Nate and I still talked on Fridays. He was always the one to make the call. Never me.
Every time we spoke, he said he wanted me back, even after the months I’d spent here in bed with two cats.
I don’t really need a man in my life right now, I’d tell him. You gave me an out.
Nate was an animal behaviorist from California who’d come to North Carolina for further training at the state veterinary school. He’d started off as a condor nesting specialist, then turned to academia. I’d studied politics but began catering weddings after college. I wanted to go to law school but was afraid to take out the loans.
We are married, he told me. It’s the same pot.
I want to pull my weight, I said. Not take three years out of working and acquire six figures of debt.
During our relationship, I’d often complained of feeling trained. I rejected bouquets and chocolates as positive feedback. How’s this any different from rabbit meat? I’d ask, picturing myself a hooded bird clutching his arm in anticipation of a reward.
Don’t be so principled, he’d say. Let me spoil you. Let me feel necessary.
But even when we were together I kept my own bank account and a separate group of friends I could go out with when he worked late. I liked to have a contingency plan—people died, spouses cheated. My father had left my mother for a family friend when she was fifty-three, and I’d seen the damage it had done. Before he left, my mother had never lived alone or worked. She shut down afterward, only going to church and running the occasional errand. I wanted to keep my independence tangible, not be forced to find it late in life.
There were things about Nate I didn’t like. One, he wasn’t a dog lover and refused to let me keep one in the house. What kind of man didn’t like dogs? He also was addicted to exercise and hated cooking, sometimes choosing to slice fresh bananas over instant oatmeal for breakfast and dinner instead of eating the meals I’d prepared. He cringed when I made pies. All that butter, he said.
When we talked after my move, Nate closed each conversation with a question: Are you happy?
I always lied. Each day in Abbet’s Cove felt like an audition. I was learning the layout of the grocery store, how to walk the hot sidewalks in my bare feet. Aside from Al, I had not made friends. The locals had cancered faces, sun-white hair, and scratched boats. They wore gold-rope jewelry and boat shoes and drank beer in the morning on the boardwalk. I wondered if you could love a town despite its people.
I had one friend, Rhea, who called every week and wanted to visit. She thought I’d made a rash decision. I’m concerned, she said. Rhea worked the late shift at an animal shelter in the town an hour west of where I’d lived with Nate. She cared for incontinent cats. Rhea was outdated, her hair permed and jeans cuffed. She talked like a bus driver. I’d known her since I was five.
She came by one afternoon after my breakfast with Al, bursting into the house, smacking her gum. I like this place more than I thought I would, she said. It fits you. Needs more furniture, though.
I followed Rhea through the house as she wandered down the hallway and peered in each room. She stopped in my bedroom and walked toward the bed.
Wash your hands before you sit down, I said.
Already washed, she said, showing me her palms and sitting down on my coverlet, which was covered with cat hair. How are you?
I’m okay, I said. I’m thinking of getting some catering gigs going down here.
How’s Al? she asked. Are you sleeping together yet?
He’s fat, I said. Which means we can focus on other things.
Rhea kneeled on my bed and touched Mary’s face. One of my nameless cats straddled the headboard like a tree branch and sniffed at Rhea’s hands, agitated, tail flicking.
What’s this bullshit? Rhea asked, pointing at Mary. You’ve never been religious.
I talk to her about men, I said. Haven’t I told you? I’m giving them up.
Rhea suggested that as the Christchile’s mother—and she said it like that—Mary probably had an entourage of hair and makeup professionals who followed her around the Holy Land in case she had her portrait painted.
It’s easy to be beautiful, Rhea said, when you have an entourage.
I stroked the cat’s chin.
What do you think Mary’s going to do for you? Rhea said.
Have you ever thought about what it would be like, I said, if sex wasn’t important? If it didn’t matter? If you could just go on about life as a happy, single person? Why don’t more people do that?
I think you’re getting weird here, Rhea said, blowing a bubble with her gum.
A doctor I’d once seen for my insomnia had explicit instructions: “Use the bed only for sleeping and sex.” I asked Rhea to put out or get off the bed. She hugged me and went home to her husband and kids, to the place where she belonged.
I left Nate the night I found the note in his pocket. I dropped my wedding ring in the gravel lot of the Abbet’s Cove Piggly Wiggly, where I’d stopped to buy a twelve-pack of anything. I left it there.
My parents had taken me to Abbet’s Cove for a week when I was ten. We stayed at the Shady Lake Motel, which boasted a fifteen-foot plaster woman in a bikini out front. Back then there were canoes and a diving board, and you could cross the road to the beach. Everyone was barefoot that summer except for the proprietor, who dragged her oxygen tank around the parking lot while the families cooked on the grills and watched fireworks launched from the base. My mother had worried the proprietor was flammable and shooed her away.
We lay on the beach for hours that first full day, my mother covering my father’s back in sunscreen, passing him the occasional beer or sandwich. Sand crabs scurried from one hole to another. I put my feet in the ocean and watched tiny bivalves bury themselves in the sand around my toes. During high tide, small fish came in with the waves and swam the expanse of shallow water. I was fascinated by the lives I saw, so when it came to eating what my father had caught for dinner, I went hungry—I couldn’t bring myself to consume the creatures I’d watched all day. I cringed as my father sucked down raw oysters. I’ve been a vegetarian ever since.
The night I left Nate, the first place I thought of was the Shady Lake. It was the last place I could remember seeing my parents genuinely happy together, and it was close by. I drove up and down Highway 301, saw the plaster woman was gone, and so was the lake. Instead, I found an unnamed vinyl-sided motel run by two Indian women. The sign said only: Free HBO. I stayed there anyway. I wasn’t planning on sleeping.
I took the Bible out of the bedside table drawer for inspiration or comfort. It didn’t help, and neither did free HBO, which in the early hours of the morning seemed to show nothing but soft porn.
One program showed a woman in a purple nightie straddling a motorcycle and pleasuring a man with her manicured hands.
You know you really just want him to take you to dinner, I said to the screen, and tell you how pretty you are. That you’re smart. That you don’t have crow’s-feet.
The day after Rhea’s visit, at breakfast with Al, I worried about Mussolini’s dog. It was warm out, perhaps ninety, and Mussolini had left the dog in the van.
Al! Margie called out from the kitchen, holler at me when y’alls ready to order.
I picked at the laminated specials list.
Fried-egg sandwich? Al asked, scanning the menu he must’ve known by heart.
Biscuits and honey, I said. Remind me to ask Mae for Country Crock in the little packets so I can take some home for the cats.
Mussolini stood in the doorway of his shop, hosing down his sidewalk. He scowled. The last of his hair whipped across his forehead. He wore his khaki pants high and his white-collared shirt tucked in. I tapped on the window. Your dog, I mouthed. It’s hot.
Shhhh, Al said, nodding toward three blue-hairs in the booth next to ours. Those old ladies are sharing recipes for pimento cheese.
Al craned his neck as if that would help him hear better. He flipped to a clean
page in his notebook. Beads of sweat ran down his nose. I wondered how much longer he would last with all that lard in his arteries.
Just write down mayonnaise and be done with it, I said, miffed he wasn’t paying me enough attention.
A few minutes later one of the ladies, her white hair curled and translucent, said: And hell or high water I was gonna get married! Won’t no one gonna call me off Daniel. I’m sure y’all was the same way.
Their laughter made me think for a moment that it was a good idea to live in the same town all your life, but I knew better. When your husband cheats on you in a small town, everyone knows, and then you have to move away to hold your head up and stop being the person everyone hugs.
I don’t want people feeling sorry for me, I’d told Rhea when I decided to stay in Abbet’s Cove. I hate that look.
I want my release party to be chic but humble, Al said. I want to remind folks about how good life used to be when people ate butter.
I reminded him these were the same people that pushed tobacco and voted for Jesse Helms. You can’t romanticize the Dixiecrat palette, I said. It’s not good for anybody.
Mussolini tacked up new signs for cannoli and prosciutto. He sat in a folding chair outside and smoked a cigarette as if he was daring customers to come in.
Later, with grits in his mouth, Al imagined talking to Mussolini: Your mozzarella is fantastic, but who wants to buy cheese from a fascist?
Al reminded me of some greasy Buddha, grinning and full, elbows on the table, both chins resting in his hands.
So, I said. Are we seeing a movie tonight?
Sorry, Al said. Dinner with my mother.
Drinks at my place afterward? I said.
Early to bed for this guy, he said, shaking his head.
Wasn’t there a small part of him, I wondered, that wanted to know me better? Undress me?
I pictured Mother Mary, then, and let her clean up the corners of my mind, which had landed in the gutter, wondering just how bad Al looked without clothes on.
Two months ago I had broken my celibacy vows and called Nate. We’d met at Free HBO. There was sand in the sheets. We ripped each other’s clothes off. I slapped his face and bit his shoulder. Afterward, he held onto my hip as we lay silent on the bed, watching a fly on the wood-paneled wall. The fly moved left, left, up, right in logical squares of movement.
I hated myself for giving in.
Every fly, every gnat, is driven by algorithms, Nate said.
You just want me to believe that you couldn’t help it, I said, pulling away.
The fly has more faith in his gods than we do, he said.
You’ve said that before, I said, putting on my pants. Probably about a condor. Math is not a good enough reason to sleep with someone else.
Do you plan on coming home to pick up the rest of your stuff? Your winter socks or your guitar? Nate asked. He swung his long legs out of the twin bed. I just need to know when to expect you.
I no longer expect anything, I said. Not winter or love or the way soy scrapple might make my stomach feel. This year, I’m letting those things sneak up on me, if that’s all right with you.
You don’t know what you want, he said. That’s the problem.
Nate’s divorce papers arrived the day before Al’s party. Seeing the documents made me realize the finality of the situation. I called him.
I have to move on, he said. His voice was soft and serious. I know I’m the one who did wrong here, but I can’t keep waiting.
There’s someone else? I said. The one who rides dressage?
You can keep the silver, he said. And the dining room set. Anything, really.
I don’t care, I said. That stuff only matters to women who need men.
I’m moving back to California, he said. I’ll give you my new number.
I won’t call, I said.
I knew I wouldn’t, but I knew I’d be tempted to. I was over being Nate’s wife, but I grieved the loss of his attention. I enjoyed that part, feeling wanted, feeling like the thing that got away.
I hung up the phone and called Al. I wanted to distract myself.
Margie called to let me know the peach ice cream turned out beautifully, he said. She also mentioned that she saw Mussolini kicking his dog in the street this morning—a real shame.
Someone should intervene, I said.
I know, Al told me, breathing hard into the phone. But this is going to be a fun party. Did I mention I’m gonna hand out my grandmother’s hoecake recipe as a party favor?
You can’t bring hoecake back, I said. People got rickety down here when they ate all that corn.
Have you been crying? he asked.
I’m fine, I said, suddenly eager to hang up the phone.
I went walking that night. I itemized my old furniture in my head to the drowned sound of acoustic guitar on the boardwalk. The soft putter of a catamaran motoring into a slip for the night. Someone washing dishes with the alley door open. On the sidewalk, I passed gas streetlights, shadows of old buildings. The empty bank, the map store, fishing nets in the shop windows. Gulls balanced on pier posts, their loose down caught on the jagged wood. The organist in the old church practiced for Sunday’s service.
My mother once told me: Never underestimate avoidance as an effective coping mechanism.
I’d heard of a woman who only had use of her right brain after a stroke. She lost her ego, left it like a suitcase in another country. This was how she found bliss.
My bedroom in the new cottage was still full of suitcases, bags stuffed with old blouses and ceramic animals. Boxes of books lay underneath the bed. I hadn’t unpacked; I was still deciding, still searching for the right company.
I made my way home. My cottage was small and dark and the roof sagged. Yellow paint peeled from the front door. I let myself in and turned on the lights. The cats scattered.
I am vulnerable but not scared, I thought, getting in bed. I’m alone, but in charge of my life.
I opened up one of the Country Crock containers I kept in the drawer of my bedside table. I let the cats lick my fingers, then the packet. I fell asleep, but like many other nights I woke up after a few hours, my mind racing. I pulled on shorts, grabbed twine for a makeshift leash, and walked out the front door. The sound of the key turning in the lock seemed to echo down the street. The park was quiet, the gutter punks had gone, and the organist was satisfied.
I walked to Mussolini’s house, a small brick ranch painted white and surrounded by a chain-link fence. The streetlights hummed overhead. I leaned over the fence, pressed my finger to my lips, and said to the white dog: I have a bed you can sleep in.
The dog did not want to leave. Free of his chain, he went back to the tree and lay down, curling his body into a sickle shape, fanning his tail over his nose.
You can have better, I told him, backing away. This is your chance.
I walked back to the harbor side of town. I took my sandals off, sat on the dock, put my feet into the dark water, laid my forehead against the cool metal railing.
When I was younger, I would put my ears, then my mouth, against the glass walls of aquariums. I would speak to the sharks, the turtles, the translucent squid. Remember me.
But this year, I might eat whatever someone put in front of me.
Rhea called early the next morning.
I heard from Nate, she said. About things being final. Are you okay?
Me? I said. I’m okay.
I want to tell you about this blind cat, she said. The star of the shelter.
He’s all white, she said. Useless eyes. Ulysses, we call him. And every night I watch him jump from the floor to a perch, four feet in the air. He never misses.
Is this to keep me from feeling sorry for myself? I asked. Or does he need a home?
It’s about faith, Rhea said. You’re going to be okay.
On Sunday mornings, a gospel choir would walk by my cottage in their robes, singing Oh shout it out! The first time I heard them, I ran to the fr
ont porch in my bathrobe and started crying. They pulled children in wagons, their voices visible in the cool air. Every Sunday I waited for this.
All I needed of religion, I realized, was the beautiful sound of someone else’s faith.
After Rhea’s call, I walked the neighborhood. Only the very old and very young were awake. The retirees read their papers; it was early enough to wear a bathrobe on the porch. A mother nursed her baby on a porch swing. Her hair blew wild in the wind, which had begun to pick up as a morning thunderstorm rolled in.
I came home and picked out a low-cut dress for Al’s party. I hung it on the top of the bedroom door.
If only I had an entourage, I said to Mary. People to smooth my hair, brush eye shadow on my lids, promote my miracles on billboards.
I returned to my bed at eight. Mary hung crooked, but I left her that way, beautiful and imperfect. She hovered over me with the grace of a drunk. The wind stirred the walnut tree next door; shells pelted the siding of my house like gunfire.
I turned on the television and watched from my bed. The morning news footage showed coast guard helicopters searching fruitlessly for a young girl sucked into the sea on a riptide. The weatherman issued a small-craft advisory.
My sheets were cold. I slid my legs to one side. Once, unable to sleep and walking at sunrise, I’d seen a blue heron circle the rooftops downtown, its legs limp, trailing. I pictured it now, gray and archaic, searching for a place to land. In towns like these, I thought, there are no perfect rescues. You go down with your own ship.
Night Hunting
Every year we went to a holiday party at Mr. Simons’s, where a haggard orange tabby held court on a chair with broken caning and an apricot poodle wove between guests’ legs. Mom and I always came back to Pawlet for the holidays to be with my grandparents—they were usually staples at the party. This year they were in Florida on a senior cruise, but Mom and I promised we’d attend in their place, especially since we’d just moved back to Pawlet for good.
Birds of a Lesser Paradise Page 12