The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [73]
“We’re on a honeymoon,” I said, noting the obvious, which I had hoped at that moment I wouldn’t have to do. “We’ll have meals and make love. That’s about all.” She turned, so that now her back was to me again. “And we could go outside. We could explore. We could take hikes.”
“You know I don’t like hikes.”
“You’re in shape, Diana. You run in the gym.”
“You know what I mean.” She gazed outside. “This doesn’t have anything to do with fitness. The outdoors gives me the creeps.”
“But look,” I said. “Look what I’ve brought.” I pulled myself out from under her and went over to my suitcase, from which I pulled two whistles, the kind that football coaches use, with the little balls in them. They really make a racket. “Hey, hey,” I said hopelessly.
“What’re those for?”
“You get lost in the woods, you just blow.”
“ ‘I get lost in the woods, I just blow,’ ” she repeated. “What is it about my agoraphobia, Bradley — does it make you feel better that I have it? An advantage? You brought those along? I mean, why now, of all times, do you want to worry it?”
“I don’t want to worry it,” I said. “It wasn’t that. The thing is, I saw the two of us, walking outdoors, and I thought: What can I do for Diana? I can help her get outside, I can help her with the wide open spaces.” I handed the whistle to her.
She took it and tossed it in her hand. Then, sweetly, she raised her other hand and put her index finger on my lower lip. She played her finger back and forth on my lip. “We’re not compatible, you know,” she said. Her eyes hardened and for an instant looked through me a little. I thought that was such an odd thing for her to say that I refused, almost, to hear it. I just felt her finger on my lip.
“It’s not compatibility,” I said. “It’s how you manage it. How loving you are.”
“I’m loving with my friends,” Diana said, “and I’m mean to my lovers.” She caressed my mouth. “ ‘Just put your lips together and blow,’ ” she said, quoting from somewhere. “Oh, screw it,” she said. “Put that whistle down and make love to me again, since you want to.” She pointed to me and what was obvious, my well-meaning and innocent erection. So I did, I made love to her, because she asked me to, and because I wanted to, even though — and it’s hard to explain this — my feelings were hurt and I was angry, so I was meaner to her in bed than I usually am, rougher, more abrupt, and slowly it dawned on me, as I watched her respond, that she liked me that way, almost as if she was used to it, and I thought, Uh-oh, and kept it to myself.
You can have good sex on your honeymoon and still suspect that there’s something fishy going on.
THE NEXT DAY we went over to the Porcupine Mountains. They’re worn down in that region and the state forests and parkland have been crisscrossed with paths, but it’s a moody landscape given to early morning fogs and indescribable forest sounds. They tear through the silences every now and then. Out of nowhere, a half-mile behind you, a baby cries once, then quiets. Tree branches snap and fall in front of you. These seemingly harmless nature scenes fill you with premonitions of bucolic doom.
We veered off the main highway onto a county road and continued driving until the pavement turned to dirt, and then parked when we found a stand of woods with a marker for a path. I myself had grown interested in the mushrooms. I’d brought a sketchbook and sketched a few. They caught my attention with their red caps and their structural mockery of flowers and umbrellas and sexual organs. Diana wouldn’t touch them and seemed puzzled, or even saddened, by my interest in them.
Diana’s hair was swept back and held under that cap, and she was wearing a light yellow tee-shirt. She’d brought along a jacket in case it started to rain, and after we’d been out there for an hour or two, it began to drizzle. The drizzle was so fine that the water couldn’t even be glimpsed as it fell. You could see its presence as a graying factor in the air.
I’d also brought a small field guide — my jacket was full of pockets — and was checking the identifying