Our Lady of the Forest (14 page)

Does it say not on a Sunday afternoon?

Why do I have to walk you through this? I'm sitting here with my son and daughter, we're playing a board game at the kitchen table, and here you are exasperating me for no discernible reason. I just can't fathom this.

Which board game?

Very clever.

Sorry again. Sincerely, sir. I didn't mean to ruin your family time. Cut into your quality time. But it was Eleanor who called. Not me.

If Sunday afternoon is not included in the category of One Hour Before Going To Work then no, no visiting on a Sunday afternoon. That should be patently obvious.

Please go back to your board game, okay? We're very sorry this happened, sir. I'm sure Eleanor apologizes.

Tom hung up. He shrugged at his wife. It's all clarified, he said.

What?

I get it now. One hour before work. And I've been transferred to swing shift at the prison, which starts in fifty-two minutes.

This visit is unannounced, said Eleanor. And I—I want you to leave.

Just sticking with the contract, answered Tom.

But she was unimpressed, unfazed. Very original strategy, she said. You're hugely thinking on your feet again, Tom. Using that enormous brain power to come up with something like this.

He stood and kicked his chair behind him so that it skated and toppled over. Don't start breaking furniture, said Eleanor. That'll just get you in more trouble.

It was an accident, said Tom. The chair.

No it wasn't, said Eleanor.

I came here to see the kids, not you.

The kids don't want to see you, though. And anyway, Colleen is out. And if she wasn't she'd be hiding in her bedroom.

That's what you say.

That's what
they
say. They hate you, Tom. Your own kids. They—

Tom half raised a hand to slap her, Eleanor cringed, he stopped himself, Eleanor ran to the telephone, Your lawyer's a piece of shit, said Tom, go ahead and tell him whatever, I don't give a fuck. Hello? said Eleanor. It's Eleanor Dillon. Eleanor Cross. What? Yes. My maiden name. I'm being assaulted by my husband right now, he's breaking the terms of his visitation rights, he's slapping me and smashing the furniture, I can't seem to make him leave. Tom ripped the receiver from her hand. I didn't, he said, touch a hair on her head. And I haven't broken anything either. Give me back the phone, said Eleanor. She tried to pry it away from him and he put one hand out to stave her off, hold her at a slim remove, she feinted once and came in from the left, he caught her forearm in his logger's grip and twisted it while he spoke into the phone, No one needs to come out here, no one's hurting anybody, He's twisting my arm right now, shouted Eleanor, Well she's god damn attacking me in the middle of everything, and so a deputy was dispatched.

End result: restraining order. And Tommy had “signed” an affidavit—marks inscribed with a pencil between his teeth—citing psychological and emotional abuse, so Tommy was off limits too. Tommy, Eleanor, his own house. Fortunately there'd been no criminal charges for domestic assault or spousal abuse or obstructing a call to 911 so his job at the prison wasn't jeopardized. His daughter he could see two afternoons a week and Saturday and Sunday afternoons but they had to meet at Burger Barn or Gip's and three quarters of the time she didn't show up so he sat there drinking coffee by himself, a public spectacle, Tom Cross. He didn't blame her for jilting him; he knew he was morose, a drag. And in the months of his separation from his family Colleen had sprouted a case of acne and had also begun to wear a bra, which evoked in Tom mixed feelings. How could it not evoke mixed feelings? How could a daughter's bra be otherwise? His daughter was at a time in her life when she was temporarily unattractive, and this, he could see, bothered her, for her it was a tragedy. Lately she asked him to buy her teen magazines with articles about how to doll herself up, clothes, cosmetics, hairstyles. Having never been unappealing before, she didn't know how to handle it. Neither did Tom. The bra and the shape of her backside, like Eleanor's—athletic, winsome, beckoning—made him afraid of her. He couldn't touch her anymore without stirring up weird questions. What made it complicated was that she looked like her mother. She was a miniature version of her mother, it was frightening, proof of the tenacity of genetics. She also had her mother's demeanor, her mother's habits of being. She could be ironic in a charming fashion and she could also be imperious. She bit her lip to think about things, brooded over imagined slights, was plaintive for days inexplicably—in all these ways like her mother. A moody and sensitive presence in Tom's life, but as his deposit of feeling for Eleanor emptied it had naturally flowed into the vessel of Colleen, who for her part had no time for him, no inclination to sit in the shadow of his sad unarticulated rage. Another loss. He wasn't prepared for it. Junior, Eleanor—that made sense. But Colleen? He hadn't reckoned with that. He still couldn't reckon with it.

So now he sat on the outside looking in, a logger with no trees left to cut. An out-of-work logger in the cab of his pick-up, a sad fool pining for his old lost life, a dog left out in the rain. He didn't want to be caught like this, spying on his past so pathetically, caught red-handed in his misery, he didn't want people looking down on him, especially Eleanor. She'd find a way to use it against him, second-guess his thoughts. She'd make up something that wasn't there and add it to her list of grievances, which by now stretched to the moon. Why give her the satisfaction? Why give her an advantage? For a year he'd alternated between sadness and anger about what had happened and not happened between them, he'd passed too much time in the silence of his cabin remembering how things used to be. Sappy, sentimental, separated. Mired in marital memories. Yes, in the beginning they'd both been insatiable in the happy, dreamy fashion of young lovers which is something he'd hoped would continue unabated and last indefinitely. They were twenty years old and Eleanor Dillon, the youngest daughter of a North Fork logging family, had high, fine, middle-sized breasts he constantly wanted to slobber on and a hard high butt he could not keep from kissing and all he'd wanted to do back then was disappear inside her forever, in the morning before he went to work, in the late afternoon when he came home again, on the weekends at noon with the television on, on the floor, in the shower, on the kitchen table, in his truck, in the woods, in an easy chair, a few times bent over his workbench in the shop but more often against the bathroom wall or on the couch in front of the woodstove. Tom walked around with a smile on his face. He carried a secret wherever he went. He was careful at work because he didn't want to die—if he died he'd miss out on more of Eleanor. He knew he was a slave to her flesh. But that was okay. He could live with that. He got inside of her whenever she'd let him. He buried his face in her wet smelly pubic hair in order that he might stop being himself, find refuge from being Tom Cross.

Lo and behold: Tom Junior. Tom didn't mind at first. He'd liked plying Eleanor from behind while she was hugely animal pregnant by him, a female mammal who'd started his seed, he'd liked her taut impregnated belly, he licked her belly button, he nibbled her ear, when the baby was born Tom drank at Ellie's breast, he made her get on top, ride him, and he squeezed mother's milk all over his face while she came with contented sighs. Moo!

Then what? He couldn't place it. Things go wrong but they go wrong slowly. The baby had colic and screamed all the time. The little son of a bitch wouldn't sleep. And people are always changing too. Maybe Eleanor was played out, exhausted. Okay: he could deal with that. He adjusted his sights like a good married man and fucked less often, satisfied. A time for everything—they'd been there, done that. Been young and humped like donkeys, monkeys. What was wrong with this languid version? Nothing, really, nothing at all. He liked the married alternative, too. Skill, consideration, delicacy. He applied himself. They still got it on. It even got wild sometimes.

Why was everything about sex anyway? That was what Eleanor wanted to know. She read him like a book. She knew his thoughts. He began to be subtle, manipulative. The day was one long careful seduction. If he was good he got some when the sun went down. If he was bad, forget it, don't try.

But he couldn't help himself. Tom Junior drove him crazy. Tom would screw up, be mean or impatient, and then he wouldn't get laid. She'd carry a grudge against him, close down, until he paid one way or the other. Sexual blackmail. She had him not by the proverbial nuts but by his literal ones. He discovered that he wanted to go to work, wanted to get out of the house, ride. What a relief to be in his truck, heading out to play in the woods with his D-7 Cat or his loader or his chain saw. Afterward a few beers in the shop while he greased his equipment or worked on his saw would set him up to come home.

You smell like beer, she'd say in the kitchen. You try working in the woods all day. You're god damn thirsty afterward. You know what? Your son hears you use that language. Do you want him growing up like that? He absorbs everything coming out of your mouth. You better watch your language, Tom. Shit—I'm sorry. It's not a joke. Okay—I'm sorry. He's watching you. You're his example. Whatever he turns out, what kind of man, it's going to be because of you, Tom. Because of what you are.

Tom took the boy in his truck to the shop and let him poke around at things, get sawdust in his hair. He bought him suspenders and a toy plastic chain saw and when he did he felt that good paternal glow but more he knew he was going to get laid, he would drive down Main Street with the boy beside him, four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, a half gallon of chocolate fudge ice cream in a white freezer bag on the seat between them, and he'd say Okay now you little son of a bitch we're bringing the ice cream home, all right? And you can eat some after dinner tonight, get fat if you want to, smear it on your face, make a mess, I don't care, but then you have to go to bed early, otherwise—no ice cream.

He took Junior fishing but Junior, it turned out, was afraid of fish and couldn't cast. What's your problem? Tom said, livid, you're ten thousand times bigger than that little trout, just grab the god damn thing in your hand and chew its god damn head off if you have to, and then Junior started to cry. He took him grouse hunting, shot a grouse, the boy wouldn't go near the thing when it was all done fluttering on the ground, wouldn't pick it up or even touch it. Jesus, said Tom. What's your problem? He signed up the boy for Pee-Wee football but Junior quit after three practices, complaining that he didn't like to run, the practices were too taxing, too hard. Eleanor thought this was perfectly okay, the boy's choice, he hadn't wanted to play football in the first place, it was something Tom had forced him to do, and Tom didn't get laid for thirteen days straight when you combined the argument over Junior's football with the six days of her period.

Sometimes he truly loathed himself. I'm wedded to, a slave to, my appetites. They run me around, ruin me. But that thought was rare. The tenor of his life didn't call for it. He was a logger except on Sunday mornings when they went to the Catholic church together, the only interlude in his weekly existence that didn't encourage meanness. Tom went at first because Ellie was a Catholic, it was just a place to park his butt, rest, an easy way to score a few points, get laid on Sunday night. But the funny thing was, he liked what he heard. Jesus had died for his sins, et cetera. He attended the class, did the conversion, was baptized, confessed, and took the Eucharist, all of this was cleansing a little, it made him feel there was something more than this bleak rain-wracked life of his, eking out a living dropping trees, everyone around him doing it too, this blunt, mechanical resource extraction, noisy huge machines in the forest, bad beer, televised football, mud and cigarette smoke in the taverns. He surprised himself and became sort of Catholic in a mild, confused way.

But that hadn't helped with Tom Junior. It was probably ancestral, like Abel and Cain, if a brother could hate and slay a brother, why couldn't a father hate a son? Was there some sort of mythical story for that, something sternly Old Testament? Abraham arranging Isaac's head on the block in part to placate a bizarre insane God, in part because he enjoyed it? Or was it some dark animal instinct, hungry lions eating their offspring, the primal paternal predator in the night, a freighted domestic cannibalism, a perverse meat-eater's blood lust? Or to be plain and concrete about it: the boy hadn't met expectations. He could never figure things out. He was dumb as a plank about important matters. What use was he to anyone? When they worked together, Tom worked, Junior didn't. A so-called father-son falling team. Junior thought they were out there to talk. Focus, Tom told him. Stop bullshitting and work. The boy would focus for fifteen minutes or pretend to focus with his mind still dedicated to everything but what was in front of him. Fifteen minutes. Twenty at best. Then back to rock bands, television, movies, magazines, Web sites, computers. He didn't really want to exert himself or do a full day's work. Even when he was a little boy, Junior had been distracted, pitiful, timid playing around in the yard, always crying about something or other and getting his ass kicked at games. In high school he was a lump of shit, unwilling to try out for football or wrestling, for a while he ran on the cross-country team with all the other nonathletes. Then he quit because, he said, running was too much hard work. You're just lazy, Tom told him. Why don't you go out for a real sport this winter and take the pain, stick with it? Because I don't want to, I guess, Junior answered. I'm not interested in any winter sports. Interested? Tom said. Who gives a shit? Just get out there and take some pain and stick with something you don't even like. Because that—you're going to need it.