Second Nature Part 7

Stephen leaned up against the counter, staring at Stuart. Stuart shook his head. Still there it was, right in front of him. The face thatmight easily have been set among painted gold stars on a blue ceiling was the one he could have seen months ago if only he had looked at what was beneath the hair and the beard. Homer had leapt into Stuart's lap, but Stuart paid no attention. He no longer cared about the ruined dinner, or the beer he had planned to get drunk on. That wasn't what he was interested in. On this glorious August evening on this glorious island he had hated for so long, he had just received a gift even he wasn't foolish enough to turn down.

Lydia Altero grew more generous by the day. The small feral cats, which avoided people at all costs, now came to the side door of the bakery where she was working for the summer to beg for bits of b.u.t.ter and saucers of cream. When customers ordered a pound of cookies, Lydia tossed in extras, free of charge: b.u.t.tery moons dipped in dark chocolate, raspberry hearts, sweet macaroons. Each day business was better, and the owner of the bakery, the Russian housepainter's sister, raised Lydia's salary and kissed her on the cheeks. Women on diets threw caution to the wind and ordered anything Lydia recommended. The Simons' little boys begged to be taken to the bakery after camp, and they swore that Lydia smelled like sugar frosting. Matthew Dixon, who had always loved sweets, was too tongue-tied to speak to her, instead of going into the bakery for danish and brownies, he stood on the pavement near the window hoping for the chance to watch her slice bread or brew coffee.

Even at home, Lydia's generosity seemed limitless. When she discovered that her little sister had borrowed her favorite white sweater, Lydia did nothing more than laugh, and when Jenny admitted she'd also taken several pairs of earrings, the dangling ones she wasn't yet allowed to wear, Lydia declared that the earrings should now be considered a gift.

She fixed cafe all lait for her startled father one Sunday morning and espresso on weekdays, and although she no longer spoke to her mother and could not imagine ever speaking to her again, she was gracious enough to keep her luminous eyes downcast each time her mother was in the room, even though she could have easily announced, with a single glance, that she had possession of the whole world and her mother had nothing at all.

She and Connor couldn't hide what was between them much longer, even Lydia knew that. They tried to avoid each other in public places, where they might not be able to stop themselves from throwing their arms around each other, and when Connor did come into the bakery, as he did almost every day, to pick up sandwiches for himself and his mother and Stephen, he always got something wrong. Today, he tripped over his own feet and ordered three curried chicken sandwiches instead of one vegetable melt and two roast beefs, and Lydia just tossed her head, delighted by his confusion. Later, when Robin and Stephen and Connor had stopped working to have lunch, and were sweaty and hot and streaked with dirt, Robin unwrapped her sandwich and asked Connor why he couldn't keep their lunch orders straight. As she picked pieces of chicken off the sandwich and ate the bread plain, Stephen looked over at Connor and grinned broadly.

"What's so funny?" Connor said, embarra.s.sed. "Cut it out," he demanded, and when Stephen did not, he gave him a shove.

Stephen laughed and shoved Connor right back.

"Oh yeah?" Connor said.

"Yeah," Stephen teased him.

Connor went to tackle Stephen, but somehow Stephen moved out of his way and Connor was the one who flopped on the gra.s.s and was pinned.Together, they rolled on the newly turned section of the Feldmans' lawn, knocking over Robin's iced tea and a burlap bag of gra.s.s seed.

When Robin finally insisted they stop, they both lay in the dirt on their backs and laughed for so long Robin thought they might choke.

"You know what?" she said. "I'm bringing our lunches from now on."

Connor sat up, instantly gloomy. He thought of Lydia waiting for him behind the counter at noontime, the little bag of heart-shaped cookies she always added for free already packed up.

"Don't do that," Stephen said, slowly raising himself on his elbows.

He still had that grin. "Connor doesn't mind going to the bakery."

As soon as Robin turned to wrap the remains of her sandwich, Connor gave Stephen one last shove, but he was smiling now, too.

The truth was, he was actually relieved. It didn't really matter if Stephen knew about Lydia. That just made it even, since Lydia knew all about Stephen. Just a few nights before, when it was nearly morning and they still didn't want to leave each other, Connor had blurted out the truth. He had argued with his mother when she told his Uncle Stuart, but this was different: Connor simply could not keep anything from Lydia. When he told her about the Wolf Man she had listened with shining eyes, her face pale in the moonlight.

Another girl might have said, That's not true, that can't be possible, but not Lydia.

"The people who put him in handcuffs should be locked up," she had said, which, as far as Connor was concerned, was the perfect response.

"I'll never tell," she vowed.

Her solemn face was perfect as well. Why wasn't everybody in the world in love with her?

"People are such morons, they would never understand him," Lydia decreed. Indignant, she shook her head.

At this, Connor had threaded his hands through her long hair and kissed her, and then he backed away, self-conscious about his own pa.s.sion, and thrilled by it as well. Now, as he and Stephen worked side by side on the Feldmans' lawn, Connor wondered whether perhaps he had made a mistake in telling Lydia their secret. It would have been better if Stephen had remained a shadow that men talked about on winter nights, he should be drinking from a clear, green stream, not from a thermos of iced tea. Lydia was right. They could not begin to understand him.

They couldn't even hope to try. Goodwill was the most they could offer him, and still something awful would probably come of it.

Stephen was concentrating on turning the earth, his white T-shirt was flecked with mud. When he came to one of the holes dug by the moles whose tunnels had wrecked the Feldmans' lawn in the first place, Stephen was supposed to dig into it, then insert a packet of poison.

Instead, he crouched down. After making certain that Robin and Mrs.

Feldman, who were up on the front porch settling the bill, could not see, he reached in and took the sleeping mole from its burrow. Connor shielded his eyes from the sunlight. In only a few hours, he would berunning to meet the girl he loved. The day was so hot and clear it seemed as if summer would last forever. But in fact, August was nearly half over. The edges of the leaves on the maples and the elms would soon begin to curl, in a month, they would start to turn crimson. Why this should make him feel like crying, Connor had no idea, but he turned his back, allowing Stephen to deposit the mole in the ivy beyond the new lawn they were putting in, even though it would surely find its way back by nightfall to ruin their day's work.

He'd promised to talk to Stuart, but now he wasn't so ,. sure he could go through with it. He tried his best to avoid him--he'd take long showers when Stuart came to the , house, he'd pretend to be sleeping--but Stuart wouldn't give up. He seemed always to be at the house, a small tape recorder ready. He was there at breakfast and again at dinner, he was out on the porch when Stephen came back from running.

He sat on the couch whenever Connor and Stephen played chess.

When Stephen washed the supper dishes, Stuart was right there beside him, ready to dry.

"He's driving you crazy, isn't he?" Robin asked Stephen as they sat on the steps of the front porch drinking iced tea.

It was dusk, and Stuart was stretched out in the hammock, watching them.

He lifted his own gla.s.s of iced tea in a toast.

His depression had lifted completely, for all the good it did anyone else.

"Not exactly," Stephen said. He took a piece of ice between his teeth and cracked it in two. "A little."

"Right," Robin said. "Go home," she called to Stuart.

"It's Kay's home, not mine," Stuart called back. "She's A T U R E got that housepainter there tonight. He's fixing dinner for her.

"He won't leave," Robin sighed. Homer was curled up beside her, and she rubbed his head in the s.p.a.ce that he liked, between his ears.

"It's all my fault that we're stuck with him."

"Kay had me run out to King Kullen and pick up the sour cream and cabbage he needed for his recipe, and I actually did it," Stuart called.

"If I left here now, she'd probably ask me to wash their dishes and tidy up, and I'd have to split the housepainter's head open.

You can't ask me to go."

"The funny thing is, I would do things for Stuart that I wouldn't do for anyone else." Robin was sitting close to Stephen, their legs were almost touching. "Just because he's my brother."

Alongside the house, the roses drooped and turned dusty from the heat.

Stephen had never bothered to name his last three brothers.

By then, words didn't mean as much, he didn't need them. He could distinguish his brothers' voices from miles away, he knew each one's scent and could identify their paw prints in fresh snow.

Stephen finished his iced tea, placed the gla.s.s on the porch, then stood up."You don't have to talk to him," Robin said.

But she was smiling, and as far as Stephen could tell, this meant she was pleased. And she was, really, at least until Stephen and Stuart went into the house, and she was left out on the porch, with Homer as her only company. Sitting out there, watching the first faint stars appear, she realized that she was actually jealous. She wanted to be the one in that room upstairs with Stephen. Through the open bedroom window she could hear Stuart testing his tape recorder.

"One, two, three," he said, and then his words replayed back to him.

All summer long Robin had not once allowed herself to wonder what would happen next. Some people believed this was a condition to strive for: to be in the here and now. But Robin saw this could easily be just another way to lie to herself, the way she had lied to herself about Roy. The women who had asked for him on the telephone, then quickly hung up when told he wasn't home, were all delusional. That's what Roy always said. Maybe they were attracted to him, but if they were that was their tough luck. He wasn't leading anyone on. Marriage meant commitment. The words were interchangeable, weren't they? At least up until the end.

Alibis were contagious little things, a way to sweet-talk yourself into believing whatever you wished could be true.

Beneath those first stars, Robin wished she would have demanded the keys to the handcuffs even if Stephen had been ugly and old, even if he hadn't looked at her that way. She wished she could wash the dishes or read a book while he told her brother the story of his life and not want him all to herself. She wished she had thought to comb the knots out of her hair and change out of the soiled clothes she'd worn when they'd dug out the roots of some fallen poplars earlier in the day.

Instead, she shooed the cat away and carried the empty gla.s.ses inside, and she tried to pretend that just thinking about him didn't cause her a ridiculous amount of pleasure.

Up in the guest room, Stephen was crouched down on the floor.

Stuart sat cross-legged facing him, his clothes wrinkling.

Between them was the tape recorder. That evening, as Robin left the unwashed dishes in the sink and searched for a comb to untangle her hair, Stephen answered every question he was asked, but that didn't mean he told the whole truth. How could he have survived, that was what Stuart wanted to know straight off. What happened when the snowdrifts were higher than his head or when ice locked his lips together?

What did he wear on his feet, on his back, what did he eat, where did he sleep, did he understand fear and longing and desire? If he ever saw men did he run from them, convinced they were creatures completely different from what he was? Who, exactly, had he thought he was all those years?

Stephen told Stuart half of everything, much the way he now knew men did when they didn't want to lie outright. The other half he couldn't even say aloud. He'd never tell that ticks plucked from under the skin were always eaten whole or that blood was best washed off immediately, otherwise it caked when it dried, especially on strands of hair and under fingernails. He didn't tell Stuart that his own reflection had frightened him so badly that he took to closing his eyes when he crouched down beside a stream to drink. He did not dare mention thathe'd torn meat from the bone when a deer was still warm and struggling, or that sometimes he was sent to attack not from the flanks, but straight on, quick as an arrow, but much quieter, except for the blood pounding inside his head as he pulled the deer down by the nose before it had the chance to rear its head.

He told Stuart only the half that was easy to hear, explaining how it was possible to know the hour of the day from the shadows on the ground but not how, when you were hungry enough, you could kill without thinking. How if something didn't have a name, he had named it, inside his head, and that was why language had come back to him easily. But he left out how much he hated those words he couldn't get rid of. He never said them aloud. He used only the language of his brothers and in this way he had deluded himself, and had come to believe he was truly one of them, just as he was deluding himself again, right this minute, pretending he was no different from any other man.

As he spoke, Stephen's voice was detached, but Stuart had been too gripped to turn on a lamp. He hadn't even noticed when the tape ran out and facts were escaping into thin air. Stephen's eyes, not his voice, gave emphasis to every word. They were hazel, with flecks of yellow and green, depending on the light.

Look, and it was impossible to look away. As he walked back to Kay's in the dark, having gotten exactly what he'd believed he'd wanted, Stuart felt unsure. He'd been one of those to sign the transfer papers, committing the Wolf Man for life. Afterward he'd had lunch at his favorite Chinese restaurant, he'd ordered Peking dumplings and Buddha's Delight without thinking twice. He wouldn't get just an article out of this, he'd get a book, maybe even two, he should have been elated. When he returned to the house he and Kay had shared for so long, he should have thrown open the front door and walked right in.

d.a.m.n the housepainter, who was probably still there, sipping the last of his coffee, his arm around Kay's waist. d.a.m.n the divorce. He should have headed for the back pantry, where Kay still kept the wine, so they could celebrate. Instead, he went around to the side of the house and up the stairs to the third-floor entrance.

He remembered when Robin first put in the clematis that now wound its way along the railing of the stairs. As far as Stuart could tell, it was nothing but a twig, and when Robin had insisted that someday the vine would be so strong it could easily survive a hurricane, Stuart had laughed. He'd never once considered that not only might this be true but he might not live here long enough to notice. Well, he noticed now.

The clematis was so overgrown Stuart had to push it away each time he wanted to open the door. He went inside and put the tape recorder on the table and switched it on, then went to the sink and drank two gla.s.ses of cool, rusty tap water.

He had sat across from the Wolf Man in his hospital room and never once had any idea of who he was. He'd never even looked at him carefully, and now he wondered how his own life had gotten away from him. When was the last time he had made a real decision or taken a stand? What exactly was it that he believed in? The voice he'd captured on tape was telling him what it was like to see stars beneath an open sky for the first time. Were they lamps suspended in the dark or ice crystals caught in the web of the night? Would they fall from above in a hail of fire and light, or guide you on the path home?

Downstairs, in Kay's living room, music was playing. Stuart recognized it: Stephane Grappelli, a heartbreaking sound. The housepainter had left his bicycle leaning against the fence. It was already past midnight and the bicycle was still there. Stuart remembered that onnights as hot as these, their grandfather had allowed them to sleep out on the porch on thin cotton pallets.

Robin had always fallen asleep quickly, her breathing soft and even, but for Stuart the stars had been too disturbing and too bright, and he'd often crept inside to his stuffy bedroom, relieved to be back in the house.

Now he wondered why it was he'd been so easily frightened. If he had been the one to crawl out of that plane, would he have lain facedown on the cold ground and given up? Would he have scrambled into a tree when the wolf first approached him, preferring to starve to death there in the branches? He let the tap water run until the rust was all gone and the water was clear. One month out of the year was all he had allowed himself to be who he wanted to be, except in August, he'd been so busy doing what he was supposed to do that he wouldn't have noticed if a dragonfly had settled on the journal he was reading, the shadow of its translucent wings drifting across the page. For so long, things had just happened to him that it took a moment before he fully understood what he was about to do. But actually it was a relief when he took Stephen's ca.s.sette out of the tape recorder and placed it in the sink.

With every hour the night grew hotter and more humid, the way it sometimes did late in August. This was the sort of night when everyone prayed for rain. People couldn't sleep, or if they did doze off, beneath rumpled white sheets, their dreams were not what they had hoped for. Richard Aaron dreamed he was chopping wood in a forest of a thousand trees, his back and arms were tremendously strong, he could feel the heat in his muscles. He was high in the mountains, where the air was chilly and blue, and he gasped as he woke into the hot August night to find himself in his old body, and he tried his best not to fall asleep again the whole night through.

Mosquitoes rose in clouds above the marshes, propelled upward by the rise in the temperature, maddened by hunger and heat. They swarmed through the windows of the fisherman's shack where Connor and Lydia were spending the night, both having lied to their parents. Lydia had left a note that she was sleeping at a friend's house, Connor was supposed to be at his father's for the weekend. Neither of them had felt the slightest pang of guilt, but now they wondered if the mosquitoes had been sent to hara.s.s them. When they couldn't stand it anymore and were covered with red bites, they ran out into the marsh and covered their bodies with mud. They wanted to hide nothing, and yet they continued to keep their love a secret. It was better this way, and much less dangerous. As long as no one knew, nothing could be ruined. Let the rest of the world just try to keep them apart, let anyone try to interfere.

Some things lasted forever, didn't they? Some things no one could deny.

The heat, for instance, and the slugs that visited Robin's vegetable garden, traveling faster than anyone might expect as they made their way through the dark gra.s.s. Only a year before, on a night as hot as this, Robin had sat in her parked truck on Delaney, the headlights and engine turned off. Although she hadn't smoked in years, she had bought a pack of cigarettes and had already lit several, by then she was like a hunter ready to blow off her own foot just to get the rat she was aiming for.

Roy had insisted he would be working, but when she'd called the station--the air conditioner in the living room had blown all the fuses, and blue sparks had shot out of the wall-George had been confused. He'd dodged around a bit and then had finally told the truth: Roy was off on Thursday nights. Apparently Roy had neglected to tell Robin that this had been his schedule for more than six months.

Wearing only an undershirt and shorts, not taking the time to botherwith shoes, she had gotten into the truck and started driving. After she'd gone through town twice, she parked outside Harper's over on Delaney, not just to check for Roy but to cool down. Her clothes were drenched with sweat, her skin was sizzling. She dropped a lit cigarette on her thigh and didn't feel a thing. And just when she thought she might be crazy, and George had been mistaken or she had misunderstood, she saw them in a parked car, right across the street.

He was all over some woman, she'd have to be blind not to see it.

Later, Robin would realize that the car belonged to Julie Wynn, who was in charge of the drug education program, but that night the woman didn't matter. Robin got out of the truck and walked across the street.

She didn't notice that the asphalt was burning her bare feet, she didn't give a d.a.m.n about that. She went around and grabbed open the car door, but once she'd opened it, she had nothing to say.

"This isn't what you think, baby," Roy told her, right away, as he was getting out of the car.

His hair was messed up, but aside from that he was so calm you'd think she'd discovered him picking out an inferior brand of frozen vegetables at the market. If only he had kept his mouth shut, maybe they would have had a chance. Amazing that he could say the wrong thing so quickly. It was exactly what she thought: There was no such thing as trust or faith. Or at least she had been convinced so at the time.

Now, as she stood outside, calling for the cat to come in for the night, it seemed that last fight had happened to somebody else.

Somebody else had dragged all of Roy's clothes into the driveway.

Somebody else had sworn she would never fall in love again. It couldn't have been her, because if it had been she wouldn't be feeling this way.

Not like this.

Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above.

A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds-snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in the ivy--just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough.

As an antidote, breathe in and out slowly. Don't look at the sky.

Consider everyday things: toast on a plate, laundry in a basket, carpets that haven't been vacuumed for weeks. Don't ever think, and feel even less. Take the garbage out through the side door.

Tonight this was all Robin had to do: stay out in the yard near the trashcans and pretend she didn't know he was on the other side of the screen door. He had come downstairs for a gla.s.s of water, that was all.

He couldn't sleep because of the heat, or the mosquitoes, or a stone he'd found beneath his pillow. All she needed was to call the cat, ignore the moon, realize that in no time he would be gone. She might have been able to do all this if she hadn't taken one more step toward the pear tree. Beyond the place where the fruit had dropped and split open there was a white circle, as if a piece of the moon had fallen to earth.Horrified, Robin staggered backward. He never would have come outside if she hadn't cried out. He would have stood his distance forever, but instead he slammed through the door and went right past her. When he knelt on the ground, all the crickets in the yard started to sing. He reached for the cat and lifted him up.

Homer's throat had been slit so neatly he seemed to be sleeping, but the white fur around his neck and chest were deep red.

Watching Stephen crouched there, Robin had no idea that she had already begun to cry. She should have known better than to let Homer out, the feral cats were rumored to go wild on nights as hot as this. They tore sparrows to bits and threatened house cats and clawed at the paint of cars parked in driveways. When Stephen rose to his feet, Robin came toward him, but he shifted to make certain that his back was to her.

His shirt was covered in blood.

"Don't look at this," he told her.

The blood on his hands was already drying, it wouldn't be easy to wash away. His head was pounding just from the smell of it. This was only one small death in a fenced garden, nothing more. He'd witnessed a thousand acts more brutal, he'd done them himself, and yet this was breaking him apart. He clutched the cat to his chest.

"You shouldn't come over here," he said, as if he meant it, as if they weren't already lost to whatever would happen next.

When Robin took Homer from him, the last rush of blood stained her shirt and her hands. She placed the small white body in the tall gra.s.s, which hadn't yet been mowed, and it lay there curled up, like a question mark.

Robin wiped at her eyes and her wet cheeks, she wouldn't even notice the blood on her face until morning. Already, he had pulled her to him, right there, beneath the pear tree, and she could feel the calluses on his hands as he reached beneath her shirt.

He knew exactly what he wanted, and he wasn't going to stop now. He wasn't going to argue or justify himself or do any of those things someone who'd lived as a man all his life would have done. He wasn't going to twist this up with reason.

Wait: that's what she should have said, but his mouth was on hers and she felt too much to stop now. This was no longer her garden, was it?

This was no longer the ground. The heat couldn't possibly feel this way, so deep inside there was nothing to do but give in to it. Were there neighbors out in their backyards? Were there dogs barking? Was that the rattle of a trashcan as a racc.o.o.n or one of the wild cats scavenged in the Dixons' shed for sc.r.a.ps of food? She wouldn't let him go. Even when he pulled off his jeans and his blood-soaked shirt, she kept her arms around him, she got up on her knees, just to stay with him. When she felt the scar on the inside of his thigh, she almost spoke, but by then there was nothing to say. She was already drowning.