Shenandoah Summer

by John Muncie

  “How come you know all this?”

  He moved his fingers lower. “Professor Reifman’s drawing class,” he said, circling the small mound of her stomach. “The bald anatomy nut I told you about. One day he came to class with the names of the head bones written in Sharpie all over his skull. I don’t know how he ever got it off.

  “According to him, we’d never be any good at drawing the human body unless we knew our bones. ‘Take a lesson from Leonardo,’ Reifman used to say. ‘In fact, take a hundred lessons from him,’ and then he’d laugh at his own bad joke. Leonardo had his own set of human bones that he studied, and Reifman wanted us to do the same. His syllabus even included a list of places to buy them.”

  “Did you?”

  He shook his head. “But I still did pretty well in his class.”

  “Oh yeah? Then tell me what this is.” She pushed his hand down below her belly.

  “Ah. That, of course, is Poupart’s ligament. Let me demonstrate how it attaches.”

  “I was hoping you would,” said Alyssa.

  An hour later, Tug resumed his anatomy lecture. They were lying on their sides, facing each other. He skimmed the tip of his forefinger through her pubic hair to the crease of her inner thigh. “I love your symphisis pubis,” Tug said. Then, after a moment’s hesitation he added, “I love you, Alyssa.”

  Alyssa abruptly rolled over and got out of bed. “No you don’t,” she said. She faced away from him; her voice sounded thin and distant. “And don’t say it again. I don’t want to hear it.”

  She walked out to the balcony. By then the storm had passed; the moon shone through a few dawdling clouds, highlighting her hair and shoulders and intensifying the shadows below.

  Tug followed her outside. Both of them stood for a moment facing the rain-washed, moon-washed hills.

  “Alyssa, I love you,” Tug said again. “And I’m going to keep saying it because it’s true. You know it is.”

  “Stop it. Everything’s fine just the way it is right now. Why do you have to complicate things?”

  “I’m not complicating things. I’m just telling you I love you. I love you.”

  He faced the fields and flung his arms wide. “I love Alyssa Brown, I love Alyssa Brown, I love Alyssa Brown!” he shouted to the cows, the horses, and the man in the moon.

  Alyssa threw her arms around him and tried to drag him back inside. “Shhh—you’ll wake Dr. Holland.” She put a hand over his mouth. His lips moved under her fingers as he continued yelling his declaration of love.

  “No. Not until you say you love me back.” He broke free from her grasp and leaned over the balcony shouting even louder, “I love Alyssa Brown!”

  “Okay, okay, stop. We’ll talk about it, just stop shouting, okay?”

  Tug was going to keep shouting, but he saw something in her face. Panic? Sadness? Whatever it was, it made him stop. “Alyssa, it’s not like I said you had three months to live. I told you I loved you. Most people like to hear someone loves them.”

  Alyssa walked inside and Tug followed her. “I’m not most people,” she said as she sat on the bed.

  “I know, and that’s what I love about you.” Tug put up his hands in surrender. “Oops, I did it again. I just can’t seem to help myself.”

  Alyssa gave him a half-smile. “You goofball.”

  “Okay, I’ve stopped yelling. Now, admit it. You love me.” He’d never worked so hard in his life to get a woman to say those three words to him.

  She examined the blanket. “It’s complicated.”

  “No it’s not. Just say the first one-syllable word beginning with ‘y’ that comes to your mind when I ask you the following question: Do you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aha,” he said. “I knew it. Say it again.”

  “I love you, Tug. But that doesn’t solve anything. We can’t just ride off into the sunset together. I have a husband. You have a life in New York. You have a career there.”

  “Fuck my career. Fuck your husband,” Tug said. “I want to be with you. Alyssa, I want to be with you. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “It counts for a lot. But not everything. We’re not kids who declare their love and set up housekeeping. I wish we were. I’d be the first one on the time machine to take us back. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

  Alyssa got up and wrapped a white terry robe around her. “I’m making some tea, want some?”

  “Alyssa? I’m talking about a life together and you’re talking about tea? What’s so complicated? I love you, you love me, your life sucks with Darryl. I don’t see a lot of complications here.”

  “I never said my life with Darryl sucks. And that’s beside the point. Life’s like buying a house—not every room is perfect. If you’re lucky, most of them are. Most of mine are, Tug. I have a wonderful daughter, the farm of my dreams, good friends, a fulfilling career—”

  Tug filled in the rest of the sentence: “An unhappy marriage.”

  Alyssa sat back down on the bed next to him. “Maybe. But we’ve reached a kind of peace over the years. We each have what makes us happy. Darryl has his work, I’ve got the farm.”

  “The farm, the farm, the farm,” Tug said, wagging his head from side to side, his voice rising. “I know you love it. And, yeah, it’s great. But you can’t be held hostage by fifty acres, Alyssa. Let Darryl sell the fucking place if he wants to.”

  Alyssa stared at him in surprise.

  “I know all about the threat,” Tug said. “Abbi told me. You can’t choose the farm over happiness, Alyssa. In the end, it’s just dirt and grass.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  She leaned down and put her head in his lap. Tug could feel the heat of her breath on his skin and tears sliding down his thigh.

  CHAPTER 48

  Alyssa awoke, sunlight jabbing her face. Disoriented, she propped herself up and looked around. Tug was sprawled to her left; facedown on the bed. To her right, the clock read 8:30.

  Damn, they’d slept through the Limespring breakfast. She’d fallen asleep with her head in Tug’s lap and had forgotten to set the alarm. Marius and Nattie were probably speculating right now about Tug’s whereabouts.

  Well, we weren’t fooling anyone anyhow, she thought, and fell back against the pillows, jarring Tug. He turned over and said groggily, “Hey, sweetheart.” Then he put his head back down and closed his eyes.

  She watched him settle back into sleep and tried to do the same, but the morning’s sharp yellow light and the memory of the words “just sell the fucking place” kept her awake.

  Tug couldn’t understand her attachment to the farm unless she told him everything. And she couldn’t. Or was it wouldn’t? She didn’t know, she just knew it hurt too much to talk about it.

  Alyssa flipped the pillow to the cool side, hoping that would lull her back to sleep. It didn’t.

  Just as she started to slip out of bed, a hand wrapped itself around her wrist. “Come here, gorgeous,” Tug said. He took her other wrist in his hand and pushed her back down against the pillow, pinning her there. He kissed her, then moved his mouth to her ear.

  “I’m sorry I raised my voice,” he whispered. “No more talk about the farm, I promise.”

  That morning they sat on the porch rockers drinking coffee and eating cherries from a ceramic bowl. Soothed by birdsong and a brightening day, the previous night’s drama didn’t seem so ominous. Alyssa found herself talking about her marriage and Darryl and how they met.

  “He was everything I thought I was looking for,” she said. “He’s smart, responsible, conscientious . . .”

  “Those are the qualities for a dog, not a mate,” Tug said.

  “There were other good things about him, too. But we were just a bad match. And by the time we had Roz, it was easier to stay together.”

  In the middle of explaining how she and Darryl first went searching for a farm, Alyssa suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute: I’m telling you everything and you’ve told me nothi
ng. It’s your turn now, Palifax. Do you have any girlfriends? Who are they and how many? I want a complete list.”

  “Just one, sort of,” Tug said. He squirmed a bit in the rocking chair. He didn’t mind talking about his life, as long as relationships weren’t involved. “It’s kind of over.”

  “‘Kind of over.’ What does that mean?”

  “I told her I thought we should take a few steps back and see how we felt when I got back.”

  Alyssa threw a cherry pit at him. “You mean you wanted to break up with her but didn’t have the guts?”

  “It could be interpreted that way.”

  Alyssa threw another cherry pit at him.

  “But I’d left a little sculpture by her door before I left. That was a nice gesture, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. How long had you been together?”

  “A few months. Ten or eleven.”

  Alyssa rolled her eyes. Tug held up his hands. “No more pits. She liked the sculpture. Believe me, in a few months she’ll be much happier having it than me.”

  “She’s an artist?”

  “Painter.”

  “What’s her name? What’s she look like?”

  “Margaux. Margaux Cuberta. She looks like . . . I don’t know, she looks like anybody. She’s tall, nearly my height, dark hair. That kind of thing. ”

  Under further cross-examination, Alyssa got Tug to admit to a series of bungled “let’s take a few steps back” breakups with other women. His confessions brought him another hail of cherry pits and little sympathy. But he seemed so crestfallen that, eventually, she relented. She walked over to his chair and leaned down. “The women of New York owe me a big favor, taking you off the streets.” Then she kissed him and said, “I love you.”

  The rest of the day, Tug drew, Alyssa did chores. They ate dinner on the porch—pasta tossed with basil and garlic and olive oil—and moved to the bedroom before the sky turned dark. They made love as the sky went from gray to black. Alyssa didn’t bother to set the alarm. They slept till nine and stayed in bed till noon.

  The subject of their future wasn’t brought up again.

  CHAPTER 49

  A few days later, Alyssa was cleaning stalls when she heard tires crunching on gravel. The car coming down the driveway was black, which eliminated all the usual unexpected visitors. Betsy Parker, the horse editor of the local paper, drove a big blue truck; Nancy, the wife of her neighbor, Dr. Holland, drove a silver sedan; Jackie, a white compact; and Reedy Collins, the blacksmith, a red van.

  This was a station wagon. Tug? Driving to the farm? He’d just left an hour before to have lunch at Limespring; she hadn’t expected him back until after dinner.

  She wiped her hands on her jeans and tried to smooth her hair. It ignored her efforts and bounced back out in all directions.

  “Something wrong?” she asked as he got out of the car.

  “Yes and no,” he said. He put a hand on each side of her face. “God, I love looking at you. Especially when you do that twisty thing with your mouth. Oh man, talk about bad timing. I’ve gotta go back to the City. Now. Of all damn times. Shit.”

  Back to the City. The words felt like four kicks to the stomach. Instantly, Alyssa regretted every day of the past month. She’d told herself it was all too good to be true and she’d been right.

  “Really?” she said. “Are you coming back?”

  Tug looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Are you nuts? Alyssa, how can I make this any clearer? I love you. I’m just going for four or five days, that’s all. ‘Am I coming back?’ How can you ask that so calmly?”

  She reached down to pick a weed so he couldn’t see her face. “You forget I’m an actor.”

  He knelt down and put his face next to hers. “Yeah, well, stop acting. I want to know you’ll miss me. Look, I’ll say it first: ‘I’m gonna miss you.’ Now it’s your turn.”

  She smiled. “All right, maybe I’ll miss you a little.”

  He nudged his shoulder against hers. “‘A little’? Bullshit. You’ll be lighting a candle by my drawings. Don’t you want to know why I’m going?”

  Alyssa pushed him back with her shoulder, hard enough to topple him onto his butt. “Sorry, I’m all out of candles. So tell me, what could possibly draw you away from my infinite charms?”

  It was a long story and Tug told it with flourishes and asides. It had to do with his best friend, Joel Feinblom. Joel, a video artist who’d been trying for years to get his work shown at an important gallery, had finally got a shot at it, if Tug came back to New York right away.

  Joel had called Limespring not more than thirty minutes before. Tug had been eating lunch with Marius and Don when they saw Jackie running up to the picnic tables.

  “Tug, quick,” she’d yelled out, “there’s someone on the phone for you. Joel, from New York. He says it’s urgent. Better hurry, it sounds like something’s wrong.”

  Tug had run to the office with images of dead friends rushing through his mind. He expected to hear the worst when he picked up the phone. Instead he heard Joel singing, “Happy Days are here again . . . ,” followed by an excited explanation of why Tug had to get in his car that instant and leave for New York

  Scott Ungstead, owner of the Scott Ungstead Gallery, one of the edgiest galleries in SoHo, had just called, asking if Joel’s show, “Clean Up Your Room,” could be ready for the next weekend. The gallery’s scheduled exhibit, “Inchworm”—a video sculpture involving cardboard boxes and seven TVs playing a tape of the artist’s tongue licking the floor—had had to be canceled. The artist had totaled his car on the way to the gallery, destroying the televisions and landing himself in the hospital.

  “It’s like Rosemary’s Baby,” Tug said to Alyssa. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Joel joined a satanic cult and put the hex on the poor guy.”

  Ungstead wanted “Clean Up Your Room” as a replacement. The problem was that the show involved fifteen artists and a complicated setup, so they’d have to act fast. It was also a problem that none of the participants were well-known, and Ungstead would only give them the space if at least one contributor was a name artist. That’s where Tug came in.

  “You’ve gotta do it, Tug,” Joel had said on the phone. “Ungstead gets reviewed by everyone. I’ve been waiting for something like this for years.”

  The show re-created a teenager’s bedroom, except that everything in it was artwork from Joel and his friends. The wall posters were paintings and erotic drawings by Tari Smolens, a hot young graphic novelist; the computer screen saver was a series of photos; one of Joel’s video works played on the room’s TV screen; the teenager himself—a lifelike nude sculpture made from polyester resin and fiberglass by a Brooklyn artist—sat on a bed covered by a textile artist’s handmade quilt. Other artists, including a guy who had made a skateboard out of fried pork rinds, supplied teen stuff scattered about. Tug contributed a work called Wash Day, a hamper overflowing with dirty clothes made from melted plastic and street junk. Everything in the installation was for sale, making “Clean Up Your Room” a work of art, a group show, and a gallery all at the same time.

  Tug was explaining what was involved in putting the show together, when he slapped his palm against his head.

  “Duuuuh!” he said. “How could I be so stupid! Come with me! You can see it all for yourself. You can even help us. Consider it Limespring Follies North. It’ll be great to have you there. Besides, I want to show you where I live. Just throw some sexy underwear in a bag and let’s go. We’ve gotta go now, though. Joel made me swear I’d get there tonight so we could get started.”

  He grabbed her hand and started to pull her toward the house.

  “Whoa, Tug,” Alyssa said. “Hold on. I’d love to go to New York, but you know I can’t. I’ve got horses to feed.”

  “Get your friend Betsy to do it, she won’t mind.”

  He started pulling her again.

  “I can’t, Tug. I just can’t pick up and leave.�
��

  “Why not? What’s holding you here?”

  “Roz.”

  “Roz? She’s in Chicago.”

  “She might call.”

  “Well, call her first. They have phones in New York. She doesn’t have to know where you’re calling from.”

  She looked away. “I can’t go, Tug. I want to, but I can’t. Remember Darryl calls every Thursday. What am I supposed to do, call him first and tell him I’m going to New York with the Limespring guy he thought I was having an affair with?”

  Tug dropped her hand and started to walk away. “Jesus H. Christ, Alyssa, what are you going to do, sit by the phone forever waiting for Darryl to call?” He kicked a foot full of gravel down the driveway. “You don’t even love the guy. At least that’s what you tell me.”

  She walked after him. “Don’t be jealous of Darryl,” she said as she tried to take his hand.

  He shook free of her. “Why not? You share a bed with him, don’t you?”

  His words hit her hard. “Stop it. Stop it, please. You’re not being fair.”

  “Fair? You want to talk about fair? Tell me what’s fair about this whole fucking thing? How do you think I feel knowing you’ll be sleeping with him when he gets back from California? How’d you like it if I slept with someone in New York? You want fair? That’s fair.”

  Alyssa took a few steps back. “Fine,” she said, spitting out the word. “Just go to New York and do what you want. I’m married, you knew that all along.”

  “Okay, fine, I’m going to New York. I’ll be back sometime.”

  He got in the car and slammed the door closed. Caught between anger and misery, Alyssa watched him spin the car around and gun down the drive like an angry teenager.

  CHAPTER 50

  The station wagon’s rear end fishtailed as Tug sped through the curves of Alyssa’s drive and onto Limespring Hollow Road. The Dixie Chicks blasted from his car radio, but they weren’t loud enough to drive away the memory of: “I’m married, you knew that all along.” Tug turned from Limespring Hollow Road onto Route 688, tires squealing, all the frustrations of the summer boiling over. He was sick and tired of getting jerked around. “Remember Darryl calls every Thursday.” He pounded the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand. Jesus H. Christ.