by Zoje Stage
Shaw stood at the window, his back to her, scribbling something in a sketchbook. The blind was halfway up and he peered into the dark night, sometimes almost pressing his nose to the window.
“What are you looking at?” The book was failing to keep her interest.
“Trying to figure something out,” he mumbled.
He slept in a T-shirt and boxers, she in well-worn sweatpants and a tank top. It struck her how unattractive they were. Shaw, who’d never been the fittest guy, was growing mushy around the middle. Maybe more physical labor—chopping wood? shoveling snow?—would add some muscle tone to his otherwise shapeless arms, fish-belly white and dotted with moles. And if Orla didn’t make an effort to preserve her own muscle tone, she’d end up even more sticklike. Her shirt had a hole in it two inches above her belly button—big enough to poke a finger in—and what looked like spaghetti-sauce splatter below that.
Their sex life had diminished after they’d started procreating, but in addition to both of them being tired and busy, the foldout sleeper in the living room had lacked the intimacy of their former bedroom turned nursery. Once they’d been quite adventurous, making up elaborate stories in which they were different characters. It had started as an extension of Shaw’s acting class, but then they’d embellished their scenarios with a sexual element. After meeting on a park bench or at a café—“strangers” making a discovery, surprised by the compatibility of their conversation—they’d end up back at the apartment, erotically charged by their new personas. Their role-playing games had a therapeutic element as well; “Dorothy” and “Dashiell” might admit things that Orla and Shaw couldn’t.
They had their own bedroom walls now, their own door—their own single-purpose sleeping apparatus. Perhaps it was time to revisit some of the old characters, or invent new ones.
“What are you sketching?” She gave up on the book and set it aside.
Shaw remained engrossed. They were only feet apart, but her husband felt a galaxy away. Sometimes at night he filled her in on the progress he was making with his series, translating the symbolism of his imagery or explaining the evolution of his ideas. But this was the first time he’d brought actual work to bed.
“You know what we haven’t done in a long time?”
His head jerked up, but not in reaction to her question. He scurried backward, as if retreating from something, until he collided with the bed. The mattress bounced a little as he plopped down, his attention fully diverted as he listened to something that most definitely wasn’t Orla. Whatever sound he was tracking, it was apparently just beyond his range of hearing; he kept turning his head, squinting, like he’d become a human satellite dish, seeking a signal. It made her skin prickle.
She’d seen him do this before. And, with more subtlety, their daughter had done it too.
Back in the apartment, sometimes her husband or daughter would report hearing a high buzz of electricity that she couldn’t detect. And once, long after the rotten-potato incident, Shaw sniffed all around the living room, certain he smelled something burning; concerned, he tracked it to a neighbor’s candle, two doors down the hallway. What was he hearing here? In the middle of nowhere, where even she swore she could hear the snow fall?
“Babe? What are you doing?” She squirmed over and peered at the sketchbook on his lap, which was illuminated by his own bedside lamp. But he hadn’t been drawing. In a messy scrawl she saw isolated words:
IN!
You
me???
together together
MUST!
in???
She caressed his back, her brain a-jumble with unwanted thoughts. He leapt up as if she’d poked him with an icicle.
“Sorry—”
“No, it’s fine.” He shoved the sketchbook into his nightstand drawer. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.”
“Shaw?” The inky ghoul that had followed them on the road touched her with its sharp talon. What’s wrong with him?
He paced, hands over his ears. “I can’t do this anymore, don’t make me do this, I don’t understand what I’m—”
“Shaw—hey!” He’d never sleepwalked, but it seemed like her husband was trapped in a nightmare. On her knees atop the bed, Orla reached out and grabbed his wrist. She was probably gripping too tightly—he might see the bruises of her fingers later—but she reeled him in. “You’re okay. I’m not making you do anything. What’s wrong?”
He dropped onto the bed beside her, clutching her in his arms. “Oh Orla.”
“Please talk to me.”
“It’s nothing, I’m sorry.” He turned away, a little embarrassed. “I’ve been working too hard—probably never thought you’d hear me say that!” He tried to laugh.
It was some relief that he’d returned from the stratosphere and sounded more like himself. “You’ve always worked hard, your energies every which way. But now you’re so focused—maybe too focused? You can’t work every minute of every day. It’s not a race.”
He nodded. “I feel like…sometimes…I’m going a little crazy. And sometimes I really like it, because it feels so productive, I have so much energy. And other times…”
She rubbed his back. “You don’t have to push yourself so hard. This is—”
“I feel like I have to, that I’m being pulled…sometimes I really want to resist, you know? Like, we’re here in this beautiful place and I feel like I hardly get to see you, or the kids…but I have to be productive, that’s what I promised. But I didn’t realize…this isn’t exactly how I envisioned it.”
“We’re all still finding our way. Just breathe. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Breathe.”
He exhaled a huge sigh and flopped back onto the bed. As she knelt beside him he concentrated on his breath—in, out, in, out—a technique he’d learned to calm his nerves. The rhythmic sound soothed her too.
She stayed on her knees and breathed with him for a while, her uncombed hair like shutters around her face. Her tank top billowed out, and she scraped at the orangey stain.
“Would it help? If I tried a bit harder? We, maybe. Should we try a bit harder now that we have our own room? Maybe that’s what we’re missing—remember Dorothy? And Dashiell? We were so creative; it was so erotic. We haven’t even tried in a long time.” Maybe it wasn’t the only source of his anxiety, his stress, but it could be something—something tangible to grab hold of, to work on.
Shaw blinked, calmer than he’d been. He turned onto his side, let his eyes wander over her familiar form; it returned him to the moment. He played with a piece of her hair. “What haven’t we tried?”
“To really be…I don’t want to say ‘how we were’ because I don’t want to live in the past. But maybe you need me to be something else. And this is the perfect opportunity. Out here, we could come up with completely new characters, different than how we played in the city.” Orla tugged at her shirt. “I wear the most disgusting clothes I own to bed.”
“Comfortable. You mean the most comfortable clothes.”
She launched off the bed, whipping her top off over her head. Shaw followed her every movement. His eyes settled on her erect nipples as she stood there facing him.
“We’re not…comfort is one thing. I could clean the bathroom floor with this raggedy piece of shit.” The stained tank top dangled from her hand.
“You’re welcome to sleep in the nude—maybe the door even locks.” He fingered one of the old books she’d left on the bed.
“There’s a thought.” Topless, Orla went to the door and jiggled the mechanism beneath the knob. “Don’t think it works.”
“Well. We could fix it. Or get one of those little hook things; they’re easy to install. Or you could just put on a comfy shirt and come back to bed.” She paced in a circle. “Orlie, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She dug through the dresser and pulled out an old—but not completely mangled—shirt from the Mermaid Parade.
“I’m sorry. I feel like I’m…contagious,” he said.
As she slipped the shirt over her head, she slowly blew air through her puffed-out cheeks. Was this a bad time? She wanted the intimacy of a real conversation, especially since Shaw’s behavior had become so erratic. But she hesitated to stoke flames that she didn’t need to—for the same reason.
“It’s not you, or your work. Or here, this place. Behind it all, there’s still us. Us. You know…it’s just easy to imagine blue jeans and moth-eaten wool sweaters, and both kids spending years in hand-me-down boys’ clothes from their cousins. And we stop bothering to get haircuts, and we don’t care what’s in style anymore—and maybe that’s a good thing. But if we’re going to become so…‘just the necessities’…I don’t want us to lose, like, who we were. We had our own kind of coolness, didn’t we?”
“I think so.”
“And it’s hard for me to imagine…myself really becoming Mountain Woman.”
Shaw laughed. “We’re not on a mountain.”
“Woody Hill Woman.”
“With brambles in your hair, brewing dandelion tea. No deodorant, no brushing your teeth. Stinky Nature Woman. That could be a fun character to explore, half wild—”
“I’m glad you think this is funny.” She didn’t sound glad, but she crawled onto the bed, consoled more than she could say by his levity, the return of his humor. Half leaning against his knees, she took his hand in hers. “It’s more than that, though—”
“I know.”
“Us. That’s something we can focus on. I don’t want us to…”
“Become total slobs?”
“That’s just the easy thing. There’s a balance. And sometimes, with each other…a mermaid T-shirt? And this is a step up? You might, as a husband, deserve a little more effort on my part.”
“I like mermaids.”
“But still.”
“And maybe you’d like a little more effort from me?”
“We just need to be in sync—and not in the way of becoming indifferent together.”
“No, I know. You’re right. I think about it sometimes. I had all my snazzy clothes, and I liked getting dressed for special outings or special—”
“You looked good in your snazzy clothes—”
“And I don’t know what our outings are going to be like here. Different.” He rubbed the knuckle on her thumb.
“I mean, I get that we’re doing something different,” she said. “But while we’re changing, there’s still a part of us that might not, you know? So, we might miss things about our old life and we have to be prepared for that and not let them be setbacks. But there may be other parts that should change but won’t if we don’t make a little effort. We’ve settled into a certain way of being together. And often it’s so—to use your word—comfortable. And it’s good, but I don’t want it to feel like giving up. We might need to do a little more, to at least talk about what we want. From our sex life—whether it’s new fantasies, or not. What we need. Because it’s different here. We can make this an opportunity to change up old patterns—and that could be really good.”
She loved when he made such strong eye contact with her; she knew then he was really hearing her.
“No, you’re right.” He scooched down so they were curled up face to face. Laid a delicate kiss on her lips. “We should definitely. Be conscious about things. Take this opportunity to keep growing together.”
“That’s what I want.”
“Me too.” He smiled at her, dreamy. “You’re beautiful, even in a mermaid shirt. Thanks for looking out for me—for us.”
“Always.” She turned off her lamp and snuggled in beside him, tucking the blankets up under her armpits.
After several long moments with her thoughts, Orla knew she wasn’t quite ready for sleep. Beside her, Shaw thumbed through one of the history books, but she had another issue weighing on her mind. “Do you think Eleanor Queen’s okay?”
One side of Shaw’s mouth quirked into a grin. “She definitely wasn’t happy that you made her come home.”
“She was so quiet at dinner. And when I kissed her good night, she was just holding her book, staring into space.” Like you.
“She’ll get over it.”
“It felt weird, Shaw, out there—the way some things around here sometimes seem—”
“Did something happen?” A quick edge came to his voice and he shut the book.
“Nothing specific. Just something I felt—I’m hyperaware now, on guard all the time. And the way Eleanor Queen…I know you don’t want me—us—to be afraid, but I really don’t know what to think, and sometimes…it scares me.”
If she’d been hoping he’d coo away her worries, tell her some all-explaining thing that he’d found on a more up-to-date weather app, that didn’t happen. Instead, she felt him holding his breath. She curled in tighter, closer to him, as she waited for him to speak.
“My dreams have changed,” he whispered. “They were so good before; I felt such…warmth. Before we came here. And now…”
“Nightmares?” He nodded. “Is that what happened last night? Is that why you went downstairs?”
“It was one of those dreams where what you’re seeing doesn’t seem like anything overtly frightening. But—like you said—the way it feels. I keep feeling—last night, but also at random times—a heart, stopping. A cold seeping in. The very opposite of the warmth I used to experience when I dreamed about this.”
“The dreams are still about here?”
“I think so. I got so chilled last night, and I felt like maybe the dream was trying to tell me something, that the pilot light had gone out in the furnace or something. But when I went down to the basement, it was fine. But I feel it all the time. This sense that I’m supposed to do something. And so I keep painting and working because that feels purposeful, that’s doing something…but the feeling never goes away.”
Orla didn’t know what to think. There was the obvious interpretation: he was having doubts about moving. Was it too soon to suggest they leave? It wasn’t like she hadn’t started thinking about it, financial consequences and all. People made mistakes; it happened. They could regroup, take the hits, try again. But the stubborn part of her didn’t want to be run out of her new home simply because they couldn’t handle being in such a foreign environment. Suck it up—they could get used to it, right? If only it weren’t for the different ways in which they—and even their daughter—were hinting at things that defied explanation.
“Will it go away?” Orla asked, because she didn’t know how to verbalize her thoughts. “Maybe we’ll get used to it and…”
“I didn’t expect this to feel like such an out-of-body experience. But sometimes…please don’t take this the wrong way—”
“I won’t.” But everything inside her paused, afraid of what he would say.
“Sometimes I think…maybe the sense of craziness would go away if I could just see, do, feel something from our old life, something familiar. I could get grounded again.”
Finally a solid truth, more tangible than anything else they’d talked about. “I feel like that too.”
“You do?” He sounded so surprised.
“Exactly—that loss of being grounded. It’s more than not having a routine; it’s feeling…the absence of everything that was part of our daily lives. But maybe I’d feel like this wherever we were. The only pattern I have so far is walking down every day to get the mail.” It was a relief that, in spite of how much had changed, they were still in sync—feeling the same losses, needing the same comforts.
He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in even closer. “Everything will settle down. This will become the new normal, in time, and then nothing will feel weird anymore.” She heard him trying to convince himself, but something hopeful, optimistic, had taken root.
She kissed the tip of his nose, his lips. “We’ll develop new routines that don’t involve you painting twenty-four hours a day. And we—at least I—have to stop comparing here to—”
“We both do
. Ouch.” He shifted a little; between them lay Orla’s rescued books. With one hand he scooped them up, then turned over and dropped them beside the bed.
They made a clattering noise and Orla winced, concerned for the fragile spines and yellowing pages. She anticipated him turning back to her, kissing her, embarking on the much-needed foreplay that they’d seen so little of in recent months. Already, she felt a tingle between her legs. But the tingle changed to a prickle of fear when, beside her, Shaw suddenly froze, then gasped and tumbled out of bed.
16
Orla’s first thought was that it was happening again, the thing that seemed to suck him away from reality right in the middle of an ordinary moment. Not ordinary, but whenever we have a heart-to-heart. Could that be it? Some bizarre reaction to their intimacy? It had happened in the living room the night he’d gotten lost, and again tonight. A nightmarish spell where, for a moment, he was far away, afraid of something that didn’t exist in her own conscious domain. She scurried over to his side of the bed, half expecting to find him on the floor and convulsing.
But no.
Squatting there, book in hand, he looked deliriously happy.
“I got it right!” He sprang up and bounded back onto the bed. “Holy shit! I got it spot-on perfect!”
“What are you—”
He flashed her a page from the book, a black-and-white photo. “This is the chimney—look! And the cabin I painted—it looks exactly the same!”
“Are you serious?” Shaw didn’t want to give up the book, but she tugged it her way long enough to see the page. He’d painted a nearly identical version of the cabin in this…what was this book? Orla squinted at the washed-out title on the spine: The Settling of Saranac Lake Village.