TWENTY-SEVEN
The day after the storm hit, the sky was clear and blue and filled with soft white clouds that scudded slowly by with the breeze. It seemed impossible that a little thing like weather could have knocked down so many trees, but there were two down on our road alone. A road crew removed the trees and the deer and by noon we had electricity again. Triple A towed our car to the town's garage and for three days we had a borrowed pickup truck in our driveway. Red called twice, hanging up when the answering machine picked up. The third time he left a message, asking me to call when I had a chance. I deleted the record of his calls, feeling oddly numb, then listened to my own voice on the answering machine, telling Hunter not to worry. After a moment, I erased that, too.
Hunter and I never did talk and resolve what had happened that night. I was checking the fridge for spoiled food when Hunter surprised me by asking me out to dinner and a movie. He said he was tired of being such a recluse and a bastard. He dropped his chin and looked out from under his floppy dark hair, the dangerous, darkly brooding air he had replaced by something surprisingly boyish and vulnerable.
I should have gone back to my book on Alpha Males and their instincts: how a dominant leader, when it has subjugated its subordinate mate to the point of rebellion, will turn back to the ploys it used for its initial sexual courtship.
I ordered grilled mushrooms and pasta at Tooth and Claw, an expensively renovated old farm house. Hunter chose steak tartare and I tried not to wince at the sight of his lips chewing all that raw meat. Instead of seeing a movie, we walked around the village of Rhinebeck, where two of the three little dress shops had the kind of expensive, baggy hippie clothes I like best. Hunter bought me a lavender corduroy jumper and a black-and-white Zuni-patterned scarf. The jumper was one of those roomy one-size-fits-all things that Hunter usually despises, but this time he didn't comment, except to say, “Looks like it might come in handy.” Hunter drove back with only his left hand on the wheel. His right hand held mine.
“Are you going to take a test, Abs?”
“What kind of test?”
Hunter glanced over his shoulder at me.
“Oh,” I said. “I suppose I should.”
We stopped at a pharmacy that stayed open late and I bought something that said it was the number one choice of someone or other. At home, I went straight into the bathroom while Hunter fixed hot cocoa.
“Well? What's the verdict, Abs?”
I walked out carrying the little plastic disk and showed him the plus sign. It was faint, which I supposed was because I was testing so early on, before I had even missed a period.
“That's good, isn't it? A plus? That means we did it, right?”
I looked at him carefully, his handsome Heathcliff face open and excited for once, his dark eyes searching mine for my reaction. I had loved this man for a long time, and now a part of him had taken root in me. It would be an odd moment to close off to him completely.
“Yes,” I said slowly, making up my mind. “That's the good sign.” The next morning, I made an appointment with a local gynecologist who seemed less certain.
“Are you having any cramping? Spotting or bleeding?” She was a motherly looking woman with gray curly hair and a wide bosom, and I had liked her immediately.
“A little,” I admitted. “So I'm not pregnant?” I felt a sense of vertigo, as if I had been spun wildly first in one direction, and now in another.
“Let's retest you in a few days, and then I can tell you for sure.” She didn't use the word “miscarriage,” but I understood that was what might be happening to me. I put my hand over my stomach and thought, Hang in there, Baby. And then I wondered if that was really what I wanted, after all. But when I returned for my second test, the doctor declared me officially pregnant.
“Although I have to admit, some of your hormone levels are a little unusual. Do you have any rare genetic conditions in your family?”
No, I said, thinking: But my husband's a lycanthrope. I took a prescription for prenatal vitamins, made an appointment to return, and e-mailed my old teacher. I wasn't sure whether or not Malachy had kept the same e-mail address, but I figured it was worth a try. A sweet and motherly gynecologist, I realized, might not be the specialist my condition required.
To: [email protected]:
From: [email protected]:
Need your professional advice, for wolf-hybrid Pia—and for myself. I'm pregnant and living two hours from city, in Northside.
He wrote back immediately.
To: [email protected]:
From: [email protected]:
So you and Pia are in the same town? Send your contact info and I will attempt the trip. My health a little uncertain at the moment, but I hope to be better in a few days.
Given the circumstances, I decided to accept the inevitable and embrace my fate. That is to say, I agreed to work for my mother. After the first few days, during which I felt uncomfortably like an adolescent impostor, I settled in, and by mid-November I had a routine going. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I went over to Beast Castle to assist with the sick animals and new arrivals. My mother was so happy with the arrangement that she actually treated me like a veterinarian, writing down my instructions, calling me for medical advice. Not to mention paying me money.
Meanwhile, Pimpernell the Chihuahua had stopped eating and Grania found herself unable to pay attention to her classes. She had formed a special attachment to the little dog, and kept cooking it delicacies to tempt its appetite—fried calves' liver, filet mignon, lamb chops. I discovered an abscessed tooth in that tiny yawn of a mouth and drained the pus off, which cured the problem. After that Grania became my staunchest ally.
I was so buoyed by this turn of events that I waited three weeks before telling my mother that I was pregnant.
“You're sure? And you're keeping it? Well, I'll look at the bright side. At least this means your marriage won't last long. Once you have a baby you'll see just what that husband of yours is made of.” She made plans to come for Thanksgiving with Grania, then canceled them because she didn't want a seasonal feast, she was on a diet. Instead, my mother said, she was going to take a trip to Antigua, where she could snorkel and lose weight in the sun.
When I told him the news, my father hesitated, then asked if I was happy. He said he'd love to see me—he meant us—over the Christmas vacation.
I got sick in the evenings, but felt amazingly well during the first part of the day. So well that I was a bit surprised, actually—I'd never seen my hair look so thick and glossy, and my sense of smell seemed to have become particularly acute. This was more or less typical, according to my gynecologist. Less common was the new acuity of my hearing, although my eyesight hadn't improved.
Possibly because canids are myopic, I thought, and e-mailed Malachy again: When are you coming? This time, there was no reply.
My old friend, insomnia, still kept me up till three or four most nights, but now I nodded off in the late afternoons for an hour or so, and that little bit of extra sleep made me feel more alert all day long.
With less attention paid to it, my marriage seemed to be doing better. Hunter still disappeared up to the attic to work, but at mealtimes he joined me and made plans for the early summer, when the baby was due. We argued about names and whether or not it was safe for me to ski. We spooned each other in bed, but Hunter no longer wanted to play slave girl games with me. One morning, waking to a feeling of animal plea sure in the drowsy warmth of his body, I turned to Hunter and ran my hand down his thigh.
“Let's just cuddle,” he said, stopping my hand, and I rested my head on his shoulder, letting him pet my hair until I fell back asleep.
The hair under my arms and on my legs grew so thick and dark that I became embarrassed. Usually I just shave under the armpits, the hair on my calves and thighs being rather sparse and downy. But now I looked like some kind of yeti, and my curved little lady's razor was not up to the job. I borrowed Hunter's cherished English razor, a really lovely bone-handled affair, and his shaving cream, too. Unfortunately, my foamy fur was impossible to rinse out of the blades, and I wound up feeling like Bluebeard's wife, hiding the bloodied key to the forbidden chamber.
“Abs, darling, have you seen my razor?”
“Ah, yes, isn't it in the bathroom?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Why not use my disposable?”
“I suppose if I have to—Abs?”
“Yes?”
“Why is there no shaving cream left in this can?”
So I confessed. “It must be the pregnancy,” I explained. “My hormones are going wild.”
Hunter stared at his five o'clock shadow in the bathroom mirror. “Perhaps I should just try a beard. What do you think?”
“I think I'd miss seeing your face.” I wrapped my arms around his middle and he patted me affectionately, and then stepped away. For a moment, I considered doing something more overt, like rubbing my breasts against his bare back. The hormones weren't just making me feel nauseated and hairy—they were making me feel quite frisky as well. Too bad my husband didn't seem inclined to take advantage. For a moment, I thought of Red, wondering if he would still find me attractive like this. Then I pushed that thought away, reminding myself that it's always easy to romanticize the one who isn't around.
The night before Thanksgiving Hunter's father called and announced that he and his second wife were going to drop by to “use the house” for a few days. It was not clear whether or not they were expecting to join us for dinner, although Hunter did invite them, without asking me.
“They'll probably just drink, darling; you know them. And if you could just stick a bird in the oven, you'd still have all the lovely yammy side dishes to yourself.”
“Hunter, even if I were well enough to deal with the idea of a big bird, we're talking about tomorrow. There won't be any turkeys left.”
“Sure there will; I ordered one.”
And so it came to pass that at nine A.M. Thanksgiving day, I was hefting a turkey carcass into my shopping wagon when I saw Kayla, the waitress.
She was even prettier than I remembered, in a shaggy green wool sweater and faded jeans, her strawberry blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail. I glanced at her and then away, but not before I'd caught her looking at me, first with surprise and then with a fierce, narrow-eyed hatred.
As she came closer, I saw that there was a thin red scar on her mouth which I hadn't recalled seeing before.
“You tell that bastard to keep away,” she hissed. “If I see one more dead animal on my front door, you tell him I will call the police.”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said, but I put my hand on my stomach as I said it.
“I don't care if Dan finds out anymore. You tell him that. I don't care if you know and Dan knows or the whole damn town knows, but you tell Hunter to keep the f*ck away from me.”
My mouth was dry and I couldn't seem to get words past the lump in my throat. “What are you—”
Kayla leaned closer to me, and her pretty green eyes were awash with tears. “He's sick, that's what he is,” she said. “And you're sick to be with him.”
She walked away, just another woman who'd meant nothing to my husband, and I closed my eyes for a moment because suddenly the little supermarket was way too bright.
“Are you all right, miss?” The boy in the green apron was looking at me with alarm, and that made me straighten up.
“I'm fine,” I said. I left my turkey in the wagon and walked out to the car.
I drove home as if I were eighty-six and extremely fragile, slowing around corners, braking whenever I thought I saw a chipmunk about to race across the road. I have had a shock, I thought, and I am pregnant. I must be very gentle with myself. With my hands at exactly the ten and two o'clock positions on the steering wheel, I made my way past vast landscaped horse farms and mobile homes decorated with cornucopias and Indian corn and cardboard turkeys dressed as Pilgrims. I cautiously cornered a bend which, a month ago, had been lush with a dangerous screen of foliage but was now winter-bare. I drove past the patchy brown grass of dairy farms with their ramshackle silos and red-painted barns, and I nearly ran over a marmalade tabby sitting in the road because I was driving so slowly she must have thought I was going to stop and just wait for her to move. Then I pulled into our driveway, parked the car at an acute angle, and walked out without closing the door.
“Is that you, darling?”
“Depends which darling you mean,” I said, following Hunter's voice into the kitchen.
“Did you get the turkey already?”
“No, I couldn't.”
“Well, never mind, we'll just have lots of leftovers.” Hunter gave me a sort of blithe half-smile and shrugged. “Dad just called. Turns out he's not coming after all. Something about an invitation he'd forgotten at the country club.” Hunter was making a pot of coffee in the kitchen. He was wearing an olive green wool sweater, almost an exact match to the one Kayla had been wearing. “Never mind. It just saves us the bother of having to put up with the old sot and his atrocious other half.” Hunter raked the dark hair back from his forehead where it had flopped forward, a self-conscious gesture, intended to charm. He'd been very charming these past three and a half weeks, since the test had come back positive.
“I just saw your girlfriend at the supermarket.”
“What are you talking about?”
I turned away and walked up the stairs.
“Fine.” Hunter turned to go back to his coffee, and for some reason this infuriated me so much I found myself returning to the kitchen. There he stood, the guilty party, calmly reading a newspaper and sipping from his cup, and here I stood, the offended party, heaving in indignation, utterly ignored.
“Please don't just stand there panting,” Hunter said, without looking up. “And don't make a scene. Just go away, calm down, and come back when you've gotten yourself together.” I stared at him.
“Don't you even care what happened to make me mad?”
Hunter flipped a page of the newspaper, folded it, and then looked briefly up. “Frankly, no. You know me, Abs. I don't like big scenes. We talked about the other-women thing; we handled it. I don't really think it's fair for you to go have a cow about this now.”
“Not fair? Not fair? Kayla says you've been harassing her—”
Hunter slammed the cup down, his dark eyes utterly cold with rage. “Don't start with that one. She has her own crazy scenario going, and I don't want any part of it. Just ignore her, Abra. It's what I plan to do.”
“Are you still seeing her?”
“I won't dignify that with an answer.”
“Are you?” He read the paper as if I had ceased to make any more sound in the room. In the bleak, almost wintry light, everything seemed more ghastly and dilapidated, every vase a receptacle for ashes, every window an unlidded eye. I had gotten used to the melancholy decrepitude of the house, but now I felt that it was part of the problem. Bad furniture, bad karma, bad vibes. I wanted to hurl something against a wall.
“Answer me, Hunter.”
“Oh, Abra.” He sounded utterly bored and disgusted. “Just grow up.”
“I just want to hear you say you haven't seen her since that night.” It was insane: I felt anger, but the tone of my voice was pleading.
“I'm not having this conversation with you right now, Abra. In the state you're in, you'll just twist everything around. It's probably hormonal.”
Every word he said increased my anguish. I was suddenly very aware of my pregnant state, of how few people had ever really loved me, of how much my life hinged on this relationship being okay. If it were not, then my sacrifice of my internship, my investment of time, my position with my parents that my marriage was healthy, my pregnancy, were all mistakes.
“Please, just tell me you haven't been seeing her. Look me in the eye and tell me.”
My husband looked at me, and what he said was, “I will not be dictated to.”
I began to cry. Maybe it was hormonal, but I couldn't stop it.
“Please, Hunter.”
“Oh, Abra,” he said, putting the paper down at last. “Have some pride.” If he had held me then, I would probably still have buckled. But he walked away, and it was Thanksgiving, so I packed a small bag and left for my mother's.