For two months she told her mother she was going to a movie on Thursday nights, and instead went to his apartment, where he liked to hit her ass, to splay her. Each week, he added something new to the repertoire (pinching, biting, covering her mouth but not her eyes): something that made her a little more embarrassed, a little more shy each time. And this turned him on. He seemed to be falling in love with her.
They never talked about it.
She wanted to tell him she loved him too, but the timing was never right, and then one Thursday night he wasn’t in class. And then the next week he wasn’t either and someone said he dropped out of school and moved to Eugene with his girlfriend and her little girl.
That Friday night after work she decided instead of going home that she’d go to his house and see if it was true. She couldn’t believe he would just take off, that he would leave her after all they’d been through.
The closest bus stop was about four blocks from his apartment. It wasn’t a well-lit neighborhood, and she was nervous being there alone. But still, she made her way to the apartment building and knocked on the door. The lights weren’t on, but she swore she could hear somebody moving inside. She knocked again and again. When she stopped knocking, whoever was in there stopped moving. And so she leaned her forehead against the door and kept knocking until she felt the skin of her knuckles starting to crack. Until blood was running down the white door. Until a neighbor started screaming out their window, “Nobody lives there, psycho! Go the fuck home.”
She didn’t get home until after midnight, and her mother’s car wasn’t in the driveway. She was starting to feel that hot dizzy feeling she got sometimes, when her mother’s headlights swept across the pavement. Her mother’s speech was thick, like she was talking with a mouth full of cotton balls, and everything was blurry. But her mother didn’t ask her a single question. She just sprayed some Bactine on her cuts and filled a Ziploc bag with ice. Later, when her mom passed out on the couch, Dale tried to touch herself in her own bed. Face down, pajamas yanked down over her naked ass.With her other hand, she tried to hit herself, tried to pretend her hands were his. The tears made her pillow so wet, that when she gave up and rolled over, she had to flip her pillow over in order to sleep.
She glances at the digital clock on the nightstand next to the bed in her motel room. She knows she doesn’t have any choice but to call and let her mother know what she’s done. But her stomach is roiling, furious. The last thing she ate was a double cheeseburger at ten o’clock this morning. She feels jittery and weak. And, though she knows better, she closes the door and starts to walk toward the IHOP she saw down the street.
Later, full and strangely content, she walks back to her room, but it’s still so damn hot. There are fifteen messages on the cell phone, which she left on the nightstand.
“Mama?” she says.
The voice that answers is as thick as this heat. “Dale, where the hell are you?”
It’s as though the heat is not in the air at all, but that it’s inside her. Inescapable. Cradling the phone between her chin and shoulder, she runs cool water in the bathtub and turns the air conditioner to high. Then she tells her mother the only thing that can make this all right. “I’m looking for Daddy,” she says.
She stays on the phone until she knows her mother has passed out, and then sinks into the bathtub.
Sam has no idea what to expect from the book club meeting that Effie has arranged. She has told him very little about what to expect: ten members, only two of them men. They have spent the last two weeks reading Small Sorrows, his third novel. He’s not sure why they didn’t pick something more recent. He supposes it’s because it was his best-selling novel after The Hour of Lead. Its success was thrilling but undeserved, he thought. It’s a good book, but not the best. He remembers how confident he felt when he sat down to write it though. After the film and the success of his first and second books, he’d felt suddenly unstoppable. Of course, he wouldn’t have admitted to anyone, not even to Mena, but the success of his second novel had helped to eradicate his fears that The Hour of Lead had been a fluke. By the time he set out to write Small Sorrows, he wasn’t smug exactly, but confident. In his voice. In his ability to tell a cohesive narrative, to captivate his audience. To find the perfect words.
When he thinks about that novel, there’s a little part of him that is ashamed. It was cheap in a way, dashed off in less than six months. He’d barely edited it. The idea of reading aloud from it (Effie had asked if he’d be willing to read the prologue to the group) made him feel embarrassed. The heart of the book is true, but it’s a mess. Sloppy.
He stands looking at himself in the mirror in the bathroom. The paint behind the mirror is chipped, and so there are entire pieces of his reflection that are missing: left earlobe, right shoulder. A spot below his left eye. He’s fragmented.
God, he looks old, he thinks. Five years ago, when they were last here, he remembers looking in the same mirror and thinking he hadn’t changed so much from the first time they’d come to Gormlaith. He was unworried then about the slow toll that his age seemed to be taking. But he was thirty-nine then. Something happened to him when he hit forty.
Thankfully, he inherited his father’s full head of hair, though the color is definitely much more salt than pepper now, silvery at the temples.And his face looks so damned tired, just exhausted. He pokes at the plum-colored shadow beneath his one intact eye. His face is also thinner than it used to be. He grabs the copy of Small Sorrows he dug up for the event and studies the picture on the jacket. “Arrogant bastard,” he hisses at the photo of his younger self. This was the guy, the twenty-eight-year-old guy who used to pull Mena by the hand into the bathroom while the twins were napping and remove her clothes without saying a single word. This was the guy who would drop to his knees and make love to his wife with his tongue, and then with his entire body as they showered together. This was the guy who slept with his wife (who slept with his wife!) at least three times a week, even with one-year-old twins.“Cocky sonuvabitch,” he says, and slams his old face on the bathroom counter.
He runs his fingers through his hair and buttons his clean white shirt. He brushes his teeth and remembers how his old self would let the taste of Mena linger on his tongue all day: as he sat on the cliffs overlooking the beach, as he shopped for diapers at Rite Aid, as he wrote. He kept the salty tang of her there all day as a reminder of his hunger, their hunger.
He has no idea what to expect from the group, but he knows exactly what they expect from him. And so he puts on his author face, the confident, yet friendly, approachable, author face. He flips open the book and practices reading the first few lines: Here are my hands. Look at them closely, and remember the knots. The rough skin and certainty of knuckle and fist. Not so different from yours. Not weathered any more or less than your hands. Look at them. It begins and ends here.
Sam has not asked Mena if she’d like to go to the book club meeting tonight, and so she assumes that he doesn’t want her there. During the book tour for his second novel, Benders, he brought her with him. His publishing company sent him on a fifteen-city tour, all across the country.What she remembers about those months were the red-eye flights, her head resting on Sam’s shoulder, the small dim hotel rooms and their cold sheets, the taxi rides and the awkward new celebrity of Sam’s. Everywhere they went there was someone who adored him. He always looked vaguely startled by their fawning, and then uncomfortable, apologetic. She remembers how his modesty made her feel even more proud of him. She always sat near the back during his readings, not wanting to distract him. But somehow, whenever he read, he always located her and focused on her each time his eyes left the page. This was one of the many things that convinced her that every word he wrote was meant for her.
When he was writing, he would read her each chapter he wrote as he finished it. He wouldn’t proceed unless she was there to hear what he’d written. Sometimes, she fell asleep at night to his soft reading; he was testing the wor
ds, tasting the words, trying them out on her. He started Small Sorrows when she was pregnant with the twins. He whispered each word against the stretched skin of her belly. His fourth and fifth novels were also like little secrets they shared. As the kids ran and played outside, they sat at the kitchen table over coffee or warm bowls of bread pudding or wine and she listened to his stories unfold. It hurts her that he hasn’t read anything to her for more than a year. It hurts her that he doesn’t want her there, at the library tonight.
“What time do you have rehearsal tonight? Should I drop you off?” Sam asks as he emerges from the bathroom. He’s been in there for a while now; she could hear the medicine cabinet closing and opening. The water running.
“It’s Monday. The theater’s dark, no rehearsals,” she says. “What time is the meeting?”
He glances at his watch, has to turn it to see the watch face. It’s loose on his wrist.
“Seven?”
“Great!” She smiles. “Are you nervous?”
He shakes his head, looks at the book in his hand.
She remembers when he received the artwork for Small Sorrows. She remembers how well the black-and-white photo of the child floating on her back in a still lake captured the mood of the book. It still brings a lump to her throat when she sees it.
“Who’s that handsome guy?” She smiles, gesturing to the photo on the back.
He looks at her then, really looks at her, and she worries she’s said something wrong. But his face is warm, his eyes soft. He looks at the picture again and laughs. “Remember?” he asks.
She nods, shakes her head and laughs.
She thinks of a thousand things then: a meal at home in San Diego with Monty to celebrate the National Book Award nomination for The Art of Hunting (lobster raviolis and a bottle of Chianti), Finn riding his skateboard down the driveway that night, swerving back and forth like a dancer, the tinkling of the wind chimes on the back deck, the smell of hibiscus. She thinks about Franny twirling on the deck in that orange bathing suit, while the grown-ups drank and laughed and toasted Sam’s brilliant career. She remembers creamy sauce spilled on the tablecloth, the broken street lamp, the way Finn would be there one instant and gone the next when he rode into one of the black holes created by the absence of light. She remembers Franny falling asleep on the rusty old chaise, and she remembers the sound of dishes and glasses being cleared, the crashing of waves, and Sam’s hands. God, later, Sam’s hands on her face. How she’d said, You’ll never forget me? When you’re accepting your Nobel Prize? Sam’s hands on her face, on her waist, on her breast, on her thighs as he said, No, I have you memorized.
She waves as he gets in the car to go into town for the book club meeting. She stands at the door and watches as that beast of a car backs out of the drive, as the headlights disappear into the black abyss of this starless night.
After his dad takes off for his reading, and his mom is busy in the kitchen kneading dough for the psomi, Finn sneaks out of his room and into the night. He knows the way to the garden by feel now, like a sleepwalker navigating his midnight kitchen in search of a snack. The air is cool and wet; he pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and crams his hands in the pockets. He feels the Baggie of weed inside, measures, calculating with his fingertips exactly how long it will be before it runs out. Muppet’s connection got busted. He’s got nothing. Finn figures his stash will maybe last another week or so. If he’s careful. His sneakers are wet by the time he gets to the garden, the grass already slick with dew.
He finds the stump that he’s come to think of as his own personal smoking throne, and notices about a half dozen new toadstools growing on the bark. He plucks one off, and a familiar pain stabs at his chest. Shit. He’s been here before. He and Franny, a long time ago. How could he have forgotten this?
A summer years ago. Back when they were maybe seven or eight years old. Eight. It was the summer after second grade. He remembers, because it was the same summer he lost both of his front teeth. Every time he opened his mouth to talk, he whistled. It was also the first summer they were allowed to play outside by themselves. They discovered the junk pile in the woods first. They spent hours, days, playing among the wreckage. They had so much freedom then. He should have enjoyed it while it lasted.
One afternoon, it had been raining and they were stuck inside the cabin all day. When the sun finally came out, they’d practically bolted out the door. “Be back by dinner!” their mother had yelled after them.
They made their way through the woods to their normal spot, the place where all the junk was, and then Franny said she was bored and wanted to go exploring. Finn had shrugged his shoulders and followed her. That’s the way it worked with Franny; you just followed her lead. Everybody did.
They’d found the tree almost immediately. And back then it was alive, the craziest tree he’d ever seen. It was the perfect climbing tree, with a dozen limbs twisting and turning upward, a canopy of thick green leaves.The trunk itself was massive and gnarled, riddled with all sorts of holes, like little caves. Finn shimmied up to the top and looked down at Franny through the canopy of green.
“It’s a fairy’s castle,” Franny said, nodding. “Look.”
Curious, Finn climbed back down, scratching his arms and legs as he descended. Franny knelt down on the damp ground, pointing to a place at the base of the tree and, sure enough, there was an arched entrance. A doorway. Finn could almost imagine the gossamer wings shimmering in the moonlight, hear the tick-ticking of their flight.
“Let’s leave a note,” she said.
“Okay.” Finn shrugged.
Franny found a piece of birch bark nearby and pulled a Magic Marker from the backpack she always carried with her. It had her spy notebook, her art supplies, and snacks.When she was finished, she rolled the bark into a tiny scroll and tied it with a piece of yarn she retrieved from a pocket in the backpack.
“What does it say?” Finn had asked.
“I can’t tell you,” she said, standing up. The knees of her jeans were soaked through.
“Why won’t you let me read it?” he had asked then, angry that she was keeping it a secret.
“It’s written in a language only fairies understand,” she had said matter-of-factly.And with that, she had bent down and stuffed the scroll into the small crevice in the tree. Finn thought about it, wondered what the words were, imagined tiny hands unrolling the scroll. Imagined the words being spoken by tiny clicking tongues.
“Let me see it,” he said.
“No, you have to wait. It won’t look like anything to you, because you don’t know fairy language.”
Finn felt the same way he felt whenever Franny made up the rules. Franny was always the one who knew the secret languages, always the one who cast the spells. He suddenly wanted to see what she’d written on the scroll more than anything in the entire world.
“That’s stupid,” Finn said. “You only know how to write in English.”
She stood with her hands on her hips and shook her head.
Anger welled up inside him like a storm. “Fairies aren’t even real,” he spat, and knew the second the words came out of his mouth that he’d made a mistake.
Franny’s eyes welled up, and she shook her head. “I’m going home. Don’t follow me. And if you touch it, you’ll mess everything up. They won’t come. They might even leave the tree. They can’t live in a place where people don’t believe in them. It makes them sick. It makes them die,” she said.
Finn remembered Tinker Bell then; he remembered the way they had sat on the floor of the living room in their sleeping bags watching Peter Pan, the way Franny had wept as Tinker Bell’s light flickered, clapped her hands furiously to keep her alive. He felt awful, like somebody punched him in the stomach. He was always messing things up. Even then.
And sure enough, the next day, the scroll was still there. The fairies had not retrieved it.
“I didn’t read it,” he had said. “I swear.”
�
�It doesn’t matter,” she had said, kneeling down next to the knotted stump. “They’re gone now.”
He’d seen the sorrow in her shoulders, heavy in her the way she hung her head.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said. And he was. “I didn’t mean to.”
He sits down on the stump now, looks up at the sky, and starts to roll a joint. He wonders what happened to the tree, and he thinks about all the times he let Franny down. That wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wasn’t the last. He licks the sweet edge of the paper and then lights the joint.When it’s gone, and he feels that warm quiet of his high descend, he pulls another piece of rolling paper from the pack. It is as thin as a whisper. He’s got a pencil in his pocket, and he scratches the words, in the only language he knows, onto the tiny fragile square. I’m sorry. And then he rolls it into a tight little scroll and stuffs it into the fairy’s doorway.
Sam enters the library and is struck, once again, by how very little has changed since he was a kid. His father would bring him to the Athenaeum on the weekends from the time he was a little boy until he was in high school. They’d have breakfast first at the Miss Quimby Diner (red flannel hash, fried eggs and homemade toast for both) and his father would bring his leftover coffee with him to the library. In the main room, his father would spread out the newspapers on the long wooden tables in the room with the fireplaces while Sam wandered the stacks of books. He dreamed about those labyrinthine stacks still, the knotty pine shelves and musty scent of the old encyclopedias. He never cared for the children’s room with its noise and colors and papier-mâché sculptures. Instead he preferred the quiet alcoves and dark corners of the upstairs. The card catalogues and books with thick creamy paper, the smell of ink settled into the pages. Later, when he came home from college, he and his father continued this tradition. He remembered the smell of the fire in the fireplace, the stain of newsprint on his father’s hands.
The Hungry Season Page 13
