The Better to Hold You (19 page)

I stumbled a bit myself as I walked through the darkening woods, though I couldn’t help but notice that I didn’t trip half as often as Jackie. Or that when I did, Hunter was not around to help me catch my balance.

His footing was perfect, and in a few short strides, he was gone, leaving me to pick my way home on my own.

All through dinner Hunter drank too much and interrupted me. Red would look at me and say, “How do you like the country?” and before I could get my mouth open, Hunter would jump right in.

“Oh, you have to understand that Abs is a suburban girl. Nature, to her, means a quarter of an acre of lawn and a problem with raccoons. This is all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

Or else Jackie would compliment the chili, and Hunter would start in on all the many lentil and tofu dishes he had suffered through over the years, and how nobody ever talked about how a healthy diet made you pass gas like a leaky fuel tank, and how goddamn healthy was that to breathe in, he’d like to know.

There was a moment when I realized that I would have done better to have gotten drunk myself: I would then not have had to sit and notice the expressions on Red’s and Jackie’s faces. I had lost face that evening; I was a wife with a disrespectful husband and now everyone knew it. Halfway through the dinner I also realized that I had somehow served myself a bowl of the meat chili and began to break out in a nauseated sweat. Dead flesh. I had eaten a corpse. I’d probably catch mad cow disease and die, a twittering idiot with a sponge for a brain. I pushed my half-empty bowl away from me.

“Let me help clear,” said Red, and working at opposite ends of the table, we began to stack the dishes and carry them into the kitchen. With the evidence gone I began to feel better. Hunter and Jackie were deep in some discussion from which I caught the words “thigh,” “breast,” and “hormones” and the sentence “Letting it hang for a while to get really ready.” I had thought they were discussing meat production, but it sounded an awful lot like they were talking about sex. As I walked into the kitchen, I realized that Jackie, though not pretty, possessed a certain air of sexual confidence a man might find attractive.

“You okay?” Red asked as I deposited the silverware in the sink. He had already started washing the disgustingly encrusted chili pot.

“Yes, fine. Leave that and I’ll serve the fruit.”

Red’s eyebrows pulled together. “Hang on, are you going to throw up?”

I didn’t really know. My headache had returned. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt Red’s hand on the back of my neck.

“Okay, not doing too good. Let’s get you outside.” He led me onto the porch, where the air had turned blessedly cool. I took a deep breath and felt marginally better. Red was fumbling with something that rustled in his hand.

“What are you doing?”

“Rolling you a joint. For the nausea.”

I had never smoked marijuana. In fact, I had a bit of a phobia about drugs, after a bad experience as a child during one of my parents’ wild parties. But something about Red made me feel safe, and I was flattered that he thought of me that way, as someone unquestionably counterculture.

“Here. Just a drag or two.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Sorry, Doc. I didn’t meant to—shoot, I always forget how most people feel about weed. My grandfather always thought this stuff was safer than alcohol, so long as you didn’t use it more than once every few months. He thought it helped get into a certain kind of trance state, and … I’ll just put this out.”

“No,” I said, grabbing his wrist. “Wait. Is it strong? I once ate a tab of LSD by mistake and …” I shivered at the old memory. “I don’t like losing control.”

“This here’s no stronger than a glass of wine. I grew it myself.” He held it out and I took a drag, inhaling the distinctive, sweet smell and it was just like eleventh grade with the four of us sitting in Josie’s bedroom, two girls and two guys, except Fred and Shawn weren’t guy-guys, they were members of the science club, like me. In February they had discovered pot, which they said made everything so very slow and funny, and stopped you thinking about tests and senior year and colleges. It also gave Josie terrible munchies. She had started to gain the weight that would stop her from sleeping with almost every boy she met.

I had never been tempted. I had remained an outsider, even among the outsiders.

“Hey, Doc,” said Red, “you okay?”

I handed the joint back to him and wandered out onto the cool grass. There were a lot of stars out there: They looked fake, too brilliant and numerous, like something you might see in the Planetarium right before the lasers and “Freebird” started playing. I walked over to a large oak, then knelt down at its trunk. Red came to sit down beside me.

“What are you thinking?”

My mouth was too dry. “That it’s getting cold out here.”

“That’s what the animals are thinking, too.” Red took another long pull on the joint, then offered it. I declined. “Lie back, if you want.”

“The grass is too cold.” My tongue felt like it had been coated in something gluey.

“Use my arm.”

I laid my head back on his arm, my heart pounding. I knew I was misbehaving, but I didn’t care. Red had said that Jackie wasn’t his girlfriend, so I wasn’t being unfair to her. And wasn’t I entitled to this small taste of another man’s company, since my own husband had helped himself to so much more of another woman?

There was a three-quarter moon, its missing quadrant a thin membrane of mauve, like the shadow beneath someone’s eye. There were so many stars I could see the patterns they made—not the constellations, I didn’t know those—but triangles, cat’s cradles, webs of light.

“What animal do you see up there? Right there, above you?” Red pointed, and for a moment I stared at his arm, rounded with muscle, steady, thick-wristed, with long, rough fingers that looked capable and strong. Then I looked back up, but I was aware of him now.

“I don’t know. A dog? There’s its mouth.” I pointed, then let my hand fall. I wanted him to take my fingers and warm them. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

“Dog or wolf?”

“Dog, I guess. Wolves are bigger, aren’t they?” I turned on my side. His face, not as handsome as his body, was close to mine.

“Mostly.” Our eyes were so close now that when I tried to look at him, his features began to blur. “My grandfather would have said the animal you see is your helper.”

“Is there a big difference between wolf and dog?” His skin seemed to radiate warmth.

“The Mohawk think so.”

“What’s your animal?”

Red looked as though he were making up his mind about something. “Can’t you guess?”

“Fox?”

“No.”

I thought about it. Something clever and resourceful. But trustworthy. “I can’t come up with anything. You’re kind of a mixture of things.” Animals in legends were either clever or honest. You never got both in the same creature.

“That’s what my grandfather said.” Half in shadow, Red’s long, high-cheekboned face seemed different somehow. His nose was very big from this angle, and I told him so.

“Is it?” He caught my hand. “What else do you see?”

Triangular eyes, deep set, hazel gold even in the dim light from the porch. A faint sheen of down high on his cheek. If I let my eyes go out of focus, he almost looked as if he were wearing a stylized animal mask. Dizzy, I let my head fall back on his arm. “Mmm,” I said, meaning to say something more like, God, that pot hit me hard. I felt myself drift a little, in the cool whirling night next to a surprisingly warm body, beneath the twinkling dogstars. I could feel the rapid rise and fall of Red’s chest, as if he were panting.

“And what exactly is going on here?”

I looked up to see a great shaggy bearlike figure looming over me, and gave one of those embarrassing short screams you can’t keep from making when surprised, even after you know who it is that just startled you.

“I think I fell asleep,” I said, which was almost true. I realized how bad this must look. Jackie’s expression was sour and closed, but Hunter’s was oddly amused, as if he’d caught me in some silly drunken pratfall. His stubble was so dark he looked like he’d grown a beard in the short time we’d been outside.

“I was just telling Jackie that this is where we find you guys in each other’s arms.” Hunter held out his hand to help me up.

“You caught us just before the mad, passionate rolling-around part got started,” Red said, and Jackie snickered.

“In your dreams, Red. This girl’s too smart for a scruffy old hound like yourself.” There was a note of satisfaction in Jackie’s voice.

Red grinned at me. “They don’t believe me.”

I made myself smile back. “Gee, I wonder why.” And, of course, put like that, it did sound highly improbable. But not impossible. Would there have been a rolling-around part? I could tell from Red’s elaborate air of relaxation that he thought he knew the answer. But did I?

Hunter slung his arm over my shoulders. “Come on,” he said, “let’s say good night to these folks and get you to bed.”

I don’t remember them leaving. I don’t remember going upstairs. All I can recall, in blurred snatches, are memories of what came after. Naked in the darkened room on the bed with Hunter kneeling on the floor beside me, his hair cool and slippery between my fingers, his teeth sharp against my inner thighs, his mouth a shock of intimate heat. His rubbing his face against me like an animal covering itself with scent; his surging up to cover me, penetrate me, then withdrawing and crouching down again, as if truly meaning to devour me, as if this were where his hunger had truly led him.

Drunk and stoned and drifting through it all, I forgot to worry that this was something he was doing for my benefit, I forgot to care about him becoming put off by something I did. For the first time since we’d moved, my husband was making love to me. Pushing myself against him, I rode the lapping waves of plea sure until they crested, became pain, then built slowly to plea sure again.

Just before sleep, I curled my arms around him as he moved inside me, and imagined it was Red, imagined it was some stranger, because the play of muscles beneath my palms seemed fluid, seemed to ripple in and out of its familiar forms, as if sex had unloosed Hunter down to his bones.

And in my dreams, I think, he took me again.

The next day, Hunter acted as if I’d been rather cute, drinking too much and actually smoking grass. A regular bohemian.

By suppertime the joke had worn thin. “I still can’t believe you fell asleep on a guest,” he said. “Not that I think Red minded too much. I don’t need to start worrying about that guy, do I?” We were sitting at a table in Moondoggie’s, waiting for the pretty strawberry blond waitress to serve Hunter’s loco steak and my vegetarian wrap.

“You don’t need to worry,” I said, just as Kayla arrived—I remembered her name just as she warned Hunter his dish was hot. She dimpled, he winked, and I wanted to throw the pitcher of beer on the pair of them. Of course, Hunter wasn’t worried. I knew my husband well enough to surmise that all his light, chuckling good humor was masking a gut-deep relief that I’d been caught in a somewhat compromising position, as if that exonerated his own betrayal.

I wanted to confront him, tell him that thought and action were two entirely different things, but of course, I couldn’t, not without him questioning just what was going on with Red. And I didn’t know what was going on there. I’m not sure I wanted to know: As long as I didn’t need to examine myself too closely, I could keep my knowledge that there was a man in the background, desiring me. Maybe there was a little bit of my mother in me, after all, because I didn’t want to give that up. I didn’t want to pursue it, but I didn’t want to lose it either.

I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room, then stared at myself in the mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes. Compared with Kayla, I looked ancient. I reap-plied some light rose lipstick and emerged to find our waitress pressing something into Hunter’s hand.

I didn’t say anything until we were in the car. “What did she give you, her phone number?”

“She was giving me change.”

“Change from what?”

“Christ, you’ve become a bore. You know how much I hate this sort of thing.” Hunter flipped on the radio and Mick Jagger sang about how some Siamese cat of a girl was under his thumb.

I turned my face to the window. I was angry; he was angry. We didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. In fact, we barely saw each other for the rest of that week, as he disappeared upstairs to write his book and I went off in search of a veterinary practice that did not require its practitioners to be familiar with the south ends of cattle and horses.

“In my day, young lady,” said one grizzled local vet, “you didn’t become a vet unless you had large animal expertise. Until a few years ago, we turned you city kids back if you couldn’t stick your hand up a cow blindfolded and tell which month she was in.” I went along on one house call and had a horse step on my foot. No one asked if I was all right, and the owner just kept saying, “You’re damn lucky she didn’t kick you.” The Northside vet, who could not move the left side of his face, muttered something about my not being “right for this sort of a practice” and added, under his breath, something about “silly girls who would break like matchsticks.” I considered suing him for sexual discrimination, but then had second thoughts when I noticed that he was missing three of the fingers on his right hand, and that one of his eyes was made of glass.

As I was leaving, a trim gray-haired woman walked in carrying a large birdcage. The cage was covered by a black cloth, and what ever was inside was making a strange cackling noise, sounding more like an old witch than a bird. The woman gave me a furtive look as I passed her on my way out, and the moment I was outside, all the shades were drawn shut. Perhaps it was an owl, I thought, feeling curious. But it hadn’t sounded like any owl I’d ever heard.

It seemed that all my training and work at the Animal Medical Institute were deemed interesting but useless, somewhere between having the dubious cachet of owning a designer T-shirt and the equally dubious advantage of speaking Italian. That is to say, an asset in Manhattan, pointless in Northside.