Lost in the Forest (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Sue Miller

  What? What would be over?

  “Oh yes, you do,” he said. “You care very much, in fact.” And suddenly she believed this, too. That she cared, that it would be unbearable if Eva found out.

  All of this confused Daisy, and fed into the confusion she felt about Duncan and what he might want with her. What she might want with him. She couldn’t have explained anything. If someone had asked her, “Why did you go with him?,” she wouldn’t have known. If someone had asked, “What did you think was going to happen?,” she couldn’t have said.

  “What was your feeling?” Dr. Gerard asked.

  “My feeling?”

  “Yes. Your emotional state, as you drove along.”

  “I was excited.”

  “And the kind of excitement? Fearful?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Why not? There was everything to be fearful of, wasn’t there? Including the fact that he’d seen you stealing from your mother’s store.”

  Daisy shook her head. “None of that mattered. I felt I controlled the situation. From the moment I saw him, even though I didn’t know what it was about, really, I felt in charge.”

  “And that felt good?”

  “Are you kidding? It felt wonderful.”

  His studio was off a dirt road near Yountville. It was a huge garage, nearly a barn, behind a small, run-down ranch house. The yard between the house and the garage was full of old vineyard machinery, green or bright orange, but pocked and streaked now with rust, and eviscerated, odd bits torn off to get at other parts, and everything left lying around. As if, Daisy thought, the machines were animals that had been attacked by jackals or wolves, savage creatures who’d been frightened off their prey.

  Duncan pulled around to the side of the garage invisible to the house and parked. “Out,” he said, opening his door.

  She got out and followed him to the side door. He unlocked it. He stepped back and she stepped forward, just across the threshold.

  After the bright light outside, after the chaos of color and decay in the yard, the vast room seemed muted and still, it seemed to hold a kind of peace and order. It smelled of wood, and thinly, faintly, of something sharp and clean, something chemical. The light fell palely from skylights overhead. The air was cool. She stepped farther in.

  In the center of the room was a tall, wooden chest, the drawers missing. It was slightly curved, maybe echoing the shape of a cello, or a woman’s body. Its wood was a reddish blonde, with hardly any grain. Tools and unfinished wood were laid out on a long worktable behind it. Along the side wall there was a desk—really just another long table—with papers and drawing instruments on it, and an ergonomic chair rolled up to it. Along the other side wall was a cot. The cement floor was swept clean. At the back of the space were several other pieces of furniture—two tables with curvy legs, an elaborate kind of desk—and behind them, along the back wall, there were partitions from floor to ceiling with pieces of wood leaning this way and that between them.

  He was behind her. His hand pressed the small of her back in a way she hadn’t been touched before. “Come into my parlor,” he said.

  When she thought of it later, when she talked about it with Dr. Gerard, she couldn’t remember how many times they were together in Duncan’s studio that fall and winter. Fifteen? Thirty? They blurred together in memory. That first day, though, she always remembered clearly and distinctly.

  He showed her his work, it seemed not so much because he wanted her to think it was beautiful—which she did, without caring one way or another: it was, after all, just furniture—but as though he wanted her to see him, to understand him, as someone with a life outside of the circle of family in which she’d known him. He talked about it—the kinds of wood he used, their density and color, the sense he wanted to get of creating something sculptural in the useful pieces. Daisy asked a few questions, but mostly he talked. It was as though he’d rehearsed this. And his voice, talking about his work, changed. It grew younger, she would have said. It was only later, thinking about it, that she realized he had dropped the odd, weighted emphasis, the sarcasm.

  While he talked, he filled a kettle at the work sink by the door and put it on a two-burner hot plate that sat on a little table next to his desk. When the kettle sang, he stopped and brewed a pot of tea. He poured her a cup and then sat in his desk chair, swinging it back and forth slightly while he began to ask her about herself. His voice had changed again.

  He asked about school: Did she like it? Did she have friends?

  He said this so contemptuously that it was easy for her to answer truthfully that she didn’t. That Emily was the one with friends—thinking of the few times she’d asked someone over after school, or someone had asked her over, and how deliberated, how awkward, their exchanges had been.

  He wanted to know whether she’d ever dated anyone, and it was her turn to be contemptuous.

  “Dated?” she said. “Is that some word from the middle ages?”

  He smiled. “I suppose you move rather more directly to fucking, then.”

  She didn’t answer. She was shocked at the word, coming from him.

  “Have you ever fucked anyone, Daisy?” He had rolled his chair forward; he sat only a few feet away from her.

  “It’s none of your business.” She was sitting sideways on his cot bed, her back against the wall, the warm mug of tea in her hands.

  “Of course it isn’t. But I’m curious. More than curious.” He grinned. “Avid, I would say, for information thereof.”

  She was silent. “No,” she said finally.

  “Ah,” he said. “So your knowledge of sex is limited.”

  “My knowledge isn’t, no.”

  “But your experience of that great pleasure is.”

  She didn’t answer. She was thinking of one of the things Emily had said about it, that it wasn’t so much fun as you might think. And of Noah, in his Speedo.

  “Except, of course, perhaps, for touching yourself. Bringing yourself pleasure.”

  Again, she didn’t respond, though she thought she could feel herself blushing.

  He was watching her, the slightest smile playing on his lips.

  She met his eye, and she couldn’t help it, she smiled back. Did she like this? talking like this with Duncan? It must be that she did. That she liked his interest in her, she liked the power she felt she had in this situation. And she knew she liked the sense of all of this—whatever it was—as a great and private adventure she was embarking on, something Emily or Eva couldn’t imagine, or anyone she knew at school.

  “I’m wondering why you took the money, Daisy,” he said.

  She felt as shocked as if he’d slapped her. After a moment she was able to say, “That’s really none of your business.”

  “I agree.” He shrugged and turned his chair slightly to set his mug down on the floor. “But I happened to see you do it. This is my dilemma, Daisy. That now I have to decide what to do about that. And whatever I do, I want it to help you.” He leaned forward toward her, resting his elbows on his knees. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. She could see where his chest hairs began at the base of his throat. “It just seems to me that if I understood it, what you were up to, I’d have a better chance at deciding this … sympathetically.” He lifted his hands. “So?”

  Daisy thought of John, suddenly, of how he would ask her things just this openly, just this kindly. But Duncan wasn’t kind. Was he?

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know why I took it.”

  “Well, that’s fair.”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated, and then she felt a lump rising in her throat and her eyes filled with tears. She made a stupid noise, a gurgle.

  “Daisy,” he said. He moved forward and slid next to her on the cot, putting his arm around her, taking her mug of tea and setting it on the floor too. She started to cry, openly. He held her, stroking her back while she wept against his shoulder. She cried for a long time. Later when she tri
ed to explain why, it seemed to her that it was having his attention, it was feeling noticed so particularly. And, of course, it was being held.

  Gradually, though, she slowed. She sat hunched against him, looking down at his shirt, his pants, her own hands in her lap, and feeling a growing embarrassment and confusion about how to end this moment, what to say.

  And then he lifted her face—she resisted a little, she knew her face was ugly this way, blotchy and smeared—and he was kissing her, so gently at first it seemed just a part of his comforting her, and Daisy relaxed and let him. But then he was licking her! licking her tears, kissing and licking her face, her eyes, and then her mouth again, pulling on her opened lips with his. He tasted of salt, of her salt tears. His mouth was gentle and soft on hers, beckoning hers. Daisy kissed him back.

  And then suddenly it felt too hard. Daisy jerked away, and they sat looking at each other. They sat there for a minute or more. Daisy had stopped crying. She was aware of his hand on her back, of the way he smelled, a smell that lingered on her face, of the sound of their twinned breathing in the silent room. When he started kissing her again, gently once more, she responded again. And then she felt his hand move to her legs, grip them, pull them. He pulled her against him, he pulled her down, and they were lying next to each other.

  She froze.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Nothing’s happening.” His arm was under her head, and slowly she relaxed against it. He stroked her hair, he wiped her face. She closed her eyes. After a while, she curled against him.

  He kept his free hand moving, over her hair, lightly on the curves of her ear. He stroked her neck. This felt lovely to Daisy. He turned her face to him, and kissed her again. When she returned the pressure, his hand came up to her lips and his fingers pressed them and stroked them. She opened her mouth and one of his fingers came just slightly onto the inner part of her lower lip, the wet part. She sighed.

  “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded, his finger resting against her teeth. She touched his finger with her tongue. His flesh too tasted of salt.

  “It’s meant to, Daisy. Everything’s meant to.” His hand stroked her neck and the hard ridge of bone at the top of her chest. Then he put it on her breast, and his fingers began circling her shirt where her nipple was. Her flesh seemed to thicken, and his touch got lighter. He closed his thumb and forefinger on her, a light pinch, a rolling motion.

  “Do you like this, Daisy?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her throat was dry.

  “Unbutton your blouse,” he said. His voice was flat.

  She lay still. “I can’t,” she said finally. She was shaking her head.

  “Of course you can, Daisy. Nothing will happen that you don’t want to have happen.” He was stroking her nipple again through the shirt. “You like this,” he said. It was a kind of question, though.

  She nodded.

  “I want to see you, Daisy. I want to look at my hand doing this to you. I want you to see it, how it looks.” He stopped. “No?”

  He kissed her again, and Daisy, welcoming this shift, kissed him back. When they stopped, they lay for a while, face-to-face. Daisy had never looked at a man’s face so closely. She could see the shape of a star in the iris of each of Duncan’s eyes.

  “Unbutton your blouse, Daisy,” he said.

  After a moment, she shook her head.

  “Shall I, then?” he said. “Do you want me to be the one to do it?”

  She nodded. This is what she wanted, she understood suddenly. For him to do it all, and for her to be able just to lie here and have him touch her and not have to decide any of it, or be responsible for any of it.

  He unbuttoned her blouse, slowly, and pushed the fabric to the sides. Daisy closed her eyes. Her bra was fastened with a clasp in front, and she could feel him fumbling with it. “Help me, Daisy,” he whispered. After a moment, she reached between her breasts and undid the clasp. He peeled her bra back. She felt the cool air on her breasts.

  “How lovely, Daisy,” he said, and his warm fingers began their play on her flesh. She felt her nipple harden again as he squeezed it lightly between his fingers. He squeezed harder. It hurt a little, and Daisy made a noise.

  He slid down and Daisy felt his mouth, wet and warm on her breast. He kissed her, he licked her, and then his mouth closed over her nipple and he began to suck, gently at first, and then gradually taking her deeper into his mouth with a steady, rocking pull that Daisy felt in her pelvis, her belly. He lay there a long time sucking her, kissing her. Daisy moved her body slightly to his rhythm, it felt so wonderful, she felt it so deeply inside herself. He turned her—or perhaps she turned herself, she wasn’t sure—and took her other breast, her other nipple in his mouth. Daisy closed her eyes.

  When he stopped, he slid back up, his face by hers, but he was still touching her breasts. His eyes were on his own hands, and she looked down too. His thumbs moved back and forth across her nipples. He pulled them both slowly until they were longer than she would have thought possible and she moaned. He kissed her mouth again, and then moved on top of her. Her body answered his weight. She moved urgently against him.

  After a minute or two, he rose on his elbows above her. “Daisy,” he said, in a conversational voice. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “You are so wonderfully good at this.” He was smiling, and she smiled back. “Would you like me to give you pleasure the way you give yourself pleasure?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He lifted himself up off her and lay beside her again, propped on one elbow. “Unbutton your pants,” he said.

  Smiling, looking into his eyes, Daisy did nothing.

  “Please,” he said.

  She cleared her throat. “Pretty please,” she said.

  “Yes, pretty please.” He licked his finger and touched her nipple again, lightly. She felt it tighten.

  She smiled and reached down, and his hand was there, underneath hers, sliding below her fingers as she worked the buttons at her crotch one by one. When she had finished, she opened her legs a little, and his hand found her where she liked to touch herself and began circling her, slowly at first, and then almost right away, feeling her urgency, harder and quicker.

  Daisy stiffened her body, she held herself focused under his touch, concentrated on it, only on it; and then crying out, arching up, she came, and as he still circled her, she kept coming, pushing against his fingers, panting.

  As she stilled, his hand did too. Together they lay there. Daisy’s breathing slowly quieted. She opened her eyes and looked at Duncan’s face. He was relaxed, smiling. She smiled back. Then he slid his hand, his fingers, slowly down into the wet flesh between her legs and up again—a caress, down and up.

  “That was quick,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Breathtaking, really.”

  She laughed.

  “Do you like this?” he asked. His hand was moving slowly up and down, into her and then back up to her clitoris.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re very wet.”

  “Yes.” She was moving a little with him.

  “That’s for me, you know.”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  “So I can come into you.” His fingers were in her, a little.

  She was silent, suddenly motionless.

  “I’m not going to come into you, Daisy. Don’t worry.” His hand kept moving, she felt his fingers come into her again, then out.

  “Your bush feels odd,” he said conversationally. “Your hair.”

  “I shaved it.”

  He stopped moving. “You shaved it!” He grinned. “Why?”

  “I hated it. I hated how it looked.”

  His hand slid down again, to where she was wet. “You shouldn’t hate it.”

  “I do.”

  “It’s beautiful, Daisy.” His fingers were resting in her.

  She shook her head.

  “It is,” he said. “There’s noth
ing more beautiful.

  “Let me look,” he said. His fingers came out of her, and his hand slid up and away.

  She said nothing.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “I’ll be the one to do it.”

  Daisy was frightened now. What of? She believed him, that he wouldn’t come into her. Was she frightened of his looking at her? But she wanted it too. It was, she felt at that moment, the thing she wanted most.

  He reached across her and eased her jeans down a little on her other hip, then eased them on the side against his own body. Slowly he worked them down to the middle of her hips, and then he got up from her. Her body felt cold. She crossed her arms over her breasts. He was standing at the foot of the cot. He bent forward and pulled her jeans and her underwear down. She heard them flop on the floor.

  He knelt at the foot of the bed. He was holding her feet.

  “Open your legs, Daisy.” His voice was tensed. She felt pleasure in that—a thrill really. No one had ever spoken to her this way. “Please,” he said.

  She opened them a little way, and he shifted, so that he was kneeling between her feet, touching each one.

  She watched his face. She could hear his breath. His eyes were fixed on her. He came forward on his knees between her legs and touched her again. With his hand on her, his fingers again sliding up and down, he looked up at her and smiled. “You are beautiful, Daisy. Do you know it?”

  She lifted her shoulders.

  “You do. You do, Daisy.” Now he reached out to her knees and gripped them. He pushed them up, toward her chest. Daisy didn’t resist. “Hold your knees, Daisy,” he said. “Hold your knees up.”

  She did what he said, she gripped her knees.

  “Apart,” he said.

  She didn’t move.

  He looked up at her face and smiled again. “Pretty please.” His voice was harsh.

  Daisy pulled her legs open slowly, and felt her own flesh open too.

  He put his forefinger on her, and she heard the wet noise she made. “Feel how lovely you are,” he said.

  “Do you?” he asked. “Do you feel lovely?”