The Wood of Suicides

by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

  I came to him on the appointed days with a blend of girlish innocence and affected experience, which served to provoke him by undermining my innocence. I was still virginal enough that I desired to provoke him, without necessarily desiring the consequences of such provocation. One morning, I caught sight of a perfect red apple on the breakfast cart and snatched it up to put on his desk when we met that afternoon.

  “Are you trying to bring about my fall?” he quipped, wistfully.

  In answer, I gave an ironic half-smile and picked the apple up from where I had placed it, turning it about in my elegant white hands before touching its coolness to his lips. He bit in.

  “I have tasted of the fruit,” he announced, “Yet still, I am in paradise.”

  “Is it ripe?” I questioned.

  “A little tart.”

  When he wasn’t instructing me in the mechanics of love, he was instructing me in the poetics of it, seducing me mentally with the stories and words of great lovers whose tradition we were carrying on. There was the original, the myth, almost too sacred to mention, which prompted him to call me “my nymph, my Daphne,” and to insist that I respond to him as “Apollo.” In a former life, my lover had been a poet-god, pursuing me through the woods of Arcadia. Since then, his fantasies had been filled with green leaves and sun-dappled white skin. In the fourteenth century, I was incarnated again as a noble lady in a green dress, attending Easter service. The poet Petrarch glimpsed me and immortalized me as “Laura.”

  “Tell me some Petrarch,” I asked him, knowing how eager he was to do so. He chose to recite his favorite three lines.

  e non se transformasse in verde selva

  per uscirmi di braccia, come il giorno

  ch’ Apollo la seguia qua giù per terra

  “. . . ‘and let her not transform into green wood/ escaping from my arms, as on the day/ that Apollo pursued her, down here on earth’ . . .” he translated for me, once he was done showing off his Italian.

  “Where did you learn Italian, anyway?”

  “From my mother.”

  “Your mother was Italian?”

  He nodded sagely. “Of Florentine stock. Like Dante, and the Medicis. Her name was Caterina.”

  “Is that where you got your daughter’s name from?” I inquired thoughtlessly, then blushed as he gave me one of his sly, haven’t-you-been-listening-closely looks. It wasn’t the first time he’d caught me out, knowing more than I needed to.

  “Catherine. Indeed.” He went on, “My father was called John. He was a surgeon. He didn’t know a word of my mother’s tongue, and never tried to. Neither did my brother. I was always her favorite, because of that. She’d sit me in the kitchen and tell me all about Dad’s meretrices.”

  “His what?”

  “His whores.” Steadman smiled roguishly. “Nurses, neighbor-women. It was nothing, really. He was always a ladies’ man and she let herself go so quickly. She couldn’t have expected him not to stray . . .”

  I was careful not to question him too persistently about his origins, fascinating as they were, for fear that this would cause him to turn his attentions toward my own. In fact, he refrained from delving into my past with a stubbornness that suggested he already knew, or at least sensed, more than I would’ve cared to reveal. Did teachers have access to that sort of thing? I supposed that it was possible. I supposed it was also possible that the moral questionability of what he was doing with me made him squeamish about the subject of parents. Perhaps he preferred to imagine that I had been born out of the woodland and that his gaze gave me life, much in the same way as God breathed life into Adam.

  I was more than willing to go along with this fantasy, to cast him in the role of poet-god, both lover and creator. In fact, since the beginning of my time at Saint Cecilia’s, I’d gotten into the habit of thinking of myself as a kind of orphan; a father-born being who, cut off from her paternal origins, had every right to choose a new god. Considering the distance between my mother and myself, which was bridged only by biweekly phone calls and carefully contrived notes, it was relatively easy to maintain this illusion. I’d deliberately forgotten to inform her of the parents’ weekend back in October and the parent-teacher conferences that were happening later that month (though, since things had started up between me and Steadman, part of me yearned to put her in the same room as the man who knew and worshipped every inch of my young body). As the holiday period crept closer, I was aware that I wouldn’t be able to avoid reuniting with the woman for much longer. This apprehension was reinforced by her most recent letter, quoted in brief:

  November 11, 2002

  Carmel-by-the-Sea

  Monterey County

  Dear Laurel,

  I’m so happy to hear that you’re still enjoying school. Jill & Lee are still as kind as ever but that doesn’t stop me from missing my darling daughter! They are begging me to stay for another weekend but I think its time for me to get back to the real world, don’t you? Anyway, if I drive home on Thursday I can stop at your father’s grave on the way to put some flowers down for his anniversary (can you believe it’s already been 3 months??). I was thinking of buying some nice Lily of the Valley like we had at the service but let me know if you want something else . . . maybe some poppies or zinnias?

  I feel dizzy when I think of all the boring business waiting for me at home. I’ve made some appointments next week with some of your father’s lawyer-friends and that accountant whose daughter you went to Sacred Heart with (remember Mr. Wells?). I’m hoping to have everything sorted by the Wednesday though before I pick you up so we can have a nice, relaxing holiday together, just the two of us. There are lots of important things that I want to discuss with you, but don’t worry—I won’t be making any important decisions without talking to you first!

  I’m counting down the days until Thanksgiving. Please call me when you get this letter or soon after.

  Love Mommy

  XOXOXO

  P.S. I almost forgot to congratulate you on your grade for that English paper. Your father would be so proud!

  She would be picking me up from boarding school on Wednesday, a half day, and keeping me with her until Sunday—a painful prospect. It was difficult enough talking to her on the phone, let alone in person. As for Steadman, I didn’t doubt that he would be spending the holiday with his wife and children, playing the part of dutiful husband and father, just as I would be the dutiful, virginal daughter.

  It therefore came as a shock to me when he announced on Wednesday, after class had broken and the others had gone off to pack, “Danielle and the children fly to Philadelphia on Friday. Can I pick you up in the evening?”

  “What for?” I asked unthinkingly.

  “For a weekend of passion, I should hope. Think about it: you’ll be away from school; I’ll have the house all to myself until Sunday . . .”

  “What about my mother?”

  “Make something up. Tell her you’re staying with a school friend.” He kneaded my shoulders through the thin cotton of my blouse. I was poised in his lap, wearing everything but my shoes and sweater. My mother wasn’t coming until late afternoon, so we could take our time. “You’re a clever girl; I know you’ll find an excuse . . .” He said. He proceeded to kiss me, softly and at length.

  It would break her heart, of course, but did I really care about that? Anyway, what was another pang of conscience to someone who was already living with more guilt than a single soul could handle? I placed my hands on his shoulders. I opened my eyes briefly to glance at his handsome face turned up toward my own. I was learning to enjoy his kisses, with their stale, coffee taste and strange refinements. I kissed him back until we were both quite breathless.

  “I’ll find an excuse,” I told him, dabbing at my lips.

  “That’s my girl,” said Steadman. His hands passed down from my shoulders to my hips. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you? You’re a clever girl . . .”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I KNEW that it was
wrong to be making such arrangements, to be abandoning my poor widowed mother for a weekend of sin with Steadman. I knew that it was even more wrong for the sin to be taking place in the house he shared with his family; that I was overstepping the mark by agreeing to enter another woman’s house, another woman’s bed. My place was in the locked classroom, spread across the carpet that burned me or the desk that bruised me; I was the mistress, and had no right to the comforts of a married woman. By giving in to this particular request of his, I was surely laying myself open to torment—if only in the form of intensified feelings and the accompanying hope that I might actually have a future with him.

  I consoled myself with the thought that I had no say in the matter; that I was completely in his thrall; that anyone unfortunate enough to love as I did would have acted the same way. It wasn’t to be forgotten that the widow who I now pitied had once been in love; that she too had been feeble, sensuous; that I was merely following the example she had set for me. All the same, something pure and hardened in me told me that our sins weren’t to be compared. What she had done in innocence, I did in cold blood, with full consciousness of its perversity.

  His touch was still fresh on my body when my mother came to collect me that afternoon. Over the past three months, she had continued to dress in mourning—a Victorianism that I admired her for, even as I noted the way that it washed out her complexion and rejoiced in my own vermilion sweater, the cheerful flutter of my miniskirt. She remarked effusively on how grown-up I was looking, on how there had been a change in me. As we piled into the Peugeot, she concluded that my hair was longer.

  That evening, we dined in Japantown. To prevent her from reminiscing about her time in Kyoto with my father, I steered the conversation toward Romantic poetry, telling her everything that I knew about Coleridge’s drug habit, Shelley’s revolutionary fervor, the scandalous love life of Lord Byron. I told her that I was thinking of majoring in literature at college.

  “Literature! How nice.” She took a sip of her sake and announced unexpectedly, “You know, I am glad you’ve gotten over your psychology phase.”

  “What’s wrong with psychology?”

  “Oh, well . . .” She waved her hand in the air. “All that overanalyzing. It frightens me a little bit.”

  To demonstrate, she gave an affected shiver. She went on: “

  Besides, I don’t think everything lies as deep as what they say.”

  “Well, maybe not for some people,” I responded coolly, taking up my green tea.

  My mother gave a vague, airy laugh, as if unsure whether I was joking and, if so, who the joke was on. “Shall I order some more sashimi?” she asked.

  It wasn’t until we got home, and after she had traded her black daywear for a black peignoir set—part grim reaper, part film-noir prostitute—that she sat me down to discuss the important things mentioned in her letter. Gathering her robe about herself, she looked up at the ceiling and commented on the emptiness of the house, the impossibility of her rattling around there on her own forever, with my father gone and me starting college in a year’s time. She spoke of the beauty of Carmel-by-the-Sea, the hospitality of the Waldens—of Lee Walden in particular, who seemed to know everyone of importance and who’d been very encouraging of her talents as a decorator. She told me that it was only an idea, but that Lee knew of a beachside cottage whose owners were thinking of selling; that he could arrange an early inspection; that he and Jillian were more than willing to put us up for a few days over the winter. Lee himself was responsible for the landscaping of Arcady, which he counted among his best work: cobblestones, shadowed waters, pendulous wisteria. He had shown her photographs. It had to be seen. “It’s your decision, sweetheart. I understand if you don’t want me to sell the townhouse. I just thought it might be nice for us to take a look at this cottage . . .”

  “It would be nice, Mom. I think it’s a very nice idea.”

  THE FOLLOWING day, we had a modest lunch of turkey breast, string beans, and sweet potato. Despite its modesty, my mother cried on cue partway through the meal, lamenting the fact that my father wasn’t with us at the table as he’d been the year before. I reminded her that he’d hardly eaten anything the previous year, that eating had been painful for him. At these words, she grew quiet, much as a child might between one storm of sobs and another. “He was a very sick man,” she hiccupped. “Poor, poor Jonathon. He was a very sick man.”

  “He was very sick,” I echoed and offered to refill her wine glass.

  I was clearing the table and my mother was in the den, nursing her third glass of Pinot Gris, when I received the call from Mr. Steadman. I promptly stole outside to take it, settling on the porch steps and shivering from the late afternoon chill. Stained-glass windows glowed across the street like Chinese lanterns.

  “Oh, I’m dying,” he moaned into the receiver. “Tell me it’s sorted. By this time tomorrow, I could be holding you in my arms.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Don’t let me down, or I’ll be rattling around all weekend like a lonely bachelor. Eating leftovers. Drinking all the wine in the cellar . . .”

  I laughed. He really was a master of hyperbole.

  When I returned to the den, I found my mother poring over old photographs and dutifully went to join her on the sofa. My father as a young graduate. My father as a young law clerk. My father as a young groom at their outdoor wedding, which she attended in strappy sandals and a garland of cherry blossoms. I was struck by how youthful my father was compared with Steadman and wondered whether I’d ever regret not giving myself first to an upright young man, with a trim waistline and an unwrinkled face.

  There were far fewer pictures of him in middle age, though he remained handsome enough. The most recent were from Easter that year and had him unshaven, looking quite the roué with his two-piece suit and glass of red wine (the truth was, he couldn’t have more than a couple of sips without it interfering with his medication). It gave me a peculiar feeling to see the shots in which I’d been asked to pose beside him in my white Easter frock, patterned with evil black flowers; to remember how anxious I’d been, and how I’d tried not to let my anxiety show when he placed an arm around my waist at my mother’s bidding. I felt a similar anxiety as the lie stumbled past my lips. “Mom, my friend Catherine is touring St. Mary’s College this weekend. She wants to know if I can come with her.”

  “Catherine who?”

  “Catherine Steadman.”

  I WAS ready for him almost two hours earlier than I had to be, dolled up in a plum-colored dress and matching lipstick. Before dressing, I had spritzed myself liberally with my mother’s French perfume: oriental spicy, with notes of plum, bay, citrus, jasmine, myrrh, and Lily of the Valley. My legs were sheathed in black pantyhose. On my feet, I wore high-heeled black Mary Janes.

  It was well after five by the time he arrived at my doorstep, unshaven and dressed far more casually in jeans and his chocolate brown sweater. Though my mother and I answered the door together, he greeted her first. “Good evening! You must be Mrs. Marks.”

  “Lizzie,” she smiled, accepting his hand.

  “Hugh Steadman. As you can see, my daughter is in absentia. We told her she needed to have her room ready hours ago but, as usual, she left it right until the last minute.” He laughed—a convincing display of parental cynicism—and glanced at me darkly. “I hope your own is more organized.”

  “Oh, Laurel has been dressed for hours! Darling, why don’t you go fetch your bag from the den?”

  I flounced away, face burning. When I returned with my bag, they were discussing art, as his eyes had apparently chanced upon the framed Klimt picture while following my figure down the hall.

  “Have you been to the Belvedere Gallery?” he was asking her.

  “I have! My husband and I were in Vienna a few years ago.”

  “Then you must have seen the Schieles too.”

  “I love Schiele!” she simpered.

  It went on that way f
or what seemed like forever. At last, duly charmed, my mother kissed me farewell and closed the door behind us—though not without accepting his hand once more. He took my bag from me and, walking down the path, gave me an innocuous compliment. “Those are nice shoes. What do you call those?”

  “Mary Janes.”

  Parked across the road was a silver SUV. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but the sight of it amused me: it was so family man, so bourgeois. He placed my bag in the trunk and helped me into the vehicle, holding the door open and his hand out. As soon as we were safely hidden behind the tinted windows, I melted into his arms. We were both flushed and tongue-tied when we broke apart, minutes later. He started up the engine. I adjusted my dress.

  “Did you have to flirt with my mother so much?” I asked him coyly, once we were on the road.

  “I wasn’t flirting. I was being a gentleman.”

  “Do you think she’s attractive?”

  “I think she makes very attractive daughters.”

  As we drove north through Pacific Heights, I pointed out the public gardens that I used to pass through every day as a Sacred Heart schoolgirl, the street along which my old school had been located, and various mansions whose owners’ daughters I was acquainted with. We cut through the Presidio and across the Golden Gate Bridge. From there on, it was all tunnels, hills, and forest. Night spread across the sky like the warmth of his hand resting on my thigh.

  At last, he announced, far-off and sonorous as a dream pilot: “. . . Welcome to Larkspur.” I shook off my reverie to peer out through the velvet-blue gloaming at a sycamore-lined street, full of sprawling bungalows and ranch-style family homes.