Iron Behind the Velvet - Chapter 75

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~ The Tender Gravity of Kindness¹

He might have lived another life. The doors had always been there. But sure of the teasing reveal, the eventual outcome – disappointment, loss, his stormless compliance – of The Outsider ever convinced, he’d turned away first, before–

Yet everything, he interrupted himself, everything ... every estranged moment, every companionless hour, every solitary roam of the docks and alleys, every curative ramble in the park, every disciplined, forbearing, philosophical year, had been vital. This life – Catherine – this gathering Paradise²– could not have been had he chosen differently.

Still ... wanting, denying the want ... Was it not a vanity, his ... sufference? Did he owe apology or gratitude? Was the offer of one sincere – possible – without the other?

“Oh, Vincent.” Liz touched his face. There was nothing reserved in the cup of his cheek and he leaned into its steadying warmth. The astringency of a fresh woods drifted up from her wrist. “You’re exhausted,” she murmured. “You haven’t had a minute to yourself. You need to be alone to find a still point. You always did.”

Aloneness ... The very thing he anguished, that confined him, named him ... he required. Stillness. That his jittering, unaligned selves might settle to a reliable, presentable One. How difficult – always – to explain. Father unnerved by the clawing imperative, urging detour. Others cautious and deferential, standing aside in the corridors, letting him pass on his way down. Others tenderly sorry for him. Even Catherine had once faltered so, one evening when overhead the music was borne away. Didn’t it make you feel ...  And he’d finished for her – Alone? – in the untroubled pronunciation of the word hoping to convey the elemental precondition of it. The detachment, however brief, regardless of geography, the reclusion ... the suffering ... the mystery ... his necessaries for joy. 

Liz had found the passage first, a faster reader than he, poems ahead in Leaves of Grass. Father complained she skimmed and skirred the surface. But across from him at the long library table she’d turned her leather-bound copy his way and tapped a stanza with her finger. Tapped it again when her book bumped up against his open between his propped elbows. This is thy hour O soul, he’d leaned forward to read, thy free flight into the wordless, away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging ... ³ He’d looked up from the page, thrilled with recognition, with the poet’s company across time ... and Liz’s. 

Her fingers grazed his jawline. She started to rise, to leave, he feared. Not now. Not yet. 

“Could we ...” he began, and she settled to listen, her willing wait obliging him to go on. With a gesture toward camp, he began again. “After our work is finished ...”  

Liz knew. Devin always came first, she’d braved. Maybe even more first after he left. Noah knew. Stuart, as well, though he’d offered reprieve – The tunnel runs both ways. No more your doing than mine. 

A low lament lodged in his throat. Only Devin ...  

If solely to Catherine, he’d made that claim aloud. And his actions over the years, the walls he’d raised, the distance he’d kept ... the years themselves ... evidenced his mindset. He could not call back the charge, only leave it, its why and wherefore,⁴ alongside vows of promised return and keen examination. Alongside thanksgiving for the opportunity. 

“I’d like to ...” he began a third time, wishes gusting in. Have suppers together, you and Noah, Catherine and I. Get to know your boys. Visit with you, truly visit. Talk as we once did so companionably. Ask the questions we could have then, allow the answers we couldn’t. Explore our new dreams. Be part of one another’s lives again. 

He spread his hands. There were words, but so very many ...

“I’d like to, too,” Liz said.

And it was enough ... for now.

Liz turned to survey the pool and his gaze followed hers. From the surface, plumes of silvery steam danced; the once-still waters burbled. He imagined the silken slipping-down luxury, the assuaging massage.  

“You oughtta get on in,” she prescribed. “It’s hot now, but the chill-stream hits pretty soon and lasts about four hours. Your therapeutic window’s closing. You want I should run get Stuart to help you off with those clothes? Or Noah? He has to be back from the letter station by now. He might have some news from Wren, or know why we don’t.” 

“I can manage.” 

“I don’t want you falling asleep in the pool. Thirty minutes, no more. ‘Course you’ll blast outta there when the water goes cold. It happens all at once, like somebody dumped in a keg of ice. I’m warning you – you won’t get a warning.” 

“Noted,” he replied, as solemn as Liz struggled to remain. 

Her stool pushed back, Liz moved to the ledge of supplies, testing the caps of the brown bottles of essential oils, nesting them in her satchel. She watched him from the corner of her eye, he assumed, gauging his range of motion as he stood and purposely stretched, as he tested his weight first on one leg, then the other, swiveled his shoulders, winged his arms.  

“How was the cake, anyway?” she asked. 

“It was good cake.” Flexion ... extension, flexion ... extension.  Strong, he diagnosed himself, and pain-free ... or nearly so.

“As good as Noah’s mom’s?”

“Almost.” He chuckled when she scowled.  

“Tch,” Liz muttered, rendering Noah’s grandfather’s cadence as clearly as she had Father’s, even the one half-closed eye, the one raised brow. “Vainiker a vort, abi dem emess.” 

“A word less, as long as it’s the truth. Levya said it often enough, but I never understood,” Vincent conceded. His flannel shirt and vest lay clumped on the cavern floor. He gave each a sharp snap, began the pile of his folded clothes. 

“Me, either.”

Seated again, bent to remove his boots, he glanced up at her. “You came when you heard Devin was home, but not–”

“Sure I did,” she interrupted. “I was so glad to see him alive I could have strangled him. Did you know he was the first boy I ever kissed?”

He balked at her shift of subject even as he entertained it.  “He was? He never told me you two were–”

“Oh, there wasn’t an us-two. It was purely experimental. He didn’t care much for my critique, either. When he took off, I worried it was because of me. I was fairly specific about his shortcomings.”

“You were not the reason.” His tone was somber and remindful, contrary to her invitation, but a melancholy had thrown off its weights, rose toward the air and the light. “You came home for Devin, but not for Lisa.”  

Liz’s mouth curved down; she sighed. Grumbling, she turned back to the refitting of her supplies, intent on the troublesome buckle of a satchel pocket. “Hmmphm.” 

“My dark time ... ... ... was not her fault.”

Liz swiveled his way, her hands on her hips, her expression ... clamped. Buttoned up, Winslow would have deemed it. Liz was known for saying what she meant, meaning what she said. Lisa. Don’t get me started. He’d been quite fairly advised.  

But–

Winslow leaned in with otherworldly advice shadowy at his ear. Best you put that one in your pocket.

“She’s changed,” he persisted, nevertheless.   

A saturated moment passed. “Your dark time wasn’t a fault, Vincent.”

He searched out his cloak bundled on the ledge, envisioned a route through the maze of its folds to the hidden pocket and the creased pages of old words within it, memorial to another dark night of the soul. Like the wind outside the Great Hall, questions long censored rose swirling ... but not crying. Not crying.  

“I’m beginning to see the possibility.”

Liz narrowed her eyes. “You mean it? No doubletalk? No weasling?” 

In answer, he held out a hand that Liz took, offered a bargaining half-smile that she matched. Another day for this ... and more. We promise.   

In his sock feet, he fished the cushioned liner soles from his boots, laid them out across a rough corrugation in the stone floor. Both laces loosened as much as the repairing knots in one allowed, he pulled the shoes’ tongues forward. Thirty minutes airing out would hardly benefit the leather or his wearing comfort – better, overnight, positioned at the outlet of one of the thermal shafts, in the rush of heated air – but the commanded half-hour of his anticipated soak would have to do. Beats a stob in the eye, Levya would have admonished, his practical buoyancy lastingly edifying. Still, he wished for his reserve pair, dry and with new laces, hardly less scarred now, hardly less worn down in the heels, but in a trunk at home a three hour walk away. Perhaps Catherine might bring them.

Catherine ... He’d not forgotten.

“Is she all right?”

He must have whispered her name. When he looked up, Liz was alert, tentative, her re-wound stethoscope clutched in one hand, a white tube sock dangling from the other. “I’ve asked Catherine to come,” he told her, and Liz released a breath, stuffed the instrument inside its cushiony protection, the soft package then into a pocket of her bag. “To stay with me – with us – until we finish. Close, though our hours together will be few. Is there a chamber she might use? Near you and Wren, not so far away as the, ummm ...” 

“Honeymoon suite?” Her elbows braced on the stone shelf, Liz arched her brows. “You know, the last time Noah and I stayed in one of the holiday chambers we came back with twins.” She cackled. “Vincent, you really should see your face.” After a few snickers, she turned back to her stowing and fastening. “She said yes, I take it. When?”

Closing his eyes, he found Catherine’s heartbeat, at once, as always, secret and singing ... but appreciably heavier, he discerned, and quickened. News of Wren? Difficulty at the police station – Eimear guarded and down-playing her report, Flynn ... burning? He could imagine the scene, were Catherine and he the players. A call to Joe, perhaps ... to Jenny? She’d left her work, her life above, almost literally strewn across her desk. But he cautioned himself: Heed your own testimony. You can’t read her mind. It would be ... imprecise ... to speculate. Unhelpful, unsettling, borrowing of trouble. She was safe if burdened, she was purposed, she was coming to him. That much he knew.  

“Today. Soon, I think.” 

“Today!”

Her surprise tripped him. He should forego the steaming plunge bath, not make work for an already frazzled friend, mother, healer, leader. “I can set up the room. I know you’re–”

“Pffft!” She snatched up the shoe he reached for, nabbed the other. “Don’t be silly. We have guest chambers.” She winked at him. “With doors. Not too close, but not too far away, either.” Stone pegs studded the cavern wall, and Liz fitted the padded collars of his boots over the two longest. The shoes rocked on their rounded toes, but she balanced them with a touch to the heels. “Is she on vacation?” she asked over her shoulder, and he shook his head. “It’s kind of a hike from here to her office, is all,” she went on. 

“She drove Eimear home last evening. Her car ... She’s parked ...”

“She’d get downtown faster walking. The 4 train’ll take her straight to work, or if she’s headed home, either home, her apartment or your chambers, she’ll switch to the D at Yankee Stadium. I’ve got a map; I’ll stick it in the frame of the mirror. But ...” 

Instead of finishing her thought, maddeningly, Liz unbuckled her medical bag and folded back the flap, studied the contents again. Chose something, then a second something, leaving a stoppered bottle on the ledge by her satchel, handing him small, round, sky-blue and red tin container. Ammen’s Powder. A salesman’s sample from some abandoned stash in a forgotten sub-basement. To dust his boots, to shake inside his socks. He nodded his understanding and thanks, stowed the talc beneath his stool.

“She’s not going home first?” Liz asked. “For clothes? Work stuff?” she clarified, when he only stared at her. “I sure can’t loan her anything to wear, and Wren’s a foot taller than Catherine.”

A weave of complications ... a tangle. He felt a knot forming between his brows. “I ... I didn’t think. Perhaps I should have ... I just wanted ...” 

Liz waved away his burgeoning doubts. “My take on Catherine and logistics? She’s got it under control. Besides, you said the magic word. Want. Lemme tell ya, that one works.” 

Kanin’s story of home-going and failed overture murmured in his memory. Not always. 

He was a lucky man, a very lucky man. When next he held Catherine, he would tell her so. Show her.

“Olivia ... She’s on her way, too, then.” 

Liz softened her statement, faded the question from it, seeking a casualness he sensed she didn’t feel. The rooms she’d readied for Olivia and Kanin, the linens, the lilacs ... No doubt she’d delayed a dozen duties to lay out the welcome. No doubt she read letdown in Kanin’s face and tread, in his unaccompanied arrival.  Yet ... 

If, Olivia had said. If we can’t make it work. From the snarl of anger and broken faith, a strand of hope had curled out. He had to believe it was tied to a heart’s core of possibility and in its tensile strength. He must be as convinced of Olivia’s abiding love as he’d advised Kanin to be, must act and speak as if the conclusion were foregone, act as if until it was.  Had he not vowed as much at their wedding, he Kanin’s chosen best man, he charged with witness, charged to stand for loyalty, trust, fidelity, forgiveness, charged to support and protect their union with his whole heart, even when, particularly when, they could not? 

He swallowed back a no, shook his head. “Not ... today.”

Olivia had bristled at her old friend’s presumed offer of perfect pity, perfect sympathy, but Liz showed only compassion – concern, a twinge of loss, a wishfulness – all in the soft curve of her posture. They’d once been close, Liz and Olivia. Necessary, each to the other. He couldn’t recall a cleaving incident – no argument, simmering or manifest – before Liz moved away. Olivia’s and Jesse’s young love had blossomed seemingly overnight. One day, friends-since-childhood, just two of a dozen of their similarly-aged tribe. The next day ... aware ... as if a crowded Winterfest dance floor had spontaneously cleared leaving the two of them alone its center. Had Liz looked on from the sidelines? Cared for Jesse herself? Had Olivia perceived her as a rival? 

And hadn’t they tacitly agreed – hardly a moment ago and twice already – enough... for now. 

“When you left us ... was it because of Jesse?”

As boggled as he by his blurted question, Liz snagged a breath over parted lips. “Jesse! Olivia’s Jesse?” Like wind-driven clouds, emotions scuttled through her. Sadness, bewilderment ... a rare shyness. A perplexing, affectionate patience. “Sweet Jesse. He was a good guy, and I miss him, but did I leave because of him? No. No. How did you ... Why would ...” She blinked as if to clear the veil of years, shook her head as if to dislodge a memory. Liz at a loss for words ... a rare and curious thing.

“I’m sorry,” they said at the same time. “I just–”

“You first,” each encouraged the other.

Liz laughed ... as did he. “How long has it been since we coincided like that?”

“Too long.” 

Liz sank down opposite him, sat back on her heels. She rubbed her palms over her knees. “I didn’t leave because of Jesse, Vincent.”

“Was it Noah? Did you know already ... that you loved?” Even as he asked, he calendared the answers. Years passed before Noah and she committed to each other.

“Noah was eat-up with Minna then. Everybody was ... and I mean everybody except Olivia and Jesse. And me and you. But you remember her, don’t you?” 

Liz mimed Minna’s long, waving, impossibly pale spun gold hair, then held her spread and rounded fingers well out in front of her own chest. He chuckled, hoping the vision, comic though it was, didn’t flush his cheeks. 

“Uh huh,” Liz clucked, going on after a sniffy pause. “She was a nice girl, really. Kindhearted. Other-oriented. Modest, even. She never used her looks, just couldn’t help being spectacular. I called her Helen behind her back ... well, only to myself. You know, Helen of Troy. A face–” She broke off, coughing dramatically into her fist. “That launched a thousand ships ... and inspired some of the most overwrought love poetry ever to get sent down the sinks.”

“You knew about Noah’s poems?”

“I know so many things, Vincent ...” They shared a smile, but then she sobered. A silence magnified between them. “Except why we’re talking about this now. My moving north, I mean.”

“I was crushed when you left. I never told you. Never asked ...”

“You just accepted. I was glad I didn’t have to explain, because ... ... ... I wasn’t sure I could.”

“I was sad ... and angry ... and relieved. I’m only now beginning to understand why. Why I felt that way, why I couldn’t admit it.” He tucked his chin. “So much lost time.” 

“Not lost. Full.” She squeezed his knee. “Remember what we were studying right before? Emerson’s Circles? Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder; the steps are actions, the new prospect power. A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” I was so sure I knew how certain things would play out, and if I wanted them to be different, I had to do something, break up my whole chain of habits."⁵ She squeezed his knee again. “If I could give my young self some advice, I’d tell me not to believe everything I think. But whatever my reasons were, they changed over time, became truer. Clarity comes with a little distance and experience and willingness. Making room to be surprised.” She peered up at him, her hands spread, encompassing. “Look at us – we’re here now. In this place, this good place. That’s what matters. 

Here. In this place. Circles rippled out from Liz’s words, the small ring of meaning at the center rushing on all sides to new and larger circles, to new prospects.⁶ He scanned the chamber once more – the foggy pool, the glittery domed ceiling, cast his spirit out to the reaches of the territory, through the hoodoo mazes, behind the flumey waterfalls, the soaring, lacy cataracts,  skirting the black-water lakes, the still pools and silver shallows.  Something ... A vibration, a strange harmony ...

Liz touched his arm. “Quiet friend who has come so far ..."⁷

Feel how your breathing makes more space around you, he finished in his heart.8

“Vincent. Vincent. Time to boogie.”

Her satchel of treatments squared away again, the buckles refastened, Liz deposited the bag near the archway of the corridor back to camp, returning with an armload of bright white towels from the laundered stack on the chiseled stone shelf. She piled them at the rim of the pool, hustled back to lift a perforated galvanized bucket from a stake of rebar hammered into the mica schist, to load it with the toiletries Catherine had purchased.  

Was it only two days ago she’d gone above with Aniela? An age had surely passed.

A chain attached to the bucket’s wooden-handled bail, the last link a hammered-iron, single-pronged hook. Liz anchored it over a jut of rock and dropped the pail of supplies over the edge. It bobbed and floated in the water’s pulse and eddy. Old Pal, the minnow bucket’s flaked red paint still proclaimed.

Swishing the pool’s surface with her hand, plunging in to her elbow, she tested the temperature. “You’re still good,” she announced, rising from her poolside crouch. Her arm scrubbed dry on the fabric of her over-shirt, she gestured shoulder to knees. “Off with all that. Dump everything in the laundry crate. Noah or Stuart, one, will bring you some clean clothes and a head’s up on whatever’s going on out there.” Liz grabbed the handle of her satchel, swept the long strap over her head, settled the bag on her hip. She patted the bulky contents. “I left a vial of oil on the ledge. Take it in with you and pour it in, all of it. Breathe deep. You know. Out with the old, in with the new. You’ll be glad you did.”

He nodded his cooperation. “Mouse ... He’ll be all right?”

“The next twelve hours will tell, but he seems fine. Miraculously fine. I didn’t think he’d yank his shoes and socks off so fast, but going barefoot probably kept him close to the fire. I’ll work on him some, check his ankles for swelling, give his lungs a good listen and him a stiff lecture on rest.  Plus, I had Noah send a message for Peter to come.” 

“Liz ... Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome, Vincent, and I mean that in more than the obvious way. Now, in you go. The hot’s not gonna last.” She swerved at the entrance to the corridor back to camp, retraced a few formidable steps. Behind her the nearest torches quivered. “One more thing,” Liz said, and he froze in mid-peel, his arms crossed, his hands gripping the hem of his sweater. “If you ever ... ever ... even so much as allude to riding on top of a subway car in front of my boys, I will hunt you down and finish you off. It won’t be quick, either.”

“Uncle?” he ventured.

“Exactly. You are one, after all. The one I always wanted for them.”

Click HERE for Chapter 76

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1. Naomi Shihab Nye. Kindness.
2. Emily Dickinson. I Dwell in Possibility (paraphrased).
3. Walt Whitman. A Clear Midnight. From Noon to Starry Night. Leaves of Grass. 1881.

4. William Shakespeare. Henry V. Scene 1. 1599.

5. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Circles. Essays. 1841.

6. Ibid.

7. Rainer Maria Rilke. Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower.

8. Ibid.