Peter's hands were raw from the cold covered with scratches from the wood. He had just managed to lug the last of it behind the house, and he climbed up his front steps as his neighbor led the borrowed mule and cart away. Offhandedly, he made a mental note to buy gloves soon. May would need a pair, too.
He was the oldest, only by ten months, but the oldest nonetheless. He was the man of the house now. His sister, who had just turned twenty a few months back, was the only family he had left. He took good care of her. Someday, she would probably get married, and when that day came he didn't know what he'd do other than be lonely. He found girls entertaining and enticing, but after going out on more than a couple dates he always felt smothered and felt some reason to break it off. Girls had never trusted him. That had always been Jack, in their young teenage years. They had been drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and they had been burned in the same fashion, but still they put their blind faith in him like a puppy does to its master. When Jack had taken a liking to his sister a few years back, Peter had been reluctant to allow it. Not that he could have stopped it, really, but he could have definitely discouraged it. However, Jack had promised to be careful with May and May had promised not to do anything stupid. But then Jack had left . . . and May, with the usual hurt of teenage girls, had wallowed for a few weeks and gotten over it. It had been a kid's love; Pete was firmly confirmed of that.
And now look at Jack, the heartbreaker of all heartbreakers. That Rose had him wrapped around her little finger, but it looked like the feeling was mutual. Peter was going to have to ask Jack where he landed a woman like that, for if there were any other members of the female gender like Jack's wife, Peter had never seen them. She was too beautiful for her own good and she didn't even know it.
When Peter entered his house and put his boots by the door, the first thing he noticed was his sister's sobs. He could hear them coming from her bedroom, which was strange, because her bedroom was separated from the entryway by a couple of rooms. She wasn't that loud when she spoke; the fact that he could hear her crying from all the way downstairs meant that she was hysterical. He was about to run to her when he noticed the second odd thing.
Jack Dawson was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace, staring into thick orange flame that hadn't been there when Pete had left. He looked like he had been there for awhile. What was extremely abnormal was the fact that Jack had to have been able to catch the sound of May's weeping, and he was doing nothing. That was completely unlike him. Torn between these two events, Peter didn't know which one he wanted to explore.
Luckily, Jack decided for him. He looked up from his reverie with eyes that were blank and empty, eyes that betrayed no secrets of his soul, eyes that were like drizzle – cold, unfeeling, but intent on their purpose. He was confident; he was sure. The arrows he shot across the room did not pierce but they stung Peter's heart. He didn't understand what was happening. Where had Jack gotten to be stony and hard like that? What hardships had he endured that he could completely separate himself from any and all emotion? Surely, surely, Paris couldn't have done this to him. He had been changed from the carefree boy Chippewa Falls remembered into a wanton but burdened man, and it was terrifying.
Pete tried to talk. He really did. For some reason though, his throat was caked with sand and his tongue stuck like paste. There was absolutely no sound he could make. His shirt scratched the back of his neck and his hands were still aching from the ice outside. He was afraid.
Suddenly, though, he realized something. He was in his house. A man should not be intimidated in his own house. It was every kind of horrible there was, and for the first time since Jack had come last week, he was angry. What right did this Dawson have, to just pop up here after years of being dead to the world and then to barge into Peter's house? What right did he have to make May cry? That was what got Peter Filner's blood boiling until he could actually feel into singeing his veins, for certainly that was what Jack had done. If Jack wasn't trying to comfort May, he must have caused her hurt, and Peter couldn't stand that.
"What is this?"
Jack hadn't heard that kind of coldness in Pete's voice since one summer when they were thirteen and Jack had punched him for some stupid thing or another. Now that coldness was deeper, emptier, angrier, and contrasted greatly by the heat of the flame in his eyes. May's anguished sobs continued to rip through the house.
Jack hadn't even begun to take apart what May had said about her love. It was too much for him. His cheek still stung where she had hit him, and absent-mindedly he ran his hand over the inflicted area. There were too many secrets intertwined in this small town, and he couldn't handle them all at once. His goal was still to try and find the truth about what had happened to Grace. It was the only thing occupying his mind. It cut through every other thought, burning his brain with fear. If it were true, if it were in any way at all true, this man in front of him was damned eternally in Jack's eyes. Once Jack's good opinion of a person was lost, it was lost forever. There was nothing that could retract it, and he was always right. He glared at Peter as angrily as Peter was glaring at him, and the two stares were locked for a moment, wrestling for dominance.
"I talked to Grace today," Jack said, his voice strong and clear. He tried to keep as much accusation out of his tone as he could. He wasn't even sure if Pete was involved in this at all.
And then Jack knew. He absolutely, beyond a doubt knew, for in front of him, ever so quickly, Pete's confidence had withered and died. He stood staring at Jack, pasty white with horror, the horror of someone who, finally, had been discovered. Jack's heart fell into his stomach and his face became pale and grey, grey with a terrible fury that the house had never witnessed before. The hawk of rage bloomed in his pupils and screamed in his ears. All he could hear was that horrible screeching sound of his wrath, like a train running off the tracks.
Jack wanted to yell. He wanted to curse. He wanted to beat Peter Filner within an inch of his life. But strangely, Jack could not move. In his later years, he would look back on this moment of his life and thank God for preventing him from doing something he would have regretted, but at the moment, he could hardly swallow. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, so that when he tried to talk, it came out clumsy and almost as if it were another language. He became silent.
He know longer knew the Filners. He was realizing that now. They were not the children he had grown up with anymore; they were new, terrible beings of their very own that he had forgotten and left behind to collect dust on the shelf of his past. New people had come and filled in the place they had once taken in his heart, new people that could never be replaced like they had been, new people like Rose DeWitt-Bukater and Fabrizio de Rossi. These were the ones that he adored and that he treasured in his spirit.
Somewhere, the back of his mind retrieved a picture of the Grace he had just seen hardly half an hour ago. Her eyes were empty and hurt, showing the betrayal she had faced for the whole world to see. Her very body was weak with guilt and weariness. And the worst part was, it was the man in front of him who had done this to her; it was him who had taken away the luster of Grace's smile.
"You son of a bitch," he breathed after a few silent moments, finally managing to regain control over his voice box. He was talking so quietly Peter could hardly hear him, but the venom he spat was felt throughout the whole room. "It's true, isn't it? You gave her children and left her to raise them alone. You arrogant bastard."
The air was lightly perfumed with the dying pine tree out back that Peter had dragged in a month ago for Christmas. It now lay in a bed of dry, brown needles, slowly decomposing. He should have used it for firewood but he hadn't, and now it was too late. Just like things with Grace, it was too late to go back on his mistake.
"You don't know the whole story, Dawson," he returned, his eyes on the floor and his outward voice void of any emotion. Jack had the proper and unadulterated fury of someone who was righteously angry, and Peter knew he couldn't compete with it. Those who were righteously angry always triumphed in the end. He swallowed and mentally tried to piece together some kind of attempt at an excuse. There was none.
"What . . . did . . . you . . . do?" Jack hissed, enunciating each word with bone-chilling clearness. He clenched his fists in his pant pockets. Perhaps the one thing that had hurt him most, when he had been seeing Europe, was looking at all of the helpless single mothers. They were so empty, so devoid of hope. They were at the bottom of the bottom of the world's demented social ladder. The fact that someone whom he had once been closer to than a brother had shoved a woman down to those demonic depths infuriated him and disgusted him beyond what he could ever hope to express with mere language.
"Maybe," Peter returned, the venom in his voice finally thickening to match the venom in Jack's, "Maybe you don't understand. Maybe there's more to it than you know. Maybe there's more to it than Grace knows."
Jack felt something bitter and burning in his mouth, like metal. He had to close his eyes and take several deep breaths to calm himself. There was nothing that Peter could do or say that would in anyway take away his blame in Jack's eyes. "You used her," he whispered, and again the boiling desire to punch Pete fought to the front of his mind. "You dirty, cheap tramp, you used her."
It happened so fast that Jack couldn't honestly say what had occurred. Peter's hand reached out like lightning and grabbed onto Jack's shoulder. "Don't you ever say that," he whispered with a broken fury in his voice. "Don't you dare ever say that."
The sun played tag on the waters of Lake Wissota, each beam of light chasing the other across the rippling waves like children running in the streets. The grey of winter was finally gone, and summer had blossomed in full force. Each violently green leaf burst open against the violently blue sky, sending a chaos of color rocketing across the horizon.
Peter looked furtively over to the grove of bushes near where Jack was secluded. He was lying on his back with his elbows crossed underneath his head. It almost looked like he was sleeping, but Pete knew better. He was thinking. He was the one person in all of Chippewa Falls who had a mind that liked to delve deep like that; he could spend hours with his only companion being himself and his questions. He was a complicated person, though; he also made rash and quick decisions every once and awhile that he didn't completely think through before jumping into. At that, Peter began to think of his sister.
Just last night, he had warned her not to get involved with Jack. Jack was a great guy and a perfect gentleman, but he broke hearts as often as he switched shoes. He didn't mean to, but his entrancement of the girls he dated never lasted as long as theirs with him. He was a magnet in every possible sense. People of all ages and kinds were drawn to him in such a way as they couldn't escape the pull he created. It was dangerous, both for him and for them. Peter, of all people, had happened to remain the most immune to this charm. He was Jack's best friend, obviously, but he did not have a problem telling Jack when he was wrong or when he needed to cool off. This, though, this was different . . . May was blood, and Jack was almost as close to him, and he didn't want to hurt either of them. He wanted to believe, as May so obviously did, that their fling would turn into lifelong infatuation that would result in them marrying, punching out a few kids, and living happily together for the rest of their lives, but he knew Dawson and he knew his sister and he knew they would never last. They were so different; May put on an independent front, but really she needed people, and she needed their approval. She was a timid creature at heart. Jack also seemed independent on the outside, except he really was. He would never be happy loving a woman who wasn't self-efficient and who couldn't stand her own ground. He liked picking arguments with people, and if he married a girl who couldn't fight back, the marriage would end quickly.
Peter heard a splash somewhere to his right. He swiveled his head around just in time to see a soaking Grace Malone paddle beside the shoreline of the lake a few times. Her hair was down from its twist that her mother insisted she wear it in and floated like amber rays of sunshine across the water. He allowed himself to study her as she remained oblivious to his stare and gossiped with his sister. For the first time, a realization hit him suddenly and surely that he had never seen before – Grace was beautiful. She had blossomed from a cute little girl into an absolutely amazing young woman. He carefully examined her face, with its bright smile and lively eyes. Something inside of his heart shifted when she began to giggle. He looked away because he was so shocked by the feeling that he had not expected. Even when he tried to focus on the clouds, he could see nothing but her, and it bothered him. It truly did.
His attentions to his new predicament were interrupted when May walked by him in pursuit for Jack, who was still motionless under the branches of an oak tree dripping with emerald leaves. Peter wanted to warn her not to go, but he stayed silent. He knew better than to insult her preference in men, and he knew that she would not listen to him. Still, he felt deeply uneasy. Sister, he silently warned, his expression full with pleading, don't give all of your heart to someone who won't give you any of his.
"Get in the water, Peter," Grace called out. He turned to her as the breeze lifted her hair off her forehead, and in that second she was perhaps the most stunning creature he had ever seen. He didn't like it. Ashamed, he turned away, but the light that he had seen in her jeweled brown eyes continued to mock him with its magnetic force. He saw her as another little sister, really, and he cared for her in a brotherly way . . . or did he?
She splashed him, and she continued to jeer him, trying to get him to retaliate and come after her. One thing she maybe didn't understand, though, was that Peter Filner was an extremely practical mind. His emotions never got the best of him. Each movement was calculated, precise. His character was not made out of the spontaneous, but rather out of the predictable and what he knew he could rely on.
He knew that he couldn't let himself go to her. He would lose it. He sat on the grass with his eyes closed, trying to think about anything that would get his mind off of his sister's best friend. He ignored her voice and instead began to remember a speech that they had been made to memorize at school. Four score and seven years ago . . .
There was a sound next to him on the bank of the lake, soft and light, much like a doe makes as she slips through the forest. Then he felt a wet ankle cross over his bare foot. He clenched his teeth, and continued with the recitation in his mind. Our fathers created . . . on this continent . . .
This had never happened to him before. He couldn't think. He tried to remember the next words in Abraham Lincoln's address, but they wouldn't come to him. The next thing he knew, his lips were on Grace's, and he didn't even mind that he hadn't thought about it beforehand.
This was something that didn't need any preplanning.
Both men were silent for seconds, hours maybe, not even breathing, not daring to move. The tension between them cracked and sizzled like a live wire. Neither understood the other; neither allowed their souls to open wide enough to understand the other. The damned stubborn prides of both of them were in a wordless struggle.
Even the sobs of May had vanished into the background. She was still there, believe it or not. Sometimes she felt like no one even knew she existed. Her own brother had not come up to her, even though he had to have heard her. Although Jack was a compassionate spirit, he had not attempted to comfort her. These thoughts, as they ran through her mind, had the stringy and unconnected feel of a nickelodeon. It was almost as if she were standing outside of herself, and watching herself go through this struggle.
In an eerily detached way, she scraped her thumbnail against the post of her bed. The small scratch she had managed to make in the wood widened into a gash. She sat on the floor with a blanket wrapped around her, covering her entire body to the tips of her toes. She was very calm. Her mind was not clear, no, but it was just finally so foggy that she gave up seeing at all. Tears were dried on her face, leaving shiny paths where they had run down her cheeks. Again and again she scraped the post with her thumbnail, methodically. Splinters dug into her skin and speckles of blood shone like rubies underneath the light of the dreary winter day.
She couldn't see how life would ever go on for her. Every single one of her dreams and hopes and desires that she had so carefully built and mantled onto a kite to fly in the sky had been shattered. The rest of her years would be empty . . . her heart was broken, and so was her soul. One who has had a broken heart will never be the same again, but one with a broken soul is better off dead.
The snow had never seemed quite so beautiful to her. Each snowflake unwound from the silver sky like a pure white ribbon, falling and fluttering until it finally snuggled itself into the ground, next to the billions of others that had gone before it. She watched each one with rapt attention, trying to define the delicate and perfect shapes of the snowflakes. They were so wonderfully orchestrated and carefully made that she wondered if God loved them as much as she did.
A lone bird, maybe the only one that hadn't migrated south for the winter, cautiously picked its way across the frozen ground. One of its wings looked broken. Maybe it was doomed to die. It looked so lovely with its golden feathers. Perhaps something that was doomed to die could still be lovely. She closed her eyes softly, trying to burn the golden bird and the silver snowflakes into her mind forever.
Then, ever so gracefully, she rose from the floor and glided over to her closet. Far in the back of her wardrobe, near the corner pilled high with moth balls, she found her mother's wedding dress. She remembered that her mother had left it behind when her parents moved out to California. It was old. It hadn't even been stylish when her mother had worn it. The neck was too high and the sleeves were too full. It hardly came down to the ankle. She took it off of its hanger and pressed it to her chest like one would a long lost child, burying her face in the dank and musty fabric.
As she pulled it over her head, her hair got snagged on one of the buttons that criss-crossed the back of the gown. The hair was yanked out of her scalp. She didn't even feel it. The black lock fell, flawless and shining, to the floor. For a moment, she stared at it in confusion. Was it really hers? May had almost forgotten that she had a physical body at all; she felt so formless and empty. That was the word to describe her: empty. She really wasn't even thinking anything. There was no more feeling, no more dreaming, no more wishing. Everything that had made her alive and throbbing with vivacity had been extinguished. If someone had happened to glance at her in this moment, they would have been horrified. May was nothing but a shell of a person; she was nothing but a ghost. Perhaps that's how stories of physical ghosts were created – from the observation of a ghost of a soul. However, no one was there to see her. No one was with her to trap her spirit and keep it in her body, so it left her. She was utterly and terribly alone. It was as if she had always been this lonely. Hadn't she? Had there ever been a time when she had been loved? Were all the memories only wisps of desire that danced in her mind?
She began to button up the dress. There was a veil somewhere back in the wardrobe, but she did not get it. Veils were to shield the innocent from the world, to hide purity from those unworthy to see it. May was no longer innocent or pure. Jack Dawson had taken that as surely as he would have if he had possessed her physically. He had done even worse, for he had possessed her very soul. Strangely, though, she bore him no animosity. There wasn't a shred of anger in her being. She was simply very sad, to the point where she was now drowning in something as evil as regret. No hand reached to pull her out and she was not strong enough to do it by herself. She wished desperately that she was strong enough.
The dress almost fit her like it had her mother. She had always thought it ugly, but suddenly it seemed magnificent. Its whiteness somehow made her feel as if she could recapture some of her virtue that had been taken from her by her hurt. With her eyelids ever so softly shut, she again saw herself as a little girl who was unblemished by the ways of the world. She slipped out her door, without even understanding that she was doing it, and went into Peter's bedroom. The next thing she knew she was rummaging in his bureau made out of cherry wood, which he had forgotten to lock.
May had never been sure if she truly believed in Heaven, but right now, on this bitter winter day, she looked past the drapes and up to the sky. Through the bare and naked branches of an old oak, she saw a dim light that struggled behind the clouds. She could hear something . . . something haunting but lovely in its own way, something that she knew had to be angels. God reaffirmed in her that, yes, there was a Heaven, and He opened the door to it just enough for her to see how gloriously it shone.
There was no use in apologizing to God, or to Peter, or to Jack. She had nothing to say. She had run out of words and run out of time and run out of the will to live. Maybe she had never really had any. It didn't matter. Ever so carefully, her delicate hands lifted a small wooden box painted white out of the bureau. She removed the lid. Her soft fingers wrapped around the cold, hard handle of a pistol.
Perhaps, as twisted as it sounds, everyone holds some sort of romantic view of suicide. They think of leaving a beautifully dramatic note stained with tears. They imagine how much they will be mourned, and how maybe in their death, people will finally come to love them. This idea is what the media portrays suicide to be. It wasn't, however, even partially close to what was going through May Filner's mind. To be honest, nothing was going through her mind at all, save one thought: the pain had to end. She couldn't bear it anymore.
It was freezing outside, but it was still not as cold as her heart. She moved ever so slowly to the window and pulled up the glass pane. Immediately, icy wind rushed into the bedroom and wove through her hair. The pale light of a weak sun surrounded her in an ethereal glow. No one had ever looked as angelic as May did in that second. She closed her eyes and tried to soak in some of this feeling: the loving caress of the breeze, the adoring brush of the snowflakes that danced through the window and into the bedroom. It was the gentlest she had been touched for years. There is nothing as heartbreaking as a person deprived of love.
The pistol was loaded. She had known it would be. She did not cry; she had cried her entire life, and she was done now. This window was near the back of the house, and it showed a wonderful view of the frozen plains that stretched beyond the tiny town of Chippewa Falls. She had never lived anywhere else in her life. There were trains at the station in Eau Claire. They reminded her that there were places other than here, far better places, places that once could have been her salvation. She had waited too long and held out for too many years, and now it was too late.
May didn't say anything eloquent. She didn't go crazy with rage, either. She was absolutely silent. On the rooftop of the old carriage house that her father had made into a shed, she again saw the lovely golden bird with the broken wing. Then she lifted the pistol to her head, released the safety, and pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed through the house.
