Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

ON THE FIRST night of the couple’s retreat, Marta was instructed to whip Dean with a silk ribbon while she scolded him for his transgressions. Dean got down on all fours on the olive-green carpet of the Forgiveness Hall and smiled like a Labrador. He liked attention of any kind.

“Bad, Dean, bad,” Marta said, monotone. “Shame on you for …” Marta paused and searched for something benign to accuse him of, something other than the drinking or the chapter of their relationship Dean referred to as “The Bad Idea” and Marta referred to as “Mackenzie.” Marta gave the ribbon an apathetic flick. “Shame on you for leaving the toilet seat up.”

Dean feigned remorse and hung his head like a shamed dog. Ventura, their assigned Love Coach, raked his fingers through his short red beard, dissatisfied.

“Try to be emotionally specific, Marta,” Ventura said. “For example, when Dean leaves the toilet seat up, how does it make you feel inside?”

Marta twirled the ribbon as if stirring a pot. She wanted to say, It makes me feel like I need to be less of who I am and more of who I’m not , but instead, she said: “It makes me feel like I have to put it down again.”

Dean snickered into his sleeve. He was wearing a new flannel shirt, as well as new hiking boots, both of which he’d bought especially for the retreat. “Everyone will know I mean business,” he’d explained when he brought them home. “This get-up says, ‘that guy is ready to explore the wilderness of love.’”

Marta let her shoulders sag and the ribbon fall. It coiled at her feet like a passive, pink worm. “Tell you what,” Ventura said. “Let’s take a five-minute break. You know: inhale, exhale? Regroup, reconvene?”

Dean sat back on his haunches. Marta stared blankly past the two men, out the window and beyond the front meadow of the retreat to the remote-control airfield across the road. Earlier that day on the way to Forever Together Couples’ Retreat, Marta and Dean had passed the abbreviated runway, where a crowd gathered for the takeoff of a model Virgin Airways jet. Dean, delighted, pulled onto the shoulder to stand and watch, while Marta stayed in the car. She sat in the passenger seat with her arms folded across her chest and stared out the windshield to make it look like she wasn’t interested. If Dean thought she was interested, he’d think she was happy, and if he thought she was happy, he’d think his work here was done.

Outside the station wagon, the miniature jet buzzed up and away. Dean hooted in boyish approval. Marta sat and considered the lone wing of a dragonfly they’d hit somewhere in the middle of Indiana. It was stuck to the glass with its own green blood, but still flapped in the wind, frantic, like it had a shot at getting where it needed to be. Marta knew if she was too cold, Dean would find another Mackenzie, but if she was too warm, Dean would grow thick with self-satisfaction—dense with denial—and Marta would never get at what she wanted: the hard pit inside him. Past his perma-smile and Santa laugh, past his burly arms and baby blues, Dean harbored a stone that needed extracting. When Marta was playful and easy, the stone receded further within. But when Marta meant business, it rose to the surface to meet her, just beneath Dean’s breastbone.

Once, early in their relationship, Dean had nearly handed it to Marta. It had been on their third date, after a late night of whiskey and errant hands, and back at Marta’s place, Dean had picked her up like a child and pressed her deep into the bed. Above her, he looked like he might cry or die, and in response, Marta had put her hands over his heart. That was when she’d felt it, the dark stone of despair rising up and out of him and almost within grasp. She had cupped it beneath her palm as if trapping an insect and Dean had recoiled, but it had almost burst from him. Marta had almost held the real Dean in her hand. That, however, had been three years ago, at the beginning, when risk and romance were the same thing. Now, the only proof the stone still existed in Dean was the way he drank, which was hard and often—a boot heel pressed on the very thing Marta desired.

“That plane was a perfect replica.” Dean climbed into the car in a wave of humid air. He smelled of dry grass and metallic sweat. “I mean, they must have to get permission from the FAA to fly those things. I think its wingspan was at least twelve feet.”

Marta looked in the sky at the retreating toy. “No way,” she said. “It can’t be that big.”

Dean started the car. “It was. I saw it. All the planes up on that ridge were that big. They were this big.” He stretched his arms out across the front seat. “Bigger even. They were big enough to carry house cats.”

This struck Marta as funny, but she tried not to show it. “That doesn’t seem possible.”

“Well, I know what I saw. And I saw cat planes. They’re flying above us right now, Marta. Planes full of cats.” Dean turned on the AC to dry the sweat from his face. “Planes full of cats full of peanuts.”

Marta giggled despite herself, and Dean, encouraged, leaned over to her, hot and hungry. He put his big hands on either side of her face and kissed her. Then he pulled back and looked her in the eyes, earnest for only a flash, before eyeing her pout, her breasts, her waist. “I don’t see what all we have to fix,” he said, running his hand back and forth over her lap. “But I’ve got the boots for the job.”

Earlier that afternoon, in the front seat, Marta hadn’t wanted to give Dean the inch that he would make into a mile, but she’d relented and kissed him back. An inch from Marta, she’d figured, was a mile away from Mackenzie. And now, here they were, circling back.

Dean stood up from the olive-green floor and roused Marta from her thoughts. “I know what we can do in five minutes.” He smiled. “See a coat closet around these parts, my lady?”

Marta didn’t answer. She walked to the front window of the Forgiveness Hall and stared out the window. She could see another plane taking off across the road, rising like an X in the pink evening sky. From her angle, she couldn’t tell if it was toy-sized or life-sized.

Dean came up behind her. “Planes full of cats full of peanuts,” he whispered. Marta didn’t move. Dean’s chest against her back was as thick as a shield. Inside him, the stone was sinking deeper, a lead ball dropped into the sea.

The first time Marta saw the Fincastles exchange stones, she thought she might be hallucinating. It was, after all, only a month after her father left—six months to the day after her brother’s death—and the phase she’d been going through was nothing short of troubling. Her new hobbies included playing tic-tac-toe on her forearm with an X-Acto knife, pulling the school fire alarm non-chalantly on her way to the girls’ room, eating still-frozen pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She’d also taken up sleeping in the bathtub, covered in bath towels, and clutching a dry bar of Dial like a teddy bear. So when, one Wednesday night from her bedroom window, she saw her neighbor Lucas Fincastle pry what looked like an apricot kernel from his wife Florence’s sternum, Marta thought for sure she’d completely lost her marbles.

But then, the following Wednesday, it happened again. Marta was in bed with the lights off, staring out her window at the Fincastles’ house trying not to think of her brother’s car and the cliff and the sound her mother had made after the phone call, when Lucas and Florence entered the honey glow of their bedroom, sat down facing one another on the pink quilted bedspread, and reached out reverent palms to one another’s chests. Marta sat up, curious. She fumbled for her glasses. The Fincastles closed their eyes and breathed in unison. After a minute or two, they grew vibrant and bright, nearly violet in tone, before throwing back their heads in ecstasy and plunging their hands into one another’s hearts.