In the month since our trip we’d barely spoken. There was no safe channel of communication. We couldn’t use email, phones, or the internet, nothing that could be traced, and so our relationship became a game of silent voyeurs. I watched her eat lunch with Tommy every day across the cafeteria. She watched me make notes on the board during lectures. When we passed each other in the hallways she looked right through me and kept chatting with her friends. I stood at the door to the classroom when the bell rang just to inhale her scent as she walked by. She always smelled light, airy, with a hint of fruit; either strawberry or raspberry, I could never tell. It was maddening, being so close to her. She must have felt the same, because she stopped by the classroom after school one afternoon under the pretext of having a question about the spring play, but I didn’t trust myself not to touch her. I moved the conversation quickly into the hallway, looking beyond her as I monitored the flux of bodies, sensing her mounting frustration. Finally she wrote a note in light pencil on one of her assignments—just a location and a date—that I frantically erased in the upstairs storage room as my blood started racing.
It was a rest stop along the Mississippi, a scenic overlook into Wisconsin, but no one toured the bluffs this time of year. I only saw one other car in the half hour before she arrived. I pulled her into the backseat without a word and we wrestled clothes off, panting, tugging, and twisting until she was straddling me, and then her long, tight body drove me insane.
I wanted her like I’d never wanted anyone. At the same time I was terrified of what she’d do with the immense power she had over me. She thought she looked up to me, that I was the one in control, but little by little she was going to realize that my life was like a house of cards at her feet and all it would take to destroy me was one stray kick from any of her myriad selves. I craved her, I was obsessed with her, and I feared her more every day.
The Friday after the rest stop I got home from work to see Mary walking around the outside of the house with a guy I didn’t recognize. He looked about our age, wearing a baseball cap, snow-covered work boots, and a tool belt, and he nodded in my direction as I headed up the walk to the house. These days I looked at everybody one second longer, just to see if this was the person who was going to raise their finger and expose me for what I was. Not this guy, not today. He resumed his conversation with Mary and I went inside. Elsa was asleep in her rocker in the living room. I grabbed a Coke and drank half of it while staring at the contents of the fridge, wondering how to see Hattie again. She could “visit” another college on spring break. We could go to Duluth, or Chicago. Hattie would love Chicago.
Mary opened the front door and I quickly shut the fridge. She went to the sink without a word to me and started washing dishes with the air of someone finishing an interrupted activity.
I moved toward the door, my body automatically retreating. Apart from eating and sleeping, I lived in the storage room now. Even if Mary hadn’t acted like an island for the better part of the winter, it was ludicrous at this point for me to make the effort to reach her. Before I disappeared tonight though, curiosity got the best of me.
“Who was that?”
“Harry Tomlin.”
“What did he want?”
“I asked him to come out.” She almost didn’t elaborate, but then she shrugged as she tipped a pitcher upside down into the rinse rack. “He’s an old friend from high school. I’m having him put in some new windows.”
“Windows?”
“It’s too drafty in here. There’s no point in replacing the boiler until the windows are done.”
“Boiler? What the hell, Mary?” I didn’t know what stunned me more—her plans or that she was actually sharing them with me. I paced to the living room door to make sure Elsa was still asleep. “You’re the one who freaks out whenever I spend a dime. Why are you pouring money—my money, I might add—into this crap heap of a house?”
“I won’t touch your precious paycheck, all right? Keep it. Mom’s got her social security and I’ll make my own money.”
“Doing what? Selling eggs at fifteen cents a pop?”
A hint of a smile played with her mouth. “Thirty-five cents, actually.”
“What?”
“Organic, free-range, family-farm eggs.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She didn’t answer at first. It was frustrating, talking to her profile. She wouldn’t even turn around to have a conversation with me. Never mind that she had every right to shove me down, stomp on my balls, and kick me out of her mother’s crap heap of a house. She didn’t know that.
“Remember going to the farmers’ markets in Minneapolis? How you always spouted off about organic this and cruelty-free that?”
I did remember, but the memories weren’t splashed in her sarcasm. I’d honestly—and obviously stupidly—thought those were our good times. We were living in our Victorian walk-up and every Sunday morning in the summer we read the paper over coffee, commenting on and tossing sections until the dining room table was covered with tented and folded stories, cartoons, and the remains of the coupon pages after they’d met Mary’s scissors.