Wildwood

by Drusilla Campbell

  “All right!”

  “You can have all you want,” she added before they rushed away. “If I hear anything about this matter, any gossip at all during the week, even a hint of it, I’ll know one of you is responsible. If that happens, I’m going to be very unhappy.” She cocked one eyebrow. “Do you understand me?”

  They said they did and thought they meant it, but Jeanne knew schoolboys. In the midst of Hilltop’s routine and order, they were starved for novelty. They intended to keep their word but the tasty morsel of gossip would be irresistible. By midweek the news of Adam’s disappearance and Teddy’s panic and rage would be the talk of the school. Eventually the story would reach a few parents who would have to be assured their children were adequately supervised at Hilltop School.

  “Just who the hell do you think you are, young man? You think you can run off any time you want?”

  For now the most important thing was controlling Teddy’s temper. “This school’s got rules, mister, and you’re going to follow them or you’re going to be out on your keester.”

  “Keep your voice down, Teddy.”

  He jabbed Adam’s chest with his index finger. “Learning to play games is part of learning to be a man. You want to be a sissy—”

  “Stop it, Teddy.”

  “—all your life, Weed? And hear this: if you ever leave school again without permission, I’ll set a cane across your backside. Your father signed a paper that said I could do it—”

  “He never!”

  “—and you better believe I’ll do it. Boys are not allowed to leave the school without—”

  “Didn’t leave the school.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Didn’t.” Adam made fists and pressed them against his thighs.

  There’s mud on his shoes. Like last time, he’s tracked mud across my floor. “Where were you, Adam?”

  He pointed out the window. “Like you said I could.”

  “What’s he mean?”

  “He likes the rose cloister. I gave him permission to go there.” Jeanne didn’t really believe Adam had been in the cloister but she wanted to protect him from Teddy.

  “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

  Jeanne counted silently before asking in a measured voice. “Did anyone check the cloister?”

  “Why would I think of that?”

  “I asked if you’d done a thorough check. It’s right out in front.”

  “You believe him?”

  “He has mud on his shoes.” She pointed at the caked Reeboks.

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Smellin’ ’em.”

  “Jeanne? . . .”

  “It has a wall. It feels safe and private. I went there when I was little.” She knew she was convincing herself and that was all right. More than the truth, she wanted Teddy to know he’d bungled the search and that in doing so he had put the school at risk. “Send him back to Edith. He’s missing his supper.”

  “He can’t get away with this.”

  “Go get your dinner, Adam.”

  Jeanne shut off her computer and stood. She walked to the window and looked out across the expanse of withered lawn to the cloister. Overhead crows cawed and wheeled, black against the darkening sky. In the rose garden, the blossoms were finished. Mr. Ashizawa had cut them back to the bone and there was nothing to smell but earth.

  “You overrode me, dammit.” Behind her, Teddy had begun to pace.

  “It was going nowhere.”

  “I don’t care, you can’t just reverse . . . Actions have consequences, Jeanne. Isn’t that what Hilltop teaches? Isn’t that what it says in the brochures? Didn’t your father? . . .”

  “Yes. Yes to everything.”

  “Well, then?”

  Anger suited Teddy. Emotion put color in his face and animated him out of his irritating insouciance. But his good looks had no more power over her than his anger. If she gave in to his bullying and apologized, if she did his bidding, soothed and coddled him, would he return the favor by becoming the partner she yearned for, the friend and lover she could depend on? No chance. A day of smiles and flattery and then back to the same old thing.

  In an album somewhere there was a picture taken of her on their honeymoon. She is on the beach, leaning back, her arms straight behind her and the wind blows hard enough to whip the hair across her cheek and she glows, she is incandescent with joy. Carmel beach and she and Teddy were newlyweds. She had been pregnant and waiting for the right moment to tell him. Actions do indeed have consequences, but it had taken her this long to see how the rule could apply to her own life.

  That night Hannah read in bed and waited for Dan to come home. It was after eleven when she heard his tires on the gravel and a moment later the sound of Cherokee dancing on the kitchen’s tiled floor. All evening Hannah and Liz had been like strangers in line for concert tickets, polite, forced by proximity to make the smallest of small talk. Hannah could not believe Liz didn’t see what a perfect resolution to her problem had been offered. Not that babies were problems, Hannah would never say that. She would say they were a gift from God. And especially this one. Dan might not accept Angel into his home—too risky, too much baggage—but how could he object to raising Liz’s baby?

  Dan was pulling off his tie as he came into the bedroom. “A boy. Eight pounds, nine ounces.”

  “I have to talk to you.”

  “And he was mighty reluctant. I’m bushed.” He stripped off his undershirt. “Let me get a shower. We’ll talk after.”

  “Then you’ll be too sleepy to listen.” She patted the bed. “Please.”

  He gave her a wary look, but he sat. “Five minutes. After five, I pass out.”

  “Liz told me something wonderful today.” Hannah sat beside him. She slipped her arm around his waist and made her voice steady. “She’s pregnant.”

  “I thought she might be.”

  “You knew? And you didn’t tell me? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “None of my business.”

  “She’s going to have an abortion if we don’t stop her.”

  “I’m pro-choice, Hannah.” He pulled away. “I thought you were too.”

  “This isn’t about that.”

  “Honey, I’d leave this up to Liz if I were you.” He started to get up.

  She grabbed his hand and held on tight. “Liz is our family. When we were kids she was like my sister.” He hadn’t interrupted yet. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he guessed what she was going to say and had already decided to agree. He was the sweetest man in the world, the most generous and flexible, and he had always given in to her requests when he knew they were important. Always. “I told her if she’d go ahead and have it, we’d raise it for her.” She held her breath until her chest hurt. Dan leaned over and unlaced his shoes. “Say something, Dan. What do you think?”

  He took off one shoe and threw it in the direction of the closet. He took off the other and threw it in the same direction only harder. He stood and unbuttoned his shirt. Hannah jumped up and put her arms around his waist from behind. She rested her cheek against his warm, bare back.

  “Weren’t those good times, Dan? When the kids were small? You liked having babies in the house, you know you did, you told me you did. And we were good at it. You said we made a good team. Remember?” Please, remember.

  He turned and grabbed the top of her arms. Her shoulders lifted. It was the way he held Eddie the time he crashed his bike riding double down Overlook grade, not wearing a helmet. Love and fear and rage.

  “I’m not saying it’ll be easy,” she said. “But think about Angel . . .”

  “Angel!” He pushed her back on the bed.

  “Don’t be angry, just listen, okay? A baby like Angel needs special parents who can understand . . .”

  “You’ve got one minute left.”

  “Dan, let’s take them both.”

  He looked at her and sat down, collapsed.

  She knelt before him. “Th
ese babies need me and I need them. I can’t explain it but I do, I need them. I promise they won’t be any bother to you. I swear they won’t. I’ll never ask you to do anything . . .”

  “Get up, Hannah.”

  She wouldn’t. She wrapped her arms around his legs and laid her cheek on his knees. His calves felt solid as timber. “Please, Dan. I don’t think I can live without this.”

  After a moment, he expelled a deep breath. She felt his hands touch her hair, smoothing and combing with his fingers the ripples left by her braid. She closed her eyes and began to relax.

  “Have I ever told you about my fantasy?” he said. “I’ve always wanted to learn to fly fish.”

  “You can do that. There’s no reason—”

  “I imagine you and me learning to fly fish and going up to Canada, flying into some remote river and wading into it up to our thighs. I see me cleaning the fish and cooking them while you read poetry aloud. And then I think about making love to you under a mosquito net a thousand miles from the nearest telephone or hospital.” He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “Kinda pathetic, huh? You’re dreaming about babies and I’m dreaming about you.”

  His words damaged her. She didn’t know how exactly, but they marked her. “You make it sound like I don’t want to be with you. You know I do.”

  “How would I know that, Hannah? Even when you’re here, your mind’s somewhere else.”

  “We can go camping anytime.” She stood up, mad because he’d suckered her in with his talk of fantasies, cheated because she had thought he was going to say yes. “The woods aren’t going anywhere and neither are the fish. God knows there’ll be mosquitoes until the end of time. But Liz’s baby comes with a time limit.”

  “It’s a fetus. Not a baby.”

  “She’ll kill it.”

  “Hannah, that’s her right.”

  “I know but this one’s different.”

  “Dammit, Hannah, listen to yourself. It’s too much. The way you feel about Angel and now about Liz’s pregnancy, it’s too much. It’s not normal.”

  She stood up. “You think it’s biological.” The hard tone of her voice surprised her as much as a stranger’s would at that time, in that room. “Menopause, empty nest.”

  He took a moment to answer. “If it were that simple, I wouldn’t be so worried.” He rubbed the back of his neck. Hannah saw exhaustion in the gesture, but she had no sympathy for him. “I wake up in the middle of the night and worry about you, Hannah.”

  “Poor you.”

  “There’s a psychologist in my building, I like her . . .”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Hannah, there’s no shame attached to seeing a therapist. She’s a nice woman, skillful.”

  “If I needed a shrink, I’d go to one.”

  “People do it all the time.”

  “Well, not this people. I’m not going to let some Gen-Xer with letters after her name tell me I’m sick because I care what happens to unwanted babies.”

  “Why does it frighten you so much? What do you think you might find out?”

  “I thought you were going to take a shower.”

  “If you won’t go for yourself, go for Eddie.”

  “Him?”

  “You’ve got to do something about your relationship. You’re breaking his heart.”

  She made a sound like a laugh and pulled back the bedcovers. “Help me fold the quilt.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject.” He took the heavy quilt from her hands and dropped it in a chair. “Eddie’s fifteen. I remember what it’s like to be a boy that age. It’s not great, Hannah. He looks in the mirror and he sees his skin’s lousy and none of his features fit together. He’s awkward and shy and embarrassed by his own thoughts. He’s caught between being a boy and a man and it hurts. He needs you to love him and admire him and make a fuss over him so he can get through this time without losing all the confidence we worked so hard to build when he was little. You reject him and you know what he thinks? He thinks if even his own mother doesn’t love him, then there’s got to be something really wrong with him.”

  “Of course I love him. He knows that. And I don’t reject him. What an idea.” In the bathroom she brushed her hair without looking in the mirror. “Besides, Eddie’s not the point. He’s a distraction. I want to talk about Angel and Liz’s baby . . .”

  “If you can’t be a mother to your own son, what makes you think—”

  “I’m a damned good mother and you know it.”

  “Not to Eddie you’re not. Not anymore. You neglect him, you reject him, you make him ashamed of growing up.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  She threw the hairbrush across the room, missing him by an arm’s length. It hit her bedside table, shattering a little crystal water jug and glass she kept there. With a cry she dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands.

  For a moment Dan watched her cry, then went to his closet and took out his shorts and athletic shoes and socks. “I’m going for a run.” He stood at the bedroom door. “I don’t want to hurt you, Hannah. I never want to hurt you. Only I’ve got to be honest, the way you are right now, I just can’t stand to be around you. There’s a limit to what I can take, Hannah. The way you are now, it’s breaking my heart.”

  Monday

  By the light Liz judged it was early, probably before six. Gerard would have eaten breakfast hours ago and depending on his schedule he might be in the Jeep heading up country or under the guest house laying out rat traps or holed up in their suite with a stack of professional reading. He might be down at the quay griping to Petula about tourists.

  This time next week I’ll be home too.

  It had been a mistake to come back to Rinconada. She had brought trouble with her.

  The night before she had tried not to listen but the bedrooms shared a wall. She had heard something break and an occasional angry word or sentence came through. There’s a limit to what I can take. She wanted to forget the way Dan said it. Anger by itself would have been bad enough, but Liz had heard as well despair and exhaustion, the voice of a man ready to give up. She thought what only a few days before had been unthinkable. The trouble between Hannah and Dan might be serious. The idea of them apart tore at her heart.

  Dan wanted Hannah to see a therapist.

  And maybe that’s what Liz should have done. Instead of coming back to Rinconada and lugging trouble with her, she could have stayed in Florida, had the abortion and then gone to a professional to talk about Bluegang.

  Jeanne might be right. Liz was such a narcissist she had to drag everyone in on her troubles.

  She rolled over onto her stomach and punched the pillow, closed her eyes and told herself go back to sleep. She turned again and stared up at the ceiling, and then at the window, at a cobweb in the corner like a cheesecloth swag with the light behind it.

  When she first went to Belize Gerard had taken her for a walk in the damp forest just as the sun rose. As light hit the treetops he tilted her chin up and she saw the canopy festooned with jeweled spider webs shimmering in the warm wet dawn. She had known then that she would stay in Belize. Divina read the cards and said she must stay, she and Gerard, they were simpatico. Liz did not need tarot to tell her this. They understood each other’s moods and weather and she knew a baby that demanded and deserved centrality would forever disrupt the atmosphere between them. Because Liz remembered what it had been like before Gerard, she knew that when things got rough and if they stayed rough too long, she would cut and run. If this meant she was a coward then so be it. Thank God after a long life’s struggle she wasn’t fighting who she was anymore. She could never explain this to Hannah and Jeanne. She could talk until she needed a respirator and they would cling to their memories of the girl she had been. Perhaps this might be in the nature of long friendships. Or maybe just theirs.

  Hannah lay still and alert, listening to Dan’s movements around the bedroom and bathroom. A weight the size and tem
perature of Antarctica lay across her chest as she recalled the night before. When she thought of talking to a therapist, she couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t logical and she didn’t understand it; but she couldn’t breathe and she absolutely couldn’t tell Dan because if he knew he’d say it proved his point. She heard him go downstairs and out the kitchen door without taking time for breakfast. The tires of the BMW snarled on the gravel.

  The night before she had pretended to be asleep when he returned from his run. She lay without moving, listening to him shower, feeling him move about on the bed beside her, getting comfortable. He was like an old dog going round in circles to find a comfortable spot. She’d never kick a dog but she’d like to kick Dan. She’d like to beat on him until he cried mercy, raised his arms—I surrender. You can have Liz’s baby and Angel too and what I said about Eddie—

  She hated him for saying that about Eddie.

  What was so terrible about being unhappy? She’d been in and out of moods all her life. Being unhappy wasn’t any reason to see a shrink. People who yukked it up all the time were the ones who needed their heads examined; it wasn’t normal considering the state of the world. But it was typically male to have so little insight, to assume that because Hannah grieved for Angel and Liz’s unwanted baby, because she craved something he did not and was willing to fight for it, she must have some kind of terminal illness of the psyche. Well, she wasn’t losing her mind and if Dan didn’t know that then he needed his head examined.

  By the time Hannah got up, the children had left for school and the house was empty except for Liz, still in bed, thank God.

  Once when Hannah was down with the flu, she lay in bed and watched a morning interview program about abortion. Three women faced the cameras with the moderator, an excited man in an expensive-looking suit, standing on the steps between halves of the audience. Throughout the show the audience—every one of them at least as rotund as Gail Bacci—hectored the guests and sometimes each other. One of the guests claimed to be a theologian but looked like an Ivy League coed. She said a fetus has no soul in the womb. No one asked her how she knew this, but never mind, she rattled on. She said the soul hovers near a pregnant woman until the instant of birth. She said it had to be that way otherwise there would be two souls in one body at the same time and for some reason that was impossible. After birth the soul entered the body of the newborn; connecting up and settling in took a day or two.