That night, in their riverfront cabana, he counted her bug bites, trying not to burn the mosquito net as he moved the candle above her. “Only one safe place to kiss you,” he concluded. It wasn’t her mouth.
Irreconcilable differences.
What does that mean, Andrew? Who is at peace with the daylight between who we are and who we thought we’d be?
She thought they were in it together—no matter what, like they’d promised—but ten years in, his arm across her waist in bed felt heavy enough to stifle.
“I am so close. Just wait.”
“We’re missing our window.” His voice got loud. Indignant. “I feel, I don’t know, unwelcome. By my own wife.”
The truth was that Claudia was suspicious of becoming pregnant, afraid that Andrew would take advantage of her weakness, her dependence, her need that he see it through. She’d seen it so many times—the humiliated woman discarding self-worth to hold onto her children’s wandering father, the man wafting boyish charm and keeping the indulgent affection of their mutual friends, the woman hollowing out, becoming brittle, haggard with work, scorned by those same children later for being weak, when what she’d been was stronger than they could imagine. And if she did leave, it was as a reed flattened by the receding shore. He remarried within the year, and she remained in reduced circumstances.
She was right about that bastard. He’d been boning her sister all along. He must believe Maria’s fairytale. Like many single people, Maria cloaked intense loneliness with cheer and disaffection. Her sister maintained the fiction that she was happy, insisting that she loved her life right up to the second she rehauled it, never a bad moment, just transformation after transformation, from painting to ceramics to mixed media, never investing enough time to be taken seriously. Claudia cursed the marital intimacies she shared with Maria out of despair or for a laugh, as though voicing her thoughts would let the wind take them, Maria giggling over the phone, “¡Estás loca!”
Maria must have been conscious, then, of her betrayal, feathering her nest with Claudia’s sisterly confessions. Or maybe it had been somewhat innocent, until it wasn’t anymore. Maria seemed uncontaminated by the striving that seeped into her sister. But when Claudia had something she coveted—a husband just waiting to be appreciated—Maria’s ambition unmasked itself.
Maria had been polite, deferential even, asking Claudia about her travel plans for the coming year. Symposiums where she would lecture while others nodded and mapped out their careers, conferences where she would present a paper and drink to forget the work that awaited her—Claudia described it all with the same weary candor, a frankness reserved for people she thought would not judge her. Maria nodded and sipped while they dressed for New Year’s Eve dinner. Relieved of the burden of deadlines, Claudia refilled their wineglasses continuously. Andrew had gone to visit Thomas in his study. Let them have their time, Claudia thought. Sisterhood is special.
Later that evening, Maria rolled an empty suitcase out the front door and around the cabin, repeating the names of countries she wished to visit, crunching over snow as Andrew took pictures of the ritual with his phone. In the twelve seconds before midnight, they stuffed green grapes in their mouths, one for each tick of the countdown, for each wish, for each apostle, arriving at the new year with a mouth full of sweetness and laughter, juices spilling over into wet kisses on cheeks and mouths, the whole tradition revived by Maria, who, unlike Claudia, did not eschew her upbringing when she arrived, did not watch and learn and imitate, but instead toted difference like a banner of authenticity. Thomas even threw a bucket of water out the window, a rite he claimed because it required rolling up his sleeves.
No one ever talks about how good it feels to assimilate. It was what I was supposed to do, she thought. More than that, it’s what felt right, a refuge from the insistent poverty she once thought would be her fate, fear of which drove Claudia to distance herself from those who had walked across the border. She took a plane. Thomas said it to anyone who would listen, would work it into the conversation somehow with a wry twist of his mouth, and she knew he meant to convey that he took care of her, this girl who was nobody until she became his daughter, erroneous proof that he’d had a life.
In the grand homes of her father’s friends, the only Mexicans were there to take care of everybody else. They watched Claudia when she came over, careful not to offer rapidfire conversation until the hosts were distracted, the first shy greeting given as a slight nod of the head, to spare her. They taught her that pure attentiveness requires both an inhabitance and a vacating of presence which is difficult for some to enact without letting erasure dig down to the bone. Those who survived servitude possessed dignity beyond the people who paid them.
Andrew wanted a caretaker, though he would never admit it. No one wanted to fess up. She ran from that life, ran from it like she had never sold roses at intersections—for the church, swore her mom—ran from it like that child wasn’t with her all along, observing her fraudulence in real time, knocking on the windshield. If she had to explain why she first withdrew from Maria, why she recoiled whenever she sensed her sister was about to bring up something only they knew in a room full of people, the truth was Claudia hated to see such knowing in another pair of eyes. She wanted to move on.
In bed that night, Andrew fell prone to a long silence Claudia thought was sleep until he spoke. “Why didn’t you teach me this stuff?”
“You dislike superstition. Anything related to religion. Remember?”
“Not at all. Tonight was fun!”
By which he meant these customs were so beneath him, so completely and utterly ineffectual, that he didn’t mind them. Beliefs that Andrew would have dismissed as backwards when performed by the people of his own country became something lovely in Maria’s hands, a novelty. He didn’t want an equal. Maybe they’d be happy together.
Claudia peed herself to keep warm, focusing on the shower, which was almost hot. Everything would be okay. Things would get better the cleaner and emptier she got. She scoured her scalp with shards of soap, moving down her body in brusque circles. The water was cooling. By the time she got to her thighs, it was frigid. She let the icy stream blast her face. Swollen eyes rode herd on a long night of hard drinking. With no conditioner, there wasn’t much she could do about her hair.
The towels were the size of tissues and about the same thickness. She dried her hair with unwise flips of her head, reeling against the sink as her brain sloshed back into place. Scrubbing her teeth with a wet towel corner, she rinsed and spat and searched for flashbacks to reconstruct her night.
Kelly green. Yes. It began by playing pool—his bad break.
No, it began with beers on the beach, and the slow creep to Clallam Bay. There were those Natives at the bar. They didn’t look Makah. Maybe Elwha. She could play that off, no problem.
Amber light in a tumbler, and another, and another, and another. Had she ordered those drinks? Or did he bring them to her unasked? She couldn’t remember paying for anything but the first round, which she did with cash, in case she got stopped. She saw herself sink the eight ball, watched his face sharpen, his smile lines crystalline as he held the door on their way out. Stars tumbling to her right—the passenger’s seat. Good, she hadn’t driven. Warmth on her body, a hand on her throat, her head against the wall. The clerk’s call.
Fuck. They were already famous.
A dark little boy with a cowlick peered into the window. She shook her fist at him, dropped the towel and cupped herself. He howled with delight. Another small, round head appeared just above his. She threw a pillow at them. It hit the glass with a soft whoomph. The boys took off, cackling and waving their hands in the air, running victory laps in the parking lot.
So much for discretion. Claudia sat on the edge of the bed, clothes in her lap, back curved into a bony ridge. She didn’t have the energy to be angry. She wanted to have already done what she came here to do. She wanted to run, and to have somewhere to go. She wanted t
o trade these clothes for a silk dress and a fancy dinner with the man who promised to love her until death parted them. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger, deciding her next move.
She needed to push forward, and that was all. “Put your pants on one leg at a time,” Thomas once told her. Claudia mulled over the possibilities while pulling on yesterday’s outfit, building herself up again, layer by layer. She would go back to Maggie. Even if Peter told other people, Claudia doubted he would tell his mother. Other people might, though; several hours had passed. He could have put the word out. Most likely, Maggie already knew.
Claudia once read that dementia swept the memory clean, sending brief surges of lucidity downstream, bursting banked trauma at the least opportune times. But it seemed that Maggie’s mind rejected things she didn’t like, or maybe it was that she failed to anticipate things she didn’t want to happen, even when she knew they could happen, or would happen.
Claudia could understand that, having let her marriage, and now, her career, sink into the mire. But Peter was kind of an outsider on the reservation, like her. Even if he did spread rumors, she would deny them. Perception displaced reality so readily.
Wetting a towel, she returned to the sheet and rubbed the stain, her headache intensifying. She was too old to need birth control, right? Forty was the new twenty, but only on the surface; inside, the body aged like always. She lifted the top sheet, snapping it twice in midair before letting it billow over the bed.
Frowning against the cold sun, she pocketed her left hand and edged past a cleaning cart on the balcony. Behind it, a maid stared from the open door of another room just like hers, but with a kitchenette, where the boys played with the faucet. Claudia gave a hint of a nod as she was passing. Maybe she could offer a twenty for a ride down the road.
Her SUV was parked between a blue truck and an aging sedan. Dumbfounded, she opened the door and settled into the driver’s seat. It smelled like coffee. The center console held a white paper cup with a plastic lid cool to the touch. And a muffin, which she disregarded, lifting the coffee to read a note scrawled on its side. THANKS!
She took a sip and pulled her wallet from her jacket. Finding no receipts, she counted cash and thumbed through credit cards. Perhaps she’d left one at the bar, or maybe he’d covered his expenses, so to speak. No and no. She felt bad for checking, then irate that she would even consider empathizing with him. He took something from her without asking, when she was in no condition to say yes. But she hadn’t said no. Not that she could remember.
She pulled down the sun visor to check her face for clues, yet again. She would go shopping at the co-op and drop hints about her day. Perhaps a walk along the strait. There was so much coastline here. If anyone said, hey, I saw your car in Clallam Bay, she could respond and corroborate. People want to believe the stories they are told.
The pole in front of the co-op was all eyes and grimaces as she pulled up to the parking lot. She stared at the carvings, trying not to look at the bar across the street, where a man leaned by the door, smoking. She didn’t recognize him from last night. At the top of the pole, Thunderbird held his wings wide, chest containing another scowl, the whole of him bursting with ferocity, talons sunk into the teeth of Whale, dangling beneath him, tail curved onto his back like an elephant’s trunk. Below the whale was a massive human face.
As she parked next to the pole, trying to be conspicuous, Thunderbird—who brought wind and hail and lightning serpents to steal someone’s wife, or so another story goes—well, Thunderbird flapped his wings. She blinked.
That didn’t happen. A trick of light, she thought, a shift in the shadows as I pulled up. A matter of perspective. Her mind refused her rationale. Maybe I should eat that muffin. She palmed its buttery dome. The top of the muffin bulged like love handles. She took a small bite. Its cloudlike goodness whirled around her tongue. Her spit kicked into overdrive. She hadn’t eaten a muffin in years. She wolfed it down, licking crumbs from the paper and crumpling what remained into a wet ball she dropped into her empty cup. There.
Caffeine, fat, carbs and sugar combined to give her spirit an angle of repose. There were more than a thousand Makahs on the reservation. Although tribal members were connected by blood or marriage, some neighbors didn’t speak to each other, carrying feuds begun by those who came before. And so it was everywhere. If it didn’t work out with Maggie and Peter, she could move on, and maybe she should, without further ado, knock on another door and start fresh. It didn’t feel right, though, to leave things as they were, sullied. She would smooth things over, take whatever she had coming face to face, and, in the process, rewrite the story of what happened last night, reclaim some of her power. She’d lost control, and whether that was his doing or hers, she couldn’t say, except that she drove to a bar after splitting a six pack, which told her she was in the mood for excess.
Her left cheek tingled. The sun? She tipped her face from its rays, careful to ensure the driver’s seat position didn’t leave age spots. The late morning light slanted through the window, hitting only the outer edge of her thigh. She touched her cheek and turned to face the heat’s source. A large lidless eye, a black and white ovoid, bore into her. The totem.
The wooden man’s mouth was downturned. His top lip cradled a divot much like Andrew’s, her mind flashing to the forbidden thought—I would rather him dead than with Maria. A great disaster could befall them both, a chasm, a flood—something terrible and cataclysmic, the kind of tragedy ascribed to God.
The corners of the man’s frown tightened into a scowl, his face glowering, brightening the red rim of his eye. I am losing it, she thought. I need a nap. She forced herself to keep looking at the gray curls of cheek and nose, their contours almost fetal between his heavy brow and chin. The air around her grew stifling so fast she understood how their first and only dog died while she shopped for dinner on a fall day. She was distraught for months, displacing Andrew’s blameless grief with her own bottomless need for forgiveness.
Don’t think about that anymore, she commanded. Get out and get going. On her way into the store, Claudia took a moment to cover the carved eye with her cupped hand, silencing its judgment.
Exactly $237.45 later, Claudia was back in her car, grocery bags nestled in the passenger seat, chugging an organic coconut water for all it was worth. She steered past the Video & Liquor store, wares stacked behind dingy windows that held old “Welcome Home Troops” flyers, and steeled herself to drive past the grocer’s hand lettered sign.
LAST CHANCE COLD BEER AND WINE
For the final winding miles to Neah Bay, she kept her wheels on the road’s white stripe—so easy to make a hard turn into nothing—and vowed never to touch Peter again, knowing that the thought was a lie, an active and intentional lie, because she hoped it would happen again, on her own terms, as soon as she recovered.
Chapter Twelve
PETER WOKE AT dusk. He checked his phone. 4:30 p.m. This time of year was hard. Just when he got going, the day was gone. He blamed the long nights for his drinking. He knew it wasn’t so. His mother was sitting up in the dark when he got home. Dawn wasn’t till eight this time of year.
Exhaustion still beat him with big fists. He had let Claudia pass out in the crook of his shoulder. He did not allow himself to rest with her. You should never turn your back on that kind of woman. She had to be observed to act right. He could see that. His buzz slid into a sorry ache as she mewed and breathed heavy beside him. She looked younger asleep.
Spent and near slumber, he felt something close to tenderness, the desire to protect. He eased out of bed, wiping spit off his arm. Pity was a pile of judgment with sympathy thrown on top. He didn’t want to take part in such things; once he got concerned about a woman, there was no end to it.
He rinsed his dick in the sink, trying and failing to be quiet. The faucet screeched, loud as anything in the night, water rushing through the pipes like a waterfall. To hell with it, he would not creep. Normal, like a man, he
untangled his clothes from hers. He draped her stuff on the chair, trying to make the scene more civilized for her sake. Her keys jingled in her jacket. He would sober up on the walk to the bar. He hoped not to get hit by a drunk. There were some things a woman should not have to do.
His mom did not demand explanations when he walked in the door; she never had. He wanted her to acknowledge his right not to answer her unasked questions. Like why did you skip dinner last night? Our first with Roberta in how many years, and you were where? Maybe she thought he wouldn’t come back. Would serve her right.
But when she placed a plate of eggs and bacon and buttered toast in front of him, he ate the bread. The grease and salt worked their way in. It’s hard to be bitter while eating. He didn’t look up until his plate was empty. There she was again. More bacon, a second helping of toast. She smiled. Her dumpling cheeks swallowed her eyes. He smiled back. He couldn’t help himself. That was that.
Through his bedroom door, he heard his mother murmur and pause, murmur and pause. He hoped she hadn’t picked up a habit of talking to herself. Old people have so many demons to keep at bay. He doubted Claudia would stop by, given how he’d left her. Maybe Roberta? He hadn’t showered. She would know what he’d been up to just by looking at him.
Cleaned up, he strode down the hall and heard a woman laugh. He recognized that knowing, confiding chuckle.
“Son! The most wonderful lady has come for a chat.”
Claudia was focused on his mother, smiling and nodding like she was hearing about a child’s day at school. Something pinched deep in his stomach.
“Have you met Claudia? I think I told you about her—she visited last summer? We’ve been telling stories all afternoon. Have a seat.”
Subduction Page 10