And yes, I am lonely. This loneliness is not a godlike presence, like the fear, just a cringing small thing dwelling close to my heart. Each night, I think of Mom and Pop, and Erik wherever he went, and Cat and even friends from grade school, and I miss them unbearably. I cry a little and feel sorry for myself. I feel unprotected and disconnected. At these moments, I curl up on my cot, more like a grub than a fetus, cringing away from my distance from everyone. “Where are you?” I ask everyone I ever loved. Then, as I drift off to sleep in my curl I think of the comfort of spooning back-to-belly with your loved one, and of course it’s Matt, and then I wake and fling his memory from even my loneliness. I will be lonely for the whole human race, but not him.
It hurts to be this lonely curled grub.
This process is the woods prying me open, can-opening me, to expose fears and senses and awarenesses and feelings and instincts that have always been in there. That’s good, isn’t it? Isn’t that what I wanted in coming here?
No. I was supposed to come to a hard-won understanding of myself, a tough-love relationship with my life. Atone for past sins. True, in the background I harbored carefully suppressed, more optimistic aspirations. To the extent I hoped for any deeper self-awareness, I was supposed to serenely discover insightful but conventional perspectives on my past, my family, my relationships—all the usual. It was also about remaking myself as bolder, sturdier, independent, more capable. Maybe, my most idealistic inner voices piped, I’d even get healed by unexpectedly touching a nurturing Gaia, learning earthy wisdom, accepting nature’s gentle embrace. Hasn’t worked that way. I am over all that.
And I’m striking out on the job front. Applied for a couple teaching positions, didn’t get called for interviews. I can only wonder what my recommendation letters say.
I am considering leaving, calling the experiment a bust. Maybe Brassard will let me off the hook and give me some of my money back. Maybe I’ll move back to Boston, try for a job at some other school. Get real again, pretend to be like real people.
Chapter 7
I did not buy my land with the intent to totally isolate myself. While I badly wanted some distance from my prior life, I never intended to become a hermit.
I’d closed my Facebook page the year before, at the peak of my catastrophes, so I didn’t have to read my friends’ happy inane postings. But I still drove to the public library in Montpelier to check in on friends’ pages, make telephone calls, and send emails inviting people to visit me “in my new digs.” I even wrote an actual paper letter to my friend Cat—Catherine—which I actually put into Brassard’s mailbox. I put up the little red metal flag, and the US Postal Service actually picked it up and delivered it. (The Postal Service cars here are privately owned, typically back-road-weary SUVs with nothing to differentiate them from any other car but their jerry-rigged right-hand drive and some yellow flashers on their roof racks.)
Cat thought getting a paper letter was a hoot. Never reciprocated, but said she’d love to visit.
We met in eighth grade, made it through high school by protecting each other’s back from the daggers of other girls, went to different colleges but shared an apartment for a year or so after graduation—the first place either of us had lived “on our own.” She has brittle blond hair that makes her look caffeinated and frenetic even when she’s not. She’s skinny, runs half marathons, eats a lot of meat, drives an old BMW that costs more in repairs than she’d pay on a new car loan. Her cynical outlook helps make her a superb middle school teacher: that withering ironic wit gives voice to the students’ contempt for government and convention and adults and racists and routine, and they love her for it.
She’d been through more boyfriends than I had in our years as friends—a diverse lot. One was a tubby, shy, big-bearded hospice nurse who tended to mumble and grope for words yet was a marvelous poet; another was a buff Harley rider who managed a car-detailing shop. She spent a year with a Pakistani man, Sandeep: smart, great sense of humor, handsome, a financial advisor at some big firm. And others. She was almost always the one to break it off with them.
Ordinarily, one is well advised to avoid commentary on another’s choices in love. Cat and I were always candid about men, jobs, families, and our bodies, but over the years we’d developed an unspoken compact that if one of us didn’t offer to talk about something, the other didn’t press the issue.
With Sandeep, though, I felt compelled to say something. They just seemed to fit. He was clearly devoted to her, and from what she told me, they really hit it off in bed. They seemed enthusiastic about each other until the day she cut him off.
I approached it with trepidation: “Cat, I love you, right? I like to think I know you pretty well. So forgive me for sticking my nose in, but, I mean, of course I don’t know all the nuances of your relationship with Sandeep, but—”
“Spit it out,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“I think you’re making a mistake. I really think you’re doing the wrong thing this time. I think you’re being … like, crazy.” I kept eye contact with her to make sure she knew I meant it. Then I went ahead with the hard part: “Sometimes I think you’re … running away from something.”
Deadpan, she gave it a couple of beats and then said briskly, “Good. Forgiven. Thanks for being honest with me, sweetie.” As she left the room, she couldn’t help but call back one little jab: “Let me know if you want his phone
