“So, gang—what did you think of Old Gus’s annual scavenger hunt?” I look around at Moss, Zephyr, Ash, Barley, Trillium, Coral, and Mantis. I hear grumbles. I see scowls or the sheepish rolling of eyes. We’re sitting around a campfire in an idyllic clearing deep in the uninhabited part of the Lupine Valley property. Coral’s pick. She showed us this spot, which sits about halfway between the Lupine Valley Village and the lake, with such pride the first time she brought us all down here. She was beaming, veritably twirling around the clearing as she pointed out the arcing birch trees and scattered boulders left behind from when Ice Age glaciers dragged, melted, and scored the earth. She asked us if we thought it was beautiful. We told her we did. She asked us didn’t we think it would be a great place to paint, sketch, carve—make art of any kind? We told her we did. And this seemed to make her so happy, to have that genuine approval, to be giving something so beautiful to us.
Right now the clearing is crowded with wild, jumping shadows in the firelight. Dusk is falling, and we are back to our core group, away from the other artists and instructors we’ve spent the better part of the day with. I get the sense that most of the group prefers it this way, just us. I’m always saying how much like a family we feel. Mantis always jokes that we’re more of a cult.
“Oh, come on,” Trillium says. “It wasn’t that bad! I thought it was kind of fun. And clever, too—asking us to focus on our senses, which are so important to our art. See a spider web. Smell a blooming flower. Touch a muddy rock. Hear splashing water.” She nudges Moss genially, who shakes his head like a true grouch.
“Wasn’t a big fan of my partner,” Moss jabs.
“Toad is a nice person.” I sigh, tired of his day-long pout. “And thank you, Trill. Bless you, Trill,” I say, appreciative, exasperated, trying to hold on to the positivity. “Gus only puts one together for the summer session, so you should really all consider yourselves lucky.”
“What I’m taking from this is only come in fall or winter. Got it,” Barley jokes as he lets his stick-skewered marshmallow brown over the flames.
“Sticks. In. The. Mud.” Trillium points at each of them in turn. I look around at the group, all of whom are animated with begrudging smiles except for Coral and Mantis. Who did not participate in the scavenger hunt. Staff usually doesn’t.
I am stilled when I look at Coral as she sits hunched and small, apart from the rest of us just a little. Blank. Everyone else is sitting right next to at least one other person. But Coral is a small island, alone on the forest floor. She looks…miserable. But at least she’s up and about. It had taken some real doing to get her to come with us for even this little get-together. I wasn’t sure she would. She could barely muster the will to join Mantis on the front steps of Focus earlier to watch the scavenger hunt unfold.
When I went to Focus to gather Moss for the day’s activities early this morning, Coral was in his bed, fast asleep, in layers of clothing and blankets. Her little oval face had looked spectral hanging in the relative dark of his cabin. It seemed like Moss had been awake for a while. Wired, hair disheveled. When I looked over his shoulder, the painting on his easel was of a woman. Dark shades of maroon, ochre, brown. Drooped. Deflated. Her face a wash of tear tracks. I was struck by how good it was, despite my horror. He grudgingly let me in when he saw the concern in my face.
“She’s in one of her bad ways,” Moss whispered to me as we hovered over the bed. “She’s usually fine, you know. But she gets like this sometimes.” He shrugged. “She drove out here at, like, three this morning.”
“Is she hurt?” I whispered, brimming with worry. I’d never seen her like this. Most of the time Coral is a busy-brained hummingbird, intense in her cleaning work, intense in her art, intense in her revelry with us, teeth and beer bottles gleaming in the summer sun.
“No, nothing like that. Just—sad.” I looked over at his easel then at the messy bunches of paper and canvases on his desk. Fractions of Coral visible. “She just came here and cried and went to sleep.” Moss looked at her intensely as she rested. I studied my friend, thinking about him painting her in these moments that had clearly been so full of difficulty. The canvas was clearly her, evocative of her even though there was something …ghastly and mashed about it. I didn’t know how to feel. But I did have to concede, it was striking.
When it was time to leave for the scavenger hunt, Coral was awake but not talking. She just looked at us with tired, empty eyes. Tracking back and forth slowly between the two of us. It had been startling for me. Then Mantis arrived and took over. Told us to get on with our stupid fucking game. Moss and I checked in on her throughout the day, tried to get her to have some water or eat some crackers. She just shook her head no. I tried. Moss tried. Mantis tried.
At the end of the day, she and Mantis were still sitting outside on the front steps of Focus, Coral looking out of it, Mantis looking stony. We convinced her to come hang with us. We told her she could even pick the spot. And so here we are.
“I had a nice time, too,” Zephyr admits. I swallow and look away from Coral, catch eyes with Zephyr. She smiles at me slyly. We were, fortuitously, paired together by the luck of the draw. Out of the view of others, while I worried over a scavenger item, she kissed me down by the lake. I’d looked at her, stunned at my luck, grateful that she was not the coward I am. And then kissing was about all we did the rest of the afternoon.
“And Barley, you’re such a liar.” Trillium laughs, pulling her curly hair up in a bun. ”You were loving ticking the little boxes off! I saw you dragging your poor partner all over creation, for Christ’s sake.” She snorts, which gets almost all of us laughing. Coral even smiles a little.
“Fine, fine.” Barley holds his hands up in defeat.
We soon start talking about our various painting projects, and Mantis, clearly bored, gets up to gather some more downed brush for the fire. I keep an eye on Coral, and relief floods me as the artsy chatter seems to bring her back into herself bit by bit. Twenty minutes in, she still looks tired, but her eyes are alert, and she’s leaning in toward the circle as everyone talks through their progress.
“And Coral,” I say, “what about you?” Mantis grows still at the fire’s edge, only his hands breaking small branches in half and tossing them into the pit. He’s listening. Intently. Moss looks at Coral gently but with concentration. If she speaks now, it would be the first time all day. Coral blushes under the group’s gaze. She swallows then clears her throat. We wait for several long moments, and I worry she isn’t going to speak after all.
“Well, I—I wouldn’t say that I have a project, exactly.” Her low voice sounds scratchy, like smoked cardboard. Less than confident. But still, I feel like I can breathe again when I hear it.
“Sure you do,” Moss encourages her. ”You’ve organically been circling around birds. Drawings of birds. Sketches of birds.”
“Birds are fantastic subjects,” Ash affirms, jumping in quickly to try to help. Coral looks strengthened by their words. She has a small twig in her hands and is gently tracing the top of her foot with it.
“Oh, well—then, yeah. I—I’ve been drawing a lot of birds.” She nods, lifting her eyes to us and then dropping them again. “Pencil and charcoal mostly.”
“Blackbirds. Crows. Lots of dark-shaded birds, right, Cor?” Moss says. She nods. “She’s a real natural and can draw on anything, with anything. And wings—I would say the wings—”
“Yes, with a special focus on the wings,” Coral picks up the thread gratefully, her voice slow and methodical, like someone relearning how to hold a conversation. “Very…fine-tuned things, wings. So, I’m…playing with the idea of, like—what do you call them? Schematics. Engineering schematics in some of them.” She swallows, a dreaminess to her voice. “While still working to—to show the delicate natural textures. Moss has been helping me so much.” She smiles over at him, her eyes lifting with confidence to his. Moss smiles back an earnest, unjaded, unironic smile. Rare for him.
“We have fun in old Focus,” he says. I think of the state of her this morning, the types of drawings that fill Focus as we speak, and I feel a stone in my stomach. “Coral will bring these great big sketch pads—thick—like portfolio size, but she’ll also bring small little notebooks, like the kind you see detectives in movies carry around—” Moss is energized.
“Yeah, so I’ll bring those, big and small—” Coral is beginning to get her feet under her, which is heartening.
“And I also got her a Moleskine to sketch in,” Moss cuts her off.
“Right, and the Moleskine, which I love.” She picks up the Moleskine from her lap and presses it to her chest. “So I have all of these different paper surfaces I’ve been working with. All of these different types of pencils—“
“I keep telling her that a person has to try various tools,” Moss breaks in, steamrolling her. I watch Mantis’s eyes flash to him, supremely irked, the last of his twigs snapped and out of his hands. “Various qualities. You never know how it will impact your output.” Coral shrivels a little beneath his magnetism, just sits back and listens. Nods. “And with the Moleskine, I just let her know that’s a classic. A classic. Those little books can make anyone feel professional. Just carry around one of those, write in it from time to time, and watch—“
“Take a fucking breath, Bark. She can speak for herself,” Mantis snaps, cutting the clearing down to silence. His eyes bore down into Moss’s skull. Trillium looks around the group nervously. Moss’s face betrays fear for a split second, but then he regains himself.
“I know that. Bug.” Moss’s voice is defiant, venomous.
“Call me that again, you pencil-dicked twerp.” Mantis bounds up to Moss in a flash, that old athleticism exploding to the fore. Moss flinches from his seat down on the ground, as if preparing for a blow.
“Guys—“ I start to say, springing to my feet. Moss’s jaw tenses, but he says nothing. Neither of them moves. We all hang in tense suspension.
“He’s just helping me explain, that’s all,” Coral says, rising to her feet and coming to stand between them, her voice gentle but wary. She places a hand lightly against Mantis’s chest, her eyes searching his face for a way to diffuse this. Then she looks down at Moss, who doesn’t look back at her. His face is locked in an embarrassed snarl.
“It’s okay to stand up for yourself, you know,” Mantis hollers at her. She flinches and looks down into the dirt. I flinch, too, not expecting the sharpness to turn her way. “Don’t let this asshole speak for you. You don’t need that much help explaining yourself.” He looks down on her. “Do you hear me?” Coral swallows and nods. ”Speak,” he commands her. Coral bites her lip, her neck and cheeks red with embarrassment. The discomfort in the air is suffocating.
“I hear you,” she finally says, lifting her eyes. Her voice betrays no fear. Just agitation. A desire to end this scene. I look at Moss, who stays silent. Seemingly relieved Mantis is no longer yelling at him. ”Come,” Coral says, holding out her hand to Mantis, beginning to walk toward the edge of the clearing. Mantis drags his eyes away from Moss and follows her, putting his hand in hers at a delay. I look at the two of them—Mantis and Coral—and sense a deep and abiding kinship between them, despite his outburst. The way she offered her hand. The way he accepted it and followed her, without a word. And of course they would feel this quiet closeness; they grew up in the same small town. Have overlapping friend and family circles. Went to the same schools. They know each other in a way none of us could ever know them.
We watch as she takes him just beyond the sphere of light cast by the fire. They look like mere silhouettes. Paper dolls in the night.
She has her arms wrapped around her slim body for warmth, looking like a curled blade of dry grass. He is standing over her, bearlike at this distance, so she tilts her head back to look up at him. I watch their bodies shift positions around each other like magnets simultaneously attracting and repelling. I watch Mantis place a hand on Coral’s shoulder, slide it to the side of her arm. I watch Coral move her body toward his just the littlest bit. There’s a kitten. There’s a wolf.
“What do you think is up with them?” Moss’s words startle me—he’s suddenly sitting right beside me on the downed log we dragged over when we first arrived. I was so focused on watching the Mantis-Coral shadow box that I didn’t realize Moss had made his way to me. Ash is getting up to stretch his legs. I watch Trillium and Barley pop up to go join him. Soon they are standing in a little triangle whispering among themselves at the far side of the clearing. Zephyr is tending the fire. Moss draws his knees up and rests his arms on them. I keep watching the two bodies in the forest, darkness on top of darkness. The heady smell of smoke threads through my hair. Once in a while, one of their voices pokes through on the wind, but I can’t make out any words.
“I dunno,” I respond, and that’s the truth. “They know each other, though. From town. They’re…close, maybe. Friends, anyway,” I say, not totally able to read their dynamic either. But there’s something. Something. “He’s protective of her, I think. He doesn’t completely trust us, our intentions with her, or something.”
Maybe it’s the outsider status. While they pass in and out of Lupine Valley daily, back and forth from home to camp, camp to home, living their larger lives and dealing with people besides us, the rest of us stay put in King City. Wake here, work here, learn here, eat here, shit here, fuck here, sleep here, and do it all again. It’s a closed system. Coral and Mantis are our free radicals. I imagine there’s a bond in that, too.
“It’s his ego. He’s insecure. He doesn’t believe any of the people who pay to be here could actually be friends with the people who get paid to be here. It’s very, like, reverse-classist, really,” Moss says.
“Well, maybe he has a point. We all come and go. They stay.”
“Coral doesn’t want to stay,” Moss says.
“Maybe Mantis didn’t either. Yet here he is,” I reply. Silence falls between us. “Do you. You know.” I sniff, my nose suddenly runny. “Like her.”
“I don’t know yet.” He pushes his hand back though his black mop of hair. “But I do need her.” He sighs.
I feel a frown tugging at my face. Before I can try to understand, Coral and Mantis return to the campfire. Coral sits next to Mantis, rubbing his back in encouragement.
“Uh, so, Mantis would just like to say he is sorry for his… outburst,” Coral says, a tight, faint smile on her face. She looks down at him and waits for him to continue, and I can tell she’s nervous that he won’t. She leans down and whispers something in his ear. He sighs heavily.
“Been a long day.” Mantis sounds like an oak log. “Watching grown adults play kiddie games doesn’t do a lot for me.” His eyes peer around at us all, hard; I feel shamed. “And Coral wasn’t feeling well all day…” He shakes his head, kneading the back of his neck. ”And she’s just so talented in her own right. And smart. Just wanted her voice to be heard,” he says, looking into the fire. “So, I apologize, Moss.” He looks across at Moss, who’s still sitting next to me. Moss gives him a nod. “And I apologize, C. I got cranky with you, and I shouldn’t have.”
“I appreciate that,” Coral says and gives him a side hug.
Things settle down and get back to normal from there, Barley entertaining us with stories from the world of dopey college co-eds, and Trillium capturing our imaginations with lush descriptions of her life in Puerto Rico. We let the fire die way down as we continue to talk, all of us leaning against each other in fatigue by night’s end.
“Time to go, kiddos,” Mantis tells us when even our conversations have burned out. He gets up and dampens the remaining ember ashes with the gallon jug of water he brought, turning over the soil with a sharp branch. We all rise to our feet, creaky and ready for bed. But we still have the mile trek back through the woods to our cabins. I walk with Moss and Zephyr. Coral walks beside Mantis. Trillium, Ash, and Barley walk in their own little group. Our disparate flashlight beams bob and scatter in the trees, as if the light itself is breaking apart.
I went into Greenville today to re-up on supplies at the Dirigo Hill Trading Post and the local art supply shop, a well-stocked but overpriced boutique place called Maker. I offered to pick up supplies for my painting posse if they gave me cash up front, and everyone was more than happy to let me be the Sherpa for the hour-and-a-quarter trek each way. I felt half pack mule, half soccer mom, just trying to remember and haul everything my charges might need.
Ash needed a bar of soap, nail clippers, and four canvases. Moss needed scissors for cutting his hair, trail mix, wine, and some indanthrone blue. Barley needed toothpaste, pencils, and canned soup. Zephyr needed a travel sewing kit and more 4” by 4” tiles for her project. I also bought her a bouquet of flowers because I’m pretty sure we’re a thing now. When I asked Trillium what she wanted, she simply turned her light-brown lookers on me and said she had everything she could ever need. Her cabin looked bare. Austere. Well, then.
I get back at around three o’clock and deliver everyone’s items to their cabins, though Ash is the only one actually home at the time to receive me. He thanks me profusely but clearly wants me to leave. He’s lying on his bed with his forearm thrown over his eyes. He sighs. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s all terribly dramatic. So I wish him the best, tell him he can seek me out any time to talk, and leave him to his sulking. I get to Perspective and see Zephyr’s left a note on her door letting everyone know she’s down knitting with Hillock in her cabin. I leave her things and a sweet note paired with the flowers on the tidy desk. Barley’s cabin is also empty, but the door is left ajar, propped open by a boot. I surmise he’s airing it out—it smells strongly like he spilled some oil from his lantern. I leave his things just inside his door. Moss’s cabin is empty, no note, door closed, but I get the sense he hasn’t gone far: his paints are out and open. I set his stuff on the bed, since his desk is awash in paper and socks.
I decide to wait, now done with my delivery service, to see if he wants to take a walk with me. Maybe out to the Ledge. While I wait, I stroll the few paces around the cabin and look at the painting on his easel. It’s a striking swipe of a thing done in bright, cheery colors, mostly yellows, a woman’s form ecstatically and vibrantly tangled in its lines and arcs. I can’t know for sure, but I know it anyhow, because I know him. It’s Coral. It’s arresting, compelling to look at. Better than anything he did before I got here in May. Not great, but very strong indeed. I go to his desk and flip through some of the sketches and paintings there to find more iterations of Coral. There are dozens. Most of them not so bright and cheery as the one up on the easel, and yet most of them even better in quality than the one displayed. In these, a darkness and brokenness haunt every line, every stroke. A cold shiver permeates my body. I set down the sheets of paper and back away, wondering how often this lovely, birdlike girl gets in one of her bad ways.
I wait another minute or two for him then leave, impatient to stretch my legs, impatient to get away from the versions of Coral with her dead doll’s eyes, where her mouth seems open in an agonized wail. I assure myself that it doesn’t mean she necessarily modeled for him in distress, just that she as a subject is fruitful for him. That he can envision her in many states. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s none of my business anyway.
* * *
I take a looping arc toward the Ledge, everything feeling warm and pliable and yielding: the air, the earth, the trees. A few birds chirp and trill and hop between high branches far above, the pines creaking in their slow, gentle sway. Fifteen minutes on, the forest begins to thin and open, a hard-packed trail winding up and to the left, revealing itself. As I take the familiar path past bare, wind-weathered trunks, the view out over the Ledge rises before me. But there’s something else, too. Or, I should say, someone else.
Two of them. Embracing lovingly, kissing deeply. I halt to turn and leave them to it, but my step crunches some small stones as I do. The woman turns to look, but the man looks only at her, entranced, his eyes soft and loving. It’s Coral. And someone I don’t recognize; a man of about her age—nineteen? twenty?—with shaggy, brown hair tucked inside a blaze-orange beanie that reads Bouchard Timber Outfit.
“Hey, June,” Coral calls. She looks happy to see me. Solid and assured in the man’s arms.
“Hey, there, C,” I reply, forging my way toward them; no sense turning away now.
“This is June. Or, well, Juniper,” Coral says, hugging into the young man’s side as I make it the last several yards. ”She is one of the instructor-mentors here, in painting.” I come up and shake his hand.
“Juniper, huh? Real name, or Lupine Valley name?” He smiles warmly.
“Lupine Valley name,” I reply with a laugh.
“What it means to be baptized twice.” Coral’s lips curl into a sleepy smile. “June, this is Brady—my boyfriend.” I try not to let surprise reach my face. But all I can think about are the numerous times I’ve watched her leaving Moss’s cabin—flushed and alive, only occasionally cold-eyed and scraped bare. Or the numerous times I’ve seen her and Mantis off on their own, some unreadable tempest between them. I feel suddenly very warm. Exposed. Coral manages to seem at ease in her body, despite her vaguely harried eyes. As if everything I know about how she spends her time is mine alone to shoulder. I wonder if Brady knows how much time she spends alone with Moss, with Mantis. I wonder if she tells him Moss paints her ceaselessly. I wonder if she tells him that Mantis hovers with her always. But something tells me he doesn’t know. His face is too wide-open. He has the look of a high school sweetheart.
“So tell me the story.” I smile. “How did you two meet?”
“In school. Probably really started getting to know each other sophomore year,” Brady says, looking down at Coral for reassurance. She nods. “Been together ever since. Football player, artsy girl. Match made in heaven, right?” He smiles.
“Oh, football—so you must know Mantis?” I ask him.
“He does,” Coral replies. “Brady and Mantis are friends. That’s how I got to know Mantis—through Brady.” Coral shoves her hands in her jeans pockets.
“Mantis,” Brady scoffs good-naturedly, shakes his head a little. “He hates that—you know that, right?” Coral just shrugs.
“Oh, so you all are pals,” I say, pointing vaguely in the air.
“Yeah, kinda.” Brady rubs the back of his neck, looking uncertain. “He was one of the volunteer assistant coaches for football when I was on the team in high school.”
“Brady was the quarterback,” Coral tells me with some pride. ”Mantis was a defensive lineman, in his day.”
“He was…an interesting character. A little too much of a wild man for me.” Brady’s chuckle is tinged with weariness.
“Brady thinks Mantis is a dick,” Coral says simply, her long hair fluttering in the mild breeze. Her fingers comb through the strands, running over and through some snarls.
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, surprised at her candor. I look between the two, not sure what else to say.
“Yeah. You get to know a guy,” Brady says. ”Parties with the whole football team, girls who don’t know any better, him kind of wanting to show off. Relive his glory days.” Brady shakes his head. “Anyway, we don’t pal around so much anymore.” He looks down at Coral. “Try to keep our distance, right, Cindy?” He hugs her closer to his side, tight, and kisses her on top of the head. Her eyes flash to me for a split second, mischief in her face.
“That’s right,” she says. An awkward silence falls. Brady, like Mantis, is a big guy. Football players. I think of bookends, Brady and Mantis. Little Coral being held between them.
“Cindy?” My brain jumpstarts, looking to Coral for confirmation, grasping on to this piece of information hungrily.
“Cynthia.” She nods.
“I prefer Cindy myself, but I can let her have her fun. Let her come out to the willy-wags and traipse around with you artist types. Part of the job, I guess. But thank god you go home to the real world at the end of the day, right?” Brady runs his hand up and down her arm, voice jolly. Coral’s face strains.
“What’s so real about the world out there?” I ask him, wanting to stand up for us but also wanting to make sure it comes off as playful. I think it does.
“People…can pretend to be whoever they want to be out here,” he says, very serious. “Like their pasts don’t matter. But they do.” He nods then looks down at Coral. “Gus likes to give people second chances. Sometimes to people who don’t deserve them.” He strokes Coral’s arm again. ”Besides—I’d get the life beat outta me if I went in to work asking to be called Boomerang or something.” He laughs, shrugs.
“That’s a problem with out there,” I say. “Not Lupine Valley.”
“Maybe so, maybe so.” He nods politely.
“And what do you do, Brady?” I ask. He points to his hat.
“Work for Bouchard Timber Outfit. Brady Bouchard, at your service,” he says. “We supply wood to lumberyards. It’s my dad’s business.” He stands up straighter. I take in his flannel shirt and plain, forgettable handsomeness.
“You’re out of an L.L. Bean catalog,” I say.
“He’s even got the Bean boots.” Coral gestures down at his feet.
“Well, shit,” I say, looking down at the rubber-toed duck boots, and Brady smiles.
“Anyway—we were just about to head out,” Coral says, her eyes locking with mine. ”I’ll see you around, okay, June?”
“Absolutely,” I tell her.
“Maybe I can sneak into one of your cohort powwows this week?” she asks hopefully, a small smile creeping onto her lips. A genuine one. She comes to almost all of them now, our painting group gatherings. We both know there’s no sneaking about it and no need to ask permission. She’s one of us now. Which makes me wonder if Brady doesn’t understand the extent of her involvement with us. Which makes me worry that it would be a problem for her if he did.
“Sure, we’ll see what we can do.” I nod, playing along.
“Nice to meet you, Juniper,” Brady says to me, sincere enough. “You, too,” I reply. As they head off down the trail, Coral turns around to look at me for a moment, but I can’t read her expression. Maybe I never could. Soon, they disappear, hand in hand, and I am alone. I take a breath.
Why has Coral never mentioned Brady?
Why doesn’t Brady like Mantis?
I need to talk to Moss.
I walk up onto the Ledge, gathering myself, the wind pulling higher the more exposed I get. The endless sea of green forest and slender stripes of road beyond and beneath me are spread out like a child’s playset. The great puddle Moosehead Lake makes down below has me feeling bigger than big. Smaller than small.
I turn to go a few minutes later, the clouds and sky starting to rapidly darken toward gray, and pass Lovers’ Tree, emblazoned with rough, archaic initials. I look for a C+B or a B+C but don’t find them.
* * *
“Yeah, of course I know. They’ve been dating for, like, two or three years,” Moss says to me, totally unfazed, bored almost as he wolfs down his stew. He’s sitting cross-legged on top of his desk. I’m sitting on the edge of his bed with my own bowl of cooling supper. Rain is pelting against the windows, the outside steel gray but for the glowing windows of other cabins in the distance.
“You knew Coral had a boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Named Brady Bouchard?”
“Yes,” he says, mouth full, flipping through some used sketch paper under his thigh. I’m deflated.
“Damn—I really thought I was bringing some good intel, here,” I admit.
“I totally appreciate you,” he says, tipping the bowl against his lips and draining the last of his stew, wiping his face with his wrist. He puts the bowl down beside him on the desk. “But—yeah. We talk about everything. She tells me everything, Junie. It’s like—wild. Her family, her school days, her past. Like, did you know she has manic depression?” He looks elated. Astonished. I have never seen Moss so into something. Like he’s telling me the trading card stats of his favorite baseball player. My appetite has left me.
“I mean…I sensed something was up the day of the scavenger hunt. But—I didn’t know know,” I say, pushing the stew around in my bowl.
“She tried slitting her fucking wrists in November. This past November.” His eyes sparkle. He thrusts his own wrists out toward me and slashes a finger across each in turn. ”Think of how much blood there must have been. Think of how, even after she felt the pain on her first wrist, she kept going on her second!”
“Jesus, Moss.” I wince, holding my hand up as if to say easy. I think of the snowy, papery skin under the cuffs of her sweater. It’s fragile enough as it is.
“Yeah, dude. Brady and her parents were, like, down the hall. Having a grand old time, a lovely dinner, licking each other’s assholes for all I know.” He laughs. “Meanwhile, she’s over in the bathroom, doing that. Ruining her mom’s towels.” The image makes me queasy. His ease with all of it makes me queasy. I set my bowl down on the wood-plank floor. “And there’s more where that came from.”
I can feel my brow is creased. I press my hands between my knees and look down into the floor. It’s so hot in here. It’s always so goddamned hot in here.
“There is?” I ask him. ”More?” He nods solemnly.
“She’s been through a lot. Put herself through a lot,” he says. “She tells me about it.”
“But she doesn’t still…you know. Hurt herself?” I ask, wondering if it’s something I’ll have to go to Gus about. Moss hesitates.
“No,” he says, pushing his bowl around on his desk. “Not so much anymore. She’s got a whole regimen. Therapy. Pills.” I swallow and nod, feeling relieved. “She doesn’t like the pills too much.” He laughs gently. His eyes wander to a stack of sketches and paintings on his desk.
“But if they help.” I shrug.
“Right,” he says, pinching his lip between his fingers, looking down at the floor. ”But stuff like that only helps in a certain way, you know? They don’t just fix a person. And not everything—not everybody—needs to be fixed. But anyway, she’s okay, Junie. She has peaks and valleys, she told me. But she knows how to cope and deal with it. She’s been dealing with it for a long time. Trust me.”
I nod, breathe in deeply through my nose. Beautiful, brilliant Rita fills my mind. My ex doesn’t believe in much, but she sure as hell believes in modern medicine. She was always really open about how grateful she was for the little white antidepressant tablets she took every day.
But that’s Rita. I guess Moss would know better than me how Coral is. “In other news: Brady does not seem to like Mantis.”
“Who does?” Moss replies, dismissive.
“Brady, like, purposefully keeps his distance, though. And I think he’d prefer it if Coral did, too.” His eyes flick to me, suddenly invested again.
“Oh, yeah?” he asks. I nod. ”Interesting,” he murmurs.
Silence settles between us. We’re lost in our own thoughts.
“Are you okay?” I ask after a while. ”You look tense.”
“I’m fine.” He waves me off. He’s biting his thumbnail.
“You’re sure?”
He looks at me like his square, fretting older sister who just doesn’t get it. He shakes his head and sighs, smiling just the littlest bit. He unfolds himself off the top of his desk and stretches.
“Gonna eat that stew or what?”
I look down at it. It’s starting to congeal. I shake my head no, a little nauseous. He ruffles my hair as he walks past and takes the bowl for himself, unaffected. Ravenous.
The distance from our two large canoes to shore is probably about a quarter mile. Zephyr is sitting in the middle seat between me and Mantis, cradling a boom box that’s screaming out X-Ray Spex across the water. Mantis is on one paddle, I’m on the other. We’re in the canoe closer to Kress Beach, the sandy bit of shoreline that’s part of the thirty-acre Lupine Valley property. No one is on shore even though the temperatures have finally started to climb. It’s far enough away from the village—a mile and a half through the woods—that students venture down on only the hottest days of the year. Mantis had said, This place is wasted on you people, and so we wanted to show him it wasn’t. So we’re here. Well, not all of us. Trillium, Ash, and Barley are on a side quest of their own to Quebec City. Gone for a few days.
Coral and Moss trail behind us by fifteen or twenty yards, each of them with a paddle. They’ve been bickering for the last five minutes, their voices echoey and indistinct on the water, sometimes totally smudged out by the boom box just in front of me. Each time I turn my head back to look at them, it’s like a new frame in a comic strip:
Coral trying to direct Moss on the paddle.
Moss snapping at her as they begin turning their canoe in a circle.
Moss crossing his arms over his chest huffily when she tells him he’s not doing it right.
Coral half standing in the canoe as she tries to reach for his paddle, frustrated.
Moss on his paddle again, but sullen and silent.
All of this underscored by Poly Styrene’s deeply English voice shouting about bondage.
Eventually we’re all settled into our paddling rhythms, heading nowhere in particular. Mantis gestures and narrates points of interest around the lake. An eagle’s nest. The rough site of the largest fish he’s ever caught. A few minutes later, I look behind us and see that Coral and Moss have fallen way behind. They’re not even paddling. They’re talking. A good half football field away from us.
“I’ve got to keep my eye on the prize here, Zeph. But do some spying for me.” I smile. “What is going on in the mighty vessel behind us?” Zephyr turns herself completely around on the middle bench so she’s facing me in the stern, her eyes looking over my shoulder.
“They’re not even moving.” She chuckles, her nose stud glinting in the sunlight. ”They’re…talking. They look mad, maybe?” I see Mantis in the prow turn to look over his shoulder for a moment, trying to see what Zephyr is seeing. “Yes, they look mad. I think they’re arguing.”
“About the canoe, you think? I don’t think Moss is exactly the outdoorsy type,” I say. Zephyr’s face squints, relaxes, smiles, then grows more serious, and I can tell she’s watching something nasty unfold between Moss and Coral. Then, as if on cue, I can hear the faint, angry lilt of explosive voices over the water, but I can’t make out what’s being said. Zephyr turns off the boom box, sets it down by her feet. Mantis stops paddling and turns around. So do I.
They’re yelling at each other—Moss’s face emanating something savage, Coral’s face reflecting hurt. Their voices are raised, their arms gesticulating. Then Coral stands up and points down at Moss.
A silence.
Moss barks, furious, but doesn’t dare stand up in the canoe with her.
“Cindy!” Mantis calls. I turn forward to see his hands cupped around his mouth, his face pissed. I rotate back to look at Coral and Moss, but they don’t seem to have registered Mantis. They’re back to screaming at each other, their bodies on fire.
“Cindy! Everything alright back there?” Mantis shouts again, getting antsy, our canoe rocking as he shifts inside it. I brace my arms on the sides, almost dropping my paddle. I grab it and pull it inside with us. Suddenly, a silence has fallen over the lake. I turn to look back once more.
Coral is still and quiet, her arms at her sides, staring Moss dead in the eyes. The fight out of her. Moss is coiled like an animal ready to strike. His lips move, speaking in a lower voice that we cannot hear.
Coral goes slack. A cornstalk gone to seed. Pale, gray yellow. Leaning.
And then I realize she really is leaning. Too far. She’s falling backward. Letting herself fall backward. My mouth opens to cry out, but no sound comes, all the muscles in my body seizing. Zephyr lets out a little shriek. Mantis lurches in the canoe.
Coral falls over the side of the canoe into the water, arms spread out like a child trying to make a snow angel. The splash is barely audible from where we are. Moss’s face is wide open in shock. He clutches the canoe as it rocks wildly from her departure. She floats on her back in the wake of the canoe like Ophelia for several long moments. And then she goes under. The flutter of her pale hair is the last thing we see.
“Cindy!” Mantis cries, paddle digging desperately into the water, turning us around at a painfully slow rate. I finally come to my senses and take up my paddle and begin to help him, the cold water slapping up at us. I look out over the blue-green ripples beside Moss and his canoe and don’t see her. Moss peers over the edge of the canoe but does not jump in after her. He doesn’t even reach his arm down into the depths so that he might try to grasp some trailing piece of her clothing.
A terrible thought crosses my mind. Did he push her?
I shake it away. No. I would have seen that. I would have seen his hand on her. We were looking. We were all looking. Why would I think that? The questions ball in my throat, but I cannot speak them. Mantis and I paddle, all of us oddly silent in the shock of it, in our mission to get back to Coral, the canoe. Moss is still looking over the edge.
“Do you see her?” Mantis shouts to him. ”Do you see her, Moss?”
Moss lifts his head, as if waking from a dream. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t shake his head or nod his head or duck his head in any way that indicates anything.
“Moss, you son of a bitch!” Mantis shouts, and it’s furious now, not just panicked. ”Get in there! Get the fuck in there! Do you see her?”
My heart is racing, my arms on fire. The lake looks so still all around Moss’s boat. Around Moss. Still, baffled, alone.
And then she breaches. Coral. Her head pops up maybe ten yards away from the canoe Moss sits in. She gasps, her arms grappling with the surface of the lake, sopping and heavy in her gray hoodie.
“Jesus, fuck,” Mantis breathes, a new kind of vigor in his paddling.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Zephyr’s voice is shaky. Coral seems to gather herself as we draw ever nearer, her arms treading water in wide circles. She looks at Moss in his boat. Then at us approaching. She looks tired. She keeps looking between the two canoes—Moss near but unmoving. Mantis closing in but furious.
Between the devil and the deep, blue sea. The line springs to mind, unbidden.
She seems to sigh. As if disappointed. As if exhausted. Her eye tics.
She closes her eyes, and her lips.
She lets her arms go still, and she begins to sink.
She doesn’t fight it.
She slides back beneath the surface of the water.
“What the hell is she doing?” An acidic edge of panic is buried in Zephyr’s cry.
“Coral, we’re coming for you!” I call out, useless, pathetic. She can’t hear me under there. I think of her heavy clothes, her Bean boots, so like Brady’s. She doesn’t appear; there’s barely a trace of her. Just the bubbles percolating on the surface above her. I keep paddling. Mantis is stripping off his boots.
“When I get out, get this canoe up alongside the other one. Having both together will stabilize things better for when we get back in.” I nod at Mantis and then he’s over the side of the canoe, almost taking us with him. Zephyr and I hold on for dear life as the canoe struggles to find its equilibrium. Zephyr takes up Mantis’s paddle, and we make our way over the final fifteen or twenty yards to Moss, who just sits, dumbstruck.
Mantis dives under. Zephyr clutches my hand, on the edge of tears. My eyes scan the ripples madly, and phantom shapes reveal themselves, not one of them Mantis or Coral.
It must only be seconds that pass—long, eerie seconds—but it feels like an eternity before their water-warped shapes start to billow and bloat toward the surface, pale skin and dark clothes conjuring something not quite human. They breach in a frantic spray, gasping, arms flailing. Mantis shakes Coral to rouse her, slams his hand against her back hard as she chokes out water. I extend my paddle out to them, and Mantis grabs it immediately, holding on to Coral, and I pull them in. He instructs us on how to balance and brace the neighboring canoes so they can get in. He tells Zephyr to get in with Moss, voice gruff, breaths straining. He pushes and I pull Coral’s rag doll body inside. Then I help him in. They both sprawl awkwardly in the bottom of the canoe, drenched, at my feet. Coral’s chest is heaving, her eyes lightly closed, her skin a sickly white. But she’s alive and breathing. Mantis leaves his forearm draped over his eyes for a few moments, catching his breath.
“Moss—you little—fuck!” he gasps. “What is—the matter with you?” Mantis tears his arm away from his face and pushes himself up in the canoe to sit, his bulk jostling us again. Moss looks truly cowed for the first time since I’ve known him.
“I’m not a great swimmer—“ Moss tries, but the line and his voice are feeble.
“You would have let her die, you shit.” Mantis’s face is cragged in fury, eyes scorching. “You understand that, Cindy? He would have let you fucking die.” He glares at Coral now, but she’s looking unwaveringly into the sky from the floor of the canoe, detached, removed, heaving. “How stupid can you be? I mean, truly?” He digs a finger into his ear and flicks some water out.
“Why don’t we go easy—“ My words are shaky, my heart in my throat.
“Go easy? Go easy?” Mantis barks. “She’s been pulling this shit for years!” His voice echoes around us. I swallow, silenced. “I’ve gone easy, that’s what you all don’t understand. This whole fucking town has, and look who is still fucking here, driving me fucking crazy. Isn’t that right, Cindy?” His eyes fall back on her sprawled, sopping form. I can’t tell if some of the droplets on her face are tears now; her eyes look pink. “If you’re going to do it, then just get it fucking over with, because I can’t—“ He shakes his head, fuming. Voice clipped. “You don’t die without my say-so, got it?” Silence settles on all of us, bound tautly together in our congealed fear and shock at what just happened.
“Alright—maybe we should—“ I start, anxious to diffuse Mantis and get us to shore in one piece. Mantis’s eyes clear as if he realizes what he just said, and they ping across our expressions, Cindy’s blank face. Something releases in him, the tension loosing into something wrung out.
“She’s the only person on the planet who can get me so worked the fuck up. Shit.” Mantis runs his hands up and down his face. Zephyr and I look at each other worriedly. “Look—I’m sorry, C. I’m sorry. You just scared me so much. And I care about you so much. I didn’t mean it at all, I’m sorry.” He’s looking off into the water as he speaks, as if unable to bear looking at her. Coral says nothing.
“Why don’t we just focus on getting back to the beach?” Zephyr says now, her voice managing to sound both authoritative and calm.
“Yeah, why don’t we,” Mantis rumbles, taking up a paddle from beside Coral’s body, almost accidentally hitting her with it. She’s still looking straight up into the sky, which is soft and gentle as blue hydrangea. I turn to Moss and see he’s looking at her. His face chalky and still.
Twenty or so minutes later, we’ve made it to Kress Beach and Mantis has started a fire on its shore. Coral’s down to her underwear, bra, and camisole, standing right next to the flames. Almost too close. So close, I’m afraid a stray ember will land on her thin, birch-like arms or her wing-like clavicles and singe holes right into the very center of her. That one ember is all it would take. I’m shaken looking at her. Bruised color blooms on her naked legs, prints her upper arms, a map of pain. I have never seen so much of her body before.
“What’s with all the bruises, Cor?” Zephyr asks her, as if we are processing the visual in tandem. Alarm etches my love’s face, but she keeps her voice calm and level. Mantis and I are wringing Coral’s clothes out and hanging them on rocks and pieces of driftwood near the fire to dry. My eyes skitter between my work and Coral, heart thudding in my chest.
“Aren’t the colors something?” Coral says hazily, almost lovingly, like she has worked so hard, like they are achievements. Mantis strips down to his boxers, wringing and setting out his own clothes alongside Coral’s. His chest is broad and strong. His arms and legs thick as tree limbs.
“Those look pretty tough, honey. How did you get them?” Zephyr’s question is a gentle press, a light touch. But Coral is looking up into the sky again, then out onto the water, then up into the boughs of the trees farther up the shoreline.
“Oh, little of this, little of that. I just bruise easily,” she says, voice quiet and disjointed. Unconcerned. Silence falls over the group. Mantis looks at her with agitation, hands on his hips.
“I didn’t push her,” Moss says, his voice steady. “I know that’s what you’re all fucking thinking,” he says, defensive. He runs his hand through his hair once, twice, three times. I look at Mantis, whose face has turned hard. Coral giggles, shivering despite her proximity to the fire, despite the June warmth. We all look at her.
“Of course you didn’t,” she says, looking deep into the flames.
“Are you sure, Cindy?” Mantis asks, looking like he wants to kill Moss. Mantis moves toward her, and Coral tucks herself into his side, her cheek against his rib cage.
“More sure than sure,” she says dreamily.
“Why didn’t you help her?” Mantis’s jaw is set, his eyes burning into Moss.
“I froze,” Moss replies, maddeningly placid and guiltless. Neither Zephyr nor I know what to say. I swallow. I can tell that Mantis would like to snap Moss’s skinny little neck.
“You’re a cowardly piece of shit,” Mantis growls.
“Don’t fight now, boys. Not on such a day of celebration.” Coral’s eyes are unfocused on the fire. She sounds…disconnected. Not like herself. We all look at her, noting the strangeness in her voice. Then she starts to laugh. But then the laugh fades into a woeful sob—as if the two emotions are linked, one and the same. She slaps her hands over her eyes and then grinds the heels of her palms into the sockets. We’re all silent. Scared. At least I am. This is a Coral I have not seen before. Not even on scavenger hunt day. “He didn’t push me,” Coral reiterates, almost angry, pulling her hands from her eyes and wrapping her arms around her body for warmth. ”He wouldn’t do that.”
“Did you lose your balance?” Zephyr asks, ever the optimist, standing close to my side.
“No,” Coral replies simply. “Felt like it might’ve been okay to drown just then.” I look over at Mantis, who does not seem surprised at or alarmed by this statement, but I am. I look over at Moss. A strange expression has overtaken his face. Wide-eyed fascination. I think of what Moss told me about Coral in his cabin almost two weeks ago. About how she’d cut her wrists back in November. How she had a tendency toward self-harm. Was even suicidal. Moss had been astonished by it. Almost enlivened by it. I look at her collarbone above the sagging line of her damp camisole. The delicate skin stretched there. I feel the urge to pull her into a hug, pull her away from the fire.
“You two were fighting,” Zephyr says. Mantis is focused on Coral now like a laser beam.
“Oh, sure,” she replies, her inscrutable face breaking into a giggle that passes away as quickly as it erupted. Almost a shudder. ”That’ll happen. I fight with everyone, don’t I?” The muscles in her face tic once more. “With you,” she says, gesturing to Mantis. “With Moss. With Brady.” A flicker of something like mischief is in her eye. Or is it terror? Glee? Panic? I feel so inexplicably nervous, I can’t stand to speak. I cannot read her. Her face, her voice, her mannerisms are mingling into a mixed-up language I cannot understand.
Mantis’s face reveals nothing.
“Get out the beer and all that,” Coral says, her hand extending toward the fire, farther and farther, so close to the flames that I almost scream. “We must have a toast to celebrate.”
“What the hell are you talking about, C?” Mantis’s voice is almost pleading. “Are you alright? I mean, truly? Are you okay?”
She giggles, her fingers close enough to the fire that the heat must be excruciating.
“Coral—“ I breathe, stepping forward, terror in my chest, about to snatch her away bodily from the flames.
“I’m pregnant,” she says, drawing her hand back suddenly, pressing the hot fingers to her chest, balling her hand into a fist.
Pregnant?
Zephyr sits down at this, on a driftwood log, as if unable to stand any longer. Maybe, like me, Zephyr is unable to completely process the dissonance of the two salient points before us: Coral is a woman who tried to drown herself in this lake only minutes ago. Coral is a woman who would like, now, to toast to her pregnancy.
“Are—are you fucking with us?” Mantis breathes, looking shaken, licking his lips.
“No,” Coral replies, earnest. “It’s true. And growing.”
Mantis runs his hand back over his buzzed skull and turns away toward the water. I look to Moss like he might be able to anchor me somehow, but his expression only further unmoors me. He looks pissed. His arms are crossed in front of his chest. I think of how close he and Coral have gotten, and I think of Brady. It occurs to me that Moss must be jealous. Of Brady. Of this claim on her that Brady now has. I look over at Coral and wonder if she’ll even stay on at Lupine Valley. I wonder if this is also what’s bothering Moss. What will he do with his little muse gone?
“And you—are, are we happy about this?” Zephyr asks delicately. Coral smiles at Zephyr, those pale, harried eyes looking so tired to me now—then she laughs. And once more, her laughs bleed into sobs.
“We’re so happy!” she cries, shivering. And it’s like she’s drowning in thin air.
* * *
Her Dark Things by Audra Colfax Piece
#4: Look What It Can Do
Oil and mixed media on canvas. 24″ x 12″.
[Close-up of a fat, round apple in nuanced and complicated shades of dusky red and pink. Found objects incorporated throughout by layering.]
Note on Lisa Frank stationery found in a purple-and-pink caboodle in Cindy Dunn’s bedroom-closet crawl space in the Dunn residence.
The Dunn girl is pregnant
unmarried
and PREGNANT
just out of high school
what a shame
Brady convinced me to keep it
—June88. CD.
Note on Lisa Frank stationery found in a purple-and-pink caboodle in Cindy Dunn’s bedroom-closet crawl space in the Dunn residence.
It’s like the two things
were living in separate WORLDS before
the world where I was going off to
school in August
where I was working on my art fine art
my fine art
and the world where I would be having a BABY
in the middle of the school year
that RIPPED OPEN place inside me, that new one
the tar pit
is bubbling and OOZING and I feel like I am
burning up from the inside out like I want to JUMP
out of a moving car
off a cliff
into the ocean
into nothingness
what a shame
BRADY convinced me to keep it
—June88. CD.
Note on yellow legal paper folded and found in Nightwood by Djuna Barnes on a bookshelf in the den of the Dunn residence.
Look at what LIFE can do mom said
with a marveling
contented sigh
she looks at my
she looks at the
GOLDEN DOVE
at my throat
peace peace peace be with me
I think of
the CUTS I just
made in the skin of my
upper arms
with a STEAK KNIFE
from the butcher block
she and dad got for me and
Brady since now we moved in
together
for the BABY
the cut skin that
touches my ribs
yeah
look
what it
can do
—June88. CD.
Drawing on water-stained sketchbook paper found in a clear, yellow, plastic trinket box in a birdhouse on Lupine Valley property. [A large, sprawling crow or raven, feathers minutely rendered across its wide, robust chest. The black of its perfect, intricate feathers is deep, rich. Its expansive wings spread across the entire width of the sheet of paper, which is given a grid effect by its fold lines. Charcoal pencil.]
—June88. CD.
Note on torn scratch paper found in a seventh-grade report card belonging to Cindy Dunn in the Dunn residence.
BRADY told my therapist that I have been
“obsessively”
reading my college ACCEPTANCE packet
that it is making me worse
MAKING me depressed
that he’d like to take it from me, burn it
I drew Brady a picture a picture just a little picture to show a show
and tell
ILLUSTRATIVE
after the most recent appointment I told him
he could
frame it like a real SWEETIE PIE
he looked at me like I was
disgusting
it is called MAMA & BABY
Note on coffee-stained graph paper found folded inside a 1988 edition of the Farmer’s Almanac inside the Dunn residence.
I showed M
in his little cabin
at Lupine Valley
my new drawing Mama & Baby
he thought it was hilarious he
laughed at me and he also said
it was really good that I had gotten it
just right
that it was perfect and true
don’t I feel better he asked
and would I let him
draw me
he asked
with my face all tired and sad like that
and with my hands clenched up in fists like that
and with the tears on my cheeks like that
and the cuts on my ribs like that
in the glow of my old brown enamel lantern
with the Bar Harbor
sticker
and I said
yes
but when I showed M out behind the mess hall
when I showed M the cuts on my ribs like that
he just looked at me like I might be
a monster he said
this is an abomination
he said what is wrong with you
—July88. CD.
Drawing on ripped loose-leaf paper found folded inside a volume of poems by Nikki Giovanni in the den of the Dunn residence.
[Pencil sketch of a thin, tired fox lying curled up prettily, fur coat rendered so finely, she looks three-dimensional. There is a baby fox, a kit, eating its way out of the mother fox, its nose and sharp little teeth pressing up and out from under her rib cage through the soft belly. The face of the precious kit is covered in slick gore. The precious kit is very healthy.]
Title: Mama & Baby.