Where I'm Calling From

asked and wiped his fingers on his pants.
    “I believe so,” I said. “It’s a warm day so take your suit, and I’m sure your grandmother will say it’s okay.”
    Stuart lighted a cigarette and looked at us.
    Dean and I drove across town to Stuart’s mother’s. She lives in an apartment building with a pool and a sauna bath. Her name is Catherine Kane. Her name, Kane, is the same as mine, which seems impossible.
    Years ago, Stuart has told me, she used to be called Candy by her friends. She is a tall, cold woman with white-blonde hair. She gives me the feeling that she is always judging, judging. I explain briefly in a low voice what has happened (she hasn’t yet read the newspaper) and promise to pick Dean up that evening.
    “He brought his swimming suit,” I say. “Stuart and
    I have to talk about some things,” I add vaguely. She looks at me steadily from over her glasses. Then she nods and turns to Dean, saying “How are you, my little man?” She stoops and puts her arms around him. She looks at me again as I open the door to leave. She has a way of looking at me without saying anything.
    When I return home Stuart is eating something at the table and drinking beer….
    After a time I sweep up the broken dishes and glassware and go outside. Stuart is lying on his back on the grass now, the newspaper and can of beer within reach, staring at the sky. It’s breezy but warm out and birds call.
    “Stuart, could we go for a drive?” I say. “Anywhere.”
    He rolls over and looks at me and nods. “We’ll pick up some beer,” he says. “I hope you’re feeling better about this. Try to understand, that’s all I ask.” He gets to his feet and touches me on the hip as he goes past. “Give me a minute and I’ll be ready.”
    We drove through town without speaking. Before we reach the country he stops at a roadside market for beer. I notice a great stack of papers just inside the door. On the top step a fat woman in a print dress holds out a licorice stick to a little girl. In a few minutes we cross Everson Creek and turn into a picnic area a few feet from the water. The creek flows under the bridge and into a large pond a few hundred yards away. There are a dozen or so men and boys scattered around the banks of the pond under the willows, fishing.
    So much water so close to home, why did he have to go miles away to fish?
    “Why did you have to go there of all places?” I say.
    “The Naches? We always go there. Every year, at least once.” We sit on a bench in the sun and he opens two cans of beer and gives one to me. “How the hell was I to know anything like that would happen?”
    He shakes his head and shrugs, as if it had all happened years ago, or to someone else. “Enjoy the afternoon, Claire. Look at this weather.”
    “They said they were innocent.”
    “Who? What are you talking about?”
    “The Maddox brothers. They killed a girl named Arlene Hubly near the town where I grew up, and then cut off her head and threw her into the Cle Elum River. She and I went to the same high school. It happened when I was a girl.”
    “What a hell of a thing to be thinking about,” he says. “Come on, get off it. You’re going to get me riled in a minute. How about it now? Claire?”
    I look at the creek. I float toward the pond, eyes open, face down, staring at the rocks and moss on the creek bottom until I am carried into the lake where I am pushed by the breeze. Nothing will be any different. We will go on and on and on and on. We will go on even now, as if nothing had happened. I look at him across the picnic table with such intensity that his face drains.
    “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” he says. “I don’t—”
    I slap him before I realize. I raise my hand, wait a fraction of a second, and then slap his cheek hard.
    This is crazy, I think as I slap him. We need to lock our fingers together. We need to help one another.
    This is crazy.
    He catches my wrist before I can strike again and raises his own hand. I crouch, waiting, and see something come into his eyes and then dart away. He drops his hand. I drift even faster around and around in the pond.
    “Come on, get in the car,” he says. “I’m taking you home.”
    “No, no,” I say, pulling back from him.
    “Come on,” he says. “Goddamn it.”
    “You’re not being fair to me,” he says later in the car. Fields and trees and farmhouses fly by outside the window. “You’re not being fair. To either one of us.