SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2023 #2
Why does her daughter dislike her so much? Everyone else loves her company. “That’s very kind of you, Geoff,” she says, settling into the armchair.
He gets up off the couch. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”
“I’d love one, dear, thank you.” Beverley waits until he’s out of the room to lean forward and say, “He is truly a changed man, isn’t he? Like night and day. Like Jekyll and Hyde.”
Alice takes off her reading glasses and sighs. “He was never a monster, Mother. We just had some marital issues that took a back burner when we lost our daughter. I think moving here has shifted some of that and we’re both trying harder. That’s all.”
“Yes, of course, dear,” she says, to placate her daughter, who always finds a way to disagree with her. “All of that makes perfect sense. But a night lost in the woods seems to have made a world of difference as well, don’t you think?”
Before Alice can answer, Geoff returns to the room carrying a glass of wine. “Are you two talking about my night in the woods?” he asks, handing the drink to Beverley.
“My mom was just saying that you went in a monster and came out a saint.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Geoff holds up a hand to silence them both. “You’re not wrong, Beverley.”
Alice stops just short of an eye-roll, but Beverley can see the annoyance all over her face.
“Something did happen in those woods that changed me,” he continues.
“I can’t say what, exactly, because I don’t remember any of it.
All that I can say is that I went in there that night feeling horrible about myself.
Feeling lost, full of shame and regret, sadness and anger and resentment.
You name a bad feeling and I had it.” He locks eyes with Beverley and a shiver of excitement runs through her, like he’s a preacher on a pulpit ready to tell her the meaning of life.
“When I came out of those woods”—he slices a hand through the air—“all of those horrible feelings were gone. I felt a thousand times lighter. Like my brain had been wiped clean of all the bad stuff and only good stuff was left.”
Beverley takes a sip of her wine. She’s feeling quite agitated now.
Perhaps it’s because Geoff’s stare makes her feel like he can see the loneliness she works so hard to mask.
Perhaps it’s because it’s similar to the feeling she got last night when she’d stepped out on her porch to look up at the stars.
She’d felt as though she were being watched, studied to be more precise, by something that already knew her, that could see right inside of her.
She couldn’t tell if it was something beyond the trees or the trees themselves, but the sensation made her want to run into the woods in search of it.
At the same time, the feeling repelled and frightened her.
Geoff’s stare is creating the exact same feeling.
She takes another large sip of her wine before saying, “Well, it sounds like we should all take a walk in the woods, then.” She chuckles so that they know she’s joking. So that they think that, in truth, she has nothing to change about herself, nothing to shed, nothing to hide.
“Beverley,” Geoff says, his eyes still locked on hers, “when you go into those woods, I guarantee you will come out a different person.”
Polly
She has to pee and she’s starving for something that isn’t a donut or a muffin and her hair stinks of coffee so she’s desperate for a shower.
Those are her excuses for speeding home from work, despite the pouring rain.
Those are her excuses for tearing up the driveway so fast that she doesn’t see the flash of gray until the very last second.
She slams on the brakes but it’s too late.
There’s a soft thud against the front of her dad’s SUV and a welp that forces a scream from her own throat.
Her hands are shaking as she puts the car in park.
She can see the lifeless form of a four-legged animal lying a few feet from the front of the car, its dark gray fur spotlit by the headlights.
She thinks it might be a big dog, or maybe a coyote.
Bigger than a coyote, more like a wolf, but she remembers the police saying there weren’t any animals in the woods that would hurt you. Wolves can hurt you, can’t they?
She waits a few seconds, hoping it will jump up and run off.
When it doesn’t, she slowly opens the car door and slides out into the rain.
The light outside is neither night nor day but an in-between that confuses the eye and plays tricks on the mind.
That’s what she tells herself when the animal lifts its head at her approach, and she finds herself looking into mossy-green eyes that feel more human than animal.
Like Gray.
The animal squirms on the ground before wriggling itself back onto all fours, its eyes still fixed on Polly.
Wolf, Polly thinks, once she sees the size of the animal.
Its head is easily as big as her own and she’s sure if it were to stand on its hind legs it would be taller than her.
She takes a few cautious steps back, coming up against the car, trapped there, not sure what to do.
The wolf is perfectly still, the only detectable movement the rising and falling of its sides as it breathes. Its eyes are still locked on Polly’s.
“Gray?” she asks quietly. She’s immediately flooded with embarrassment.
The wolf turns its large head and trots across the driveway and into the woods.
“Get a grip,” she whispers as she gets back into the car, soaked fully through by the rain. But she’s relieved that she didn’t kill it. She couldn’t have carried more guilt than she already does.