Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

I’ve been very lucky. He was a good person.”

Owen could hear the telephone ringing in the house.

“Could you get that?” Hillary called from the kitchen.

“I apologize, I—”

“No, please, carry on,” Mrs. Giles said.

He left her there and passing through the dining room, crossed the hall to the phone.

“Owen, it’s Ben Hansen.”

“Ben.”

“Look, I feel terrible about this, but I’m not going to be able to make it out there tonight.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, the meetings are running late here and I’m supposed to give this talk, it’s all been pushed back. Horrible timing, I’m afraid.”

Owen could hear his sister closing the oven door, the water coming on in the sink.

“I’m sorry about that. It’s a great pity. I know Hillary was looking forward to seeing you. We both were.”

“I was looking forward to it myself, I really was,” he said.

“Have you been well?”

Owen laughed. “Me? Yes. I’ve been fine. Everything’s very much the same on this end… It does seem awfully long ago you were here.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Standing there in the hall, Owen felt a sudden longing. He imagined Ben as he often saw him in his mind’s eye, tall and thin, half a step ahead on the Battersea Bridge, hands scrunched into his pockets. And he pictured the men he sometimes saw holding hands in Soho or Piccadilly. In June, perhaps on this very Sunday, thousands marched. He wanted to tell Ben what it felt like to pass two men on the street like that, how he had always in a sense been afraid.

“You’re still with the firm?”

“Yes,” Owen said. “That’s right.” And he wanted to say how frightened he’d been watching his friend Saul’s ravaged body die, how the specter of disease had made him timid.

How he, Ben, had seemed a refuge.

“And with you, things have been well?”

He listened as Ben described his life—columnist now for the paper, the children beginning school; he heard the easy, slightly weary tone in his voice—a parent’s fatigue. And he wondered how Ben remembered them. Were Hillary and Owen Simpson just two people he’d met on a year abroad ages ago? Had he been coming here for answers, or did he just have a free evening and a curiosity about what had become of them? What did it matter now? There would be no revelation tonight. He was safe again.

“Might you be back over at some point?” he asked. He sensed their conversation about to end and felt on the edge of panic.

“Definitely. It’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Judy and I were thinking of bringing the kids—maybe next summer—and I remembered you rented that place up north. Is there a person to call about getting one of those?”

“The cottages?… Yes, of course.”

“Yeah, that would be great. I’ll try to give you a call when we’re ready to firm up some plans.”

“And Judy? She’s well?”

“Sure, she’s heard all about you, wants to meet you both sometime.”

“That would be terrific,” Owen said, the longing there again.

“Ben?”

“Yes?”

“Who is it?” Hillary asked, stepping into the hall, drying her hands with a dishcloth. A red amulet their mother had worn hung round her neck, resting against the front of her linen dress.

“Ben,” he mouthed.

Her face stiffened slightly.

“Hillary’s just here,” he said into the phone. “Why don’t you have a word?” He held the receiver out to her.

“He can’t make it.”

“Is that right?” she said, staring straight through him. She took the phone. Owen walked back into the dining room; by the sideboard, he paused.

“No, no, don’t be silly,” he heard his sister say. “It’s quite all right.”

“A BEAUTIFUL EVENING, isn’t it?” Mrs. Giles said as he stepped back onto the terrace. The air was mild now, the sun beginning to shade into the trees. Clouds like distant mountains had appeared on the horizon.

“Yes,” he said, imagining the evening view of the lake from the garden of their cottage, the way they checked the progress of the days by which dip in the hills the sun disappeared behind. Mrs. Giles stood from the bench. “I should be getting along.”

He walked her down the side of the house and out the gate.

Though the sky was still bright, the streetlamps had begun to flicker on. Farther up the street a neighbor watered her lawn.

“Thank you for the tea.”

“Not at all,” he said.

“It wasn’t bad news just now, I hope.”

“No, no,” he said. “Just a friend calling.”

“That’s good, then.” She hesitated by the low brick wall that separated their front gardens. “Owen, there was just one thing I wanted to mention. In my sitting room, the desk over in the corner, in the top drawer there. I’ve put a letter in. You understand. I wanted to make sure someone would know where to look. Nothing to worry about, of course, nothing dramatic… but in the event… you see?”

He nodded, and she smiled back at him, her eyes beginning to water. Owen watched her small figure as she turned and passed through her gate, up the steps, and into her house.

He stayed awhile on the sidewalk, gazing onto the common: the expanse of lawn, white goalposts on the football pitch set against the trees. A long shadow, cast by their house and the others along this bit of street, fell over the playing field. He watched it stretching slowly to the chestnut trees, the darkness slowly climbing their trunks, beginning to shade the leaves of the lower branches.

In the house, he found Hillary at the kitchen table, hands folded in her lap. She sat perfectly still, staring into the garden. For a few minutes they remained like that, Owen at the counter, neither of them saying a word. Then his sister got up and passing him as though he weren’t there, opened the oven door.

“Right,” she said. “It’s done.”

They ate in the dining room, in the fading light, with the silver and the crystal. Roses, pink and white, stood in a vase at the center of the table. As the plates were already out, Hillary served her chicken marsala on their mother’s china. The candles remained unlit in the silver candlesticks.

“He’ll be over again,” Owen said. Hillary nodded. They finished their dinner in silence. Afterward, neither had the appetite for the strawberries set out on the polished tray.

“I’ll do these,” he said when they’d stacked the dishes on the counter. He squeezed the green liquid detergent into the baking dish and watched it fill with water. “I could pour you a brandy if you like,” he said over his shoulder. But when he turned he saw his sister had left the room.

He rinsed the bowls and plates and arranged them neatly in the rows of the dishwasher. Under the warm running water, he sponged the wineglasses clean and set them to dry on the rack. When he’d finished, he turned the taps off, and then the kitchen was quiet.

He poured himself a scotch and took a seat at the table. The door to the garden had been left open and in the shadows he could make out the azalea bush and the cluster of rhododendron. Up the lane from where they’d lived as children, there was a manor with elaborate gardens and a moat around the house. An old woman they called Mrs. Montague lived there and she let them play on the rolling lawns and in the labyrinth of the topiary hedge. They would play for hours in the summer, chasing each other along the embankments, pretending to fish in the moat with a stick and string. He won their games of hide-and-go-seek because he never closed his eyes completely, and could see which way she ran. He could still remember the peculiar anger and frustration he used to feel after he followed her to her hiding place and tapped her on the head. He imagined that garden now, the blossoms of its flowers drinking in the cooler night air, the branches of its trees rejuvenating in the darkness.