How to Get Along with Women (20 page)

Glenna will be horrified.

Glenna will be charmed by this and tell and retell the story at dinner that night. Silas, pick that child up and tell me she's forty pounds. Sarah, we will give you a car seat, we'll give it to you. We must have an old one around here somewhere.

How many at dinner. Sarah and Ruby. Glenna, Silas, their three boys, her two parents. Plus plus plus. Some assortment of others, friends or almost-cousins or whoever else Glenna can pull in for a week away. Drunk Silas, his arm snaked around Sarah's waist, hand under her clothes. The same the last two summers: Sarah changing into pyjamas in the safety of her locked car, Silas wandering the lawn at two in the morning. Ruby asleep, waiting for Sarah in the tent.

We're very lucky, Sarah says out loud. We get a whole bunkhouse to ourselves. Like a cabin. Like a fort, she says.

How about we sleep in a tent? Ruby says.

No, Sarah says. A bunkhouse. A little house for just us. She flicks her eyes up to the rearview. But we can put a special net over your bed to keep the mosquitoes away.

Like a tent? Ruby says.

Like a canopy, Sarah says. Like a princess.

She sprays some wiper fluid and sets the arms going on the windshield. Ruby closes her eyes and tips down toward the bench in the backseat.

In Sud-Buried I will have a creamy bath of round, pink bubbles, she says. And a princess bed with a beautiful lace tent.

Silas is out in the gravel drive when they pull in, smoking a joint where Glenna can't see him. Bent over a bike tire to make it look like he's doing something. Watching, Sarah thinks, for this car. For Sarah and Ruby.

Beckett!

He pinches the roach tight between his fingers, slides it into the breast pocket of his shirt. A strong, fast hug, his arms wrapped firm around her back and then gone. Sarah springs the hatch and starts hauling gear out onto the ground: duffle bags, the cooler, a sleeping bag in case they need it. Silas pops the passenger door.

Hey Ruby-Ruby! Pushes a finally-sleepy Ruby along toward the cottage and comes back for Sarah.

Took you long enough, Beckett.

Sarah points to the sleeping bag. Silas shakes his head and she throws it back in the car and slams the door.

I forgot you're a betting man, she says. I hate to disappoint.

I had forty dollars on you at 10:30.

Five-year-old in the back, remember.

Five, shmive, Silas says. You've cost me. How about a drink.

Is it noon?

Different rules up here, my friend.

How many, Sarah says, meaning rules or guests, whatever Silas comes up with first.

Let's see. Silas half-shuts one eye in the manner of the thinking man. There's us and you. That's seven, if you include children. Do we?

Yes.

All right then. Seven. Glenna's parents. Nine. Mike and Ilsa. You met them once in the city.

He never talks, Sarah says. Why doesn't he ever talk?

He's a mute, of course. All the best men are. Silas pauses. They have a baby now, it's awful, you can't stand it, don't talk to Ilsa if you can help it. So what's that?

Twelve, Sarah says.

With children.

Yes, with.

Seven without, Silas says.

But we get the bunkhouse still, Sarah says. Me and Ruby, that hasn't changed. She leans down and takes a bag in each hand.

Is that a good thing?

It's good. It's good for Ruby, Sarah says. Of course it means I can't even jerk off by myself.

If only you'd learn to keep your mouth shut, Silas says.

The screen door slaps shut and Glenna is outside, her blonde hair pulled back smooth and clean, wearing a blue one-piece, Sarah can see, under her dress.

Sarah, Glenna says.

She holds Sarah by the elbows.

At dinner Silas announces: Beckett's a poet!

The others at table shift in their seats. What now?

Glenna: We all know her, Silas.

Not Mike and Ilsa. Mike, did you know Beckett writes poems? Books and everything.

Ilsa, Sarah says to distract from the unsettling business of her own poem-writing. The bottle stands by you.

Ilsa is short and pretty, with red hair tied up in a knot of bobby pins. She's round in a way that Sarah admires. Imagine being round like that, Sarah thinks. Imagine that belly. She perceives fat women not as happy, exactly, but perhaps blithe. Free of doubt. The blanket of flesh between their hips also insulating against too much thinking.

Sarah pours and Silas pouts at his end of the table. Oh come on, Beckett.

I haven't got any stories.

Men.

There haven't been any, Sarah says. I'm shamefully celibate. I went out with one, for dinner. He was married. I was almost sure he was married when he asked me. I went so I could prove it to myself.

Do you know when I met Beckett? Silas turns to Mike, who twitches with alarm at the attention. Have I told this story? New Year's Eve. He looks wildly around, suddenly discovering Sarah again. You had that crazy house with all the stairs. Ruby was only toddling.

Sarah nods at her own glass. She was in diapers.

Oh, I don't know, Silas says. Glenna, where were you. Why was I there alone.

I went home, Glenna says.

Right, Silas says. His shirt cuffs are unbuttoned and the flapping sleeves give him the look of a fallen duke—as though the estate could be seized at any time. I meant to go, too, he says, but it was blackout time and, and everything went dark kind of. I come to, and I'm on this white, white couch in a white living room. I thought, Is this the mental ward or what, but when I looked around and saw all the things, you know, the accessories, they were so nice.

Glenna lays a hand flat on the table: Silas. That's enough.

So I wake up and I hear some girl and guy just beating the shit out of each other you know? That was Beckett and Marcus. Right, Beckett? But she didn't seem like one of those ladies tied to the tracks, I didn't have to rescue her. So I ostriched it. Like this, I went back to sleep. Silas folds his hands into a pillow and settles down for a moment next to his dinner plate, then bobs back up. She was giving good as she got, he says. And I wake up a few hours later with some little blondie bouncing around on me. Happy New Year! Happy New Year! That was Ruby. And I sat up, Hello, and there were all these people around I didn't know and here's Beckett: lalala! mojitos! shrimp ring! Silas pushes his hair back with one hand and grips the table-edge with the other, holding himself down.

I ended up staying for two days, he says. Beckett wouldn't let me go! I stayed for two days eating fucking shrimp ring.

Two days, Glenna says, wine glass in hand. And Sarah was the one who got a divorce.

So you're co-parenting. Ilsa turns to Sarah. That's good. I mean, you have your independence. The grass is always greener, right?

It's like being a homeless person, Sarah says. You never know where your next meal is coming from.

Silas: What are you talking about down there, Beckett. Are you talking about fucking.

In my next marriage, Glenna says, I think I'll be the reckless one.

Mike gives Ilsa a hard look.

Sarah turns to Glenna. Where's Ruby? Is she in bed?

Glenna's mother took Ruby for a pedal boat in the afternoon. A kind of pity. People are always wanting Sarah to take time off. As though parenting were some new and difficult task when really it has always been just her and Ruby.

We're all done with kids! Silas says to the room and his sleeve catches the rim of a glass, sending a spray of shiraz across the tablecloth.

Salt! Glenna jumps up.

White wine! Silas yells and grabs for Mike's glass.

Sarah's own glass is empty again. To Ilsa she says, He was away, working on a play. Anyway he was away a lot.

I shot my guns in the air for a while, Sarah says.

The men start stacking dishes, apart from Silas who leans on one hand.

Are a lot of them married?

Shocking, Sarah says. Isn't it.

It's not, Ilsa says. Take a look at you. Men always think they're entitled, but really. I fetishize your breasts. I secretly love your breasts.

Mike, in the kitchen with dishes, takes on a look of resignation.

You don't seem to be afraid of any of it, Ilsa says.

Glenna's mother calls from outdoors: Someone's baby's crying! But it's a loon, they realize it as soon as Ilsa has run from the room.

In the morning there are cheese omelettes. Sarah shows Ruby how to wash her feet in the water bucket by the door. There's a bucket by every door, she says. No sandy toes in the house, okay?

She pulls a kayak down into the water. Silas on the dock, plate in hand, heels together. His back to her: a kind of lameness in the way he stands. He's softened in the way married men do, men who feel somewhat guaranteed. Sarah with her notebook in a zippered plastic bag in case of a spill. She wades out to the knees and climbs in, gripping the bag between her thighs, and paddles quickly. It's a small lake and she wants to be out in it, far enough to blur anything familiar, the children shrieking at their dock wars. She'd woken early and boiled water for coffee, watched Glenna's parents steal a kiss in the lean-to, the old man stuffing a pipe with tobacco. Honey, they called each other. Sarah watching, rubbing the tender insides of her wrists together in the kitchen window.

She comes around an outcrop of rock and pine, Crown land, thick with brush, and into the bay. Sets the paddle carefully across the open seat of the kayak and pulls the notebook out from between her legs. It's hot and still on the water. She tugs the brim of her straw hat down lower around her face. High up, there are white clouds moving fast: now sunny, now shade. Now sun again.

Marcus when they were first together, blond hair falling over his eyes, dancing wild around her room. The back of his t-shirt a wet V. What Mozart would look like, Sarah said, if he were born in 1971. Washing dishes in Sarah's sink wearing her pink rubber gloves. Sarah naked in the kitchen, poaching eggs, beating the linoleum with her red patent heels. At night they ran down the stairs and traced thick chalk outlines of themselves beneath the balcony, waited up until morning to see the look on the Italian Nonna who lived next door and watered her tubs of plastic roses until mould curled around the edges of the leaves. In bed Sarah held a pen and tried to work while Marcus twined her hair around his fingers and ran his hand along her ribcage and squeezed at her nipples underneath her shirt and nudged her thighs apart with his own knee and took away the book and slapped at the pen and slid his hands beneath her hips and stroked into her cleanly twice and three times and then stopped until she asked him and asked him again to please, please make her come.

The kayak smacks up against something and Sarah grabs at the paddle. It's shady and cool. She looks down and there are rocks. Shallows. The brim of the hat pulled so low that she didn't see how far she'd drifted, aground, cool not because of clouds, but because of shade, the cast of trees above her.

She wedges the book back between her knees and pushes off firmly with the paddle, kayak scraping the stony lake floor, then out of the bay and toward open water. Her shoulders stiff with sun. Sitting up taller, she pushes the paddle deep, twirling it on every stroke until she's moving swift and clean. This brings the wind up, or the feel of it. Where is Ruby. Sarah can't see her from this bend. Someone has her, certainly, has given her a sensible lunch. She slacks off and listens to her breath, hard and fast. The paddle crossways, resting lightly in the crease between thumbs and forefingers.

There's a cry and Sarah sees the loon. It's the male, twenty feet to the right of her. Then only ten. Close. Does he know she's a boat. He dips under the surface and Sarah counts, but he doesn't come up. Then she sees him, around the other side of the kayak. Maybe three or four minutes under water. He lets a cry loose over the lake and the echo rings back, the sound like another bird calling. Tucked in an inlet, the female is quiet, busy with her babies. Fish in mouth, he calls again, twitches in the direction of the echo.

You're not calling to her at all, Sarah says out loud.

She dips the paddle and moves closer.

That loon killed a beaver this time last year, Glenna says.

She's out on the dock as Sarah paddles in, page-turner in hand, creamy layer of sunscreen not quite soaked into the skin on her thighs. He came up from underneath. Their beaks are like scissors, you know. Beaver shot straight up into the air. People saw it across the bay.

I seemed to make him nervous, Sarah says. She hauls the kayak up where the dirt is dry-baked, flips it so the bottom-side glints in the sun. It's not a heavy boat, but it catches in the long grass. Sarah's shoulders and thin spine showing as she tugs it into place, her slim legs curving out from the bottom of her bathing suit.

He just doesn't want you close to his family, that's all, Glenna says.

Where's Ruby?

She's on ride-along. My dad took her to the dump. I think she's hoping to catch a bear. Glenna sets the book down and raises a hand to shade her eyes. He's been feeding her stories about how we live in the Bear Capital of the World.

Did she eat? Sarah picks up the tube of sunscreen and squirts a sausage of white into her hand, rubs this into her belly and under the band of her bikini top, then around the back of her neck.

We made sandwiches. Jesus there's nothing on you, is there?

It's an optical illusion, Sarah says. I'm heavier than I look. She sets the cream back on the table and falls into a chair. Was I gone long? I'm working something up in my head, sometimes I lose track of time.

We've got Ruby. Glenna pulls her feet and ankles onto the chair and sits curled up. You mean working like writing-working.

Like that, yes.

I was worried you were upset, Glenna says. Because of Silas, you know. He should keep his stories to himself. Her ankles are crossed. Sarah can see the first hint of sunburn on her breastbone, the skin ruddy and loose-looking.