What if...
What if what?
What if we were having this conversation in person? There’s much I think we still have to clear up. And much we could say to each other.
Agree.
Where are you now?
Still in my car. In Salem.
Remember when I was going to invite you to my house in Maine?
I remember.
What if I re-tendered my invitation? What if I gave you the coordinates to my house now? Would you come?
The Rabbit
Movin me down the highway, movin me down the highway... movin ahead so life won’t pass me by...
This is what I’m singing as I drive up the interstate. My car has a CD player, but it never worked, and I don’t pay for any of the subscription music services. So I’m singing this song from memory, as I do whenever I’m on the road tailing one of William’s girls. It’s the only happy memory I have of my mom, dancing with her to it in front of our stove, which we pretended was a fireplace because it was our source of heat. Some guy had left the record behind and it was scratched so it skipped and stuck... highway... highway... highway...and still we had fun dancing to it. Later I realized my mom was drunk as sh*t, but a girl has to take her happy memories where she can.
Today it’s not life I don’t want passing me by but Sam Vetiver. I keep one car between us as she zooms along in the fast lane. I’ll say one thing for that old Jeep of hers, it’s good it’s that obnoxious yellow, because otherwise I might lose sight of it. That thing moves surprisingly fast.
But then again, I know exactly where she’s going. I could drive to William’s in my sleep.
She turns off the highway, and so do I. We cruise along for a while. This is the point at which you can tell you’re getting into the north country. The interstate is developed, has office parks and condos and malls. This two-lane is hemmed in by forest. There are leaping deer signs, and moose. I thought they didn’t really exist, were just a myth the locals made up to titillate andscare the tourists, until one dawn I was following William to Albany and saw a mama and baby standing by the side of the road. Just hanging out and chewing breakfast in the mist, like something from a movie.
There are mountains now, and curves. And trees. So many of them. Dense on the road on either side. Choking off the light. So much forest.
There are fewer vehicles, too, and I drop back so Sam Vetiver won’t spot me. Not that she would probably recognize me. My vehicle, unlike hers, blends in. It’s an old sedan, which is one of the two kinds of cars people drive up here, the other being some big SUV or pickup, sometimes with truck nuts and often with dead deer in the bed, heads lolling and eyes glazed.
We drive ever farther inland and north. Bear signs join the moose and deer. About an hour later she turns onto the dirt road that will take her to the logging track to William Island. I’m starting to get sleepy now, I pulled an all-nighter staking out her apartment, so thank goodness we’re almost there. The sky has a low, heavy, gray look too.
When Sam Vetiver finds William’s private road, I peel off. Give her some time. It’s too isolated here for me to get too close. I snooze in the drive of an abandoned hunting camp.
By the time I wake, I figure it’s safe. I drive to my usual hiding spot, conceal the car. I’m lucky, there’s some snow, but it’s so cold it’s frozen solid. I won’t leave significant tracks.
Now comes the hard part, navigating the rocks along the causeway and around William’s gate. The pillars are for show, they’re not attached to anything, their bases are just sunk into the lake. Which isn’t fully frozen yet, I can still see bubbles like somebody’s trapped under the dark ice. So I hug one of the pillars, spreading my body like a starfish, and make a calculated jump—landing safely on the other side. Welcome to William Island! It’s a challenge to get here, but I’m used to it.
What I’m not used to: seeing Sam Vetiver’s yellow Jeep behind the gate, parked in the driveway. It’s like coming into my sh*thole apartment and finding a snake. My stomach lurches.
I can hear them carrying on all the way from the yard.Oh! Oh! Oh!Goshdamn Sam Vetiver. I wedge myself in between the bushes and the house, beneath William’s bedroom window, waiting, trying to decide what to do. I shift around silently, flex my mittened fingers to stay warm. The temperature is dropping wickedly. I could get into the house through my secret window, but I’m too sad. After listening to as much of their post-f*ckfest nonsense as I can stand, I decide to risk driving back to my sh*thole and returning tomorrow.
As I’m following the causeway back out to where I hid my car, crawling over the rocks, I hear the garage door rumble up, the sound carrying across the ice in that long-range flat way that’s possible only in winter. I pause, clinging to a boulder, and pop my head up just enough to see William in the robe he usually reserves for hot tub use, a big thick forest green one as if he’s at a luxury spa, and his boots. Sam Vetiver is watching him from the garage in just his sweatshirt, jumping up and down on the cold cement and laughing.
He opens the tailgate of her Jeep and lifts out a suitcase the size of a coffin. And another. Wheels them both through the garage into the house. Sam Vetiver darts out and grabs a backpack from her front seat, squealing as her bare feet hit the frosty driveway.
She runs inside. The door rolls closed.
The house is quiet now, lights shining against the cold dusk. In the black woods even the birds have gone silent.
F*ck. This is not normal.
This is not normal at all. How long is that b*tch planning to stay?
A long time, from the looks of it.
