Copyright ©1987, 1989, 1991 by Richard Seltzer
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That night Frank dreamt again about a house. Only this time it was Charlie's cabin the way it had been in 1969 -- with the ship's mast and rigging in the living room. In the dream, the secret room he had been looking for was Charlie's hideaway up in the rafters, where he kept old adventure books.
When Frank woke up in the bunkhouse, he went to the main cabin and tried to imagine how it used to be. He checked inside and out several times. A side window and a skylight that were clearly visible on the outside, simply didn't appear on the inside.
Curious, he got a ladder from the toolshed and put it against the wall that separated the livingroom from the main bedroom. He started tapping it near the peak in the rafters, and a door opened to that old hideaway, brightly lit by the skylight and window.
Here, too, he found stacks of boxes -- some with books (the old adventure stories) and some with photos. He stretched out on the cushions and started rummaging through them. The first box he looked in had nude photos of Irene in every position imaginable -- using the old ropes and rigging as props. He felt awkward looking at them, like a horny teenager -- but they did turn him on; and he felt so much alone up there that he indulged myself and savored them.
In fact, they caught his attention so completely that he didn't notice when Marge, seeing the ladder in the livingroom, climbed up, too.
"I see you found the photos," she said, startling and embarrassing him.
"You mean, you knew these were here?"
"Charlie told me."
"But why should he tell you that?"
"That's one reason he suggested that I come here -- those photos and all the old letters I wrote to him back then."
"But what would photos of Irene have to do with you?"
"Irene? Oh... Those... Then you haven't seen the others?"
"What others?" I asked.
"Well, I suppose it is high time."
She dug into the same box and came out with two large envelopes full of photos of herself. The one envelope had the shots of her posing in Sarah's room in and out of Sarah's old dresses. The other showed her at the cabin in the same poses as those of Irene.
They sat there quietly for what seemed like a long time -- not looking at each other and not looking at the photos. Frank shut his eyes and imagined he was out fishing on the lake. He tried to relax every muscle and to blank every thought from his mind, but something kept nibbling and yanking at his line.
When he opened his eyes, he realized that Marge was talking. "You knew that Charlie and I were flirting at your grandparents' house. I wanted to get back at you -- our breakup was still fresh and painful in my memory."
"I don't need to hear the details. The photos are quite eloquent."
"But I need to tell you."
"And do you need to hear about me as well? Do you need to hear that while you were fooling around with Charlie, I was went back to Gillian and bought myself some experience and self-confidence. And I caught something from her. It wasn't anything serious. It was easy to cure. But with the stupid risk I took it could have been anything."
"You did seem more experienced than I expected when we finally got back together. But I never asked."
"And I never asked you. At least both our mistakes were harmless -- I didn't catch VD, and you didn't get pregnant."
"But I was pregnant."
"By me? From that silly messing around in the back seat?"
"No, by Charlie, here in this cabin, and quite deliberately -- I tricked him into it. I wanted his child, but he didn't want me -- not as much as he wanted Irene. That's why the cabin looks so different now -- I chopped down that mast of his, and cut up all those ropes into tiny pieces, and burnt them all by the lakeshore. That was why I went to Europe. That was why I almost married an Italian named Giorgio. That was where I had a miscarriage. And then we met again back in Boston, and you were like a new person, and I was like a new person, and life started over again."
She stopped. That meant Frank had to react. But he didn't want to react. He didn't want to have heard what he had heard. He just lay there, staring up through the skylight at blue endless space. Then he asked, "What about Charlie?"
"What about him?"
"Do you still love him?"
"I don't think I can answer that. Do you still love Irene?"
"That's not at all comparable. We never..."
"You would have, and you know it."
"There is a difference between what actually happens and what doesn't."
"Is there? Perhaps. But don't underestimate the power of the almosts, and the wishes, and the dreams and the lies that haunt us and affect all that we actually go ahead and do. Don't play Mr. Innocent with me or we'll never get back to together, and I do want to get back together, if I can ever find you."
"I'm here."
"On which level of which dream?"
There were 25 thumbtacks stuck randomly in the ceiling above Frank's head. One floor board near his feet had a Y-shaped crack. His left shoe was untied. There was a coil of rope in the corner of the room.
"Say something!" Marge yelled at him. "Damn you! React!"
"You tell me the biggest crisis in your life happened fifteen years ago, and I didn't even know about it," he answered reluctantly. "The climax happened while I was out buying popcorn. You reached a turning point and passed it, and I didn't even notice."
"But I couldn't have told you before. It has taken all these years for memory to do its work and put the pieces together in a coherent story. It has taken this long for me to realize that that time of chaos with Charlie was necessary, that without it I would have become a very different person, we would never have returned to one another, and I would never have fallen in love with you, as I did. Are you angry at me for telling you now?"
"No," I answered. "I just feel empty and foolish. It's so stupid."
"And how stupid do you think I feel, hearing about the research that's been going on all these years and is now beginning to prove the theory I was so passionate about back then. Do you think I wouldn't like to be the one taking the bows, getting all the credit, winning the fucking Nobel Prize? Do you think I don't want to be somebody who's worth something to this world? But the fact is -- the idea was great, but it didn't need me to come to light.
"This reminds me of what Charlie said a long time ago," she went on. "Something about Leibnitz and Newton, and the time being ripe for certain ideas. And everybody is born with some special genius and potential, but God rolls his dice, and only against great odds might it happen that your number comes up at the right time -- that your special gift is what is needed at just that time in history and you are ready for it. But that's not the way the dice came out.
"Is the world really any different because I wasn't the one who got the credit? The discovery was made or will be soon. They will find ways to deal with memory disorders and senility. People will understand the relationship between dreams and memory and will stop over-valuing the role of sex in our imaginative lives. And that doesn't have anything to do with me. If you will, I'm one of those tragic millions who never do the great deed, never fulfill their dreams, even though they feel they had it in them to do it.
"I'm the mother of three children. I work for a fish company. I'm the wife of a frustrated would-be novelist. That's who I am. I have to learn to love that person, if I ever expect you to love me. And you have to learn to accept and love the person you have become."
"I know I should feel sympathy for the agony you must have gone through," Frank began.
"Good God, Frank. You haven't listened to a word I've said. You're still thinking about what happened back then. I'm talking about now."
"Yes, I keep thinking of myself -- my hurt ego. God, how selfish of me, and how selfish you must think I am that it took you this long to tell me."
Frank got up and left. But he took the pictures with him -- the pictures of Marge.
Links to the rest of Sandcastles
To correspond with the author, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
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