Second Nature

  Robin stayed exactly where she was, dripping rain onto the linoleum, even after the Wolf Man turned his back to her. Slowly he opened his hand, and the mouse ran in circles, as though dazed by the scent of human flesh, before scurrying off to hide in a heating vent. For weeks the Wolf Man had been thinking how easy it would be to tear out one of his doctors’ throats during their sessions together. The doctor would reach for a pen, or turn to look out the window, and he wouldn’t even know what was happening until his shirt was drenched with blood and clouds filled his vision. It was the same with a deer. Even if it was still struggling, you knew it had given up the fight when its eyes turned white, when it saw something so far away it wasn’t even in this world.

  The thunderstorm had moved in quickly, across the river, from New Jersey. The windows were rattling. Alone on the bench, the Wolf Man began to shiver. If he hadn’t, Robin would never have gone over to him. When she reached out and touched his arm, the heat from her fingers went right through his black coat and into his skin. She was the first person to touch him who didn’t have to. He still had blood blisters all over his hands and feet, and on rainy days like this the scar that ran along the inside of his thigh ached horribly. Lately, he had been remembering things that seemed to belong to someone else: forks and spoons set out on a kitchen table, slices of an orange on a blue china plate.

  “It’s just thunder,” Robin said.

  It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring. He knew that by heart. They thought he understood nothing, but he had heard them talking, right in front of him. The attendant who had kicked his shins while the handcuffs were clasped on was coming down the hall, tossing a set of keys in the air and catching them in the palm of his hand. The Wolf Man looked at the woman next to him; the heat from her touch moved upward, into his throat, until at last the words came out on their own, like birds rising.

  “Don’t let them take me someplace,” he said.

  When you spoke after so many years, the words actually hurt, each one a crooked bone, a fishhook, a burning star.

  Robin dropped her hand from his arm; her rain slicker fell at her feet. Something made her skin feel hot, and although it might have been pity, it might just as easily have been something else.

  The Wolf Man had known enough to keep what was inside him secret, and now he cursed himself. He should never have said a word. He looked down at the linoleum tiles on the floor; he tried not to breathe. The edge of the handcuffs cut through the skin above his wrists. In only a few hours, they’d transfer him and he’d be gone forever. Already, he was starting to disappear. Soon he would forget that the upturned leaves on the trees predicted whether or not it would rain, and that a rabbit dared not move if you covered its eyes. That was how they decided what to take down, at least he remembered that. They went after whatever was frightened and gave up easily. Anything that had the courage to stare you down, you let pass by.

  And so, in spite of the thunder, he raised his eyes. As soon as he saw her looking at him that way, he knew he hadn’t made a mistake. By then, Robin was telling the attendants that she’d been sent to pick up their patient. Later, in the hallway near the elevator, she would inform the social worker from the State Hospital that the transfer had been canceled. No one had reason to doubt her, not even when she insisted that handcuffs were no longer necessary. And although there was now lightning streaking the sky and the clouds were the size of black mountains, the Wolf Man smiled, exactly as the cook who baked his birthday cake vowed he could, when the attendant handed over the key.

  TWO

  THE EVENING HAD TURNED sweet and blue. Mockingbirds appeared in the gardens to pull worms from the rich, damp earth, and all through the island you could hear their stolen songs. It was the hour when deer ventured out of the pine woods to feast on ivy and potted geraniums, when raccoons in the marshes scooped up mouthfuls of mullet and snails, and the blue air made people dizzy and thankful for all that they had.

  Commuters returning from the city were so anxious to get home they bolted from their trains and ran for the wooden bridge, their umbrellas unfurling behind them like black wings. How lucky to live here, far from the soot and the savage business of the city, where dogs needn’t be leashed and children could ride their bikes for miles, stopping to collect driftwood and smooth beach stones. Cemetery Road wound along the marsh and into town, past the hardware store, which sold hurricane lamps and wicker furniture, as well as pipe and paint, past Fred’s Diner, where the omelets were always served with home fries dotted with paprika, past the post office and the five-and-dime and the town green, where three ginkgo trees had been planted for summer shade.

  It was told that the owners of the original houses had all sunk to their knees when they first crossed the bridge; they kissed the earth until their lips were sandy and cracked. Even now, most people felt the same way. Gardens were tended carefully, stone fences repaired, children taken by the hand and walked to school, though it was safe enough for even the young ones to be out on their own in cheerful groups on warm evenings, turning flashlights onto the old pine trees to scare the owls. Croissants and brioches and Blue Mountain coffee beans could be had at the bakery, but Richard Aaron had made certain to leave acres of open land. Half a mile from the driveways and front porches seemed like untamed territory, wilderness really, compared with the rest of Nassau County. This past February, a fox had wandered into Miriam and Jeff Carson’s window well, and after they’d tied up their basset hound in the backyard, everyone on Mansfield Terrace came to see it, bringing tidbits of meat and bread, until the Animal Rescue League arrived. People had banded together when a developer from Roslyn proposed a mall, just east of Cemetery Road. Miriam Carson, who was so kind-hearted she fed her dog cereal and cream for breakfast, and Patty Dixon, who had plenty of time on her hands now that her son Matthew was off to college, organized a core group of demonstrators who made the developer so wary he walked away from the project, leaving Cemetery Road as overgrown and neglected as it was meant to be.

  Good deeds were not uncommon on the island. Every Christmas, baskets of apples and pears were delivered to senior citizens, with the exception of Richard Aaron, who had once dragged himself to his bedroom window in order to throw the holiday fruit into the snow. The school library was crowded with volunteers on Wednesday afternoons. Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were held in the basement of the Episcopal church on Thursday nights, with French-roast coffee and blueberry bread free for everyone, and a big potluck supper was held each spring. When Roy moved out in October, Robin’s neighbors began to keep an eye on her house, and also, it seemed, on her. Did she need sugar or salt, or maybe just a shoulder to cry on? Robin might occasionally confide in her friend Michelle, who was a guidance counselor at the high school and had a way of getting people to confess things they might later regret mentioning, but she certainly wasn’t about to say much more than good morning to her neighbors. Still, they insisted on offering help. Patty Dixon, whose yard backed onto Robin’s, suggested that Connor might want to borrow the weights Matthew had left behind, just to make sure Connor stayed out of trouble now that there was no man in the house; Jeff Carson advised new rain gutters, and he phoned when he spotted some loose shingles after a storm.

  On this evening when the sky was clear and the roads washed clean by cool rainwater, Robin wished she lived in a place where people minded their own business. There was Jeff Carson, taking his dog for a walk before supper as he always did, fair weather or foul.

  “Damn it,” Robin said when she saw him.

  She waited at the corner of Mansfield Terrace, giving the pickup some gas when it idled roughly, until Jeff had turned onto Cemetery Road, pulling the basset hound behind him. By now, Robin had the distinct impression that everything she did—rounding the corner, parking in her own driveway, getting out quickly so she could usher the Wolf Man through the side yard—was a criminal act. She was a grown woman with a teenaged son and mortgage payments, yet her hands were shaking as she opened
her own back door. She refused to consider the possibility that what she was doing was crazy, that she was off her rocker, as Roy had often suggested when they were breaking up. She was stubborn, that she admitted, and she didn’t like unfair advantages. This was particularly true when she was younger. The children at school used to harass Stuart in the playground; they thought he was highfalutin and snotty although their grandfather was already bankrupt, and they tied his feet together with twine and threw mudballs at his clean white shirts. When Robin was in first grade, she would run over to those big boys and kick them in the shins, hard enough to leave purple bruises before they could shove her away.

  “Don’t do that,” Stuart always said when she defended him, but on the way home he held her hand.

  An unfair advantage, those handcuffs, that terrible haircut. And now the Wolf Man was following her into her kitchen, obedient and silent, his overcoat smelling like wool and rain. Well, she’d feed him and let him have a good night’s sleep, then get rid of him before Connor ever knew he’d been there.

  “Why don’t you sit down,” Robin said. “Please.”

  The Wolf Man was standing in the corner, almost as if he were stuck there, his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. When he went to the table, Robin heated the pot of vegetable soup she’d made the night before and poured some into a bowl for him. For herself, she fixed a lukewarm cup of that morning’s coffee, though she was jittery enough without it. Her face was burning; she would have liked to dash cold water on her cheeks. There was the faint possibility that Roy was right, that she’d become so intent on having things her way she’d stopped thinking altogether, driven by something as untrustworthy as pure emotion. She now had, after all, a man in her kitchen who could easily murder her and sneak out the back door without leaving any footprints behind. If need be, she supposed, she could scream, and one of her neighbors would come running, wielding a shovel or a rake.

  The Wolf Man hadn’t said another word since his plea in the hospital corridor; he carefully kept his eyes averted. When he heard footsteps on the stairs, the muscles in his arms and legs grew tight. A white thing with a long tail came into the kitchen. It crossed in front of him and mewed.

  “Homer, you silly cat,” Robin scolded the thing. “He thinks he owns the place,” she said as she scooped the cat up, opened the back door, and set him outside.

  The Wolf Man remembered how to spell it, but not what it looked like. Cats drank milk, he knew, and they teased mice, even when they weren’t the least bit hungry.

  “I thought you might be starving,” Robin said when she came back to the table.

  He had not touched his soup, but because she expected him to eat, he took the spoon and slowly began. The food burned his mouth, still he continued to eat. He knew to take what was offered. If you were hungry enough, you would turn over a rock and eat beetles, snapping their shells with your back teeth.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Robin said. She was ridiculously nervous; she was having trouble holding on to her coffee cup. “Apple juice? Milk?”

  “No, thank you,” the Wolf Man said.

  Someone, a long time ago, had taught him well. Not only please and thank you, but excuse me whenever he pushed. He finished all his soup, quickly, so that heat blisters rose on his tongue, then followed Robin when she signaled to him. As she led him up to the guest room, Robin explained that he must stay in his room when her son came home.

  “We’ll figure out what to do with you in the morning,” she said.

  She fumbled with the lock, which was there to keep the cat from making the guest room his own. The room was small, with a sloping ceiling, and had not been occupied in more than a year, since Stuart camped out after his divorce, complaining about cat hair and mildew and dust. The house’s previous owner had been one of the original workmen brought in by Robin’s grandfather. In his old age, the woodcarver had sat in this room every morning, drinking the coffee his wife brought him, watching purple finches and starlings on the lawn. The scent of wood shavings and espresso clung to the wallpaper, violets on thin green shoots all along a cream-colored border.

  While Robin made up the bed with clean sheets, the Wolf Man went to the window. There was a redwood fence around the backyard that he could take easily, with one leap. But where, exactly, would that get him? All along he’d had a single plan, one he had thought about every morning and every night. Get free and get back home. If anything, getting free seemed the hardest part, since all the doors at the hospital were locked with metal keys and it was impossible to dig out or under the walls. He had tried the first few days, scraping at the concrete until his fingers bled.

  It was not until he’d actually been freed, and led onto the street, that he realized how horribly flawed his plan was. Terrified by the buses and the crowds, he’d followed behind Robin so closely he’d stepped on the backs of her boots. At home, he could travel as much as thirty miles in a day and find his way back in the dark. He could cover two hundred miles in a single season and still distinguish one pine tree from another. But here, his sense of direction failed him completely. He stumbled on the sidewalk and shied away from the hordes of people with their raincoats and black umbrellas. And even later, while they were driving, he didn’t make his move. It would have been so easy. He could have grabbed the woman by the throat and forced her to pull over. He could have thrown the door open and leapt out onto the road when they passed a stretch of woods. The black coat wouldn’t have slowed him down, nor would the heavy shoes they made him wear; not even the thunder could have stopped him. If only he had known the way back home. He wasn’t even sure that the same constellations rose in the sky here.

  “Extra blankets,” Robin said to him.

  Two woolen blankets had been placed at the foot of the bed. Before he could stop himself, the Wolf Man looked at Robin. He had an odd feeling, almost as if he were hungry. He sat on the edge of the bed, not that he planned to sleep on it, or in it, or whatever it was that men did. He forced himself to look away from Robin. Instead, he stared at his own hands; with their calluses and broken fingernails and ropes of blue veins, they could not have looked uglier.

  When, at last, Robin left him and closed the door behind her, the Wolf Man got off the bed. After he’d heard her go down the stairs, he opened the window. The sweet air made him restless, and he paced the length of the room three times. Even a room as small as this might be dangerous. He looked in the closet, to make certain nothing was there, then went to the corner. He carefully crouched down next to the bureau the wood-carver had fashioned out of cherry. Since they’d found him, he’d taken to sleeping this way, with his back to the wall, protected from any surprise attack. Outside in the yard, the birds were calling; the white cat sharpened his claws on the bark of a magnolia tree. Lately the Wolf Man fought sleep; he’d become afraid of it. But all the night before, he’d stayed awake, waiting for the attendants to come for him, and now his eyes began to close. He dozed off to the sound of the birds, and once he’d begun, he couldn’t stop himself from falling deeper and deeper asleep.

  He could sleep safely for hours, but then, when the moon was in the center of the sky, the dream would surface. There was no way to stop it. He was back on the ridgetop, shivering. All the trees were black, but not as black as what was within him. He was beside a pool of dark water, but he would not look at his reflection. Still, he knew something deep inside, and the knowledge broke him apart and filled him with terror. His brothers were calling to him, but he had lost the power to answer. He wanted to run with them, to sleep beside them and dream the same dreams: mice and owls, blood and bones, acres of tall, sweet grass. He threw his head back and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. In his dream he stayed this way for a long time, terrified and mute, until his voice finally tore out from him and he could answer his brothers.

  On Mansfield Terrace, at a little before midnight, many of the neighbors thought what they heard was the Carsons’ basset hound, Marco Polo, who always howl
ed at the moon and scratched at the screen door, begging to be let out. But Connor Moore, on his way home, late for his curfew and woozy from six bottles of beer, knew this was no dog, for there was Marco Polo, out in his driveway, silent and puzzled, as he, too, listened to the howling.

  The hair on the back of Connor’s neck rose up and he walked faster. The clouds moved quickly, sweeping past the moon, and anyone who had the least bit of sense was already in bed asleep. At sixteen, Connor was a big, beautiful boy who could have really enjoyed himself if he hadn’t been cursed with a conscience, and for this he blamed his mother. He had grown six inches taller than Robin, quite suddenly, and now he felt condemned to protect her. When offered a dare, Connor still accepted. He jumped off the bridge at low tide fully clothed, he drank six-packs of beer at a sitting, he knew which girls would accompany him to one of the old fisherman’s shacks on the north beach, late at night, when not another soul was around. But somehow, the easygoing boy Connor had once been had disappeared; he had become a worrier, and he was uneasy now, as he walked along the wet pavement, headed for home.

  Maybe what he was hearing was a night heron, whose sudden screams could sound like a baby’s frantic cries, or a man who’d discovered his lover had been unfaithful. Nothing worth worrying about. Connor could see the light go on in his mother’s bedroom and her shadow against the window shade. Odd, since she was the one who insisted they use candles after nine at night ever since their run-in with the electric company, when they’d been hours away from having their power cut off. Connor felt bad for his mother, but it seemed his father couldn’t help himself. When Roy talked to women he came on to them, even older women he had no interest in whatsoever; it was a bad habit, like smoking, and he’d been doing it his whole life. But all that sweet talk had led to something more: a series of girlfriends Connor had known about before his mother found out and dragged his father’s clothes into the driveway for all the neighbors to see. It wasn’t as if he had caught his father with another woman, the way his mother finally had, in a parked car over on Delaney, but he’d sensed something was wrong, and he’d worried. When, at last, he’d been called into the living room and told about their separation, he could hardly pretend to be surprised.