She wanted him to come after her in Texas, but not quite yet. Truth was, she didn’t think he meant it, he was just calling her bluff and hoping she’d say no. The alternative was to invite him and make the plans and be disappointed when he called at the last minute to say he had to leave the country.
Let him wait, just this once.
There was also an odd email, one that had no subject line, and the sender’s address was a jumble of numbers and letters. Nothing that made sense. She opened the full header and it was incomprehensible. Tristan would know what it was, but he was joined with Kate, no longer listening to the pings of his computer.
She read the email. You looked lovely on that pink rock. There’s another mountain you need to climb. I’ll tell you about it when we meet.
The skin over her left cheekbone tingled when she read the words. She tapped the keyboard and checked email again.
Grayson: I miss you, my inamorata, why don’t you get a phone so we can talk in the evening? Say the word and I’ll bring dinner and a bottle of Scotch that will knock your socks off.
The voices were different. Grayson’s had a lighter tone. He seemed older, the whole Texas thing. The odd juxtaposition between the way he talked and wrote and what he did for a living. Art.
But there were questions. She didn’t really know much about him.
Where was he when he wasn’t with her?
There was so much to find out.
Just bring the Scotch, she typed. And of course, yourself.
Scott hadn’t seen Jess in six months. Had no idea how she knew he’d come home. She stood there on his front porch in a dress that looked so much like Lynnie it made him ache.
“Come on in.”
Her lips were pressed together tight. Her brown hair swung out and fell back on her shoulder when she snapped her head in his direction.
“What are you planning to do about Wendell?”
Same old harridan tone, accusing him of everything he’d ever done and more. All the anger she had that Lynnie died she saved for him. Jess must have been in her late forties, but she could have passed for thirty-something easy. Never married, no children. She worked part-time as a school psychologist and had a private practice on the side. Gave everything she had to Wendell. Who’d left both of them now and Jessie was mad as hell.
“She’s twenty-three years old, Jess, what do you want me to do, ground her?”
He looked at the collar of her dress, the way it lay against her neck. Waited for her to notice. His eyes moved to the book on the coffee table and back to hers, calculated how low to duck if she threw it at him. But when his eyes went back to hers, something was different.
Jess was lonely. Wendell was gone. Culpeper was dead. Hell, hadn’t he spent the night before in a chat room? Jess probably hadn’t had a date in years. She knew too much, all those therapy hours spent listening to the secrets of a small town. He should have been nicer.
“You doing okay, Jess?”
She got it suddenly, her face went red and she stood up. “You’re sitting there feeling sorry for me. Poor little Jessie, she doesn’t have a life. You are so arrogant, Scott.”
She sat back down.
He tried not to smile. He watched her tug at the dress, like she was trying to make it bigger. It showed off her breasts, not like Jess at all.
“I’m sorry I said that. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s okay.”
She looked mad again.
“You want a soda?”
She tipped her head slightly. “What kind?”
“Coke. The regular kind.”
“Okay.”
He got two Cokes and put one on the coffee table in front of Jessie. She picked it up and they popped the tops at the same time.
“Let’s get back to Wendell.”
“Jess, there’s nothing we can do. She needs space.”
He waited for the comeback but there wasn’t one. Jess sipped her Coke and crossed her legs. He sat further back in the chair. There was something erotic about crossed legs. But this was Jess.
“I’m worried about her, Scott. She’s been restless lately. She isn’t talking to me the way she used to.”
He hadn’t wanted to piss her off. But he thought she needed to hear it. “Jess, maybe she’s just moving on with her life. Maybe you need to do the same.”
Jessie slammed the can on the table. She leaned forward. “What does that mean, Scott? Move on with my life like you have?” She looked around and shook her head. “All you do is avoid it. You come home just long enough to get a Lynnie fix and then you leave again.”
Scott stood up. “Hold on, Jess. You’re out of line.”
She stood up too, and pointed her finger at him. “Don’t take that tone with me. I’m not Lynnie. I don’t take that tone from anyone.”
“Maybe that’s why you can’t get laid.”
Jessie stepped around the coffee table and slapped him. The sting of the slap was a surprise. He wouldn’t have thought she’d hit so hard.
He meant to step back, but his hands went to her waist and they kissed. They could not get close enough, fast enough. Rough, teeth bumping together and her hands pulling at his hair.
He had pushed women away for less than this, for making him feel anything more than the pure sexual release that came from fucking without feeling. Mere exercise. A good workout.
But he didn’t push Jess away. He pulled her close and they kissed a second time. He waited for resistance but she clung on and then simply let go.
“You looked exactly like her in that dress.”
“She loved you more than you deserve.”
He pulled the box from the top of his hall closet and sat it down in the center of the bedroom floor. Circled it with hunger and disdain. What the box held were the few items of Lynnie’s clothing he’d kept when she died, dresses she’d pushed to one side in the closet because they were waiting to be dry-cleaned. The smell of her lingered in the fabric.
Some year back he folded them into a box he shoved to the back of the closet. Another year he moved them to the hallway, top shelf.
Bottom of that box there was a white gown Lynnie wore on their honeymoon and then on his first nights back from time away. There were smells and memories caught up in the folds of the gown that had driven him to do crazy things, a possession of sorts, and he opened the box and dug his fingers down to the bottom. He felt the soft slick folds.
He did something he hadn’t done in a long time. Got out the guns, the ammo, took it all out back and shot. Let ‘er rip, aiming at nothing, just firing for the pure hell of it. Killing off the bad old stuff that haunted him. Lynnie never minded, but Jess put her foot down after Wendell was born.
But it was okay, now there was no one to scare, no curious hands to get into anything. The gunshots rang loudly and echoed. He looked up to the same stars he always saw. The names he’d taught Wendell, how to orient to the wide night yonder. Maybe if he hadn’t taught her all that stuff she wouldn’t have gone to Texas.
He figured she was outside wherever she was, looking up at the night sky same as him. If he looked at the stars and let his vision go blurry he could feel her thoughts a little bit. Got a read on what she was thinking.
The tables were turned, old boy, she left you this time. He wished she were back in Virginia. But it was just him.
In the morning he looked out the back window, half expecting a scattering of corpses after last night’s sortie. And there was something – the yard was dotted with black, an unkindness of ravens, it was called, come to talk about something, the crazy man that stirred them up, the ghosts he shot to kill but missed in the middle of a bad night, oh-dark-thirty.
Scott went hunting this weekend and hid his dirty hunting clothes in the back of the closet. I can’t believe he thought I wouldn’t notice that. As soon as I opened the closet door I smelled the sweat and the musky scent of something – him, the deer. The sharp smell of gun smoke.
We had
an argument. He says I can’t wash the clothes because it scares the deer away, the smell of detergent. The thought of Scott shooting a deer in the first place made me cry and then I got madder.
“Why do you have to shoot them anyway?”
He thought it was me being tender-hearted about animals, and I am, some, but it’s more than that. It’s what he does when he’s away that I’m really upset about.
He has moments when he sleeps when his face is peaceful and so still. But often he twitches and jerks and the slightest sound wakes him up. I wish he could sleep like a baby, without the burdens of what he does when he’s away. He never brings it home with words, but it comes out in other ways. I feel the heaviness. The heartache from other countries.
Scott. This is what I really want to know. Have you killed men? Have you left women without husbands and children without fathers?
“Lynnie, come back to bed.”
When I go to him he’s not only awake but aroused, and even if I’m still mad, a little, it’s impossible not to respond when he touches me. It’s as if what I wrote in the notebook is in the air around us. He wants to erase it by making love. Cancel out the other by doing this. And it works. There’s magic in the tenderness of a body that I know has the power to crush me. By holding back, by being so very gentle, he makes a different song and I can’t help singing it.
It’s part of the dreams I’ve been having, the two of us merged, like we’re one body, like we’re no longer separate. And something happens in that space we make together.
There is a moment when we’re done when I feel something physical. A literal twinge inside. The image of his sperm and my egg and I know, or maybe it’s just hope, that I’m pregnant. The unanswered question. Have you ever killed a baby, Scott? But now he’s made one, in me, and somehow that makes everything better.
He left yesterday and so I am here alone waiting, counting days. Not the days until he comes home again, but the days until my period. Hoping. The possibility of a baby.
Jessie called today to tell me about her new job, and her plans to apply to grad school next year. It’s the first time I didn’t feel sad about not doing that myself. My secret.
Scott called tonight. He has a way of seeing things, a way of knowing. I wonder if it’s part of his work, but either way, it’s become who he is, how he makes his way in the world.
I answer the phone and he says, “There’s something you need to tell me.”
“I’m pregnant, we’re having a baby.” His voice seemed so distant on the phone. I wasn’t sure why. Sometimes the connection is bad, and we never talk for long. But this time it felt like he went someplace else, in his mind, when I told him.
This is the thing about Scott. This is what I think I know about him. He is so tough. But inside, there’s a soft place that he protects. He only opens up when he knows he’s safe, and even then it’s a quick thing. A flash. And then he closes again. I think sometimes the work he does is all about protecting his soft place.
I dreamed about him tonight and now I can’t go back to sleep. He was sleeping with a woman, different than he is with me. He was watching her, his eyes were so dark they glittered. He wanted her. I woke up crying. Part of me has known all along this happens when he’s away. Just write it down, make it real. He sleeps with other women. But he always comes home to you. I’m so torn. I feel hurt and angry, and at the same time I still love him. It doesn’t change that.
He has so many secrets.
He is home and I buried the dream away, put on the white gown, made love to him the way I always do. He brought me a miniature, like always, a little miniature clay pot. The empty vessel. I think of it filling, as we make love, him filling me, the two of us filling the pot with our love, the baby filling my womb, the baby filling the emptiness between us.
The thought of the baby makes me smile, and I tell him, “Scott, she’s in there growing. Getting ready to be our little girl.”
He rolls over on his back and I run my hands over his belly, all exposed and not soft but hard with muscle. And yet it is exposed. He is a father. He will be a good father. When he’s home.
I have been up knitting for an hour and he’s finally asleep. I discovered that the soft clicking of the bamboo needles is like a lullaby for him. I feel a stirring deep inside, movement, a fluttering. She’s learning how to move. Or that’s how I imagine it.
I want her to be safe, and right now, inside me, she is, and Scott there on the bed. But what about when she’s born and he’s gone? I want her safe. There was something my grandmother used to say. The tree. Rowan. It has protective powers.
When I wake up the back yard is filled with crows. They are calling and marching, and I know it means something but I’m not sure what. In my study I counter it with figurines. The silver soldier, trees, the empty pot. I arrange them on the table by my chair and then I make a wall of rocks, mountains, a protective circle.
“What are you doing?”
Scott comes in and stands beside me. He takes my hands and pulls them to his face.
“There are crows in the yard.”
“I can make them leave if you want. I can shoot the gun in the air.”
“No.”
I’m crying and he hates that. But he uses his thumbs to wipe the tears dry. “Let’s go someplace. Let’s take a little trip.”
When she was young, Wendell pretended Aunt Jessie and her father were married. She invented the wedding in her head. Aunt Jessie wore an aquamarine dress that showed off her gorgeous hair. Her father said during the ceremony that although he would always love her mother, he promised to love Aunt Jessie just as much.
Then Wendell threw baskets of rose petals in a big circle around them and they all went off on a road trip that lasted almost forever. Finally Aunt Jessie got to go camping with them. When her father let her read by the light of the lantern, Aunt Jessie just smiled like she’d known it all along.
It was in high school she gave it up. Aunt Jessie never said anything mean about him, but her anger was clear when he came home and even more so when he went away again. That look she gave him, one big vertical crease in between her eyebrows.
She never got married. She took good care of Wendell. She was the school psychologist for the local schools so they came home together almost every afternoon. Aunt Jessie sat with her while she did homework, then they played. Aunt Jessie put music on and they danced, and later, danced to Wendell’s music with equal enthusiasm. They went for walks, planted flowers, read out loud to one another. The Brontë sisters, Lord of the Rings. And Jane Austen. Which made Wendell scream in frustration but Aunt Jessie loved Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy.
Wendell’s memories of life with Aunt Jessie were easy and uncomplicated. There had been arguments, especially when Wendell was fifteen. That had been a tough year, when she discovered that boys and even men were very much within her ability to control and manipulate. Aunt Jessie had tried to intervene, Wendell had offered to stay at her father’s house, alone, because of course he was rarely there.
They had made a truce of sorts, and Aunt Jessie made efforts to update her ideas on things. She took Wendell and her friends to a rock concert and screamed and danced along with them. That was the thing about Aunt Jessie. She went with the flow.
Wendell suspected her aunt had never said a word to her father about that time. He would have said something. It had been a rough year with him, too. He began to notice what she wore and made comments. He seemed to know without one trace of doubt the first time she had sex. He had waited up and she saw it cross his face, from one side to the other, the knowledge that she had changed. She was no longer his little girl.
One night when she still was a little girl her father had sat in Aunt Jessie’s living room, waiting for her to pack a bag. His arrival had been a surprise. Aunt Jessie was mad he didn’t call. First thing he said was “hurry up and we’ll get pizza out on the way home.”
Wendell hovered in the doorway to the living room, knowing she
should help with the packing, certain Aunt Jessie needed a hug, and possibly an apology as well, since the chicken pot pie she had made from scratch was sitting on the kitchen table getting cold right that minute.
If she went to help Aunt Jessie she would have to leave him sitting there, straight and formal, winking and shifting his eyes to the small package on the coffee table. He always brought something, little things like the ones in her mother’s study at home.
Aunt Jessie left the living room.
She heard her opening and closing drawers in the kitchen and meant to go help but he held out his arms and instead she went to him, climbed on his lap and let him wrap her up in his warm smell. She held on tight. Maybe this time he wouldn’t go away again.
Grayson appeared at the front door with a bottle of scotch and they sat out back and sipped in the dark. His breath was audible and then warm as he came close. The aroma of scotch and heat from his body, moist lips that found their way to hers like a secret thought come to fruition. He shuddered, a soft expression of greed, as her hands slipped from his shoulders downward. He pushed her gently away. He was making her wait and she wasn’t used to waiting.
“Easy, girl.”
It was only after he was gone she realized he was right.
But she got antsy when he left. Like now, she was tempted to go to Sixth Street. She could still catch the last set at any number of clubs, and maybe she’d run into the anonymous letter writer, but really, she’d had too much scotch to drive.
Still.
Online, no emails from Tristan, none from her dad, a new one from Aunt Jessie.
Honey, I miss you so much. I saw your dad and he’s missing you too. I’m just tired and I miss you and of course, I’m worried some. Tristan says you’re okay, he is such a nice young man. But you know that, don’t you? Be nice to him. They’re not all like that.
Aunt Jessie had been drinking white wine. Every once in a while she got frisky and had a third glass. Wendell was sure she’d written that email while listening to the Dixie Chicks and singing out loud.
The Meaning of Isolated Objects Page 7
