Fierce Little Thing

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  “I don’t think he’s sexy, Iss.”

  “And Philip was married to Xavier’s mom, and Jim to Teresa!” Technically, Jane had already left Philip by then—and had another man’s baby—but if Xavier doesn’t care to set the record straight, I’ll hold my tongue. “Not to mention,” Issy charges on, “Ephraim was also supposedly quite happily married to Sarah—Mr. Do unto Others—and even he couldn’t keep his dick out of her! And still can’t, apparently!”

  “Okay,” says Cornelia.

  “Don’t be hard on yourself, Cornelia,” I say, as we pass a truck stop. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your mother’s choices.”

  She swivels in her seat. “Oh, sure. We’ll all be like you, Saskia.” Her voice is a blade. “Why take responsibility when we can just bake our daily bread and live on our big, beautiful estates and pretend we didn’t murder—”

  “Stop,” Issy says. Cornelia stops. Xavier drives on.

  64

  Abraham took us out on the water. He paddled a kayak; we took two canoes. Never in a million years would I have said I thought him handsome; I considered my devotion far more complex. But it did not escape my notice that with his hair knotted on his head, I could see the muscles of his back move like machinery whenever his hands pulled the paddles. When he turned to see if we were coming, his eyes finally met mine, and a part of myself, at the root of me, shivered.

  Issy and Cornelia pushed off without me, so I rode with the boys: Ben steering at the back of the canoe, Xavier paddling at the front, which left me, jobless, in the middle. The opposite shore, fixed in my mind, sprang into three dimensions as we moved toward it: trees, cabins, boats. We turned south. The familiar landmarks dissolved as we rejoined the Thinged World. New trees, new cabins, a smattering of islands, a pair of loons.

  “You want a turn?” Ben asked. His newfound friendliness was so puzzling that I still couldn’t tell whether he was being genuine. But when I looked back at him, risking tipping us, he offered up his paddle.

  I shook my head. “We’ll capsize.”

  He pointed at the girls ahead. “Let’s beat them.” Ben and Xavier paddled like anything and we pulled far ahead. Cornelia’s shattered expression as she watched us sail by filled my heart with mean hope.

  I thought of Odysseus and his exploits, which Daddy liked to regale us with at bedtime. He’d look at Mother over our heads whenever he spoke of Penelope, weaving patiently, fending off her many suitors—a threat veiled as a compliment. I thought of you pointing at a barge on the East River and asking how something so big could go so fast. I thought of how in paddling away from Home, I was leaving the search for you behind for the day, and hoped you didn’t mind, and couldn’t feel my mild wave of relief; it was exhausting to hold the whole possibility of you inside every minute.

  We came to the end of the lake and then we kept going. Abraham led us through a secret passage only a little wider than the canoes. The channel was shallow and sandy, maybe twenty feet long, curving gently to the right. Abraham called it “the Dugway.” It seemed we would run aground—Ben’s words, spilling from just behind me—but we soared over the close bottom like an airplane above the earth. The view opened up again, at the lip of a whole new lake, like Alice Through the Looking-Glass.

  65

  Four spotlights spring on when we pull into the driveway. Next comes a volley of barks from the belly of the house. The dogs’ voices knot together; it’s hard to tell how many. Maybe I’m afraid, after all.

  The house is made of big, round logs. It’s two stories tall and wide-spread on the land. It clearly has a view, but anything outside of the lit circle we’re caught in has been eaten by the night. Xavier cuts the engine. We sit there until the front door yawns open.

  Ben.

  Ben in a white T-shirt and plain boxers, shielding his eyes. He looks small from this distance, just a regular man on this earth. At his command, the animals charge from the house. Four dogs: square heads, rib cages like metal crates. Brindled and snarling, they snap against the car. The hot bodies smack the metal again and again. Sekou utters a manic cry.

  Xavier unrolls his window, just enough to speak through. He holds up his hands. “We come in peace!”

  Finally, Ben understands. “No,” is all he says. He calls to the dogs. They leave us in an unexpected show of obedience, and disappear inside at his heels. Do we imagine the sound of the bolt locking the door, or does sound really carry that far across the Maine night?

  Xavier undoes his seat belt.

  “No,” I say. “I’ll go.”

  66

  Abraham steered us to an untouched beach skirted by forest. The boys took turns bursting out of the surface of the new lake, fists of black gunk clutched high. Cornelia and Issy had a treading water contest. Ben swam close, his body swift and strong. When he surfaced, he grinned, then splashed me.

  “You’ve got Cornelia to thank for this bounty,” Abraham said, as we dug into a half peck of apples, two pounds of bacon, and boules of Sarah’s sourdough. “She created a diversion.” He unfolded a piece of wax paper, revealing a hunk of Teresa’s goat cheese. “So innocent-looking, but I tell you, this girl’s a criminal mastermind.”

  “Sarah said we could take it,” Cornelia said.

  Abraham stopped sawing and caught her eye. “Unthing yourself of the notion that you must be good all the time,” he said. “I promise, you’ll find yourself much happier.” He was looking at her in the way I longed for, a beam of looking. He hardly blinked. He did not look away until she smiled shyly. Then he nodded and carried on with the knife.

  My mouth watered as he spread the cheese onto each slice of bread, and topped it with slabs of bacon. This was one of Home’s magic tricks: a new desire to devour my fair share. Afterward, belly full, I toppled back onto the warmth. Cornelia and Issy started up a game of Spit, and Xavier played the winner.

  “Can you believe that when I first imagined Home, it didn’t occur to me to think about children?” Abraham’s voice surprised me. Maybe I’d been sleeping.

  “I was there,” Issy said, slapping the empty pile before Xavier had a chance. “You thought about me.”

  “I treated you like a small adult, Iss.” Abraham unbound his hair and wrung it out like a fine linen cloth. Beads of water thumped the bed of sand. “I didn’t understand that a child is a force unto herself. I was so focused on building what I’d imagined that I never looked up to notice that it was already being shaped by you.”

  Issy opened her mouth to disagree.

  “Let me own my weakness,” Abraham said. “Unthing yourself of the idea that I cannot make mistakes.” He tossed her the remnants of his apple. She popped it in, core and all, then shuffled the deck again. Xavier flopped back into the sand.

  “Anyone want to play?” Issy asked. She dealt herself a round of solitaire.

  “I never considered,” Abraham mused, weaving his fingers through the knots the water had tied in the ends of his hair, “how the community of children that is at the center of Home’s daily life might and should change our mission. You’re a vital force in shaping what we do. I’ve started to think of you as our North Star.”

  It was easy to feel left out when Cornelia and Issy whispered shoulder to shoulder, and Xavier preferred to tell his secret to the world before confiding in me, and he and Ben got to be boys together. But wasn’t I here now, with all of them, with Abraham sharing his wisdom, on the lip of a sparkling lake with a full belly? And Ben’s private smile in the water, and the mystery of his newfound kindness.

  “Xavier,” Abraham said, and though Xavier stayed in the same prone position that looked like he was sleeping, his energy changed; every inch of him attended. “How do you feel after announcing who you are?”

  “Okay, I guess?” Xavier propped himself onto one elbow, and his look asked what we thought. “I mean, everyone’s being nice about it.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  Xavier shrugged. “I don’t know. I just.” He
shrugged again. “I didn’t want to make it about myself or whatever.”

  Abraham was fixed on him now, just as he had been on Cornelia, and then on Issy. “We do our best to Unthing ourselves of our selves, but life is a subjective experience. Besides, it’s a marvelous thing to discover who you want to fuck.”

  Xavier’s laugh barked with shock. Cornelia covered her mouth. Issy guffawed. Ben dug his feet into the sand.

  “Oh dear,” Abraham said, “did I say a very bad word?”

  Xavier shook his head, laughing. “No, go ahead.”

  “I embarrassed you,” Abraham said. “Only I meant to celebrate. Only I meant to say that what your mother did was awful, Xavier. I hate that she turned you out just at the moment you were able to tell the truth about who you are.”

  “Yeah, no, it’s okay,” Xavier mumbled. “She didn’t … it’s not a big deal.”

  “You are safe here, with us. You are safe to be who you are.”

  Xavier nodded, but it was clear he was on the verge of crying. Abraham turned, abruptly, to Ben. “Your father has a problem with gayness, doesn’t he?”

  “No,” Ben said. He scowled.

  “It’s right to disagree with him, and stand up for your friend.”

  “Ben’s been cool,” Xavier said. “He’s been helping me a lot.”

  “I love that so,” Abraham said. “I love that so, Benjamin.” He placed his hand on Ben’s arm. “I knew there would be a day when you would challenge your father’s views, and stand up to his fists.”

  Ben’s gaze was a line across the water.

  “I know it makes you angry when I speak of your father this way. I, too, had a father whose views I disagreed with. I, too, lived and breathed in the wake of his expectations, and his anger. I want you to know that once I grew, once I forged my own path, our difference became easier to bear.”

  Ben nodded once, as if to say, please end this. Issy pointed out a pair of loons fishing, their black heads scanning left and right before they dove under.

  “I’m glad to see your sadness leaving.” At first I didn’t know Abraham was addressing me. His voice grew intimate, as if it was just the two of us. “I wished for it to be so.” He started a braid at the nape of his neck. “You are getting stronger, turning your sadness out. Do you feel it, how strong you are?” I should have brought the hatchet along; it would have pleased him to see me throw it. “I wanted to ask, Saskia”—and he leaned toward me with a furrowed brow—“who you consider to be the leader of this group.”

  The lake and wind seemed to hold themselves suspended. “The leader?”

  Abraham finished his braid and let it hang, unbound. “Let’s Unthing ourselves from the idea that it is good or bad to be a leader. Of course there are benefits to leading. But it is also hard work. Sometimes it brings work that will break your heart. I believe that those who are born to lead know it all along. I myself knew it from the time I could talk. There has always been something in me that can’t help but make big decisions.”

  Ben was still looking off across the water, only the loons weren’t there anymore. My belly tightened.

  “I could see,” Abraham continued, “what should rise to the surface, and what was better to let sink. I could see what was worth bringing into the light. You know all about that, don’t you, Saskia?”

  My face was burning. I couldn’t look at the others now. How would they punish me for the way he was setting me aside? But my insides were flipping and twisting, like a dog being offered a meaty bone.

  “Cornelia sings like an angel,” Abraham said. “Ben works hard. Issy lifts us with her spirit. Xavier…”

  Xavier turned then, panic racing across his face.

  “Xavier is loyal,” I said.

  Abraham nodded after a moment. “Xavier is loyal. And why,” he said to me again, “do you think I gave you that sharp little axe?”

  My hands buried themselves in the sand.

  “An axe is built to destroy,” he said.

  Ben audibly groaned, then stood, and walked off along the shoreline, as if I had done something terrible he had known I was capable of all along. “Are you saying,” Cornelia said, “that Saskia is built to destroy?”

  “I am saying,” Abraham said, leaning back into the sand with his hands behind his head, like a man on vacation, “that there is always the possibility of violence. Especially when living as we choose to, removed from the Thinged World. Removed from its strictures. The sheriff has his eyes on us. Did you know that? I ran into him in town the other day and he glad-handed me and told me to just plain call him Sal. Sounds friendly enough, doesn’t it? Well, let me tell you about friendly. He’d love to come up to our land. He’d love to get to know you all, especially. The children. They always want to know the children. You know why? So they can take you. Sal could do that—did you know? He could take you, Saskia. You’re here without a parent. He could snatch you up and put you in the system. He would call it protection.”

  67

  I have to knock and knock and knock and knock. The night tightens, but at least it’s not daytime; I’m not sure what would happen if I stood in the sun this long. Maybe I’d flake off, like sand in a windstorm. At least in the dark I can breathe. The others are watching, so I have to succeed.

  The last time Ben or I knocked on the other’s door, I was on the inside. I’d just settled into a Friday evening alone in my Park Slope apartment, planning for a movie night, maybe, a self-pedicure—during that steady phase in my early twenties, after Home, when I believed having a regular life was as simple as getting a paying job. Did he knock this desperately? Did he feel this much regret? Did he feel whatever one calls the premonition of regret, knowing that when the door opens, what will happen is inevitable—and terrible, and necessary? Not anything like a choice.

  I feel his steps before I see him. The dogs are there, too, snarling, yipping, but he calls to them—“Hush now!” My hand shrinks back just as the door opens.

  Here he is, then. The expanse of his face. His eyebrows, furrowed like a little boy’s, then involuntarily eager when he sees it’s me, though he tries to hide that. He smells of dried sweat and evaporating whiskey. He is puffy and middle-aged, but I notice him in there, under all of the changes. He snaps his fingers. I think, at first, that it’s meant for me. But the dogs sit.

  He’s standing in his kitchen. He’s put on sweatpants. He folds each hand over the bareness of the other arm; it’s this tenderness that urges me to look him in the eye.

  “I thought you were a shut-in now.” He’s got the same pug nose, the cowlick at the forehead, like a puppy licked him. “They kidnap you?”

  “I came because I wanted to,” I say, wondering if I’m right. “Because if Abraham is back, we have to stop him.”

  He rolls his eyes at the mention of that name. I change tack. “Can you let us in? Issy’s kid is in the car.”

  Ben runs his hand over his face. Then there are footsteps. His eyes dart left, toward the rest of the house, still dark.

  “Everything okay?” It’s a girl, a very pretty girl, a very pretty young girl, with wavy raven-colored hair and ample breasts and a face shaped like a valentine. On second glance, she’s a woman with a bit of girl left in her. She’s wearing his flannel robe. She cinches it with a blush, but not before I glimpse the turquoise slip beneath it.

  Ben’s daughters are tall and blond and strapping. They inherited these traits from their mother, who is positively Viking; Shelley-Ann, his wife. Shelley-Ann looks nothing like this fresh young thing. Believe me, I know.

  “I told you to stay upstairs,” he says to the pretty young thing.

  “I was worried.”

  “Go back.” His finger points toward the belly of the house.

  “I’m Saskia.” I stretch out my hand. “One of Ben’s oldest friends.”

  The girl smiles, broad and easy, reminding me of Issy the day we met. Her palm is soft. “Jenny.” She peeks over my shoulder at the SUV.

  Ben has
his arms crossed, eyes to the ceiling.

  “Jenny,” I say, “we’re super tired. We drove up from Connecticut. We’ve got a baby with us. Ben probably has a couch the baby can sleep on, right? The rest of us are fine with the floor. Could you help us? Please?” My eyes slip off of her and onto him. “We can talk in the morning, but for now, we just want to sleep.”

  Jenny looks to Ben, a pleading look to do right. So she knows him then. She knows he has it in him to turn us away.

  Finally, he says, “I’ll lock the dogs up.”

  68

  “Certain fungi and plants have what is called a mycorrhizal relationship,” Marta said over her shoulder as she clambered the long hill. Wind swirled the maples and sent leftover rain down onto our heads.

  “You know the other day, out on the other lake?” I whispered to Issy, letting Marta keep her healthy lead. I’d being trying to figure how to broach this topic. Xavier would call me a show-off; Cornelia would analyze the situation within an inch of its life; and Ben—well, no; I definitely couldn’t bring it up with Ben. The only problem was I could never get Issy alone. It was always Issy and Cornelia doing laundry together, or us three girls walking down to the campfire, or the five of us on the Main Lodge porch, playing a Spit tournament because there was nothing better to do. Then Marta showed up to take me foraging, and I asked to bring a friend.

  Above us, on the path, the old woman commanded: “Repeat the difficult word.”

  “Mycorrhizal.”

  “Don’t sound so glum! It’s an evolutionary miracle.”

  A week had passed since that day on the lake with Abraham. I was supposed to be enjoying learning from Marta, but I couldn’t shake the expression on Ben’s face, or that groan, or the way he’d walked away when Abraham said I was built to destroy. Now he wouldn’t even talk to me, as though he’d been dreading those words for longer than he’d known me.