The Book of V.: A Novel(46)



Beyond Rosemary, Vee has found a doctor willing to keep her name to himself and refill her prescription for the Pill, which seems to her now, though she is not currently having sex, as critical as food and water—like her own private armor. The library book agrees. The library book—which she couldn’t check out; it was reference, and besides, she wouldn’t dare be seen reading it; even in the library she had read it tucked inside a large dictionary—quotes a handbook that calls the Pill “the first drug to weaken male society’s control over women.”

Vee is confused about sex. She wakes sometimes from dreams pinned by an arousal so intense it’s more like pain, a certainty that a body has been on hers, a desperation to call it back. But it’s not sex, per se, that she misses—she doesn’t think so. She has enjoyed not putting on a girdle, not shaving her armpits every day. It’s not sex—she tells herself—but it is something. Rosemary hugs her. Rosemary is a generous hugger. But that’s not it, quite, either. Rosemary’s friendship, as much as Vee loves her, cannot be enough. A man is required—she knows this even as it shames her. She has not been unattached from a man since she and Rosemary, at thirteen, went on a double date with two boys named John and John.

The smoke is still in her nostrils when she reaches a driveway, at the end of which stands a small house of unfinished wood, newly built—she can smell that, too. Enough trees have been cleared around the house that she can see it, but not so many that she feels exposed as she stands looking at it. She wonders if anyone else knows that the house is here, if the man who drove by is a kind of hermit, or outlaw. She hears the clicking of his cooling truck. She sees a row of tools leaned against the house, shovels and hoes and axes and a machete. She wonders if he is planning to build a shed—if his wife, if there is a wife, will insist on a shed. She would, she thinks. But why? Her walk has left her confused. Would she want the shed to protect the tools, or to hide them for appearance’s sake, or to make him build it? Vee knows she often can’t tell the difference between what she wants and what she thinks she should want, but knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to tell the difference.

“You here to beat down my trees?”

Vee hadn’t noticed the man walking toward her, carrying a leash. She backs away.

The man stops. He surveys her. He wears blue jeans, a hunting jacket, and—the only incongruity—a clean shave. “My dog jumped out of the truck,” he says. “Want a ride down the hill?”

Vee shakes her head.

“Okee doke.” The man heads for his truck, then shouts before closing the door: “If you’ll be so kind as to get out of my way?”

Vee moves to the edge of the driveway. She would like a ride. But a dog, she thinks, doesn’t just jump out of a truck. Does it? Not if its owner is kind?

The truck reverses to where Vee stands. The man rolls down his window, a wary look on his face. “Sure you don’t want a ride?”

She shakes her head.

“Where’d you come from?”

Is this fear? Vee wonders. Or is it shame? Her body feels heavy, her thigh muscles on the verge of collapse. The truck’s running board is oddly clean, as if he leaps into his seat instead of climbing, and she rests her gaze there, listening to the blood in her ears.

“You mute?”

“You alright?”

When she doesn’t answer, the man climbs down from the truck. “Oh god,” he says. “Don’t cry.” And Vee, who didn’t know she was crying, starts to cry harder. She feels insane suddenly, standing in a strange man’s driveway, letting him take her by the shoulders, falling into him. She has fallen into him. “Oh god,” he says again—she hears it, muffled, through her hair. “Oh no,” as his arms wrap around her. Then: “Goodness, you didn’t look this small.”

Vee has never slept with a man whose family she didn’t know. She has only slept with Alex and two boyfriends before him. He could be diseased; he could be a murderer. She leads him toward his house. She doesn’t smell pipe smoke on him, doesn’t smell it inside. She wonders if she dreamed it, if she is dreaming this, too, hallucinating the lumberjack in the woods and her hands on his neck—could it possibly be real? But if she were hallucinating, she would hallucinate a mattress on the floor and there is a bed—a simple one, built of the same wood as the house, but still a bed. If she were hallucinating, it would be a collision so hasty they would simply unbuckle and pull aside, but beneath him she is naked. The man’s eyes are open and looking into her eyes, though she can’t tell if he sees her. She barely sees him. She sees Alex pushing her to the floor, sees Suitcase Wife up in the ceiling, sees Alex pushing his hand up Suitcase Wife’s skirt, working his whole hand up inside her, then Vee feels it inside herself and Suitcase Wife has disappeared into Vee, their backs hitting the floor with a terrible sound, though that might be the thwack of Vee’s stick hitting the trees. Smack. She slams her hands against the man’s chest. She feels a rush of power. Then she sees the dog leash hanging on the bedroom doorknob, within his reach, and hears herself say in a squirrelish voice, “What about your dog?” and as the man laughs, and comes, fear grips her again, and now this is all she feels, bright, blinding fear, until he is off her. He says something but she can’t hear; she is underwater in the tub again while Alex talks at her. She finds her clothes. Her hat. Where is her stick? When did she let go of her stick? She hears his footsteps behind her and decides she’ll turn down the ride again—even if he insists, she’ll say no. She needs a cigarette. She needs to walk.

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