Fellow Mortals (22 page)

He leans along a vine until it tightens from his weight. She hears the creaking of the fibers, half believing it’ll snap. He’s a hundred miles off in the center of the web, distant in a way that makes her feel alone. She waits until he’s sharp enough to tie another knot, and then she notices him wince and says, “How’s your cut?”

“Little sore.”

“Let me see.”

“I’m right in the middle—”

“Stay,” she says. “I’ll come to you.”

She peels her body off the chair, taking her first-aid kit out of her bag and ducking, stepping over, and limboing deftly through the vines.

“You didn’t change your bandage last night.”

“I forgot.”

She takes an antiseptic wipe and a fresh Band-Aid out of the kit, and then she strips the old bandage off and tucks it into his pocket. The cut’s healing nicely and it’s more or less clean. She dabs it off, blows it dry, and wraps the finger up new, suddenly surprised by his nearness and his height. It’s only when he’s close that Ava feels petite, especially barefoot, with Sam fully dressed and taller in his boots. She’s worn her bathing suit for much of the week, a modest one-piece, unrevealing as can be, but it’s moments like these that she’s aware of how exposed she is and equally aware of how natural it feels.

“How did
you
get covered in sawdust?” he asks, wiping off her shoulder.

“God, I
am
covered in sawdust. I’m going for a swim.” She steps away and backs against a vine, and when she turns she meets another vine, straight across her thighs. When she’s finally free and clear, she turns to him and says, “You should come, too. You have your own pond and never use it.”

“No, go on.”

“I won’t be here tomorrow.”

“I know,” he says, frowning. “But tomorrow I have to haul the woodstove in. I’ve got to finish this today.”

“All right,” she says, rolling up her towel with a sigh. “If I’m not back by two, come and fish me out.”

“I’ll put a pepper on a line.”

She slips her sandals on, hikes a hundred yards back, and follows the brook, the simplest way to the pond without getting lost. The footpath, tamer than a week ago, gives her an easy walk through the bushes and the trees, and she meanders with the trickle of the water at her side.

She’s spotted three different birds she didn’t recognize today, one with a flash of
lime
, early migrants, she assumes, on their way to southern islands. There’s a deer in a coppice, flickering its tail. When she moves it merely watches her, curious and calm. Then it turns without a sound and swishes through the ferns. She has her own sense of vanishing—the sculptures, Sam, her job and home, so distant they could almost be another woman’s life—and she’s as glad to be alone as she’s afraid of getting lost.

She comes upon the pond, where a second, fuller stream tumbles in across the way. The double inflow keeps the water moving, not exactly crystalline but fresh enough to swim. When she came the other morning it was blanketed with mist, and here in the heat it radiates a coolness, giving her the first clean breath in several hours. She walks to a bank lipped with mud and soggy moss. It’s shady here but twenty feet out, just beyond the overhang of branches, the surface of the water is a brilliant, rippling gold. She takes her sandals off and wades very slowly to her knees, feeling like she hasn’t quite felt in thirty years.

She could do without a suit—it’s a perfect opportunity—and swim to the sunnier bank to even out her tan. She pulls a shoulder strap down and looks back along the path. Live it up, she decides. It’s the very end of summer.

She’s been swimming all week but not like this—what a difference just a little polyester really made. She hadn’t thought of leeches but she thinks about them now. The mud between her toes seems muddier somehow, and when her feet leave the bottom partway across, she considers going back before committing all the way. Then she flutters in the sunlight and swims right through, blooming in the water and forgetting any fear. She climbs onto the opposite bank and sees her bathing suit behind her in the shade, so unreachable she’s free of it and free to be at ease.

She reclines on her back with her hands behind her head, one ankle in the water, one knee toward the sun. Her body feels longer, more elastic on the slope. The grass feels spongy up and down her spine.

It’s hot enough to burn but there are days like these, right before the fall, when the light seems sensuous and literally vital. Ava dozes in the warmth, passing in and out of sleep. She thinks of Laura with the soap and wonders how it felt, knowing he had shaped it, knowing she would tell him.

The birds, the rustling trees, the plash of water at her feet, are so harmoniously varied they’re essentially inaudible, cushioning her mind and softening her limbs. But she’s attuned to what’s around her, sensing every little pulse, and she can feel him on the bank as soon as he arrives.

He’s a ripple in a daydream, airy as a wish. When she finally clears her eyes and sits to meet his gaze, he’s standing with her bathing suit, there across the pond, quiet in the shade and difficult to see.

Sounds sharpen up—chickadees, cicadas—but she doesn’t try to hide by jumping underwater. He’s a vague silhouette. The water undulates around him, moving out in circles when he steps, very gently, from the safety of the bank. Ava hugs her legs, all curves, like a G clef. Her knees are at her breast, pulsing with her heart.

He watches her and waits, still faceless in the shade, leaning forward like he’s one small push from swimming over. Ava almost stands, almost speaks, almost laughs. Then he turns and leaves her suit like a lily pad behind him.

She’s alone, so alone she almost doubts that he was there. Her body’s goose-fleshed, paler in the midday sun. She’d been svelte lying down but now her stomach has rolls. Dirt and grass are on her back, she has tangles in her hair, and she must have gotten bitten while she slept—there’s a welt.

The pond feels deeper when she starts swimming back. She’s afraid of going under and afraid of getting out, treading water till her limbs can barely keep her up. Then she’s planted in the mud again. Something jabs her heel. She fishes out her bathing suit and tugs it on fast, drying off quickly with the damp, cold towel.

Her nipples and her navel are apparent through the fabric and the suit keeps riding up the middle of her seat. It’s a long walk back and she’s obsessed with poison ivy, every little insect buzzing in her ear. At last she finds her things where she left them with the web. She retreats several steps but he isn’t here to meet her.

Ava notices his chisel and his rasp near
The Weaver
. His sanding cloth dangles off the middle of the arm. She snap-folds her chair, takes her cooler and her bag, and carries all she has toward the cabin and the trail. When she makes it to the clearing, Sam’s sitting on a stump, head down, feet apart, hands clasped between his knees.

The chair’s metal armrests cut against her ribs.

“You’re leaving?” he asks.

She checks her bag to find her keys. Once she’s certain that she has them, she continues on her way, never breaking stride until she’s made it to the shade. She pauses at the trail, daunted by the long walk out to reach the car, and when she turns around, expecting he’ll be standing right behind her, he’s very far away—still watching from the cabin.

“Will I see you?” Sam asks, with an undertone of
ever
.

She notices his boot, darkened from the water.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Henry’s here tomorrow. He’s been talking about you all week.”

Sam takes a step, like he did beside the pond. She can almost feel the ripples moving in the air.

“Thanks for letting me come,” she says. “I’m glad I got away.”

“Ava…”

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says.

For an instant she imagines dropping everything she has, but then she readjusts her load and says, “Accidents happen. It’s what I’ve been telling Henry all summer.”

A band of sun cuts her eyes and then she’s fully in the trees, following the ruts and looking for the first real bend along the trail. The ice inside the cooler rattles off her hip. Even here she feels the motion of the water all around her and the suction of the mud when she tried to move her feet, and she doesn’t look back because she knows that he’ll be standing there, watching her the whole way out in case she stops.

*   *   *

She makes it home long before Henry. The house looks quiet from the middle of the street, but right inside the door, Wing scampers up around her, barking out loud and coiling like a slinky. But he’s nervous and his ears pin back around the kitchen where he’s pooped on the floor, two feet from the paper.

“Close enough,” Ava says. “It’s okay … you’re okay!” and then he’s puppyish again, nuzzling at her leg. She lets him out, cleans the floor, and balls the paper into the trash. She gives him food and fills his water dish, and when he comes back in to eat and have a drink, she watches him and smiles.

“You’re a good dog.
Good dog
,” Ava says.

Suddenly she’s crying, and she kneels to let him kiss her on the cheeks and on the eyes. He waits at the top of the stairs when she goes to the basement, where she quickly undresses and drops her clothes directly into the washer. Upstairs she takes a two-minute shower, dries her hair, and stands in front of the mirror. There’s color in her skin where there should have been a suit, and when she slathers it in lotion, praying it’ll fade, the burn starts to tingle from the friction of her hand.

She picks a dress Henry bought her that she never really liked—a housewife’s dress, square and oversimple. Wing leads the way downstairs, seeming to believe they’re up to something good, and everything she does satisfies him fully.

Ava marinates chicken: better late than never. She cleans the table outside, carries silverware and plates, shucks corn and watches Wingnut gambol in the yard. He sniffs a holly bush and finds an old ball near the roots. Ava throws it for a while, and once they both tire of the catch, she opens a beer and they go to the front porch, where the sun’s like nectar on the columns and the floor.

She thinks of how relaxing it’ll be this fall, how she’s missed the lazy weekends of board games and television, ironing his uniform every Sunday night. They’ll eat at restaurants again. Share a hobby. Go to movies. With the Finns finally gone, they can rearrange the house. Buy a woodstove. Maybe get a brand-new bed.

She looks at Wing panting in the sun and tips her bottle. He waggles up close and licks a dribble of the beer. They sit erect, hip to hip, and watch the grackles and the finches, Wing feeding off her eagerness and looking up the street. Henry’s coming home any minute, any second. It’s his favorite time of day, the hour of reunion, when the family’s all together and it’s perfect, just perfect.

21

He hadn’t gone to swim. That was all he knew for sure.

The week had seemed a month and then he’d felt it passing, standing there alone when she departed for the pond. Like his finger, barely healed whenever he examined it, notably improved the day that he forgot. Five days, forty hours—she had only just arrived, and then before he knew it she was leaving him for good.

He’d found her towel on the ground beside a small heap of cloth, familiarly blue but not immediately obvious. There hadn’t been a rustle or a splash, not a sound. He’d picked the garment up, startled by its delicacy and form, like when he comes upon a snakeskin and wonders where the snake has gone.

He thinks of telling Henry—we were both so embarrassed!—and he’s sure to get a laugh: what a gas, Ava skinny-dipping. What if it’s a secret, though, and Ava doesn’t tell him? What if Ava
does
and Henry waits for him to mention it?

Any way it goes, he may have cost himself the Coopers. After this, weeks alone. Sporadic visits. Maybe none. Sculpture after sculpture after tree after tree. There’ll be frost in October, dead leaves, frozen weeds. Too cold to sculpt outside, too dark and unremitting. Then the true cabin fever of a season in the snow. He sees it coming in the dusk and the long slant of light, the void that opens up whenever he gazes at the stars before bed and sees directly into space, directly into nothing. Even summer’s like an accident, a meaningless reprieve.

“Oh my
God
,” Sam says, clutching at his head.

He can’t imagine staying here, can’t imagine not. He’s standing with
The Weaver
when he notices the chisel. It’s the one he cut his finger on, the one that shaped her leg. He picks it up without a thought and almost chucks it at the trees, and then he hacks
The Weaver
’s
face until it’s hideously blank.

He hears a siren in the distance. He’s been hearing it awhile. It’s not unusual for sounds to carry from the town—the whistle of a train, certain motorcycle engines—but it’s rare to catch a siren so distinctly. Must be close. Maybe on Arcadia, he thinks. Then it stops.

*   *   *

Henry reaches Arcadia Street and slumps. Despite his summer exercise, delivery’s worn him out. His shoulder throbs. He tries keeping pressure off the blisters on his feet and he’s as liable to cry from yawning as he is from seeing the Bailey lot. Ava’s car isn’t here. He’s been hoping every day he’ll catch her going out but she and Sam have holed up solid in the woods, and who can really blame them in a week like this?

The temperature and sunlight, the hint of wood smoke seasoning the air … he almost feels nostalgic for the hour of the fire. The stillness has a late-day ripple of mirage, as if the summer is evaporating right before his eyes. He thinks about the Finns—the floral lace curtains, Joan’s figurines—and he can’t help smiling when he thinks about Nan, how she hit him with the dryer when he carried her to safety. He misses Sam now, too, and thinks of visiting tomorrow, but he can’t imagine getting out of bed and driving off, not with Ava staying home, lounging in her gown with her caramel-cream tan. They’ll fry some bacon and eggs, sit in the yard with Wing. He’ll surprise her with a restaurant date, let her know with just enough time to get dressed. Maybe hit the drive-in. Maybe just park.