by Celia Laskey
“Avery?” I force myself to peer at her face and it looks surprisingly placid, her eyes closed and her mouth in the slight smile she always has when she’s sleeping. I lower a shaking hand to her head, and stroke her soft auburn hair, then slide my hand down and rub her rough split ends between my fingers. I hesitate before moving to her neck, where I’ll need to press my fingers to a vein and wait to feel either the pulsing of her beating heart, or, incomprehensibly, emptiness. Jesus. I convinced her—guilted her—into coming with me by telling her that leaving was the only way for me to live, and now she might be the one who dies. Steeling myself, I press my pointer and middle fingers to her neck in the spot below her jaw. It’s warm, a good sign, but I don’t feel any movement. I wait, applying more pressure. Finally, underneath my middle finger, there it is—a swell, then a thrum. I exhale in a gasp of relief and grief, feeling my Los Angeles dreams vanish one by one, then I dial 911 for the ambulance that will take us back to Big Burr.
Year Two
Gabe
U wanna meet at a motel. On my phone’s screen, the blue speech bubble from PB Tall Guy floats over a dark gray background wallpapered with little Grindr logos: a face mask with two round eyeholes. PB Tall Guy didn’t put a question mark after motel, like he’s not asking, but reading my thoughts. I wanna meet at a motel. I do. I wanna meet at a motel real, real bad.
A toilet in the stall next to me flushes. I’ve been gone five minutes, maybe ten. Jean is out there in Giovanni’s dining room, probably watching her chicken piccata get cold, wondering if I’m having diarrhea or if I ran into someone I know. Or she’s on Facebook, scrolling past pictures of her cousin’s babies and articles about this season of Looking for Love. She’s definitely on her second glass of wine. I close Grindr and put my phone in my pocket. Sweat slicks my forehead, upper lip, and palms. I wipe it off with a wad of toilet paper, then drop the paper in the toilet and flush.
“You okay?” Jean says when I come back to the table. She says it flatly—annoyed, not concerned.
“My stomach is just a little upset.” It’s not exactly a lie. QB nausea, I used to call it. The kind that would hit before a big game, when I was excited but knew so much was riding on it.
“Again?” Jean says. “I don’t know why you refuse to see Dr. Webber when this is happening every other day.”
“It’s not that bad, hon.”
“It’s bad enough to ruin our anniversary. You’ve spent half the night in the bathroom.” She looks down at the table, then back at me with glassy eyes. God, I’m the worst. As of today, Jean and I have been married for fifteen years. Something about that number has sent me into a tailspin. I guess it’s because milestones that are multiples of five always feel weightier, more significant. And fifteen years is just a long fucking time. A long fucking time to be pretending. I’ve been on Grindr for a while now, but mostly just to look. Today, my fifteenth anniversary, is the first time I’ve considered going through with it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching across the table. Jean keeps her hand limp, refusing to close her fingers around mine. “It’s not like I can control it.”
The sound of something shattering comes from the kitchen, and everyone in the restaurant turns. At a table in the corner, a man sits across from another man. They have coiffed haircuts and visible pectorals underneath their starched oxfords—one of which is covered in a bright floral print. The man in my sight line regards me with a slightly raised eyebrow and I quickly avert my gaze, keeping the pair in my peripheral vision while trying to pay attention to what Jean is saying. Something about probiotics. The other man turns around in his chair and looks in my direction. Jesus Christ.
You’re imagining it, I tell myself. You look like every other straight man in this restaurant sitting across from a woman.
Before the task force arrived, I never had to worry about being spotted or outed, but now everywhere I go I swear I can feel them looking at me—looking through me. Not to mention my online presence. The only Grindr people from Big Burr know about is the kind with pepper in it, but I’ve seen a few task force members on there. I changed my picture to a generic ab shot and made sure there were no identifying details in my profile, but that makes it harder to catch someone’s interest. A lot of guys even say, “No face pic, no chat.”
“Dessert?” asks Norm, our usual waiter.
Jean looks at my plate, the square of lasagna almost fully intact. “I don’t think so.”
We split the tiramisu every time we come for dinner. “Hon, you want some tiramisu,” I say.
“You’re not feeling well. We should just go home.” She folds her cloth napkin into a neat square. Disappointment hangs on her face.
Norm shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
“We’ll take the tiramisu to go,” I say.
* * *
• • •
AT HOME, two empty macaroni-and-cheese boxes and an orange-crusted bowl sit on the kitchen counter. The familiar sounds of swords clanging, blood sluicing, and death groans emanate from the living room.
Jean tosses her purse on the table and gives me a do-something-about-this look.
“Billy,” I call out.
He doesn’t answer. I walk into the living room.
“I’m at the hardest part,” he says, his eyes fixed on the TV. A fighter with an octopus head shoots out a tentacle and wraps it around a samurai’s neck. The samurai’s face turns blue and he collapses to the ground.
I pick up the remote from the coffee table and turn the TV off.
“What the fuck, Dad?” Billy turns to me, his eyes rage-filled like one of the characters from his game, and throws the controller across the room. The terrible twos have nothing on a sixteen-year-old with an addiction to video games and a temper like a buck in the rut.
“You left the kitchen a mess.”
“I’ll pick it up later.”
“Now,” I say.
He blows air out from between his lips. “You don’t need to take it out on me just because you and Mom had a shitty date.”
I blink. Taxidermied heads of deer, elk, and antelope line the living room walls—trophies from hunting trips I’ve taken over the years. The whitetail buck has a smug expression, his mouth curled up at the edges and his head tilted at a watchful angle. He knows, the deer seems to say. Billy huffs by me, his shoulder knocking against mine on his way into the kitchen. Jean sidesteps Billy and hands me a cup of ginger ale—on the surface a sweet gesture, but there’s resentment behind it. Drink this and shut up about your stomach.
“Coming to bed?” she asks.
“Right after I drink this.” As she walks up the stairs, I feel the warm weight of my phone in my pocket. The blue speech bubble drifts somewhere inside of it, lonely, waiting for a response. I lock myself in the downstairs guest bathroom with my cup of ginger ale. In the bathroom is starting to feel more fitting than in the closet, since it’s the only place private enough to check Grindr.
The room is decked out in Jean’s late-fall décor: beige hand towels covered in red and orange appliqué leaves, a clear vase full of dried wheat stalks, and a green-and-yellow striped gourd next to the soap dispenser. The one nonseasonal item is a Far Side daily calendar that sits on the toilet-tank lid. Every morning Jean rips off the previous day’s comic, even though we almost exclusively use the upstairs bathroom. Today’s comic shows two wolves standing in the middle of a flock of sheep, holding sheep masks. When you look at the sheep more closely, there are seams connecting their heads to their bodies and fabric patches over their wool coats. The caption says, “Wait a minute! Isn’t anyone here a real sheep?”
Writing back doesn’t mean I’m committing to anything. Where and when? I reply. My yellow speech bubble hangs underneath his, the lonely one now. I take a gulp of ginger ale while I wait for him to respond. The soda is flat, and without the bubbles, it tastes sickeningly sweet. I
open up the medicine cabinet and take two extra-strength Tums. The chalkiness never seems to leave my mouth—these days a value-sized container lasts me only a week.
Dry Creek. Motel 6. Tuesday 7 pm, PB Tall Guy writes.
After a few minutes of deep breathing, I head upstairs, hoping Jean is already asleep. But she’s propped up on her backrest pillow, reading one of her romance novels. This one is called The Duke and I, a pink-tinged pastoral scene on the cover. I’m always surprised she reads them in front of me—they should be a secret, an embarrassing indulgence. Every now and then I peek over and catch a sentence like “He tore off his clothes with the urgency of a man fighting off fire ants” or “She bucked on top of him like he was her prize stallion and they were feet from the finish line.” Her face is expressionless, like she could be scanning the paper. But she must get a little turned on reading this stuff. Isn’t that the point? And who does she picture when she fantasizes? It can’t be me.
I climb under the rose-printed quilt and groan while rubbing my stomach, trying to make it obvious that I’m in no state for sex. I know Jean will be upset, not because she’ll miss the physical act, but because of its significance. No lovemaking on our anniversary means we’re not keeping up with the Joneses, even though I’m pretty sure the Joneses aren’t doing it on their fifteenth anniversary, either.
Jean closes her book but keeps the page marked with her finger. “I’m making you an appointment with Dr. Webber.”
“I really don’t think that’s necessary, hon.”
“Gabe,” she says sternly. “It’s affecting you, and it’s affecting us. It’s not up for discussion.” She opens her book again and lets out a long, forlorn sigh.
* * *
• • •
IN THE MORNING, the sun streams through the window for the first time in almost a week, so I decide to go hunting. Deer season is ending in two weeks, and I still haven’t gotten one. The last time I didn’t bring one home was eight years ago, when I came down with a flu that knocked me out for a month. When Billy sees me in my orange vest, he asks if he can come.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Hunting has been the perfect way to spend hours on Grindr, Craigslist casual encounters, and Reddit with no fear of Jean or anyone else walking in on me. It also limits my hunting zones to places with cell reception, which is maybe why I haven’t shot anything yet.
“You promised you’d take me this weekend,” Billy says, looking down at his hands.
“Why do you want to come?”
“I don’t know. You got me a permit and all. Shouldn’t I use it?” He sees me considering. “Plus, it’ll get me away from my video games for a few hours.”
* * *
• • •
WE SIT IN my tree stand staring at the beige expanse of Dave Harnell’s field—Dave lets me hunt on his land in exchange for a little meat. It’s been two hours, and we’ve yet to see anything. In the distance, a thin tail of smoke wisps out of the Harnells’ chimney. My nose catches a trace of the burning wood. Behind their house, a hill slopes to a small pond surrounded by crispy cattails. To the right, a long tree-lined gully cuts into the field. One oak holds onto a handful of brown leaves, but the rest of the trees are bare. I alternate between keeping my eyes on the pond, where deer sometimes go for a quick drink, and the gully, where they go to eat sumac seed heads, those densely packed clusters of fuzzy scarlet berries.
The tree stand shakes, and I glare at Billy, who’s been jiggling his leg off and on all morning. “Cut that out.”
His leg stills. “Don’t you get bored out here?”
“That’s part of it.”
He hoists his rifle onto his shoulder and closes one eye, squinting through the sight. He sweeps his gun across the field and curves his pointer finger over the trigger, making firing noises with his mouth as he pretends to shoot trees and birds. Playing a video game even out in the real world. “Why do you like it, then?”
A yellow-rumped warbler trills somewhere nearby. I look for a flash of yellow through the tree branches but don’t see any birds. “It’s nice to get away from everything.”
“What do you want to get away from?”
I shrug. “Nothing specifically.”
“Mom?”
“No, not your mom.”
He picks up a browning maple leaf mottled with small black spots and rips pieces off. “Are you having an affair or something?”
My stomach surges. “What makes you say that?”
“I’m not blind,” he says. “Or stupid. Who is it? I won’t tell Mom or anything.”
Who is it instead of Who is she? Was he making an intentional grammatical choice, or am I just reading into it? I want to press Billy about what evidence he has, but I don’t want to seem guilty. Kids can do anything with computers these days. Could he have found my browser history even though I cleared it? Or my Grindr app, even though I hid it in my extras folder? Dry Creek. Motel 6. Tuesday 7 pm. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do. I make endless mental lists with two sides. On the “should go” side, there’s (1) I’m dying to; (2) maybe after I do it once, it’ll be enough and I’ll stop; (3) I should find out if I even like having sex with a guy before I bust up my whole life. On the “shouldn’t go” side, there’s (1) I’ve held out this long; (2) maybe I’ll like it so much I won’t be able to stop; (3) I know I’ll like it. I should leave Jean first so I’m not a cheater. No matter how many lists I make, the sides are always even.
“Fine, don’t tell me,” Billy huffs, and starts swiping at his phone. I peer over his shoulder and see a familiar name on his Facebook: Zach Roland, the kid who was running away with the head of the task force’s daughter the night that poor girl was hit by a car. The paper said the car drove right over her legs. The police still haven’t figured out who did it. She was in intensive care for weeks, though last I heard she was finally being released from the hospital.
“Hey, is that girl back at school yet? The one who was hit by the car?”
Billy nods. “She’s in a wheelchair. The doctors said they’re not sure if she’ll ever walk again.” He scrolls through his Facebook timeline too fast to even see anything.
“That’s terrible. Do you know why they were trying to run away?”
Billy shrugs like he’s trying to shake something off his shoulder and looks away. “How the fuck would I know? I don’t even know them.”
“You’re Facebook friends with people you don’t know?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I saw you’re friends with that kid Zach.”
He puts his phone in his lap, facedown. “God, Dad, don’t look at my shit. Besides, everyone at school is friends on Facebook, even if you’re not really friends. Everyone knows that except old people.”
I hold my hands up. “Okay, I was just curious.”
Billy’s eyes widen. “Hey, look.” He gestures with his chin in the direction he was staring.
A beautiful buck stands smack in the middle of the field, about thirty yards away. The sun glints off the tips of his expansive rack and I count twelve points. My heart speeds up. The buck on my living room wall is only a ten-pointer. The greatest spread of this one’s main beams must be at least twenty-five inches. He turns to the side, giving us a clear shot at his heart.
“Get him, Dad,” Billy says.
I raise my rifle, still shaky from Billy’s questions about if I’m having an affair. The sight quivers in front of my eye. I center the cross on the buck’s heart and take a deep breath. As I breathe out, I squeeze the trigger. The buck’s ears perk up and rotate at the sound of the shot. He looks straight at the tree stand and then sprints to the gully, his white tail up.
“Shit.” I throw my rifle down and smack my palm against the wood planks of the stand. It vibrates under my knees.
“It happens,” Billy says.
<
br /> “That was an easy fucking shot.” I reel my arm back and punch the tree trunk. Rocklike maple bark grinds into my knuckles. I punch again. A piece of bark falls off the tree, revealing smooth brown wood underneath. Notches of blood appear on my knuckles, welling into drops.
“Dad,” Billy says, pulling my arm.
I whip him off and keep punching. I punch until I feel the crack of bone.
* * *
• • •
“HOW’S THE OTHER GUY look?” jokes a customer in Sportsman’s Corner the next morning.
I wish I could flip him off, but my hand is covered in a rusty Ace bandage and a white drugstore splint. I give him a courtesy laugh, pretending I haven’t heard the same thing all day.
“What happened?” he asks.
I tell him I fell on it, the same thing I told Jean yesterday when I got home. Another lie to add to the bucket. When Jean looked to Billy for confirmation, he backed me up, even saying he accidentally tripped me.
I spend the first part of my shift chewing out the sales team for not reaching their monthly quota, then I go through inventory. A shipment of mallard decoys never arrived, and after an hour on the phone with corporate, I find out the truck crashed. A chunk of the highway had to be closed to pick up all the plastic ducks that spilled out. Around lunchtime, a guy I vaguely recognize walks into the store. I flip through the possibilities: a regular customer, someone who works in town, a husband of one of Jean’s friends—no, no, and no. He goes to the footwear section and stands in front of the boots.