points to myriad layered scraps of paper hidden under layers of paint, scrawled words peeking out here, there, in a haunting, whispering way.
Deep within me, something sparks.
“Which creates this interesting texture and also a complicating intermedia component. So, I did a bunch of these. A bunch. But that was all before Max—Professor Durant—died.” Her cheeks flush a little. “After that, I continued to fixate on the inanimate. In this case, the rope.” From her portfolio, she pulls a dramatic painting in whites, beiges, brown, blacks, and oxbloods, the object itself difficult to discern until you let your eyes adjust to the darkness of the palette. There is, indeed, a rope buried in there. “The rope Max used to—the rope Max used,” she settles on.
I feel alarm. Sadness. Sickness for my friend.
She goes on to show me iterations of this painting, one after the other, sometimes speaking, sometimes not. And as she goes along, something odd begins to happen. The rope is no longer a rope. The rope that was a rope is now Max. Somehow. A rope that evokes Max. A Max that evokes a rope. And then the rope that was a rope that became a Max becomes a Max hanging from a tree. It is, and it isn’t. It invokes but does not solidify into something graspable. It makes you conjure the terrible thing yourself. Fill in the blanks. Look what you’ve done. Look what you made.
I clasp my hands tightly to keep them from shaking. She keeps going.
“And then I had more. There was more in me.” I want to tell her to stop. To please stop. No more. But I don’t. I stay quiet. It is agony.
She starts to show me a new series. But a rope isn’t the primary object this time. It’s pair of white gloves in the first, and even the second, but elongated like wide-open plains. Then the white gloves that became plains becomes a deer, then becomes a woman, then becomes a man, a big man, then becomes some sort of insect, becomes a praying mantis.
For a long moment, all my senses evaporate to nothing. My heart pummels me from inside.
Audra has settled into her chair. She waits. Patiently. For questions. Further discussion. But I’m silent. Unable to create words. A smile cracks her face, the gap between her teeth on full display. I watch her reach into her jeans pocket and pull out a folded piece of newspaper. She tosses it at my feet. I swallow hard and slowly reach down and pick it up, afraid of what it might be. I unfold it, the thin paper shaking in my hands.
MARCUS ALVIN PETERS
1963–2018
Greenville—Marcus A. Peters, age 56, went to be with the Lord on October 28, 2018.
My stomach drops to my feet.
Mantis is dead?
Hot anguish and a confusing flood of relief overwhelm my every cell. My eyes skip through the paragraphs. Lived in Greenville his whole life…high school football star…survived by his brother David Peters, sister-in-law Paige Peters, and nephew Lance Peters…passed in a tragic hunting accident…was wearing white gloves…the negligent hunter responsible for Marcus’s death has yet to be apprehended. If you have any information, please call…
I lift my eyes from the obituary.
Audra looks pleased.
“First Moss, now Mantis. Whewww,” she whistles. My blood runs cold hearing the nicknames. Names that I haven’t heard spoken aloud in decades. “Bad run for Lupine Valley alum, huh?” White-hot fear streaks through me. But so does recognition. Who else could it be but her?
The shock of it stiffens me. I forget to breathe.
I look at the curve of her cheek, the shape of her eyes, the outline of her nose.
Eveline.
And Coral. She’s in there. Coral is in there.
Coral is in here—my home.
“I grieved your mom,” I say, voice a broken croak. Audra nods, patronizing. ”What happened to her was terrible—“
“What did happen to my mom?” she asks, her voice low, quiet. A challenge. I feel a subconscious animal fear prickle the length of my back. “I bet you know,” she says now, crossing her arms in front of her. ”You and Max were tight. Have been for decades. Since way back then. If that’s the case, I’m sure you know what happened to my mom.” We look at each other in silence. I swallow. My shaky hand reaches down for my water glass, nearly topples it. Then I manage to grasp it and take a few birdlike sips. Audra watches patiently.
“I—I didn’t find out the whole truth until much later. I was the one who found her, you know. When they came back, and she wasn’t with them—“ My throat feels so tight. “I went and looked for her.” Tears are crowding my eyes.
“Oh, I know, Junie.” Her voice is controlled, so controlled. Like she’s speaking to a panicking child. Junie. Jesus Christ. “I’m not saying you did anything too terribly wrong. But those other two?” She gives me a knowing look. ”Probably got what was coming to them.” A smile crinkles her face. I think of Ashley Pelletier. I think of the note Coral pinned to my door. My afternoon in the library, squinting at the microfiche. A baby strapped to my chest.
Eveline. Audra.
I press my fingers to my lips, sobs wanting to break inside of me. “You’ve seen Animus.” Her voice is gentler now. Almost sad. “I have, too. That’s my mom. You must know that.” I close my eyes. I know the painting well. The piece that launched Max. As soon as I saw it, as soon as he showed me, I knew. We didn’t say it out loud, but I knew.
The door leading in from the garage bumps open, and we both jump. We look in the direction, on edge.
“It’s alright. That’s my wife,” I tell her, clearing my throat, blinking my glassy eyes. I need to gather myself. “We’re in here, Zeph,” I call to her. She’ll always be Zephyr to me. No longer has pink hair—it’s gray now. But the nose stud remains. We found our way back to each other twenty years after we split. Together now for ten. We kept our promise.
“Sorry, sorry for the ruckus,” she says sheepishly, wheeling around the corner, looking fresh and windblown. “I’m Zanibou. But I go by Zephyr most of the time.” Audra looks surprised, almost starstruck. She plasters a warm enough smile on her face, gets to her feet and shakes hands with Zephyr.
“Sorry to interrupt—I know you’re in the middle of a thesis defense. Pretend like I’m not even here!” She smiles brightly, gives me a quick peck on the cheek, and then recedes upstairs with her phone and a shopping bag.
“Mom…left a metric ton of little notes behind.” Audra swallows. “She mentions a Zephyr—your girlfriend.” There is wonder in her voice.
“That’s her,” I say, a genuine smile coming to my face, some of the tension having been broken by Zephyr coming home, interrupting our rhythm. “She wrote those little poems all the time. Pinned them everywhere. All over the place.” The intervening years have softened the edges of those memories, made the scary or mean or frantic ones less acute. I remember more of the playful ones. The ones she more often left for Moss. For Max. We sit in silence for a long moment. “So where do we go from here?” I breathe, my overwhelming sense of disorientation and shock returning to me.
“We graduate me. And we end the story here, today,” she says. She is asking me to look the other way about what I know. Just as I did then. And she knows I will. Because no one ever really changes.