Hummingbird Salamander(31)

I let out my breath. I had been threatened with a gun less than twenty-four hours before. No stamina to keep being mindlessly reactive. Which just made me feel even grainier, like I needed a shower.

“Has a homeless man been seen in the neighborhood?”

“No, Jane. This feels more like someone watching us.”

“Because of the cigarette butt?” Incredulous.

“You tell me.” Resentful.

I relaxed, because I could tell part of the problem from his tone. He’d reverted to an older accusation, one I could accept. That I was the one who knew security, that I should be the one on top of those things just as he was always on top of cooking meals.

“We can extend the security system out here,” I said. “It’s probably just someone passing through. Some transient spending the night. Or, happy thought: it could be a neighbor whose wife doesn’t want him smoking.”

I didn’t think it was any of those things.

“We’re putting in a fence,” he said. “I don’t care how it looks. You call someone.”

Through my fatigue, irritation. He didn’t understand my job, that I managed security. I wasn’t out there in a uniform installing home security systems.

“Could be one of your unhappy clients, too, you know,” I said.

It just came out. Didn’t mean it, except I did. He spent too much time helping a colleague off-load homes in a subdivision plagued with housing code citations. Just because they were old friends.

“Really?” he said. “Really?”

Not really. But we’d never have the real. That was the sadness that came over me in that moment. Struck me—hard—that the distance between us had increased tenfold since I’d left for New York. And it was all my fault.

He stalked off. He’d drop the subject. I’d drop the subject. We would click back into place on the tracks, like it had never happened, a space I could inhabit like an actor. If I wanted to.

Because we had a reservoir of love and goodwill? Because we, like most, were creatures of habit?

I never discovered the answer, because there was also the world beyond us, changing and changing again.





[37]


I met my husband in college. He’d been on the football team, third-string defensive end. More specific: on a bus to the pep rally for a crosstown rivalry that spanned multiple sports. This big, hulking guy with great hair and a wicked smile.

“Hey, Dandelion,” he’d said. Absurd. No one had mistaken me for a dandelion even as a kid. But he managed to convey by his tone that he thought I was hot, that I was not a dandelion, but that he wasn’t making fun of me.

“Hey, Bear,” I said, from within the cocoon of my fellow female athletes. Like we’d known each other for years. “How’re things? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“You know—the usual,” he said. “Was in prison for a while. Then lost a bet. Had to board a bus. To go sit on a bench.”

“Bus to lift a bench, Bear. Like always.”

“How about you? Did you ever get certified as a psychic?”

“No. Turns out I’m terrible at seeing the future.”

“So am I, Dandelion. That’s why they got me to play football.”

“You’ll grow out of it,” I said.

“No, I’m done growing. Sick of it. How about you?”

He sat next to me on the way back. He’d lost a sibling, too. I don’t know how the subject came up. But it did. Talked about it intensely, in the back of the bus. Talked about it honest. Then rarely if ever talked about it again, all through dating for three years, engagement, and then marriage. Because we didn’t have to. He already knew how I was feeling around the date of my brother’s death. And I knew how he was feeling.

I didn’t have to keep pulling out my insides for him. Explaining any new thing might pull all the stitches out, without warning. Neither of us would ever “get over it.” Neither of us would expect the other one to pretend to.

But we were different. His family had gotten it right. His sister’s death didn’t pull them apart. It brought them closer together. Maybe I kept his family at arm’s length because that was too painful. Maybe I resented how much time they’d had to say good-bye.

“Hey, Bear.”

“Hey, Dandelion.”

I never thought anyone would call me Dandelion. I never thought I’d be married, or to a bear. Never thought I’d have a kid. All I had focused on for the longest time was escape. Escape velocity.

We hadn’t used those terms of endearment in a long time.

Would it have made a difference if we had?





[38]


I stayed out there by the oak tree for a while. The dead leaves obscured the man’s path to the observation site. A sour smell permeating the undergrowth, a kind of sweat smell that registered like sickness. Like my mother’s last years. I felt I had smelled it before, but the memory of my mother snuffed it.

I took out my key chain, flicked on my little flashlight, examined the ground in a semicircle out from the oak into the corridor of woods. The faded glow of dusk couldn’t quite claim this territory. I already knew you couldn’t be seen looking out from behind the oak. But here? I’d never realized how much of a shadow you’d be. You could stand there for hours and no one would ever know you were there. Never disturb you. The line of sight to the street—at a right angle to our house—was negligible. A thicket of high bushes. But once on the street, you’d have to get into a car. Or you’d have to walk four or five blocks to a public park. Either you’d have to look normal, like you belonged, or someone would notice you.