I went to rip off little pieces of skin that grew over the deformity. I looked at a map of Montana. The retreat was less than a half hour from Bigfork, from their six-bedroom lodge on Flathead Lake, with the kayaks and the water skis tied to a giant oak that grew out of the water. There was a grand main residence with all local woodwork, with stone showers, and with a kitchen that made my chest hurt. And then there was a small but gorgeously appointed cabin on stilts over the water where he sometimes slept alone to hear the lapping of the lake against the pebbles he’d had specially imported from a place in Sandpoint, Idaho. In the beginning he told me he slept in the lake house to think unmolested of me. And I would picture him staring up at the log ceiling, stroking himself and wishing I were there.
I had told Alice where the house was. I’d pulled it up on my phone, the old listing with the photos I’d studied as though there would be a test about my former lover’s real life. I’d told her about the grocery store where he bought his big cuts of beef. It’s no organic market, he’d said, but they know their ribs. Johnny, the meat guy, he knows his ribs.
It was the next day when River knocked on my door. I’d never seen him look sad.
—What’s wrong?
—I told her. I told Alice.
—You told her what?
—About what we did.
—Oh.
—Yeah. It’s terrible.
—Why did you tell her?
—Because I couldn’t live like that. I pretty much love her.
—Why are you telling me?
—Because you’re friends.
—Not really anymore, I said. I felt faint and I didn’t think it was from the pregnancy. I heard my burden come to the door.
—May I have a moment? I hissed at Eleanor. It was the first time I’d snapped at her. I went outside and closed the door behind me.
—She’s really upset. I think she hates me.
—Well, you cheated on her.
He looked like he was about to cry.
—She’s leaving for her retreat in a few days. She said she’d think about whether she could forgive me. But either way she wasn’t going to be exclusive with me for a while.
—Why are you telling me this?
—I don’t know, he said. I have no one else to tell.
—So go tell your dog, I said. I walked back inside my house and slammed the door.
* * *
I WROTE HER THAT DAY.
I didn’t know about the two of you.
Predictably, there was no reply. I felt remorse but not really. Mostly I felt fear. I closed my eyes and saw her at the Whitefish Farmers’ Market, carrying a baguette and a bouquet of poppies. Big Sky would be coming from the opposite direction with a brown bag of tomatoes and basil. Then the pink fucking.
And all I had was this lump of a child on my couch. I kept checking my phone for a reply. Alice would know I’d be doing that. I’d told her all the sad things I did.
I took Eleanor to the place that Alice was supposed to take me—Cold Spring Tavern, a former stagecoach stop, up in San Marcos Pass.
We drove until we found an ivy-covered wooden house on a main road set in the woods. Dark smoke rose from the chimney through the tall trees. You couldn’t see the sky. There were old wooden picnic tables and a bearded man flipping big red steaks on a charcoal grill. Motorcycles were parked in diagonal formation as far as the eye could see.
It was so romantic inside the place that I wanted to kill myself. Red-checked tablecloths, oppressive candles, dusty Tiffany lamps, mounted deer busts. The first thought I had was how I wished to be there with Big Sky, how I wished to dance with him in the middle of the afternoon, to fuck in the woods behind the bar or in the charming, slightly scummy inn down the street.
I felt crazy, I have to tell you, the craziest I have ever felt. I had to stifle my laughter. Eleanor would say something serious and I’d laugh and laugh. The kind of laugh where the whole body moves like a rung bell. She looked at me oddly but then she would smile, too. Everybody just wants to be happy.
We sat inside and ordered a couple of lagers and the tri-tip steak sandwiches. When the bartender dropped off the beer, I smelled expensive marijuana on his breath. Eleanor was wearing a t-shirt with a palm tree on it and a pair of khaki shorts that fit too tight around her thighs.
—This is the coolest place I’ve been, she said. She was given to saying things like that without the corresponding expression of happiness on her face.
I agreed that it was.
—Thank you for bringing me here.
—Well, I think we both were having some cabin fever.
—Do you like that guy who lives in the yurt?
—We had sex a couple of times. He’s good in bed.
Those words looked like they’d hurt her.
—Can you do that? she asked.
—What do you mean? I asked, laughing but annoyed.
—Like, when you’re pregnant.
Sometimes I would forget I was pregnant, and anyhow I couldn’t believe a child would linger in there. I was sure that at any moment my body would dispel it.
I told her of course you can.
—The penis doesn’t, like, poke the baby?
—No, Eleanor. Anyway, he didn’t put it in that hole.
Predictably, this shocked her. She tried not to show it. She tried to pretend she was mature.
—So you like him?
—Do you like being a virgin?
She shrugged, taking a sip of her beer. The sandwiches arrived, sloppy and beautiful, with apple horseradish on the side. We ate them without speaking. She wiped up steak blood with the crust of the bread. I never finished all my food. My mother told me to always leave a little bit on the plate.
Once we were done, we walked outside with fresh beers and sat on the logs and the motorcycle men stared at me. The kind of staring that never stopped. I had the deplorable thought that I wanted one of them, the largest one, to fuck the baby out of me.
—I’m worried about sex, Eleanor said.
—Honestly it’s nothing.
—I mean that I don’t know who I am.
—In what way?
Very quietly she told me that sometimes she felt like a girl who liked women and other times she felt like a boy who liked women and still other times she felt like something in between who just wanted to be loved. That it was a painful feeling. That she walked around with it all the time, hanging from her neck.
I asked her if her mother knew and she laughed and I asked her if her father had suspected it; he had mentioned to me once or twice that he was safe for the time being since Eleanor did not seem interested in boys, so he did not need a shotgun for date nights. He was always acting the part of the insanely protective father. Because that was what I missed about mine. I had to confront what protective meant—whether I had, in fact, been protected. Physically protective was one thing. Any father could own a shotgun.
Before she could answer, one of the motorcycle men came over and leaned down between us, his hands on the log table, his arms too close to us both.
—What’s cookin, ladies?
I saw the rape in his eyes. I was wearing my white dress and laughed to myself, thinking how anyone would say I kept asking for it. I’d opined often with other women and with men that every man has a degree of rape in him. Women didn’t understand what I meant. They were alternately disgusted and confused. They thought I was stupid. But the men didn’t. I think they were impressed that I understood.