Searching for Caleb

Justine fit books into cardboard boxes. Then machine parts. Duncan let his jigsaw puzzle dissolve and scatter while he took up a new kind of solitaire. Lately he had become talkative and fanciful, almost silly; he was emerging from his silence. But the bourbon and the solitaire remained, because he had lost his job by now and if he didn't look occupied in some way Justine would ask him to help her. That was one thing he could not do. He would feel like a child repacking his pathetic provisions-blanket, alarm clock, teddy bear-after half a night of running away. Or like some sea animal, declawed and deformed by battle, scuttling back to his shell with whatever scraps of himself he could salvage. He remained on the floor, pretending to be deep in his game. Meanwhile his mind had sprung awake again and was playing games of its own. He composed a list of all his favorite words, aloud. "Luncheon. Reality. Silver salver. Ippolitov-Ivanov." Justine sat back and wiped her hair off her forehead.

"Sometimes I wonder why we travel with so much stuff," she told him.

One of the puzzling things about Justine was that she always seemed to be shaking lately, and it hadn't stopped when he decided to move her to Baltimore. The streamers of her hat trembled gently, and whenever she drank coffee (which was the only thing she would touch) she spilled it.

She reminded him of a fragile tree full of birds. But what could he do that he hadn't already done? He tried diverting her thoughts. "Justine," he said. "You know? In twenty years I firmly believe we will be traveling instantaneously by transposition of matter. You get in this glass box, see, if you want to go to, say, Omaha, and someone in Omaha gets in another glass box-"

"I travel fast enough as it is," said Justine, "and way too far."

"You haven't traveled so far," Duncan said. "Then bulletin boards would spring up everywhere: 'Gentleman from Detroit wishes to go to Pittsburgh; does anyone in Pittsburgh wish to go to Detroit?' There would be new hope for the unemployed. Bums could make money being transposed to Cincinnati when someone in Cincinnati wanted to get out. You go to a park bench.

'Look, fellow,' you say-"

"But it would always be me who ended up accepting," said Justine. She rose, and for no apparent reason examined her face in the speckled metal switchplate on the wall. "I can turn into anyone. That's my curse,"

Her curse was her ability to see all sides of every question, but that wasn't something Duncan wanted changed and so he didn't mention it.

Finally Justine turned away and bent to pack another box.

She was fitting some things of Meg's in now. Each object she handled very gently and lovingly, taking much longer than necessary. She rolled a stray belt meant for a dress Meg might not even be wearing any more, and she tucked it in beside a mildewed high school almanac.

She took the lid off a tin of pebbles that Meg had collected on a Virginia beach in the summer of 1965, and she held each pebble up to the light and smoothed it with her fingers before replacing it.

At mealtimes, if he remembered, Duncan made sandwiches and poured two glasses of milk. But Justine seemed to have given up on eating. She didn't even go to the diner; she didn't go anywhere. When he urged her she would take one bite of her sandwich and then set it down. "Come on.

Eat," he told her. Though he could see that it wasn't possible. He could tell from the way she chewed; her mouth was too dry, or too small, or something. Never mind, she would eat when she got to Baltimore. Aunts would take her in hand. He thought of the aunts for the first time with gratitude, imagining how they would relieve him of Justine's dull white face and her limpness. Then he caught himself and looked away from her eyes, which were fixed on him too steadily.

He could always leave her, of course. He could settle her in Baltimore and then go off again on his own. But he knew that he wouldn't. If he didn't have Justine he wouldn't even know how to see things, what to look at; nothing would exist for him if he couldn't tell Justine about it. The first flat-brimmed hat in a department store window would break him. He would be unable to last the night without her rustling, burning wakefulness guarding his sleep. So he put away all thoughts of leaving, and he wrote the letter to Peck & Sons asking for work. But when the answer came, he didn't want to open it. He stuffed it in his pocket, angry already at the phrases he knew it would contain. Finally Justine found it, and opened it for him. "Well? What does it say?" he asked.

"Oh . . . they'll get you something."

"But what does it say?" Are they glad I'm finally listening to reason? Do they say they always knew we would end up coming home?"

"No, they don't mention it," Justine said.