the curb, heading west.
Santiago Canyon
1958
17
MAY SAT NEAR the window, looking out into the night. Off and on she heard the sound of undifferentiated roaring from out in the direction of the road, and this afternoon she had seen an airplane in the sky overhead, heard its lonesome droning, waited for the heavy-bodied thing to plummet out of the sky despite Colin’s assurances. There was something about the sound in the sky that recalled the roaring darkness of the well, and when she closed her eyes she felt a momentary vertigo, the sensation of spinning away into a watery darkness. She had a horror of going outside, into a world changed out of recognition. Even her memory was altered. There were dark places in it, like missing pages from a book. Colin had explained to her that this was the cost of traveling, as he put it, through time. He had talked to her about the rain, about drowned children buried near underground water, about what had happened to them on that day near the sycamore grove. He had learned so much in the years since, enough so that he was quite simply a different man than he had been.
The house was hung with calendars—something that Colin had apparently been obsessed with—and each was left open to the month of December. The calendars dated from 1940, the year he had arrived, and each December had rainfall totals penciled into the boxes that enclosed particular dates, with running totals and commentary at the ends of months.
The calendar on the wall nearby stood open to December 1958, and the sight of it had been even more jarring to her than had the age betrayed in the lines on Colin’s face. He lay asleep on the bed now, the bedclothes pulled loosely around him. His face was still strong, but it was careworn, his hair gray at the temples. She calculated his age: forty-five, give or take a year—twenty years older than she. Her mind grappled with the idea of that, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. He wasn’t the same man whom she had known then, but then she was hardly the same woman, either. The distance she had come along dark rivers was unfathomable to her, but she easily understood Colin’s desperate loneliness, heightened by the long years that he had waited. And although making love to Colin this evening had betrayed her friendship to Jeanette, they had managed to convince themselves that Jeanette quite simply didn’t exist.
Now, sitting in the darkness, that kind of thinking seemed like a monstrous rationalization to her, despite its being close to true. The waters in the well were receding. Jeanette wouldn’t come to them, not this season. When
would
she come, if ever? Ten, twenty, thirty years? May couldn’t bear to think about it, to picture it. Since the day before yesterday a lifetime had fled away in the blink of an eye. In last night’s darkness, what had she and Colin to hold onto besides each other?
He had told her about the years that had gone by: how her father’s house had been torn down in 1942, how he, Colin, had bought the furniture left in it, the dishes, the knickknacks, most of it remaining from the days that her family had lived there. The attic above them in this very house was full of that old furniture, the wardrobes and bureaus that only yesterday had held her things, the chairs that her family had sat in around the dinner table, the desk that her father had built and beneath which she had played as a child. This house had sheltered these relics of her life for sixteen years now, years that she had been away. Some small part of her had been living here in this house all that time, waiting for the rest of her to catch up, and through those years Colin hadn’t forgotten her, even though the world had.
And the world had kept spinning, taking them all along. There had been wars, famines, floods. The sun had risen and set without her thousands of times. Towns had disappeared; others had sprung up. She had been alive in Colin’s memory even when she had barely
Santiago Canyon
1958
17
MAY SAT NEAR the window, looking out into the night. Off and on she heard the sound of undifferentiated roaring from out in the direction of the road, and this afternoon she had seen an airplane in the sky overhead, heard its lonesome droning, waited for the heavy-bodied thing to plummet out of the sky despite Colin’s assurances. There was something about the sound in the sky that recalled the roaring darkness of the well, and when she closed her eyes she felt a momentary vertigo, the sensation of spinning away into a watery darkness. She had a horror of going outside, into a world changed out of recognition. Even her memory was altered. There were dark places in it, like missing pages from a book. Colin had explained to her that this was the cost of traveling, as he put it, through time. He had talked to her about the rain, about drowned children buried near underground water, about what had happened to them on that day near the sycamore grove. He had learned so much in the years since, enough so that he was quite simply a different man than he had been.
The house was hung with calendars—something that Colin had apparently been obsessed with—and each was left open to the month of December. The calendars dated from 1940, the year he had arrived, and each December had rainfall totals penciled into the boxes that enclosed particular dates, with running totals and commentary at the ends of months.
The calendar on the wall nearby stood open to December 1958, and the sight of it had been even more jarring to her than had the age betrayed in the lines on Colin’s face. He lay asleep on the bed now, the bedclothes pulled loosely around him. His face was still strong, but it was careworn, his hair gray at the temples. She calculated his age: forty-five, give or take a year—twenty years older than she. Her mind grappled with the idea of that, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. He wasn’t the same man whom she had known then, but then she was hardly the same woman, either. The distance she had come along dark rivers was unfathomable to her, but she easily understood Colin’s desperate loneliness, heightened by the long years that he had waited. And although making love to Colin this evening had betrayed her friendship to Jeanette, they had managed to convince themselves that Jeanette quite simply didn’t exist.
Now, sitting in the darkness, that kind of thinking seemed like a monstrous rationalization to her, despite its being close to true. The waters in the well were receding. Jeanette wouldn’t come to them, not this season. When
would
she come, if ever? Ten, twenty, thirty years? May couldn’t bear to think about it, to picture it. Since the day before yesterday a lifetime had fled away in the blink of an eye. In last night’s darkness, what had she and Colin to hold onto besides each other?
He had told her about the years that had gone by: how her father’s house had been torn down in 1942, how he, Colin, had bought the furniture left in it, the dishes, the knickknacks, most of it remaining from the days that her family had lived there. The attic above them in this very house was full of that old furniture, the wardrobes and bureaus that only yesterday had held her things, the chairs that her family had sat in around the dinner table, the desk that her father had built and beneath which she had played as a child. This house had sheltered these relics of her life for sixteen years now, years that she had been away. Some small part of her had been living here in this house all that time, waiting for the rest of her to catch up, and through those years Colin hadn’t forgotten her, even though the world had.
And the world had kept spinning, taking them all along. There had been wars, famines, floods. The sun had risen and set without her thousands of times. Towns had disappeared; others had sprung up. She had been alive in Colin’s memory even when she had barely
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