I laughed suddenly at the thought of it.
Marie looked at me, a smile playing on her lips. “What are you laughing about, Steve?”
“I was just remembering the first time we took Peter to the Danbury Fair.”
I could see the whole day playing through Marie’s memory, sweet, almost delectable, even down to the last unsavory moment. “He threw up,” she said, “behind this big tent.”
Peter grimaced. “I did?”
Carl waved his hand. “Everybody throws up,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and lifted his face upward slightly, as if trying to get some sun.
“Careful there, hon,” Amelia warned. “Don’t tip back too far.”
Carl waved his hand as he leaned back a bit farther. “A man’s got to take a risk, right, Steve?” he said as he pressed himself back farther, Amelia watching him steadily, growing tense until he bolted forward suddenly and caught her eyes in his.
“Scared you, didn’t I?” he joked.
Amelia’s face relaxed. “He’s always trying to get at me,” she said, her eyes now on me. She began a story about some other occasion when Carl had “gotten her,” as she put it, then followed with another.
While she spoke, I felt my mind drift away, drift along the shaded stream, as if skating lightly across the glassy surface of the water. I could hear Amelia’s voice, as well as the laughter of the others as she continued with her tale. I heard names and places, dates, weather reports, ages. I could even feel the overall warmth of the moment we were all sharing, its calmness, pleasure, and serenity.
And yet, I could also feel myself moving away from it, down the softly winding stream, its twin banks gliding smoothly along either side, as if I were being carried on a small canoe. Overhead, I could see the flow of the trees as they passed above me, flowing like another stream, this one suspended surreally above my head. Slowly, almost without my realizing it, the stream became a sleek blue road, winding through a maze of suburban streets, neat lines of houses flowing past on both sides, until, in the distance, I could see the mock Tudor house at 417 McDonald Drive. It was silent, and not at all threatening, and as I continued to drift toward it in my mind, I could feel a grave attraction for it, an excitement at drawing near it, as if it were a place of assignation.
A burst of laughter brought me back, loud and wrenching as a sudden gunshot. I blinked quickly and stared around me. Everyone was laughing—Marie, Peter, Carl. Everyone but Amelia, who, as I noticed, was staring directly toward me with steady, evaluating eyes.
“Where were you, Steve?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She didn’t seem to believe me. Her eyes remained very still, her face framed by the swirling circular maelstrom of her old straw hat. “Just in some other world, I guess,” she said, in a strangely cool and brooding voice.
I nodded, but added nothing else.
Amelia returned her attention to the others. Carl was telling some story about Marie as a little girl, and a few feet away Peter was listening very attentively, as if surprised by the fact that his mother had ever been a child.
I listened attentively too, though from time to time my eye would return to the spring, follow a leaf as it flowed through the dappled shade until it disappeared around the nearest bend.
Toward the end of the afternoon, we repacked the picnic basket, gathered up the folding chairs, and returned to the house. Carl and Amelia walked in the lead, arm in arm, chatting quietly on the way. I could not make out any of what they were saying to each other, but from the quiet glances they exchanged it seemed one of those intimate, deeply familiar conversations one sometimes sees in older people, the sense of completedness, of everything having passed the trial stage.
Marie walked along beside me, her arm in mine, her head pressed lightly against my shoulder. She seemed contented, happy with how the day had gone, with the choices she’d made in her life so far, with me as her husband, with Peter as her son. It was the kind of satisfaction that seemed complete in itself, rather than the product of a thinly disguised resignation.
As we neared the house, Peter shot ahead, running through the tall grass, his blond hair glistening in the sunlight. I felt Marie press her head more firmly against my shoulder.
I glanced down at her.
She was staring up at me affectionately, as if marveling at her own contentment. Then she lifted her face toward me and kissed me on the mouth. Bathed in such sweetness and familiarity, the product of such a long and enduring love, it should have been the single most thrilling kiss I had ever known.
Toward evening, Carl made a fire in the old hearth, and we all sat around it, talking quietly. Marie sat beside me on the sofa, her feet balled up beneath her, her shoulder pressed up snugly against mine. Peter slept next to her, his head resting delicately in her lap.
“Everything going okay at work, Steve?” Carl asked idly, by then puffing on the white meerschaum pipe Marie had given him the preceding Christmas.
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’ll probably be made a partner soon,” Marie said.
Carl looked at her. “How about your business?”
“It’s fine,” Marie told him. “I put in a bid for a job in Bridgeport last week.”
I glanced over toward Amelia. She was rocking softly in one of the chairs Carl had made, but her eyes seemed not to move at all as she stared at me.
“So I guess everything’s okay, then?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes, it is.”
I expected her to smile, or give some sign of satisfaction, but she didn’t. She turned toward the fire instead, and held her eyes there, the light playing on her face in the way of old romantic movies.
We left an hour later, Peter piling groggily into the back seat while Marie and I said good-bye. Carl hugged each of us in turn, then stepped back to allow Amelia to do the same.
“Nice seeing you again,” she said easily, then glanced over at me. “Be good, Steve,” she told me in a voice that seemed stern and full of warning.
Marie sat close to me on the drive home, breathing softly as we drove through the dark countryside. Once back in Old Salsbury, we led Peter to his room, and watched, amused and smiling, as he collapsed onto his bed.
Later, in bed ourselves, Marie inched toward me, stroking me slowly. We made love sweetly and well, with that correctness of pace and expertise that only custom can attain. After that, Marie moved quietly into a restful sleep.
Toward dawn I felt her awaken slightly. She lifted her head in the early light, smiled, kissed my chest, then lowered her head down on it again and closed her eyes. While I waited for the morning, I stroked her hair.
So it was never love, as she would say to me that last night, it was never love … that was missing.
***
Marie was still sleeping in the morning when I got up and headed downstairs to my office. It was smaller than Marie’s, since I’d always done most of my work at Simpson and Lowe, while Marie did most of hers at home. It contained little more than a drafting table, a large light, and a few metal filing cabinets.
I sat down at the table, pulled out the latest plans for my dream house, and began to go over the details again, searching for places where I could remove yet another enclosed area from what was already an impossibly airy and unreal space. But as I worked, I found myself increasingly unable to concentrate on the plans before me. It was as if the dream house had become, at last, pure dream, nothing more than idle whimsy, an idea for which I no longer felt any genuine conviction. It was Rebecca and her search that seemed real to me now, and I even allowed myself to hope that from time to time Rebecca might sense my presence beside her, silent, determined, armed as she was armed, with the same grisly instruments of night, the two of us equally committed to tracking down “these men,” poking at the ashes they had left behind, closing in on their distant hiding places.