by K. D. Miller
He was upstairs in his den. Just go. Talk to him. But then she thought of all the approaches she had made, all the conversations she had tried to start, and went tight and hard. She stomped upstairs to the kitchen and started making yet another dinner for five.
It was the night after the wedding. Steve was in bed flipping channels on the big hotel-room TV. Marion was in the bathroom taking off her makeup. After the ceremony they had stayed as long as they could at the reception, dancing with everybody except each other on the dock Ranald and Patrick had built out of fresh pine. Then they had driven in silence back to the hotel in Huntsville, where they were staying the night.
Marion took longer than usual creaming her face. Should she tell Steve that she was proud of him? He had been Patrick’s best man. He had stood tall with Harriet as the boys in their white tuxedos paddled their canoe up to the dock, Patrick in the stern because he had the stronger stroke. He had listened attentively when the two mothers did the readings—Marion’s from St. Paul’s If I speak with the tongues of men and angels but have not love, and Harriet’s the Shakespearian sonnet Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. He had handed over the rings on cue. He had not looked away during the kiss.
Marion tissued off excess cream. Yes. She will be fair. Civilized. She will tell Steve he had made her proud. She turned the bathroom light off and went into the bedroom. Saw him propped up on the big hotel pillows, aiming the remote at the TV. He did not look at her. She thought, When was the last time he said anything even vaguely complimentary to me?
She got into bed and looked at the screen. It was some news show. Someone was interviewing two young women. So this is it. My marriage is going to end. In a hotel room in Huntsville.
“What’s this about?” She kept her voice neutral.
“Date rape. These two say it happened to them.”
“Well, if they say it did, then it probably did.”
“Oh, give me a break.”
“Why do you say that?”
“’Cause I’m sick and tired of hearing all this crap I’m supposed to take at face value, and if I don’t I’m some kind of bigoted asshole. That’s why. I mean, these damn fool girls. The way they dress. The way they act. The way they drink. And they probably enjoy it at the time, but then they sober up the next day and decide they’ve been raped and come back and point a finger and wreck some young guy’s life.”
Oh, the things she could have said. Our son has just gotten married. I didn’t get myself pregnant. My parents would have helped me raise Patrick on my own. You didn’t have to be a martyr, quitting school and going to work. I did not wreck your life.
Instead, she told him a story. About something that had happened in university before she met him.
Steve had been her first lover. She knew that was important to him. So she told him about sitting on the floor one night with a guy in his residence room. Playing Scrabble, for God’s sake. Scrabble. He gets up, she thinks to get another beer. But he’s come round to her side and he’s opened his fly. He grabs the back of her hair. Presses her face in hard. She has to open her mouth if she’s going to breathe. And the whole time, she’s thinking, I guess this is all right. I guess this is all right. Because she had liked him. And she had thought it was quirky and sweet, his wanting to play Scrabble with her. And she had been hoping he would kiss her.
When it’s over he zips himself up. Sits back down. Starts moving his Scrabble pieces around, making a word. She gets up and leaves.
When she tells her roommate, her roommate says stuff like that just happens sometimes and she should forget about it. And that makes sense. It’s how they think back then. And after all, she did go to his room, didn’t she? And it could have been worse. At least she’s still a virgin.
Marion kept her eyes on Steve’s the whole time she was telling him. Watched his jaw sag. It was appalling, what she was doing. The lie she was telling.
“Jesus Christ.” Steve looked as if he might cry. “Why didn’t you bite the bastard?” Exactly what she had asked her roommate. Who was the one it had happened to. The one she herself had advised to forget about it.
“You think I haven’t asked myself that? I just wanted to survive, Steve. So I normalized. That’s what we do. No matter what insanity is going on, we normalize it.”
They looked at each other for a long minute, knowing that this was it. Steve looked away first. Changed the channel. They ended up watching a documentary about the Amazon river. When it was over they turned out their lights and slept back to back, the way they had in Bermuda.
At home, Steve had an upset stomach for two days. Marion would catch him staring into space. Over and over, she had to stop herself from going to him and confessing that it had happened to her roommate. That she had lied about the whole thing.
In bed finally, she put her hand on his turned back and said, “It’s all right. I’m all right. It’s in the past. I have you now. And you’re the best guy there is.”
After a long moment he said, “I just want to beat the shit out of him. And I don’t even know where he is. Wouldn’t know him if I fell over him.” He rolled onto his back and looked at her. “Would you know him? If you saw him?”
“No. I can’t picture his face.” And that was the truth. She had never seen it in the first place.
They didn’t make love that night. But she sensed that they would. Soon. Whatever had kept them apart was softening. She could feel it.
I have held the world together in my arms. Strangely, in her gladness, she kept picturing Trace smiling at her, giving her a thumbs-up. And beside her, Frank dipping his big head, blinking his wide-spaced eyes.
In the years since, Marion has sometimes wondered how Trace is doing, if she’s still working at Spicelands. She has wished she had written to thank her. For being there when she herself was thousands of miles away from home and convinced her world was coming apart. For looking at her and seeing all there was to see. Then for telling her, accurately as it turned out, that everything was going to be just fine.
The riding class has been going out on the trail, keeping two lengths apart while Roger moves up and down the line on his own horse, encouraging and correcting each of them in turn.
“Canter now! All canter!”
They canter, trot, and walk together at Roger’s command. They learn to duck overhanging branches, to lean back and brace against the stirrups when the trail dips, to tip their weight forward onto the horse’s shoulders for the uphill stretches.
Marion yearns to ride off on her own, to be alone with her mount, to go as fast or as slow as she wants. At home, she rereads the Basic Equitation for Beginners pamphlet. At the instructor’s discretion... Will she be allowed that final solo ride? What if Roger lets the other three go off on their own but makes her stay with him? She was the slowest to catch on. But she’s done so well since. She doesn’t voice her worries to Steve. She knows what he’ll say. Don’t think about it.
Sure enough, during their ninth lesson Roger calls a halt at the spot where the trail forks in several directions. Here, he tells them, is where they might take off next week on their first solo rides.
Might. Is he just being a good teacher, keeping them on their toes? Or is he trying to cushion their disappointment? Her disappointment?
“Trot now! All trot!”
He’s at the head of the line. She’s at the end. She does not follow. Keeps her horse still, watching the others disappear around a turn.
Through the haze of the painkillers, she can hear Roger talking to Steve. He sounds upset, his English more fractured than usual. “The horse is animal vair-y timide. Anything spook him. Plastic bag in wind. Bee fly too close to the eye. And when he spook, he run.”
It’s like remembering a dream. That moment when everything started whizzing past and she couldn’t even feel the horse under her, it was all so fast and so smooth, a
nd what was holding her on? What was keeping her in the saddle? She gave up sawing at the reins and threw her arms around the big neck, pleading with the animal to stop. But it veered to the side and she kept going straight ahead, flying through the air. And then—
“Your wife—Mari-on—she is not ready for the solo ride. She is too … gentille. She does not make enough of the … controle.”
Then Steve is beside her in the ambulance and they’re moving. This is all her fault. And she knows why. All the good times, all their happiness these last ten years. A sham. Based on a lie. That she told.
“I shouldn’t have—” Her mouth is sticky and dry.
“Shhhh.”
“It wasn’t true. What I told you. I didn’t—”
“Honey, don’t try to talk.”
“The scrabble game. That guy. In university. It wasn’t me. It was—”
One of the paramedics adjusts her IV, and she falls asleep.
She has a concussion and a broken shoulder. Though she can walk, she has to wear an arm sling and is so stiff and sore that for a week she can’t dress or wash. She cries the first time Steve has to help her on and off the toilet.
“I was always—”
“Always what, Honey?”
“Always such a—fucking—lady!” She explodes with a simultaneous laugh and fart, which gets Steve going.
“Yeah, you always were,” he says, dabbing his eyes on his sleeve. “Even when you were pushing out Patrick. You were trying to be nice about it.”
“I just hated—I mean, I was glad you were there—but I hated you seeing me like that. I was afraid you’d never want to come back.”
“You kidding? That next six weeks? Never jerked off so much in my life. Kept telling myself I was an asshole to even think about it. But when you were nursing Patrick? Gave me a hard-on every time I saw you pop your nipple into his mouth. I envied the little guy.”
“I thought it bothered you. You always turned away.”
“Oh, it bothered me, all right.”
The way they’re talking these days. It must be the enforced intimacy. Steve flushes the toilet and manages to drag her underpants and slacks back up under her.
“I guess I won’t be riding again for a while.”
“Not at that stable, anyway. I managed to convince Roger that we wouldn’t sue or anything like that. But I don’t think he wants to see you again.”
“It was dumb, what I did. Going off on my own.”
“Sure was.”
“How mad are you?”
“Offhand, I’d say I’m fucking furious. Okay. Put your good arm around my neck. On the count of—”
“How mad are you about the other thing?”
“What other thing?”
“The thing I tried to tell you in the ambulance. About how I was lying. Ten years ago. In the hotel after the wedding. When I told you I’d been date-raped. It didn’t happen to me. It happened to my roommate.”
Steve is quiet for a long time, looking at the shower curtain. Then he faces her and says, “Something you should know about yourself is that you’re a lousy liar.”
She stares at him.
“Look. You think I wasn’t unhappy back then too? Should have been the best year of my life. Bermuda. Our kid getting married. You think I didn’t want something to just—I don’t know—blow all that lousy crap between us out of the water? I haven’t a clue why you told me that story. I don’t know why I let you get away with it. But it worked. So let’s just not—”
“—think about it,” she finished.
“Right. Now put your good arm around my neck. On the count of three. One. Two...”
LOST LAKE
“What do you think of this Moyra business?” Since they arrived, their four-year-old has been quoting a new friend who seems to know everything.
Leo shrugs, eyes on his book. “Lots of kids have imaginary playmates.”
“Yeah, but this one’s kind of—”
He puts his book down. Looks at her over his glasses. “What?”
“Well for one thing, where would Leonora get a name like Moyra? There’s no Moyra in any of the books we’ve ever read to her. Believe me, I have those things memorized, and there’s no Moyra. And then, this morning she came to me and reached up and grabbed my boobs and said, Moyra says daddies like these things.”
He laughs. “She’s curious. She’s noticing stuff. And it’s easier to have this Moyra person voice her thoughts.” He play-grabs at Fiona’s breasts. “Maybe she saw us fooling around.”
“Maybe.”
“So what did you tell her?”
“Oh, something vague like, Mummies and daddies who love each other do like to hold each other and touch.”
“Was she satisfied with that?”
“For now.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. We’ll be into penises and vaginas in no time.”
“I wish.”
“Oh, do you!” He puts his book and glasses on the night table, rolls onto her and buries his face between her breasts. “Daddies like these things,” he growls, reaching down between her legs.
Fiona laughs and lets herself have a good time. Tries to put out of her mind the rest of what their daughter told her.
“Daddy likes the other lady’s things too. Moyra said! Because he’s always looking at them when he thinks nobody will see.”
Fiona kept her face still and her voice calm. “Moyra sounds like a very imaginative little girl. Do you know what imaginative means? Im-ag-in-a-tive?” She can always divert her daughter with a new word.
Afterwards she told herself to forget about the breast business. Okay, Leonora must have seen her father sneaking a peek at Jennifer’s boobs. God knows, she flaunts them enough. But so what? Show me a straight guy who doesn’t do stuff like that and I’ll show you a eunuch. She couldn’t shake off the other thing Moyra apparently told Leonora, though. And she can’t share it with Leo, either.
“I know a new word too!”
“Do you? Tell it to Mummy.”
“Pub—?” The little girl frowned and tried again. “Pub-ul—”
Fiona smiled and nodded encouragement.
“Ish! Pub-ul-ish!”
“Publish. Wow. That is a very grown-up word. Do you know what it means?”
Leonora nodded, proud. “It’s the thing Daddy is never going to do, ever again.”
“What?”
“Moyra said! She said, Your father is never going to publish another word, as long as he lives.”
Fiona’s mouth went dry. Could this be a real person saying these things? An adult? Jennifer, even, with that mean mouth of hers?
“Leonora, is Moyra a grown-up?”
“No.”
“Are you sure she’s a little girl? Like you?”
The child nodded. Then she said, “But she’s real, real old.”
They are staying for a week in an old country house on the shores of Lost Lake in the Laurentians. Leo and Fiona Van de Veld and their four-year-old daughter, Leonora, are on the top floor, in the master bedroom and adjoining nursery. Charles and Jennifer Stumpfigge, Leo’s former colleague and his wife, have the main floor bedroom.
It is mid-September. On the drive north, Fiona was all but falling out of the passenger window of the car they rented at the airport in Montreal, relishing the cool breeze after a stifling Toronto summer. From the back seat, Leonora kept up a chorus of “Orange! Red! Yellow!” whenever she spotted changing leaves.
They arrived a day ahead of the Stumpfigges. That first afternoon, while she and Leo were unpacking, Fiona kept coming upon Leonora opening closet doors, looking under beds, peeking into cupboards in the kitchen. She was trying to find the Stump Figs, she said. She had heard Leo and Fiona talking about them, had imagined little elf-like creatures and wanted to play w
ith them. She was visibly disappointed when the other couple arrived that evening and turned out to be ordinary people like her parents.
Leo is on sabbatical from Breadalbane College, where he teaches creative writing. He and Charles, who has just retired, are checking out Lost Lake Music Camp as a possible site for a writers’ retreat.
Fiona knows Charles a little, and has met Jennifer once, at last year’s Breadalbane staff Christmas party. “So how did Chuck end up with Morticia Addams?” she asked Leo that night in bed. “I know for a fact that he doesn’t make enough to bag a trophy second wife.” Jennifer looked to be at least twenty years younger than Charles, very pale, with makeup verging on Gothic, long straight black hair and breasts that belied her thinness.
“She’s his first. He was a confirmed bachelor, then along come Jen. Nobody knows what she’s doing with him. But he dotes on her.”
“Do you think there’s some kind of S&M thing going on?” Fiona could imagine Charles, balding and plump, trussed up in a leather harness. Jennifer wouldn’t need a costume.
“That’s what I love about you,” Leo said. “To the pure in heart, all things are pure.”
As a matter of fact, Fiona is trying hard to get along with Jennifer, given that they’ve been thrown together for a week. In the kitchen of the big house, shortly after the Stumpfigges arrived, she helped Jennifer put away the groceries they had brought and said brightly, “I think you and I both deserve medals for taking our husbands’ names.”
“Oh really? Why would that be?”
“Well. Stumpfigge and Van de Veld? Not exactly Smith and Jones, right?” She was actually sweating. “Mind you, I was happy enough to stop being Fiona McFee. Everybody used to call me Fifi.”