Deborah Blumenthal - What Men Want

“So what happened to his relationship?”

“I guess when the initial fascination faded, she felt cut off and she wasn’t pulling her weight.”

The image of a woman as a member of a dogsled team came to mind. “What do you mean?”

“He wanted to share his life and for Moose that means someone who could help him cut down trees for firewood and build an addition to the house. She liked to cook and help him fix up the house, but that was it.”

“You mean she couldn’t even chop down trees?”

He nodded, laughing.

“He’s liberated—to a fault,” I said.

Chris shrugged. “He has a lot to give, but he hasn’t found a girl who’s big enough to take it.” I thought about Ellen. I hoped that wouldn’t be a big mistake, unless he wanted someone to stand by him to fight with local industry about polluting the air or water.

When we got to the restaurant, neither one of them was there yet so we sat down in a booth and ordered a pitcher of frozen pomegranate margaritas. After sipping half of one, I started to forget about Moose and Ellen.

“We should do this more at home,” I said to Chris. His knees touched mine under the table and he reached down and took my hand.

“You’re wasted already?”

I started to laugh. I spotted Ellen as she walked in, but then wasn’t sure if I was waving at the right girl. Something was different, and then I realized that I was seeing more of her face. The haircut was short and almost boyish, an impossible style for most women, but on Ellen it looked delicate, pixieish and feminine, not to mention that the red color looked richer than I remembered. It framed her face and pale complexion. Ellen is five-four with big blue expressive eyes. She’s almost thirty-three, but could pass for ten years younger. I think it’s because she works mostly indoors, away from the sun. With less hair, her eyes seemed to pop.

“Love the hair,” I said as she took a seat. She smiled.

“I cut it off because I was fed up, but it turns out that everybody likes it. At work they call me Peter Pan.”

Chris poured her a drink and she sat back and sipped it and then shook her head. “I had a day…I’m beginning to doubt—except for present company—that there are any honest, upstanding citizens in the world.”

“There aren’t,” I said flatly. “That’s why we’ll never run out of copy.” Ellen just shook her head.

“What are you working on?” Chris asked her.

“Shabby contractors, bogus long-distance phone charges, car complaints, spoiled dog food, unsafe toys…” She shook her head. “I could go on and on.”

I looked up to see a giant standing next to our table wearing a thick suede jacket. He was bearlike, maybe six foot five, with a beard and brown curly hair.

“Hey,” Chris said, coming around the table and hugging him the way men do, in a hard, standoffish kind of way. It reminded me of a Broadway play that I saw years back called Defending the Caveman that homed in on the differences between the sexes, showing in one particular scene how old female friends greet each other, as opposed to the male approach. Women squeal in delighted high-pitched voices and then come together screeching, laughing, crying and embracing. And men? One goes up to the other and punches him in the arm while saying something endearing like: “You still driving that old piece of shit?”

Moose patted him on the back. “How you doing?” Chris introduced him to me and then to Ellen.

“Ladies,” he said, nodding.

Chris poured him a drink and we toasted. I looked at Chris, then at Moose. His blue eyes peered out, surrounded by curly locks as though he were Santa. The immediate impression that I got was of shyness.

“How come you’re in town?” I said.

“Came to see my mom. I can’t get her to come up and visit me…” He shrugged and didn’t finish the sentence.

“It’s pretty cold up there,” I said, feeling for some reason as if I had to take her side.

“Twenty below last week,” he said matter-of-factly.

“So you live in an igloo?” Ellen teased.

Moose shook his head as if he had considered that and then decided against it. “Log cabin. I built it. Great woodstove, keeps the place really warm.”

“What do you do all winter?” I said. “Doesn’t it get lonely?”

He looked at me curiously and smiled slightly. “I have work to do in the house, firewood to cut, I’m preparing to put on an addition, and I have my books, carpentry work in town, journals, my dog and I’m writing a guide to wilderness survival. Not much time to get lonely.”

“Wilderness survival?” Ellen said.

Actually, it turned out that he was working on his third book. Ever since he was small, Moose said, he spent most of his life outdoors. After we looked at our menus and ordered he told us that his mother was a nature lover who grew up on a farm and unlike other mothers who baked, cleaned, shopped and maybe went off to work, she spent much of her time with her children outdoors, hiking, swimming in the ponds, and teaching them about birds, snakes, turtles, insects, trees and plants. By age ten, he was an expert marksman with a slingshot and a bow and arrow, he knew how to start a fire, build a shelter and forage for food, distinguishing between the edible plants and berries and the poisonous ones so that he could basically survive outdoors, no matter what the temperature. He learned how to carve plates out of wood polished with beaver fat and could weave baskets out of split white oak, make his own clothes and get by in the woods with just some basic clothes and a knife.

That was a world that, of course, was unknown to me. I never did understand all the esoterica about camping and being able to use a compass if I was lost, build a tent for shelter or cook over an open fire.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t welcome being in the wilderness with the right guide, particularly if he looked like the six-foot-four Australian who took me and a group of friends on a rafting trip in Colorado, our present to ourselves after we graduated from college.

“So you spent your summers camping out?” Ellen asked Moose.

“I camped outside my house from the age of eight,” Moose said. “My parents built me a tepee in the backyard instead of a tree house and I spent most of the year out there. I grew my own fruits and vegetables in the garden and made my own clothes. Even my own shoes.”

Ellen and I looked at each other. Manolo of the Adirondacks.

“And I bet you never went to the doctor,” I said.

“To get my shots and all, sure. But when I was sick I tried to treat myself with medicine from plants. I haven’t been to the doctor in the past twenty years.”

“Germs probably can’t survive where you live,” I said. He smiled.

“And what about when you’re doing all that outdoor work. Don’t you ever fall or hurt yourself?” Ellen asked.

“I broke my ankle a few years ago. Set it myself.”

We were all silent. I was proud of myself when I closed a wound with ointment and a butterfly bandage.

“So you’re writing your book with a quill pen, or what?” I said. He shook his head.

“I have a computer and all that. I’m connected.” I imagined him hunkering down by candlelight and writing on a computer.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You built your own with twigs and leaves.”

“Actually I have a Dell,” Moose said, laughing. “But now that you mention it…” With a smile he steered the subject to me, obviously eager to get himself out of the spotlight. “So what about you, how are you doing with the column?”

“The pressure gets me a little crazy,” I said. “But I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

“I read your stuff from time to time online,” he said. “I try to keep up with the papers.”