He hadn't been sleeping much lately and when he did his dreams were about her, Kori. So? There wasn't anything new about that. He knew it would happen. The doctor had said it would happen. She said Frank would go through times when Kori's absence would be more real to him, times when he might even feel something like panic. Dr. Ibsen said Frank needed to be prepared for these times and to remember that they would pass. She said those little crises might be minutes, might be hours, might even be a day, but they would pass.
But lately, like last night, he lay there in bed awake, thinking about the life they'd had together. He'd replay the phone call from the police about the accident, the drive to the emergency room, leaning against the wall waiting for someone to come out to talk with him, the scene in the quiet little side room where they'd led him to see her. The anger he'd felt standing there next to her body. The way he'd refused to talk to her, to almost not look at her as she lay there, covered with a clean sheet pulled up to her chin, her hair wet from being hurriedly washed.
Frank jerked and his eyes flew open, looking around, not sure where he was and how he got there. He saw that he was still sitting in his car on the side of the road, the wipers occasionally slipping across the windshield. He wondered how long he had slept. He needed to get moving again.
He blinked a few times and twisted his head a few times to loosen it up, then put on his turn signal and, after looking in the mirror, pulled out onto the road and sped up to continue his journey.
His destination was the cabin on the coast that he'd inherited from his parents, a favorite place for Kori and him to spend long weekends and vacations. It was in a wooded development of vacation cabins that overlooked the rocky Pacific coast of northern Oregon.
Truthfully, as a child, he found the cabin scary every time his family went there. It seemed remote and isolated, surrounded by bear-infested forests and beaten savagely and regularly in the fall and winter by enormous, violent storms as if the mighty Pacific Ocean actually hated that part of the coastline. He was a nervous wreck during his time there with his mother and father. He would only go outside when forced to and, at night, he cowered, shaking in his little bed hoping to somehow be overlooked by both the bloodthirsty animals waiting outside and the hateful fury of the storms that pounded the walls and windows of the insubstantial little cabin.
After meeting and marrying Kori, he'd somehow grown enough to negotiate a truce with the cabin and later, actually fall in love with it. He'd always attributed that miraculous change to her. Something about Kori gave him strength and understanding he'd lacked alone. Looking back, as he had, the time they'd spent there seemed peaceful beyond reason. He longed for the peace and safety that he'd felt there with her.
He had not been to the cabin since they'd gone there for an anniversary weekend together, seven months ago. That seemed to him now as the last perfect time they'd had. The last time that everything seemed to fit together in his life.
So what did he hope to accomplish or gain by going back there? Maybe there was some magic left there that he could glom onto. Some formula for happiness that would be obvious when he saw it. Something he could hold onto and use as a talisman to reassure him that his life was still worth something. He wanted to escape from the churning and fear he felt now and he wanted back the peace she'd brought to him there.
It was almost 3:00 PM and the sky was getting darker, partly because in November it got dark around 5:00 PM here and partly due to the storm moving in off the ocean. He must have slept on the side of the road a lot longer than he thought. Well, that was good, he obviously needed a little catching up on the sleep.
He had another 45 minutes to go before he reached the cabin and, once again, he was beginning to doubt that this was a good idea. He took the next turn off to the west from the highway. The next part would be at 35 miles per hour because it was narrower with almost no shoulders and led through a wind-twisted scrub forest to a small collection of houses and a little mom-and-pop store with the grand name of the Pacific View General Store where you could buy food and gas, but from which you could not "view" the Pacific Ocean. The old couple that ran the store had a contract to watch over the 30 or so cabins in the adjacent park, as the cabins were only occupied periodically during the year. From the store, it was about a 10-minute drive to the cabin or about 11 minutes walking on the less meandering path that cut through the woods. Frank briefly thought, once again, about gassing up at the store and then turning around and going back to the city. He could chalk the day up to a nice drive and some time to think things over. Oh, and a nap.
Frank thought that, but he knew that he was going all the way to the cabin. There was a flash of lightning in the sky in the distance and he flipped the windshield wipers up to a slow continuous mode to deal with an increase in the amount of rain. He had his headlights on since leaving his apartment but he now he really needed them to see the upcoming turns.
When he finally pulled up to the fuel pumps at the Pacific View store, he sat there for a moment thinking about the times he'd been in this exact spot before. Sitting in the back of his parents’ station wagon, waiting for his father to fill the car's tank. He was eight years old and his stomach was aching with anxiety and barely suppressed panic as he contemplated staying at the cabin for the next few days. His parents would already be gearing up their arguments for him getting out into nature and enjoying his time at the coast, while he would be picturing himself as an empty ribcage with a part of a head attached, being batted about the parking area for sport by a grizzly bear with a red-stained muzzle.
Later, as a grown man with a wife and better control of his imagination, he saw himself here at the little store with Kori, gassing up, buying a few provisions for the weekend or walking to the store on the trail in the morning to pick up some orange juice and eggs for romantic breakfast, or in the evening for a bottle of red wine with a screw cap for sitting on the porch and watching the sunset.
He got out and stood under the edge of the high shed roof over the pumps in the bluish fluorescent light while filling up the car's tank with gasoline. There was enough wind that he was getting wet from the rain blown sideways and he hunched his shoulders to try to keep the cold rain off his neck.
The front door of the store opened and an elderly woman looked out at him, squinting, and then smiling in recognition and waving. He waved back, as she retreated into the warm dry store. He finished filling the tank, then got back in the car and started it up. He looked briefly into the brightly lit store through its glass front door that was almost obscured with product stickers and thought, last chance, he could still turn hard right and drive back home.
He flipped his lights on and pulled out in the direction of the cabin.
The road from there twisted through the thick pine forest with only glimpses of the lights from cabins off to the sides. The road was barely wide enough for two cars and snaked as if built without a plan.
After a few minutes, he turned into the short driveway leading from the access road and as he pulled up into the clearing at the back of the cabin, he saw that the sodium vapor light attached to a Douglas fir on the edge of the area was on, illuminating the circular gravel parking and the back porch with a salmon-colored light.
A quick glance as his headlights swept across the back of the cabin reassured him that everything looked intact. He would have been surprised if it weren't, the old couple took their stewardship seriously.
He parked and grabbed his jacket off the passenger seat as he got out and walked up the back steps onto the porch. The yellow motion-sensor light came on well before he reached the coco fiber welcome mat. He stepped up to the door and looked at his reflection in the darkened glass in the door's top half. His faced had a haggard look that wasn't helped by the angle of the yellow light cast from the side and above.
He shook his head, unlocked the door with the keys still in his hand and pushed it open. The stale smell of the empty cabin washed over him like a wave of cold water. Memories came flooding back to him as he stood there with the doorknob still held in his left hand. It still wasn't too late to turn around. He closed the door and flipped on the kitchen lights with his right hand.
The room's details burst into existence, filling his view with a familiar picture. For a moment, his emotions seemed to stay perfectly balanced and he felt nothing. But as he focused on the details caught by his moving eyes, he felt himself being pulled first one way and then another, by scenes from his memory.
He saw the sink and the nearby drain board and remembered Kori washing up dishes while he dried and put them away after their last breakfast here. He saw her hair in a loose bun and her shirtsleeves rolled up. He saw the fine blonde down on her cheek in the morning light as he stood beside her at the sink waiting for her to rinse a plate and hand it to him.
His view shifted to the old kitchen table with turned legs, still covered with an old worn red, blue, and yellow patterned tablecloth and the four chairs pushed up tight against it. In the center of the table was a pottery bowl that was empty now, but his mother used to keep wax fruit in it because she thought it looked cheerful. Wax fruit! As a kid, he used to look at the bowl and its contents as though it were some kind of artifice or trickery. Why would you have wax fruit?
He looked past the kitchen and saw the large front windows that looked out toward the land’s edge and the ocean beyond, near blackness now. He remembered, as a child, only being able to see the distant flashes of lightning that briefly illuminated frozen vignettes of a tempest sent to surely destroy him.
And then he saw the same windows and remembered the storms he’d watched from the large leather couch, cuddled under a blanket next to Kori, cozy in the heat and flickering light from the nearby stone fireplace and feeling safe, absolutely safe. How could he have been entertained by that cataclysm held at bay, on the other side of that piece of tempered glass? How could he explain that?
Then he saw the stairs leading to the open loft that held the old double bed with the chest at the foot containing bedding and quilts. He remembered coming up here for their honeymoon and the feeling of his heart swelling with love at every sight of her. He remembered that he'd never felt anything so wonderful before in his life. He remembered thinking that finally, he was happy, finally, he had what he'd waited for, for so long.
Then he saw the mantelpiece and the single hurricane oil lamp with the red glass base on the far right side. More specifically, he saw the empty space on the far left side of the mantelpiece and he remembered Kori throwing that lamp at him. She had called him a shit, an idiot, a selfish bastard. She said she wanted out of the marriage right away. That she never wanted to see him or hear of him again, ever. She told him that he wasn't even human. He remembered calling Kori a bitch, a liar, a two-faced idiot that only loved herself.
He remembered that fight going on until the sun went down and him sleeping in the car. He remembered driving back to the apartment the next day in silence. He remembered it was another day before they'd made up and said they were sorry.
He stood rooted to that spot just inside the back door, thinking of all this. Frank thought to himself that he needed to turn on the propane and start the furnace, maybe make a fire.
He took two steps and stopped as he saw the bookshelf and remembered picking up books from the floor while holding pressure on a cut on the side of his head. A cut he'd gotten from a book that Kori had thrown at his head while he sat in a chair. He gradually remembered that entire fight and all the ugly things that they'd both said.
When he turned away from the bookshelf and saw the broom standing next to the back door, he winced involuntarily and walked quickly to the door, opened it, flipped off the inside lights and walked out locking the door behind him.
The wind was picking up and the rain was coming down in sheets as he climbed into his car and buckled up.
He turned on his lights and moved the windshield wiper lever up to full speed as he turned the car toward the driveway.
It was definitely too soon to return to the cabin.
* * *
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