“Hi, Sal baby,” she whispers, and Sally stirs, opening her huge, bloodshot eyes without lifting her head. She blinks sleepily at Lorraine before closing them again. She’s an old woman now, fourteen people years, ninety-eight dog years. And that’s how Lorraine thinks of her: an impossibly old woman.
“She’s sad personified,” Nessa had said wistfully, the day they’d brought the little basset hound home as a puppy, when the girls were teenagers.
“Not everyone is sad,” Tanya had countered.
In the kitchen, Jesse’s at the stove in his boxers, and across the room, a giant bouquet sits on the table.
“Lorrie,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
She walks over to the table and touches a silken petal, ducking her head into the bouquet, inhaling. Flowers mean forgive me. Flowers mean sex. She closes her eyes and tries to make her body relax. She thinks of the woman’s voice on the meditation tapes she’s been listening to. Let go of the tension in your toes. In your calves. Your knees. Breathe the negative energy out.
She can sense him before he touches her—a tightness in the air. He buries his face between her shoulder and her jawbone and she feels the wetness of his eyes on her neck, then the pad of his lips in that same spot, and she almost laughs out loud, that he’s kissing away his own tears. What an idiot, a voice in her head cries out, loud and mocking—though her face reveals none of it.
His kisses move from her neck to her collarbone and then he kneels down in front of her and kisses her stomach and the front of her jeans, sliding his hands up her legs.
She hopes the sex goes quickly; she has so much to do. She goes through the list in her head as Jesse picks her up and carries her to the living room. It’s been days since she’s washed her hair. They need more packing boxes. They’re almost out of toilet paper. She imagines Tanya’s repulsion at finding no toilet paper in the house.
Jesse lays her down on the couch and undresses her, removing each piece of clothing as though unwrapping a fragile gift. He folds her jeans and T-shirt neatly, pulls off her underwear, unhooks her bra, and guides her arms out through the straps.
Jesse sits on the floor beside her and begins to touch her. He’s so good at touching her, and she hates him for it. He moves his hands over her, softly and tenderly. “I love you,” he says, his voice like a buoy across a dark, calm sea.
For a moment she opens her eyes. From the couch she can make out the top of Sally’s head, her droopy ears splayed out like pigtails on either side of her. Lorraine is glad the dog is asleep. She feels guilty having sex with Sally close by, the way she wouldn’t want to have sex knowing Nessa or Tanya were in the next room.
“What?” Jesse asks.
“Sally,” Lorraine says.
“Sally’s fine,” says Jesse.
Lorraine closes her eyes again. She lifts her hips off the couch and Jesse tightens his grip on her thigh, the other hand still moving patiently. She squeezes her eyes tighter and clenches her muscles and feels that double-sided pang of wanting and not wanting it to be over.
But it ends and she gasps and lets her hips drop.
There it is—home. The brown peeling paint, a faded chocolate, pale yellow trim on the windows and railings and doors. It’s a color combination so familiar to Nessa, so native to Arlington, that a physical sensation accompanies the colors, especially today—coming home for the final time. She knows the gentle slope of the telephone wires against the pale, spring sky; the forest-green trash bins along the side of the house, the way they blend into the chocolate brown.
A Realtor’s sign protrudes from their small lawn, which is barely a lawn at all. A big blue banner across: sold. A bunch of red balloons are tied to the porch railing, bouncing and bobbing off one another. Someone, the real estate agent probably, has put flowerpots leading up the front steps.
Inside, at first Nessa doesn’t recognize her mother. From the back Lorraine looks old and small. Mostly it’s her shoulders, the way she’s curled into herself, her neck bent as if she’s praying, though all she’s doing is washing a dish. Her jeans are too big for her and the seat of her pants sag, the band of her underwear exposed.
“Mom,” she says, walking up behind her, and Lorraine whirls around, a flash of alarm in her eyes. She smiles and Nessa is shocked to see that there are braces on her mother’s teeth.
“Sweetie,” Lorraine says, hugging her. When she pulls back, she covers her mouth with her hand. “Aren’t they awful? Dr. Nathan recommended them.”
“They’re not so bad,” Nessa says, horrified. “But I don’t get it, your teeth were fine.”
Jesse appears in the kitchen then with Nessa’s bag. He walks over and puts his arm around Lorraine’s waist and tugs her shirt down a little. Jesse has always towered over Lorraine, but today they look exorbitantly mismatched—like they’re existing on two different scales. Jesse, ten years younger than Lorraine, has never quite lost his boyishness, and even though there is gray in his stubble now, and a softness in his belly, he has the look of an overgrown kid—bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked.
Nessa feels a swell of sadness at her mother’s sloppiness—that she’s allowed her shirt to ride up like that, that she lets her underwear show. Tanya, she’s certain, will feel irritated by Lorraine’s appearance, and therein lies some fundamental difference between her and her sister. Although Nessa could guess, she doesn’t know how this difference came to be—that Tanya ended up one way and Nessa another.
“I can’t believe it,” Nessa says, glancing around. “The house already feels so empty.”
Lorraine looks around the kitchen as though seeing it for the first time. “It’s felt empty for a while,” she says, and then she leans into Jesse, who squeezes her shoulder.
* * *
—
NESSA BEGINS TO WADE through the piles of clothing in her and Tanya’s old bedroom. Most of it should have been thrown out years ago—bell-bottom jeans from elementary school, training bras with fraying straps, period-stained days of the week underwear. There’s the denim jacket with red roses embroidered onto the back that Nessa wore almost every day in middle school, Tanya’s faux-leather jacket from Limited Too, a metallic blue. Among the clothing are Ellie the Elephant and Lisa the Monkey, their fur worn and faded, their bodies limp.
Each item feels loaded and slightly magical to Nessa, the way the smell of Elmer’s glue might transport you back to a specific classroom, or the opening chords of a song to a specific childhood crush. Holding the stuffed animals in her hands, Nessa is glad that Tanya isn’t here yet: Tanya, who isn’t drawn to nostalgia, who looks forward with a vengeance, and never back. Her sister would have rolled her eyes at Nessa, cradling these forgotten animals.
Nessa takes out her phone and snaps a picture of the room, then sits down beside the piles. She opens her texting thread with Henry and types a message: My childhood bedroom, she writes, and attaches the photograph. But she deletes the text and writes another: My mom got braces, it’s weird. But she deletes that one, too. She doesn’t want to scare him off, and talk of families means you want someone to understand you.
Nessa types another message: I’m still sore from this morning. Clicks send.
A few seconds later she gets an emoji back: a winking smiley face sticking out its tongue. And then: Come back I miss your body.
She smiles and puts her phone down beside her and collapses onto the floor. Then gets back up and goes to the bathroom; tries to pee but nothing comes out.
She texts Tanya from the toilet. Mom has braces.
Tanya’s response, dictated by Siri, appears immediately: What the actual fuck.
* * *
—
A LITTLE WHILE LATER there’s a knock on the bedroom door. Nessa is expecting Lorraine, but it’s Jesse. “I’m going to take Sally out,” he says. “Want to come?”
Nessa holds the leash—it�
��s a new one, bright magenta patterned with paw prints. Sally plods ahead of her and Jesse at a snail’s pace, each step labored and deliberate. Even as a puppy, Sally had been a subdued soul, with a melancholic bark and a tendency to fall asleep in the middle of chaos.
The year they got Sally, 2003, had been bad for Nessa, the night with Dan a looming shadow they now lived in but pretended not to. That night, when it occurred, was like turning a corner from one reality into another. But as time went on, the fuzzier it became, and the chance of ever talking about it—of going back in time and making things right—seemed to disappear completely. Tanya was barely speaking to Nessa then, and Lorraine was spending all her free time at Jesse’s, and often it seemed that the only ones at home were Nessa and the puppy. Nessa used to lie with Sally after school, stroking her long, soft ears and quietly singing songs as though the dog was an infant who might one day learn the words herself.
Nessa and Jesse make their way down Winter Street, stopping every few minutes for Sally to smell a patch of lawn or study a crack in the sidewalk.
“How’s work been?” Jesse asks.
“It’s okay,” Nessa says. “I’m pretty bored there, but it pays the bills.”
A neighborhood kid on a bike teeters past, clutching the handlebars in a death grip, staring ahead with intense concentration. Up the street a man who must’ve been the boy’s father is yelling instructions.
“You think you want to do what that doctor you work for does?” Jesse asks.
“Be a therapist?” she says, glancing at him. She feels as though she might have to pee again, but they just left the house; she wills the urge away.
Jesse nods.
“I think so.” There’s not a lot Nessa can picture herself doing, but she does know how to listen.
The boy’s father jogs past them, holding his hand up in greeting, and she and Jesse nod hello. “There you go, buddy!” the man calls to his son. “Nice and steady.”
“You get people,” Jesse says to Nessa.
She shrugs; she doesn’t know if he means it as a question or a statement. “Well. Kind of.”
“And you’re easy to talk to.”
“Am I?”
“Oh yeah,” Jesse says. “I’ve always found it easy, anyway. You listen. You were like that as a kid, too. You listen closely, and not just to the things people say, but to the things they don’t say.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you think so.” Nessa attempts to hide how happy this makes her, though she’s sure it’s all over her face. Lately she’s been thinking about quitting her job at Janeski’s and applying for social work programs. Smith has a good one. But thinking about something isn’t the same thing as doing it.
It took her until she was twenty-four to get it together to apply for college. Before that, she’d spent a number of years aimlessly following around boys. There’d been a cross-country road trip with Trevor that had ended in Montana when they ran out of money. For a while she’d lived in a dorm room at Bennington College with her boyfriend, Max, until the RA had caught on and she was kicked out. There was a year-long romance with a married man who she still received texts from sometimes. The truth was, those years were mostly boring and lonely.
At Tanya’s college graduation, Nessa was overcome by the beauty of Smith’s campus—the tree-lined paths, the stately brick buildings, Paradise Pond. The girls graduating called themselves Smithies and hugged one another tightly—even Tanya, who hated to hug. Nessa applied early decision to Smith and didn’t tell anyone when the small envelope showed up in the mail. We are sorry to inform you. So she accepted an offer from UMass Amherst—the state school twenty minutes away—and started her undergraduate degree just as Tanya moved to New York City to begin law school. Nessa did well enough in the classes she was interested in and blew off the ones that bored her. She didn’t graduate with honors or plans or a boyfriend.
She decided to move to Northampton, Tanya’s old stomping grounds. When she saw the Smith students around town—going for coffee or brunch, or for drinks at the Green Room or Packard’s, she liked to picture Tanya—happy and well-adjusted, arm in arm with another girl.
“What’s this gap on your résumé?” Janeski had asked Nessa during her interview. The psychiatrist was looking for an assistant who was “detail oriented, with a psych background and a warm disposition.” Nessa figured she sort of fit the bill.
“I was traveling,” Nessa said.
Janeski raised an eyebrow. “Abroad?”
“I spent a lot of time in Vermont.”
Janeski moved on to the next question.
It occurred to Nessa that she might have no business being a therapist. She understood sadness—often this made people feel safe around her. But she hadn’t yet figured out what to do with this sadness, or how to make it go away.
Sally stops and sniffs, pattering around in a circle on the sidewalk, looking for a place to relieve herself. Nessa and Jesse stop, too.
“I’ve always found it easy to talk with you, too,” Nessa says to Jesse. “I’ve been seeing this guy,” she goes on. “He’s one of her patients.”
Jesse’s eyebrows shoot up. “One of the shrink’s patients?”
Nessa nods and tries to read Jesse’s face. He looks amused, but something sharper, too.
“So he must be nuts, then?”
“Not any crazier than the average person.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He stole a taxi,” Nessa says. “The key was in the ignition, just idling. I guess the driver was carrying a woman’s bags up the stairs for her. He got in and drove away.”
Jesse bursts out laughing, and Nessa starts laughing, too.
“Jesus,” Jesse says, “that couldn’t’ve ended well.”
“No. He got arrested.”
Nessa looks down at Sally, who has just deposited four golf ball–sized turds in the middle of the sidewalk. She glances at the house they’re in front of. This one looks brand-new, also a two-family home, but unlike hers, with the two front doors adjacent, like a couple holding hands, the two entrances are located on the far ends of the house, for optimal privacy. Nessa can picture the house it replaced perfectly. Small and maroon, paint peeling so bad it was spotted.
“You be careful, though,” Jesse says. “This taxi thief—is he nice to you?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s his deal?” Jesse asks, his voice suddenly serious. “He doesn’t hurt you, does he?”
“No, no. It’s nothing like that. Do you have a bag?”
Jesse pats his pockets, front and back. “Shit. No.”
They smile at one another, like two kids getting away with something.
“Oh well,” Nessa says, and all three of them keep walking. “He can just be kind of an asshole sometimes,” Nessa goes on. “It’s fine, though. I’m going to end it with him.”
It’s not that she needs Jesse to persuade her to stop seeing Henry. She doesn’t actually care about Henry. He won’t be in her life for long—she’s always known that. But it feels nice when Jesse gets like this, a little worked up. Her own father has never been protective; mostly, she figures, because he just hasn’t been around. Her father has always been content seeing only the top layer of things, as though digging any deeper might turn up a mess he’d prefer to avoid.
Jesse, on the other hand, sees everything.
“You think he’ll listen?” Jesse asks. “Take no for an answer?”
“What choice does he have?” Nessa asks, as they cross the street to the other side, where the private school is, a brick building with a half-moon driveway out front. At one point it was a therapeutic day school for kids with emotional problems. Now it’s just a normal K–8.
Up ahead, the boy on his bike barrels toward them, a terrified look frozen on his face. His father is running behind him. Nessa glances again at Jesse, who appears dee
p in thought and doesn’t register the boy on the bike. She wonders if Jesse is thinking about her.
“If he’s anything like the men I know,” Jesse says, “he’ll think he has all the choices in the world.”
“I’m not worried,” Nessa says.
“Still, if you ever need someone to tell him to get lost, you’ll call me, right?”
Nessa pictures Jesse showing up at her house in Northampton, telling Henry to get lost. There’s something equal parts exciting and mortifying about this picture. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ll call. But I promise you it’s not going to be a problem.”
Jesse nods. “Good.”
The boy on the bike has started to scream. “Dad!” he yells, and it surprises Nessa how high-pitched the boy’s voice is, how vulnerable. “How do I stop?” he wails. “How do I brake?”
“Pedal backwards!” the father calls back. “Backwards, son!”
Nessa and Jesse and Sally stop to watch. For whatever reason, the boy seems unable to pedal backwards, seems unable to do anything at all. He continues to belt forward, his shoulders hunched up by his neck, his helmet huge and askew on his small head.
“This kid’s about to eat shit,” Jesse says quietly to Nessa, and though it’s subtle, there’s a hint of excitement in her stepfather’s voice.
* * *
—
WHEN TANYA ARRIVES LATER that evening, Nessa and Lorraine greet her outside in the driveway.
“The traffic was horrendous getting out of the city,” Tanya announces, as she embraces Lorraine and then Nessa. “It took me literally two hours to go twenty blocks.”
Tanya has always had the mysterious ability to look fresh, even after a five-hour drive. Her hair is pulled up into a neat ponytail, a few dark strands framing her face, and when Nessa leans in to hug her, she gets a whiff of Tanya’s shampoo—coconutty and feminine. She’s wearing black linen pants and a fitted black T-shirt and tiny diamonds sparkle in her earlobes. Her face is clean, free of makeup except for her lips, which are painted a matte pink, and the slightest suggestion of blush on her cheekbones. She looks, as she always does, prettier than Nessa remembers.
Something Wild Page 3