Authors: Christopher Coake
But this seems too much like vengeance, too much like I am kissing Karel in anger, which is not what I feel at all.
So I imagine my husband in love with me: Jozef, ten years younger, walks into the café. His beard is too big for his face, and the corners of his eyes crinkle up when he smiles at meâas though he recognizes me, as though he is surprised to see such an old friend in a place like this.
Karel's arms are tightening around my waist, pulling me close to him, and up on the balls of my feet. I am stretching my mouth wide against his.
Jozef. I wake in the night after giving birth to Stane, only to see Jozef sitting awake in the corner; he smiles tenderly at me and asks if I would like some water. He holds the glass to my lips and then kisses me and strokes my hair.
I love you
, he whispers, runs his rough finger across my cheek.
I love our son.
Karel puts his hands under my bottom and lifts me onto the rock. I curl my calves around his legs. He nuzzles the space where my blouse is open.
Love me
, Jozef says.
As long as you love me I will be all right.
Right now his hands are on rock, his lungs ache, he tastes blood.
Death, then. Think of deathâdeath, after all, has given us permission. So here: Jozef moaning into my neck in the hospital. Papa's eyes red with loss and rage. And here: Gaspar's casket, my shocked husband hobbling to it with a cane, putting his hand on the lid, as though something is inside it.
Here is Gaspar's wispy blond girlfriend, arriving suddenly from Dresden, knowing no one and latching on to me in her grief.
We were engaged
, she says to me, her voice so thin it must hurt her to say any words at all. She says,
We hadn't told anyone, we were waiting till he came back to announce it.
There's Papa in a chair, head in his hand, Karel's hands on his shoulders. Across the room Jozef embraces other climbers, some flown in from Russia and America. Two Sherpas are here from Nepal. None of the wives or girlfriends look at each other except in sideways glances, mistaken turns. We listen to the men we love so much say over and over,
At least he died doing what he loved.
I keep my arm around Gaspar's German girl, knowing what she thinks, what all the women think: if Gaspar died doing what he loved, he would have died at home, he would have died inside her. These brave men are cowards, that is what I think. I look around the room, a little drunk from a flask Karel brought, the girl snuffling into my shoulder, and I knowâfor the first time I knowâtonight is only a rehearsal.
My husband, alive, does not stop me. But Jozef dead and goneâthis is what makes me pull away from Karel.
Love does not keep me faithful.
But shame does.
I'm sorry, Karel says, breath rasping.
I shake my head and slide away from him. No, I say, angry now. No. We both did this.
He nods twice, quickly, and rubs his jaw as though I have hurt it.
We have both agreed on a course, but there is still wildness in the air, that thing which is so easily called up between us but so difficult to dispel. I walk to the edge of the meadow and back again, to calm myself more than anything else. Karel
stands next to the rocks, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. I want to tell him not to feel bad, but for now I cannot go closer.
Over the curve of the hill, a curl of dust rises: a car driving slowly toward the house. I look at Karel. We stand side by side on the hilltop and try to see who it could beâwe can barely see the road from the meadow, only glimpses through gaps in the trees. The trail of dust slows and begins to billow, and then for a moment we see a van, marked on the side with the 24ur emblem.
Something has happened, I say.
We hurry back down the path. I try to prepare myself. Today is summit day, and that is all the news people care about: they don't ever think about how, if Jozef makes the top, he still has to climb down, half dead. But maybe something else has happened. I tell myself: Hugo wouldn't inform the media before me. But I have been gone for an hour, and there are many people at base camp, all with satellite phones.
I do not believe it, but of course in my heart I do: I broke my promise. I kissed Karel and Jozef has died.
I am almost running when I emerge from the woods onto the road. The van is parked twenty or thirty meters away. I walk to it, and this is what I see:
A cameraman and a newswoman are standing next to the Roman wall, right in front of one of the tall crumbling pillars, three meters high. And clinging to the stone, at the level of their heads, is Stane. I hear one of the newspeople say, loudly, so Stane can hear too, He's his father's boy, look at that.
Stane is climbing. Not the clambering up tree trunks I've seen him do. The newswoman was right.
He has been
taught.
Stane grips the rock the right way, locking his thumbs over the tops of his fingers, keeping his balance out away from the rock, suddenly lying sideways, leaning away from a crevice while his feet push the other way. By the time I reach him he has touched the top of the pillar, and when he does this he emits a laugh, the squeak of delight I know so well.
The newspeople applaud, and the cameraman moves in, and Stane takes one hand off the rock to wave.
The newswoman is saying something about a new generation, and that's when I force my way past her. I put my hands on Stane's waist and pull him off the pillar. He's heavier than he used to be, but I catch most of his weight, even though it nearly knocks me over.
Turn the cameras off, I say. Get out of here.
The camera swivels to me. The newswoman asks if I have any words about Jozef's success today. All of the nation is watching, she says. We're all very proud.
I turn and walk back to the house, Stane shocked in my arms. I am so angry I can barely see. I pass Karel, just coming out of the trees, and I say, Get rid of them.
Mama, put me down, Stane says. Put me
down.
I set him down and then swat him twice on the behind, hard. The newspeople can see us, but I don't care. I pull Stane along by the arm. He's wriggling and trying to escape, without knowing why or where to go. I can't help it. I tug him off the road, down the slope, into the trees out of sight. There I swat him again, and again, enough so that he stops struggling and begins to cry. Enough so that he
knows.
Then I kneel and put my arms around him. Stane smells of little-boy sweat and pine needles. He tries once again to
pull away, but then he sees me crying, and this hurts him more than the spanking. I hold him to me, my quivering son.
He is a man, eyes crinkling like his father's, smiling at a girl in a café. He is calling a name into swirling snow, screaming wind, alone.
Mama, he says. It's okay, I was only climbing.
I tell him, You mustn't, Stane.
I am holding him as an infant, handing him for the first time to Jozef. Jozef's face falls into pieces when he takes his newborn sonâwhen he looks up again at me, for the first time as a father. And I know: my husband will never climb again, he will never risk anything, now that he has seen his darling boy. I shake and throb inside and think I might die from love. I watch Stane in his father's arms and I think,
My sweet boy, do you know what you have done? You have given me your father back. You've saved us. You've saved me.
You mustn't, I say into Stane's ear. I shake him with each word.
You mustn't
ever.
A
T A LITTLE PAST ONE IN THE MORNING, AN HOUR AFTER
identifying their bodies at the morgue downtown, Danny pulled his truck into the drive at Tom and Brynn's house. Their narrow Victorian was dark except for the glowing living-room windowâa babysitter was inside, watching Colin, their three-year-old son. Danny had talked to the babysitter for a few minutes from the morgue, told her he'd be right thereâbut then he'd taken the longest route from downtown he could find. He'd stopped twice at gas station pay phones, trying to raise his girlfriend Kim, to tell her the news, but Kim had never answered.
Danny shut off the truck. The poor babysitter had started sobbing during his call; by now she was probably freaked out of her mind. Danny's hands on the wheel seemed to weigh tons. He thought about circling the block a couple more timesâhe was pretty damn well freaked out himself, wasn't he? Or he could just drive offâhe wasn't far from the 1â70
on-ramp. He could drive from Columbus to fucking Alaska without letting up on the gas.
Then a shadow pushed aside the living room curtain, looking out at the drive. He was caught.
A woman maybe ten years older than Danny met him at the doorâthe babysitter's mother. She wore a short hairdo that might look good on a movie star, but which made her look just like what she was: a parent of a teenager, thick and square and gray at the temples, trying too hard. Behind her mother the babysitter huddled on the couch, holding herself as if her stomach hurt, her eyes so red Danny's started to burn in sympathy. After he'd introduced himself both mother and daughter gave him the once-over. He'd been rehearsing with the band when the police calledâhe was wearing week-old clothes and reeked of cigarette smoke. His hair was out of its ponytail.
I'm so sorry, the woman told him.
I'll be all right, he said, surprised that his voice was even workingâor that he would say something so bizarre as
that.
Do you need someone here?
I'm going to call a friend now, he said.
The woman looked relieved.
The babysitter said, thickly, Can I look at him one more time?
So the three of them stood in the doorway to Colin's room. Just last week Brynn had glued glow-in-the-dark stars and moons across the ceiling and walls; they barely picked up a shine from the streetlight outside. The room seemed vast this way, without walls.
Colin was asleep, his covers kicked off his bare legs, his face turned to the wall. He was practically naked, sleeping in
tiny underpants. Danny forced himself not to look awayâas he'd always done when Brynn laid Colin out on the floor for a diaper change. Or like he'd done last week, when Tom had made a big production of
Show Danny what a big boy you are, show him you can use the potty
, and they'd all crowded into the bathroom to watch Colin do his thing, his face screwed tight, like he was threading a needle.
You did a good job
, Danny told him afterward, and Colin had looked up from washing his hands and said,
Yes, I did
, as though he didn't have pants with cartoon bears on them still drooping around his ankles.
Danny thought about walking into the room, pulling the boy's covers back up, but he didn't. Colin was almost three; three-year-olds were messy, and a lot of the times naked. He had no more place for shame, not now.
The babysitter started to whimper.
Shh, Danny said, and quickly motioned them back to the living room.
There he assured them once again that they could leaveâand they did, but only after Danny fumbled for his wallet, and both mother and daughter said No! in unison, almost angrily.
When they were gone, Danny stood for a little while in the kitchen, on the opposite side of the house from Colin's room. It was the only place in the house that wasn't filled with the too-sweet odor of a small childâinstead he could smell chili, pancakes, the omelets Tom cooked for everyone on weekends. The smell reminded Danny he hadn't eaten since lunchtimeâthat he was so hungry he was dizzy. But the thought of rooting through Tom and Brynn's leftovers made him feel like the most horrible piece of shit on earth.
Tom's bottle of Maker's Mark in the pantry, however, was another thing entirely. Danny cut through the wax and then
poured himself a shot. And another. The whiskey brought tears to his eyes; these threatened to build on themselves. He took a couple of deep breaths and then picked up the kitchen phone to call Kim again.
Her phone rang four, five times. Danny wondered if, just maybe, he was catching her. They had been tense lately, and though Danny was pretty sure she wouldn't cheat on him, this new hesitance in her, left to turn itself over and over in his head, had mutated into all kinds of horrible pictures. He felt a kind of lunatic gladness as the phone kept ringing. When things were this bad, why
shouldn't
they get worse?
But thenâfinallyâKim answered, rasping out a hello.
It's me, he said. It's an emergency.
Danny.
Yeah. Kim, listen. I need you to wake up. Go to the kitchen and pour yourself a drink, okay?
She laughed throatily. Too late, she said. I was out with Amanda all night. She coughed. Um. Why?
Danny figured that was good enough.
Baby, he said, listen. I'm at Tom and Brynn's. They're dead.
What?
Tom and Brynn. They wrecked their car.
Kim didn't say anything, so Danny kept going.
My name was in Tom's wallet. I had to ID their bodies.
The words were falling apart, and Danny was starting to shudder; he took another drink and let the whiskey rest burning in his mouth and nose before unclenching his jaws. He heard Kim breathing quickly, maybe crying. He wanted her to cryâif she did,
he
could. He leaned his forehead against the cool yellow wall. He'd helped Tom paint the kitchen, last year, on a weekend when Brynn and Colin were out of town at her
parents' place. That was last time he and Tom had had the good old times they used toâdrinking beer and barbecuing and watching sports and the violent movies they weren't allowed when Colin was in the house.
Gluttony
, they'd kept saying, painting late into Friday night in order to free up the rest of the weekend. It got to be a chant:
Glut-ton-y. Glut-ton-y.
They'd smoked ribs at four in the morning, eaten them for breakfast. That was right here, in
this
kitchen.