“Oh, for fuck’s sake. If you don’t know, then I can’t tell you.”
“Yes, you can,” she said softly. “You just don’t want to.”
“You’re right,” Tug said. “I don’t want to talk to you at all.” He put down the knife and walked out of the kitchen and out of the apartment.
Grace stood there with the half-chopped food, the still-full glasses. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Even in their darkest hours — especially then — she and Mitch had never stalked out of a conversation before it was finished. However estranged they had been, or angry, or terribly sad, they had remained almost maddeningly communicative. And since then she hadn’t really gotten to know anybody well enough to feel stricken by an argument, or by a departure, the way she did now.
She felt bereft. She put the food away in plastic containers, drank the wine, and went to bed without eating. She lay there on her back, adopting Tug’s favorite position, as if by imitating him physically she could enter his mental space too. But of course he was still far away, and she only felt more alone.
At midnight the buzzer rang. When she opened the door, his coat was wet from freezing rain, his curls dark and damp, his eyes exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She would have carried him inside if she could have. Instead she opened the door wider and stepped back. He walked toward the bedroom, shedding his coat and sweater, rubbing his wet curly hair, explaining that he was testy and tired, that he’d be able to talk about it later but just couldn’t right now, and he led her by this trail of words to the bed and they crawled in together. She could feel his pulse racing like a frantic animal’s. He kissed her hair.
He looked tired in the morning, his creases and wrinkles pronounced, his cheeks ruddy. Even his hands were rough and scaly. He had been weathered by the world. She wanted to pour all the energy she had into him, to siphon it into his bloodstream and organs, to blow the air from her lungs into his.
They lay in bed holding each other, Tug’s chest to her back, and she was crying. She didn’t want to be, but she was, her face resting on his elbow, the hair on his arm scratchy against her skin.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please don’t cry.”
She nodded, though she could hardly move her head, he was holding her so tightly. “You need a doctor,” she said. “The right medication … ”
“You’re going to be late for work,” he said softly, kissing her cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. Just being with you helps a lot.”
A few weeks passed and Tug seemed better. He began talking more about his time in Rwanda, the other aid workers, the rolling landscape, the people. He talked about Marcie, too, how he had failed her every time they were together, yet didn’t want to stop failing — because failure was where he lived now, it was his comfortable new home. Stories would come to him at inconvenient, even bizarre times. Once they were in the supermarket, and he turned to her at the butcher counter and told her about a man he’d seen by the side of the road, his body dotted with open sores, flies perched on him, waiting for him to hurry up and die. Grace stood there listening and nodding until he said, “Anyway,” and he was done. He turned to the butcher and bought their rack of lamb and only when they walked away did she notice the looks other customers were giving them, wary and aghast.
Another time they had dinner with her friends Azra and Mike at a Portuguese restaurant on Duluth. The first half of the meal was fine. They drank two bottles of wine and made small talk about the food, the cold weather, Azra’s job. Grace’s oldest friend, since high school, she had a dental practice in Côte St.-Luc and always joked that the two of them should set up an office together, a suite where they could each have an office and hang out together between appointments.
“I’ll drill the teeth and you drill the minds,” she said, laughing, as the dessert came.
“You’re drunk,” Mike said affectionately.
“What do you think, Tug?” Azra said.
He didn’t answer, and Grace glanced at him. His cheeks were red, his forehead sweaty. She put her hand on his leg, but she could tell it didn’t soothe him, that he didn’t even register it was there.
“I think it’s a pile of crap,” he said.
Azra raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“You glory in the pain you inflict. Grace doesn’t do that. People whose bodies are suffering can’t think clearly about their lives. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”
“It was really just a funny idea,” Azra told him.
“Tug,” Grace said softly.
He stood up suddenly and left the restaurant.
Her mouth hanging open, Azra looked at her, and Grace shook her head. She wouldn’t follow him; he’d only be angry if she did. “It’s not about you,” she said to Azra.
“What’s it about, then? My God.”
“He’s been through a lot. It’s good, actually, for his emotions to come out like this. It means he’s not suppressing them.”
Azra reached across the table and touched her arm. “Watch yourself,” she said.
When she got back to her apartment, he wasn’t there. But in the morning she woke to find his legs wrapped around hers, their fingers interwoven. She turned and made love to him gently, as if he were injured or ill, and when they were done he was still pressed up against her.
That’s how it went: one day lovely, the next flawed. In this respect, was it so much different from anybody else’s life?
She wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary on the Tuesday morning in April when her session with Roch Messier was interrupted by a knock on the door. She thought it was likely her previous patient, who maybe had left an umbrella or something else behind. But when she saw the two blue-uniformed Sûreté du Québec officers in the hallway, she felt the dread she’d long nursed within herself, the sense that she’d known this would happen.
One officer was male, the other female.
“Madame,” said the woman, “are you Grace Tomlinson?”
She nodded and led them to the reception area. They refused her invitation to sit down and stood uncomfortably, like early party guests, in the middle of the room.
The woman asked, “You are an acquaintance of John Tugwell?”
“Yes,” she said. Her chest felt frozen, as if a block of ice were lodged there.
From the pocket of her heavy uniform coat the woman withdrew a note, unfolded it, and held it out to Grace. She didn’t take it, just read it in the officer’s hand. It had only her name and the words I’m sorry.
“We found him on the mountain,” the officer said.
She knew it was cowardly to faint, but she recognized in herself the need to exit the situation as quickly as possible. She couldn’t afford to be brave, to be composed, to be alive. Not right now. She let herself do it, and fell.
Azra came to her apartment and sat with her through endless, empty hours. Everything had flown out of Grace’s hands: it wasn’t her place to identify the body, to make funeral arrangements, to call his sister or his ex-wife or friends she’d never even heard of. Her roots in his ground were shallow, and now the ground itself was gone.
By eleven that night Azra was asleep on the couch and Grace was alone, awake, in her bed. She wanted desperately to talk to someone, and almost woke Azra up; but she didn’t, because the only person she wanted to talk to was Tug.
The funeral was held in Toronto, where his sister lived, and Azra drove Grace there and back. They sat in the back and didn’t speak to anyone. Grace didn’t feel comfortable introducing herself to his family, since Tug had made no introductions himself. Ordinarily not a pill taker, she downed enough Valium to get her through the day, then the next, and the whole following week.