State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [162]
“I know,” she said. “I figured it out.” She looked at the strongbox. “He slept with me. He had terrible nightmares after you were gone.”
“So did I,” Anders said. He turned off the two lanterns and put the strongbox on the floor. “Move over,” he said.
Marina stretched out on one side of the cot and Anders lay down beside her. Their noses were touching and he put his arm over her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“No,” she said. “It’s better this way.”
“Tomorrow we’ll go home.”
She leaned into him. She nodded into his neck. If they fell asleep they would have to fall asleep at the same minute. They would have to hold each other very close and stay very still until they woke up again. Until this point they had embraced every year when she came to his house for the Christmas party. He would open the door wearing a red sweater and she would be standing out in the snow, holding a bottle of wine, and he would give her a quick hug and then usher her inside.
“How was it you?” he said.
“I don’t know. Karen wanted me to go, and Mr. Fox. I was supposed to find out what had happened to Dr. Swenson and find out how you died. I was so sorry when I heard you had died.”
“No one thought I was missing?” he said. “No one thought it was strange that my body was gone?”
Marina shook her head very slightly against the pillow they shared. “Dr. Swenson said they’d buried you. She thought you were dead. She was sure you were dead.”
“But you didn’t think I was.” He put his hand on her shoulder.
“I did,” Marina said. “Karen didn’t. She held out a lot of hope for you but I didn’t believe her. I thought she just couldn’t accept it.”
“Then why did you come out there to find me?”
“Barbara Bovender,” she said, and that was when she kissed him, because their mouths were so close, because he was in fact alive, because she could not explain any of it. She was in the Bovenders’ living room and Barbara was asking her, did she love him? She loved him now, but only now. On this one night, after a day of the most extraordinary circumstances that either of them would see for the rest of their lives, she kissed him to prove to herself that all of this had happened, and he kissed her because it was true, he was here. And when they pulled their bodies closer still it felt like a necessity, trying to lie together in such a small space. When she cried it was because she saw the tributary again and she saw again how easy it would have been to miss it. Had she missed it, had Barbara Bovender missed it, Anders would never have been found, and Easter never would have been lost. Anders knew this, he said as much when he held her head in his hands. When they made love it was only to calm the fears they had endured. It was a physical act of kindness, a comfort, a sublime tenderness between friends. She would have made love to Mr. Fox if he had been there, and Anders would have made love to his wife, but for this night what they had was one another, and anyway, after all that had happened between them how could they not press themselves together, press through each other with their bodies to show how deeply, if only until the plane landed in Minneapolis, that they were intertwined. Without the scant weight of what was left of him to pin her down she might have gone to stand in the shallows of the river to see if Dr. Swenson was right about Easter rowing his way home to them in a stolen canoe, maybe the same canoe Anders had floated away in. Without the warmth of her he might not have believed the reversal of his fortunes. This would be the only part of the story that they would never speak of again, the part where he lifted her on top of him, his arms as thin as sapling trees, and she put her face down on his chest and she kissed him and cried.
In the morning, miraculously, they were both still balanced in the bed, two thin plates leaning against one another in a rack, Marina on her side, wearing Anders Eckman over her back like a blanket. She would have thought that she would go to the Martins one last time before