Man V. Nature: Stories (13 page)

“I tore up all my carpet and put in real wood floors, so I imagine mine will sell pretty quickly. A lot quicker than these pieces of shit,” she said, gesturing at the board.

“I imagine so,” Jeremy agreed, his gaze calm but alert, as if he'd encountered a strange dog in the forest. “Wood flooring is very timeless right now.”

“We used to sleep together.” She dropped it like an oily chicken.

“I'm sorry?”

“Dave and I. Before he was married. After he was married. While she was pregnant.” She smiled. “We were lovers. Multiple times. Multiple orgasms, I mean.” She paused. What
did
she mean exactly? “I mean, I
know
him.
I
know him.”

She stopped. She didn't need to plead her case to
Jeremy.

“I'm sure you do.” He sighed. “Please let someone in the office know what you decide.” He turned his back to her. “And you should have shoes on,” he added, disappearing behind a curtain. “It's almost winter.”

 

Another family moved into Dave's place. Janet saw ribbons of old carpet in the Dumpster and figured they had installed hardwood floors. She decided Dave had bad taste and added that to her growing list of his failings. She watched the husband over the fence as he staked the yard according to some spring planting map. She thought about seducing him, but he was doughy, and worse, clearly under the wife's thumb. Janet pictured him barely erect and simpering at her bedside.

She did not try to sell.

But she continued to watch Dave's weather reports, the friendly hum of the vibrator mingling with his expert's voice. He'd developed something of a giggle that confused her at first, until she realized that it came with something of a smile, genuine, not slight, and ever-present. This was Dave happy. She hated seeing it; it made her want to cry. She masturbated angrily.

Then one day in early spring, with the ground still frozen and the night still arriving by five, the weather was reported by a blonde in a tight pencil skirt and bursting cleavage. Janet was eating cookies from a box in her bra and sweat pants, vibrator tucked under the elastic band, ready.

The broadcast confused Janet. The blonde hadn't said, “Filling in for Meteorologist Dave Santana.” She'd called herself the weather girl. Janet tried, but she couldn't get off to that high voice, to an imagined smell rather than a known one.

In the morning, the paper announced a station shakeup. The only people who watched the weather were fishermen, and they wanted a weather girl.

And like that, Meteorologist Dave Santana was gone.

 

That year, Janet entertained no remarkable men. Those who woke next to her were proud to confess some shortcoming, as though vulnerability was a new trend. She hated the fears most of all; “I fear I'll never find someone who will love me for me,” said a landscaper, who played guitar in a local 1970s cover band. You probably won't, Janet would think as he clung to her. But admittedly she had softened, and mostly she kept her mouth shut, or if she ventured to respond, pointedly sighed. She sighed a lot post-Dave.

Worse, she thought she saw Meredith Santana everywhere. At the gas station pumping gas, with a baby in a car seat. Or at the supermarket, a baby strapped to her back. At the bar where Janet picked up game men, bouncing a baby on her knee and flirting in a frayed booth. Squinting out from the background of the adult movies Janet watched. The woman was a specter toting a specter child. Janet wasn't sure she even remembered what Meredith looked like. She only recalled pregnant Meredith, and so couldn't even remember, or had never known, if she was as naturally thin as Janet.

So when Meredith Santana walked into the teachers' lounge, there to cover the school nurse's maternity leave, Janet barely had any surprise left in her.

Meredith was nothing like Janet remembered. She was lovely. She wore her shining brown hair in a stylish blunt cut; she was athletic and obviously naturally thin. Her appeal wasn't fleeting; she would always turn heads. Janet couldn't believe it was the same woman she'd seen slinking off mornings a few years ago. Maybe she had been transformed by the power of Dave's love for her. When Meredith shook her hand, Janet held it uncomfortably long, then reached out to pinch Meredith's arm, to test that her flesh was real. Meredith jerked her hand away, eyed Janet, but then laughed. An easygoing girl, the kind who fits herself in anywhere and easily belongs.

Janet avoided speaking to Meredith after that. But when they were both in the lounge, Janet couldn't help but register the fact. She listened for Meredith's voice over all others, or for the mention of her name in gossip. She found herself skulking outside the nurse's office. She parked two spaces beyond Meredith's car so she would need to walk by it twice a day. She chose the pasta because Meredith chose the pasta; likewise, the meatloaf, the pizza, the wet ham for her salad. In the small, sallow fitness room at school, Janet watched Meredith StairMaster, mesmerized by the shifting apples of her ass, Janet's mouth shamefully agape.

One day Meredith walked into Janet's room during a prep period and slid into a front-row desk usually occupied by her worst student, the quiet flutist.

“It seems like you've been following me,” Meredith said, serene as a cat.

What balls, Janet thought. She found it difficult to speak
.
She could only open and close her mouth silently. “I'm not,” she finally croaked.

“Look,” Meredith continued kindly but firmly, “I've only heard things, so forgive me if I'm out of line. But I'm married.” She added, “To a man.”

Janet would have laughed had she not almost sobbed. She couldn't explain that her obsession with Meredith stemmed from the need to know what Dave truly desired, or why it wasn't her. There had to be a clue.

Janet recovered slightly. “I know you're married. I
know
him.”

“Oh?” Meredith said brightly, sitting up in her chair. “How do you know Dave?”

Janet prepared herself for the mayhem, but Meredith's inviting smile stalled her.
She should be suspicious. I should be a threat.
Janet felt powerless. She gasped slightly. She couldn't do it. And she couldn't believe she couldn't do it.

Meredith covered for her. “He was the weatherman—that's how.”

“You mean meteorologist,” Janet said, trying to reprimand her. Janet would never make that mistake.

“Oh, shame on me. He was the
meteorologist
.” She laughed it off easily. “Now he gives motivational speeches.” She beamed, as though unaware that the teachers talked endlessly about her locally famous husband. She probably was unaware. She was the kind of blessed person to whom love, happiness, family, security, confidence, beauty, were just what came with normal old life. She'd probably been told to expect it all.

“I saw him motivate once,” Janet riddled quietly to herself. It was all she could muster. She wanted to curl up under her desk.

Then Meredith leaned in conspiratorially, said, “I know he's no movie star, but he had fans. Women writing letters. Waiting outside the station. He had this neighbor once. He said—oh, I can't,” she said, dissolving into giggles.

He had told Meredith about her. But how much? Not everything, since they were still together. Right? Couldn't be everything, because she was laughing. Right? How much did married people talk about?

Meredith waved her hand. “But I
get
it. I stalked him too!” She nodded vehemently, her eyes wide and girl-talky. “I did!” she squealed. “I finagled an invite to a party he was at. I wouldn't let him talk to any other women. Oh, did I flirt! I was
shameless
,” she insisted. “
Those eyes.
” Now they were married, and had a beautiful daughter. “And,” she said, patting her flat belly, “another on the way.” She put her finger to her lips. “Shh. Secret.”

Janet was flustered. Obsession did pay off. Just not for her. Meredith was the magician. She slumped. “I wasn't following you,” she lied morosely.

Meredith waved her hand. “Oh, pooh, I don't know why I thought that. I let silly lounge gossip get the better of me.”

What had she heard? Could be any number of things. Janet winced. Since when did she care?

“You know,” Meredith said, “the teachers here, they're so prim. I couldn't tell them that story. But I think we're probably similar.” She was smiling at Janet in such a genuine way, with the openness, the small-scale arousal that comes from meeting someone just like you. “We should hang out.”

Janet stood and moved things around on her desk, cycloning them into a shape. She should go home with Meredith Santana, cozy herself into the couch with wine, laugh like best girlfriends, and be there when Dave walked in. She should cross the room to him, squeeze his surprised hand, and say, “I loved your work,” or “I still need my meteorologist,” and play it off like it's what any cheeky at-home watcher would say, wink at Meredith, make her laugh, get her on her side. She could make Meredith love her so that Dave cracked. She knew she could. Her mind screamed, Do it! Wreck it! Ruin it all! She tasted bile. “I'm late,” she sputtered and threw a stapler into her bag.

Meredith glanced at the school clock. It was still thirty minutes before the next period. “For what?”

Janet shook her head. “I'm just too late.” She left.

Sitting in the car in front of her town house, Janet scolded herself. She'd let a moment pass. Since when was what she wanted not part of the plan? She let the tears come. She'd succumbed to this new era of sentimentality and weakness, in which possibility was dead and buried and there were actually some things
you just don't do
.

 

Though she knew Meredith was a temporary fill-in who, most likely, would not return after summer, Janet arranged a transfer to the high school in the next town over. With her awards she easily convinced them to make room for her on the faculty. Her female students wept. Some promised to transfer. But she said, “Stay put, do well, don't get pregnant. For me.” The teachers in the lounge peppered her with questions that feigned concern. Is everything all right? Family emergency? Hidden secret? As a last gasp at insult, she just smiled and said she wanted something better for herself. Still, they offered her cookies more readily than they ever had before. Meredith, oblivious, genuinely wished her luck, her hand absentmindedly protecting the growing Santana in her belly.

In her new school, Janet ran through the single men, and some of the married ones, finally settling on a well-built phys ed teacher who had no idea that he should have striven for more. He didn't mind her gray hairs that popped up here, there. Her older breasts weren't as pert, but he still thought she was sexy when she bounced astride him, and this had an effect on her; it filled her with a terrible feeling of gratitude. The phys ed teacher was a solid lover, and she inched down closer to his level. The sex ranged from fine to good, more tender than wild or frightening. It was nothing like with Dave Santana, but she'd known, during those too-brief encounters, that would likely be the case. She was at her best with electrifying men.

She and the phys ed teacher settled into something surprisingly monogamous, though they remained unmarried. Eventually they forgot why they'd wanted to hide their relationship at school and began timing their lunch break to sit at the same table. They spent nights at each other's house, each stashing their belongings in an emptied drawer of the other's dresser. She met his aunt. She'd never met a lover's aunt before. Occasionally they drove to school together. But neither mentioned wanting more. Janet dreaded that conversation, but also couldn't help wondering why it never came.

 

A little girl shrieked at a man in the diner, horrified in the way children often are; big tears for small problems. Janet cupped her ears dramatically, scowled in their direction. But then, the slump of the man's shoulders, the squatness of his neck, the beige; she knew it was Dave without even seeing his face. And if there were any doubt, his likeness marred the towheaded little girl with long curling pigtails; beyond the raging tantrum lay that same blankness. Janet's stomach flipped.

She slid out of her booth and sidled up to him and his daughter.

The girl regarded her warily when Janet drew a line down Dave's back with her finger, playfully accusing, “I
know
you.”

Dave's back arched away from her finger instinctively. He turned and for a second—she saw it in his eyes—wondered who she was.

“It's the hair,” she said, fluffing the ends of her now shorter bob, mildly flustered. The girl's big eyes darted from Janet to Dave and back, narrowing into slits. Dave's own eyes narrowed, remembering.

“Janet.” He adjusted his windbreaker. “Well,” he said curtly.

“I miss you on TV, Dave,” she growled. His mildness made her feel predatory. She wanted to drop to her knees, suck him in front of the entire dinner crowd.

“Well, you know I haven't been on television for some time, Janet.” Being with the phys ed teacher, she'd gotten used to a certain standard of the male form that Dave had never possessed. But he was trimmer than the last time she'd seen him, looked a little more rugged—was that a tan?—a little more ready for anything.

“You look good, Dave,” she flirted, and waited for him to respond in kind. He did not.

“You know, Dave, I miss you other places too.”

He bent down and fidgeted with his daughter's backpack. The girl wiggled away from him.

Janet tried a new tactic. “You know, Dave, I met your wife a couple years ago.”

“No, you didn't,” he said, flashing anger, certain he had kept his worlds apart.

She had always liked being someone's secret, but it was clear being known held more power. “Yes. I did. She was a nurse in my school.”