The Last Neanderthal

by Claire Cameron

  “I see.”

  “That’s why, Simon…I…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m thinking I should have the baby here.”

  “Where? In Ikea?”

  “In France.”

  Simon was silent. I saw a spot of bright blue on the horizon. The Ikea had been permitted to sprout only outside the stone ramparts of Avignon.

  “I want to be able to keep an eye on the project,” I said.

  A small muscle in his jaw twitched. “Rose?”

  “Simon?”

  “We live in London. I”—he pointed his finger to his chest—“live in London.”

  “I know.”

  “Fuck. You are such a handful.”

  “I’ll assume you are referring to my breasts.”

  Simon bit back whatever he was about to say as he guided the car into a parking spot in the enormous yet crowded lot. “Let’s just go in,” he said through clenched teeth. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  The store was turned in on itself with no view outside and no sense of its surroundings. Once we got inside, I realized that was exactly the point. I was free to close my eyes, sit on an overstuffed sofa with too many pillows, and inhale the scent of spray-on fabric protector. I could have been anywhere in the world. Simon seemed to relax as well. And I suppose Ikea was a more straightforward adventure for him than most of the ones I had suggested. Having grown up in what I would call the suburbs of Bournemouth, he was naturally forgiving of big-box stores and sprawl. And he quite liked the meatballs they served.

  He led the way along the yellow line through the displays of rooms that belonged to pretend people in my mind. I made up the life story of each imaginary occupant.

  “You see how she’s laid out the table for dinner and it’s only ten in the morning?” I said with a tsk. “She’s having trouble relaxing. Can’t live in the moment. And it puts him on edge when she sets it like that because all he wants to do is watch the game with a bowl of pasta in his lap.”

  “Do you think they’ll make it as a couple?” Simon straightened their napkins while looking at their credenza with concern.

  “Not a chance,” I said. We strolled toward the next display in the dining section. “They won’t last the year, poor things.”

  “This looks suspiciously organized, doesn’t it?” Simon gestured to a table in another room. The place settings used more utensils than needed. The plates were all odd angles and points.

  “Control issues.” I nodded.

  “Perfectionism is a flaw disguised as control.” Simon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He was quite worried for them.

  When we got to the bedroom displays, we saw one with a particularly puffy arrangement of pillows on the king-size bed. Simon sprawled out and pretended to snore. A little girl snuck up to see the spectacle. I’m not sure if he knew she was there, but when she got close, he suddenly rolled over and let out a growl of a yawn. All I saw were the soles of the girl’s sneakers as she screamed and sprinted off.

  Soon afterward, we settled in for meatballs, salad, and those strangely yummy wafer cookies that no one else in Europe makes the same way.

  “Do you ever wonder”—my eyes darted as I ate—“why you were put on this planet?”

  “I feared this would happen.” Simon gave me a weary smile. “You’re attracted to this kind of big-box store, but once inside, you have an existential crisis.”

  “Seriously, Simon. Why do we bother?”

  “Many great philosophers have asked the same question.”

  “All this disposable furniture. It’s flat-packed. It will cause fights between couples as they assemble it. And then it will end up in landfill. Why do we have to struggle this way?”

  “It’s pointless.”

  “I know why,” I said.

  Simon stopped, meatball speared on his fork, eyebrows up toward the glow of the fluorescent lights overhead. “You do?”

  We’d had this conversation many times before. I asked him the same question at least once a year, if not more. Simon’s answer was that he didn’t believe there was a point. He just got up each morning. Removing the need for a larger meaning made the small things more important. He loved tea in the morning, especially blistering-hot tea. For him, tea and an unread newspaper were point enough. I, however, had been driven by a constant search for the meaning of life since the day I was born, it seemed. I talked about it often. The first time I asked Simon if he thought there was a reason he had been put on the planet, he had taken the question completely seriously. He stopped, sat down in a chair, and considered the issue in silence. He thought until he came to a conclusion. It wasn’t his answer that got me. It was that Simon saw thinking as an activity that had to be done separately from other things. And once he’d thought it through, he came up with a firm answer.

  “No,” he had said.

  “Then there is no point to getting out of bed every day?” I asked.

  “I don’t think about it. I never have.”

  “Will you?”

  He looked at me and I realized that he already assumed we would be together for life. “I won’t have a choice, because you’ll keep asking.”

  I fell in love with him then.

  This new turn in our conversation—that after all our years together, I had an answer to why we were here, and one that had appeared at the same time as a plate of meatballs in Ikea—caught Simon off guard. He seemed to brace himself, realizing that he now had to contend with whatever the answer might be. He ate the meatball on his fork and stabbed another one. “You know why we were put on this planet?” He waved the meatball at me. “All this time, the answer was here?”

  “I don’t wonder anymore.”

  “I was going to say the same. That I suddenly do see a larger point to all this.” He smiled broadly.

  “I found her.” I grinned back.

  “The baby.”

  “The Neanderthal.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have this feeling, Simon. Once I’ve excavated her completely, she’s going to show that my theories are exactly right.”

  “Oh yeah?” Simon plopped the meatball into his mouth, looked away, and bit down hard. “I’m sure that’s true.”

  We found the perfect shelving system that could be customized for the cramped nook by the double doors in the flat. I worried that it might not fit in the car, but Simon waved his hand. It was all flat-pack, no problem. I didn’t think so, but I had nodded because I was getting tired. We spent a long time making sure that we had all the little shelves, drawers, and braces that would make it complete. You’d think it was a task that two PhDs could accomplish easily, but it was ridiculously complex. I had a stubby brown pencil to tick off the items as Simon loaded them onto the dolly. He had to run back in twice to get the last few parts. We had a small disagreement over the pronunciation of a Swedish name and another one on how the aisles were numbered. Why did they skip numbers, and what was the rationale for aisle 11 being in the back corner across from aisle 4? Then there were the screws. I was sure they were included and Simon was convinced we had to buy them separately. The answer turned out to be both.

  We were finally set but had to wait in the checkout line for the better part of an hour. Our cart with the bad wheel and I finally wobbled back to the rental car. Simon pushed all the shelves into the passenger-side footwell. He didn’t have much concern for where my feet might go, but they were so sore I would have been willing to leave them behind anyway. I took the small wire baskets to hold on my lap—or the small slice of my lap that was left. The back braces that supported the shelves slid into the gap between the front seats.

  “Are we all done nesting, then?” asked Simon. His back ached too.

  “I need a nap,” I said.

  The last thing to go in was the backboard of the shelving unit. I stood out of the way while Simon wrestled it in on top of everything else. He got the front in and pushed. The end stuck too far out of the rented hatchback, so he pushed again.
It wouldn’t go in any farther. I quickly saw it wasn’t going to fit and something inside me turned. I’d told him as much in the store. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back in and standing in the delivery line, which seemed to snake for miles and miles.

  “I warned you,” I snarled.

  “You said we should try.”

  “You never think ahead.”

  “You’re always running off to different countries.”

  “I can’t run. I’m the size of a large chair.”

  “I move to London and you take off for France,” he snapped. “How do I plan for that?”

  “You could start by renting a car that is big enough for me to fit inside.”

  “I’m trying to save money.”

  “Because you aren’t making any.”

  Simon stepped back from the car. His face hardened and he almost looked like he might run, but then he abruptly let out an anguished moan. A sound I’d never heard from him. He was suddenly large and fierce, his lips pulled back to show his teeth, eyes wide. Whatever despair and helplessness he felt came out as rage. The small girl whom he had accidentally frightened earlier was just walking to her car with her parents. She froze in fear, her mouth agape, and then gave a terrified yelp.

  I turned my back to Simon. My feet ached and I was exhausted. I was worried about my Neanderthal lying in the dirt. I wanted Simon to step up. I didn’t want him to be upset about the pieces not fitting. I wanted him to fix it. I wanted him to fix me because by this point I felt broken in ways I never had before. My body was no longer mine. I couldn’t will it to behave as I wanted it to. I slumped down with my bottom on the bumper and listened to Simon wail.

  Finally, he took a breath and came around to my side of the car.

  “Rose?” He spoke in an exaggerated calm.

  “Yes?”

  “Get in.”

  “Now we’ve got two things that will barely fit.”

  “We are driving to London.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now. I’ve had enough. This baby is coming. I will have the shelves delivered. We are going home.”

  “I’m not. I can’t.”

  “You care more about that Neanderthal than you do about me.”

  “I’ve worked my whole life for this.”

  “Well, me too.” He stomped off toward the store.

  Simon came back after an extended stay in the delivery line. I had wedged myself into the passenger seat to wait. He got in and put his head on the steering wheel. If the purpose of customer service is to beat a person down until he agrees to pay any amount asked, it had worked. He looked utterly defeated. “You want me to stay in the village?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I can’t miss this week of teaching. It will ruin any chance of picking up more courses in the future.”

  “I know.”

  “Where will I work here? I can’t even speak the language. You know all this?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “We need to feed this baby.” His voice was low and sad. “I can only do that by making money.”

  Since meeting Simon, I had been stronger, braver, and I had taken more professional risks than I ever had previously. He watched my back and that made it feel safe to take chances. His flexible mind made my thinking even more so. But I suppose having a baby with someone is the ultimate risk. And just then, I was terrified. Simon wasn’t watching my back. Or if he was, he didn’t know what to look out for. The baby was inside me. He had no idea how that felt.

  “We are the only primates who delegate the gathering of food,” I muttered, trying my best to explain.

  “Sorry?” He looked at me, exasperated.

  “That’s what Caitlin said to me the other day. All the other female primates can resume gathering food just hours after they give birth. Their babies can cling to their mothers and nurse while the females work to feed themselves. Humans can’t. We have to rely on others to forage. It leaves a woman very vulnerable.”

  “Sounds mildly threatening.”

  “Yes. Caitlin wants me gone—”

  “Are you sure?”

  “—and I need to stay.”

  “Rose,” he said in a low voice. “The baby is coming.”

  “In two weeks.” I tried to force a smile.

  When we got back to the village, I stepped out of the car. “I’m sorry, Rose,” Simon said, his voice breaking, “that you don’t feel I’m fit to forage. I’ll do better. I’ll get a post for September, I promise.” He drove off to find parking so that he could come back to the apartment to get his things. But to me, it felt like he was leaving for good.

  I stood watching the tiny car disappear. The unease pulsed from my chest and ran through me to every part of my body. I tried to decide whether I felt guilty, angry, or mad, but I was too physically uncomfortable to settle on one. There were no words that could counter the feeling that took hold of me. Even if Simon said he wanted to be with me, there were no guarantees. Life and jobs were unpredictable, as were loyalties. It didn’t matter if he tried to convince me otherwise. I was the one carrying the baby. For him, there was a choice. For me, there was none.

  18.

  Girl and Runt spent the short summer season gorging on fish and growing. With only the bears for company, Girl tried not to let Runt see how lonely she had become. For his part, Runt didn’t mind the lack of other families in the least. His belly was full. He felt no more alone than he had before. In fact, he thrived. He had no reason to worry about being kicked by a foot that belonged to one of the family; his place by Girl’s side felt firm, and watching the bears on the other side of the river provided endless entertainment. The air was warm. They slept with the flap of the hut open and he loved hearing the rush of the river as he drifted off.

  In the morning, the sun shone down on them. They stretched and yawned and wondered what might happen next. All the beasts along the river were thriving—Girl and the bears and Runt. The large amounts of food opened up possibilities. Good health sometimes allowed a beast to take a wider view than it had the day before. It also brought restlessness.

  Girl sniffed the air and realized that the big male bear was stirring up trouble. She watched him snapping at the fish in a careless way. He had eaten so much that he was only trying to show off by clipping their fins as they soared by the tip of his nose. He wrestled with a younger male bear in the shallows, but the youth was clearly no match. He chased other bears away from the falls, and even that was too easy. Girl pulled Runt back from the river. If there was trouble, it was better not to be in its way. She sent Runt off in search of hazelnuts. Best to keep him busy.

  So Girl was already alert and watching when the big male bear started in on the mother of the cubs. He lifted his nose in the female’s direction and gave her a meaningful sniff. She pretended to ignore the interest and started to round up her young ones. She stopped their wrestling, pried them apart with her muzzle, and nosed them in the direction of the brush. But the male bear wouldn’t be shaken off so easily. He sniffed even more pointedly in the mother’s direction.

  Girl knew he was checking to see if the mother was fertile. Her cubs had only been born that spring, her milk glands were still full, and although the cubs were feeding on fish, they still got most of their nutrition from her. When strong cubs were feeding that way, the mother wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. All the energy in her body would go toward making sure the cubs would live. When they were big enough, she would move on. She might have an interest in mating with the male bear then.

  It didn’t take more than a sniff for the big male to know the whole story. But he didn’t want to wait any longer. With a gnash of his teeth, he let out a great huff. He charged at the mother bear, butted her hard with his head, and shoved her to the ground. From that position, he tried to climb on top of her. She was as fierce as every mother has ever been. She raked her claws on his glossy coat and snapped her teeth at his neck. She managed to connect her sharpest incisor with h
is nose and bit down. He yelped and jumped back in surprise.

  There was a momentary truce, but no one thought it would hold. While the mother bear made a panicked dash for her babies, Girl had a similar instinct.

  “Aroo!” She gave a sharp call to Runt to tell him to get in a tree. If the bears were fighting, the family moved away. It was part of the agreement that kept the long-standing peace between the two groups. Both had a security in their strength to the extent that they could allow the others to dominate for a time. If the family had a fight, the bears would slink back into the brush. Now, it was up to the family to clear out.

  The family did this by taking to the trees. Being up high in the branches wouldn’t necessarily keep them out of danger. It was more about making a show of conceding the ground to the bears.

  Girl quickly jumped up to the first branch of the looking tree nearest her. She climbed, feet and hands on limbs, and there was an excitement in her climbing. Even with her belly in the way, she bounced up from branch to branch.

  The summer had held much drama for the fish. They had risked everything they had to get up the river; their hearts, scales, and lives had been thrown on the rocks. But Girl’s time at the meeting place had been sadly still. While she was glad not to be challenged—or, worse, killed—for the family’s land, the quiet came at a great cost. There was no posturing, strutting, or flexing of muscles. There wasn’t a great display of urges or the satisfaction of a public copulation that had been a few days in the making. There were no dances or moans or fights. Her heart had not throbbed longingly once.

  So although the unfolding drama did not belong to the families, it was better than the calm comfort that had settled in at the meeting place. She reached a high branch that had a good sight line. Tucking her bum onto a crook, she snapped off a few leafy branches for a better view. She could see the male bear was charging at the female. He was doing this with a clear purpose: to separate the mother from her cubs. If successful, he would kill them.

  Girl knew this without needing to be told. She had many things in common with the bears. She knew their ways much as she knew the ways of her own family. The bears felt hunger, as she did, and thirst. They ate and pooped like she did. And they wanted to mate, just as she did. They shared the basic drives of life, and without those drives, both the bears and the family would cease to be.