Aspen in Moonlight

by Kelly Wacker

  She considered the irony of working to protect apex predators when she had one nearby that she wanted to cull. But Kerry wasn’t the kind of natural predator that maintained balance in the ecosystem. Quite the contrary. She was nothing but a malicious canker—

  Mercifully, her office phone rang and interrupted her dark thoughts. Not surprisingly, it was her father. Her parents had offered to fly home when Betty alerted them about the shooting and surgery, but Sula had assured them it was unnecessary. They promised to call every day, and they did for a few weeks. Now they phoned every few days.

  “Hey, Dad. What’s up? Checking on me again?”

  “I’d like to think of it as checking in.” He laughed. “How’re things?”

  “Fine.” Nothing had really changed in the last few days. “Oh, we’re going to close the office this afternoon. We’re forecast to get snow.”

  “So soon? Usually the first snowfall isn’t for, what? A few more weeks.”

  “Yep. Blame it on climate change.”

  “No doubt.” Her father sucked his teeth. “I saw a news story about some bad storms with tornadoes in the South, and I thought about Melissa. Have you heard from her yet?”

  Sula sighed deeply. “No.”

  “Have you tried contacting her again?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I told her I wanted to talk, and now I’m waiting. I guess she needs some space, or…” Sula hesitated to say she thought it was over.

  “Or what?”

  Sula didn’t speak for fear of making it real. “I don’t want her to think I’m pressuring her. I scared her, Dad, and I feel terrible about it. I hate thinking she’s afraid of me.”

  “I’m not so sure that keeping your distance is a good idea, Sula. This is a shocking thing for someone to deal with. Trust me. I know. You can’t talk about it with anyone, not even your closest friend, without fearing they’ll think you’ve gone off the deep end or you’re perpetrating a hoax. It’s very isolating. And it makes you question a lot of things. Like everything.” He laughed gently. “If she’s struggling—and she probably is—she needs someone to talk to, and the only person she can be truly honest with is you.”

  “I hadn’t considered it from that perspective.”

  “If you really love her, and I think you do, she needs to know it. If you don’t act like you love her, she’ll never be sure.”

  Sula had always thought her father was a kind and thoughtful man, but her admiration just hit a new high. “How’d you get so smart, Dad?”

  “He’s been married to a very smart woman for many years,” Sula’s mother interjected unexpectedly. “I think it’s rubbed off on him.”

  “Mom! I didn’t know you were on the call. You need to tell me when you’re both on the phone.”

  Her mother laughed. “I didn’t want to interrupt, sweetheart. Your father understands what Melissa is probably experiencing more than I do. I agree with him. If she hasn’t reached out for you, you need to reach for her. Don’t leave her twisting in the wind.”

  “And don’t make it too heavy,” her father said. “Don’t ask her how she feels about your relationship and stuff like that. Just let her know you’re thinking of her. I’ll bet she’ll return in kind.”

  “And that’s the beginning of a conversation,” her mother said.

  “So exactly how much have you two been talking about this?”

  “Oh…not much,” her father said unconvincingly.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “All right, Charles. We’ve probably taken enough of Sula’s time. I’m sure she’s got things to do.”

  “Yes, I do.” They said their good-byes and Sula returned to work, considering renewed possibilities.

  The morning passed surprisingly quickly. As promised, she closed the administrative offices two hours early, to everyone’s delight, and went home. The cats greeted her on the porch, rubbing against her legs with tails straight in the air. Their coats had become thick recently; even they knew winter was coming soon. Sula had been seeing the signs—migratory birds had begun an early journey south, and she’d observed chickarees, the little pine squirrels, furiously tearing through pinecones to get at the seeds at the base of the scales. “Squirrels gathering nuts in a hurry will cause snow to gather in a hurry,” her grandmother used to say. She petted the cats while taking in the view that filled her with a sense of beauty and awe. Even on an overcast day, such as this one, it never failed to provide a balm for her soul.

  Since talking with her parents, she’d thought even more about Melissa, if that was possible. Going into the house, she focused on forming the words she’d send in a message. She wanted to say so many things, but she couldn’t put them all down in a single message. It would be overwhelming. She would take her parents’ advice and let Melissa know she was thinking of her. They were right. Melissa wouldn’t know her feelings if she didn’t express herself.

  Sitting on the couch, Sula took her phone out of her pocket. Opening the messaging app, she tapped Melissa’s name and stared at the blank white message box. She started a message and erased it. She began another and erased that one, too. She didn’t know how or where to begin.

  Feeling overwhelmed, she took the phone to the kitchen, putting it in a charging dock on the counter while she went upstairs to change into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. In the mud room, she put on her hiking boots and a coat and headed up the hill behind the house, intending to take a short hike and hoping the fresh air and physical activity would provide her some clarity.

  The cats followed her halfway up the hill. She was thankful for their company, especially recently. They seemed to sense her sadness, sleeping with her every night and entertaining her with their antics. It was hard not to smile and laugh at them as they zoomed around her, playfully pouncing on invisible prey and each other. They didn’t follow her past the edge of their territory, so they eventually parted ways. Sula continued on, weaving around boulders and pines, unhurriedly making her way to the crest of the hill. It was quiet. The birds and animals knew the weather was changing and had already taken shelter.

  The golden-hued grass in the meadow below rippled like water as the wind picked up.

  The temperature was dropping, and the steely gray clouds obscuring her view of the peaks were a color she associated with snow. Tucking her hands into the pocket of her coat, she descended into the meadow. As she meandered through the dry grass, the first snowflakes began to fall. Pausing to watch them, she put her hand out to catch a few, and landing in the palm of her hand, they almost instantly dissolved into droplets of water. By the time she arrived back home, the snow was beginning to stick, and she was thirsty.

  Entering through the back door, she didn’t see the cats anywhere. She removed her boots, leaving them on a mat in the mud room, before going into the kitchen to fill a tall glass with water. After several big gulps of it, she leaned against the counter, taking small sips and staring at her cellphone with ambivalence. The phone nested at an angle in the dock, and its slick black surface reflected her frowning face. She tapped the phone. No new messages.

  While walking into the living room, she wrestled with ideas on how to begin a conversation with Melissa. She was not very good with words, at explaining her feelings, so maybe she shouldn’t rely on them so much. Perhaps she could send something other than a message. She stared out the front window, watching the falling snow, and thought about flowers, yet that didn’t seem quite right. Flowers were for dates, birthdays, or funerals. Flowers made her think of greeting cards, and she had never seen a card for this situation. Cards, like flowers, seemed impersonal, too generic. Above all, whatever she sent had to be meaningful.

  A thump, a sound like something falling on the floor, came from the back of the house. Curious, Sula walked through the kitchen and down the hall but didn’t see anything out of place. When she walked into the den, she spied a cat sitting on the billiard table.

  “Uh-uh, no.” She waved her han
d at Spotty, who gazed at her with a feline expression of indifferent innocence. “Bad cat.”

  Sula inspected the felt on the table, which didn’t appear damaged, and then she saw the cue ball on the floor by a cabinet. The cat must have knocked it off. This was an old house and the floors weren’t exactly level, so that fact wasn’t noticeable until you dropped something that could roll. She walked over and bent down to pick up the ball, and when she straightened up, something in the room caught her eye. That was it. She knew exactly what she would send Melissa. It was perfect. She glanced at Spotty, who blinked slowly at her as if to say, “See. I’m not such a bad cat, after all.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  With one more class to go for the day, Melissa was on her third cup of coffee and warding off a nervous breakdown. She felt ragged, exhausted, but at least she wasn’t still wearing her pajamas. She didn’t want to see anyone or leave the house all weekend, so hadn’t found any reason to change clothes. However, Monday demanded she dress for work. Freshly showered, with hair and makeup done, she knew she looked better on the outside than she felt inside. When she’d first returned to Georgia, colleagues and students kept remarking on how tanned and fit she looked from her trip to Colorado. At one point she thought she might scream if one more person commented on how golden her hair had become.

  She was only keeping it together on the surface. Underneath she felt raw and vulnerable, wavering between confusion, bouts of heartrending longing, but also anger from having been played the fool. Her emotions were dangerously close to the surface, easily bubbling over, and she didn’t trust that she wouldn’t burst into tears at an inappropriate moment. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but with every passing week she felt worse, not better.

  Each time she passed the water fountain down the hall from her office, she stared at a poster hanging above it. In bold letters, it asked, “Do you have signs of depression?” She did. For one, she was isolating herself, which wasn’t a good thing to do, but she didn’t have anyone to talk to, not even a therapist, because her issue hinged on something any right-minded person would identify as the product of delusional thinking. She wasn’t delusional—she knew what she had seen, and Betty had confirmed its reality.

  Even so, she had distanced herself from the only two people with whom she could talk. After a brief stop at the Buckhorn Police Department to write a statement about witnessing the shooting, she’d just taken off from Colorado. Although it had been time to leave, she could have handled her departure much better. She didn’t even say good-bye to Betty. She quietly left the keys to the cabin in the lodge mailbox. Since returning she’d felt stupidly paralyzed.

  In the evenings she prepared for her classes until she was mentally exhausted, and then she cleaned her house or found little odd jobs that needed doing until she was so fatigued, she fell asleep immediately. She dreaded the nights, because keeping herself busy during the day made whatever she tried to avoid then find her in the middle of the night. Without fail, she’d wake up either revisiting the horrific moments of seeing Sula transform from a bear or reminiscing about Sula the woman—missing the rich timbre of her voice, her infectious laughter, and the feel of her soft, warm skin.

  This morning Melissa awoke with her arm outstretched. She’d been dreaming about Sula taking her by the hand, helping her climb a boulder. She felt light-hearted, awash in a feeling of contentment, but as the warmth and pressure of Sula’s dream touch ebbed, Melissa broke into tears that quickly turned into uncontrollable sobs. Her cat, Alex, nestled close to her and purred loudly. Although it was a sweet gesture, it couldn’t ease her pain.

  Even now, sitting at her desk cradling the cup in her hands, staring at the inky black coffee inside it, she was having a hard time shaking off the lingering bittersweet feeling from the dream. She glanced at the clock. It was nearing three o’clock, almost time for class. She gathered her things and left her office for the classroom.

  A seasoned instructor, she shifted easily into her role as professor when she entered the room, like an actor taking the stage. She called roll, bantered with the students, and picked up where they had left off the last class discussing the work of Pablo Picasso. She framed the mercurial painter as a problematic individual, a charismatic, misogynistic narcissist whose art practice nonetheless expanded the boundaries of art and deeply affected the course of Modern art in the twentieth century. The final image in her lecture was the Minotauromachy, the “minotaur battle,” an etching made in 1935 when his marriage was falling apart.

  “The figure of the minotaur you see here,” Melissa pointed, the digital projector casting a shadow of her hand across the screen, “represents Picasso. He might also be the bearded man on the ladder observing the scene. Also watching are the women in the window with the doves—a symbol of peace, and don’t forget his father specialized in painting pigeons, or European rock doves as they’re also known. But our focus is here in the center where we see that the minotaur has gravely injured a bullfighter—”

  “Is that a woman?” Steven, a student sitting in the front row, asked.

  “It is. She’s holding the sword used to give the killing blow to the bull in the ring. She’s draped over the horse, eyes closed, her jacket open, exposing her breasts—”

  “And the horse is wounded.” His eyes big, Steven looked disturbed by the graphic violence, as did many of his classmates.

  “Yes. Its intestines are spilling out,” Melissa said, and the class groaned collectively. “Yet this ferocious creature is stopped in his tracks by a mere girl holding a burning candle…a light in the darkness.”

  “Is the minotaur afraid of the girl or mesmerized by her?” The question came from Kiley, a shy but thoughtful student, who always sat in a dark corner of the back row.

  Melissa moved to the side of the room to a position where she could see the overall image more clearly. “It’s a good question, isn’t it? What do you all think?”

  The room was silent. She knew to be patient and to wait, for someone would eventually break the silence. Several students spoke at the same time, expressing different points of view. Some thought the minotaur looked terrified, while others saw him as menacing. One student thought he was fascinated by the flame of the candle, but another interpreted the creature as reaching to snuff out the flame. “What if I told you that the girl in this etching looks a lot like Picasso’s young mistress who had recently informed him that she was pregnant?”

  “Ohhhh…” several students said.

  “So, let’s consider the possibility that it’s all of those things simultaneously. What he wants and what he’s afraid of are the same thing.” Melissa paused, shocked by how her words seemed to illuminate her own current inner conflicts. She walked to the back of the room. “Let’s take a moment to unpack his use of the minotaur as a personal symbol. He chose this creature from Greek mythology to represent the root of his conflict. Remember, the Greeks saw beauty in order, rationality, and logic—all products of human intellect. Think about what the minotaur is: the body of a man with the head of a bull. A human body without logic, ruled by bestial passions was an ancient Greek’s worst nightmare.”

  “Are you saying the minotaur is the boogeyman?” Steven asked, making the class laugh.

  “Sort of, but the way Picasso illustrated him here, he’s the epitome of conflict. While he is fearsome, he’s also a pitiful creature who doesn’t fully belong in either the human or the animal world.” Melissa saw heads nodding. She glanced at her watch. “And with that, we are out of time for today.”

  Melissa stayed in the back of the room, leaning against the back wall, while the students gathered their notebooks and laptops, stuffing them into backpacks and bags. As they cleared the room one by one, some wishing her a good afternoon before they left, she ruminated on the expressive, almost human, countenance of the minotaur’s face. It wasn’t the shape of the nose or the set of the mouth but the eyes that held a spark of humanity. She’d seen something similar in person when
she made eye contact with a bear by Moose Lake. A bear whose eyes glinted amber like her lover’s because, as it turned out, they were her lover’s. She took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. Talk about simultaneity and conflicting emotions.

  She retrieved her folder from the lectern and walked back to her office while continuing to reflect on the ideas that had surfaced during her lecture. She hadn’t planned to explain things exactly the way she did; it was as if she had been speaking for her own benefit. Perhaps her subconscious was working things out like a computer program running in the background.

  She put the folder on her desk and picked up her messenger bag, ready to go home even though she still needed to finish tomorrow’s lecture on ancient Roman art. She’d do it at home…in pajamas. She slid her laptop into her bag and picked up her phone to find a message from Beth asking if she’d like to meet for a quick drink. Melissa had been dodging having a real conversation with her, knowing she couldn’t postpone it forever. She responded, agreeing to meet her at the Depot restaurant.

  When Melissa arrived, Beth was already in the bar with a glass of red wine in hand. She waved Melissa over.

  “Thanks for meeting me.” Beth gave her a quick hug. “I thought I’d take advantage of Ben being on soccer-practice duty tonight with the kids.” She held up a menu. “I ordered dinner to go. I know. I’m a terrible mom, I should be in the kitchen right now preparing a well-balanced meal for my beautiful family.”

  Melissa laughed. “Let me see that menu. I’m going to copy you.” Scanning it quickly she saw that it hadn’t changed over the summer. She waved the bartender over and ordered a draft beer and a burger with fries to go.