“Dad has me working on a new arm of the foundation.”
He’d spoken of his father’s foundation a few times in the last year, and it seemed connected to why he’d been so stressed lately. “I can help you with anything, just tell me what to do.”
He shook his head. “Maybe it’s time to start chopping wood.”
“But you said the generator—”
“Everything has changed now. I don’t even know how much food is in this house.”
“The pantry is full, but I can organize it today and we can work on rations. Did the weather station say how long this Arctic clipper is going to last?“
“Frey—we’re in the mountains. We might be waiting ‘til Spring.”
He went back to rearranging his backpack. I lingered near the pantry door pretending to check labels, really my mind was on him. Why had he taken both of his bags with both of his pairs of shoes and hiking boots andallof his clothes? Would he have left me if he had the chance?
He’d said himself we were at the mercy of each other now.
“I was thinking one of us should hike out of here.”
And there it was. His confession. Hehadtried to leave me alone up here, that’s why he’d left in the early morning hours. Not to get a jumpstart on the daylight like he’d said, but toabandon me.
Eight
From the loft windows I could see everything.
Tav worked chopping wood in a small clearing where he’d packed down the snow at the edge of the woods. He’d found a small handsaw in the utility room of the basement, along with a food storage pantry with bags of rice and canned goods. We now had twelve cases of tuna fish in a can and ten gallons of purified water. The electricity and water still worked, thank God. But if that changed we would need to severely ration even that to conserve the generator power.
Tav swung his axe, destroying another medium-sized evergreen limb. He pointed out the generator to me as it hummed in the backyard. I didn’t think we needed chopped wood. I sensed instead that he was taking out his aggression on it more than anything. He’d always been a doer—while I worried myself into a prescription for anxiety medication, he shot into action.
It was one of the things I loved most about him. So competent and willing to tackle any project that came his way.
I’d probably been paranoid to think he was trying to leave me this morning. He’d had trouble sleeping last night, falling into bed long after I'd fallen asleep, and I'd heard relentless tossing and turning after that.
Whatever his father had tasked him with at the foundation was important, and Tav was always so capable and balanced when it came to his contracts. He never spoke in detail, but I could see the fire in his eyes when he spoke of work—he loved solving puzzles and was a good fit from the start. But the last few months he’d taken to hiding behind his laptop working on projects for the foundation his father had created. When Tav had first told me of the foundation, he’d explained that they needed a charitable committee to review grant requests and charitable action projects. I didn’t know what much of that meant, but it sounded great. And it also seemed to have Tav breaking under the pressure. I made a mental note to search the internet the next time I had service to look for any press releases related to the new foundation. Tav’s father was constantly busy and always putting pressure on Tav to work harder. I knew Tav wanted to make his father proud, but I often wondered to what end.
I was probably being too hard on him. He worked so hard all week long and spoiled me even when he wasn't there. Bags of organic fruit and vegetables from the local market showed up randomly throughout the week. On the nights he knew I was working late on a project, he often sent my favorite takeout to surprise me and to make sure I ate. He was thoughtful, so thoughtful.
Maybe the isolation of this place was already getting to me. So much big nature that required raw survival right outside of the window left me feeling like I had a case of vertigo. Maybe my mind was also off-step because I'd missed a few of my medications over the last few days. That was another reason Tav liked me at home and settled safely, any small daily upheaval of my routine often left my medications—and thinking—haywire.
Up and down moods were often the result.
Tav and I developed a sort of silent lingo when this happened. Without saying anything, he'd often leave my prescription bottle by the nightstand with a glass of sparkling water. He took care of me. He watched out for me when I couldn't. I’d never felt safer.
Tav had been there too when the call came in. As her next of kin, when my mother's body was found, I was the first they’d called. A wave of devastation had swept through me. It stole the air from my lungs and the energy from my muscles. I’d crumbled to the floor and left the Monterey police chief hanging on the other line, while Tav held me close to him and I wept.
My mother was dead.
An accident,they said.
And in one swift moment I lost my entire life. Tav put me back together when I didn't think anything could. Tav and a mild antipsychotic kept me from slipping out of reality. When Tav wasn’t around, I fell so deep into myself it took days to climb out.
That’s when Tav had started to keep tabs on me.
I never did anything to harm myself, but sometimes I think he worried that might change. He began to chat with me often throughout the day while we worked three-hundred miles apart with only a screen separating us. I liked the company, even if it was virtual. We found a way to keep things interesting, if not spicy, via text messages or late-night phone calls. He made me feel taken care of, even then. When I went to therapy, it was like having him with me. All of my appointments he’d called-in for three-way sessions. And by the time he came home on Thursday or Friday night, it was like we were brand new all over again.
Work kept my mind afloat over the last year as I mourned the loss of my mom. I spiraled the first few days. When the local news caught wind of my mother’s passing, the probing voicemails had started. My mother had the bleeding heart of an activist, when she moved to Monterey she started a charity for the arts that brought awareness to mental health and women’s issues. She’d become so active over the years, she’d made a few enemies. Mostly from political groups that made a villain of her for her hot-button human rights debates, but my mom never said much about it to me. She laughed once when she said a local reporter was on her for a hit piece about something from a long time ago when she was younger and evenmorevocal. She was always at the head of a picket line or protest with her braids and bell-bottoms. Women like her collected friendsandenemies. And she seemed to like it that way.
She’s why I shied away from politics, because she had it at the forefront of her mind even when I was a child. My mother’s style of punishment wasn’t standing in the corner, her punishment was reading the Wall Street Journal first to the last page and then choosing one article that she and I could discuss over dinner. She made me whip smart, and averse toanythingthat polarized people.
