Second Nature

by Alice Hoffman

  “This isn’t what you think, baby,” Roy told her, right away, as he was getting out of the car.

  His hair was messed up but aside from that he was so calm you’d think she’d discovered him picking out an inferior brand of frozen vegetables at the market. If only he had kept his mouth shut, maybe they would have had a chance. Amazing that he could say the wrong thing so quickly. It was exactly what she thought: There was no such thing as trust or faith. Or at least she had been convinced so at the time. Now, as she stood outside, calling for the cat to come in for the night, it seemed that last fight had happened to somebody else. Somebody else had dragged all of Roy’s clothes into the driveway. Somebody else had sworn she would never fall in love again. It couldn’t have been her, because if it had been she wouldn’t be feeling this way. Not like this.

  Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above. A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds—snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in the ivy—just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough.

  As an antidote, breathe in and out slowly. Don’t look at the sky. Consider everyday things: toast on a plate. Laundry in a basket, carpets that haven’t been vacuumed for weeks. Don’t ever think, and feel even less. Take the garbage out through the side door. Tonight this was all Robin had to do: stay out in the yard near the trashcans and pretend she didn’t know he was on the other side of the screen door. He had come downstairs for a glass of water, that was all. He couldn’t sleep because of the heat, or the mosquitoes, or a stone he’d found beneath his pillow. All she needed was to call the cat, ignore the moon, realize that in no time he would be gone. She might have been able to do all this if she hadn’t taken one more step toward the pear tree. Beyond the place where the fruit had dropped and split open there was a white circle, as if a piece of the moon had fallen to earth. Horrified, Robin staggered backward. He never would have come outside if she hadn’t cried out. He would have stood his distance forever, but instead he slammed through the door and went right past her. When he knelt on the ground, all the crickets in the yard started to sing. He reached for the cat and lifted him up. Homer’s throat had been slit so neatly he seemed to be sleeping, but the white fur around his neck and chest were deep red.

  Watching Stephen crouched there, Robin had no idea that she had already began to cry. She should have known better than to let Homer out; the feral cats were rumored to go wild on nights as hot as this. They tore sparrows to bits and threatened house cats and clawed at the paint of cars parked in driveways. When Stephen rose to his feet, Robin came toward him, but he shifted to make certain that his back was to her. His shirt was covered in blood.

  “Don’t look at this,” he told her.

  The blood on his hands was already drying; it wouldn’t be easy to wash away. His head was pounding just from the smell of it. This was only one small death in a fenced garden, nothing more. He’d witnessed a thousand acts more brutal, he’d done them himself, and yet this was breaking him apart. He clutched the cat to his chest.

  “You shouldn’t come over here,” he said, as if he meant it, as if they weren’t already lost to whatever would happen next.

  When Robin took Homer from him, the last rush of blood stained her shirt and her hands. She placed the small white body in the tall grass, which hadn’t yet been mowed, and it lay there curled up, like a question mark. Robin wiped at her eyes and her wet cheeks; she wouldn’t even notice the blood on her face until morning. Already, he had pulled her to him, right there, beneath the pear tree, and she could feel the calluses on his hands as he reached beneath her shirt. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he wasn’t going to stop now. He wasn’t going to argue or justify himself or do any of those things someone who’d lived as a man all his life would have done. He wasn’t going to twist this up with reason.

  Wait: that’s what she should have said, but his mouth was on hers and she felt too much to stop now. This was no longer her garden, was it? This was no longer the ground. The heat couldn’t possibly feel this way, so deep inside there was nothing to do but give in to it. Were there neighbors out in their backyards? Were there dogs barking? Was that the rattle of a trashcan as a raccoon or one of the wild cats scavenged in the Dixons’ shed for scraps of food? She wouldn’t let him go. Even when he pulled off his jeans and his blood-soaked shirt, she kept her arms around him; she got up on her knees, just to stay with him. When she felt the scar on the inside of his thigh, she almost spoke, but by then there was nothing to say. She was already drowning. Her arms were around his neck and she circled herself around him until he made her let go and forced her down on her hands and knees. When he moved inside her, she cried out, but not because she wanted him to stop. He wouldn’t let go of her, and that was what she wanted. And later, when they’d gone into the house, and up to her room, they still couldn’t stay away from each other. They did things they could never have spoken of, or known they needed so badly. And they didn’t stop until they were sore, until there was only one star left in the sky.

  Outside, the first birds began to call to each other, but fortunately they didn’t wake Stephen, and for that Robin was grateful. The sky in the east grew milky and pale, but she could hold on to this night just a little while longer, at least until daylight made it impossible. She could believe whatever she wanted, she could believe whatever she wished. He was turned with his back to her, and just watching him sleep made Robin shiver, although the heat was still rising, as it would continue to do until the rain came, late in the afternoon, a sudden, drenching storm that would wash away every bit of blood under the pear tree, until it was almost possible to forget what it was they’d found in the garden.

  SIX

  NOW THAT IT HAD HAPPENED to him, Stephen understood why the black wolf would have once had reason to kill him. When he was small, Stephen had hated to let the big dog out of his sight. He trotted after her and made a nuisance of himself, until at last the black wolf let him know there were times when he was not wanted. The lesson was harsh and quick: the black wolf charged and pinned Stephen to the ground, showing his teeth so close to Stephen’s face that for months afterward he dreamed he was being eaten alive and woke whimpering and feverish.

  That the black wolf had tolerated Stephen at all was a measure of his restraint, and now Stephen wished he had studied that restraint better, because he himself seemed to have none of it. He wanted Robin constantly; when Connor sneaked out at night Stephen couldn’t even wait for the door to close behind the boy before he went to her room. When she worried that they might be overheard, convinced that Connor was asleep in his bed, it took all his control not to betray the boy and just tell her they were alone. He kissed her until she stopped talking; he kept her there in bed until she didn’t give a damn who overheard. He was jealous of everything she touched: The towels she smoothed as she folded them into the laundry basket. The sweet pea vines she cut back beside the Feldmans’ toolshed. The ground coffee she measured into the paper filter. One morning, when he was alone in the house, Stephen went into her bedroom and examined the clothes in her dresser. He found a photograph of Roy, an old one, taken years before, when Connor was a baby, and he tore it in half for reasons he didn’t understand, and all the rest of that day he felt embarrassed by what he had done, and he tried to patch Roy back together again, using glue and tape, with no luck at all.

  Whenever he went running, in the dusk that came earlier every day, he ran flat-out, so that people sitting on their front porches didn’t know if they’d seen him or just a shadow cast by a cloud. He ran until his lungs hurt, hoping to extinguish some of what was burning him alive. Sometimes, when he got to Old Dick’s ho
use, he stood by the sink and drank water straight from the faucet, gallons it seemed, and still he was on fire. Instead of reading from the newspaper, he now read poems from the musty volumes no one had opened for decades; meaningless words, no sense in them at all, and yet some of those poems made his throat tighten with longing.

  “What are you trying to do?” Old Dick shouted whenever Stephen began to read poetry. “Kill me?” He held up the Tribune’s sports page. “Here’s beauty,” he spat. “Here’s truth.”

  Out of the hundred questions Stephen might have asked the old man he finally chose the one that most disturbed him. There was almost no light left; Stephen put down his book and moved his chair so that he could see Old Dick’s face.

  “Can what you feel inside kill you?”

  “Absolutely,” Old Dick said. “Bet on it. It’ll tear you right up and burst your blood vessels.”

  “If you want two things?” Stephen asked.

  “You’re fucked,” Old Dick said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Stephen admitted.

  Old Dick reached for his glasses. What he wouldn’t give to change places with this fellow for one day, or a day and a night, a week—what he wouldn’t give for that. Stephen was wound up about something, and it was exquisite to see, all that pain and emotion. By now, Old Dick often found himself waiting for the sound of Stephen running along the gravel driveway; he yelled at Ginny if she left out crackers as a snack, rather than the good chocolate-dipped cookies from England. On rainy days he found himself fretting; he was so completely out of sorts, thinking he was bound to be disappointed, that he coughed up blood. But the rain didn’t bother Stephen, he ran in fine weather or foul, and if he happened to leave a pool of rainwater on the carpet, Old Dick didn’t seem to care. And now, although he was enjoying Stephen’s agony—almost feeling it himself, somewhere deep in his chest—there was something else he was feeling, too, and it came as such a surprise to finally have mercy in his heart that he began to cough, and he didn’t stop until Stephen got up and pounded him on the back.

  Old Dick caught his breath and waved Stephen away. As he struggled to sit up straight, the money in his mattress shifted beneath his frail weight.

  “Love won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “Although if you have a choice, go for sex without it. Far superior and less complicated.”

  Stephen looked down at the carpet.

  “No choice,” Old Dick judged, correctly. “Poor bastard,” he said cheerfully. “I envy you.”

  In what the old man determined was an enviable state, Stephen ran back to Mansfield Terrace through the rain, not noticing the cars on the street or the dogs that dared to chase him, snapping at his heels as he outdistanced them. By now, he had imagined, he would have already begun the journey home, but the atlas lay on the floor of the guest room closet, unopened since the night Homer died. He could not go home and still have Robin, but he was greedy, even though he knew that if he held on to both, he’d be pulled apart, until all that was left of him was scattered, like stars, across the dark space that separated what he wanted most.

  And now as he ran, he wondered if he had asked Richard Aaron the wrong question. Perhaps it was knowing you had to give something up that could kill you. Certainly this knowledge forced him to run with a fierce speed that he couldn’t control, not any more than he could control his reaction when he realized Roy was following him again. This time he couldn’t just go on, acting as if he didn’t know he was being tracked. Instead he turned and ran toward the car, straight at the headlights, not caring, at that instant at least, if Roy ran him down.

  Roy had to brake suddenly. He skidded up on the curb, then threw open his door and got out.

  “Are you crazy?” he called. “Are you out of your mind?” He blinked in the rain, not yet aware that Stephen was still headed straight for him. Before Roy understood what was happening, Stephen had put both hands on Roy’s chest; he shoved him, hard, so that Roy reeled backward, smashing up against the car.

  “Hey!” Roy said.

  Stephen approached Roy again, and again he shoved him, but this time Roy’s back was up against the car and there was nowhere for him to go. They stood face to face, breathing hard, ignoring the rain that was drenching them to the skin.

  “You’re looking for a lot of fucking trouble,” Roy said. He had bitten his own lip, and now he wiped at the blood. “Jesus,” he said.

  “Don’t follow me anymore,” Stephen told him.

  Stephen turned and started to walk down the middle of the road; he could feel something roaring in his ears. He heard Roy coming up behind him, and he was ready when Roy grabbed him. Quickly, Stephen broke away; the hair on the back of his neck rose.

  “You’re living in my house, aren’t you?” Roy said. “You’re living under the same roof as my kid and my wife.”

  “She’s not your wife,” Stephen said.

  Roy felt a pain in his side, just below his chest. He took a step backward. The rain was coming down harder; it could blind a man if he looked straight up into the sky, it could confuse him, too, even leave him speechless, particularly when faced with the truth, and that was why, long after Stephen had disappeared down the street, Roy was still standing there, right in the center of the white line.

  A secret is always hard, a stone wedged just beneath the skin. A constant reminder that won’t go away, a secret invokes longing; it takes on a life of its own. In order to keep one well, certain things have to be done backward: Laughter instead of tears, a slow walk when the urge is to run. Always deny what is most important, at least in the presence of others.

  And so it was possible to be together every night and then, each morning, pretend that the night before hadn’t happened. Robin and Stephen were tentative with each other in daylight, more distant than polite. If Stephen was at the refrigerator getting himself some juice and Robin had to get to the sink to wash the dishes, she’d step around him, or sometimes just forget the dishes altogether and let them pile up. When they were out on a job, she’d curtly direct him to the work that needed to be done first, then set about by herself hauling manure or chopping at twisted branches, even if it was far too much for one person alone.

  “Why are you so pissed off at Stephen?” Connor asked her one night after they’d all eaten dinner in silence and Stephen had gone upstairs, to read, he’d said, although Robin knew it was to wait for her.

  “I’m not,” Robin told him, her voice unreliable.

  “Could have fooled me.” Connor shrugged.

  Maybe she should have said, Look, I’m crazy about him, I’m absolutely insane with it, but instead she cleared the table and rubbed at her throat, as if the secret were buried right there, above her collarbone. Every once in a while she almost gave it away. The last time she’d seen her father-in-law—they’d happened to pull into the Mobil station on Cemetery Road at the same time—the Doctor took one look at her and asked if she was feverish. When he suggested rose hip tea to ward off the flu, Robin felt so giddy that she had to turn away or she’d laugh out loud. She couldn’t even talk to Michelle on the phone anymore for fear of blurting it out. This is what’s happened to me, she wanted to say. You won’t believe it.

  She took cool baths and tried not to think about the future, but she knew he wasn’t hers alone. There were nights when he couldn’t stand being confined, when he left her to go to the window, and the way he looked out at the yard, the way he seemed to see right through the dark, frightened Robin. Sometimes, when he couldn’t bear the heat of the house and the closeness of the walls, he went out for a walk. He followed the marshes, then passed by the ginkgo trees in the center of town, going only as far as the bridge where the weeping willows grew. One night he came upon a deer that was so tame and unafraid of people she went on eating the ivy that grew beside the Dixons’ driveway. Stephen stood there motionless, the way he’d been taught, but inside, his heart was pounding. In the dark, the deer’s black nose looked soft and wet; it was
the best place to latch on if you wanted to take her down quickly. The deer breathed out warm puffs of air as she chewed ivy, flanks shivering from the pure joy of eating.

  When the wind shifted, the deer looked up at him, leaves hanging from her mouth. Stephen looked right back, not breathing at all now. If he’d been hungry, if he’d had nothing to eat but beetles and mice, his stomach would now be churning in anticipation; he would have had to keep from rushing. The deer, in her stupidity, began to walk toward him, her hooves making a sad clacking sound on the concrete. Stephen watched the deer’s mild approach and was horrified, revolted by everything he had done and now considered doing again. You might lose the taste for blood and bones once you were well fed, but not your appetite for the chase. You didn’t forget the way your legs felt just before you began to run, as if a spring were coiled inside, with a time clock all its own.

  The moon was in the center of the sky. It was white as snow, white as the bones ravens have picked clean. Stephen waved his arms in the air. The deer stopped and studied him with eyes as big as teacups.

  “Go on,” Stephen said. “Run.”

  But this deer was used to the tone of a human voice, which sounded a little like music, and she calmly sniffed the night air. When Stephen clapped his hands, the noise echoed like a shot. The deer jumped over some azaleas and ran across the lawn, leaving small hoofprints in the grass. Stephen closed his eyes and leaned up against the Dixons’ car. He put his hands on his knees and breathed deeply. Some secrets were much harder to keep than others, especially ones you kept from yourself.