THIRTEEN
Once I admitted it to myself, it was all I could think about. My marriage was being restructured and relocated. My husband was letting me go. And while my moods were swinging wildly between depression and anxiety, I tried to act as though I were at peace with Hunter's decision.
I didn't want to drive him away any faster than he was already going.
Maybe it would have been better if I'd let myself rage at him, but I was too frightened. I don't fall in love easily. I don't even fall in like very often. And I'd given so much of myself to Hunter that I didn't know how much of me would be left when he was gone. I wouldn't even be able to console myself with sleep, the way other depressed people do. I would sit up with the furniture, watching my familiar things become shadowy and strange the way things do when you pass the witching hours of fatigue and solitude and are still awake.
And there was nobody to tell this to. My father, who remembered Hunter as a cocky twenty-one-year-old with a goatee and a lot of unexamined ideas about American cinema, wholly disapproved of my husband. It was the one thing he and my mother agreed on, although my father believed it was in poor taste to say anything more than, “Well, you know how I feel on that subject.” The way he said this, however, implied a loathing so deep and pervasive that it defied language. For a while, my mother tried imitating him, but then she couldn't stop herself from going on. And on.
As for female friends, well, I couldn't see turning to Lilliana. We had only been friends for a few months, but I could already tell that in Lilli's version of reality, men were easier to come by than career opportunities. My situation was a bit different. During my college and postgrad years, when most women meet more eligible partners than they will at any other time, I had encountered only three men who were interested in me: a brilliant math and music major with poor people skills, a good friend going through a bad time, and Hunter.
I couldn't confide in Malachy or Sam or Ofer, and Malachy, while he knew about my husband's exposure to the lycanthropy virus, was of questionable sanity himself. Too much time had passed to call my small crowd of high school friends.
I began trying to find a way out: There had to be a cure. Hunter had said, “You can always come with me.” But that wasn't a real option, not unless I wanted to give up AMI and everything that gave my life meaning.
Except for Hunter, of course.
The next day I called in sick and went to the bookstore. I was looking for An Answer, but of course there were lots of Answers: Letting Loose, Holding On, The Leap of Faith, Making Him Want to Change, Making Change Work, Changing the Way You Love, Understanding the Alpha Male.
I picked up this last, figuring it had been misfiled: Surely Alpha Males belonged in the animal category? Could there be a special self-help section for Women Who Loved Lycanthropes? According to this author, though, we were all animals.
Is your mate an Alpha Male? Take this test.
1. Would your mate describe himself as
A) team player
B) One of the guys
C) A highly autonomous individual with leadership capabilities
D) Your lapdog
2. When confronted with a major life choice, does your man
A) Ask your advice
B) Ask an expert's opinion
C) Tell you and the expert what's wrong with both of you
D) Pant and whine
3. When driving, if cut off by another car, does your mate
A) Curse and yell
B) Pursue the offending vehicle very closely and then swerve off at the last possible moment before impact
C) Physically assault the small dog sitting in the other driver's lap
D) Shake uncontrollably, often losing control of his bladder
I assumed that anyone who answered D) was probably a shih tzu. There were a few more multiple-choice questions designed to ascertain if the woman reader was an Alpha, Beta, or Gamma Female. I was an Alpha, just barely, because of a high score of autonomy (willing to see a movie alone, does not need mate's advice to select clothes). As an Alpha Female, however, I needed to work on “asserting my right to submit.”
Do not think of submission as surrender. Instead, think of it as a choice—an assertive female knows she is strong enough to submit when it serves her needs. Traditionally, women have understood that their greater emotional intelligence, often called intuition, actually makes them stronger than men—strong enough to back down. In any pack, you will see that the Alpha Male is dominant over the Alpha Female, with the exception of the period of intense initial sexual courtship and the postpartum period. At these times, the male caters to his mate; otherwise, the female uses her enhanced social abilities to hold the family unit together.
It was pseudo-scientific bull. It was absurdly atavistic. And I couldn't put it down.
If you, as a woman, decide that you desire to hold on to your mate with the long-term goal of producing viable offspring, you should understand that you will need to know when, and how, to submit. If during moments of key pack decision-making (when to move to a new hunting ground, for example) you assert your will, you will be setting yourself up as rival, not mate. Be aware of your enhanced capacity for emotional compromise, and remember that there will also be times (postpartum, for example, or during enhanced periods of sexual connection) when you can expect your man to submit to your will.
I finished reading the book at home. Hunter was out, buying a secondhand car. He came back in the late afternoon, and threw his keys and briefcase on the table.
“Success?”
“Success.”
“What kind?”
“Ford Explorer, three years old.” He pulled out the purchase agreement to show me the particulars: CD player, front air bags, enough miles on it to qualify it for early retirement.
“It's been driven a lot.”
“Yeah, but it's in great shape, and it has a sunroof.”
“That won't mean much if it's in the shop all the time. Did you look at a Consumer Reports? And didn't those cars have something wrong with the tires?”
“Christ, you sure know how to take the fun out of things. It's a f*cking car. Don't make a doctoral project out of it.”
I picked up my book. “Fine. It's going to be your car, you're going to be the one driving it. It won't really affect me at all.”
“Oh, so that's what this is all about. You're going to start laying some guilt trip on me about going. Look, I've already said you can come with me if you want—”
I put the book down to glare at him. “Which you know I can't do!”
Hunter turned away from me and began looking over the purchase papers. “Well, that's not my fault. I don't see you giving up your work to be with me, so don't ask me to do it for you.”
We talked again, at seven-thirty, to decide what to order for dinner, and ate separated by walls of paperwork. At twelve Hunter went in to bed without saying good night, and I took the opportunity to cry, shave my legs, and apply a facial mask. In all the women's magazines it says to pamper yourself when you feel low. It worked only in the sense that I felt I was doing something. My face had dried into a brittle shell and I was scrubbing the dead skin off my heel when I became aware of Hunter, standing in the bathroom doorway wearing nothing but faded plaid pajama bottoms.
“Do you know it's almost four in the morning?”
I nodded, trying to hide the pile of my callused skin.
“Hey, what is this shit you're reading?” The book. Which I had been carrying around all evening. “Alpha Males are notorious for ambition, energy, drive, and promiscuity. Does your man sound like an Alpha male? Do you want to know how to hold him?” Hunter looked at me, absolutely gleaming with mischief. “I'll show you how to hold me, darling. You use your right hand. No, seriously, what do you need this crap for? Smart girl like you. By the way, do you know your face is beginning to crack?” He came forward, hitching up the waistband of his pajamas. He stopped an inch away, his chest broader and hairier than it had been in college. I felt as if all this were already part of the past.
I leaned forward into him, and his hands came up to stroke the back of my head. “Is this the end, Hunter?”
His hand lifted my chin. “It's the end of this phase of our lives.”
“Is it the end of us?”
He didn't answer right away. In his silence, I thought about the fact that I had old friends and work friends, but no friend close enough to cry on. No friend other than Hunter.
“I hope it's not the end. I don't mean for it to be, Abs. So come with me.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist. “What if I said yes?”
Hunter looked down at me. “Is that what you want?”
I couldn't tell if he wanted me to say yes or not. I thought of my mother, histrionically holding my father responsible for the subjugation of all women. In the middle of the night, at the top of her voice. I thought of the emptiness of having nothing but my work and the city, no one to care if I was in the apartment when it was burgled. Having no one to touch me anymore. Somehow I knew that if I let Hunter go, it would be a very, very long time before anyone would be touching me again. I would become a highly qualified veterinarian and eventually go into a successful Manhattan practice, and there would be nothing much to go home to, not even a dog.
Or one of us could sacrifice something. Like me, the one with all the emotional intelligence.
“It's what I want, yes. I want to go with you, Hunter. If you want me to.” Relief flooded me. Oh sweet surrender. No more fighting to stay afloat; just cut the anchor and let Hunter pull me along.
Hunter leaned forward, examining me closely, taking in the glow of my happiness, which was threatening to become tears. “Hmm. I'd kiss you right now, you know, but you're likely to flake off on me.” He looked down at the pile of dead skin in the bathtub. “Yes. Quite a lot of flaking going on here.”
“I'll wash my face.”
“I'll dispose of the corpse.” He gathered up the disgusting waxy bits of skin in his hands and dropped them into the toilet. “You see that? With my bare hands, too. True love, darling. Nothing less.”
There were no more jokes after that. We made love slowly, carefully, like two people made of glass. I fell asleep wrapped in his embrace.
When I told the board that I was leaving, they were very polite. They seemed to feel that I was having some wild overreaction to Malachy's departure, and warned me that they could not guarantee a place if I decided to reapply. Sam was sweetly befuddled at my decision, while Ofer, predictably, dripped scorn.
“I can't believe you're going out into the sticks to watch some old guy castrate bulls with his bare hands,” he said.
“I'll miss you, too, Ofer.”
Lilliana, of course, knew just the right thing to say. “You know I've got your back,” she said. “And if this is what you want, then I'm happy for you. I'm just going to miss you like hell.” She came with me when I used the day spa voucher she'd given me as a birthday present, and we gossiped about Malachy.
“Actually,” she said as we sat side by side, having our feet scrubbed, “I e-mailed him.”
“You're kidding! What did you say?” I pressed a button to stop my chair from vibrating so I could hear her better.
“I asked him if he knew what he was doing next. He said he was looking into renting facilities upstate, where it's cheaper.” Lilliana leaned back as her pedicurist told her to put her feet back in the mini-Jacuzzi. “Mm, if I ever get rich, I think I'll buy one of these chairs for home. Hey, maybe Mad Mal will move near you and you can go into business together.”
“Assuming I'd want to. Besides, Lilli, the man was not exactly the picture of health,” I pointed out. “For all we know, he could be on his deathbed.” But then I remembered that distorted glimpse I'd had of him just before passing out. Maybe he was fighting off his ailment. Or maybe it was mutating into something else.
“Somehow, I think Malachy's got a lot of fight left,” Lilliana said as her pedicurist removed her right foot from the water. Mine followed suit.
“I don't suppose you'd ever leave Manhattan, Lilli.”
Lilliana grinned. “If I did, where would you stay when you came to visit? Do you know what hotels cost in this city?”
“Hey, nice color,” said my pedicurist as she began to paint my toenails. I had brought polish from home: All things considered, I figured Wolf Whistle Red was appropriate.
After that, I was at loose ends for a few days. For the first time in my adult life, I didn't have a plan, a schedule, a place to be. It felt as though the laws of nature had been suspended. On my last day of work, I walked out of the Animal Medical Institute into the uncomfortable heat of late September. “Indian summer,” the weather report had called it this morning.
I had walked half a block before I realized I was still wearing my white coat. Folding it and draping it over my arm, I turned around one last time toward the East River. There I saw the ghost of a half-moon still hanging low in the sky, like some Shakespearean portent of wild spirits and mad kings.
Or like a low-bud get movie warning that lunacy is waxing near.