Page 20 - 2017 WTP Special Edition

In the coming years, walking his daughter to ers—more than this, Agnes’s ebullient hair and the daycare, or holding her hand as they cross the heart shape of her face remind Peter of Helen.
Exit, Pursued by Bear
street, Peter Fricke will find himself asking if it was serendipity or fate that brought Agnes Ku- rowsky into his Shakespeare seminar that year. They’ve just broken into May, and the bougainvil- leas in the courtyard are a riot of scarlet and coral. The once burly Peter, who played college football at Notre Dame, has lost more than forty pounds in the wake of Helen’s death. Unimaginable still, that his Helen, seven months pregnant at the time, was shot at Albertson’s at eight twenty-two p.m. on March thirteenth. These days, instead of her pasta salads and curries, he relies on tea and peanut butter sandwiches to see him through the long afternoons at the college.
She smiles, revealing the gap between her front teeth. “My grandmother used to grow these,” she says, gesturing at the Christmas cactus on the windowsill which has unexpectedly flowered. “Are you good with plants?”
This afternoon he sits rereading The Winter’s Tale, his favorite of the late romances. He is teaching the play, and the stage directions—Exit, pursued by a bear—replay in his mind; not quite tragic given the play’s joyful ending; but given how much Helen loved The Winter’s Tale, more than a little sad.
“I saw my doctor today,” Agnes says, easing into the chair. “I’m not due until May twenty-first, but she thinks, based on the examination, well,” her green eyes brighten, “she thinks I’ll go into labor before then.”
Fourteen months have passed since her death, and Peter continues to linger in his office long after his colleagues have gone home. Sometimes, hunkered down in his armchair by the single lead glass window, Peter almost believes he will look up to find Helen standing in the doorway. “Peter Pan,” he can almost hear her say. “You didn’t think I’d really leave you? How could I?”
“Slow down,” Peter says. He has not yet written the exam. “Let’s say Monday, say one o’clock.”
Now footsteps in the department hallway fracture the silence, and Peter looks up. The late sun blooms through the window obscuring Agnes’s features
so that it’s her very pregnant silhouette and frizzy, golden hair that Peter sees first. “Oh hello,” he says. “You caught me just in time. Come in.”
That evening Peter stands in his small kitchen and fixes dinner, his terrier mixes, Lorelei and Milly, and Taco, the overweight Chihuahua, watching his every move. When Helen was alive, the two of them used to linger over dinners on the patio they’d built together after buying the house in Silver Lake, a small 1930s ranch they gradually refurbished. Though they hadn’t met until their late thirties, marrying within the year, it had seemed then as if they’d all the time in the world. Over long dinners, they’d talk about the years ahead as they ate salad from the garden, poured more wine, and tried to remember not to overcook the fish or burn the rice.
Not only is Agnes Kurowsky beautiful in a timeless way, as if she’d stepped out of a Thomas Hardy novel—Tess of the D’Urbevilles or The Woodland-
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“Not really, but this one manages to thrive any- way.” He motions to the chair in front of his desk. “What can I do for you?”
“And you’re afraid this will coincide with the exam?” Peter says, startled by Agnes’s directness.
Agnes nods. “I’ve read everything at least twice, so I’m already prepared. Could I take the exam early? I could even be ready tomorrow.”
~
JacquElinE Kolosov