Aliens Among Us
Part One
As she trudged along the hard-packed floor of the Sahara, her camel lurching desultorily behind her, Marie thought about the first time she had been called an idiot by her son. It had been his earliest epithet, hurled at her sixteen years earlier in response to her unwillingness to give him a second box of animal cookies. Teddy had been four then, and his eyes grew bright and his mouth slack with wonderment while the word assaulted her, as if he had fired a toy gun only to find it real and fully loaded. Marie was quick to turn away and not betray her hurt and acknowledge the power that this tiny person, who she had misjudged as her ally, had over her. She knew that children called one another names all the time, and that Teddy was only trying on the newly acquired language of hurt. And she was sure Teddy didn't really think she was an idiot. How could that be true when he so often asked her what things meant or how things worked, looking up at her with a surrendering, hopeful expression, the way, she imagined, she looked at her surgeon?
A funny thing to remember, she thought. The desert was working on her like the moments before sleep when her usually orderly mind kaleidoscoped, and loosened fragments arranged and rearranged themselves at random. Bits of life made themselves prominent, the small, insignificant injustices, the moments when, from deep within the crowd and noise of her life, she recognized her solitude. She let drop her camel's reins, realizing that the animal, a stupid creature of these long aimless walks and unvariegated vistas, had no desire for escape.
The trip had been her idea. Teddy, back from college for spring break, winced when she introduced the notion at dinner. Teddy had always been an emotionally obvious boy, like many boys, she supposed, his needs uncomplicated by any notion that he needed to obscure his desires, and she could see him about to mount his defense, but then back off, in deference to her situation. Both her husband and son had lived the last twenty months of her life in deference to her situation, something she took no pleasure in. She did not like being the focus of interest, felt embarrassed that her frailties were so baldly on display. More than any thing, she found illness unseemly, as if she were that annoying child in the front row, forever waving her hand in the air, begging to be noticed. But it had been impossible to deflect the focus from herself without seeming ungrateful and unkind. People became ritualistic when faced with another's illness, needing to do and say the certain things that people do and say in these situations. The drama of disease was just that, and she submitted to her role. She sometimes had the impression that she was the stone in a game of curling, her husband and son rushing ahead to sweep the ice so that she would not stumble and go off course. The caution that pervaded the house was suffocating.
Teddy, alarmed by the notion of his parents breaking in on his backpacking trip through Spain and Morocco with his new girlfriend, Elise, could not, finally hold back, and Marie was grateful for his irrepressible egotism. He and Elise didn't even know where they were going to be, really, at any given time, Teddy argued, canting his head so that his soft, floppy hair covered his eyes in that way he had perfected as a small boy. The feckless gesture had charmed Marie then, even as she knew his hair was hiding not just his eyes but his transparent obfuscations, the small brilliances of childhood that made it possible to magic one box of cookies into two. The gesture still warmed her, but in a nostalgic way that reminded her that there were sorts of innocuous deceptions that one came to cherish, especially when they were replaced by more dangerous ones, subterfuges of the body, for instance, or of familial kindness. Teddy's reedy tenor rose up a half-octave, his recently shed adolescence making a quick, petulant reappearance. He and Elise only had enough money saved from summer and school jobs for hostels and sandwiches. Surely his parents weren't going to travel like that. "I mean it might be, you know, hard on you, Mom," he said haltingly, as if English were a new language whose nouns and adjectives he had not yet mastered.
"I'm feeling good for now," Marie said, "and I need an adventure, don't you think? I think I deserve an adventure." She felt only slightly guilty at playing her family so baldly, but now that she had introduced the idea of a trip, she could not let it go. She wanted to get away from her house, from her town, from the streets that she could only think of now as one way or another way to get to the hospital or the doctor's office. She needed to do something sick people didn't do: travel to exotic places, eat strange foods.
Edward looked up from his chicken, His long face was scored down each cheek with vertical crevasses, which deepened Marie's impression of her husband as an outcropping, something obdurate and fixed. His thin lips moved, and Marie felt herself grow eager and alert, as she had for all the twenty-three years of her marriage when she waited for her husband's tersely apportioned expressions. "That seems like a fine idea, if you're up to it, Mimi," he said. Teddy stared into his lap, chastened.
This was the tragedy, then, the true victim of illness, Marie thought: There was no language left to them that was not brokered by disease. It was a fine idea because it might be their last trip together. It was a fine idea because they should grab this reprieve of good health before it passed them by, because if they waited much longer, she could be dead. Marie felt the way a squirrel might feel upon seeing a fox standing between itself and a tree: terror modified by acceptance of a bleak eventuality.
Edward had read about the camel trek in a magazine. Marie did not ask what magazine, because this piece of information, like so many of the small, seemingly ineffectual bombs he lobbed onto the field of their marriage reinforced the fact that despite the daily satisfactions of partnership, she was very much on her own. Each day the front door shut behind Edward when he left the house for his office downtown, and it was as if he disappeared entirely off the face of any map Marie recognized. She could imagine him at work in his office, his files open in front of him, but her visualization was generic. He could have been any lawyer. He could have been a lawyer on one of those horrible afternoon programs she had been forced to watch during the long months of her convalescence when she had been too enervated to change the channel on the remote. The fact that Edward was reading travel magazines in his spare time raised many troubling questions. What fantasies of escape scrolled through his mind as he read? And were they fantasies that included her?
Early on in their dating life, she had woken one morning before Edward and began making breakfast in his bare bachelor's kitchen. When she went to throw out the broken eggshells, she was confronted with a copy of Double D magazine lying on the top of the trash. On the cover, a model wore nothing but a leather cap and shorts, her hands barely covering the boulders of her breasts, the toffee-colored ponds of her areolas peeking out between her fingers. She felt as she might coming upon a dead animal -- a kind of primordial sense of threat, and then a pervasive despair. She fingered gingerly through old coffee grounds to glance at other pages filled with bullet-sized nipples and fully shaven vulvas before replacing the trash can lid. She wrestled for days with whether and how to confront Edward. When she finally did, in the small voice of a wronged child, he was not chagrined, and it was she who felt shame at having spied on him. She convinced herself that the magazines didn't matter, that everyone had fantasies. Even she had fantasies, didn't she? When she was trying to bring herself to orgasm, didn't she sometimes think of that attractive actor with the high cheekbones she'd seen in the mini-series on PBS? She came to realize, though, that in not confronting him further she had tacitly agreed to the foundational bargain of their marriage: a privacy would always exist between them, like a no-man's land between two countries. The bargain had suited her nature. She was not comfortable with the new-fangled ideology of intimacy as espoused by talk show guests and magazine articles. She was not sure that this kind of wanton divulging equated to love. Sometimes she imagined such intimate conversations between herself and Edward, and even these fictional scenarios made her queasy with discomfort. The shared space of her and Edward's marriage, brought into loud and garrulous focus by Teddy, whom they both adored, had created a comfortable, functioning familiarity. They had gone in and out of years together. This was love enough.
"I think I'd like to ride a camel," Marie said. She smiled at the image she had of herself, swaddled in colorful cloth, jewels winking from a headdress.
"That'll be a memory for sure," Edward said.
And there it was again, that trap of language. Edward colored, even as he said the words. For of course he was referring not to a memory they would all share down through the years, but to one he and his son would hold onto in Marie's absence.
Join the FiveChapters mailing list and you might win a copy of Marisa Silver's new novel, "The God of War." Just send your email address to editor@fivechapters.com.
Part Two
"I feel like Lawrence of Arabia!" Edward called out from atop his camel, when Marie finally caught up to the group, which included the four travelers, Selim, their guide who they had hired at a good price for the two day journey, and Achmed, a boy of fourteen and who walked alongside the caravan, occasionally whispering gentle encouragements into the camels distended bellies. Elise, from on top of hers, turned and snapped Edward's picture with her palm sized camera. She wore a black and white scarf wrapped around her head in the way Marie had seen men do in the souks. Marie wondered if it was wise for Elise to imitate this headdress as if it were just so much of a fashion statement, but there seem to be no irony to the girl. She was uninhibited in a way that had been off-putting at first. When she had met Marie and Edward at the airport in Marrakech for the first time, she had kissed each of them on the cheek. Marie had been unsettled by the facile intimacy, which felt just this shy of reckless. But there was something artless about Elise, her forthright boldness ultimately awkward like a foal finding its legs that tempered Marie's initial judgements. Elise's wild crop of dark curls stuck out from beneath the material, and she had peeled off her outer layers so that she was wearing only a pink tank top underneath which one could see the penumbra of her black bra. Elise made no concession to being in a Muslim country. She strode through the cramped and twisted marketplaces heedless of the eyes that were on her, while Marie experienced each glance as an invasion and was always sure to wear a sweater over her blouse, even though the days were hot, even though protecting herself in such a way was an atavistic habit, like a dog circling before it sits, a gesture to a history which no longer lends any practical advantage. Teddy's camel drew up alongside of Elise's and he leaned over, kissed her on the mouth, and said something. Elise to let out a throaty, knowing laugh that carried over the cinnamon colored dunes. Teddy had grown his last bit during his two years away at college, and his body was filled out now, his neck thick, his back broad. Marie was taken aback by how easily he wore his new armature, as if he was unaware that he had finally morphed into a man. But he had always been heedless of himself, as though he was just energy occupying whatever body shape was given to him in any particular year. This quality gave him both an air of unnerving confidence as well as guilessness, a boyish optimism that he had not yet shed, and that now, housed in his six foot frame, made him seem sometimes naive. He had mostly been at school during the long months of Marie's treatment. When she spoke to him on the telephone, she was relieved by his easy acceptance of what was happening to her. Sometimes his questions regarding her health had no more gravity than they would if she had a head cold. Then she was grateful that a certain childlike solipsism had not yet escaped him.
Camel riding, it turned out, was not very comfortable for someone who, like Marie, had weakened back muscles. Selim had said something about "sitting into" the animal, which Marie had not really understood and was too embarrassed to ask him to repeat, because she didn't want him to think she was making fun of his thick accent. The guide was pleasant and shook everyone's hand when they met him, but after that, he did not say much. She was taken aback when, mounting her kneeling camel for the first time, he had placed his hands around her waist as she settled into the saddle. His touch was firm and off-hand, so different than the ginger, hesitant touches of her husband over these last long months. Edward was put off by the guide's diffidence, but Marie was relieved to be with someone so unsolicitous and frankly uninterested in her.
Two hours into their trek, she asked to be helped down from her camel. Edward had teased her gently. "People have crossed the entire Sahara on camelback, Mimi," he called to her, with the prideful voice of a newly minted expert. "You just have to get used to it."
"I'd rather walk," she said.
Edward's expression turned wary and she could tell he was worried about her. She waved her hand, her usual gesture, which was meant to release him from considering her. She had made this same gesture during the seemingly endless months of her treatment. He had been attentive and helpful, but as the months wore on, and the newness of her reactions to the treatment became predictable, and the energizing drama of diagnosis and attack gave way to the duller and more frightening implications of her illness, she freed him with this wave, releasing him from his duties as sentinal, and taking a small painful pleasure in the relief she saw sweep across his expression. She remembered the same look on Teddy's face when he was young, when she would excuse him from a meal and he would tear out the back door on his way to some adventure, while she, the enabler of this freedom, was left behind.
"This kind of hurts my tits," Elise announced loudly, when she dismounted her camel for lunch.
"It doesn't do much for the nether regions either," Edward said. He was not normally coarse, but the presence of the girl, who was lush and available as a dessert tray, had made him giddy and forgetful of himself. Elise possessed the magnetic energy of the helplessly self-involved. It was impossible not to desire her notice.
"Teddy! Your dad is referring to his balls!"
Marie felt her face grow hot. Her hand wandered to her own chest. She could sometimes feel the scars even though her doctor had told her this was impossible. But now they felt cold, like twin rivers of ice melt, despite the fact that her back and underarms were soaked with sweat. Selim came to her, carrying a glass of sweet tea.
"Thank you," she said, disconcerted by his attentiveness He was a tall man, and wore a long, hooded robe over his shirt and slacks. "Aren't you hot?"
"It's the opposite. This keeps the coolness next to the body," he said, fingering the rough cloth of his outfit. "Your hot tea will cool you down." His eyes wrinkled and his uneven teeth showed as he smiled at the irony, and she had the impression that he had many more things to say, but that it was not his habit to offer information. Marie wondered if it was a peculiarly American trait to expect quick intimacies from strangers. But still, she liked this man who treated her not with the curiosity she had become accustomed to during her years of illness, but with only the pro-forma concern of one who wished to be paid for a job well done.
"Drink," he said, encouraging her with a movement of his head. She put her glass to her lips. The tea was so densely sweet it was nearly revolting, but she did as he said, watching as he rejoined Achmed, squatting down on the blanket where the boy was preparing the food.
Elise and Teddy began to walk up a nearby dune. Edward watched them go, his hand raised to his brow. Marie could see him struggle as he made the decision not to follow the young people.
"Give them some time to themselves," he muttered to no one in particular, as he looked away from them, disgruntled by his wisdom. He walked towards the small table and chairs that had been set up beneath the shade of a large umbrella. Sitting, he shifted his body towards the open expanse of desert, put his hands behind his head and leaned back, groaning with the stretch.
"It's really something, isn't it?" he said.
"Yes," Marie said, sitting down.
"Puts you in the mind of things."
"What things?" Marie said.
He did not respond, and she knew she should not press the conversation further, but she did.
"What does it make you think about?" she said.
"Oh," Edward said with a painful sigh. "Just, well, it's a lot of land, isn't it?"
Elise and Teddy bounded down the dune, their bodies pitched forward so that it looked as though they might fall at any moment. Elise's scarf flew off her and released the Medusa-like fullness of her hair. Their laughter carried across the desert to the lunch table.
"Where are you going?" Marie asked, as Edward rose from his chair, stumbling slightly in the sand.
"She's lost her thingy, her whatever-you-call-it," he said, pointing vaguely to his own head.
"Teddy will get it."
But Edward was already off, passing Teddy and Elise, his long legs seeking purchase in the loose sand. Elise turned and followed Edward. Marie heard her voice but could not tell what the girl was saying when suddenly both Elise and Edward took off in a race up the dune. Elise easily reached the scarf first, snatching it up and waving it in the air in triumph. She ran back down the slope past Edward, who stood, his arms on his hips, his chest rising heavily as he tried to catch his breath.
Marie watched Teddy make his way towards the lunch table, his gait loose-limbed like his father's. He sat down on the chair. Elise stood at a distance, re-tying her scarf around her head. Her shirt rose above her navel, revealing her soft belly. Teddy sat and watched her with a dumb, mesmerized expression on his face. When she was finished, Elise came up to the table and sat down heavily on Teddy's lap.
"Unh," Teddy said, slapping her rump.
"Not in front of your mom," Elise said. "It's insulting."
Marie was embarrassed by the innuendo and Elise's implicit assumption that Marie and Edward were past the carnal part of their marriage, and therefore to be protected like children. Edward came up to the table and stood, surveying the seating arrangement. "There are enough chairs to go around," he said to Elise.
"I'm in my favorite chair," Elise said, leaning her head back into Teddy's shoulder, and closing her eyes, a satisfied, post-coital smile on her face. Teddy began to pet her hair, weaving his fingers in and out of her curls. His tenderness made Marie's breath catch in her throat.
Join the FiveChapters mailing list and you might win a copy of Marisa Silver's new novel, "The God of War." Just send your email address to editor@fivechapters.com.
Part Three
After lunch, Elise was sick. She blamed the food.
"You might have just picked up a bug," Marie said. She had agreed to stay behind at the lunch site with Elise while the rest of their party rode on ahead to the evening camp. There was some argument about this, with both Teddy and Edward demanding to stay, but Marie reminded them that she did not intend to ride her camel, and that they would make much faster time without her. By some prearrangement, the camp was being set up in advance of the group's arrival by some associates of Selim who had a jeep. Selim would drive back and retrieve the women.
"No. I remember one bite of chicken that tasted funny. Oh, God."
Without bothering to move from her chair, she leaned over and vomited. Marie reached for the girl's hair to hold it away from the mess. The mass was surprisingly soft for all its girth.
"Fuck," Elise gasped, as she sat up. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and looked at Marie. "Fuck. Sorry."
Marie dropped the girl's hair. "Would you like some water?"
Elise nodded and Marie unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water. Marie watched the girl take too much liquid into her. She put down the bottle. "At least Teddy doesn't have to see this."
"He's thrown up a few times in his life," Marie said.
"It's not exactly sexy."
Marie thought about Edward's voice coming through the bathroom door: You okay in there? She shuddered to think of the sounds she'd made.
"In sickness and in health," Marie said.
Elise's eyes widened. "Whoa! We're not getting married or anything."
"Of course. I know that. I was just remembering."
"We've only been going out for a few months. Who knows what will happen. Plus, marriage is kind of meaningless at this point. Don't you think?"
Marie had never thought of Teddy as a romantic. He had shrugged on and off a series of girls throughout high school without much visible turmoil. But she had watched him these past few days. His arm slid around Elise's waist or shoulders whenever she was within distance, the way his hand used to fold into Marie's when he was young, and they would walk on the street or through a crowded store, as if he required her as ballast.
"You have lovely hair," Marie said.
Elise touched her curls self-consciously. "I hated it when I was younger. I used to pull on it to get it to lie flat." She shrugged. "It's Jewish hair." She looked at Marie challengingly. "Did Teddy tell you I was Jewish?"
"No."
"He told me you never met a Jew until you went to college."
"I grew up in a very small town."
"That's just so crazy," Elise said. "I mean that's how prejudice starts."
"I'm not prejudiced."
"Are you sure? Sometimes people don't think they are. But just thinking that some people are so different, like if you've never met any. I mean that's a form of prejudice in my opinion."
"I'm not prejudiced," Marie repeated, embarrassed to have to defend herself to this girl.
"I'm just talking theoretically. I mean it's worth thinking about, right? Instead of just accepting that most people aren't prejudiced because we know it's the wrong way to be, maybe we should accept that most people are and start from there."
"But I don't believe that's true."
Elise shrugged. "Look at this thing with Selim."
"What about Selim?"
"He's like our servant. He carries our bags. He cooks us meals."
"We pay him. This is his job."
"We didn't even invite him to eat lunch with us."
Before Marie could respond, Elise stood up and ran behind a low, barren bush. Her body was barely obscured and Marie could see her back heave as she retched. After a few moments, Elise, looking clammy, returned to the chairs.
"I'm sweating," Elise said.
Marie stood up, concerned. "Let me check your temperature."
Elise bent towards Marie, presenting face for Marie's palm. Without thinking, Marie put both her hands on each side of the girl's face and brought her lips to the skin below Elise's hairline. It was how she had always checked Teddy's fevers, her lips being more trustworthy than her hands.
"You're cool as a cuke," Marie said.
"A what?"
"It's something my mother used to say."
Elise put her own hand to her forehead as if to contradict Marie, but then dropped it and sat in the chair. "Can I ask you something?
"Yes," Marie said, sitting.
"Why didn't you get new breasts?"
Adrenaline flooded Marie's body, leaving her unsteady even in her chair.
"Teddy told me about the operation. And I just thought, well, I can tell you don't have anything there."
For some reason, Marie felt the urge to tell Elise what she had found out at the doctor's the week before the trip. But she knew it would be a mistake. "I don't know," she said. "It just didn't seem necessary. It just seemed beside the point."
"It would just be a silver lining. Right? New boobs? Like trading up for a new model?"
Suddenly what seemed most important was not the girl's irrepressible impulsiveness, or Marie's desire to confess, but the image that was forming in her mind of her son telling his girlfriend about his mother's illness. Had he needed this girl to care for him in his distress? Had he cried? Elise was as fickle as a fish, her innocence teetering on the edge of cunning. Marie feared for her trusting son.
Join the FiveChapters mailing list and you might win a copy of Marisa Silver's new novel, "The God of War." Just send your email address to editor@fivechapters.com.
Part Four
By the time Selim arrived and drove them to the campsite, the sun had set and the sky was a deep iron blue. Already the sand was recovering from the pummeling heat it had taken during the day. Teddy and Edward both came rushing up to the jeep, each solicitous of the weakened Elise.
"We've made up her bed," Edward said, helping Elise down from the jeep. He reached back and put her arm around his taller shoulder so that she hobbled beside him, as though her foot, and not her stomach, were the cause of her troubles. Selim came around the jeep and stood watching, his arms folded across his chest.
"I've got it, Dad," Teddy said, smoothly taking Elise from his father, so that Edward was left empty handed.
"Let her rest!" Edward called after them. He watched, unhappily, as Teddy and Elise disappeared inside their tent. In a few moments, Elise's hards laughs could be heard. Marie wondered who she was making fun of, Marie or Edward.
"He should let her rest," Edward said to no one in particular.
Selim watched Edward with amusement in his eyes, which made Marie angry. "She'll be fine, Edward," she said trying to cover her husband's foolishness. She turned to Selim. "I'd like some tea now, if you don't mind," she said, her voice hard.
"Of course, Madam," he said, bowing slightly.
That night, the stars broke out across the sky, nearly obliterating the blackness. Their quantity was overwhelming. Marie was stunned. She had the impression that this part of the sky had somehow been gifted with a surfeit of these brilliant jewels and, unable to choose among them, it was wearing them all at the same time.
"Kids! Kids!" Edward called, drawing Teddy and Elise from their tent. "You have to see this."
Elise and Teddy stood, necks craned, stunned silent by the view. Edward, puffed up as though he himself had produced this wonder pointed out Cassiopeia.
"I don't see it," Elise said.
"There," Teddy pointed. "See? It's amazing, Dad."
"I don't see it!" Elise whined.
"It's right there," Edward said, still pointing at the sky. "Plain as day." He came up behind Elise and took her by the shoulders, positioning her in front of him so she could more nearly replicate his point of view. His head next to hers, he pointed.
"Ahh..." Elise said, her voice low and thick with pleasure. She did not move away from Edward now that she had made her discovery. Marie felt herself grow tense and uncomfortable, her desire to look away as strong as her desire to watch this queerly wrong interaction taking place in front of her. She felt just as she had that morning long ago, scraping coffee grounds from the images of the centerfolds.
"Teddy, why don't' you and Elise get some sleep?" Marie said. "We have to start early, right Selim?"
"Yes, quite early," he said, and she had the feeling he understood her. After a few more minutes, Teddy and Elise slipped back into their tent. The orb of their flashlight danced across the white material and Marie could see their close shadows, moving inside.
Join the FiveChapters mailing list and you might win a copy of Marisa Silver's new novel, "The God of War." Just send your email address to editor@fivechapters.com.
Part Five
Marie chose not to sleep that night. She had learned how to defy sleep when she was sick. The skill had felt like some measure of victory over her situation, and she had learned to love the sleepless nighttime hours especially, when time seemed to slow and stretch, and she was not assaulted by the raucous sounds of the day -- the sounds of car doors opening and closing, the Doppler of children's voices as they walked to and from school -- that were insults to her. She left Edward asleep in the tent.
Earlier, Selim had dug a fire pit, but the fire was nearly out. Selim crouched nearby, his knees to his chin, holding a stick and toying with the embers.
"I'm sorry about earlier," Marie said, sitting down on the cold ground.
"Madam?"
"About the tea."
"You had a difficult day."
They were silent for a few minutes.
"You speak English well," Marie said, hearing the condescension embedded in the compliment. Maybe Elise was right. Maybe she was prejudiced.
"I've been four years at University, Madam. I speak French and Japanese as well."
"Japanese!"
He smiled knowingly at the surprise in her tone.
"Are you married?" she asked.
"Yes. And two children."
"And they live with you in the city?"
"They live in my village in the mountains."
"You must miss them when you are away like this."
Selim looked into the dying fire. "The day after my marriage, I received my acceptance into the University. My mother told me I had to stay with my wife in my village."
"You went to the school, though."
"My parents chose my wife for me. I wanted to study."
Marie said nothing. Selim's face was still, the glow from the fire burnishsed the planes of his cheeks.
"How old are you children?" Marie said.
"One and three," he said, his eyes brightening. "Amina and Mohammed." He winced slightly as if the names caused him pain.
So sadness was his bargain, she thought. She wondered if he could live with it. The coolness of the earth penetrated her thin shirt and she quickly became cold, but she didn't move. She watched the stars, and realized that the sky was so wide and so near that she could see the heavens move. She felt that she was witnessing something elemental, and that she, and Edward, and everyone else were simply objects moving across the universe in tandem with the stars.
"I've been sick," she said, watchng the pageant above her. "Terribly sick. But it turns out I'm not going to die after all. At least, not now, maybe not for a long time. 'The prognosis is life.' That was what my doctor told me. His first joke in nearly two years."
Selim did not speak. She was not even certain he was listening to her.
"You get used to the idea of dying," she said. "It's hard to adjust your expectations."
She sat up. Selim was watching her.
"They don't know," she said.
She slid into her sleeping bag and lay down next to Edward, careful not to wake him. But then she heard unmistakable rustlings coming from Teddy and Elise's tent, which signaled that they were making love, and she began to laugh. She covered her face, trying to stifle her sound. Edward turned in his sleeping bag and opened his eyes for a moment. His face was soft, his expression confused, trapped as he was between sleep and wakefulness. She quieted herself and was relieved when his eyelids lowered and his breathing became regular again. Carefully, she took his hand in hers. She felt its weight, the warmth of it despite the cold air. She thought of him foolishly chasing after the girl, and smiled to herself. He was dazzled by her vitality. And why not? His wife dying and he was fumbling his way towards life. It was not elegant, but she could forgive him. And Teddy, too. He'd discovered a future apart from his mother. If it was not to be with Elise, who would surely pass him by, the faster, surer swimmer of the two, then it would be someone else. His body needed love now, a different love than she had given him. She had gone on this trip hoping to find a way back to what they had been, but she did not want to go back. She knew that now.
She thought about how it would happen. Would she pack her things and drive away while Edward was at work? Or would she stay and, when he returned home, confront him with her choice. A conversation might be difficult for him. It would demand words he did not have, feelings he could not name. She did not want to be unkind. She closed her eyes and saw, against the night of her eyelids, the stars. She imagined their migration to some other part of the world. Soon, in that place, other people would look up and point and wonder at how much there was that they would never know.
Join the FiveChapters mailing list and you might win a copy of Marisa Silver's new novel, "The God of War." Just send your email address to editor@fivechapters.com.
