Alice Hoffman - Here On Earth

In truth, those dinners aren’t all Hollis plans to freeze. He has removed the thermal coupling from the oil burner in the basement of the house on Fox Hill. No big deal, he merely wants to cut off the heating output and help make the place more unattractive. It’s his house, and he would be well within his rights to insist that March move out, but he wants her to come to him of her own free will. Sometimes, however, free will requires a little intervention. Which is why Hollis is waiting at the barn the next morning when Gwen arrives. It is five-thirty when she gets there and she hasn’t slept well; she doesn’t even sense Hollis’s presence until she’s already given fresh water to Tarot, as well as to Geronimo and that stupid pony who always tries to bite her.

“What are you doing here?” Gwen asks when she notices Hollis in a comer.

“I own the place,” Hollis says. “After all.”

Gwen can’t help but note how restless Tarot is with Hollis in sight. As soon as Hollis approaches, Tarot kicks at the wall.

“Kind of a waste to keep this old man,” Hollis says. The contempt in his voice makes Gwen take a step closer to Tarot. Hollis and the horse are staring at each other. “Every once in a while I think about putting him out of his misery.”

Gwen feels a chill. She can recognize a threat.

“He’s not in misery,” Gwen says.

“I’ve been thinking that we could help each other out. You and me. Believe it or not.”

“Really?” Gwen’s throat is dry. He wants her to become an accomplice to something.

“I’d like your mother to move in with me, and I don’t want you to screw it up.” Like the last time, that’s what Hollis is thinking. When you fucked up our plans without even being born. “In fact, I want you to think it’s a great idea.”

“Good luck,” Gwen says. “Because that’s never going to happen.”

Gwen is totally freezing, but she couldn’t leave if she wanted to. Hollis is blocking her way, standing in the doorway of the barn. There’s a lamp right above him that casts a particularly harsh light. At this hour, he looks his age; he looks like an old man himself. He’s the one who should be put out of his misery.

“All you have to do is be positive. Tell your mother you want to move. In return, I won’t shoot him.”

Gwen takes a deep breath. She hopes she can bluff him. “Not good enough.”

Hollis stares straight at her.

“I want the horse,” Gwen tells him.

Hollis laughs at that.

“I mean it. I want it on paper. A legal document that says I’m the owner.”

Hollis can’t help but smile. She’s smarter than he would have guessed. Too bad she has no idea who she’s dealing with.

“Fine,” Hollis says. “My lawyers will draw up the transfer of ownership. I’ll have it to you by next week.”

“Fine,” Gwen agrees, hoping only that she won’t start to cry until she gets out of there. When she leaves, she runs. She’s done it. Tarot is hers. She runs and she runs, but it seems to take forever to get away. She feels as if she’s done a terrible thing, selling out her own mother for a horse, but she’s done it, and she’s not going to cry about it, at least not for long.

By the end of the week, they’re ready to move. They have so few possessions the old Toyota’s rear seat is not even filled. Like explorers in the New World, they travel light. Hank is waiting for them over at Guardian Farm, to help unload the car.

“I painted your room blue,” he tells Gwen. It’s the little room off the kitchen, which Hollis won’t be using anymore.

“Thanks,” Gwen says, gathering together her school-books. “But I would have preferred you bombed it.”

Gwen reaches for Sister, who’s in a panic. The red dogs are all barking, and although the terrier yips right back, it’s hiding behind a box of shoes and clothes.

“Come on,” Gwen says to the dog. “Be prepared to enter hell.” She shoos away the annoying mutts and carries Sister up to the house.

While March unloads the trunk, Hollis comes up behind her and circles his arms around her waist. March can feel the heat from his body, even in places where he isn’t touching her. Funny, but she’s thinking about the lemon tree in her backyard at home. She’s thinking about the sound of gunfire all those years ago when the hunting ban was lifted; how you could find a trail of blood every time you went for a walk in the woods.

Hollis kisses the back of her neck and holds her against him.

“You’re not going to regret this,” he tells her, and March lets herself sink back against him.

When she follows Hollis up to the door, March doesn’t dwell on how empty the house on Fox Hill looked when they left. She doesn’t let herself get all caught up in guilt about how Richard will react when he comes home tonight and finds her message on his answering machine: She and Gwen will no longer be at the same number. Her words replayed on his machine will be calm, but there is no way to disguise their new phone number. It is, after all, one Richard has memorized; it was his when he lived at Guardian Farm.

There are lace curtains on all the windows in the bedroom where Mr. and Mrs. Cooper used to sleep, and the fresh white paint Hank hurried to finish on time is luminous in daylight. But daylight is not what matters here. They have their meals at the old kitchen table, they go about their business, but all the while, March is looking out the window, waiting for dusk, when she can go upstairs with Hollis. The blue satin duvet cover on the quilt is one Annabeth Cooper ordered from France, hand-stitched and amazingly silky beneath the skin, and the bed is larger than the old wooden bed March has at home.

On this bed, you dream things you can’t discuss with anyone. Nights last longer on this bed; they begin before a suitcase is unpacked, before dinner is served, before morning, before noon. Always, she dreams she is falling and there’s no way to stop. It’s dream fucking that goes on here, the kind that overtakes you so that you don’t bother to lock the door or make certain the window shades are pulled down. It’s the kind of fucking that makes you cry out loud, makes you beg, then dissolve, that urges you to do what you’ve never done before. If someone knows you inside out, he knows when to start and when to stop. Don’t think about the other women he’s been with. Don’t care if these women have felt absolutely certain they were the only ones, if he’s told them he’s never had it so good, not like this; if he’s done it again and again. You know it’s always been you, that’s what he tells you, and that’s what you believe. It’s the way it was, isn’t it, when you were so young the future seemed limitless, and it was impossible to tell where you ended and he began.

Don’t think about the crows calling from the trees, or the sound of the front door slamming. What does it matter anyway? Let the dogs bark; let the hours pass by. It’s all a dream, and it’s yours, and it always will be. Give in to it, that’s what he whispers. Don’t bother bathing or combing your hair. Just do what he tells you, do it all night; go down on your knees and do it the way he likes it. Let it last an eternity, because, in all honesty, there’s no going back. Doors have been shut, suitcases unpacked; days have come and gone and you’re still here.

In the mornings, when March goes downstairs to make coffee, she doesn’t say much. If she sees Hank or Gwen before they leave for school, she might offer to fix breakfast; she might stand at the window to wave goodbye, but her attention is limited. She cannot make sense of Gwen and Hank’s conversations, or maybe she just doesn’t want to. She stays in the dream. She used to be so orderly, but now she has to hand-wash her underwear, since she’s run out of clothes. She’s lost count of what day it is; she hasn’t even bothered to change the sheets on their bed. And yet, she’s convinced she needn’t worry. Outside, there is wind and dreadful weather, but it can’t hurt her. He’ll tell her what to do and what to think, and after a while, if she stays here long enough, what to dream as well.