Without another word Meena darts into the ensuite, latching the pocket door behind her. He goes and stands with his forehead against it, listening to her sob quietly inside.
“I don’t understand,” he says, forcing a laugh. “You just need to play it. It sounds just as good as the real one, I swear. Better even. I did tests.”
“I’m sure it sounds wonderful, Liam,” she says through the door, and for a moment he recalls hanging it, performing the many fine adjustments that ensured the door slid freely without scraping against the frame—which means he could take it down in a hurry if it comes to that.
“I just can’t believe that this is what you’ve been doing down there all this time,” Meena goes on. “I thought you’d finally made that studio you always wanted—like George Nakashima—and you were making furniture. I thought you were doing something you cared about, Liam—for yourself. Not just for other people.”
“Why would I want to build anything for myself?” he says, his diaphragm tightening like a reef knot. “I already have everything I need.”
“I’m so sorry, Liam,” she says, before expelling a sad sigh. “I’m so sorry that you don’t understand what I mean.”
“But I did build the viola for myself,” he says, his eyes burning with tears, and even to his ears his tone is embarrassing in its childishness. “I built it so you won’t have to do whatever Tanya Petrov says anymore. And you won’t need to travel so much. You can play shows in New York and be around more.”
“I travel and perform because I want to,” she says with audible exhaustion. “Not because someone tells me to. And definitely not because I want to escape you.”
“Well that’s not how it fucking feels,” he barks as he punches the thin door, punctuating his last word with the blow, leaving a three-knuckle indentation in the wooden panel.
Looking back, Meena’s reaction to the viola is exactly what the deepest, least rooted part of him had expected all along. Over the ensuing years, her refusal to accept it will come to embody all the mysteries he’d never grasp about her, all the things she wanted from him that he could never hope to offer. And while building the viola is surely the most satisfying thing he’s ever done, it also taught him that Meena would never be with him, not completely. And just like Willow, she’d always be ready to abandon him for something she loved more.
Liam backs away from the door, retrieves the viola, and carries it outside. In his driveway, he gets an orange extension cord and ties the instrument by its perfect maple neck to his van’s trailer hitch, leaving enough slack that the body of the viola rests on the ground. Then he puts his van in gear and drives around Brooklyn all night with his windows down, until he can no longer hear the sound of woody scraping behind him.
The next morning, Meena wakes early and packs up the belongings she keeps at his place and calls a cab to the airport. That day, Liam works for fourteen hours straight. He does the same the following day. And the day after that. Three months later, his house sheds half its value in the housing crash and he defaults on his mortgage payments. After the foreclosure, he moves into his contractor’s van full time, parking at a state campground at Montauk, where he sleeps as wintry ocean gales lash the van’s thin steel walls.
Luckily, the bank allows him to keep his tools and his van, so instead of getting high, Liam takes out his first ad in The New Yorker and accepts as many carpentry contracts as can possibly be crammed into a calendar. After that, alongside guys like Alvarez, he renovates vacation homes seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.
Those who claim that rage is counter-productive need only consider all the wondrous things that Liam Greenwood has built in his thirty-four years of life to understand that the opposite can also be true: that rage is perhaps the most productive fuel there is.
GAPS
HE DOESN’T REMEMBER how he made it to his van. But it’s dark now, and the night-triggered driveway lights have popped on. He can see his own body’s drag marks snaking through the frosty sludge of decaying leaf mulch all the way back to the house, which is now just a series of distant glass cubes, glowing expensively in the distance.
He pounds loudly on the van’s side panel to get Alvarez’s attention, but there’s no response. Jaw clenched, shoulders shaking and nearing collapse, Liam hauls himself up into the driver’s seat, drawing up his legs manually before cramming them beneath the wheel. Despite the clawing cold, it feels good to be upright, to have the seatback against him.
“Alvarez, you in here?” Liam says, scanning the cargo area of his van by swivelling the rear-view mirror around in a circle. “Alvarez?” Nothing.
Liam rests a moment, watching the white bouquet of his breath assemble before him then float up to cling to the windshield. When some sensation returns to his hands, he rifles through the glove box but can’t find his extra phone. Alvarez must have been so pissed after Liam kicked him off the site that he called his cousin for a ride, then offered him the phone for gas money. But instead of anger, all Liam feels for Alvarez is pity. He’d been a good employee, and Liam hopes he finds peace, perhaps in an online casino, or perhaps elsewhere among all the world’s shattered people.
His molars chattering, Liam digs his keys out from the pocket of his Carhartts and gets the van started. There’s over a half tank of gas left so he lets it run, and soon the heaters blow hot. It doesn’t take long for the piss that had frozen stiff in his pants during his crawl to melt into the seat. It looks like he’ll have to drive the van to the hospital himself. When he’s ready, he’ll press the gas pedal with the baseball bat that he keeps around in case thieves come for his tools while he sleeps. And if that’s too difficult, he’ll just let the van creep along in idle to the main road, which could take a while, but better late than never.
You grew up in a van, all your life you’ve gone to work in one, and now here you are dying in one, too, he mutters to himself and then laughs until he coughs, which conjures a quick stab in the small of his back that nearly makes him black out. Willow’s gone now, he thinks after the pain recedes. Then why does he feel—even after years of her absence—that she could pull up beside his van in her Westfalia right now and he wouldn’t question it for a moment?
Lung cancer took her. Bong hits, menthol cigarettes, and organic gardening—that was Willow. Had Liam visited her when she was sick? He had. He went to Vancouver and cared for her and eased her discomfort. At least he’d done that.
Though in truth, there are few mistakes that Liam has avoided in his life, few decisions he doesn’t regret. And as a result, there are so many gaps in what he permits himself to think about, so many things he’s left in his own personal rear-view mirror—just like Willow had taught him.
He ought to get driving, but he’s not ready yet. He reaches down and kneads each of his thighs with the palms of his hands and feels nothing. His body has served him so faithfully until this day. It has wrenched and torn and built. It has lifted and pushed and pulled. It has pounded a million nails and driven a million screws. It has shed itself of a thousand pounds of toxins and cut a million pieces of wood to exact lengths. It has risen for him on a thousand dark mornings and endured enormous discomfort in order to survive. All to fail him now.