“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she said.
“I’m forty years old and I drink too much,” he said. “I don’t blame you for not being interested in me. You don’t intend to sleep with me, do you?”
She had not been asked that so bluntly since college, when a few crazy boys she knew talked that way. She didn’t know whether to resent it or to try to answer him.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Next do you say that you want to go home, and do I drive you?”
“You’re trying to make me a puppet,” she said. “You’re making a mockery of me before I even speak.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He got up and put his coat on, and she heard his keys jingle as he lifted them from the table. She was humiliated to be sent home, like a child being sent from the room after it has cutely performed for all the guests. She continued to stand by the fire, but he continued to stand in the hallway.
“I didn’t know you were dating me for sex,” she heard herself say.
“I wasn’t,” he said.
That was in August, and she had not seen him since. Sometimes when she was depressed she would think of Peter and wonder whether she shouldn’t have tried harder so that she and Margaret wouldn’t end up together forever. They seemed to Elena to be old people already, the way they carried on about the cat: how clever it was, how much personality it had.
Tom came at eight o’clock, as Elena and Margaret were finishing dinner. Tom’s hair had grown long. He wore a black coat and black boots. He had a friend with him, a fellow named Max, who stood by shyly. Max was taller than Tom, and nowhere near as good-looking. He had on a denim jacket with layers of sweaters underneath, and his face was mottled pink from the cold. Tom brought him forward and introduced him. Tom presented his usual assortment of odd gifts: a basil plant, ajar of macadamia nuts, a book of poetry called Gathering the Bones Together, a poster of Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly from Singin’ in the Rain. After the admiring, and the laughing, and Margaret adopting Debbie Reynold’s posture and expression, no one seemed to know what to say. Margaret offered to show Max the house. Elena told Tom how much he had changed. She didn’t think that she would have recognized him on the street. When they lived together he had been thin, with a beard and short hair. Now, she saw, as he took off the coat, he had put on weight. His hair was as long as hers.
“Would you like a drink or a cup of coffee?” Elena said.
“Where have Margaret and Max gone?” Tom said.
They were silent, and could hear talking in the far room, the room where Margaret grew plants under lights in the winter.
“I might have a beer,” he said. “There are some in that bag Max carried in.”
They bent together to pick up the bag. Their heads bumped. She thought, again, that this was going to be an impossible visit.
“Have one?” he said.
“No thank you.”
“Okay if I get a fire going? You’re the only person I know who’s got a fireplace.”
He went to the fireplace and crumpled newspaper and stuffed it in and began building a pile of kindling and logs. Elena sat on the floor, holding the box of matches. She thought back to the night in August when she had last seen Peter.
“You said you were writing about Rousseau,” Tom said. “How’s it coming?”
“Not very well. I think I might have chosen the wrong topic.”
“What’s your topic?” he said, striking a match and putting it to the newspaper. She had told him in the letter what it was.
“Ah, beautiful,” Tom said. “Look at it go.” He sat beside her and smiled at the flames. “Are you going to take a walk with me later? I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Max has talked me into going to the West Coast. I want to talk you into going with us.”
“You come to visit once a year, and this time you want me to move to the West Coast with you.”
“I don’t have the nerve to visit you more than once a year. I treated you like hell.”
“That just occurred to you.”
“It didn’t just occur to me. My shrink said to tell you.”
“Your shrink said to tell me.”
“You sound like my shrink,” Tom said. “I say something, and he repeats it.”
By the time they went for a walk, several records had been played and they had all eaten cheese and crackers, and then Margaret and Max had wandered out of the room again, back to the plant room to get stoned. Elena and Tom sat drinking the last two cans of beer. She admitted defeat — she told him all the problems she had with writing, the problem she had concentrating. He confessed that he had no intention of going away with Max, but that he thought if he told her that, she might come back.
“I’m nuts. I admit I’m nuts,” Tom said.
He was beginning to seem more familiar to her. Underneath the black coat had been a plaid shirt she remembered. The shoes were the same black motorcycle boots, polished.
Tom stood and pulled her up with one hand. Then, weaving, he headed for the chair to get his coat. Elena went to the closet for hers. The temperature gauge outside the door read thirty-four degrees. There was a full moon.
“Rousseau,” Tom said, looking at the moon. “I think that gypsy’s sleeping just to flip out the wolf.”
He buried their clasped hands in the pocket of his coat. He didn’t let go as he unbuttoned his coat and turned sideways to urinate on the leaves. Elena stared at him with amazement. When he finished, he buttoned his coat with one hand.
“Hang on!” Max called, running with Margaret down the field to the edge of the woods. Elena saw that Margaret had put on the white poncho their grandmother had sent her as an early Christmas present. Max and Margaret were laughing, close enough now to see their breath, running so fast that they passed Tom and Elena and stumbled toward the woods.
“I’ve got the tape!” Max called back, holding a cassette.
“He has a tape he borrowed from a hunter friend,” Tom said.
“Recording of-a dying rabbit!” Max called to Elena. “Once I get this thing going, we can hide and see if a fox comes.”
Max put the machine down and clicked the cassette into place, and was hurrying them into the woods and whispering for them to be quiet, although his loud whisper was the only noise. Max crouched next to Margaret, with his arm around her. Tom took Elena’s hand and plunged it into his pocket again. Elena was spellbound by the noise from the cassette player: it was a rabbit in pain, shrieking louder and louder.
“You see a fox?” Max whispered.
Soon an owl landed in a small peach tree in the middle of the field. It sat there, silhouetted by the moon, making no noise. Max pointed excitedly, cupped his hands over his eyes (though there was no reason for it) to look at the owl, which sat, not moving. The screeching on the cassette player reached a crescendo and stopped abruptly. The owl stayed in the tree.
“Well,” Max said. “We got an owl. Don’t anybody move. Maybe there’s something else out there.”
They sat in silence. Elena’s hand was sweaty in Tom’s pocket. She got up and said, “I’m going to finish my walk.” Tom rose with her and followed her out of the woods. When they had gone about a hundred feet they heard, again, the sounds of the dying rabbit.
“Is he serious?” Elena said.
“I guess so,” Tom said.
They were walking toward the moon, and toward the end of the field. There was a road to the left that went to the pump house. She was thinking about going there, sitting on one of the crates inside, and telling him she would come back to him. Imagining it, Elena felt suddenly elated. Just as quickly, her mood changed. He was the one who had broken off their relationship. Then he had begun to date her sister.