The Vanishing Year(34)
CHAPTER 11
The city recedes behind a curtain of fog while Henry’s fingers tap the steering wheel to the Rolling Stones. His arms are bare in a navy blue polo shirt tucked in to khaki shorts. He whistles along with the radio and every few minutes glances over and gives me a smile.
This is the Henry I fall in love with, again and again. He is relaxed, in his arrowroot Henry way. His blond hair is “vacation” messy. The day is warm for April and smells of summer, wet pavement, and popcorn, like a state fair. We have the windows cracked and I am happy. Well, I am mostly happy. I have the previous evening’s fight in my mind and I can’t turn it over. I keep thinking about Henry’s hands pushing down on my shoulders, his cold glare at Cash. His quick about-face.
I tried to say something later, in bed, telling him he worried me. He curled against my back murmuring apologies. His hands snaked up my midsection to cup my breast and I shrugged him off, blaming fatigue from the day. He pulled me against him until I felt like I could suffocate, his breath wet on my neck, my ear, and whispered “poor baby” again and again. I fell asleep, a deep dreamless coma, while he was still awake.
Now in the car, his fingers tapping to the radio, his lips moving to the words, basking in the glow of his carefreeness, I close my eyes and breathe. The day is overcast and gray, and in front of us is open New Jersey countryside, rolling green hills and yellow wheat fields.
“Penny will be taking care of the apartment,” Henry says mildly, as though all Penny had to do is water the plants.
In the light of day, my fear about Jared being the burglar seems melodramatic, even silly. I gaze out the window, analyzing this. I’ve had two strange occurrences in less than a week. The car, which may or may not have been intended for me at all. A speeding car running through an intersection toward a crowd of people didn’t imply any intent, when you think about it. The crowd around me was maybe seven other people, including Cash. Who’s to say that one of them wasn’t the target, if in fact it was deliberate at all? I cling to the careless driver/late for an appointment theory. The break-in seemed a clear signal until Henry drew up a list of missing items, including several expensive diamonds and several thousand dollars in cash. The safe had been impenetrable, but given the scratch marks around the dial and latch, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
The police found no sign of forced entry. The investigation is ongoing, they tell me, but they say precious little. They asked if anyone had a key to the apartment and Henry said no until I jostled him with my elbow, hissing Penny under my breath. He corrected himself, “Oh yes, Penny does. She’s harmless, though.” Trey swore he’d been watching the door, had taken no breaks within the time frame, and to his knowledge, there were no visitors to tenants. Henry grumbled at this, rolling his eyes. “Of course someone got in somehow. But he’s saying what he needs to say to protect his job.”
But now, sitting in the driver’s seat, his left knee bopping to the softly playing radio, he looks ten years younger. I can’t figure out why we don’t do this more often. The house sits vacant for months at a time. Henry has gone up a few times in the past year, hunting, he says. Alone? I’d asked him once. I always pictured hunting retreats to be for groups of men. Men unlike Henry, with burly beards and large bellies. Men who drink Miller Lite and wear camouflage, fingers orange with cheese ball crumbs. Henry laughed at me. “There are lots of kinds of hunting, that’s for deer.”
“Well, what do you hunt?” I pressed. I mean, it was incredible that I didn’t already know.
“Rabbits. Pheasant. Sometimes fox.”
“Fox? I thought that was with the dogs and the horses and only done in nineteenth-century England?” I pictured bugles and plaid vests.
“No, you can hunt foxes without dogs and horses, Zoe. That’s the sport. The basic hunting uses a fox whistle.”
“So you have guns? At the cabin?” I felt incredibly dumb.
“Yes, Zoe, I have guns.” He rolled his eyes at me and rubbed his forehead. He hated my interview mode, firing questions at him like a journalist. “Besides, in Fishing Lake, everyone hunts.”
“What do you do with a fox? Can you eat it?” I wondered if Penny had cooked us fox one night, pink gamey slices laid glistening over a bed of radicchio. I shuddered.
“You can’t eat fox meat. I sell the pelt sometimes.”
“You what?” I waved my hand. “Never mind.”
New Jersey fades effortlessly into Pennsylvania and we drive through a small town on an isolated road until even the houses dwindle down to one or two per mile. At the top of an isolated hill, looking down onto the farmland below, sits Henry’s country house. It’s hardly a cabin. A stone farmhouse set a quarter mile back from the road, shrouded by enormous pines. Henry has his own forest.
He empties the trunk, dragging two Rimowa suitcases behind him on the gravel driveway. I follow him inside the house, which smells like wood and must. He runs around, opening all the windows, the breeze lifting the curtains, bringing with it the scent of lilacs. The living room is sparsely decorated, wide plank floors and brightly colored woven rugs, canvas sofas and original local artwork. Simple but expensive. Surfaces gleam and windows shine. I want to ask if Penny has been here, but I don’t.
I follow him up the wooden steps to our room. Through the screened windows I can hear birds and the soft distant whirr of a lawn mower, but not one car. I get up and cross the room, part the white, gauzy curtains. As far as I can see, it’s green and brown rolling hills. My city heart pumps for action, for movement. In the distance, all I can see is the soft sway of soy and wheat. I exhale and try to relax, but all I feel is edgy and unsettled.