We Went to the Woods

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  “Or we could all just become rabid consumers. Vote for the crazies. Push capitalism to the edge of revolution and give it a final shove over.”

  She smiled again. “It does have its appeal, doesn’t it? Fuck our liberalism, our environmentalism, our lukewarm socialism. Nothing will change until the death knell of the system is sounded!”

  “Sounds a hell of a lot easier than stockpiling enough potatoes and sauerkraut for the winter,” I said.

  “It does. But maybe not the ‘commonest, cheapest, nearest,’ et cetera.”

  “No. Probably not.”

  Her brow wrinkled and she turned away from me again. “And didn’t I just adorn myself for the first person who would take me?” she said softly. I wanted to answer, but as she slid down from the tree, her voice sharpened: “And didn’t you?”

  Chapter 13

  That evening, Chloe and Beau declared that we needed to play. I expected Louisa to protest, but even she relented in the face of the edgy gloom that had settled over the Homestead. We were worried—we felt as though our young, desperate experiment had been violently encroached upon, and I could see it cracking us open. A bacchanal seemed ideal. How simple and easy and nice it would be to lose ourselves in food and wine and chatter. With renewed vigor, we leapt into action, pulling down dried herbs from their racks in the kitchen, tugging up scallions from the garden, counting our bottles of booze and budgeting them for the party. Chloe and Louisa tugged me off to Louisa’s cabin to primp, and I watched breathlessly as Chloe tried on all of our clothes, looking effortless and beautiful in everything she put on. Louisa donned only her own things, out of deference to those wild cheeks and round curves. She settled into an Edwardian-style black gown that nearly reached her ankles and pulled her bright tumble of curls into a springy beehive. Chloe kept switching between a delicate blue item and a simple floral prairie dress.

  “The blue reminds me of Isadora Duncan,” she said wistfully, twisting her hips so that the chiffon switched daintily in fluttering ripples. I thought of a nightgown I had been given as a little girl, and remembered spinning manically to watch the skirt billow out princess-style. The thing had probably been extremely flammable. (Sweatshop crap, madeinChina, notsustainablyproduced.) Chloe seemed to bask in that childish grace without any of the ambivalence I had felt then; I had thought myself to be an impostor, a mawkish interloper in the world of princesses. Not she, not Chloe. She leapt and did a series of pirouettes, arabesques, neat pas de bourrée. Louisa gazed at her appraisingly.

  “You do look worthy of the Great Astaire. But you remember how Duncan died,” she chided. “The other dress won’t tear or get caught in the brambles. Better to look like Laurey before her big dance scene.” At my quizzical expression, Chloe explained: “Oklahoma.”

  “That’s supposed to clarify?”

  “It’s a musical.” Louisa waved my question away, not wanting to explain her allusion. She had a strangely comprehensive knowledge of musical theater. (“It was the only thing my mother could think of to do with me when I visited her in New York,” she had explained once. I had been led to believe that those visits were fairly uncommon, but Louisa could name every song on the Breakfast on Broadway radio program, which aired for an hour on a local radio station every Sunday. I suspected that there might be more to this, but I had yet to do enough snooping to get to the bottom of her extensive knowledge.)

  “Mack? What do you think?” Chloe asked, zipping up the flowery peasant dress. Naturally, she looked lovely in that too.

  “They’re both delightful, but Louisa is probably right. You know we’ll end up dragging wood for a bonfire or running around in the dark.”

  Chloe sighed. “You’re right, of course.” She turned to me. “And what are we going to do with you?” I looked down at myself, startled. I was wearing leggings and a button-down flannel shirt. My one concession to the festive occasion had been to trade my Timberlands for a pair of cheap flats that had remained untouched in the corner since my arrival at the Homestead. Even those seemed inadvisable, since there were still patches of mud to be squelched through.

  “You look like you do every day,” Louisa chastised, always unafraid to be blunt. “Come now, we don’t want to seem like a bunch of country mice in front of Beau’s ridiculous friends.”

  I suddenly understood. “You mean Fennel, in particular, I assume?” I said.

  Louisa glanced briefly away, but then looked back at me. “Yeah, Little Miss No-Mirror. If you’re going to adorn yourself—and let’s make no mistake, we all do, one way or the other, even Fennel—you may as well own it.” She turned back to the mirror and defiantly swept on black eyeliner in a wing that traced the crease and crinkle of her eye. Chloe came behind me and tugged my hair from its usual position, then twisted it into a tight knot at the back of my skull. She pulled her fingers through my fine, dirty blond tresses, which were always a little dingy these days, given the nature of our bathing arrangements. Fanning my hair out on my shoulders, she pursed her lips.

  “I think it should go.”

  “What?”

  “Your hair,” she said.

  “What?” I yelped, instinctively pulling my head away from her.

  “Hmm. She’s right,” Louisa concurred. “You haven’t got the volume for long hair, anyway. But you’ve got cheekbones and a cute little chin. Off with it.”

  “You guys, my hair hasn’t been shorter than this since second grade,” I protested. “Besides, I need to be able to tie it out of my face. For work!”

  “Not if it’s so short that it’s not in your face,” Chloe reasoned.

  “But everyone has long hair!” I whined.

  “Not Jack,” Louisa pointed out. “Come to think of it, he could use a haircut too.”

  “Where are your little scissors, Lou?” Chloe asked. She turned to rummage on Louisa’s table, cluttered with books and trinkets. Of all of us, Louisa had most thoroughly filled her small cabin. It resembled a boudoir, crammed as it was with scarves and delicate objets.

  “Here, you better do it,” Louisa said to Chloe, producing the scissors. “You have an artist’s eye.”

  “Guys, I can’t have short hair!” I protested, even as Louisa nudged me into the chair and found a scarf to drape around my shoulders. Chloe stood behind me, shears in hand, and held up a chunk of my hair, which did look admittedly lank. She gazed at my eyes, reflected to her in Louisa’s mirror.

  “Do you want to do this, Mack?” she asked seriously. I looked back at her, and felt my resolution fade. She wouldn’t cut without my consent, she meant that—but she was nudging me in the direction she wanted to go. I trusted Chloe, though. I took a deep breath, giving myself over to her.

  “Fine. Do it. It’s just hair.”

  “It always grows back,” Louisa said cheerfully from the bed, where she had sprawled to watch my cropping.

  Half an hour later, I emerged from Louisa’s cabin. I felt both dazed and utterly wired, as though every sound and shard of light was strangely magnified. I didn’t know whether to cry or leap into the air.

  “Shit!” Jack exclaimed when he saw me, vaguely heading in the direction of my own cabin. “You—your hair!”

  “You better not say anything critical about it or I’ll start crying,” I said honestly. I reached up to brush the nape of my neck.

  “No! I mean, you look like someone else! You look incredible!”

  “Shucks, thanks,” I said. “Quite the compliment.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just—you look pretty amazing, Mack.”

  I sighed, but I couldn’t help smiling a little. “Thanks, Jack,” I said, and continued to my cabin, to take stock.

  I examined myself in my own, much smaller mirror once I got inside. Jack was right. I did look like a different person. Gone were my dull strands. They were now clipped close, framing my face in sharp little an
gles across my forehead and in front of my ears. My cheekbones did jut out more, my chin more pointed and feisty. I actually rather liked the shape of my neck. In addition to the changes made to my coif, Chloe had given me subtle swoops of black eyeliner at the edges of my eyes and a coat of her reddest lipstick. She had also made me exchange my flannel shirt for a lightweight striped sweater.

  “There. You look like Jean Seberg,” she pronounced. This was apparently a good thing.

  I sat studying myself for a few minutes longer before mustering the courage to venture back outside. I was afraid of how Beau would react, that he would see me and think me foolish or vain. Or perhaps no more fuckable than before.

  But Beau wasn’t outside. Louisa was spreading tablecloths and a picnic blanket. Jack was testing his various batches of mead and applejack, to see which was “showing best.” Chloe was humming brightly and plucking at her ukulele, tuning it up. Ferdinand bleated loudly from his pen in contribution. “A Pastoral Scene.”

  “Where’s Beau?” I asked, joining Louisa to help her set dishes out on the porch of the big cabin.

  “He’s gone to collect the party,” she explained. “They’ll be back soon. Hey, you don’t want to invite anyone, do you?” The question surprised me.

  “Um, no, probably not.” I felt I should make some excuse for why I had no friends beyond these four people I spent every day with. But I had none.

  “Mack,” Louisa said, her voice dropping. “Listen, I’ve wanted to talk to you about something.” Her tone made me shiver.

  “Uh, okay. What’s up?”

  “I’ve been meaning to bring it up for a while. But I was sort of hoping you’d talk about it first.”

  “Talk about what?” I asked, though I had a fairly good idea.

  “About what happened before you came here. With the Experiment. About why you’re here.”

  “I’m here for the same reasons as you guys,” I insisted.

  “I don’t doubt that—don’t worry,” she said, placing her hand on my forearm in a manner that was meant to be reassuring but that instead made me flinch. “But I watched the show.”

  “They edited it to make it look worse than it was,” I mumbled, ducking my head and wanting badly to run away.

  “So I assumed. Why…why didn’t you ever talk to me about it? Or to Beau?”

  “Does Beau know about this?” My heart sank.

  “I asked him if he knew, yeah. You know Beau, though. He didn’t seem to care at all. Not that I care,” she said swiftly. “I just—I wish you’d felt like you could talk about it. I kept waiting for you to mention something—”

  “Look, the whole point was that I wanted to put it behind me. I left New York under some nasty circumstances, and I just didn’t want—to keep revisiting it, all the time. Trying to defend myself for having done something really stupid. Something wrong.”

  “Mistakes,” Louisa said with a shrug. “Bygones. You think we all haven’t done some really questionable things?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Well, you don’t seem to be advertising them, either.”

  “Point taken. Look, I just wanted to clear the air. I’ve been feeling weird, aware that I know but you don’t know that I know, and I keep asking leading questions and whatnot….Just, it’s out there.” She pushed her hands away from her body, as though shoving her knowledge of what I’d done back at me.

  “Okay,” I said, then bit my lip. “Do Jack and Chloe know?”

  “I haven’t said anything to them. But you do know that all you have to do is a bit of Googling.”

  “But I’m Mack now,” I whispered.

  “It’s not such a huge leap from Mackenzie to Mack, doll,” Louisa said. Though I don’t think she intended to be unkind, her comment revealed how naïve she thought me, how apparent my shame was.

  “And voilà, there’s Beau,” Louisa said, speaking as though this conversation had never taken place and pointing at my truck turning up the driveway. At some point, Beau had stopped asking if he could take my truck. I found it very difficult to get annoyed with him.

  Beau’s friends tumbled from the vehicle, like some traveling gypsy horde bringing merriment and strangeness. I spotted Fennel’s dreadlocks—she had been sitting in the middle of the truck cab, snuggled up to Beau. In a second truck close behind them, I could see the dark snarl of hair that belonged to that girl Zelda. There was a thin, frizzily curled blonde, and one of the guys I recognized from the last visit—Jesse? And the glowing girl I had seen the first time with Fennel, Natasha. A motorcycle pulled in behind them, and two men hopped off, one with a long blond ponytail, the other with a shaved head and marvelous cheekbones. I recalled the freshly visible curve of my bare neck and felt absurdly shy. Screwing my courage to the sticking place, I advanced to welcome Beau’s guests. Our guests. This was my place too.

  As I approached, Chloe came scampering from the big cabin and raced over to Jesse, excited to report on the development of her bees. His face lit up when he saw her, and he didn’t even acknowledge my presence as Chloe rapturously began regaling him with the blow-by-blow of her hives. Beau came forward with his hand extended, and for an exhilarating, giddy moment, I realized he was about to introduce himself. To me. When he drew close enough to see my face, his eyes widened, and I couldn’t help but beam in pleasure at his surprise.

  “My, my. My Mack. Look at you!” he said, delighted, and scooped me up in a spinning hug that left me breathless. “You’ve been busy,” he whispered coyly into my neck before turning back. “Do I need to do some introductions? You remember everyone from the West Hill crew?”

  I nodded in reply. “Except for you,” I said, reaching my hand towards the thin blonde. “I don’t think you were here last time?”

  “I’m Kayla. Richardson,” she said. There was something a little glazed about her expression.

  “Mack. You grow up around here? I know a couple of Richardsons.”

  “Watkins Glen.”

  “I went to Lansing. Did you have a brother? Who played baseball?”

  “That’s Kyle. Jock asshole.” Her words were slow, as though she were chewing on marbles.

  “I remember him. He was the nemesis of our star player. Andy Reed.”

  “I don’t really remember,” Kayla said. “Kyle used to talk about sports all the time. But now he’s fat, so he doesn’t bring it up.”

  Zelda snorted. “You can be a mean little bitch,” she said fondly to Kayla, and gave her a kiss that was brief but firmly on the mouth. “I’ve brought more wine,” she announced. “But I should probably deliver it to your fearless leader.” She leaned towards me and stroked my shorn skull. “It’s enchanting. Very nouvelle vague. You’re fetching as fuck. Right!” She hoisted the case of wine a little higher on her hip. “The fiery redhead is at the helm of her ship, I assume?” Without waiting for an answer, Zelda strode off towards the big cabin, Kayla following dutifully behind her, toting a canvas bag with a loaf of bread poking from the top. I joined Beau and Fennel, who were unloading other supplies from the back of the truck.

  “I don’t know why you invited her,” Fennel was saying. “She and that Kayla girl only come to West Hill because Sy is their hookup. And we’ve been trying to vote Sy out for at least six months.”

  “Why can’t you?” Beau asked.

  “It’s in our membership bylaws. It’s why we’re so careful about inviting new members to join. Once they’ve finished their provisional membership, they have a stake in the Collective and it’s really difficult to remove them from the consensus decision-making.”

  “People change,” Beau pointed out.

  “Yeah, no shit. I want to amend our community agreement to include a clause about drug use,” Fennel said.

  “Or illegal activity?” Beau asked. Fennel glanced at him in warning.

  “It just doesn’t seem practic
al to not be able to remove members who are jeopardizing the entire project with their personal decisions. The weed was one thing, and we were all in agreement that that was actually a useful member contribution. Well, mostly. Obviously, I don’t smoke. Though there was some income. But this is totally something else now.”

  “You have a formal agreement? At West Hill?” I chimed in. Beau had been, as ever, rather vague about how his friends ran things, and I was desperately curious about their process.

  Since my discovery of the notebook, I’d been researching intentional communities and reading extensively about some examples; I’d read about Twin Oaks and the Shakers. I had chuckled over the Alcotts’ Fruitlands, imagining Louisa’s namesake growing up in the feckless shambles of that utopia. I was most interested in the Oneida Community, though—our local incarnation of communal life and free love. My research had made me feel that the Homestead might benefit from something a little more rigorously determined. I’d brought it up once with Louisa while we were breaking up topsoil to plant some greens.

  “I mean, we’re not really that formal, are we?” Louisa had said casually. “Sure, if we make this work for a couple years then, yeah, we should probably consider expanding. And defining what our priorities are and all that. But I mean, for us, we’re friends who are experimenting. We’re not going to go all fucking EcoVillage overnight. Or turn into the Collective.”

  I nodded. “I know—that’s not necessarily what I mean. It’s just, intentional communities usually have a stated intention,” I said timidly.

  Louisa looked at me, amused. “Mack, don’t you think the endless conversations we have about what we’re doing out here qualify as our intentions? Do you think we need to put it all down in writing?”

  “That’s not what I was saying,” I stammered, and then I backed out of the conversation as quickly as I could.

  “You like to write everything down,” she said, patting me on the hand.