My Three Husbands (26 page)

The sight made me feel weak in the knees.

I turned to go but Tremaynne just stood there, staring. Finally the dads realized that we hadn't left. They turned and looked questioningly at my husband.

Tremaynne nodded and cleared his throat. “I uh—I just uh—I wanted to uh—to say uh—well—.” He walked over to them with his hand extended. “She's lucky to have dads like you.”

 

 

I closed the door. We were finally alone.

We turned to look at one another. It was the queerest feeling. Like,
we're alive. We made it. We're safe.

But also,
we're in this together now.
Because I now knew that my husband was a member of Earth Freedom, a radical group that had claimed responsibility for destroying buildings worth millions of dollars. Earth Freedom had never killed anyone, that wasn't their intention, but they were considered terrorists.

Enemies of the capitalist system.

I didn't know what to say. What could I say? Tremaynne didn't say anything either.

He brushed his dirty hand along my paint-smeared face. I caught it, held it to my sticky cheek.

Then with a gasp we were locked in one another's arms, kissing and crying and tearing off one another's filthy clothes.

“Ow!”

“Aah!”

Pain was part of the pleasure. It meant we were alive. Our flesh was covered with scrapes, cuts, bruises. We kissed each other's wounds. We were hot as fire. We were alive and together.

“Awh!”

“Careful!”

We both smelled, but I inhaled the stink like it was perfume because it was our odor, our conjoined stink, and it told the story of what we'd just been through and what we'd escaped. Together.

“Ouch!”

“Ooh!”

We kicked our clothes aside and stood locked together in a naked embrace. I could feel his cock, full and hard, pressed against my thigh. He stroked my breasts, then lifted them to his hungry mouth, all the while pushing me back toward the bed.

We fell back onto softness. Softness now, instead of hard earth. He climbed on top of me. Then he rolled over and roughly pulled me on top of him.

“Oh, Venus, Venus,” he moaned. “Why the fuck did I ever marry you?”

 

 

Husband. Hot tub. Champagne and Dr. Pepper. Caesar salad for two. Cheese platter with double-fat French Bries and Camemberts. Huge musky Italian grapes. Warm focaccia with peanut butter and jelly. Sliced papaya, mango, and kiwi. Dunhill cigarettes in a fancy red box.

I had everything I wanted except money, power, and a huge juicy cheeseburger with dill pickles and french fries. I didn't want to offend Tremaynne by giving in to my carnivorous desires. I'd have to change my eating habits big time to make them compatible with his vegetarian ways.

Our meatless feast must have cost over a hundred bucks, but it was all paid for so I didn't care. We had it laid out on the terrace beside the hot tub.

We ate and soaked and for the longest time just sat there, naked, Tremaynne holding me in his arms. The steaming water was like liquid balm.

A luminous midsummer moon hung bright and clear in the star-washed sky, pouring its silvery light over the distant folds of forested mountains. It was so quiet that we could hear the river singing. The air was sweet and chill, perfumed with scents that were now familiar to me.

A feeling of security spread through me as I lay in Tremaynne's arms. It was the first time I'd ever had this sensation. It was like the calm after a storm. A feeling of being safe with someone who was stronger and calmer and surer.

I've finally found the right one,
I thought.
Different as we are, we are destined to be together.
The thought made me light-headed with joy. I'd finally found a love to equal the dads' love for one another. I could now live in that same mysterious place they lived in, that secret sacred spot where two became one and no one else could ever hope to intrude.

I felt like our bodies were permanently bonded. Working together, as one, under the most extreme circumstances, we'd forged a physical partnership that would last forever. After what we'd been through there could never be any barriers between us.

“I have to go,” Tremaynne whispered in my ear.

I thought he meant, go to the bathroom, so I slid to one side and said, “I'll wait out here.”

He stroked my chin. “No. I mean go. Leave.”

I stared at him. I heard the words, but they went dead in my ears.

He said, “You knew that, didn't you?”

I shook my head. I could feel the blood draining from my face.

“It'll all disappear, Venus, unless we do something about it.”

“Do what?” My voice was harsh. “Spike trees? Burn buildings?”

“You saw it with your own eyes,” he said calmly. “You saw it, Venus.”

I turned away, curling up like a silent fetus in the hot broth of a mother's womb.

“You walked through it,” he said. “You drank the water. You saw the trees. It isn't a fantasy, Venus. It's real.”

“They're just trees,” I cried miserably.

Tremaynne hoisted himself out of the tub and sat on the edge, his flesh steaming. “I'm not going to get into an argument with you about it.”

“Why not? We're married! We're supposed to argue.”

“You said you wouldn't stand in the way of my personal fulfillment.”

“What about my fulfillment?”

“File for a divorce,” he said. “It's better to do it now rather than later.”

“No,” I said.

“It was a mistake, Venus. I'm sorry, but it was a mistake.”

“It wasn't a mistake. I love you.”

“A mistake on my part,” he said quietly. “I should have known it wouldn't work. We're just too different. I'm too different.” He hugged himself. “You said once that you could accept me as I really am. Well, this is how I really am.”

“We can work through the differences,” I said. “I'll change. I'll totally change.”

“For me?”

“Yes, for you.”

“That's not a good reason to change,” he said.

I couldn't bear what I was hearing. I almost wished we were back in the forest, tied up, struggling to survive. “You used me,” I sobbed. “You used me to get out here. That's all it was.”

He reached out to touch me, but I slapped his hand away. We didn't speak for a few moments. In those moments my entire life flashed before my eyes. I saw clearly what I had now and what I'd done with my life: nothing.

“I'll come with you,” I said finally. “I'll join. I'll help you.”

“Venus.”

“I'll sit in a tree. I can do it. I know I can do it. After today I can do anything.”

“Venus. This isn't play-time. This is what we believe in. It's our lives. We'll die for it if we have to.” He tilted his head, trying to get me to look at him. “It's more important than any—relationship. I didn't know that until I got out here. Until I saw what's here, and what they're doing.”

I lunged out of the tub and took him in my arms, squeezing and sobbing. “You can't go. You don't have anything. No clothes. No food. Nothing.”

He tried to make light of it. “Hey, that's how I came into the world.”

“Don't leave me,” I cried. “Please don't leave me.”

An owl hooted far in the distance. Tremaynne, instantly alert, peered in that direction. I realized it wasn't an owl at all, but one of them, calling him away.

He stood up, leaving me half in the tub, and went into the room.

I looked up at the bright silver moon, at the sparkling stars, at the vast mysterious forest rolling away as far as the eye could see. It wasn't asleep. I knew that. Under the soft white blanket of moonlight it was alive. Every inch of it. Breathing. Watching.

The owl hooted again. My heart felt like broken glass. I looked in and saw Tremaynne pulling on his clothes. Getting ready to go.

W
earing dark glasses to hide my puffy eyes and some of the scratches on my face, I waited for the dads down in the lobby. I felt weirdly fragile, ghostlike, transparent, as if the light pouring in through the glass wall in the reception area could pass right through me.

An empty vessel. A drained glass. A sponged blackboard. A blank page.

A nothing.

Maybe it was delayed shock. Or the fact that I hadn't slept or stopped crying for the past ten hours. I was all cried out. Any more tears and I'd be weeping blood.

The dads were taking care of last-minute details. A valet had gone to fetch the SUV from the garage. Our luggage was sitting on a cart out by the front steps. In less than fifteen minutes, I'd be leaving Pine Mountain Lodge. And my husband.

The honeymoon was over.

So was my marriage.

I wandered over to look at Daddy's model of Pine Mountain Lodge. A meticulous world in miniature, it was perfect down to the last detail. You could almost see tiny people hurrying through the rooms, living tiny, thumb-size lives.

Daddy was big on order. Whitman, too. Life for the dads was about organization.

Mine was about chaos.

I remembered the look on their faces when I burst into their room early that morning. Burst in with a keening wail, running blindly for their bed, for their comfort. I crawled in right between them and clung desperately to Daddy. I told them everything. That Tremaynne was a member of Earth Freedom, everything. I put his future in their hands.

A tanned couple in white tennis clothes, carrying tennis rackets, eyed me as they crossed the lobby. Did they think I was Godiva, the wild European rocker? Their eyes had that hungry, searching look, as if they thought I might be somebody.

What a joke. I was nobody. I felt like I had no identity at all.

And I didn't want to be seen. I was certain that people could look right through me. See the nothing I was. So I crouched down beside the model, found our suite, and peered in. There was the very room where we'd made love with an intensity that I would remember the rest of my life.

As I was examining the tiny room, replaying the scene of our lovemaking, I remembered that I hadn't taken my birth control pills.

I'd missed two days.

My body went hot. I stood up very slowly.

I saw Kristin walking toward me and I turned away, not wanting to smile or talk.

“I was afraid you'd left already,” she whispered.

I shook my head.

“Are you waiting for your handlers?”

I nodded. “Only they're not my handlers,” I confessed. “They're my dads.”

Kristin didn't hear me. She didn't want to. She didn't want the truth to spoil her fantasy. “I wanted to give you something,” she said. “Something special, to remember me by.” She thrust a small polished piece of wood into my hands.

Cut into the wood, in a flowery script, were the words “Eternal Love.” A rawhide thong was poked through holes at either end.

I looked at her, unable to speak.

“I made it myself,” she said. “In shop class. Three years ago. It's a necklace. See?” She took it from my hand and placed it over my head. “The words glow in the dark.”

I nodded and sucked in a really deep breath.

“You probably meet thousands of girls,” Kristin said. “On your tours and stuff. So you probably won't remember me. But maybe you will. Maybe I'll come visit you in Iceland. Or you'll come back here, to Pine Mountain Lodge.”

I stroked her bare arm and quickly walked away, using the butt of my hand to wipe away a new flood of saline. Outside, on the front steps, I dug in my purse for a cigarette. My hands were shaking so bad I must have looked like a drug addict, or like I'd just chug-a-lugged six double espressos in a row.

Sniffing and clearing my throat, I made my way over to the luggage cart and sat down. I was weary beyond exhaustion.

Two days of missed contraception.

Was it too late?

Was it already growing?

How could I stop it?

Did I want to stop it?

When would I know?

I'd have to quit smoking.

The dads' SUV pulled up beside me, dented but sparkling clean, and the valet hopped out. “Well, here she is.” He gave the hood an affectionate pat. “This baby's taken quite a beating, but Prince Brunelli had our mechanic check out the engine and everything's cool. They gave her a wash, too.”

I nodded and stood so he could get the luggage.

Where were the dads?

Where was Tremaynne? Was he back in the Earth Freedom camp? I retraced my journey up the river, over Dead Horse Canyon, through the forest and the clear-cut plateau to Devil's Spring. From now on that would be my inner geography. My secret universe. In my thoughts and fantasies, Tremaynne would live somewhere in that magical and terrifying stretch of forest.

I touched Kristin's necklace. Love might be eternal, but fate was heartless. I'd fallen in love with Tremaynne because he had ideals, because he was dedicated to something larger than himself. I hadn't known that his demanding ideals would ultimately take him away from me for good.

He'd been mine only when we were in bed. I knew that now.

Where was he at this very moment? How would he live? What if the police or Bureau of Land Management found the camp and confiscated all the tents and supplies and arrested the members of Earth Freedom?

“They'll never find us,” Tremaynne laughed when I voiced this concern the night before. “They never have and they never will. We move fast.”

If anyone ever came to me seeking information, I was to disavow all knowledge of his activities.

But what if there was a baby?

I moaned and turned to climb into the SUV. I'd just sit there until the dads came. I couldn't understand what was taking them so long. I wanted to get the hell out of there as much as I wanted to stay. If I'd had a wedding ring, I would have anxiously twiddled it, turning it around and around on my finger like a talisman to help me in my hour of need. But I didn't have a ring. All I had was the tattoo permanently etched at the root of my ring finger. I stroked it and felt my face go all quivery, like I was going to start bawling again.

The other passenger door opened. A deep voice said, “Some coffee for you.”

Marcello handed me a large stainless-steel travel mug with
Pine Mountain Lodge
printed on the side.

“I added some cream and sugar,” he said. “I hope it is satisfactory.” He snapped his fingers and someone darted forward with a cardboard box. “Some sandwiches,” Marcello said. “Fruit. For your journey.”

“Thank you.” My voice was so low even I could hardly hear it.

Marcello suddenly slid in beside me. He reached out for me but quickly caught himself and pulled back. “If you tell me it is impossible,” he said, “it will only make me work harder.”

I couldn't speak. All I could do was look at him.

“I can arrange things,” he said. “You could live here.”

I touched his hand. Just a touch, then drew it away. I was grateful to him, but I didn't want to give him any ideas.

“I will take that as a beginning,” he said.

“What?” I whispered.

“It is the first time you have touched me.”

I gave him a wan smile. “Listen,” I said, my voice low, “I'm not Laurie Ann, okay? That person's dead.”

Marcello moved an inch closer, staring at me. “Then who are you?” he asked.

I thought about it. “Venus,” I said. “Just plain old Venus.”

“Venus.” He smiled and gently took my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Are you really a prince?” I asked.

He nodded. “But, in America, I try not to be.”

We sat there like two kids on a first date who didn't know what to say to each other. Finally Marcello fished in his pocket and pulled out a business card. On the back, he scribbled a number. “This will always reach me. Direct.” He patted his breast pocket. “I keep this phone right next to my heart.”

I took the card and managed a faint smile.

Marcello stuck his hand out the door, snapped his fingers again, and this time was handed a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers. “These are for you. So you will remember me and Pine Mountain Lodge.”

I nodded.

He raised his hand and gently stroked my hair, then slid out and was gone.

 

 

We were all pretty quiet. Daddy and Whitman took turns driving. We'd travel for, like, fifty miles before one of them would say something.

“I canceled my cell phone number,” Whitman informed me. “He won't be able to use that phone.”

The phone. I'd completely forgotten about it. And now it didn't matter. It was no longer a lifeline, merely a dead gadget.

At one point Daddy looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “Were
they
planning to burn down my building, too? Earth Freedom?”

“I think they're trying to stop a timber sale,” I said.

“Because they've destroyed other buildings,” Daddy said. “We did a search on the computer this morning. We checked all the newspaper stories about Earth Freedom.”

“Daddy, I don't know.”

“It's a very shadowy group,” Daddy said.

My faux pa turned around to look at me. “The next time you say you're getting married, we're going to run an FBI background check on the guy.”

“I'm never getting married again.”

I don't think Whitman heard me. “This must be the shortest marriage on record,” he said. “No, I think there's one even shorter. I read about it in
Ripley's Believe It or Not.
The couple drove directly from the church to the lawyer's office and filed for divorce.”

He was probably trying to cheer me up. But he was also reminding me of my tendency to leap before I look. I think the dads thought I was mad at Tremaynne. Hated him for betraying me. And I did, of course. But I didn't see him as a criminal or a dangerous terrorist. Those were words used by the other side.

I stared vacantly out the window as we sped along the blacktop, past mile after mile of tall pines. It was hypnotically monotonous. Unless you got off the road and out of your car, you'd never have a clue as to what was really out there, in those deep canyons and high plateaus and mountain peaks already dusted with snow. You had to feel the earth beneath your feet. Hear it with clean ears. Smell its powerful but elusive scents. You had to put yourself right in the middle of it, without any of your daily props, and accept it as something that existed in and of itself, for itself, beyond your grasp. It was a home for creatures that didn't obey human laws. For whom humans were the enemies.

The bouquet of flowers Marcello had given me sat on my lap, along with his card.
Marcello Brunelli. Lumina International.
That's all it said. There were two telephone numbers, a fax number, and an e-mail address. I turned it over and studied his handwriting, the way he formed numbers. Figures were important to him. Each numeral was very clear. The sevens had lines drawn through them, the European way.

All I had to do was pick up a phone and dial.

 

 

The afternoon sun beat down on the speeding SUV, releasing the scents of the wildflowers and sandwiches and fruit supplied by Pine Mountain Lodge. We'd decided we'd stop only for gas and toilets. If we kept up our pace, we'd be back in Portland by ten that night.

Every mile took me farther and farther from Tremaynne.

Every mile brought me closer and closer to Portland, where I'd have to resume a life that suddenly seemed terrifyingly meaningless. I'd have to go back to work at Phantastic Phantasy. Stand behind the counter in that stuffy, smelly porn shop with tinted windows and cum stains on the carpet and help men check out their sexual fantasies. Or rap sharply on the doors of the video booths to remind them that they had to spend money. Run the barcodes for
D Cups
and
Rump Roast
and
Manmeat
and other magazines across the scanner. Order new dildos and buttplugs.

And go back to my tiny apartment and deal with things like what I'd microwave for supper.

Go over to my mom's and hear about her latest self-esteem serum.

Unless I made some changes in my life, big changes, humongous changes, I was headed nowhere fast.

School? Maybe.

Possibly.

A baby? Maybe.

Possibly.

All I knew was that I couldn't go back to being what I was. Something in me had changed. I didn't know what it was or how, ultimately, it would affect me. I had followed the river and crossed Dead Horse Canyon and traveled to places most mortals don't even know exist. I'd been Venus, Godiva, and Laurie Ann.

I'd done it, and I'd come back, and if I didn't find some new way to keep moving ahead, I would never find fulfillment.

Maybe there was no such thing as fulfillment. Maybe it was all in the doing.

I looked at the dads. They were holding hands. They were in love. In their own way, they had followed the river and crossed the canyon.

I saw a sign for Hell's Canyon.

I waited until Daddy was just about to head down the first stretch of the narrow, hairpin canyon road.

“Let me drive,” I said.

The dads looked at each other.

“What?” Daddy sounded alarmed. “Why?”

“I just—want to.”

“It's not an easy road,” Whitman said. “Remember what happened on the way out?”