By Jessica Barksdale Inclán
After that, May found herself sitting on Dave’s faded cushion a couple times a week after coming home from her canoe practice, learning, with some surprise, that Dave was a county judge. She should have known by the way he folded his hands, as if he were hiding the correct answer to everything under them. Wise pronouncements. Thoughtful summations. He didn’t blink a lot, holding her gaze, used to—apparently—long lawyerly rambles. No wonder he always wore a suit, she thought. When she walked her dogs Remy and Marcel in the morning, she’d see him striding briskly down Washington Street, rain or shine, freeze or heat dome.
Sharply dressed, shoes shined, hems perfect. He didn’t carry a briefcase, though wasn’t that what briefcases were for? Legal briefs? Maybe he was dialing it in, waiting for another job or retirement or Deanna’s call, nodding and banging his gavel as the clock wound down too slowly.
Sometimes he took a motorcycle out of the small, slightly ramshackle garage that was illegally on part of her yard. How did he know how to drive the thing? May wondered, but in the afternoons, up the alley came the motorcycle, Dave intact. He wore a helmet, black leather pants, jacket, and boots, just like real bikers. Maybe he was one.
At one point, she’d thought of getting a plot survey in terms of the garage, but would she decide to rip out a third of his paint-peeling structure, one that housed a precious motorcycle? Would she make him pay for an easement, if that was what one did when someone built on your property? May decided to just weed around his garage when she felt like it and pick the apricots that hung over the garage roof when ripe. They were hers, after all.
Once she got a handle on his last name (Clark), she read about him in the local paper, noting his judgements on one case or another. Sometimes, his photo accompanied the story. But it was hard to reconcile this quiet, smiling man who asked about her dogs and served her Ritz crackers and cheddar cheese slices with a man who decided anything, folded hands or not.
“Even if I got a job now,” Dave was saying. “I’m not moving to Michigan in the winter.”
May blinked, bit down on a Ritz, crumbs sodden with an unhealthy oil. Palm. Coconut. Canola. If you loved someone, she thought as she tried to swallow, did winter really matter? What did snow, ice, sleet, and frost have to do with needing to be by your beloved’s side?
“It’s probably pretty cold there,” she said, remembering that her mother made an actual pie crust from Ritz crackers and cheddar. A cheese Ritz pie.
Dave sipped his wine. Was Deanna his beloved? Did Dave have a beloved? May certainly never had one, not even her first husband, Timothy. And there it was. Twice divorced. She didn’t deserve to be loved by anyone. Too much risk with her, a two-time loser. How could she ever write that up in an online dating app?
Third time’s a charm?
“Do you have a cat?” May changed the subject and reached for her wine. For months now, she’d been trying to cajole the white and black cat that scuttled by the fence into her house.
“Deanna left it,” Dave said. “It was never mine.”
It?
“But did it live inside?” May asked, going with the pronoun for now.
“Sometimes.”
“Will it live in your house when it gets cold?”
Dave gave her a look. As usual, she was surprised by his green eyes. Who had green eyes? Who had red hair? Who had freckles except for people who lived in Scotland or on the ragged edges of Norway? He and Deanna should stay together. They were genetic anomalies, remnants of a white society that was morphing into brown people much more attractive. But who was she to talk? May was of ordinary hues. Brown eyes, formerly brown hair now going grey at the sides. She was the universal person, a common version, the discount special, no surprise anywhere.
“I’ll take the cat,” May said. “For the winter. If you don’t want to. My dogs love cats.”
“Someone has to,” Dave said.
“Indeed,” May said, wondering if there was someone available for everything that needed love.
*
After Dave said, “Do you want to see my corn?” May had no excuse to refuse. He was a neighbor but also a stranger, no matter that for weeks, they’d been talking about peonies and squash beetles. He’d pointed over toward his backyard, the gate closed, mentioning his clematis, broccoli, and corn. But his unblinking, flatly delivered line didn’t seem like a come on. At least, not one she’d heard before.
“Sure,” May said and then followed him from her side yard, across his driveway, and into his yard, smaller than hers, a patch of vibrant lawn, sun, dirt, and deck. In a raised bed: the corn. Also, near the fence that ran along the alley, roses, bamboo, and a butterfly bush that flared with bright purple talons.
“Nice,” May said because Dave’s corn was regal, green, swaying in the early evening summer breeze, tassels like blond hair blowing in the three rows of corn, six plants each. When she listened, May heard the light rasp of the stalks.
Or in another view, the stalks were scary, signs, an imminent horror story. She decided to go with Iowa and Oz and America in general. Eyes squinted, she could almost see children running through fields of green.
Dave nodded and smiled, both tendencies habitual, something she’d noticed the first day she’d met him. His life seemed expressed from the shoulders up, coming from a desire to not call attention to himself. A good boy grown into a nice, accommodating man. But what did she know about him? Even though she and her pending-ex-husband Joseph, and then she alone, had lived next door to Dave for almost four years, she’d never once been invited into the yard, much less the house. In fact, all the neighbors shunned May and Joseph on sight because the remodel of their 1925 house had stretched many months beyond deadline.
A long pandemic pause in construction left their house a skeleton for months. Then came an attenuated crawl toward completion that stretched out long past anyone’s tolerance. Dust, contractors, roofers, odors. Paint, stain, sealants, tar. Cement trucks disgorging a constant flow, tractors ripping up the backyard, haulers parked illegally. What a way to announce oneself.
Now this last-minute, very late, totally surprising neighborliness was happening because Dave and his wife Deanna were in some kind of long-distance relationship (meaning, she lived in Michigan, and he never visited), and Joseph had moved out eight weeks before, their petition for dissolution submitted to the courts.
No one had ever liked Joseph, May knew. She hadn’t either, not really, not after the first six months of their relationship, and that was nineteen and a half years ago. Twenty on October 23rd.
Imagine what the neighbors would have thought had they known Joseph’s secrets. They might have come to the front door with pitchforks and fire.
“Deanna planted the corn in March,” Dave said.
“That’s pretty early to put anything in the ground around here,” May said.
“She was planning on leaving me even then,” Dave said, voice static as if he were reading from a cereal box.
May bit her tongue.
Dave waved an arm toward the back of the yard. “Maybe that’s why she ripped out all the ivy. Clean slate.”
May was curious about Deanna, a tall red-headed woman who wore the Nordic-themed clothing May saw advertised in glossy magazines, outfits designed for affluent white women with disposable income. The dresses looked like burlap sacks, the pants corduroy balloons. The tights were the woolen stockings of children’s stories, rolled up over knobby white knees, Pippy Longstocking-esque for the 40s crowd.
In another lifetime, her name would be Gunila or Gisken or Gunda, striding the hills of Grimstad with a goat on a leather lead. But in actuality, there Deanna would be, long and lean, striding down city streets in oversized sweaters, orange, lime green, and yellow knitted hats with braided strings that she sometimes tied under her slightly pointy, freckled chin.
If she hadn’t been so beautiful, Deanna would have been an ordinary woman wearing oversized castoffs from the thrift bin. If May had slid on a pair of wool stockings and a smock, she’d roll out of the house dumpy and ridiculous. Best to wear black leggings and skimmer through the world unseen.
“Is she going to come for the summer?” May asked.
Dave pointed to a metal chair with a faded cushion.
“No,” he said, sitting down on a wooden chair opposite. “She is not.”
“Do…” she began and then stopped. “So roasting or boiling your corn?”
“Don’t know,” Dave said. “I don’t really like corn.”
“It’s best when other people grow it,” May said, turning toward the rows, so orderly. “Like you. Maybe if the corn borers or whatever they are don’t eat it, we can have a corn roast. I’ll bring over whatever the pests don’t eat in my yard.”
Dave didn’t smile but he nodded anyway. “That’s a good idea.”
*
Finally in early September, the corn was ready for plucking and shucking. Dave ushered May into the backyard and handed her a brown paper bag. For a second, she wondered what it was for. Throwing up? Hyperventilation? Takeaway?
“Husks,” Dave said. “Then we can compost them.”
May nodded, prodded into a memory of sitting outside on the patio with her sisters, ripping the husks off the corn their mother grew each summer and boiled up in giant heaps. That’s all they’d have for dinner, their father okay this once that there wasn’t a protein on the table.
Mostly, corn tasted like butter and salt, crisp and crunchy. They’d all have to floss their teeth at night, May and her sisters never doing a very good job with the silk. In a way, ripping off the husks and stripping the corn bare seemed wrong, all that vulnerable yellow. In fact, the more May had stared at the ears, the more obscene they appeared, kernels bulbous and slightly soft at the tips.
Maybe anything so difficult to prepare shouldn’t be eaten.
Nothing had changed with her husking process. May struggled to get the ears clean, and then Dave boiled up the corn in his kitchen and they ate it out on his picnic table with her salad of baby chard and arugula. Earlier in the day, she’d walked down to the store to buy a fresh loaf of sourdough.
“It’s getting dark earlier now,” Dave said.
May refrained from mentioning that this was always the case. “Winter is coming.”
“Do you watch that?” Dave asked.
“What?”
He shrugged. “Deanna hated it, too.”
“What else did she hate?” May blurted out, swallowing a corn kernel strangely, coughing. “I mean, what was the problem?”
“She wanted something,” Dave said. “Her own dirt.”
“This.” May waved her hand around to encompass the backyard. “Wasn’t hers?”
He shook his head, straining against the unfamiliar move. “It was my mother’s house.”
Then May remembered one afternoon in the yard, Deanna saying she couldn’t prune the maple trees. “It’s his decision,” she’d said.
“They’re hitting our roof,” May had said.
“Talk to Dave,” Deanna said. “All I do is mow the lawn.”
She’d adjusted her large floppy gardener’s hat, turned the machine back on and roared into the front yard.
“So she bought a house in another state,” May said now.
“She did.”
“She didn’t get to make decisions about things?”
Dave stared at her. “Of course she did.” He stopped. “She didn’t ask.”
“She didn’t.”
Dave kicked at a chair leg with his shoe. “Not that I heard.”
What to say? May took another bite. At least Dave had kept his boundaries. He’d told Deanna what was his. Unlike Joseph, Dave had never made a promise to open up fully and share and then avoid anything like the truth for almost twenty years. Dave hadn’t hidden anything from Deanna, not like Joseph who had preferences he’d tucked away like stolen documents.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the trees,” May said. “They are pretty, but—”
“I’ll get them pruned. Before the winter.”
And it’s coming, May thought, wondering what that really meant. All she knew was that she’d have the cat by then.
*
By the time October and an early rain fell, the cat—John Ludlow, the only cat she’d ever known with a surname—moved in. Dave started coming over to her deck, looking out over the black-eyed Susans that were still in bloom, brilliant yellow stars in the growing autumn darkness. John Ludlow slunk into the house and slept next to the dogs in the family room, avoiding Dave and the outside altogether.
“Are you still paddling?” Dave asked, noting a pair of water shoes drying on the deck rail. Canoe practice went year-round, with only a short hiatus during the holidays. Would paddling all year help her fill the open spaces where Joseph used to be?
Thank goodness John Ludlow had shown up to take his place.
“More than ever,” May said, passing Dave the plate of hummus and pita chips.
“Isn’t it cold?”
“It’s freezing,” May said, and then thought, just the way I need it.
“Do you ever fall in?”
May looked at Dave, wondering if he’d known, but how could he? A huli wasn’t a crime or newsworthy. Just she and five other paddlers flipping over in the Columbia River, capsizing in the 58-degree water.
The week before, they’d gone over at a night practice. A grinding on the bottom of the boat. A lurch, and then, May had thought, here I go. She watched the dark world around her turn from air to water. As a team, they’d recently outfitted all the canoes with waterproof skirts, most of the sets so old, the zippers stuck and bit against the broken tracks. So as they flipped, she focused on holding her breath, slowly unzipped the skirt, and then popped up, struggling to breathe.
Within two minutes, another canoe had come to help them, and no one was officially hurt, though one paddler hadn’t returned to practice. Not yet. May kept showing up but decided to never zip up her skirt. Being below the surface of the water, upside down, was something to expect. Count on. May understood that it was possible for her to die sooner than anticipated.
“I have,” she said. “I did.”
“Was it scary?” Dave asked, trying to ignore John Ludlow near May’s feet.
“It was terrifying,” May said. At home after shivering in a hot shower, the only mammals she had been able to talk to were her dogs and John Ludlow. If Joseph had been here, he would have listened, at least with one-half of one ear.
Thank goodness for John, who had decided that night he was needed and slunk under the blankets and curled around the small of her back, a ball of fluffy heat.
Dave nodded and looked at her, his green eyes steady. “Don’t stop,” he said. “It’s harder to go back if you do.”
At that moment, May wasn’t certain what they were talking about, but then John Ludlow jumped on her lap, and she sat back, running a hand down his smooth body.
*
At night, May heard the way the floorboards slipped against their finish, a tiny shushing sound. Sometimes, there were loud cracks when boards pulled free, a quick hard snap.
Her room was smaller with Joseph gone, the air tight around the bed that she bought when he moved out his possessions, which included the bed they’d slept on for almost twenty years. The wooden slats slid underneath her as she turned, searching for sleep.
At the end of the first week of October, a second summer bloomed, lasting almost a week, hot days capped by nights that smelled of wet trees.
Each evening, May spent ten minutes before bed slathering unguents and potions into her hands and feet, both so dry by the end of the day it seemed she was converting to lizard. Her skin felt papery, brittle, and old, which made perfect sense because she was all these things. But May wondered if she might split open and spill herself into the air.
“Why did you do it?” May asked to no one in every room she walked into.
Worldwide wars continued. The earth spun too hot, shooting off hurricanes. Gases and dust smudged every horizon.
No matter the blinds or shades May bought, light crept into the bedroom, even moonlight. Sometimes, she awoke to find she was sharing the bed with a dazzling bright slash of white.
The decorated rock Joseph left behind had been a gift from his older daughter, and May couldn’t find it in herself to throw it away. Finally, she tucked into the back of the guest room closet next to an old Waterpik.
“I love you, John Ludlow,” May whispered to the lump under the covers.
He didn’t answer.
*
At the next canoe practice, her coach Mark asked her to stay behind after they had put away the boats. Was it about the huli? Had she somehow behaved inappropriately? Was she being kicked out for having been part of the spectacular failure? At least she hadn’t been the one to steer the canoe over the known submerged danger. That’s what Anika had done, jumping out of the canoe as she did, drifting downstream where the other canoe found and then recused her. What happened to the notion that the captain was the last to leave the ship?
Why me? She thought, flushing by how she preemptively threw Anika under the bus.
“What’s up?” May shivered a little, the memory of river water pressed against her skin for a flick.
“A question,” he said, locking the club door and turning toward her. He was a tall man, balding, funny with a habit of sarcasm, slightly annoying with his teasing. His smile was broad, and he had big blue eyes. With his hat on and a sweatshirt covering his slight paunch, he could pass as fifty-eight, solid, healthy. “Let’s walk.”
May relaxed a little. He didn’t seem like he was going to say anything horrible. In fact, something seemed to shimmer around them.
“Are you going to the Halloween party at George’s?” he asked.
Was she? It wasn’t on the 31st but the weekend before, the date of her doomed anniversary, so on All Hallows Eve, she could stay home and answer the front door and pass out candy. Later, during the witching hour, she could keep her animals calm from screaming teenagers on rampage, those throwing toilet paper and water balloons as well as random fireworks. How would John Ludlow take it all? May would find out.
“Maybe,” she said.
They moved together down the dock and then up the ramp, the water slapping wood, boat mast ropes and ties clattering, clanging.
“Would you want to go with me? We can make sure we aren’t too embarrassing in our costumes.”
“Costumes?”
“You didn’t read the email to the end, I’m guessing. Favorite nautical characters. I was thinking about a pirate.”
“A safe bet. Everyone looks good in an eyepatch. And there is nothing like a parrot.”
Mark laughed, a nice sound.
For a second, May focused on her steps on the metal ramp, and then she asked, “I thought you were dating Lori.”
Lori was much younger than Mark and May, a woman somewhere in her late thirties. At sixty-one, May reacted to Lori as she would to her son, nodding, giving advice, and feeling maternal. How could it be possible Lori and she might date the same man? May was a grandmother, though she wasn’t able to act very grandmotherly, her son Stephen and his family in Australia for a year while he was on sabbatical.
Do you want me to come home? Stephen had texted when she wrote him about Joseph’s departure. I can. I will.
Of course she wanted him to come home. In fact, she wanted them all to move into her house, Stephen, Brit, and Marigold. She’d give up the main bedroom and sleep in the guest room near the water heater. Yes, she wanted to type. Right now.
Instead, she texted back, I’m fine. It was time. I’ll see you at Christmas.
May was going to visit Brisbane for three weeks during the hottest time of the year down under, though she was certain she’d need that long to recover from jetlag.
“Not anymore,” Mark said after a pause. “We broke up last month.”
Best for Lori, May thought too quickly. But what did she know? Maybe Mark was the love of Lori’s young life, an older, eventually doddering man Lori wanted to tend into death.
May had no idea how any relationship worked.
“How many times have you broken up?” May asked.
He shot her a look. “I guess your teammates have kept you informed.”
“A little.” May shrugged. “But who am I to say anything?”
“Your divorce is final,” Mark said. “Rumor has.”
“Rumor knows things.”
They reached the top of the ramp, May trying to hide the fact that she was a bit winded. It had been a hard workout.
“I didn’t even ask,” he said. “Are you seeing someone?”
Was she? Did Dave count as “seeing”?
“Not really,” she said. “My neighbor has me over for dinner. We talk about corn.”
Mark cleared his throat. “So let’s call it a space where we meet unattached,” Mark said. “We have time for a party.”
Wise, May thought.
“Better hurry,” May said.
“Fair enough.” Mark laughed again. “What do you say? Do you want to go?”
For some reason, dressing up in a costume seemed perfect, an excellent way to attend a party, half-hidden, almost someone else. “That would be nice,” May said, though she wasn’t entirely sure it would be.
At that, Mark smiled, and she saw how a younger woman might want to date him. He seemed happy, face a bit flushed, though that could have been from the chill or the walk up the ramp.
“Great.”
They headed toward their cars, parted, and on the drive home, May tried to ignore her pleasant unease, something she’d forgotten about. Nerves. Jitters. Maybe desire. At home, after Remy, Marcel, and John Ludlow sufficiently greeted her—rubbing her shins, huffing, barking, and purring—May went upstairs, stopping at the desk on the landing, a dull, ugly clump of feeling in her breastbone as she stared at her new desk.
This used to be Joseph’s workstation, the place he planted himself during the pandemic and then later, even more so, when he was fired, the fourth time during their marriage.
What was he doing up there all day? May wondered as she worked in her own office on the basement floor, creating commercial art for a card company. At one point, early on in their relationship, she’d thought his intensity, his focus, his grim determination to get things done, was inspiring, almost sexy, as if their lives were at defcon 5, their survival, not to mention the world’s, at stake. Twenty years ago, Joseph had been a man in his forties, good-looking, but—May realized a couple years into their relationship—his attractiveness was uncanny, slant, nose too big, hairline slightly domed, chin a bit pointy. But she’d liked his laugh and the way, at first, he’d doggedly courted her.
Is this thing still on? he’d texted when she didn’t reply right away.
Then there had been picnics at the waterfront and day trips to Mt. Hood. He’d proposed after stuffing her Christmas stocking with an engagement ring, a diamond and two sapphires.
They’d clung on, and in his late sixties, Joseph was still trim and solid, his hair thinning but respectable. His eyes were blue but small, though when he smiled (as in every photo) they disappeared. Point being, May was used to him, his habits, his looks, his drive. In the mornings, he’d take his coffee and sit at his desk, knocking off one task and then the other, head bent toward the day’s work.
But later? When the work was pulled out from under him (never his fault) he’d be putting the same amount of time into his work, though what he was doing was unclear if not mysterious.
Well, she found out a few times: pornography, an addiction he’d had from the time she’d met him, a predilection he’d secreted into the marriage, something May discovered well after she thought he was the man for her.
“But I don’t need it anymore,” he’d told her in 2006, 2013, 2014, and 2021. “I promise you, I’ll stop” or “I’ve stopped.” And, “No, I don’t do that at all. And I’ve never cheated on you. Not once.”
“Why do you need this?” she asked when she caught him the first time, his back to her as he sat in the chair, the large computer screen filled with a woman exploring her body parts.
“Why do you keep doing this?” she asked the last time.
“I got laid off,” Joseph said.
“You’re blaming that?”
“It gave me something to do.”
May had stared at him. Instead of pruning trees or taking up golf or bridge or Pilates, how did he decide watching porn for hours a day would be a productive use of his time?
Closing her eyes, she imagined herself a person who could have called him out right away, instead of listening to his bullshit about his desktop.
“That search history is from an old computer,” he told her. “I admit to going there when I was with Sue. I had needs. You know.”
Did she? Had she ever gone onto a computer for sex? In between marriage one and Joseph, she’d slept with some men she wished she hadn’t. For one thing, she’d started wearing thong underwear for seven months and bought a pushup bra that scratched her armpits.
But Joseph was surfing the sites, cruising the internet, lurking in chat rooms despite their active sex life; despite the fact she’d always been told she was a good-looking woman. Not beautiful or worse, gorgeous. But attractive. Large-breasted, slim-hipped, long-legged. Sure, bodily calamities had increased in recent years (sagging skin, thinning hair, aches and pains). Fat moved from where it was useful to where it was not (ass to waist). But things were okay enough for May to be amazed that Joseph had gone out of their marriage first virtually and then literally.
“It’s not about you,” her best friend Justine told her. “He can’t help it. He’s compelled. Addicted.”
As May took in each word, Justine said quietly. “He’s ill. It’s an illness.”
Earlier this year, after Joseph left a sex chatroom running on his computer, May had plenty of time to read through the conversation while he walked the dogs. She wasn’t angry as much as sad that she couldn't trust her husband. Besides all the lying and porn, they no longer touched or talked or moved together in the world like a couple. After that confrontation and then the call from the doctor about the herpes test, it was time to end it all.
Remy ran up the stairs and curled up on the dog mat she’d put by the loft desk, the one she used now. The first time she sat down in her new chair beside the desk, she realized it was the best place in the entire house. Joseph had kept it all for himself. Light and bright, tall-ceilinged, full of space and air—and a good view of what was going on downstairs.
Going to a party with Mark would be fine. Sitting on Dave’s patio was okay, too. But she never wanted to live with a man who live-chatted with sex bots while May worked downstairs, oblivious to or in denial about her shitty marriage. She didn’t want to think about desire or penises. She didn’t want to worry about anymore STIs, some of which were deadly. She had failed herself and her entire life, seeing none of the places where she could have changed things until it was too late. And it was too late.
The truth was she hadn’t known where or how to hold onto this marriage or Joseph, not at the start, not at the end. He, his inner life, their partnership, their combined hopes and dreams had never been real, tangible.
It was just like Deanna said about Dave’s house. May’s marriage had never been hers.
What she wanted was clothes on, pants zipped, sweaters thick. May was done with the other part, the naked part, the fragile, frangible, delicate part. She waved bye-bye to the kissing and holding and hoping.
She was totally over the part that hurt.
*
That night, May slept deep and hard for about three hours, and then she was awake, a habit formed during her perimenopausal days. Tonight, she stared up at the ceiling and thought about all the work she’d put into sex with Joseph.
“You’re too wet,” he’d complained at the start of their relationship, back when May admired his arms strong from weight workouts, his salt and pepper hair, his small but intensely dark eyes. “I don’t get enough friction.”
What seemed to work was if she held him in her hands and the simulated sex, her hands finally perfect, the right kind of vagina.
Later, he said, “You’re too dry.”
She was trapped in the three bears saga, vagina edition.
So May started down a long road of lubricant shopping. She bought special oil supplements from Sweden with a name like Membrane or something close to it. The little red capsules promised plump and tender private parts pronto.
Her membranes stayed dry. Finally, she made an appointment with her gynecologist who’d told May a couple years back that she was cut loose unless something went wonky.
“But it’s all still here,” May had said, whirling a hand in the air in front of her now useless uterus and various other remaining parts.
“Call if something goes wrong,” Dr. Chao had said as she turned away to type into May’s chart: Dead uterus. Dry parts. No hope.
“Something’s wrong,” she told Dr. Chao, this the visit before the herpes. Total humiliation.
May came home with hormonal suppositories, but then Joseph said, “You’re too wet.”
But all along, it wasn’t that she was too wet or dry or wet: it was that Joseph’s ideal sex partner was an image on a screen coupled with his own hand holding a white t-shirt, she’d discovered years back.
The shirt seemed to come from an ancient time when Sears was still a store. Interestingly, the shirt found its way into the hamper often even though May never saw him wear it. At some point, she connected the dots, one time, two times, three.
All the hours, days, and months she’d put into her sex life made her pull a pillow over her head. What had she been thinking? Why hadn’t she realized that no amount of time or work or counseling would dissolve her into Joseph’s ideal partner, a woman available, ready, undemanding, and able to repeat actions over and over again. A woman young and juicy, able to stride anywhere wearing anything, even a burlap skirt, sexy in woolens and heavy yarns. But no. She was not his ideal anything, and the thought of touching someone else made her twist under the blankets in a hive of disgust.
After a couple of hours, she grabbed her phone and texted Justine, who was on East Coast time already awake, probably eating breakfast or building a deck in her massive backyard or raising a rare breed of sheepdog.
Can’t type. Phone, Justine texted back.
“What happened?” Justine said when May called.
“Nothing,” May said. “At all.”
“You don’t want to get into a rebound relationship,” Justine said.
“No matter who I date, the next one will be a rebound. Plus, I don’t think I could take off my clothes in front of anyone ever again.”
“What about that guy? The one who paddles? You said he was losing his hair.”
“It’s not too bad,” May said. “Normal hair loss.”
“That should never be a sentence,” Justine said. “Anyway, is he still rocking your canoe?”
“Hardly. He’s been dating a woman in her 30s. I’ve seen her plump little legs and arms. Her round face. She’s the awaited Christmas goose. She’s good enough to eat. And her hair! God, where does it all come from? She’s filled with collagen. Smooth. Unlined.”
“You were the same when you were her age. God remember your hair? It was so lush it was obscene. And your legs. For miles! So you’re older. You look great, “Justine said. “You’re a beautiful woman—”
“—for my age.”
“Of course, you’re your age. But he’s your age.”
“But there’s the, well, you know. The sexually transmitted…what? Infection? Disease? Mark of Cain?”
“Everyone has it!”
“Do they?”
Justine huffed. “Yes!”
“You don’t.”
“I’ve been married for five hundred years,” Justine said. May didn’t remind Justine that she had been married for twenty and managed to pick it up. “But in the 70s, all my friends got it.”
“It’s not the 70s anymore,” May said. “Where are people even finding it now? Who is so stupid beside Joseph?”
“You have drugs you can take. That viral load stuff.”
“But still. It’s there. Even if I can’t pass it on.”
“Listen,” Justine said. “One step at a time. You’ll tell him before you must tell him.”
“We haven’t even gone out on a date.”
“So no rush, right?”
No rush indeed. In fact, she hadn’t even known about the herpes until this year.
May had gone in for a terrible pain, an itching, a burning when she peed. In some medieval torture method, Dr. Chao performed a small biopsy and promised quick results.
A few days later, May had Dr. Chao on speaker as May drove to practice. “You tested positive.”
Cars started to roar past, one honking, and May realized she’d taken her foot off the accelerator. Pulling over, she waited for the doctor to tell her more.
Back at home, Joseph swore he had never been with another woman during their marriage and later came to her office cradling an array of printouts that stated the virus could be dormant for up to thirty years. For days, May did the rumination math. Did Timothy give it to her? What about the men she slept with while wearing her thong underwear?
She’d made sure they’d used condoms.
“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck…” Justine had said when May called with the news.
Quack, thought May.
But it didn’t matter who gave it to her, Joseph or some rando from Match.com twenty years earlier, did it? If she started to date again, she would have to practice her explanation.
Hi, May imagined saying. I have herpes!
In the background, May could hear Justine’s dogs charging around the house, claws clacking, barks echoing. Probably May had interrupted Justine’s morning gardening, the dogs forced inside after bounding between piles of leaves and cuttings. Justine was probably covered in dirt, her gloves tossed on the dining room table.
“What about the neighbor?”
“He’s a mess. And the added bonus is that he’s still in love with his wife.”
“That’s a problem,” Justine said. “But listen, you don’t even really like him. Probably, you don’t even like your coach. Besides, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to reveal one damn secret to anyone. You don’t have to make any of this come true. You can keep drawing and painting and paddling. You are doing just fine the way you are. You don’t need anyone, especially a man!”
There it was. Even her best friend said so. May was destined to be like the man two blocks away who sat in his yard every morning behind the chain linked fence playing his zither, his dog at his side. Sometimes he listened to sports from around the world on a tinny radio. Or May would turn into the woman who frequented Reveal, the local coffee place, her hair messed in the back from awkward sleeping on a hard pillow, her usual coffee order on the table. She was always alone with a book, but even as May passed by with the dogs, she could see the woman was waiting for someone special to magically arrive. Maybe someday, it would happen. So far, apparently, not.
Just like these two abandoned souls, May would dry up and wither like a corn husk, turn fully into herself, living alone until she died. Listen to her scratch and crunch as the wind blows her away.
Hi! I have herpes.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself!” Justine said. “I can hear you. Get out of bed and draw. Walk the dogs. Come up with a plan. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
May stared at the ended call, Justine’s name haunting the screen like a ghost. Her friend was right. She needed her own plan, not one that involved her looking at corn, or feeling like it, either.
“Come on, John,” she said to the cat. “Let’s get up.”
*
For a couple of days, Dave’s truck wasn’t in his driveway or parked in front of his house, so May finally knocked on his front door, one she’d never used, but it seemed weird to knock on his back gate, much less open it and start banging on the screen door.
After a minute, Dave opened the door, eyes wide with fatigue. His robe clung to him like a tired ghost and his feet were bare. His bangs stuck straight up, and the sides flared like wings, as if sleeping were a combat sport.
“Oh.” May realized she thought he wasn’t home, fleeing to Michigan and Deanna, finally. “Are you—are you okay? Your truck is gone.”
“In the shop.” Dave held the door open. “Don’t worry. I’m not sick, at least not in the typical sense.”
The hair at the back of May’s neck rose. Was he sick like Joseph? Was he sick as in mentally ill? Was he sick to death, as in really dying?
“Deanna broke it off officially. Sent a letter.”
That kind of sick. Hope was sick, May thought. Hope had died.
Remembering something, she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a greeting card, one that she had designed for a new client, a fancy card company, one that hadn’t turned totally toward AI. Jo, her new project manager, had sent some physical proofs, and she’d tucked this one into her pocket and had forgotten about it.
And here it was, a drawing of a red-eared slider, the cutest turtle species May had ever seen. The company was focused on nature but in a romantic and maybe fairy tale sense.
“Cute,” Jo had said. “Real. But on the cuter side. Your usual.”
This small, pleasant turtle had a shell of yellows and greens. On each side of his neat head were two flairs of red. He was compact with cute feet and a tiny tail. He seemed to be smiling. What not to love?
The inside was blank, and May had no idea what she would write on this occasion.
Without thinking much, she handed it to Dave, who stared at it for a moment, rubbing one thumb over the turtle’s borders. For a second, May stared at this thumb, his fingers, the way they cupped the card.
When she looked up at his face, he was staring at her in a way that made her feel nauseated but also thrilled.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, stepping away. “Let me. Well. Okay. I’ll see you soon.”
Then she was down the steps and back in her own yard, safe.
*
Two days later, a U-Haul box appeared in Dave’s driveway. May spied a little, listening to him talk to the movers who came to help him pack the box. Sentences were incomplete, but she heard “Michigan…wife…rent the house.”
By the end of the week, everything personal was gone from the front yard (the Buddha, the ceramic frog, the birdbath). Painters swooped in and did a speed job, the house a sudden baby blue with white trim. Contractors pulled in and out of the driveway, delivering new appliances or carrying tools. Much banging commenced, Remy and Marcel barking for a week straight. John Ludlow hid under the bed, and it was John that forced May to open her side gate and venture into Dave’s yard one afternoon in late October.
“So,” she began, holding up an arm to indicate the house. “Something’s happening, right?”
Dave put down his watering can. “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
He couldn’t really meet her eyes, his gaze skirting her face, but finally resting on her forehead. “I’m moving to Michigan. Deanna and I worked something out.”
May waited for a second for the hammer to hit her. In the pause, she took one breath, two. Her heart told her nothing. There was only regret that she would lose a good neighbor and an almost-friend. None of this was close to her rage the day Joseph finally left, the Uber taking him to the airport and the plane headed to Boston so he could be close to family.
“The only people who can stand him,” Justine had said. “Good riddance.”
“I’m glad for you both.” May looked up at Dave’s new paint job, the house bright and tight as a wrapped present. “Is someone moving in? I hope they don’t have an RV.”
In her mind, she conjured the property survey she could order up. Recreational vehicle? Gone.
“Nothing like that. A couple with a toddler. Nice people. They have a utility vehicle and some bikes. A canoe. They’ll be using the garage.”
The threat of the sudden garage demo and sturdy fence evaporated. “That sounds good.”
“First of the month. I’m leaving Halloween day. Seemed as good a time as any.”
For a moment, the autumn breeze pushed around them, maple leaves swirling in the air like tiny sailing ships. Somewhere, pumpkins were growing.
“About John Ludlow,” she said.
“Can you keep him?”
There Dave was, always saying what she wanted. Too bad no husband of hers had ever had the habit.
But his question punched the air out of her. Could she keep John? Would she be able to take care of the creatures and the life she’d created, she alone and aging and mostly pointless? Maybe she’d been able to love and feed and care for Stephen when he was a boy, but did she have any skills left? Her dogs were alive and well, but every day presented potential dangers: poisonous plants, dark chocolate, rabies. But May wasn’t over wanting to love warm bodies. She still needed people and things, even if she didn’t know who or what they were. She still craved life even as it began to pull away. She understood she wanted John Ludlow, the cat with two names.
“Yes,” she said. “I can.”
*
The night of the Halloween party, May came home from a paddle, showered, and began to festoon herself. Earlier in the day, she’d gone to Joanne’s and the Halloween store and purchased what she needed. A swath of aquamarine fabric decorated with starfish and dolphins. A length of glittering beads. A slightly aquatic blonde wig. A gold boa. A teal mask covered in sequins.
After making a huge effort with the makeup (she did still have eyelashes), May tugged on her blue tights and top and then wound the fabric around her waist in a sarong fashion. Then came the wig that quite possibly would give her a migraine by the end of the night. But she brushed it out and pulled the hair away from her face with a scarf the color of seafoam. Finally, May put on the beads and boa and mask, finishing off with a pair of gold shoes she’d bought years ago for a New Year’s Eve celebration.
If she only had a stuffed fish, her costume would be complete. But all she could find at the Halloween store was a pink iguana.
After some thought, May called Mark and told him she’d meet him there. Things would be easier that way, especially if he got back together with Lori toward the end of the festivities. Realizing once again that they should never be parted, Mark and Lori would beat the pumpkin piñata to death and then fall into each other’s arms. And so what if they did? May would enjoy the punch, the conversation, and the costumes. Maybe she’d drink too much, throw up in George’s hot tub, and walk home. Maybe she’d paddle back, taking the Columbia as far as she could, hulking wet and squishy up the city streets toward her house.
Or maybe, just like the creature covering her right now in blues, greens, and golds, May would swim home, a fish woman, adaptable, resplendent.
But before that, she’d take herself out to the party.
Hi, she’d say to Mark after taking a sip of George’s grog. How’s it going?
Jessica Barksdale Inclán has published a short story collection, Trick of the Porch Light, and three poetry collections: When We Almost Drowned (2019), Grim Honey (2021), and Let’s End This Now (2024). Her seventeenth novel, What They Found at the Lake, is forthcoming in 2027.
She taught at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California and continues to teach for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University.
She lives in Vancouver, Washington.