The way my jeans used to fit is what I’m talking about. The way everything smacked of sex, until it didn’t.
A year after the divorce, Leslie came to my place for one of her regular weekends. She was fifteen, into Guns N’ Roses. She had an older boyfriend, a seventeen-year-old Ryan was trying to chase off.
What’s new with you? I asked after Ryan dropped her off and brought her to the front door.
I’m in love, she said, but she said it in a way that was ugly and defiant. She was wearing a skirt that was too short and her nail polish was chipped. Her face was beginning to break out and she’d tried to cover the acne with foundation that was not her shade.
I didn’t know how to offer the motherly advice she needed, so I poured a drink. And then another drink.
She was sullen at dinner and afterward she fled to the guest room and played “November Rain” on repeat. For two hours I listened to her play that song.
For chrissake, I said, barging into her room, unable to take it. You’ll never be Stephanie Seymour, okay?
I look down at Faye’s sleeping body. Her scalp is visible through her coarse hair. Her tail drapes across my knees.
I pull my jacket back and kiss the crown of her head. The wiry white hairs on her neck bristle against my cheek. I hug her close, keep her warm.
I’ve always had trouble sleeping, and when I see deep sleep my first inclination is to be jealous. That kind of sleep is precious. When she was a toddler, I used to find Leslie dead to the world in the linen closet, a towel wrapped around her bare legs.
It was the kind of peace I could never find.
Sometime during what we call the middle of the night that is really the earliest part of the morning, I tuck Faye deep into my coat and leave the aye-aye house. I take a gravel path to the primary lemur enclosures, a square block of large cages pressed against each other to encourage companionship and play between the primates. There’s a roof over the cages, but the front panels are exposed to the elements, though a handful of well-intentioned, snow-logged tarps are draped over a few. It is a cursory inspection; I move fast. Some of the lemurs cling to each other through the adjoining cages for warmth. They are still, but alive.
They do not chatter, or brachiate, or reach for a piece of dried fruit. They only mutter, shift, and resettle.
I’m afraid of interfering, of tipping them toward death. They know best. They must know best.
It feels like lucid dreaming, walking in the snow, an endangered aye-aye in my overcoat. It’s like a false start to the morning, the dream you are only one foot out of, a simulation. The kind when you open your mouth but can’t talk, when you reach out but can’t move.
Please, I’d said to Ryan a few weeks earlier. You’ve got to talk some sense into Leslie.
It’s a stage, he’d said. The more we try to intervene, the more we’ll push her away.
I’ve tried to tell her it’s not true, I said. She doesn’t believe me. She thinks we’re all going to die. Soon.
Ryan was quiet.
What’s she going to do when it doesn’t come true? I said. When the world is still spinning? What will she have then?
This, Ryan said, is a case of too little too late.
At five in the morning the director of the Lemur Center arrives. She follows my footsteps in the snow to the aye-aye house.
Get out, she says.
Her clothes don’t match and her hair isn’t brushed and I can tell that these animals are everything to her.
Are the lemurs okay?
I don’t know, she says.
She turns her back to me. She’s shaking. I can feel her hurt and anger and I knew it was coming all night. Here it is. All for me.
I’m sorry I didn’t call, I say.
I deserve every bit of her rage. And maybe I want it. Maybe I want to wear her scorn, bear its weight, feel its teeth.
I’m as bad as you think, I want to say. Worse, maybe.
She flips the light switch; the power is back on. My eyes sting. She stomps out of the aye-aye house.
Faye is stiff with sleep and cold. I stuff her into my overcoat and begin the walk home.
I tell myself: This is not a big deal.
The early sun is already melting the snow and the trail home is dark and muddy. I cradle Faye with one arm. Her nails dig into my skin and her tail hangs out from beneath my coat. If we pass anyone, they will think I am holding a cat, or perhaps a raccoon.
I reach my apartment complex and notice the power is back on; I can see my downstairs neighbor’s television through the window. He’s watching Turner Classic Movies—overacted movies in muted colors. Like me, I think, he’s still holding out hope that the best days aren’t gone, that the best times weren’t the years when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were together in Technicolor bliss.
I trudge up one flight of stairs. I’m tired. It’s as if I have a morning hangover; the sun is too bright, the day too fast for my eyes.
People are walking dogs, brushing off cars, returning to normalcy.
What is it about an unseasonably warm day that makes me think of my childhood? I can smell the bread and taste the chicken casserole and poached pears my mother used to make. I can feel grass underneath my thighs. I can picture my father sitting in his car alone, parked in the driveway, rereading his movie script, the paper stacked against his steering wheel. I can picture Leslie playing in the sandbox, turning to me for a hug before she knew how to hold a grudge.
I can always tell when I’ve done something wrong. It’s a feeling I’ve known every day of my life.
I know I’ll pour myself a drink when I walk inside. I don’t want to do it, but I will. I have a half pint of bourbon in a box in the back of my closet that I can finish off neatly. It’s the perfect amount. And if I’m going to do it, I might as well enjoy it. Maybe I won’t drink in the bathroom, which I do sometimes even now, living alone. Maybe I’ll sit Faye on the ottoman, give the drink the glass it deserves, a cut-crystal highball. Ice.
But I don’t drink. I enter my apartment and make a nest for Faye in my walk-in closet and return to my book about yearling moose. I promise myself that I’ll travel to Maine in the spring, find the yearlings, show them how to keep clear of the road, remind them of water holes nearby.
Every five minutes I crack open the closet door to look at Faye, who is sleeping. I fill a ramekin with dried cranberries and half of an old banana and place it next to her. I turn up the thermostat.
When I return to the living room, I’m conscious of Faye’s absence, the loss of her warmth against my body. It reminds me that she will not live forever.
I make myself some tea and wait for the phone call, or the knock on my door. They will notice she is gone. Maybe I have a night, or a few hours.
I want to call Leslie again. I want to call her and tell her about the night I saved an aye-aye, slept with a death angel pressed against my warm breast. I want to call her and tell her I’m sorry, that I understand, that the world will not end. I want to call her and tell her that she will be safe from everything, that it’s not too late to be Stephanie Seymour, that she’s too good for the life she has now. I want to exaggerate, extol, explain, atone. I want to tell her about the endangered prosimian in my closet. I want to call and tell her I love her; I want to tell her another story she won’t believe.
The Urban Coop
Pay no attention to the soot on the buttercrunch, I told my new assistant.
We were looking at a row of lettuces in Mac’s Urban Garden. You wash those, right? she asked.
I didn’t tell her how often I’d caught the homeless harvesting team urinating near the zucchinis. Saint Charles with his cowboy hat and soiled cargo pants. Tiny Hanson with her high-heeled boots and cut-up snowsuit. The Neil Diamond look-alike in his black trench coat.
Sam didn’t know it, but I had plans for her. I wanted her to take over the garden.
Produce to the people! she’d said in her phone interview, and I was sold.
Now Sam knelt in front of the budding kale and Swiss chard in her expensive windbreaker. Her luxury hybrid was poorly parked outside the garden entrance. Bangs hung in front of her eyes. A half hour into her tutorial and she was already clutching her back.
Two types of people came to Mac’s—those who were hungry, and those who wanted to feel good about themselves. But I’d learned feeling good about yourself could be hard work, backbreaking even.
That’s tatsoi, I said to Sam, pointing to the plants with delicate spoonlike leaves next to the kale. Good with mustard, so tell the boys and girls that free packets of mustard from McDonald’s work just fine if they need to stretch a meal.
I’m late for a therapy appointment, I said. Think you can do some weeding for an hour until I’m back?
Sam shrugged. She seemed unsure about the new job.
I was one month into the worst guilt of my life, and after I explained to Sam the danger of cabbage loopers and flea beetles, I went to my car. I cranked the ignition and began to cry.
My dog, Zydo, sat next to me in the passenger seat. I rolled down his window, and he thrust his head out and wagged his tail, as if I had never done him wrong.
I didn’t deserve Zydo. In fact, I didn’t know anyone good enough for a dog like him. Loyal to the point of self-destruction.
Mac and I had a boat—the Excitecat 810. On weekends we left the community garden to volunteers and drove to Beaufort, where we anchored and partied with friends. Zydo always came along. A lab mix, he loved the water. He’d pace the length of the boat and bark at passing crafts. His shaggy blond ears crimped in the humidity. His nails scratched the deck when he walked.
Mornings on the boat, I’d make instant coffee, Zydo at my feet. We’d climb quietly onto the deck, careful not to wake Mac, and listen to the birds. Zydo would sun himself with his chin on my legs until Mac was awake, and then we’d motor over to Shackleford Banks to let Zydo kick sand and chase gulls. Once, we saw two deer swimming past the boat toward land; Zydo had quivered with excitement but stayed by my side, obedient.
Aside from a touch of separation anxiety, Zydo was the perfect dog.
Then, one Saturday afternoon, our friends came by in an inflatable dinghy.
Let’s hit the Dockhouse for live music, they said. Climb in. Room for Zydo? I asked.
I worry about his nails, someone said. We’re drunk, and if the boat sinks . . .
The crowded boat had burst into laughter. The sky was still blue, but we could see the moon. The water made a soft slapping sound against the side of the dinghy.
He’ll be fine on board, Mac said, handing me a fresh beer. There’s nowhere he can go.
The cool aluminum can between my fingers, the reggae our friends played from a portable radio—these things made me believe in okay, in just fine, in letting go.
We’d never left Zydo alone on the boat, and as the dinghy pulled away he lifted his chin to the sky and whined. Some cord in my chest pulled tight. I looked away.
When we returned that night, singing, smelling of beer and sunburned skin, he was gone.
What do you want? my therapist asked.
A baby, I said. I want a baby.
She folded her manicured hands and nodded. It struck me as a learned nod. I’d once heard that women nod their heads to build rapport—even when they don’t agree.
I’d started therapy after Zydo’s accident. My guilt had consumed me. I needed direction. My therapist plumbed me like a well, pulling out fistfuls of trouble, messy tangles of fear and longing.
What prevents you from having a baby? my therapist said.
I’m getting old, I said. My partner is old. And if I can’t take care of my dog, I don’t deserve a baby.
Silence the inner critic, she said. How old are you?
Thirty-nine and a half, I said, but Mac is in his fifties. And I think he’s lukewarm on the idea. He’s not trying very hard.
A few months earlier I’d said to Mac, Wouldn’t it be fun if we had a full house?
You want another dog? Mac had asked. More chickens?
Mac was a good person, a visionary. We’d met at a bar in Duck, discussed our love of dogs, open water, and community agriculture. Our relationship was simple. We kept separate bank accounts. We didn’t fight.
Three years ago, Mac and I had driven into Raleigh towing a yellow ’74 Volkswagen bug that had silkie bantam hens roosting in the backseat and two goats hanging their whiskered chins out the windows. Mac had taken a job as a professor of agriculture at the state college. We settled in a historic neighborhood one block from the prison. A year later, Mac got a government grant to build a community vegetable garden on a plot downtown. It was his dream, but someone had to manage things while he taught, and that person was me.
I like my simple life, Mac often said. I don’t need anything more than what I’ve got.
In vitro might be a possibility, my therapist said.
Yeah, I thought. A ten-thousand-dollar, pain-in-the-ass possibility.
When I returned from my appointment, I found Sam baffled by the tool sign-out sheet and food records. She tossed her bangs aside as she scanned the clipboard.
Skinny Meatloaf? she asked. One-Eyed Gloria Gaynor?
When the customers won’t give you a name, we name them after musicians they resemble, I said. There is One-Armed Snoop Dogg, Phil Collins with a Mustache, and so on.
Sam wrinkled her nose and brushed soil from her jeans.
It’s pretty obvious who’s who, I said.
I don’t know, Sam said, rubbing her lower back.
I worried she was looking for a way out. Assistants never lasted long at Mac’s. From what I could tell, they liked talking about the job more than working it.
It isn’t meant as a sign of disrespect, I said. It’s just our way of tracking assets.
I signed out a hoe to Neil Diamond. The strawberry patch could use weeding, I told him.
I had to remind myself I was dealing with people, not characters. Our Neil Diamond really looked like Neil Diamond, wily eyebrows, thin lips, and all—but there was no swagger in his comb-over. Tiny Hanson told me Neil Diamond had a daughter in town who wouldn’t see him, that he paced her neighborhood on weekends, hoping to catch her on the way to her car.
Wife left him long time ago, Tiny said. Girl probably ain’t even his.
I turned to Sam.
By the way, I said. There are brown spiders that scare the bejeezus out of me in the strawberry patch. Jumpers. Wear gloves over there.
This isn’t . . . she said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Ugh.
Sam stared at her hands and began to clean beneath her nails.
Waste of time, I said, hoping I wasn’t scaring her off.
The soil had burrowed into the lines of my hands the first year of the garden. When Mac and I went out to a nice dinner, I painted my nails deep red to hide the black earth.
Sam’s hair was shiny and her skin was smooth. I found myself thinking about her ripe ovaries. What are you, twenty-five? I thought. A hundred and thirty pounds? You’d be easy to knock up. You have all this time.
I wanted to borrow her body for the weekend.
A handful of customers, or as the head of the neighboring condominium home owners’ association called them, “vay-grints,” had gathered for work and scattered themselves across the four garden quadrants. Buildings that weren’t quite skyscrapers cast shadows across the plants. The bus station spilled over with people on their way to work. Two blocks away, Not Grandmaster Flash played the Love Boat theme on trumpet.
Saint Charles tugged at my sleeve.
I been vomicking again, he said.
I dug into my purse and fished out Tums. Sam stood next to me, eyes on the compost.
Don’t eat out of the trash if you don’t have to, I told Charles.
He crushed the tablets with his teeth and sauntered off to tend the kale.
When we got the grant money, this place was covered in cigarette butts, I said to Sam. An
d now . . .
I surveyed the garden. The roots of old, knotted oaks bulged underneath the cement sidewalk. The trees’ shade was a godsend when the summer heat began to bear down. The early crops looked healthy and Tiny had done a good job picking up the Styrofoam cups and cigarettes that littered the place each morning. Mac had fashioned cone-shaped trellises out of driftwood for the newly planted peas. A clump of azaleas lined the Blount Street entrance.
This isn’t what I expected, Sam said.
I lied. It will be if you give it time, I said. Hard work can turn any old dump into a fertile paradise.
Two fishermen had found Zydo just before nightfall, disoriented, paddling out to the horizon. At first, they said, they could not believe what they saw.
We thought it was a porpoise, one said.
Zydo had been dehydrated and confused. He’d snapped when they lifted him into their boat.
Desperate and lonely, he had swum a mile into the open sea.
That evening I returned home from the garden with a headache and a bag of early cucumbers.
I don’t think Sam is going to work out, I said.
Mac slid his reading glasses down on his nose and laid the newspaper on the kitchen table.
I sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor and scratched Zydo’s stomach. His back legs twitched when my nails found a good spot.
Pregnancy test was negative this morning, I said.
I felt my bottom lip begin to quiver.
Don’t cry, Mac said.
It’s karmic, you know, I told Mac. We’ve done this really bad thing with Zydo, and now . . .
You’re paranoid, he said, rising to rub my shoulders. And superstitious.
He began washing the cucumbers. I pressed my face into Zydo’s coat.
I wondered who knew me better—my partner or my dog, who sat up and shoved his nose into the crook of my neck, resting his chin on my collarbone, as if to say There, there, there.
At six a.m. Zydo touched his cold nose to my shoulder, a leather lead in his mouth. I put overalls over my nightgown and grabbed a cup of feed from the garage.
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