Page 28 of Maverick
So there’s that.
As soon as I get the horse loaded into the back of the trailer, she appears again, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and this time my eyes are drawn to her bare legs. Usually, I see her in jeans. Well, this is going to be a long couple of months. And I kind of like it.
I give thanks for the fact that this girl is driving by herself. And then ask myself why I put myself in this position, because it’s actually so easy for me, with my deeply charismatic personality, to keep people away from me. And yet.
But here we are. I brought her into this part of my life, and there’s no turning back now. “Well, I’m ready,” she says.
“Great. You get hitched up, and you can follow me out.” I give her the address so that she can map it in case we lose each other, and then I get into my truck while she expertly gets her trailer hitched up. And then we head out on the road. It’s summer, and things are dry as hell, but it’ll still be nice to get back home and be in that place where all my dreams died.
Well, some of my dreams are still there. Or maybe, just the dreams that I carry for Sadie.
Frank is one of them. “I’m doing this for you,” I say as I look out at the road.
A bird flies right in front of my car, dangerously close, as if to say: sure you are.
Yeah. That’s kind of her sense of humor, or at least, I like to think that it is. Sometimes I can’t feel her at all. It’s a deep, dark black hole of nothing where her presence used to be, and I hate that. Sometimes, though, it’s like there are little signs from her everywhere. It just depends on my mood. I choose not to reflect on that too much as I continue on down the highway. And the hours pass with only a couple of stops, where we fill up both on gas and road snacks. We don’t really talk to each other. There’s a cursory acknowledgment of one another in the minute market, but otherwise, we just keep on going.
I’m thinking about all the things that I didn’t consider before extending her this offer, like the fact that I don’t have any idea what state the cottage is in. It’s been sitting there mostly empty for a few years now. I had a tenant a couple of summers ago, butI haven’t had one since, and even though it was clean then, I’m sure that it feels… Abandoned in the time since.
Oh well, I’ll sort it out.
I’m not generally impulsive. Not anymore. But here is where my impulsivity has led me, and now I have a guest.
I turn down the familiar drive that’s lined with aspens – gorgeous in the fall, all yellow leaves and natural splendor – and she turns in behind me. I suddenly feel… Weird having her here. Because this is my life. This is part of me. I don’t share myself with people. Not with anybody. And now I have Stella coming to stay for a couple of months.
Oh well. Oh well. Apparently, this is what happens when I get captivated by a pair of tits. Even a pair that I don’t intend to ever touch.
It’s a dichotomy, these two things. Because some of it is about my wife’s memory. And somehow, some of it is about this woman who makes me feel things I haven’t felt since Sadie’s death.
Conflicting, and yet somehow… Of course. Because life really is like that. Annoying, cruel, unintentionally funny.
Painful. Ironic. Awful. I’m not quite done listing the faults that I see with fate when we pull up to the front of the house. It’s a pretty house. As pretty as it ever was.
Even back in those glory days. When this house was a symbol of something. Of a life that I thought I was actually going to get to have, instead of one that I imagined I was shut out of forever.
It stands there, a beacon to all of that, like it doesn’t know the woman who helped design it is dead.
The porch is just as wide and welcoming as it was beforehand, and I feel like that’s a little bit of a cosmic joke.
I don’t often think about it, not like this, not five years on, but right now the years feel compacted. Like it hasn’t been morethan a day. Like I just closed the door on all that, and opened it to Stella being here, and maybe that’s why.
Maybe she’s why.
I decide to go up to the passenger side of the truck and open the door. “We can drive over to the barn. You can leave the trailer and get your horse settled.”
“Oh. Sure.”
I get inside, the redirect surprising even me, but apparently, I’m not quite ready to invite her into the house. There’s a wedding portrait on the living room wall, surrounded by other photos of us, including engagement pictures she had to force me to agree to. The kind of saccharine romantic series of pictures I’d have mercilessly mocked if anyone else did them, but now I hoard like a dragon does treasure.
Her knickknack shelf is there untouched. I don’t know what I would even put in it. I don’t have any knickknacks. What am I going to throw there? An elk antler? I might as well leave her cups and vases, little wooden owls, and other signs that she was there. But then, that’s the thing. It announces that a woman used to live there. It invites conversation. It’s not that I want to keep her secret. It’s not that I’m wedded to not telling Stella, but it feels weird. Wrong, somehow, to open up that part of my life.
I’m just so used to having it closed. Because being the villain feels simple by comparison. To all the things that I actually am.
Who wouldn’t rather be some mythical bad guy, instead of a kid who grew up around addiction, who found love, for one brief moment, before losing it? I’d rather be a villain than a widower. At home, that’s who I am. A man who lives alone on a ranch that was never meant to only be his, and on the circuit, I have this myth and legend that surrounds me that has nothing to do with the reality of anything.
I prefer it. I can slip it on like a pair of worn jeans and find some solace in it. Some comfort. Because it gives me a break.
I didn’t really think about the fact that bringing Stella into this life compromises the break that I get from it.
