Fellow Mortals: A Novel Page 17

  Ava says, “You’ll have to wait. I want to shower. I’m disgusting.”

  “No, you look great. But sure, go ahead. I don’t mean to rush you. You want me to start boiling the water?”

  “Leave it,” Ava says. “Can you towel up the pee?”

  “Wing peed? Where?”

  “Never mind,” she says, reaching for the cleaner under the sink. “Why don’t you watch the grill. I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

  “Take your time,” Henry says, frowning at the food, struggling to identify the part he got wrong.

  She sprinkles powder on the rug and goes upstairs, where she shuts and locks the door in case Henry and Wing decide to follow her up and loiter. But she really is relieved he had a good day back. She should have left a note and hurried back to greet him, but he’s obviously fine, even happy that she went.

  She strips out of her clothes and sets the T-shirt aside so it doesn’t get lost amid the other dirty laundry. Then she showers and a day’s worth of forest rinses clean, drawing out the color in her face and arms and making her hair feel womanly again. She towels off and gets her bag, looking for the brush, and there’s a folded piece of paper hidden in the bottom.

  It’s a handwritten note (“Sorry. Thanks. —S”) wrapped around a pair of twenty-dollar bills: money for the shirt she ruined with his blood. She folds it back up and slips it into her purse, and then she roots around the corners of her underwear drawer, digging out the bathing suit she hasn’t worn since the previous summer. It’s wrinkly and a horrid shade of red, almost fuchsia, but she tries it on in front of the door-length mirror, smoothing at her tummy, tugging at the straps to elevate her boobs and twisting round to see … no, absolutely not. She takes it off and puts it away. She’ll have to buy another. This time of year there’s a good chance of clearance and the Walmart is open well before nine. She can stop along the way, hurry in, and try one on. Something cute, maybe blue. She even has the money.

  20

  Billy hears a car pull up, rare for this hour on a dead-end street, and goes to the window thinking it might be Sheri. He’s in his boxers when he looks outside and sees a woman—Ava Cooper—walking from the street like she’s heading for the beach. She’s wearing sandals and a cover-up, semitransparent, over a powder-blue bathing suit and shorts. But there’s style to her hair, enough to show some effort, and she doesn’t look around like a stranger dropping in. Henry’s back at work—Peg told him all about it—so she must be here alone. She must have been invited.

  Billy presses on the screen, memorizing everything, especially when she passes and he sees her from behind. She walks around the trailer and continues into the trees and then she’s gone, swallowed up by the darkness of the leaves. Maybe Sam’s getting even. Maybe Ava got bored. He draws the blinds and takes his boxers off, actually in pain until he stretches on the bed and works it out. It’s not enough.

  He showers for the first time in two or three days. He combs his hair and splashes aftershave in several different places, anywhere his heat will activate the scent. The laundry isn’t done but one of his polo shirts smells clean enough to wear, so he puts it on with jeans, adds a belt, and laces up his work boots.

  He walks out back and heads toward the trail, cringing from the sun until he’s made it to the cover of the trees. All he means to do is ramble out and say hello, and how can Sam resent it when he’s talked to everyone else—everyone but him, who’s tried to let him be. Ava will appreciate his neighborly concern. She’ll offer him a soda and encourage him to stay. And if he comes upon the two of them together like he thinks, he can’t be held responsible for anything he sees.

  He steps as carefully as possible to minimize the noise. They might have wandered off at any point along the way; the trail could lead to nothing but the ATV. Whenever there’s a gap, Billy listens more attentively, studying the ground and peering into the trees. Once he hears a bird that might have been her laugh, and when he stops to look around, turning three or four times, he can’t remember which direction he was going when he stopped. He feels ridiculous and stupid getting lost on the trail, but then he seems to get his bearings and continues on his way. He’s preoccupied with checking to the right and to the left, and he’s amazed to look ahead and see a cabin in the sun.

  How could nobody have known? Maybe everybody did know. Maybe he’s the only person no one bothered telling. He’s astonished by the thought that Henry helped him build it.

  After waiting half a minute and deciding he’s alone, he crosses to the door, knocks gently just in case, and opens it enough to have a reasonable peek. There’s a chest and a table and a set of plastic chairs. He steps inside and finds a bookcase, partly full of books but also bottles, cans, and packages of nonperishable food. Lot of beans, lot of soup. Beer and jugs of water. There’s a kerosene lantern hanging from a rafter, and a mattress and a pillow in a loft above the door.

  He notices a small plastic bag behind a chair. He picks it up—it’s from a drugstore—and studies the receipt. Hairclip, chewing gum, vitamins, conditioner. The hairclip’s missing but the rest of it is here. He opens the conditioner and blots it on his hand, giving it a sniff before he rubs it into his skin. The chewing gum’s open, several pieces gone. He peels the foil back, picks one out, and puts the rest of it away exactly as he found it.

  After checking the windows and deciding that it’s safe, he leaves the cabin, shuts the door, and wonders where to go. He chews the piece of gum and puts the wrapper in his pocket, wishing he had read the flavor on the package. Some kind of berry, probably a mix, so delicious that he swallows it and wishes there were more.

  * * *

  Ava made the mistake of bossing Sam around the second day, saying “Careful with the bag” after he had volunteered to carry it, along with the cooler, all the way back to her chair. He’s been calling her the goddess ever since and Ava’s taken to the name, accepting compliments and favors and behaving like a muse. Yesterday he struggled with the newest sculpture’s leg—it was forced, too unnatural and crude above the ankle—and he finally had to ask her if she’d model for a minute. Ava held the pose, tilting forward on the chair, while he scrutinized her leg and told her how to flex. She’s been glancing at her calf on and off ever since.

  The sculpture is a maiden weaving on a loom. She’s sitting on a block, leaning forward in a dress, delicately balanced on her fine white toes. Her body’s spindly, not a bit like Ava’s aside from the calf (and possibly the mouth; Ava’s studied it and wondered), and her face wears a look of desperate concentration, focused on a loom Sam fashioned out of sticks.

  The roots spreading open from the overturned trunk are growing from her back, right between the shoulders—four crooked limbs, spidery and wide. They’re hideously jointed and appear to be in motion, and he’s hung the web of grapevine everywhere behind her. It’s an intricate design, interwoven from the trees, doubled by the great skein of shadow on the ground.

  Ava stretches in the sun, admiring his work. She’s enjoyed watching details emerge throughout the week, how the swells became the shoulders and the angles turned to elbows, and even though the roots have made it hideous and strange, it’s gorgeous in its way and easily her favorite.

  Sam fiddles with the web and stabilizes knots while Ava tells the anecdote, lovingly embroidered, of the day she met Henry in the middle of a china shop.

  “An actual china shop?”

  “More of a dinnerware store,” Ava says. “I needed plates.”

  He was the youngest mailman she’d ever seen, without a mustache in those days and skinnier by twenty-five pounds. She paid him little mind when he walked into the store with a handful of letters, but he claims to have noticed Ava right away and lingered at the counter while he chatted up the owner. His laugh annoyed her first—she had thought the word guffaw—and when she turned and caught him staring, Henry waved instead of hiding. Ava, being gracious, felt compelled to wave back, and that was all it took for Henry to approach her.

&nb
sp; He’d been a shortstop in high school and still had the walk—the bowlegged saunter of a player with a cup. Ava held a plate, pretending not to see him. He was handsome, she admitted, but his brashness put her off. In a moment of distraction, just before he spoke, she fumbled with her hands and bobbled the plate. Henry lunged to catch it and collided with her breast. She’d later accuse him of copping a feel—he never did deny it—but the grope was hardly noticed in the thousand-dollar crash. Henry’s mailbag snagged along the corner of a table and a pyramid of china—yes, literally china—had collapsed upon itself and shattered into bits.

  But he had caught the plate. He gave it back to her intact and his expression seemed to indicate that she had been to blame. He made her wait ten minutes while he settled with the owner, who liked Henry enough to let him pay the damages in interest-free installments. She was mortified, prepared to make the finest of apologies, but then he grinned at her and said, “I hope our second date’s cheaper.”

  “And you dated after that?”

  “No, of course not,” Ava says. “He saw me one day a couple of weeks later and followed me home. Once he knew where I lived, he got my name out of the postal directory. He didn’t call me but he followed me around, especially on the weekends. I’d see him at the movies and the market … he’d come to my favorite diner on Saturday morning. But he didn’t try to hide it. Every time he saw me, he would wave and yell hello. Eventually I just got used to seeing him around. One day at the diner, I said we might as well share a booth if he planned to stare at me the whole time. He bought me breakfast. That was our first date.”

  She eats an ice-cream sandwich, nearly melted in the cooler. By the last few bites the cookie’s soggy in her fingers. The trees look luxuriant, heavy with humidity and late-summer green, and there isn’t a breeze so much as a lazy flow of air, syrupy and spreading in a sweet, amber glow.

  “How did you and Laura meet?”

  “She was working at the drugstore in town,” Sam says, tightening another loose section of the vines. “Not in the pharmacy yet, only checkout. She was finishing her degree and I was still working toward my MFA.”

  “You were kids,” Ava says.

  “Yeah, we were,” Sam agrees. “So I was standing in line behind an old woman with a folder full of soda coupons.”

  “I know that lady. There must be a thousand of her.”

  “Laura was at the register trying to explain why certain coupons didn’t work with other discounts, and I found myself staring at her throat. There was something about it, maybe the collar of her shirt, maybe the little gold pendant she was wearing. It was summer, I don’t know—she looked really good.

  “And I kind of spaced out and suddenly the coupon lady wasn’t there, and here’s this girl at the register giving me a frown because I’m obviously ogling her and two or three people are behind me in the line. I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m a sculptor. I was studying your neck.’ One of the customers groaned but Laura said, ‘That’s okay. I’m a model. I’m only working here to make sure they carry all my magazine covers.’

  “So I hopped out of line and got a three-pack of soap. I paid at another register, went in the parking lot, and carved one of the bars into a rabbit like the pendant she was wearing. I wrote my name and number on the back of the receipt, wrapped it up with the rabbit in my shopping bag, and gave it to her at the register. I left before she opened it. She called me that night and asked me out. We had dinner a few nights later and I asked her what she thought about the soap. She said it dried her skin too much and that I ought to switch brands. I couldn’t believe she’d used it. I thought she might have done it just to mess with me a bit. But later on it seemed sexy … really intimate, you know? She was playful like that, at least in the beginning. Everything was thrilling. Just a shower. Just dinner.”

  He leans along a vine until it tightens from his weight. She hears the creaking of the fibers, half believing it’ll snap. He’s a hundred miles off in the center of the web, distant in a way that makes her feel alone. She waits until he’s sharp enough to tie another knot, and then she notices him wince and says, “How’s your cut?”

  “Little sore.”

  “Let me see.”

  “I’m right in the middle—”

  “Stay,” she says. “I’ll come to you.”

  She peels her body off the chair, taking her first-aid kit out of her bag and ducking, stepping over, and limboing deftly through the vines.

  “You didn’t change your bandage last night.”

  “I forgot.”

  She takes an antiseptic wipe and a fresh Band-Aid out of the kit, and then she strips the old bandage off and tucks it into his pocket. The cut’s healing nicely and it’s more or less clean. She dabs it off, blows it dry, and wraps the finger up new, suddenly surprised by his nearness and his height. It’s only when he’s close that Ava feels petite, especially barefoot, with Sam fully dressed and taller in his boots. She’s worn her bathing suit for much of the week, a modest one-piece, unrevealing as can be, but it’s moments like these that she’s aware of how exposed she is and equally aware of how natural it feels.

  “How did you get covered in sawdust?” he asks, wiping off her shoulder.

  “God, I am covered in sawdust. I’m going for a swim.” She steps away and backs against a vine, and when she turns she meets another vine, straight across her thighs. When she’s finally free and clear, she turns to him and says, “You should come, too. You have your own pond and never use it.”

  “No, go on.”

  “I won’t be here tomorrow.”

  “I know,” he says, frowning. “But tomorrow I have to haul the woodstove in. I’ve got to finish this today.”

  “All right,” she says, rolling up her towel with a sigh. “If I’m not back by two, come and fish me out.”

  “I’ll put a pepper on a line.”

  She slips her sandals on, hikes a hundred yards back, and follows the brook, the simplest way to the pond without getting lost. The footpath, tamer than a week ago, gives her an easy walk through the bushes and the trees, and she meanders with the trickle of the water at her side.

  She’s spotted three different birds she didn’t recognize today, one with a flash of lime, early migrants, she assumes, on their way to southern islands. There’s a deer in a coppice, flickering its tail. When she moves it merely watches her, curious and calm. Then it turns without a sound and swishes through the ferns. She has her own sense of vanishing—the sculptures, Sam, her job and home, so distant they could almost be another woman’s life—and she’s as glad to be alone as she’s afraid of getting lost.

  She comes upon the pond, where a second, fuller stream tumbles in across the way. The double inflow keeps the water moving, not exactly crystalline but fresh enough to swim. When she came the other morning it was blanketed with mist, and here in the heat it radiates a coolness, giving her the first clean breath in several hours. She walks to a bank lipped with mud and soggy moss. It’s shady here but twenty feet out, just beyond the overhang of branches, the surface of the water is a brilliant, rippling gold. She takes her sandals off and wades very slowly to her knees, feeling like she hasn’t quite felt in thirty years.

  She could do without a suit—it’s a perfect opportunity—and swim to the sunnier bank to even out her tan. She pulls a shoulder strap down and looks back along the path. Live it up, she decides. It’s the very end of summer.

  She’s been swimming all week but not like this—what a difference just a little polyester really made. She hadn’t thought of leeches but she thinks about them now. The mud between her toes seems muddier somehow, and when her feet leave the bottom partway across, she considers going back before committing all the way. Then she flutters in the sunlight and swims right through, blooming in the water and forgetting any fear. She climbs onto the opposite bank and sees her bathing suit behind her in the shade, so unreachable she’s free of it and free to be at ease.

  She reclines on her back with her hands
behind her head, one ankle in the water, one knee toward the sun. Her body feels longer, more elastic on the slope. The grass feels spongy up and down her spine.

  It’s hot enough to burn but there are days like these, right before the fall, when the light seems sensuous and literally vital. Ava dozes in the warmth, passing in and out of sleep. She thinks of Laura with the soap and wonders how it felt, knowing he had shaped it, knowing she would tell him.

  The birds, the rustling trees, the plash of water at her feet, are so harmoniously varied they’re essentially inaudible, cushioning her mind and softening her limbs. But she’s attuned to what’s around her, sensing every little pulse, and she can feel him on the bank as soon as he arrives.

  He’s a ripple in a daydream, airy as a wish. When she finally clears her eyes and sits to meet his gaze, he’s standing with her bathing suit, there across the pond, quiet in the shade and difficult to see.

  Sounds sharpen up—chickadees, cicadas—but she doesn’t try to hide by jumping underwater. He’s a vague silhouette. The water undulates around him, moving out in circles when he steps, very gently, from the safety of the bank. Ava hugs her legs, all curves, like a G clef. Her knees are at her breast, pulsing with her heart.

  He watches her and waits, still faceless in the shade, leaning forward like he’s one small push from swimming over. Ava almost stands, almost speaks, almost laughs. Then he turns and leaves her suit like a lily pad behind him.

  She’s alone, so alone she almost doubts that he was there. Her body’s goose-fleshed, paler in the midday sun. She’d been svelte lying down but now her stomach has rolls. Dirt and grass are on her back, she has tangles in her hair, and she must have gotten bitten while she slept—there’s a welt.