Archer Mayor - Occam's razor

In the end, I’d come to believe our undocumented marriage had been a pleasant, worthwhile, and honorable failure, doomed less by incompatibilities and more by the simple fact that we each needed privacy as much as we needed one another. In a suitable paradox, our separation had finally brought us closer together. Once again situated as we’d been years earlier, we’d been relieved of the question of what life might be like if we moved in together-and burdened by knowing what that knowledge had cost.

Arriving in a dark and quiet Brattleboro much later, I parked at the back of the shared driveway off Green Street and entered my new home, still enjoying the novelty of its unfamiliar odors. Seeing by the light filtering in through the windows, I crossed the downstairs to a door leading to a small attached barn and entered what I was hoping would become a source of rejuvenating comfort. One of the things that had attracted me most to this place had been the opportunity-for the first time since I’d left the family farm-to have a fully functional woodworking shop.

Aside from reading, which I did as much as possible, I had no real hobbies. Work had consumed most of my waking hours, later yielding occasionally to spending time with Gail, especially lately. But that was now over, and I had hopes of reaching back to my past to revive a pleasure I hadn’t visited in too long. As a boy and a teenager, I’d worked, first under my father’s guidance and then, after he’d died, by myself in a cow shed on the Thetford farm where Leo and our mother still lived, running ancient cast-iron saws, lathes, and drills, turning out everything from uninhabitable birdhouses early on to some pretty sophisticated furniture later. But since leaving home, I’d never tried it again.

With typically nurturing invasiveness, Leo had encouraged my yearnings. He’d taken time off from his butcher shop, and from caring for Mom, to help me move in, arriving with a truck full of the same equipment I’d used all those years ago-refurbished and overhauled and gleaming like new. It had taken a whole day just to set up the shop, but the results had been akin to receiving a transfusion.

Now the machinery sat strategically placed around the open floor of this small, warm, renovated barn, waiting to carve out a whole new line of creations. I was pretty sure I’d make a mess of things early on, but the comfort I felt merely watching these tools under a row of bright lights-silent, shiny black, and resolute-more than compensated for any lingering apprehension.

There was a gentle knock on one of the windows. I crossed over to the sliding door that led to the driveway and opened it enough to see Sammie Martens standing in the cold.

“Come on in.”

She slipped inside and leaned her back against the wall, taking in the scene before her. “Wow. You weren’t kidding about this.”

I slid the door closed again. “Nope. And it’s all my old stuff. My brother brought it down so I could take another stab at it.”

She took a few steps forward and laid a hand tentatively against the cold, hard flank of a band saw. “It’s beautiful-like out of a museum.”

“It’s old enough to be. All cast-iron, solid as rock. It’s the kind of equipment they used to have in lumber mills. My father picked it up over the years, sometimes bartering, sometimes buying it secondhand.”

I realized she was now looking at me, a small smile on her face. “You sound like a proud father yourself.”

I laughed and motioned her over to the door leading back to the living room. “Yeah-well-old dog, old tricks. You want something hot to drink? I just got back from upstate. I was thinking of fixing some hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate?” She hesitated as she passed before me. “Sure. Why not? I haven’t had any of that since I was a kid.”

I turned on a few lights as I walked toward the kitchen, which was separated from the rest of the room by a long, low counter.

“How was your trip?” she asked, perching on a stool and watching me work.

“Pretty much a dead end. I’m all but positive Marcia Wilkin’s holding back, but nothing I said would budge her. Unless something pops up we can use as leverage, I don’t see what else we can do. We’ll just have to wait till Mark gets elected governor, and then see what that draws out of the woodwork-if anything.”

“Well,” she said philosophically, “it’s not like we have a case building against him, anyhow. Just a bunch of suspicions. The really bad guys are all behind bars.”

I was shifting things about, preparing the kettle, getting the cups out. “Yeah. Would’ve been nice to tie up that one loose thread, though.”

Sammie didn’t respond, and after a few moments of silence, I turned to look at her. She was staring off into space, her face small, pale, and sad.

I reached out and touched her shoulder. “You okay?”

She smiled wanly and laid her hand on mine, giving it a squeeze. “I should ask you the same thing.”

“I think so,” I answered. “I’ve been debating with myself all night. Maybe that’s why I was in the woodshop-sort of getting myself re-anchored to something. I know we’ve just gone back to the way things were-even with her working up in Montpelier-but I miss what we had.”

“Tell me about it,” she said wistfully.

“You still think about him a lot?” I asked.

“Not him- it, ” she answered. “I know now he wouldn’t have worked out, for a whole bunch of reasons, but I really liked that closeness with someone.”

The kettle began to whistle. I spooned out the chocolate, poured in the water, added a little half-and-half, and set the end results in front of her. “I have whipped cream.”

Her face brightened. “No kidding?”

I got the canister out of the fridge and shot a small iceberg into her mug. She took a careful sip, putting a dollop of cream on her nose, which she wiped off with the back of her hand, laughing.

I thought of how we represented far sides of the same spectrum-she at the start of adult life, and I much closer to the end. “You looking for someone else?” I asked after a while.

Her mood had lightened, her tone become jauntier. “Shit, no. I’m still walking wounded. I think I will in the long run, though. I can see what people are talking about now.”

“This won’t be the last time you get hammered,” I cautioned.

“Oh, I know. That’s what made me think it was such a crock. I used to watch my parents duke it out and think, no way I was going to fall into the same trap. But I’ll give Andy that much-for all his bullshit, he showed me what it could be like. And you and Gail showed me, too.”

I looked at her, surprised, hardly thinking we set an example for anyone. “You’re kidding. We live in separate towns, for Christ’s sake.”

“But you love each other, even so.”

I sipped my drink silently, reflecting on how simple she made it sound-and on how she might be right.

After a moment, I resurfaced from my thoughts. “I never asked-why did you drop by tonight?”

She held up her mug and smiled. “For this.”

The year had come full circle. It was January again, the ground was covered with snow, and I was back in the State House, elbowing through a throng of people. This time, however, Gail was beside me, beaming with enthusiasm, fueled by a renewed passion for working in the political storm.

“They say he has it wrapped up. He’s been twisting arms, calling in markers, making all sorts of deals. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days-been working on pure adrenaline.”

We were crushed together, navigating the hallway like tandem kayakers in a raging stream. All around us the air was filled with similar conversations, the showdown at the joint assembly being the only topic in town.