Small Things Moved

On Tuesday the mug was on the wrong hook.

She noticed it at seven in the morning, standing in her robe in the kitchen with a hand on her stomach and the first gray light in the window. She had slept in snatches. She had lain in the dark with her eyes open, listening, and had dropped off at last at about five, and woken at six-thirty with a dry mouth and a pulse in her temple and the stale, bruised feeling of a person who has run all night through a dream. She put the kettle on. She reached up for her blue mug, the one with the chipped rim that she had used every day for six months, and her hand closed on air.

The hooks were on the wall above the sink, a row of five brass cup-hooks Emory had screwed into the plaster in April. She hung her blue mug on the second one, on the left. She had always hung it on the second one. It was a habit as deep as breathing; she did it without looking, the way she turned off a light.

The mug was on the fourth hook, on the right.

She stood there for a long moment looking at it.

I moved it, she thought. Last night. I got a drink of water, and I put it back wrong, and I was so tired I don’t remember. She lifted the mug off the fourth hook and held it in both hands. It was cool. There was a faint dry ring inside it where the last of her tea had dried. She had drunk from it, she thought, on Sunday, before the record. She had not touched it since.

She hung it on the second hook, and stood back, and made her tea in a different cup.

* * *

It was only one thing, and she would have forgotten it if there had not been another.

By noon she had found six.

She went through the house slowly, as one might go through a house after a burglary, touching things, checking, not quite daring to name what she was looking for. In the study, the Blackwings in the walnut box were no longer lying in their neat rows with their erasers to the left. They had been turned. All twelve, with their little gilt letters upright, SKRIV facing the lid, as though someone had wished to read the word. She had not done that. She had never in her life put a pencil in a box with the print facing up.

On the landing, the gray cardigan she had hung over the banister was now folded over the arm of the chair in the bedroom. In the bathroom, the glass on the shelf held only her own toothbrush; his was gone. That she’d expected. He had taken his razor, too, and his boots, and the big gray sweatshirt from the back of the chair, and the three shirts from the closet, as he’d said he would. He had been thorough. He had been so thorough that for a moment, standing in the empty closet, she felt a small shameful pang of loss.

But the other things she had not expected.

The curtain in the bedroom was open. She had pinned it shut with a safety pin on Sunday night, and she remembered that, she remembered the click, and the pin was lying on the windowsill. Not dropped; placed, closed, with the point turned down. The back door, which she was certain she had bolted, was unlocked. The Marigold postcard from the boatyard, which she had stuck to the refrigerator with a lighthouse magnet, had vanished. And the little brass key on its green ribbon, which she had left on the kitchen table beside the roses, lay in exactly the same spot, laid out as though for display, and the roses were gone.

She looked for them in the trash. She looked in the compost. She looked in the sink, in the yard, in the ditch. They were nowhere.

She went through the pockets of the cardigan she was wearing, one by one, with fingers that trembled, until she was down to the left front pocket, where she kept a folded square of paper. A gas bill. Rules of Engagement, in her own handwriting, with a signature in pencil at the bottom, and a ghost of a kiss.

It was gone.

She turned the pocket inside out. She searched the other cardigan, and the coat on the hook, and her purse. She went up the stairs on her knees and crawled under the bed. She had carried that piece of paper for three months. She had slept with it. She had taken it out on the dark nights and read it by the light of her phone, the eight rules and the amendments, Pip not discussed in the bedroom, and anyone who makes a perfect walnut pencil box, and when a woman says come back to bed. It was her proof. It was the only thing in the world that proved she had not been mad.

She sat back on her heels on the bedroom floor in the pale slats of light, and said, aloud, in a small clear voice:

“I’m not imagining it.”

The room said nothing.

“I’m tired. I’m pregnant. I’m not sleeping. But I am not imagining it.”

She was not sure, as she said it, that she believed herself.

* * *

That was the cruelty of it. She understood it later, in the long clear hours of that week; she understood that it was not the things themselves, but the shape of them. If the house had been ransacked, she would have called the police. If a window had been broken, a lock forced, a threat scrawled on a mirror, she would have known how to be afraid. But a mug on the wrong hook? A pencil turned in a box? A pin laid down with its point to the sill?

No one would believe it. She hardly believed it herself.

She sat at the kitchen table with a notebook open before her, a plain spiral thing from the Port Ellis hardware store, and wrote it all down. Tues 9/2. 7:05 — blue mug, hook 4 (should be 2). 9:40 — pencils, SKRIV up. 10:15 — curtain open, pin on sill. 10:30 — back door unlocked (I bolted at 10 last night, I remember the sound). She wrote in small neat block capitals. She paused, and looked at the letters, and realized with a lurch what she was doing. She had caught his hand.

She crossed it out, and began again in her own cursive.

Photographs, she thought. Evidence. She took out her phone, the sleek traitorous little slab of glass, and photographed the mug on the second hook, and the pencils, and the open curtain, and the back door, with the date and time stamped in the corner. She felt foolish. She felt like a woman in a bad film. But she took them, one after another, nine in a row, carefully, and when she was done she swiped through the album to check.

There were eight.

She swiped back. The photograph of the pencils, which she had taken in the study, was not there. She looked in Recently Deleted. It was empty. She took it again, with a trembling thumb, and checked again, and the new one was there, bright and clear, with the right time.

She put the phone down on the table, face-down, with great care, as if it were a living thing.

There’s no WiFi. I unplugged it. She had unplugged the router on Monday morning. The house had been cut off from the world for twenty-four hours. Whatever the phone was doing, it was not doing it by the internet. She told herself so in a firm voice. She did not ask herself how she knew.

The sea breathed below the cliff. She sat in the kitchen with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she did not want, and for the first time since March, she felt the full vast loneliness of the house: the long empty hall, the quiet stairs, the twenty rooms (it felt like twenty) of echoing air. The nearest neighbor was three miles. The nearest road was a gravel track through a pine wood. She was alone on a cliff with a man’s key on her table and a secret under her heart, and there was not a single person in the world to whom she could say what she was afraid of.

Pip, she thought.

She picked up the phone again. She found the name. She thumbed to the message screen, and typed: Is the Block Island ferry

She stopped.

The cursor blinked. She looked at it. It was a perfectly ordinary half-sentence, six words, a joke from twenty years ago. She would say it, and Pip would come. She would drive down from Portland in the Audi with her hair flying and her kit bag in the back, and she would stand on the porch, and say what’s wrong, Cor, what’s he done? And Corinne would have to tell her.

She’d have to say: I’ve been sleeping with your son since May.

She’d have to say: I lied to you in your kitchen.

She’d have to say: I am carrying his child, and I think he knows, and I think he’s been in my house.

And Pip would look at her. Pip, who had held her head over a toilet after the second miscarriage. Pip, who had driven ninety minutes through the dark. Pip, whose face had gone white at the party, with her fingers pressed to her mouth, watching her boy among the sparklers. And the look in that face, Corinne thought, when it came, would be the end of something. Not of the friendship, perhaps. But of Pip’s belief that her son was a gentle boy who had once had a hard year.

And what do I tell her? That he moved my mug?

She held down the delete key and watched the six words go, letter by letter. She put the phone in the drawer under the toaster, with the flashlight and the string, and shut it. She went and stood at the window and looked at the sea, and she was ashamed, and afraid, and so tired that she thought she might lie down on the kitchen floor and sleep there until the end of the world.

* * *

She went into town because she could not stay in the house.

It was one in the afternoon, bright, brisk, the first cool day of September. The sky had the sharp pale cleanness of autumn, and the pines along the lane had a few red needles in them. She drove the Volvo with the windows down, and noticed, halfway to Port Ellis, that the seat was too far forward, and that the mirror was tilted a little to the left, and that the gas gauge, which she was sure had read nearly full on Sunday, stood at a quarter.

She pulled over. She sat with her hands on the wheel, in the dappled shade, for a very long time.

I drove to the Hannaford’s on Saturday. She tried to calculate. I drove to Rockland. It’s — thirty miles round trip. That would be an eighth of a tank. She tried the numbers again, a different way. The Volvo’s gauge was erratic; everyone said so. It dropped a quarter, held for a week, dropped another.

She did not take photographs.

She pulled out onto the road and went on into town.

Port Ellis General Store sat at the top of Water Street, a tall, shingled, eccentric building with a deep porch and a rack of lobster buoys by the door. It sold fishing tackle and birthday cards and canned beans and, at the back, from a counter behind a Plexiglas screen, stamps and money orders and the United States mail. She went in with the little bell jingling over her head, and for a moment stood blinking in the warm brown dimness, breathing in the smell of coffee and cedar and old floorboards. A boy in a fishing cap was buying a bag of ice. An old man sat by the stove with a newspaper. And behind the counter, in her lavender cardigan, with her glasses on a chain, Mrs. Dunphy looked up from a stack of envelopes and smiled the smile of a woman who has been expecting you for some time.

“Corinne,” she said warmly. “Well, there you are.”

“Hello, Mrs. Dunphy. I need stamps. A book of the forever ones.”

“Of course you do.” She slid back the Plexiglas. “I was only saying to myself an hour ago, I wonder how she is. I haven’t seen you in weeks.” The sharp eyes traveled over Corinne’s face, the shadows under them, the paper-white cheeks. “My, my. You’re peaky. Are you eating?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine, dear. You look like a wrung-out dishrag.” She tore a sheet of stamps from a roll, with a ripping sound, and counted them out onto the counter. “I won’t say a word. I won’t. But I’ll tell you, I was very glad when Emory came by.”

Corinne’s hand stopped halfway to her purse.

“I’m sorry?”

“The Wolcott boy. He was in yesterday, first thing.” Mrs. Dunphy lowered her voice. She leaned across the counter, and the lavender cardigan gave off a faint cloud of talcum and peppermint. “Such a gentleman. Such a devoted boy. He was beside himself, poor lamb. He said he was worried sick.”

“About what?”

“About you, dear.” The pale blue eyes were soft with pity. “He said you’d been having a hard time. Since the divorce. All alone out there on the cliff, no family, no friends; he said you’d been crying, and not sleeping, and he thought you might be — oh, I don’t want to say the word. Struggling. That’s the nice way to put it.” She patted Corinne’s wrist. “He said you’d had a bit of a turn, over the weekend. A little upset. And that he wanted me to keep an eye, in case you came in looking peaky. In case you wanted somebody to talk to.”

A silence fell.

It was a very large silence. It seemed to fill the store, and the long brown aisles, and the creaking boards, and the ticking clock above the door. The boy in the fishing cap was looking at his shoes. The old man by the stove had put down his newspaper. And Mrs. Dunphy stood, with her hand on Corinne’s wrist and her kindly, curious, hungry face lifted, waiting.

“I’m not struggling,” said Corinne.

Her voice came out quite level. She heard it with a kind of remote admiration.

“Of course you’re not.”

“I haven’t been crying. I’ve been working on a book. I’m on a deadline. Emory has —” She hesitated. “Emory is a very sweet boy. He’s very loyal. But he’s a little — he gets anxious. He worries. He’s been so kind. I think he’s projecting.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“I’m perfectly well.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Mrs. Dunphy gave the wrist a final pat, and drew back, and her mouth took on a sorrowful, indulgent, ineffably knowing shape. “Only — you’ll tell me, won’t you? If there’s ever anything. People do get low out here, you know. The winters. I had a neighbor, a lovely woman, who — well, never mind. You’ve got friends. You’ve got the Wolcotts. You’ve got me.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’ll let that boy look in on you.”

“I’ll —” Corinne swallowed. “I’ll think about it.”

She took the stamps. She paid with a ten, and left the change on the counter, and walked out under the jingling bell into the cold September sun with the back of her neck prickling, as though a hundred small eyes were fixed on it. She stood on the porch among the lobster buoys. A gull wheeled overhead, screaming.

He’s building a story.

She stood very still.

That’s what he’s doing. He’s not breaking anything. He isn’t threatening. He’s going quietly around the town, a boy with a sad face, and he’s telling people that I’m unwell. That I cry. That I’m alone, and confused, and shouldn’t be left. And when something happens — when I say something, or do something, or go somewhere — it’ll be a piece of the pattern. Poor Corinne. Poor dear. We all saw it coming.

She walked to the car with her keys in her fist, and her heartbeat in her ears, and opened the door with a sharp metallic clack.

And no one, thought Corinne, will believe a word I say.

* * *

She called the clinic from the front seat of the Volvo.

She had meant to wait until she got home. But it was a quarter to two and she could not stand to put it off; she had a crawling conviction, sitting in the sun with the hot leather at her back, that every hour she spent not knowing was costing her something she could not afford. She took the card from her purse and found the number and dialed.

“Maine Medical Partners, Maternal-Fetal Medicine. This is Denise.”

“Hello, Denise. This is Corinne Aldermere. I have an appointment on Thursday at ten with Dr. Baptiste. I just wanted to confirm, and ask whether I should bring any records.”

“Aldermere. A-L-D-E-R. Okay, hold on. Let me pull you up.”

Keys clicked. She watched a woman in a pink raincoat come out of the bakery across the street, carrying a box tied with string.

“Hm,” said Denise.

“Is there a problem?”

“I’m sorry, hon. I’m looking at the schedule, and it says you’ve been moved.” The voice was friendly and puzzled. “Looks like somebody called on Monday afternoon and rescheduled your appointment to the eighteenth. September eighteenth. At two.”

The world slid sideways.

“I didn’t call.”

“Oh. Well. It says here — a woman, on a Maine number, gave your name and date of birth and said something had come up. She asked to move it by two weeks. We get a lot of those.”

“It wasn’t me.” Corinne closed her eyes. “I didn’t call. I haven’t called anyone. It wasn’t me, and I don’t want to move it. I need to be seen on Thursday. I need to be seen as soon as possible. I have a — I’m high-risk, there’s a rupture history, Dr. Anand referred me herself —”

“I see that.” The voice was very gentle. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. I’m looking at Dr. Baptiste’s calendar and his Thursday is — it’s completely full. We gave your slot to another patient first thing yesterday. I can put you on the cancellation list. If somebody drops, I’ll call you right away. Is this the best number?”

“It’s the only number.”

“And if you start bleeding, or have pain —”

“I know.”

“You go to the ER. Okay? You don’t wait for us.”

“I know. I know. Thank you.”

She ended the call. She sat with the phone in her lap, staring at the windshield, at the long ordinary street of white clapboard houses and flower boxes and a dog asleep in the sun. A woman had called. A woman, on a Maine number, with her name and her date of birth.

It was a woman, she thought. It could have been a girl. A friend. Someone he paid. Someone he —

She stopped, because the next thought was worse. Or it could have been me.

Because what if it was? What if some part of her, in the long gray fog of the last two days, had picked up the phone and made the call? What if she had lain awake at four in the morning in a state of such blind terror that she had reached for the easiest lever, the simplest escape, and moved the appointment, and then forgotten, because she was tired, and sick, and carrying a child?

It’s possible, said a small, cool, reasonable voice. It’s very possible. You’ve been so afraid of him that you’ve been afraid of the clinic. You’ve been afraid of Portland. You deleted a text. You pretended it was a dentist. You’ve been lying to everyone, for weeks, and there’s nothing in the world more natural than that a woman who lies should forget which lie she told.

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, hard, until colored lights burst behind the lids.

That’s what he’s doing, she thought. That’s exactly what he wants.

He wants me to doubt myself.

* * *

The afternoon was gray and sweet and endless.

She went home. She locked the doors, front and back, and shot both bolts, and went round the ground floor checking the windows. She had thought for a while of staying in the car and driving, any direction, to a motel in Camden, to Portland, to the airport. But the thought of a hotel room, its anonymous bed, its blank walls, was unbearable. She was tired of running. She had run from Graham to this house. She would not run from this house to a Motel 6. This was hers. She had paid the rent.

Rent, she thought, with a flicker of a different unease. She had paid it to Harbor & Pine Realty, by electronic transfer, on the first of every month. She had never once spoken to a human being there. She had never, now that she looked back, seen the name of the owner.

She dismissed it. It was one thought too many.

She made a grilled cheese sandwich and ate half. She tried to work, and could not. She read the same page of Skau four times: Marit stood on the pier in the rain and looked at the water and knew that someone was watching her. She laughed, and the laugh broke into something else, and she put her head down on the desk and lay with her cheek on the manuscript and breathed.

Nothing moved that night. She lay awake with the beam going round the ceiling, listening, and in the morning the mug hung on its second hook and the pencils lay as she had left them, and that was almost worse. On Wednesday she did not leave the house. She sat at the desk and called it working. She left the phone in its drawer, and did not ring anyone, and no one rang her.

At four on Wednesday it began to rain.

It came quietly out of the west, a fine gray veil that blurred the glass and darkened the lawn. Soon the drops were running down the window in thin silver threads. The garden went dim. The pines on the edge of the cliff turned black and shaggy, and the sea beyond them vanished into the weather. She turned on the lamp in the study and sat in its small yellow circle, watching the rain, with her hand on her stomach and her eyes half closed.

At ten past five, someone knocked on the door.

Three raps. A pause. One tap.

She did not move.

She sat in the circle of lamplight with her hand pressed against her middle, and every nerve in her body went still. The knock did not come again. She listened to the rain, and the tick of the clock, and the thump of her own heart. After a long time she rose, and crossed the study, and went down the hall in her stocking feet to the front door, and stood in front of it, without touching the bolt.

“Corinne?”

His voice came through the wood, low and hoarse and very close. He must have been standing with his face almost against the panel.

“I know I shouldn’t be here. I know. I’m not going to come in. I’m not going to try to open the door.” There was a pause. She heard him draw a long breath. “I just can’t — I thought I could do it. I told myself for three days that I could. I got to the boatyard on Monday and I couldn’t hold a plane. I got home and I couldn’t sleep. I lay on the floor of my room for six hours with the glove in my hand.”

She put her forehead against the door.

“I’m not going to ask you to take me back,” said Emory. “I swear. I keep my word. I’m only asking for one thing. One evening. One dinner. So I can say it right.” His voice cracked. “It ended so badly. I said okay, and I walked out of your house, and I haven’t been able to breathe since. I want to say a proper goodbye. I want to leave you with something that isn’t — that isn’t that. I want you to remember me as something other than a man you had to send away.”

The rain ran down the glass. Out in the gray, the first sweep of the lamp crossed the top of the lawn, pale and slow, and was swallowed by the dusk.

“Please,” said Emory, softly. “Please, Corinne. Just once.”

She stood in the hall with her hand on the cold brass of the bolt, and her palm resting flat against the oak, where she could feel, or thought she could feel, through the whole thickness of the wood, the warmth of his body on the other side.