My Three Husbands (14 page)

“We gotta live here all the time,” the woman called to his back. “We can't afford no Pine Mountain Lodge.”

“Especially if you keep turning customers away,” Whitman called over his shoulder. He stepped outside and looked at us. “Well. Pâté anyone?”

“Let's find a spot outside of town,” Daddy suggested. “Tremaynne, you'll just have to eat bread and cheese.”

“I'm not your little boy, okay?” my husband said grumpily. “I don't have to eat anything I don't want to.”

Whitman's voice was sharp. “Then don't. But let us enjoy our goddamned diseased goose liver, okay?”

I'd been tracking the advance of another pickup rattling into town. You couldn't miss it; it was the only moving object in the landscape and it was barking.

The truck pulled up next to the café. Two men wearing camouflage jackets and feed caps peered at us through the dusty windshield. With the glare and the dust, I couldn't see much. One of them had a black beard; the other one had pale, shoulder-length hair.

The back of the truck had been fitted with a large cage. There were three furiously barking dogs in it. Big dogs, mixed breed, vicious looking. Their barks were slightly muffled by a brown hairy blanket draped over the top of the cage.

Only it wasn't a blanket.

“Jesus Christ!” Tremaynne cried.

I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach. Once I saw it, I couldn't not see it. I didn't want to look but I had to.

The bear's belly had been slit open. It was gutted. Strings of slimy blue and red entrails hung down into the cage, dripping onto the enraged dogs. A smell like blood and shit reached my nostrils. Next to the cage I saw two plastic pails full of raw oozing guts. Then, with a jolt, I saw the bear's face, its small, startled eyes, its dangling pink tongue.

I raced around the side of the Snakebite Café and threw up my latte and the barbecue-flavored potato chips I'd eaten hours earlier. It was horrible. There were flies everywhere. I had to wave them away while I puked. They buzzed down to dine on my vomit.

I heard a loud voice. Tremaynne's. Accusing. “You killed a bear! Why did you have to kill it?”

Another voice. Unfamiliar. Angry. “That ain't none of your goddamn business.”

“There's hardly any bear population left!” Tremaynne shouted.

“There's tons of bear around here. They're like rats.”

Tremaynne's voice sounded like a sob. He must have really lost it. “Do we have to kill everything?”

There was a moment of silence. Then I heard laughter. It sounded like the hunters hadn't heard anything so funny in their entire lives.

 

 

“The air.” Whitman sucked in a deep breath. “Delicious.”

I sniffed, cautiously. It did have a pleasant tang, sort of like Western Wind room deodorizer.

I scrunched my butt down good and hard on the earth, so the vertigo wouldn't get me. We were sitting at the top of Hell's Canyon, looking out over miles of nothing.

“It's mostly sandstone,” Daddy said, tearing off a hunk of French bread and carefully positioning a slab of foie gras on top. He closed his eyes and took a rapturous bite.

Tremaynne was watching me to see if I'd eat the pâté, so I didn't. And I was keeping a close watch on him, my prisoner of love. I was afraid that he was pushing me away. Was it because of the dads? Because he didn't like them?

The dads didn't particularly like Tremaynne, either. I could tell. But at least they were making an effort.

Something was troubling my husband. I didn't know what it was, but I was afraid it might have something to do with getting married. Second thoughts. Cold feet. I knew from experience that the first time was the weirdest. Maybe he was thinking: She's the wrong one. Buyer's regret.

Or else . . . but I didn't want to go where my thoughts kept leading me. Ever since Whitman's simple question, ever since he'd asked Tremaynne about his involvement with Arbor Vitae, I'd been wondering about it myself. More than once he'd expressed a kind of exasperated displeasure with the group. Earth Freedom, as I'd learned by accidentally opening and reading an e-mail addressed to Tremaynne on my AOL account, was a splinter group of Arbor Vitae. They were far more extreme. Tremaynne must have known at least some of them.

But he'd never mentioned Earth Freedom. I reassured myself with that.

I sat there looking at the three men in my life. There was so much space around us. Vast, interminable space. I hated the way all that empty space made me feel. So tiny, so insignificant. So vulnerable. So much could go wrong when you had all that space around you. The world stopped being solid and familiar, and slipped into something vaguely menacing.

I posed a question to myself: If something went wrong right now, if there was a disaster or a calamity, who would I want to be with? My dads or Tremaynne? Who would give the most help, comfort and guidance?

“Listen,” Whitman said. “Silence. Absolute silence. Do you know how rare that is?”

Daddy sighed and bit into a tiny sweet green pickle.

Silence was not what I was after. Silence is boring and scary. Maybe dangerous. I wanted noise, bustle, chatter. I wanted to walk with my new husband through a fun glam scene with background music and beautiful clothes. I wanted him alone, away from the dads, in our honeymoon suite. If I could just get him back into my arms, he'd be mine again. I was sure of it.

“It must have been quiet when you were up in that tree,” Whitman said.

My moody, difficult husband was gnawing on a piece of bread. “It's never quiet in a tree,” he mumbled.

“That experience must have changed your life.”

Tremaynne didn't answer. He wouldn't sit with us on the blanket Whitman had spread out. He wouldn't touch the pâté or the cheese. When Whitman offered him a glass of champagne, he turned it down.

“Well, here's to you, then, daughter dear,” Whitman said, clicking my glass. Of course he'd brought crystal champagne flutes. “I hope you'll be as happy as your dad and I have been.”

“I hope so, too.” I looked up at my husband. His back was turned. He was staring off into the distance.

Whitman quickly spread some pâté de foie gras on a piece of bread and popped it into my mouth. And I ate it. It was our secret.

H
e made a second phone call outside of Boise. We stopped for gas at a huge eight-lane station beside the highway. In Oregon someone pumps the gas for you. Everywhere else in the nation, you have to do it yourself. (Whitman always said that's why he lived in Oregon.) While Daddy worked the pump, Whitman washed the dust and squashed bugs off the windshield. He was meticulous; “streaks” gave him a headache.

“Pee if you have to,” Daddy said, stretching his back, “because we're not stopping for the next hundred miles.”

Tremaynne jumped out and hurried over to the busy minimart. I followed. There was only one restroom.

When he went in, I seized my chance.

I nabbed a scarred wiener from the rotating grill, stuffed it into a stale bun, slathered relish, mustard and catsup on it, and snarfed it down in three huge bites. While I was eating the hot dog, I darted over to the candy shelf and grabbed a box of red hots and a giant Reese's peanut-butter cups. I'd paid for it all, swallowed my last bite of hot dog, and hidden the candy in my purse by the time Tremaynne came out of the restroom. I must have set some kind of record. A bulimic couldn't have gorged any faster.

“My turn,” I said, smiling sweetly. He nodded absently and wandered over toward a rack of maps.

I wanted so bad to know what was going on in his mind. Something had happened to him. Something was out of kilter. It was bigger than a mood. He hadn't been the same since seeing that butchered bear in Snakebite.

Something told me to leave him alone with whatever he was wrestling with. Men don't like it when you pry into their emotions. I let him be, but I felt lost and out of sync with him—not exactly the kind of feeling a woman wants on her honeymoon.

It's always weird looking at yourself in minimart restroom mirrors. This one wasn't glass but a kind of thin metal sheet bolted to the wall. It was like looking into aluminum wrap. The surface had been scratched and gouged by every kind of sharp object imaginable. It reminded me of the windows in New York subway cars, their surfaces mauled by frantic, destructive male energy.

With a mirror like that, applying fresh black lipstick was not easy.

It was just as well that I couldn't clearly see my reflection. I was starting to look and feel car-tired. My hair was a windblown mess. My skin was coated with dust. My face felt dried out. My breath smelled of meat and stale vomit. Worst of all, my wedding high was pulsing away as fast as blood from a slashed artery.

All I wanted now was to get to that luxurious honeymoon suite, brush my teeth, wash my hair, and take a long seductive bubble bath with my new husband. I wanted privacy, just the two of us. Away from the dads, we could play bedroom games all night long.

Once I'd coaxed four orgasms out of Tremaynne. Maybe tonight I could claim five.

I poured a stream of fiery, heart-shaped red hots into my mouth.

I needed courage to confront the toilet. I hate toilets in gas stations and truck stops. This one was metal, without even a seat. The floor around it was sopping wet. A toilet like that brings out the desperation in a girl. There was no toilet paper. It smelled. Moving closer I could see a big Tootsie Roll of a turd floating in the bowl. Tremaynne's? It didn't smell like his shit.

No way I was going to wade in to that vile stall, or touch anything with my bare hands.

The urinal looked a little cleaner. It was one of those low ones designed for kids and the handicapped. I gingerly pulled my pants down, squatted, and peed into it. There was only cold water to wash my hands. No soap. No paper towels, no cloth towel on a roller, no air-dry machine. An altogether icky place.

When I came out, I saw Tremaynne standing in the corner, half hidden by the display of road maps. His back was to me. It took me a moment to register that it was a phone alcove, and he was on the phone.

He hung up, turned around, and saw me.

His dark eyes flickered but gave nothing away.

Maybe it was the red hots taking effect. Or maybe I was so insanely jealous I couldn't admit it to myself. My face was suddenly burning.

I tried to control my voice. “Who were you talking to?”

He flipped the hair out of his eyes. “Nobody. A friend.” He put a hand on my back and tried to steer me away.

“What friend?”

“Just a friend.”

“Who?”

“For Christ's sake,” Tremaynne snapped, “do I have to get your permission every time I make a fucking phone call?”

And that was, like,
exactly
my fear, that it was a fucking phone call. That my day-old husband was calling someone he used to fuck and probably wanted to fuck again. “Why can't you tell me who it was?” I pleaded.

“Because it's none of your business,” he snapped.

A sharp sudden half-crazy fear took hold of me. “Is it someone from that group?” I blurted out.

“Earth Freedom?” The moment I said it, heard my fear materialize into words, I realized I'd made a major mistake.

He jerked his hand from my back and brushed past me. His face was tight, angry. I wanted to cry and run after him, but just then the dads came in to pay for the gas.

“What's the matter?” Daddy asked.

“Nothing.”

Whitman looked at Tremaynne's retreating figure and then at me. “Did you have another fight?”

“We didn't have a fight.”

“Yes, you did,” Whitman insisted. “I know body language when I see it.”

I turned away.

“Was it about food?” Whitman wanted to know. “I hate to tell you this, kid, but you married a real food fascist.”

Daddy moved closer. He put a finger under my chin and lifted my head so I had to look at him. “Are you all right?”

I nodded morosely.

“This is your honeymoon,” Daddy said. As if I needed reminding. “You're supposed to be having a good time.”

“It'll be okay once we get there.”

I said the words, but I was beginning to wonder.

 

 

We didn't say a word for the next hundred miles. Whitman drove with his left hand and held Daddy's hand with his right. I resented their calm happiness.

My new husband wouldn't touch me. He sat scrunched over to one side, staring out the window like a sullen boy.

I was miserable. Why wouldn't he tell me who he was talking to in the gas station or out in Hell's Canyon? It must have been a woman. Yes, I was sure of it. He wasn't thinking about me, his wife, he was thinking about
her.

My mind flipped through various seduction scenarios. He'd liked that secret hand job in the car. What could I do next to restore his interest? I had to get him back. It was our honeymoon. We were supposed to be cementing our future. Like Daddy said, this was supposed to be fun.

Whitman turned off on a side road, a two-laner, and we plunged into a thick pine forest. The road curved up to a high, rocky plateau and then down past some small, still lakes that sucked up the hot blaze of the afternoon sky.

Whitman turned down a gravel road. We bounced across an open field and stopped beside a deserted lake.

“Are we there?” I didn't see any sign of a resort.

“Almost. I thought we could have a quick swim here.”

“Isn't there a heated pool at the resort?”

“Yes, but you have to wear a suit. My source said this was the best lake for FKK.”

“What's that?”

“Freie Körper Kultur.
Free Body Culture. German for skinny-dipping.”

The dads were already out of the SUV. Whitman pulled out a stack of striped towels. The same towels we used to take to Jones Beach in New York. I flashed on that strip of white burning-hot sand with wall-to-wall bodies, all of them greased and baking in the sun like sausages on a griddle. I was twelve when the dads first took me there. I remembered the hungry glances of the dark-eyed, dark-haired New York men, the way they eye-stripped me wherever I went, and made little noises that only I was meant to hear.

“Coming?” Daddy asked.

“I don't want to swim in a lake,” I groaned. “There might be fish in it.” Or weeds, or slime, or something that brushed against my legs underwater.

Tremaynne shot me a disgusted glance—like,
what a wuss
—and got out. He silently trudged after the dads.

“I don't want to unpack my suit,” I called out forlornly.

“Don't need one,” Daddy called back.

Yeah, right. Like I was really going to strip in front of the dads and Tremaynne, out in the open. I was no longer the girl who danced, tits flying, at Terry's Topless. I was no longer a lingerie model. I'd put on weight. I'd become self-conscious about my body. Tremaynne, who never touched refined sugar or junk food, probably thought I was turning into a fat slob.

They were moving farther and farther away, crossing the field and heading towards the stand of enormous pine trees that surrounded the lake.

“Is the water, like, cold?” I called.

They didn't hear me. The three of them disappeared down a slope.

I sat there for a couple of minutes, nervously nibbling on my peanut-butter cups. The silence hummed in my ears. Then in the distance I heard a faint cry of delight. It couldn't be Tremaynne? He couldn't be having a good time with the dads, without me.

I kept a sharp eye out for snakes as I hurried toward the pine trees and the sounds of whooping and splashing. A hot, sun-baked heaviness rose from the earth. The air was breathlessly dry and smelled like the incense Carolee used to burn at Christmas.

The pine trees reared up in a stiff barricade. I'd never seen trees so big. The ground beneath them was thick with fallen cones and needles.

“Yee-ha!”
I heard Whitman yell. And the sound of splashing water.

Their clothes were arranged on big flat rocks near the shoreline. And there they were, all three of them, naked, happily playing in the water. They looked as wet and cool as otters. Whitman's chest was covered with thick black hair that was turning gray. Daddy's body was white and completely smooth; he always shaved off the few hairs that sprouted around his nipples. The dads were both in amazingly good shape, although Whitman was thickening in the middle and Daddy's buns were starting to sag.

Tremaynne was shorter and didn't work out at a gym like the dads did. But Lordy Lordy, did he look fine. Watching his slim, dark, slippery shape against the sun-dazzled water, I felt my knees go weak with desire.

Tremaynne was an outdoorsman. All that hiking and climbing had given him muscular thighs, a narrow waist, and what the dads called a bubble butt. The hair on his chest was black and soft as sable. It spread in a
V
from his groin to his shoulders, hiding his small dark nipples like berries in a thicket. I longed to stroke it, lay my head against it.

Dry or wet, my husband always looked good to me. He was short but beautifully proportioned. Women eyed him every time we went out together. He could be criminally charming when he wanted to be.

I figured it must be my fault that he was in such a foul mood. But what had I done? Was it a crime to ask who he was talking to out in the middle of nowhere?

“It's so cold it burns!” Daddy gasped.

“All in your mind.” Whitman's teeth were chattering. “Stay down a little longer.”

The dads' dicks, which I'd seen on a couple of memorable occasions, had contracted in the cold lake water.

Or had they?

I couldn't be sure. They were jumping up and down in water that came up to their belly buttons.

I looked at Tremaynne's cock.

It was definitely not contracted.

“I'm going to run back and get my suit!” I called. “Wait for me!”

As I was scrambling back up the slope, I heard Daddy challenge Whitman and Tremaynne to a race. “Out to that big rock and back again. Go!”

That's what he used to do with me, when I was seven. On hot summer nights he'd pick me up after work and we'd go to the neighborhood pool. I was a good swimmer back then. Racing Daddy toward the deep end of the pool always filled me with furious excitement.

The three of them dove forward like dolphins and headed out into deeper water.

Something in me was flashing Danger! Danger! But I couldn't identify what the danger was, or who was imperiled. My one and only goal was to get into that horrible freezing water, close to my husband, as fast as possible.

My bell-bottoms and open-toed sandals were totally inappropriate for scrambling up the rocky rim of the lake. The rocks gave way beneath my feet. There was nothing to grab on to. I slid back down. Finally, panting, I picked my way to the top. The forest stretched for what looked like a quarter mile, ending at the grassy meadow where the SUV was parked.

I looked back at the lake. There they were, the three of them, cutting through the water with all the concentrated force of their masculine strength. Daddy was in the lead.

Your husband doesn't want a marshmallow,
a voice in my head angrily scolded me.
He wants someone who will share his activities. Starting now, girl, you'd better get in shape.

In my fantasies I had the power and agility of an Amazon. I rode, I ran, I swam, I even flew.
Wonder Woman
used to be one of my favorite TV shows.

But in real life I was ten pounds overweight and smoked. I didn't have the lungpower to run. I started out at a jog and was about halfway through the forest when I began to gasp, then to cough. I stopped, chest heaving, lungs stinging, and tried to catch my breath. Sweat poured down my forehead. I coughed up something thick and mucousy.