Diane Cook - Man V. Nature - Stories

“I tore up all my carpet and put in real wood floors, so I imagine mine will sell pretty quickly. A lot quicker than these pieces of shit,” she said, gesturing at the board.

“I imagine so,” Jeremy agreed, his gaze calm but alert, as if he’d encountered a strange dog in the forest. “Wood flooring is very timeless right now.”

“We used to sleep together.” She dropped it like an oily chicken.

“I’m sorry?”

“Dave and I. Before he was married. After he was married. While she was pregnant.” She smiled. “We were lovers. Multiple times. Multiple orgasms, I mean.” She paused. What did she mean exactly? “I mean, I know him. I know him.”

She stopped. She didn’t need to plead her case to Jeremy.

“I’m sure you do.” He sighed. “Please let someone in the office know what you decide.” He turned his back to her. “And you should have shoes on,” he added, disappearing behind a curtain. “It’s almost winter.”

Another family moved into Dave’s place. Janet saw ribbons of old carpet in the Dumpster and figured they had installed hardwood floors. She decided Dave had bad taste and added that to her growing list of his failings. She watched the husband over the fence as he staked the yard according to some spring planting map. She thought about seducing him, but he was doughy, and worse, clearly under the wife’s thumb. Janet pictured him barely erect and simpering at her bedside.

She did not try to sell.

But she continued to watch Dave’s weather reports, the friendly hum of the vibrator mingling with his expert’s voice. He’d developed something of a giggle that confused her at first, until she realized that it came with something of a smile, genuine, not slight, and ever-present. This was Dave happy. She hated seeing it; it made her want to cry. She masturbated angrily.

Then one day in early spring, with the ground still frozen and the night still arriving by five, the weather was reported by a blonde in a tight pencil skirt and bursting cleavage. Janet was eating cookies from a box in her bra and sweat pants, vibrator tucked under the elastic band, ready.

The broadcast confused Janet. The blonde hadn’t said, “Filling in for Meteorologist Dave Santana.” She’d called herself the weather girl. Janet tried, but she couldn’t get off to that high voice, to an imagined smell rather than a known one.

In the morning, the paper announced a station shakeup. The only people who watched the weather were fishermen, and they wanted a weather girl.

And like that, Meteorologist Dave Santana was gone.

That year, Janet entertained no remarkable men. Those who woke next to her were proud to confess some shortcoming, as though vulnerability was a new trend. She hated the fears most of all; “I fear I’ll never find someone who will love me for me,” said a landscaper, who played guitar in a local 1970s cover band. You probably won’t, Janet would think as he clung to her. But admittedly she had softened, and mostly she kept her mouth shut, or if she ventured to respond, pointedly sighed. She sighed a lot post-Dave.

Worse, she thought she saw Meredith Santana everywhere. At the gas station pumping gas, with a baby in a car seat. Or at the supermarket, a baby strapped to her back. At the bar where Janet picked up game men, bouncing a baby on her knee and flirting in a frayed booth. Squinting out from the background of the adult movies Janet watched. The woman was a specter toting a specter child. Janet wasn’t sure she even remembered what Meredith looked like. She only recalled pregnant Meredith, and so couldn’t even remember, or had never known, if she was as naturally thin as Janet.

So when Meredith Santana walked into the teachers’ lounge, there to cover the school nurse’s maternity leave, Janet barely had any surprise left in her.

Meredith was nothing like Janet remembered. She was lovely. She wore her shining brown hair in a stylish blunt cut; she was athletic and obviously naturally thin. Her appeal wasn’t fleeting; she would always turn heads. Janet couldn’t believe it was the same woman she’d seen slinking off mornings a few years ago. Maybe she had been transformed by the power of Dave’s love for her. When Meredith shook her hand, Janet held it uncomfortably long, then reached out to pinch Meredith’s arm, to test that her flesh was real. Meredith jerked her hand away, eyed Janet, but then laughed. An easygoing girl, the kind who fits herself in anywhere and easily belongs.

Janet avoided speaking to Meredith after that. But when they were both in the lounge, Janet couldn’t help but register the fact. She listened for Meredith’s voice over all others, or for the mention of her name in gossip. She found herself skulking outside the nurse’s office. She parked two spaces beyond Meredith’s car so she would need to walk by it twice a day. She chose the pasta because Meredith chose the pasta; likewise, the meatloaf, the pizza, the wet ham for her salad. In the small, sallow fitness room at school, Janet watched Meredith StairMaster, mesmerized by the shifting apples of her ass, Janet’s mouth shamefully agape.

One day Meredith walked into Janet’s room during a prep period and slid into a front-row desk usually occupied by her worst student, the quiet flutist.

“It seems like you’ve been following me,” Meredith said, serene as a cat.

What balls, Janet thought. She found it difficult to speak. She could only open and close her mouth silently. “I’m not,” she finally croaked.

“Look,” Meredith continued kindly but firmly, “I’ve only heard things, so forgive me if I’m out of line. But I’m married.” She added, “To a man.”

Janet would have laughed had she not almost sobbed. She couldn’t explain that her obsession with Meredith stemmed from the need to know what Dave truly desired, or why it wasn’t her. There had to be a clue.

Janet recovered slightly. “I know you’re married. I know him.”

“Oh?” Meredith said brightly, sitting up in her chair. “How do you know Dave?”

Janet prepared herself for the mayhem, but Meredith’s inviting smile stalled her. She should be suspicious. I should be a threat. Janet felt powerless. She gasped slightly. She couldn’t do it. And she couldn’t believe she couldn’t do it.

Meredith covered for her. “He was the weatherman — that’s how.”

“You mean meteorologist,” Janet said, trying to reprimand her. Janet would never make that mistake.

“Oh, shame on me. He was the meteorologist .” She laughed it off easily. “Now he gives motivational speeches.” She beamed, as though unaware that the teachers talked endlessly about her locally famous husband. She probably was unaware. She was the kind of blessed person to whom love, happiness, family, security, confidence, beauty, were just what came with normal old life. She’d probably been told to expect it all.

“I saw him motivate once,” Janet riddled quietly to herself. It was all she could muster. She wanted to curl up under her desk.

Then Meredith leaned in conspiratorially, said, “I know he’s no movie star, but he had fans. Women writing letters. Waiting outside the station. He had this neighbor once. He said — oh, I can’t,” she said, dissolving into giggles.

He had told Meredith about her. But how much? Not everything, since they were still together. Right? Couldn’t be everything, because she was laughing. Right? How much did married people talk about?

Meredith waved her hand. “But I get it. I stalked him too!” She nodded vehemently, her eyes wide and girl-talky. “I did!” she squealed. “I finagled an invite to a party he was at. I wouldn’t let him talk to any other women. Oh, did I flirt! I was shameless ,” she insisted. “ Those eyes. ” Now they were married, and had a beautiful daughter. “And,” she said, patting her flat belly, “another on the way.” She put her finger to her lips. “Shh. Secret.”