The Animal Girl (25 page)

And because he was pleading with her, Evelyn got off and walked beside him on the sidewalk.

Minutes later, after they had closed Evelyn's front door behind them, Russell surprised her by removing the keys from her hand, kissing her rapidly, without tenderness or passion, and lowering her to the dining room floor. He stripped her tight biking pants off, pulling her panties with them and yanking them over her shoes. “I'm all sweaty, Russell,” she said, wanting to slow him down. His hand was on her crotch and he was kissing her mouth forcefully. The throw rug dug into the skin over her tailbone; she yelled out for a pillow, and he grabbed one from a chair and shoved it beneath her. She grasped onto a table leg while he entered her, moving with enough force to make the ceiling light fixture sway. His hands gripped her shoulders, holding her down, in place, while he came, after which he lifted himself off her and rolled onto his back.

Evelyn lay quietly, looking at the myriad legs of the table and
chairs rising above her and the jigsaw scraps of early evening light scattered over the floor. “I didn't like that,” she said. It wasn't that she'd felt coerced or violated. It was the fact that what he'd done had been all for himself. The way he'd held her, the way he'd moved, finished, then retreated. She hadn't been necessary. She'd felt like anyone, any woman being fucked too quickly. “You seemed far away,” she said.

“There are worse things, Evelyn, than death.” He was still breathing hard from his exertion, and there was an edge of meanness in his voice. It occurred to Evelyn that he'd been furious with her the whole time he'd been inside her. “I know that firsthand. Most people don't. Most people never even think about it.”

“Don't, please, bring her up after we've just had …”

“I know it,” he said. “I know it firsthand.” He stopped himself and let out a breath. “I'm sorry.”

But he didn't sound sorry, and Evelyn felt even angrier at the thought of how he'd treated her, how he'd taken her on the floor just now, how he'd been thinking of his wife, of his tragedy. He must have thought of her constantly, every minute of the day, every time he saw a car drive past, every time he mounted his bike, every time he fucked Evelyn. “I want to know something,” she said. “What would you do if she woke up one day and was herself again?”

“That's not possible,” Russell said.

“I'm asking it anyway.”

“I'm not answering it.” They were lying side by side, not looking at each other and not touching.

“Margaret had a talk with me last week,” Evelyn said. “She told me that you still hoped Jenny would come back.”

“Do you want me to say that I don't?”

“She told me that you two had considered letting her go, but decided against it. Margaret worries that our relationship might influence you, might pressure you into reconsidering.”

“Is that what you're doing now?” Russell said, calmly, as if he'd just understood something. “Are you pressuring me?”

“If it's really impossible for her to wake up,” Evelyn asked, “if she's really gone forever, why don't you let her go?”

“I see.” There was a fierce tremor in his voice now.

“While you fuck me, you think of her,” Evelyn said. “You think of her the whole time. What would you do? What if she woke up tomorrow and asked for you?”

“All right,” he said, sitting up on his elbows. “I'd go with her. I'd leave whomever I was with, and I'd go with her. She was Tessa's mother. She was my wife for nearly twenty years.”

He had raised his voice. He'd spoken out of anger. But Evelyn understood that he had also spoken honestly, and for that she was both furious and grateful. “Thank you for answering my question,” she said. “I'd like you to go now. Please.”

The next afternoon, Russell showed up at her front door, his shoulders slouched in a posture of exhaustion and defeat that Evelyn recognized now and that made him seem, despite his size, small. “I didn't sleep much last night,” he said. “I owe you an apology. I'm sorry. I really am.”

“Me, too,” Evelyn said. She had planned on delivering a speech about taking a few weeks apart, a small break from each other. But she hesitated now. His hair was uncombed, his face drawn and bloodless, and seeing him in despair made Evelyn want to stay with him until he felt better.

He shrugged. “I'm no good to anyone, I'm afraid.”

“I'm not perfect either.” And then Evelyn added, “This might not work. I'm not saying we shouldn't keep trying. I'm just saying that we might not want to get our hopes up.”

Russell put his hands in his pockets, took a deep breath, and nodded. “I won't hope too much, and I'll keep trying.”

“Me, too,” Evelyn said, feeling relieved and already too hopeful.

That weekend she and Russell went out on the river again. It was a windy afternoon, and the water rippled with the changing directions of sudden gusts. Wind-torn branches and maple leaves floated by. Drifting with the current, canoers—a father and son, a girlfriend and boyfriend—waved at Russell and Evelyn. Russell had already pulled in two small-mouth bass while Evelyn struggled more than ever to
control her casts in the wind. She caught her line three times in the thick growth on the riverbank before giving up and retreating to a patch of grass, where she sat and watched Russell, up to his thighs in water, gracefully lobbing his line into a ripple.

She'd wanted so much to like fishing, because Jenny had not, and because this shared activity might somehow sustain them, keep them going despite an ornery mother-in-law and Russell's maddening fear. But Evelyn was tired of her jealousy and didn't much like the person she was becoming under its influence. Even as she sat back and admired this lanky, tall, surprisingly agile man, she imagined how they'd eventually ask each other for space. She wanted to be the first to do it, to have at least that little bit of satisfaction and power, and to avoid the familiar humiliation of rejection, of all those men who'd never called her back and, even more urgently, the helplessness she'd felt when her ex-husband had left, had ceased to like her, and nothing—not begging, not threatening, not crying, not yelling, not even feigning indifference—would change his mind.

No doubt Russell, gentle, lovely Russell, would let her end it without trying to seize the initiative, to hurt her back. He'd likely apologize, say how sorry he was for them to come to this. Then he would leave her alone. This thought made her want him more; and so, sitting on the grass in a patch of warm sun, the breeze on her face, she saw that she was already hopeless, that she wanted him and could not be with him. Nonetheless, on the long, slow bike ride into town, she behaved herself, staying behind him on the sidewalk. At the busy intersection of Ashley and Huron, where she'd come to a stop ahead of him, her front tire sticking out into the street just a little, and perhaps, she had to admit to herself, intentionally, as a test for Russell, she felt the bike go rigid beneath her. When she turned, she saw that Russell had grabbed her seat post. “What?” she said. “Let go.”

“You were about to …”

“I'm not going out into that,” she said, gesturing at the traffic rushing by and feeling more upset than she wanted to be.

Russell looked down at his hand and let go. “I can't help myself, can I?” he said, his voice frustrated and angry. He shrugged now, as if he too had given up.

And, of course, he was right. They couldn't help themselves. He'd continue to irritate her and she'd continue to provoke him. They'd push each other until they had nothing but aggravation between them. And so she'd ride, she told herself now, however the hell she wanted to. At the next intersection, against a red light but with no cars in sight, she sped through, glancing back at Russell's terrified face so that she didn't see the car until it struck her. She felt the incredible lightness of her body hurtling forward, the air sucked from her lungs, the impact against the hood, a thud so deep, so allencompassing, thrumming through her thighs, her torso, her ribs, her head, that it seemed to come from inside Evelyn. Her bike was gone, nowhere to be seen. A girl—the driver, perhaps—stood out of the car. “The light was green. The light was green. I didn't see her,” she was saying. Russell, in his silly helmet, was galloping toward them and yelling, “Help us! Help us!” Evelyn stood up and saw flecks of blood and smudges of road tar on her hands. Her helmet—somehow it had come off—lay in the asphalt gutter. Very slowly she lowered herself back down to the street. People at a sidewalk café abandoned their tables, rushing toward her, and a man in a tank top—the words “Peace Despite Everything!” emblazoned over the chest—spoke loudly on his cell phone. Bending over her now, Russell said, “You're OK. You're OK,” and she knew, from the expression on his face, that she couldn't have been.

Evelyn was in the hallway of a hospital, ceiling tiles and rectangular fluorescent lights in their silver ice-cube trays above her. There was the sound of a child crying somewhere, and she was trying to remember how she'd gotten here and was able to piece together images of a fire truck, an ambulance, a man's steel-toed boot, a woman with a pie-shaped face and a reassuring smile saying, “How are you, Evelyn? Can you move your fingers for us? Your legs? Good. That's very good.” And now, in the hallway, a young male doctor asked her to count backwards from twenty and then to recite her home phone number and her address, and in the middle of this recitation Evelyn began to cry, tears taking her over, their force mysterious and irresistible.
And then she understood why she was crying. “Russell,” she said. “Where is Russell?” Finally, pale-faced, his eyes frantic, he stood over her and took her hand. His thick hair was smashed and lopsided the way it got after he'd worn his bike helmet. “I'm here,” he said. “Right here.”

Then it was dark, it was nighttime, and Evelyn saw white butterflies flitting above the thick, molten river, swirling with eddies and undertows. Russell was casting and casting, and the shadowy form of a fish rose to his fly, then folded into the dark river again. She slipped under the water with the fish and couldn't seem to struggle back to the surface again. And because it was easier, she allowed the cold current to take her. “They don't want you to sleep for more than a few hours at a time,” Russell said now. She realized that she was awake and he was sitting beside her, a blue curtain at his back. “It's important that we make sure you're OK. You have a concussion.” He asked her a series of remedial questions. “What's your name? Can you say your name for me?”

“Evelyn,” she said, smiling. “You're here,” she said. “You're here.”

“And my name? Who am I?”

“You're Russell.” And then: “Am I hurt badly?”

“No,” he said, and despite the trembling in his voice, she believed him. “They just want to watch you for a day or so. They had to give you stitches. You cut your head.”

She sat up. “I feel good. I feel …” But she felt a heavy ache behind her eyes, and when she put her hand to her chin it felt at once too close and too far away. She lay back down.

“You'll be fine,” he said. “You'll be as good as new in a day or two.” His hand was shaking in hers, and she understood then that he was the frightened one. She understood how hard it must have been for him to return to this place, the beds and stretchers and wheelchairs terribly familiar from the hours and weeks and months he'd passed in waiting rooms, wanting everything to be all right when nothing was.

“I did it on purpose,” she said. “I rode out into the intersection. I wanted you to see that there was nothing to be afraid of.” She shook her head. “More than anything, I did it to piss you off. But I didn't see
that car. I didn't see anything. I know you're always thinking about what happened to her. And I just wanted to make you forget it. I'm sorry. You must be furious with me.”

He closed his eyes and squeezed her hand more tightly. “Later,” he said. “I'll be furious later. You can sleep again if you like.”

When she woke next, it was daylight, and Russell, eyes puffy and ringed with purple, sat beside her with a cup of coffee in hand and a copy of
Newsweek
in his lap. He was still wearing the clothes he had fished in—his Levi's torn out in the knees and his Michigan Wilderness T-shirt. He hadn't showered, hadn't even gone home, Evelyn guessed. On her bedside table sat a vase of red and yellow tulips. “Those are from the garden,” Russell said. “Margaret brought them over earlier this morning.”

Evelyn felt surprisingly well. She sat up and stretched her arms above her head. “That was nice of her,” Evelyn said. Then she laughed. “Margaret doesn't think much of me.”

“She brought you flowers, didn't she?”

She passed her hand over her head, discovering the wiry lattice of stitches in her scalp. “Fifteen,” Russell said.

“She's right, you know. She's absolutely right not to like me.” She gestured at the tulips. “They're beautiful, but I bet she brought them for you. I bet she feels terrible that I'm putting you through something like this all over again.” Russell shook his head and tried to smile, but there was a blankness, a helpless exhaustion in his face that told her the truth. “You didn't go home last night. You probably didn't even sleep. And I did that to you.”

“I'm fine,” he said.

“I put you through hell.”

He looked away, toward the TV on the wall opposite her, and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “you did.”

Later that morning, she was taken in a wheelchair to radiology and learned that she had sustained a minor fracture in her left fibula. They put her in a bulky plastic boot, which she'd have to wear only a few weeks and in which she could walk without the aid of crutches. Otherwise she was fine, and her doctors told her she'd be released that evening. Though she insisted that Russell go to work, he stayed
through the day and they played game after game of checkers, between which she rose from bed and practiced hobbling around the room in her plastic cast. After picking over a terrible lunch, they switched from checkers to chess, and just when Evelyn had been about to seize his queen with her knight, she looked up to find that Russell's head was down and that he was sleeping.