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Back in the car, she drove around town, up and down its few streets, looking for the hotel where she had stayed years earlier. She remembered that it had advertised itself as the oldest inn on the mountain; she remembered the postcards in the lobby and the small bar with a fireplace. She remembered that she had been desperately in love, that she had made all kinds of pledges and declarations on that trip, each one more romantic than the last; she remembered how she had yearned to have her words echoed back to her exactly; she remembered how she had instead been told how sweet she was, how flattering. And she remembered how she had accepted these answers, telling herself that they meant what she wanted them to mean. Now the only place she could find that resembled the hotel seemed to have recently become an office building. So she continued east out of town.
The sign said ranch. The smaller sign below that one said lodging. A third sign said water filters. She took the turn too fast, and the car slid and lurched, kicking up gravel. Dust billowed into the car, and he began to cough.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "Are you okay? I'm sorry. I'm so tired."
The driveway ended in a gravel circle on the edge of a sloping green lawn. A neat white farmhouse sat at the top of the slope. A couple of barns and a gray prefabricated shed were clustered near the circle, and a tractor and an old green sedan on blocks were parked in a small gravel rectangle off to the side of the barns. She heard a dog barking somewhere nearby. Two dogs, maybe.
She pulled over on the edge of the circle.
"There's no one here," she said.
"How do you know?" he asked.
"Because there's no car," she said.
He pointed at the green sedan, "Isn't that a car?"
"Yes," she said. She reached over and patted his knee. "But it doesn't have any tires. It can't go anywhere."
He rubbed his hand on the dashboard. "Isn't this a car?"
"Yes," she said. "But it's our car."
He took her hand, which was still on his knee, and raised it to his mouth. "Our car," he said, making the words rhyme. "Our car." He opened his lips a little and pushed her thumb between them. His mouth was hot and wet. She closed her eyes. She felt his teeth gripping her thumb, and his tongue pressing against her flesh. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that his were shut. She pulled her arm back a little, but he kept a firm grip; he held her hand where it was. His lips made a little smacking noise around her thumb. She looked at the veins that ran through his eyelids. His skin was so thin, so pale; his eyelids looked like the inside of oyster shells, pearly and mottled with gray and blue. His long eyelashes fluttered ever so slightly. She had sometimes envied those lashes, though there had been a time when hers had been just as dark and lush.
She heard a motor. She jerked her hand out of his mouth. He opened his eyes, blinking. The sound got closer. She looked in the rear view mirror. A pickup truck careened into the gravel circle. She wiped her hand on her pants. The pickup stopped short behind them. She got out of the car, putting a smile on her face. A man hopped out of the pickup. He was short and trim, with white hair, and he wore a clean white polo shirt and khaki shorts.
"Barbara?" the man said, smiling back at her and extending his hand.
"No," she said.
"You didn't call about the cracked filter?"
"No," she said. "We saw your sign. The lodging sign."
"Oh," the man said. "Right. The bed and breakfast thing. My wife…"
She heard a car door open. She turned. He was getting out of the car, holding his pinecone to his nose. She felt blood rush into her cheeks.
"But you do have a place for us to stay?" she said. "We've been on the road for a lot of hours, and we're exhausted."
"My wife…" the man repeated, trailing off. Then starting up again: "I believe the room is set up for guests. I haven't checked in a while."
"Room?" she said.
The man looked at her and then over at him.
"It's kind of a suite," he said. "It used to be where the help lived, I guess. Not that we have help." The man laughed a brief laugh.
They followed him into the house and through a large, modern kitchen. She took note of the granite counter tops and stainless steel refrigerator. A door in the corner, near an old brick hearth where iron pans now hung, led to a winding staircase. They followed the man up the stairs. The place was not set up for guests. What the man had called a suite was two rooms across from each other, with a small bathroom in between. One of the rooms contained a pair of low twin beds, a table, and a single floor lamp. The mattresses were bare. The table was covered in dust. Dead lady bugs coated the windowsill. The other room looked like an office: a white desk, a white chair, a white filing cabinet. She wondered if the man noticed that their only luggage was her purse and a plastic shopping bag full of hospital pajamas and slippers.
"Sorry. I guess it's been a while since anyone's been up here." The man said. "I'll get you sheets. Towels."
"Thanks so much," she said.
"You don't mind making the beds yourself?" he said.
"No, it's okay," she said.
In a slightly lower voice, the man said, "The beds can be pushed together if you want. You can move that table."
She laughed. All at once she was on the verge of hysterics. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt herself grow hot. She thought she might choke. Forcing her eyes open, she said, "Thanks."
The man looked back and forth between the two guests. Then he raised his fingers to his forehead and flicked them at her in a kind of salute as he turned to leave.
She was stretching the sheets over the second mattress when she heard a noise come from across the room, a gurgling, gassy noise. She looked up and saw him, turned partly away from her, looking out the small, low window, holding his pinecone in one hand and clutching his belly with the other.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
He nodded, but his face had a strange look of concentration on it. He was staring straight ahead, with his brow slightly furrowed. Then she smelled it.
"Do you need to use the bathroom?" she asked.
"Hmmm. I don't know."
She hurried over to him and grabbed his hand. She pulled him hard, and the pinecone dropped to the floor. She dragged him to the bathroom, unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and pulled down his pants. It was too late. He was a mess. He stood facing the toilet with his arms raised and his hands pressing into the rose-patterned wallpaper. She knelt down behind him. She started to clean him off with toilet paper. The smell was terrible. She tried to breathe through her mouth. She rolled the toilet paper into huge wads and wiped him down. He was hairy; his buttocks were covered in small black curls, which made it difficult to wipe him clean. The wads were so big, she worried that the toilet might overflow. It looked old. She flushed between each soiled wad. She dug into the crack between his buttocks and rubbed. She heard him grunt softly. She flushed.
"Turn around," she said. He did. She unrolled some more toilet paper and made it into a mitt around her hand. She was still on her knees. She tried to let her eyes lose focus, to blur what she was looking at. She wiped under his testicles, pushed them aside with her paper mitt, and cleaned in the crevices between them and the inside of his thighs. He grunted quietly again. She squinted. She flushed and grabbed
She felt herself aching, in her belly and between her legs.
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some more paper, made another mitt. She dug at him from underneath, rubbing. As she did, she noticed that he was growing hard. His penis started to rise in front of her face. She noticed that she was sweating, that she was panting. She felt his fingers on the top of her head. She jerked backward and stood up.
"Okay," she said. She tried to adjust her voice, to make it sound soft. "All right, that seems good." He didn't know, she thought. He didn't know anything anymore. It was all gone. "Why don't you sit down." He sat on the toilet while she started to draw a bath in the small tub.
Getting him out of the hospital the night before had been so simple. The ward was short staffed; just two nurses were on duty. She had waited until they were both busy with patients. His room was the last before the bend in the hall which led to the offices, supply closets and vending machines. All she'd had to do was walk him quickly around the bend and get him on the service elevator. But she doubted it would be as easy to sneak him back into the hospital. She couldn't imagine what they would say to her, what would be done to her.
She made sure the bathwater was hot. Then she pulled off his shirt and his socks.
"You like a nice not bath, don't you?" she said.
"Do I?" he said.
"You do," she said. "Careful—don't get your cast wet."
He lowered himself into the water. "Ahhhh," he said. "You're right. I do like it. A nice hot bath."
After his bath, she wrapped him in a towel. She showed him how to pull it tight and tuck one corner under the edge so it would stay up on its own. She handed him his hospital-issue pajamas, and he put them on.
"I am so tired," she said as she finished making the second bed and patted it. "I don't think I've ever been this tired. Except…" She thought of the night of his accident.
"Except?" he said, sitting down on the bed.
"I bet you're tired, too." She said. "Let's take a nap. Let's take naps."
He lay down on his side and pulled the blanket up to his chin. He tucked his knees up close to his belly, sticking one hand under his face and the other between his legs. Her heart jumped. It was how he used to sleep. Before. She used to watch him, just watch him sleeping. Once, he had woken up and caught her staring. "What are you doing?" he had said, pulling his hand out of his pajamas. "Nothing," she'd said. She had felt him glaring at her in the dark. In his hospital bed, with the sensors stuck to his chest, and the sheets tight around him, it had been different. He had slept on his back, just as if he were still in a coma, and she had wondered if he would ever arrange himself in the old position again, or if he had lost that, too.
He closed his eyes and snuggled his face into his hand.
She took her bra off by unhooking it under her shirt and pulling it through a sleeve. She removed her pants and placed them, folded, on the table next to the pinecone, which he had recovered from the floor. Then she climbed into bed. It was the first time she had been fully horizontal in nearly a month.
When she woke up, the room was dark. She heard dogs barking again, more this time, at least four or five. She looked at her watch and stared hard at the glowing hands. One o'clock. One o'clock in the morning. They had been sleeping for ten hours. Now her legs twitched under the sheets and her eyes were wide open. She thought about all the bargains she'd made while she was waiting, first at the emergency room, and then in the intensive care unit. Bargains, but bargains with whom? All the things she said she'd do differently if he lived; all the promises she would keep if he woke up. She rolled onto her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow. They had fought. He had said to her, "I hate you." They had fought the evening of his accident, and she had left the house, slamming the door, to go grocery shopping. She hadn't been there when it happened. She tried to change this retroactively, reverse her memory, rewind, alter one of the thousand tiny choices, the chance elements that had led to the accident. She had tried to undo the fact that he had been alone.
A dog howled, then others did, and then the barking started again. She got out of bed and went to the window. It looked out on the rear of the property. In the moonlight, she saw a large dirt area surrounded by a tall wooden fence. Inside the pen, silver bodies moved in a pack. She saw them rush to the near edge of the fence and stop. The barking grew louder. Then they all ran to the far border of their pen and howled. She tried to count. Eight, maybe nine. She watched them, running back and forth like that.
Then she felt a hand on her leg, on the back of her knee. She remembered that she was wearing just her underpants and shirt. She turned. He was lying there, leaning halfway out of bed, with his arm stretched out to her. He stroked the inside of her thigh. Then he hooked his hand around her leg and pulled. She took a step. He pulled her other leg. She took another step. With her third step, she was standing next to his pillow.
She looked down at his face. His eyes were so clear and pale, they looked like glass in the light that came through the window. His arm was white and the knob of his wrist bone shone like a jewel. He reached up and took her hand and pulled, harder now, so that she sat on the edge of the bed, next to his neck. He lifted the edge of her shirt and pressed his lips to her waist. She trembled. She felt his wet mouth on her skin. He pulled again, pulled her so she was lying down next to him. He kissed her neck under her ear, and then her throat. She felt herself aching, in her belly and between her legs.
She pushed him away and sat up.
They looked at each other.
She whispered: "Do you know who I am?"
"Yes," he whispered back. "I think I do."
"You don't know what it means, do you?" she said.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know if I know."
He reached for her again, and she sank onto the sheets. He pushed her shirt up and pressed his fingers to her nipples. He moved his head down to her chest and began to suck. He sucked hard, steady, as if he were trying to pull something from them. She ran her hands over his head, feeling the place where it had been shaved and sewn, soft hair, rough scar. He bit her, she let him.
She woke up to a pounding noise. She looked around the room. She was alone in his bed. She quickly got dressed and hurried downstairs. He was standing there, in the kitchen, with the man. The man was hacking at something with a knife.
They both looked up and smiled at her.
"I'm helping," he said.
"You are?" she said. She stepped around the kitchen table and saw that the man was cutting a big piece of raw meat.
"Helping with the dogs," he said.
The man said, "It's their breakfast time. The young fellow here said he likes dogs."
"Oh, yes," she said.
The man said, "We're going to go feed them these steaks now, aren't we?"
"No thanks," she said.
"Oh," the man said, "no, I meant me and the boy."
The man threw the steaks into a plastic tub, where many more pounds of raw meat were already piled in a couple of inches of blood. The man walked out of the kitchen, and he followed close behind the man. She followed the two of them as far as the back door of the house. She stood in the doorway. She watched them walk down the green hill to the edge of the wooden fence. The man whistled, and the dogs flowed out from a shed in the corner of their pen, kicking up clouds of dirt. She saw now that there were a dozen of them. The man threw two or three pieces of meat over the fence, and the silver dogs leapt at it. She watched the man hand him the plastic tub and demonstrate the arm movement for tossing the meat. He reached in and pulled out a dripping steak.
It was early morning on the third day after the accident when the white-haired doctor called her into the hallway. "We believe he will live," the doctor said, smiling gravely, standing outside the darkened intensive care unit room. She knew she should feel happy, or at least hopeful. She thanked the doctor, but didn't say what she was really thinking: he was not going to live. Even if he pulled through on this occasion, his life was temporary. She wanted to tell the kindly doctor how, when she'd first learned she was pregnant, she had been happy. She thought about explaining how she'd felt that in a way, she would become immortal, that she would live forever through the baby. All that used to matter was that he would outlive her.
She said none of that to the doctor. But before they parted, she did say that she supposed she was lucky: she had only ever spent two nights in a hospital as a patient. She'd had a long labor and had lost a lot of blood. She'd been in terrible pain, unimaginable pain, but had resisted drugs until she was biting through the flesh of her own arm.
The dogs devoured the meat, then paired off and licked each other's muzzles clean. He looked over his shoulder and waved to her before he put his hand in his mouth and sucked the blood off his fingers. She had never seen his face so full of joy. n°
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Nelly Reifler is the author of See Through (Simon & Schuster), a collection of stories. Her work has been published in journals and magazines in the U.S., Great Britain, Italy, and Japan. She received a Henfield Prize for her fiction and a Rotunda Gallery Visiting Curator grant to mount an exhibition based on her writing.
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©2004 Nelly Reifler and hooksexup.com
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