The Body Farm, page 12
“What?” I gripped the phone in both hands. “Are you there?”
She was gone. I could tell by the quality of the silence, but still, I waited for a good long stretch with the phone to my ear, listening to nothing.
○
The drive seemed endless. Wallace, colicky, squirmed in his car seat. His face was red, mouth distended, hands working like sea anemones. I watched him in the rearview mirror.
Jasmine sat beside me, radiating a kind of martyred grace. The night before, I had told her about Betty Sue. I told her everything, and Jasmine listened with her head cocked to the side. In a strange way, her reaction reassured me. Yes, she was angry about my deception, suspicious of my motives. But she told me she would come along, and I said thank you, yes, I needed her there.
The drive took nearly six hours. We lived near the Georgia border, as far from the Homestead Correctional Institution as you could get without leaving the state. The highway shimmered with mirages, the broiling asphalt casting up warped reflections of the cloudless sky. The car’s air conditioner whined and sputtered in a feeble protest. Beneath my wife’s honey scent and the diaper-and-flour odor of the baby, I caught the sting of cigarettes, fused deep into the seat fabric, from the days before I’d quit. Jasmine had done that, weaning me off the smokes with her patented brand of reasoned argument. It was one of many painful gifts she had given me.
Florida rolled out before us, hot and forsaken. Roadkill lay crushed on the melting tar. Clumps of identical houses were clustered like patches of mushrooms. Children with dirty legs played by the side of the highway. As the merciless sun climbed the sky, the moon followed us, refusing to set on schedule. A ghostly silhouette against the blue, it hung in my window like a stopwatch, counting how many years, days, and hours it would take me to finally quit betraying Betty Sue.
○
We made love only once, Betty Sue and me, at the tender age of thirteen. We were both too young for it, but when we learned that she would be moving away—when her father took a new job in Grand Landing—we met in the forest one last time. We were both angry at the situation, scuffing our feet, hands jammed into our pockets. We did not know how to end our difficult relationship. There wasn’t a word for what we were to each other.
I kissed her first. It was a strange little bump, our mouths colliding. She stepped back and stared at me, astonished. I waited for a slap, for her to turn to the side and spit on the ground.
Instead she flew into my arms, weightless and glimmering. It didn’t last long. We peeled off half our clothes and lay down among the weeds, my hands shaking as she buried her cry of pain in my shoulder.
Even now, I remember every moment of it, every shift, every inhalation. The line of her jaw. The way her fingers dug into my forearm, marking five perfectly round bruises that lingered for days. When it was over, we rolled apart, wide-eyed and scared. Betty Sue had leaves in her hair. There was a streak of blood on her inner thigh. I could not move. I lay in the grass, feeling as though God himself had reached down and pinned me to the earth, like a butterfly stuck to a corkboard backing.
○
Picture this:
I am standing in a room that is not exactly a color. Tables dot the space, the air charred fluorescent. There are women in orange clothing strewn in plastic chairs, conversing in low voices with friends and family.
Jasmine stands outside the door, the baby on her hip. In the lobby. In safety. Through the square, scratched window in the door, her gaze is fixed on me like a laser, her expression unforgiving. The glass frames her and Wallace like a portrait in a museum: Madonna and Child, Plagued by Lunatic Husband.
Trip-trip-swish. A woman in orange dashes toward me. She still wears pigtails, now threaded with gray. I stumble at the sight of her. She sprints to the nearest table and stops on the other side, panting. We are not allowed to touch. Her grin is as bright as ever, though one tooth has yellowed, beginning to rot. She is giggling and crying at the same time, no tears, only breath too big for her little torso, rocking in her chest like wings.
Overlaid with this, I can still see the child I knew. Same height, same build. Same face, though the skin is weathered now. Same glittering eyes.
I sit down, keeping to my side of the table. I do not allow my fingers to wander. Betty Sue mirrors me. I send a reassuring glance to Jasmine, noting that her shoulders have relaxed. I understand: it is a relief for her to see the reality of things, a human being, flesh and blood, no siren with magical powers, no seductive minx, no rival. Jasmine bounces the baby, who has begun to fuss, and turns away.
Betty Sue begins to talk a mile a minute, just as she always did. She tells me about her father, who recently passed from cirrhosis. She tells me about learning to play basketball in the prison yard. I tell her about my mother’s increasing addiction to soap operas. I tell her about my father’s promotion on the railways. Betty Sue knots her hands together. Her fingers are chapped, her nails bitten down to the quick. This is small talk, breezy conversation, yet somehow it makes my head swim. Her brother. My sister. Her memories of our old neighborhood. I tell her how the place has changed. We can’t shut up long enough to draw breath. She waits until the guard is looking away, then strikes my shoulder to make a point. I’m gesturing with both hands, trying to shape my life in front of her. Here, the house. Here, the big tree in the yard. Here, my family. Her whole face follows every movement, drinking me in with affection and hunger, a lover who has missed me with every breath, a bird eyeing a worm.
Underneath all these things, another conversation takes place in silence. I tell her I always loved her. I tell her good-bye. With her eyes, she says the same back to me. We never got to say these things when we were kids. We didn’t know how.
○
That was the last time I saw her. We did sustain a written correspondence for a while; we gave it our best shot. Every few weeks, an envelope would turn up in the mailbox. By that time, Jasmine found the whole thing amusing. “Another letter from your girlfriend in prison!” she would cry. A page or two of misspellings and cross-outs. Nothing intimate or revelatory. The epistolary equivalent of chitchat. It would take me a few weeks to accumulate enough words for a reply. The span of time between call and response got longer and longer on both sides.
I had other things on my mind. Jasmine was herself again. She read late into the evening, cooked her special pasta, and listened to jazz. She gazed at the baby with a satisfied glow in her cheeks. I had missed her. I took her out to fancy dinners so she could dress up. I fixed the crooked kitchen cabinet. I brought home a stuffed bunny for Wallace, one that squeaked when you squeezed it.
In the end, Betty Sue and I stopped trying. I stored her letters in a shoebox at the back of the closet, gathering dust. I sweated her out of my system like the last remnants of a bad flu. Perhaps she had been in my bloodstream since childhood.
On that fateful day—when I took her virginity, or she took mine, or we both gave them away, or maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it altogether, because really what we did was cross a threshold, both of us, staring into each other’s eyes—Betty Sue climbed to her feet right away and tugged on her jeans. I remember her standing over me. A chortle rose out of her throat. I smiled up at her, at the sunlight crowning her brow. She laughed until she had to clutch at her stomach.
“I got you,” she told me, in between shuddering bursts. “I got you good. Nobody else can ever be your first. It’s always going to be me.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but she turned on her heel and ran away. I watched her flash between the trees and disappear.
Porcupines in Trees
At midnight, she is still awake. The cabin is a noisy place, filled with the bang of a shutter, the groan of ancient plumbing. Lila wanders the rooms, unnerved by the density of the darkness. There are no streetlamps here. No ambient city glow, soaking up the stars. Trees clack in the wind outside. Lila shivers inside her robe.
Most of the day was spent driving. Two hours to make it out of Brooklyn. Another six, heading north through rolling hills, to reach the Adirondacks. The GPS gave instructions in clipped, clinical tones. Lila did not like being directed this way. Born and raised in New York, she was branded with a mental map of the city. She was never lost there. Now the silence presses against her ears. She misses the wail of sirens and the subterranean thunder of the train.
Simone, impervious, is sound asleep, taking up more than her half of the bed, as usual. Her droning snores carry all the way down the hall to the living room. Lila goes to the window and pulls the curtain aside. The lake is a smear of gray, and the mountains rise beyond that, black and two-dimensional, as though painted on the sky.
When the porcupine first appears, Lila assumes it is a monster. Her experience with the forest begins and ends with horror films. Something is snuffling among the bushes, cracking twigs and overturning leaves. Then the animal barges into the clearing, and, with a gasp, Lila takes in the quiver of quills.
The porcupine has a lazy, lumbering gait. As it moves, its armament clatters—an obvious warning, like a snake’s rattle. It noses through the grass, scratching at the ground with a paw in search of food. The creature’s head lifts, and it glances in the direction of Lila’s window. She wonders if it has sensed her there, watching. Despite the darkness both inside the cabin and out, she experiences a jolt as the animal’s gaze brushes her body.
The porcupine grows still, eyes unblinking, quills bristling like an eave hung with icicles. Lila lifts a hand in greeting, an automatic wave. In reply, the animal turns and shuffles back into the woods.
○
In the morning, Lila takes six pills, swallowing them with water. Simone stands next to her at the bathroom sink, brushing her teeth and watching Lila in the mirror. Two red. One yellow. Two blue. One purple. Lila chokes them all down. The water has a sulfurous aftertaste—or perhaps it is the residue of her medication.
At her side, Simone gargles noisily. Her white hair is bed-crumpled, her mouth chapped, her eyes heavy. Lila does not meet her wife’s reflected gaze. She keeps her attention focused on the furnishings of their rented cabin. The place is quaint in every particular, from the knotted pine walls to the leaf-shaped sconces to the cheery toothbrush holder. Sunlight filters through gingham curtains. Lila lines up her pill bottles on the counter, then begins to stack them into a tower.
“We have to check your stitches,” Simone says.
Lila examines herself in the mirror. Frizzy gray hair. Eyes as flat and dull as old dimes. Skin like dry clouds. She is sixty-one. In the last few months, her aging has seemed to accelerate. She is becoming less human, more papier-mâché.
“Lila,” Simone says sharply.
“I heard you.”
She holds out her wrists. The ritual is familiar to them both now. Simone has all the equipment ready—gauze pads, rolls of medical tape, antibiotic ointment. She removes the bandages, her fingers clumsy but gentle. Lila does not wince, even as the tape pulls at her wounds. Simone bends down, adjusting her reading glasses. Lila holds still.
The sight of her own injuries is still a shock to her. It induces a kind of distance in her mind, as though she is observing herself on television—a crime show, the gore sealed off behind a screen. Her forearms are marked by jagged red scars. Three cuts on one side. Four on the other. The wounds on her right arm are much more pronounced. This is to be expected, apparently, since she is left-handed.
Simone presses on the inflamed skin, checking for infection. Lila sucks in a breath. It helps to think of the injuries as something else. A drawing. A map. The crimson scars run like rivers. The stitches, bold and black, look like bridges. Her wrists could be the topographical representations of a faraway country.
“Seems to be healing fine,” Simone says. “Remember, no heavy lifting. Nothing over ten pounds.”
“I know.”
Simone reaches for the gauze, her expression weary.
“I saw a porcupine last night,” Lila says.
Simone says nothing, wrapping her wrists in white.
○
The trip was Simone’s idea. She first broached it on the way home from the hospital. This was a week ago, though it feels much longer to Lila. At the time, she was too heavily drugged to attend. She lolled in the passenger seat. The doctors had put her on a cocktail of mood stabilizers and pain pills. Simone’s question—a cabin, the mountains—flitted past her like a flock of butterflies.
But Simone persisted. She raised the matter again in the psychiatrist’s office, several days later, as she and Lila sat in plastic chairs, not touching. The room was dim, perfumed by cinnamon candles and illuminated by lamps with heavy orange shades. The hospital had referred Lila to Dr. Conroe. She was not sure what to make of him. She had never been to a therapist before, and Dr. Conroe had an odd manner. Bearded. Heavy glasses. Soft voice. He ruminated, interrupting himself and stepping on his own sentences. He seemed distracted, but Lila knew better. As they chatted about the weather, as Simone nibbled her fingernails, as Lila did her best not to fiddle with the dressing on her wounds, Dr. Conroe looked her over with shrewd eyes. He threw out the occasional question, as sharp as a slap. How was her mood? Was the medication making her nauseous? Was she still fixated on the kitchen knives?
Lila answered in monosyllables: Fine. Yes. No.
Simone had talked about her plan. A forest getaway. The natural world. It would give Lila a chance to heal, away from the noise and bustle of New York, away from their friends and prying questions, away from the apartment where Simone had not been able to remove the bloodstains entirely from the floor.
Dr. Conroe gave the trip his blessing. Lila was not in danger now, he said. The fresh air might do her good.
○
In the afternoon, Simone goes for a hike. Lila watches her banging around the cabin, strapping on her fanny pack and filling her water bottle. She knows better than to ask Lila to accompany her; the pills have left her too dopey for this kind of exertion. Before leaving, Simone fusses around her, helping her onto the porch swing. The air is both cold and humid, that peculiar mix of early spring. At last, Simone crunches off down the path. The trees reduce her to flashes of color—blue coat, red cap—before swallowing her up.
Lila breathes quietly. Her mind is empty. She has no thoughts, her head filled with cotton. It has been years since she has sat like this, without music, without NPR, without conversation. New leaves coat the trees. The whole forest is an almost indecent shade of raw, pale, hopeful green. In the distance, little waves dance at the edge of the lake, while the deep water remains serene and motionless.
It was Simone who chose this place. Lila has never been to the Adirondacks before. She is aware, however, that the mountains hold good memories for her wife. Simone used to visit the area as a child. She has often shared stories about cookouts and sing-alongs. Her parents, raising six children in Queens, were too poor to rent a cabin, as Simone and Lila have done. Instead, the family would camp in mildewed tents. They made fires for warmth, peed in the woods, boiled lake water to purify it, and subsisted on trail mix. Simone has spoken fondly of all these things. Building ineffective rabbit snares. Skipping rocks on the lake. Fishing with makeshift poles. The mountains were a haven for her. They were a respite from her family’s cramped apartment, the bedroom she shared with five brothers and sisters, the crush of the city, the indignity of school, and reality in general.
In her current state, Lila does not care where she is. Awash in medication, she is unattached to the physical realm. But she understands Simone’s desire to return to the mountains now, after the recent shock and trauma. It is instinct, rather than logic. It is a primal, ancient pull, like a salmon’s desire to swim upstream to a half-remembered, sunlit home.
Lila hears something moving. The bushes toss on the hillside. Her mouth goes dry. It might be a bear. There are black bears in these woods; Simone has told her so. Lila rises to her feet, shading her eyes with a hand. She takes a cautious step toward the cabin. If it is a bear, she must not bolt, since the action of flight might trigger a predatory response. Is she supposed to play dead? Or should she make herself look bigger? Why can’t she remember? The bushes rustle, the leaves dancing ominously. A twig snaps. A bird rises with a clatter of wings, startled into flight.
Then Lila sees it. A porcupine. She lets out a relieved breath.
The animal’s face is bemused and benign. It might be the same one from the previous night; there is no way to tell. Lila considers yelling for Simone, but she does not want to spook the creature. It bustles between the trees, its manner businesslike, like a commuter on a Manhattan sidewalk. The porcupine is bigger than a breadbox, but not by much. In the daylight, its mess of fur and quills seems rumpled, like a bad case of bed head. Clearly it has some ancestry in common with mice and squirrels, but the porcupine does not pause, in the manner of prey, to look around for predators. It does not notice Lila this time. It shoulders through a thicket of dense bushes. Stamping and grunting, the animal vanishes into the lattice of green.
○
Lila does not like the word depression. It has a geological sound, a fitting descriptor for a sunken patch of earth, not an emotional state. Not a form of mental illness. Not something that could claim a person’s life if left unchecked.
Still, it is her word. It is the name for her condition. Over the past week, she has found herself whispering it aloud. She has scribbled it on notepads like a reminder. The word has even cropped up in her dreams.
Until recently, she did not know she was sick. Dr. Conroe believes that she has been dealing with depression—undiagnosed and unacknowledged—for ten years. Maybe more. Probably more.
This is the nature of the disease, apparently. Depression is gradual, as subtle as nightfall. The sky dims by degrees. The shadows pool together. It is impossible to pinpoint the moment when the light is gone completely.
Now, looking back, Lila can chart her descent in terms of what she has lost. So many things have slipped into the gloaming, the air darkening, the horizon blurred. She has lost her brisk walk and her enjoyment of practical jokes. She has lost her love of knitting—an act that used to be both meditative and productive, good for her soul and her collection of hats. She has lost the desire to water her plants, which withered and died.
