Evan seeks Isaac

Who by Fire: Chapter 32: Audio and prose

Note: Update: Evan seeks Isaac as she fears losing him …

You can start reading here or anywhere, then go back. See Table of Contents. Come in the middle? Robert is the narrator who discovers after his wife Lena has died that she had a lover, Isaac. Evan is Isaac’s wife. Robert is on a search for how he lost Lena: He’s creating the story through memory, invention and a search for the truth and his role in what happened—and by stalking Isaac.

Isaac and Evan

Isaac wrote down the length of the baby’s femur, a reliable, repeatable measurement used to determine fetal age: 7.8 centimeters—this confirmed that the baby had been full term, a newborn infant. But he decided to measure the tibia as well and there it lay next to the reed-like fibula. He had bones with spaces—the tibia not tied to the fibula—and that word fibula put Lena squarely in the middle of his work, the way she took the terms of his work and remade them so he’d never see them the same way again, the infinitesimal fibula, her words in his mind, “like the clasp on a buckle,” and how she’d said, “Go now” and how he was bound to her and could never go, the way he was tied to her the way the tibia is bound to the fibula—the narrow bone and the broader one forming the length of the leg, the way she defined the length he would go, had gone, had yet to go. She was inside him like his bones. Go now—but how?

And here stood Evan. “Evan,” he said.

Because he didn’t walk towards her, because he seemed absorbed in his work, because she didn’t feel welcome, she didn’t go to him to kiss him the way she’d planned. She stood in the doorway. “Want to have lunch? Maybe a quick bite, a sandwich on the mall.” She walked to the window. It had started raining. “I would have brought us a picnic from home, but the rain, and I was at the office when I decided to show up. I could go. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t interrupt. I shouldn’t have come.”

He still had the tiny tibia in his hand. He set it down in its place on the table, the puzzle filling out to a human skeleton like a broken vase laid out for repair. Lena, he needed to see her and here was Evan. “Evan, come on, we’ll use my big umbrella, walk over to Pennsylvania, have lunch at Ten Penh. Let me call and see if we can get in. I know you love that place.”

“Yes.”

Ten Penh

Over Asian green beans and grilled salmon, Evan said, “I was going to call you and say, ‘Hello, Sweetie,’ but then I decided to come. An impulse, I guess.” She waited, watched him eat his salmon. He’d ordered what she’d ordered. She’d suggested the lobster with fried spinach, “A celebration dish.” He’d said, “To celebrate what?” She’d reached for his hand and then drew back. He didn’t notice or pretended not to notice?

She’d thought seeing him would get rid of her need to figure things, to analyze. But there were Lena and Julia again like people in an elevator who won’t move when you’ve come to your floor. While she was thinking about pushing her way through them, she heard herself say, “When you go to Chicago next week to see Jason, why don’t you suggest that Lena go to the exhibit at the Field Museum? She must have work there, contacts she could see about the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. Why don’t you ask her to go with you?”

What was she doing? he thought. Giving me an opportunity or revealing me? Did she know they’d planned to go at the same time? And they were going, weren’t they? But when he’d pressed her in the morning, she hadn’t said she’d go. He said now, “Lena? What has Lena got to do with anything? If she wanted to go to Chicago, she’d go. Did she talk to you about the Field Museum? Have you talked with her again? Why suggest such a thing? It’s out of left field.”

“Isaac, I’ve seen Lena since she was over the other day—Tuesday, wasn’t it? Yeah, Tuesday.”

As if he could forget the day he’d brought her to the farm.

She continued. “Anyway, So I saw her again. And I’m worried about her. I think she’s in some sort of crisis.”

He wanted to say, Seen her? Why? When? Where? All he’d need to add was ‘How,’ and he’d sound like a newspaperman hot on the story. Instead he uttered a noise, a laugh of sorts, a small paroxysm of self-loathing for the thought that he would ask his wife such questions, that he’d consider saying such things out loud, that he’d be stupid enough to let her see his alarm. I’m a careful man, after all, he said to himself with all the disdain, the disingenuousness that sentence deserved. He was no longer a careful man.

And of course she noticed the guttural noise that mimicked a laugh and that she interpreted as disgust. “You think I misbehave. Shame on me.” She put down her fork and rubbed one index finger over the other.

“No, of course not.” He noticed how much larger her fingers were than Lena’s, that she used red polish, that it was chipped on her pinky. The chipped polish made her gesture seem childish and desperate while he’d heard only ridicule in her voice. He was struck by a moment of poignant sympathy for her and his need to dismiss that if he was to salvage what she offered him—the trip to Chicago with Lena. “I always think the best course is not to mess in other people’s affairs. You know that. But maybe you’re right this time. I don’t have that radar you have. But still, why don’t you suggest one of your colleagues to her if you think she’s in trouble? What do you think’s wrong? Oh, I guess you don’t know. But anyway, why come to me?”

Good question, she thought. She let it lie there, ate her salmon, the wasabi mashed potatoes. She watched him eat his. And when the young Asian woman checked in to see how their lunch was, she asked for another glass of Chardonnay. She bought time. “Jason told me about a photography exhibit at the Art Institute. All soldiers—a woman photographer who’s taken pictures of French and Israeli soldiers, children when they begin. He said they look so changed when they’re through their training, that the pictures had made him go home and redo something he’s working on. He said they look older, worn out. He said the light had gone out of their eyes.” She looked at Isaac, put her fork down. “I have this patient. A young woman. She thinks she knows stuff, has intuitions. And she acts on them. She looked into her lover’s eyes last week and knew he didn’t love her. She’s not going to see him anymore. She said she saw a shadow there and she knew. But, of course, none of this is the point, is it?”

“No.” On the brink of disaster, he said again, “No.”

“I guess I saw something in Lena’s eyes,” when it was something in his eyes that she’d seen. “That’s not exactly a professional observation, but…” She arranged her fork on an angle across the edge of the plate. She stared at the crescent moon she’d created, a part of the circle of the plate cut off. “Isaac, the two of you are friends, have been for a long time. If anyone could help her, it would be you.”

“When did she come to see you and what did she say?”

“Yesterday for lunch, but she ate barely anything and she was really shaky, disturbed even, I’d say. That much I know. The cause, I can’t be sure about. But we had gotten talking when she was over the other day when you both were there—we were in the garden—we talked some about your work. She said something about the baby—the one you’re— Well, of course, you know. But we got to talking about how the baby was found, began to make up a sort of story about what might have happened. I didn’t remember it until she called. Idle chatter while I was showing her our gardens. We got talking about those three sisters. It seemed like a diversion, nothing, just talk in the garden. But then, she called or did I call her? I don’t remember but anyway she came to lunch and told me something awful.” Evan picked up her fork again, stirred the green beans about on her plate.

“Evan, please.” All the certainty he’d worked so hard to maintain slipped away with this plea, as if he’d slipped into a dreamy, sleepy state while riding and was jolted awake to find he no longer had the reins in his hands.

“Before she married Robert—” And she did hesitate now. She did think about the violation of a confidence. She did know that, even though Lena hadn’t stated it as such, that’s what it was, and then with Isaac’s attention full on her—he’d put down his fork, had lain both his hands flat on the table as if he were about to lean forward but had decided against it, as if he were holding himself in check—she continued, “She had an abortion, a late one, she’d waited too long, the way that kind can be difficult. It left her barren. That’s the way she puts it. An odd sort of word, I think. But that’s how she sees it. Barren. She wasn’t young when this happened, not a teenager, I mean. I don’t know when it was, but she’s deeply troubled by it, Isaac. That’s for sure. No one else knows—not even Robert.” And now she couldn’t stop. The words came barreling out as if it had been her secret, as if she’d held it for some eighteen years. She told in the whirlwind of revelation that she was used to hearing from clients who could finally say out loud to a stranger, to her, what they couldn’t tell anyone else. And when they told in this way, she’d make a note: the underbelly, the word she’d come to use as a reminder to herself that she was at the core of it, that the weakness that might, if she were lucky, make that person strong had been revealed to her. This was how she spoke now and she knew it. “She seems so shamed, so sad. Something’s really wrong. Clammy hands, trembling. I’ve seen this stuff. You know I have. Maybe if you had some time alone with her, perhaps on the flight to Chicago, the flight back. Or a drink with her before or after you see Jason. Maybe you could help. She said she’d never told anyone. I don’t know what you should do or could do. And she’s not my patient. I’m helpless the way—”

What am I doing? and then she said it. The truth. She simply said it. “The way I am with you.” She waited for him to reach for her hand and when he didn’t, she simply placed her hand on top of one of his. He hadn’t moved while she’d spoken. His hands were still flat on the table in that odd gesture of both force and restraint.

Her hand on top of his was like an accusation. The truth when finally spoken is solid like a wooden stud inside a wall, that beam that must be found or avoided, firm in its place. Her solid, warm hand lay on his and held him.

Caught.▵

Table of Contents

Coming next: Chapter 33: “Isaac and Lena”

Only Connect, all sections, and this serial novel come from my heart and soul—and ten years of research. I know the saying ‘time is money’: I couldn’t help but pursue this story. If you have already gone paid, my heart goes out to you with my thanks.

Love,