“We told Lucy the braces would give her superpowers, like Wonder Woman’s magic belt,” Julie told me as she hammered. “We showed her pictures of knights in their armor and told her how much it weighed.”
Of course, I knew why Julie was telling me these stories: they were meant to be consoling, reminders of the other citizens who resided in the country where I had begun my travels. Had she asked I would have told her about the president of France, how he did not hobnob with the masses. Those who eat pâté de foie gras know they are not common. Part of the pleasure comes from knowing that destiny does not permit everyone this type of food.
For his last meal he did have foie gras, and also ortolans, the little singing birds that are an endangered species. He made a tent by draping his napkin over his head, so he could more fully inhale their scent. While the rest of his guests chattered, the president of France sat with his head covered like a ghost, decimating further the ortolan population by cracking their bones with the few good teeth that he had left.
HERE IS AN unusual fact about my husband Danieclass="underline" he happens to own a gun — a shotgun from his childhood. Though for years I protested its presence in the house, recently I told Daniel I’d changed my mind about the gun: it was reassuring to know I had the option of shooting myself when I couldn’t bear another day.
But I made the mistake of offering this pronouncement over dinner, as Daniel dished up his lentil soup. The soup, I might add, has a more delicate flavor than its name would suggest. I have asked what the secret ingredient is, but Daniel refuses to say. Coriander is what I suspect.
He began to blink profusely as the ladle dripped: “Perhaps we don’t have to discuss this over dinner—”
“This lovely dinner,” I added. “Forgive me. You have gone through the trouble of making your special soup, and here I am talking about shooting myself. I forget how dramatic it must sound.”
And we never came back to the gun, but in a way we did, because all of a sudden Daniel expressed interest in buying one of the old hunting cabins on the river east of town. “We could use it in summer,” he said, “so you don’t wither in the heat.” He said it came with its own hunting blind, though the plank walkway to the blind was in disrepair. I told him that after thirty-two years of marriage he should know me well enough to know a hunting blind was about as enticing as an outhouse.
“The cabin has indoor plumbing, dear.”
“We already have indoor plumbing.”
“But we don’t have cattails.”
“Remind me, what is a cattail?”
Then he showed me a picture. A little dilapidated shack. It was cheap because it was built in the floodplain, set up on concrete footings. To access it, you ascended a half flight of stairs that brought you to a rickety deck.
When I pointed this out to Daniel he said, “Julie can build another ramp.”
I asked why, suddenly, he wanted a cabin.
“I thought I might try my hand at hunting.”
I told Daniel I could no more see him hunting than I could see him behind the wheel of an ice-cream truck.
“Why not? I have always been attracted by the idea of sitting outdoors at dawn with a hot cup of coffee and the smell of wet wool filling up my sinuses.”
When I tried to picture Daniel’s sinuses I saw stalactites dripping.
“What would you shoot?”
“Ducks, I suppose. Surely you would share with me my roasted duck.”
“Could I wear a napkin on my head? Like the president of France, when he ate his last meal?”
I was trying to be funny, but my questions just made Daniel twitch. “Last meal? You’re not still thinking of shooting yourself?”
“Oh, Daniel,” I said as I touched his cheek. “I think about it all the time, but your duck has nothing to do with that.”
AND I LET the subject of the cabin drop as he also let it drop: still, in short order, the gun vanished and a strange key appeared with all the others on their hooks. The fob was a yellow rubber fish that could function as a penlight when it was squeezed. I was not upset that he had gone ahead and bought the shack, though I could hardly believe that he wanted a place to shoot poor birds. Easier for me to believe that he was preparing a trysting place. He would never bring his mistress to our house, though in fact I thought this might be all right: it’s a big house and we could all play cribbage after.
Instead Daniel spent his weekends at the cabin while I worked here, compiling indexes for nonfiction books. This is how I became acquainted with the president of France — I had indexed one of his biographies. Under ortolan there were six entries. Under mistress, twenty-seven.
Or I assume Daniel went to his cabin, because he came home smelling of paint. I began to drop names: “I ran into Daphne on her bicycle.” But all he said was: “Who is Daphne?” Or: “I ran into Julie in Home Depot,” but his response told me nothing: “I saw her Lucy on the monkey bars when I drove past the park.”
And so the summer gave way to fall, and the fall I spent on a biography of Aldo Leopold, the grandfather of modern-day ecology. Here’s what I know: sampling methods, Sand County Almanac, sandhill cranes. I can remember the slots but not what fills them. And the slot for Daniel’s mistress remained empty.
I knew if I asked Daniel to take me to see the cabin he would feel obligated to put on a barbecue or take me fishing, though my interest in the cabin had nothing to do with barbecues or fishing. So one day while Daniel was at work I rode there in the HandyVan, my customary means of getting to the doctor and the store. I could tell that Lou the driver thought it strange as I directed him not to any of our usual destinations but toward the dirt roads that ran near the river. When we got to the cabin — which sat with a dozen others in a row — Lou wrestled the wheelchair backward up the deck’s wet steps.
“What are you going to do out here?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Lou. I suspect I’ll just be taking nature in.”
“But it’s raining.”
“Yes, Lou. I’ve noticed.”
He still seemed reluctant to leave, so I waved him off: “The other cripples await you, Lou, they need you to take them to the mall. Come back at four. I’ll be all right.” Reluctantly he got back in and backed down the dirt road. I sat there waving him off until the HandyVan disappeared.
The river ran behind the cabins, a few of which had been fixed up by other people who must have had real houses for themselves in town. A few more had slipped over the brink of feasible repair. And then there were the desperation rentals, people eking out the winter underneath their mossy roofs, waiting for the flood, the muddy yards studded with broken plastic toys that would be swept away. These cabins showed no signs of life but for the drone of radios buzzing like bees trapped in their windows. The golden oldies. Music for somebody with no place to go except the past.
I stuck the key in the lock and panicked a moment when the knob would not turn — a healthier wife could have kicked the flimsy door to splinters. Stopping to assess the outside of the cabin then, I realized that Daniel had not given much thought to its adornment. No wind chimes had been strung outside, not even a deck chair on the deck. It was as if the cabin had no patience for these distractions, as if it were single-minded in its intent.
Finally, after I backed out the key a smidgen and pressed my thumb to it, the tumblers settled and the door flopped back. Straightaway the scent of mildew slapped its glove across my face. Inside, I found the living room sparsely filled with furniture that must have come with the cabin: a card table with two rickety chairs and a dusty plaid sofa. The shotgun lay on a shelf above the sofa, too high for me to reach.