Once Upon a River (17 page)

She stammered and said, “Thank you for the omelet.”

Michael laughed. “Take a shower, and you can thank me for the hot water tomorrow.”

Margo rested her gun in the corner just inside the door. For the first time in a long time, she had wanted to get the thing off her shoulder. She followed Michael into the bathroom. He was explaining how the hot water took a while to heat up and was showing her how to switch the flow from bath to shower. She peeled off her three shirts before considering she shouldn’t undress in front of a stranger. Michael looked away and abruptly left the room. Margo hardly recognized the thin, dirty creature in the mirror. She didn’t think her body looked strong enough to accomplish anything. Her shoulders were hunched from the cold. Her mud-colored curls were matted, and her face was a mess of scratches, insect bites, and poison ivy blisters. Her small breasts seemed shriveled. Her mother might’ve said she looked like a Slocum. Three times she shampooed her hair before the water rinsed clean.

Though she was in a stranger’s shower, she felt safe. With the water running, she could let herself cry, and when the hot water finally began to peter out, she composed herself by recalling the serene photos of Annie Oakley aiming her rifle, preparing to shoot, knowing she would hit her target every time. There was one photo Margo liked of a young Annie Oakley standing with her new husband, Frank Butler, and their big white dog, George.

Margo put on the dark terry-cloth robe that hung on the back of the door and padded across the hall into the room with the boat skeleton. It looked too big to fit through the doorway. The room did not even have a view of the water, so it was no wonder he didn’t sleep in there. A half dozen tools were lined up neatly on a wooden chair. She returned to the room with the sliding glass door and curled with King on the floor. Michael came in and sat on the foot of the bed, looking amused. “Are you a wolf girl? Or maybe a dog girl?”

“I watch King fish from my house.”

“Why do you call her King?”

“For the kingfisher bird. It has a big head like hers.”

“I didn’t have a dog before I bought this place,” Michael said. He squatted down and stroked the dog’s head. “It was the craziest thing. When I closed on this house, the old owner asked if I’d keep her, because she loved the river and wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. But he called her Renegade. Cleopatra fits her better. Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, a river dog. Cleo for short.” He tugged gently on the dog’s ear and her mouth opened in a smile. “You sleep in my bed, and I’ll sleep on the floor. You might have noticed I don’t have a couch.”

“We can both sleep on the bed,” Margo said. “It’s huge.” Still wearing the bathrobe, she climbed in on the river side. Michael sat on the end of the bed for a while before shrugging his shoulders and joining her.

“What’s that mysterious light at your house?” he asked.

“A kerosene lamp.” She had left it burning, figuring it would burn itself out, but it hadn’t.

“Are you going to teach me how to fish?”

“I need some matches. And I ran out of gas. If you let me borrow some, I can pay you back.”

“Did you see my boat in there?” Michael waited for her to nod. “After Danielle left I thought I should redo that room, but then I figured I’d rather have a boat. As soon as I finish it, I’m rowing up to that island with the black willows.”

“My grandpa gave me my boat.”

Michael nodded. “I built this bed out of red oak. I slept on a mattress on the floor for two months after Danielle left, until I finished it. Odysseus built his own bed, you know. I want to build everything that matters myself.”

“What about a car?”

“Cars don’t matter,” he said. “So what kind of wood is your boat made of?”

“Teak. The only teak boat on the river, my grandpa said.” Margo didn’t have the energy to ask who Odysseus was. She ran her hand over the headboard above her. It was made of solid planks, nothing fancy. It was the kind of bed Margo would like to have, though she wouldn’t need one that took up most of the room the way this one did.

“It must be heavy,” Michael said. “I have a teak cutting board. It’s like a brick.”

“It’s fine in the water. But I can’t go farther downstream than Confluence, because it’s too heavy to carry around the dam. My grandpa used to say he was
stuck on the Stark
.”

“Maybe you can take me for a row one of these days.” Michael was propped on one elbow. “
The River Rose
. I like how your boat’s name is a complete sentence.”

Margo had never rowed her boat with a man in it, and it struck her as a fine idea that she would take this handsome Michael with his hair parted in the middle up to Willow Island. She looked at Michael, fixed him in her sights. She moved closer and kissed him. The kiss she got in return was so mild that she wasn’t sure it’d happened. When Brian kissed you, you knew you’d been kissed.

“Talk to me,” he said and laughed. “I don’t kiss just any girl who wanders in here.”

She kissed him again, and this time he pulled away more slowly. She was surprised at how much she wanted to keep kissing him, though he was practically a stranger. She was feeling the same urgency she felt when she had a buck in her sights. Only she didn’t want to shoot Michael.

“Why were you out in the rain?” he whispered. The way he asked questions suggested to Margo that problems could be discussed and solved, that nothing was as dire as it seemed. She wasn’t able to answer him yet, but she considered telling him something else, something interesting—maybe that she’d once seen a heron carry a little snake up to its nest—but then he would want her to talk more, and she wanted to be silent with him. She wanted to know his smooth chest, his ribs, his solid shoulders, his delicate throat. His arm lay above the blankets, thin compared to Brian’s or Paul’s. This arm couldn’t hold her down, couldn’t put her anyplace she didn’t want to be. A girl could stand and fight a man like Michael, instead of running away. She would do with him only what she wanted to do. The kerosene lamp across the river dimmed, and a few minutes later it flickered and went out.

“What are you afraid of out there?” Michael asked.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she whispered. Even if it was a lie, she liked saying it. She wrapped a hand around the back of Michael’s neck and kissed him hard, as though pulling the trigger of a rifle and holding it steady all through the shot. She pushed her fingers through his hair and felt along his shoulder, wanting to touch as much of his skin as possible all at once, to have his whole body of skin beneath her hands. She leaned across him, felt the curve of his back and his buttock, and continued down his leg until she felt him shudder and move toward her. Fresh air trickled through a window not quite closed. The dog sighed on the floor. From the end of the hall she heard the clothes and sleeping bag in the dryer. Michael worked his hand between her legs and her breathing collapsed into laughter—something that had never happened before. He rolled onto her easily, like waves onto sand.

Later, when she closed her eyes, she felt his affectionate gaze on her. As she drifted off, she thought maybe she had drowned with Paul and was now revived.

She awoke alone to light pouring through the thin curtains covering the sliding glass door; the sun was warm on her clean skin. Brian’s cabin had no southern exposure, and she usually slept with her clothes on. Margo sat up and saw her sleeping bag folded on the far corner of the bed. On top of it were her jeans, her dark blue turtleneck, flannel shirt, and sweater. Paper money was folded on top. Her heart thudded before she realized that it must be the bills and change that she had left in her pants pocket. Her Marlin was still sitting in the corner where she’d put it last night. She dressed and found Michael in the kitchen wearing a button-up shirt and sport jacket. She put her rifle next to the broom in the corner and sat at the table.

“I’m going to church,” Michael said. “I’m meeting with a study group afterwards. We’re going to explore how various skills can help those who are less fortunate. I’m going to talk about home improvement skills. Would you like to come? You could talk about fishing.” He leaned back against the sink with his arms crossed, a cup of coffee in one hand. She tried to remember being wrapped in his arms, held tight against his chest, but this morning his body seemed stiff beneath his shirt and jacket, and she couldn’t imagine him without clothes. “I wish you would. It’s a very relaxed church. Some people around here call it the hippie church
.
”

“I’m going home,” she said automatically.

He handed her a cup of coffee with milk already in it. “How old are you, Margaret Louise? I’m twenty-eight.”

“I’ll be nineteen in November.” She then remembered she’d told him she was already nineteen. In fact, she’d be seventeen in two months.

“You know, I had no intention of doing that last night. I don’t really even know you.” He stared at Margo in a way that seemed rude, so she sipped her coffee without looking up at him and stroked King’s head. The silence in the room grew large, and Margo let herself settle into it. Silence was a game she could play.

“And I didn’t use protection. Don’t worry about pregnancy—I’ve been snipped—but still we shouldn’t have. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

She looked into his face. His eyes looked a little frantic, but they were kind.

“I’m sorry,” Michael finally said, sitting across from her and relaxing. “I just don’t know anything about you. For all I know you’re some lost heiress or a girl who just killed her whole family and buried them in a garden.”

“Or a girl raised by wolves?” Margo said.

“Or maybe I’m dreaming you.” His voice grew quieter. “Because, believe me, if I dreamed a girl, she’d be just like you. She’d have beautiful arms like you. She’d be smart, and she’d even smell like you. She’d teach me to live off the land.” He stood up, picked up a dishcloth, and wiped the clean counter with it.

What could she smell like? Margo wondered. She’d just had a shower.

“Except this girl would talk.” He folded the cloth and put it down. “She’d argue with me. And if I was lucky, she really would be an heiress with an island in the river.”

Margo kept his words on the surface. She wasn’t a wolf girl or a murderer or an heiress. Or a dream. She was a girl who needed some matches and gas for the outboard motor. King pushed her head beneath Margo’s hand until Margo resumed petting her.

“But maybe that big guy you live with will come back and use me for bait.”

Margo thought it was the first sensible thing he’d said. She smiled.

“You’ve lived with him since last December, but now you’re afraid of him.”

Margo looked at her cabin. She was grateful no boat was parked there. After last night, she realized she no longer wanted to see either Paul or Brian. Margo had appreciated the home Brian had given her, but she didn’t want to be with him again, not even if he were set free. She had learned a lot from Brian, but last night it had been so nice to be the equal of a man, and to feel safe and comfortable.

Michael took a drink of coffee. “Are you going to live in that cabin all winter? Keep warm with a woodstove? Or do you have a propane or kerosene heater?”

“I might go stay with my ma,” she said. She wanted to hear how it sounded.

“Oh, of course you have a mother! Where does she live?”

“Lake Lynne.”

“Will you come back tonight?” Michael’s eyes were as brown and hopeful as King’s. “We can eat dinner. I could come get you in the Jeep.”

“The closest road is a half mile from the cabin,” she said, slinging her Marlin over her shoulder. “Then it’s just a walking path.”

“And I don’t have a boat yet, so I guess it’s up to you, Margaret Louise.” He watched her stand, drain her coffee, and walk toward the door, just as he had watched her row away with his dog on the day they’d met.

A half hour later, Margo was back at the cabin, sitting cross-legged on the dock, enjoying a warm breeze off the river, watching Michael’s Jeep pull out of the driveway again. She wished she’d told him she would come to dinner. If he asked her again, she would accept his invitation on the spot and offer to bring something—fish fillets, maybe. She watched the Jeep pull onto the river road that led upstream to Heart of Pines and past hundreds of regular houses like his. She should write to her mother and ask if Luanne was living a regular life in Lake Lynne or if she was an aberration in her new town. A heron dropped from the sky and settled out of sight downstream. Two mallards drifted near shore, and from their slightly rusty chest feathers Margo figured they were first-year males. She wondered if they were all that survived of a dozen chicks that a mama had hatched in the spring. Margo quacked, and they made a gentle noise in response, but kept moving.

That evening, while Michael was still away, a silver car pulled into his driveway. Though Margo didn’t recognize the car, the driver was clearly Danielle, the woman who had left Michael. She disappeared on the road side of the house, and shortly afterward King appeared and bounded down to the water. It occurred to Margo that the woman might have come to take Michael’s dog. Margo reeled in her line and dragged the outboard motor off the boat without taking care to protect the propeller. She pushed off from shore and in a few minutes was downstream and on the other side of the river. King ran out onto the float to greet her, bowed playfully, and tossed her head instead of climbing into the boat. “King! Come!” Margo barked. “King! Come!” As the dog finally jumped in, the woman appeared from inside the house. She wore a white blouse under a thin white vest. She was holding a glass of something clear with ice in it and carrying a lawn chair. She rested her drink in the grass, unfolded the chair, and then sat and stretched her legs out.