Woman in the Woods

Jane leaned against the sink, washing the supper dishes. With her hands in the hot soapy suds, she looked out the window, absently thinking that the dahlias needed watering.  An hour or so left of daylight, maybe she'd get to the flowers before turning in. There were still boxes to unpack, and things to put away, they could wait. She listened over the sound of the running taps, grateful to hear Bill's sputtering snoring, and the TV blaring the baseball scores, and, guiltily, felt relief to have a few moments to herself. She allowed herself to relax for the first time tonight since he came home from work. Let him sleep. Again, she wondered what kind of curtains to get for the kitchen, she'd seen some nice fabric she liked in the village.

A fleeting cloud darkened the approaching evening, and Jane felt a quiver, a sensation of being watched. 

Then she saw her. From out of the woods, about 500 feet from the house, an old woman was just standing there, looking straight at Jane with pale milky blue eyes, eyes that seemed familiar, kind, sisterly--but there was something about her fixed gaze that nettled, as though the woman could really seeJane, see into the very working springs of her mind, into the ticking clockwork that made her run. A cold finger of anxiety tickled her insides. The woman wore a red sweater over a faded housedress, and bedroom slippers. She looked half-crazy, with wild, starkly white hair that fell long down her shoulders. She must be lost, she may have wandered from somewhere, she could be hurt or scared. Jane started to call out the window, but quickly stifled herself, afraid to wake Bill. 

She watched as the woman walked into the dilapidated toolshed at the edge of the property-

it must have been a trick of the light, the angle of the sun as it dipped behind the trees, but the stranger seemed to dissolve into the old wood door, and disappeared-

Jane shut off the faucet, hastily dried her hands, and was out the back door. "Hello?" she called. The yard was big, overgrown, neglected for years, her bare feet felt the soft suppleness of dandelions, the dryness of sunburnt crabgrass. Her gait slowed as she neared the shed. It was shut tight. She tried the handle, pulled at the rusted lock. No go. "Hello?"

She put her ear to the door. Nothing. It was dead quiet. All she could hear was the brook that ran along incessantly, and the birds chattering. There wasn't a neighbor for miles. Jane suddenly missed the noise of crowded Somerville, at least there were people around. They bought this place out in the boonies for the quiet, at least that's what Bill had wanted. It was just the two of them, alone, buried here in the country.  She pushed an unpleasant thought away as she rubbed at a small smut-covered window with her hand, peered inside. Nothing.  A banged-up push mower and some gardening tools, a network of spider webs embedded with dead insects, rodent droppings. 

The woman was gone. Gone where?She looked again inside, almost expecting her to be there, knowing she couldn't be. Just then she noticed the implements that hung on the walls, the bow saws, the shears, spades, and a broken rake--- there, where an axe or hatchet used to be, the barest outline of it, an empty spot--it must have been a good-sized one, given the ghostly negative space on the grimy wall, the kind you'd use for chopping wood. 

But it was gone, too--

"What are you doing out here for Chrissake?" It was Bill. He was up from his nap, standing there on the porch, his pants half zipped.  A can of Narragansett in his hand. The fourth since he got home from work, the mid-point of his nightly consumption. 

"Nothing." 

Don't tell him. Tell him what? That she'd seen a strange lady go into their shed, a woman who came from out of the woods and who seemed to have disappeared? That there also seemed to be an axe missing? She'd never hear the end of it. She could hear him razzing her already. She wouldn't say anything. No need to give him more reasons to pick on her. 

"Get the hell back inside, Plain Jane. Get your ugly ass in the house," he said. "I''m ready for dessert." She knew what that meant. With leaden feet she walked toward him, her skin already flinching at the memory of the buckle of his belt

It was a rough night. Afterwards, while he slept, Jane sat out on the porch swing, and looked out into the dark woods, her tears bright in the moonlight. Every bone in her body cried in pain. She smoked cigarettes from the stale pack she still held onto for emergencies, and rocked mechanically, listening to the rusty chains creak and groan. She smoked and waited. Waited for what? She didn't know. But nothing happened. 

At dawn, she crept back into the house, quietly not to wake him too soon, to start his breakfast. She unpacked the percolator, and got it going. In one box, she found the new kitchen things she had bought for the move. The price stickers were still on them, these she cut off and shoved to the bottom of the trash barrel, so he couldn't grouse over the cost. He was always angry over money she spent on any little thing, as if she was ever able to spend much, but she wanted something cheerful, bright colors, sunny florals- maybe this would be a new chapter for them, she had hoped.

Jane whisked eggs and watched them bubble in the skillet, feeling something bubble up inside her, too, something she didn't know how to describe, something deeper than simple loneliness, something simmering and a little frightening that she tried to shoo away, but it was as pesky as a fly. She found herself glancing out the window, to the line of trees, half-hoping--

It was time to get him up.

She winced pulling herself up the backstairs, still aching from last night. She’d hoped the country would calm his demons, but he just got drunker and meaner. Nothing she could do was ever enough for him. Still, she hurried, lest he get up late and on the wrong side of the bed. There would be a long Saturday for her if he woke up mad.

A chill passed through her as she made her way to their room, like something passed through her.  On the nightstand table next to her side of the bed, on top of the book she was supposed to be reading, was something she'd never seen before but instantly recognized. Its handle, well-worn and smooth, felt warm to the touch. She ran a finger along the wedged blade.  She lifted it, appreciated the heft, the weight of it. Instinctively, she turned to the door where she knew the stranger stood. Their eyes met. A silent communication passed between them, an understanding of one woman to another.

The old lady put a finger to her own lips. 

Shhhh. 

And then she was gone.

  

Just then Jane’s husband grunted, stirred in the bed. 

Jane held the hatchet ready, her heart pounding in her ears-

"Bill," she said, softly – no need to startle him, her voice has as gentle, as docile as always. Her hand clenched the weapon. “Bill,” she said, "it's time." 

  

Home

Last year Tommy shot the fatal dose of heroin laced with fentanyl that would kill him. That was last October.  She found him on the kitchen floor, half in and half out the back room, lying across the threshold, his face distorted and blue. The paramedics worked on him even though he was past saving, you can still see the dents on the wood floor where their equipment was thrown down, the defibrillator and the tool box of drugs, you can see the trace of his prized Frye boots when he was dragged to the middle of the kitchen, where they hooked him up and did futile chest compressions. Eileen says she watched because she didn't know what else to do, she stood there and watched them pound and shock poor Tommy, but he was dead, and she knew it. Still she watched, because just maybe-- until a gentle talking detective got her to go downstairs, got her to sit and lit her cigarette and listened as she told him how she found him, just as she tells me tonight because she still needs to-

how she'd just gone to the service station to get her car inspected a month late and she'd run into the store for milk and scratch tickets, the tickets were still in the pocket of her work shirt when she found him. She bought the 2% because he likes it in his morning coffee, she was bringing it into the kitchen to put in the fridge and then she saw the face, it didn't even look like him, but still she knew, she didn't even remember calling 911, or crying into the phone. 

She tells me it all, every detail ticked off like a rosary, until she seems spent.  We sit on the porch by the wild, overgrown garden to watch night fall in pink shadows between the houses across the street, a view we've dubbed Sunset Alley. I've got my white wine, with lots of ice in a ceramic coffee mug, Eileen has her bottle of fancy beer. Just about every night we sit here, after our walk. She has already smoked half a joint and her eyes are closed, the evening sun makes her hair gleam silver. She passes me the sizeable roach, this one makes me woozy after one hit, and I always cough. We sit a while, drowsily, just sit. A few neighbors walk by, Nancy with her asthmatic pug Julius, who stops long enough to sniff among the cosmos, and the Martins with their two tots Ava and Rosa in an aerodynamic Swedish designed stroller. Everyone says hello. A few joggers go by, someone is cooking on the grill, there's the sound of kids laughing down the street and cicadas singing riotously. Life goes on. 

Tonight, during our nightly walk around the neighborhood, she found an abandoned dresser left out on the sidewalk. In this neighborhood so close to the schools, all summer kids are moving in and moving out, leaving behind unwanted things: office chairs, desks, old TVs, assorted clothes, lightbulbs, lamps without shades, shades without lamps, framed posters in varieties of subject matter, china dishes, board games, kitchen junk- everything she hauls in up the back staircase of her little house on Ashburn Street, with a proud smile on her face like a cat back from a mouse hunt. Eileen is a consummate collector of sorts, a caretaker of forgotten, discarded things. I am only the latest orphan. When my last relationship ended abruptly, she took me in until I get back on my feet. That’s the way she is. “You’ll stay with me,” is all she said about it. We packed up my things in her car, and I’ve been here ever since, just about two months now. 

When we came across the dresser tonight on Linden Street, she stopped in her tracks before the bulky, heavy looking thing. I've learned during our long friendship to stand by as she makes her appraisals. "Real wood. Mahogany maybe." She rubbed her hand along the slightly warped surface. "Some water damage on the top, I think I can sand that out." Her eyes widened. "Dovetailed drawers, look." Dutifully, I looked, though I never know what I'm looking at, still I nod approvingly.  "I could paint it pink, if I can’t refinish it," she said, noting its neglected state. Again, I nod. 

Soon, we were lugging the hulking piece down the quiet side streets, and up the two flights of stairs, banging and huffing until finally into the living room it went, with the other foundlings in this horde of oddities.  This is the third bureau she’s rescued so far during my brief tenure. With her hand on her chin, she thought out loud, "I could put it in the garden, put plants in the drawers, something trailing, like those wave petunias, could you see that?"  The garden is a circus of birdbaths, and trellises where climbing sweet peas flower all summer, tall sunflowers grow top heavy and drooping, grass is as high as your waist, tomatoes ripen red on tangled vines, cucumbers nestle under broad green leaves, statues of nymphs and fairies peek out through the foliage, there are wicker chairs with busted seats, a Victorian croquet set lies hidden in the weeds where a family of rabbits has taken up residence.

"Sure," I said. 

The small bedroom where I sleep- the room where Tommy died- now has fresh painted walls in spring green and a hula girl lamp on a random night table. The huge mattress is up on milk crates. A scarred chest of drawers, another find from the street, houses all my stuff. There's a crazy quilt and a floral bed spread, feather pillows and striped sheets that are soft and smell like lavender dryer sheets. I've settled in. My books all piled everywhere. It's home, for now. 

Its previous tenants include: a series of stray dogs, feral cats, friends down on their luck such as myself, the temporarily destitute, the bereft. When Tommy was released from prison this last time, where'd he'd spent 7 years and change for a botched armed robbery, it was no surprise when he showed up on the doorstep, no surprise when she let him in, again. "He was my brother, " she says, “what was I going to do?”  

I helped her go through shoe boxes full of old photographs a few days after he died. They were adorable kids. PJ with his missing front teeth, Eileen with her mop of hair, and shy Tommy who never looked at the camera, or the person holding the camera. Still, there the three sibs are dutifully lined up in Easter outfits, around the Christmas tree, in bathing suits running through the sprinkler on the front lawn. They seemed to be the normal family, circa 1960, pastel curtains and floral wallpaper. The smiles hide the whole story.

In spite of their early years, probably because of them, Eileen has been trying to recreate home and family ever since. Tommy was the baby, “the straw that seemed to break my mother’s back,” Eileen wonders, again,   “maybe she had post-partum depression or whatever. She was an angry woman, all banked up. All that anger, she took out on the runt kid.” Beaten at home from the time he could walk, molested by a cousin, he ran away, got in trouble, dropped out of school in the 10th grade, then drifted, skidded. By the time he died at the age of 57, he'd spent a third of his life behind bars. The last 11 months of his life he spent here, in the home his sister had made, the home they never had as kids. 

There's a card still tacked up in the little back room, the only thing he brought to the space that you might call decorative. It's a crappy Hallmark knock-off card, a view of a cottage snow covered under glittery white, lit up windows give the scene a wintry cozy feel. Inside it’s dated Christmas 1991 in the round cursive letters of a young woman, who signed the card "with all my love, Sandy." Who was she? Sandy? Eileen says she never knew, he never brought his girlfriends around. This one thing he saved, through all the wreckage of his adulthood. What little else he owned, the few things he brought, are mostly gone now, the army jacket, his clothes, the boots he always wore, the boots he would die in… the paraphernalia of his habit, dirty cotton balls and bent burnt spoons and tiny empty bags with crystalline residue, needles, and glass pipes, all that was removed by the detectives. The mattress is new, the bedding too. But still Tommy lingers, in the one frayed shirt that still hangs in the closet because she just can’t part with it, in the few photos of him as an adult. “He always had a shit eating grin,” she says. He is squinting in the sunlight, still too shy to look into the camera. And sometimes, when I'm drowsing with one of the books from one of the piles, before I drift off, when I shut off the hula girl lamp and the room is dimly illuminated by outside light that glints on the glitter snow of the card, I wonder if he was happy here, even if just for a little while. 

On the porch, I sit next to her. She never says that she is lonely, that it’s hard for her to be the only one of them remaining. She keeps her sadness to herself, though sometimes I catch her crying on the couch. PJ died of AIDS 20 years ago, Tommy has been gone nearly a year, and now it’s just her of the Nolan kids, from the house on Green Street where they played at happy family. I begin to understand her need to save the discarded and the displaced.

And so we sit quietly, listening to the neighborhood sounds at night.  

But I should know better to think she might sit still long. 

“Where are you going?” I ask, when she is up and off the stoop. 

“I’m thinking I need those chairs we saw on Elm, the ladder backs with the cane seats.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now—come on before somebody else snatches them."

And soon she is off, to claim another foundling, to find something else that needs a home. 

Mix Tape

Things start to unravel once they leave San Francisco. 

“Do you have the right map?” 

“Of course, I have the right map.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I have the right map?” Dave finds himself falling into the pit, knowing it’s not about the map.  It’s never about the map. He’s explaining to Raymond, all the times he has been a competent co-pilot, always with the thoughtfully selected mix tape, and snacks, always there to light the cigarette, always there with the map, the right map. Didn’t Dave get them through the White Mountains in that rain storm when Raymond freaked out? What about the Catskills? It doesn’t matter, he knows it doesn’t matter, but he’ll keep flailing for a while longer, all through Carmel and Monterrey. He doesn’t even see the crazy cypress trees he’d read about in the Planet Out  guide. Red cliffs jut out over the Pacific, the highway clings precariously close to the edge, but he doesn’t notice these things, either. All he knows is that the windows of the rental are hermetically sealed, and the AC is cranking, and Air Supply is All Out of Love, and he is flailing, again. It’s all he can do to breathe. 

Raymond says, finally, both hands gripping the wheel and his eyes peering through his red-framed glasses at the winding ribbon of road, “It would really be different, if you could drive.” This is the bit of shrapnel he lobs, to end it. Their fights are now predictable. Raymond always has the last word. 

Dave stops talking. He blinks in the bright glare that bounces through the windshield. He doesn’t drive, it’s true. There’s nothing much he can say to that. He also doesn’t dance, or know how to properly cook a brisket, he can’t tie a tie, and his sense of style is on record for being childishly atrocious. He is not reliable. In so many ways, it is obvious he is a disappointment to Raymond. 

The plan is to head leisurely down to L.A. They have four days before they fly back East. Less than 20 miles into the trip, they are both silent. But the sun is, at last, making an appearance. Dave changes the cassette in the player. Patsy Cline. “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

The vacation has been a failure. San Fran was a ghost town. AIDs had taken its toll; its specter was everywhere. Castro, where bars and bathhouses once thumped with activity and non-stop Disco, was a yawning stretch of video stores and coffee shops. Haight-Ashbury? All straight yuppies now. And, it rained for three days. 

“This place is like a very long funeral,” Raymond huffed as they climbed one of the famous hills. 

They dutifully followed the itinerary: breakfasts in the 50’s-style diner, Coit tower, Golden Gate. They rode the trolley, ate expensive seafood on the wharf. At the top of the Mark, they watched the evening fog descend. But, each night, their enormous bed back in the hotel was like an ocean liner adrift, and they each kept to their own side.

 Yesterday morning, when Dave had come back after grabbing a paper from the lobby, Raymond was talking on the room phone. He was laughing, something Dave hadn’t heard in some time. He hung up when Dave came in.  

"Who was that?"

"My racquetball buddy, Bill. We set up a court time for next week. What’s in the news?” 

“Ivan Lendl beat McEnroe at the French Open. Who’s Bill?”

“I just told you. Is that what you’re wearing? What is that?”

“What? This? My Mighty Mouse T-shirt. My favorite. Who’s Bill?”

“It looks ridiculous.”

“Since when do you play racquetball?’

Raymond studied the pattern of the rug, which he was still doing when the phone rang.  Its shrillness punctured the bristling quiet between them. He snatched the receiver. “Yes? Long Distance? Collect? Yes, I’ll take the charges, thank you…Oh hey, what?... Yeah, we must’ve got disconnected…” Then he took the phone into the bathroom and closed the door. 

*****

 A few weeks before, back in Boston, they fought over milk.

 But it wasn’t about milk. It’s never about milk:

That day, Davewas sitting with his coffee at the window, watching a stunted tree just beginning to bud green. He heard bare feet pad the wood floors. He heard in the next room, the kitchen cabinet open as Raymond grabbed a clean mug. He listened as the coffee was being poured, and the glass carafe, still half full, was put back carefully into the Braun. The silverware drawer jangled, then the fridge door opened.

"Did you forget to get milk?"

.           “Isn't there any in there?" 

"No, David, there isn't any in here."

The fridge was shut. Firmly.

Raymond stepped into the livingroom. His hair was already combed, and his glasses sat primly on his nose. Dave had told him not to get those frames, told him he would look just like Sally Jessy Raphael, which he did, especially as he stood there with hands on hips. "You know I need it for my coffee."

"Drink it black." Dave took a sip from his own cup. "Mmmm. Delicious."

"I put milk on the list when you went shopping. I remember it was the first thing on it. MILK. Right on the top."

"I must have forgotten."

"How do you forget something written on a piece of paper in your hand?"

"Maybe I didn’t see it." He didn’t forget. He’d seen it clear enough. It was right there, at the top of the list, in Raymond’s perfect handwriting: MILK. 

"Well I can't have my coffee without it.”

"Have some OJ," Dave said, "I remembered to get that."

Raymond was not amused. “Fine. I guess I’ll schlep to the store then.”

Neither of them moved. They eyed each other for a beat. It was a dance they both knew, the passive/aggressive Tango. 

"I should go. I forgot it yesterday." Really, Dave needed to get out of the room. He itched for a smoke, he told himself, he needed air. But he wanted to run. 

"Get the Globe, too, while you’re out.”

*****

The map Dave is holding is in fact not the right map. They pull into a tiny hamlet called Buena Vista, where there is a gas station, a phone booth, and two picnic benches overlooking the eponymic view of a sheer drop to the ocean.  

“I’m going to take a leak and get some directions out of here,” Raymond says. “Try not to get into trouble.” He slams the car door in a way that seems unnecessary. 

“No, thanks, I’m all set,” Dave says to the vacant driver’s seat. “I don’t need a drink or anything, I’m good, thank you.”

Silence. Just the continued whirr of the air on full blast, and a girl group singing about a fool’s game.

“Who is Bill?”  Dave pictures someone athletic, someone tall, someone who is not a disappointment in so many ways. Someone completely unlike himself. 

Again, he can’t breathe. Scrambling to get out of the car, he slams the door, good and hard. Fuck you. 

He realizes, as soon as the door of the tan Escort thumps shut, with a stinging flux of panic-- he’s locked out. There are the keys in the ignition. And, there are the doors, autolocked. He tries the handle anyway. No go. Locked out, in the middle of nowhere.

He looks around, helplessly. The heat is beating down. The grass is burnt dry, like straw that would go up with the kiss of a match. It didn’t rain down in Buena Vista for three days straight. From the look of it, it never rains in Buena Vista.

Ideas fire through his brain, all at once:

Run. 

Hide. 

Grab a rock. Break the window. 

And, then, from out of nowhere:

Grow up.

Grow Up.

GROW THE FUCK UP.  

“OK.” Dave says this out loud, with resignation.  His sigh carries on the faintest puff of a sea breeze that stirs the flinty soil in the empty lot. A cloud of dust half-heartedly eddies around his Keds. “OK” –

Now, here comes Raymond. In each hand, something to drink, something cold, two cans that glint in the noonday sun.