“No,” I say, but do not move to avoid his touch. “Tell me, instead. Can you really remember your ancestors’ lives?”
“Certainly. Well”—he pauses, flicks teasingly at my nipple—“there are limits to it, of course. Just as it’s easier for you to remember what happened last week than what happened twelve years ago. The last three or four generations are the clearest. After that, things run together a bit, unless one chooses to really concentrate. But some things”—swift as a snake he moves, darting to fasten his mouth to my breast—“one never forgets,” he says through firm teeth. He is already hard against my thigh.
“Don’t you ever get enough?” I ask him, and he shakes his head minutely, his eyes merry with lust.
“Well, I do,” I declare, and shake free of him, leap up and run. I get as far as the pond’s edge before he overtakes me, and we are both laughing wildly as we wrestle and splash into the water. He catches my wrists, not ungently, and forces me down in the shallows and makes love to me yet again, unmindful of the mud and warm lapping water. Afterward we wade together into deeper, clearer water, to rinse mud and small clinging plants from each other’s backs and faces. Then I turn slightly aside from him, unreasonably shy, and as I wash myself I can feel I am swollen, tender from all the sex. He comes closer, murmurs, “Shall I do that for you?”
“No,” I say firmly, backing away, more than a little intimidated by his endless capacity for sex. He shrugs those muscled shoulders and watches with frank interest as I finish washing myself. I know that if I turned back to him, showed the slightest hint of receptivity, he would come for me again. And again and again and again. It is a daunting thought, a sobering thought. When I wade out and dry myself on my shirt, I notice the longer shadows of the trees shading our sunny coupling space. Daylight insects are quieting, the high heat of full day fading. We both know, without words, that it is time for me to leave.
Tom and Teddy may even be home already. The thought comes unbidden, and with it a huge weight of … something. Not quite guilt. More like suddenly remembering that your term paper is due tomorrow and you haven’t been to the library yet, or that guests are coming for dinner in an hour and you haven’t even taken the meat from the freezer yet. A suffocating press of things that had to be done, immediately, right now, the choke chain of adult responsibility snugged up suddenly and tightly. I struggle with the burden, try to find some way to justify this day I have stolen, the gluttony of pleasure I’ve wallowed in. This day does not match up with what I thought I knew of myself, the painstaking picture of myself that I’ve created. Aren’t I the faithful one, the unswervingly loyal one, practical, honest, dutiful: the list of my supposed virtues reads like the Boy Scout Handbook. So how have I come to be dressing in the woods after fornicating with a faun? In the sequence of my life, the images of our couplings are like Tarot cards interspersed with the family portraits; oh, look, here’s Micky and Bobby Sue and your cousins, and Grandma and Grandpa with Frisky the cat, and this one’s the Hanged Man … “You could stay,” he says.
My underwear is damp, it clings to my thighs when I want to pull it up. Want to feel ridiculous, try getting dressed in front of a satyr whose erection is still pointed your way. My jeans are too tight, they seem to have shrunk from drying in the sun. Where the hell’s my other sock, oh, yeah, at the bottom of the pond by now.
“You don’t have to go back,” he says it again, a different way.
I shake my head, mute, my throat suddenly closing tight, choking me with unsheddable tears. I throw my sock away, jam my bare feet into soggy sneakers. I can’t find my bra, there it is, some twelve feet away, I’ll never know how it got that far. I walk over to it, stoop down to untangle it from a Russian thistle. I try to put it on gracefully, such a ridiculous garment, and for me, anyway, serving no purpose at all. A pretense at civilization.
“Why do you have to go back?” he asks softly.
From anyone else it would have been some kind of accusation, or a veiled plea to change my mind. From him it is only a question, and the gentle way he asks it tears at my heart. Because I long to stay. I shrug my shoulders stiffly, pick up my wet shirt. “Teddy,” I say, and then force myself to complete the honesty, “and Tom.”
“Oh,” he says. Not “I see” or “I understand” because he doesn’t. Just “Oh,” because he knows I’m telling him the truth. I do have to go. I button my shirt, waiting for him to ask me if I will come back again. But he doesn’t, and after a while I know it’s because he knows that I don’t know. Not yet. I probably won’t know until I do come back. Or I don’t. I don’t want to say good-bye, don’t want to make any parting gesture at all. Neither, it seems, does he, for when I glance up from my buttons, he is gone. And I am grateful.
Easy enough to find my way home. Parallel the stream through the cooler shadows of the trees, through the thickening evening, hell, it must be past five already, they’re all going to be home. There will be questions. Again. Probably another quarrel. I’ll say I fell in the beaver pond, and they’ll believe me. Just another detail in the family legend of Evelyn’s weirdness. Stories will probably be passed down about me for generations. The Daughter-In-Law Who Stared at the Chicken Yard By Moonlight. The Daughter-In-Law Who Couldn’t Get the Sheets White. The Daughter-In-Law Who Fell in the Beaver Pond.
My insect bites are beginning to itch, and I realize ruefully that some of them are in embarrassing places. Explain that, Evelyn.
I stride along, every step carrying me closer to confrontation. Part of me knows there is no justification for what I have done today. Part of me doesn’t care. Part of me is childishly optimistic that no one will notice anything. Perhaps it is that part that makes me run my fingers through my bedraggled hair, pulling out bits of moss and leaves and twigs. Noticing my shirt is buttoned unevenly, I redo it, and tuck it firmly into my jeans. By the time I emerge from the forest and climb through the barbed-wire fence, I am as respectable as possible under the circumstances. I cross the cow pasture, feeling as if there were a cross hairs on my chest, expecting a shout at any moment. Houdini lifts his head, recognizes me, and goes back to grazing. That’s all.
I come out on the driveway, glance about, and cannot believe my luck. I’ve hit the jackpot, won the big prize. There isn’t a vehicle in sight. They are all gone, every one of them, which means that no one is home yet. I am saved. I glance up at the windows, expecting to at least see Ellie peering out from the upper story, but all the curtains hang straight and white. Home free.
I step out of my wet shoes at the door. I am shedding clothes as soon as I am inside the door of the little house, not scattering them, but dragging them off and bundling them under my arm. They smell unmistakably of sex. I bury them deep in the laundry hamper and jump directly into the shower. The hot spray hits my body and for a few moments it just seems to intensify his musk on me, the whole bathroom reeks of sex and faun. But the scented Avon soap that Mother Maurie provides soon cuts through it, and for once I am glad of its Whorehouse-in-June pervasiveness. I shampoo with Prell, and watch in a sort of awe the brown stream that trickles down my shoulder and belly. I hadn’t realized I was that dirty. I lather up twice before it rinses clear. I turn off the shower, wring out my mop of hair, and bundle it into a towel.
I make a careful inspection of myself in the bathroom mirror. There are plenty of insect bites, a few scratches, but no hickeys, no rakes of nails nor love bites. He has left no outward trace at all upon my body, and but for the tenderness between my legs, I might have imagined the whole thing. Now that is an unsettling thought and I hastily chase it away. I am not that crazy, and besides, Teddy has seen Pan, too. He’s real.
I go to the bedroom, dress quickly, loose shorts this time, jeans are too uncomfortable against me, a tank top and one of Tom’s cotton shirts thrown on over it. Dry shoes, sandals have to do, and there I am. I drag a brush ruthlessly through my hair, then braid it back in a long tail. It will pass. And ta-dah! I’m ready, you can all come home now.
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nbsp; I go to the living room, sit down for an instant, then jump up and go to the kitchen. Dinner, I should be cooking dinner, but even as I rattle out pans and drag out ingredients, it occurs to me that if it is this late and they are not home, they are probably eating dinner at the haying place, probably part of the fun, all get together to work, and afterward eat and drink together and sit around and talk. Belatedly I notice that I was not invited. A few weeks ago that would have incensed me, a few days ago it would have depressed me, but today I feel nothing about it. No, I feel almost good about it. They have theirs and I have mine. That they have excluded me once again excuses in some small measure what I have done today. So.
I put back the pans, and instead fix myself a sandwich, find a handful of softening potato chips in the bottom of their waxed bag, put together a cup of tea, and sit down with a book. But in a few moments I am up again, pacing, the half-eaten sandwich languishing in the heat beside the soggy potato chips, the book tossed aside. I cannot sit still. I want Tom and Teddy to come home, I want all of them to come home, because I need to find out what I will do. Different scenarios keep playing through my mind. Will I cast myself at Tom’s feet, confess all and beg forgiveness? Or will I coolly pretend nothing has happened, be all wifely dutifulness and deception? Will I be cold and uncommunicative, leaving him to wonder what has happened? I don’t know.
Worse, I cannot even concentrate on wondering. My body keeps remembering his touch, his scent, the taste of his mouth. I am too full of him to think of anything else. Too full of him to think about the guilt that has begun to crawl along the edges of my nerves. Incredibly, I want him again already, as if his constant ready lust is a thing he has infected me with. I think of all we did, and wait for shame or guilt, but get instead the warm itch of arousal. Is this what sets an animal in heat to yowling?
I pace the small house until grey evening becomes true dark. I throw the sandwich and chips into the kitchen garbage, dump the cold tea down the sink, and make a fresh cup. This one I take outside into the coolness. I wonder what he is doing, if he is lying under a tree somewhere, piping and thinking of me. But there are no breathy notes hanging on the evening air to tempt me. Instead, I notice a peculiar thing. No lights. Only the big mercury vapor light high on its pole is on in the yard. The big house is dark and still, totally bereft of life. I have never seen it so. Even if the Potters Senior are gone, Ellie and Bix are usually there, and even if Bix is still out haying, Ellie should be there. Something cold turns over in the bottom of my stomach.
I go back to the little house, measure it with my steps. Where are they all? Did they all get together and decide to go out for dinner and then leave without me because I wasn’t here? That could be it, but it’s not likely. Tom’s father is too wary to get stuck buying dinner for that many, and Tom and Bix simply don’t have the money. No. Probably all of them have just gone off in different directions. Or maybe spending the afternoon with a faun has cast an enchantment on me, I am now completely in his world, and I cannot see or hear or feel the people from my old world even though they are right here around me. Just as I couldn’t hear Mother Maurie, maybe that was just the beginning of this. Maybe they are all around me, talking, eating, doing the books. I get a cold shiver up my back, push the thought away. Teddy, I’d always see Teddy, because like me he touches both worlds. If Teddy were here, I’d see him.
So. There is the logical thing to do. Phone Clemmons’s farm, ask if Teddy and Tom have left there yet. Feel a fool, maybe, when they tell you, hell, they left hours ago. Feel even dumber if the voice says, hell, yes, they’re here, hey, Tommy-O, the old lady’s on the phone for you. Then what do you say? Forget it, it’s all a pipe dream anyway, I don’t have a phone, the phone’s in the big house, and there’s no one there to say I can use it.
I hold out for an hour, an hour of pacing, of making cups of tea and setting them down in various places around the house, to discover them, cold and congealed, only after I have made a fresh cup. Finally I put on a sweater, for the night outside has chilled, and there is a coldness, too, inside me. No one in the Potter family stays out this late, let alone all of them. It is almost ten.
I cross the yard, furtive as a raccoon crossing a freeway, waiting for the sweep of headlights, the blare of horns. The doorknob to the back door is cold under my hand, and does not turn. But the secret key is in place on the lintel. I thieve it and push it into the lock, twist the knob, push the door open. Quickly I put the key back, thinking that if I hear car noises in the driveway, I will quickly leave, locking the door behind me so they will not know I have been inside their house alone, will not demand of me, “What were you doing in here?”
I ghost through the house, but of course no one is home, there is only the grey light from the yard light falling in window squares on the floor, the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the oversweet bug-spray fragrances of Avon products. Nothing is alive here, nothing is out of place. It looks more like a hotel lobby than a home. The newspaper, Sunset magazine, Reader’s Digest are fanned on the coffee table. The cork coasters are in their holder. No one ever leaves his slippers by the couch, no one forgets a crumpled tissue, part of a cookie, no, not in this house.
The phone is on an end table beside a huge fat lamp. I hate to do it, I squint my eyes against it, but I turn on the lamp. I cannot find the phone book without it, but I soon find I cannot find the phone book with it, either. I discover it at last in a drawer in the other end table. I try to look up the number, but find I don’t know first names. I search fruitlessly for some scribble in Tom’s hand, some note, was it Clemmons or Cullens they were going to hay with? I can’t remember the last name, let alone the first. The phone book is useless to me, and there is no scribbled hint.
I put the phone book back carefully, exactly as I found it. I click off the lamp, stand in the sudden rush of darkness, thinking. The phone erupts suddenly beside me, jangling shrilly, sending me leaping, stumbling, irrationally grabbing at it to still its scream. My jerking hand dislodges the receiver, oh, shit, there’s nothing for it but to answer it now, I cannot simply hang it back up, maybe it’s even one of the family.
“Potter’s Equipment,” I say. It is what they always say, at home or at work, for the number is the same.
“Hello?” says a woman’s voice uncertainly. A soft country voice, uncultured but not unkind.
“Hello?” I reply, my voice shaking in spite of myself.
“I … I just … I know it must be a bad time, to call like this, but I just wanted to say how sorry we all are. To hear about it.”
“Oh,” I say stupidly, not knowing what else to say. I cannot ask what the hell she is talking about, that is too weird, so I say, “Uh, who is this?”
“Jenny Snow. You know, I helped with his 4-H group. And I was just so shocked to hear, and I just wanted to say …” She is weeping now, but I am very still, very cold, all is going dark around me. “We’re so sorry to hear about it. Just when he was getting so good with his pony, too. It’s just such a, such a waste.”
She falls silent. I cannot say anything. But I suppose I have, I hear someone whisper, “Teddy,” and the sound hangs in the air.
“I, well, I just can’t tell you how sorry we are. That’s all.” The voice on the other end is unabashedly weeping now. “I just wanted the family to know,” she says, and then “good-bye.”
And she hangs up, but I hold the empty phone to my ear, gripping it hard.
Time passes so softly in the darkness and stillness. I set the phone down, sometime, very gently, joggling it back into its cradle. The handset is wet. I wipe my cuff across it, stand up, I do not remember crouching down, but my legs ache almost as much as the hand that gripped the receiver. Quietly I move through their house, as silent as drifting smoke, needing no light to avoid any of their obstacles. I push open the kitchen door. My wakeful hand finds the button, locks the door before it tugs it shut behind me. I let the screen door close over it, and then sit down on the top concrete step.
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br /> The night is very beautiful. There are stars out, so bright that not even the mercury vapor lamp can drown them. The night land smells of animals and crops, with only a trace of diesel drifting up from the shop. It may be only my imagination, but I think I can smell new-mowed hay. It is a new scent for me, for in Alaska I lived near the forests, not the fields. But I think that is what I smell. Maybe I am imagining it. I replay the call a thousand times in my mind. I hug myself, grip tight on my shirt, feel my ribs through the fabric. So. What do you really know? That it’s Teddy. Teddy is … hurt, maybe, perhaps. Oh, really. Do neighbors call like that about a hurt child? Only if the child is hurt really, really bad. Or dead. Dead?
Let’s not play games, Evelyn, that’s sure as hell what it sounded like. A condolence call.
But wait. How? Where? Where would they all be, if it happened a while ago, long enough for word to spread, they’d be home by now, wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t they?
Hospitals. Morgues. Funeral homes.
NO!
A part of me wants to get up and run, run so far and so fast that moving my body would take up every thought space in my mind. That part screams and races around the walls of my head like a cartoon mouse. The rest of me just sits there, on the cold concrete steps, and thinks stupid things, like this is a great way to get hemorrhoids, the mosquito bite on my ankle itches, I wonder what time it is, maybe they all went out for ice cream and got a flat tire, maybe the phone call was a bizarre wrong number. I will into existence Teddy with chocolate ice cream dabbed on his chin, jumping out of the car, saying, “Mom, where were you?”
My magic must be stronger than I know, for in response headlights are turning down the driveway, one, two, three sets of them, here they all come, in a row, like a funeral procession, no, like a parade. I stand up, dusting my chilled rump, and move forward to meet them, go hastily, actually, to stand by the porch of the little house, I don’t want to look too much like the family dog waiting to be let in. They sweep past me without a pause, pull up and park in their regular spots. Engines turn off raggedly, headlights blink out. For a brief instant silence holds, and then Ellie and Bix are getting out of the station wagon, Tom and Steffie hop out of the truck. No sign of Teddy, yet, but they are all converging on the sedan. He is probably in there, riding with Grandma and Grandpa. I take three stiff steps forward, then find myself striding up to them as Tom’s father gets out of the car, says, “Bix, you get the door, Tom, you help me with your mother.”
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