Joanna found Malcolm peering through the window of the nursery at a few babies, all wearing little hats and bundled up tightly like burritos. “Kind of cute, I guess,” she said.
Before speaking, she had watched him for a few moments. There he stood in the dim hallway, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. His hood was pulled up over his head, though it wasn’t cold at all in the hospital, especially not in the maternity ward. This, combined with his solemn expression, lent him the appearance of someone who didn’t belong there. If he wasn’t an excited new father or a doctor, what was he? A hooded infant enthusiast, a hospital loiterer, a baby snatcher? When he turned to her, his visitor nametag came into view. He’d printed his name in neat block letters. She smiled. So that was who he was.
He turned to her, surprised to hear her voice. When he saw her standing there beside him, every feature in his face fell, and for a moment Joanna thought her sister must have been mistaken about the reason he came—that he was simply being a good friend to Ted, checking up on his pregnant wife. Malcolm took a hand from his pocket and grazed Joanna’s cheek with his fingers. He lifted her hand and examined her torn cuff, the scrape on her wrist.
How terrible she must look—her hair a matted mess, bags under her eyes. His arms opened and she fell into them. He pressed his body into hers gently, as if she were breakable. Closing her eyes and hiding her face in his neck, she held on to him until he let go.
His voice came out sounding hoarse. “Listen, your dad said I should take you back to his place.”
“Okay,” she said.
Her dad’s house felt cold, the air still. They entered the kitchen through the garage, using the key hidden behind a fencepost outside. When she flipped on the light, the dining table came into focus. It was set for a party, with pastel pink and blue streamers strung through the chandelier. “We should put this food away,” Joanna said, picking up a platter of mini quiches, now glossy and congealed.
Malcolm took the plate from her and set it back down on the table. “It’s late. You should get some sleep.”
Too tired to argue, she shuffled down the hall to the room Linda had set up for her and Laura, with matching twin beds covered in scratchy store-bought quilts. Malcolm followed her and set her suitcase on the nearest bed. Then he slipped away. Her last shred of energy went into changing her clothes, brushing her teeth. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, a sharp laugh burst out of her, foam bubbled from her lips. She looked rabid, deranged. Heavy-lidded, dinged and scratched. Like an abandoned car at the side of the road, stripped of parts and left to rust. She spit into the sink, then rinsed. Her stepmother always kept piles of fluffy washcloths, folded precisely, on the étagère above the toilet. She pressed a dry washcloth to her face. It smelled comforting, like detergent and dust. After washing her face and brushing her hair, she assessed herself in the mirror again. Better.
She took the bed at the far end of the room, under the window. Her head sunk into the pillow, softer than she was used to. Malcolm appeared at the doorway a few minutes later, his body backlit by the light in the hall. “All settled in?”
She tried to turn up the corners of her mouth, though it was too dark for him to notice. “Yes,” she answered. It sounded formal.
“Good.” His silhouette hovered outside the frame of the door; then the door inched closed, slowly. He was being careful with her, she realized. No sudden movements or noises.
“Malcolm?” The light from the doorway widened, a sliver. “You’re not leaving me here, are you?” She had a sudden childish fear of staying in here by herself, in this big house, coyotes howling in the hills above.
She heard him exhale softly. “No. Sh-h. Go to sleep.” The door closed with a muted click. “Thanks,” she murmured to the sound of his footsteps down the hall. A part of her had hoped he’d feel sorry enough for her, in this tender state, to sleep next to her. But aside from the initial hug, he had kept a careful distance from her.
The next morning she woke up, unaware of how long she’d slept. Her head was pounding. There was no clock in the room. The glare of the sun didn’t help—the days blazed bright from dawn until sunset here. The twin bed on the other side of the room hadn’t been slept in—the patterned covers still smooth, pillows piled against the headboard just so. Inexplicably, her heart picked up, although it was broad daylight, and there was no need to fear being alone in an empty house.
She crept down the hall, peeking into the other bedrooms, all of which appeared undisturbed. Her sister, she knew, had spent the night in the hospital. Her father and Linda must have stayed there too, slouched in waiting room chairs.
“Dad?” her voice echoed out into the living room. The dining table had been cleared, the food and dishes put away. “Malcolm?”
At the kitchen sink, she filled a mug with water and set it in the microwave to cook. No tea kettles and teapots in this household. At least the tea would disguise the mineral taste of Reno’s water. She peered out the window at the backyard, half hoping to find everyone there, gathered out in the bright cold. The patio furniture still wore its protective covers from the snow and chill of winter.
The door into the kitchen creaked open. Joanna jumped.
“Sorry,” Malcolm said, entering the kitchen.
“Where were you? Where did you sleep?”
Malcolm ignored her questions. “Everyone is over at your mom’s place now. Ted came in early this morning—he’ll probably crash all day. Laura’s there, too. She’s fine; they let her check out this morning.”
Joanna let her head nod, taking it all in. “Wow,” she said. “Great.”
“So if you get dressed, I’ll take you over there.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll probably take off right after that, though. I’ve got to get going.”
She studied his face. He was regarding her politely, as if she were a stranger stopped on the side of the road in need of assistance and he was doing the right thing by giving her a lift across town to the nearest service station.
“Where are you going?” She hadn’t expected him to be leaving her so quickly, before they’d even had a chance to talk, to sort anything out. She couldn’t stand it; she took in a quick breath to stave off tears. If she had just a few moments with him, or a day, at least, she could fix this.
“Back to Portland.”
“Portland?” She tried to make her voice come out neutral. Maybe he meant he needed to go there to fetch his things, scoop her out and leave her empty, the way she’d been before he’d moved in. She’d have to start over again. Live in a barren house or buy furniture. Both prospects sounded equally dire.
He nodded. “I finished up that last job a few weeks ago. I don’t know—I’m probably going to start my own company. Furniture commissions, built-ins, things like that.”
“Wow.” She smiled into her teacup. She hadn’t taken a sip, but she set the mug down on the counter. “Okay, give me fifteen minutes.” Her headache had disappeared; she felt fine. Better than ever.
In the room, she threw her clothes into her suitcase without folding them. Then she plucked everything out again, furiously, realizing she needed something to wear besides pajamas. She debated whether to shower or not. Yes, she definitely should shower. She cranked the plastic dial as far as it would go. The water was too hot. Blistering. The scratch on her wrist, now bordered by a dark purple bruise, stung. She didn’t care. She liked it; she wanted to be scalded clean.
Hair still wet but brushed, cheeks flushed from the heat of the shower, she ventured down the hall, suitcase in hand. She found Malcolm outside in the driveway, rearranging the contents in the back of his car. She set her suitcase down at Malcolm’s feet. “Ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“You look better.” He frowned at her suitcase. “I think your dad and Linda wanted you to stay the night here. Especially now that Ted and Laura—”
“I don’t want to stay here,” Joanna said. Malcolm shrugged with a suit-yourself gesture. “I’m going with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to go home. Back to Portland.”
“But you just got here. And you were in an accident—”
“I know. But I’m fine. Just a little achy is all. And I was here over Christmas. I came to keep Laura company, and now her husband is here so I’m no longer needed.”
“That’s not true.”
“Come on. Don’t make me ride back up with the two of them. I couldn’t take it.” Malcolm’s head shook slowly, back and forth. “Come on,” she said again. “Hey, it’s spring break! We don’t even have to go home right away! We could go camping!”
“Camping?”
“Yes!”
“But we don’t have any equipment. And it’s March.”
Joanna ran into the garage through the side door and banged her hand against a switch. The garage door grunted and screeched its way up, revealing stacks of cardboard boxes, outdoor furniture, tools, sporting equipment, and—yes—camping gear.
“We can borrow everything we could possibly need from my dad!” Joanna ran over to a shelf, took down two sleeping bags, tossed them into Malcolm’s car, and darted back inside. What would they need? A propane stove? A tent? Backpacks with aluminum frames? Water purifiers?
“Joanna—” Malcolm stood to the side while she filled every remaining space in his hatchback.
After a few trips into the garage and back, she ran into the kitchen for provisions, emerging with a gallon bucket of mixed nuts and two jumbo bags of dried fruit. They could live off this for a few days, she figured. “I think we’re ready.”
Finally he relented. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll take you with me if you call your parents and let them know.” She clapped her hands. “But we’re not camping.”
Joanna settled herself in the passenger seat and fastened her seat belt. They had ten hours, at least, to patch their friendship back together, piece by piece. Even longer if she could talk him into camping.
She slept a good part of the drive; she was exhausted, still shaky from the accident. They didn’t talk much, but she felt like it was a companionable silence, not an awkward one. Progress, she thought. They didn’t stop for lunch—just ate salted nuts straight from the plastic jug as they retraced the journey Joanna had taken the day before. Already it seemed like a lifetime ago.
They exchanged very few words. When they passed through a town, he asked if she needed to pull over. And when she put her hand to her head, he asked if she was feeling okay. No, no, she would say. She didn’t need a thing.
Her shout interrupted the cozy calm. “Stop! Turn around!”
Malcolm slammed his foot on the brake. “What?”
“We have to go back there.”
She made him turn around and stop at a restaurant on the side of the highway, nestled under pine trees. It was nothing more than a log cabin set up like a diner inside, with a few tables and a long counter. She’d been there with her dad once, when they were driving back from Portland after dropping Laura off at college. It was exactly as she remembered it, with a rotating glass case stocked with every flavor of pie imaginable. Joanna and Malcolm ordered four different kinds, washed down the blackberry and chocolate and banana and Dutch apple with cups of coffee. If only we could live on pie and coffee and salted nuts, Joanna mused. And Malcolm had smiled at her.
When they got back in the car the mood felt lighter, easier. “Since when are you so into camping?” he asked as they ventured back onto the highway.
She hesitated before answering, wanting to get it right. She had a few hazy memories of the whole family camping together, all snuggled up in sleeping bags in a big green tent. Hot chocolate on cold mornings, swimming in mountain streams. After the divorce they’d gone on trips with just their dad, then their dad and whatever woman he was seeing at the time, and then, eventually, Linda. Camping had lost its charms by then. It might have had something to do with adolescence—the indignity of finding a place to squat in the woods, scraping hard ground with a rock to make a suitable toilet. Smelling like a campfire, covered in a layer of dust, she’d spent those trips reading novels on a dirty canvas chair.
But if she admitted her history with camping, he’d never agree to it. And here is what she needed—she needed him to agree to it. It all hinged on his agreeing to it. She didn’t know why, exactly. The plan had arrived to her, fully formed, in her father’s driveway. Take him camping. That was it, the whole plan, but she knew it would work.
“I do like camping,” she said cautiously. “I just haven’t gone in a long time. Since I was a kid.”
“Well, if you knew anything about camping you’d know not to do it this time of year. We’ll go in the summer. You don’t want to die out there.”
“Sounds like you’re a real camping expert.”
“Somewhat.” He was smiling, but his eyes stayed on the road ahead.
“You went to art school. How much of an outdoorsman could you be? You wouldn’t last a day in the wild.”
He laughed and looked over at her. This was good. Engaging in ridiculous conversations. “And I suppose you would.”
“Sure,” she said. “If I had to. I’ve read Alive. I can identify ten kinds of edible mushrooms.”
“Sounds like a plan. So you’ll live on dead bodies and fungus.”
“At least I have a plan. You wouldn’t last a day out there.”
“I could last two weeks.”
Joanna regarded Malcolm. “Go on,” she said.
“It was this survival camp my parents sent me to one summer.”
“Survival camp? You went to something called ‘survival camp’? And you survived?”
“Two weeks. In the wild, as you say.”
“And how did I not know this about you?”
He shrugged. She spent the next twenty minutes grilling him. What did he eat? Where did he sleep? What did he do all day, by himself, a teenage boy wandering around the San Bernardino mountains, fending off grizzlies with a chiseled stick? “I just never saw you as the survival type. Two weeks, by yourself!”
“Okay. So maybe I didn’t make it for the entire two weeks.”
“Aha!”
“Maybe it was more like four days.”
“Well, still. You were a kid.”
“And maybe I wasn’t entirely alone. They had guides tracking us, keeping an eye on us.”
“This is making more sense now.” Her eyelids began to feel heavy. She pressed her thumb in the middle of her forehead, trying to make her headache go away.
“Take another ibuprofen,” he said. “Try to sleep if you want. It will help.”
Her eyes closed. Malcolm had said “we”—we’ll go camping in the summer. They’d never spent a summer together. He was gone for two years, and last summer they were barely speaking. If they were friends again in time for summer, he could build things in the garage while she gardened out back. At the end of a perfect July day, they could sit out on the porch swing (Malcolm could build them one), drink raspberry lemonade from raspberries she would plant along the fence. Garnished with some wild mint she would gather from the easements. Back and forth, they would swing, waiting for night to fall….
Her eyes opened when she felt the car pull to a stop. They were in a forest, with gigantic narrow pines towering above them. If she studied her surroundings hard enough, she could figure out where they were. It was better not knowing—how far from Reno, how close to home. The sun had already sunk below the horizon, but the sky was glowing, still infused with light. She sat up.
“Bathroom break,” Malcolm said, getting out of the car.
Joanna shook herself awake and stepped out onto the pavement. She shivered and took in a huge breath, that intoxicating smell of evergreens. She could gulp the air down, it was so clean. It forced every slumbering part of her awake. Her stomach was empty, and her muscles ached, but she was alive, the edges of everything crystal clear.
Malcolm found her waiting for him in the covered area between the men’s and women’s restrooms. “Hey,” she said, “are we going to camp here?”
“Here? Joanna, it’s a rest stop, not a camp ground.” He walked back toward the car, and she reluctantly followed.
“So?”
“So we’re not camping here.” They stopped at the car.
“Please. It’s perfect!”
“We’ll get buried by snow in the night. They won’t find us until July.”
“Come on. It’s not that cold. Burrow under a pile of leaves like you did at survival camp. Rub two sticks together and make a fire. Or just use a sleeping bag.” She hit the back of the car. “Open up.”
He shook his head, but then unlocked the back of the car. “We can stay here for a few minutes. Then we have to get back on the road.”
“Okay,” Joanna said, happy to have won a fraction of the argument. She found a sleeping bag, unfurled it, and presented it to Malcolm. “Bundle up.”
They walked down a narrow path behind the restrooms, into the forest. Malcolm wore the unzipped sleeping bag like a shawl around his shoulders.
Silently, they approached a picnic table in a small clearing. They sat side by side on the tabletop, their feet on the bench. Joanna gazed up into the darkening sky, glowing like blue glass, somehow dark and bright at the same time. It was so beautiful she couldn’t speak. She looked over at Malcolm and his face was turned up, too. She nestled closer to him.
He looked down at her, then reached his arm around her, enfolding her in the sleeping bag. This was all she really wanted, to feel his body warm against hers and look out at the sky. They sat there like that for quite some time without saying anything. She couldn’t tell if ten minutes or an hour went by. As the light faded the stars popped out, one by one. Maybe this was it, the resolution she had been looking for. They had muddled through different stages of their relationship to arrive at this, a silent communion.
He seemed to sense her looking at him and turned to her. It was now so dark, she could see him only because he was right there, inches away. His expression unsettled her. She closed her eyes, then leaned in and brushed her lips against his. They barely made contact, but her stomach dropped. She froze, waiting for his reaction. She thought she heard him exhale. He pressed his forehead to hers, and they sat like that for a minute before he seemed to make a decision. He pulled her in, roughly, and kissed her.
Joanna kissed him back. She grabbed onto the front of his shirt to bring him in and the sleeping bag slipped off his shoulders, collapsing onto the table in a heap. So this was exactly what needed to happen. This was her whole plan, even if she hadn’t realized it back in Reno. She simply needed to show him how much they needed each other. Then they could go back to Portland and live happily ever after. He could start his business, she’d do something. Go back to work, start that gardening show—something. She’d figure that out later. Whatever it was, they’d be together. They’d have their friendship or their romance or whatever he wanted her to call it.
So she kissed him back, hard, and soon she was reaching down to unbutton his jeans. His hands were under her shirt; she felt the pressure of them on her back.
She was fumbling with his zipper when he stopped her. She had known he would push her away a second before he did. It happened quickly. One second they were all tangled up in each other, the next there was a foot of space between them.
She was surprised to hear anger in his voice. For a minute all she could hear was their breathing, fast and jagged.
She couldn’t look at him. Instead she focused on the picnic table. She ran her hands over the splintered wood, carved with the initials of all the travelers who had stopped before them. Her dad used to sleep on rest stop picnic tables when he traveled; he said they always provided a perfectly flat surface.
“Seriously,” Malcolm said. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Say what?”
“Tell me what you want.”
She knew what he wanted to hear. She opened her mouth to tell him. It would be easy. It should be easy.
Malcolm rushed in before she could say anything, his voice low and modulated. “And don’t tell me we’re just friends. I swear if I hear you say one more time—Let me tell you something, Joanna: we were never ‘friends.’”
“Of course we were friends,” she snapped. Suddenly she was angry, too. “We still are friends. Or we could be. You’re the one—”
Malcolm cut her off. “We made out within hours of meeting each other. You couldn’t keep your hands off me—”
“We were better than friends!” Joanna yelled. Her voice had nowhere to go. It rang out and disappeared into the woods. “Why can’t you get that? Why doesn’t anyone get that? So what did you want—you wanted to play house? You wanted to be boyfriend-girlfriend?”
Malcolm exploded. He jumped off the table, stomped around in the dirt. “Is that really such a bizarre idea? We lived together. Slept together. Why is that such a fucking stretch?!”
She took a deep breath in attempt to regulate her voice. “You want to know why?” Her hands began to tremble. She balled them into fists. “You left me. You slept with me, then you left me. The very next day.”
Malcolm took a step toward her, then stopped. “I should have known you’d hold that over my head. God, what do I have to do to make it up to you?”
“Apologizing might be a good place to start.”
“Listen, I’m sorry, Joanna. I’ve always been sorry. That should be pretty clear by now.”
“And you never even explained it.”
“I tried—”
“Just tell me why you did it. Why you left.” She held her breath, waiting for him to answer.
Malcolm ran his hands through his hair. “What do you want me to say? I wanted to be with you. I did. I freaked out. It killed me that it happened like that. I mean, you were crying about Nate. Drunk.”
“I knew what I was getting into.”
“You were wasted. Inconsolable.”
“But I wanted you,” Joanna said. Almost under her breath she added, “You have to know that.”
“Well, you have to admit, my timing sucked. I could barely face you the next morning. So I left.”
“Well, luckily you found Nina to make it all better.”
“God Joanna, I know I screwed everything up, but how long are you going to make me pay for it? We’re obviously in love with each other, but you want to go around being ‘just friends.’”
Her heart stopped for a moment. She tried to speak, but he wouldn’t let her.
“What do you want from me? I made your breakfast every morning, fixed up your entire house, built you that bench hut you wanted so much. What next? How long do you expect me to keep this up, for our precious friendship?”
Her throat constricted. It was difficult for her to gauge her own reaction to everything he had said, but she chose to focus on just the last part. That, she could manage. “Malcolm, we’ve been over this. I didn’t—don’t—want to lose you again, is that so difficult for you to understand? I didn’t want to ruin it.”
He came up to her. In the darkness, she could barely make out the features of his face, just inches away from hers. She felt heat come off of him when he spoke. “It’s ruined,” he said. “You ruined it.”
She reached up to him and succeeded in grasping the edge of his sweater. The fabric slipped out of her fingers.
Malcolm swiped the sleeping bag from the table. Its nylon fibers brushed over her as it snapped through the air. And then he was gone. She heard some rustling, his feet crunching over pine needles, and then it was quiet.
It was so dark out Joanna couldn’t see anything. The sky gaped above her, black and endless, glittering with stars. No moon. He had left her to survive on her own—or die trying. She put her hands out, feeling for the table underneath her. The trees swayed overhead, hundreds of feet above her, creaking in the wind. It threw her off-balance. If she left the table, she’d fall into nothingness. She was so unused to this darkness.
She took in a few deliberate, deep breaths, filling her lungs with the crisp forest air. Then, before she lost her courage, she stepped off the bench. Her hands stayed on the table; it would anchor her. Her eyes could not focus—only look up to see the sky. Where the stars ended, the tops of the trees began, cutouts that melted into the ground where she stood.
“Malcolm?” she called out. She craned her neck, listening for an answer. She couldn’t hear anything. A cold breeze picked up and the trees shuddered and groaned.
She was shaking now. “Malcolm!” she shouted as loud as she could. Then she took her hands from the table. It was like stepping into space. Above she could see the stars, but all around was nothing. She had no idea how to move forward, but she didn’t reach back for the table. She didn’t need the table anymore. She would survive out here on her own if she had to, fling herself into the great unknown. If she never found him she would be devastated, of course, but she’d get by. She’d be like that kid in My Side of the Mountain, live in a hollowed out tree, wear underwear made from rabbit hides.
But she would rather not. She could make it out here if she had to—she’d read enough survival stories by now—but she would rather not. She lurched forward, waving her hands in front of her. “Malcolm?” She wasn’t yelling now. She said his name softly. “Malcolm!”
She took another step, less shaky this time, and then she crashed right into him. He was standing not four feet from the table, waiting for her. Her whole body unraveled, trembled with relief. “I thought you’d left me out here to die.”
She heard him sigh, and then she felt his hand on her face. “You wouldn’t die.”
“Right. I’d subsist on trail mix.”
Malcolm didn’t laugh. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he wasn’t even smiling. She felt him press his lips to her forehead. Then his hand dropped away from her cheek.
“Malcolm.” She paused. “You asked me what I want.”
“Joanna—”
She needed to say it. Quickly, before she lost her nerve. “I want you. That’s what I want. I want to un-ruin it—us. I think we can. I think it’s possible.”
He didn’t answer, but she could hear him breathing.
Slowly, she pulled him in by the edges of the sleeping bag, still draped around his shoulders. She’d bring him back. He would fold his arms around her, wrap the two of them up in a fabric cocoon. They’d fall to the ground, sleep like that on a bed of pine needles, live off each other’s warmth, hibernate under the snow. They could survive out there. She knew they could.
