How to Be Human

by Paula Cocozza

  Flora began to fidget. “There, there, it’s all right, darling,” Mary said aloud. She meant to soothe the baby’s whimper but immediately felt the cold draught as Mark left her side. “Wait!” she called. “Mark! Stop! She’s not scared; she was just stretching!” Oh Christ, what had she done? In quick straight strides Mark crossed the line of shade—over the blanket, people leaning out of his way, the reproving clatter of a bottle toppling on a plate—and stalked to the end of the garden.

  Mark looked at the fox, and the fox lifted his snout.

  Him again?

  This snail smell spreading where it should not be. Causing him to spray extra. He stooped to refresh his scent on the roof, everything in the wrong place, the world. Scrambled. Scents fighting on the wind. The whole run covered with humans. Big job to sort out. He was looking at the new swaying human den behind the male. They had put that on the grass where he liked to root for worms. The worms were his. So the grass on top of the worms was his. So the den on top of the grass was his.

  A nerve in the male’s eyelid twitched and flickered the way the mastiff pulsed before she jumped on her chain.

  Mary began to panic, and maybe Flora sensed her agitation, because she pulled away, sucking at the apple-green cotton, soaking it in dribble. Even in this heat, perhaps because of this heat, Mary’s skin felt ominously cold. She began to walk the forty feet toward Mark, tightening her hold to stem the baby’s wriggling. If it was a question of making the peace, she could do it. She knew how to calm Mark. And she knew her fox meant no harm. How she wished he had waited for her at home instead of coming to meet her here. But even as she thought it, the scene in the corner of the garden struck her as the logical conclusion of the past few weeks, as if all those crossed paths, indistinct sightings, shadows overlaid on shadows, pledges, and misgivings, had led the three of them to this moment. One seemed poised for attack, the other alert in every golden fiber to defend her.

  He was her friend. He alone knew that she was not so strange.

  She caught that last thought for inspection, then let it go: it did not seem strange to think that of him. More than anyone else, he understood her, saw her best self, and found no fault.

  Mary was still trying to square the bizarreness and the truth of this when Mark reached back. His forearm swiveled on the elbow joint. His upper body cantilevered backward, and Flora joggled up and down in Mary’s arms, plates and glasses swerved, and the black fence bounced as Mary broke into a run, her cry dividing with each step. “No!”

  With one brutish lurch, Mark threw the bottle.

  Mary did not see it land. She did not know where it hit and broke. She saw the movements not as a sequence of events, but as a single overlap of images: one’s funny little hop as the force of the throw threw him off balance, juddering into the gazebo; the other’s bewildered jump. She heard a thick clunk of glass, then its disintegration into several discrete new noises. The scrape of claws on the roof. The lime rustling violently as the pigeon took flight. The warped wobble of the asphalt. A hiss and fizz of booze. There was a long hush, an eerie time delay, while all those fragments were in flight, in which Mary pictured the trajectory of Mark’s previous missile. His mug whistling past her ear and smashing against the bedroom wall. Coffee streaming down the white paint, brown tracks dividing and multiplying. She had stopped running, and now in her ears there was only the muffled rustle of broken shards nestling into leafy overgrowth.

  Stiffly, without turning, the fox’s forepaws took the place of his hind paws. He performed the maneuver with immense dignity. His reversal was not a retreat—more like the courteous accommodation of his thuggish guests. After they left, he would return.

  The asphalt buckled again beneath his pads. Really must fix that roof.

  Mary flashed her pale palm to say she would be home soon.

  “Sorry about that. It was pretty much empty anyway.” Mark shrugged to all the gawping faces.

  He was walking toward her, and Mary knew from his look, she just knew, that he had heard her shout and, unlike everyone else here, had understood that her panicked cry of “No” was aimed not at the so-called intruder on her shed but at him.

  Behind Mark, with a flip, fold, thud, the gazebo collapsed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was the idiot in the fedora who started it, who observed Mark’s violence, and in its quiet aftermath began to stir beneath his rim. A few humans turned to watch him climb onto the picnic bench, where, encouraged by the attention, he clamped both fists to his mouth and made a bugle sound. “Tallyho!” he shouted, jumping lightly from the bench to the tabletop, his trousers rolled for action. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first ever Hackney Hunt!” Mary looked around, expecting a responsible adult to intervene, but Michelle was sobbing on the grass next to the gazebo while Eric tugged lamely at corners of canvas, a cloth thrown over a catastrophe.

  The guy in the hat cupped his hands to his mouth again. “Kill the fox!” he yelled. “Kill—the—fox! Kill—the—fox!” His shouts roused his friends, who began to beat their hands on the table while the slats flexed beneath the fedora’s stamping feet. Louder and louder, faster and faster—an incitement to something, the next thing, whatever the next thing might be. “Hey, Dave, that’s the wrong kind of hat!” someone shouted, and he touched his brim self-consciously. So this was Michelle’s brother, Mary thought. The friend who had chased him earlier, the acrobat who had nearly floored her, ran to Eric and Michelle’s side return and came back with the lid of the old kettle barbecue. He handed it up to Dave, who pounded it with his bottle. For the first time in an afternoon of impeccable behavior, Flora let out a piercing cry.

  The picnic-bench crew whooped a welcome to their new recruit, and at the end of the garden, Michelle started to run. Certain that she had heard Flora and was coming to take her, Mary tensed her muscles to prepare for the loss. But Michelle sped past without a glance, and the dark house gulped her down.

  “Who wants to be whipper-in?” the fedora yelled. The woman in the floral skirt stood up, jangling all the bangles she’d picked up while traveling.

  “For God’s sake, calm down!” Mary heard herself shout, but now a second guy climbed onto the table, the halves of his waistcoat flapping like saloon doors. A pack of crows flew up from the direction of the street. Was her fox safely out the front while the humans were all back here?

  “You need dogs for a hunt!” the redhead shrieked, darting into the house. With one hand on his hat, the fedora sprang off the table. He half staggered, half danced to the corner of the garden where Eric was lamely huffing over poles and tarpaulin; rebuilding the gazebo evidently trumped both the job of reinstating order and of going after Michelle. Mark sauntered to Mary’s side, just as the fedora jumped and snapped off an overhanging branch of her lime. She opened her mouth, but Mark got there first.

  “What the fuck is he doing to our tree?”

  “My tree!” Mary said. “And it was my garden the fox was in! It’s no one’s goddamn business if he’s on my side of the fence.”

  “That fox has ruined the barbecue,” Mark said.

  “You have ruined the barbecue!” She glowered at Mark, his fingers jerking at his sides in quiet, involuntary spasms, as if his brawling adrenaline, having found no other exit, was running itself down in those dead ends. “Couldn’t you just control yourself?”

  He blinked at her in surprise. “God, there’s no reaching you, is there? It was ripping chunks off your shed roof!” His eyes were examining her, bitterly blue. “Do you know what I heard when I threw the bottle? Your voice. Telling me no. I only did it for you. I was trying to help. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “Hey! Mind those burgers!” Eric shouted, slinging gazebo poles to the grass and running to the barbecue, where the fedora was poking branches into the coals. “All right, Dave! Leave that, will you? Let’s calm down, shall we? Think of your sister!” But Dave shook him off, whooping as the branch took light. He passed it to his friend and shov
ed in another. Down the garden they danced, lithely dodging Eric, waving their smoking sticks, while the guy in the waistcoat looked about for a better plan. The redhead emerged from the dining room with the ceramic bulldog lamp tucked under her arm. “I’ve found a dog!” she said. She had wound the electric cable around her hand like a lead, but Eric apprehended her and took the lamp with a firm, “Thank you, Sky.”

  On the blanket, Farooq helped Rachel to her feet.

  “Don’t go!” Eric said. “Michelle’s made a trifle. Guys! Cool it! Bring that stuff back here!” he shouted as other guests began to gather their things. “There’s children around!”

  “We can’t just stand here!” Mary said to Mark. “What will they do if they find him?” If she had one of those baby slings, she could march into the woods and confront them, but she was unsure her fox would approve of carrying young into that sort of danger. She studied Mark, wondering if there was any way he might be deployed. A faint sheen of sweat shimmered on the near side of his neck. Suspect seepage that betrayed a fault in the coils of his inner air-con. He looked at her and said, “So what I’m wondering is, what’s it to you if they find it?”

  “You can’t hunt an animal like that,” she said. “It’s barbaric.”

  “So? You hate animals. You were always asking me to get rid of foxes.” He checked over his shoulder for Eric. “And cats.”

  “That was different!” she said, reddening. She had forgotten entirely that there had been foxes in the garden before her fox. They had borne so little resemblance to him. How instructive, she thought, that now when she tried to picture them, she could call up only their generic mid-distance stare. The simple fact was, she had never got close to them, never wanted to. Why was that? “Maybe because I never had pets when I was a child,” she said to Mark, “I grew up fearing them. So animals always looked wrong in the garden. Like they didn’t belong.” She thought about those last words. “Actually, the problem was, they looked like they thought they did belong.”

  “You want a pet, get a pet,” Mark said, watching the guy in the waistcoat slip through the gate to the woods. He gave a deep sigh of exasperation. “They’re not thinking it through. Do you know what my granddad always said was the hardest part of killing a fox on the farm?”

  Mary didn’t know and she didn’t want to know. She curled her fingers around the baby’s calf, a human stress ball, the perfect size for an adult hand, but Mark was already telling her. The hardest part of killing a fox was finding it. Mary squeezed so tightly she could picture her fingerprints on Flora’s bone. “Look,” she said at last. “That fox is doing no harm.” She tried to think what the average, reasonable person might say. “It’s nice in a city to encourage wildlife.”

  The trees started to chatter. The branches shook the leaves hard, the first Mary had heard of them in all these weeks of still heat wave. There was the tear of splitting wood, a shriek, a crash, a cheer. A magpie’s rattle cut across the racket, and Mary traced the sound to her chimney, a sort of sentry post, where the bird’s long tail stuck out straight against the sky like the barrel of a gun. From side to side it turned, discharging clattering rounds. “I need your help,” she said, looking up at the bird, and he flew off into the woods, strafing the idiots below.

  Mark shook his head. “Fuckin’ Neanderthal hipsters.” He looked back at Mary. “What sort of help?”

  She made to go—his life was in danger, they had a pact, she needed to get to the woods—but Mark pulled her back. “Think of the baby,” he said. His hand stayed put, and at his touch her arm began to tingle. Mary willed her blood to leave it, so all Mark would be holding was the dead arm and none of her feelings, but instead, just thinking about it made the whole of herself hasten to the muscle that his hand clasped, her head, her thoughts, squeezed inside his grip. She met his cool eyes and saw their silent addition. “And think of your sanity.” It was the moment when she knew she had him. The way he held her arm. She had him right there, if she could handle him. He was going to rescue her, from marauding foxes, from herself, from anything she needed rescuing from—if she let him. Well, she didn’t need rescuing, but maybe he could rescue her fox. Mark would never agree to that. But he would want to save them, Mark and Mary, his idea of them, and he would protect the green lushness of the backlands, his leafy memory of their shared life. She had only to blow on the idea to make it rustle.

  “Our woods!” she cried. “We must save our woods!”

  Shrieks rang out from the other side of the garden wall. Judging by the manic clacking of hazel canes, she supposed the hunters had found his hole and were trying to shake him out.

  “I’ll go,” Mark said.

  * * *

  HE WAS NOT in his den. He was creeping through the brambles with his back dipped long and low, weighing up risk with a vrim of whisker. Quick paws, felt feet; this way. Fern, fern, mud, mud. The path halved beneath his pads. Humans escaped pens. Rushing out. Like cubs seeing their first sky. The air a hive of new smells. Well, let them. Just up here was his den / other den. Two hazels bent together. Best resting place for quiet. He stopped. Even this den busy with human howls. He would go to his other / other den. Down the track to the park. Through the nettles. Nearly at the end of—

  She had lost him. She was urging him forward, but then she lost all sense of him. That was her worst fear. She desperately hoped he would escape, but only so he could return to her. What she dreaded was not so much his dying, his death in itself, but a world in which she would never see him again.

  “This is meant to be a party, for God’s sake! Come here, Georgie!” Eric said, scooping up his son. “Michelle’s gone to a lot of trouble.” A guy in a patterned shirt hugged Eric and thanked him for a great day; he and Maeve had to make a move.

  Eric looked relieved to spot Mary.

  “Sorry about this,” he said. “Dave is a selfish git. He knows Michelle’s in a bad way. Or he would if he could bring himself to look past the brim of that fucking hat. He’s ruined her party, and for what? That fox or one of its gang will be back tomorrow.”

  “Do you think so?” Mary tried not to sound hopeful.

  “I know so. They’re on to a good thing here. Footballs, pot plants, even Flora’s beloved raggy they’ve taken.” He stood George back on the grass and tousled his hair.

  “Actually, Eric, I think it’s time I handed you Flora,” Mary said. “I should really head home.”

  Eric’s face fell. “Don’t go. Please? Just five more minutes so I can find Michelle.”

  * * *

  THE BABY WAS beached on Mary’s breast, with her mouth squashed open like a dry spout. She was exhausted and hungry, and Mary was pretty sure her nappy needed changing. There was still no sign of Eric. She entered the kitchen and glanced down the hall in time to catch Farooq and Rachel slipping out, the world closing to a thin slice of light between the front door and the jamb. Lucky them to have escaped—the house, and the whole afternoon, behind them. A couple of bottles had rolled onto the floor, and she kicked them gently to the skirting. The kitchen glistened with a sickly fermented smell, sweet and dejected, of a spillage dried sticky. Mary had the sensation she was breathing in another person’s outward breath in the last conversation of a long night. Between her temples a hangover had begun to move in. Where were Eric and Michelle?

  In the hall, Mary whispered Eric’s name. She appraised the stairs, but at the half-landing, darkness roped them off. When she had babysat she had been free to go where she pleased in the house, but she was aware that the parameters of acceptable trespass had narrowed. The doors to the dining room and lounge were also shut, so she bent an ear to the nearest keyhole. Were Eric and Michelle in there, or had the stags on the wall got the run of the place? From up on its perch, the ceramic owl looked down and saw—

  No. The keyhole was blocked.

  How claustrophobic this hall was. Mary was boxed in by wooden panels with knobs she must not turn, as if she had found herself at the center of one of those little
wooden puzzles that Mark had bought. She put her nose into the soft folds of Flora’s ear and nuzzled her. She twisted her head to look at Flora’s face, and with a thrill saw the baby raise an eyebrow in sleep. Mary repeated her nuzzle, a little more vigorously, and the eyebrow lifted again. “Mmm. You’re delicious,” Mary said.

  It was her voice, but not her voice. The words thrummed in her chin and with a tacky sound unstuck her lips. It was the first time she had spoken to Flora without embarrassment or pretense, in just the voice that had come to her, not singsong nor parentally derivative. “You really are good enough to eat,” she said. Oops. She wiped the dribble off the child’s neck, rubbed her lower lip up Flora’s lobe. The cartilage in the curve of her ear was such a tender balance between supple and resistant that, as she did so, the ear rolled up like a tuile. She gave it a nip.

  “Baby’s ear.” There is a shell called baby’s ear. She shut her eyes to listen better. It’s her mother’s voice, come to her tangy with salt. Found on some shingle beach of her childhood. Such a solitary childhood. She holds out her hands, and her mother tips the shell into her palm, pale and smoothly breakable as thin porcelain. Her thumb idles across the porch, polishing the red frill, the pearly ridges of the entrance floor. The swirl darkens into some unseen inside shell cave where a drop of sleeping sea curls. She shakes the shell. She shakes the shell …

  She remembered that she had shaken the shell, but the droplet clung on. She had heard its faint rattle, sniffed its briny prickle. But no matter how hard she shook, there had been no loosening it. No seeing it, whichever way she held the shell or turned her head. With a shell like that, you could never round the final bend into complete discovery. God, she’d been lonely. She’d always been lonely. Even as an adult. She’d spent whole days sitting by the canal, watching the gas holder rise, just to be near another thing that breathed. She shut her eyes again and pressed her own ear to Flora’s ear. She longed to hear something, something coming back at her, mother to daughter, the wash of foam on a shore, the rebound of a wave, an answer from another place.