And Sometimes Why

by Rebecca Johnson

  Dear Dad,

  Thank you for your last e-mail. I am very sorry to hear that Helen is not well. What do the doctors say?

  She stopped writing and began chewing on her fingernail. There was no point in asking. The doctors had stopped treating Helen months ago. She crossed out the last two sentences.

  Dear Dad,

  Of course I remember Molly the poetry professor. Nervous woman with dark ringlets and pale skinny legs. She’s had her eye on you for years. Yes, I am going to tell mom, who will probably hop on the next plane to California with a No Trespassing sign tucked under her arm.

  She stopped again. Nothing sounded right. One was too grim. The other too breezy. She stood up and walked to the window. In the last few days, she had noticed that the afternoon light, normally a silvery steel-gray, had given way to a brighter, whiter light. A true afternoon. When she mentioned it to Jason, he had nodded. “First sign of spring,” he said. She checked her watch. It was early for her afternoon walk, but the outdoor air would clear her mind, let her start over again.

  Gus, the dog who usually stayed behind, jumped to his feet when he saw her.

  “Hey there, Gus.” She patted his head. She would have liked his company on her walks but Jason forbade it. It was too easy for a dog off-leash to get a leg caught in a trap. She set out on the trail, breathing deeply, imagining the cold air scouring the inside of her lungs clean, purging them of years of California’s soiled air. Somewhere to the right of her, a spruce dropped its load of snow with a quiet whoosh. The first day Miranda went out on her own, she’d walked about a hundred yards and then run back to the house, suddenly spooked by the sense of a looming abyss in front of her. It was how she often felt treading water in the deep part of the ocean. What lay beneath was too vast to contemplate.

  As she grew more familiar with the land, the way it rose and fell, how the trees leaned a certain way on the other side of the ridge, she got the confidence to push forward on her walks. If something were to happen to her, a sudden freak attack by a wolf, or a bear roused early from hibernation, Jason would come looking for her. He would find a patch of blood, a sign of struggle, the ripped interior of her down vest, and tell the small circle of people who cared. Maybe the police would even come investigate. To make sure he hadn’t hacked her up himself with an ax. In the end, that was all one could ask for. To have one’s death noted.

  When she came to the top of an unfamiliar ridge, she stopped. About a hundred yards from where she stood, something dark was moving in the snow. It was a fox with a large steel trap attached to its leg.

  “Shit,” she said out loud, making her way to the animal.

  The fox stopped. He kept his face pointed away from her, but Miranda could see his yellow eyes watching her with hatred, as if he understood that she was responsible for the disaster that had befallen him. When she got closer, Miranda saw bits of crushed white bone visible between the hard steel teeth of the trap. The fox was breathing hard, his chest rapidly falling up and down. Now that she was off-trail, the snow was at least three feet deep. She hadn’t bothered to wear the gaiters Jason wore on the trail, and her boots were filling with snow.

  The fox turned to face her. His whole body was trembling now—whether from pain or fear, Miranda couldn’t tell.

  “I’m sorry,” she said out loud to the animal. He only growled and tried once again to hobble away. But Miranda’s presence had seemed to deprive him of what energy he had left. He sank into the snow, his leg twisted at an awkward angle, and stared angrily at her, as if to say, What now?

  Miranda knew what to do. Barbara Olatz had dealt with the exact same situation her first year in the Tanana valley. I did feel pretty awful for the little fellow. But better a quick death than a slow one. When it’s time for me to go, I hope someone will do the same for me. Miranda lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “I can’t do that,” she said out loud. She turned back to the trail, eager to get away from the animal’s obvious suffering. Just a few minutes before, the afternoon had seemed so wonderfully alive. Now she felt cold, weak, and slightly nauseous. A coward forced to look at herself in the mirror. Twenty paces down the trail, she stopped and turned. The fox was still lying in the snow. Miranda broke a branch the thickness of a baby’s arm off a pine tree and started back toward the animal. The stick bobbed nervously in her hand. Her socks were wet from the snow in her boots.

  Miranda stopped a foot from the animal and watched him close his eyes, as if he knew what was coming. She raised the stick overhead with both hands and brought it down as hard as she could across the length of his nose. Just as Barbara had predicted, the fox’s body stiffened, then went limp. Miranda kneeled in the snow, took off a glove, and put her hand on the widest part of his chest, near the heart. Up close, she could see that the fox wasn’t red at all. He was more rust-colored, with black, white, and gray markings around his face and eyes. Underneath her cold fingers, she could feel the slow thumping of his heart. She’d half hoped the blow alone would have been enough to kill him. Stand on his heart and that will stop it dead, but more than once I have lost my balance doing that, so it helps to have a partner steady you. Miranda brought the fox into her lap. She stroked the fur on the fox’s forehead, then put her hands on both sides of its head. A quick jerk to the left while he’s out will do it. She moved its head slightly. Barbara made it sound so easy but Miranda didn’t think she had the proper torque. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and twisted the neck as hard as she could. She heard a bone snap. A last ripple of life shuddered through the animal’s body, and a bright red rivulet of blood ran from his nose onto the stark whiteness of the snow.

  Miranda shivered with disgust and pushed the body away until it was half covered with a shroud of snow. The animal’s eyes were covered in a milky sheen, as if a shade had been lowered from its lids. She stood up and looked down at the carcass, looking for the certainty that she had done the right thing, but all she felt was soiled and guilty. The fox had seemed so human in its struggle to survive. If her leg had been caught in a trap, she probably would have acted the exact same way. She wanted to go home, to forget what had happened, but when she imagined explaining herself to Jason—I killed the fox with my bare hands but left it for the wolves—she knew she could not leave it in the snow. A mature red fox could easily bring seventy-five dollars from Jason’s dealer. She took off her gloves, unhooked the trap from its chain, and carried the fox home, using the U-shaped trap as a handle. Each time she glanced down at the body swinging by the side of her leg, she felt her horror fade a tiny bit. A body without life was an empty container. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to weep over.

  When she got closer to the house, she could hear Gus barking and hurried her steps, fearful that a wolf might have showed up. Parked in front of the house was an unfamiliar red snowmobile. The door to the house opened, revealing Judy Volker’s parka-covered body. Miranda hurried up the steps. Judy opened her arms and enfolded her in a stiff hug. “I’ve brought an e-mail from your father,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  31

  sophia almost never properly matched a phone voice with a face. Men who sounded huge and avuncular turned up tiny and elfin. Women with soft, feminine squeaks were looming, big-bosomed Helgas. But she got Coleman Kramer, the art teacher, exactly right. He had thick, graying hair cut in a modified buzz; a generous belly, shrewdly concealed by an expensive black shirt that, she guessed, he had not paid for himself; a handsome Roman nose; a plush lower lip; amused black eyes; and about thirty-six hours’ worth of gray and white stubble on his chin.

  “You must be the Micheline manqué,” he said, taking one of Sophia’s hands and resting his other on top of it, as if he were wishing her good luck on a long voyage.

  The classroom was large and airy, with a high ceiling, old-fashioned skylights that looked as if they never opened, and fluorescent light fixtures that bathed every thing in a harsh glare. Most of the students sat on high stools in front of easels staggered around a simple
wooden stage set with a stool in its middle. Coleman led Sophia to an empty easel with a piece of white paper attached to a board. On the ledge underneath were several pieces of black drawing charcoal. “You’ll be taking the spot of Mrs. Edna Fernblatt, who has recently decamped from New York for a ranch in Phoenix, thanks to her husband’s worsening asthma. I heard all about it last night on the phone. And no, sadly, by ‘ranch’ she did not mean a sprawling horse farm of the sort elderly Republican politicians retire to. She meant a ranch house.”

  Coleman turned out to be one of those teachers who won his students’ affection by insulting them. “It occurred to me after our last class,” he said, leaping onto the platform in the middle of the room and rubbing his hands together, “that every one in this room is a talented phony.”

  Sophia looked around the class. There were a few students who looked to be in their early twenties, but overwhelmingly the class was older and female, the kind of cultured, prosperous women who could be seen at the symphony or the ballet. Earlier in life, they would have been the mothers organizing school bake sales to benefit the Biafran refugees or the homeless shelter across town. Relieved of child-rearing responsibilities and living off their husbands’ retirement accounts, they finally had the time to “do something for themselves.” Sophia could easily imagine the conversations that led to the class.

  “Well, Mom, what do you want to do with your life?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “You must have some interests.”

  “Of course I have interests.”

  “What about painting? You’ve always liked art.”

  “I suppose…”

  Now those women were smiling self-consciously at Coleman’s insult. He had called them all phonies, and that wasn’t good, but at the same time, he had said they were talented, and that was something.

  “What do I mean by ‘phony’?” Coleman turned slowly, affording each student an excellent view of his substantial but not badly shaped ass. “You are all drawing the way you think you should draw. You’ve had your art history courses and spent endless afternoons at the Met, you know what good drawing looks like, so when you sit down to draw, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Draw like Rembrandt. He’s a real artist.’ Only none of us, and I include myself, can draw like Rembrandt. Even if we’re better draftsmen, we can’t do it, because we’re no Rembrandt. He’s dead. So we end up with something that is, by definition, phony.”

  Now the women were glancing at one another, tentative grins on their faces. Oh, that’s our problem. We think we’re Rembrandt.

  “So tonight, let’s forget about what we know. Stop trying to draw like someone else. Let your drawing be bad. Let it be misshapen. Let it look nothing like the model. If people want verisimilitude, they can take a photograph. But whatever you do, make it you.”

  On cue, a heavy girl with a weak chin, broad nose, and the deflated air of someone who didn’t expect much out of life, climbed on the stage, sat on the stool, and let the silk kimono she was wearing slide off her back. Coleman climbed on the stage, smiled at the girl in a surprisingly paternal way, and arranged her body so that she was leaning forward, palms on top of her thighs, like a runner waiting for the signal to start. The encounter startled Sophia. In her college art classes, the models had all been clothed after the feminist union protested that paying a woman to take off her clothes, even if it was in the name of art, amounted to prostitution. The art teachers had offered to use only men, but the feminists, sensing a rare victory, had held fast. A principle is a principle.

  Sophia took her time studying the broad planes of the girl’s white back, the slight roll of flesh around the waist, the ridge of her spine under the skin, the sloppy chignon at her neck. Instead of wandering the classroom, as Sophia had feared Coleman would do, he sat at his own easel, stared at the girl, and made loud, slashing marks against the paper. After a few minutes, he would sigh loudly and start over on a fresh piece of paper.

  Sophia picked up a piece of charcoal and tentatively began to draw the line of the girl’s back, slowly reacquainting herself with the connection between the eye, the page, and the object. It felt good to be in a room filled with people all bent to the same task, but almost as soon as she began to work, it came back to her why she had given it up. Look at that line, she despaired, it’s terrible—out of proportion, wobbly, lacking conviction. Shut up, she scolded the judging voice in her head, and forced herself to continue.

  “Not bad.” She jumped. Coleman Kramer was standing behind her.

  Sophia looked at the drawing and made a face. “Trite.”

  “It’s the subject. What is there to say about a naked woman that hasn’t been said? Personally, I prefer eggplants.”

  As the class was breaking up, Coleman asked Sophia if she wanted to get a drink. A few feet away, one of the art ladies frowned.

  “Sure,” she said, smiling at him.

  He chose a dark West Village bar where, she was relieved to see, most of the patrons were over thirty. Maybe there was a guidebook she could buy—Manhattan for the Middle-Aged? After the waiter brought their drinks—white wine for her, bourbon and a beer for him—Coleman asked what she thought of her first class.

  “Uncomfortable.” She wrinkled her nose. “Like taking a bath with strangers.”

  He had a good laugh, the kind that made you want to keep amusing its owner. Sophia had never been able to laugh out loud. As a child, she had considered her laughlessness a strength, the sign of a critical intelligence not easily shaken. It was only as an adult that she realized she might be missing something. Even now, when she heard something genuinely amusing, the best she could manage was a smile and a descriptive “Funny!” Mostly, people didn’t notice. They were too busy enjoying their own mirth to care about anyone else’s. Darius had been the first to spot the flaw about three weeks into their relationship, when they’d gone to a comedy club to watch a fellow literature student on amateur night. The woman had surprised every body with her dry wit and perfect timing, and did eventually achieve some small mea sure of fame before she was diagnosed with a rare but fatal case of esophageal cancer at the age of twenty-eight. After a joke that had the room howling—something about cunnilingus, if Sophia remembered correctly—Darius had glanced at his date to see how she liked the show. Sophia, he later told her, had been watching the stage with a confused expression on her face. Later that night, he mentioned it to her.

  “Yes,” she had agreed, thrilled to have been so acutely observed by another person, “it’s my tragic flaw.”

  Darius vowed then and there to find her funny bone. During the weeks that followed, Sophia was forced to endure an endless succession of unfunny “guy walks into a bar,” “Arab and a Jew,” “How many Polacks does it take?” jokes. She always laughed but Darius (rightly) accused her of faking it. She began to develop sympathy for women who faked orgasms. His heart was in the right place, but listening to joke after joke was turning into a torture. Finally, after a joke involving Richard Nixon and the movie Deep Throat, Sophia reached deep down into the bottom of her diaphragm, let out a few, tentative coughlike exhalations, and then—ha, ha, ha—she giggled, eyes closed, mouth stretched wide in an approximation of hilarity. Darius watched her suspiciously. He was as adept as the next man at sniffing out fakery, but in the end, he, too, had grown weary of all the forced jollity. If his girlfriend was never going to laugh out loud, why should it bother him?

  “I’ve made you laugh,” he said.

  “Yes, yes,” she agreed, a little too quickly, “you have!”

  Sitting across from Coleman Kramer, a man for whom laughing was as natural as breathing, Sophia wondered if she ought to have married someone more like him. Three bourbons (him) and two white wines (her) later, Coleman looked into Sophia’s eyes and told her she was “a very attractive woman, all things considered.”

  “What things?” she asked.

  “You know,” he answered.

  “No,” she said, �
��I don’t.”

  “Come on!” he roared with laughter. “It was a joke. You don’t get out much, do you?”

  “No,” she said, signaling for the check.

  “Now, now.” He reached over and trailed a finger up her arm. “Don’t be like that. I like you.”

  Sophia shivered. “I like you, too,” she answered. “More or less.”

  “Come home with me.”

  “Do people do that?” she asked. The check sat on the table between them, untouched.

  “Have sex? All the time.”

  “The first night they meet?”

  “In my experience, thinking about it doesn’t improve it.”

  “In my experience,” she answered, putting her credit card on the black folder holding the bill, “anticipation is the greater part of plea sure.”

  “Okay. Don’t sleep with me. But let me walk you home.”

  “I live on the Upper West Side.”

  “So do I.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “Only a little. If I bomb with you, there’s a woman on Ninety-ninth and Columbus who is always happy to see me.”

  Sophia couldn’t help looking shocked.

  “I’m kidding.” He paused. “She lives on Eighty-third and Amsterdam.”

  After a cab dropped them on Sophia’s corner (paid for, once again, by her), Coleman took her arm as they walked down the street arguing unseriously about the merits of an artist’s retrospective currently hanging at the Museum of Modern Art. He thought it overrated, she thought it the work of a genius. Sophia recognized that his passion on the subject stemmed from envy, but said nothing. With Darius, her blood had boiled when he disagreed with her or offered an opinion she considered obtuse. Arguing with a virtual stranger, she felt stimulated by a fresh perspective. So what if he was wrong? It was no reflection on her. Anybody seeing us, she thought, would assume we were two middle-aged married people still very much in love. Or maybe they were giving off the carnal glow of anticipated sex. After all, there was nothing stopping her from inviting him up to the apartment. The fact that he had counted on her resolve wavering was a little irritating, but so what? Wasn’t this exactly the kind of adventure she’d craved when she decided to move to New York? As they approached her building, Sophia noticed a dark, stooped figure sitting on the steps. Something about the curve of his back made her stomach flip.