Women & Other Animals (13 page)

helping, so she pushed off again and rowed. The river curved and narrowed until she could make out occasional irrigation pumps and boathouses on the opposite bank. She focused on a line of three bright stars until they disappeared behind trees. Blisters formed and ruptured on her hands, but she didn't let go of the oars, for fear she wouldn't be able to make herself grab hold again. To warm herself, she conjured up a picture of Michael's yellowandwhite kitchen, cluttered with books and jars of jelly.

She needed to stop rowing, to rest under her covers, even if there was sand in the bed. But when she finally caught sight of her dark place on stilts, she remembered that she had no matches, and she knew how the pockets of coldness would be trapped between her blankets long after she tried to curl up and sleep without a fire.

And she'd left her warmest covering, her quilt, folded on Michael's bed. She headed instead across the river, to Michael's oilbarrel float. She misjudged the distance from shore and stepped out into thighdeep water. Her fingers no longer worked well enough to make a knot, so she wound the rope as many times as she could around a crosswise support piece. As she worked, her aluminum prow clanged against the metal barrels. The noise must have woken King, because a light came on in the bedroom, and King jogged out into the yard and over the plank to watch Gwen at eye level. Gwen petted her, face to face.

When the kitchen light came on, Gwen suddenly noticed her legs were numb in the water, as though she'd fallen asleep standing. She staggered to shore. If that white underpants woman was gone, she and Michael could empty her dresser into the river. Gwen would like to drag out all of Jake's huge pants and flannel shirts and release them alongside the perfect brassieres. She and Michael could watch pieces of clothing twirl and dance on their way to Lake Michigan, sinking and resurfacing, grasping at each other before disappearing for good.

Michael opened the door before she knocked. King stayed beside her.

"Can I have some matches?" she asked. She thought deliriously of swallowing a box of wooden matches, having them fall to the bottom of her empty stomach.

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"You're late for dinner." The clock behind him said 4:10. "Come in, though."

Gwen clenched her teeth, locking her jaw against the cold. She could survive in the cabin across the river, or in Florida, or anywhere. She asked, "Are you by yourself?"

"Don't worry about Danielle. I can defend myself against her."

"I brought King back. She came out to find me."

"Come in, Renegade," he said, stepping aside, but the dog didn't move. Michael looked into Gwen's face. "Did somebody do something to you? That guy with the speedboat?"

Gwen stopped her shivers by hunching her shoulders. Inside were coffee and butter and clean sheets. Food and hot water awaited, but she now wished she'd brought Michael something. She should have stopped at the cottage and gotten those three beers she'd taken from Dan. Or sardines. She was finally hungry enough to eat canned sardines. "That big island upstream," she said. "It's called Willow Island. I'll take you there if you want."

Michael leaned against the doorway. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, smiled, and said nothing.

Gwen felt drunk but blinked her eyes open. "What's your favorite bird?" she asked.

"My favorite bird? Let's see. How about the great blue heron?"

"There's herons on Willow Island." Gwen was dizzy from standing. "A campment of herons, living way up in the trees." She put one hand against the doorframe to steady herself. ''Hundreds of them. One came so close it brushed me with a wing."

"I don't suppose you know the story about Leda and the swan?"

Gwen wondered if she'd get used to Michael.

"Your fingers are pure white." He took her free hand and held it up in the kitchen light. "They're so cold. And you've got blisters broken open. We should clean your hands with peroxide and bandage them." He tugged at her wrist but stopped when she resisted. "I forgot. You want to stand right here in the doorway. Well, I bought you a can of gas. Matches are right here on the stove. I'll hand you everything so you don't even have to come in."

"What if your boat doesn't fit through the doorway?" Gwen's teeth clacked together, breaking up her speech.

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"Then I'll cut out the doorway with a Sawzall." Michael pulled her other hand off the doorframe and held both of them. In Gwen's blurred vision, it seemed that Michael's arms were fusing endtoend with her goosebumped and bruised arms, stretching into an impossible length of skin. "Come in, Gwen. Renegade's going to get cold out there waiting for you. I'll make you an omelet. This time I've got tomatoes."

Before she stepped through the doorway, Gwen looked behind her, across the river, toward the dark little house. She would row across tomorrow when her hands stopped hurting and close it against the raccoons. Beyond that, she didn't know yet what she'd do. King followed her inside.

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The Perfect Lawn

From his hiding place in the backyard, Kevin could see into Madeline's bedroom window and into a basement living room with sliding glass doors. On the other side of her ruffled curtains, the beautiful Madeline lay with a science textbook propped on her knees. As usual, Mrs. Martin spent the evening on the couch with a paperback close to her face and the television glowing. She smoked nonstop, pressing a cigarette to her mouth and pulling it away as regular as a heartbeat. Several times this school year, Kevin had seen Madeline storm into the living room and stand before her mother, hands on hips, as if demanding an explanation or dishing out discipline, as though Madeline was the mother and Mrs. Martin was the daughter.

Madeline stood and pulled off her Red Devils sweatshirt to reveal a thick white bra. Kevin inhaled and held his breath, but Madeline undressed no further. She stepped into the hall and the bathroom light came on; through the frosted glass he could distinguish no shapes. He let out his breath, moved up the lawn closer to the house, near the burn barrel, and lay on his belly in the dry leaves.

The Martins' backyard was not just neglected—it was a travesty. Under the newly fallen leaves there were growths of moss, bare patches, and last year's decaying leaves and sticks. Kevin worked

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with his dad in the lawn care service when he wasn't in school, and he knew that with regular care this yard could be as nice as any in the township. The property abutted the neighbor's woods all the way down to the river, which afforded many landscaping options for this scraggly border in which he took cover. Kevin would suggest right off yanking these pricker bushes and planting some mediumsized shrubs, something that would flower in the spring—forsythia, maybe—and a couple of burning bushes for fall color. The other cheerleaders lived near the school in whitecolumned houses with manicured flower beds, or in the halfbricked ranchstyle homes on Tiger Lake whose yards sloped toward little boathouses and docks. Though Madeline had every right to live on Tiger Lake and to have the best possible lawn, she and her mom lived instead in this small asbestosshingled house on the river, not far from Kevin.

The night was unseasonably warm for November, so when Mrs. Martin got up from the couch and stepped outside with a grocery bag of trash, she didn't bother closing the sliding door behind her. She floated across the lawn, squinting against the smoke from the cigarette in her mouth, ashes and bits of paper falling away from her. Kevin flattened his body against the ground and cursed himself for choosing the new hiding spot. Mrs. Martin emptied the papers into the burn barrel and then held her disposable lighter inside until something ignited. The fire gradually lighted her face, neck, and chest. Her robe was fastened loosely, and Kevin wondered if it might slip open. Smoke spilled from her nose and mouth.

Kevin's dad smoked too, but he burned cigarettes right down to their butts, then smashed them out in big glass ashtrays, bending and twisting the filters. He exhaled smoke in long straight streams, while Mrs. Martin just let the smoke drift out of her. Up close, Kevin could see that Mrs. Martin looked sort of like Madeline, or at least she had the same long, reddish hair. Perhaps after Kevin and Madeline had gone together awhile, her mom and his dad would start dating. It gave Kevin a moment of relief to imagine the four playing cards or eating a Thanksgiving turkey, but Mrs. Martin was staring into the barrel as though conjuring a vision or reading a message from the dark side in the flames. Through the eyesized air holes punched in the drum, Kevin watched the fire gaining fury.

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She obviously wasn't wearing anything under that thin robe, not even abra. She was standing too close over the fire, and he worried that her collar or the hair hanging in her face would ignite. He could almost see individual strands singe and shrivel toward her face.

Mrs. Martin took a step back and crossed her arms, holding her cigarette right in front of her face so she could drag on it without effort. Kevin could not see what was burning, but from the smells he imagined inserts from newspapers, a cereal box with a waxedpaper liner, a box of macaroni shells with a plastic window. Kevin didn't know what Madeline ate besides the pizza slices she carried away from the lunch line. Perhaps it was the thought of Madeline eating with her hands, or maybe he had been absentmindedly pushing himself into the ground. Whatever the reason, Kevin felt himself erect against the grass and leaves. He looked toward Madeline's window, but Mrs. Martin was blocking his view.

He contemplated scurrying away or else reaching under his body to adjust his personal part, despite the risk that Mrs. Martin might notice him. He could bring himself to do neither, and his whole body stiffened with indecision. Then with a tiny crackle, a piece of flaming something popped out of the barrel through one of the air holes and landed two feet away. Within minutes, Kevin smelled leaves smoldering. Mrs. Martin continued to gaze into the barrel, not noticing the new fire. Her nipple pushed against the fabric of her robe.

More leaves and some of the damp sticks began to smoke. Mrs. Martin's orangelit face grew demonic in the rippling light. Her pale eyes shone wet, and the long shadows of her eyelashes reflected upward onto her forehead. She was some sort of thoughtless witch, unconcerned with what spells she was casting. Her snakelike fingers wrapped around each other and around her cigarette like an unholy tangling of limbs. He tried to remember Madeline's fingers. Certainly they were more respectable than this. The smoldering circle grew to the size of a fried egg.

He knew the longer he delayed, the worse it would be to reveal himself in all his tompeepery. The smoldering orangeedged patch Page 89

grew to the size of a small hubcap, but he would burn to death in silence rather than have Mrs. Martin tell his father that she'd found him skulking in her shrub bed. He pressed his groin into the lawn, rhythmically.

When Mrs. Martin finished her cigarette, she lit another from it and dropped the stub into the flames. She turned and headed toward the house, dragging her robe across overgrown grass, catching a stick and a couple of leaves in her hem. As soon as she slid the door shut behind her, Kevin stood and stomped out the smoking debris, breaking up the pile to make sure nothing was still burning. Then he collapsed on the ground, telling himself that if this fire had been let go, the woods next door could have caught. If Kevin had not been here watching, that big tree by the house eventually might have fallen in flames through Madeline's roof, pinning her in her bed. Kevin imagined the beautiful Madeline curled safely in the dark under blankets, wearing red cheerleader underpants and her bra.

One January afternoon, Madeline approached Kevin at school and stood with her arms crossed over those lush breasts, big and smooth like a couple of knolls built up for decorative annual plantings. Because there was a game tonight, she wore her cheerleader uniform.

"I'm sick of you following me," she said.

"Huh?" She was so close that Kevin smelled her powdery perfume.

"I purposely went out to the parking lot, then back to the gym so I could see for sure, and you definitely followed me." Madeline turned her face up and shook her hair against the creamcolored backdrop of the painted cinderblock hallway. She pushed her hand through her hair, front to back, pulling strands away from her face, giving the impression that possessing such a mane was a noble burden. Kevin never tired of this performance, and he couldn't help it that hair as thick and long as Madeline's gave a guy the idea that he'd like to have her head in his lap. Kevin's surveillance of Madeline Martin, however, had nothing to do with thoughts of initiating her into personal acts he might have seen in magazines his dad subscribed to. The burnbarrel fire had made Kevin aware that Page 90

danger was always present and that he must continue to protect Madeline. He meant to come clean with her now, but he didn't know where to start. Instead he stared at her chest.

"And stop staring at my tits," said Madeline. "That is so rude."

"Sorry." His eyes traveled down to her pleated skirt, red and yellow, barely long enough. She would reveal the underpants during athletic maneuvers at tonight's game.

Many of his male classmates seemed to prefer the petite figure of Breanna Harding, head cheerleader and homecoming queen, but Kevin had studied them side by side, and Breanna's overmade face and blond hair looked as dull as a plastic mannequin's next to Madeline's natural glow. Little Breanna might posture on top of the pyramid with ease, but only because, at the bottom and center of the pile, with feet secure on the asphalt track or gymnasium floor, there was someone as solid as Madeline.

"If I catch you following me again, I'll tell the viceprincipal." Her hands were propped on her hips and she looked him square in the face. Madeline was a forthright girl, no doubt about it, but her eyes were as cool green as the perfect lawn.

"I won't follow you anymore," Kevin mumbled, letting his vision fall farther toward her muscular legs and shapely feet.