If I think about the part that’s really addictive, the part that’s the sweetest, it’s the way they look when you’ve hurt them. The way they crack and break. Even the strongest woman is just a little girl in disguise, desperate for you to notice something about her. So hungry for it, she’ll do anything you ask. Low things.
You’re a cruel man, Sam.
I have heard this more than once. It always feels good, though I can’t say why.
In Ida’s shed, I looked for the box marked Train Set and removed the bottle I keep stashed away inside. I took a long sip, then another. I examined the wooden trains; they must have belonged to Ida’s brother. There was a story about him I can’t quite recall. Drowned in the lake or stung by a bee. His trains carefully carved and painted, each carriage a different shape and shade. A labor of love.
Probably his father’s. This is what fathers do. I tested out the train on a little stretch of wooden track. Chug-a-chug-a-choo. Conor will love it. I took another sip. It dawned on me suddenly that Ida’s dead brother is the only reason I’ve been left the house. One man’s misery is another man’s fortune, and all.
I’ll need to call my mother back. Make up a vague apology. Get her to wire over more money. Weave in some guilt about her not bothering to know her grandson. That’ll do it.
Our cash is running out, not that Merry knows. Not her department, I always say. Funny, I always thought she’d inherit a decent amount from her mother. But turns out old Gerald wasn’t as astute an investor as he was a surgeon. Bad decisions, big losses. After he died, Maureen lived outside her means; in the end there was nothing left but a load of back taxes and a series of unpaid aesthetician bills.
I took out my phone. Tomorrow? I wrote.
Yes, came Malin’s reply.
She asked me once, Do you love your wife?
Yes, I said, of course.
She nodded sadly but said nothing more.
I downed a final drink in the barn and went inside.
An email arrived this morning from Frank. Her flight details confirmed. See you soon, she wrote. I felt a wave of unexpected dread, a sort of preemptive exhaustion. Frank in need, always hungry for approval. Always watching to see if there are any slips. Continuity errors. She loves to catch me out.
No, I must focus on the good. Her face when she sees the house. When she holds the baby. When she’s confronted with all the parts of her that are lacking.
Just like that, she will be sure of nothing.
And I will have it all.
I wrote down the details and deleted her email. I clicked on the website I visit most days. I came upon it by accident. An anonymous forum. Mothers, all of us, but not the ones who share recipes for birthday cake and ideas for Halloween craft projects.
I don’t write anything but I read it all.
Val in Connecticut who drops buttons on the carpet in the hopes her baby daughter might choke on one, dropping a single button each day so that it will be down to fate in the end. Anonymous in Leeds who calls and then hangs up on social services every morning, trying to work up the courage to hand over the twins she cannot bear.
Pretend women, playing at being mothers.
Sam emerged from the studio and I quickly exited the page. He came up behind me and pressed his hands into my shoulders, kissing the top of my head.
Who’s Christopher? he said, as an email popped onto the screen.
Just an old client, I said. He probably doesn’t know I’ve left the States.
Better tell him, Sam said, and walked off.
I read the email and then deleted it. I had an overwhelming need suddenly to get out of the house. I pulled on running gear and went to find Sam. I’m going for a hike, I announced.
He was taken aback, but thrilled. Fantastic, he said. Should I watch Con?
Oh no, I said, I really want to have some mommy-son time.
Strange, how the words come so easily, how the untruths roll off the tongue while the rest stays locked away.
You’re such a great mom, Sam said.
I nodded. I’m doing my best.
And I am, I am! I must be, because why else would it all feel this torturous – as though I were day and night on stage, under the harsh lights, face melting, body corseted into an ill-fitting borrowed costume. The same show, again and again, enter stage left, deliver the lines you have rehearsed. And into the crowd, looking out at a sea of faces, searching, hoping – desperately needing to hear the sounds of applause. Or even just a single clap. I see you. You exist.
I settled the baby in his stroller and pulled the door shut behind me. We walked down the path in the direction of the lake, then veered left onto the dirt road that leads to the forest trails. It was a fair climb up the first hill, to the flattish clearing of forest with views of the south side of the lake.
In the last months of my pregnancy, I would wake some nights and find myself here, having wandered through the house in the half darkness, out the door and through the garden and down to the gate, a trance that took me inexplicably all the way to the start of the hiking trails, and out to this clearing. I’d cut my feet on gravel and stones and the pain would make me wince and cramp and cry out. I was weighted down with the life inside, an awkward shape, clunky and dense in the darkened forest, knocking into trees and branches as I lumbered along. There were noises and movements in the night but none of them scared me as much as what was inside. Sometimes in the mornings, Sam would find a thin trail of blood leading from the front door to my side of the bed; nocturnal Odette turned back into the cursed swan. How did I get here, how did I get here? I could not understand it.
It was good to be outside in the cool and the quiet, just the trees and the soft calls of insects at work. I looked around. There was not another soul about. A cabin nearby was boarded up, the windows shut, wooden beams nailed across them. A gingerbread house, I thought, and perhaps inside, a cannibal witch.
I looked into the stroller. The baby had fallen asleep. In the soft dappled sunlight, he looked almost painterly, the goldenhaloed child of devotional art. I touched a finger to his nose. He stirred but did not wake. I considered the stroller. I remembered the salesman in Stockholm describing state-ofthe-art suspension, a fixed front wheel, pneumatic tires. Mountain Jogger, it says on the handlebar. Built for this terrain.
I breathed in the morning air, fresh and warm; held out my arms as though awaiting some divine benediction. Then I began to run. Harder, faster, farther and farther into the trees. Around me, the pines loomed tall and ancient and indifferent; the ground underfoot crunched with fallen leaves and weeds and thick-growing lichen, everything alive and wild, a world unto its own.
I did not look back. I ran and ran, as though running for my life. I ran and ran, until everything ached and stung – heart and lungs and head. I wondered briefly if the baby would be all right, out here in the woods, exposed to all the
