Chapter 13: The Fog

The fog came on a Wednesday and did not leave. It sat on the point the way the sea sat on the rocks — heavily, permanently, without the intention to move. The barometer held at 29.72, neither rising nor falling, the pressure locked, the atmosphere in a state of equilibrium that produced fog the way equilibrium in a marriage produced routine, the conditions self-sustaining, self-reinforcing, the fog producing the humidity that produced the fog, the cycle closed, the system stable in its instability.

Eamon had never minded fog. In his Coast Guard years, fog had been a condition, a variable, a thing to be navigated through, and the navigating was a skill he had mastered — dead reckoning, radar, the sound of the fog signal telling him where the land was, the compass telling him where the water was, the experience telling him where the danger was. Fog was not an enemy. Fog was an environment. You entered it and you operated within it and you emerged from it, and the emerging was the proof of the operating, and the operating was the skill, and the skill was what the Coast Guard trained, what the Coast Guard valued, what the Coast Guard was — an organization devoted to the proposition that the dangers of the sea could be met by the skills of the men and women who worked on it.

But this fog was different. This fog was not a condition to be navigated through. This fog was a condition that had settled and that showed no sign of lifting, and the settling was not on the bay or the coast or the atmosphere but on the house, on the marriage, on the life that Eamon and Nora had built on the point, the fog as much inside as outside, as much in the kitchen as on the water, and the fog inside was not vapor but absence, not condensation but confusion, not weather but disease, and the disease was doing what fog did — it was erasing the visible, it was contracting the world, it was reducing the known to the immediate and the immediate to the uncertain.

On the first day, Nora could not find the garden.

The garden was thirty feet from the kitchen door. The garden was visible from the kitchen window. The garden was enclosed by the cedar fence that Eamon had built, the fence with the gate that squeaked when you opened it because the hinge was brass and the brass had developed a patina that resisted the pin, and Eamon had not oiled it because the squeak was useful, the squeak told him when someone opened the gate, and the someone was always Nora, going to the garden, tending the tomatoes, picking the beans, pulling the weeds, the garden work that was her work, her territory, her daily practice.

She went out the kitchen door. Eamon was at the table, feeding the starter — it was a feeding day, and he had taken over the feeding, had absorbed it into his routine the way he had absorbed every other maintenance task, the every-other-day rhythm joining the every-morning rhythm of the lens and the every-evening rhythm of the log — and he was stirring the flour and the water into the culture, the spoon moving in its circles, and Nora went out the door into the fog.

He heard the door close. He heard her footsteps on the granite path. He heard the footsteps stop.

He waited. The footsteps should have continued — six paces to the garden gate, the squeak of the gate, the footsteps on the soil of the garden. But the footsteps had stopped and the gate had not squeaked and the silence was the silence of a person who had stopped walking because the walking had lost its direction, the way a ship loses its direction in fog when the compass fails and the radar is dark and the shore is invisible and the water is the same in every direction and the ship does not know which way is forward.

He went to the door. He opened it. The fog was thick — visibility less than fifty feet, the tower a ghost, the fog signal building invisible, the garden fence invisible, the world invisible beyond the radius of the kitchen light that spilled from the open door across the granite path and into the white nothing.

Nora was standing on the path. She was five paces from the door. She was standing still, her hands at her sides, her face turned slightly to the left, toward where the garden was, toward where the garden should have been visible, and the garden was not visible because the fog had taken it, had erased it, had removed it from the world, and Nora was looking at the place where the garden should have been the way a person looks at a shelf where a book should be — the space correct, the absence wrong, the thing expected and not found.

"Nora," he said.

She turned. She looked at him. The fog was in her hair, in the fine silver of it, the moisture beading on the strands, and her face was wet with the fog, the fog touching her face the way rain touched a window, covering it, obscuring it, and her eyes were open and her eyes were looking at him and her eyes were not seeing him, not quite, the seeing delayed, the recognition delayed, the half-second between looking and knowing that in a healthy brain was instantaneous and that in Nora's brain was lengthening, the half-second becoming a second, the second becoming two, the gap between the perception and the identification widening like the gap between a boat and a dock, the line cast off, the water between them growing.

"I was going to the garden," she said.

"The garden is to your left. Thirty feet."

"I know where the garden is."

"I know you do."

"I couldn't see it. The fog."

"The fog is thick today."

"The fog is thick," she said, and the repetition was not agreement but processing, the mind taking the information and holding it and turning it, examining it, the way a person examines a key that does not fit a lock, the shape wrong, the teeth wrong, and the examining is the trying, the trying to make the key fit the lock, the trying to make the information fit the world, and the world was fog and the information was fog and the key did not fit because the lock had changed.

He walked her to the garden. He walked beside her, not holding her arm, and they walked the thirty feet to the gate and the gate squeaked and they were in the garden and the tomato plants were there, the late tomatoes still ripening, the green of them visible even in the fog, and the beans were there and the herbs were there and the garden was there, was intact, was the same garden it had been yesterday when the sun was out and the visibility was unlimited and Nora had walked to it without hesitation, without confusion, without the stopping on the path and the looking at the nothing and the not-knowing.

"I'm fine now," she said. "You can go."

He went. He went back to the kitchen and he stood at the window and watched the fog where the garden was and he could not see her but he could hear her, the faint sounds of the garden work, the pulling of weeds, the turning of soil, the sounds that said she was there, was working, was doing the thing she knew how to do, and the sounds were the signal, the fog signal, the sound that said: I am here, I am here, I am still here.

On the second day, she could not find the kitchen.

She had been in the sitting room, reading — the same book, always the same book, the book she did not remember having read, the book that was perpetually new to her, the narrative refreshing itself with each reading because the reading did not accumulate, did not build, did not carry forward, each session a first session, each chapter a first chapter, and the reading was a closed loop, the beginning connecting to the beginning, and she read and she forgot and she read and she forgot and the book was infinite because the memory was finite.

She stood up from the chair. She walked to the kitchen. The kitchen was through the doorway, the doorway that was eight feet from the chair, the doorway that she had walked through forty times a day for twenty-six years, the doorway that was as known to her body as the seventy-two steps were known to Eamon's body, the geometry of the passage encoded in the muscles, in the tendons, in the spatial memory that told the body where the walls were and where the doors were and where the rooms were in relation to each other.

She walked through the doorway and stopped. She stopped in the kitchen and looked around the room, and the looking was not the looking of a person entering a familiar room but the looking of a person entering an unfamiliar room, the looking of a person in a hotel, a hospital, a house that is not hers, the looking that searches for orientation, for landmarks, for the things that say: you are here, this is your room, this is your kitchen, this is your life.

Eamon was at the kitchen table. He saw her stop. He saw the looking. He saw the eyes move from the stove to the counter to the window to the table to him, the eyes scanning, searching, and the searching found the table and found him and the finding was the recognition, the moment when the unfamiliar became familiar, the moment when the kitchen became the kitchen and the man at the table became Eamon, and the recognition arrived and the face changed, the confusion clearing, the fog lifting, and she was Nora again, was in her kitchen again, was home.

"I was going to make tea," she said.

"I'll make it."

"I can make my own tea."

"I know. Let me make it."

She sat at the table. He made tea. He made it the way she liked it — strong, no sugar, a splash of milk, the same way she had taken it since he had known her, the preference as fixed as the barometer's calibration — and he set the cup in front of her and she wrapped her hands around it and the warmth went into her hands and her hands were still, and the stillness was the stillness of a person who was holding on, who was gripping the known thing, the warm cup, the familiar shape, the proven fact of tea in a kitchen on a cold October afternoon.

"The fog is bad today," she said.

"It's thick."

"Not outside. Inside."

He sat down. He sat down across from her and the table was between them and the tea was between them and the silence was between them and the silence was not the silence of two people who had nothing to say but the silence of two people who had one thing to say and could not say it, the one thing being: I am losing you, I am losing myself, we are losing the thing that connects us, and the losing is the fog, the fog inside, the fog that does not lift when the conditions change because the conditions do not change, the conditions only worsen, and the worsening is the trajectory, and the trajectory is the disease, and the disease is the fog.

"I couldn't find the kitchen," she said.

"You found it."

"I was standing in the doorway and I didn't know where I was. For a moment. For a few moments. And the kitchen was right there — I could see it, I could see the stove and the counter and the window — but I didn't know it. I didn't recognize it. It was like looking at a photograph of someone you know and not being able to say their name. The face is there but the name is gone. The kitchen was there but the — the knowing was gone."

"The knowing came back."

"The knowing came back. But the gap — the gap was longer this time. The gap is getting longer."

He reached across the table. He took her hand. The hand was small in his, the bones fine, the skin thin over the knuckles, the hand that had made bread and tended the garden and held their son and held him and graded papers and wound the clock and navigated with maps and done ten thousand things that hands do in a life, and the hand was warm from the tea and the hand was his wife's hand and the hand was the thing he could hold, the one thing he could hold, because the rest of it — the knowing, the recognizing, the finding of the kitchen, the finding of the garden, the finding of the self — the rest of it was beyond his grip, was beyond his maintenance, was beyond the brass and the chamois and the wire and the paint and the oil and the caulk and every tool in his arsenal.

"I'm here," he said.

"I know you're here."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"I know."

"The kitchen is here. The house is here. The lighthouse is here. Everything is here."

"I know everything is here. That's not the problem. The problem is that I'm not always here. I go away. Not physically. Not my body. My body stays. But the — the me goes away. For a few seconds. For a minute. And while I'm away, the kitchen is not the kitchen and the house is not the house and you are not — and you are not always you."

"I'm always me."

"You're always you. But I don't always know it."

The third day. The fog still on the point, still thick, still unmoving, the barometer still locked, the atmosphere still in its equilibrium, and Eamon was in the tower, climbing the stairs, and the climbing was the same as every morning, the hand on the rail, the boots on the treads, the seventy-two steps ascending in their spiral, and he climbed and the climbing was the doing and the doing was the maintenance and the maintenance was the purpose and the purpose was what got him out of bed and up the stairs and into the lantern room where the lens waited, where the lens always waited, the two hundred and fifty-six prisms in their concentric rings, patient, permanent, unforgetful.

He cleaned the lens. The chamois moved in its pattern. The prisms released the light from the east window, what little light there was — the fog dimmed the dawn, the fog softened the light, the fog turned the sharp angles of the spectrum into approximations, the colors muted, uncertain, the reds becoming pinks, the blues becoming grays, the light itself forgetting its own nature, the light becoming fog, and Eamon cleaned the lens and the cleaning produced no effect that he could see because the light was insufficient, the light was diminished, the light was the light of a fogged-in morning on a coast in October and the lens could not focus what was not there.

He went to the gallery. The fog was on the gallery, was on the railing, was on the decking, was on his hands when he put them on the railing. He could not see the ground. He could not see the house. He could not see the bay or the rocks or the water or the islands or the horizon. He could see the fog, and the fog was everything, and the everything was nothing, and he stood on the gallery a hundred and three feet above the sea and he was alone in the fog and the fog was inside and outside and the distinction between inside and outside had been erased by the fog, the way the distinction between the sea and the sky had been erased by the fog, the way the distinction between the present and the past was being erased in Nora's mind, the boundaries dissolving, the categories collapsing, the known becoming unknown and the unknown becoming everything.

He went down. He went to the house. Nora was in bed. She was awake but in bed, lying on her side, looking at the wall, and the looking was not the looking of a person who was seeing the wall but the looking of a person who was seeing nothing, who had turned the looking inward, who was searching the interior the way Eamon searched the tower, room by room, floor by floor, looking for the crack, the rust, the leak, the failure, and the searching was exhausting, the searching took everything, and the lying in bed was the result of the exhaustion, the body resting while the mind worked, the mind working to hold the things that were slipping, the names and the words and the rooms and the way to the garden and the way to the kitchen and the way to the self.

"Do you want coffee?" he said.

"What day is it?"

"Friday."

"Friday."

"October eighteenth."

"October eighteenth. The garden needs covering. The frost will come."

"I'll cover the garden."

"The row covers are in the shed. The white ones. Not the black ones. The black ones are for weed suppression. The white ones are for frost protection. They let the light through."

"I know the difference."

"Do you?"

"You taught me."

She looked at him. The look was the look of a woman who had taught for thirty-one years, the look of a teacher who has just heard a student say something that surprises her, that exceeds her expectation, the look of recognition that the teaching has produced the learning and the learning is real, is retained, is carried by the student beyond the classroom and into the world, and the look was pride, and the pride was not in herself but in him, in the student, in the man who had learned the difference between the white covers and the black covers because his wife had taught him and he had listened and he had remembered.

"I taught you," she said.

"You taught me everything I know about gardens."

"I didn't teach you about lighthouses."

"No. I taught myself about lighthouses."

"You didn't teach yourself. The lighthouse taught you. You just showed up and paid attention. The lighthouse did the rest."

He stood in the doorway of the bedroom and looked at his wife lying in the bed in the gray light of the fogged-in morning, and she was right, the lighthouse had taught him, the lighthouse had been the teacher and he had been the student and the curriculum was maintenance and the lessons were daily and the examinations were storms and the grades were pass or fail and he had passed, so far he had passed, and the passing was the tower standing and the lens clean and the log written and the gallery drained and the signal sounding and all systems satisfactory.

But the lighthouse had not taught him this. The lighthouse had not taught him how to stand in the doorway while the woman he loved lay in the bed in the fog, the fog inside and outside, the fog everywhere, the fog that was not weather but disease, the fog that no signal could penetrate, the fog that no light could cut. The lighthouse had taught him how to maintain a building. The lighthouse had not taught him how to maintain a life. The lighthouse had taught him how to keep a lens clean. The lighthouse had not taught him how to keep a mind clear. The lighthouse had taught him everything except the thing he needed to know, the thing he most needed to know, which was: how do you keep the light on when the fuel is running out and the wick is burning down and the flame is going and there is no replacement, no supply ship, no depot with barrels of oil stacked on the dock, just the flame and the wick and the fuel and the time, the time running out, the time that was the fuel, the time that was the only thing between the light and the dark.

"I'll cover the garden," he said.

He covered the garden. He got the white covers from the shed and he spread them over the rows, the tomatoes and the beans and the herbs, the fabric light and permeable and white, the covers floating over the plants like shrouds, like fog, like the sheets of mist that covered the bay, and the plants were underneath, alive, growing still, producing still, the last tomatoes ripening under the covers, the green becoming red in the hidden warmth beneath the fabric, the change invisible, the change happening without observation, the way change happened when no one was watching, when no one was checking, when the keeper was in the tower and the world was in the fog and the living things were doing what living things did, which was live, which was grow, which was change, which was die.

He went to the tower. He wrote in the log:

0830. Fog, day 3. Visibility less than 100 ft. Barometer 29.72. Calm. Temp 46. Fog signal operating continuously. Lens cleaned. Garden covered for frost protection. All lighthouse systems satisfactory.

All lighthouse systems satisfactory. The lighthouse systems were always satisfactory. The lighthouse systems were the one thing he could make satisfactory, the one thing his maintenance addressed, the one domain in which his skills were adequate, and the domain was a tower and the tower was stone and the stone did not forget and the stone did not lose its way and the stone did not lie in bed looking at the wall and the stone was not his wife and his wife was not stone and the difference was everything, the difference was the whole thing, the difference was the gap between what he could maintain and what he could not, and the gap was the fog, and the fog was not lifting.

On the afternoon of the third day, the fog began to thin. The barometer moved — 29.78, the first change in three days, the equilibrium broken, the atmosphere shifting, and the shifting produced a breeze, southwest, light, five knots, but enough, enough to stir the fog, to break its hold, to introduce the movement that the fog required to dissipate, and by evening the bay was visible and the islands were visible and the horizon was visible and the world was back, the world had returned, the erasure reversed, and the point was the point again and the lighthouse was the lighthouse again and the house was the house again and Nora was Nora again, or mostly Nora, the fog inside not lifting as fast as the fog outside but lifting, clearing, the kitchen becoming the kitchen, the garden becoming the garden, the husband becoming the husband, the known world reassembling itself around her like the bay reassembling itself around the point, the edges sharpening, the details returning, the names returning to the things they named.

She made dinner. She made soup — potato and leek, the recipe she knew by heart, by hand, the recipe that did not require a book or a measurement but only the knowledge of the hands, the knowing of how much butter, how much stock, how much cream, and the knowing was there, the knowing was present, and the soup was correct, and the soup was good, and they ate it at the kitchen table with bread from a bakery in Camden because the new starter was not ready yet, the new culture still building, still accumulating, still becoming what it would become, and the bread from the bakery was adequate but was not hers, was not the bread she had made, and the absence of her bread on the table was a presence, was a reminder, was the empty crock on the shelf, the space where the thing should be.

After dinner, Eamon went to the tower. He climbed the seventy-two steps. In the lantern room, the fog was gone and the lens was catching the last light of the October evening, the light amber, the light heavy, and the prisms broke it into the spectrum and the spectrum was vivid, was intense, was the full range of color from red to violet, and the colors moved across the walls of the lantern room as the sun set and the angle changed and the light that had been too dim in the fog to produce any color at all was now producing all the colors, and the colors were the light's apology, the light's return, the light saying: I was here, I was always here, the fog covered me but did not extinguish me, and now the fog is gone and I am back and the colors are the proof.

He stood in the colors. He stood in the lantern room with the light passing through the lens and breaking on the walls and breaking on his hands and breaking on his face, and the light was warm, the light was alive, the light was the last light of the day, and the day had been a day without fog for the first time in three days, and the absence of the fog was a presence, was a gift, was the clear air that followed the fog the way the calm followed the storm, and the calm was temporary, he knew, the calm was always temporary, the fog would return and the storm would return and the disease would return and the losing would return, but for now — for this moment, in this light, in this room, on this day — for now the light was on, and the light was enough.

He went down. He wrote in the log:

1845. Clearing. SW 5-8. Temp 43. Barometer 29.82, rising. Fog lifted 1600 after 3 days. Visibility improving, currently 5 mi, increasing. Fog signal secured. All systems satisfactory.

He went to the house. Nora was in the kitchen, washing the soup pot, the water running, her hands in the water, the motion of the washing automatic, correct, the hands knowing, and she was humming, she was humming a song he recognized, a song she had hummed for years, a song whose name he did not know but whose melody he knew, had always known, the melody that was part of the kitchen the way the clock was part of the kitchen, the melody that was Nora doing the dishes, the melody that was home.

He stood in the doorway and listened.

The humming continued. The water ran. The clock ticked. The fog was gone. The light was on.

For now.