The Knot

On their first weekend in the new house, Jane and Tom ate dinner on the back porch. The air had the sultry sweetness of July, and the light lingered long over the lawn. Instead of enjoying the evening, savoring the tang of his barbecued chicken or the char of his grilled asparagus, Tom found his gaze snagged by the ugly chain-link fence that perimetered the lawn. It was the kind of fence favored by owners of savage dogs. The developer had tried to hide the fence with dark green fast-growing Thuja trees. The trees weren’t fast-growing enough. Tom could see not only the enclosure but also a white house just like theirs. Misgivings prickled through him. He wondered if it had been a mistake to let Jane sweet-talk him into buying a cookie-cutter house in a network of cul-de-sacs named after common trees. The knowledge that their neighbors in every direction had the same layout as his began to gnaw at him, as if the houses were jaws and he was bone. He felt a stab of longing for the idiosyncratic house he’d designed and had to leave behind for his ex-wife Cheryl. That had had gables, eaves — a soul.

To steady himself, he pictured the bedrock of Long Island beneath them formed 400 million years ago, before recorded time. His breath slowed. Settling back in his synthetic resin chair, he told Jane how much he loved the pair of ancient hemlocks at the end of the lawn.

“I was thinking we should get a hammock for the hemlocks,” Jane said, setting her wine glass on a yellow-smiley-face coaster. One of the downsides of writing no presents just your presence on their Paperless Post wedding invitations six months ago was that Tom’s friends sent gifts that read, We’re rooting for you but didn’t try very hard this time.

“I made a hammock for Cheryl as a wedding present.” He realized he might not have mentioned this.

“You made Cheryl a hammock?”

“Sure. My grandfather taught me how to knot them.”

“You haven’t made me anything, Tom.” Her eyes pooled.

Stunned, he saw for the first time the possibility of his second marriage failing. He felt like Hercules: a man who had to prove his love — trapped, hemmed in, his choices stolen.

At the anger management course that Jane had required him to take before she agreed to marry him, Tom had learned delay tactics. Jane had been taken aback, she said, when Tom punched a hole in the wall of her apartment. He hadn’t meant to punch anything. It was just that he’d realized Cheryl was still using his Amazon Prime account. He hadn’t thought he needed an anger management course, but he’d done it to calm Jane down. At the course, he’d learned that he — well, anyone, really — was supposed to notice angry feelings before they got out of control, soothe himself, and change the thoughts fueling his rage. He gazed at Jane’s tidy, clean hair and remembered how satiny it felt to the touch. She was only 29, ten years younger. He was lucky to have found someone so kind. She was exactly the kind of woman he should love.

“I’ll make you a better hammock than the one I made Cheryl, sweetheart.”

Her eyes shone, and he felt like stars had fallen to earth. She smiled at him the way women usually did. He didn’t know why women liked him. They seemed to go in for his square jaw, dark hair, brooding eyes. Secretly he resented the way they were drawn to his intensity, probably imagining they could siphon his passion off for themselves the way people stole gas from other people’s cars.

“I’m being ridiculous,” she said. “You don’t have to make a hammock. Let’s buy one.”

 

In the morning, Tom slid out of bed before dawn. Outside, night was a black velvet glove caressing his cheeks. Striding toward the tool shed, years seemed to evaporate from his gait. He felt like the teenager he’d once been: optimistic, dreamy, aching with love for every pretty girl he saw. It was always like this at the start of a project, this pre-creativity high. He felt he could have commanded even the stones beneath his feet to become bread and feed the world.

In the shed, his hands moved quickly and confidently. The space was small, intimate, just his size. With his lathe, he turned, shaped, adjusted, the wood yielding to the blade. He whistled without being aware of air passing between his lips. The not unpleasant scent of nighttime mildew rose from the thin walls. His mouth puckered with desire for coffee, but he forced himself to keep making the tools he’d need to net and sling Jane’s hammock. Squinching his eyes against the harsh LED bulb, he carved a netting needle from pearwood, made a mesh stick of hardwood and measured two ash sticks. He loved the way each specimen of wood had its own character, the whorls and pliability affecting the shape of what he carved and the way he worked with it.

You’re a wood whisperer, Tommy, Cheryl used to say, her voice warm in his ear.

Cheryl the man whisperer, he thought, almost fondly.

He began to whittle. His breath slowed. He remembered how, when he was a child, woodworking had been his first experience of himself as a person with gifts. It had been humbling, making him feel part of something greater than himself. He pictured one of his fingers pointing up and one of God’s fingers reaching down.

First light crept inside the window, and the walls of the shed seemed to close in on him. Wheelbarrowing his supplies around back, the wheel wobbled in the soft damp earth. Blades of grass clung to the rubber. At the end of the lawn, he placed the thumb of his left hand on the cord and with a turn of the wrist of the right hand threw the cord over the mesh stick, passed the needle under the loop then through the bight and down. The cord slithered out of his grasp into the dewy grass, where it lay sly and sneaky.

This would be so much easier, he thought irritably, if he could consult his grandfather’s knot-tying book. He hadn’t seen the book in a long time. The needle dangled in his hand. He must have left the book at Cheryl’s house.

Cheryl lived only ten minutes away. Three quick turns and he’d be home before Jane even knew he’d left. He pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket then hesitated. Jane wouldn’t like him to visit Cheryl. He and Jane had run into Cheryl in the supermarket a few months ago, and afterward, Jane had criticized Cheryl’s black eyeliner and slutty clothes in a judgmental — probably jealous — way. He should just buy Jane a hammock like she said.

But the book was an heirloom.

I’d like my knot book back, he texted Cheryl.

What knot book?

It seemed intimate that Cheryl had responded so quickly. She usually slept until noon. Well, maybe kicking Tom out had solved all her problems, just as she’d imagined.

Pfft, he scoffed.

Then the words of her text sank in, and he felt the sting of hurt. He remembered how on their third date he’d turned the pages of the knot-tying book for Cheryl, her thigh warm against his. He’d told her how his grandfather, blind by the time Tom was born, could still work each of the book’s knots from memory. His parents had died in a car crash when Tom was ten, and his grandfather had raised him. Tom wondered how Cheryl could have forgotten the book. It seemed emblematic of the way she’d erased their history. Anger buzzed in his ears. He thought about how when he shouted, no one nagged, criticized, or beat him down with their words. Kingdoms fell. Nations toppled.

Coffee. He’d make coffee.

Turning, he saw light streaming from the kitchen. Jane was up.

He slowed. Dew darkened the toes of his work boots. He knew exactly where he’d left the book. He was intimate with the contours of his old house. He and Cheryl had lived there together for seven — what he’d thought of as blissful — years until she dropped the bomb on him. She said he had anger management issues. She still lived there with a younger man named Jonesy who worked in construction. Tom called him Bonesy to annoy Cheryl: He was very thin.

The book was probably tucked away in that no-man’s-land of a cavity between the front and back hallways. He remembered Cheryl looking over his shoulder at the original blueprints and asking what that useless cupboard was for. “Wouldn’t it look better if when you opened the front door you could see all the way to the preserve?” she’d asked. He’d told her in a snappy voice — he knew now he shouldn’t have used that voice — that to accommodate her many conflicting demands, there had to be a little space, a sort of air pocket, for leftover room that didn’t fit conventional form.

Check the useless cupboard, he texted Cheryl, skulking by the back door like a criminal.

No response. She was probably in the shower.

When he pushed open the back door, Jane smiled at him over the newspaper. “You’re up early.”

“Working on your hammock.” He placed his phone face-up on the counter in front of him — where he could watch for Cheryl’s response without Jane seeing.

“Please don’t,” she said. “I don’t know why I got so upset. It’s probably the strain of moving.”

“Understandable.” He poured coffee and cream and then stirred. His spoon clinked ceramic. White chunks of soured cream floated in the dark liquid, refusing to dissolve like it was supposed to. “Cream’s off — again. Can’t you buy smaller cartons like I asked?” His words felt like darts leaving his mouth, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“Sorry,” she said calmly.

Her calmness didn’t seem real. No one could be that patient. Her unflappability felt like a wall he wanted to tear down.

He reminded himself that being calm had been Jane’s childhood survival tactic. She was the responsible one who’d driven around town — even before she had a license — picking up her father from bars. Tom poured himself a cup of black coffee, sipped, and winced. It tasted the way antifreeze smelled.

On the counter, dots formed beside Cheryl’s name in his phone, like she was smoking. I just donated a box of books to the library. Maybe your knot book was in there.

“What knot book?” Jane asked, coming up behind him.

His heart beat faster. “My grandfather’s. I’m trying to get it back from Cheryl. It’s a family heirloom.” He pictured the book’s pages yellowing in the bottom of a hamster cage. His fingers punched out a reply: How could you do such a stupid —

“Try to respond as you would to a business professional,” Jane said.

“I am,” he snapped. But he’d never communicate with his partner Howard like that, so maybe he had more control than he realized.

Did you check the useless cupboard, Tom texted.

If you want it, come and get it.

Tom put down his mug.

“Why don’t you ask her to look?” Jane said. “Push back. She can leave it on the front porch, and we’ll pick it up together later.”

“You don’t want to see Cheryl when she’s angry,” he said.

“And you do?”

“You’re the one who wanted a hammock,” he said.

Jane’s eyes hardened.

Tom clenched his fists.

Then Jane held out her arms. He hesitated — and melted into her. He loved how the soft rounded parts of her body fit his harder leaner ones. He was proud of himself for accepting her olive branch. He’d put out every hint of annoyance like an expert firefighter. Pshoo, he whispered to himself, picturing the spray erupting from one of those big brown fireman hoses.

 

The car seemed to steer itself to his old house. Truth was, he’d almost turned into his driveway many times — not since he’d met Jane, though. He idled on the street at the weatherbeaten house sign. It was only 8:00 a.m., maybe a tad early to be in someone else’s home. The pink roses by the mailbox were ablaze. He remembered choosing the bushes in the nursery, imagining how pleased Cheryl would be with him. Well, she should have been pleased.

“It’s not a la carte, Cheryl,” he said out loud, thumping his chest.

His mind veered to the empty flowerbeds at his and Jane’s house, and he pictured the perennials they could stage, each rising in its season: the daffodils and forsythia, the roses, the Rose of Sharons. Maybe he should turn around, pick up some cream for coffee, and take Jane flower shopping. They probably even sold hammocks in the nursery. Keep it simple, his anger management leader, a man with quick eyes, had said.

The idea of seeing his old house drew him with an almost magnetic force. Gravel crunched beneath his tires. Parking beside Cheryl’s red Subaru, he released his seat belt, felt the engine cough and die. The car door opened with a pull and thud, and he breathed in the heady scent of the hardy gardenia he’d planted summers ago. The house’s spacious front porch filled him with pride. He averted his eyes from the house’s strange hydrangeas. Cheryl said they bloomed pink and blue on the same bush because they couldn’t decide if their souls were acidic or base.

He’d forgotten how sturdy his front steps were, how pleasing the generous cut of his bay windows. The front door was wide open.

He paused at the threshold. “Hello?”

His belly knotted. The open door was an invitation: Cheryl used to tell tradesman to come on in if she left the door open. He stepped inside. The floorboards creaked. He’d carpeted the wide front staircase in maroon, like a convent. He’d added a walnut rail and set multiple windows with seats all the way up to the second floor so you could enjoy the view of the preserve in the back.

Cheryl must be in the kitchen. He glanced at the orange powder room door in the hall and remembered how a week before Cheryl kicked him out, he’d cornered her in there. Afterward, he promised never to shout at her again. He wondered why it was so easy to make resolutions and so hard to keep them. It was like there was a force inside of him, almost demonic, making him do the very thing he didn’t want to.

The door to the den was open, and the opulence of this room, the sheer audacity of its textures, drew him. He’d draped the ceiling in shirred red velvet, grouped tufted leather wing chairs alongside red velvet sofas, paired red fringed lamps with red light bulbs, added a pool table. He picked up a pool ball and something about its heft and satisfyingly smooth surface made him long to hurl it through a window. He put it down and watched it roll at a sultry pace on green felt.

Walking through the dining room, he ran a finger through the dust on the table. Where they’d once displayed his mother’s china, the shelves were empty. He wondered why Cheryl hadn’t put out something else. Maybe she was depressed.

He found her in the kitchen sipping coffee, just as he’d imagined. “Hi,” he said, hovering in the doorway.

“Hi,” she said, without rising from the table he’d carved for her from a live oak.

He became aware of not having shaved.

Cheryl seemed more fragile than he remembered. Her pale skin was translucent as porcelain. Her fingers looked too dainty to grip her mug, and he found himself wishing he could hold it for her, tilt it to her lips. She’d frosted her blond hair, and she looked like a snowy lawn on a wintery morning: fragile, ephemeral, with a loveliness that could melt at any moment.

Her eyes were a clear blue. He realized that in his vanity he’d imagined her pupils bloodshot, her cheeks rimmed with yesterday’s mascara. She was gazing at him with an expression he couldn’t read. It wasn’t hostile, as when she’d told him to leave: get out get out get out I never want to see you again. No one could handle you! He was glad she’d relented, glad she’d invited him over today. Her eyes weren’t warm and friendly though, either.

They were wary. He felt the full sting of having lost her trust.

She wore the same flesh-toned nightgown he used to yell at her for wearing to check the mailbox. Maybe she’d picked up Bonesy in that nightgown. Maybe she’d picked up Bonesy before kicking Tom out. His chest felt tight.

He told himself that Cheryl wasn’t the type to have an affair. She was too controlling. He was sure that not cheating was her boundary, the absolute she pushed herself against — the way Tom used to push her against a wall, begging please, please. He remembered — his breath hitching — how she used to enjoy holding him off. She complained that when she gave in, his interest in her disappeared, like water disappearing down a sink.

He glanced at the Mr. Coffee machine he’d given her after breaking the carafe of their old coffee maker by shattering it against the wall.

“Do you have any — ” he asked.

Cheryl tilted her head.

There was intimacy in the missing beat.

It didn’t mean anything — just an old habit. But maybe he should have brought Jane, like she’d suggested. He shivered. Cheryl would have hated if he’d brought another woman.

He poured coffee and added cream from a satisfyingly small container. “Where’s Bonesy?” he asked, leaning against the butcher-block countertop. It seemed to have an indent from where he’d leaned so many times before, although he knew he was imagining it.

“I got bored of Bonesy.”

“Too passive?”

“Ha. Ha. Ho.”

“You know you need a man with some snap.”

“At least Bonesy was handy.” Her lips twisted.

“Handy how?”

“He closed up that useless cupboard of yours.” Cheryl met his gaze.

“Show me,” Tom said in a husky voice. Putting down the coffee, he followed her lithe form through the dining room. He could see her body moving inside the nightgown, a thing apart from the cloth.

The cavity between the front and back hallways was gone. He felt a pulse of what seemed almost like fear that shapeshifted into a more reassuring tidal wave of rage. To calm himself, he ran a hand along the wall where the cavity should have been. It felt smooth, well-spackled, the paint faintly pebbled. He had to admire Bonesy’s handiwork. He could give him that. There was no trace of what lay underneath.

“Where’s the knot book I left in here?”

“I asked Bonesy to wall up your stupid book.”

He hadn’t known she was petty. He sucked his teeth.

Cheryl backed away, turned, and ran upstairs. He felt the staircase vibrating.

Waves of anger rolled through him. He lifted his knee to kick the wall but stopped himself. No. Stumbling backward, he knocked over the umbrella stand. Bright yellow tennis balls bounce-bounced on the black and white tile floor. He opened the back door and hurled them onto the lawn.

Turning back to the cavity, the smooth wall looked like it was mocking him.

Well, he knew how to handle smooth walls. The sledgehammer.

He stalked through the dining room through the kitchen into the garage and found the sledgehammer where he’d left it. Spiderwebs caught on his fingers. This thing seemed unused. Bonesy hadn’t been that handy, he thought smugly. Lifting the sledgehammer, he felt the drag of its business end. He hesitated. Maybe he should go home to Jane. It wasn’t too late.

Back in the house, there was no sign of Cheryl. When he reached the cavity, he hoisted the sledgehammer. The first smash hurt his shoulder. The second hurt his hand. Destruction became easier with each blow.

Panting, dusty with plaster, he found the knot book lying on the floor of the cavity. The book was smaller than he remembered. He clasped it between his palms like a prayer.

Cheryl screamed. “What did you do to my house?”

Tom turned, grabbing the sledgehammer to keep it from tipping.

“Don’t hit me!” She ran into the powder room, and he heard the lock turn noisily.

He ran after her and pounded on the door. “I’d never hit you! At least give me that! Never never never!” A voice in his head told him he sounded like an actor in a B-movie.

She screamed again. “Go away! I’m calling the police!”

Crouching in a blind panic, he splayed his fingers and then turned and ran out the back door toward the woods. He’d chosen the spot for the house carefully. He always needed an escape route. His grandfather couldn’t follow him into a forest, except for that one time.

It had been late in a summer day soon after his parents died. The sun was low in the sky, slanting sideways through the trees. The long shadows of the trunks stretched toward him, and he could see the outline of the sun glimmering in the distance through the breaks in the leaves. His heart caught in his throat with the beauty of the light against the dark and the sense of eternity breaking into the world.

He heard grandfather on the lawn yelling, “Tom! Tom! You get back here!”

Pretending he couldn’t hear, Tom walked slowly toward the golden beams that streamed through the gaps in the branches. The tree trunks were dark because the light was so bright on the other side. It seemed symbolic of his life. He was in the dark, and his parents had moved into the light. In between them was the impenetrable wood, and he couldn’t get to the other side. He couldn’t see his parents or reach them because they’d left him.

His grandfather had caught up to him. Remembering, Tom’s fingers tightened.

Now, from behind a maple, Tom saw Cheryl standing on the lawn in her flimsy nightgown, clutching her arms around herself. “Tom! I didn’t call the police! I know you’d never hurt me. I know it! Tommy!”

Ants crawled over his boots.

“Tommy!” Cheryl called. “Come back!”

Tom waited until Cheryl returned to the house.

He was alone. Birds sang all around him, a symphony of birds. Something loosened inside of him. He had the strange sensation that he could hear the sap running through the trees, the scuttle of spider legs on their bark, feel the shadow of squirrels leaping across his roof.

Far off he saw the hammock he’d slung for Cheryl, graying and unraveling. The cord must be held firmly with the thumb when pulling up the knots, as on this depends the uniformity of the meshes.

He was repeating the words of the knot book by heart. He hadn’t needed to come here after all. He shouldn’t have sledgehammered Cheryl’s wall, either. He’d been rude to Jane about the cream. A crow landed at his feet then side-stepped away, eyeing Tom.

The problem with anger was the cost. He ran a finger down the grooves of the maple bark and told himself he needed his anger. It was the source of his power, the pilot light for his creativity engine. He should just live alone, he told himself in a rush of self-pity. That way he’d never lose his temper.

He heard the sharp crackle and cry of tires displacing gravel. Cheryl was such a liar. Of course she’d called the cops. He pictured himself being hunted in his own woods like a fugitive, having his head blasted apart by some overzealous rookie, and decided the safest place to hide was in the house. The walls of the house seem to expand as he looked at them, beckoning him.

Moving swiftly along the periphery of the trees, he made his way through the back door. It was cool inside, cooler than he remembered. He crept into the recess he’d exposed.

He could stand comfortably. It hid his body perfectly. He smelled plaster dust. He pictured all the houses he’d designed and realized he’d made a cavity like this in each. He’d become craftier about disguising the spaces since that shameful time that Cheryl had called this one useless. He labeled them book nooks, china cubbies, linen closets. Each was the same height — his height. Each was his hiding place.

The front door creaked open. The police might want to inspect the damage he’d done, take pictures. He jabbed his elbows into his waist. Stupid, stupid. He needed to think of everything or he’d get hurt. Tensing, he listened for a power-hungry male growl. He’d be ashamed to be found here.

“Hi, Cheryl. Thanks for having me,” he heard Jane say.

He started. Jane had come looking for him like Tom was her alcoholic father. To a hammer, everything looked like a nail.

“You really didn’t have to come, like I said,” he heard Cheryl say.

“Cute jeans,” Jane said.

Cheryl must have changed out of the nightgown for Jane — but not him. He hadn’t realized she was manipulative.

“Where is he?” Jane asked.

“Outside somewhere. I heard the back door slam. But when Tom loses his temper, best thing you can do is let him stew in his own juices. Coffee?”

To Tom’s surprise, Jane agreed.

He heard footsteps receding and strained to hear his name again. His jaw ached from clenching it. He imagined himself walking out of this closet, and instead of how it would really be — him prickly and surly and ashamed — he saw the three of them laughing together like old friends. He wished he knew how to be like that.

He realized that most of all he’d give anything to be home with Jane drinking bald-black coffee. It struck him that to live with Jane was what he needed, but to make Cheryl regret kicking him out was why he’d come. There was madness in the hearts of humans. There was madness in his heart.

His fingers — he lifted them up and pushed against the low ceiling. Jane would probably tell him to forgive Cheryl and let it go. Well, Jane was controlling and Cheryl was manipulative. He’d fix this his way, using his gifts: his creativity, his imagination.

He shut his eyes and pictured building a new house for him and Jane, a house made of night, a house made of light, a house made of warmth, a house facing south, a house made of wood, that expanded and contracted with the seasons, a house that took time to settle.

The house took shape in his mind, its foundation, beams, walls, floors unfurling before him like flowers. He could see ivory sofas in the den, smell jasmine plants in the sunroom, feel the vibration of his and Jane’s children running in its upstairs passageways. Tears sprang into his eyes. He wanted this — desperately.

Listening with his entire being to his old house, he felt it melt down to its core, lose its flavor, and he saw what was left. Here — in this closet — lay the house’s beating heart, the wounds he’d hidden from himself, though probably from nobody else. Everybody had wounds, he thought. Everybody was stinking full of wounds. He heard the muffled laughter of the women, and beneath it he sensed the aches of the whole world. He breathed in awe and wonder and connectedness. He wanted to restore not just himself but all things. A jolt of power coursed through him.

There should be houses for everyone, he thought wildly: houses of safety, houses of sunlight, houses with soundproofed walls and heavy doors that swung open on well-oiled hinges and strong locks when they needed them. Rows of houses rose up in his imagination, each tailormade to the specifications of its owners. I’ll do it, he vowed. I’ll beg Jane’s forgiveness and never see Cheryl again. I’ll design affordable housing with character, individualized, with enough infrastructure to support the entire enterprise. His chest expanded with the heroic breadth and scope of his plans. He’d keep these resolutions. It was easy.

A vein pulsed in his neck, in the walls. His heart throbbed in his ribs, the ceiling, joists and beams. The house shivered and drew closer. The walls contracted. “I’m here!” he whispered, and only when the words were out of his mouth did he realize he was begging. The cavity swallowed all sound. Plaster fell on his hair, his cheeks, down the back of his shirt. The house sighed and settled, closing him in.