Page 60 of The Cabin
But now, everything is different. So maybe it’s time to change things up a bit.
I sit on the front porch and dive into the world of Jack Reacher, and find myself enjoying it way more than I thought I would. And just like that, hours have passed, and my stomach is rumbling.
I’m feeling too lazy to prepare anything involved, so I make a smorgasbord of snacks, and keep reading.
The sun shifts, and now it’s beating directly onto the porch, and I get hot. Sweaty. The inside of the cabin would be cooler, but I’ve spent nearly every minute of the past year inside, and I just…I want to be outside.
The water looks cool, inviting. Why not?
I change into a bathing suit, a plain one-piece that I tend to wear for real swimming rather just lounging on the beach. I don’t think any of my bikinis would fit at the moment anyway—the one-piece is all but hanging off me as it is. My ass is flat as a post, and my tits, never large on my best day, have shrunk to mosquito bites. But, I’m not here to impress anyone.
I’m thankful there’s no full-length mirror here. I don’t think I’d be very pleased with my reflection. I need to eat, get back to a healthy weight.
I bring a towel and head to the dock. The water ripples, reflects the sunlight like a million diamonds in the sun. When was the last time I went swimming? A hotel pool with Adrian, in NYC for a signing, a year before I found out about his diagnosis.
I push that thought away.
I dive in—don’t give myself time to think about it, to anticipate the cool of the water. Which turns out to be cold. I surface, shrieking and spluttering, pushing my hair back. Refreshing, though, once I have a moment to acclimate. I stroke across the water away from shore, and then turn on my back and float. The sounds of the world are muffled, and the sun is hot on my face and the parts of me that aren’t covered in water. I splash in circles, open my eyes to reorient myself, make sure I’ve not floated too far away from shore. I know I’m still pretty weak, and if I were to accidentally float toward the middle of the lake, I could be in trouble.
Eventually, I start to feel a little cold, so I roll back to my belly and breaststroke back to shore. When I get there, I see Nathan’s truck, but not him, not at first. It’s not until I climb onto the deck and wrap up in my towel that I see him. The tree line of the forest starts a good twenty yards behind the cabins, and he’s off just inside the trees, skinning a deer. He pauses, glances my way, sees me and waves. I wave back, but head inside.
Adrian tried hunting once, when we were first dating. A friend from college invited him, so he went. He hated it. Said it was cold and early and boring, and when he did finally manage to get a shot off at a deer, he both missed and felt horrible for shooting at it. Said he’d have felt even worse actually killing the thing, and when his friend made his shot and brought down a buck, he felt nauseated. Which was only worsened when his friend cleaned the carcass right there.
He never went hunting again.
My dad used to hunt a lot, when I was little, so the sight is fairly familiar to me. I’d wake up late on a Saturday morning and I’d see Dad out under the big old oak tree behind the house, a deer hanging by its hooves. We’d have venison steaks that night, Dad’s specialty. He’d freeze most of the rest of the meat, and then in the winter, when things were tight and lean, he’d break out back straps and steaks and ground venison and whatever else.
Then he passed away when I was a teenager, and I’d wake up on Saturday mornings for weeks and months afterward expecting to see him out there with a deer, and I’d remember all over again with crushing sorrow that I’d never see it again.
All this flits through me in an instant, from seeing Nathan out under the tall pines in the cool shadows, his hands pinked with blood as he expertly skins and cleans.
I hurry inside, feeling nauseous. Not from the sight of the blood—I’m an ICU nurse. From an inundation of sorrow.
Missing Dad took years to get past. You stop thinking about him, forget his face, the sound of his voice. The feel of his stubble on my cheek as he gave me a peck. You feel guilty for forgetting, but the forgetting is often easier than the missing, and then you feel guilty for sort of wanting to forget.
