Above The Thunder Read online

  “Oh, bull. It’s your birthday. You need to be self-indulgent. If you were a man in mid-life you’d be buying supersized SUVs with equipment racks for sports you don’t even play.”

  Anna studied the table for a decent shot. “I need to do something out of character. I think I’m in a rut.” The third martini was a mistake: Alcohol never had the mellowing effect on her that it seemed to on others. She didn’t need to be stirred up, didn’t want to think about regrets or mistakes. She didn’t get the career she’d wanted, but she got an unexpected bonus in her husband who made her life just as fulfilling—more, probably—than if her plan to become a surgeon had worked out. She had things in her life now that satisfied her—her music, her teaching—and if her world was smaller and more lightly made than it had once been, it was also easier to let things go and let small pleasures step in for any epic striving after happiness, whatever that was.

  Anyway, what satisfied her these days were quiet, low-key things—hanging out with Greta, rehearsals for the community chamber orchestra, helping out with an occasional charitable event.

  “Earth to Anna,” Greta said. “It’s your turn.”

  Anna lined up a sure shot, but it went wide of the pocket.

  Greta laughed. “What’s the matter, granny, got the shakes?”

  “Give me a break. I’m almost a senior citizen. In some states, I’m old enough for a retirement community.”

  “Sure. Any minute now you’ll be breaking a hip and taking in stray cats. Watch my youthful dexterity now: six, corner pocket.”

  Anna watched Greta concentrating on the game, along with, she saw now, most of the men in the bar. Greta was in her late thirties, though she looked much younger. She commanded attention wherever she was. It was her hair, partly, the shimmering length of gold, but there was something else, too, something intangible, as though she carried her own weather with her, changing the air from cool to warm, from low pressure to high, whenever she walked into the room. Greta was a big woman, not heavy or especially tall, but outsized somehow, awkwardly postured, as though she were constantly bumping her head against the ceiling of her life and coming away wounded. It was this air of bruised vulnerability that made her more beautiful.

  Anna was grateful that she didn’t worry about losing her looks as she got older. Men were attracted to her for reasons other than physicality, she knew. Hugh once said it was her aura of aloneness the first time he saw her at the freshmen mixer, her cool blue dress and watery drape of dark hair, the proud tilt of her chin, as though dancing or standing alone made no difference to her at all. Anna believed that the ideal world would consist of two physical types of women: those powered by estrogen and maternity, and those who functioned on the rational hormone of progesterone, cut with a little testosterone, for a competitive edge. She’d have chosen the latter, hands down.

  Greta sank the eight ball and ended the game. “Another?” she asked.

  Anna said no, but agreed to a nightcap at Greta’s when it became clear that her friend didn’t want to be alone. “I’ll see you at home then,” Anna said, and ducked into the ladies’ room to wash her face. She felt a little sick, light-headed with a sudden dread. She put her hands under the cold water. A man was speaking Spanish on the pay phone just outside the door. He was angry, whoever he was. He looked her up and down when she came out.

  “Señora,” he called.

  She turned. He held out something to her. One of the hairpin brooches. She took it from him. “Gracias,” she said, and saw that he was breathtaking. Beautiful dark eyes and lovely hands, lean and elegantly dressed in closely cut trousers and a yellow shirt that looked like raw silk. She turned the pin over in her hand. The one with the silver forget-me-nots. She put it back in her pocket. She might keep this one.

  Back at Greta’s, Anna put on a pot of decaf while Greta checked her phone messages. Anna ran her hands over the smooth blue and white tile on the butcher-block island. Greta’s things were nice, of the highest quality. Beautiful copper-bottomed pots hanging on a rack above the sink, wonderful smells in every part of the house—cinnamon and dill in the kitchen, eucalyptus and lavender in the living room. Greta usually had a vase or two of daises or baby tulips, but wandering now through the rooms, Anna counted no fewer than ten vases of exotic flowers. “Who died, anyway?” Anna said, nodding toward a huge arrangement of pink orchids and Asian lilies.

  “I know. Isn’t that something? Mike’s been bringing them home. Every other day. I suppose I should be suspicious.”

  Anna raised an eyebrow.

  “Birthdays, anniversaries, or forgiveness. Is there any other reason a man brings a woman flowers?” Greta opened the linen drawer, pulled out a pack of cigarettes from beneath the dishtowels. “Wanna do something wicked?”

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Anna said.

  “I don’t. Only when I’m feeling rebellious. Mike hates it.”

  “Sure, I’ll have one.” She’d been a regular smoker in college, but hadn’t had a cigarette in at least twenty years.

  Anna followed Greta to the deck in back. A small fence here separated Greta’s yard from Anna’s. “I have to ask, Greta.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is everything all right? Between you and Mike?”

  Greta didn’t answer at first. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s staying away longer and longer. He sometimes leaves the house at six in the morning and doesn’t get back till nine or ten. Yesterday he didn’t get home until midnight.”

  “Well,” Anna said, “well, what do you think?”

  Greta exhaled, shook her head. “I don’t know. I doubt he’d be that brazen if it were another woman. He’d at least have the decency to lie to me.”

  “Where does he say he’s been?”

  “Driving. Just driving around.”

  “He might be. I mean, that might be the truth.” There had been a time in Anna’s own life, as a new mother, when she felt at peace only in the car. Though she never came close to leaving her family, the possibility that each exit off the freeway held, knowing that with one turn she could take the off-ramp and head into Canada, was beguiling and thrilling. Those early years, especially, when Hugh was working a twenty-four-hour shift at the hospital, Anna sometimes felt as if her life were as precarious and flimsy as a rotten floorboard.

  She’d been a scholarship student at Smith, double-majoring in chemistry and physics when she met Hugh at the freshmen mixer. Her plans were to go on to medical school—by her junior year she had been accepted early decision at Tufts—but the romance with Hugh was so intoxicating and so perfect that Anna couldn’t imagine anything going awry. They married the month after graduation. Their plan was for Hugh to get through medical school and into a residency before Anna started her studies.

  She completed a med tech program in nine months and worked in a lab to pay the bills. It was easy, pleasant work, a temporary stopgap while she waited for her turn to go to school. Even in her long hours alone while Hugh worked, her boredom with the repetitive lab work, she was satisfied with their life, glad to come home at the end of the day to their shabby rooms with the threadbare furniture and the smells of bad cooking from the neighboring apartments. It was the kind of marriage she’d always wanted but dared not hope for. Everything was exactly on track the first two years. Then Anna discovered she was pregnant. She and Hugh had been so careful, and Anna knew her cycle so exactly—down to the hour she ovulated—that they never worried about accidental pregnancy.

  She knew when she had conceived. Hugh had gotten a rare four days in a row off and they drove up country to stay at Hugh’s family summer home in Maine. Anna was the happiest she’d ever been, riding bikes and walking along the beach every afternoon, the two of them eating lobster in the burnished gold of evening light, lulled by the hiss and roil of the water and the waves.

  Anna had never thought of herself as a mother and was content with a childless marriage. The idea of an infant infuriated her, made her feel panicked and trap
ped.

  She wanted Hugh to at least consider aborting, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Hugh tried to reassure her. “Nothing will change, darling. We’ll simply switch jobs. I’ll get into a residency program, and then you’ll go to medical school. We’ll get a nanny for the baby.”

  Except that it didn’t quite work out that way. Hugh joined the orthopedic surgical staff at Boston General. Anna had Poppy—named after Hugh’s grandmother—and prepared to begin her studies. But the baby left her exhausted, and there were dinner parties for Hugh’s new colleagues, social events for doctors and their wives, and clubs Hugh suggested she join, including one called The Medical Wives’ Society. She laughed at him. But he pleaded with her, said he knew it was a bunch of bored women, but it didn’t entail much more than afternoon teas, a charitable activity or two.

  “How can you possibly ask me to join something like this?” she’d said to him. “It shows so little respect for who I am that I have to wonder if you know me at all.”

  “Anna,” he said quietly, “darling Anna.”

  In the end he won—though she didn’t think of it that way; she loved him, and she made the concession. She dressed up and lunched at the club once a month, sat through the endless chatter about shopping and decorating and suspicions about pretty, predatory nurses. Twenty-five years later, Anna still occasionally attended some of the Medical Wives’ events. There was nothing like the consistency of disliking someone for nearly three decades to make one feel ageless.

  Anna shook out another cigarette from Greta’s pack and lit it. “I’m fifty-three, what a drag,” she said. “Anyway, my insomnia is back these days, so you can call me later tonight if you want.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  Anna stubbed out her cigarette in the potted geranium. “Grade papers. Then practice, if I’m still cogent. I’ve joined the community orchestra again, and Rachmaninoff’s on the program, which would have put me behind even if I hadn’t missed the first two rehearsals.”

  “Oh,” Greta said, looking past Anna to the street.

  Anna hugged her. “It will be okay. Call or just stop in at any hour. Last night I was up till four.”

  “Okay. Thanks for hanging out.”

  “Thanks for calling off the surprise party.” Anna went inside to get her jacket and bag.

  “Oh, hey,” Greta called.

  Anna turned.

  “You dropped this.” Greta handed the hairpin to her.

  “This again,” she said, and felt the hole in the lining of her coat pocket.

  She sat in the dark when she got home, not tired enough for bed but not sharp enough to practice or to read through two dozen quizzes on viral pathogens. She kicked off her shoes and headed to her bedroom where she saw the message light on her machine blinking. Greta, probably, it was only ever Greta these days. She pressed the PLAY button.

  “Mother, it’s Poppy.” There was a pause. “I hope you’ll call me back, it’s kind of important.” Anna heard a child’s voice in the background, a girl who must be Flynn, the granddaughter she’d never met. Somewhere she had photographs of Flynn as an infant. She must be about ten now. Anna braced herself. Poppy gave her number, an area code of 907. What state was that? The second message was also from Poppy: “Hi, it’s me again. Well, I suppose I can just ask this on the machine. If I don’t hear back from you in the next few days, I’ll assume the answer is no. Marvin and Flynn and I would like to visit. This summer. In a few weeks. Hope to talk to you soon.”

  Anna sat down on the bed, and felt all the evening’s earlier dread gather into a sickness in her stomach. She hadn’t seen her daughter in twelve years. There were occasional postcards, but in the past five years Anna hadn’t heard anything at all from her. And after Hugh died it as if her daughter were dead, too.

  Poppy left home at eighteen, with Marvin, the nut who called in response to the newspaper ad Hugh placed to sell the old VW bus that had been languishing in their backyard for a decade. Anna recalled exactly the day Marvin Blender came into their lives. It was October, and Hugh was sick. Poppy had just come back from Europe with a heroin habit. It was the worst time in their lives. A month after Anna and Hugh returned from their summer home in Maine, they learned that his extreme fatigue and headaches—he’d been complaining all summer but insisted it was from overwork and stress—was sarcoma. Anna herself drew his blood. His white count was so high that the slide looked like something by Monet, the cells like a covering of water lilies.

  It was with this news that she and Hugh went to pick up Poppy at the airport. Anna watched the passengers disembarking, but not until Poppy walked right up to her did Anna recognize her daughter; Poppy was like a torn page from a favorite book, familiar but unidentifiable without the whole. She was so thin Anna could see her kneecaps jutting up against her jeans when she walked. Her hair, shoulder-length when she left six months ago, was now so short her scalp showed through. Anna knew right away, knew from her mask-like expression, the dullness in her eyes. Hugh refused to believe it at first, saw Poppy through the eyes of a loving father rather than the physician he was.

  Anna went through Poppy’s things, searched every inch of her room but found nothing. It was the cleaning lady who finally solved the mystery; Poppy had hidden everything in their bedroom. The heroin was in one of Anna’s seldom-used jewelry boxes, the syringes in the bottom bureau drawer with the gift-wrap and ribbons. There was a note from Maria on the kitchen table on top of two tiny packages. I knocked over the Mrs jewelry case when I dusted. These bags fell out.

  Poppy was in and out of the hospital, jaundiced, and then with hepatitis so severe that it left her with only sixty per cent liver function. She was in an on-site rehab program for two months before they released her to her parents.

  By Christmas she was improved, had gained weight and was attending college classes part-time. She had a new boyfriend whom Anna and Hugh liked very much. There was talk of a wedding in a year or two, but Anna and Hugh both treated Charlie as if he was already part of their family. He came to the house every night and sat with Poppy in front of the television or with Hugh and Anna on the patio after Poppy went to bed. He was good-natured and patient, one of the producers of nature shows at WGBH, and most importantly, was crazy about their daughter. He’d been as tender with her as Hugh was.

  Anna poured herself a double sherry now and took it into the bathroom to run a hot bath. No. She didn’t want her daughter to visit. She slipped out of her clothes, into the hot freesia-scented water, and let her mind drift.

  A year after Hugh’s diagnosis, his cancer had gone into and out of remission, but by the following autumn the chemotherapy was working. He was exhausted, but in good spirits. One Sunday the four of them, Anna and Hugh, Poppy and Charlie, sat down to an early supper. Charlie had just returned from a deer-hunting trip with his brother so dinner that night was venison chili and cornbread. It was crisply cool. Hugh and Charlie took their after-dinner Scotches outside. Hugh was bundled up in the white wool cardigan Anna kept and wore for months after he died, convinced that it still held the scents of years of fine and perfect falls: hearty dinners spiced with rosemary and garlic, the tannin and woodsmoke in the air, the faint scent of wine from a spilled glass of Merlot.

  Anna put on Chopin’s nocturnes and watched her husband and future son-in-law bent together in the dusky light, the leaves from the over-hanging oaks casting shadows on the broad, flat stones of the patio. After Hugh died, Anna sat for hours in Hugh’s chair, in the exact tone of late-afternoon light. She watched those same shadows of leaves, the delicate filigree pattern on her skin like cool, finely tatted lace. She felt Hugh everywhere, his memory wrapped around her like an invisible shawl.

  That day, Anna wondering if this was Hugh’s final autumn, Poppy had come up beside her, took a step toward her mother as though to put her arms around her, but stopped. Anna and Poppy did not touch, hadn’t since Poppy was a girl. They’d always been wary around each other, and Poppy’s rough adolescenc
e had driven them even farther apart. “It will be all right. It’ll be okay,” Poppy said.

  Anna nodded, blew her nose. “Well. It’s getting a little tragic around here. Will you change the music? Chopin is a bit too much right now. Maybe the happy fool,” she said, her pet name for Mozart.

  They were just sitting down to dessert and coffee when the phone rang. Hugh answered, and from his end of the conversation Anna knew it was someone calling in response to the ad for the VW. “Sure. That would be fine,” Hugh said into the phone.

  “You’re finally selling that old heap, eh?” Charlie said, when Hugh returned.

  “Sure. There’s a demand for those old buses. A whole new wave of hippies coming up. Anna and I once drove across the country in that thing. Those were the years Anna wore miniskirts. All the way up to the watermark.”

  “What!” Anna said. “I never wore miniskirts.”

  “My dear, I couldn’t forget something like that.” He said it with such conviction and wistfulness that they all laughed.

  Anna remembered Hugh wanted her to wear miniskirts. Maybe he had bought her one or two, she thought now, turning on the hot water tap with her toe, but she certainly hadn’t ever worn short skirts. She balanced her glass of sherry on the edge of the tub, rolled a towel behind her neck.

  They had just started eating when Marvin showed up. Hugh had told him to come at seven-thirty, but he must have driven over the minute he hung up. Charlie spotted him first, a tall man in a long black coat, with straight, shoulder-length dark hair. He walked around the backyard, shielded his hand over his eyes and stared in at the house, directly in front of the dining room window. With that strange coat—Anna remembered it as a military type of thing, double-breasted, with brass buttons—and his hand over his eyes, he looked like some lost member of a battalion, unsure of the friendliness of the territory. He snapped his head this way and that, as though he heard his name in the wind.

  “Who is this chucklehead?” Charlie said.

  Hugh sighed, pushed his chair back and put his napkin on the table.