The Better to Hold You (17 page)

“Do you?” I watched Hunter and didn’t understand what he might be feeling. His question seemed loaded. I had never seen him take such an active dislike to anyone.

“Do you doubt it?” The two men held each other’s gaze for a long moment, and then Red broke away to shake my hand. “Goodbye, Doc. Hunter. See you Friday.”

Jackie smiled at me unhappily. Like me, she was probably wondering why Red had accepted the invitation. Doubtless, he viewed it as some sort of challenge. “You want me to bring anything, hon?”

“No, no, just yourselves.”

I watched them walk away through the crowded bar, stopping once or twice to talk to people they knew on the way out. “Why were you acting like such an asshole, Hunter?”

Hunter took a long swallow of beer. “I thought he was interesting. That was a good idea, inviting them over for dinner.” As Hunter put down the money for our meal, I felt another strange prickle of tension, the way I had when he and Red had first confronted each other. I looked up to see Hunter smiling at Kayla the barmaid. He’d left her a large tip.

Outside, I could smell the remnants of a light rain. Wisps of fog clung to the headlights of cars.

“Wow, look at that.”

“Look at what?”

“The moon.”

I squinted. “You can’t see the moon to night.”

“Can’t you?” Hunter unlocked the car and shrugged himself into the driver’s seat. “Maybe I just feel it, then.”

“So what’s it feel like to you?”

“Feels like it’s growing.” I laughed, thinking he’d made a joke. But when I looked at him he wasn’t smiling.

On the way home, the fog thickened until all we could see was the stretch of road directly in front of us. Hunter honked the horn an instant before I saw the doe leaping from the side of the road, ears pricked, eyes red marbles in the glare of our headlights. If it had been me driving, I probably would have hit it.

Hunter swerved around it as if he had known it was there all the time.

There were small raccoons in the walls. Or enormous mice. Of course, the proper term for enormous mice is “rats,” but I felt better not thinking about rats a few feet from my head while I slept. Not that I was sleeping much, as I lay in bed listening to the frantic skittering of busy rodents. The pitter-patter of little feet, I thought, but Hunter wasn’t around to make the joke to: He was up in the attic, thinking deeply about wild Romania.

In the mornings I sometimes found little corpses near our porch: mice with long, thin noses. Voles? Moles? A squashed frog, one eyeball popped out. A tiny lump of heart, a threadlike trail of viscera attached. I cleaned them up, because my husband had always been the more squeamish of us.

“Hunter, did your family used to have a cat that got loose?”

“Not that I recall.”

It was probably a feral cat. Or a neighbor’s dog. I remembered hearing there were foxes around, even coyotes. But a wild creature wouldn’t leave all the remains so close to human habitation, would it?

“A little project for you, Abs,” Hunter said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Solve the mystery.”

But it didn’t bother me enough to want to set traps, so I did nothing. I figured I could ask Red if there was anything painless I could do when he came to dinner. Like lay down a barrier of salt, or get a dog. I quite liked the idea of a dog, maybe even a puppy.

Hunter did not. “You’ll be out working, and I don’t want to be stuck here all day with some bulbous-headed, lop-eared, obsequious mutt for company.”

That week I spent most of my time in the car, trying to get my bearings. It seemed to take me an hour to get anywhere on the winding, nameless back roads that meandered through endless cornfields and cow pastures. On a search for an electrician to wire the upstairs, I found a good used-book store and spent the next few days rereading books from late childhood: James and the Giant Peach; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Julie of the Wolves.

But the nights seemed endless. We didn’t have a TV in the bedroom. There was a small, old black-and-white console downstairs, but it didn’t get anything other than one grainy station in Poughkeepsie. I found I missed the friendly blond newscasters and the weather maps, and I felt a little lost without even the possibility of stumbling onto an old movie at four in the morning.

Something about the size of the house intimidated me into staying in the bedroom, anyhow. I couldn’t even bring myself to go downstairs to the kitchen to fix myself a bowl of cereal. On our sixth night, I made it halfway down the staircase before the creaking floors and ringing silence did me in. I went back up, then past the bedroom to the attic, where Hunter had been holed away for hours.

“Hunter?”

He looked up with a false smile. “Abra. How’re you doing?” His gaze had returned to his computer.

“I’m … getting used to things. You coming down?” I tried to make it sound like an invitation.

“In a while.” Hunter sighed and met my eyes again. “I am busy, Abs. You knew I would be when you agreed to this. I mean, I came here to work …”

“No problem,” I said, already moving away. “I understand.”

“In another week or so, when I’ve gotten into this project—”

“Sure, of course.” I almost yelled the words at him, then went to our familiar bed in its alien setting and cried. There were other people’s things in here: someone else’s ugly oak dresser, someone else’s fragile wicker chair. On the wall, a tattered sampler attested to some luckless child’s skill with a needle. I sat up, drying my eyes, and the windowpanes rattled twice, hard. Storm coming. Growing up in Pleasantvale, I had looked forward to storms. They gave you an excuse to huddle inside with a book, free from the responsibility of having to play outside with others. Living in the city seemed to blunt the impact of most storms; Lilliana, who’d grown up in Manhattan, said she’d never been frightened of lightning, even as a child.

I pressed myself closer to the window and saw that the wind was whipping through the leaves, ripping some off their branches before they’d even had a chance to change.

I could hear the howl of it, because there were no cars, no voices, nothing else to drown out the wind. This was nothing like the suburbs. This was nature, raw and unsentimental, liable to reach down from the sky and zap you. I suddenly felt very vulnerable in my cotton nightgown with my bare feet cold on the wood floor.

Oh, now that was self-pity at its excruciating worst. That was the kind of melodramatic, whiny complaint that I would expect to hear from my mother. What was happening to me here? Opening up my closet, I slipped my feet into the furry Dalmatian slippers Lilliana had bought me as a leaving present and grabbed my baby blue terry-cloth robe off the door hook. I was not going to turn into some neo-Victorian neurasthenic. I was going to go down those stairs—creak, creak, creak; I pounded my feet down extra hard—and through that kitchen, and I was going to open that back door and walk the hell out into that dark and stormy night. Because I was not afraid of a little wind and rain. And then I was going to walk back into the kitchen, make myself a bowl of Corn Pops and milk, and I was going to eat it while watching the black-and-white weather in the living room. Because I was not afraid of some heavy old furniture.

There was a clap of thunder and the Victorian lights flickered in their sconces, but I just kept going, one furry slipper in front of the other.

The moment I opened the back porch door a gust of wet wind slapped me in the face. The next gust went in a slightly different direction. I stepped out under the overhang and lifted my chin so that I could feel the rain. And then I heard it, a howl above the howl of the wind and the crackle of electricity in the air. It was a high, clear, undoglike sound, and I realized, with a leap of excitement, that I was probably hearing a coyote.

And then I heard another howl, lower, stronger. No, not stronger. Closer. I looked up, back at the house, and realized that Hunter had stuck his head out the tiny attic window. It was a good wolf howl. That Magdalena woman had taught him well.

I went back inside and picked up the old black rotary phone to call my mother, but this was not Manhattan: The line was dead.

“Hope we’re not too early, Doc,” Red said the minute he walked in the door. His gaze flickered over me so quickly I almost thought I’d imagined it: down to green-sweatered breasts, back to eyes. I’d left my hair loose down my back and worn mascara. I could tell he approved.

“No, you’re right on time.” He kept his eyes on mine while I spoke, but it looked like he was making an effort. He was wearing an old sheepskin jacket that still had a lot of sheep left in it.

“Wanted to get going before the sun was down so I could walk you around the boundaries in a bit of light.” As Red spoke, he kept glancing away, and I realized with some surprise that I could see a bright splotchy flush like a crude handprint on his cheek.

I’d made him blush.

“That sounds great. How are you, Jackie?” Red was helping his girlfriend out of her hideous horse-printed jacket. They had brought the cool fall air in with them, along with a strong smell of cigarettes.

“Doing fine. Here—for house warming.” She handed me a small package of guest soaps shaped like little lambs.

“Oh, thank you so much for thinking of that. Here, I’ll take your coat.” The cigarette smell had soaked into the wool; I moved it as far from my face as possible.

“Wow.” Jackie looked around at the dark Victorian foyer with its green-and-yellow stained-glass window and whistled. “Always wondered what it looked like in here. Used to know Harvey, the old caretaker.”

“So you were aware that this place is a mausoleum. Red? Can I take your coat?” He was sniffing the air distractedly. I wondered if something had gone wrong with the chili.

“Oh. Sure. I was just—do you have a dog?”

“No. Why do you ask?” I hung Jackie’s coat up in the hall closet, wondering if he was going to tell me I needed one for protection.

“Because some people keep their animals penned up, you know, when guests come, but Jackie and I are really dog people, so there’s no problem with us.” Red removed his coat, revealing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up over the bulge of his small, hard biceps. I could see only half of his coyote tattoo.

“Nope, no dog here,” I said, hanging his coat on a hanger. “I haven’t really had time to take care of one. Until now, of course. In fact, I’ve been thinking about getting one.” I turned to Jackie. “You never brought Pia over,” I said. “Is she getting better about not scratching?”

Jackie shook her head. “No, she’s still itchy. And she can’t seem to settle down at night. I thought about bringing her along today, but she gets so weird about new places and people, I figured I’d better leave her at home.”

“Would you like me to come over and check her out?”

Jackie smiled, revealing a smear of lipstick on her front tooth. “I’d really appreciate it.”

“Well, my veterinary skills are a bit more advanced than my cooking. I hope you guys like chili.”

“Oh, no, it smells great. Just great. You know us Texans, we like our chili.”

“I’m sorry if it’s not quite right. I’m not used to cooking with meat. There’s also one without.”

“Oh, meat for me.” Jackie smiled even more broadly, and there were deep lines in the leathery skin of her face. I found that I liked Red all the better for not caring that his girlfriend was not perfect or young.

“Another carnivore,” I said. “Hunter will be thrilled. I’ll go upstairs and tell him you’re here.”

“Anything else I can do while you’re up there, Doc? Chili need stirring?”

“No, thanks, Red. Everything’s taken care of.”

Jackie pulled a pack of Marlboros out of her pocketbook. “Jeez, I can’t quite recall the last time you offered to help me in the kitchen.”

Red looked at the cigarette Jackie was lighting. “Maybe we should go on outside a moment with that, Jackie.”

Jackie lifted her eyebrows. “All right, mind telling me what’s got you turning into Mr. Manners?”

“Oh, listen,” I said, “it’s getting cold out: If you want to smoke in here, that’s okay.”

Red was looking at Jackie. “We don’t want to impose.”

“No, it’s no—”

But Jackie wasn’t looking at me, either. “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of insulting our hosts.” She slammed out the door. Red looked at me for a moment in silent apology before following her.

Well, this was going to be an interesting evening.

I hurried upstairs with the lamb-shaped soaps. I’d left Hunter in the clawfoot bathtub, but when I looked, he was gone, and a damp towel was flung over the toilet seat.

“Hunter? Hunter, they’re here.” He’d been so surly about having Red and Jackie over that I half-wondered if he’d gone back up to the attic to write. If so, I wasn’t going to argue with him. But when I came downstairs, ready to make an excuse, Hunter was already out on the porch, smoking a cigarette with Jackie. He was standing with one hand braced against a support beam, looking muscular as he loomed over both our guests. He must have gone down the back stairs. He waved when he saw me, and I realized he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

“Hi, I was just checking to see where you—aren’t you freezing in that?”

Hunter laughed, and I realized that Red had taken off his flannel shirt and was wearing short sleeves, too. Maybe it was a macho thing. “Tell you what, Abs,” he said, taking another drag on the cigarette. “What we need is a drink to warm us up.”

“Of course. Um, Jackie, what would you like? We have vodka, gin, um, I think there’s some beer, red wine …”

“A Bloody Mary would be great.”

I said I’d check if we had tomato juice. I started walking back into the kitchen.

“Abra.”

I turned back to Hunter, who was smiling as if he’d just won a bet.

“Yes?”

“You forgot to ask Red what he wanted. And I’ll have a gin and tonic.”

“I’m sorry, Red. What can I get you?”

“Any old beer you have is fine for me, Doc. Can I help you bring stuff out?”

“If you like.” I went into the kitchen feeling somehow diminished, as if I were a little girl pretending to be a hostess and I’d just been found out.