by Zoje Stage
“Ohh…ah.” The revelation came out as two syllables. “Like, nurturing.”
“Exactly. Trees work together. And they also provide a lot to the surrounding habitat. I wanted to get across this idea of…interconnectedness. Symbiosis.”
Orla spotted one of the other printed pictures and moved closer to get a better look. “Is this the chimney you found?”
“Isn’t it cool?” Somehow he managed to sound even more excited than he had when describing his work. “I’m guessing it’s got to be really old. Our very own ruin! The one reward for getting lost.”
She scrutinized the stack of rocks, but couldn’t figure out why Shaw should be so enamored of it. “So was there a house there?”
“Maybe. Some sort of structure stood there, a hundred years ago. Might get a better sense of it in the spring, when we can see the land better.”
“Interesting.” A hundred years ago the surrounding area would have been even more remote, yet someone had chosen—from so much available land—to build a home not far from theirs. Had this person known something about this place that made it special? Or perhaps they were simply more attuned to a beauty that Orla didn’t yet appreciate.
She continued to ponder the rather comforting idea of a bygone neighbor as she turned her attention back to the sketched lines and washes of color on Shaw’s canvas. He had such a vision for it, and that alone amazed her. “Your clarity. Sense of purpose.” Shaw beamed. “Who are you and what have you done with my husband?”
They shared a laugh and she wrapped her arms around him.
He kept his eyes on his unfinished painting. “I know people thought, for the longest time, that I’d wasted so much time, money, on all those random classes, books, supplies…but I’m ready now, and it’s all coming together.”
“I’m immensely proud of you—I want you to know that. So many people quit, give up. But you knew you had something in you, something to say, a vision, and you kept working until it came into focus.”
“I’ve needed all the things I’ve done to get to this point.”
“I know.”
He turned to her, hands on her waist, a crazy-pleased grin on his face. “I love you so much, Orlie.”
“I love you too—and I promise I’m going to embrace all of this newness. I want this too—for you, for all of us.”
His battery finally faltered and she kissed his drooping head before guiding him back to the living room, the sofa. A smile lingered on his face as he lay down, put his cheek on her lap. She fingered his hair and they stayed like that for a while, appreciating the silence. The noise of the city had been so ever present she’d barely noticed it. But here—this was what quiet sounded like. The soft whoosh of the furnace coming on. The occasional hum of the refrigerator. They grinned in unison, reacting to a light thud above their heads, certain of its origin: one of Tycho’s toys dropping from his hand to the floor as he slept. They always found toys beside his bed in the morning.
I could get used to this.
She didn’t say it aloud because another thought accompanied it. He did believe, on some level, that the trees communicated—which didn’t mean he thought they whispered ideas to him. Maybe he only meant that they spoke to one another. He’d never talked about nature like that before, but she understood how the artistic process required people to open themselves. To see and listen. To draw new conclusions about the world. It made her wonder…
Her husband, like her daughter, was highly sensitive, and she didn’t doubt his ability to tap into things that didn’t register for other people. Especially while he was in this state of creative blossoming. Could a place really call to someone, like some sort of invitation?
Instead of spooking her, the thought made her smile. It would mean they were wanted. And that was encouraging; she might not always feel like the bungling stranger. She would find her way, and someday feel a true sense of belonging.
9
True to his word to make up for the previous day, Shaw headed out in the radiant morning sun to work on the snow dragon, but only Tycho tagged along to assist him. Eleanor Queen considered it; she looked outside, scanned the terrain, then shook her head without saying a word. She helped Orla unpack everyone’s clothes. The boys came in an hour later, the cold rising from their coats, dusted with white, their faces rosy and victorious. After a simple lunch, Shaw retreated to his studio, and Tycho took a nap. When Orla came down from organizing Eleanor Queen’s closet, she didn’t find the girl on the couch where she’d left her, though her book was there, open and facedown on the cushion.
“Bean?”
She caught an unnatural splash of color from beyond the front window: Eleanor Queen in her coat and hat, nose to nose with the snow dragon. Orla smiled, glad her daughter felt comfortable enough to go back outside alone. Shaw had raised the wall that formed the dragon’s spine, with curved mounds on either side for its body. The spine gradually sloped downward to form a long, undulating tail. They’d built up a stack of snow for its front legs and neck and made a blocky head for it. When Orla saw it after Tycho and Shaw came in, it had been only a rudimentary shape, though recognizable as the dragon they intended. But now, after Orla had opened the front door, stepped onto the porch…
The dragon was detailed with swirls and scales, the snow carvings of an expert sculptor. Shaw could have produced such work, but there hadn’t been time, and she was sure it hadn’t looked like this earlier, with a finely shaped head, large, protruding eyes, and an open mouth that…moved. Eleanor Queen gazed at it, its face at her eye level, and though Orla couldn’t hear it speaking, she could see her daughter nodding in reply. The dragon’s mouth curled into a grin—and then, seemingly aware of the trespassing observer, it turned its head toward Orla.
She raced off the porch, panicked. “Eleanor Queen!” Her daughter was too close to it. The dragon was surely only pretending to be friendly—at any moment it would open its mouth and swallow her child.
Eleanor Queen turned a little toward her mother’s voice, unalarmed.
When Orla looked again, the dragon was a primitive pile of snow pushed together by the mittened hands of a father and son. She stumbled, stopped. Reality wriggled, but she tried to proceed as if things were normal. “What are you doing out here?”
Eleanor Queen shrugged. “Nothing. Just saying hello.”
Maybe it was the snow, white everywhere she looked, but Orla felt dizzy. Everything spun and for a second she thought she was inside a child’s snow globe, being shaken. She wobbled, then steadied herself. “I thought it moved.”
“Mama?” Eleanor Queen hurried over, tramping along the flattened area where her father and brother had collected their snow. Her brow furrowed as she gazed up at her mother. “You okay?”
“Let’s go inside.” Orla let her daughter go ahead of her and looked back one more time at the snow dragon. A lumpy nothing. She blinked hard. Had she imagined it?
When she came in and took off her wet shoes, Eleanor Queen was already back on the couch, reading.
“Are you having more fun now? Playing outside?”
“Yup. Sometimes. It’s better when everyone’s being friendly.” She kept her eyes on her book.
Everyone? Who else could’ve been out there besides family?
“I’m glad.” Cold air blew against her back and Orla realized she’d neglected to shut the door. But after she closed it, she still felt shivery and hugged her arms tight against her body. Children had playful imaginations. That didn’t bother her. But what had Orla seen? Had the movement been due to a trick of the eye? The wind? Could sun glare on snow create a mirage?
Whatever it was, it left her feeling unwell. “I’m gonna go upstairs and lie down for a minute.”
“Okay, Mama.”
Orla spent the rest of a lazy Sunday afternoon in bed, hoping she wasn’t coming down with the flu.
On Monday she felt like herself again, and soon after exchanging a few texts with Julie, she heard a van rumble up the drive
. It was installation day for their satellite dish. A flurry of excitement ensued when the doorbell rang: Tycho shouted, “Someone’s here!”; Shaw whipped open his studio door; Eleanor Queen galloped down from her room. It had been four days since they’d seen anyone but one another, and they all clustered in the open doorway, grinning at the satellite guy as he stood on the porch. Occasionally, during the ballet’s off-season, they might have spent an entire day at home as a family, especially if it was raining and they needed a break from running around. But nothing about their previous lifestyle had tended toward reclusiveness.
The satellite guy—who Orla, after decades of living in one of the world’s most diverse cities, could only think of as a commercial-perfect white dude; he even had a camera-ready, but also genuine, smile—slipped inside partway through his work to check on their signal. When it needed a bit more tweaking, Orla donned her coat and boots and followed him back out.
The snow dragon looked to have solidified overnight, its arched spine trimmed with ice. But it was otherwise ordinary and nonthreatening, and she brushed off the previous day’s woozy delusion as the symptom of a twenty-four-hour bug. She watched as the satellite guy climbed up the ladder to fine-tune the dish’s angle, unperturbed by the cold, the snow, the height, or the roof’s steep pitch. As Orla moseyed away from the house, he whistled a cloudy tune from his perch on the ladder. Orla respected the perfect balance he’d acquired after years of working on a step only a few inches deep. No wobble or hesitation. He probably had a strong core. She spotted movement on the ground ahead of her, a fluttering in the snow. Curious, she moved closer.
Then closer still when she couldn’t quite decipher what she was seeing. Even right on top of it, she bent over, squinting against the dazzling white. More movement. Like something digging itself out. She thought of baby turtles, newly hatched, using their flippers to free themselves from the sand.
Was that a wing? A bird, trying to surface through the snow?
No. An ear. Pointy and alabaster. And then she saw a snout and a pair of amber eyes.
Startled, she realized it was a fox and took a half step back. But it wasn’t one of the safecracking foxes from her imagination, burglars with miniature tools. This one wouldn’t be robbing anyone. It couldn’t even stand or walk. It had a bulbous tumor growing out of its back that seemed to be causing it pain. And the look on its face begged for mercy. Orla thought she heard a little mewl. She looked up toward the satellite guy to see if he heard it too, but he kept his eyes on his work, absorbed.
As Orla leaned in again, the fox’s tumor moved—a head lifted, and a pair of long, floppy ears, as furry and alabaster as the fox, broke through the snow. Not another fox, but…a hare?
She couldn’t make sense of it. Were the two animals stuck on something, caught in a trap buried under the snow? Tentatively, she swept at the snow with her foot, wanting to see what lay hidden beneath. But the more she looked…it wasn’t possible, but they appeared to be fused together.
Orla brought a hand to her cheek. Did she have a fever? Was it longer than a twenty-four-hour bug? She thought of summoning Shaw, but he was working, and what if she was hallucinating? She didn’t want him to worry or insist she see a doctor; they hadn’t even found a new family doctor yet, though they had a list of physicians in the area. And if it really was an animal—or animals, somehow trapped together in the snow—why should she make it his problem? In the city, she’d never needed him to squash the spiders or crawly things she found in the apartment. She’d released the more gentle-looking bugs out the bathroom window and balled up the others in a wad of tissue.
The two-headed thing at her feet looked so…wrong. She considered asking the satellite guy to come see it; maybe this was a mystery better understood by the locals.
The thing—things?—grew restless, writhing as if they wanted to run off in different directions. The fox had a pair of forelegs, but did the rabbit? Were there other legs still hidden in the snow? It/they squealed, thrashing harder, trying to escape each other. The fox barked, growing more desperate. It managed to inch forward, dragging the hare behind it.
Oh God, this just wasn’t right. These mangled creatures were suffering, but the pity she felt paled in comparison to the revulsion.
She lifted her boot. The thought of delicate skulls crunching unnerved her. But she had to do something. Put them out of their misery. Make it go away. Finally, she brought her boot down, a decisive stomp. Nothing cracked; no blood oozed from beneath her foot.
“Mrs. Bennett?”
Had he seen it? And seen what she had done? Orla turned, and the satellite guy was looking at her. She didn’t bother to correct his assumption about her name; sometimes she liked her double identity. The domestic Mrs. Bennett; the professional Ms. Moreau.
“Want to see if the signal’s stronger?” he called. “I unplugged the router, so just plug it back in and give it a sec, then turn on Netflix or something.”
So he hadn’t seen her euthanize a pair of anguished mutants.
“Okay.” She looked back at the spot in the snow, fearful of seeing a smattering of tiny bones, or a smear or a twitching, as when a very resilient cockroach wouldn’t quite die. There was nothing. The surface of the snow was displaced from where she kicked it around. But there were no signs of any other disturbance.
On Tuesday, with access to her internet curriculum, Eleanor Queen resumed her schoolwork, head bowed over Orla’s laptop as she watched tutorials at the kitchen table. Their days settled into a routine: Shaw worked in his studio, door closed; Orla snuck in minutes on her laptop to order window coverings, miscellaneous minutiae, and a basic gun locker, and she played with Tycho—outside or in the living room—between other tasks; Eleanor Queen diligently worked through math and reading and world cultures assignments. Afterward she’d join her mother and brother in whatever they were doing—cooking, playing, folding laundry.
On Friday afternoon, Eleanor Queen’s schoolwork finished, the three of them sprawled on the living-room floor and made artistic masterpieces.
“Mama?” Eleanor Queen asked, concentrating on painting a tree. Shaw had found the remnants of a roll of brown packing paper in his supplies and given it to the kids to use. Orla had suggested they make a long, collaborative piece to hang above the sofa between two of Shaw’s cityscape paintings.
“Yes, love?”
“Could I keep doing school at home? Even next year?”
Orla looked up from her doodle. She was glad Eleanor Queen liked working independently, but she had hoped her daughter would find friends here, at school. Ones who stuck and didn’t overpower her or shove her aside. It had been an important part of Orla’s motivation for moving, her expectation that the North Country children would be less demanding, less competitive than the kids at her daughter’s city school, less like a jar of frantic bugs desperate to scrabble out into adulthood.
“You like working at home better?” Orla asked.
“Yeah. It’s easier to focus, and not as much is going on. And after I watch the tutorials I can do as much as I want.”
Orla frowned. She couldn’t argue with her daughter’s reasoning, that she liked working in solitude and at her own pace. “You know we wanted to get Tycho enrolled in kindergarten for next year—”
“Am I going to school? Yippie!” As he jumped up, his paintbrush released purple droplets onto the scene he was painting. “Oops. Mama, I messed up my zoo.”
Oh. Now Orla understood his splotches of color were a menagerie of animals. His face started to crumple and she felt his sorrow, his disappointment, at spoiling his masterpiece.
“It’s okay, no damage done—these can be the ladybugs and bumblebees.”
“And moth-quitoes! And lighting bugs!” He dropped back down to his knees, his face awash in excitement, and dabbed more pinpoints of color around his animals.
Orla turned back to Eleanor Queen. “So we were going to enroll you too. The schools here are much smaller. Maybe you’d like that bet
ter?”
“I don’t know. Can I keep doing it this way if I want?”
“Why don’t we both keep an open mind and decide after we see the school. And then we can talk about it again. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Orla admired the skill and discipline Eleanor Queen displayed in her work. Her tree was very detailed, reminiscent of the pine behind their house that reached for the sky. Its textured bark looked almost like a map, or a maze of rivers. Though it was beautifully rendered, Orla couldn’t quite like it. She was tempted to ask her daughter if she’d been influenced by her papa’s work, especially the first forest painting he’d completed, which he called Connected. Something about her daughter’s depiction made it seem more human than tree, but where Shaw had captured a sense of community, of sheltering, Eleanor Queen’s tree looked…wicked. Maybe it was the confident, almost haughty stance, the branches too much like knobby arms. If the drawing came to life, it would point its finger at her and boss her around.
No, it would do worse than that.
She touched a hand to her cheek as if she could already feel the mark, the backhanded slap of a branch.
Neither Shaw nor the children had grumbled about aches or pains or congestion. (Or alarming visions.) But Orla couldn’t shake a feeling of…off. Something was off. Was this what cabin fever looked like? Could it start so soon?
Once—years before the children were born—she’d set a bag of potatoes in the apartment closet because she thought the darkness would be good for them. Months later, a stench settled in. She thought a rat or squirrel had died under the floor, but eventually Shaw sniffed out the source: the potatoes, long forgotten in the closet, had blackened and liquefied.
Why did being in this house remind her of that? Of something rotten she couldn’t quite pinpoint?
