Only Flesh and Bones

by Sarah Andrews

  Eleven o’clock. About when Miriam was being killed. I dragged a napkin across my lips, my business there finished. “You’ve been very kind to me,” I said.

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  “I want you to know that Chandler and I … I mean, last night, we … nothing ah—”

  “I know. If he had, I’d have broken his balls.”

  Ten minutes later, I was pulling on my jacket to leave. “Thanks again,” I said.

  “Come by anytime,” the innkeeper said automatically. Her sharp blue eyes had taken on a dreamy quality, and I was having trouble telling which way she was looking, given the reflection off her rimless glasses. “You going far today?”

  I groaned. “Just to Douglas. By light plane.” How was I going to do this? Getting back on a horse after a fall was one thing, but horses didn’t fly so far off the ground.

  “Perfect flying weather, or such as we get around here. Not too often we have sunshine this time of the year here in Jackson.”

  I gave her a rueful smile. This I now certainly knew.

  “No, really, I used to take a turn at the yoke myself. I caught a weather report this morning, and you’ve got a nice high-pressure system from Oregon to Nebraska.” When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “How many hours you got?”

  I looked at my feet.

  “You even licensed yet?”

  “Student,” I said miserably.

  “And you flew in here yesterday?”

  I nodded.

  “Goll, woman, get yourself a good scare maybe? That weather was for shits.”

  This time, my head wouldn’t even move.

  “That bad, huh?”

  In a small voice, I said, “I’m not so sure I want to fly anymore.”

  “Aw hell. Scares are good. They teach you a lot. Like the saying goes, There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. Give yourself a break. You’re less bold today than you were yesterday.”

  I muttered something like, “Maybe.”

  “Would you do again today what you did yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. You ask for John Hendrix out at the airport. He’s the fool who taught me. You tell him I sent you, and he’ll go over your flight plan with you and make sure you know what you’re doing.

  “My radio doesn’t work.”

  “Go see John. He’ll take a look at your gear, and if he thinks you shouldn’t be airborne, he’ll tell you so, and you come on back here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Now go out there and fly that plane. But first, you’re going to let me make you a sandwich.”

  I let her, hungry as I was for any token that might bring me courage. She bustled about her kitchen, throwing together luncheon meats and cheeses, spreading special mustards on thick slabs of chewy bread. Inserting a crisp layer of red-leaf lettuce, she slapped down the top slice, cut the sandwich in two, and wrapped it carefully in plastic. She put it in a bag, added an apple and a paper napkin, and handed it to me.

  I started toward the street again, my feet numbly taking me forward. As I swung the door open, the innkeeper stared through it, waiting to see what life brought her next. Suddenly, her gaze stopped drifting and her eyes snapped my way. “Wait—I almost forgot!” she said, and hurried back out of the room. On her return, she handed me a thin, flat package wrapped up in brown paper and sealed with fiberglass-filament packaging tape. It didn’t take any great intuition to decide it was a book. She said, “Our boy said to give this to you. Something about lightening his load, or maybe it was that you needed this more than he did. I forget which.”

  Quickly thanking her, I hurried out the door, down the steps, and around to my car, already shifting the handles of my bag so that I could pick at the tape on Chandler’s package.

  In the car, I got a thumb underneath the edge of the paper and tore. Sure enough, as the paper yielded, it revealed a journal with a pasteboard cover decorated in marbled black and white to look like leather.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I drove north of Jackson toward the airport, but turned right instead of left, following the banks of the Gros Ventre River. I felt the need to be completely alone when I read Miriam’s last entries, away from any prying or insensitive eyes.

  The Park Service campground a few miles up along the river was closed, but I parked the car near the gate and took Miriam’s last journal through the trees until I could see that jumble of half-melted ice and freezing water and hear nothing but its call. Kicking aside a thatch of frozen leaves and cuddling down against the roots of a pine tree, I placed the volume on my lap and smoothed the cover with one hand. There was only one date inscribed there, the day she had begun writing in it. The date she had finished, her hand could write no more. I held it sadly, knowing there would be no completion, and no farewell.

  I began to read, skimming along for those entries that held answers for me:

  September 7

  Things are getting difficult with Cecelia. Her moods are growing worse and worse, and she doesn’t look after herself. Her hair hangs like a filthy mop. It’s so hard to remember that this was my little darling, the one I thought glowed with the light of the angels. Right now, I’d say she was getting her ideas from downstairs.

  September 22

  I’m trying to remember the last time Joe and I had sex. I won’t call it lovemaking anymore. I’m just talking about getting laid. Last night, I brought the subject up again and in no time at all it was a fight, with me using any words I could think of to try to get him riled so I’d at least see some feeling. In the end, I felt like I’d been begging him for sex again. I hate that, and I can see in his face that it just pushes him farther away. I know my anger toward him is just making things worse. I wouldn’t like someone coming at me like that, so why should he?

  I read faster and faster, lines jumping out at me.

  October 14

  Cecelia is seeing someone she doesn’t want to tell me about.

  November 17

  Joe and I had sex last night, the first time in months. A Saturday, of course. It just didn’t do much for me. I tried thinking sexy thoughts about someone else, like I used to, but that just made me feel like I was losing my mind.

  January 22

  I’m taking a night course on storytelling. Our assignment for tonight is to write an outline for a story so we can learn what goes into story structure. I hope the teacher’s broad-minded, because mine is a sizzler. I’m going to write about a woman who finds the perfect man. He’s mature but has the body of a young man, he takes pleasure in cleaning up the kitchen after the woman messes it up, and, best of all, his greatest pleasure is to bring her pleasure. He gets into bed at night ready to give her a back rub if that’s what she wants, hold her tenderly and listen to her innermost thoughts if that’s what she wants, and, best of the best, give her truly fantastic sex. Oh, and he’s genetically engineered so that his hormones resonate off of hers, and so his arousal depends upon and follows hers. He never comes too quickly.

  January 23

  The teacher read my story outline and wanted to know where the next page was! She used it as an example of what doesn’t work. I was shocked! She explained that as the story core for a novel, my story wouldn’t make it, because nothing happens. I argued that lots happens, he cleans up the kitchen, massages her back, and gives her great sex, what did she want? She said it needed tension, action, learning. My characters are the same at the end of the novel as they are in the beginning. Then she read a few love scenes from books where the characters are in complete harmony and she was right, they were boring. It wasn’t even titillating.

  January 25

  Still thinking about the storytelling class. I’m beginning to see something from this, like the message is that if Joe indulged me in every little thing and knew what I wanted without my telling him, I wouldn’t learn anything. And I clearly have a lot to learn.

  February 16

  My therapist sugges
ted that I look at the places where I’m angry with Joe and see what that tells me about me, instead of him. In a flash, I saw that I’ve really needed him to be safe, just like he is. But this same thing—bis very safeness—drives me nuts. For the first time, I feel kind of grateful to him. And when I think of things in this light, I realize that we’ve been together so long, and I know him so well, that if I had to start over with somebody else, it would take me many years to get to this stage of knowing him, and then I’d have to continue on from there. And maybe I’d make all the same mistakes again, and wind up with someone just as inflexible. I guess I’m so wobbly that I need someone to be that inflexible, just so I know where and who I am. Am I realizing that I truly love Joe, at least in the nonromantic sense?

  February 28

  I’m reading back my most recent entries and something just hit me: it’s not sex I want at all; it’s sensuality. I realized a while ago that Joe can be sexual, but he doesn’t know how to be sensual. That’s what C was, just a creature of the senses, with no substance. Is it so much to ask to have both qualities in one man? And now that I know this, can Joe be taught? I don’t think so. Or is he capable, but just holding it back behind that incredible wall of his? I’m not sure I want to think about the possibility that some people are born asensual. That would be a terrible handicap. Or do they just suffer less?

  April 26

  Cecelia’s behavior has taken a real downturn. I thought she was doing so much better, even though she hardly talks to me, just glares, but I had a call today from the headmistress of her school saying she’s been cutting classes in the afternoons. I confronted her and asked if she was sneaking off with some boy, and she said what if she was? and sneered at me. I suggested she bring the boy home to meet us. She just started to laugh. I didn’t like the sound of it.

  May 5

  I had Joe talk to Cecelia about the boy. She wouldn’t speak, didn’t even listen. He’s worried, too. Her moods are atrocious.

  May 14

  I can hardly bear to write this, but I must. I came home early from the gym today and found Cecelia hiding out behind the horse barn, talking to Chandler Jennings. I was so furious I ran at him, screaming. He looked at me with those crazy eyes of his and said nothing. Cecelia was hitting at me and shrieking, telling me I had no right to run him off like that. Good God, she’s not even sixteen; please help her! I’d have the son of a bitch arrested, but he’s disappeared like a mist. Cecelia was hysterical, saying that if he couldn’t meet her there how was she going to find him? I asked her point blank if she was sleeping with him, and she came at me clawing and scratching, totally incoherent. It’s all my fault for ever having anything to do with that monster. I don’t know what to tell Joe.

  May 16

  I’ve decided to take Cecelia away with me for the summer. I can take her to school myself until then, and pick her up each day, instead of letting her ride with Heather or any of the other girls, but after school lets out, I can’t be vigilant every day. I need to get her away somewhere I can keep her safe from him. I don’t have the courage to tell Joe. Just when I’m realizing there’s something worth having in our marriage, my mistakes come back to haunt me.

  May 20

  I told Julia I wanted to get Cecelia away from a man that was paying her too much attention, and she suggested I take Cecelia to a dude ranch. There would be horses there to distract her. She was all for protecting her from older men.

  May 29

  Julia called back today and said she had just the place for me, a small ranch in the middle of nowhere up in Wyoming with horse barns and everything. Who of all people but Cindey Howard knows the landowner, some rancher she met during her weekends up in Saratoga. I guess old Cindey can be helpful once in awhile after all.

  Joe agreed to the price of the rental and I’ve explained to everyone that we want a quiet hideaway summer, as in don’t tell anyone where we are. It’s close enough to Denver that Joe will come up Friday evenings and return on Sunday afternoons, God bless his predictability. Maybe we’ll be like a family again. And what the hell, he’ll be with me Saturday nights.

  June 13

  School’s out today. We’re off tomorrow, pulling our horse trailer like a couple of ranch women. Cecelia doesn’t seem too horrified at being taken away from her friends, just her usual moping. I’m beginning to feel very hopeful about this.

  June 22

  It’s beautiful here. The ranch sits near the north end of the Laramie Range, and the meadows are full of wildflowers. The horses are kicking up their heels.

  Cecelia sleeps late each day, but I suppose that’s normal for an adolescent.

  Po Bradley, the foolish man who owns this ranch, dropped by again today. He seems to think himself the ladies’ man. I think he’s very sweet, but he ought to get a life. He told me to watch out for the local sheriff, a man called Elwin Duluth, of all corn-fed names. Po says Elwin has a crush on me. He said it in all seriousness. What a joke.

  July 15

  Cecelia’s 16th birthday. My little girl is a woman now. How I wish I could spare her some of the confusion that comes with all those hormones. As Cecelia slept late this morning, I danced around the meadow outside remembering her birth, wishing her a better, wiser adulthood than I’ve had. It’s nice to dance again. Why has it taken me this long to realize that for some pleasures, I don’t need a partner?

  July 18

  I was dancing in the meadow again this morning and found Po Bradley watching me from a thicket of willows up by the irrigation ditch. He brought me a handful of wildflowers and said I was the most beautiful thing he’d seen around “these parts” in years. I felt violated. This is supposed to be our safe place.

  July 27

  Joe just left to drive back to Denver for the week. Last night as we lay in bed here talking about this and that, where Cecelia might go to college and what travels we might like to take together someday when we have the time, I had a glimpse of how nice it is for some couples who have been married for fifty or sixty years and have all those years together. They’re old and maybe sex doesn’t mean much anymore and all those things they’ve been through together have grown up into a garden of memory and shared importance for them. I guess I’m finally realizing that while Joe isn’t the intimate I’ve always dreamed of, he is the one who’s been along for this ride, and while he hasn’t been a source of joy and stimulation exactly, he hasn’t beaten me or played around. He’s not the extension of myself and fountain of gratification I’ve always wished he was, but he’s my constant, my rock. And he said something really sweet: he said that it was important to have me next to him at night, just to reach out and touch if he awakens.

  July 31

  Joe called this evening as usual and told me the most wretched news. Fred Howard’s company is being bought out by someone or other, but Fred “borrowed” a lot of money from the company retirement fund to cover his and Cindey’s expensive habits. Not just his money, everybody’s money! That’s theft! He came to Joe asking for a loan to cover it so no one would find him out when they ran the audit. Fred claims he had always banked on an upturn in oil prices that would make his stock worth more so he could cover the “loans” his company was “making” for him. I said I guessed they’d have to stay home from Saratoga once in a while and quit eating such expensive steak and drinking such fancy wine as if it were water. Joe said he didn’t think that leopard was going to change his spots. Joe sounded really disgusted. I was proud of him. I asked if he was going to give Fred the money and he said no, that it was a lot, and besides, what kind of banker makes unsecured loans to spenders who keep on spending? I said I agreed, that I didn’t think it was a good idea to bail people out from such activities.

  This is going to kill Cindey. She always was too proud for words. I feel lucky, because Joe’s always been so smart about his investments. Julia would say that I shouldn’t be relying on a man to look after me, but I say that one way or another, the bare bones of existence need to be main
tained and that past a certain point it doesn’t matter whether each person is out there working separately or whether people have an old-fashioned division of labor like Joe and I have.

  Joe will be up tomorrow night and I’m truly looking forward to seeing him. It’s nice to feel this homey old warmth growing up between us.

  August 3

  Joe just left. He went over the back way so he could stop in Saratoga on the way home. Even though he isn’t going to loan him money, he wants to hold Fred’s hand through this merger.

  We had a really nice weekend. Cecelia was her usual morose self, but Joe and I went for a long ride together up into the hills by the Laramie Range and it was just plain pleasant. I guess before I was always worried about getting my own needs met, but now that I’m being a grown-up and really giving to others with all my heart, I find that my own needs are met more strongly than ever. What an irony. Oddly, the needs that are being met are not the needs I thought needed meeting.

  There are the same old adult things I will always want and need, but I see now that I really want them from Joe. Maybe he’ll remain forever tone-deaf as a lover, but he’s my lover. True, he still shuts down whenever I let him know how much all these years of living with a stone just plain hurts, but maybe I’m strong enough now just to let that go.