“I’d like us to go out together.”
“Where?” He sounded neither pleased nor alarmed.
“Only outside, into the woods. I’d like to …” She could hardly say I’d like to show you something—she would just laugh, or he would, the thing wouldn’t work, anyway. “I’d like to prove I’ve changed.”
“In the woods.”
“I’ve started tracking—animals, you know? I work in the evenings, mainly, putting the research together and emailing it off, so the days are my own.”
“And you spend them tracking? ” He wasn’t worried any more, so he could settle into mocking: he was good at that.
“You’ll see. Go and get your shoes and I’ll show you.” Sarah wasn’t as good a tracker as she might be: she couldn’t move soundlessly over dry leaves, or definitively tell an opossum’s handprint from that of a young raccoon, none of that stuff.
I can still show him what I have to, though. Why not.
She watched him leave to do as she’d asked. He didn’t appear to be scared, although she realised she was.
But, in the end, why not.
As they moved away from the house, the sunlight was reddening. It made them shield their eyes, laid a clean tissue of heat across their faces and pushed the shadows in long, low angles across the path. She knew they weren’t walking quietly enough, but that it would be fine, because they would sit soon, when they came to the stream, and the forest would settle and get used to them.
“Hide near water and something will come to drink. You let their own need bring them to you.”
“How long will we have to wait?” He was whispering, because she had.
“I don’t know—until the need arises.” It was good to be whispering, shoulder by shoulder, crouching just within each other’s heat.
“It’ll be dark soon.”
“I can find the way home after sunset.” That wasn’t a lie—she’d done it once. But she’d had a torch then and she didn’t now. “If we keep low and still, things will arrive.”
“What things?”
“The deer move in the evening.” White tails, they were lovely, but neither she nor David was in enough cover to let them come near. “Birds … I don’t know. It’s always different. Once a woodchuck came over those rocks: we saw each other and both froze. Woodchucks can look very like rocks, they have the right colouring, so he turned his head sideways and flattened and I’d never have guessed he was there if I hadn’t known.” She was talking too much when she shouldn’t be talking at all, but David was listening and the woods smelt live and it was cooler here, in the shade, a good place for them both to be, so she kept on. “Every ten minutes or so, he’d rearrange his feet, or sit up and stroke his whiskers, have a good look, and there I was, looking back. Then he’d snap into being a rock again. We went on for nearly an hour, possibly longer, with him being scared but curious and then curious but scared.”
“How did you know it was a he?”
“I guessed.”
“I thought things weren’t supposed to know you’re watching.”
“Sometimes they know, but they don’t mind. It’s possible to be there together and no harm done.”
David eased back slightly, making himself more comfortable, and gave a neutral nod. She could think of nothing else to say.
Slowly, the peace of the woods distilled into the drilling of a sap sucker, a blue jay’s cry, the undulating bounce of squirrels through the scrub, the rattle of a broken branch, finally let go. She loved the clasp of it, fixing her, as one call started another and each motion found its reaction without subtext or ambivalence.
“Why did you do it?”
He made her start, although he was speaking very quietly.
“Do …?”
“Why did you do it. You said you were thinking, only taking time away to think and then you were with someone else, you were married to someone else. Did you know him before, or … ? I couldn’t …”
“I didn’t know him before, he just wasn’t you. We didn’t work, David.” Although this wasn’t what she wanted to tell him, but he’d made her angry and now it was out, “I’m sorry, but—”
“You’re sorry? I was outside the church, that’s how sorry I was. I wanted to see so that I’d believe it. You got out of the car …”He swallowed, frowned. “I went away. But I … I don’t know why I’m here now.”
“I don’t know why I asked you to be.”
And it would have been good to laugh at this point and ease the atmosphere. They had, after all, just wounded themselves in faultlessly hushed tones out of consideration for animals which would, nevertheless, have heard them and kept sensibly away. Their consideration for each other was, of course, less perfect.
David tugged at a green twig, snapped it. “Look, do you mind if we don’t sit out here all night. I’m getting bitten to hell by these flies and I’m not in the mood.”
“Sorry to have brought you out.”
“No, the idea was fine.” He smiled, but not for her. “It would have been great if we’d been two other people.”
“But we’re not.” “What?”
“Nothing.” Sarah rose and started to lead him back. “Come on. We’ll at least catch the sunset.”
“Oh, well, not a completely wasted day, then.”
“And just when I was thinking this could only get worse if you decided you were going to be sarcastic.”
“Sarah, I—”
But she grabbed his arm, pulled it, hard. “You should look at this.”
“Oh for Christ’s … now what?”
Sarah felt curiously relieved: because today had already gone so wrong that whatever she did could have no particular weight, she could simply do it anyway, because she felt like it. She kneeled and, although she didn’t expect it, he also sank beside her and repeated more gently, “Now what?”
“You see where there are leaves from the last storm?”
“I suppose, yes. The dead ones.”
“They bed down in a sort of layer and then they show up dips.” She was proud of this, they weren’t easy to spot, not from above, not walking, not in the company of a man you’d like to slap. “And then if you lift them …” She peeled up a section of the cover, it tore away like damp, heavy paper. “Yes. There we are.” It was nice to be right, once in a while.
“Are we?”
It was a print, the split impression of a deer’s hoof, sharp in the mud. “If you lean forward …”
“Oh, right.” And it did seem that she’d pleased him, that he wanted this.
“You can go first, then.”
“First at what?”
“At what I’ll show you.” She took his wrist, “You put,” and folded all but his first two fingers into his palm, “That’s right …” She let go. “And then you put your fingers in.”
She watched as he set his fingers, one in each side of the cleft in the mud where the hoof had splayed apart.
“Lovely, isn’t it? Makes you think of the moment the deer touched and left it. You’ll be a bit muddy now.”
“I don’t mind.” He paused, his concentration on his hand, and then withdrew. “Your turn.”
Sarah reached and fitted into the mark while David waited. When she touched the place, she knew it at once, almost laughed.
“What’s the matter?”
“It feels warm where you’ve been. Usually they’re cold.”
“Is that an improvement?”
“Yes.”
The last of the sun had soaked into the leaves above them and each branch was burning with a green, veined shine.
David cleared his throat. “Shall we go home now?”
“If you want to.”
They stood, unsteady for an instant.
“David?”
“Yes.”
“I thought we were over. When I tried to go back and you—”
“I know.” He lifted her hand in both of his. “You’ve got dirt in under your nails.”
�
��I can live with that.”
“Or I could lick it out.” He met her eye and immediately slumped into a laugh. “Jesus, not a good thought. Not what I should have suggested. Not … suitable. I haven’t known what to say for the whole of the time I’ve been here.”
“You should have said.” And she made sure to laugh immediately after and bring her other hand up to meet his. “I haven’t, either.”
“Tricky.”
“Putting it mildly.”
The breeze shifted, showed the silver under the leaves.
“I’m sorry, David. I made a mistake.”
“Yeah. I made one, too.”
They let their hands separate and began walking.
David brushed his clean knuckles down her arm, “I’ll tell you something, though—I’m not especially good at this nature stuff, but I do think that we’re going to have thunder, in fact I’m absolutely sure there’ll be another storm tonight.”
“It’s possible. The leaves are turning.”
“It’s definite.” He let a few more paces pass. “So we should stick together.”
“For the night.” She would kiss him soon.
Truly, no mistake.
And each one knowing the other was here, need opening to make them defenceless and bring them in, no harm done. “It might be wise. In case you decide to get frightened, or happy. Or whatever else.” He tugged at a grass head as they strolled. “In case you decide.”
“Which could happen at any time.” The wood starting its evening song, the sweet-shop scent of rhododendron strong beside them, the soft grumble of late bees, still working at the flowers, and David matching her, step for step, the best kind of wait between them and set to break. “At any time.” And she allowed him: the way that he had been, that he would be soon, the way she would be with him: she permitted everything, made herself prepared.
“I know, love.”
“Good. So that’s all right, then. That’s all right.”
Acknowledgements
Versions of some of these stories have appeared in New Writing 6 (Vintage), Boston Review, Grand Street Magazine and Harlot Red (Serpent’s Tail), and have been broadcast on BBC Radio Four.
The author is grateful for time spent in Lewisboro, New York, as a guest of The Writers’ Room.
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