Chapter 29 #2
“Yes, I’m aware you don’t want to have sex with me.
It’s not the slap in the face you think it is.
You have never wanted to have sex with me, and I’ve tried to talk to you about it, and you insist that you do want to have sex with me, and then when I tell you that’s literally the definition of gaslighting, you tell me to stop saying the word gaslighting because it’s an annoying word.
So thank you, for stepping into reality with me for once, and admitting that you have never cared about fucking me. ”
“That’s not true,” my husband insisted, and I threw up my hands and started to protest, but he spoke over me.
“Hold on. Hold on a second. Let me talk.” He waited to be sure the floor was his.
“I did want to fuck you in the beginning, especially when…” My husband shook his head and muttered something under his breath.
He thumped his hands on the bed. “Forget it. We have to pack. We can’t miss this flight.
It’s the only one off the island today, and you have to be on set tomorrow. ”
“No. Finish what you were going to say. Especially when what?”
My husband sat there unmoving, his hands flopped up to the ceiling like I had asked him which way to turn in a maze and his guess was as good as mine. “I don’t really know. You were just different in the beginning.”
“Younger? Newer? Hotter?” Standing there, with my high ass and bouncy little boobs, I was thirty years old.
“You looked up to me.”
I gasped. Took a step away from him. I could not believe he had just said that. “I cannot believe you just said that.”
My husband looked a bit stunned too. We were in the business of paying lip service to inequalities and representation and making space at the table, and so he knew how that sounded.
But then he seemed to think about it a little more, and he laughed darkly.
“I mean, Faye. That’s a little rich, coming from you.
You asked me to hit you at one point. To, like, pin you down and pretend like…
whatever. You wanted to trade sexual favors for expensive dinners like you were an actual hooker.
That isn’t too indelicate for you, but me saying I miss when you needed me a little bit more is?
” He shrugged. “I just thought it was kind of a turn-on when you, like, asked me for help with Excel. Or you fucked up Jonathan’s lunch order and you’d come to me, wringing your hands with tears in your big brown eyes.
And honestly, Faye?” He is staring out the window, spellbound by the rough rhythm of the ocean and whatever cognizance has finally paid him a visit.
“It didn’t feel like something on your to-do list then.
It felt like you really wanted me too. It was like you got off on being helpless. ”
“That’s it,” Corrine says now.
I stretch my neck long, tilt my head this way and that, trying to see.
Something profoundly grotesque appears to claw at the fungus floor of the forest. I lean forward, make out the curvature of a rib, bring the back of my arm to my mouth.
I turn away, but still I hear them collect the pieces of her and deposit them into a large drawstring knapsack, the kind the dry cleaners give you for all your silk blouses and trousers.
We come upon a wide stretch of trail I recognize, dead and downed trees dappled with exceedingly green growth. It is a magical panorama, lush and Tolkien, and two people are taking in every last inch of it, walking the trail hand in hand with matching, wonderous expressions on their faces.
“Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck,” Corrine says.
“Give Faye your hat,” Henry says out of the side of his mouth, and then Corrine caps me lopsidedly. I’m adjusting the brim as the couple picks up their pace to approach us. The man has a long gray beard and spiffy round eyeglasses. His wife has her hair tied back in a silk scarf, bright lipstick.
“Oh my gosh are we happy to see you,” the man says. “There was a bear.”
“We didn’t run,” the woman assures us.
“Yes,” Corrine agrees. “Never run.”
They nod. Yes. Yes. Never. Their cheeks are flushed, their eyes bright. This is a tale of survival they will tell again and again and we are their first audience.
“This is private property,” Henry says.
The man frowns. Looks around as though there might be some sign posted that will say otherwise. “Since when?”
“1878,” Henry says flatly.
The wife laughs initially. Her teeth are large and uniform, not quite white. Veneers. The plague has spread outside of Los Angeles. “Oh, you’re serious?” she says. Her carefully painted lips turn down. “We’re so sorry. We thought this was Heaven Hills.”
“Do you have a map?” Henry is speaking with a mechanical kind of patience.
The husband pats down his pockets, produces a friendly looking cartoon of the Southern Adirondacks, unfolds it to reveal glossy ads for local inns and restaurants and maple sugar factories.
Henry places his fingertip on a thin red line.
“This is where you are.” He follows the trail with his finger until it intersects with a yellow loop. “This is Heaven Hills.”
“Whose property is this, then?”
Henry refolds the map and returns it to the owner. “It’s mine.”