If it wasn’t the breast pump it was the cloistering that got me; I went for a night drive in the rain. The baby was there too, wailing. Duke was rarely home for dinner, though that was our deal. One train missed for a hard-to-catch client, another train late. We moved from the city for the consecration of things, to be together when together. Now I was alone with the trees and a sleepless creature with prolonged colic.
The wipers whirred back and forth saying the same thing as my breast pump—you’re doomed, you’re doomed, you’re doomed—smacking of peppy mockery. The kind I knew well from boarding school, only in frayed motherhood I had no smug collar to flip as I spirited away, no room-of-my-own to hide. I drowned out her bellowing with staticky radio station playing Madonna and rolled down the windows. She blubbered and waned to a sputter, her eyes closed heavy, tamping down the rattling in her chest until it fizzed out all the way and her head slumped, surrendering to the deathgrip of sleep.
The road before me had that eerie sameness. Was I moving forward at all? I punched the accelerator—what did it matter how fast you go when the road is infinite? Bumps. That’s why it mattered. I hit one, launching, landing awkwardly, waking her again—startled, murderous screams. I screeched to a stop and put my head on the steering wheel, noticing the time, 2:22am. Where was he? Where was I?
Lost, somewhere on an old road flanked with centuries old oaks, all new to me. The baby’s shrillness electrocuted; I opened the back door, grabbed her chunky thigh, and lifted her like a freshly cleaned whole chicken. She hung upside down hushing from the swift momentum and her upsidedownness. With a final swing to my breast, she latched hard with those barely there piranha teeth. I felt a surge of relief like a heroine addict must, euphoria racing. The edge off, I lurched forward, homeward. The windows fogged, the AC fritzed. We were both sweating. The grouty beads in her neck folds almost made me smile. The rain lulled; I was going to make it. The path was straight afterall, how hard could it be? Stay the course. No one around for miles. No one but fellow nocturnals. Bam! I hit something…shit.
It smashed the window—the cratering gave way to fissures and shimmying. I swerved to a ditch stop and left her there to see what it was.
The deer was alive but the tongue was discoloring, out-hanging. I had never heard a deer whine, only nursing fawns, but the uneven panting was the kind I knew meant active dying. I didn’t have a gun so I dragged her into the forest next to an out of place boulder, put my hand on her chest and prayed. As the deer pants, so my soul. The closest thing to an intimate moment I’d had in months. The closest thing to truth. I lingered too long; she cried.
My front grill was cracked in two, shit, shit, shit, the window was shattered but somehow held there. The baby gurgled, smiling, my head throbbed. I laid down in the backseat coddling her awkwardly. She cooed happily as I drifted off, leaving the unfixable behind to blacken like the tongue of the dying doe.
His meaty hands, black as flint, were honing the walnut branch to a point. Like this, sharp as ye can. But I had gone from the lesson, twirling and leaping, ascending a branch that leaned sideways against a bigger tree.
Hey, come over and take a look. His voice was graver since we left harms way, which could have been the name of our town, Harm’s Way. It had a nice ring. One day I would tell people about this and all the unseeable things I saw.
I skittered up the tree’s incline, high above—why do I need to learn — you’re here?
Cuz you may need to spear some fish when I’m gone.
I grabbed the vine after a few reaches, and swung out over the basin repeating over and over…Wherever you go, I go! My words echoing off the river’s edges, the creekish level water flipping around the rocks revealing stains on the sides of the rock walls showing just how high it could surge.
Shhhh. We’re lyin’ low. That’s the game now. Quiet, like a deer.
But I’d launched too far, the momentum kicked, my grip loosened off raw, slippery hands, I let go and landed face first. Pound…black as dirt, the taste of pennies, a mouth of blood.
Bang, bang, bang, bang! My temples hammered awake.
M’am…?
His badge flickered off the sun, forcing me up. You ok?
My eyes barely opened, swollen in resistance, it was the first good sleep I had had in weeks, interrupted by a nosy patrolman. He may not be one of the bad ones, but he was just as vile with his timing.
At home, Duke was pacing — are you out of your mind? Viv?! Driving with a baby in the dead of night!?! I’m getting you some help until things even out.
Help is more work, Duke. I can handle it. I’m trying some new things and I do NOT want another human to manage. This half human is enough.
You’ve been trying, now we’re down a car. And you slept in the forest for godsake!
I hit a deer! You were gone! If we were still in the city, we wouldn’t need a car!
I will not argue with you over this—we agreed! I’ve a got a meeting. I’m late. He twirled his lapel pin to calm down, not really wanting to hurt me. Listen. I’ll be home for dinner with some great nanny options from that offbeat husband you liked, the one that went to Brown and played in that grunge band… whatever his name was… rest while you can.
The door shut and he was gone. I was too happy to rest—a child left to play.
I buckled on the harness, slipping her and the knife into their compartments and took to the trail. Some miles later with trial and error, there she was—dead but not yet cold. I dragged her back and put the baby down to play in her playpen. Admiring my face in the mirror, cheeks twig-slapped pink, eyes glinty from hauling bounty—coming alive.
I could hear Eli coach me with that baritone voice, making me hungry for chocolate. The better I got, the more Hershey’s kisses. It was always like this. Whether we were reading or wielding knives. Doing was sugar. Carving was calming.
He taught me that, to whittle cares away. The honey stick, a toy, spikes along our fort, hours of anxiety-letting. I could feel the grooves, weigh usefulness in the scale of my young hand. He was simple, that was his genius. He wanted to be enjoyed, useful. And this is what everyone else missed. He wasn’t for everyone. He was for me. We were for each other. And it had nothing to do with love. It was earthier. Firm and certain as dirt underfoot.
I hung the beaut from the tree, and went for it. Was it like riding a bike? How long had it been? The knife dug deep, I still had it in me. Separating bone from marrow, I was washed in her waters, painted in her bright blood. She was clean now too. We could feast.
All day she simmered. I took it to a broil for the last stretch to crisp the edges and stepped out of the shower on her hide, drying off. A mat of my own making. All in a long days work. I missed work. I hadn’t noticed the grayer dapples, the paint marks. She was all-giving. Never finished, the fate of does. My breasts leaked, running down my stomach and legs falling on her, a christening. The baby monitor registered a squawk but I was not moved.
He waltzed in with alligator shoes squeaky new, tracking in city dust crackling undersole and stopping short, inhaling. The gamey butter encrusted with cardamom pods, bubbling in naked lemons and oranges I foraged from the neighbor away all summer in Nantucket. There was a truce, his hands interlacing mine. Where’d you find this venison? It’s incredible.
I have my ways. He had his, too. We made love while the baby stared at the toys on the floor. He forgot all about the nanny. When he slept I went outside to salvage her head and hooves, in awe of how she must have tread in awkward spots so quiet, so gracefully; I buried the rest. Shoveling wasn’t like carving but it had a better aroma—the herby peat infused my lungs, a soporific drug of its own.
Back at the precinct, the pudgy cop with the uneven shave, beatboxed to his favorite eighties song, filling his glass with murky coffee. Falling back into the over-springy swivel chair that always leaned back too far, running his fingers down yesterday’s notes. Uploading her license—Vivian Wright—it showed a blank. Uploading again, an error pop up. Harry, you know this new couple? They live up by Solomon’s Edge? Bought Haskell’s place.
City slickers, all the same—foodies.
She’s not coming up with a match.
Probably a bad scan.
Yea, damn technology.
What’d ya pick her up for?
Nothing—she hit a deer. I drove her home.
Harry peeks at her photo on the screen, raises his eyebrows—she’s a looker. You know where she lives if you need to find her.
Beatbox cop takes a long swig of coffee, shrugs it off—yea it was late, maybe I missed a step.
Mark it as a Good Samaritan escort, and close it out.
He does, all is well with the world, strong beans and sugar breaks.
Duke slid the coffee across our gratuitously long marble island, cracking farm fresh eggs. I was stuck on a sentence in the crime section.
What you reading?
Inking my finger, dragging it along the words, zoned.
Yoo-hoo.
Needed this second cup, thanks.
I slipped the page out from the newspaper and plonked down on the couch pretending not to be shocked by what was written there—the stay of executions lifted, the dates set, the poison mixing. The room spun like a bad carnival ride, like labor when the pain took you outside yourself.
You, ok?
My chest was hoarding blood, sucking it up from my extremities— weightless, detached. I hopped up to get things flowing again, my limbs reluctantly tingling back to life. I was usually better than this. Water, have more water. Stay quiet. Don’t speak! I spoke.
Sometimes I wonder why the ground doesn’t cry out.
Cry out?
You know—like when Cain killed Abel and he was left to wander alone after God confronted him…all because he heard Abel’s blood making a ruckus from the ground.
That’s heavy for the morning.
You asked.
He reached over for the pan drying near her, and buried his head in her neck. I pulled at my hair, swirling it up into a messy knot, nonplussed.
Maybe you should give the crime section a break. You have enough coursing through you, get out in town a bit today. Oh that reminds me—can you take my coat to the dry cleaner? They’re slow here. Need it by September, gotta get ahead of things. He laughed thinking this reference was comical—the fast city ways versus the slow, bumbling burbs—thinking errands are the thing of afternoon delight for me—how far from her center he was, how far she must keep him, how easy it was, how sad that made her today.
His woolen charcoal-colored coat was balding in parts but he wouldn’t give it away. He was sentimental about coats. I guess that wasn’t a bad sign.
My sister’s coming to see the baby tonight, let’s have dinner. Get dressed up.
Cocktails. I wanna be home to feed her before she sleeps, trying to get her to sleep through the night. I’d like to start tinkering in my studio again, maybe.
Once you get a tequila in you, you’ll feel differently. If you still want to knead and tinker after hours, I’m all yours. He flung his hobo satchel around his back; I mustered a half-smile. I wasn’t attracted to pushy dismissiveness, so cocksure that he was the pièce de résistance. Wasn’t that what took us so long to get together in the first place? Had he learned nothing?
She lifted his coat to her nose, it smelt of boardrooms and numbers and holding your tongue, and thought of that night at boarding school on the rooftop he found her smoking a clove. Interrupted her really. Her solitude, her gazing down at them all like lock-step ants.
Didn’t take you for a smoker.
She turned around, startled at his sudden appearing, and knew he’d fallen in love at the sight of her hair swept halfway over her rosy face, her nonchalance, her enigma. Only one of those traits was God-given, the rest was adaptation.
Cloves. I like the smell and needed a break from Rablais.
You’re one of those French lit girls.
He stumbled toward me, his curls flopping side to side, his eyes charged with wanting. What he wanted was something much bigger than her, something she knew was unreachable but he would always search for, conquering one thing to the next, an infinite regression of rotting successes.
The only girl in the class. Actually, the only person in the class now which is my favorite thing about the class — just me.
I took a long drag to hurry things along, it was starting to snow, and he was cloying.
Madame Sylvie all to yourself? You need this more than I, take a swig.
Everclear isn’t really my drink of choice.
What is?
Water I filter from the dark silt of a river.
His foot slipped, she caught him. He liked this.
Why do they call these boat shoes when they all they do is slip?
Your brain is wobbly not your shoes.
Failed my chemistry test. Just hoping they don’t send word to my parents. Blurring it all out tonight. Come on, one sip.
I don’t blur.
So sturdy.
I like to stay alert.
Duke made the sound of an ambulance to mock me, melting onto the rooftop in unkempt splay. Locked his hand around my thin arm trying to pull me down on top of him, wanting me to save him. I slipped my body out of my prized vintage navy military-style coat. My only coat. He thought I left it for him as a tease, but I was molting. Never return to old skins. He tried though. Threw a few rocks at my window, stalked my roommate, played a ukelele, did magic tricks wearing the coat. I camouflaged in pale white, slinking out of sight. He was no match for a real predator. Those I knew well…
A second knock at the door, I manuevered the stubborn polyester curtain aside. He spit on his shoes shining them with his handkerchief—they looked worse. Relentless preening as he waited, off the reflection of our lopsided, brass mailbox.
I was standing on a fruit box to be tall enough, clutching my toy fox, sucking a popsicle for breakfast.
Mother stood board straight from where she was slouching seconds before, straightening her overworn, silky pencil skirt, swiveling her camisole to cover her pert, braless breasts, and shot to the door, bending down to me speaking in Czechlish, “foxes have holes, wolves have dens, go now and find a friend…” Pushing me out as he came in, she tore off his cop wares piece by piece and they jumped into the bed we shared. I didn’t budge, I watched dumbfounded, Moses! I zaid go! He was eating her shoulder. I fiddled with his badge. He flung himself toward me in bare hairy chest looking the beastly, as though my fiddling had brought to life a monster, shoving his badge to my nose. In a blink, this can take everything you love. You got that?
He took the handcuffs and locked mom down. She laughed. Moses he’z chjust playing. I wasn’t. I grabbed scissors and stabbed him in the leg. He shoved me high against the wall, held the scissors to my neck; I spit on his face. He snipped, cutting my long hair, half of it anyway as I turned my face away back and forth, then let me fall, my face hit the cabinet corner. Mom screamed. That was the abridged version.
I ran. She stayed. On repeat in some form too many days, all in a days work until that day. Maybe it was because I was eleven now but I had had it.
+++
Eli was on the stoop whittling as I zigzagged across the buzzing street. His sister was filing her nails standing against the crooked porch banister, mouthing at me. What the hell happened to you now?
I stared blankly, vowing something new—to leave it all behind in soul until I could leave in body. Trust no man, no woman. Life was “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.” Though I didn’t know the words yet, I knew the facts. Eli knew them too and told me all about the facts of things. Cat got her tongue, or what?
I sat down and stared at the bruised dandelion defiantly upright, growing up despite its heavy head. He spoke for me. Lilith, leave her be. She’ll speak when she’s got something to say.
Her hair’s gone sideways. A spoilt’n, done run out of her salon appointment and got her face whacked.
I could see a bulge growing above my left eye as I sat there.
Nothing a pair of scissors and ice can’t fix. I’ll get some.
Lilith followed him behind the screen door to the small kitchen, and didn’t bother to whisper.
You’ve got your own nieces and nephews, you give that dang girl too much attention.
She’s walking a tightrope; she’s got a destiny on her if she can make it there.
A destiny?! Cuz she’s white?
She’s suffers like the rest of us.
She looks happy to me. Always playing with her sewn animals, except today. Got herself into some trouble. People’ll get the wrong idea, Eli, don’t play the fool.
Eli came back, knelt down with the scissors and cut my hair to a bob, mostly even, then ducktapped some ice to my head. Clever and funny.
Long day and it ain’t even lunch, I said.
Let’s make some gumbo.
I smiled.
I don’t know what it is you see in her.
Same thing I see in myself, things you know too, but forgot. Beware of those who are hated. Thems the knowers, thems the feelers, thems the prophets.
Thems the hungry! I said in kind, poking fun, wielding a wooden spoon, pepping up just being near him, turning the knob on the stove, ready for grub.
If prison didn’t toughen you up, your lost for good.
Lost for good. Better than lost for bad.
Lilith left in a tizzy, the screen door whacked against its frame as we threw in some crawdads zapped by the oil-sizzling skillet.
The cop car careened gently through the broad street windiness of the upscale part of town, stopping a few houses short. One good thing about the city infestation—new haunts—that disco deli overstuffs the Reubens with high-rate sourkraut soaked in jalapeño juice.
You really like that stuff?
Good for my gut.
You could use less gut.
The kraut hanging out of his mouth like tentacles, he spots her. There she is.
What’s that she’s carrying? Ease on over.
They edge closer. Looks like a fox to me.
Vivian has a dead fox by the neck. Her coveralls splotched with browns of dried blood.
Taxidermist?
When my wife was breastfeeding she wanted squirrel. So I mean, it’s close.
They shrug.
These people, they’ve got everything, but she’s wearing a dirtied up car mechanics suit.
Probably LouiseVuitton, mispronouncing it in mockery.
Duke’s black SUV pulls up, empties him out. What’re we gonna say?
Duke eyes them—everything ok, officers?
Making the rounds.
…and a courtesy call. Your vehicle’s at the pound. It’s been booked, you just need your insurance to go by and take a gander.
I don’t think there’s any recovering Debbie.
That your wife’s name?
That’s what we called the Rover, she was my grandmother’s car. We used her summers but now that we’re here. Well, she didn’t last long.
Rovers are nice.
The old ones.
Awkward pause.
Okay, well. Just getting home so I think, if there’s nothing else.
What’s your wife’s name?
Vivian.
Okay, yea. That’s what we have down.
She wasn’t causing any trouble was she? She’s a new mom. Otherly creatures.
We’ve been there.
Yea.
It’s animalistic.
Lunar.
Doesn’t last too long though.
Good, great. Okay, thank you gentlemen.
I was spying through the window as he charmed the cops. He walked and looked disappointed. You’re gonna wear that?
To what?
My sister, she’s coming.
Oh yea. Sure. I’ll change.
As he offloaded his bag and popped a beer, I unbuttoned my coveralls, slowing until I was all goosebump’d flesh and bone while he waxed on about stocks and bonds and flubs and wins, unaware.
What have you been doing all day? Hunting.
Hunting?
Yea. For your college friends, the Millers et al. You said they were coming for dinner this weekend.
Right, well, where’d you go—Bedford Market?
No.
Where then?
It’s a surprise, trying something new.
He finally stopped gabbing and noticed, walked over and kissed me. I called your sister and canceled, thought we could stay home use her for a weekend away. He wasn’t unhappy about it. Once he snored, I declawed the fox and made the baby a rattle.
Three couples yammered over each other about the dire state of things, pretending to play devil’s advocate here and there, a kind of philanthropy to small mindedness, then lauded each other for their longsuffering genius once the Malbec had settled in. I lifted the fox with an apple in its mouth overhead and presented it like a prize, offering a non-sequitur. Foxes are patriotic, don’t you think?
They stopped their chatter on cue looking for lifelines, a smattering of generous rebuttals ensued.
Hadn’t made that leap, no.
I think I read they were part of the Thanksgiving feast.
Viv’s not much of a historian and quite forward-thinking when it comes to food.
They mate for life, I know that much.
Short lifespan helps.
Well, Bon Apetit!
They didn’t want to admit and no one finished it off except me, but though slightly gamey, the meat tasted mostly of mint and apricots, walnut oils and licorice from the fennel seed. My favorite side dish was their feigned enjoyment of it all.
How’d you two meet? You’re so different from each other.
The better question is how Viv never acknowledged we met.
In boarding school.
Wow, I didn’t know Vivian was.
Smart?
At Masters, she meant at Masters.
But let’s be frank, is it really the smarts that get into boarding school or the cash? I was sent there. And I obeyed orders then. Kept my head down. Didn’t have many friends; best years of my life really.
He squeezed my hand, suggesting I stuff my mouth with an apple and saved our faces. She was the only one brave enough to take French 4.
French literature? My least favorite class at Choate, so broody. You have quite a library here, charming.
I was mad for books then.
What do you like now?
Hunting.
They laughed collectively. She could see their finely kept teeth, their exfoliated Adam’s apples, their nostrils flaring with disdain at her jabbing humor.
Duke, she’s funny!
I guess you can hunt more here than in the city.
She’s Amish, I mean she grew up Amish. Most of the world is a stretch for her.
Amish! That explains it all! You can tell by her skin—what do you use?
Detachment and duck fat.
The conversation abated with the eerie slowness of a long undertow before the tsunami sends everyone running.
Fish tails and cognac anyone? I salted them with sumac. They’re yummy.
We clinked cognac; I passed the tails.
Wow, what’s the bitter tang?
Zest of caterpillar rind. Something new I’m experimenting with.
The guests made sudden childcare excuses and grabbed their things, giving Duke concerned glances as they exited. Exactly the kind of digestif I hoped for, she relished it as she stared up from bed at the popcorn ceiling they swore they’d smooth but never would, satisfied until he spoke.
Vivian, what has gotten into you? I know you had a rebel stint in the city but ever since Twila was born you’ve been…
What?
Strange, belligerent, chomping at the bit.
I’m hungry and I like to hunt. I like to get my hands dirty and feel useful—is that a crime?
We need to try at least to keep up.
Keep up with what? You knew who I was, you’re the one who wrestled me into marriage in the first place. I was content to be alone. You knew that. I wasn’t false about any of it, so here we are.
We went to Masters, for heaven’s sake. Your roommate may become president of the United States; my great-grandfather was a steel magnate. We have an obligation to maintain some decorum, stay the course.
What course? Says who?!
Says our school motto—to whom much is given, much is required. We have duties.
You were given a trust fund, I was given a knife. We’re each playing our part.
It’s your night to play wet nurse. He rolled over in a huff tending to the baby when I didn’t budge; I slept like a baby should.
Police station phones clang. Beatbox cop ambles over to Harry, keys jangling, got a call about Vivian.
The foxy taxidermist?
Yea, missing oranges and hydrangeas, maybe some lemons. A late night dip.
Doesn’t she have her own pool?
What can I say these people aren’t happy unless their hands are on someone else’s rhododendrons.
It’s still trespassing, should we bring her in?
Nah, let’s go there. I’d love to see inside old Haskell’s place, they were too straight-laced for any drop-ins. Now’s our chance.
Duke faced me squarely at the table. My hair brushed back wet, my feet bare, toes wiggling—the way I kept balance—fidgeting with a decorative copy of Sophocles plays kept on the breakfast nook table. We never ate there but the gilded drawings drew me, tactile and soul-nourishing alongside my afternoon beer—the one I’d have to skip today due to the unwanted gathering.
You have money and markets at the ready—why are you taking fruit off their trees?
The cops enjoyed the marital play-by-play, the joists and beams, the glass walls that made them feel they were outside under the oaks sipping their tea by the pool.
They’ll die unless we eat them first. I can’t bear to watch them rot. It’s unnatural, it’s wasteful.
Then don’t watch them! Stay here at home and eat your own fruit.
Beatbox interrupted. Also, ah, if I may? We’re having trouble with your name.
What kind of trouble?
Your ID.
I use my license just fine.
Yea, it seems real. And it looks like you, but there’s no analog in our system.
Did you ever have a name change?
Not even when we married.
A twin?
I’m an only child.
Parents?
I grew up Amish. Wright’s the name.
The splurch of a radio, we’ve gotta a 1576 on Colbert road.
Welp, off we go now thanks for the tea, we’ll check in later.
Ducking into the car, something still seemed off. We can’t go to Amish country, can we? That’s way out of jurisdiction.
Is it anyone’s jurisdiction if it’s no ones?
Yea, I think she’s a bored housewife putting on a show and admittedly, I’m enjoying it. They speed off, sirens blaring.
+++
Duke over-scoured the pan while I packaged the leftovers, saying nothing, peeved. He needed an olive branch; I needed a trip.
You’re right. Some time away would be good for me. I won’t be able to wean her otherwise. I know myself, if she’s anywhere near me, I’ll give in, it calms me but then I resent it all, no sleep, no autonomy. She deserves better.
I’m relieved to hear it! I can get the Harvey’s place in Wainscott!
No. I’m gonna go home for a few days. Problem is there’s no technology. So you’ll need to be on top of it here.
Yea, ok, I can manage.
He turned toward me with that goofy smile I adored, so gullible. Lifted me in the air, twirled me around, the baby whinneyed. I still had it.
He dropped me at the airport. I nibble-kissed her chubby leg, she grinned clutching her fox-toothed rattle. Duke enveloped me and looked pleased, hopeful I would return fixed, resurrected. After they pulled away, I walked through the terminal past security, in the direction of the bus station and continued off-course.
The Greyhound bus lumbered over the badly paved roads, I knitted the nose to a point on the fawn still coming into form. Painted clouds clustered at the end of my horizon, no matter how much we tried, we would not reach them. So it was with so much—look but don’t touch, move but don’t reach. Not this time, this time she would make it, she had to.
I switched out my phone as we veered south from Swedesboro, and disembarked as the sole passenger somewhere in Tennessee. I waited for the bus wheels to pull away and smash my old phone with its sure weight. Picked up its broken carcass and carried it to the stained public bathroom. Added a solvent; the whole thing fizzled into nothingness after a few minutes, draining down the pipes of a dumb small town without intrigue or voice. The town had revived some, a restaurant called the Black Sheep caught my attention with its cartoonish furball body and stick legs as thunderbolt gave way to a whirlwind of rain twisting around me.
Ducking through the trees, I finally found the old road along the dewberry brambles, gravelly and pocked with craters best driven over by jeeps, filling with water. My wavy reflection and that of my military coat flashed here and there as I darted toward the appearing building like a kid jumping stones, until I was safely under the stoop. Hesitating to knock, my muddy shoes, my sopping clothes, the years between us—but there was no going back now. I rapped on the door of the old, cloistered stone house. The rain mauled the unkempt overgrowth; I munched on a handful of dewberries snagged along the path and knocked again, waiting for the door to creak open.
An old woman in nun’s habit peeked around the door, her eyes blinking, her stare askance, her mouth tight—no solicitors.
I stood still and silent, she sniffed a few times and reached her hand out to find my face, feeling my nose, Moses? Is it you? Come, come in here, out of the rain.
I shuffled in, hugging her small frame at the same time, a trotline dragging me home.
Get some tea on, strongest black, fresh cream! Moses is here! The servant girl twisted the gas knob, the tea cups clanked, we sat in old warm chairs.
It’s been so long.
Seven years, maybe eight, Birdy. Long enough that I have a baby.
You’re a mother! Always meant to be one.
Beautiful to the eyes, hard for the rest of me.
You need some rest, that’s all.
I need more than that. How’s my room?
Hardly touched since you left.
The evening prayer bell, signaling the gathering time for adoration.
Join us for morning prayer tomorrow, and we can catch up some more.
I took her hand and opened it up, this, it needs to be reactived or something. My ID.
I’ll get on that.
A press badge will do me for now.
Birdy clutched my shoulders then crawled her fingers to my cheeks, working her way up to my forehead, bending my head onto her chest. She was praying for me without words. Her heartbeat would be the last time I’d feel at home before he was dead, or I was.
The winding staircase led to the organ, right behind the pipes was my nook. The door popped open like a cork. Dust sprinkled about, stopped in time accumulating in absence. I sat on the bed, it bounced and squeaked. I moved it away from the wall, and jiggled a small piece out, wiggling my hand into its small opening, fishing out the plush doll. Dirty and splotched, but fully himself—Mr. Fox. I napped, clutching him, letting it all wash over in flashes.
When the morning bell rang, I woke and saw the badge had been slipped under the door. Too hungry to eat, I snuck out my window like old times, hanging on to the sil enjoying the stretch, letting go, sinking into the ravine below, swirling with warm and cold rushes—all delight. Emerging on the other side of the woods. My woods, wet and steamy green, dripping with vines, holding off tomorrow, thinking of contrasts and strong currents.
The cobblestone on Bleeker, the crowds hustling, the loiterers, the happenstances; I watched them happily incognito, slicing the muscles out from the fascia, tossing the excesses, showing the customer my pride and joy, wrapping it in brown paper, snapping it with tape, back to the grinder—moving, cutting, guts sliding out. Clearing my mind, holding their hearts, coddling the gizzards weighing it all out, coming up full by days end.
He saw me through the weather nicked red-painted letters, my head hovering somewhere between the C and the T in Franck’s Butcher. My face shining as from the inside, my smile absent.
It had to be her, the window fogged more as he came near. The cold air of nepotism she’d left behind was peeping in, a Rolex dangled from his hand as he wiped the pane with his elbow, making a bonging sound. He probed his disinterested friends.
Is that Vivian?
Who?
Vivian from Masters.
That sylphy vampire girl? I hope not! How do you go to Masters and end up sawing off the chicken heads for a living?
Not much different than what you’re trying to do, slay it as a banker—bloodsport. They high-five.
I think it is her.
I’ll be damned. This is what happens when you lose touch.
Serves her right. She was always making a mockery of us by being so aloof. Cautionary tale, boys. Lose your contacts, end up chopping animals to sell off to your old nannies.
A gaggle of seasoned Hispanic women dressed in well-ironed work frocks flank the counter, everyone so well-trained no one pushes forward. Vivian looked at the one with glassiest eyes—what can I get you? She squinted trying to make out the words… points to the grouper, disappointing Vivian, all scales and no entrails.
He ignores his friends and goes in to find out, brusquely pushes past, right to the glass case. I’ll take twelve rib-eye, freshly cut by her. Vivian recognizes him, freezes.
Frankie, this stiff wants ribeye.
Vivian, I came in here to see you.
Kid, take a number. This isn’t that kind of meat market. The nannies blush. Vivian, take down my phone number.
By the looks of it, she doesn’t take orders from you. She’s gone into the freezer. And she hates the freezer. Duke writes his number down defiantly on an order sheet. Viv returns, handing the grouper over with the care of a fresh newborn; crumples up his number, throwing it in the incinerator at her first chance.
The highway was empty aside from the occasional haytruck and 18-wheeler, the city-town was weathered and gutted, only a few businesses left and mostly questionably legal pool halls and squatters dens. She had to go there first, an emotional choice but she wasn’t being trailed as far as she could tell, no one knew anything about this town related to her.
Mom’s tombstone was smooth and nameless, stained with the green tears of chemical rains. How many years had it been? Twenty? Twenty three? I knew it was hers, it was behind mine: Moses Dvorak. Why my name and not hers? Oh yea, mine was paid for. It was my fault really, I had forgetton to ask Birdy for anything more.
Dvorak. Absolutely no useful relation to the composer. This was one of mother’s constant laments, the tertiary lineage, the inability to claim anything lasting. She never learned to die for me, so I had to die myself. How it left so little energy for my own offspring. Mother wasn’t all bad though just alone and trying to outlast bad choices, between a rock and a hard place. I never thought we had much in common but standing on her grave now, wasn’t I doing the same? Trying to outlast myself. I kissed her stone and walked around to mine, put Mr. Fox there to keep ghosts company, and wandered about.
I could smell the honeysuckles we’d yank and suck the lights out of, as Eli put it. It was as though he had planted them all over the graveyard, though that was impossible. This was nature left on its own, unkempt, stinging sweet flowers growing up with prickly burrs. The wind picked up, I tore more star-like buds off and sucked hard. Sweet, green, heady.
You have gall, showin’ your fancy face here? You ruined him. You ruined alluvus. You ruined what was already ruins.
I could hear her twang breathy against my neck, but it was only a vine flapping, threatening to strangle like an umbilical cord, so close to new life breaking through.
I blurred through the woods, barefoot, and tiptoed without hindsfeet, they’d wrestled him down. The last thing I saw as I dropped the slain goose I’d finally strangled by twirling it around with one hand, was mud-crusted boots on his face. My favoite face. That beautiful face, the face of God himself if God had one. You’re under arrest for the murder of Agnes Dvorak. You have the right to remain silent. He grunted and wailed at a whack or two. But, I know he was protecting me. Anything you say can and will be used against you. I bit down on the vine and huffed muted wails, swinging back and forth until I heard him drive away and saw others on foot with a K9 tracking, it was now or never…one last swing, then a three story drop. I let go, freefalling into the shallows…
The cloistered nuns were on the precipice hanging out their clothes some miles down. A few were bathing in the river they told me, when my limp body appeared face up, a person! There’s a person in the river!
The K9 let loose, finding his way down, trailing too, but not as fast as a river flows. Barking and making a fuss, but unwilling to jump into the rapids, I was a speck by then, the of a tennis ball and just as green.
+++
Stretched out at the hospital, my face bloated and misshapen, we can tell this much—she’s a girl. That’s all we know.
Birdy waited by my side. She couldn’t see with her eyes but she could hear. Eventually, they’d caught my wiff, a surly man waltzed in with official clothing. Him, the handcuffing seductive one, when he walked in my blood pressure registered off the charts, even though my eyes were swollen closed, all at the sound of his gravelly voice. He spoke perfect English for a second, then in a foreign tongue, one Birdy could catch partly as a Pole. It was certainly Czech. What did I tell you? If you crossed me there’d be hell to pay. It was the hell to pay that caused her to rouse. Hell was her business, not his.
His boot pressed down steady, blocking her oxygen tube, the bells clanged. The doctors rushed.
The doctors pronounced me dead, the bully disappeared, Birdy thanked them with a hefty donation to the children’s wing, and took me home, holding constant vigil.
+++
I could not move one foot in front of the other, one eye was lower than the other. The nuns took turns changing my dressings, dismantling the mirrors, and reading Hunchback of Notre Dame and all the other ones where humans find some kind of good in the grotesque.
One day I was mostly recovered, so they threw me a funeral to make it official.
Harlem was the familial rattatatat she longed to return after the glorious muck of butchering. Always buzzing—music through an open window, street busker, greasy bacon and honey aroma from the mom-and-pops determined to survive, permeating the air with a sense of urgency, coursing upstream against the odds. I jumped the stairs by two, knocking on the few apartments, leaving an array of gutsy leftovers for pies and soups, a surge of rare happiness zinging through me.
On the top floor, my flushed cheeks blanched. How’d you find me?
The old fashioned way, I had you followed. The main door was too easy to pry, you should tell the super.
I am the super.
I’d like to say I was playing hard to get with all my evasions but the myriad of colors begging for preeminence on my face, gave me away; I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. It was one thing for him to find me inferior in the world, it was yet another for him to judge me in my own world. A grey-walled studio with concrete floors; two mismatched, stickly, wooden chairs; a badly woven seventies couch doubling as my bed; and my prized rusting teakettle atop a miniature stove—a life in miniature.
A little brown sugar colored boy with a fresh buzz cut barged in with a chessboard under his arm, or I would have shown Duke the door.
You’re late.
Is it today already?
The boy chuckled at my funny way of saying it; I turned to Duke.
They all think because I went to boarding school, I’m a chess master.
I beat her now, mostly. The boy settled down on the couch, and opened his board.
I’m no match for you, Zeek. But my friend here, he’s not doing much—you can play him. Right, Duke?
Sure, if you’ll cook me whatever’s in that bag.
I doused and sizzled things about, he played chess. It was not unattractive to witness the duo with their prolonged stares and giddy oneups ending in stalemate and choreographed handshakes in time for dinner.
We noshed on the fire escape.
Livers?
Yea.
Spicy.
Cayenne. It’s good for you.
I slurped mine up, he chewed awkwardly willing himself to swallow. The chatter and bangs of apartment buildings touching at their corners, closing us in, echoed around.
You ever eat inside in peace?
I like the air and other people’s clammer.
Good. A couple of us are going to Stephen’s Talkhouse in Amagansett this weekend, you should come. Out of the city—plenty of air and clammer, wild animals even, and ticks too.
I have to work.
I’ll pay you whatever it is you would have made. No, I’ll double it.
I’m not for sale.
Everyone has a price.
Not me. I stiffened, pushing my plate onto the apartment sill, plucking the dead basil leaves from the paltry herb patch I was trying to grow with ten minutes of sun a day. I had the feeling I may throw a punch or a kick, send him hurling down the seven flights, banging various body parts on ladders and ironwork, tumbling a few times until he splattered as easily as a moth on a windshield—a spectacle, a scandal.
I barely defused myself by doing the thing the nuns taught me when I flared up: finger tapping out the ancient Jesus prayer—Jesus Christ son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. And I was a sinner, the worst of them. It was a nice reminder that all I wanted to do to those outsiders who wanted to know me, was obliterate them. Watch their awkward demise. Because what I wanted most was to be left alone in blissful confinement way up on 126th Street where none of the squeaky clean things dare tread. What fellowship can Harlem and the Park Avenue share anyway?
One day, one night if you hate it, I’ll leave you alone forever.
Forever? That’s a word I appreciate. But you should know, I turn into a murder victim at midnight, so no sleepovers.
You should know, I can’t stand to leave the beach when I’m there, but if it means I get you ALL day, it’s worth a detour if I can’t convince you to stay. Shake on it?
I hesitated, wiping my hands on my homemade half-apron, the one with the scalloping, the most feminine thing I owned, he took my hand gently and brought me close, we lingered there. I could smell the aperitif that got him up the stairs, the tired cologne stuck to his neck sealed by the overstrong airconditioning on the 27th floor of his Park Avenue investment office. He would be a lost stiff without me, poor soul. What could I do? I gave in. We kissed by the waves and he never let go. He knew I would slip the line if he so much as blinked.
I downed a bottle of motel mini bar vodka and jumped on the cot-like bed practicing a British accent. Could they have maybe thought about this before they sent the press badge? It was easier to lose accents than create them. I knew that much by now. At least my name was the same.
Hello, sir. I’m Vivian Wright from the London Gazette. I cleared my throat, and tried again with more gentle swing. Pleasure to meet you, I’m Vivian Wright with the London Gazette… we’re doing biopics on all the inmates set to be put to death this month. I’m most interested in Eli Shank.
+++
Take a seat. We don’t do preferences, we don’t do you, we do what we wanna do here: us.
But I was impatient. You may want to know that Officer T has given me carte blanche… he’s like an uncle to me… his niece was a college roommate at Ole Miss. The jailer makes a whoop the Ole Miss way, I finished it with a hooty holler.
A loud buzz and the vaultish door behind me opened in continual zing, closing again, locking me inside.
Speak of the devil.
The detective waltzed in gruff and territorial. You do look familiar …what’d you say you studied at Ole Miss?
Czech. We have something else in common from 20 years back, too. ‘Five foot two, eyes of blue.’ You used to play that song for my mom, or she played it for you.
+++
A call from Beatbox cop flashes on Duke’s phone. They’ve found something, Vivian Wright doesn’t exist —
Duke laughs, she’ll love that, she’s always been one for existential disorientation. When I met her she wasn’t sure she existed at all, I guess she was half right.
I’m not sure how funny this really is, Mr. Canfield. Your wife’s not who she says she is. We have traced her to something, though.
Yea, what’s that?
The Vatican—know anything about her connections there?
The Vatican? No. She’s religious in her way, but not all the time, is it a crime to know the Pope?
No, but it is one to falsify documents.
Beatbox cop’s phone blows up with a call bleeping through, this number keeps calling, I need to get it. I’ll let you know if we find anything else, in the meantime when you’re wife returns, we have some questions.
Duke hangs up the phone, befuddled and slightly amused—her mysteries never cease. She was right about one thing—with her, I’m never bored.
+++
Precinct 3725…he’s too late, no one is on the line. A voicemail chimes. It’s Vivian.
If you wanna know who I am, Hawkbills’s Cemetery will tell you…Look for the fox.
Harry, it’s her. She reached out.
She’s an eccentric dame, or a sick one.
The two cops drive off armed and dangerous, certain they’re on to a big sting—what kind of foxes she got? Rabid ones? Sends chills down my neck. And I’m loving every second—a scavenger hunt!
Hawksbill? That’s foresty Tennessee not Amish land.
Sometimes we wonder about how we’re gonna die, the wondering was over for me. My plan to come clean and save Eli from protocols and politics and poison, led me here fast—hanging upside-down by my ankles. I should have practiced more at chess, the bastard took my first moves and used them against me. How did I think I could lure a man who’d held so many secrets and had so many quid pro quos, he believed he was demi-god?
Now I was swinging, everything wavering, my post-baby abs useless to set me upright for any length of time, tied up like an animal set to be gutted, if only he could find the knife I’d stolen from him while he was fiddling, then dropped inadvertently and had to break it with my foot pressing it into the ground. I wasn’t an agile street girl anymore, but I had given him a run for his aging meanness, the kind that had added pounds and disarray over the years. He could shoot me, sure, but that made noise and it was too easy. He didn’t want to be caught now, it’s no fun to knock off a girl who already died once.
The revelation hit as the tree trunks swayed—the thing I loved to do most lately as a barely making it mom, trapped in a life so far from where my mind and imagination lived—clean my prey—would be the way I went. Poetic justice if not real justice. I was trying to think my way out of hearing his endless words.
Looks to me you got steely over the years, like they all do. Striving. Discontentment. Lack of focus. In other people’s business because you have none of your own. You’re different from your mom—she was a dumb mother-fer, but she was a lover. Sometimes I wonder if those things go hand and hand. Being dumb and being happy. Curse with you is you were never happy. That’s where you and me’s the same — smart and loathsome. Yessiree, things come full circle. The one you loved the most is you, that’s really why we’re here isn’t it? You couldn’t let a dead dog lie. You couldn’t let your mom do her job, YOU had to interfere, now someone’s on death row.
He was right. I did act before thinking when handcuffs and badges were involved.
I whistled for coyotes, they came and encircled, more in wait for my carcass than bloodthirsty for any villain. If only animals had discernment about good and evil, and not just instinct.
The blood draining to my head made me hot, the seam of my pants grated, help so close but so far away. I had slid a honed piece of sharp deer bone as plan B into my seam, now it was unreachable. My hands tied behind my back, my ankles cracking. First black stars then gold ones, the back-and-forth momentum rocking me to daze, the swinging slowed, vomit drool clogged my neck until everything went bullet black.
His hair was cut military short, greying in fuzz around the ears. His shoulders broad, square, anatomically protective. His arms barely fit inside the small cubicle, overlapping as his head hung down as though praying. When he hears me sit down at the edge of the chair to get as close I can, his chin lifts and our eyes meet. His smile makes the lights in the room zing so bright they swoon and make flashes, surges and dips. His face shines like it always did, a sunlamp orangy-warm against the cold, grey slab of my face, like the slow morning sun on the longest summer day. I place my palm on the glass between us, the way I imagined I would so many times. His voice would break through the cheap mic, look at you. All grown up and still have your shine. I flush holding back a dam’s pressure of tears. Words I couldn’t find to say like—let’s bust out! Why have you been so silent!?! You’re innocent! Please don’t become a saint by dying a martyr because of me. It’s cliche. It’s passé. I’m not worth it—nothing is worth more than you.
I would try and help refocus his darting eyes—connecting the dots between then and now—by telling him about her, I have a baby girl. I’m not a natural mother, turns out.
Runs in the family, he would say.
The rest would ooze out like a child’s wound, fresh and mixed with gravel and dirt, and the yellows of rushing plasma in need of a bandage.
I’ve had this irrepressible instinct to leave and go home since she was born. But where is home when you’re my home? I needed that kind of sleep, that slumber I had when you kept me safe. Where I could dream. I needed to show her to you. To show her the reason she could exist, the reason I coud be unhappy as her mother at all.
Your soul is my home, is the problem, that’s just it. I’m doomed because you’re doomed. None of that would come out of course, it was too cloying, too demanding.
If it had come out, he would interrupt me with something grounding and erudite. Something ethereal-facing so I would swallow my gushing and let him teach me the hard truths stuck halfway in my throat. Of all the books we read, Antigone has stuck with me these years inside here, not much to do but wear grooves thinking—remember the line?
I would say it or he would or we’d belabor it together…
“I have longer to please the dead than the living; in the kingdom…where I’ll lie forever.”
And he would go on and on until the buzz sounded and filled my head without thoughts of torture. What’s after is everything—this is a blip. Of course, I don’t believe for a second we’ll be sleeping, not if there’s any delight in it for you or me. We’d be working, plowing prayers, restringing angel wings, stomping out grapes.
And then he would tell me what came of my efforts to leverage the high places—all dead ends. Whether I live or die, you can discuss it with the Pope—since I hears you and he are close. He would laugh in the way he’d have to lick his lips to stop from breaking the eaves with its boom, then go on about the letter from His Holiness, and the pope’s sister, Sister Birdy, and all her care packages and efforts to stay the court’s scythes for good. He would be manly about it all. This system is tight, even the innocent wait for years for exoneration by then they’re broke in two, or unclaimed corpses.
I would implore him to stay the course, stay with me forever, earth’s forever was enough for me. You’ll come stay with us; I’ll put you back together.
And he would squirm and resist again—You can’t squeeze into old snake skins.
But that’s just it you’re not a snake.
If I do leave here alive, he would promise with a glint off the greening fluorescent light illuminating a gathering tear, you’ll be the first place I go before I see the world and send your daughter postcards.
Yes, the world. The world would spin on even if the townie cops failed to guess my whereabouts by the map I tucked into the fox at mom’s grave, come and shoot down the rope—not me or each other—so I would fall on the ground from way too high up, and smell the rotting leaves of the again, like I did in our days on the lam.
The fox would be analyzed for mom’s blood mingling with the detective’s blood showing definitively, traceably timestamped, proving he was there, but nothing would come without appeals and bobbles and briberies and waylays.
I would detach myself from the play-by-play as Duke advised, because now I would be harmonious and blending after seeing death twice, say her name, and knit Twila a mobile of yarny woodland animals, mount the heads of my beautiful game along her walls, in the room she would sleep without need of my breast or my presence, awaiting the day it would finally happen, his release…
An unmarked car would pause a moment too long, his white sneakered feet planting firmly on our driveway, one at a time. He would take in the architectural sleekness of the lines and archways and cathedral windows through the sprinkler spray and the sideways sunshine of approaching dusk—wondering where the porch was, naming the flowers in the yard one-by-one as he walked the pebbleway lined in overgrown sea lavender. Holding the bouquet he gathered in the few steps, in awe of the verdancy and the whisps and brown-eyed Susans, growing so effortlessly in peace. Facing the tall door head-on, setting down his tidy but thrifted suitcase definitively, ringing the doorbell while I pretended not to be watching and once flung open, would forget to shut it. The breeze would push him inside and I would resist clutching him as he beelined for the baby, rushing alongside him, agape as he swung her round and round, holding her high and proud.
When that happened, when he was free and holding her, that’s when the curse would lift, that’s when I could love them all again and for the first time. Until then I would wander, hunt, night-stalk, forage, gut, break wishing bones in two, loosening the hold, until the sacrifice tipped the scale and took for good, spilling enough blood that the ground never stopped crying out—shrilly, annoyingly—until justice has no choice but to rouse and answer, even if the knife was found by the enemy after all, and the bloodspill was mine to the last drop.