Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

Daniel hasn’t moved. Head down, shoulders bowed, his eyes on his shoes now, a picture of defeat.

Stefan comes over to him, sits beside him on the sofa, puts a hand on his shoulder, and says softly, “That’s not the whole story, Dad, I know that.”

And it’s then that tears fill Daniel’s eyes.

—

WHEN DANIEL DESCRIBED THE SCENE in all its scathing detail to Isabelle, she was silent for quite a while. The phone line crackled with empty air while she tried to find the right response, both honest and as comforting as she could make it.

“She needed to say all that,” Isabelle said finally.

“Obviously.”

“What did you do?”

“Listened.”

“Did you respond? Did you try to show her your side of things?”

“She wouldn’t have been able to hear me.”

“No, you’re right, not with all that anger blocking the way.” Then: “But maybe one day she’ll be able to.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s what you can hope for, Daniel.”

“Yes.”

But the only thing that changed after Stefan’s visit was that Alina and Daniel became even more careful with each other, more buttoned up, both aware now of the tumult roiling away beneath Alina’s calm surface. Each working hard not to trigger an eruption, something that had mortified both of them.

—

ISABELLE WAS MORE THAN SURPRISED, then, when, years later, the phone call she received was from Alina. But there was no decision to make, and Isabelle packed her bags and asked Michael to drive her to the Oakland airport and kissed him good-bye and thanked him for being so understanding, because she clearly knew how much he didn’t want her to go.

“I’m going to miss you,” is as much as he allows himself to say as they stand at the airport curb beside his murky-green Volvo. She is his center and his reason to get up in the morning and his delight at the end of the day when he finishes his work and comes home.

“I know,” Isabelle says. “I’ll miss you, too.” And she means it. Despite the fact that she is going to Daniel, she will miss Michael.

“You can do this,” he tells her, and she nods, even though she isn’t sure she’ll be able to. This time, on this trip, Daniel is the one in need, and she has to make sure she doesn’t buckle in the face of it.

As soon as the plane is at cruising altitude and the seat belt sign is turned off, Isabelle settles into her seat. She’s never completely confident that the tons of metal she’s encased in will make it up into the air, so she holds herself in anticipation until the plane has leveled out. Finally she allows herself a deep breath and lets Oakland and her life there drop away. Her thoughts turn to the last time she saw Daniel, so much easier to contemplate than what awaits her now.

In 2003, almost exactly three years after her first trip, she visited Daniel again in New Hampshire. Avi was eight and Michael wasn’t yet in her life. She had spent the past three years trying to do what Daniel had urged her to: write her own version of their connection. But she wasn’t at all sure she was on the right track. All she’d been able to get down on paper were snippets and isolated scenes and paragraphs that didn’t seem to go anywhere. How would all these disparate parts coalesce into a real story?

What she needed, she decided, was to pace across the wooden floor of Daniel’s cottage and read it all aloud to him and sneak glances to see how he was taking it in and then sit and wait for his verdict with her eyes on his face, the way she used to when she was his student. She wanted to be that student again, and so she flew to Winnock one more time.

She found a quietly confident Daniel, a bit tentative about the warm reception he had received for Out of the Blue —after all, he’d been through this dance before — but accepting enough of it to be able to continue writing.

He was working on a series of short stories about a fictional town in New Hampshire that was inspired by the place he now called home. And it was going well, and he welcomed Isabelle with a lightness of spirit that she was thrilled to see.

This time their days together were completely different. They had an ease with the other, a certainty about the place they occupied in each other’s life. They wanted nothing more than for all that to continue. And nothing else.

Daniel would stay in Winnock — that was clear. It was where he could breathe deeply and live simply and write without the anxiety that he knew was always crouched in a corner somewhere, lying in wait for him. He saw it as almost a physical being, a sleek black panther, deadly and silent. One false move and the cat would pounce.

Isabelle would stay in Oakland and raise her child where he needed to be, close to his grandparents and at home base for his wandering father. She would work out her relationship with Casey somehow, someday, and help Meir run the bookstore, and struggle to write. That’s how they would live their day-to-day lives, but they had each other whenever they needed. If they could count on that, they wouldn’t ask for more, because neither of them was certain that more would have been better. “As is” seemed perfectly fine.

They spent Isabelle’s visit in Daniel’s small cabin, which had been transformed since she was there last. Now it felt like someone had made it a home. There were beautiful white pine shelves and cabinets built into the walls surrounding the stone fireplace. And Daniel had filled them with the books he loved.

“Jesse’s work,” Daniel explained. “He lives with Alina now, it seems.” And then Daniel grinned at her. “He talks to me, even if she doesn’t.”

And Daniel had bought a sofa, deep blue and very comfortable. There were rugs on the floor and white curtains at the windows. And a real set of dishes stacked on the shelves in the kitchen. A handmade quilt of five pointed stars on the bed they shared. Orphan even had his own monogrammed dog bed, courtesy of L.L. Bean.

And Isabelle was able to walk across the cabin floor and read her pages out loud and watch Daniel’s face for a reaction and sit down in a kitchen chair when she was done and ask, “Well? Tell me.”

“Why does this story matter?” Daniel’s voice is gentle.

Isabelle sits motionless and contemplates what he has asked her. She doesn’t have an easy answer. And he waits. The wind outside fills the quiet. The birch tree limbs rub against each other in a sort of moaning.

Daniel is comfortable simply watching her try to find an answer and so he doesn’t say anything, and they sit like that, across the small room from each other, until finally Isabelle says, “Because I want to show how the most unlikely people can save each other’s lives.”

“Yes,” he says with a sort of relief, “that is exactly it. Perfect!”

On her last morning there they wrap up in heavy jackets — there is frost in the air — and wind woolen scarves around their necks and walk into town for Bev’s cinnamon buns and coffee.

Isabelle had heard so much about “the women” but had met only Pauline the last time she was there, small, feisty Pauline, who had served them their dinner and her unedited opinions at the Granite State Diner. But it is Bev she is curious about, because Daniel has spoken more often about her and she seems to be the heart of the class.

Through the woods they retrace their steps from Isabelle’s last visit, laughing about how angry she had been then.

“Angry at myself,” Isabelle says now.

Daniel takes her gloved hand in his and doesn’t disagree.

The trees are bare now, all the gorgeous leaves underfoot fading into the forest floor. It’s more desolate than the last time Isabelle was there, with winter around the corner and the blaze of autumn behind them. But they are content, and Isabelle feels the need to amend her thought.