Lifelines: Kate's Story (3 page)

“Don’t
push me. I’m not ready.”

Her
friend and partner studied her soberly before answering. “I’ll take the client,
but only because it’s time you did something other than counseling and working
on David’s book.”

“The
book’s finished. I dropped it off at the Museum this morning.”

“Did
you talk to Penny?”

“She
wasn’t there.”

“You
avoided her. You’re avoiding everything these days, especially talking about
David. You need to rejoin the human race, Kate. I’ve got tickets for the
Boundary Bay Players’ performance Saturday night. If you want me to take your
client, you’ll come with me, and you’ll laugh at the funny bits.”

“Sarah...”

“I
mean it. You come, or I won’t take your referral.”

“What
if I don’t laugh at the funny parts?”

“Fake
it if you have to. Crawl out of that rut before you get washed down the drain.”

K
ate sat in
her driveway in the Subaru David had bought for her 45th birthday, a plastic
grocery bag of milk and eggs in the back seat. She’d bought the groceries and
she’d deposited Jennifer’s six hundred dollars. Time to go inside and prowl the
hardwood floors while Socrates watched critically.

Three
weeks ago her new client, Rachel Hardesty, had visited a clinic to vacuum her
baby away. Kate thought of David, dead six months; of the baby they’d named
Michael, too tiny to live. She wanted to hate Rachel for having a choice, for
discarding life when everyone Kate loved had been torn away.

She
shoved the car door open. Treetops overhead arched in response to a breeze Kate
couldn’t feel, as if dancing to the music of trucks and heavy machinery coming
from the property at the far end of Taylor Road.

Last
week the trees had echoed with the whine of Barton’s Well Drilling rig.
Presumably they found water, because the drillers packed up after a day and
left the hammer-and-nail men in residence. Once, she would have made nightly
walks to the construction site to monitor progress on the new house. Now, she
couldn’t bring herself to care.

Inside
the house, she pushed play on her message machine and heard Penny’s bright
voice. “Kate, I’m sorry I missed you today when you brought in David’s book.
I’m taking it home with me—I’ve been looking forward to this for so long. Give
me a call and we’ll get together over lunch one day next week.”

Penny,
eighty-one years old, twice widowed, the moving force of the local historical
society. Although Kate had lunched with her once a month for over a decade,
she’d been avoiding Penny ever since David’s death.

She
deleted the message, but the light still flashed. Kate pulled out the pins that
held her shoulder-length hair and dropped them on the counter. Next message.

“Kate,
it’s Mom. Call me as soon as you get home.”

Before
she dialed, she would take Socrates for a walk.

She
collected Socrates’ leash and found him inside his fence, a listless golden
lump who didn’t look up when she said his name. When she grabbed his collar and
pulled, he resisted. He wanted David, but he finally agreed to plod ahead of
her down the sloping driveway, oblivious to the construction racket.

Thirty
years ago, David’s father had subdivided these five hilltop acreages from the
family farm, giving his own surname to the new road he built. When he retired
to Hawaii, he sold his farm and gave one of the Taylor Road properties to
David, his only child. The rest of the lots remained empty, either because the
economy took a dive, or because people didn’t want twenty-acre parcels three
miles inland from Madrona Bay.

David
and Kate had moved into their new house after Kate finished her masters’ degree
in Seattle. She was pregnant with Jennifer by then, and David spent the next
four months trying not to be jumpy every time she got behind the wheel of a
car.

Now
Socrates ambled beside her towards the setting sun, as if he knew the walk
wasn’t a treat, but an attempt to escape the house. It usually took about two
years to come to terms with the death of a loved one. Usually. About. As if
David were a one, instead of husband, lover, friend.

Kate
Taylor could no longer navigate her way between memories and reality to wrap
her mind around tomorrow. She tried to visualize counseling herself. As client,
she would sit in the corner chair, her legs drawn up, arms wrapped around to
make a human ball. 

“I’m
stuck in my own life,” she would announce.

What
would it look like if you were free?

I
don’t know! I didn’t sign up for this. I want out.

Out
of what, Kate?

Socrates
stopped in the road and planted his broad rump on the gravel. Kate thought of
the suicide protocol forms in her filing cabinet.

Suicide
is something helpless people do.

Truth
was always simple, yet too slippery to be bound by words.

Make
a change. Do something different. Today.

Like
what? Talk to the dog? He blames me for not being David.

Then
talk to the dog.

“We
need to do something different, Socrates.”

Socrates
stared at her from under droopy eyelids. He didn’t agree? Didn’t care?

He
began plodding towards the end of the road.

David
might be alive if I’d come when he first called.

Stop
it, Kate. You know better.

Do
I?

She
heard an engine fire up somewhere out of sight and called Socrates to heel.
Five-thirty, the northern sun low on the horizon. The construction workers must
be finished for the day.

A
dusty blue truck appeared, a baseball cap shadowing the driver’s face. A hand
waved. Kate felt exposed, and her lips wouldn’t reply with a smile. Perhaps she
needed a baseball cap to hide behind.

At
the end of the road, Socrates ambled towards the single red pick-up truck that
waited beside a pyramid of gravel. Muddy streaks marred the Madrona Bay
Contracting sign on the truck’s door.

Beyond
the truck, a man’s silhouette rose from a labyrinth of wooden concrete forms.
Kate’s lips parted to call Socrates, but even without saying the words, she
knew the dog would ignore her.

Do
something different, the smallest thing.

I
can’t smile.

Socrates
moved closer to the workman’s silhouette, his golden rump swaying with each
step as if daring her to follow him.

What’s
so difficult, Kate?

She
could sit in a room with Rachel Hardesty and ask intimate questions she didn’t
want the answers to despite her hostility for Rachel ... yet she couldn’t follow
Socrates across sixty feet of gravel-and-dirt driveway to force a polite human
contact upon herself. If she couldn’t say hello, she would never survive
tomorrow night’s outing with Sarah.

She
was a wasteland, surrounded by a moat filled with invisible syrup.

Socrates
stopped halfway between the gravel pile and the man-made concrete forms growing
against the stand of Douglas fir. Kate caught up and slipped her fingers under
the dog’s collar to turn him back, to escape the something different she wasn’t
ready to accomplish.

The
silhouette turned, head outlined against sunset clouds, and said, “Hello?”

As
if his voice were a signal, Socrates pulled free of Kate’s nerveless fingers
and shuffled towards the stranger. The man bent to caress Socrates’ wrinkled
ears

David’s
dog tilted his head and leaned into the stranger’s touch. In silhouette against
the sky, the bending man transformed into David. Tall, lean, one hand on the
dog’s head.

Kate’s
throat swelled with tears.

“You
live at the other end of Taylor Road, don’t you?” he asked. His voice held
traces of an accent she couldn’t identify.

“Yes.”

He
moved closer and Socrates pressed against his leg. Not David at all. This
stranger wore unruly dark waves in place of David’s receding gray hairline. His
winter tan covered a forty-something face. Rugged, not distinguished. When he
smiled, she couldn’t make a grimace in response.

“Did
you want to see around the site?”

No.

“All
right,” she said, and gestured to the visible signs of construction. “Will Socrates
get in trouble over there?”

Two
whole sentences outside the office. Go home and put a mark on the wall, Kate.

“He’ll
be fine.” His smile transformed into a grin. “Socrates? A wise dog?”

“It’s
hard to tell. He doesn’t talk much.”

“Maybe
he can give me some advice.”

“I
wouldn’t trust Socrates’ advice,” she said soberly. Too sober, stuck in
sobriety.

The
concrete forms rose in parallel wooden walls, a double-rectangle two feet high
and ten inches apart. Between the walls, a ribbon of open space tangled with
re-bar and stretched-out lengths of string. She brushed one of the strings with
her fingers.

“You’ll
pour the concrete this high?”

“This
isn’t your first construction site?”

“No.”
She followed him through a gap in the concrete forms. “Basement door?”

“Crawl
space. Bedrock’s only a few inches down, so no basement. Front door here.”

“Porch?
Veranda?”

“A
shady west-coast veranda all around the house. The kids can play outside in the
winter without getting wet.” His voice implied ownership.

She
stared at the fir and balsam trees that would separate his children from her
home. “It’s your house? Your children?”

He
didn’t reply and she turned to find him massaging Socrates’ ears. The dog
groaned and leaned into his new idol’s legs.

“Affectionate
dog,” he said.

Either
Socrates liked men exclusively, or he simply disliked Kate. As if he knew she
had nothing to give.

“You
must be in a hurry to move in, since you started construction in the middle of
January.”

“The
owner’s in a hurry and I’m happy to oblige. We’ll get the roof on fast, then it
won’t matter about the rain.”

Of
course he wasn’t the owner. She’d forgotten the truck: Madrona Bay
Construction.

“I’d
better get back,” she said.

“It
must be dinner time. Your family will be waiting.”

She
crammed fists into her pockets.

He
picked up a tool belt from one of the poles and walked to the truck. Socrates
followed and when the man pulled the driver’s door open and tossed the tool
belt onto the seat, she grabbed Socrates collar, just in case David’s dog
thought ownership had been transferred.

Socrates
had always gone with David in the Mercedes, and now she wondered if he believed
David had left with the Mercedes. She tried to remember if he ran out when
Jennifer arrived for Christmas in David’s car, but couldn’t retrieve any image
of her daughter’s arrival.

The
contractor said, “Come back any time you want to look around.”

She
nodded and he swung into the truck and closed the door. He wound the window
down and started the engine in one smooth sequence.

“You
want a ride back?”

“No
... thank you.”

He
smiled and she didn’t, then he drove away and left her with Socrates, his words
echoing in her head: Your family will be waiting.

Do
one thing different.

K
ate
stood at the end of her kitchen counter with the telephone pressed to her ear,
waiting for her mother to answer.
When she answers, just talk, and don’t
tell any lies. You’re a grown woman, too old for convenient lies.

Six
rings. Evelyn would be napping, or—remote possibility—out somewhere. Kate
wished her mother would join the twentieth century and subscribe to voice mail.
Then Kate could leave a message, proving she’d returned the call without having
to actually talk to her mother.

Kate
heard the phone click in mid-ring.

“Hello?”
Evelyn Stewardson’s voice sounded groggy.

“Mom,
did I wake you?”

“It’s
all right. Just a minute while I go into the kitchen.”

Kate
held the receiver to her ear while she waited, tied to six feet of corridor at
the end of the kitchen counter. She’d stood here while she talked to Jennifer
this morning. Why hadn’t she gone to David’s study for the remote telephone?
Why anchor herself to the end of the kitchen counter on hold for her mother?

She
imagined Evelyn’s passage through her small Bellingham house. Her mother would
shuffle into the kitchen, put on the kettle, find her cigarettes, all in
preparation for a short conversation with Kate.

“There,”
she finally huffed in Kate’s ear.

“How
are you, Mom?”

“I’m
fine. It’s so nice to hear your voice.”

It’s
good to hear yours, too.

No
lies.

“I’m
glad you’re doing well. Did you play bridge this week?”

“I
don’t enjoy bridge any more. They all take it so seriously.”