To Stop the Head from Running Wild by Kieran Mundy
The day I was expected at Missy Cadwell’s, a woman across town left her screen door open and got mauled to death in her own living room.
Domesticated, Missy always said about the bears, overly domesticated.
I think what she meant was habituated. That summer, they were walking into houses, coming in through doors and windows. Domesticated, habituated—either word seemed a strange way to describe it.
When I got to Missy’s it was already dusk. She wanted me there before the sun set. The driveway was long and sloping, and I could see her all lit up in the large kitchen as I arrived. There were so many windows in that house, so much glass. Her husband, Guy, had insisted that all the trees in front of it be cut down so they’d have a view.
I parked and knocked. Missy kept the door locked, now, even during the day.
It was my mother who suggested me to Missy. I was back home indefinitely, my degree in comparative literature at the bottom of a storage bin in my parents’ attic. Missy volunteered weekends at the town library, where my mother worked. She heard Missy asking around for someone. We knew who the Cadwells were before this, obviously. Everyone did. Their house was enormous, a mansion by any measure, though there were never enough people in it to fill all that space. Guy Cadwell traveled for work and was hardly home. They had a son, but he was grown. An Olympic skier—Nordic—who trained abroad. Switzerland, France. Missy was often alone. All those empty rooms, the closest neighbor a good two miles away. It worried her. She liked to have company while Guy was gone. Women. Young ones. She gave me fifty bucks a night and filled the fridge before I arrived. We’d sit on her expensive leather sofas with bowls of ice cream, which I didn’t eat at home because my mother liked to talk about what it might do to my figure. My mother always called my body “my figure,” like it was the fifties, like she was perpetually preparing to have me sized for a cotillion dress. Missy wasn’t like that. She never talked about my body or even her own, for that matter, which surprised me considering the complaints I heard from other women her age, things about what they could no longer do.
It would defeat the purpose to invite a strange man into my home, Missy said about having me stay, so I only trust strange women.
The house sat on top of a hill, past the reservoir. From the back deck you could see all the way to Mount Pinnacle. Not quite in the middle of nowhere but, rather, on the edge of it. Inside was cavernous, high-ceilinged. The kind of mansion made to look rustic, with visible post and beam work in dark cherry. Guy built it for her when they first married.
I mean, he had it built, Missy told me once, laughing. He can’t build anything except for net worth.
Guy Cadwell worked in finance. Missy didn’t work at all. She had other girls on rotation—daughters of friends, mostly—and it’d been a month since I last stayed with her.
She answered my knock with a dishtowel in her hand and an apron wrapped so tightly around her tiny waist it looked as if it was holding her together.
Come in, come in, she said, ushering me over the doorstep. White or Red?
I followed her into the kitchen, and she held up a bottle in either hand, smiling.
Red, I told her. She asked how I was, and I told her I’d spent the last month applying for jobs.
Boston, hopefully, I said.
You’re a smart girl, she told me, smiling. You have no reason to worry.
She had a clean, soft face. Dimples. A smattering of freckles across her nose and spools of dark hair. Natural, no makeup. She was forty-six, but sometimes I thought I looked older than she did. I was already trying to get rid of the creases that lined the margins of my mouth. Before going to sleep, I’d suck in my cheeks hard, hoping to undo the day’s damage.
A timer went off and she took a frozen pizza out of the oven. She removed her apron and glanced at the clock.
I have to leave, she said. It’s a fundraiser.
There was an Ivy League university in the town adjacent to ours. Missy and Guy were alums. The university was the reason people like them lived here at all, the reason a family like mine occupied the same place as a family like hers. The college people liked how rural our town was. The quiet of it. For a long time, I couldn’t imagine marrying for money. Being in that house made me reconsider. I sunk my feet into the plush carpeting, tiptoed around and touched her possessions, thinking how if I had all that space, all those things, I wouldn’t share them with a stranger the way Missy did. But then I’d hear something creak, or my own footsteps would echo down a hall, and I understood why Missy didn’t like being alone, so close to all that nothing.
Twenty minutes later, Missy flew out the door in a dark green dress with sequins sewn into the hem, instructing me to help myself to dinner. She said she’d be back before midnight.
I finished my wine, looking at the lives pasted up on the fridge. Missy, Guy, and the Olympian on a beach somewhere, at a wedding, standing in the middle of a snowy stadium as the Olympian held up a trophy bigger than his head. The Olympian looked like her—both with dark hair and the kind of cheekbones I wasn’t born with nor could ever afford. Guy was blonde, his features weasely and too small for his face. The Olympian was five years my senior. Once, after returning from his first Olympic Games, he gave a speech at my high school. They played the national anthem, and we all cheered when he walked on stage. He was twenty-two then, and handsome. He spoke about determination and perseverance.
The girls next to me giggled.
I bet he’s great in bed, one of them said. All that endurance.
I turned away from the fridge. The windows were open but no breeze came through. The air was humid, listless. Though Missy never said so, it felt like part of my job was to be on alert. To listen for alarming noises or unexpected visitors. But the way I slept at Missy’s never allowed for this. It was always deep and full. The sort of sleep that, upon waking, makes your body feel as though it’s filled with sand. I cranked the AC and shut the windows. Then, remembering the bears and Missy’s warnings, I locked them.
Some people were saying it had to do with climate change—a scarcity of food, the odd, ever-shifting weather wreaking havoc on the bears’ hibernation habits. Others complained that the bears had grown too comfortable here, with us. They said that our rural, provincial town wasn’t enough of a human presence to keep them at bay, that we’d begun to blend back in with nature. These people argued for development, for condos, to capitalize on the tourism we got from leaf peepers every autumn, to drive away the bears. I didn’t have an opinion. On my evening runs, I’d seen a few bears from a distance, digging in the elementary school dumpsters, ambling along the side of a dirt road. It was odd, but it seemed to me that the bears were just another thing people talked about to fill up their time. Soon it would be on to the next scandal, predatory or otherwise.
I often returned home from my runs to an empty house. There was usually a note on the table, a casserole in the fridge for when my father got off at the garage. I knew it took my mother hours to make the casseroles, that she sweated over the stovetop as she stirred and chopped, hair frizzing from the heat of it. That when she was done she cleaned the whole kitchen and covered the casserole with foil before fixing herself a small bowl of greens and heading off to the library for an evening shift in one of her little dresses. Modest but tight. Flattering.
Nobody wants to see some old lady working the front desk, she always said. We should look how we’re expected to look.
I woke, still on the couch, to a dark house and a loud pounding at the door. Not an animal sound, but the other reason Missy paid me to keep her company out here. A human sound. I switched on
the porch light and looked through the peephole. It was Missy, holding her heels in her hand. I let her in. She was drunk.
Thank you, she slurred, I couldn’t find my key.
Behind her, a cab pulled away. I hoped she didn’t know I’d been asleep. She liked me to wait up for her when she went out, to feel she had someone to come home to.
How was the fundraiser? I asked.
She started to tell me the sorts of things she usually talked about after an event—soft shell crab for dinner even though the ocean was a hundred miles away, the hosts’ mispronunciation of a big benefactor’s name during a speech—but she was unfocused, her sentences zigzagging like something chased. She was upset. There was a mix up with her donation, a mistake, and Helen Clearwater accused her of not donating at all. Which made sense because, according to Helen, she probably didn’t have access to Guy’s finances, seeing as she was just a housewife.
She said that, Missy told me, she called me that.
She began to cry. I watched her, thinking how strange it was—a bunch of women educated enough to throw the word “housewife” around as an insult, but who were still so bored with their lives that they would do it at all. I suggested a glass of water and opened the freezer for ice. When I closed it, I saw Missy staring at the picture—her, Guy, and the Olympian at one of his competitions.
He looks taller than I remember him being, I said.
Missy paused her sniffling. She blinked at me.
You’ve met? she asked.
I explained about his visit to the high school.
Local hero! I said, wanting to cheer her. But Missy’s face shifted. Her cheeks paled. She gulped at the water, wiping her mouth with the collar of her dress.
You must be so proud of your son, I tried again. Does he get his athleticism from you?
Stepson, she corrected, her voice splintering the word.
I watched as she lifted the picture from the fridge and flipped it over. I was glad Missy was drunk, now. I was sure I hadn’t hidden my surprise well. People in town were always talking about the Cadwells, about the Olympian, but I hadn’t heard this detail before.
Guy’s first marriage, Missy said.
I’m sorry, I said. I just assumed.
Yes, Missy said, the words lazy on her tongue, rubbing up against each other uncomfortably. Sadly, he isn’t mine.
She stared at the back of the photo and sighed, let her hands drop.
My God, she said, I’m tired. She held out her arms. Walk me up? she asked.
I’d been in the master bedroom before, though never at the same time as Missy, and so felt I only ought to guide her just past the door. But she grabbed me as I turned to go.
Wait, she said. My dress. I need help with my dress.
She gestured at the buttons running down her back. I hesitated a moment, unsure. But I didn’t want to tell Missy no.
Her flesh revealed itself to me slowly, button by button. A warmth crept up my neck. Her back, bare and delicate, was dotted with freckles the same way her face was. The buttery fabric of her dress kissed the tips of my fingers. I wondered what my skin would feel like with something of that quality pressed against it.
Help, she said once the dress hung open. Please. Everything else.
She was still sniffling. Hiccupping. I obeyed, unfastening her bra before reaching down to help her shimmy out of her slip. I could smell her. Not just her perfume and shampoo, but her.
It was the closest to Missy I’d ever been.
When I finished undressing her, she lay at the foot of her bed and then began to crawl to the top, tossing throw pillows aside as she went, moving deeper into the layers of bedding as though she were digging a hole. I stared. She didn’t look how I thought middle-aged women were supposed to look. She wasn’t sagging or wilted. She had sharp corners, her thighs didn’t curve out into parentheses the way mine did, and where I had a thick layer of muscle, the outline of Missy’s ribcage showed through. She settled under her covers and closed her eyes. There was a baby monitor on Missy’s bedside table. It was new—high-tech, the kind with a camera that went both ways.
For when Guy isn’t here, Missy had said when she told me about it. The other half will be in your room.
It was new. She wanted us to better keep an eye on each other.
The house was so big, Missy reasoned, that neither of us would be able to hear the other if we screamed. Just to be safe, she explained.
It was strange that the camera would be there, watching me. But it seemed a small price to pay for getting to sleep in that bed at all. And it was my job. It was whatever Missy wanted. I switched it on and closed Missy’s door.
It was difficult to sleep that night. Noises sounded louder and the bed was too soft. I kept thinking I saw shadows passing outside the window, intruders or beasts. Bears ready to come in through the front door. Paws on the welcome mat.
Usually, Missy encouraged me to go where I pleased during the day, emphasizing that I only needed to return by nightfall. But when I wandered into the kitchen that morning, she
greeted me by announcing that we’d spend the day by the pool.
I’ve got facials coming at four, she said. You can’t say no to that.
Her face was scrubbed raw, and her hair was pulled tight into a bun. She smiled and sipped from a bottle of water.
Oh Missy, I said, you’d see a bear coming from a mile away up here.
She frowned and waved her hand through the air.
That’s not it, she said, I just thought perhaps we’d be a bit luxurious is all.
We sat on the patio in lounge chairs. Missy brought out fruit, cheese, expensive, thinly sliced meat. It was hot. She had the paper on her lap but her eyes were closed and her head lolled to one side. She snored. I tried to read from a novel but I couldn’t focus. I’d borrowed one of Missy’s old bathing suits, a stringy blue thing, and it was pinching.
I’m sorry, she’d apologized. I don’t have anything larger.
I glanced over at her. In the sunlight, her tanned skin appeared even smoother than it had the night before.
When I went inside to use the bathroom, I saw that the picture on the fridge was turned over again. Missy and the Olympian didn’t look as similar to me now. Missy’s eyes were different, I noticed, sharper. In the photo, Missy’s arm was tight around the Olympian and her hand was on his stomach. Their cheeks, glowing pink, were pressed in together. It was strange to see it now, knowing they weren’t related. The photo had an intimacy to it, a closeness.
Was there something you needed?
I turned. Missy was standing at the threshold of the sliding glass doors, fanning herself with the newspaper. She looked from me to the picture and then back again.
No, I told her, no.
What a terrific sunburn I’m getting, Missy said. She laughed and walked into the kitchen, kicking her foot up onto a bar stool to show me where her sandal had made a set of crisscrossed white lines on her flesh. She pointed at the picture.
That’s a nice one, isn’t it? she asked. She flashed her teeth.
I stared at her, searching for something that might tell me if she didn’t remember our conversation about the photo, or if she was just pretending not to. She wiggled her foot.
Oh, yes, I said. Beautiful.
She walked off towards the bathroom. I watched her go, wondering if Guy had always preferred wives like Missy or if the Olympian’s real mother was of a different sort, the kind of woman whose favorite game to play as a girl was house.
I left when the facials came, claiming to have suddenly remembered that my mother needed help at the library. At the village store, I bought an iced tea and drank it while reading the ads and flyers on the bulletin board. The Church was hosting a summer potluck series; the town band would be playing on the common the following Friday; somebody was selling a pair of hockey skates, size eight. There was a big flyer right in the middle of everything. The Coalition for Small Town Safety Presents Prevention Methods for Black Bear Behavioral Issues. The photo they’d chosen was a black bear standing on its hind legs, teeth bared and claws waving wildly through the air. I’d never seen a black bear do anything like it before.
When I got back to Missy’s that evening she was already in pajamas—an oversized t-shirt with Nordic Skiing Regional Championships written in gold across the front and a pair of silky pink shorts. She gestured to the TV and asked what I was in the mood for.
Whatever’s on, I told her.
She went to bed halfway through. I stayed up, letting the movie play. When it was over, I padded through the halls, shutting off lights and locking doors. It was always my least favorite
part of the night, this closing up of the house. It was unlikely that anyone would break in. Our town was tiny. Crime, like strangers, came rarely. But I was an ill-prepared companion for Missy, should anything actually happen. I wasn’t strong or quick. Just another human living in the same kind of body as Missy, the kind that can’t help but put the person inside of it at risk. I pointed this out the first time I stayed.
It’s really just to keep me from getting freaked out, she said. You know, to stop the head from running wild.
I slipped under the sheets in the guest bedroom. Through my half of the baby monitor, I could see Missy’s sleeping figure rising and falling in the blue, pixilated screen. It flickered. Her breathing came through static and broken.
It was midnight when I heard the crash. I switched on my lamp and then wondered if I shouldn’t have. Something was in the house. My pulse skidded. I looked at the baby monitor. Missy was asleep. I got out of bed and moved down the hall, slowly, a book in my right hand. I could see a dark shadow moving around the kitchen. It was large. The size of an adolescent black bear, maybe. I wished I’d read the flyer more carefully. In the wild, if you see a bear, you’re supposed to scream or clap your hands so it leaves you alone. I wasn’t sure if this was still true if the bear was inside a house. If it got spooked by the noise, where would it run to? I worried the walls and furniture might confuse it, make things worse.
I’d made up my mind to scream, at least so Missy would hear me through the monitor, when the shadow came into my view. I recognized him immediately. He was tall, broad shouldered, and thicker in the torso and legs than I remembered. My heart slowed. I let my head rest against the doorframe for a moment. He was holding a shattered plate, his large hands fumbling with the remaining ceramic shards. Two more broken plates were on the floor below him. I stepped into the kitchen and coughed.
Oh, the Olympian said, glancing up. Sorry I woke you.
He smiled, revealing a set of perfectly straight, white teeth.
Clumsy, he said, gesturing to the mess around him.
He had on sweats and a tight shirt. On the table sat a set of leather luggage embossed with the Olympic rings.
You must be one of Missy’s girls, he said.
I nodded. It was odd to hear Missy’s name come out of his mouth, even odder to hear myself be referred to as one of her girls.
I’m starving, the Olympian told me. Just got off a plane. Did Missy cook?
I shook my head. I wasn’t even sure Missy knew how to cook. I pointed him towards the leftovers from the pool, and he piled his plate high with cheese, meat. He leaned on one of the bar stools, pulled out the seat beside him and gestured for me to join.
Please, he said.
I situated myself on the stool.
I’d been with attractive men before, but the boyfriends I’d had—even the handful of men I’d gone home from bars with—seemed a different species entirely compared to the Olympian. I took extra care to keep from touching him, from bumping his elbow with mine. I could feel every inch of space separating my body from his, as though to reach out into it might cause the air between us to crystalize and shatter.
He paused his chewing to ask how long I was staying.
A week, I told him.
He let out a laugh.
It’s still funny to me, he said, shaking his head.
What is? I asked.
That she thinks you girls will be able to protect her. For a long time, the Olympian went on, it was just her and I up here.
Missy made it fun, he said, Activities, games. He laughed again.
She always kept us entertained, he said.
He told me how she used to accompany him when he trained abroad, how they spent hours alone together. I wasn’t sure what to say. I hadn’t known there was a wrong way to speak about a stepparent until the Olympian spoke about Missy. Only then did I notice it, the way it came off his tongue. He got up suddenly and went to the sink with his plate. It was easier to look at him from further away. Up close he was too handsome. Too much.
I left the Olympian in the kitchen, the way he’d talked about Missy clinging to my skin, making me sweat. It wasn’t until I was crawling back into the guest bed that the pieces of it stacked on top of each other: Missy’s oversized shirt, the picture, Guy’s perpetual absence. There was something there, between them. Wasn’t there? I stared at the ceiling. I could hear him, making his way up through the house. Was he going to see her, now? To be with her? I reached for the baby monitor, groped around in the dark until I found it. The screen was blank. I shook it once, then again. But it stayed dark. Missy’s half had been switched off.
The walls creaked. I could feel a blush edging down my spine. They weren’t related, technically. But it was wrong, surely, somehow. Wasn’t it unnatural behavior? Above me, I heard a cough, the faint sound of a door closing. I pictured the Olympian slipping into Missy’s enormous bed, cupping the soft ledge of her ribcage. I shuddered and pulled the duvet to my chin, listening hard. Missy was supposed to be his mother. She wasn’t, of course. It was only her role. And yet, still. Some kind of order had been broken.
The food chain, I thought for a moment, it was a disruption in the food chain.
But that wasn’t right. It wasn’t right.
In the morning, the Olympian sat at the kitchen table, a video of a race playing on his laptop. Men in ski suits so tight they looked naked, nylon fleshed, skimmed rapidly across a track of packed snow. Missy stood at the stove with a spatula in her hand.
Coffee? she offered. She pointed and, surprising me, flipped a pancake with the natural ease of any woman offering up an act of motherly love.
Have you two been introduced? she asked, glancing from the Olympian to me.
Oh yes, the Olympian said. We met last night.
He winked and sipped from his mug. I nodded stupidly. Missy stared. For a moment, I thought I saw her mouth shift, as if she’d smelled a piece of rotten fruit. And then it disappeared, and an aggressive smile took over her face all at once, as though she had no choice in the matter of her expression.
Wonderful, she said, turning back to the stove.
I sat beside the Olympian, listening carefully as he and Missy spoke, waiting for anything—a gesture, a word—that confirmed what I suspected. But they talked only of his skiing. How his training was going, what the coach was saying about the team. When he mentioned wanting to catch up on sleep before his red-eye that night, Missy told him his room was off-limits.
I’m turning it into a sewing studio today, is all she said.
I couldn’t picture Missy sewing. But it was all very ordinary. Very domestic.
I was cornered later that morning. She was sweeping outside the bathroom when I finished showering, holding one of those old-fashioned brooms—the kind with a stiff straw head and a heavy, dark handle. I’d seen it before, hung up as a quaint decoration in the sunroom.
He didn’t bother you last night, she asked. Did he? She looked at me closely.
No, I told her, startled by the question. He didn’t bother me at all.
Missy set the broom against the wall and suddenly she was pushing into me, wrapping both of her tiny hands around my wrist.
Are you sure, dear? she asked. Are you quite sure?
He was perfectly polite, I told her. I tried to extract myself from her grasp only to find she was holding tighter, her fingernails digging into my skin.
I’d like to know, Missy said. I’d like to know if he did anything he, you know, shouldn’t have.
Her eyes went wide, boring into mine with a desperate intensity I’d never seen on Missy. A deep embarrassment settled over me. How stupid, how hopelessly foolish, I thought, to assume she was in love with the Olympian. If she was asking me this then surely whatever was going on between the two of them was darker. Violent, maybe.
He has a habit, she went on, of becoming a little too friendly. No sense of boundaries, is what I mean.
Missy, I said, he was—She cut me off, drawing in a breath and nodding fervently.
Yes, she said, tell me. Tell me everything.
A perfect gentleman, I finished. He was a perfect gentleman.
Her gaze narrowed at this. She stared at me hard, lifting a brow.
He’s very handsome, isn’t he? she asked. She didn’t wait for my answer. She reached out, then, moving her grasp to my waist. Her fingers grazed the exposed skin between my shorts and the hem of my t-shirt.
Such a lovely figure, she said. So full.
I blushed, though it did not feel like a compliment, and as I stood there, Missy’s body pressed in close to mine, her smell thick and cottony, I saw that it wasn’t fear on her face. It was jealousy, or something close to it. Wasn’t it? She was asking if we’d been together, the Olympian and I. She wanted to know.
We barely spoke, I told her, because I didn’t know what else to say. I’d assumed it was the two of them who’d spent the night in each other’s arms.
She squeezed my hips again, this time pinching a roll of fat between her thumb and index finger. I felt suddenly aware of my stomach. How it hung over the lip of my shorts.
Well, Missy said, don’t be surprised if that changes.
She let go of me.
No sense of boundaries, she said, again. He’ll be making himself comfortable, I’m sure. But you don’t need to be nervous. Only do what you’d like.
Before picking the broom up, she ran the back of her palm over my cheek.
Your face looks much better tanned, she whispered. It’s good we laid out today.
And then she resumed moving the broom back and forth across the floor, whistling as she went. Her gestures were careless, as if imitating what she thought sweeping was, copied from a film or a book. A cough sounded behind us. We turned. The Olympian smiled, pointed at the bathroom door.
Ladies, he said. Nature calls.
Missy and I moved aside. He walked between us, brushing up against both of us at once.
I went to the guest room and sat on the bed. The pulse in my neck thrummed. I stood, sat down, stood again. I was reaching for my car keys when I noticed Missy’s half of the monitor. It’d been switched back on. She flitted in and out of the frame. I leaned in closer, trying to make sense of what I’d found myself in the middle of. If my initial suspicions were wrong, and Missy and the Olympian had never actually acted on whatever feelings simmered between them, it was not for lack of desire on Missy’s part. It was not for lack of wanting to.
I turned to look at myself in the mirror that hung above the guest bed. Missy was right. My face, though plain and too round, was prettier with a tan.
Only do what you’d like.
In a sudden rush that made my head light, it occurred to me that Missy’s invitation to lay out by the pool with her was not the gesture of generosity it seemed, but that she was preparing me for him. She wanted me with him.
I thought about how easy it would be to leave. I could be in my own bed by nightfall, if I wanted—the attic room in my parents’ house filled with heat and a deep darkness without the
shining glow of the baby monitor. It’d be even easier to pretend that whatever was happening here wasn’t. That Missy had never opened the door. That she hadn’t let me in.
The knock came a moment later. The Olympian stood in the doorway, shirtless. I was eye level with his chest, the Olympic rings tattooed across it in black ink. I had to look down. The slick chisel of his muscle caught in my throat, made me feel I’d done something wrong.
I was hoping I could lie down, he said, grinning. Sounds like my room is off limits.
Of course, I said, my gaze directed at the ground. It’s your house.
This was untrue. Really, it was Missy’s house. But I stepped aside. He strode forward. I grabbed my book, slid on my sandals. I was turning to leave when the Olympian stopped me. He touched my arm.
You don’t have to rush out, he said. I don’t bite.
He settled into the bed, leaning against the pillows. Then he patted his chest. He shrugged and grinned again, like the idea that we might lie down together had just then occurred to him. The assurance with which he turned his lips up at the edges, the ease of his gesture, filled my mouth with saliva, as if I were going to be sick. I swallowed. Behind him, hanging limply on the back of a chair, was Missy’s old bathing suit.
I touched my hip, remembering the heat of her fingers on my skin, the way she pinched at my fat. Was that the reason I’d been picked? My body, though just enough of a temptation to make the Olympian play whatever game she was playing, not seen as any kind of real threat.
But I could have something that Missy couldn’t, if I wanted it. It was probably the only thing I could have that Missy couldn’t.
I kicked off my sandals and got into bed beside the Olympian, letting my head rest against his naked chest. He moved his hand, slid it just under my shirt. My palms were slippery with sweat. I pressed them to the Olympian’s chest anyway, a thrill bubbling up between my lungs. His torso didn’t feel like something that was supposed to be touched. It didn’t feel human.
He was flexing for me. The obscene bulge of his pecs brought on another rush of queasiness. I moved my lips to the Olympian’s neck. He had his hands up my back, inching towards the clasp on my bra. Without moving my mouth, I reached around and pushed his fingers out of the way, unhooking the bra myself. I could feel it fall away from my skin the same way Missy’s had when I undressed her. When I was as close to her as I could ever imagine being.
I looked at the baby monitor. It was pointed at the door. I extended my arm and grabbed it. The small plastic orb felt light in my palm, like I could break it, if I wanted to, just by closing my hand. I set it back down, turning it so that the Olympian and I were in the frame. The Olympian’s body was heavy against mine. He didn’t try to stop me.
I only peeked into the camera for a second before turning back to him. But she was there. I’m sure she was. Leaning in to see us, her eyes steady and unblinking. Watchful, intent—a mother’s gaze.
I didn’t stay with Missy again. I wasn’t asked to.
That night, after the Olympian left to catch his red-eye, Missy picked up Chinese for dinner. We ate it on the couch together while a movie played. I had it figured out, I thought, Missy’s face in the camera evidence for the story I’d constructed, lying in the guest bed, after the Olympian tugged his clothes on and left: the camera, protecting Missy not from the bears but from herself.
But when I stole glances at her—wanting her to reveal that she’d seen us, that I’d done what she wanted me to do—she remained still, her face a locked door. Later, washing the dishes, we both went for the sink at once, bumping into each other. We paused, arms touching.
Sorry, I said. I didn’t see you.
That’s all right, dear, Missy said, smiling. I didn’t see you, either.
And then she leaned her weight into me ever so slightly, enough so that I had no choice but to step out of her way. The rest of my time with her was uneventful. Normal, even. Sometimes, as Missy and I clinked our glasses of wine, I wondered if I’d imagined her wild longing for the Olympian, imagined that she asked me to be with him in order to keep herself away. That I thought the whole thing up to fill the empty space in my head.
The bears turned into old news as summer dwindled on. There were a series of vulgar, spray-painted pictures graffitied onto the side of the high school gym, a strain of toxic bacteria detected in the reservoir. People had other things to think about and it seemed as though the bears had got their fill. They stopped breaking into houses and instead limited themselves to the occasional
bird feeder or dumpster. I glimpsed them only on the outskirts of the woods, closer to where they belonged.
In late August, I ran up Mount Pinnacle just before dark. My mother made me take a whistle and pepper spray, in case I happened upon that which both she and Missy feared: a creature so habituated—so domesticated, as Missy would say—that it’d become a danger.
I complained, to which my mother responded that she was only acting as any good parent would.
Jogging up Mount Pinnacle, I became aware of myself in the way that I always did when I ran. My calves hummed. My lungs inflated and pushed against my chest. I could picture my DNA swirling around in the blood that pumped out from my heart. At the top, I stopped to catch my breath and look out at the green fields, the reservoir. I put a hand to my brow and squinted against the setting sun. I was about to turn back down the trail when I spotted it. An easy house to pick out. The only one for miles that wasn’t surrounded by trees, everything natural cleared out of the way.
I wondered if Guy was home or if someone else was staying with Missy. One of her girls, not yet back for the night, having left Missy to wander amongst the furniture and walls. Missy, alone, turning the locks against whatever might walk in right through her front door.
Kieran Mundy’s work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, Joyland and elsewhere, and has been recognized in Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2017 and 2019. She’s the recipient of Gulf Coast’s 2020 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose, judged by Jenny Offill. Kieran holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Oregon, and her work has been funded by the Vermont Studio Center. She currently lives in Bend, OR where she is at work on a short story collection.
25 March 2022
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