History of Wolves(75)

I didn’t step forward and say her name. I didn’t approach because of that belly of hers, and because I saw—as she waddled toward me—she was wearing the black suede boots I’d left at her house three months ago. She was wearing my boots, which shone a dark plum color in the morning sun. I just nodded at her as she passed, as she glanced once in my direction and then on to the next thing. The door. The crowd of hockey players in their white caps on the curb who’d caught sight of her, now, and were staring outright. School. Tenth grade.

Dear Lily,

I’ve been wanting to write you a note for a very long time. I’m having Mattie give you this letter because everybody will be watching you for correspondence from me, and nobody will be watching her. What I need to tell you is I can’t stop thinking about what you said last spring. I think about your fantasy of Gone Lake all the time, every day, every minute. I think about it so much that it’s all very clear to me now, like something that actually happened. Like something we really did. Did you intend that? I think maybe you did. I think about the feeling of your lips on my skin in that boat. I think about the feeling of my dick in the back of your throat, you sucking me down, and then your sweet look of surprise when I finish. Can you imagine how deep it went, how good it was, how long I lasted, how I drew it out for you at just the right moment—did you feel all that, Lily, you fucking pervert?



Even now—in the murky moments before sleep—I sometimes think about what it would have been like to have taken Lily out on Gone Lake that day in the canoe. I think about it when nothing else works, when I can’t find a way to jostle myself from the overwhelming sense of quiet in my new little room in the rehabbed cabin. In my mind, I go through the ritual preparations methodically, staving off all feeling of any sort, heating a kettle on the stove, filling a thermos with coffee in the early morning and slipping it in my backpack, ambushing Lily when her dad drops her off in the schoolyard. Saying to her, “Let’s cut class, this once.” Saying, “Let’s have a smoke, catch a few crappie, okay?” She’s reluctant, in my dream of her, but then, magically, we’re out on the boat, out in the bright center of Gone Lake. The waves are shushing the boat around, and it’s early fall, a couple of hours past dawn, and Lily’s wet hair hangs in cords down her back. Her teeth are chattering and her lips are white, and she’s only wearing one of her sheer sweaters, no jacket or gloves. I see the cold curl her thin shoulders in. But I cannot feel it myself. No cold, no wind. I feel nothing. When she turns around to flick out her cigarette, the one I lit for her, I lunge and take her paddle from her. She gives me a confused look, so I tell her, quietly, “You knew what was going to come next.” Then I creep from the back of the canoe toward her. I feel the boat like my whole body going under me, the thing rocking back and forth, shuddering and tipping us both off balance. I say to her when I get close, warningly, menacingly perhaps, but also with tender commiseration: “Just a kiss.” It feels almost like a benediction, giving her this. The violence in me is almost overwhelming. “That’s what you wanted, right? Just a kiss.”

And then there’s this. Even now, when those words move through my mind, like a curse or a wish, I become Lily. It happens just like that. I have to go through all the preparations for it to work: I have to heat the coffee, fill the thermos, wipe down the wet canoe seats with my sleeve. I have to paddle through the rolling water for a long time, and do it silently, and let Lily ride silently in the front. I have to be patient. I have to do all the steps. But by the time the shore is a huge ring of horizon around us, by the time I’ve taken her paddle, and seen the look of recognition on her face, I find I’m the one stranded in the boat, I’m the one shivering with cold, I feel everything and I’m the one wanted more than anyone else.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


My deepest gratitude goes to Aimee Bender, who read this novel with such generosity and insight in its earliest of drafts. I am very grateful to Elisabeth Schmitz for championing this book and guiding it toward publication. Many people at Grove Atlantic have gone above and beyond with their time and care: thank you Julia Berner-Tobin, Paula Cooper Hughes, Kirsten Giebutowski, Judy Hottensen, Gretchen Mergenthaler, Katie Raissian, Deb Seager, Chin-Yee Lai, and everyone else who helped this book find its way into the world. My profound thanks to my agent Nicole Aragi, who responded to this novel with more enthusiasm than I could have hoped for, and also to Duvall Osteen for keeping things organized behind the scenes. Thank you, too, to Southwest Review for publishing the first chapter in 2013 and honoring it with the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction. A special thanks to the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for recognizing the value of supporting feminist projects. I also thank T. C. Boyle and the students in his workshop at the University of Southern California, who were the first readers of what became the opening chapter of this novel. Let me extend my heartfelt appreciation to all the teachers over the years who have provided me with such superb models of thinking and writing, especially Bill Handley and Natania Meeker at the University of Southern California and Marshall Klimasewiski and Kellie Wells at Washington University in St. Louis. My sincere thanks to both of these institutions for financial support and for offering wonderful communities in which to grow as a writer. I will always be immensely indebted to the colleagues and friends in these writing communities who provoked such influential conversations about books. On a more practical level, thank you to Janalynn Bliss at USC for printing off chapters of this novel when I was no longer on campus. More recently, I owe Cornell University my thanks for providing a teaching home as I revised History of Wolves.