• • •
In Margot’s obit they called her wry, which I loved, because it made her sound smarter than a sorority girl. She was wry. During rush she’d sat with me in the living room and listened to me nervously chat about my hometown, how we have this amazing firemen’s fair every year, and how my parents ran a local protest about how nonjudiciously people sprayed DDT all over the place and how that stuff was poison, and my family cooked with a lot of garlic because it was really good at repelling mosquitoes naturally.
—Wow, she said drily, I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much about someone in five minutes.
She could tease without injuring; I don’t know how she managed it.
Later, when I was pledging, I joined her for lunch along with Twyla and Deirdre and she called me Carrie Bradshaw.
And then later, after pledging, I saw her with Deirdre in the back stairwell and the two of them had stared at me, and I said nothing and left. She was grateful, I think. I could see it in her face at dinner later, when she came into the dining room and no one looked up and stared. She was so compelling—another unearthly beautiful person—that she could have robbed a bank and I would have been honored to sit in the backseat during the getaway, Deirdre at the wheel.
• • •
She was clogging my dream.
The fisher cat woke me.
There was no cadence or art in the noise. It struck in bursts, circling the cabin like sonar. Grant had warned me about how fishers yowl—They sound like banshees, he said. Outside, it screamed and paused, screamed and paused, puncturing the ringing in my ears.
The woodstove was out. I’d left the vents too far open and now the cabin was dark and freezing. She screamed again. Was she hungry, or sick, or aimless?
There were thousands like me, I knew, who scampered into the woods: Thoreau, and that kid who ate the bad berries, and the Unabomber. But those people were dangerously strange. They had chosen solitude, but it had been thrown at me. And maybe it’s the fisher cats that make loners crazy, or the way the branches cross one another into oblivion in the night, like a pen scratched in one spot over and over, or maybe madness compelled them into the woods first and then aloneness nursed it for them.
Every nerve in me flared each time the fisher keened. Even with ears covered, I could hear it through the pillow. It wailed until dawn; I didn’t get out of bed to relight the stove until it stopped. I was childishly afraid for my body, half-naked in the dark, while something circled the cabin and screamed. With a sound like that, I thought, it must be afraid of itself.
• • •
It’s natural, the minister said at Margot’s funeral, to think that each of us missed signs of recklessness because we were too busy with our own lives. A strange noise came from Margot’s father in the front pew, a choking sound, and the man beside him put an arm around him.
Grant sat toward the back with his brothers. Anticipating this, I had twisted my hair into a chignon before the service, exposing the back of my neck.
—All of us have vanities that obscure the signs of that which is around us, the minister said. But in some ways, these obfuscations are holy tools. They are put there with purpose. We are not meant to see the suffering of all. It would make life unbearable.
I wondered if my skirt was too short, and would Grant leave his pew before I passed by him at the end of the sermon?
—But, the minister added, if we can just see a sliver of the suffering of others, then we will be rewarded with a bounty of goodness. Compassion for suffering is a precious gift.
• • •
Coals were tucked deep in a nest of ash. I restoked and sat cross-legged on the floor, letting the heat tighten the skin on my face. I ate nuts for breakfast, drank the reddish water, and ached for caffeine. How could I have forgotten coffee? Apples were wrapped in layers of clothing in my duffel to prevent bruising. They tasted mealy but I swallowed anyway. Outside, in a pool of sun, I broke down and called Grant, again and again, until his phone stopped ringing and went straight to voice mail. There was no medium. I would look aloof or crazy to him. The reality of this was hideously unfair. I tried once more. Then I called Shannon.
—He just left? she said. I breathed slowly so she wouldn’t hear my tears.
—He may have had a good reason, I said. But I’m up here and don’t have a ride home.
—Why didn’t you call last night?
—I think a part of me wanted to make sure he really wasn’t going to come back.
—I’m leaving now, she said.
—Don’t. Not yet, I said. Let me take one more night here.
—Why?
—Just to say that I did this by myself. And if he ever asks, I can tell him that I so enjoyed my time alone that I stayed on and didn’t even miss him.
—If you already called him fifty times then I don’t think you’ll get away with looking casual, she said.
—He could think I adapted, I said. Do you want to come up and stay, too?
—God, no, she said. It sounds awful.
• • •
I tried Walden again, and the writer begged for truth instead of love. It was absurd.
I tried meditating, but the ringing in my ears drowned out the calm and I abandoned the search for nirvana. The only time I’d ever been close is when I slammed a finger in the car door and the reverberation of my pain rattled through me, like a gong. Every atom in my body drew its attention to my ring finger, and I felt marrow, nails, veins, with a clarity I would never know again.
I went for a walk and hung a camera from a strap around my neck, which I knew I would not use. The land near the cabin was flat, but a twenty-minute amble northeast revealed a drop of rock face. Exposed quartz descended into the woods far below, with the occasional sturdy pine pushing out of a crevice. Moss hung off the rock like a bad toupee. I could see for eons.
Not a single living creature was visible. Only the trees moved in the breeze.
• • •
Last week, he’d taken me to dinner at an Italian place in the center of town. I needed to get out of the house, he said. It was too much darkness. And he didn’t know Margot well, he said, but if she was like any other girl in my house she would have wanted me to live. So okay. There I was. He ordered us a bottle of Chablis and pasta with shrimp staring dolefully at us from their little mire of noodles and sauce. He drank more than I did, and then he wanted to drive home and I told him no, I should drive, and he insisted, and I said I didn’t feel comfortable, and usually I wouldn’t have pushed this issue but I was frail and tired and sad and so I started crying, blubbering really, and then I was ashamed of my tears, which made me cry more, and he said come on Stella, take a breath, and I couldn’t, I didn’t have it in me to get it together anymore, and somehow I was pressed against the car and he had me by the wrists but I was wriggling and an elbow hit me in the eye, an awful mistake that stopped both of us immediately. He dropped my wrists and backed away like I’d shot him.
—I hit a woman, he said, agonized.
—No, no, you didn’t mean to.
—But I grabbed your wrists. I grabbed your wrists! he said.
—It was an accident, I said.
—I hit a woman, he said again, in awe.
• • •
When I got back to the cabin, it was well past noon. My legs were sore when I hit the clearing and I was so thirsty I drank directly from the pump, water splashing over my face, spluttering like an animal.
The door was open slightly. The eye hook was unlatched. Holy God. The eye hook. Had I forgotten to lock it? No, I was sure, I could picture my fingers slipping the hook in its metal noose. I was sure.
I yelled Grant’s name. Nothing moved.
—Don’t mess with me! I shouted at the cabin. I know you’re here!
I kicked at the door so hard it bounced off its hinges and drifted back to me.
Nobody was inside. Not under the bed, or on the porch, or under Grant’s table, or in the outhouse. My paranoia embarras
sed me, but I couldn’t shake it. It followed me inside like a stray. Did somebody move the duffel one centimeter to the left? And where was my comb? My other apple? Did I pack my Xanax? Where the hell was my Xanax?
I ate beef jerky, gnawing on it until it thickened into wet gristle in my mouth. I lit every taper in the cabin, then the woodstove, and shut every window and door. It wasn’t even sunset. Sweat curled the hair on the back of my neck. The soreness in my legs amplified. I thought of calling Shannon again but couldn’t, not yet. She would ask for the whole story on the drive home. All week, I’d been wearing sunglasses in the house and hiding out in my room, because it was finals and my sisters were still emotional and no one said or noticed anything. But if she asked, I’d have to tell her: he did it by mistake. It was an accident. It wouldn’t sound believable. I wasn’t ready. My ears rang, and rang, and when I pulled the quilt over my head I could smell my own exhausted fear.
The fisher woke me. Three hours asleep, or ten, I didn’t know. All the tapers had extinguished in mottled stubs. Only embers were in the woodstove.
Its wail was closer that night. Everything about its pitch was loathsome. Three seconds and then the shriek. Two seconds and then the shriek. Advancing like lightning on an approach. It was mocking me, its keen imitating a woman in pain, and the way it circled had to be planned. It had to know I was there.
Moonlight sluiced over the floorboards in luminous patches. I was careful not to step on them, as if they could be disturbed. It was not hard for me to see the outline of the shotgun on the wall. A twelve gauge wasn’t as heavy as I remembered. I nudged open the door, tiptoed through the screened porch, and stepped quietly onto the front steps of the cabin.
How strange it must have looked: a thin young woman, dirty, barefoot, holding a shotgun in her underwear. Wild-eyed. But does it matter, does it really matter, if no living man can see? The air plucks every goose bump on skin. A raise of the gun, resting the cheek against the smooth wooden stock, and a stare down the barrel into darkness. It’s like riding a bike. Grant would be so proud.
I waited for the glow of the fisher’s eyes.
16
Lovable Persons
-CHORUS-
Fall 2009
Ruby: Pledging is basically an excuse to go to parties and get drunk with your best friends for months with a legit reason. The girls that complain just like having something to bitch about.
Jennifer: Pledging is like buying a day pass to a really small water park. It’s great for the first three hours, but eventually you’ll have been on all of the rides so you’ll just have to keep riding them, over and over, even though you don’t really wanna anymore, just so you can say you got the most out of your money. By the end of the day, you’ll have a UTI from your wet bikini and the antibiotics will cost more than the admissions ticket, but on the bright side, you’ll be really good at chugging pretty much anything, including twenty-four ounces of unsweetened cranberry juice.
Kayla: People think it’s like the movies. It’s better than the movies. My sisters have taught me how to be a better person. They’ve taught me unconditional love. And there’s always food.
Elina: If you have to ask about what it is like then you should not be allowed to get the answer.
Lisa: I mean, it sort of sucks. But it could be worse, you know? I’ve heard Iota has it worse.
Marcia: Pledging gives you structure when you didn’t even know it was what you needed.
Shannon: Pledging is basically boot camp. You know that you’ll be stronger when you finish, and everyone on campus will have a newfound respect for you.
Amanda: Pledging is an incredible opportunity to connect with a generation of precious women who will be your best friends for life. No matter what happens, your sisters will accept you and cherish you for who you truly are.
Janelle: Pledging is the best thing you will ever do with your life no seriously it’s incredible. It’s so much fun that you’ll barely notice that there is work involved and at the end of the process you’re going to be part of a secret group that connects you to thousands of women across America and you can even get discounts or job interviews from it so it’s not just about mixers and Greek week, though those are definitely a plus lol.
Janie: My mom is still pissed that I didn’t go legacy and rush her house. She wouldn’t even write the check for house dues my first semester. I had to ask my dad to do it.
Twyla: Pledging is like going to a debutante ball where you announce to the world that you are a lovable person. At the ball, you wear a white dress and gloves that go past the elbow and everyone tells you that you have incredible poise on the dance floor (the waltz is truly a dying art), and then later you go home and your sisters threaten to post pictures of you in your Spanx on the Internet if you don’t give them your dress immediately.
Lucy: When we were pledges we had to take turns as the sober driver from Thursday to Sunday. We’d post our cell phone numbers up in the lobby and we’d spend the weekend on call, waiting to pick up our wasted future sisters. It sounds obnoxious but it was actually kind of fun. On weekends we’d line our cars with trash bags and when cops pulled us over for speeding we said we were picking up drunk sisters and they would tell us how awesome and responsible we were and let us go.
Corinne: Pledging is like trying to eat a powdered doughnut without wiping your face or using a napkin. You’ll do this weird thing with your lips where you’ll have to pull them away from your teeth in order to make a clean job of it. If you do it right no one will know that you ate the doughnut, but in the meantime you’ll look like a dope.
Tracy: Pledging is awesome like eighty percent of the time. The rest of the time, you’ll wish you were home.
Alissa: We share secrets, drinks, mascara, shoes, mono, pinkeye, class notes, gossip, textbooks, gas money, leftovers, herpes, grudges, lies, songs, Halloween costumes, puffy paint, thread, blunts, tweezers, compliments, curling irons, and the flu. We are experts in taking group photos, making jungle juice, braiding hair, cleaning floors, sewing pledge pillows, and making paddles. And sometimes we say “Love you like a sister” and really mean it.
Stella: Pledging is like having a boyfriend that calls you every day and tells you he loves you and picks you up from class, but one time he accidentally hits you when you are being obnoxious, and after that it’s sort of hard to forget that he did it but at the same time he’s still a great guy so you forgive him for the most part and aren’t willing to leave him over something so small.
Deirdre: Margot used to say that pledging is like sprinting in the dark without a flashlight.
Eva: Get a grip, Deirdre. Jesus.
Kyra: There are so many other things to care about. After they asked me to leave I’d look back at it and laugh at how stupid all of it was, if I thought of it at all.
17
Scylla
-KYRA-
February 2008
Week Twenty
I made it to the end of February when you began to have consequences, my girl. It couldn’t be helped: my sisters noticed when I quit drinking, and then I got too fat to button up my peacoat. I loved that coat. Before you bumped I would tie that belt tight at the waist, so tight I would feel like a magician sawing myself in half. I had to stop cinching and leave myself unbuttoned with a long, gauzy scarf draped around my neck, its fringe grazing my belly. My sister Margot, who could never seem to stand still long enough to hear another person, pulled me aside.
—What’s happening to you? she asked. She shifted from one foot to the other, and I couldn’t help it: I followed her feet with my eyes.
—I don’t know, I said. I think it’s a thyroid thing.
—You’re not fooling anyone, Kyra.
—I’m probably fooling some people, I said. Isn’t that enough?
—What’re you going to do?
I called the first clinic on Google. I could have gone to University Health but I had a not-so-irrational fear that you—my condition—would be reported
to the school and I would be forced to make an academic decision before I was ready.
• • •
The clinic was called Family Care. No one was in the waiting room, and I didn’t bring any of my sisters along. I had different friends at the time, boyfriends, mostly, and I didn’t like staying in the house around women when I had so many opportunities for romance.
A girl my age came out with a name tag—Agatha! What a name!—and gave me a cup to pee in. You were already announcing yourself in my blood, in my urine. We sat at a card table in an overheated room with staccato fluorescent lights. I started to sweat but couldn’t take off my hoodie; I was wearing my letters underneath.
—Would it feel pain? I asked.
—You’re a good person to ask that, she said. Most women don’t ask.
—Is that a yes?
—Yes, she said.
—For how long?
—You’ll get a shot, and it will take twenty-four hours to work. So it could take twenty-four hours for the baby to die. We just don’t know.
Her connotation should have been a hint about exactly what sort of family planning center this was, but I was sufficiently terrified. I didn’t think of her phrasing until later.
—I have to do this, I said. But I already knew I wouldn’t do it; I just hadn’t admitted it in a full sentence.
—I understand, Agatha said, and she held my hand in hers. Her palms were warm and clammy. But first, we should do an ultrasound.
—I’d rather not.
—It’s recommended. If it’s an ectopic pregnancy then we’d have to react differently.
The proclamation of we was comforting.
On-screen, I saw your blue profile bobbing in the blackness. I could see the outline of your nose and the fingers of your left hand curled in a fist. It was all over for me. We were moored together now.
• • •
In my meeting with the executive board, I was asked to submit my resignation to avoid the shame of disaffiliation from the house. I had to leave immediately. They told me to forfeit my letters, my pin, and my room key.
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