She gave me an endearing look and said, “Gretchen, that’s very optimistic of you.”
“I know,” I said.
“You’re seeming very young today,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“It’s lovely. Your cheeks are flushed.”
“It’s ridiculous,” I said.
Joe has one strange quirk, as I’ve come to find out, which is that he prefers to make love outdoors.
“I can’t breathe inside,” he told me.
“Winter is coming,” I said. “It’s comfortable inside. There are things like beds and blankets and heat.”
He shrugged. “I can do it. I’m capable of it. I won’t turn sex down. But I’m not going to like it, not as much.”
So I immediately started thinking of ways to manage this particular request. Blankets I could pull from the shed and wash. Sleeping bags. Perhaps a little apple-tree shelter.
We were under the tree again a few days ago when we noticed that the bear had just clawed the tree. The bark had been shredded away, leaving long pale streaks of tenderness. What had happened, we surmised, is that the bear had gotten all the apples within reach and now he was climbing up for the ones at the top. He was getting desperate for calories; winter was coming.
“If we weren’t outside right now,” Joe said, “I wouldn’t have seen the bear’s claw marks. These leaves wouldn’t be falling through the sky. And I couldn’t watch the light and the way it hits your body. And they’re all very beautiful.”
That made me shy so I laughed. “Schoolkids, that’s what we sound like.”
This whole time, he had been inside me and rocking me gently—we had stopped to let our bodies catch up with the sensations—and then he really kissed me, and his hands went to my breasts, and his lips moved to my throat, which made my back arch, and then the pathways traveling between my mouth and breasts and pelvis were lit, and there was a very long period of feeling very good, so good that I had to hit the ground with my fist, and I could not help but moan and thrust my body into Joe’s with a strength that would have scared me had it not been matched by a welling of tenderness. I was telling my body to come, come, and I was afraid I was going to numb-out, but then the inside of my body broke out in a sweat, that’s what it felt like, and I heard myself making noises that seemed a little out of hand, but then an image flooded my mind, Joe walking with his arms out, embracing the world, and so I thought, oh yes, just let yourself do this, and he made his own animal noise as he came, and we both sounded like the wild creatures that humans can sometimes be.
For a long time, Joe ran his hands across my back, and front, and thighs. He told me about bears. That this time of year a bear will spend almost twenty hours a day foraging, and that the drive to collect food is very strong, and that now they’ve moved from the summer flowers and grasses to berries and apples, and they have to work hard to get the twenty thousand calories a day that they’re going to need for winter. Bears mate in the spring but they have delayed implantation, which means the fertilized egg floats freely in the uterus, and the egg implants and develops now, in the autumn. And then Joe paused and said, black bears are solitary and intelligent and curious, just like you, and he kissed me. And he said, one of these days, we’re going to see this bear.
When he was done talking about the bear, I talked about females and sex, since that’s what was on my mind. I told him that the reason women could come more than once was that after orgasm there’s an instantaneous refilling of certain chambers, meaning that orgasm doesn’t return a woman physiologically to an unaroused state but rather to a pre-orgasmic level of arousal. Some women are not aware of their orgasmic capacity, including me, and that before him, I had thought I was unable to have more than one. I told him this was probably good for his male ego, but that wasn’t why I was telling him. I told him I had my own selfish interest in the topic. I told him that orgasms made me feel strong, and also that they smoothed over all the hurt in the world. I told him that I had recently decided that good orgasms took some concentration, some imagination, and a little spark of craziness. They also relied heavily on a feeling of safety and generosity.
Joe sat there, head propped on his hand, touching my body. He seemed curious, in the best of ways, willing to listen without expectation or judgment.
I said, “Do you have to be somewhere? Do you need to go?”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. Then I added, “The more orgasms a woman has, the stronger they become. The more she has, the more she can have.”
He said, “Gretchen, in certain ways, you remind me of a bear.”
I said, “I just think you should know all this.”
He leaned over to kiss my nose. I traced his body with my fingers, and when he buried his head into my shoulder I wrapped him in my arms. While we were resting this way, a gunshot sounded from somewhere in the valley. The geese took off slanting and honking into the sky, but I could sense that the rest of the world—the songbirds and mice and deer—stopped still.
“Hunting season,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Bear hunting is over.”
“But not deer and elk.”
Eventually, Joe had to go, he had an appointment to shoe horses, which was about the same time Anya would arrive home with her kids after school. Since the apple tree is in view of her house, we’ve had to take her schedule into consideration. We waited until the last minute, and then Joe and I gathered up our things and left, and when he climbed into his truck, he jumped right back out again to kiss me and he surprised me by saying, “You’re holding my heart together right now,” and I wanted to ask him about it, but he got in his truck, and he drove away.
When I came home from cleaning today at noon, the kids were out by the apple tree, winging fallen apples around. I watched them as I unloaded my cleaning supplies: the bucket of rags, the containers full of chemicals, the vacuum. I’d cleaned three houses in record speed and it’s amazing the sort of energy that love can give you. When I went inside, I wrote myself a note to buy a new can of WD-40 because that stuff is the best for taking off sticky substances, and I’d just used up the last of mine cleaning tape residue from a fridge door. I flopped on the couch and tamped some pot into my beautiful green pipe but didn’t light it.
I was thinking now about the future for Joe and me. He’d left a few days ago, a short trip to Denver to see some family, due home tomorrow, and his immediate absence made me think of his future presence, or lack thereof. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t resist going over the possibilities. Of course we would end, at some point in time. And we would end like most relationships end, in which one or both persons fade themselves out. It takes too much energy, too much bravery, really, to say good-bye, literally, with force, and usually there’s just a silent withdrawal, hardly perceptible, until it becomes obvious. You quit being so generous—with yourself and the other person. Joe would quit going out of his way to stop by, and I wouldn’t go out of my way to rearrange my cleaning schedule. And strangely enough, this lack of giving would make us feel trapped, like there was suddenly too much, and that there would then be conditions we would not agree to, and we would want again our freedom. Then we’d give each other a tired, sad smile, because somewhere inside, we’d know it was over.
One of the beautiful things Ovid wrote was, “If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe then.” So I sat on the couch and lectured myself about this: Do not do that, do not get busy. Instead, I decided, when we were over, I would sit around and smoke pot, and I’d let the great wilderness of the inner life take over, as it should.
Because it was a gloomy day, I knew Anya would be making brownies, for which she uses only Callebaut chocolate, because chocolate helps her get through gloom, and I knew she’d bring me some, because she’s not stingy, and something about that made me want to walk out and see her kids. I stashed the pipe for later and went
outside, and there they were, under the apple tree. They were wearing coats but no hats and gloves and Zoë had a clear line of snot running from her nose to her lip. They were crouched down, staring at two grasshoppers, who were, no joke, having sex. There was a bigger grasshopper and a smaller, greener one, and their tails were bent toward each other, connected at the end.
“Look, Gretchen!” Zoë squinted up at me. “These grasshoppers are wrestling!”
“Indeed they are,” I said.
“Just like we wrestle!” said the boy, whose name is Michael.
“Sort of,” I said.
“There’s a lot of bear poop under your apple tree,” said Zoë, as if I were responsible for it. “We poked at it with a stick. We think the bear ate ten million apples to have so much seed in its poop.”
“That seems about right.” Then I said, “Are you two happy?”
They looked up at me, red-cheeked. It looked like they were wondering if I was stupid. Michael didn’t say anything but Zoë said, “Halloween was yesterday. I’m happy.”
“Okay,” I said. And that’s when we heard it. A huff, huff and then another huff, huff and the first thing that hit me was the smell. A very bad smell, really, and I said, “Oh, kids,” the same time that the bear appeared out of the raspberry bushes and regarded us. “Oh, kids,” I said again, and I thought, Damn, this bear was supposed to come when Joe was here, but I said, very calmly, “Don’t worry, kids. It will go away,” and then I addressed the bear, “Bear, go away. Go away, Bear.”
But it did not go away. It was moving from the raspberry bushes toward the apple tree, as if it had not seen us, although surely it had, because we were only thirty feet away. It seemed very calm. It was a dark brown, darker in the head, and its ears were round, and its nose curved upward just a bit. It took four steps and then it sat back on its butt and I realized it was a she because the nubs of her nipples ran down her belly.
Zoë let out a small animal noise, and Michael was frozen but I could tell he was about to scream or run and so I said, very fast, “Kids, don’t move, do not move, stay right next to me, that’s right, move right in behind me.” I kept my eyes on the bear, who paused and seemed to be listening to me too. I shuffled them behind me. “Bear,” I said, “we are not going to hurt you and you can have the apples. If you hurt us, I will hurt you back.”
The kids were starting to cry and so I said, “Kids, I want you to know one thing. This bear will have to fight me before she gets to you. And let me tell you, I can put up a great fight.” While I was talking the bear stared at me for a long time and then got bored and started walking in our direction, a little to the right. All she wanted was the apple tree.
I started backing up, kids behind me, and looking around for sticks but there weren’t any, but there were a few bruised and wormy apples, scattered out where we were, so I bent over, slowly, and picked up three at my feet. I guessed that I could throw pretty hard and with pretty good aim, and no creature really wants to be pelted with apples, and so I believed the apples were going to save us, and then I felt calm and safe, which gave me enough time to pause and consider the bear.
She sat down, suddenly, and huffed. She seemed uncertain as to what to do herself. Her need to get to those apples was very strong. I decided I liked her because she was stubborn and perhaps lived too hard. If I did not have two kids behind me, grabbing so hard at my shirt that they were strangling me, I felt as if I might stand there and consider her for quite awhile.
“We’re going to back up now,” I whispered. “Are you ready? If she comes, I’ll throw apples at her and punch her in the nose, and you two get to my house, no matter what. Hold hands. Okay?”
As we moved back, the bear got on all fours and lowered her head and then she moved forward, rapidly, right at us. She was angrier than I would have supposed. I heard myself say, “Oh god oh god oh god,” and my arm cocked backward with the apple, ready to fast-pitch it at her face, and my other arm went backward and below, to shield the kids, and then I said, very loudly, “Bear! Your egg is implanting and you will not hurt us!” Suddenly I was very angry with her, and my mouth opened on its own and I made a very wild noise, a very wild noise for a very long time, a noise that basically meant get the hell away from me and these kids.
Joe came home a few hours later—he had returned early from Denver, due to a storm suddenly in the forecast, and he sure as hell didn’t want to get stuck with relatives—and I told him about the bear. How she held her ground and watched us go. I told him that the kids and I watched her from my kitchen window, saw her stare after us and then climb up the apple tree, where she stayed for some time.
We were sitting up, near the apple tree, having dragged two chairs out there and having built a campfire in a rock-lined fire pit that Joe had quickly made for the express purpose of being able to be outside near the apple tree while he heard the story of the bear. It was just starting to snow, the first of the year, tiny flakes that reminded me of campfire ash, perhaps because they reflected the gray of the sky. The campfire itself started crackling in response and I pulled up the blanket around my chin—a thin one from my car—and said, “Let’s go inside, this is ridiculous,” and Joe kept saying, “It sure is,” but we didn’t move.
Joe pulled me into his lap and was hugging me tight because I was shaking. Perhaps it was the cold, perhaps it was the nervous energy, perhaps I had come to the point where I felt the need to unleash many words upon Joe because I needed someone to listen. I talked for a very long time. Perhaps more than I ever had to any other human. I told Joe that Anya had looked out her window and saw the bear gliding at us and that she’d dialed the fire department at the same time she started running for her kids, but then, when she saw the bear stop, changed her route so that she wouldn’t have to run right by the bear. She came panting up to my trailer soon after we’d reached it. She promised me a lifetime supply of brownies. I told him that Anya’s marriage had gotten to that place where imagination fails, and that she and her husband were each feeling like a prisoner. I told him we’d probably ramble through the same cycle, if we stuck it out. I told him that I loved him. I told him that when we broke up, I would think back as this being the Time of Joe, and that I believed a few good memories could sustain a person.
He held me to him, and listened and hugged me tighter now and then. Sometimes he said things back, little phrases to show his agreement, or simply to acknowledge he was listening, and, when I had wound down, he told me about the horseshoeing conference and about his cute blond niece and some elk he had seen a few days ago, including one female who kept rubbing her head against a tree. He told me he saw no need in forecasting the end of us, although he understood the impulse, and that he too had recently wondered what there was to live for, exactly, besides some form of love?
Our conversation wound around different topics and stopped-and-started and circled back and I felt like both our bodies and our words were like grapevines, and then I felt the foolishness of that, and then I let go of the feeling of feeling foolish.
It was during a lapse into silence that we heard the fall of feet. It was Anya, walking straight at us. She had in one arm a big two-toned brown blanket. Tucked in her other armpit was a silver thermos, and in this hand she also held a tinfoil-covered plate of whatever it was that she’d just baked. She was smiling, pleased for us. She handed the thermos and covered dish to Joe, and then, with both hands, she flung out the blanket in the air, where it hovered for a moment, and she guided it down on top of us.
“Joe,” she said, “hello.”
He reached up to shake her hand. “Good to see you, Anya.”
“Have a brownie,” she said. “Snowstorm is coming. You may not want to drive up the mountain tonight. Gretchen, thank you again for saving my kids.” She brushed her hands together, as if she were now done with her job. “I’m off to have dinner with my family. Sy will be home soon.” She brushed a thick strand of wet blond hair out of her face and turned
on her heels and left.
“Joe,” I said, as I watched her go. “Stay the night? Please. I need you next to me.” I breathed out, releasing a long gust of air, and then my teeth began to chatter. We pressed our bodies together in the lawn chair and huddled inside the blanket and drank Anya’s coffee and ate her brownies and watched as the snow moved sideways. The sky darkened and the snow picked up, and finally we stood, kicked the rocks into the fire, and ran for my trailer, our hands thrown out to the world.
Chapter Three
The Color of the Impression
To get past certain emotions, say love for example, it will take both effort and erosion. When the effort isn’t working, despite a person’s best attempts, and the erosion is taking too long despite her patience, this person will realize she is going to be required to hold certain feelings in her heart and continue on as if they’re not there. She’ll be struck by the knowledge that others are walking around doing the same thing, greeting her in this mountain town’s tiny post office as if their hearts were not aching with melancholy, and even worse, that they’d prefer to keep the relevant words unspoken.
Well. That is what I learned from Ruben.
I was ice-skating on the pond, the new Australian shepherd pup bounding around next to me, leaping at my legs in adoration and joy, and it was this exuberance that caused us to collide, and I ran over her paw with the blade of my skate. Her yelp pierced the air as I plunged forward, right into the boat that I leave upside down next to the pond. My head hit the chine of the boat, the boat being a little plywood number I made myself. So many things happen in such a moment, of course, in the expanse of a meadow still filled with morning fog, and I thought oh, this hurts and tipped my head back so the blood in my nose would run backward, and my tongue felt out the cut on my lower lip, and my eyes sought out the puppy. She was limping over to me, leaving bloody footprints on the ice, including one red swipe where she slipped stepping over the push broom I’d used to clear away the snow.
The Blue Hour Page 3