Second Nature

by Alice Hoffman

  “You were just about the same age when you started going with Robin,” the Doctor reminded him after they got up to leave. “I’d say that turned out to be pretty serious.”

  Connor opened the door for Lydia, without noticing that his father and grandfather were approaching. Today, for the first time, he and Lydia had talked about their future—not just tomorrow and the next day, but their whole lives. They’d been tentative at first, both afraid to admit what they hoped for until they knew the other hoped for exactly the same thing. They would spend their lives together; they had vowed that on the corner of the town green, and kissed each other twenty times, and then found themselves too shy to speak. Lydia finally suggested they celebrate, and they’d come to Fred’s for Cokes and French fries and a warm place to hold hands under the table. Connor had turned to look for a booth in the back, when Lydia nudged him.

  “Relative alert,” she whispered.

  “Hey there, buddy,” Roy said as he came up to them. “Hey, Lydia.”

  Connor mumbled something no one could hear, but Lydia smiled brightly at Roy, then turned to the Doctor.

  “I’ll bet this wind is murder on any saplings you put in this summer,” she said.

  “Precisely.” The Doctor was impressed. “Hold on to this one,” he suggested to Connor. He elbowed Roy. “Come on. They don’t want old farts like us around.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Roy shot back.

  Roy could see that Connor couldn’t take his eyes off this girl. When she laughed and headed for a rear booth, Connor began to follow as if she were a magnet. The boy had it so bad Roy would have laughed out loud if he hadn’t remembered exactly how it felt. And maybe that was why Roy grabbed Connor’s arm, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to say what he wanted to. The best he could do was pull his son close as he handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

  “My treat,” Roy told Connor. He was glad that his own father was out of hearing, because he would have really enjoyed this one. “Just don’t run off and get married,” Roy advised his son.

  In the middle of the month, when the moon turned orange and every windowpane was thick with frost, Richard Aaron dreamed he was alone in the woods. He didn’t recognize the sort of trees that grew here, huge dark things with trunks large enough for a man to hide in and roots so coiled it was impossible to find secure footing. He was walking fast and his breath came hard; it was amazing that he had this much strength in his arms and legs. It was impossible, and yet it was true. Something had happened to him. He removed his thick leather gloves and discovered that his hands were no longer bony and twisted. He touched his forehead and found that the skin was smooth. He called out just to hear his own voice, and there it was: a bellow edged with the pride of a young man, a truly beautiful noise.

  He walked on, over the hard earth, the frozen pine needles breaking beneath his boots. He was lost, he knew that much, just as he knew he had to go forward. The birds above him were calling, signaling the end of the day. Soon he would no longer be able to see, and he had to hurry through the woods. As he went on he grew younger and stronger; he could snap the branches blocking his way with his bare hands, he could leap over the gray rocks that littered the path. He was much younger than he had been the day he got married; his full height had come back to him and his hair was dark brown, a chestnut color the girls had all admired.

  Richard Aaron went on through the woods, and finally he reached what he’d been searching for, the white horse that was waiting for him. The horse was so white his eyes hurt just to look at it, but he couldn’t look away, not now, not after he’d come this far. He stopped at the edge of the clearing, out of breath and terrified. He knew he would have to ride this thing, a horse twice as big as any he’d seen before, but first he’d have to catch it. He tried edging up to the horse slowly, but the horse whinnied and backed away, tossing its huge head. Richard Aaron kept walking forward, slowly and gently, but the horse grew agitated and began to trot away. That was when Richard Aaron knew why he’d been granted these legs; he’d have to chase this horse down. He’d have to run for it one last time.

  He followed the white horse through the woods as darkness fell; several times he was close enough to grab on to its tail, but the horse always pulled away. At last they came to an open field, where the grass was as high as Richard Aaron’s waist, and he knew this was his last chance to do this right. The horse was galloping now, black hooves shaking the ground. It was breathing smoke in the cold, dark air, challenging Richard Aaron to race. He was as fast and as strong as he’d ever been. He ran with all his heart, and the wind followed along behind, slapping against his back. Straight ahead was an even deeper wood, with trees impossibly tangled and black; he would never be able to catch the horse once they entered that forest. He had to do it now, in this field, where the grass whipped against him and smelled sweeter than any lawn he had ever walked across. With his last, best effort he came up beside the horse, keeping pace, but that was not enough and he knew it.

  And then Richard Aaron realized that there was a man running beside him, a young man, like himself, whose face was filled with concern. This young man had no trouble keeping up with the horse; he would have run right past, if he hadn’t slowed his pace to talk to Richard Aaron.

  “Are you all right?” the young man said. He spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to be running alongside the horse. He wasn’t even sweating.

  Richard Aaron was too out of breath to speak. The horse’s legs were much stronger than his; in the dark the horse looked like a cloud.

  “Are you all right?” the young man continued to ask.

  There was the moon, shining through the window. There was the wood, looming just ahead.

  “Help me up,” Richard Aaron shouted over the sound of the hooves hitting against the earth. “Just help me up.”

  Stephen grabbed onto Richard Aaron’s hand and held on tight.

  “That’s it,” Richard Aaron called as the young man lifted him onto the horse. It was the instant before they reached the endless woods, and quite suddenly the field was green, and it went forever, forever and ever, and because the horse would now do anything Richard Aaron told it to except turn back, he never had the chance to say thank you.

  They buried Old Dick the day before Thanksgiving, in the spot he’d chosen himself when he first came to the island. Nearly everyone in town came out to the cemetery, in spite of the sleet that was falling. The ice was so stubborn the gravediggers had been forced to work all morning just to loosen the top layer of dirt. Every shop in town was closed that day, except for the market—since people still had to pick up their fresh-killed turkeys—although the butcher cried as he wrapped each of the birds in waxed paper. He remembered when Old Dick had been his best customer, he remembered when Ginny Thorne would come in and smack each lamb chop before she bought it, to make certain it was fresh enough for Old Dick.

  Robin wore her black dress to the funeral, the one with the silver buttons. She combed her hair and put it up neatly with clips shaped like stars. The only good coat she had was meant for spring, but it was black and would just have to do. Of course she’d known this day would come—how long could someone live, after all—and yet she could not truly believe it was Old Dick inside the coffin. The box seemed absurdly small, much too small to ever contain him. Robin stood with Connor on one side of her and Stuart on the other, with Kay beside him, her arm hooked through his. Connor’s face was pale and he looked reed-thin; Stuart may have been crying, but it was difficult to tell—his shack was so chilly, even with the insulation he’d put in, that his nose was red most of the time.

  After the service, they took turns shoveling the frozen earth back into the grave. A chair had been brought to the gravesite so that Ginny would not have to stand. Her daughters hadn’t wanted to drive her down from New Jersey, they’d said it was bad for her health and pointless besides, but Ginny had insisted. She clutched her purse and was completely composed, gracefully ac
cepting people’s sympathies, but when they started to shovel the dirt over Old Dick’s coffin she began to weep, and her grief was strong enough to chase the sparrows from the trees.

  “That’s the end, isn’t it?” Ginny said.

  Robin went to her and hugged her, then reached into her coat pocket for the tissues no one in the family had used. Ginny blew her nose, but her tears continued to fall and each tear melted a little hole in the ice on the ground.

  “There won’t be another like him,” Ginny said, and nobody could argue with that.

  Just before Ginny’s daughters took her home, claiming it was too much of a strain for her to go back to Kay’s house for supper, Roy walked them to their car. Robin came up beside him as he handed Ginny’s daughter the bankbook Old Dick’s attorney had given him. In the years before his fortune had been lost, Old Dick had set some money aside in an account he never touched, not even when he no longer had any accounts of his own. It was all in Ginny’s name—thirty-seven thousand dollars. Robin was furious, not because Old Dick had left Ginny the bank account, certainly she deserved that, but because the attorney had gone over Old Dick’s will with Roy. As soon as they were alone, Robin turned on Roy, even though Connor and Stuart were already waiting for her in Kay’s car.

  “You’re not even related,” she told Roy.

  “Look, Robin, if you’re going to argue, you’re going to have to do it with a dead man. Old Dick’s lawyer called me, not the other way around. It turns out he made me his executor.”

  “He never would have done that.”

  “But he did,” Roy said. “Go figure.”

  Actually, Roy hadn’t been very surprised when the attorney phoned him. Years ago, when Connor was a baby and they’d all gone over to Old Dick’s for dinner, the old man had taken Roy aside.

  “You’re in the business,” Old Dick had said. “Take a look at this.”

  He went through his desk and pulled out a Dade County police report that was more than fifteen years old.

  “Robin’s father,” Old Dick had said—an odd choice of words, since the suicide the report covered was also his son.

  Roy had looked the report over carefully, then handed it back. As far as he could tell, there’d been no foul play; it seemed a simple enough report, one he could have filled out in under ten minutes if he’d been assigned the case.

  “I think about it every day,” Old Dick had said. “But of course that’s what they want you to do when they’re gone. Wonder why.” Old Dick returned the file to his desk drawer. “So what’s your opinion?” he had asked Roy. “Why would he do it?”

  Roy felt extremely uncomfortable, not only because he now knew details Robin had been spared—that her father had shot himself on a Tuesday, for example, that he hadn’t even bothered to leave a note—but also because Old Dick, who Roy knew despised him, was now looking to him for an answer.

  “I don’t have all the facts,” Roy had begun.

  “Come on. Come on,” Old Dick had insisted. “Your best guess.”

  “He was miserable,” Roy finally ventured.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Old Dick had agreed after some consideration. “He was.”

  It had taken all this time for Roy to figure out why Old Dick had turned to him on such a private matter. He hadn’t understood until the attorney’s call on the evening of the old man’s death.

  “Looks like he trusted me,” Roy told Robin.

  “Just goes to show how anyone can make a mistake,” Robin said.

  Kay honked her horn; the mourners would be arriving at her house before she had time to set out the buffet.

  “Go on,” Robin called to Kay. “I’ll walk.”

  The gravediggers were still at work, cursing the sleet. Old Dick would have been pleased to know he’d managed to cause one last hard time.

  “I never thought he’d go,” Robin said. “Remember when he poured a pitcher of ice on your head?”

  When Robin was sixteen and they still lived in the big house, she always refused to have sex with Roy there. Even when he begged and swore there were so many rooms—the attic, for instance, the little pantry Ginny never bothered with, the all-but-forgotten guest room on the third floor, used for nothing more than storing an old sewing machine—they’d never be found, Robin couldn’t bring herself to do it right there, in the house. She would sneak out her window, climbing down the arbor meant for wisteria. Roy would wait for her, near the kitchen door, shifting his weight from foot to foot, clapping his hands together when it was especially cold, hidden, they assumed, from sight. Old Dick had found out soon enough—how, they never knew—and he stationed himself at an upstairs window with the ice water. Although they had never discussed it, Robin had always been certain she’d heard him laughing when Roy, drenched and freezing, yowled like a cat caught by the tail.

  “I guess he liked your new boyfriend a whole lot better than he ever liked me,” Roy said. He sounded calm, but the muscles in his jaw betrayed him; they pulsed the way they always did when he was upset. “He left him the rest of his estate. Nothing for Connor or for Stuart. Nothing for you.”

  “There was nothing to leave,” Robin said.

  “The carriage house. And enough cash to cover the taxes for the next few years. He used his mattress as a bank. I slit it open last night. No wonder he had trouble sleeping. It was the lumpiest mattress I’ve ever seen.”

  “And I’ll bet you’ve seen lots,” Robin said before she could stop herself.

  “Robin.” Roy shook his head and looked up at the sky; the sleet had let up, but the air was iron-gray and cold. Some things, Roy figured, still had to be paid for long after they were found to be worthless. “The cash is in an escrow account. But you and Stuart have a perfect right to the carriage house if you want to contest the will. Old Dick had it drawn up last month, and believe me, no one in town will vouch for his sanity.”

  Robin turned to walk down the path that led to the cemetery gates. She was wearing black high heels, which made navigating on the ice difficult; she raised her arms for balance, like an acrobat.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” Roy said. He had come up beside her, but he kept his hands in his pockets to make certain he wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and grab her. “You don’t feel like you’ve been cheated?”

  The night before, when Roy went to the carriage house to collect the money hidden in the mattress, he and Stephen had been careful to avoid each other. But as he was leaving, Roy couldn’t hold himself back.

  “This place is yours now,” he’d told Stephen. “Looks like you got everything you wanted. Congratulations.”

  Now, as he walked beside Robin, Roy still couldn’t let it go. “Is it fair that it all goes to a stranger?” he asked her.

  “You don’t understand anything,” Robin said.

  She wished the weather were better; it was much harder leaving someone behind when the ground was so cold. She’d begun to think ridiculous things: that she should have left a blanket, that someone should have stayed, just so Old Dick wouldn’t be all alone.

  “Explain it,” Roy said. There was something different in his voice, which made Robin turn to him. “Go on,” Roy said. “Explain it to me.”

  The fact was, Robin admired Old Dick’s honesty. Why should he bother with niceties after he was dead, when he’d never bothered before? He did what he wanted, always. When she was younger, Robin would have ascribed this to pure selfishness, but now she wasn’t so sure. Who, after all, had made his bed and washed his sheets, cooked his supper and shaved him every morning? Who had sat beside him at the very last moment?

  “I can’t explain it,” Robin said. “Not to you.”

  They had reached the cemetery gates, which opened out to the road. The gates were wrought-iron, ordered from a blacksmith in Albany.

  “Well, I feel cheated,” Roy said. “I was supposed to get you.”

  After that, there was nothing left to say. They walked down Cemetery Road as the twilight turned the i
ce blue. Once, Roy almost reached out when Robin slipped on the road, but he thought better of it. She didn’t want that, and he knew it. Walking beside her, on the way to Kay’s, he thought that some loose talk he’d heard in a bar once really was true, in spite of its dubious source. The first person you fucked had a hold on you forever. The first person you fell in love with, you could never escape. If it turned out this was the same person, you were done for, and that was what had happened to him.

  “You’re not coming in for supper?” Robin asked when Roy stopped at Kay’s driveway. The house was already full of people Old Dick had despised; Kay had ordered platters of cold cuts and good scotch, the kind Old Dick would have appreciated. “Are you sick?” Robin asked when she saw the look on Roy’s face.

  “You didn’t deny it when I called him your boyfriend,” Roy said.

  “I’m not fighting with you,” Robin said. She was shivering in her light spring coat. She was much too tired for this. “Not today.”

  “Don’t expect me to make it easy for you,” Roy told her. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Robin said. “Because that’s what it sounds like, Roy.”

  “No, I’m not. That is not what I’m doing.” He really looked at her now. “And you know it.”

  What he was doing was actually a hundred times worse. He was telling her that he loved her, something he hadn’t mentioned and may not even have known when they were married. She used to whisper it to him sometimes, while he was fucking her, and he had to turn off his mind every time she did that. For some reason that declaration had seemed like a curse to him back then; he couldn’t even hear it spoken aloud.

  “Forget it, Roy,” Robin said. She wrapped her coat around herself. “You can’t do this to me. I’m not going to feel guilty about wanting more than we could ever have. Those days are over.”

  Inside, Lydia was watching from the window as Roy threw his hands up in defeat. He’d left his car parked at the cemetery just to accompany Robin to Kay’s, and now he’d have to make that long walk back alone.