Oslo, Maine

by Marcia Butler

  Sandra pulled off her muddy boots, propping them against the bottom step for when they’d soon leave for Portland, and nudged open the front door with her toe. They tunneled through the living room, filled with gunmetal shelving units that housed volumes of books and music scores. Decorative oddities peppered the room, such as a collection of splintered rowboat oars that had been bolted to the walls as a kind of folk art. Ceramic and wooden bowls, filled with buttons sorted by every color imaginable, lined the ledges of tall windows along the front of the house. A tricycle standing in as a side table, its seat just wide enough for a single cup of coffee, sat by a sofa whose batting had exploded at various split seams. With so much ongoing scavenging, the living room might have felt overly busy. But a double-height ceiling with a walking loft at one end mitigated that well enough. And because the house sat back from the public road with a quarter-mile drive, curtains weren’t necessary. This unrestricted light had allowed Sandra to be adventurous with color. She’d painted the walls a deep lapis blue, which at night appeared almost black, like a gorgeous bruise. Sandra appreciated all this cockeyed beauty and by rescuing what others considered useless, she felt both thrifty and benevolent.

  They rounded the corner into the kitchen, all whitewashed cabinets and stainless steel. She headed directly for the fridge and grabbed a container of homemade cucumber soup, then brought bowls down from a shelf above the stove, which she filled with soup and topped with a sprinkle of dill. They stood next to each other, their bodies canted against the butcher-block counter, and slurped the cold meal.

  “You’ll call the solar company in the morning?” Sandra asked, wiping her mouth with a dishrag.

  “I guess.”

  “Jim, we can’t continue to pay electric bills this high,” she said, throwing the rag into the sink.

  “Summer’s coming. We could turn the heat off now. Not call till September. That’ll save some money. Wear sweaters at night?” He trotted out his reasoning between gulps.

  “There’s a plan,” Sandra said.

  She squinted from the early afternoon sun, which had struck her face with surprising intensity, grateful for its warmth in the chilly room. Now that their solar panels were null and void, maybe the mild weather predicted for the next couple of days would not only heat the house, but also dry up some of the mud on their private road. That they’d never paved their driveway in all these years suddenly deflated what little energy she had left after teaching all morning. Shocking, how she’d gotten used to the many indecent ways they continued to live. Sandra should have been resolved by now, but the ongoing indignities reinjured her in strangely cumulative ways. Somewhere in there was the textbook definition of insanity: to hope for different results even as Jim never changed.

  Sandra glanced up at Jim’s profile as he swallowed the last drops of soup: an Adam’s apple that never seemed to stop pumping, a patrician sniffer. He was as skinny as the day she’d met him, with hair still brown like saddle leather and smiling blue eyes with wrinkles in all the right places. Jim’s was an indisputably attractive presentation that many people equated with wisdom. He was perceived as a man of lofty principles and reasonable solutions. And all of that was true enough, because Jim was the de facto voice of reason in Oslo. Listening to all sides, he never raised his voice while negotiating disputes among neighbors. In short, Jim lent a level head to gnarly small-town conflicts. Yet the platitudes that impressed others did nothing to assuage the fact that they were broke about three hundred sixty days of the year. And privately, Jim was aghast that Sandra, out of financial desperation, had deigned to start teaching. He claimed it gave the wrong impression and diluted how they were seen as artists, even in a town where that particular nuance rarely registered on anyone’s mind other than Jim’s.

  “Musicians do their work out of love,” Jim had declared.

  “Who are you talking to? The local dry cleaner? Do you even hear yourself? Musicians have to find ways to support themselves, too,” she’d counter with a pinched smile, because Jesus, playing in a per-service part-time orchestra in Maine wasn’t exactly lucrative.

  “Those who can, perform. Those who can’t, teach.”

  “Fine. Tell that to the luthier the next time we need overhauls. I’m sure he’ll waive the bill when he finally understands.”

  Sandra didn’t enjoy bringing Jim down several notches every few weeks, but he forced her hand with his manifestos from on high. And so, it was with unexpected delight and, if she was honest, abject relief that she’d easily built up a full teaching studio in no time. Sandra traveled to neighboring towns called Norway, Denmark, Mexico, and Peru to teach the odd child who showed even a mild interest at twenty bucks per half hour. For larger families she managed to rope in three or four siblings, each handing one violin off to the next. Oftentimes she threw in the last lesson at no charge as an incentive, or a simple kindness. And it broke her heart to learn that people she had lived among for years were, in fact, desperate for music. They hadn’t understood the need until Sandra had satisfied it.

  They finished up their soup, and Sandra stacked the dishes into the dishwasher while Jim watched her.

  “Why are you standing there? Go get dressed. We’re late as it is,” Sandra said.

  “I don’t like you teaching Pierre,” he said.

  “I know you feel that way, but there’s nothing you can do about it. We need the money.”

  “It’s not a good idea. They’re too close to our house. Proximity. Plus, Claude’s crazy.”

  “I’m aware of that, too. But the kid needs me.”

  “You can’t fix that family, Sandra.”

  “I am not the naïve one,” she said, slamming the dishwasher closed and punching the start cycle.

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” he said, walking out of the kitchen.

  “I’ll be in the truck.”

  THE MOOSE KNEW the large metal container provided salt and because it was not in motion, she also understood it to be safe. Approaching, she saw a female human inside who looked to be asleep. This would normally deter the moose, as she’d found many humans to be unpredictable. But once she came closer, the moose recognized this human to be the female with long white fur and an odor of violets, whom the moose had first encountered while searching for a secluded area to birth her calf.

  That day, the moose walked into a clearing and spotted a metal container approaching. Preparing to abandon the area, the moose then noticed that this metal container was different; it seemed unusually small, and a female human sat on top. Stopping a fair distance away, the female human shoved a dark patch from her eyes. The air shuddered and the moose sensed her fear, but this human made no motion to approach or make noises. She then directed the metal container in the opposite direction and disappeared. All that remained was the scent of violets. Within the hour, the moose began to birth her calf.

  Now the moose licked salt off the large metal container as the female human with long white fur and an odor of violets slept inside.

  SANDRA STARTLED AWAKE, out of breath and in a full-body sweat. She’d been idling the truck with the heat on full blast while waiting for Jim to join her for the drive to Portland. According to the dashboard clock only ten minutes had passed, but she’d succumbed to that bottomless sleep where her orientation was so scrambled that if she woke on the moon it might have made some sense. As she reached over to turn off the ignition, Sandra looked up and saw a large patch of brown in front of her. The brown quivered. Then she realized that this brown was actually twitching fur. The moose saturated the entire windshield. Sandra wiped sweat from her forehead and slunk down in her seat. Seemingly unaware of her presence, the moose swung her head around and began to lick salt from the engine hood. Having tongue-washed a section on the driver side, she shifted to where Sandra sat, and in doing so presented her flank. Sandra noticed old and deep scars incised across the fur, the slashes resembling the intricate cross-hatching work of an imprecise basket weaver. And also what looked like a
more recent wound at her neck—healed yet still red. The moose stopped in mid-motion and seemed to look directly at Sandra, then abruptly turned and walked toward the woods, pausing at intervals to emit a grunt call. Sandra looked around, hoping to catch sight of the calf, as well. Oddly, he didn’t appear, and the moose was soon swallowed by the dense trees.

  Sandra had first seen the calf a few weeks earlier. He looked to be the scrawniest newborn imaginable, and so helpless he seemed tethered to his mother by an invisible leash. If he did dawdle, the moose always, always, waited for him. Or gave him a strong nudge, as if to say, “The world waits for you, until it doesn’t.” Since then, Sandra had seen them roaming often, either on her land or next door on the Roy property. Just the previous week, Sandra had spotted the moose emerging from the lake with a dripping hunk of greens in her mouth, heading for her calf, who paced the shore, waiting. The two then consumed food—the calf urgently at her udder, the moose masticating the greens in slow motion. One never interfered with the other, even as they ate at divergent paces. Sandra wanted to remember how untainted this mutual accommodation appeared to be.

  Sandra could’ve easily drifted off again, her exhaustion was that deep. But since waking, she couldn’t help but think how she knew more about the Roy family dynamics than she probably should. And now Jim’s warnings of not getting involved didn’t seem such an unreasonable admonition. But really, all that was boilerplate. What Sandra was ashamed to admit was that she envied the shoes. It seemed next to impossible that Claude made enough to afford designer shoes by working the occasional additional shift at the March. But the Jimmy Choos were there, which meant that somehow Claude Roy had extra money. And she felt deprived.

  Dragging her ponytail around, Sandra inspected the split ends. She’d neglected to wash her hair or even shower before teaching that morning, because the house was particularly cold. It then occurred to her that Jim had actually turned the heat off the previous night, which had been one of the suggestions he’d trotted out earlier as a way to cope without fixing the solar panels till September. And now that the house had warmed up, he was delaying their trip to Portland by indulging himself with a shower. In evidence were beads of water dribbling down the upstairs window by the claw-foot tub, creating vertical tracks in the steam. She rolled down the truck window.

  “Get out of that shower!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  A few crows flew for cover. Jim acknowledged by rubbing the window clear of fog and giving her a thumbs-up. Sandra felt re-chilled and turned the ignition on again for more heat.

  During the upcoming drive she’d not talk about Celine’s pills, or her expensive fuck-me shoes on display in her new private bedroom. She wouldn’t even broach the gossip she’d dangled earlier about their neighbors’ sex life. She’d keep Pierre’s secrets about tiny papers and cryptic words and coded numbers. And she’d hold back her revelation that teaching violin was about the best thing that had ever happened to her. Rather, she’d listen, again, to Jim’s rationale for turning off the hot water heater at night. She wouldn’t nail him that she knew he’d already done it. They’d agree to wait. Maybe trade off showers every other day. She’d wear the same clothes three days in a row. They’d do many things like this and a lifetime of marital accommodations would continue to build upon itself. Meanwhile, Jim would continue to try and fix the solar panels. The air blew hard and hot from the truck vents. Sandra could smell her own sweat, which ran like oil off her skin. They’d now have to break speed limits to make the rehearsal on time. She began to weep.

  THE FEMALE HUMAN had begun to make movements, so the moose walked away. Her udders were still full, swaying and uncomfortable. She emitted her grunt calls, now strictly instinct; her calf had died the day before. When she was well hidden among the trees, she looked back to see the female human poke her head from the container and howl. The female then thrashed her head from side to side, causing her long white fur to fly everywhere. Her body trembled. The moose understood these motions to be something other than aggression.

  NOTHING HAPPENS BY ACCIDENT

  HE STOOD AT THE PERIPHERY OF THE school gymnasium and watched his classmates gather in groups, jumping like jackrabbits and jabbering on about summer plans. They’d just been dismissed from their final seventh-grade assembly on the last day of school. Pierre understood all the commotion, because it was early June and summer had officially launched with two options: camp for those who could afford such extras, or plain old zip for everyone else. Pierre was a member of the zip group. But no matter which fate fell upon what kid, screaming about it seemed to be required. A girl, the frequently mean ringleader in his class, howled like she was about to be thrown off a cliff, a fate Pierre thought most days she deserved. The mob matched her howl for howl, and within seconds the entire space throbbed.

  Since his brain had gone haywire, Pierre experienced loud sounds and high pitches as unbearable. And though he had no control over involuntary spazzes when the noise went beyond his tolerance—like his hands flying to his head and his fingers diving deep into his ears, or his body going stiff and then quivering from shoulders to knees—this time, Pierre wrapped his arms around his middle and tried very hard not to go all dorky. It didn’t work. The Ringleader pointed at him and announced to her awful friends that he reminded her of a zombie. Since he didn’t want to be labeled anybody’s walking dead, and as a final desperate act, Pierre decided to follow the brain doctor’s advice. The nothing exercise.

  Closing his eyes, he relaxed his shoulders, shook out his hands, counted to ten and thought of … nothing. At the exact moment of … nothing, everyone in the gym roared like a flash mob, instantly causing his heart to pound. Just as quickly, his fingers twitched and his legs went rubbery. Pierre squeezed his eyes shut and imagined he was on another planet, because he actually felt like a zombie. And … nothing turned out to be about the stupidest advice he’d ever received.

  Keep repeating the exercise until it works.

  Things don’t get better overnight.

  Be patient …

  Those were the exact words his doctor had used to encourage him a few weeks earlier, when Pierre had described nothing as one hundred percent, totally lame. Shoulder-relaxing, hand-shaking, and counting numbers was easy enough—any drip could get those down. But … nothing? How was that possible? Even his mom had to muffle a laugh when the doctor continued to blather on forever about … nothing.

  Nothing seems like a difficult concept.

  But it’s really quite simple.

  Just empty your mind …

  This was how the doctor had further explained his so-called theory at the next office visit, which happened to be the one and only time Pierre’s dad ever attended. “Really? That’s the best ya got?” his dad yelled on his way out the door. Pierre couldn’t blame him and only wished he could walk out, too.

  Actually, between appointments, Pierre had been giving the brain doctor’s theory of nothing some thought. The guy had gotten it totally backward, and Pierre couldn’t wait to correct him. He’d explain that there was no such thing as nothing—there was only everything. Big bang whatever, quantum yadda, quark blah blah. And the theory of everything, which at the moment Pierre knew pretty much nothing about. But he must have read about it at some point, because he’d thought of it. Plus, it sounded cool. And huge geeks like Einstein and Stephen Hawking understood this stuff. Useless nothing doctor.

  Now he was thinking very hard and feeling way too much, which made Pierre’s vision go kind of wavy. The floor surged up and he felt on the verge of collapsing. But fainting in front of the Ringleader was not a possibility; he saw her circling him, ready to pounce with her snark. She was really pretty and too thin. (All the mean ones were.) Pierre willed his head to clear, and more importantly, not to cry.

  “Stupid brain trauma. Stupid brain trauma. Stupid brain trauma,” he repeated softly to himself, which was as close to nothing as he could summon.

  Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. He tried th
at too, but more as a simple wish that it might come true.

  The world is a noisy place.

  We can’t control things.

  You will get through this …

  His doctor had made him this promise on Pierre’s most recent visit. Adding to these assurances, the doctor crossed his heart hoping to die, and even swore on his mother’s grave. What a phony. Pierre’s mom and dad promised stuff to each other all day long by swearing on their parents’ graves, and both sets of grandparents were still alive. That’s when Pierre quit trusting his doctor.

  The gym was now almost empty. Just a few kids, including Pierre, were waiting for parents to collect them. Thanks to the relative quiet, his heartbeat slowed. The sweat on his palms finally dried and he held out one hand to test the tremors—his fingers stiff as pencils. For a moment Pierre considered the possibility that the nothing (or was it the quiet?) exercise had worked, but then immediately dismissed that idea because simple logic told him otherwise. When the kids left the gym, the screeching stopped. That’s when he felt better. It was an example of cause and effect, which was an actual theory. Not some nothing foolishness. Idiot doctor.

  Pierre leaned against the cement wall, grateful for its cool surface. He canted one leg in front of the other, another attempt to appear normal for the Ringleader, who’d just smiled at him. She’d tried this before—a trick to make him smile back. But as soon as he did, she’d turn around and walk away. Now, Pierre thwarted her by turning away first. This felt like a victory for about five seconds. Then doubt set in, because Pierre had no clue what the Ringleader actually meant to him, other than being a victim of her evil methods of torture. This was what his life had become. He’d lost huge blocks of time. Then he’d suddenly remember small chunks, which felt like his brain had somehow decided to be nice and give him a break. But those pieces, however arranged, rarely seemed to make much sense. Now, the Ringleader got distracted by her creepy friends and left the gym. Pierre breathed deeply, pulled out his phone, and tapped the photo icon to review the four pictures he’d taken the day before.