9:30 P.M.
When we leave Dixon’s, I don’t look back. My chest is full of a hollow pressure, a balloon blown up to bursting with the empty weight of dead air. The nothingness. Darkness stretches ahead. All around me, the high-pitched trill of cicadas blends into the night air. Peter walks in front, his flashlight illuminating a narrow patch of road, the center strip of tall grasses, pale sandy tracks on either side. His light casts a halo into the trees. Moths fly out of the forest, drawn by the light—dust-brown flickers, desperate for wattage. I’ve never understood that suicidal draw. The kids trail behind Peter, complaining that their legs hurt; tired, spooked, staying close to the light. Maybe moths are terrified of the dark. Maybe it’s as simple as that.
“There’s no such thing as werewolves,” Peter is telling Finn, reassuring him.
“But what about vampires?” Finn asks.
“No vampires, bunny,” I say.
“But wouldn’t it be great if there were such a thing as monsters,” Peter says. “Think about it: if werewolves and vampires exist, then magic exists. Life after death exists. That’s a good thing, right?”
“I guess,” Finn says. “And ghosts?”
“Exactly,” Peter says.
“What about serial killers?” Maddy says. “What if someone is hiding in the woods? What if he wants to hurt us? What if he has an axe?”
“Or she,” Peter says.
“Did you guys have fun?” I say, mentally kicking Peter in the shins. Now Maddy will be awake all night, worrying. “I thought it was a nice gathering.”
“We played freeze tag,” Finn says. “Can we have ice cream when we get home?”
Jack walks beside me, carrying my straw bag. At some point, he slips his arm through mine and we walk like that, linked together, along the dark, sandy road, each thinking our own thoughts. Off on a high ridge a coyote barks, nips at the night. Far away, the pack howls back. I listen to their call-and-response, the empty hunger of it. They are coming in for the kill, their dinner of field mice and small dogs.
One of our garbage cans is lying on its side at the bottom of the driveway, two raccoons astride it. They freeze in place when the beam of Peter’s flashlight hits them, little fur statues, bobsledders, eyes lit red in the glare. Corncobs and lettuce leaves and coffee grains and bits of shredded paper towel are strewn around in the dirt.
My mother shouts in annoyance, runs at them waving a stick. “Get out of here! Out! Out!”
We watch them slink-run into the tree line.
“Vermin,” she says, giving the garbage can a sharp kick. “Which of you morons forgot to put the bungee cord back on?” She storms down the path to the house without waiting for a response.
“Imagine if she’d just discovered the Wreck of the Rhone,” Peter says.
“You guys go inside,” I say. “I’ll deal with this mess. Don’t eat all the pistachio. Save some for me. Jack, turn on the outside light, would you?”
I wait until I’m alone. Up above me in the trees I hear the whisper of guarded movements, feel pairs of watchful eyes. What if someone is hiding in the dark? What if he wants to hurt us? For so many years I have put that terrible night away. But now, in this flash flood of love and panic and sorrow, I let my skin go cold. I wonder how long raccoons live. Could these same raccoons have witnessed Conrad raping me? Were they those babies, peering in through the skylight at my moonlit bed? Did my tears scare them? My muffled screams? Or were they bored, waiting for a safe moment to go back to the pond for a few more minnows? Did Conrad’s mother hear Rosemary’s pounding heart in her dreams? What if he has an axe? I imagine Maddy alone, terrified, begging for mercy, Peter and I asleep in our cabin, unaware. I want to promise her that nothing bad will ever happen, that no one will hurt her. But I can’t.
I sit down on the ground, amid the old salad and damp cigarette butts and tea bags. An empty box of Bisquick ripped to shreds by sharp little claws. Last night Jonas came at me in the dark, shoving himself into me, my head pressed hard against cold cinder block, unearthly, gasping, a beautiful pain, dress pushed up around my waist, and I felt my entire life coming together inside of me.
A bullfrog croaks in the pond. Somewhere, deep in the mud, a giant snapping turtle is lurking. Through the window, I see Peter in the pantry, dishing chocolate ice cream into mismatched bowls. He hands them out to the kids, then picks up the container of pistachio ice cream and considers it for a moment, before emptying the whole thing into his bowl.
10:00 P.M.
I’ve made a pile of corncobs and husks. The back door opens and Peter comes out with a big black garbage bag. He looks into the dark for me.
“Here,” I say, stepping into the light. “It’s a disaster area.”
Peter opens the maw of the bag, and I dump everything in.
“I saw you,” Peter says, his voice withheld, odd. “With Jonas.”
“Saw me?”
“I know.”
My skin goes blush-hot, an adrenaline rush quickening through me. I force away the rising panic, concentrate on picking up damp cigarette butts. “These fucking raccoons.” I move out of the light, pick up a torn egg carton, hold my breath, wait for what’s coming.
“You kissed him.”
My heart releases a millibeat. There was no kiss. I didn’t kiss Jonas last night. He came out of the dark, took me from behind. I breathe a sigh of relief without breathing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Pete.”
“Don’t lie.” His face is hard as river stones, sure in its rage.
“I’m not lying. What do you mean, saw me? Where?” A hideous thought creeps in: did Peter follow us to the old ruin? Did he watch us from the trees? See our raw, open sex?
Peter shakes his head in disgust. “Just now. In the kitchen. At Dixon’s.”
The sea changes in my body, the pure-water rush of Thank God. “You mean when I kissed the burn on his hand? Jesus.”
“It wasn’t just the kiss. I saw the way he was looking at you,” Peter says. “Like he wanted you.”
“Well, yeah,” I say, my voice heavy with forced sarcasm. “How could he not? I’m irresistible.”
“I saw the way you looked back at him,” Peter says.
“I put butter on his hand. I handed him a dish towel.”
Peter takes the egg carton from me. “You know what, Elle? I’m done here. I’m going to bed.” He shoves the bag in the trash can, slams the lid, secures it with the bungee cord.
“For Christ’s sake, Pete. It’s Jonas. He’s our oldest friend.”
“He’s your oldest friend.”
“I ‘kissed it better’ like he was a little kid. You were right there.”
“I was,” Peter says, and walks away from me.
“Wait,” I say, going after him. “Are you seriously upset with me because I kissed Jonas’s burnt hand?”
Peter stares me down. His eyes are cold silver, a mercury streak.
“Fuck it. Think whatever you want,” I say, covering my nerves with self-righteous anger. “Jonas is my oldest friend. Of course he loves me. But not that way. It would be like incest.”
A pause flickers across his face—hope and doubt combined.
We stand there at an impasse, Peter desperately wanting to resolve his suspicions, uncertain; me, terrified, crossing my fingers behind my back, holding my ground, willing Peter to believe me, pretending defiance. I have given up Jonas. I have chosen Peter. I have died for him. I say a prayer to the God I know does not exist. After this, I swear, there will be no more lies.
“Okay,” he says finally, his face giving a little. “But if you’re lying . . .”
I keep my voice level and steady. “Good. Because there’s nothing going on with Jonas, or anyone else for that matter. You’re the only man I love. I promise you.”
“Good,” he says. He comes over and kisses me hard. “But no more kissing other men. You’re mine.”
“I am,” I say.
“Now come to bed so I can make love to my wife.”
“The kids are still awake and Mum is prowling around somewhere.”
“Hush.” He takes my hand, leads me down the dark path to our cabin door. He pushes me up the steps in front of him. “Turn around,” he growls.
I face my body to him, brace myself inside the doorway. He puts his hands up my dress, pulls down my underpants, leans in and licks me slowly with the rough flat of his tongue.
“You taste like the sea,” he whispers.
I close my eyes and imagine the ocean, the beach today, the tent, Jonas. I cum in his mouth, thinking of the other man I love. When the tears come, they are not for what I have lost, but for the truth about Jonas I cannot seem to shed.
10:30 P.M.
We lie together, Peter crashed out in his postcoital slump, sheets squashed down around our ankles, our akimbo parts. I turn my pillow over, press my cheek against the cold side, listen to the rise and fall of Peter’s chest, the rasp of his soft snores, the sweet exhale of his cigarette breath. I am restless, nervous. I need him to come back to me. But I know that nothing will wake him from this particular sleep. Men fall asleep immediately after orgasm. Women wake up. It’s curious, that off-rhythm. Perhaps, after the exhaustion of trying to impregnate us, they need their rest. It’s our job to get back up on our feet, sweep the cave, tuck the children into their bed of rushes, nitpick their head lice, tell them stories that someday they will tell their own children: about fire, stone wheels, a cave dripping with stalactites—luminous color, frozen in time; the boy who chased a great bird through the sky; how to cross the open sea. I put my clothes back on, let myself out of the cabin. It’s late, but I need to kiss my children.
Their light is still on.
“Where were you?” Maddy says. “You were supposed to come back for ice cream.”
“Daddy wasn’t feeling well. I had to find him some aspirin and get him into bed.”
“Right,” Jack says without raising his eyes from the bare-bulb glow of his computer screen.
Maddy has been reading aloud to Finn. They are snuggled up together on her bed. She’s holding a heavy, tattered book, its olive-green cover mildewed and time-stained.
“What are you reading?”
“I found it on the bathroom bookshelf,” Maddy says, and holds it up for me to see.
“That book has been on the bathroom shelf since before I was born. I don’t think anyone has ever read it.” I sit down on the edge of the bed. “Make room for me.”
Maddy moves closer to the wall. Finn makes a space, rests his head against my arm. “It’s about a crow named Johnny,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “That’s why no one’s ever read it.”
“There are spiders in here.” He points to a web in a high corner. Next to it, peeking out above the edge of the beam, I notice a small ragged mouse hole in the cardboard ceiling. I’ll have to get Peter to patch it. A fine-legged spider fusses around her web, preparing a dead fly. Five heavy brown eggs are suspended below her, held in a hammock of filament.
“Can you kill it?” Finn says.
“Spiders are good,” I say. “We like spiders. They catch mosquitoes.”
“I don’t like them,” he says.
“Don’t be a pussy,” Jack says.
“That’s not nice, Jack.” Another night I would get into it with him, but not tonight. Tonight I want to be here with my beautiful children—warm and happy, believing this will last forever. “You were terrified of spiders when you were Finn’s age.”
“Whatever.”
“Not whatever. Apologize to your brother and then come over here and snuggle with us, please. I need a massive cuddle right this second. Non-negotiable.”
Jack sighs, puts his computer down, comes over, and lies down in the narrow bit of space that’s left.
I wrap my arm around him, pull him close to me. “That’s better.” The four of us lie there, squished like sardines.
“Now what?” Jack says.
“You guys are suffocating me,” Maddy moans. “I can’t breathe.”
“Did I ever tell you the story about the hamster my sister Anna squashed between the bed and the wall?”
“On purpose?” Finn asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “It’s possible. Anna could be hard to read. But I don’t think she meant to kill it.”
“Well, either she did or she didn’t,” Jack says.
“Right. Lights out.” I take the book from Maddy. “Johnny Crow will still be here tomorrow.” I scoop Finn up off Maddy’s bed, tuck him under his covers, and kiss him all over his beautiful sweet face until he pushes me away.
Maddy puts her arms up for a final hug. “Me,” she says.
I hold her tight in my arms. “You didn’t brush your teeth. Your breath smells like creamed corn.”
“I did,” she says, but we both know she’s not telling the truth. “I did!” she says again.
“Corn is delicious,” I whisper in her ear, and she smiles.
“Okay, fine. I didn’t. But I’ll brush double in the morning.”
“I’m coming for you next,” I say to Jack.
“Whatever,” he says, but he’s smiling.
11:00 P.M.
Mum is sitting on the porch sofa in the dark.
“You’re still up,” I say.
“All those peanuts I ate at Dixon’s are repeating on me.”
“I’m getting a glass of wine. Do you want anything?”
“I’m headed for bed in a minute. There’s an open rosé.”
I pour myself a glass of wine and sit down beside her. “I’m exhausted.”
“I don’t know how you do it. All these people you take care of.”
“My husband and children?” I laugh.
“You coddle them far too much. I barely paid attention to you and Anna, and look how well you turned out.”
In a way, her blindness—her total lack of self-examination—is a gift.
“They can’t even put their own dishes in the sink. I barely survived while you and Peter were in Memphis. Though Finn did give me a nice foot rub.”
“You asked Finn to rub your feet?”
“His hands seem a bit small for his age.”
I shake my head in despair. My mother is who she is. But a piece of her has been in the wrong place for far too long and I have to set it right.
“You know how I was trying to tell you this afternoon? About Leo?”
My mother yawns. “You told me. He went back to his first wife, God help her. I should have written to her—told her what he did to you.”
“Mum.” My heart starts beating so fast I can see its tremoring on the surface of my chest. “It wasn’t Leo.”
“What wasn’t?”
“It wasn’t Leo,” I say again, my voice barely more than a whisper. “It happened, but it wasn’t Leo.”
She looks utterly confused. I watch her puzzling out what I’ve said, putting the pieces together. I recognize the exact second it comes clear to her: a twitch, an imperceptible shift, the nervous dilating of pupils.
“Conrad?” she says at last.
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Not Leo.”
“Not Leo. It was Conrad. Conrad raped me.”
For a long time, my mother says nothing. In the darkness, I feel her energy slipping, dimming. She sighs, a heaviness upon her.
“I’m sorry I let you blame Leo.”
“Leo left me. Our baby died.”
I can see from her face that she is preparing for the worst as she asks me the next question.
“And Conrad drowning?”
“The boom hit him. He fell in.”
Her look of relief is palpable, and I so wish I could leave it there.
“But we both knew he wasn’t a strong swimmer. We didn’t throw him the life preserver.”
“We . . .” There’s a flicker of confusion. “Of course, Jonas was with you. I’d forgotten.”
“He knew everything,” I say. “He’s the only one.”
She nods. “You two were inseparable. He had such a crush on you back then. I think you broke his heart when you married Peter.”
“I did.”
An image of Jonas comes to me. Not the man I have loved, eaten, wanted, ached for today, but a small, green-eyed, dark-haired boy, lying beside me in the woods on a bed of velvet moss. I do not know him yet. But we are there together, lying by the spring, two strangers with one heart.
“I loved him, too.”
My mother is not one for warmth, but she puts her arms around me, cradles my head against her neck, strokes my hair the way she did when I was a little girl. I feel a thousand years of bile and bitter and silt seeping out of my veins, my muscles and tendons, the darkest places, pouring into the pocket of her lap.
“I’m sorry, Mum. I meant to be good.”
“No,” she says. “I’m the one who let Conrad in the door.” She pushes herself up off the sofa with a heavy creak. “My bones are not what they once were. I’m going to find a Maalox and hit the hay.”
On her way past the big picnic table she clears the children’s ice cream bowls, takes them inside to the sink, spoons clinking. “These can wait until morning.”
She pauses at the screen door, an odd expression on her face, as if she’s tasting something, digesting it, trying to decide whether or not it’s good. When at last she speaks, her voice is decisive, the way it’s always been when she’s given me serious advice.
“There are some swims you do regret, Eleanor. The problem is, you never know until you take them. Don’t stay up too late. And remember to close your skylight. They say we may get two inches of rain.”
I wait until I hear her cabin door click shut before following her down the path. There’s a ring around the moon. The rains we hoped for are finally coming. I can feel it in the brooding air, the impatient sky. Outside Anna’s and my old cabin, where my children sleep, I pause. All their lights are off—even the dim glow of Jack’s computer. I listen to the silence, imagine I can hear their soft, safe breathing. No demons, no monsters. If I could protect them from every terror, every loss, every heartbreak, I would.
A swath of moonlight stretches toward me from the center of the pond, widening as it approaches. I push my way through the bushes to the water’s edge. The pond is low. In the wet, sandy shoreline, raccoons have left a trail of sharp footprints. I take off all my clothes, hang my dress over a tree branch, and wade naked into the silk water, the pond obsidian clear, the croaking of bullfrogs, the whisper of moths. I can feel the molecules Jonas has left behind him all around me in the water. I cup my hands in the pond, put them to my mouth, and drink him. In the distance, lightning fractures the sky.
I stop on the path outside our cabin, count the seconds, listen for the faraway rumble of thunder, watch as the acid strobe fades away, watch as darkness takes itself back. My body feels like a sigh—relief and regret. But for which swim? I climb the steps of our cabin, knowing the answer. For either. For both.
Peter is still in his deep, satisfied sleep. I unhook the skylight, lower it softly into place. I climb into our bed beside him, spoon him, latch on to him—the familiar warmth of his body, the comfort of his calming breath—and wait for the storm to make its way inland from the sea.
4:00 A.M.
At four in the morning, when the winds come up, it’s the cabin door rattling against its hinges that startles me awake. Outside, pine trees are bent sideways, limbs howling in rage. I climb out of bed and go to the door. A beach towel has flown off the laundry line and landed on the roof of my mother’s cabin. Birds tumble through the stormy sky like fall leaves wheeling through the air, helpless in the wind, the relentless, circular current. Wrens and finches, skylarks—airborne, but not in flight. I stare out into the dreamlike predawn light. A few inches beyond the screen, a ruby-throated hummingbird is thrumming, fighting to hold its ground in the air, trilling against the tide, its iridescent wings beating invisibly fast, a flash of gemstone in the gray sky. It is flying backward. Not pushed by the wind, but deliberate, frantic with purpose, pressing for shelter in a thicket of white-blooming clethra outside our cabin. Its wings, attached with minuscule wrists, make figure eights—infinity symbols.
I call over to Peter. “Wake up.”
He stirs, but doesn’t wake.
“Peter,” I say, louder this time. “Wake up. I want you to see this.” But he is dead to the world.
I go over to his side of the bed, nudge him.
“What?” he says, voice groggy with sleep. “Jesus. What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Early. But wake up. You have to see this. It’s insane out there—like some sort of bird maelstrom.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“I think we might be in the eye of a hurricane.”
“There wouldn’t be all this wind—only dead air. It’s just a big storm coming. Nothing to worry about. Now fuck off and let me sleep,” he grumbles sweetly.
A few years after Maddy and Finn were born, long after our lives had meshed into a different song, Jonas and I were walking in the woods one afternoon and passed an oak tree entwined in honeysuckle. There were what seemed like a hundred hummingbirds drinking flower nectar with their needle-beaks.
“Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backward,” Jonas said. “It’s one of those facts that’s always astonished me. They can fly backward and forward at equal speed. Thirty miles an hour.”
“If I could fly backward, I would,” I said. To the safety of branches, to the time when my heart raced for him like a hummingbird’s, 1,200 beats per second.
And he said, as he always did, “I know.”
6:30 A.M.
When I wake again, the heavy rains have passed. Water has pooled on the floorboards next to our bed, soaking the stack of books I keep planning to read. Peter is dreaming. I can tell by the way his eyelids twitch, by the length of his rough-saw breaths. I brush the hair off his forehead, kiss his cheek, his brow.
He stirs, shifts, his eyes crack open.
“Hey,” I whisper. “You’re here,” and cover his face in butterfly kisses.
“Morning, baby,” he says, swatting me away. “You going for your swim?”
“Why don’t you come with me? The pond will be warm after the rain.” I hold my breath, wait. Come with me. End this.
He rolls over, his back to me. “I promised Jack I’d take him into town at nine. Wake me up if I oversleep.”
I press my hand flat against the curve of his shoulder, splay my fingers wide. I like the way his freckles look inside the Vs my fingers make, like constellations of stars. I trace a heart with the tip of my finger across the wide plane of his back.
“I love you, too,” he mumbles from the tangle of sheets.
The early morning air is clammy. I wrap my mother’s old lavender bathrobe tight around me, stand in the doorway looking out. The surface of the pond is motionless, sheet glass, as if the storm never happened, the water lilies shuttered in their circadian sleep. A stillness, the world bathed in a blush of watermelon-pink. On the steps of our cabin I spy a single iridescent feather. I pick it up. Twirl it in my fingers by its sharp bony stem. Across the pond a figure stands. Waiting. Hoping. I can just make out his blue shirt.
The cabin step sags beneath me with a sigh, then springs back with a quiet thwang I’ve heard a thousand times before. This place—every wheeze, every grunt—is in my bones. The soft crunch of pine needles under my bare feet, the waft of minnows, the musk-fishy smell of wet sand and pond water. This house, built out of paper—tiny bits of shredded cardboard pressed together into something strong enough to withstand time, the difficult, lonely winters; always threatening to fall into ruin, yet still standing, year after year, when we return. This house, this place, knows all my secrets. I am in its bones, too.
I close my eyes and breathe in the everything-ness of it all. Jonas. Peter. Me. What it all could have been. What it could be. I take off my wedding ring, hold it in the palm of my hand, considering it, feeling the weight of it—its worn, eternal shape, its gold-ness. I squeeze it tight against my life line one final time before leaving it behind me on the top step and heading down the path to take my swim.
On the far side of the pond, an egg-yolk sun rises out of the dense tree line like a hot air balloon, slow, graceful. It hovers, suspended for a moment, before breaking free of its tethers—the break of dawn. In that instant, the smallest breeze shirrs the water, waking the pond for another day.