The Swan Thieves

Chapter 75 Mary

One morning I realized I hadn't had a letter or a drawing from Robert for five days, which was now a long time for us. His latest sketch had been a self-portrait, humorously caricaturing his own strong features, his hair on end and somehow alive, like Medusa's. Under it he had written: "Oh, Robert Oliver, when will you pull your life together?" It was probably the only time I ever knew him to criticize himself directly, and it startled me a little. But I took it as a reference to one of the "melancholies" he sometimes described offhandedly to me, or as an acknowledgment of the increasingly double life he led through our letters. I took it, in fact, as a kind of compliment, which is the way one wants everything to look in the midst of love, isn't it? But then he didn't send anything for three days, then four, five, and I broke my rule and wrote him a second time, concerned, yearning, trying to be casual about it.
He never got that letter, I'm sure; unless the post office has closed his box and thrown my letter away, it's probably still sitting there, waiting for the hand that never reached in to pull it out. Or perhaps Kate cleared out the box eventually and threw it away. I like to think she didn't read it, if that's the case. The morning after I sent it, my apartment buzzer rang at six thirty. I was still in my bathrobe, my hair wet but combed out, getting ready to go to my drawing class. No one had ever rung my bell at that hour, and I thought immediately about calling the police; that's the nature of the neighborhood I live in. But just to see what was going on, I pressed the button on my speaker and asked who it was.
"Robert," said a voice, a big, deep, strange voice. It sounded tired, even a little hesitant, but I knew it was his. I would have known it in outer space.
"Just a minute," I said. "Wait. Wait just a minute." I could have buzzed him in, but I wanted desperately to go down myself; I couldn't believe it. I threw on the first clothes I could find, grabbed my keys, and ran barefoot to the elevator. On the first floor, I could see him through the glass inner doors. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder; he seemed very weary, more rumpled than ever but also alert, scanning for me through the lobby.
I thought I must be dreaming, but I unlocked the door anyway and ran to him, and he dropped the bag and lifted me up in his arms and crushed me; I felt him burying his face in my shoulder and hair, smelling them. We weren't even kissing in that first moment; I think I was sobbing with relief because his cheek felt the way I'd thought it would, and maybe he was sobbing a little, too. We pulled apart with our hair sticking to each other's faces, tears, sweat glistening on his forehead. He had let his beard grow out for a few days; he looked unshaven, a lumberjack on the sidewalks of a DC neighborhood, one old shirt over another. "What?" I said, because that was all I could manage.
"Well, she threw me out," he admitted, lifting the bag again as if that were proof of his exile. And at my look of shock, I guess: "Not because of you. Something else."
I must have looked more shocked than ever, because he put an arm around my shoulders. "Don't worry. It's all right. It was just about my paintings, and I'll explain it to you later."
"You drove all night," I said.
"Yes, and can I leave my car there?" He pointed to the street, its signs and litter and incomprehensible meters.
"Certainly," I said. "You can, and it will be towed sometime after nine." Then we both began to laugh, and he brushed my hair back again, the gesture I remembered from our encounter at the camp, and kissed me, kissed me, kissed me. "Is it nine yet?"
"No," I said. "We have more than two hours." We went upstairs with his heavy bag, and I locked the door behind us and called in sick.