Fairy Tale Blues (35 page)

“Gosh.” Her voice lifted. “That's pretty big news.”

“This will be her sixth litter of pups. That's the most any wolf has had in Yellowstone.”

No reaction. I gave up and said goodbye.

 

Hadley lived on the phone lately. In between talking to her two lawyers—Will down in Florida, who was handling her divorce, and our lawyer, Philip, here in the valley, who was drawing up the papers for TFS—she was calling in orders for next year's ski season and the coming summer season. My job was to scramble around, keeping the staff happy and the store managed. These final weeks of ski season our attention was geared toward unloading the inventory. Everything we couldn't carry over into summer was drastically discounted, since next year would bring a whole new line of equipment and clothing. We constantly rearranged to keep the store looking interesting as the stacks of goggles and skier fleece dwindled.

I looked forward to leaving for Florida in a few days, then closing for the off season a couple weeks after my return. Most of April through mid-May we shut the joint up and typically headed for warmer places with no mud. Around here everything dripped, snow turned to slush, icicles dropped off roofs, creeks broke up and the shelves of ice, piled along the banks like shards of crockery, loosened and ran fast and dangerously downstream. We called it mud season, and this year I'd be sloshing through it, instead of escaping it. I might work on a project I had in mind, a big present for Annie.

A customer pushed through the door of TFS, greeted me in a foreign accent I couldn't place. I smiled back and shuffled through the remaining face masks, grouping them by size; we wouldn't be selling many more of these this year. We were into spring skiing now, with temperatures in the low thirties most days, threatening our snowpack. I called to Saundra to mark the masks half price when she got a chance. Right now she was twisting her hair and staring out the window; every once in a while she dipped for candy stored in one of her vast pockets.

Lizette and Todd pretended it took two to fold T-shirts, and Casey was online planning his off-season trip to Costa Rica. Hard to keep energy and interest high at the end of the season. They'd all be out of here if we didn't offer a big bonus for staying to the very last day. Time to lift spirits. I pulled out the sign and hung it behind the counter where only the employees could see it. It said:

I nodded to the foreign fellow again just to let him know someone was awake and available, in case he needed anything.

He nodded back to me and said, “I'm just watching.” Guessed he meant he was just looking. Saundra and I exchanged amused glances. Then she went back to staring out the window. We all wanted to be outside. The air was soft; the sky was blue. When I'd driven to the village that morning, untracked snow in the fields on either side of the road had sparkled like a tray of jewels. This valley held extraordinary beauty cupped within its circle of mountains. There was no place like it on earth.

Now more customers wandered into TFS. It was nearing time for the lifts to close that afternoon, when it always became busy in the store. I moved to the fog cloths, another thing that wouldn't sell well the rest of the season. “Saundra, mark these half off, too.” I added again, “If you get a chance.”

Might do some fishing during off season. Time to get out my pale morning duns and blue-winged olives. Might try my hand at making some dry flies of my own. I'd lost interest in working with fleece; Malden Mills was selling out anyway and good quality stuff was harder to come by. Besides, my present for Annie entailed giving up a good share of my workspace. I'd need it to store all the gear I now had in that little cabin in the backyard.

I stuck the marking pen in Saundra's pocket so that the next time she dipped in for M&Ms she'd grab hold of it instead. That girl had a big fantasy life and I hated to intrude. I checked the stack of mail. There was an envelope typed on a typewriter. Didn't see that anymore. Opened it and found a letter written by a woman describing a product she made by hand.
I crochet small ducks in all colors. A tie beneath the chin allows it to be filled with M&Ms
(Saundra might like this).
Then with a squeeze in the middle of the duck, the candy will come out from a hole beneath the tail.

I should take this letter with me to Florida to show Annie. She would howl. I lifted my head and savored how good it felt to know that I'd be with her soon. But I worried, too. Annie used to make what I called State of the Union addresses. And she made them far more often than our president did. The union, of course, was the two of us. What would she have to say now?

Annie

 

 

I
drove to the Orlando airport to pick up Jess and the boys. We would spend a night together in my apartment before meeting the rest of the family in the Keys. My feelings about seeing my husband after more than two months were conflicted: part anticipated pleasure, part protective self-armoring. As I drove across inland Florida against the slant of late-afternoon sunshine, I realized the patterns of my marriage had risen into high relief against this background of time and distance. That was my purpose in taking a marriage sabbatical, so I drove to this meeting with Jess, feeling confident about the necessity of leaving my marriage in order to save it.

Still I grieved.

I would not be returning to the same sanctuary I had entered twenty-six years ago. Never again would I live in such sweet, destructive union. I had left that dark womb, emerged from the sea of marital soup, and from now on, though we were mated in love and faithfulness, our lives would be furnished with more than “his” and “hers” towels. There would be “his” and “hers” money, friends, space, power, values.

I came to Florida feeling that Jess had become a pebble in my shoe, a splinter in my thumb, a continual drain on my energy. My frustration at the end of a day had often broken into wordless sobs that jarred my body with their rough passage. Jess would hold me, smooth my hair, murmur, “There, there,” into my ear and take on the preparations for dinner himself.

Caring behavior? Yes. Also an arrogant response that came from a sense of disengagement: too bad I was experiencing problems; he wasn't.

I could never have figured out the trouble I felt while living within this mixed stew of covert abuse and overt affection.

I was happy to hear the news about Wolf No. 9. For me she symbolized what could happen in wild places, and I felt I had been in a wild place for the past months. If No. 9 could give birth under those tough circumstances, any female could do anything. I, for one, could solve my life and my marriage.

I was driving through a dense forest of pine scrub, the land flat as the back of my hand, resting on the steering wheel. Bijou rose from her nest in the fuchsia-colored fleece blanket tossed in the backseat for her and came to brace her front paws on the center consol and rest her chin on my shoulder. I tipped my face to hers to acknowledge her presence and hoped she wouldn't mind sharing me with Jess.

Nobody liked change. And, I knew, Jess would not like the upcoming changes one bit, as his response to the new financial setup at the store had demonstrated. In fact, Jess' fear of such changes, I realized now, was what had prompted him to instigate the boys' challenge that Thanksgiving evening a couple years back, when the three of them attacked my lack of interest in working at the store with Jess and watching TV with the family. Jess mixed it up, figuring that if I left our lifestyle, I'd leave our life . . . and him. He was working from fear and resistance. Didn't he know that what you actively feared and resisted usually became reality?

 

I had seen couples greet each other at airports like this before, people who I knew had been married for years. I had always wondered how you could stand face-to-face with a mate you'd been separated from and not mash your bodies, your breath, your mouths together in relief that the parting was over. But there we stood, Jess and I, separate, smiling, though not rushing into each other's arms. Jess, I saw, was attempting to mask the uncertainty of his standing with me. I did nothing to smooth his unease and, for once, did not take it upon myself to feel responsible for it.

I just stood there, looking at the man I loved, would always love, but seeing in him, too, the man who gave me the same gift of blue topaz ear studs for our anniversary that he had given me for Valentine's Day, who gave away a share of my store ownership, who derided my passion for creating, along with the man who loved me, who was a good father, who had shared life with me for twenty-six years. I saw it all.

Then I went to hug him.

If our sons had accompanied Jess on the flight, I would have wanted to put on a good show for them. Their plane was due a few hours later, and by then I hoped Jess and I would have had time to relax with each other.

Dinner together that night in an Orlando restaurant, the first since our anniversary dinner atop Gros Ventre Butte, didn't begin with champagne or gift giving, but rather quiet talk about our lives and our children. I didn't buy a special dress after all. My heart wasn't in it. But later, after picking up our sons, driving to Hibiscus, and settling the family in my small apartment, Jess and I retired to my bedroom and made love, sweet, slow love, devoid of urgency or lavish expressions of arousal.

Afterward, I lay beside Jess as he slept and remembered that woman who meshed herself so tightly into her husband—his body, his life, his awareness—that she pumped her own life force into his until she could not tell herself apart from him, his actions, his thoughts. His thoughtlessness.

And then I smiled to myself, because I recalled showing more enthusiasm when Jess' luggage arrived at the same time and place as he did, earlier at the airport, than I had in bed with him just now. This, too, would heal, I thought, and went to sleep myself.

Though I had brought Jeter back to the boat after a couple of his overnights, making the visits look routine for the watchers, I had let Jeter board by himself and only waved to Daniel before walking or driving away. Today, bringing Jess to meet Daniel at the Turtle Nest, was the first time I'd spent with Daniel in a week. After introductions, we settled at a table on the deck.

“You notice anything different?” Daniel asked me.

I looked around. As usual Daniel's cell phone had been tossed on the table; as usual the dogs had scooted beneath our chairs. The umbrellas were open, the sun shined and the staff inside was gearing up for the lunchtime rush.

“It all looks the same to me.”

“No Stocker.” Daniel tipped his head toward the inside, then toward the water. “No go-fast boats.” He raised his eyebrows. “Been like that all morning.”

“Well, that's good, isn't it?” Jess asked, though I knew he had been curious about go-fast boats and how it felt to be under surveillance. Even the boys had planned to stop by, after they fished with Shank, to meet Daniel and see a go-fast boat.

“Not good. My old partner's nearby, is my guess. He has a long arm and he's reaching for his IOUS.”

Daniel was restless, shifting position, sitting where he could watch inside the restaurant, instead of in view of the water. He didn't eat much. I wondered what Jess was making of him. Daniel was not his typically cool self.

“What does this mean?” I asked.

“Have to leave.”

“When?”

“In the next hour or so. I put my boat in the hands of a broker this morning when I got cued from one of the go-fast officers. Then everybody took off.”

“Cued?” Jess said.

“One of the guys and I went to flight school together in Palm Beach years back. He let me know.” Daniel demonstrated with his fist and a thumb slicing across his neck.

Daniel said, “Whatever's up is not standard operating procedure.” He took a swig of his iced tea and added, “I don't plan to be one of those federal retirees collecting my pension in prison, which is where my old boss may be heading.”

“I'll be damned; the government will still pay a pension to a prisoner.” Jess enjoyed this talk, I could tell, but I could see now that he was leery of Daniel. Yet he'd been hearing his story as a kind of serial during our phone talks over the winter months. Each call, Jess would ask, “So what's up with Daniel?”

Daniel said now, “Most likely the officers didn't get much warning themselves. Probably an early-morning phone call to look scarce for the next couple days. I was just waiting for the two of you to show before I took off.”

Daniel's phone blinked a red light from the table, and he excused himself. “Sorry. Go ahead and eat.” He stood up, reached for his phone and walked around to the other side of the deck.

The second Daniel was out of earshot, Jess dropped his sandwich on his plate. It landed with a thud, and I looked up at him in surprise. He leaned across the table to me, hands braced on the edge, eyebrows raised.

“Hey! You told me Daniel was retired. I thought he was some old guy.”

“He is retired.” I hadn't thought before about whom Jess had imagined I was spending time with.

“Damn it, Annie. I've been picturing some bent-over, gray-haired senior citizen.” Jess looked toward the direction Daniel had disappeared, then back to me. “What are you doing, hanging out with him? He's built like our neighbor, what's-his-name.”

“Who?”

“You know, the guy who tells his wife he's going out for a run and then sprints up the Grand Teton and down before lunch.”

“Oh, Richard.” Jess was jealous. A first for us. There had never been an occasion for jealousy before; I didn't especially like the complication it brought to our reunion. It felt like a diversion from the real issues. I said, “Believe me, we've both had our minds on other problems down here.”