“The scenery is immense,” Ginny says. “Immense colors. Immense smells. It’s so large, isn’t it, Paul?”
But then it’s not you at all. How could it be? How could it be anyone but this person in the boat? This person who just nods while his nineteen-year-old girlfriend-fiancée-banger is framing pictures for a movie she will never make. This person who is me.
I TIE OUR
boat to the side of the wooden dock Molly and I built during our first summer here. Our old Boston Whaler is tied to the other side, and I think about
how we had to sell Molly’s convertible Volkswagen to buy the damn thing.
“We won’t need two cars,” Molly had said.
“I don’t know anything about boats,” I said. “If it breaks down it’s not like I can look under the hood and figure out what’s what.”
“That’s why God made paddles,” Molly said, and I remember loving her very much then. She was wearing overalls, and her hair was tucked under a baseball cap, and she kissed me on the forehead to let me know that our discussion was over.
So we gave a Granite Lake old-timer named Jersey Simpkins five-thousand dollars for his fifteen-year-old Boston Whaler and figured the rest out as we went along. In time, I learned a lot about boats and about the water.
“How do I get out of this thing?” Ginny says. She’s standing up in the middle of the barge.
“You can’t be indecisive,” I say. “Put one foot on the dock and then step over. If you wait, you run the chance of having the boat drift away a bit and then you’re scissored between the two.”
“That’s great,” Ginny says but manages to get herself onto the dock with little problem.
We unload our bags onto the dock, and then I just stare at my house. Ginny, even though she’s only
nineteen, has sense enough not to talk to me for a moment.
Molly and I paid seventy-five thousand dollars for this two bedroom log cabin.
I know she’s not inside.
We bought paintings and built bookshelves.
I know everything about her is inside.
We made love, children, plans.
I know that wherever she is, she knows I am here.
We fell apart, piece by piece, bone by bone, until all that was left were the words, the pictures, and the hope that someday it would be recovered. Someday they would build condos here, and everything would be found and put back together in its proper place.
“Do you want to check the boat first?” Ginny says. Her voice is low and sweet and completely female. I look at her, and she looks like a baby. Everything is so grand around her. An entire world is standing beside Ginny and she appears so frail.
It’s natural selection, I think. The wolves will devour her.
“No,” I say, and we head toward the house.
THE FRONT DOOR
is locked.
“Should we knock?” Ginny asks. She is nervous, I can tell.
“I have keys,” I say.
“But what if she’s asleep or has a guy over or something?” Ginny asks. “It would be rude to just rush in on her.”
“This isn’t a dorm,” I say. “This is my house.” My voice sounds bitter and raw. Ginny shrinks back from me.
I fumble with my keychain for a moment, making enough noise that if Molly were inside she’d hear it. I put my key into the deadbolt and try to turn it.
“Shit,” I say. “She changed the locks.”
“Let’s just go,” Ginny says. “We could drive up to Seattle and get a big room in a hotel and drink coffee and go to that Pike Place Market they always show on TV.”
“Wait here,” I say. “I’m going to go around back.”
“This is stupid,” Ginny says, but I’m not paying attention. When could she have changed the locks? At what point did she think that the idea of me with a set of keys to my house,
my house
, was a bad one?
We never even locked the doors.
I walk past our garden, where Molly and I planted radishes and onions and carrots that never grew. There are foot-tall weeds where our small crops used to live and die. I try to peek in through one of the side windows, but the blinds are down.
What locksmith would be willing to boat out across the lake to change two stupid locks? Or drive for three hours?
I reach the back of the house and look around at the mud. There are footprints here in the soft earth, as there always were. We never used the front door. We’d walk out through the back door to where our grill was to take a walk among the evergreens or to lie on the moist ground to watch the stars.
I lean over and trace the outline of Molly’s bare right foot.
Mary Leakey found footprints in the lava deposits of Laetoli that were 3.5 million years old. The prints told stories about how our ancestors lived, how tall they were. They detailed the possible start of the nuclear family.
I detail Molly’s longitudal arch.
I run my index finger over her transverse arch.
Her prints lead away from the house. They lead to the house. They circle small areas.
There are other prints that run the length of the yard. Some are beside Molly’s. Some are apart from the house, running the perimeter.
I stand up and try the back door. It opens into a blackened room.
“Molly?”
Nothing.
“Molly?” I say again. “Are you in here? It’s me.”
I’m home.
“It’s Paul,” I say. “Are you here?”
I flip a switch beside the door, and the overhead light in the kitchen flickers on.
There are dishes in the sink: three plates, silverware, glasses. The teakettle we registered for is on the stovetop.
Dead flowers are on the kitchen table in a vase we got on our first anniversary.
A full garbage can.
“Paul?” It’s Ginny.
“Come around back,” I holler. “The door’s unlocked.”
You prepare all your life to be disappointed by things. You imagine what it will be like to bury your dog, your parents, your children. You imagine scenarios where these things sort themselves out.
“Ugh,” Ginny says from behind me. “Do you smell that?”
I don’t say anything.
“That’s septic,” she says.
Scenarios.
In the summer, the septic tank always backed up. In the fall, it occasionally leaked into the soil beneath the house and I’d have to flood the dirt with water until
it diluted the smell. Molly used to chop limes up and scatter them around the base of the house.
“I can fix it,” I say.
“I hope so,” Ginny says.
WE DUMP OUR
bags in the guest room.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable sleeping in her bed,” Ginny says.
“That’s fine,” I say.
“I’d feel like Goldilocks,” Ginny says and then gives my arm a tug. “Laugh, Paul. I said something funny.”
I move in to kiss Ginny on the lips, to show her that I’m alive and well and living in my skin, but she puts a hand on my chest to stop me.
“No kisses until I brush my teeth,” she says. “You don’t want to taste the Krispy Kreme in reverse like I did.”
Here’s the truth: She reminds me of Molly. Seeing her here in the house, standing in what used to be my office but what is now a guest room, I want to hug her and kiss her and plan the future. I want to get out the wedding video and laugh at my best man’s speech. I want to unbury everything I kept hidden from her, dust off the age and say, Look, everything is different now.
I want to remove the slashes from my chest.
I would offer her all of these things if Ginny were really Molly.
And that is also the truth.
WHILE GINNY SHOWERS
, I go from room to room looking for anything. Molly could be anywhere. There is no crime in leaving your home unannounced.
I start in her bedroom. Our bedroom.
The room she sleeps in.
The bed is unmade, the light summer comforter rumpled at the foot of the bed. Molly’s four down pillows are splayed out across the floor, her two cotton-filled pillows, usually placed behind the down ones to be used solely for sleeping, are in the center of the bed.
The napping pillows, always kept under the bed and away from sight, jut from beneath the bed skirt.
On the dresser is our wedding picture.
Molly wore a long white dress and held a bouquet of red roses.
My hair was longer and I was a little drunk.
Looking at the photo, I have to remember these details about myself because I’ve been sliced away. It’s just Molly and her flowers. She looks radiant.
I pick up the picture and hold it against my chest. I want Ginny to walk out and see me and think that this
is just terrible, to think that I am fragile and hurting and that only she can pull me through.
But that’s not really it at all. I know Ginny won’t walk out. She’s mid-verse in her favorite Alanis Morrisette song, and I can hear the water running. I’m holding the picture against my chest because I am fragile, and I do hurt, and I miss Molly and wish that I were holding her.
I set the picture down and start pulling out the dresser drawers. They are filled with clothes: socks, underwear, T-shirts.
There’s a bottle of Diorxel on the nightstand. I touch it and think that perhaps Bruce is right. The lake changes people. The Diorxel, however, shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s an antidepressant.
I go to the closet and open it up. Her sun dresses are hung up, organized by color, in sharp rows. Her shoes are lined up according to season.
There’s a pair of men’s boots. I pick them up and hold them in my hands. They are heavy and dirty. The kind of boots a man who liked the outdoors would wear. Stuck in the grooves of the soles are dirt and grass.
So.
You can’t be jealous when you have a nineteen-year-old girlfriend.
I set the boots down. There’s a large flannel shirt hung up in the closet.
A pair of black socks.
A baseball cap.
I start scratching at my chest.
I don’t see any pants.
I sit down on the bed and open up the small chest of drawers on my old side of the room.
They are blue, size 36.
My chest feels hot, and I think that everything is fine. No one can live an eternity without feeling loved. It’s part of being a primate. It’s in our code, our contract with life. I know these things. I teach them. I tell my students that in today’s society we don’t
need
bonding, we don’t
need
to feel guilty for being jealous or promiscuous, we don’t
need
to be worried about finding a mate.
We don’t
need
anything anymore.
But we want it. Our bodies demand it. Our psyches will bend and twist until it is delivered. It is our contract as primates. We must
have it
.
So I’m fine with this. Molly can love whomever she wants.
I’m beginning to feel a little faint.
“Paul?”
I’m fine, Molly, I really am.
“Paul?”
I just need to sit down and sort this out.
“Paul?” Ginny says. “My God, you’re bleeding.”
My chest just itches, that’s all.
“God,” Ginny says. “You’re ripping your chest open again. Lie down. God.”
I’m fine. I really am.
GINNY FINDS THE
iodine in the kitchen. We always kept it in the kitchen in case one of us cuts ourself.
“Why do you do this?” Ginny says. She’s swabbing my chest with a cotton ball.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Ginny stops swabbing and puts her hand against my cheek. “Paul,” she says, “there is never a reason to harm yourself. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say.
“I don’t want you to feel like you need to keep things hidden from me,” Ginny says. “I can handle whatever scars you might have. I’m a big girl.”
I know that right now is a time when I am supposed to tell Ginny that I love her.
“It started a long time ago,” I say.
Ginny nods her head and starts swabbing my chest again in silence.
I want to tell Ginny that we are capable of great
cruelty to ourselves and others. In some cultures, gang rape is considered a legitimate way to punish lazy people. Orangutans routinely rape one another.
So a little scratching is no big deal. In the scope of human development, I’m just an aberration.
“When I’m upset,” Ginny says, “I like to go to the mall. That way, I know that I’m still alive. You know what I mean? If I walk through a mall when I’m pissed off about something, I see hundreds of other people. And I just start adding up what’s wrong with me and then multiply it by the amount of other people who are probably doing the exact same thing as me. It gives me perspective. It makes me feel like my problems are a lot less significant than I thought they were.”
I don’t say anything.
“Next time you want to hurt yourself,” Ginny says in between swabs of iodine on my torn skin, “you tell me and we’ll go to the mall and sort it all out. Okay?”
“I love you,” I say, because that’s what I know I’m supposed to say. Ginny kisses me once lightly on the chest.
“It’s nice you say that,” Ginny says, like she knows me better than I could have ever imagined.
Ginny finds some noodles in the pantry and starts boiling water for pasta while I continue looking through the house. I don’t know what I’m hoping
to find anymore because I think I’ve already found enough. Maybe Bruce Duper knew all along and just wanted me to find out for myself.
Molly has gone off with some man.
In the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom I find a prescription for Zumax, an SSRI used to control her spirals. Like the Diorxel I found in the bedroom, it’s from a doctor’s office in Spokane.
Here’s the truth: Molly isn’t stable. I suppose there is a cause and effect to every illness, and for Molly maybe it was her husband. I’ve never really been sure. She wasn’t, isn’t, crazy. It came in waves over her, avalanches she called them, and for days she would be swallowed alive.
It would begin with a migraine that Molly said felt like there were tens of thousands of tiny people pounding on her head with claw hammers. She tried meditation, biofeedback, acupuncture, but nothing could stop the pounding. Then, when the migraine would finally begin to ebb, she would sink into this depressive hole.
That’s when the madness would begin: the marathon painting sessions, the pacing, the absence of clarity.