S
am knows that Monty is going to want to see something. Anything. He pokes around the documents on the computer, looking to see if there’s something he could offer him, a morsel. Monty is demanding and persistent, but also easily satisfied. If Sam can just find a little nugget, some proof that his writing hasn’t gone to complete shit, then he’ll leave him alone and they can just try to enjoy their weekend. But there’s nothing there, and he knows he won’t be able to articulate the mess that’s inside his head: Billy and the experiment, the cold Minnesota winter, that raw hunger. The bones.
He really wishes Mena were going to be here for dinner tonight. Mena is always so good with Lauren, such a diplomat. She knows exactly the right questions to ask and answers to give when Lauren starts in. Sam’s approach is to simply make sure there’s enough liquor in the cabin to keep them all drunk, for the entire weekend if necessary.
He comes down out of the loft and finds Mena in the kitchen pulling a fresh loaf of bread out of the oven. He wonders if it’s too late to try to convince her to stay home.
“Hi.” He walks behind her and leans his head on her shoulder, wrapping his arms around her waist. As if this is perfectly normal. As if he hasn’t forgotten how to show her affection.
“Hi,” she says.
“It smells good.” His cheek is still resting on her back as she busies her hands with the loaf of bread. She smells good. God, has he been so far away from her to forget the smell of her? How could he be feeling nostalgic about his own wife?
“There’s spanakopita and salad. I made a cheesecake for dessert. No strawberries. Lauren’s allergic, right?”
“How do you remember that?” Sam asks, still holding on to her.
“She reminds us every time we go out for dinner,” Mena says, laughing. And then in her best Lauren Harrison voice,“Oh, my
Gawd,
just don’t put any strawberries on it. The last time I ate strawberries I wound up at Mount
Sigh
-nye.” Then in Lauren’s conspiratorial whisper, “Anaphylactic shock.
I almost died
.”
Sam laughs and squeezes her tighter. “Please stay?” he says, pressing his nose into her soft T-shirt.
She stiffens. “It’s the last weekend of rehearsals, Sam,” Mena says, her voice harder now. She shrinks and disappears out from under his grasp, moving quickly to the refrigerator door.
“It’s just one night. I
need
you,” he says, and immediately regrets it.
Mena shakes her head and hisses. “
Jesus
.” Her hands are on her hips now; she is in attack mode. If he says the wrong thing, does the wrong thing, she’ll strike.
“What?”
he says, like an ass.
She laughs as if he should know what she’s angry about. “
Nothing,
Sam.”
“When will you be home?” he tries, sensing this too is the wrong thing to say.
She throws up her hands, exasperated. “I don’t know. Maybe late.”
She’s pulling away, further and further. She’s like that white dot when you turn off an old TV. She’s going to just get smaller and smaller until she’s completely gone.
“Mena, what did I do?” he asks.
She looks at him, shaking her head and chuckling again. He hates this.
“Seriously,”
he says. “Why are you so pissed at me?”
“I talked to Hillary today,” she says. “She told me she had a long talk with you about the house in San Diego.”
He nods. He doesn’t know where she’s going with this.
Mena explodes. “Do you realize you never asked me if I wanted to come here? You never even asked!”
“That’s not true,” he says. “We talked about it.”
“No, we
didn’t
.You just made up your mind.You thought that dragging us all the way out here would make everything better. That you could undo everything by leaving that house. Like you can
fix
it. Now. After it’s already too late.”
It’s like he’s popped the cork on a bottle of wine and knocked it over. Everything is spilling out, staining, destroying.
“You don’t touch me anymore.You can’t even look me in the eye.We don’t ever,
ever
talk about what happened. Not once have we talked about it. And now here, out in the middle of nowhere, it’s not any better! You disappear into your little cave up there and leave me out here in the fucking wild to deal with everything. It’s no wonder Finn’s such a disaster,” Mena screams. Her face is changing. It’s like it’s not even her anymore. He doesn’t recognize her.
“Franny is
dead
. And we could have stopped it. It’s our fault, Sam. It’s
my
fault.” She points at his chest, pushes her finger hard into the place where his heart is. “It’s
your
fault.”
“Mena,” he tries, but she is raging now, swinging her arms at his face. He tries to grab her hands, her arms to stop her, but she is moving too quickly.
Sam has only been punched once. In college, during an innocuous snowball fight on the green in front of Old Mill. He’d accidentally nailed a kid in the temple with a snowball, and the kid came after him. He remembers the pain and then the snow and then the blood that stained the pristine white.
When Mena gets loose and her knuckles make contact with his eye, he stumbles backward and bumps against the table. And then the table collapses.
“Jesus,” he says.
The weak leg finally gave out. They both stop and look down at the table. The fruit bowl is broken, and there are oranges rolling across the wooden floor.
“I’ve got to go,” Mena says. Her face is red, and tears are streaming down her cheeks. “You deal with this.”
And then she is gone.
F
inn comes back from Alice’s just as Monty and Lauren are pulling up. He tries to leave as soon as he sees Monty’s Mercedes rounding the corner. He likes Monty a lot, but his wife is a train wreck.
He’s got everything he needs ready at the door: backpack, tent, sleeping bag. Inside the backpack is the food his mom made (oatmeal raisin cookies, turkey sandwiches on homemade bread, Greek salad). He’s also got a whole bunch of plastic grocery bags for the plants. The cottage is pretty quiet. His mom has already left for rehearsals. His father has his tools out all over the place, trying to fix the kitchen table, which finally fell apart. The weak leg finally gave out, his dad said. Just in time for a visit from Monty and Lauren.
He thinks he’s got a clear path out the front door, but just as he’s hoisting the pack on his back, his dad stops him.
“Five minutes,” Sam says. “That’s all I ask. Then you can go.”
“Shit.”
“Mouth.”
His father is scowling.
“What happened to your eye, Dad?” Finn asks. His father’s got an egg over his left eye, and the skin around it is turning purple.
“I bumped it when the table fell. Listen, I want you back by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. And I need to know where you’re camping.”
“Why?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t come out there unless you’re not back in the morning.”
Finn’s skin prickles. He doesn’t want to tell him where the garden is. He doesn’t want him snooping around. Not tonight. Not any time. And so he lies. “You know that path that heads out north? The woods out there. About a hundred yards from here. I’ll be able to see the fricking house lights from my tent.”
His father nods. “Nice spot,” he says. Satisfied, Finn guesses.
“Hey, Dad. Everything okay?” he asks.
“What?”
“Just wondering if everything’s okay.”
“Sure,” his father says. “Everything’s fine.”
He’s pretty sure his dad is lying. And something about the broken table, about that new shiner makes Finn feel sort of sorry for him.
Monty knocks on the door.
“Well, have fun with Monty and the Bride of Frankenstein.” Finn thinks that this will make him laugh, but his dad looks distracted.
“Five minutes,” he says again. “Just say hi and then you can go.”
“Okay, five minutes,” Finn grumbles. “But I want to get out there so I can do some hiking first.”
He hasn’t told his father that Alice is going to meet him there. He’s pretty sure his parents wouldn’t care that she’s coming, but he doesn’t want to push his luck. Her mom knows where she’s going to be, and it’s not like they’re boyfriend/girlfriend or anything. But he knows that because of Misty they’d probably worry anyway. Plus, his mom is so weird about Alice. Both times she’s come over his mom’s acted spooked. He knows Alice reminds her of Franny. But Christ, she’s not Franny. She’s nothing like Franny.
In order to get to the garden in time to cover the plants, he needs to be there by six o’clock. He told Alice to meet him there. Now it looks like he might not be able to make it on time. He wishes his cell phone worked here. Not that it would make any difference, since she doesn’t even have a cell phone herself.
Monty is practically rattling the door off its hinges.“Sammy!”
“Welcome to the wilderness,” Sam says, ushering Monty in.
Lauren is standing quietly behind Monty, smiling a huge lipsticky smile. She’s wearing blue jeans that are so new they’re practically black. High-heeled black boots. A sleeveless sweater that looks like cashmere or something. Expensive. If she weren’t such a bitch, she’d be sort of hot, Finn thinks. She’s got short black hair and enormous tits. He’s never been able to look her in the eyes, not even when he was a kid.
She comes in and sighs. “Well, that was about the longest drive ever. But, soooo glad we’re here ... Sammy!” she says, kissing each of his dad’s cheeks, pushing her chest forward and her butt behind her. “Finn!” she squeals, and repeats the process with Finn. She smells good, like a magazine. She pulls away from him and looks him up and down. He starts to feel uncomfortable. Then she releases him dramatically. “Oh, they grow up so fast. Now where exactly is Mena again? Doing a little play with the yocals?”
“
Fool for Love,
the Shepard play. She’s got the lead,” Sam says.
“How darling.
Fool for Love
,
Fool for Love.
” She taps her temple with perfectly manicured plum-colored nails. “Is that a musical?”
“It’s the one about incest, Lauren,” Monty says.
“Shepard. ”
“Oh.” She grimaces. “Sorry. I’m not a theater person.” Her lipstick is also the color of plums. She looks older than the last time Finn saw her.
“Come on in.” Sam motions for them to enter the cabin.
Lauren stretches her arms, shoving her chest outward again. Finn stares at his feet.
“What’s that smell?” Lauren asks, wrinkling her tiny surgery-perfected nose.
“Mena made dinner before she left. It’s
spanikopita,
” Sam says.
“Smells ... divine,” Lauren says, but her face is still twisted up.
Time to go. “I’m out,” Finn says, and shakes Monty’s hand.
“Sorry to put you out of your room, kid. Where you staying the night? They got a Four Seasons up here? A Ritz-Carlton?”
“They’re sending me out to the woods,” Finn says, and smiles. “Like
Hansel and Gretel
. I’ve got some bread crumbs in my pocket.”
“But no Gretel!” Lauren laughs.
Silence.
Everyone is horrified.
It takes her a minute. She gasps audibly. Her hand flies to her mouth with her mistake. “Oh, my God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Train. Wreck.
“See ya,” Finn says, and heaves his backpack onto his back. And then he is jogging toward the back way to the garden, through the woods. As he runs, he keeps checking his watch, checking the sky. It’s ten until six. He hopes to God Alice is there with some more plastic bags.
When he gets to the garden, Alice is sitting on a rock, staring out at the sea of plants. The air is redolent with the smell of weed. Finn takes a deep breath, inhaling that heady scent.
“Hi!” he says, touching her shoulder. She looks weird. Her eyes are red. Her hair’s a mess. “Hey, you okay?” he asks.
“My mom wants to take me away,” she says. “Before my dad gets out next week.”
“What?” Finn asks.
“We’re going to go stay with her aunt in California.”
“California?”
“Yeah, isn’t that crazy?” Alice shakes her head. “Here you are dying to get back home, and now my mom is buying Greyhound tickets to Barstow. Is that close to San Diego? Where you live?”
Finn sits down next to her. “Not really,” he says. His heart is beating hard. He is trying to imagine being stuck here without Alice. The idea of it is incomprehensible.
Alice is playing with her shoelaces, tying and untying them. She looks up at him sadly. “I don’t want to go.”
“Then don’t
go,
” Finn says. His chest hurts now.
They’re both quiet for a long time. There’s a bird making a lot of noise in a tree above them. A woodpecker or something. He never realized how noisy it was out here, almost as noisy as the city. He’s racking his brain; suddenly he gets an idea. “No, wait! You can stay with
us
.Your dad doesn’t know who the hell we are. He wouldn’t come looking for you at our house.”
Alice shakes her head. “I’ve seen your house.You don’t have room for us.”
“We have room for
you,
” Finn says. He’s reaching for her now. It feels like she’ll vanish if he doesn’t hold on to her. “You can stay with me.”
She squeezes his hand, looks him in the eyes. “I can’t let my mom go by herself,” she says. She’s starting to cry, and he doesn’t know what to do. “I have to take care of her.”
Finn can feel his throat growing thick. He concentrates, makes his mind go empty. It’s the only way to hold it together.
After a while of just sitting there, holding hands, Finn says, “You’re going to miss the harvest.”
“I’m going to miss
you,
” she says, wiping the tears with the back of her wrist.