“Ellen, you remember Scott.”
Ellen’s eyes got big and her mouth opened a little. Then she drew her face back together. “Oh my god – I haven’t seen you in years. Maybe not since the funeral.” She stopped suddenly and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
But she didn’t seem sorry – her face seemed almost eager for a response. He started to speak but Jess put her hand on his back, where Ellen couldn’t see.
“Ellen is the guidance counselor at the school.” Jess kept going. “She knew Wendell, of course, and now we’re in book club together.”
“And how is Wendell?”
Scott and Jessie both responded at the same moment. “Wendell is fine.”
Ellen’s eyebrows shot up and she stepped back.
“I see.” Ellen continued. “I saw Joni Hathaway’s son’s car outside your office last week. It’s about time that boy got some therapy.”
Scott thought he could see something riling up in Jess. She had that look, he knew it well. She was about to say something sharp. He cut her off.
“Well, we should get going, Ellen. Nice to see you again.”
He got in the truck and cranked it, hoping the engine noise would make further talk difficult. Jessie waved her hand to Ellen and got in.
“Book club is going to be very interesting this week.” Jess sighed and he pulled out of the parking lot. He hadn’t realized the extent of Jessie’s position here. Therapist in a small town. Everyone in everyone else’s business.
“Have you ever wanted to live someplace bigger?”
She laughed. “Only about once a week.”
At the corner he turned left like he would to go home, then realized his mistake. He circled the block to turn around, but before he could get back to the main road, she undid her seat belt and slid over to kiss him.
Whispered, “Let’s find someplace to park.”
“You want to go parking?”
“May as well. They’ll all be talking about us anyway.”
“Good thing we didn’t buy ice cream at the store.”
He knew exactly where to go. When they got there he cut the engine but left the radio on. She slid closer on the seat. It took him about ten seconds to get out from behind the steering wheel and Jess to slide into his lap. They remained somewhat controlled for about thirty more seconds.
You thought you’d left youth behind and then something happened to trigger the boy in you, or the girl. Otherwise, why would either one of them want to make out in the cramped front seat of his truck when they both had comfortable well-sized beds to go home to?
In his head time had rolled backward, to a lazy summer afternoon with this woman, rewound to a girl, and they had no place else to go. Not even the cover of darkness, because it was still light out and would be for hours. In their youthful haste they couldn’t wait that long, so there they were, parked on a dirt road so far back in the woods there was no chance of interruption. Only his desire and hers. How far they’d decide to go before one of them, likely her, stopped.
Of course this was no longer applicable, the stopping part. There would be no consequence, except maybe the gossip of a few bored women, but in his dream they should stop and they would. It was the not knowing who or when or where that made him so hot.
He pulled back.
She rubbed her lips and asked, “Would you have stopped if we were in high school?”
“I don’t know, Jess. Back then I had hormones raging and I didn’t have a bum knee that hurts like hell right now from being cramped up in this truck.”
She kissed him. “Stay at my place tonight.”
They stripped down in her living room. Jess, in a moment’s return to shyness, pulled his arm and looked toward the hallway. She was giving him back his youth. He picked her up and carried her down the hall.
She was heavier than he expected. He hadn’t borne a woman’s weight this way in many years. Jessie’s arms fit around his neck and the crook of her knees rested perfectly on his forearm. She smelled good. It was a good weight to carry.
The kind of women he’d been with either walked ahead of him or behind. Mostly they just did it where they were. Against the sink in a dirty bathroom, on top of crumpled clothing on a cot behind a thin gauze curtain. In the back seat of a government issued vehicle.
There was a moment he thought she was going to curl up in the blanket and hide, but she opened her arms to him.
They didn’t speak, which was just as well since he had no words. He had to go slow. With Jess it was different. This was not the mindless fucking he had done all these years. He had to mean it. She would know the difference.
They sought out one another’s warm places: the hollows that lay on either side of Jess’s belly, his chest, where she nuzzled and pressed her soft face.
She raised her head and looked at him. In the silence she bloomed from the inside out. This was not a motion he could see, exactly, nothing a camera could capture on film. But its force pulled him closer.
To Jess it seemed to come easily. She unfolded but he felt split open. He resisted. She touched her fingers to his lips. Rose beneath him and said his name. “Scott.”
“You can have me.”
Jess slid her mouth along the skin behind his ear.
“Scott,” she whispered, “we should have done this years ago.”
Each time he awoke through the night he listened for trouble and heard Jess breathing softly beside him. Her body in the bed was neither clingy nor distant. She was simply there. The sounds of her house were different than his. A car passed by and then near dawn the toilet ran for ten seconds and stopped. Needed adjusting. Maybe he’d do it in the morning.
The last hour he passed lying awake next to her. This very thing made her different. Her body relaxed beneath the sheets, hand tucked under the edge of the pillow. He considered what he’d say when she opened her eyes. If there was a way to leave without waking her he’d be tempted to do it. Not to get away from her so much as to avoid the awkwardness he expected.
She stirred and her eyes opened, clear and alert right off. She smiled and reached for him. Her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s drive someplace today. Charlottesville, or maybe Norfolk. Find some place good to eat.”
“I need to stay close to home today.”
“Why? You’re off, right?”
She pulled the sheet up over both of them.
“You know I’m never really off with this job.”
She sighed. “At least you’re not leaving the country. That would be worse. How about tonight, then, here. I’ll fix something special for dinner.”
He pulled the sheet down. She was waiting for an answer.
“I need to get to Williamsburg.”
He dismissed the fact that he’d just lied to her. He was not expected at work. In fact, he did have some time off. But suddenly he was thinking of leaving the country.
He knew she wouldn’t ask. Everyone in his life was used to not asking. He had a built-in excuse to live this way. Leave when he wanted. Stay gone as long as he wanted. No questions asked.
Her face slackened. She seemed sad, and then resigned. “Lynnie lived with this all those years. And then Wendell.” She whipped the sheet off and stood up. She didn’t say it but he knew what she meant. And now me.
He watched her get clothes from her closet and put them on. He remained naked on the bed while she did this, so she could be dressed first. He didn’t want to leave her naked. This too made things different.
When she’d tucked the t-shirt into her pants and pulled the brush through her hair, he stood up and got his own clothes.
She waited for him and when he slid his shoes on, she walked down the hall to the living room. He couldn’t think of a good reason to sit down, but he didn’t want to leave either. For a moment they both stood and it wasn’t as awkward as he’d expected.
She spoke first. “Bye, Scott.”
He watched her closely to see if she might be moving toward him. He’d been tr
ained to watch body movements, even subtle ones. He knew exactly what to look for. But her body was still. No muscle tense, no slight tilt in his direction.
He wanted a clue that she wanted to touch him. Without one he wouldn’t go to her to say goodbye.
He met her eyes and then walked out. Closed the door behind him easy, backed out the driveway in his truck and accelerated slowly. He drove to his house without once going over the speed limit. Walked to his back door like it was any other day and let himself in.
When he got inside and closed the door, the doorknob hit the wall so hard it left a round dent a quarter-inch deep. He drove back toward Jessie’s house two times, but turned around before he got there. The whole mess had gone to hell.
There are things I need to say before I go.
In my mind I was walking to the rowan tree with its berries and ravens, I had almost reached it, but then I remembered. I have to go back.
To Scott, holding my hand in this hospital room crowded with doctor and nurses, to the little girl, Wendell, who tried so hard to be born. She was connected by the umbilical cord, pumping, our blood mixing and swirling, and then she wasn’t.
My head is swirling with images. Ravens and crows, trees, mountains.
I see an armadillo and motorcycles.
Sisters. Scott and Jessie.
I see little girls.
The doctor lifted her from between my legs and handed her to Scott. She has red hair, a brilliant flame in the dimming room. She breathed on her own, and cried.
Your name is Wendell. I love you. Don’t get stuck. Look hard for what you need to know. Dig deep.
The doctors and nurses are talking, but not to me.
Look, Scott, what we made together. Look what we did.
He’s holding her, and there are more people wearing white coats. They’re circling and scurrying but they don’t see me. Scott doesn’t see me.
My name is Lynnie. You are my husband. You’re holding our daughter Wendell.
“We don’t have much time.”
My name is Lynnie. Listen, Scott. Pay attention. Look at me.
Those things I need to say.
The touch of his hand is slipping, the lights fading, the faces of the nurses and the doctor now distant even though they are still standing exactly where they have been all along.
He doesn’t know what to do. He won’t be there for her. He needs an anchor.
A lamp shines across the room to my left, and its tiny island of warm light is my anchor. A small comfort as I get ready to say goodbye.
Scott finally comes close when I pull on his hand. His eyes are wider than usual. His heart too, wider open than usual.
Take care of her. You have to protect our daughter.
My mind is so full: ravens and the white gown, guns and armadillos. Eyes. Scott’s eyes, what he sees. What he doesn’t see. What he has done.
He tries to speak and I know what it is he wants to confess. He can’t get it out. He isn’t ready to tell.
There are two, Scott. Two sisters. You have to take care of them. You have to keep them safe.
Is this what I was supposed to tell him? What if I got it all wrong?
The air goes out of me slowly. That’s what he needs to know. He can figure it out.
You can, Scott. I know it.
The beeping of the machines slows and the numbers on one monitor ratchet down, three digits and then two, blinking yellow, blinking like fireflies in a room that fades to black. Scott holds my hand and then I leave my body. I become the firefly, blinking, blinking.
I slip away quietly. Before they know it, I am gone.
Part 2
the bisti badlands
hoodoo: bad luck; one that brings bad luck; a column of eccentrically shaped rock, produced by differential weathering; bewitch, bring bad luck to.
Out behind her house there was a cave, nearly obscured by brush. She had sensed the space behind it, as though the empty cavity held more energy than the living things outside. The opening was small that enough she had to bend down to get through, but once inside she stood upright. It smelled like dirt and bat guano. Based on what she’d read about the area, it was probably a site where primitive people had lived, transient as they’d exhausted the supply of plants and animals and moved on.
The cave was cool and she sat down and counted slowly, a way to get still. It didn’t work. Her thoughts continued to careen wildly: Grayson’s attention in the beginning; things he had said to her, come over here girl. The anonymous notes which seemed to have stopped. The emptiness of her email inbox. Even Aunt Jessie was silent.
A stasis was happening. She had the image of many arrows stopping their motion mid-air, hovering as if for direction.
It was the state of mind she’d never been willing to experience for long. Out here in the Texas hill country, the drive from the house to town was just long enough to deter her taking it. Loneliness seemed at the moment like a separate presence, a companion she’d avoided but suddenly bumped into. She sat with it inside the cave. It was a good time to cry, and a good place, but she didn’t. Her eyes remained dry and after a few moments, a new thought arrived.
Dig deep.
Her tools were in the house, so she got them, along with several bottles of water, and returned to the cave to open a small test pit. According to the books in the library, the area was promising for artifacts, but the test pit revealed nothing. The cave was quiet though, and peaceful. Then an image flashed, almost like a map in her head. Outside the cave, a fire, people clustered nearby, working.
She laid out the boundaries for an open area excavation in the clearing. Looking for relics of what used to be. The wooden handles of the tools felt good in her hands, worn smooth from previous digs.
The meticulous process of preparing the earth and beginning to scale away the layers had always calmed her. While generally impatient and tending to recklessness, the work had always been different. It allowed one place to slow down. She sometimes thought of it as a religion, the act of digging more a prayer than anything else.
There could be surprises but she expected to find projectile points, scrapers, choppers, flakes, animal bones, and snail shells.
She funneled her energy, the agitation she’d felt earlier, into the precise movements of removing a layer of earth. Peeling the years away. If only it worked like that with life, She could peel back to the day of her birth and change a few things. Have her mother live and have her father happy. It was hard to imagine.
Artifacts in this area would be made from chipped stone, pottery, antler, bone, and shell. She hoped to uncover something from the Paleo-Indian period, 9200 BC. The distinctive Clovis fluted point commonly used in hunting mammoths. That would be an exciting find.
Which made her think again of Grayson. Something he’d written in an email when they first met. After she’d written him a dozen in one day and apologized for the deluge.
God, Wendell – I never get enough of you. Deluge me.
His words were like something she wanted to fold up and tuck into her pocket for later.
Near the end of the day she stopped and walked back to the house.
The soft shimmy of the refrigerator kept her company while she cleaned the kitchen, some sort of misplaced penance, restoring normalcy. Wiping the counter was a lull into not feeling like she was waiting for something.
The refrigerator hummed and jerked, enough, it seemed to say, so she stopped and sat with her laptop at the table. Checked email, but there was nothing new. She read the last messages from each of them, Aunt Jessie, her father, Tristan. Grayson. The mysterious writer of missives. Grayson’s was the hardest because it was likely the last one he’d write. He hadn’t known that when he wrote it. The words he’d written didn’t match what had happened since. If she were braver she’d delete it and forget, but she closed the email and moved it to a folder titled Lost.
She got a beer from the fridge and clicked over to Ebay, where she had no intention of shopping but
instead opened her favorite seller list and put the cursor on one name. Mtnman7. He was all about secrets but he had no idea that what he bought online in the middle of the night revealed something to anyone in the world who cared to look. His late night shopping sprees when he’d had too much to drink and couldn’t sleep.
She’d been tracking him that way for over a year.
Since she’d come to Texas he’d bought a hunting knife, an old compass, an antique photo album of pictures that looked oddly like Aunt Jessie, some kind of gun shell from an old war. The most recent purchase was a painting titled Two Sisters. It was dreamlike and haunting, two young women who resembled one another but one wore a sexy black dress and heels and the other one had on a shapeless thing that looked like a sack. The backdrop was a mountain vista. The sisters held hands but their eyes were empty, as if the camera had stolen their souls. The painting was unlike anything he’d bought before, and it made her think of the stories Aunt Jessie told of growing up with her mother. Once when Wendell was young she’d insisted for about a year that she too had a sister. She lived someplace else, Wendell had insisted, and made up things about her, made Aunt Jessie set an extra place at the table in case the sister came for a visit.
Her father came home during that time and when he picked her up commented that it was odd Aunt Jessie had set a place for him. “It’s for her sister,” she’d answered, and his face went funny.
“You know, daddy. She lives where you go when you leave, but someday you’ll find her and bring her home.”
He had been motionless, not like him. Aunt Jessie tried to explain. “It’s an invisible friend, Scott.” She motioned with her eyes.
“Don’t go along with that stuff, Jess.” His voice rose and she left the room.
He took the plate and put it in the sink. “Let’s go, Wendell.”
When she came back days later Aunt Jessie took her face in her hands. “It’s okay to have a pretend sister, Wendell.”
“I don’t anymore. She died.”
The Meaning of Isolated Objects Page 12
