Cloven Hooves

by Megan Lindholm

  I was yesterday, pathetically grateful. Yesterday I was in love. Today, I’m angry again. This doesn’t make sense, not even to me. I make a cup of tea, sit down on the cozy cushions in the stiflingly hot little house. Dust motes are dancing in the white light pouring in the windows. My thoughts waltz with them, and I let them go, knowing that if I do, they may lead me back to the truth. It comes to me, in elusive bits. Yes, I love Tom. But I’m angry with him. Because if you love someone, it should be easy to be faithful to them. And it isn’t. No matter how I ignore them, my thoughts caper with fauns, with brown polished horns and white teeth, with sleek flanks and roundly muscled bronze forearms. Yesterday I had an excuse. I was a neglected, mistreated woman, and the faun was offering me comfort. Today, I don’t have that excuse anymore, not really. Yesterday’s kiss can be explained away, to myself at least. But if I leave the house today and go to him, it will be because I want to go to him, not because Tom has hurt or slighted me. Only because I want to be with him.

  I examine my two loves, and they are two different things. Neither cancels the other, neither makes the other any less necessary to my soul. All the cheating country-western songs I have ever heard go schmaltzing through my mind. “One has my name, the other has my heart,” “Yore cheatin’ heart will tell on you,” “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille!” I slam a fist down on a yellow cushion, launching an explosion of dancing motes. It isn’t like that, like some stupid song, it’s not beers and tears.

  So what is it like, then? I ask myself.

  “It’s a lot more dangerous.”

  I hear myself say the words aloud, hear them swallowed by the cuddly little house. I wonder if I’m crazy, talking to myself, seeing fauns in the forest. No, I deny it quickly, but then I force my mind back, force myself to reexamine the day, try to find one shred of proof I can offer myself that yesterday I spoke with a faun. There is nothing. I touch my fingers to my lips, feel again that press of warmth, that clash of teeth. No. There is nothing, and everything.

  But I don’t need to worry about it, my sensible self tells me. No, not at all. Because all I have to do is behave myself. If I stay home and be a good wife to Tom, as I know I should, then I don’t have to worry whether or not the faun is real. Because I won’t see him. If I see him again, if I am crazy, it will be because I have been unfaithful first, because I have gone where no good woman would go, because I have deliberately put myself into an occasion of sin. Occasion of sin. I haven’t thought of that phrase, straight from the Baltimore Catechism, in years. I think I finally know what it means.

  I also think I am probably the last person on earth who cares what it means. I think of my college roommates and their casual sexual liaisons, Jenny, who believed that “if it feels good, do it” to be the highest attainable wisdom, and Stacy, whose speciality was virgins because “you never know what they’ll do or say.” Either of them would have slept with Pan yesterday. Slept, hell, they’d have rutted, fornicated, and copulated with him. Not for them these verbal niceties. Except that neither of them would have seen him. Because neither of them would ever let their heads get as screwed up as mine was.

  Teddy comes clattering into the house, horse gear scattering in his wake. “Here,” he tells me, “for you,” and gives me three frail white trilliums, the small three-petaled flowers that grow in the shady parts of the deep woods. Their stems are crisp, their heads unwilted.

  “Where did you get these?” I ask him, knowing already that I will have to apologize to Mother Maurie, that Teddy has desecrated some garden corner I was unaware of.

  “Outside,” he says vaguely, waving a hand. He takes off his cowboy hat, tosses it to the couch. “I saw a brown man leave them on the steps. Me and Steffie are going down to the river, wanta come?”

  “No,” I breathe.

  “Why not? It’s cool down there, and Steffie says there’s a safe part where I can wade. Wanna come?”

  “I’m going to stay here,” I promise.

  “Okay,” says Teddy, and races off to the bathroom. He appears a moment later, with one of Mother Maurie’s pale blue guest towels and a pair of his cutoffs. “Bye-bye,” he says, and is gone. I hear the slam of a car door outside, hear the engine starting. I am a fly trapped in amber, frozen in the stiff white sunlight spilling in the windows. The trilliums are on the glass-topped end table. I know they are a near scentless flower, but the heat in the small room is leeching out their soft sweetness, polishing it over my Pledge and Windex smells.

  I pick them up, feel their coolness against my fingertips, slender green stems, soft petals, as I carry them across the room. I open the cabinet under the sink, drop them into the waste can under there. I will not keep them, will not put their delicate stems in a glass of cool water, will not let their scent spread throughout the little house. I will not wonder what Teddy saw.

  A few moments later I open the cupboard under the sink, peer through the gloom into the waste can. They are still there, white against the darkness, and the stink of banana peel and coffee grounds cannot conquer their sweetness.

  No, I bid myself sternly, as if I am a two-year-old caressing a can of Drano. No. I shut the cupboard door firmly.

  I attack the housecleaning. I empty cupboards, put down new shelf paper, replace the cans and boxes in a frantically controlled order, boxes of cereal grouped together, canned goods ordered by size, convenience dinners grouped together. It will never stay that way, it makes no sense to do it, but I stock my cupboards as if I were stocking the shelves of Annie’s store. In the bedroom, I empty the closet, rehang every garment, so that all of Tom’s shirts face the same way and are completely buttoned on the hangers, and grouped by color. I dump the drawers on the bed, and am arranging his underwear in neat stacks when I hear the truck horn blow.

  The fourth time it blows, I rise and go to the kitchen window. The pony is standing in the driveway, looking bemusedly at Tom’s father. Tom’s father is sitting in his pickup truck, blowing the horn. His face is very red, even at this distance I can see the beads of sweat forming where his hair has receded. Yet the look on his face is not annoyance, but righteous anger. I feel like I am six and have left my tricycle in the driveway.

  The pony is not eager to be put back in the chicken yard. Nor is he afraid of me. I take hold of the cheek strap on his halter and pull. He braces his sturdy legs and rips his head free of my grip. And stands there. I slap him firmly on the haunch, tell him to “Move along!” He shifts two steps, moving closer to the idling truck. Tom’s father sounds the horn again, a blaring accusation not three feet away from me. I flinch involuntarily. “I can’t get him to move,” I hear myself calling over the idling truck, as if he cannot see this, as if telling him that I am trying will make a difference to him. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even roll his window down, but only sounds the horn again. I glance around, but Steffie is gone, down to the river with Teddy, and Ellie regards us without curiosity as she flicks out her dust cloth on the kitchen doorstep. I know nothing of ponies, I suddenly realize, know very little about domestic animals at all. If Houdini were a black bear, I could get him moving, or a wolf dog, or even a lynx. Those things I know. This pony has no respect for me at all. I grab the halter by both cheek straps, brace my feet, and try to drag him forward. He resists, and then suddenly comes toward me, leaving me stumbling backward, nearly landing on my ass in the driveway. He takes another step before I can recover myself, and then, as I am scrambling backward, when there is, perhaps, maybe, barely enough room, Tom’s father guns the four-wheel drive pickup truck and spins out gravel as he shoots around the pony’s rear end. Houdini comes toward me in earnest then, and I stumble backward, trampling Mother Maurie’s flower bed before I regain my balance. The pony obediently follows me into the flower bed and, the moment I release him, takes a culinary interest in the marigolds.

  I grip the halter again and tug his head up. He nonchalantly rips his head free of my grip, tearing one of my fingernails across as he does so. I jam the in
jured finger in my mouth to keep from screaming, and watch as he resumes grazing. Then I do what Steffie, perhaps, would have done in the first place. I go back to the guest house and get a carrot from the refrigerator.

  At the sight of the carrot, wagged enticingly before his nose, Houdini becomes very reasonable. He lets me clip the lead to his halter, and follows me docilely back to the chicken yard. The gate is firmly shut, the latch in place. I have no idea how he got out. I wonder, briefly, if Steffie and Teddy took him out and somehow forgot to put him back. That makes no sense to me, but I resolve to ask Teddy about it.

  I go straight back to the guest house. I have no desire to go up to the big house and apologize to Tom’s father for the pony being loose in the driveway. Instead, I dive back into my housecleaning. I move all the furniture to one end of the living room. When the Mop & Glo is dry, I put it all back, one piece at a time, each piece dusted, each cushion vacuumed before it goes into place.

  I have taken all the sheets, towels, and pillowcases out of the laundry cupboard, and am refolding them before I organize them carefully into sets when Ellie walks in. She doesn’t knock, no one knocks, after all, this is the family’s guest house, and just because I am staying here, it doesn’t make it any less their rightful domain. Ellie walks in, to casually announce, “Your pony’s ruining Mom’s azaleas. Not eating them, just walking on them. Oh, you know what, you know why your sheets are like that?”

  “What?”

  “’Cause you’re using the wrong detergent and bleach. I noticed it the other day, when I was doing the laundry for you. I ended up washing everything a couple more times. You probably noticed that all the skid marks in Tommy’s shorts are gone now. It’s the water here. You’ve gotta let the enzymes in the detergent work for a while before you add the bleach. And Tide’s about the only stuff that will suds in this water. The rest of the detergents, they just make a few bubbles and sort of die. Gotta use Tide and Clorox. Want me to show you how?”

  “Uh. Sure. What about the pony?”

  “It’s in the azaleas, the ones planted along the chicken-yard fence. Daddy says he doesn’t know why the hell you didn’t put him back in the chicken yard. He thinks maybe you think it’s okay for him to graze on the lawn, but actually the shit will pile up something fierce, and the only thing worse than horse shit on a lawn when you’re trying to mow it is dog shit.”

  “I did put him back,” I explain, but Ellie just looks at me, her eyes gently rebuking my lie.

  “I’ll put him back in the chicken yard,” I say dully, and go to the refrigerator for a carrot.

  Houdini is reveling in the azaleas, rolling luxuriously in their scratchy branches. Several are squashed totally flat, but most have sustained only minor damage. Once more, the carrot works its magic and he follows me sedately back to the firmly latched gate. I slap him on the rump as he plods through it, and follow him, latching it carefully behind me. I make a complete circuit of the chicken-yard fence. Nowhere is it broken down or torn loose from the posts. Nowhere. I study Houdini’s round grass belly. He stops his grazing and lifts his head to gaze at me complacently. No way. No way that pony jumped this fence.

  I make a second circuit more slowly, looking for tracks. It soon becomes plain that Houdini has followed this fence line more than once or twice. I doggedly continue, trying to find some clue as to how he is getting out. There is nothing. But in the far corner of the chicken yard, there are other tracks, overlaying the pony tracks. The marks of cloven hooves. Deer tracks, I tell myself firmly, and listen to how achingly quiet it suddenly is. No chirr of insects, only the far clucking of the chickens in the shade of the chicken house. The domestic animals are speaking, but the wild things, the bugs and the birds and the rustling of mice in the tall meadow grass beyond the chicken yard, all that is stilled. Stilled and waiting.

  After a moment, how short or long I cannot tell, I come to myself. I stop my listening, and scuff over the deer tracks with one sneakered foot before I move on. I finish the circuit of the chicken-yard fence with no more idea of how the pony gets out than I had when I started. I am sweating, the sun is beating down on the crown of my head. Within the forest, it would be cooler, air would be moving, shadows and moisture would be trapped beneath the trees, breathable air. I latch the gate firmly behind me. The pony is peacefully grazing. Evidently his mind is no longer focused on escape. I leave him and go back to the azaleas.

  Carefully, I gather up the broken bits of branches from the low, bushy shrubs. I snap off the ones that are only hanging by shreds of bark. It’s not hard, the branches are dry and almost crisp, Mother Maurie has not been watering them enough during this dry spell. I decide that all but one of the azaleas will probably survive. The one casualty has been snapped off cleanly at the main trunk. Even this one, given plant food and water, will probably come back from the roots. I dispose of the dead branches in the moldering yellow pile of lawn clippings behind the toolshed. I check the pony one more time before I go back to the little house.

  My sheets and towels are gone. I check the laundry cupboard. It is empty, but smells of bleach where the flowered contac paper has been freshly scrubbed. Gone, too, is the mop and bucket I had casually left in the corner of the kitchen. I find them by the back steps, the mop bleached and hung to dry in the sun, the bucket scrubbed and left upside down to drain.

  I pace the small house. There is no real choice, I have to go over to the big house. To apologize for the azaleas, to find the sheets and towels. To thank Ellie for correcting my abysmal housekeeping. To grovel before my in-laws. I think about having a cup of tea first, but decide against it. I will have a cup of tea afterward, will save it as a sort of reward for myself for having done what needed to be done.

  And suddenly I am determined to do it right. I will go over there with a cheerful expression, will admit that ponies baffle me, that I don’t know how to get my sheets whiter and brighter. I will chuckle with them over my ignorance. I will even ask Tom’s father for his advice on how to keep the pony fenced. I’ll apologize for it being loose, and for the damaged azaleas. I will offer to water them and give them special care until they recover. I will be the model daughter-in-law, and Tom will be proud of me. When he gets home tonight, he will hold me and kiss my hair, and we’ll be in love with each other, just like yesterday.

  I look around the house, and in a few moments I realize what I am looking for. A gift, a peace offering. A platter of fresh-baked cookies, a white cake decorated with pink flowers, a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses. Something to share, something to say we are one family. But I have nothing.

  Nothing I want to share.

  But I go to the sink cupboard and open the low doors. Sweetness wafts out to me from the garbage pail. I reach in and get the three trilliums, brush a few clinging crumbs of coffee grounds from their purity. I feel as if I am sacrificing my first born on an altar as I carry them out the door and across the dust and white light and heat of the yard. I start to tap on the kitchen door, then remember that I am no stranger here. I must stop acting like a stranger if I wish to be treated as part of the family.

  Tom’s father spills the coffee he is pouring as he jerks around to see who has come in. “Oh. It’s you. Startled the hell out of me,” he observes, and walks out of the kitchen. I follow him into the living room. He sits down on the Naugahyde La-Z-Boy recliner. Mother Maurie is sitting on the sofa, working on a latch-hook kit. I suddenly wonder who’s running the dealership while they are coffee klatching here, during the busiest time of the year when they really need Tom to stay to give them a hand. They both look up at me questioningly.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “I expect you’re looking for Ellie. She took all the sheets and towels into the basement. I wish you’d told us you didn’t know how to get them clean before they got into such a state.” Mother Maurie prims her mouth over her sewing.

  Clean? They had looked clean to me. I swallow. “I guess I’m just not used to this kind of water. Ellie said she’d expl
ain it to me. I’ll go see her in a minute. Uh, I actually came over to say sorry about the pony being loose and all. I’ve put him back in the yard. I’m not real sure how he keeps getting out. I don’t know much about ponies.”

  “Appears to me you’da thought about that before you told Tommy to buy him or else.” Tom’s father has eyes like a snowman, black coal set in ice. An elevator shaft has opened in the pit of my belly and my stomach has fallen into it and is sinking, sinking. Of course, I tell myself, of course. I can even hear Tom’s voice, the way he’d phrase it, “Hell, Dad, you know how women are? What the hell was I going to do? Get the pony or I leave, she said, and I don’t need that kind of a scene right now, with Teddy involved and all. So I got the pony. What the hell. I’ll never understand women, maybe it’s her time of the month or something.” I have no place left to go, nowhere to hide.

  Tom’s mother has said something, is saying something. I try to hear her, but I can’t make sense of it. It is words, one after the other, and I hear them, but I can’t get the sense of the sentence. I’m mentally ill, I think, this is what they mean by psychosomatic deafness, I can hear her but I don’t hear her because subconsciously I don’t want to, and I am so busy with this thought that when she stops speaking, I can’t remember even one word of what she said, have not a single clue as to what she has said. She is looking at me expectantly.

  It doesn’t matter. I know what I have to say. I don’t have to build on their conversation, don’t have to lace my words and thoughts in and out of theirs. I don’t have to reply to what Tom’s father has said and knows about me. “I’m sorry about the azaleas,” I say. “I think most of them are going to be okay. But I’m going to go to the nursery and get some plant food and give them some extra care until they’re doing well again. Um, the corner one is the only one that might not make it. It got snapped off pretty close to the ground.”