Out of The Woods (2 page)

The music smashed against her as they drove: Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”. It was Fernando’s latest favorite, very trendy. He always favored trendy things. She listened to the music, anticipating: first it was the heavy guitar (he took one hand from the steering wheel and played air guitar) and then the ugliness of the first verse. These, she could handle. But when the music slowed, it was like the singer had slipped inside her head, and was pounding on the soft inner surface of her skull with a hammer. The beat was hypnotizing. She found herself mouthing the familiar words:
Sleep with one eye open…gripping your pillow tight. Exit light…enter night… Take my hand – we’re off to nevernever land
… The guitar, screaming. The sound of doom. Her heart was pounding. She reached over to turn off the music with a sudden twist of her wrist. There was abrupt silence in the car.

“What? Why’d you do that?” Fernando said. “I was enjoying that.”

He looked at her with annoyance and switched it back on, but, seeing her face, he made the small concession of forwarding it to the next song: Savage Garden:
I knew I loved you before I met you…I think I dreamed you into life
… He hummed along; this one was popular too.

She stared out the window. That was better. The lyrics reminded her of the day when they’d first met, of the firm but gentle way he had shaken her hand, of the way he’d held her gaze a moment too long. Scenery flashed by the car window: tree, tree, tree, river, house, tree, the greens and browns calming. He had felt so familiar to her, she thought. Really, it had been like meeting herself, embodied in a man. On their first few dates, even the music he had played had been right – as if by telepathy, he had chosen all her favorites. “Soul music” she called it, and she had felt him a kindred spirit who saw the world the same way she did. She hadn’t mentioned it at first, had just held it to her chest like a small treasure. Much later, when she brought up the music in a desperate attempt to prove that indeed they did have common ground, he had looked puzzled. It was a
Top Hits
album, he’d said; he’d never really listened to the words of the songs. She had masked her disappointment with a quick kiss.

Now, she stared out the car window and thought of that false kiss, of his thick lips and his ready smile, of his easy laugh, and his goddamned pied-piperish charisma. He had pulled her in, just like that. It had been so easy to hand over control of her life to him, to hand over her power.

The song finished as they pulled into the parking area. She noted the trail head; she’d not been here before. She wished suddenly that she’d paid more attention to the route they’d driven to get here – they could be anywhere. She hadn’t noticed how long the drive had taken, and that made her doubly dependent on Fernando, because she couldn’t bring herself to ask where they’d come. The question would just inflame him. At least she had her own map.

Fernando went to get their packs from the trunk. She sat in the car and watched him in the rear view mirror; this was how they always did it. He ran his hand through his thick dark brown hair, and she knew he was thinking about the new style, trimmed short at the sides, and subtly teased up on top with sticky gel. He’d had many compliments about it. It did look good. God, he looked like a movie star. It was unusual to be so adept outdoors, and yet to be so immaculately groomed, so caught up in appearance and the latest trends. Sometimes he seemed like he was just playing the part of a wilderness guide for a Hollywood blockbuster, rather than his work being his passion. It was Halley’s passion – she just wished she were as instinctively good at it as he was.

She watched him move, as always, with assurance. Self-absorbed, she corrected herself, that was more the word, as if the whole world should say ‘
Bless You
’ when he sneezed.

When had she first noticed she’d got him wrong? Maybe it was the first time they’d made love: she had touched his strongly muscled chest with two fingertips, running them across his smooth skin. He was so beautiful, golden and chiseled, more like a statue than real flesh-and-blood. And she had felt…
stubble
. It had felt exactly like her legs when she missed a few days of shaving. Confused, she ran her fingers over the spot again, more slowly. He noticed, answering her unspoken question with a shrug of his broad tanned shoulders. “I haven’t waxed in a little while.” At the time, it had seemed endearingly feminine.

Halley got out of the car and took a quick glance at her watch: ten am. Not so bad; they’d planned to be at the trail head at nine-thirty and she knew Fernando always allowed extra time for her to get ready. It did take her a long time lately, but it wasn’t because she was ‘disorganized and stupid’, as Fernando put it. She glanced at him checking and rearranging the contents of both backpacks, and then looked at the trees.

It was also because of the doors. And the windows. There were so many to check. She couldn’t just do it the one time; it needed three times to be absolutely certain. It was a large house so this meant running from room to room while he was in the shower. She couldn’t check them when he was around: if he caught her at it, it would ruin it. No, she couldn’t let him see her doing it or tell him anything about it.

Now there was the stovetop too, with its four burners. That really slowed things down. But the stovetop helped the ritual: she could shut the kitchen door, and could do the checking even when Fernando was out and about – he rarely ventured in there. She’d thought this addition was a clever idea, but it quickly became essential and time-consuming. Check each knob once, from left to right, then do it again, from right to left. The thin black line in the center of the knob had to be exactly vertical, and sometimes she’d hit one of the knobs with her hand in her haste, and she’d have to start over again. That’s what took the time. If Fernando shouted at her through the kitchen door to hurry up, it also meant she had to start over, because she hadn’t been fast enough the first time.

Most important, she had to check the basement door. The door, non-descript when they’d first moved in, was now quite striking: she’d succumbed to a compulsion to paint it a high-shine glossy black. It took three coats to get the depth of color just right. That done, she’d decided it needed a new doorknob, and she went from shop to shop to shop until she found the perfect one, a transparent mock crystal with gold fittings.

She could see the door clearly in her mind. Checking that glossy black basement door was always the final check, done just before they left the house. Once, last October, she had discovered it was unlocked. She didn’t know how it could be unlocked – no one ever went down there. She could remember the feeling even now, a year later, how her heart had clenched at the discovery, how her hands had gotten so sweaty that the mock crystal knob had slipped in her grasp, and she couldn’t get it to lock right away. She thought about the door: had she checked it before they left? She couldn’t remember. She simply couldn’t remember.

* * *

“What’s the matter with you?” Fernando asked, as if he’d been bothered by something for quite a while. “Why are you breathing like that?”

Halley jumped, startled from her reverie. The woods came back into focus.

“What? Sorry…”

Fernando looked at her for a long moment, and then shook his head. He turned his thick arm to check the face of his large silver watch. “Twelve o’clock. Well, at least we’ve made good time.”

Halley couldn’t believe two hours had elapsed. Lost in her thoughts, she’d seen nothing of the walk.

Fernando took off his backpack and removed the contour map from its waterproof pouch. With a flick of his wrist, he shook the map open, and pulled out his compass. Halley waited quietly. Fernando studied the surrounding countryside, marking the position of the large peak to the left and the shorter one slightly to its right, and compared this with the map. He confirmed the map’s North-South orientation with the compass, and nodded to himself. With precision, he folded the contour map along its original fold lines and stowed it back in the plastic case, and then in his backpack, along with the small red compass. He pulled out a thin white towel from the pack and wiped the perspiration from his bare shoulders and arms. When he offered it to Halley, she shook her head.

“Hot today,” he offered.

Halley dropped her pack to the forest floor and quickly removed her long-sleeved t-shirt, which was wet with sweat. She hadn’t wanted to stop before to remove it, afraid he’d get angry at her for slowing them down again. She felt him watching her, and fumbled with the zip of her backpack, shoving the shirt in on top of the windbreaker. She was about to put her backpack back on when she felt his gaze shift down towards her chest. Fernando was staring at her. “What? What’s the matter?” she said, with a slight hesitation in her voice, as if she were dreading the answer. Her shoulders had hunched in together and her chest sunken, as if she were awaiting a blow.

He seemed to be thinking of just how to put it. The edges of his lips lifted in a mocking smile. “Just wondering where you got that ridiculous shirt. A crown, Jesus, Halley. It’s so…” He lifted one eyebrow.

Fuck you
, she thought.
Fuck you, you bastard
. She opened her mouth, but closed it again.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is a stupid shirt.

He turned around and begun to walk, leaving Halley to put her backpack back on. She jog-trotted to catch up with him, and followed silently, three feet behind.

The sound of her footsteps bothered her. As her green hiking boots struck the path and moved the leaves around, they seemed to be whispering “
weakling, weakling”
at her, with each stride. She was a weakling: she knew she had to leave Fernando, but she couldn’t do it.

That’s not fair, I’m not a weakling,
she thought, as she watched Fernando’s swinging stride.
I have tried to leave him. Even though he acts like he hates me sometimes, he always pulls me back. Like that time on High West Mountain…

She remembered the occasion well; it was the most recent time she’d tried to leave. That time, she’d come really close. It had been a four day hike, and they had planned to swap leadership at the end of each day. But on the second day, when it was Halley’s turn, she could feel the distrustful way he watched her with the map, his impatience and his questioning and his doubts about her ability. His attitude made her doubt herself, made her make silly mistakes.

She’d gotten angry and left him. They had climbed separately for days, both aiming for the same base camp. He was there on the mountain with her, but for the first time, she didn’t seek him out. She got lost a few times, but that didn’t matter so much; she always managed to find her way again, backtracking and using the map and compass.

After two days, she found she could take a few breaths before she thought of him. After three, the light in the forest seemed to change in a subtle way, becoming brighter and less threatening. It would get better, she knew; in time, she would be all right alone. The fourth night, she slept soundly.

When she woke the next morning, she saw his familiar handwriting on a flat grey rock – he had written her a message with a coal from her own campfire. She had felt a sharp constriction in the center of her chest. The message simply said, “Thinking of you”.

He hadn’t written “I love you”, or “I’m sorry” or even “Goodbye”. His intent in writing the message was unclear, and she couldn’t be sure why he’d come close again. She hated the message, the way it made her long for more, long for him.
Why can’t he just leave me alone!
She knew the reason – it was situated somewhere between her “beautiful body” and the powerless way she admired him; he couldn’t bear to let either of these things go. She rubbed the message out with the toe of her boot.

But she kept thinking about it. It twisted and turned and ate away at her resolve. She didn’t mean to, but she found herself tracking him and finding him later that day. Quickly forgetting her days alone, her competence, she handed leadership back to him. He didn’t seem at all reluctant to take it. She had gone back to him again, and was disgusted with herself.

It happened this way, over and over. It wasn’t that he was overtly abusive. She’d never have stayed with him if he’d hit her, or cheated on her, or abused her openly. What he did was far more subtle, she thought, and hard for anyone else to see. Her friends all said he was great, handsome, that she was nuts to even think about leaving him. But she knew. He was undermining her, like the slow erosion of a hillside. Eventually, she would simply collapse.

Coming back to the present, she stared at his strong back.
I’ve followed him too far. I think this is how drowning must feel
. She had an image of icy waters closing in over her, suffocating her. She coughed; there was a full sensation in her lungs that was disconcerting. She cleared her throat but didn’t speak.

After a long while, Fernando broke the silence. “You haven’t said a word in hours,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”