Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

He sets out the dog’s food and stands there watching him all but inhale the dry kibble, his tail going like an out-of-control metronome, happiness exploding from his body. Daniel knows exactly how he feels.

He looks up at the sound of a car door opening, like a crack in the still morning air, and across the meadow Jesse Eames is getting ready to hoist himself into the cab of his red pickup, but he stops and turns instead to see Alina running from the open door of her barn, barefoot, in a white bathrobe, her hair flying around her shoulders, into his arms. And Daniel watches as Jesse grabs his daughter, and she kisses him, and his father’s heart swells with even more happiness. So Alina loves this man. How glad he is for that.

Quietly he opens the door into his own cottage, slips in before Orphan can follow, and discards his jeans as he crosses the cold wood floor. Isabelle is turned on her right side, toward the wall, away from him, and he slips into bed behind her and spoons her body with his.

“You’re cold,” she murmurs, but returns to sleep and he holds her and breathes deeply, savoring this moment as he has every second since he saw Isabelle in the woods the day before.

—

THEY WAKE TOGETHER WHEN THE SUN is clearly up, thick stripes of yellow light across the floor, bed, wooden table, and turn toward each other. Daniel strokes Isabelle’s hair away from her face, smiling, and she burrows into his chest.

“Morning.”

“I don’t want it to be morning,” she murmurs. “I want to go back to last night.”

“Well, maybe,” he says as he begins to run his hand down her long back, “this morning will be better.”

“There’s a thought. Better than last night? Is that possible?”

He grins at her. “Flatterer.”

And he kisses her gently, and then not so gently, and she moves her body into his, matching his rhythm — slow, deliberate, careful. She wants to be present as their bodies respond to each other again, not swept away. Present. With Daniel. As she is. As they are with each other.

—

LATER, WHEN SHE’S SITTING at the cleared-off wooden table and Daniel is at the stove making her scrambled eggs and toast and coffee, and Orphan is curled up, snoring, on his bed next to the hearth, Isabelle tells him she’s leaving later that day.

“I figured,” he says, not looking at her.

“Avi’s only five,” she says in explanation, and Daniel nods. “Maybe you’ll come visit us in Oakland.”

Daniel puts their plates of scrambled eggs on the table and sits down opposite her.

“Maybe.”

“I’ll pick you up at the airport. All you’d have to do is get yourself on a plane. No driving necessary,” she adds, although they both know that the likelihood of Daniel getting himself on a plane is slim to none.

“Or you’ll come back here.”

“I’d like to.” Now they’re both in the wistful realm of “if only’s.” Then, because she doesn’t want to leave anything unsaid, she adds, “I’m going to read the book again. I suspect I’ll have a different reaction.”

He grins at her, instantly happy. “Well, you’ll let me know.”

“I will let you know — about the book, about everything, just the way I always have, only now I feel…” And she hesitates, struggling to find the words to describe what has happened between them. “I feel…more entitled to do it. Like these two days have given me permission.”

“To…?” he asks carefully.

She looks down at her plate, hesitates a minute, gathering her courage, then looks straight at him and says with conviction, “To love you.”

Daniel nods, his heart too full to speak. And so they smile at each other, shyly, and Daniel takes her hand, which rests on the table, and brings it to him, opens her fingers, and presses his lips into her warm palm. Isabelle.

October 29, 2000

Daniel,

Last night after I put Avi to bed, when the house was quiet and I had gathered up my courage, which somehow you always give me, I took out your book and began to reread it with a much more open heart. Daniel, it’s a beautiful book, as breathtaking as either of your first two. And the rawness is there, which makes the words jump off the page. And I feel honored to be the “inspiration” for Lanie.

How wise you are to understand that my anger was only about my own disgust at my own inadequacies, my own small and unproductive life, and jealousy, yes, jealousy, that you were able to write a book and I wasn’t. So petty and unfair of me.

But tell me why you made your character such a mess. Did you used to drink that much? And smoke that much? And self-destruct that much?

Lanie might have saved Gus — interesting that you named your character after your father, but that’s a different conversation — but I don’t think I ever did that for you. I might have nudged you closer to where you eventually ended up, but it was completely without a plan and only because I needed so much from you that I grabbed greedily, and the result was a lifeline for both of us.

So my version of events would be quite different, but yours is beyond great. The book is a wonder!

Love,

Isabelle

Isabelle,

Then write your version.

Daniel

Daniel,

Arrrgggggghhh!!

I.

And then, because Daniel doesn’t want Isabelle to feel he has discounted the rest of her e-mail:

Isabelle,

And don’t think your words of praise haven’t made my day, my week, my month, and my forever.

Love,

Daniel

And so slowly, with great trepidation, without telling him at first, Isabelle begins to do just what Daniel commanded: she starts to write her own version of the time they spent together and beyond. Just as Daniel had.

It is Alina who calls Isabelle and tells her to come. That Daniel needs her. And of course she goes.

It isn’t hard these days for Isabelle to arrange her life so that she can quickly fly to New Hampshire. Avi, who is nineteen and in college at UC, Davis, is spending the summer between his freshman and sophomore years working as a white-water guide. Years ago Casey took him to Alaska so they could experience Mendenhall Lake, at the foot of Mendenhall Glacier. He couldn’t resist, Casey told her: “Two Mendenhalls going to see two Mendenhalls — a natural!” And Avi had been dumbstruck by the stark beauty of the landscape — the seven-thousand-foot-tall mountains capped with snow and the pristine, iceberg-studded lake. This summer he’s back to lead boatloads of tourists down the rapids of Mendenhall River.

Casey has always understood something about their son that Isabelle might have missed: that he is happiest where the terrain is rugged, that he hates to be contained. Whatever he ends up doing with his life, it will be something without a desk or a schedule. Not unlike his father.

Their relationship these days consists of travel to remote places: hiking through the austere mountain ranges of Pays Dogon in Mali, riding the rapids of the Rio Upano in Ecuador through the Amazon rain forest. They are always planning their next adventure, each trying to best the other in finding the most remote and original trip to take. It is here that they make their connection, here that they are most alike.

But it is the ways in which Avi is unlike his father that reassure Isabelle about his future. Avi examines and mulls and thinks things through. He wants to know the why of things, and especially of people, in a way that has never appealed to Casey.