Today will be better. I have to believe that.
Even in the bright light of a new morning, however, I am hounded by last night.
Audra’s gun, the jarring blasts of the shots, the guttural groans of the moose, the sharp pain in my ankle, confronting Stone ‘Em Bog in such a grim way—all of it mixed into a bodily repugnance inside me as we drove away from the bog, and it stayed on to roost when we arrived back at her house. She had me settled on the couch, socks off, calf propped up on a pillow on top of her coffee table. While I chewed Tums, she took another look at my scraped hands and assured me the cuts were only superficial. She told me we were wound twins now, and she showed me the scar on her palm again. A broad smile spread across her face. I was not amused.
“And I think your ankle’s just sprained,” she reiterated as she held ice on it. “You were able to put some weight on it, obviously, getting back and forth to the car, so that’s a good sign.”
“It really hurts now,” I told her, voice hard.
“We’ll keep it iced and elevated and see how you are in the morning,” she said, unfazed.
I looked down at my swelling ankle with worry and disgust. Something about this—maybe my expression, maybe my overt concern—made Audra laugh.
“What’s so funny?” My voice bit with anger.
“Oh, nothing—what a night we’ve had.” She shook her head. “Leg injuries abound. I just hope I don’t have to do to you what I had to do to that moose.” And she’d started laughing again. The strong urge to recoil from her touch swelled within me, which is something I never expected to feel toward her.
After a while Audra had helped get me up into my room, and I felt only a dangerous, angry form of attraction to her then. The kind that could only manifest in hate-fucking, the kind that comes out of a seedling of fear. And I did feel fear. I realize that now, in the morning light. I feared her. Something about her. I felt like an old man, and like she was my nurse with far too much control. Annie Wilkes in Misery.
As I lay in bed last night, all I could think about was that gun.
I just hope I don’t have to do to you what I had to do to that moose. Ha Ha Ha.
The flash of the gun was the flash of the yellow ribbons in her apple tree, the flash of the lemon enamel birds on her ears. I had closed my eyes against it in some pathetic attempt to banish them, to fall asleep.
She never even said she was sorry. That stands out to me, too. There was no I’m so sorry, I should never have suggested we take that walk in the growing dark like that. On such rough terrain. I feel so bad. Oh, Max, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have driven through all those potholes. Shown you the gun in the glove box. Oh, Max. I could have worked with guilt. You know, there are a few things you could do to make me feel better, Audra. A lesser woman might have smiled sheepishly, bitten her lip, asked what she could do, that she would do whatever I wanted if I would only feel better. No, there was no apology in Audra, no pity. She went to her own room. We slept apart. She touched me as little as was necessary to get me set up for rest. And by then, that’s all I wanted to do anyway—rest—and I hated her for that, too. A bait and switch, all her fault.
Maybe it’s a test. Maybe that’s what it’s been all along, over this whole last year. One big fucking terrible test. But of what? For what?
Or maybe it’s just some standard-issue misfortune. Hard luck in the wildlands. If I take a breath and think for a second, it is likely the latter. Animals get hit by cars. People who live in remote areas often have guns. Walking on rugged terrain can result in injuries. So what that Audra literally lives in the place that is the epicenter of my longest-held secret? So what that there are goldenrod ribbons dangling from her tree? So what that she took me to the bog? So what that she shot an animal to death before my eyes? So what that I am here less than twenty-four hours and already injured? So what?
The images threaten to rise—weathered picnic tables, tin cups, papery-white skin, so much gold—I push them all back where I have kept them all this time. I shut my eyes against my own frenzy.
Keep it together, Max. Hold to the prayer, man. Hold it.
My mind conjures blue Misha’s silky, blond hair, red Francesca’s deep curls, purple Audra’s wild, auburn mane. In my grasp. Holding. Held.
Today will be better. It has to be. It can’t get much worse than yesterday.
I manage to get myself into the shower, taking my time, meditating under the hot water and trying to rinse away the negativity. Hold to the prayer, Max. The prayer still abides. I get out of the shower, testing my ankle—it chirps at me, bright, sharp, acid yellow in its clarity. I lean one way to dry myself then recover.
She’s probably right, it’s probably not broken. But it still fucking hurts.
I make my way downstairs to find Audra cooking us brunch. I see some of my favorites—poached eggs, French toast, black coffee. Maybe it’s a peace offering.
“Morning, professor.” She smiles from across the kitchen. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore, you know. But I’ll survive.” I pour myself some coffee and orange juice.
“Good. Because today is thesis day. Studio day.” She flips the toast in her frying pan. I stare into her taut back, the black tank top she’s wearing clingy and thin. She wears black leggings with it. Bare feet. “And I know you said you have some work to do—for school. I’ll make sure you have time to do what you need.”
“You’re the boss,” I reply, and I realize how true that is. I’m hundreds of miles from anything that has even the semblance of being mine. My apartment. My car. My office at the institute. The places I shop. The streets and routes I know backward and forward. This is Audra’s turf. Audra’s rules. I have no choice but to follow the leader. Usually I am the one calling the shots. “As it turns out, a professor’s weekend is often not much of a weekend at all, my dear.” I sigh, thinking of the letters of recommendation I have to write over the coming weeks and months, the independent studies I’m directing, the ever-present grading and prepping.
I start scrolling through the Boston Globe on my phone. Then I go to the institute faculty website to see if the department admin has updated my page with the news of my latest publication credit. It’s an essay in a collection about historical censorship in art coming out in the spring from the New York University Press. Not yet. I’ll have to nudge them. Again.
By the time we finish our late brunch—my mood much improved by the food and coffee and a cigarette or two out in the sunshine and bracing autumn chill—it’s nearly one in the afternoon. We’ve taken our time, luxuriating in the meal, in our conversation about the institute, her thesis project, my theories about what has made a successful thesis in past years, even some chatter about awards and recognitions and gallery showings I’ve achieved in the past. Audra is patient as I prattle on about myself, and then she opens up about her own process. It has fully brought me back to myself, back to why I’m so attracted to her in the first place.
“The idea is to harness these voices, women’s voices, in a chorus that reaches through time. Through these mixed-media collage pieces I’ve pulled together. A kind of chant or a siren song drawing the looker farther and farther into the world of the pieces, of the thesis, into its message and truth.” She taps the tines of her fork against her bottom lip, looking off into the distance as she tries to describe her work to me. Her mind. Her eye. Her talent. Electrifying, maddening, incredible. She blushes and laughs at herself gently. “That’s a lot of talk, I know. But that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ll show you this afternoon, and you can tell me if I’m even close.”
“If there was ever an artist I thought could pull off exactly what they imagined they could, it’s you.” I let my napkin fall onto my plate. I smile at her because there’s nothing else I can do. Smile, and wait for her genius to bludgeon me. “Alright,” I say, feeling full and somehow already sleepy again. “Let me go do my homework before I lose all motivation. And then studio. Thesis.” She smiles when I say homework.
“Feel free to use Pops’s office down the hall. Or your room. Wherever you’d like.”
“Thanks,” I tell her and head off. I climb the stairs on my pulsing ankle and grab my laptop, bring it back downstairs to her grandfather’s plush office. I close the door, and over the next two hours, I respond to the emails I’m most overdue in responding to; I proofread a grant proposal a few colleagues and I have put together on behalf of the department; I grade a few short response papers by a student from my Art & Critical Theory class. When I’m getting ready to shut it all down, I hear a new email ping through. I close my other windows and go back to my inbox.
TO: mdurant@biva.edu
FROM: thedevil@kingcity.me
SUBJECT: Hi, Moss
Everything seems to slow down. Tunnel down into one point of light. I can hear my heart in my ears, as if the rhythm lives there. My finger hovers over the track pad. I look down and see it’s shaking. My hand. My finger. It acts as if outside of me and clicks.
who are you drawing these days
who are you painting
A strangled yelp erupts in my throat, and I stand up so fast, the chair falls over behind me. The clatter it makes startles me again, my shoulders high and tense as a spooked cat. Then the room is still again. Just my breathing. The silent screen. I reread the words over and over again. It’s like worrying the shell of a scab. I read it and read it. It stings each time.
I force myself to look away from the screen. I inhale more than breathe.
I push my eyes onto objects around the room, struck with a creeping vertigo. The solid wood desk. I press my hand onto it. A photo of Audra and her grandfather on the sideboard. The window behind me. Sunlight. The nice Persian rug under my bare feet. I curl my toes into its fibers. I breathe in and smell furniture polish. I focus on these things, these real things I can touch and sense, like a dreamer wanting to banish away horror with a pinch.
Moss.
When I look down at the screen, the email is still there. I feel sick.
I slam the laptop down hard. Hard enough that, for a split second, I worry I may have broken it.
I stand up too fast and cry out when my ankle angrily protests, a hot spike driven in sideways. The bite of it is jagged and clarifying. My astonishment that became fear has now become anger.
Who did this to me? Who would do this to me? Who could do this to me?
I pace around the room like an animal, trying to get a hold of myself.
Maybe I didn’t see what I saw.
I did.
Maybe it doesn’t mean what it meant.
It does.
I lean against the desk and force myself to take three deep breaths.
I turn my gaze out the window. The light is pushing from clear and lemony into veiled and golden. This must be the light Audra was talking about yesterday. Our light for looking.
I glance over at my laptop and feel only terror. I can’t open it. Not now. Later. I’ll look at it again later. Maybe I didn’t see what I saw. The room feels too quiet now. The laptop too menacing. I flee the room.
Audra is on her couch, legs tucked up under her. She’s reading Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. She looks up at me, expectant, happy.
“Were you able to get—“
“The ankle,” I say by way of reintroduction, my voice terser than I want it to be; Audra is cut off. She looks sheepish. ”It kills.”
“Advil?” she offers. I nod. ”How about a drink?”
“How about several,” I say. I watch her get up to go fetch me these things. I stand in the living room, dazed.
Someone knows what I did. And someone knows that I’m back.