The Den

by Abi Maxwell

  “If you don’t like it, don’t read it,” I snapped.

  Clarence didn’t even respond to that. He just kept on. It’s one of his best qualities, the ability to press on happily, taking no offense. He said, “The style is totally different. Didn’t you ever notice that? The voice in this one story sounds nothing like the voice in any other section. Not even like the voice in the rest of the chapter.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “You could probably find out what really happened to these people, you know.”

  “I know what happened to them,” I said.

  “You know what I mean,” he said. He closed the book but kept it on his lap. He said, “What do you do all day, Jane?”

  I shrugged.

  “Why do you go out there?”

  “Where?”

  “Maybe it would help,” he said.

  This, I think, is the other best quality of my husband, though it can be hard to accept it in the moment. He works and thinks and does whatever it is he does all day, and he scarcely asks me a question, and he gives no indication that he knows what I am doing, but all along he understands.

  He said, “What if these people didn’t really disappear?”

  “But they did.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “What if you found out where they went?”

  “It’s not like I’m thinking about them,” I said.

  “Well, then, what is it, Jane? You don’t eat, you don’t talk to me, you walk around all day like you’re some ghost. Maybe you’d feel different if you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There’re programs now. On the computer. You could look up their birth and death records. Passenger lists. I don’t know, Jane. It’s just an idea.”

  I asked him if he thought these records would tell me what happened to my sister.

  “Jesus,” he said. “You’re the one who put these stories together in the first place. What if one of them isn’t true? Or what if it’s different than you thought? I don’t know. I just thought you’d like to find out,” he said. He took the book from his lap and set it on the table and left the room. I looked at the clock. Almost 3:00 p.m. Almost the hour when I had seen Kaus in the post office. I grabbed my jacket and hurried out, and maybe it was because of my anger at my husband that I finally had the nerve to ask the woman at the post office about him. I asked, and as she answered I swear I could see her trying to hold a little smirk in. I like to pretend it was in reference to our shared moment of imagining this remarkably attractive man waltzing through our town, and not because of any memory she had of his connection to my broken family.

  “Just moved back,” she said. “Course I’m not supposed to tell you that.” She looked away from me then, picked up a stack of packages, and went into the back room. I waited a minute for her to return, but she didn’t, so I walked out, and I kept walking. I walked all the way through spring and into the sticky days of summer. I didn’t mow the lawn, didn’t plant a garden. I just roamed the streets, and then one aimless day I roamed in after getting the mail and I complained to Clarence that they’d sent another new telephone book, and that it was such a shameful waste of paper this day and age, and before I had even finished my rant I found myself opening the book, flipping the pages, and reading through all the S names. His came early. Saengsavang, Kaus. I ran my finger back and forth over the name of the one person I could find—save, perhaps, for the doctor—who potentially knew my sister more than I had. Thirty-eight Mountain Drive. It was right there, right up the hill from my home, in that little development where I’d gone nearly every day to swim.

  * * *

  —

  The first time I walked up to his road, I noticed a pileated woodpecker in a silver maple at the corner. I stopped and watched it for a long time. I’d read once in the daily paper that birds are like people in that they eat three meals a day, and that if you want to see them you can look at breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I’m not a birder, but in this case it seems to work. I frequently walk up to that spot at mealtimes now, just to see him. It’s male, I know—I looked it up. His red crest goes all the way down to the base of his bill. Sometimes, a car drives by while I am standing there, just one hundred yards or so from the driveway that leads up to the A-frame-style house that Kaus lives in. It’s the sort of house that I imagine will fall right off the rock ledge it’s built on when whatever is coming for this world comes. I walked up there that first day, all the way to the top of his driveway. It was late on a humid afternoon. There was a broad, high porch above me, with what must be a fantastic view of the woods below. His truck was in the driveway. I stood there for a while, just letting the mosquitos swarm, not even swatting at them. I thought of how I deserved every bad thing that had ever or would ever happen to me, of how my apology would mean nothing, change nothing. I took a deep breath, turned around, and walked home.

  * * *

  —

  The next day I was standing in my kitchen with my hands in the dishwater when I saw a fox bolt into the yard. Though my reaction must have been instant, I remember a moment in which I had the time to think of how unlucky I felt. A coyote is what I wanted. Why in all this time had I not been allowed to see even one wild coyote? My chickens were out, but I knew I had a chance. I ran out the back door, grabbing a log from the remains of the year’s woodpile on the way, and I hollered as I got outside, and threw that wood at the animal. My aim was good. The wood hit her right on the back. She yelped and spun around. I spun around, too. There was a voice.

  “Sasha,” it said. “Sasha, come!”

  “Oh my god,” I said.

  The dog limped to her owner. He still wore the same hat I had seen him in that day in the post office.

  “Oh my god,” I said again. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Is she okay?” The dog was at his side now, nudging her head into his legs, and he was leaning over, petting her and at the same time pulling her back out of my yard. “My chickens,” I said. “Her color. I don’t know. She’s so small. I thought she was a fox.” I looked up at him. “Kaus,” I said. I had said his name in my mind so many thousands of times, but had I ever actually said it to him before? “Kaus, I am so, so sorry.”

  The dog had returned to her bounding self, and Kaus began to turn around and head for the road. I imagined myself letting him go. Behind me, I heard the barn door slide open. Clarence. He would see us, would join us.

  “Kaus,” I said again, but he didn’t turn. “Wait,” I pleaded. “Did you see me?”

  He stopped then, finally. “What did you say?” he asked as he turned around. His question felt so heavy that for a moment I wondered what my initial question had even meant. What, exactly, had I been referring to?

  “At your house,” I said quickly. “I looked you up. I walked by your house. Is that why you came here today?”

  “I didn’t come here,” he said. “I was just walking by.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. His voice was at once quiet and pointed. He turned away again and whistled for his dog, who had gone up the road without him. “Sasha!” he called, and then he left my property before my husband had even made it across the lawn to us.

  Henrietta

  BEFORE HE could even talk, it seemed unfathomable to Henrietta just how much her son had his own independent mind. Like the way the drain of the bathtub or sink or any drain at all, really, amazed him so fully with no prompting whatsoever. When he was a young toddler they used to take walks through the neighborhood, and had she not eventually picked him up and carried him home she felt he would have lasted out there all night, just staring down the city drains, plopping rocks through the grates and clapping in delight when he heard their splashes. It used to be that she thought he enjoyed the sound of it, that maybe he would even turn out to be a musician. But as he g
rew and began to speak it became clear that it was strictly the plumbing that he loved. He wanted to know how the water in the city got to their house, wanted to see the path it took when it left. He wanted to know what exactly happened when the toilet flushed. Eventually she bought him a flashlight and a stool, and after that he would spend hours at the bathroom sink, just staring down, exclaiming now and then that he saw something. She never did know what it was he saw, if anything. But when he drew pictures, more often than not it was tubes and pipes. Well, she would say to him now and then, at least I won’t have to call a plumber when you grow up.

  She wasn’t so sure he loved those things now, though. She’d even asked him, “Do you still love pipes?” and he had laughed right at her. Still, his understanding of the way things worked had never left. She liked to think he’d inherited this mechanical sense from her own father, though she wasn’t convinced her father possessed that sort of mind. Maybe her grandfather. Because she didn’t like to think very often of what parts of him might have come from his own father.

  He was sixteen years old now. Henrietta said, “You sure are spending a lot of time with Annika.” And, “Maybe it’s time you slow things down with Annika.”

  “God, Mom,” he said. And then, when he was angrier, “God, get off my back, as if you know what it’s like to love someone.”

  She went to the drugstore and bought a box of condoms after that. He scoffed at her and refused to touch the box, so the next day while he was at school she brought it into his bedroom and put it in his underwear drawer. After that he never said anything about it and she never allowed herself to check to see if it had been opened. But a few weeks later she did bring Annika outside to see the daffodils, and while they stood there marveling at the giant patch that had grown forth from just a few lone plants a handful of years ago, Henrietta said, “Don’t you get pregnant, you understand me?” Annika, predictably, just blushed, and then she actually turned to leave, but Henrietta grabbed her arm. She said, “Does your mother talk to you about this? Are you taking birth control?”

  “No.”

  “No she doesn’t talk to you, or no you’re not on it?”

  “I’m not having sex, Ms. Olson.”

  “Henrietta.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You will,” Henrietta said. “And do you know whose problem it will be? Yours.”

  Yours alone, Henrietta thought. She would have liked to believe otherwise, would have liked to imagine her Charley as good enough to stand by, but she had spent his entire life thinking about the opportunity a man was afforded to go the other way. What, exactly, had that opportunity looked like for his own father? Had it been a string of decisions that led inevitably to an open door that he could not help but choose? Or had it been an unexpected and shining path that had appeared before him like an apparition?

  * * *

  —

  In their first few years in Montana, Henrietta hadn’t retold that coyote story to her son. She’d told him other stories of her childhood—sneaking out to ride the horses had been the main plot—but for some reason she had always stayed away from that particular one. But then one day when he was four he noticed a picture of a wolf on the front page of the newspaper on their table and he said, “Why is that coyote there?” She told him it was a wolf that had been spotted on the edge of town but he wouldn’t believe her. She said, “Where did you learn about coyotes?”

  “I just know,” he said.

  “But who told you about them?”

  “I just know,” he said again, and when she asked a third time he grunted and said, “I don’t want to talk,” and he walked away.

  That night, though, at bedtime, he wouldn’t stop asking her questions. What is a wolf? How is a coyote different than a wolf? Where do the animals live? What do they like to do? She told him to stop with the questions and to close his eyes, but he would not. By this time he had of course read many stories of the Big Bad Wolf, and had always delighted in that wicked animal, but now it seemed to her that he must not have ever fully realized that such an animal really existed. He sat up in bed and said, “Are there wolves and coyotes outside now?”

  Finally, in order to get him to just lie down and be quiet, she said, “I will tell you a story about coyotes if you promise me you’ll close your eyes.” He promised and she said, “This might be a bad idea. What if you get scared, Charley?”

  At that he let out a little mocking laugh and told her that coyotes didn’t scare him.

  “Of course,” she said. “Once upon a time,” she began, “in the place that I am from, a family of five lived in my woods.” She told the story slowly. It was the second time in her life that she had told it, and once again she found herself rewriting it as she spoke, saying that the family had needed to get away, that they had lured coyotes into their house and then disappeared. “So the coyotes helped the people, and the people got to go free,” she said as her son let his breath out, cuddled in to her, and eventually fell asleep. After that, the story—her version of it—became a favorite, one that he wanted told right alongside all the others from her childhood.

  * * *

  —

  Once, she and Charley checked out a copy of Little Red Riding Hood from the library. At home, Charley sat transfixed as she read it to him. She had forgotten the ending—that the girl and her grandmother were eaten, and then, when the hunter arrived, cut free from the belly of the wolf. When the story was done he sat quietly for a long time. She asked him if he liked it and he didn’t answer. She asked if he had been scared. He had just barely turned five years old. Finally he said, “Why did our family in the woods have to go?”

  It was the first time he asked for the information that she had promised him—though of course he couldn’t remember that—on their journey west. Now she thought for a while about what to tell him. She didn’t want to make up any more specifics, but she could say that they had done something bad, or something that other people thought was bad, but neither statement felt quite right. Finally she said, “It’s a total mystery, we will never, ever know.” She thought that he wouldn’t accept it for an answer, but actually he seemed to love that added dimension of the story. “Tell it,” he urged, and so once again she told him what had come to feel like their very own creation story.

  * * *

  —

  In late spring, Henrietta dropped Charley and Annika off at a trailhead twenty minutes out of town and said she’d pick them up again four hours later. They’d planned to hike through a burn area, where Charley thought there would be lots of morels to pick, and then continue three miles onward, to a waterfall, where they would have a picnic before hiking back. When the time came, Henrietta sat at the trailhead, waiting. An hour passed, another. Thank god it stayed light so late. While Henrietta sat there on the old logging road she saw a bear. Just a black bear, a big one, lolling along with its head low. A minute later she saw a deer. Just as that animal jumped over the small incline at the side of the road and darted back into the forest, a moose walked out. Next an elk. It was uncanny. The animals just kept coming and coming. Henrietta thought for a moment that she had lost her mind, even been drugged. It took her some effort to calm down. She reminded herself that she had never felt safe here. It was nothing like where she’d come from. Here, the wilderness went on and on, and it was filled up with animals that could kill her. She reminded herself that that particular unrest had always suited her, had always been part of what she loved about this landscape. Now, though, with her son out there, she found herself terrified.

  Anyway, they returned. They had a full bag of morels with them. They said they’d seen a wolf on the trail, that they’d decided to stay still and wait for it to retreat, and then after it had, they’d waited another hour just to be sure. She probably would have thought it was just a story, that really they were out there having sex and losing track of time, but because of the
animals she herself had seen, she believed them. Plus, part of the story was that Charley had been the one who was scared, the one who’d insisted they wait. It seemed to Henrietta that had they made the story up, they would have kept Charley as the brave one.

  Charley’s birthday was a few weeks after that hike, and on it Annika gave him a book. An old paperback copy of Never Cry Wolf. In the past, Henrietta had scarcely seen him read, but once he began that book he would not put it down. She asked him over and over again what he loved about it, but he wouldn’t say. Lately he would scarcely say a word to her.

  * * *

  —

  The hardest part of mothering, she thinks, has been the loneliness. Long ago, when she first came to this big state, she’d seen a little article in the paper for a new group for teen mothers. These days, that seemed typical enough, but back then she’d been shocked that there were enough of them to step out in public and form a group. Henrietta had been seventeen at the time, and she’d kept the article and thought almost daily of joining. She’d even driven by the house where the group met, but she hadn’t had the nerve to stop. Because what if people saw her going to the group? What if, somehow, she was found out? Even though she’d promised herself that she would be honest she had still lied about her age, said she was twenty-one. She’d used that lie to buy a house. She had at least used her own name and Social Security Number, because what did she have to lose? She wasn’t quite sure. Her son was healthy and her life was surprisingly good, and the possibility that anyone would ever come after her for the money had long ago evaporated from her mind. Still, in the long weeks after the forms for the loan were turned in there was one small but sure thread in her that wondered hopefully whether or not she would be found. When the papers were returned and the signing was done she was once again shocked by how easy it could all be. Now she had a mortgage payment, and what kind of teenager had that? She wouldn’t fit in with the other girls in the teen mothers group. Still, she’d saved the article, which had been printed with a photograph of seven girls standing at a rose-filled park with their babies.