1503951243

by Laurel Saville

  “Miranda, my dear. What brings you back? You seem upset.”

  “No, Darius. I’m not upset. I’m ready. Ready to join. To stay for good.”

  There was quiet for a moment. As if Darius was taking this all in.

  “Well,” he said, “this is delightful news. Of course. Yes. We are thrilled to have you and all you bring with you.”

  Sally winced at his liberal use of the royal “we.” He missed, either willfully or ignorantly, all the many signs of petty rivalries between the women, the significant looks that passed between them when he gave one or the other a compliment or praise. In spite of the communal vibe, there was a lot less camaraderie between the women than he thought there was.

  “It’s time,” Miranda said. “I can’t have my life split in two anymore. I need to choose. I can’t . . . it’s just . . .” She sighed. “I choose The Source.”

  “What a momentous decision,” Darius said. “I admire your resolve. We will talk more in the morning. In the meantime, we will find you some space in the front bedroom.”

  “No. I mean, yes, thank you. But wait,” Miranda said.

  “What is it, Miranda?” Darius asked.

  “I want you to cut my hair,” Miranda said.

  There was silence again.

  “Now?” Darius asked, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of himself.

  “Yes,” Miranda demanded. “It will make my transition away from the egotistic concerns of the outside world complete. It will mark my commitment to The Source and our values. Please. Yes. Now. I want to be like the other women here.”

  Sally listened as a chair scraped, a drawer opened, silence descended. Moments passed quietly. Then the chair scraped again, and she heard two sets of footsteps approach the stairway. She closed the door to her room. She heard them enter the other bedroom, where there were a few whispered voices that quickly settled down. Then, Darius took the stairs to the attic. Sally returned to bed and slept fitfully, dozing and waking, startling easily from the middle of disturbing dreams where unseen pursuers chased her through dark alleys, over rickety fire escapes, across hallways that would not end. She finally rose from bed, wrapped herself in a robe, and tiptoed down the stairs to have a smoke on the back porch. It was cold, so she only smoked half of a cigarette, then came inside to douse it in the sink. She opened the cabinet to throw the butt into the garbage and gasped.

  The discarded ends of Miranda’s once-glorious mane filled the trash can. Even though Sally knew this was what Miranda had asked for, seeing the evidence of the drastic deed took her breath away. She was surprised at how affected she was by what she saw. It looked as if a long-haired animal were curled up atop the garbage heap, asleep. Some clot of emotion shifted deep inside of her. Sally found a bag and lifted Miranda’s disembodied locks from where they lay, placed them gently in the cocoon of brown paper, and took them with her back to her room. She put the bag in the back of her closet. She didn’t know why she saved Miranda’s shorn hair. She simply felt that it must be saved, that something of Miranda must be saved.

  Dix began to doubt himself. He was waiting for Miranda to do something, to give him a sign. But what if she was waiting for him? He was hoping she’d return. But what if she was hoping he would rescue her?

  Eventually, he tired of wondering. He had nothing to lose. He had the one person he cared about in the world to gain. Even more important, to help. He decided to go on a Tuesday afternoon. There seemed to be a logic to this decision, something about the potential likelihood that it would be quiet out there, that Darius might not be around, but it was a rationale that existed only in Dix’s imagination. Certainly the people at The Source did not recognize the flow of weekdays and weekends in the way that he or most others did. They lived and worked according to their own rhythms. But it soothed Dix to think that there was some reason to his choice of day and time that might lend his errand a better chance of success.

  It was a bitter January day. The skies were heavy with snow that would not fall, so there was no fresh, white icing atop the dark and dirty piles of frozen accumulations that lined the roads. As he made his way up the pitted driveway, Dix’s stomach lurched as much as his truck did. He pulled into the gravel area near the ratty farmhouse and sat, unsure what to do, hoping some person would appear and give him a reason to get out of the truck. He wanted to be drawn forth instead of having to step into the void of the empty yard, go up to the door, and knock—and suffer the indignity of having to ask for her.

  Nothing happened to help him. So he stepped from the truck and slammed the door. A little too hard. Then the farmhouse front door slammed, as if in response. There was a woman on the porch. She was wrapped in an oversize coat, a man’s coat. She had a baseball cap pulled low over her forehead, a rough fringe of hacked-off hair peeking out the back. She pushed the bill of the hat back with her wrist and crossed her arms over her chest. She was not smiling.

  Dix was stunned to realize it was Miranda.

  He felt the casualty of her missing mane like the loss of a once-close but long-estranged friend. She’d told him, in what felt like a prior lifetime, that the women here cut their hair for modesty. It was part of rejecting the celebrity-obsessed, culturally misogynistic, male-dominated, overly sexualized, capitalist-controlled outside world. Dix thought at the time that there was little enough excess here in these unforgiving and parsimonious mountains; cutting your hair to make a statement seemed to be an inverted, highly perverse form of vanity. Now here was Miranda with the same short hair, the same rough attire. He feared the gesture completed her estrangement not only from him but from the rest of the world.

  “Miranda.” Her name was a plea in his mouth.

  “Dix.” His name was a statement in hers.

  He took a few steps toward her. Her posture tilted slightly, but she did not step back. “How are you?” he asked, catching a new, weathered roughness that had come into her face.

  “I’m well,” she said, her voice assiduously neutral.

  “You look it,” he replied, lying.

  She cleared her throat and asked, “What brings you here?”

  Dix saw a face move into and then quickly out of an upstairs window. “I . . . I . . .” He had no idea where to begin. The words finally fell from his mouth. “I miss you, Miranda.”

  She winced. Which caused him to do the same.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she said, looking down and shifting her feet.

  Dix knew this wasn’t going well, but he didn’t know what to do, how to fix that, so he blundered on, desperate to try any words that might reach her. “I’m sorry I upset you. I’m sorry we didn’t fix things. I’m sorry you’re not with me anymore. I’m sorry I don’t know what to do about any of it. I’m worried about you. I love you. I want to make things better. I want to be a couple again. What can I do, Miranda? Tell me what to do.”

  She watched him quietly.

  “I wish you’d come home,” he said, now out of words.

  Miranda cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and said, “Dix, this is my home now.”

  His body drooped under the finality of her words. He turned his face from the sting of them. He closed his eyes against the pain. He had never imagined she could speak to him so coldly. Then he heard boots bang against porch steps. He felt his hands taken up, calluses and ragged nails against his palms. He opened his eyes on Miranda’s upturned face, her eyes shadowed by the cap’s brim.

  “Dix,” she pleaded with him, suddenly the soft, kind Miranda he once knew.

  He tried to meet her eyes but found it difficult.

  “I need some time,” she said. “I think some time apart is important. I need to find out who I am. I need to find what’s important to me.”

  He wanted to ask her why she couldn’t do that with him, how she could possibly do that here. But he knew she had no answers to those questions. Perhaps no answers were even possible.

  “Try, Dix.
Try to be happy for me,” she said.

  He nodded, his face averted. He gently pulled his hands away from hers. She held on.

  “Look at me,” she implored him.

  He turned to her.

  “I love you, Dix. You’ve been nothing but good to me. You’ve done nothing but care for me and about me. I owe you everything. But I need this. I want this. The most loving thing you can do for me right now is to leave me be.”

  Dix leaned down and pressed his lips to her cheek. “I love you,” he whispered, then removed his hands from hers, got into his truck, and drove away.

  Miranda felt restless nausea slosh in her gut. Her diet had changed so much since she’d come to live at The Source full-time. This bloat and tiredness and stomach upset was just her body trying to rid itself of the toxins it had accumulated, she reminded herself. She told herself to lie still and breathe it all away. She remembered her meditation instruction, to send her breath deeper into her lower chakra. She tried to visualize the process of healthy digestion. She set her intention to allow her body to expel the fear and blood of all the meat she’d consumed in her life and, in its place, absorb and embrace the nutrients and nourishment from the new, natural, and lovingly raised foods she was eating at The Source. With each exhalation, she imagined dark vapors leaving her body. She listened to the breathing of the other women around her. Someone was snoring. Violet. They teased her about it. Luna had suggested a buckwheat pillow, but they were unsure of where or how to procure one made from organic materials. Miranda smiled at the sound, the comfort of being in this place, with these women.

  No one was touching her where she lay on her thin futon, yet she felt embraced by the presence of several sleeping bodies nearby. She thought of the animal bodies nestled in straw out in the barn. The seeds dormant in the ground. The soil itself under its blanket of snow. She felt connected to it all. She remembered how she had felt separate, distant from everything around her, for so many years. No longer. Her stomach settled. The bile subsided. She listened in the predawn darkness to footsteps overhead. Darius was rising. Darius, who had brought all of this together, who had created this sanctuary. Darius who knew her brother, her parents, who was somehow the string that connected her past with her present and, she felt sure, her future.

  How improbable it all was, Miranda thought, smiling to herself. How perfect. How magnificent the world was when you could tap into its inherent magic and ride its ancient and everlasting rhythms. It was time to rise and greet the miracle of a new day free of dread and anxiety. There was, after all, nothing to do other than that which presented itself. So easy in the end, that which had seemed so hard for her for so long. Darius had taught her all of this. Darius had shown her what she hadn’t even realized she’d been seeking. Silently, she thanked him.

  An undulation of queasiness hit her again. She began a check-in and assessment, starting at her toes and slowly working her way up her body, asking each part to relax, flow, connect with every other. She willed tension out of her ankles, from behind her knees, from deep within her hips. She spread her palms over the taut skin below her belly button. She whispered soothing words to her innards. She imagined them as calm seas. Her tummy did a flip under her hands. Her eyes shot open.

  Wait, she told herself. Could this be something other than simple nausea?

  She felt energy moving from the inside of her body outward, warming her palms. She felt what seemed to be movement.

  My God, she thought. Finally. It’s happened.

  She dared not say the word, even to herself. She’d waited far too long to jinx her sudden certainty that a new life was at last growing within her. A vision of Dix flashed behind her eyes, his soft green eyes, his sheepish smile.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for giving this to me.”

  She heard footsteps. Darius coming downstairs, past her door. A picture of Darius supplanted the one of Dix, the green eyes turned bright blue, and the awkward grin became a confident smile.

  Yes, Darius, she thought. Thank you. This happened because of you.

  It had happened because she was finally doing the right thing with her life, and her body had become receptive to what she had wanted for so long. It was only because of Darius that she had been awakened in this way. This was a gift from Dix, but even more, an acknowledgment from the universe to her because of Darius, through Darius, because of the larger gifts he had bestowed upon her. She was sure of it.

  Dix sat with a cup of tea going cold in his hands and watched the snow fall. He plowed, shoveled, scraped, and pushed it back. It came again. He returned to his truck and shovels. Then he’d drink tea and watch the paths he’d cleared refill with dense, white clouds of snow. Weeks drifted by. He didn’t mark the days or notice the time. One early morning when the entire landscape looked like the color of old steel, the sound of gunshot in the distance reminded him that, somehow, he’d missed deer season this year. He’d never even cleaned his guns. That was a first. It was small-game season still. Maybe he could get a rabbit or two. Possibly even a partridge. Unlikely. But he was growing restless. He’d been sitting too long. His body was starting to protest.

  He cleaned his gun, loaded it onto his truck rack, got into his camo, and headed out. If he didn’t hunt, at least he’d hike. But by the time he got going it was late morning, no time for hunting, and it was bitter cold, so the animals would be hunkered down. As he should be. He drove aimlessly. Or what seemed to be. Until he found himself on a particular dirt road near a certain driveway. He didn’t hesitate, just turned in again without thinking. He didn’t know why he had returned. He had no plan, no idea what to do once he got to the end of the drive. He simply stepped from the truck, slammed the door, and waited. He had nothing else to do, nothing else to lose. Once again, the front door answered him. But this time it was a man who stepped forth. He stood cross-armed on the porch.

  “Dix,” the man said, freighting the name full of disappointment. “Why are you here?”

  Dix took a moment to assess the man in front of him. So this was Darius. The man at the center of The Source. Short, slender. Pretty.

  Christ, Dix thought, he could be a girl. So insubstantial. Hardly a worthy adversary.

  “I’m not sure,” Dix answered. “Just kinda ended up here.”

  Dix watched Darius look him up and down, saw his eyes flick over to his truck, where his loaded gun rack stood in stark silhouette in the back window.

  “We are a sanctuary, Dix,” Darius said. “Your presence is disturbing.”

  Dix looked Darius up and down again as well. He was wearing roughed-up clothes that clearly had not earned their ragged edges honestly. Like those factory-aged jeans teenagers bought at the mall. He wondered what Miranda saw in this guy. Then it occurred to him how much alike they were. Soft, spoiled, fake. Trying to be unique by acquiring the tropes of individuality. His anger at Darius, at the both of them, was driven out for a moment by a wave of pity and disgust.

  “Shut up, Darius,” Dix said dismissively, as if he were talking to a barking but chained dog. “I want to see Miranda.”

  “I understand, Dix,” Darius said, apparently ignoring the insult, his voice oily and cool. “But it’s better for her not to see you. She was very upset the last time you came. It took her some time to recover her equilibrium. I know you want what’s best for her. We all want what’s best for her. What’s best for her now is to be here. Where there is peace and where she is cared for within the structure of our supportive community.”

  In the face of this slick and sanctimonious stonewalling, Dix’s anger returned, even stronger than before. It was an emotion he had blocked for Miranda, but he had no hesitation showing it to this man.

  “You bastard,” he growled. “You know nothing about Miranda, about what’s best for her. You’re a fucking charlatan.” He took a few steps forward. Darius’s face remained maddeningly still and expressionless. Dix pointed his finger toward the chest of the man in front of him. “Who do you thi
nk you are, anyway? You are a joke. You are a poser. A rich boy trying to find himself by playing games out here on this land. This place will take you down, Darius. Mark my words, these mountains will take you down.”

  The door behind Darius opened. A woman emerged, her pale skin set off by the bags under her red-rimmed eyes and the curtain of hair that hung limply alongside her caved-in cheeks. She wore a low-slung skirt and a long sweater that clung to her swollen breasts and protruding belly. Dix did not recognize her until she said his name.

  “Dix. Please. You’re scaring us. You’re scaring me.”

  Miranda cradled her stomach with her palms in the subconscious and universal motion of pregnant women. Dix looked in desperation from Miranda to Darius and back again. Miranda shook her head slowly in an expression of weary dismissal. Her words came back to him in mockery. No sex at The Source. What a fool he had been for believing her, for working so hard to sweep away all his nagging doubts. Here was the damning evidence of what he had suspected but not wanted to admit all along: Darius had given her what Dix could not. She was not here out on some selfless, do-gooder impulse. She was here, had been here all along, because she was in love with this horrible blue-eyed devil of a man. She had lied to herself. She had lied to him. Dix was flooded with despair, regret, and shame—emotions he had never before experienced in even a small quantity and now felt in an engulfing wave. Miranda took a step forward. Darius held up his hand to her, and she obediently stalled where she was. Dix stumbled backward. He fell against his truck and banged his fist against the metal hood. He threw himself inside and sped away, spewing a wave of gravel behind him.