The Better to Hold You (20 page)

I was told I could volunteer at a local animal shelter until something opened up—had I ever heard of Beast Castle?

“That’s not local,” I pointed out. “That’s nearly back in the city.”

Unspoken, but clear nevertheless, was the sentiment that that’s where I belonged, too.

In Manhattan, I would have known how to distract myself—taken walks, window-shopped, gone to the movies. In the country, these things seemed like possibilities, if distant ones, but I couldn’t bring myself to actually pursue them. Nevertheless, after four days of consecutive rejection, I decided to give myself a day off from the job search. I went out into the garden and watched chipmunks argue amongst themselves. I drank cup after cup of coffee. I listened to the wind rustle the trees, knocking off the last few crab apples. I considered calling Lilliana, but when I picked up the receiver, I got a busy signal. The electrician and telephone guy had come to wire the upstairs, and now Hunter claimed to be doing research through the Internet. I say “claimed” because he was suspiciously secretive, hiding the screen when I came into the room.

I went back into the kitchen and for fifteen minutes I did nothing but stare at the dust motes dancing in the air, until I realized I had better start with something closer to home. Like unpacking.

The truth was, besides a few articles of clothing and toiletry, I hadn’t really moved into our new house. And it had been almost a month—long enough for me to see how little old ladies wound up living in labyrinths of old magazines and empty soda bottles. I was more than a little overwhelmed by the prospect of unpacking boxes of books and clothes and old college papers and possibly the skeletal remains of a woolly mammoth—God only knew what Hunter had buried under a top layer of bubble plastic and tissue paper.

In those last weeks in the city, while I’d been at work, Hunter had packed our apartment as if the secret police were pounding at the door, indiscriminately throwing my medical textbooks in with his thrillers, my underwear with his sneakers. The guys from Samson Movers had answered a last-minute emergency cry for help and had done a slightly better job, wrapping each dish in white paper, pointing out in contemptuous Middle Eastern accents that even a weight lifter cannot move five boxes filled with thirty hardbacks each.

For the first few weeks I had emptied a few boxes at a time, usually getting lost in college papers and childhood photos so that hours passed in a fugue of nostalgic depression.

But here I was now, on the outs with Hunter, jobless and without immediate prospects, miserable to the point where the next step down was sure to be a doozy of a drop. So it was time to buck up, pull in the reins, get moving. There was no dignity in my wallowing around in regret, living like a refugee. Besides, it was altogether too Piper LeFever. I was Abra Barrow: practical, sensible, methodical.

I turned to confront the battalion of boxes in the spare bedroom.

I made three piles—throw out, file, and ask Hunter, when I came across a file marked “Old Letters From Hunter” (my handwriting). There was correspondence from our earliest phase of dating:

My Sensual Nun,

I am imagining you in the Science Library, all neat and tidy in something with lots of buttons up the front, reading up on your anatomy in one of the big leather chairs while hordes of nervous freshmen lust for you from afar. How I long to distract you.

As for myself, I am discovering why it is imperative to break in hiking shoes before the big trip. Did you know ticks seem to prefer pubic hair? For the first night here, I just thought I was growing new moles.

In any case, my tulip, remember to use the lotion I gave you for your little hands and feet, and then give your wonderful pert breasts a massage, too, and imagine it is me.

I will be popping blisters, and wishing I could call.

Much love, Hunter

P.S. It is actually quite strange being alone for all this time. You don’t quite realize how much of your mind and time you fill with conversation, whether real or fictional (books, television), until you have to contend with real silences.

And there was a letter which, from the date, was something Hunter had written but never sent me from Romania:

Abra,

This trip has been one of the most astonishing, heart-wrenching, painfully wonderful experiences of my life. I wish I could find a way to make you understand the change this time in Transylvania has wrought in me, but how can I talk about a transformation that is still taking place? Magda, the senior wolf researcher here, says that this fever is something which I must allow to pass, but I know in my heart that I can never return to the banality of the life I led back in New York.

Which leads me to the difficult task of asking you to call our accountant

There was also a note, in a strong, sloping, European hand:

Remember not to rush the change. Give it the autumn. Possibly even the winter. Then call me when you are sure.

I didn’t need a signature to guess who’d written it, or when. Magda. The other woman who, Hunter assured me, was not the reason for his strange moods, his sudden desire to move to the country. The other woman who had seized hold of my husband’s imagination and held it still.

Call me when you are sure.

He hadn’t chosen me over her. He hadn’t even chosen Northside over Romania. This Magda had told him to wait, until, presumably, she could judge just how much of a wolf he was. And like an obedient dog, he was waiting.

Heart pounding, I put the letters back in the file, replaced them inside a box, and stood up, the blood leaving my face in a rush. I walked out into the garden and realized that autumn was already past its peak: Last night, while I’d been sleeping, a strong wind must have blown all the red and yellow maple leaves off their branches. I walked up the hill past the torn barbed-wire fence, the air cool even through my light oatmeal sweater. Prickles caught on my black wool skirt as I made my way through the tall grasses, and I felt the tears on my cheeks as I walked higher and higher on the hill, the sky soft and gray with clouds.

I am good with directions, even when I don’t admit to myself that I know where I’m going. My feet found the path Red had shown us, no longer shrouded in shadow because it was early in the day and the trees were growing bare. I trudged along the carpet of leaves and pine needles until I saw the cabin we had not reached, a rough log structure set slightly off the ground. Please be home, I thought. Red was the only person I could imagine talking to who would not make me feel like a fool. When someone wants you, they do not look at you with pity.

I walked up to the door, knocked three times. No reply. I knocked again, said “Hello?” Then tried turning the knob. Red’s door was unlocked, but as I walked in, I saw that he wasn’t home.

You learn a lot about a man from seeing where he lives. Hunter’s dorm room in college had been so bare that it hardly seemed anyone lived there at all. And, of course, he hadn’t—Hunter had made his home in other people’s dorm rooms. Red’s cabin was much the same: a bachelor’s abode, minimally furnished. I got the feeling most of Red’s living was done elsewhere. There was a bed, covered with a woven Indian blanket, and a game of solitaire laid out on a plain pine table with two chairs. There was a sheepskin rug and a small CD player, a milk-crate bookcase with a few old Elmore Leonard westerns, a small camping stove and a few cans of beans. I turned on the CD player and J. J. Cale sang in his grizzly voice that he might not be able to read or write, but he could make love to me all night long. Sounded pretty good to me.

I heard a sound and whirled around, but there was no one there, just the creaking door opening and closing in the breeze. I sat down on Red’s bed and there was a musty, unwashed lanolin smell from the wool blanket or the sheepskin rug. Funny how much wet wool can smell like a big dog.

I wished Red were here. I suppose I wanted comfort. Advice. A sop to my ego. I wanted to be wanted. But Red was off somewhere, removing wildlife, or making Jackie happy.

Still sitting on his bed. I leaned over and saw that, along with the westerns, Red’s bookshelf held North American Medicinal Herbs, Call of the Wild, and Cosmopolitan. Hmm. I opened the magazine—it was September’s issue—and saw that it was bookmarked to the article “Why Good Girls Like Bad Boys.” The subtitle, which Red had underlined in red Magic Marker, was, “He’s kind, sincere, even wants a commitment—so why does he bore you to tears?”

Poor Red. The answer was right there in the bookcase—one dog-eared copy of Jack London’s classic, one herbal textbook, and a lot of yellowing “man’s got to do what he’s got to do” novels. He was a beef jerky and white briefs kind of guy. And while I knew I wasn’t exactly sophisticated myself, I knew the difference between single malt scotch and Tennessee whiskey, the difference between columnist and essayist, between an elegant transition and a quick dissolve. I wanted to be loved, yes, but I also wanted a man who wouldn’t need the end of the movie explained if it didn’t end with the hero walking off into the sunset, bad guys vanquished, girl in tow.

Red was clearly in the category of Jack Daniel’s and columns on the fine sport of fishing, jump cuts and sunsets, everything pretty as it faded off into the long distance shot. Maybe if he’d been Hunter’s age or even younger, I’d have felt otherwise: He’d have had time to change, grow, mature differently. But despite that surprisingly boyish air he had at times, Red seemed to be in his late thirties, maybe even older. He caught vermin for a living, and he lived without electricity. You just can’t Cosmo obstacles like that away.

I put the magazine down the way I’d found it and noticed, for the first time, the bows and arrows in the corner. They looked metal-tipped and serious, like something you’d use to take something down, not to shoot at a target. I didn’t see anything else that looked like a trap, or like poison, which surprised me. How did Red make a living if all he used was a bow and arrow?

I took one last look around and saw something peculiar: The game of solitaire was laid out in a sort of shield pattern, and the playing cards were painted with animal faces. They looked like the tarot deck my mother had used. There were some of the same animals she’d seen in my spread—owl, coyote, wolf, and also something that looked like a wild turkey. Boy, I hoped that wasn’t me. What had she said? Owl, coyote, wolf—magic coming my way, something about coyote the trickster and wolf the guide.

Wouldn’t you know that the first man to flirt with me would turn out to be as nutty as my mother?

I felt guilty leaving without writing a note—it made it seem as if I’d been spying. But I didn’t see anything to write a note with, so I removed a dog card from the pack and laid it on Red’s pillow before smoothing the blanket back down. I hoped Red wouldn’t mind that I’d been there, but at least this way I wouldn’t be deceiving him about anything.

God, I hated deception. I walked back down the hill, calm enough now to have a fight.

There is one sure way to find out who has more power in a relationship. Start a fight. Start a fight with all the righteous grievance on your side. See if your partner, who should be cringing and apologizing, or at the very least listening, winds up going on the offensive and attacks you for invasion of privacy and a lack of trust, and then accuses you of transferring your own feelings of insecurity over not having a job onto the relationship. Then, when you try to bring the conversation back around to his behavior, see whether or not your partner cuts off your response by saying, “I’m just too mad to finish this right now.” If you find yourself looking at your partner’s departing back, your rage turned into a deep, painful, roiling unhappiness, then guess what? He’s top dog.

I walked upstairs to the attic and informed Hunter that I had found the letters. He heaved a deep sigh and half-turned in his chair. On his computer screen I could see an instant message from someone.

“Oh, God, we’re not starting that again, are we? Christ, Abs, maybe you should go back to the city and go back to the Institute. You really are falling apart out here.”

“I can’t go back.” My voice was a whisper.

“Then go find something else. Do something before you drive both of us crazy, sitting around the house all day long.”

“I haven’t just been sitting around.”

“You didn’t even start unpacking the boxes till today, you don’t have a job, you don’t cook—”

“I’m looking for a job, in case you haven’t noticed, and I cooked last night, but you said you didn’t want—”

“I mean cook real food.”

I took a deep breath. “Listen,” I said, “we are not talking about what I am or am not doing. I came up here to discuss those letters. And Magda.”

Hunter nodded slowly, as if hearing something he had always suspected proven true. “I know what this is. This sudden lack of trust, this new need to be in my face twenty-four hours a day. You’ve lost your own direction. But you’re going to have to work this out for yourself. You can’t hang on to me every second, hoping I can give your life purpose.”

“Hunter, that is completely unfair! I found a letter you wrote that seems to be telling me to contact our accountant. Were you thinking about divorce? What exactly happened in Romania? I think this is something we ought to discuss.”

“Fine. You stay here and discuss it. I’m heading out.” Hunter quickly saved the files on his computer and pressed the button to shut it down.

“No,” I said again, louder, standing up. “You are not going to Moondoggie’s to flirt with that waitress again.”

Hunter’s face began to flush with color. His eyes glittered darkly. “You are really intent on pissing me off today, aren’t you?”

“So you think this is all my fault?”

“I’ve had enough of this shit, Abra.”

“No, I have!” I ran out the door in front of him, my heart pounding so hard I could barely think. I half-expected him to grab me as I raced down the half-finished stairs from the attic, but he must have been too surprised.

At the bottom, I stopped and glanced up. Hunter was leaning over the railing, looking at me as if he were seeing a madwoman. “Abra, what the hell are you doing?”