by Ann McMan
Grace smiled at the imposing picture she made: Élisabeth Abbot Williams—the esteemed fifteenth president of St. Albans College. A complex and accomplished scholar with an impeccable academic pedigree—provocative enough in appearance to command the cover of any fashion magazine—cast against a tumbled backdrop of recreational excess and faded elegance. The absurd cap with its garish, Day-Glo jumping fish logo was spot-on as a burlesque icon of her many contradictions.
“Keep it.” Grace smiled sadly and gave Abbie a mock salute. “It’s you.”
# # #
Grace was able to snag a bag of dry dog food and a box of Milk-Bone biscuits for Grendel at a mini-mart within walking distance of the harbor. She didn’t worry too much about Grendel disappearing if she left her alone on the pontoon. The little dog had already had numerous opportunities to bolt and had shown no inclination at all to flee. When she returned to the boat with her purchases, Grendel was exactly where Grace had left her: curled up on her bench seat at the bow of the pontoon.
Grace opened the box of dog biscuits and fished out a couple. She walked over to Grendel and held one out to her.
“Want this?” she asked, waving the tiny bone-shaped treat back and forth. “Want a cookie?”
Grendel ducked her head and scooted forward on the seat, wagging her tail. Grace gave her the cookie and sat down beside her.
“Looks like we’re stuck with each other, kiddo.”
Grendel looked up at her with sad brown eyes.
“Yeah.” Grace stroked the dog’s head. “We’re both a couple of castoffs, aren’t we?” She gave Grendel the other biscuit. “It’s okay. Tonight, we can howl at the moon together.”
Grendel sat beside her on the short ride back to Butler Island. Grace noticed that another rig was tied up at the dock Grady shared with Roscoe, and when she got closer, she recognized the souped-up deck boat belonging to her brother, Dean.
Why the hell is Dean out here on a holiday?
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. She saw him coming down the path from the cabin while she was mooring the pontoon.
“Yo,” he called out. “I thought you’d taken off already.”
“No. I had to run over to St. Albans to pick up some stuff. What are you doing here?”
“I came out to drop off some salvage wood I got yesterday in Hinesburg. Nice stuff. Wormy chestnut. Not enough of it to do anything with at your place so I thought maybe Grady could use it out here. Where you been? And what’s with the mutt?”
Grace and Grendel climbed up onto the aluminum dock. She had no idea why Roscoe had the damn thing set so high. He was either too lazy to adjust it, or he suspected the lake level would mysteriously rise up another two feet when no one was looking.
“She’s a stray. Somebody dumped her out here yesterday. Don’t you recognize her?”
“Recognize her?” Dean looked at Grendel more closely. “Why the fuck would I recognize her?”
“She belonged to the people who lived in the house next door to me.”
“No shit? Those assholes who took off during the night and skipped out on all that back rent they owed Joe?”
Grace nodded. “They would be the ones.”
“Fuckwads. I hate people like that. They’re what’s wrong with this country.”
“In this case, I won’t disagree with you.”
Dean reached out to take the bag of dog food from her. “Seems like they went to a lot of trouble to ditch their dog out here. Why not just dump its ass out along the road someplace?”
“Beats me. Maybe they actually cared about her and thought she’d have a better shot at getting taken care of on an island.”
Dean laughed. “Well they figured that one right, didn’t they?”
Grace shrugged.
“You always had a damn soft spot for things nobody wanted. How many bimbos who were kicked out or knocked-up did you drag home while we were in school?”
“I dunno, Dean. Didn’t you keep track of how many of them you fucked?”
“Can’t say I did.” He chuckled. “Besides, I only hit the good-lookin’ ones who were already preggers.”
“You’re really a pig, you know that?”
“Hey? It’s not like they didn’t want it. Nobody had anything to lose.”
“Yeah.” Grace led the way back up to the cabin. Grendel raced on ahead of her like she’d made the trip a hundred times. “Great economy in that, I guess.”
“No shit.” He huffed along behind her. Grace could tell by his breathing that he was smoking again.
“Speaking of women who should have better sense—where is CK?”
Dean didn’t bother to pretend he had no idea. That ship had sailed. “She’s working on some grant thingamajig. She’s gonna be in the library all day. We’re hooking up later.”
“Yeah.” Grace waved a hand. “TMI, dude.”
“Oh, get over it. We weren’t hurting anything. I don’t know why you had to get so bent out of shape about it.”
“Maybe because I had to boil the damn sheets.” Grace unlocked the cabin door so they could go inside. She began to wonder if the salvage wood was just an excuse for him to come out here and finally face the music about CK. She hadn’t spoken with him since the day she caught them together in her guest room.
“CK is my friend, Dean. I don’t want her to get hurt.”
He set the bag of dog food down on the floor beside the sofa. “Why the hell would she get hurt?”
“Forgetting something?”
He looked at her with a blank expression. “What?”
“Let’s see . . . Dina, Donna, Debbie, Darlene.” She ticked them off. “Four wives, Dean. Oh. Wait . . . I forgot about Dolly.”
“Hey, I never married her.”
“Only because you found out on your way to Vegas that she was already married to two other men—at the same time.”
“That one was not my fault. She was from Utah.”
Grace held up her hands. “Which means?”
“Hell if I know. It’s Utah. They’re into weird-ass crap out there.” He scratched the back of his head. “They all wear that magic underwear shit, too.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “They’re called ‘temple garments,’ Dean. And they’re supposed to be an aid in resisting temptation—something you, in particular, would derive great benefit from.”
“Whatever.” He sniffed. “I don’t see how any man can walk around in that getup—it’d be like having your junk in a straightjacket.”
The mention of “junk” was like a Skinner bell—causing Dean to hike and resettle his baggy jeans.
Grace shook her head. “Therein would be the point.”
Dean sniffed again.
Grace stared at her brother and tried again to solve the riddle of how he and CK could be . . . whatever the hell they were.
Fuck buddies?
What a stupid phrase to describe an even stupider concept. Besides, Dean only dated—or married—women who fit within his alliterative approach to relationships.
“I guess I don’t need to worry too much about you and CK,” she said. “Her name doesn’t begin with D.”
Her brother gave her a crooked smile. “Maybe I’m making an exception.”
“Branching out to a new frontier of the alphabet?”
“It could happen.”
“I doubt it.” Grace folded her arms. “You’re too damned cheap to replace all those monogrammed towels Mum gave you when you married Dina.”
“So? They’re nice towels . . . eighty-zillion thread count or something. I’m not gonna trash ’em.”
“Dean? I’d venture a guess that four divorces have cost you more than a set of Egyptian cotton towels.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean picked up the bag of dog food. “Where do you want this? I gotta hit the head and get back to town before noon.”
“I’ve got a plastic bin in the kitchen.” Grace led the way. “Where’d you leave the wood?”
“Under a tarp
on the back porch. It’ll be fine out there until you and Grady can figure out what you wanna do with it. If you think it’ll be longer than another month or two, you’ll wanna bring it inside before he closes this place up for the season. I think it would make a great accent wall—maybe in this dining area.”
Dean’s ability to shape-shift from knuckle-dragging bubba to feng shui master never ceased to amaze Grace. He was simply a genius at interior design and space utilization.
“I like that idea. Why can’t we do this at my place?”
Dean shook his head. “You don’t need this at your place because we don’t have to cover anything up. All we need to do is rip shit out to show off what’s already there.”
Grace opened the Rubbermaid bin, and Dean stashed the big bag of dog food inside.
“Why don’t you apply these searing insights to your personal relationships?”
Dean looked at her. “Why should I? Last time I checked, your scruples didn’t seem to be doing you any good.”
“Touché.”
Dean seemed to think better of his comment. He laid a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Hey. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. I know you’re still having a rough time of it since that bitch took off.”
Grace patted her brother’s hand. “It’s okay. You’re right. I need to get my head out of my ass.”
“Yeah. CK said you might be starting to come back to life.”
Grace felt a tinge of panic. She had a momentary, irrational fear that CK would say something to Dean about Abbie. But she’d never do that . . . would she?
“She did?” Grace tried to make her voice as casual as possible. “What prompted that conversation?”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t really what I’d call a conversation. I was telling her about Agnes coming for Thanksgiving—and how you’d probably throw a rod.”
“Wait a minute. Mum is coming for Thanksgiving?”
He nodded.
“When the hell was that decided? I thought we were going to Wilkes-Barre?”
“Nope.”
“Dean. What the fuck? I’m not ready to have company—especially not Mum’s brand of company.”
“First off—it’s not ‘company.’ It’s Agnes. Second, she’s only staying a week.”
A week? Grace would never survive a week under the same roof with her mother.
“She’s not staying with me.”
“Oh, come on, Grace.”
“I’m not kidding, Dean. She’s staying with you.”
“In Plattsburgh?”
“Why not? Don’t they have turkeys in New York State?”
Dean rolled his eyes. “What’s your problem? She’s a nice old lady who doesn’t want to be alone for the holidays.”
“She’s an overbearing virago who defines me as a lesbian with bad shoes.”
“So? You are a lesbian,” Dean dropped his eyes to look at Grace’s feet, “with bad shoes.”
“Fuck you.”
Dean laughed and kissed her on the cheek. “Fuck you, too. See you on Tuesday.”
“Okay.”
Grace held the back door open for him. He left the cabin and made a beeline for the outhouse. She knew he’d be disappointed to discover that none of his favorite reading materials were left out there.
“Hey, Dean?” she called out. “Be careful with CK. And quit having sex in my guestroom.”
“What-ever.” He waved a hand over his head without looking back. “You and that mangy mutt stay safe out here.”
He disappeared inside the privy.
# # #
Grace was determined to spend the rest of the day and evening working on her GAN.
She tried to convince herself that she was motivated more by a surge of creative enthusiasm than by the lavish praise Abbie had heaped on the story that morning.
She set up a makeshift desk on the north side of the cabin, in some shade cast by a cluster of cottonwood trees. She hadn’t bothered to bring her laptop along, so she was writing longhand.
This introduced a new set of variables to the exercise.
Grace found this style of writing led her to work more thoughtfully. The prose she generated wasn’t actually better—it was just more careful. There was something about the exercise of mechanically crafting the letters with a pen and ink that led her to be more precise about the words she chose to use. Hand-written sentences took on greater meaning—probably because anything she typed on a mechanical device seemed, by definition, to be less permanent . . . immediately tagged as a candidate for change or revision. Strings of words that were backlit on a computer screen existed more like placeholders than actual prose.
She sometimes mused about the possible benefits her students might derive if she insisted that they write their theme papers out in longhand first, before typing them up for submission. For one thing, it might provoke them to actually notice things like missing punctuation, dangling participles, or sentences without verbs.
Not very likely . . .
She had been making halting progress. It was a battle to stay focused on the words and not let her attention wander to the boat traffic on the lake. The weather was glorious today—a nearly cloudless sky and soft winds from the north. There was next to no chop on the water—which meant jet skis were out in droves, furiously racing behind motorboats to zigzag back and forth across their wakes. It was a textbook, late-summer Vermont day.
She was now writing a scene where Ochre had taken up reluctant residence on the back wall of a booth choked with indifferent antiques housed inside a barn-sized “super flea” complex that sagged inelegantly near an off-ramp on Interstate 80 in South Bend. The proprietor of the booth had acquired her—along with twenty-two other works of “art”—from a back room full of “everything’s five bucks” objets at an estate auction in suburban Muncie.
Ochre knew the drill. She’d hang here, unadorned, overlooked and unrecognized, until the day some poor loser took a liking to her unique color palette or her ’50s-era gestalt. Although any would-be buyer would never be able to articulate what it was about Ochre that made her so alluring. More often than not, some untutored lummox would eventually notice her bare breasts and decide that her family of warm mustard tones was a perfect match for his natty harvest-gold recliner.
Then her unending American Gothic nightmare would commence its next chapter . . .
But for now, Ochre was content to rest quietly in obscurity, nestled among the mishmash of Hoosier cabinets, distressed Coca-Cola crates, castoff Lodge skillets and motor oil cans that doubled as coin banks. Sometimes, like today, a weary individual would stop and stare at her—long enough for Ochre to wonder if, at last, her true provenance was about to be divined.
Why do you look so familiar? the pensive one would ask.
Because, like you, I do not belong here, she would answer.
I don’t know what you mean, the stranger would say.
Then sit down here beside me, Ochre would reply, and I will explain it to you.
And so their dialogue would begin.
I am not what you perceive—yet am the culmination of all you seek.
I don’t understand.
You will gain understanding when you stop seeking it.
Why must you speak in riddles?
A riddle is a mirror that reveals a hidden path to meaning.
Another riddle.
Another path.
I have another question.
What was your first question?
Why you look familiar?
I abide in the temple of all familiars.
Yet you are here—naked and unashamed.
I am enlightened. That is true.
What else is true?
It is true that you fear my power over you.
I fear only what I do not understand.
That is your curse.
Why is it a curse to be cautious?
Because you have allowed your fear to become your pearl of great price.
Are you saying
I’m wrong to avoid risking my happiness on an unknown?
I am saying the known and the unknown are two sides of the same coin.
So there are no wrong answers?
There are only wrong questions.
How do I learn the right questions?
If you have to ask, you will never know the answer.
I am afraid.
To face your fear is to embrace your humanity. To flee it is to embrace a life of misery.
I no longer wish to be miserable.
Then it behooves you to change your perspective.
How do I do that?
What do you seek?
Happiness.
The known and the unknown are two halves of a whole.
Which means?
To embrace one is to possess the other.
Which one are you?
I am the known that remains unknown.
And what am I?
You are a mirror without a path . . .
Grace abruptly closed her notebook.
Where the hell did that come from?
She held her pen up to the light and examined it. No telltale glimmers of diode-emitting ink. No residue of perspicacious pixie dust. No magic. No nothing. Just a plain old 41¢ Bic Cristal ballpoint.
That meant all the sophomoric, Kierkegaardian mumbo-jumbo came from her.
She stood up and heaved the pen over the cliff into the lake.
She blamed Dean. Damn him and his fucking inferences about her pathetic sex life.
Damn him for being right. She was a coward who was a prisoner of her scruples.
Something needed to change. Something needed to give.
And soon . . .
Chapter Six
Grace fought hard not to yawn. It wasn’t easy.
It was only her third day back after the long weekend, but already, it felt like a month. She was trying hard not to pay attention to the calendar, but it was impossible not to count off the days until Abbie returned to St. Albans—for good.
This was the fourth student appointment she’d had since ten o’clock. Most of the thirty-minute meetings were with students from her Freshman Lit 101 surveys. Papers that comprised one-quarter of their total grades were due and, based on the sneak previews she’d had, several of them were skating perilously close to ruination.