Survival Instincts

by Jen Waite

  “Anne!” Sam’s baritone layered over Rose’s exclamation. But they were both relieved—their daughter tended to put all her energy into whatever passion project she was working on at the moment—and now that energy could be funneled into her paralegal job and exploring a new city.

  The next morning, Rose and Sam met Anne for breakfast at a touristy place near their hotel. When they walked into the restaurant, Rose saw her daughter sitting at a table in the middle of the room, glowing.

  “Hi, honey, you look wonderful!” Rose hugged her daughter and settled into her seat at the table.

  “Drew came over last night.” Anne beamed.

  “The guy with the venereal disease?” Sam asked as Rose said, “Oh. Wow.”

  “Dad.” Anne laughed. “He begged for me to give him another chance. And he said”—Anne paused here and took a breath—“he got scared because he has such strong feelings for me.”

  “Oh boy,” Sam said as Rose responded, “You seem really happy. Just take things slow and see what happens.”

  “I am. I am so happy. I think this could really be something . . .” Anne picked up her menu, still smiling with all her teeth.

  That relationship followed an up-and-down, off-and-on, emotional roller-coaster progression for two years, until Anne had walked in on her boyfriend in bed with two other women and finally realized that Drew hadn’t been lying when he’d said he thought he was too young to be monogamous.

  Ethan seemed a large step up from Drew, and Rose could see why her daughter was so taken with him, especially after her prior relationship. Ethan knew himself and he seemed to know he wanted Anne. It must have felt wonderful, after Drew, to meet someone so self-assured, so confident, and so sure of what he wanted. And then, that night as she was reading her novel, a thriller about a woman who witnessed a terrible crime, it occurred to Rose: Ethan reminded her of Peter. His easy smile, his loud laugh, the way he tried so hard to please everyone. He reminded her of the man she had loved before Sam. They had met outside of a Pizza Hut restaurant. It was winter and it was one of those winters in Vermont, less and less typical these days, when snowstorm after snowstorm dumped more than six feet of snow onto the ground. Snowplows and shovels pushed and heaved the snow into piles lining the sidewalks and into mounds in the middle of parking lots. Rose was driving the car her parents had sold her when she turned eighteen, with the stipulation that she paid its bluebook’s worth, plus a small amount of interest each month. The night she met Peter, she left class, climbed into the old car she thought of as new, and went directly to Pizza Hut. Every Friday night she stopped and picked up one cheese (for herself and two younger sisters) and one pepperoni, mushroom, and green pepper pizza (for her parents). It had snowed heavily in the morning and tapered off by the afternoon, and, that Friday night, even though the three young male staff had arrived early for their shifts to shovel snow from the parking lot, revealing faint white parking lines for cars to tuck into, there was still a solid foot of snow that covered the entry of the restaurant from the road. Rose waited at the light for the arrow to turn green; the blinker made a sharp clicking sound in her ears as she surveyed the mound of snow that her car would have to clear. The light changed and she swung the steering wheel to the left, tapping the gas as her tires rolled over the small snowbank. She felt a hard metal crunch and the steering wheel jerked in the opposite direction. Rose calmly steered the car into a parking space at the far end of the parking lot and exited the car. She looked at the slash in the back tire and then looked toward the snowbank. The curb peeked out from where her tires had cut through the snow. Rose sighed and crossed her arms. She walked, arms still crossed, into the restaurant.

  “Excuse me. I seem to have driven my car right over the curb. The snow was covering it completely.” She looked accusingly at the young man behind the counter. “My back tire has a large gash in it.” She led the man, boy really—he looked to be about her age when she glanced at him out of the side of her eye—outside to her car. He looked at her tire and laughed. “You’re not going anywhere with that, huh?” Rose glared at him and shivered. It was starting to snow again in big, fat flakes. By the time he had fiddled around in the trunk of the car, plucking out a tire that looked like a toy, and some tools she didn’t even know were stored in a secret compartment, he had apologized a dozen times. By the time he had unscrewed the gashed tire and fastened the spare in place, the knees of his gray slacks were soaked through and his hands were red and stiff from the cold.

  “Thank you, I’m sorry I was . . . irritated before. It’s just that my parents have only just sold me this car and I panicked.” Rose looked down at the boy tightening the bolts a final time, and noticed for the first time since she approached him at the Pizza Hut counter that he had perfectly shaped dark eyebrows, a square jaw, and curly brown hair that fell just past his eyes. She smiled. “I’m Rose, by the way.”

  “Hi, Rose. I’m Peter.” He sprung himself up off the ground and reached out a frozen hand, grinning with his teeth; his smile lit up his whole face and shone right through his eyes. “Your pizza is on me tonight.”

  Peter had grown up in St. George, one of the smallest towns in Vermont. When he wasn’t working at Pizza Hut, he was on his way to becoming a journalist, taking on local culture assignments for the hometown paper. He was the smartest boy Rose had ever met; when they talked, lying with their faces inches apart on his bed, she felt she was learning something new, seeing the world in a different way. He used words that she’d only read in thick books, and he listened intently when she spoke, as if her words held some universal wisdom that even she couldn’t quite grasp. Peter felt like her destiny, like everything that had happened before him was not actually made up of meaningful moments or experiences after all but only a dull period of waiting for him to appear.

  Peter swept her off her feet so completely that when she found out she was pregnant, just three months into the relationship and one year into nursing school, she was thrilled. He was too, or at least he said he was, wrapping her in his arms and whispering, “I’m going to do this right.”

  She hadn’t thought that was an odd thing to say. Or that Peter must already have been terrified he was going to screw things up. He never told her much about his past but he alluded to “difficult things” in his childhood that had made prior relationships impossible. “But not this time. This time is different,” he had said. And she had believed him.

  They moved into a small apartment, close to Rose’s school, and the heady infatuation they had both felt for the past three months seemed to morph overnight into a sort of slow-moving dread until, by the time she miscarried a month later, she felt for sure that the baby had felt her mounting panic and decided to dislodge itself, rather than come into their world. She knew that wasn’t medically possible, but she had never quite been able to shake the belief. She recognized all the symptoms she had learned about earlier that year (heavy bleeding, severe cramping, nausea). She called Peter from the toilet and left a shaky message: “Meet me at the hospital. I’m losing the baby.”

  The first time she told the nurse that her boyfriend would be coming soon, the nurse believed her. “I’ll keep an eye out,” she had said, giving Rose’s hand a squeeze. By the fourth “He’s coming,” the nurse looked at her sadly and nodded, wiping the cold sweat from her forehead. “Just try to rest, sweetie.”

  The months that followed were a dark blur. She never saw Peter again. He had left town by the time she got home. His belongings removed from the apartment so precisely that she wondered if she had imagined the whole relationship, though she had an ache in her gut that proved otherwise. She thought of Peter, and of Claire (she had decided the baby was a girl), constantly for months. And then when she started to fail her nursing exams and had to drop out of school, she decided that that was enough. Every time Peter or Claire popped into her head she picked them up and placed them into a box (in her mind the box was blue with a whi
te bow), until eventually they stayed there, in that box, and she could choose when to take them out, which was almost never.

  She met Sam two years later at the bakery where she worked, first as a cashier and then as one of the morning bakers. Sam came in to get coffee every morning. He was quiet and slow-moving, his energy so different from that of the frenetic buzzing that had vibrated out of Peter. She found out by asking around that he was in his late twenties and an ex-marine, a scout sniper (which didn’t mean anything to Rose until she saw the reactions of other servicemen and -women when Sam would reluctantly reveal his designation); Rose found out later that he’d been medically discharged after losing sight in one eye. After he left the marines, he moved to Charlotte because “it seemed like a town where not much happens.” He took his attention to exacting detail and applied it to carpentry. Instead of spending hours crouched on the ground, measuring how many millimeters a light wind to the east would skew his bullet, he spent hours in his shop, carving and sawing and sanding wood into exquisite pieces of furniture.

  It took Sam sixteen coffees and a combined hour and a half worth of small talk to gather the courage to ask Rose out on a date. They took things slow. Rose liked slow; slow felt safe. She wasn’t sure that this man would stand the test of time, but selfishly, Rose decided that Sam was exactly what she needed after Peter. She didn’t feel butterflies and her stomach didn’t do loops when he reached for her hand during the movies, but she felt her insides relax when they were together, as if her body knew something her mind had yet to acknowledge. And then one night in bed, a year into their courtship, they cracked each other open. She told him about the baby she had lost and he told her about the friend he had lost, not even in a fight, but by stepping on a land mine, just a few feet from where Sam stood. Sam had only lost sight in one eye from flying debris; his friend had been cut in half. After that she stopped being afraid he would leave, like Peter did, because they had shown each other their hidden parts, and they had both decided there was more beauty in those parts than fear. She understood then that magic could come in many forms.

  Lying in bed that Thanksgiving night, she took Peter out of the box for a moment and spun him around in her head, looking at him from all angles. Yes, it was uncanny, the similarities between Peter and Ethan, and once she saw them, she couldn’t unsee them. She had forgiven Peter long ago—they were both so young and he had tried, she knew he had really tried, but in the end, he couldn’t overcome whatever demons he had kept hidden from her. Still, she didn’t want the same kind of man for Anne—a brightly burning spark of a man that fizzles out just as fast as he catches. She tossed and turned all night, fretting about whether to say anything to Anne. But what would she say? Your boyfriend reminds me of my ex that I’ve never told you about who abandoned me while I bled out our child in the hospital?

  By the time she woke up, she felt a vague panic but was no closer to deciding what to do about Ethan. She walked into the kitchen. The concentrated, early morning sun shone a beam of light straight through the room and illuminated Ethan drinking a cup of coffee at the table, still extended with the leaf Sam had brought up from the basement. He looked small sitting at the long table all alone, and the picture she had drawn of him last night in her head suddenly seemed silly and dramatic compared to this human man in front of her. His face lit up when he saw her. “Good morning, Rose. I made coffee.”

  She never said a word to Anne. Two years later, when she got the call from the hospital, she realized she’d been wrong about her son-in-law. Yes, she could admit that to herself. Ethan wasn’t anything like Peter. He was something else entirely.

  FOURTEEN YEARS

  BEFORE THE CABIN

  ANNE

  They went to brunch on their first date. She had e-mailed him the same night they met; she waited six hours and then couldn’t wait any longer, her stomach flipping as she sent off her number with a quick note, It’s the elevator girl. He texted ten minutes later. What are you doing tomorrow morning? She would have recoiled at the suggestion of brunch for a first date from any other guy. It seemed so intimate, so exposed. But as soon as she slid into the booth of the diner Ethan suggested, Anne felt at ease, like she was home. They laughed over eggs and coffee, not talking about anything at all, nothing she could remember anyway. Afterward they walked around the city for hours. It was a perfect spring day—winter had finally given way to consistently warm days and the oppressive heat of the summer was still months away. They talked about their childhoods (she grew up in a farmhouse in Vermont, he on an actual farm in Indiana), what they missed most about their hometowns (her: the smell of the air, him: his dog), and what they loved about living in New York (this they agreed on: that the city, though it could feel harsh and cold and overwhelming, was the most exhilarating place either of them had ever been).

  At one point Ethan stopped in the middle of the street and turned to her. “Ok, Anne, I want to hear your deepest, darkest secret. You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine. Let’s just get it out of the way.”

  “Wow. Deepest, darkest secret. Great first-date question.” She laughed. “Hmm. Ok, my deepest, darkest secret.” She took a breath. She hadn’t said this out loud yet. “I don’t think I want to be a lawyer.” It had been weighing on her, eating away at her thoughts, and in that moment, at the age of twenty-five, it felt like her whole world was hinging on the decision about law school.

  Ethan put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Annie, if that’s your deepest, darkest secret, I think you’re going to be ok.”

  She felt her body relax. He was right. She suddenly knew without a doubt that if she was with Ethan, it would be ok.

  “Your turn.”

  “I have no soul,” he deadpanned.

  “Ah! So that’s why your eyes are completely black?”

  “Exactly.” He broke his blank stare with a chuckle and then fell quiet for a moment. “I haven’t told anyone this, but I know it destroyed my parents when I left home. I think that’s my darkest secret.” He glanced at the ground. “And because of that, I don’t really visit. I feel too guilty. I mean, I send money and we talk on the phone sometimes, but . . .” He shook his head. “They don’t understand me. No one in my family does—no one in my family has ever left the Midwest. I don’t know . . .” His voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, was that too much?”

  “Of course not. I want to know everything about you.” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it, and she felt color seep into her cheeks. “Sorry, now I’m saying too much.”

  Ethan laughed. “Not at all. This doesn’t feel like a first date, does it? I feel like we’ve known each other much longer.”

  Anne smiled shyly. “Me, too.”

  A month later, she was spending almost every night at his apartment. A year later they were engaged.

  * * *

  —

  They were married in a park overlooking Lake Champlain. It was early summer. Anne would be pregnant with Thea in six months’ time. The night before the wedding, Anne stayed at an inn attached to an old red barn where the reception would be held; her six bridesmaids—she still had close friends at that point—arrived the morning of with their lavender strapless dresses in garment bags and pouches of makeup tucked under their armpits. The six of them crammed into the small yellow inn room and avoided each other’s elbows as they changed from jeans and T-shirts into gowns. Anne stood still, holding her breath, as a couple of them wove the lace ribbon along the back of the corset bodice of her dress, yanking it tight at the bottom and tying it into a knotted bow. Two more fussed with the veil, securing it onto stiff strands of hair and then dusting the sides of her head once more with hairspray. One of Anne’s bridesmaids, a friend since elementary school named Whitney, set up shop in the bathroom as the in-house makeup artist.

  “I’m sorry to make you work on my wedding day, Whit. Here, chug this,” Anne said, shoving a glass of champagne into her
friend’s left hand, which was momentarily void of brushes and creams and glitter. Whitney set the glass down on the bathroom counter. “I’ll drink after. And stop, I offered. This is my wedding present to you. Just relax and enjoy yourself.” Whitney said all this with a furrowed brow, not looking at Anne but at the face in front of her. She finally clucked in disapproval. “Can I pluck your eyebrows?” she said to Lana, a college friend with dark brown eyes and a long, thick black braid running down her back. “I’m going to say no to that,” Lana replied dryly.

  “Ok, then you’re done. NEXT!” Whit scooted her off the chair and motioned to the next in line.

  Lana sidled up next to Anne and rolled her eyes. “Just FYI, the full-brow look is in right now.”

  Anne laughed. “Whit is just very no bullshit. She wasn’t trying to insult you. I think she just wants everyone to have the same look, you know?” She felt her heart flutter nervously. She had been taking constant stock of all the different personalities coming together today and playing peacemaker amongst her friends from home and college.

  Lana smiled. “I’m not offended, Anne. I’m amused. It’s incredible that she offered to do makeup for everyone.” Whitney had spent an hour and a half on the bride’s hair and makeup, leaving her an hour to do everyone else. Anne and Lana looked at the four bridesmaids still waiting to have their makeup done as Whitney worked slowly and meticulously on Theresa, who sat with her eyes closed in a state of bliss as Whitney softly brushed foundation on her cheeks.

  “I think Theresa’s gonna need a cigarette after this. Look at her face. I think she’s climaxing,” Lana whispered.

  “I heard that,” Theresa said from the chair. “And, yes, this feels fucking gooooood,” she sang. “Please, don’t ever stop,” she groaned with her eyes closed.

  “Ok, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but we have”—Anne picked up her phone and turned it over—“an hour before we have to leave for the ceremony. So. Whit. You’re doing so amazing, but—”