Charlotte watched two Great Blue Herons alight from a tall sycamore tree on the far side of the river that morning and glide down to the sandbar where she and Eugene would on occasion have picnic lunches in late Spring, a time that she always believed held possibilities.
They flapped their enormous slate-colored wings as they landed, turned their narrowly sculpted heads toward the shore, and walked down to the river in search of breakfast. Charlotte peered at them through the spotting scope she kept on her deck and shivered, though it was not just the morning temperature that caused her body to quiver.
She was going to meet Martin for coffee at the River Café in Guerneville. They were working together on a grant for a local conservation trust where they both served on the board. The project had gotten dumped on them by the outgoing president a couple of months earlier. She had been dreading the prospect of writing it, though was excited by what they would be able to do with the funds if they won the grant. The wetlands, over by Shiloh Ranch in Windsor, had been recently donated to the county but, as part of a former cattle ranch, were in desperate need of restoration.
She was also intrigued to be working with Martin, a mid-fortyish environmental policy professor at Sonoma State with an off-beat sense of humor whom she’d been getting to know for the past couple of years. He knew how to thread the needle when competing for money for such projects, but as a grant writer, Martin was nearly useless. He would get lost in his love for scientific data and forget about the larger narrative. Perhaps it was his fascination with his new Compaq computer, which ran a program called Windows that he had mentioned but she had never seen. At any rate, Charlotte found his inability to write surprising, because he was a great storyteller. One afternoon, after they’d spent a couple of hours hashing out what they’d need to do to meet the deadline, he described his adventures as a grad student conducting fieldwork in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. The limp she’d observed from the day she first met him was the result of a broken leg while fleeing a rhinoceros. He laughed it off, but he’d gone five days without any medical assistance and had to be medevacked to Johannesburg.
If Charlotte’s husband Eugene had any interest at all in that sort of thing, they probably could have done it together, just the two of them. He was, after all, a high school science teacher at a prestigious private school down in Fairfax. Eugene had a gift for holding the attention of an entire class of teenagers, making subjects like botany and biology seem not just important, but fun. Over the past couple of years, however, he’d been more interested in his drinking than in his students. Charlotte was amazed that no one down there had picked up on it. Or maybe they had, and she just don’t know about it.
“I’ll be gone until mid-afternoon working on the wetlands project,” she told Eugene, leaving out any mention of Martin, though she guessed he understood that implicitly.
He nodded his head, not bothering to look up.
Eugene was sitting at the kitchen table reading the San Francisco Chronicle in a ragged light green bathrobe he’d had since before they were married ten years earlier. It was, in fact, a birthday gift from his first wife, though he had never mentioned it. In Eugene’s mind, it complemented the pea green newsprint of the sport section, the Sporting Green. He considered it required reading before starting his day.
“We’ll work at the cafe, swing by the site and then finish up at his house.” As Charlotte spoke, she sliced a banana and a half-dozen large strawberries, then placed them in bowl of unsweetened yogurt. She was a small woman with short dark hair, a round, confident face and olive skin that suggested southern European descent. In her mid-thirties, she could still draw men’s eyes in a crowd, though never gave a hint she was aware of it.
“You know, Martin’s not known for getting these kinds of things done in orderly fashion,” Eugene said, finally looking up. “He only gets shit done when there’s a deadline breathing down his neck.”
Eugene had been a member of the county’s conservation commission years ago. Back then, he’d worked with Martin.
Charlotte opened the dishwasher and saw three days’ worth of dirty dishes. She’d run it before she left and hopefully Eugene would empty it before she got home. He had plenty of time on his hands, once he finished the sports section.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“Martin tends to suck people into his orbit,” Eugene said. “He puts on this phony front of collaboration and teamwork, then reaches out with those big burly arms of his and hustles the project over the finish line, taking most of the credit along the way. Thought you should know.”
God, she was tired of how dismissive of people he could be, even if he was right, which he was perhaps half the time.
“That’s your guy-jealousy thing again,” she said. “He’s heard me out about what’s going on with the marsh birds. That’s not his area of expertise. It’s mine.”
Eugene rolled his eyes, got up, and heated some goat’s milk in the microwave from the two Toggenburgs they kept in the old barn in back of their house. When Charlotte went upstairs to their bedroom, he opened the freezer, pulled out a fifth of Smirnoff and poured a quarter inch into the coffee mug.
“How about I cook dinner tonight?” Eugene asked when she came back down. She turned and looked at him, mildly surprised. “Petrale sole, poached,” he said. “The way you like it.”
She turned away, out the window toward the river for a moment, eyeing the two Great Blue Herons that were still on the sandbar.
“Sure, that would be nice, Gene,” she said. “I’d like that.”
She enjoyed his cooking. It was one of the things that first attracted her to him. And she knew he needed something to do that Saturday morning. He would drive into town in his old VW bug, stop by the farmer’s market for the sole, kibbitz with his buddies at the garage, then swing by the Safeway for more wine, before taking an early afternoon nap prior to starting dinner. He could make a day of it.
If Charlotte did go over to Martin’s place afterward, as he had suggested, it could be with a clean conscience—or perhaps a cleaner one—knowing that she and Eugene would have, hopefully, a pleasant evening meal together.
“But you need to promise me something,” she said, reaching into the closet for a water bottle, not looking at him.
“What’s that?” he said. His voice, which only occasionally showed much emotion lately, sounded defensive.
“Save the wine until later. I want the Eugene I fell in love with cooking me dinner.”
He looked down at the floor, rested his balding head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. She could tell he hadn’t slept much. For a few moments, he said nothing.
“I am the Eugene you fell in love with. I just get tired of having to be Eugene at all. Do you understand that?”
She realized she was not going to be present for Martin that morning in the way she’d been hoping.
She’d focus on their work together. That’s what they were there for after all.
“I don’t know if I do,” she said.
* * *
As she drove the backroads that curved through the magnificent stands of towering redwoods on the way to Guerneville, her spirits did not pick up in anticipation of the morning ahead. This thing that was eating at Eugene had been seeping into their lives over the last several months. Like a saturated leach field, its odor could not be avoided. He was fifteen years older than her, and her only reference point for unhappy men in their fifties was her own father, who never recovered after her mother left him when Charlotte was fifteen. He too was an academic. After her parents divorced, her father stopped publishing, and the rest of his undistinguished career exemplified what was wrong with the tenure system. He couldn’t be fired, but simply grew more irrelevant over time, with ever-stronger opinions about everything that was wrong with the academy.
She spotted Martin immediately as she stepped into the busy café. His large head of brown hair with a few wisps of gray at the temples and bifocals low on his perfect nose created a presence of relaxed sophistication. His large barrel-chested frame covered by a bright green and yellow plaid flannel made him unmistakable in the crowd. He had his new laptop out and some spreadsheets on the table, looking like he’d already been there for some time.
“My favorite grant-writing wizard,” he said as she sat down. “Anyone who can make this look easy is, by definition, a godsend and a gift. It’s that magic you have with the pen that most intrigues me, by the way. Very hard to come by.”
She felt her face become warm. He smiled at her as if taking some satisfaction in her reaction.
Martin offered her half of his bagel, which she accepted after some hesitation. It was more than an offer—more like an insistence.
As expected, he went deep and long on the data about removing invasive species and expanding the grasslands to attract more birdlife during migration season. She was taking notes on her yellow legal pad, stopping him frequently to distill the points he was trying to articulate.
“Is this making sense?” he asked, putting a hand on her left forearm, then lifting it away as if he were being too forward. “If you’d like to go over any of it again, I’ve got plenty of time.”
She noticed he wasn’t even speaking from notes. He had all of this in his head. Occasionally he’d point his stubby yellow pencil toward the place on the spreadsheet from where he was drawing the info. His tone of voice was calm and deliberate but not patronizing. That was one of the reasons she enjoyed working on this project with him. Eugene would have been patronizing.
“The pieces are coming together—I see what you’re trying to do here,” she said. “If we can get the area to stabilize and make the case for control structures to better manage water flow, which we know is going to be expensive, they’ll see how the rest of the project will come together naturally.”
“You’re making grant writing a lot more fun than I’m used to,” he said.
She said nothing. But it was the best Saturday morning she’d had in months.
* * *
Martin showed her his living room on their way to the kitchen where he was going to print out some additional spreadsheets and other documents. He could have emailed them to her, but she hated printing them out. And she was curious about where he lived.
“My grandmother was a big quilter and she gave me this shortly before she died,” Martin said. He lifted the quilt from the couch and spread it out on the oak floor where Charlotte could get a better look at it.
“She knew I loved this image in the center,” he said, nodding toward a team of dapple-gray draft horses pulling a single plough through the field, breaking the topsoil for spring planting. “I wanted to be that farm boy following behind, doing a man’s job at a young age.”
Beyond the farm boy and the team of horses was a gentle sloping stream and beyond that were rolling green hills reminiscent of Sonoma after the spring rains. In that moment, Charlotte was inspired to try her own hand at quilting. No one in her mother’s family of transplanted New Englanders had ever taught her, though she knew they knew how.
The printer jammed after the first two documents. Martin sighed and lifted the cover. His face betrayed frustration, but he only whistled a tune as he went about troubleshooting. She didn’t recognize it, but it had an unusual melody with minor notes one might hear in an Irish ballad. It calmed her and so calmed him. So different from how Eugene would have handled it. Assuming he’d already had a couple of cups of warmed goat’s milk and vodka, he would have moved beyond “damn” to “fucking god-damned printer” and “they can’t fucking make anything that works these days.” He’d probably fix it, but not without the requisite drama.
Within a few minutes the printer was working again and she walked up to Martin and put her hand on his arm. He turned to look at her. She radiated a smile whose power she didn’t even understand. Martin stepped back toward the kitchen table.
“You’re just so damned beautiful,” he said.
Charlotte looked straight into Martin’s eyes for a moment, as if to ask him something she wanted desperately to understand, then again surveyed the room.
“How long have you lived here? Did you and your former wife—what was her name?— buy the place together?”
“Yeah, about fifteen years ago. Juno and I put a lot of work into this place. When we split up, she wanted to move and I didn’t, so that was about the only easy part of the whole mess.”
“At least you guys did what you needed to do.”
By now Eugene had likely left the farmer’s market and was visiting with a couple of his buddies at the garage. That’s what he had said, “the buds down at the garage.” But the garage was next to Shanley’s Hideaway and so “the garage” became the preferred euphemism for a late morning or early afternoon drink at the bar. She wanted the evening to be relaxed, uneventful, perhaps even fun. Playing scrabble or something.
Martin put his arms on Charlotte’s shoulders. His touch caught her off guard. She rolled her head back like she might pull away, but she didn’t. He stood motionless for a moment and then Charlotte put her arms around his waist. She pulled him toward her, then lifted her head and kissed him. The quivering in her body that she’d felt early that morning as she watched the herons returned. They said nothing to each other for a long time as they continued touching each other’s bodies. Finally she stepped back. “I better be going.”
* * *
The familiar aroma of garlic and shallots filled the kitchen as she walked in the door. Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, a series of solemn melodies and a favorite of Eugene’s, played on the phonograph. While they had a CD player, it was rarely used. Eugene insisted, more often after a couple of glasses of wine, that CDs lacked the warmth and richness of vinyl. The Respighi recording was proof of that.
He looked up from the cutting board toward Charlotte with an expression of anticipation, as if he wanted her to acknowledge the effort he was putting into preparing the meal. She smiled, walked up to him and gave him a hug. Then she abruptly turned away at the smell of alcohol on his breath.
“Did you get a lot done with Martin?” Eugene said. “Have you two saved the wetlands?” He showed no sign of embarrassment when she turned away.
“Yes, we’ve got all the data we need in terms of what is there now,” she said, putting effort into her neutral tone of voice.
“He’s always commanded a great deal of respect for his knowledge of the natural environment in this county,” he said. His tone had changed, seeming to praise Martin after warning Charlotte of his self-aggrandizing tendencies that morning. “Can I pour you a glass of Sauvignon Blanc?”
Charlotte nodded and went into her study, sat down and stared at the river. There was now a single heron taking in the sunset. She recalled the anticipation she felt during the morning. Out of somewhere forgotten but yet familiar, a sense of resolve came over her. She walked back into the kitchen, picked up the wine, took a sip, and sat down on a stool beside the counter. It was more acidic than she preferred, one of the reasons she’d never been a fan of Sauvignon Blanc.
“I’m not ready to move forward on the adoption, Eugene. I don’t think we’re in a place where it makes a whole lot of sense.”
He stopped peeling the potatoes, put his hands on the counter, and looked over toward her.
“You just need to give it some time. I wasn’t asking for a decision right away.”
Eugene looked relaxed to her, only mildly concerned.
“Yes, maybe some time, but not now. I want to put it on the shelf for a while.”
He went back to peeling the potatoes. She watched him for a few minutes.
“Let’s not leave it on the shelf forever,” he said. “It’s going to start to smell after a while. Neither of us will be happy with the lingering odor. Trust me on that.”
She walked back to the study, and raised her eyebrows at the perceptiveness of his remark. Pulling out a desk drawer, she stared at the sheaf of adoption papers. They were only an application. Eugene had signed them a couple of weeks ago after the last time they talked. He thought parenthood was what was missing in their relationship. That was why he wasn’t happy, he’d said. It wasn’t Charlotte, it was the sense of their shared lost potential.
This was the third time in as many days that she held the papers in her hands. That first day, she had almost signed them. In her mind she was trying to stay open to what the world might be offering to her, to them as a couple. Then yesterday, when Eugene was teaching down in Fairfax, she had a long phone call with her sister, Astrid, who was several years younger and lived down in Santa Cruz with two cats. Astrid was entranced by Eugene, even when he was drinking. She thought he was brilliant and colorful, and she envied her older sister for having such a man in her life. But for Astrid, the notion of parenthood was wholly unattractive. And though Astrid listened sympathetically to her sister, told her she loved her, she was clear it was not something she would ever consider, regardless of the man.
When they got off the phone, Charlotte sat for perhaps twenty minutes at the antique rolltop desk that had been a family heirloom. She had it shipped out from Maine when her grandfather, whom she adored, had passed away several years ago. She stared at the application papers. They seemed to stare back. Rubbing her eyes, she started to weep. An intense sense of contraction in her chest left her close to hyperventilation. She had a momentary impulse to tear the papers into small pieces and leave them lying on the desk for Eugene to discover that evening. Charlotte stood up, walked into the bathroom and dried her eyes before stepping back to the desk and putting the papers back in the top drawer.
Tonight, she simply pulled them out, looked at them and knew that whatever the consequences, she was never going to sign them.
* * *
Over dinner, Eugene talked—it was a monologue really—about his son from his first marriage, whose name was Nick and was now in his mid-twenties. He reminisced about the summer they built a large Dobsonian telescope together from a kit Eugene had purchased. Nick learned from Eugene how to polish the two mirrors, set the primary and secondary ones, and install the focusing mechanism. Nick had loved the entire process. It was one of the happier summers they had spent together. Nick learned many of the constellations of the summer sky—Cygnus, symbolizing a swan and part of the Northern Cross; Aquila, an eagle embodying strength and freedom; and Scorpius, a symbol of hubris and divine retribution.
Nick had been an academic and athletic star in high school. His parents divorced just as after he graduated, and he’d struggled through college but eventually got a degree in agronomy. Eugene and Nick remained close and talked on the phone often. He was working near Bodega Bay as a bartender.
Charlotte had heard the telescope story before, and she was surprised she wasn’t bored hearing it again. This was the Eugene she had fallen in love with. He was still there, she thought, even if it was through reliving the past. It helped her understand how badly he wanted to have another child. They had tried for several years, done all the requisite tests, and it was determined that the problem was with Eugene. That was when they began discussing adoption, a topic that now, three years later, he was not letting go of. The only thing that had really evolved over that time was the doubt in Charlotte’s mind about raising a child with the man she was now married to.
* * *
When Charlotte woke up the next morning, Eugene was already out of bed. He had bouts of insomnia, so she was used to waking without him next to her. She listened for him down in the kitchen drinking his morning coffee and reading the Sporting Green. He could sometimes be so quiet in the mornings that she often didn’t know he was down there. But the house—the entire house—seemed unusually still.
She called his name as she came down the stairs and halted at the pale hickory door that separated the kitchen from the dining room. He was on the floor between the counter and kitchen table, motionless on his side. She ran over, kneeled down beside him and said his name again, first softly, then more loudly. He didn’t move and so she touched his cheek. It was colder than she could bear. In an instant, uneasiness became panic. She felt for a pulse. There was none.
She tried to lift his head and chest to hold him, but his body was completely limp. He must have been dead for several hours. Charlotte lay down next to him with her head on his chest. Later, she couldn’t recall how long she stayed there before finally calling the police.
* * *
Astrid drove up that afternoon and spent the next week with her. To Charlotte’s surprise, Astrid rose to the occasion, helping to orchestrate funeral arrangements, running interference with some of Eugene’s drinking buddies, and keeping others at bay who Charlotte wasn’t ready to deal with. The autopsy revealed he had died of a heart attack and probably experienced warning signs that something was wrong. It seemed inevitable someone would take it upon themselves to state the obvious to her—that he should have taken better care of himself.
Martin called the next day after hearing the news from another board member. They didn’t talk long, but Charlotte was pleased, unexpectedly so, to hear his voice. He had that calmness about him that he could summon when others were stressed or confused. As they were about to hang up, she asked him to hum the tune he had whistled when the printer had jammed at his house the previous week, apologizing for such a silly request. Did it have a name? He didn’t know, he said. His grandmother, the one who made the quilt he so adored, taught it to him. Charlotte thanked him and said maybe they could go for a walk sometime, perhaps after the dust settled and everyone’s immediate sense of shock over the loss had passed. Yes, he said, he’d like that.
Charlotte and Astrid sat beside each other during the memorial service, with Nick and his mother in the row behind them. For all the craziness that she had heard about Eugene’s first wife, the woman was the very image of poise and composure. Charlotte had met her once at a birthday party for Nick. When the service concluded, and Charlotte stood to prepare to leave, she saw Nick and his mother embrace for several moments. The loss was not hers alone. She now understood it viscerally for the first time since she found Eugene on that too-silent morning.
* * *
When Martin called about ten days later, ostensibly to talk about the grant, she had to ask him to refresh her memory where things stood with the project. She didn’t think she’d be able to work on it anytime soon. With the deadline only a few weeks away, she wondered if someone else could finish writing the proposal. Of course, Martin said. He’d find someone.
“Can you hum that melody once more?” she asked.
“It means something to you. What is it?”
“You weren’t flustered that day by something that really didn’t matter. I take solace in that. I’m not sure what matters to me anymore.”
“Taking care of yourself, that’s what matters.”
“That takes me only so far. I need to see beyond that.”
Holding the phone, she sat down on the floor between the kitchen counter and the table, the place she had found Eugene.
Martin hummed the tune for several moments, then began to whistle it. The melody brought a smile to her face.
“Thank you,” she said. “I need to go now.”
She walked into the study and stared at the single heron, now on the other side of the river. After a moment, she opened the drawer that held the adoption papers, took them upstairs and placed them in a manila envelope. She never looked at them again.
–
David Harris lives in the Bay Area. His short stories have appeared in Twelve Winters Journal, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Litbreak Magazine, Roi Faineant Press, On the Sea Wall, and other publications. He is a former journalist for Reuters News Agency and has worked as a corporate communications consultant and speechwriter. He currently serves as president of the California Writers Club – San Francisco Peninsula Branch.
© 2025, David Harris
Halfway Down the Stairs 