On board, she ran her hand over the railings and the wheel. George called to us from below, and we found him in the galley. He greeted us with hot chocolate, but Evangeline was busy ducking her head into the berths and opening cabinets.
“Check under the settee cushions,” George said, gesturing to the salon.
“Settee?”
I pointed it out. She pulled up one of the cushions and lifted the lid on the compartment beneath. Just some extra lines and a coiled water hose, but she straightened, smiling. “Everything’s hidden everywhere.”
He nodded. “While I was designing her—during the build-out too—I fought for every square inch. Shouldn’t be any wasted space on a boat.”
That set them talking. Evangeline wanted to know how he knew “how to do all this stuff,” and George showed obvious pleasure that she was taking an interest in his favorite topic. When he produced cinnamon rolls made by his wife and set them in the salon, Evangeline exclaimed at the table’s ability to raise and lower with the release of a lever. With some nudging on my part, we managed to get off the dock only an hour late.
The wind was erratic, and we had a few rough tacks against the gusts, sudden swings of the boom and lurching heels that sent items crashing below. George raised a brow when I lost my grip on a sheet and a sail flailed, loose and whipping. “A little rusty, are we?”
Evangeline laughed in the twenty-five-knot winds as if on an amusement ride, disappointed when we fell into a calm around noon. We took advantage of the lull, lunching on ham sandwiches and store-bought cookies as we wallowed in the wake of the occasional power vessel that roared by. As we drifted near a channel marker, a sea lion, lounging on its base, roused in irritation. Evangeline couldn’t take her eyes off it. She kept trying to mimic its long, guttural calls, the way its mouth shaped the sounds, tonal leaps full of warnings and complaints, demands and pleas.
“It’s singing a story to us,” she said. “And it sounds pretty epic.”
After lunch, Evangeline took the helm as we headed back, her red hair flaring like embers in the afternoon sun. George and I trimmed the sails as best we could, but with the wind at five knots and some flawed course work by the pilot, the sails kept luffing.
She scowled at us. “Keep the shape,” she commanded, one of George’s favorite lines.
We laughed. “Not a lot we can do about wind,” George said. “But the boat’s heading is too straight on. If you fall off a little, we might have a chance.”
She understood. She’d been listening all morning, asking about terms we used. Now she headed the boat a tidy thirty degrees starboard, and with some tweaking of the lines the sails did take shape.
“Nicely done.” George handed her a thermos of hot tea. “You know, there are sailing schools in town if you’re ever interested. A great boat-building school too.” Evangeline didn’t say anything, but she glanced my way, trying to gauge my reaction.
Back at the dock, George and I folded the sails as Evangeline scrubbed the deck without complaint. Afterward she and I stopped by the pizza place. We were tired and windblown, and I thought we’d eat in peace at home, but she said, “Can we eat here? Please.”
“It’s just a pizza place.”
“Still.”
She was so urgent I agreed.
When we walked in, she stood tall with a strange pride. She scanned the room in an obvious way, not like she wanted to see who was there but to see if anyone saw her. I wondered if this was about family, about proving she wasn’t alone.
When the pizza was set hot and crisp before us, Evangeline dug in greedily. I marveled that I’d survived the day without breaking down. I’d seen the ghost of my young son in those fluttering sails, but the pain was familiar, almost sweet. I’d been missing that little boy for years. When the kids abandoned the boat for other activities, the adults would see the empty deck and feel how those particular children were lost to the past. We mourned them even then but kept them alive by laughing and telling their stories:
“Remember when we couldn’t find Kristie, then found her napping in the jib on the bow?”
“And Daniel captaining the dinghy with Rufus as first mate? He had to fish that mutt out of the water more than once!”
I could picture my young Daniel so well, his joys and disappointments, his irritations and affections. But I’d lost sight of his inner life these last years. There’d be glimpses here and there. I knew he suffered. I knew that. A few months before he died, Daniel punched a hole in his room’s drywall after a fight with Sammy. He never said what had happened, but my nearly grown son let me take his hand in mine, dress its wounds. Afterward he helped me patch the damage in quiet submission. When we were done, he said, “Things kind of built up. I figured the wall could take it.” A hidden life under that surface beauty, a life with longings and losses, with passions that could explode.
When Evangeline and I got home, Rufus leaned against my leg, subdued. His muzzle and paws had gone gray since he’d jumped from the dinghy all those years ago. Of anyone living, it was Rufus who knew who Daniel had been these last years, Rufus who’d slept on his bed every night.
Evangeline thanked me for the “fun day,” said she was tired, and headed to her room. Rufus trotted after her. I was about to call him, wanting the dog to spend the night with me. He might dream of Daniel’s lost years and share the dreams with me. Just then, Evangeline reached down and patted Rufus’s head in a gesture of easy affection. With whom else could she share that kind of touch?
I smiled and sighed and let the dog go.
43
She’d thought eating at Watertown Pizza would feel like a victory, some reclaiming of what was hers. But when she walked in with Isaac that blustery December evening, the place was half empty, just a couple of families distracted by little kids.
They grabbed a cozy booth, and she enjoyed negotiating with Isaac over the toppings: mushrooms and spinach for him, salami and sausage for her. As they waited for their dinner, Isaac sought her advice on getting his students engaged. He listened intently as she spoke, leaning forward to hear over the screeching of kids, asking questions here and there. He wanted her ideas, and that surprised Evangeline. Being listened to was a lot better than being noticed at the door. And when the pizza arrived, everything about it was delicious and right.
What she hadn’t calculated was this: how the ordinary pleasantness of it would do her in, force her to realize how little of this she’d had in her life. The contrast between what she now knew was possible and what her life had been until this point drained every ounce of energy from her body. She could hardly walk by the time they got home.
Yet she struggled to fall asleep. Shadows snaked across the ceiling, twisting like those branches on a warm September evening. And even as she lay in Daniel’s house, she was back in those woods, Daniel luring her along with pizza like the silly, feral thing she was.
The trail had grown so narrow she thought they’d get caught in a thicket, but the woods opened and she could breathe again. Several trees had been cut down, replaced by a rattan love seat that rose from the ground like strange flora. Ferns and mosses crawled up rotting legs and spiraling vines laced its back, tearing away, dismantling it one tiny joint at a time. A striped seat cushion—filthy and sunken but otherwise intact—remained miraculously in place.
Daniel took the lantern and set it on a broad, low stump along with the pizza, then tossed the blanket over the dirty cushion. “You find furniture on the trails sometimes,” he said, “chairs, torn mattresses. Saw a big desk once. Most of the time, it’s just people dumping old junk, but this place seems different. Like someone set it up as a room.”
The lantern created a circle of light, cast the woods in darkness. The night’s warm breeze carried a trace of mint, and Evangeline had only to lift her eyes to see a sky full of stars and an almost-full moon. As they nestled on the love seat, a small animal mo
ved through the underbrush nearby, a bird or a rat or maybe a coyote. Whatever it was, its territory was the darkness and the two of them were in the light.
“This is nice,” she said, because it was.
Without another word, she dove ravenously into the greasy slices. She managed to polish off half the large pizza. They’d both reached for the last piece at the same time, and he’d given it to her. “For a not very big girl, you sure can eat,” Daniel said. When Evangeline glanced up, she saw how his eyes, though focused on her, were seeing something else.
“Yup,” she said, and burped, loud and on purpose, hoping to reestablish herself. But he laughed, grabbed and kissed her as if swept up on impulse. Everything about it was false, and she pushed away.
He pressed closer, jamming her against the arm of the love seat, an arm so decayed she thought it might break, hoped it might, so they would tumble into the undergrowth and she could scramble away. Daniel cupped her cheek, an obvious lie of affection, and while he whispered she was beautiful, he took her hand and pulled it to his crotch.
She resisted, tugging against him. This went on a moment, both acting as if it weren’t—a ridiculous social nicety, like ignoring a wayward fart. He pulled harder, until she thought the skin on her wrist might tear, her thin bones might snap. She twisted her face away and managed to shove back.
“I see how it is,” she said, hoping he heard her bitterness.
“That you’re beautiful?” Even now, he tried to confuse her with false tenderness. She wondered if he knew what she was. Could you become something forever by doing it once? And what if that one time was only because the car door opened and the man looked safe enough, because every house you’d tried in the past week had been locked up tight, because you didn’t have the luxury of being a virgin, and besides, worse things had happened to you, because you stupidly thought it wouldn’t matter that much—because you were hungry, so terribly, terribly hungry? Did one time stain you forever? Did it bury itself under your skin, fester there, emit an odor that made you fair game?
It seemed it had, in her own mind if not his, because though Evangeline believed in negotiations up front rather than after the fact, she figured if he thought he was owed a hand job for the pizza, it wasn’t such a bad deal. But once his cock was out, she realized he wanted more, pressing her head down on it. When she resisted, he pushed with enough force that something popped in her neck, sent a sharp pain racing down her arm.
She calculated the cost of the pizza—once again proving her thesis—and thought, fine, pizza for a blow job. But even that wasn’t enough. After a few minutes, he began tugging at her shorts, trying to pull them off without bothering to unzip. She wrestled with him, finally saying she didn’t want to. At least that’s what she thought she said. But whatever words came out, it was too late. She’d gone along with so much already, and he’d disappeared into that zone guys go where the only words that enter are the ones they want to hear.
He kept saying, “You want me. You want me”—an odd choking sound in his throat.
The shorts got hung up on her hips, and she clutched at them thinking he might let her be, but with one massive yank he had them off, her skin left raw from the rough seams. She had a choice. She wouldn’t deny that. They were speaking different languages, and she could resort to one he knew. She could scream or knee him in the groin or gouge at his eyes. He’d likely understand that. She could see how that would go—out there, alone in the woods. He probably didn’t mean to rape her. Probably didn’t.
She pushed back and caught sight of his face, a muddle of anger and sadness and longing. This scared her even more, because what could it mean? She decided not to risk it. You go along to get along, right? Her foster dad had taught her that. Besides, she’d already established what she was.
She said to at least use a condom. Not that it mattered, nothing did, but she needed to take some element of control. Only he didn’t have one and said he’d pull out in time. She tried to ignore what happened after that, but with each thrust a broken piece of rattan stabbed at her scalp, deeper and deeper until it seemed to be hitting bone. When his thighs and buttocks tensed and his back went rigid, she shouted, “Pull out!”
Maybe he tried, but he didn’t quite make it in time.
A few minutes later, they were back on the trail, Daniel striding ahead, letting her fend off branches herself. Evangeline gingerly touched her scalp, her fingertips returning bright with blood.
When they reached the car, he turned toward her, but he was looking down and away, anywhere but at her.
“I don’t know where you live. Is it close?” he said.
“Half mile max.”
For a second, she thought he might leave her there, but he straightened like he’d decided something. “Hop in,” he said.
Except for directions, they didn’t talk on the short ride. When they arrived at her brush-clogged drive, she told him to stop there.
“Thanks for the pizza,” she said, wanting him to hear her bitterness.
His eyes darted at her, then to his lap. “I hope I didn’t . . . I mean, I thought . . .”
She waited, but he said nothing more.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, like she couldn’t care less. At least that’s how she hoped it sounded.
She hopped out, her legs trembling as she walked, barely holding her weight.
* * *
—
IT WAS WHAT SHE HAD DONE when he was still collapsed on top of her that caused her the most shame. Panting, he’d said, “God, you are so hot.” And ridiculously, it had felt good to be admired. She’d felt so dirty and foul those past weeks, like she wasn’t even a girl, just a rodent scrabbling.
So when he said it again—“I mean it. You are so hot”—she had said, “Thanks.”
Her eyes were open now, in Daniel’s house, staring at the ceiling, picturing how he’d stood, zipped his pants, said, “It’s getting late.”
And even then, she’d continued to delude herself. As she searched in vain for her panties, as she gave up and pulled on shorts freighted with twigs and dirt and tiny things crawling, she told herself that the only thing that had happened, really, was that a handsome boy had been overcome with desire for her, a boy who couldn’t get over how sexy she was, a boy she’d perhaps confused with her mixed signals and who—if she decided to give him another chance, which of course she wouldn’t, but if she did—would understand what she wanted next time, might even take her out in public.
She’d spent years contorting the facts of her life into new shapes so as to cause herself less pain. Years denying what was true. But she wasn’t in the woods anymore. She was safe in this house with a man who wanted to hear what she had to say. That was the truth of her life now.
She tried to relax into this new safety, but a body doesn’t easily forget hard lessons long learned. Her heart kept stabbing at her ribs in rhythmic bursts of pain, and she knew she’d struggle to fall asleep.
Rufus, who’d been lying by the door, stood and lumbered over. He hesitated a moment, then jumped onto the bed. He stood over Evangeline breathing heavily, then pressed his cold nose into her warm neck, snuffling and licking, until she said, “Ahh, Rufus, Rufus,” pulled him down, and curled against his back.
44
Day of My Death
The memory of my mother with her knife has faded. It’s my own knife I’m thinking of now. If Uncle Jim hadn’t given me that field kit for my seventeenth birthday, none of this would have happened.
It was Daniel who insisted we go that last night, who directed me a good ten miles out of town. Earlier in the day, he’d asked me to pick him up from football practice. He wanted to surprise Sammy by showing up unannounced at her place. That didn’t sound like a great plan to me, but who was I to question?
As soon as he jumped into the truck, I knew something was off. His voice was too loud, and
he was swearing about everything and nothing and laughing at weird times. He used to do that when we were little kids to keep himself from crying.
Out of the blue, he said, “Didn’t your uncle give you a new field-dressing kit a while back?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Want to test it out?”
I didn’t. I wanted to drop him off and go searching for Red. She was all I could think of. “It’s not deer season.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“But you’re going to Samantha’s.”
“Naaaah. Let’s go hunting. You got anything better to do?”
“Maybe I do,” I said.
That caught his attention. I never had anything better to do.
“Like what? Like a girl?”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure I’d find Red again, and I didn’t want to jinx it.
He studied me a long while, like he was reading my face. “You’ve got nothing,” he said. “Believe me.”
I started to turn to take him home. He grabbed the wheel and jerked it. Just a little. Just to shake me up. “Come on. I know you got that field kit in back.”
“What will your dad say?”
“He won’t say anything.”
“But your rifle. He’ll hear you come in.”
“I’ll use yours,” Daniel said, pulling it from the rack behind our heads.
“And me?”
“You get to dress it out. That’s what you get.”
* * *
—
A COUPLE HOURS IN, Daniel lit the lantern he’d slung across his back and hung it on a scrawny pine. I guzzled a beer and checked out the kill, a muscular six-point buck. Daniel had landed the perfect shot, back third of the neck.
What Comes After Page 20
