Cloven Hooves

He plays Pan.

He plays a glimpse of sunlight on a dappled flank in a birch grove, he plays brown eyes that light green with laughter, he plays the unwary clack of a cloven hoof against a glacier-worn stone, the deep breath drawn after a race through the woods, the grip of strong fingers on my wrist when he bids me be silent, the nudge of his shoulder against mine when our heads are close together over the first pale wood anemone, he plays the wind through brown curls and the trickle of rain over his shoulder blades. My throat closes up with how beautiful he is.

When I open my eyes, he has lowered the pipes, and I do not know how long I have been listening to the silence that is also a part of his song. He meets my shining eyes and his cheeks rose with more than the flush of his playing. He scratches his head, digging lovingly at the bases of his nubbly horns. With his free hand he offers the pipes to me again.

But this time I do not reach for them at all. I know what he wants to hear, and I do not wish to play it. I will not play ragged jeans and dirty knees, runny nose and scaly knuckles. I will not play my shame, and I try to pretend I don’t notice he is offering the pipes to me. So he pokes me with them, and when I still don’t respond, he pokes me again, hard, prodding me in the short ribs with their hardness.

I glare at him. He makes a face at me, sucking in his cheeks and hogging out his eyes. I snatch the pipes from his hand before he can jab me again. Immediately he settles back on his log seat, attentive and polite. I want to call him a bad name. He sits watching me, waiting for me, and I don’t understand why he is being this mean, this nasty, to demand this of me. I know what I am, and he can already see what I am. Why demand it be given a tongue? But he is still watching me, waiting, his face smooth, and I look long in his eyes, trying to find where he has hidden the malice that makes him demand this.

But he is too deceptive for me, and at last, in anger, I lift the pipes to my lips. I close my eyes, and squawk out bony dirty knees and snarled hair. The pipes shriek hilariously of a smudged face and hands rougher than a dog’s toepads, of ragged clothes that flutter in the wind they croak, and then of thin arms and a bony chest.

The pipes smack against my front teeth, jarring me to my very spine and cutting my upper lip and gum before they fly past my face. I open my eyes, frightened, and his hand is still lifted, palm toward me, as if his hand will fly back again and this time strike my face. His eyes are outraged and hurt. We stare at each other across the torn place between us, and something is bleeding, I am cut in a place that isn’t even on my body and he shares the wound, feels it just as I do. The hurt lasts a long time, and I don’t know how to make it stop.

I stoop slowly and pick up the pipes. They are unhurt, save for a drop of my blood on the end of one. I wipe it off on my shirt, cautiously offer them back to him. He takes them as if they are encrusted with dog shit, by two disdainful fingertips. He gives me a look I cannot interpret and hops off the log and rubs the pipes over the moss carefully, rips loose a handful of green willow leaves and scrubs the pipes with them, staining them green but ridding them of whatever uncleanliness he imagines on them. He is puffing when he sits back down. As he starts to lift the pipes to his mouth, I rise. I’ve had enough music for today, I decide. Especially I fear that he may play his own beauty again, a wicked counterpoint to my latest performance.

Walnut fingers grip my wrist, clenching tight. He has always been stronger than I am, but never before today has he used that, except in play. I refuse to struggle, knowing I cannot break free. Instead, I glare at him, then make my face cold and impassive as a bank of blown snow. I look past his shoulder into the moving shadows of the woods, for the wind has risen slightly and is stirring branches and grasses to dance. With the corner of my eye, I see his left hand lift the pipes to his mouth.

He plays, and I must listen, but I don’t have to show I’m listening. I continue to stare past him as he plays a tiny green frog clinging to the underside of a leaf, a cluster of high-bush cranberries dangling beneath an umbrella of rosy leaves, tiny alder cones rattling down on new-fallen leaves, and spruce sap glinting in the sunlight. I watch the shadows sway.

He pauses, but not for breath. He shakes me, hard, by my wrist, and I try not to sway with his rattling. I look at him, making my eyes cold and hard. Something in his forest eyes keeps me from looking away from his gaze, even when he lifts his pipes and puts them to his mouth. He plays again, the same tune.

But this time I cannot deny the slender ankle wading past the frog, the strong brown fingers reaching for the cranberries, the laughter that echoes the rattle of the cones, the fan of hair the wind blows past the spruce tree that glints the same as the shining sap. He plays on, watching my face, and I hear warm breath stained with wild strawberries, the curved back of someone curled and sleeping in the deep grass, green eyes blinking with snowflakes on their lashes. What I hear is me, and not me, like a reflection in a pool is both me and the leaf-dappling light on the soft mud at the bottom.

He plays it twice again before he will let me go, his eyes watching me as if commanding me to commit it to memory. Evelyn Sylvia it is, Evelyn in the forest, the Evelyn he knows, and the notes are my name as his pipes say it, as the forest itself breathes it.

His fingers loosen around my wrist as he continues to play. I draw my hand free of his, and gather my bucket to go. Rinky comes to my tongue click, and splashes beside me as we recross the slough. His black tail is curled up tightly over his shining back, and I think of going back and asking Pan to play Rinky for me. Another time. Another time. His music follows me still, rising and falling with the stirring wind, but as I get farther and farther away, it blends with the forest’s own singing, and I cannot tell if I am hearing the forest itself or Pan’s rendition of it.

His music has driven the sense out of my head. I see my mother’s face as I shut the door behind me, and the sound of the door shutting is like the clack of a jaw trap on my ankle. Too late to run, and the mushrooms I offer are not enough. I am required to sit at the table and peel potatoes while I listen to a recital of my sins. She admits that Candy said a lot of cruel things, but that doesn’t excuse my physical violence. Sissy and Candy come up from the basement, both to listen and to chime in with any crimes my mother may miss. Candy’s nose has stopped bleeding, but as I suspected, the mohair sweater, though still soaking in cold water, is probably ruined. I bite my tongue, refusing to say aloud that now she will probably give it to me, hand down the stained, worn-out stuff to Evelyn, she’s too stupid to know the difference.

Candy’s eyes are both blacked, too, and this explains Sissy’s sudden chumminess with her. Jeffrey showed to take Candy out, but when he saw swollen nose and puffing eyes, he backed out of the date, none too graciously. Now they both agree that Jeffrey is an asshole, but have no gratefulness to me for revealing that to them. Candy is demanding I pay for her sweater, which is a joke, as I never have any money except at my birthday or Christmastime. I am judged and condemned to clean up the room that we share. I don’t say a word as they rant at me, and I can feel how much angrier this makes my sisters. But it only seems to make my mother more thoughtful. As she swoops up the heap of potatoes I have peeled and splashes them into a bubbling stew and stirs it, she stares at the blank wall over the gas stove, and her grey-green eyes are distant, almost as if she were listening to music rather than to the nattering and bleating of my sisters.

The next morning I find that the hem of my pleated skirt has been resewn. The mohair sweater is dyed a uniform brown before it is folded into my drawer. I say nothing, and neither does anyone else.

SEVEN (#ulink_e8b74d7a-418b-5ca9-9008-9e55607164ea)

The Farm

June 1976

“Are we gonna stay so I can have a pony?” There is a ring of orange juice around Teddy’s mouth, like a visible question mark at the end of his sentence. He phrases the words casually, but his eyes are vaguely accusing, as if he expects me to selfishly snatch all his hopes away. As if someone has warned him in advance of my cruelty.

I refuse to let their warning be fulfilled. “I guess so, honey. Daddy and I need to talk about it a little more. Do you want to stay here all winter?”

I reach across the table and rumple his hair, but it is too short to tousle now. He reaches up to smooth it, looks briefly puzzled at how short it is. But it will grow again. It is not permanent, none of this is. They can change the outside of him, but they cannot change what I have put within him. Child of my long days with you, full of stories read by me, of questions I have answered and questions I have asked, grown within my own body and then nourished by my mind. My own. My boy, I thought, mine. This one is all mine, Mother Maurie. You may be able to whistle up Tom, but not my Teddy. This one I’m keeping.

I cancel that thought as soon as it surfaces, disturbed by my own growing paranoia. I cannot understand what is happening to me. Sometimes, when I think about it, I am frightened.

Teddy considers my question gravely, and I await his answer solemnly. “Yes, Mom, I think I would like to stay. I could have a pony, and go to school in the very same school that Daddy attended when he was a boy my age. And when Bix gets better, he’s gonna teach me to run the big tractor. And I’ll be a man, not a little sissy.”

His eyes light up as he finishes this speech. No doubt the thoughts please him, but it disturbs me a little to hear them couched in phrases fresh from Grandpa’s mouth.

“Well, I suppose we’ll probably stay then,” I say lamely. A cruel temptation rises in me. It would be so easy to say, “Too bad your poor puppy will be all alone this summer. Too bad your Tonka trucks have to sit on their shelves and get dusty, too bad Eddie-down-the-road will have no one to swim with him in the gravel pit this summer. But I guess a pony is worth it. I hope our Bruno puppy doesn’t run away because he’s so lonely. I hope no one breaks into our cabin and steals all your toys. I hope mice don’t chew up your stuffed animals.” I could show them how it’s really done, how you twist a kid’s head until he doesn’t know what he wants, how you scare him and torment him into wanting what you want him to want.

But you don’t do that to children you love, and that is how I know they don’t really love Teddy. By the way they use him to manipulate Tom and me. Perhaps tonight I will point that out to Tom, open his eyes to how we are being used. Or perhaps tonight I will step in front of a speeding locomotive and halt it with my upraised hand. Teddy finishes eating and carries his dishes unsteadily to the sink. He lifts his hand in silent farewell, the ultimate in cool, and I respond in kind. He grins suddenly and flashes past me and out the door, is gone faster than a red fox disappearing into tall grass. He will do whatever it is small boys do all day when their mothers are careful not to bother them. I will not spoil things by asking what it is he rushes off to do. Whatever it is, it belongs to him. A boy needs time on his own.

But what if he is not on his own? I begin to tot up the time he spends at home with me, as opposed to the time he spends at Grandma’s big house. Well, they have the television. Add a lot of time on that score. And they have a full-stocked refrigerator, and a freezer that Auntie Steffie keeps full of Fudgsicle bars and Eskimo Pies. A major draw. And no one imposes discipline on him. If he becomes unbearable, they simply send him back to me. More and more, I slowly realize, I am becoming the punishment, the place you are sent when you’re bad. I’m the “take a bath, pick up your toys, brush your teeth, go to bed” person. The candy-givers live next door.

I realize my teeth are clenched so tightly that my jaw aches. I have been polishing the same spot of table for the last five minutes. I rock back on my heels and raise my cold hands to my sweaty forehead. Try to calm down, I tell myself reasonably. Every day you get further and further out. These are not wicked evil people. They are simply run-of-the-mill grandparents, enjoying their grandson during the first long visit they’ve had since he was born. All grandparents love to spoil their grandchildren, love to give them candy and privileges, toys and ponies. If Mother says no, ask Grandma, says the T-shirt. I smile ruefully to myself. Calm again. Real.

What is coming over you, I ask myself soothingly. What makes you think these wild things? What ignites your territorial fury, what sets you off so quickly these days? A shiver of cold fear touches me. What is happening to me? Lately I see only the worst in anyone’s motives, including Tom, Tom who I love above all else, beyond all reason or safety. If I can doubt Tom, who is left for me to believe in? What has happened to the safety of our marriage? We never quarrel, we never nag each other, we laugh together, and he holds me warm at night. He is tall and handsome and strong and he loves me. I know this is so. But sometimes it seems that whenever his parents come into the picture, we are at each other’s throats. What is becoming of my serenity, the inward peace I have so carefully cultivated? I feel pieced together, like a shattered china cup mended with the wrong glue, knowing that the next time they fill me, I will again shatter, scalding all within reach.

I make another little space in my self. There, I tell myself, you’ve seen the problem. Well, it’s simply solved. Just start fresh, today, turn over a new leaf, be a better person, refuse to be prey to these feelings. Make a resolution, right now. No more nagging. No more emotional arguments. Decide all on logic. Show Tom a little more affection, make him love you again. Support your husband in this thing he needs to do. He perceives staying here as the payment of a debt, as evening out with his folks for all they have done for him. How can I begrudge him that? He needs to do this thing, to make peace with himself.

I make a hot cup of tea to calm myself. Tea bag in the cup. Water in the kettle. Kettle on the stove. Put the dishes away while the kettle heats. Pour the steaming water into the cup. Breathe in the comforting aroma of brewing tea. Remove the bag. Put in the sugar. Sit in the chair by the window. Concentrate for just a few moments on these very simple movements, let them be a ritual of serenity. Breathe deeply and unwind.

I sip my tea and shut my eyes for a moment. The old familiar images rise to my mind. Think of a black room, completely dark. A small shining white thread stretches across the floor of the room. That is my idea of sanity. If I can spend my whole life walking through that dark hall, balancing on the white thread, never breaking it, then I will remain normal. Be accepted. But it is such a temptation to just relax, to let go, to fall from the sharp and cutting edge of rationality into the deep warm blackness of my own world.

Pan comes from my blackness. I know that. Pan had to come from the blackness. When I had decided I wanted to be real, all those years ago, I had banished him to that blackness, to the hidden closet of my mind. Traded in a bizarre illusion for a real life, for Tom and later Teddy. I had left the old loneliness behind, and with it I had abandoned the dreams I had fabricated for dealing with it. Pan, my imaginary companion, had been a defense mechanism, a tool for dealing with isolation. And now he is back. What does that mean? Forget it. Just forget it for now. Turn to the matters at hand. Chores to do, a life to lead. I sip at my tea. It’s cold.

The rest of the day slips past me just as elusively. I do housework. That is all there is for me to do. There are no vehicles free for me to drive to town, and one does not drive to town frivolously, not when Mother Maurie is keeping track of the gasoline. The gardens outside the houses belong to Mother Maurie and are faithfully tended by Ellie. One must not walk through the planted fields lest one crush the new plants. There are the woods, of course, beyond the chicken yard. But there is nothing there for me, and no reason to go there.

So I do housework. Generic tasks. Sweeping the same floor I swept yesterday, dusting the same shelves, cleaning the same bathtub. I fix a careful lunch for myself at noon. Tuna-fish sandwiches, cut into triangles, a handful of potato chips, a pot of tea. Tom will not be home for lunch, he is discussing business at the big house. Teddy is with him. I eat my tuna in careful bites, wondering what would happen if I went over there, if I knocked on the door and walked in. Would they all look up from the big table in astonishment, wondering who had come to disturb them at their meal, who had come breaking into a family’s time together? Ridiculous. They’d smile and greet me, make a place for me at the table. But there’d be the question, from Mother Maurie, most likely. “Why, Evvie, how nice! And what brings you over today?” And I would have no answer, would die before I said, “I’m lonely, I want to see my husband, I want to watch my baby eat.” Those reasons are not good enough for practical people like the Potters. I have no real reason to go over there, nor desire to sit through a noon discussion of hydraulic hoses and whether the stock of gaskets is sufficient. It would be pointless to go over there, and silly.

After lunch, I have my lunch dishes to wash, and to dry, and to set carefully away. It is good to be busy. After the dishes, I read a romance. This one is about pirates. Their captain is actually a kidnapped nobleman who has won the respect of the pirates and becomes their captain by his skill with a sword. All he wants is to regain what is rightfully his, and he sets out to recapture one of his own ships, now carrying the loutish cousin who arranged to have him kidnapped so he could inherit the pirate captain’s rightful place. Also aboard is his loutish cousin’s beautiful and willful fiancee, Desiree. She has raven tresses and a bee-stung lower lip. She pouts beautifully, and doesn’t wish to marry the loutish Alfred, but has been forced into it by her father, who thinks only of money. David, of course, captures the ship and takes her prisoner and holds her for ransom, thinking to make his loutish cousin Alfred very unhappy. Desiree hates David at first, thinking he is just a greedy pirate, interested only in money, much like her father. But even as she is hating him, she has to think constantly about his broad shoulders and white teeth, his roguish smile and dancing blue eyes, and the elegant way he put his own cloak around her to cover her after one of his less civilized pirates had ripped her bodice …

“If we’re staying here this winter,” I say, being careful to always say, “if,” not “since,” “then I suppose I should look around for a job. What do you think?”

“Just a sec,” Tom said, not even looking up. Evening has come, greying the windows and leaking shadows into the house. The table is an island awash with yellow light. The rest of the kitchen is a gloomy, huddling place. Tom’s heavy tractor manual has a yellow cover, stained with diesel. Tom’s notes and a schematic take up the rest of the tabletop. There is no room for me to share the table. “I’ll talk to you in just a second, honey. I’m sure the problem is in this section of the hydraulics, and I think I can find it if I’m just left alone for ten minutes straight. Okay?”

I don’t answer, but he doesn’t notice. He is already submerged in valves and lines, filters and clamps. It doesn’t bother me. There are other things for me to do. Teddy is ready for bed, has been tubbed and scrubbed, and now waits, red-cheeked, for a bedtime story. He is a little pinto himself now, my boy, his innocent butt white still, but the rest of him baked brown right down to the top of his sneaker lines. His fair hair has turned ashy white, his face tanned so dark that his blue eyes are a shock. I sit on the floor by the wicker sofa that has been spread up as a narrow bed.

“What shall we read?” I ask, but it is really a rhetorical question. Where the Wild Things Are is already set out by his bed. We have read it every night for the past three months, and he shows no sign of tiring of it. I do not mind, even though I can now recite it. There is something in this book for Teddy, and once he has digested it, he will be ready to go on.

“This one,” he says, and presents me with a Little Golden Book about Scooby-Do. With some reluctance I accept it, leaf through its stiff newness.

“Auntie Steffie gave it to me. He’s our favorite. When I go over Saturday mornings, we watch Scooby-Do together, with Pop-Tarts.”

The ultimate cultural experience. We read the new book slowly, with Teddy taking great care to examine every picture. It is the same story that they use for all the cartoons, and Teddy seems pleased with its familiarity. When we are finished, I cannot resist saying, “Well, I think I like Where the Wild Things Are better.”

“It’s okay,” Teddy concedes. “But it’s not real.”

“And a talking dog that hunts for ghosts is real?”

He frowns. “It’s real in the story. Not a dream. Auntie Steffie says that Max falls asleep in his bed and just dreams the Wild Things. She says that he had a bad dream because he went to bed with no dinner, and that’s what the story is really about.”

“Oh,” I say. I try to find the right words. “I don’t think it’s a dream in the story. It never says he falls asleep and then wakes up again.”

“But then how did he get to where the Wild Things are?”