It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  “An hour ago!” Dan cries. Now I see the concern beneath his anger, the fear he’s trying so hard to hide. “Five minutes down the street and you disappear. What the hell am I supposed to think, Michael?”

  “I ran into someone,” I tell him. My gaze flicks over my sister—if she weren’t here, I would tell him about Jessie, he’d know exactly what happened and he wouldn’t be so pissed, but I won’t say a word with her around. She’ll tell everyone, I know her too well.

  But that’s not enough for Dan. “Who?” he wants to know. When I shrug and look away, he spits, “That boy you used to fuck around with? The one who came over yesterday? Did you meet him?”

  “What?” I ask, surprised. He means Stephen. “Dan, no. I didn’t…Jesus, you can’t think…” But I can see it in his eyes, that’s exactly what he thinks, that maybe I ran into Stephen at Grosso’s and we got it on, picked up where we left off all those years ago—the distrust I see shining back at me from my lover’s eyes makes me livid with rage. “You know me better than that, Dan.”

  “I thought I did,” he mutters in reply.

  Indignation wells within me but I tamp it down. Pushing past him for the door, I say, “You know what? We’ll talk later. Without the audience—”

  With surprising speed, Dan plucks the bag from my arms and shoves it at my sister, who fumbles to hold onto it when he lets go. “We’ll talk now,” he tells me, and before I can argue, he threads an arm through mine, pulls me back down the porch steps and across the yard to our car.

  Chapter 32: We Need to Talk

  “Dan,” I protest, digging my heels into the hard ground as he drags me towards the car. His anger scares me, the set of his shoulders, the grip of his fingers on my wrist. In all our ten months, I’ve never seen him like this, not towards me. Even that one time back at the barracks, after the bachelor party? He wasn’t this pissed. Then he had been sullen, drunk and silent, but now I feel his emotions hum just beneath his skin like an electric current powering his anger. “I went to the store,” I try again. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn around. Because we’re far enough away from the house now that Caitlin and whoever else has gathered on the porch to witness this little spectacle can’t hear what I say, I tell him, “I ran into my aunt, Dan.”

  The announcement doesn’t phase him.

  I try to wrest my hand from his but he’s too strong and we’re already at the car, he holds on tighter as if afraid I’ll run away. Without a word, he pulls my keys from his pocket, unlocks the door, holds it open and gives me that look of his that defies argument. “Get in,” he tells me.

  His face is a mask of anger—the lips I love to kiss set in a harsh frown, the eyes I could drown in storm-tossed. “Dan,” I whisper. Did I do this to him? When did I let things get this bad between us? I had no clue…tentatively I touch his cheek, the skin taut beneath my fingers. “Baby, what—”

  He closes his eyes, hiding from me the sparkle of unshed tears. His jaw clenches, his teeth grind together. “Please,” he sighs. “If you love me, Michael, please just get in the car.”

  There’s only one response to that. I do as he says, buckling my seat belt as he shuts the door behind me. Looking back at the house, I can see Caitlin, Trevor hugging her legs, Ray and Neeshi and Aunt Billy…I feel chastised, a child sent home for playing too rough, this car a prison around me. What have I done? I want to ask. They all stare back at me as if they already know.

  Know what?

  When Dan slides into the driver’s seat and starts the car, I ask, “What’s this all about?”

  “Just don’t,” he warns. He pops the car into reverse, backs out of the yard. Then he slams the car into gear and tears down the street, tires squealing beneath us. What happened to the quiet, courteous driver my lover used to be? Where the hell is this coming from? I grip the belt across my chest as Dan says, “Don’t talk, Mike. Let me work this out first, please. I don’t want to say or do anything that I won’t be able to apologize for later.”

  “Are you mad at me?” I ask, even though the answer is obvious—it’s in the way he stands on the gas as he drives, the way his hands fist around the steering wheel, the way the world rockets by.

  He shakes his head as if he’s surprised that I dare to speak. “Michael,” he starts, and then he sighs, but he doesn’t look at me. His gaze is on the road ahead, leading out of town. “I love you,” he tells me. “Just…please, okay?”

  In a tiny voice I whisper, “Okay.” I love you. That doesn’t answer my question.

  We follow the same road Jessie and I just took, past Grosso’s, past the neighborhood where I played growing up, past the city limits sign. For a crazy moment I think we’re heading home, Dan’s that fed up. He packed our things while I was at the store, the suitcase is already in the trunk, he’s had enough. But that can’t be right. The funeral’s tomorrow, we have to stay for that. Besides, if we leave now, like this? There won’t be a home to go back to, not if we don’t find some way to overcome whatever it is threatening to tear us apart. Me, I think, staring out the window at the autumn forests blazing by. I’m the problem here, it’s me and I don’t know why, I don’t know how to change it. I just know that I’m not the way I used to be, I’m not the same man I was when we left our place Saturday morning and headed to my mother’s. And I don’t know how to fix it, either. I don’t know what Dan’s thinking anymore, I don’t know what he wants from me. But there’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, a steadfast belief that tells me if I don’t find out soon, then he might be thinking that he needs to pack up the rest of his stuff and move back into the barracks once we get home. I’ll do whatever I have to, say anything he wants to hear, do anything he wants to keep that from happening.

  So he wants quiet—I stay quiet. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from apologizing for…whatever it is he’s angry about. Taking too long at the store this morning, not telling him what Stephen said, keeping him away these past few days. I miss you, I want to say, but I don’t—he doesn’t want to hear it just yet. He’s mad as hell, I can feel his irritation like a barricade between us but he still loves me, he said that much. He loves me enough to not want to say anything that he might regret, so I’ll keep my mouth shut and let him think. I’ll let his anger ride itself out. Then we’ll talk.

  With Sugar Creek behind us, the road seems to open up, the sky stretches away like a blanket draped over the tops of the trees, clouds hover above as if eavesdropping on us. Too bad there’s nothing to overhear—even the radio is turned down low, I can barely hear it. I feel confined, claustrophobic despite the open fields that line the road. The trees keep back behind tall grasses, empty stretches of land, but I feel them closing the distance between us, I feel them nearing the road. I can’t fight this feeling of helplessness that clings to me. I just know that we won’t get far enough away from Sugar Creek to talk things out between us, up ahead the trees will form a barricade across the road, keeping us in, keeping us here, and we’ll never work things out. I’m scared we’ll never be as good as we were, we’ll never be more than we are at this exact moment in time, we’ll never be love again.

  That thought terrifies me. We have to get out.

  I want to tell Dan to go faster, drive harder—maybe we’ll zoom through the trees then, put my family and my past behind us, move on into the future together. But I’m being quiet, he wants me silent and I am, I couldn’t speak now if I wanted to, and I don’t say a word. Instead, I stare at the trees and swear they glare balefully back, their naked limbs shaking at us as we pass. They’re closing in on us, I just know it.

  The car starts to slow to a normal speed even as my heart skips faster in my chest. The trees, I think, panic rising in my throat, but a warm hand covers mine where it’s clenched around my knee and I relax. “Dan,” I sigh, rubbing my eyes as his fingers curve into mine. Beneath me the car veers to one side of the road, slowing as we trade tarmac for gravel, the crunch of grass under our tires. I imagine the sound is the trees creep
ing closer, moving through the tall grass, reaching out with skeletal limbs for the car, for us…

  I open my eyes and the trees are where they belong, back away from the road. Dan cuts off the car and we sit in silence, holding hands while the engine winds down. I want to say I’m sorry but I don’t know if that’s what he wants to hear, so I sit still and say nothing at all. I’ll wait for his lead.

  With a final squeeze of my hand, he climbs out of the car, slams the door shut behind him. Confused, I watch him skirt around the hood and then he’s at my side, taking my arm, helping me out. As he closes the door, I look back the way we came—the road is empty. I can’t even see the sign for Sugar Creek, we’ve come that far. Ahead of us, the highway is a single ribbon that winds through the land like a promise. There’s no one else in sight. Finally, for the first time all weekend, we’re alone.

  Alone.

  “Dan,” I start, but he shakes his head, he’s not ready to talk yet. Taking my hand in his, he leads me away from the road and into the grass, tall for this time of the year. It brushes along my knees, leaving little triangle-shaped burrs stuck to my jeans. I pick at them, toss them away, but more take their place. Even though I can’t get rid of them fast enough, I concentrate on them anyway, they give me something to do. Beside me, Dan keeps a fast pace, crossing through the grass quickly in wide steps that I struggle to match. I want to ask if he knows where he’s going, but I know he doesn’t. Far away from everyone else, that’s what he must have in mind. Someplace where we can just be us. Maybe we haven’t drifted too far apart if I can still read something of his thoughts.

  Another dozen yards or so and the trees loom ahead now, almost shadowing us. Between their branches the sky looks puffy and swollen, strained. It’s going to rain and we’ll be caught out in the storm. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all…

  Before I can object, Dan plunges into the woods, pulling me along behind him. “Baby,” I sigh as I tug on his hand, but he keeps going, through fallen leaves, around stumps and rotting logs, tramping down branches and shrubs and anything else in his way. “Dan, wait. Where…”

  He stops suddenly. I take another step or two past him before I realize it and turn to find him frowning at me, concern brightening his eyes. “Not much farther,” he tells me. “Are you doing alright?”

  I take a deep breath and nod. Sweat sheathes my back, my arms, making my sweater stick to me, and my hair is damp along my forehead, my lungs burn from his quick steps, my thighs quiver slightly. But the way he’s watching me now is damn close to the way I’m used to seeing him look at me, so we can’t be that far from where we need to be. I need to be with him, I tell myself. Everything else is just details.

  He’s waiting for an answer. “Fine,” I say, and I flash him a bright smile because I am fine, I’m doing better than I have all weekend from that look in his eyes alone. Glancing around at the trees drenching us in their shade, I ask, “Do you know where we’re going?”

  With a laugh, he admits, “I have no idea. You said we needed to talk—”

  “So we head for the hills?” I joke. When he shrugs, a little embarrassed, I pull him to me and he comes willingly enough, thank God. His arms find their way around my waist on their own, he hugs me to him, buries his face into my neck, his breath warm on my skin. I hold him in my arms, rest my head on his shoulder, it feels so good to be here again, to be with him. When I breathe in I can smell him, fresh and musky, his cologne enflaming my blood, filling my mind with images of me and him and a hundred different positions, a million different ways to show him my love. “I love you,” I sigh as I hold him tight. “Dan, I’m sorry, so sorry, you just don’t know.”

  “I want to know,” he murmurs. His words are soft like his breath along my neck. “Don’t push me away, Michael. I’m sick of it. Don’t tell me you’re fine when I know you’re not. Tell me what you’re going through here. Talk to me, please.”

  Will that be enough to set things right between us? At this point, I’m willing to try anything. The anger I saw in his face earlier scared me, anger directed my way, and the thought that I might make him mad enough to move out once we get home? That terrifies me. Fisting my hands in his jacket, I tell him, “I don’t know where to start.”

  His arms tighten around me, keeping me close. “How about telling me why it took you an hour to run down the street for milk?” he asks softly.

  Okay, I can do that. Gingerly I extract myself from his embrace, take a step back so I can look into his eyes. The concern is still there, and love—the shadows can’t hide that. “I ran into my aunt,” I tell him. “Jessie? The one everybody is afraid will show up tomorrow and ruin the service?”

  Dan whistles, surprised. “She’s here?” he wants to know. I nod and he asks, “What did she want? You talked to her? Mike—”

  “Walk with me,” I interrupt. I take his hand again and move around him, back the way we came, out of the woods. I don’t like these trees that hem us in, listening. They tower over us like guards. I want to be in the open, the sky endless above us, the earth stretching out for miles around.

  My lover’s frown returns, his mood darting to distrust in an instant. “I thought you said we’d talk,” he cautions. When I tug at his hand this time, he stands his ground.

  “I don’t like it here,” I admit. I look around at the trees, I feel like they’re swaying above us, too close, too damn close. Mindless panic threatens to choke me despite the comforting hand in mine, my lover’s body beside me. It’s too quiet here, still and unmoving like a grave, like death. “Dan, I don’t…” I trail off, unable to put my fears into words. I don’t like it here, baby, I think—the only coherent thought that makes it through the swirl of madness in my head. That’s the best I can do. Please.

  He must see something of that in my troubled face because he starts off again, deeper into the woods, but he’s walking slowly now, I can keep up with him well enough. “You act like you have someplace in mind,” I say cautiously, lacing both hands through one of his. I don’t want to point out that I don’t know where we are, and I don’t want to tell him that I’m afraid we’re going to get lost. At least we’re together. That’s the only thing I’m banking on here.

  With a nonchalant shrug, Dan keeps walking. The forest floor is an obstacle course of deadwood and foliage, the ground mushy like a thick carpet beneath our feet. Sunlight filters down through evergreens, illuminating small patches of land where a sapling struggles to grow or a single plant rises from the undergrowth. I clutch his hand in mine for some comfort, no matter how small, and I walk so close beside him that our shoulders brush with every other step. The car is miles behind us it seems, and there’s no one around, no one at all. In his low voice, Dan prompts, “I thought you were going to tell me about your aunt?”

  “Jessie,” I say. When he nods, I swallow back my fear and focus on what happened this morning. I tell him about Grosso’s, warm and dark and so much the way it always was that I felt transported back in time, a boy again. I imagine my words a steady stream that trickles from my lips to paint the landscape—the description of my aunt left on the tender branches of a young sarsaparilla sprout, Mr. Grosso’s condolences tumbling over a moss-covered log, the bright sunlight as I stepped out of the store shining on leaves of late season poison sumac. I glance behind us, almost convinced that I’ve left a trail of words leading back to safety—we just have to follow the story to where we entered the woods, a literary Hansel and Gretel, my words proverbial breadcrumbs leading us home.

  But there is no path behind us, just trees and swatches of sunlight, and maybe a glimmer through the branches that might be our car. Dread rises in me again but I talk it away, telling Dan of how Aunt Jessie pulled to a stop in front of me, told me to get in the car. How she took the long way home, right out of town and then turning around, heading back. What she’s doing here, what she hopes for, why she came and what she has to apologize for, even if it’s too late to say she’s sorry in person. “An abortion?
” he asks, unsure. “They hate her because she had an abortion?”

  “This is my family,” I remind him. Around us the trees are starting to thin, and I swear I hear the trickle of running water up ahead. “They don’t really need a good reason to hate someone.”

  Besides, I can see where Evie was coming from, all those years ago. Back then, the stigma of an abortion would have been an almost unbearable cross for the family, particularly a handful of young sisters living together in a house with two children and no parents or husbands. In a small town such as Sugar Creek, that might have been enough right there to send Jessie away. People did those things back then, sent young girls who were “in a bad way” to live with relatives in another city or another state, where their “condition” might not raise as many eyebrows. And then there were Evie’s own convictions, her love of children mirrored with her inability to have one of her own. Of course she would resent Jessie, who saw the life within her womb as an inconvenience and seemed ready to kill it without a second thought. A giving person by nature, Evie probably felt obligated to help her sister but in turn must have hated her part in the affair every single day of her life.

  Finally the woods break away, revealing a small stream that splashes away, sparkling water over smooth river stones and the gnarled knuckles of exposed roots. The trees stand back as if in awe. Moss grows along the banks, a beach of lichen that disappears beneath the clear surface, gives the rushing water a dark green tinge that reminds me of spring. Tiny silver fish flicker through the fecund water like flashes of sunlight captured in the rocks, winking at us then hurrying away. There’s a faint breeze, it stirs the wild oats that shoot up here, and the few cattails that have started to go to seed. A magical place, I feel it in the very center of my soul, a small section of heaven set down here on earth and untouched for centuries, waiting for someone to come along and savor its solitude. Waiting for us—the water didn’t run before we came, the fish didn’t swim, the grasses didn’t rustle amongst themselves like whispering children. “You knew about this?” I ask with an incredulous laugh, folding my lover’s hand to my chest.