One day in the fall, she walks far from the house. Clouds of round gold leaves shimmer on the aspen trees like a suspended rain of coins. A whistle, high and sharp. Caleb comes striding through the forest, the shimmer. He is as he always is: hair braided down his back, barrel of his rifle sticking up over his shoulder. He glints with humor, with the presumption of her love. In a rush, she realizes how lonely she’s been.
She wraps her arms around his waist. He curves a hand over her nape. She knows he is noticing, as her former barber, the raggedness of her hair. Barclay had wanted her to grow it long, so instead she’d cut it herself, badly, with Mother Macqueen’s sewing scissors.
She is talking into Caleb’s chest: What are you doing here? How are you here? Why are you here?
“Jamie said he hadn’t heard from you.”
“I haven’t written. I couldn’t. How is he?”
“He seems better. He’s painting. I think he’s bedding his landlady. Here. See for yourself.” He pulls an envelope from inside his jacket. “I’m just the messenger.”
“You didn’t walk all the way from Missoula, did you?”
“Not all the way, but maybe you and Jamie could look into more efficient ways to correspond. I’ve heard there’s a postal service.”
“You have to be careful not to be seen. Really, Caleb. Not by anyone. Barclay won’t like it. He’s already taken away my plane.”
“He’s locked you up.”
“Do you see me in chains?” She doesn’t know why she has the impulse to defend Barclay. “It’s not forever.”
“It is unless you leave him.”
“He’ll cool off.”
Gently, he says, “I used to think my mother would get better.”
“That’s different.” She looks away, scanning the trees for spies. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way just to deliver a letter.”
“It wasn’t just for the letter. I wanted to see you. I was worried.” He studies her. “You’re too thin.”
She bristles, then subsides, feeling he has broken a promise to her by worrying, insulted her judgment and competence, but knowing, too, that she has given him good cause.
He adds, “I’m always out wandering around. It’s not a hardship to wander in this direction.”
“I envy your wandering.”
“Come with me, then. Leave.”
There is no reason for her not to go except the impossibility of it. “If I slink off, I’ll feel like a coward.”
“Marian.”
“I need him to let me go.”
“He’ll never do it.”
“Or else nothing will ever be resolved. I need a real end to it, an agreement of some kind. I can’t feel as though I owe him anything.”
“You think he doesn’t know how to make you always think you owe something? Your marriage is a contest to him, and if he lets you go, he’ll lose.”
Heat rises in her. She can’t tell fear from anger anymore. “Don’t argue, please. I can’t bear it.”
He yields. “At least read the letter. I brought a pencil and paper so you can write back.” A twist of a smile. “You’d think I don’t have anything better to do than be your personal courier.”
* * *
—
In his letter, Jamie had thanked Marian for bringing him to Vancouver. He’d tried to reassure her that he was better, that the dark enchantment of Wallace’s house had been broken. He expressed mortification for how low he’d sunk, for the state in which she’d seen him. I let myself lose track of things. He told her he’d gone to meetings of a local group of artists, the Boar Bristle Club, named for the hog hairs used to make certain paintbrushes. They’d included a few of his paintings in one of their exhibitions, and he’d sold one, not for much. On the weekends he peddled portraits in the city parks like he had in Seattle, and he’d gotten a job in an art supply store, and he’d placed an ad in the newspaper offering drawing lessons. The only fly in the ointment is that I don’t hear from you and don’t know how you are. And, he added, he and Geraldine had become good friends.
The truth: Jamie is in love. Or—not quite. He wants to be in love, because without question he is in lust, and not to love the first woman he sleeps with strikes him as impolite, even seedy. And why shouldn’t he love the soft, welcoming body he is permitted to touch with his hands and his mouth, to rest his weight on, to venture inside? Why shouldn’t he love the good woman who inhabits it, who has, through sheer carnal force, finally displaced Sarah Fahey from the center of his thoughts? There is no reason not to love Geraldine, and yet he doesn’t. Not quite. But he feels affection for her and, whenever he is not in her bed, an eagerness to return to it.