The Retreat
by Lila Flavin
Art by Vanessa Leung
Lenny walked the dog on the path along the train track. It was spring and the dog’s belly was damp from the dewy grass. The leash was in Lenny’s right hand and then it wasn’t. The hard plastic of the handle banged behind the dog. “Rosie, Rosie!” The dog ran towards the train-track. At first, Lenny kept her voice calm. She didn’t want to spook the animal. The sound of the train’s wheels on the track got closer, the toots coming at closer intervals. The horn blew.
“Rosie!” Now Lenny yelled. She didn’t care about sounding calm. The dog didn’t stop or even look back. In Rosie’s frightful little mind, the plastic handle of the leash was a predator chasing her. The faster the dog ran, the faster the plastic handle chased her. The hair on Rosie’s back stood straight up. Her ears were pinned back.
There was a moment, before the train hit the dog, when Lenny stopped running. She pulled the collar of her jacket over her eyes. Just before the train hit Rosie, the dog let out the shrillest of squeaks. It was a pitiful sound; the same one Rosie used to make when someone accidentally stepped on her paw, but it was one that would stay with Lenny, live inside her nostrils, her ears, her mouth, for days after.
You have to look, she told herself after the train had passed. You have to turn your head and look. She didn’t want to look. She was sure the dog was dead. If she didn’t look, she could remember Rosie as she’d looked this morning, legs tucked beneath her on the bed, watching Lenny dress. And yet, she looked. She looked at the train track and for weeks and even months after she would wish she hadn’t. Later, she would think that if she just hadn’t looked, things would be better. Things would go back to normal.
When she got home, Lenny took down the pictures of their dog from the refrigerator, stashed them in the drawer where they kept sandwich bags. When Joy came home, Lenny wished she could cry so Joy would know something was wrong. Joy walked into the kitchen, put their keys in the bowl, and opened the fridge. Lenny stood at the counter, hands in fists. Joy took out a beer and it hissed as they opened it. Looking towards the open door, where the dog was usually perched on the end of the bed, they said: “Where’s the little Rosie?”
“Joy,” Lenny took a step towards her partner.
“Lenny, where is Rosie?” Joy walked around the kitchen, looking under the chair, and behind the stove.
“Joy, I’m so sorry.” Why couldn’t Lenny cry? She needed to feel something but all she was aware of was Joy’s panic, and how much she didn’t want Joy to hate her.
When she told Joy what happened, her voice didn’t break. She was steady, just like at work when she had to get twenty third-graders to line up and walk silently from gym class to snack time. She reported the events to Joy exactly as they’d happened, except she left out the part about Rosie’s dying squeak. She had to protect Joy from these kinds of details.
She started to tell Joy about the clean-up crew that had come, the collar she had managed to retrieve from under the track.
“Stop it!” Joy sat in the stool at the counter, face in their hands, palms soaked with tears. “Stop calling her ‘The dog’. She has a fucking name.”
“I know she does,” Lenny took the beer from the counter and tipped it into her mouth. Maybe she should get drunk, maybe then she could cry. Lenny was envious of her partner’s tears. Lenny didn’t feel anything except frustration, and now dread. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She and Rosie had been having a nice afternoon together. She had planned to make ratatouille with the left over eggplant and zucchini in the fridge. The vegetables would rot now.
Joy slept on the floor of their office for a week after Rosie died, using the dog bed as a pillow, replaying videos of the dog on their lap, zooming in on frozen images of the animal’s eyes, one brown and one yellow.
The following weekend, Joy made Lenny take them to the place where it happened. Lenny took them twenty feet further down the track, worrying irrationally that there would be some remain of Rosie that would disturb Joy. Joy’s pockets were full of the dog’s toys; they hadn’t changed out of sweatpants all week. Joy took one of the toys out of their pocket, and threw it at Lenny’s foot. It was in the shape of a seahorse with hard plastic eyes.
“Why’d you do that?” Lenny said.
“Do what?”
“You just threw a toy at me.”
“I threw it at the ground next to you.”
“Are we going to do this or what?” Lenny said.
Joy shook their head.
“What?” Lenny could hear the dog’s squeaking noise coming back, coming in through the air around her. She wanted Joy to yell at her so she could hear something else.
“I’m not going to fight with you,” Joy said.
Lenny didn’t answer. She picked up the toy at her foot and pushed her thumb into its belly again and again to hear the noise. She sat the seahorse up along the train track, patting down the fabric where Rosie had chewed it. Crouching down on the ground, knees pulled into her chest, she begged for tears to come. She needed Joy to see her tears. I’m sorry Rosie, Lenny thought to herself. That’s what she was supposed to think in moments like this, wasn’t it? Her next thought was: Can I go home now?
Joy came up behind her, kneeling down. Lenny felt their breath on her neck. Her body responded to the closeness of Joy, the sweet smell of Joy’s shampoo, a tingle running down her middle. Lenny wanted so badly for Joy to touch her. They had only brushed hips against one other accidentally since the incident. Lenny closed her eyes and imagined Joy’s forehead leaning into her back, fingers pushing along Lenny’s spine. Joy was more muscular than Lenny; she missed the way her partner’s body absorbed her. Now there existed a force field between their two bodies.
Vanessa Leung, Adaptive Lighting I, Charcoal on Kraft Paper
The rest of the weekend Lenny cleaned while Joy sat on the couch eating chips. Joy ate chips when they were angry, or sad, or depressed, or stressed. Lenny could hear the chewing from their bedroom: angry, quick, loud chews. Lenny threw out the dog food in the plastic container by the fridge. She hid the water bowl under the sink. When Joy went to the bathroom, she vacuumed the dog hair off the couch. She threw away the red antlers she’d bought for a holiday party that snapped around the dog’s jaw.
She and Joy went to get bagels on Sunday and didn’t have to watch the dog from the store window to make sure she was okay. Sunday night when it was raining, Lenny felt relieved she wouldn’t get wet taking the dog out; then she felt guilty that she was relieved.
“Should we still go away?” Joy said later that week. It had been twelve days since the accident. They’d booked a cabin at the retreat center months ago, picking it specifically because it was dog-friendly, with a large backyard for Rosie to run after squirrels. Lenny put down the sponge. She wanted to leave this place where the couch still smelled like Rosie. Yesterday, she’d found a cow hoof under the bed. It was the only thing that would keep Rosie quiet. She was so excited by the prospect of going somewhere, anywhere, with Joy that she forgot to wash the soap suds off her hand.
“You’re dripping water on the floor,” Joy said.
Lenny went to get a paper towel and realized they were out. She hadn’t been grocery shopping that week. Lenny usually loved running errands, or rather enjoyed the satisfaction after she completed an errand. She’d lie in bed at night and think of what she’d accomplished that day, and if it was enough, she would sleep well. But since the accident, she made double the number of to-do lists. She’d start a new one every day, a new one every few hours. As long as there were things to do, she could keep going with her life and forget the sound of the dog’s squeak. She made the lists but she didn’t complete the tasks, each day losing confidence that she was capable of it. It was easier to let go, to watch the paths collide, to keep filling more pieces of paper with tasks she would never complete. They had to get out of this apartment. Then their life could get its direction back. The retreat center was exactly what they needed.
Lenny packed on the Thursday before their weekend trip. She took four pairs of leggings, two short-sleeve shirts, two long-sleeves and tucked them into the tote bag. She wrapped the muddy sneakers in a plastic bag and lay them on top. Three long nights by the side of a creek. There would be running trails and fishing poles if they felt like it. They’d have three meals a day in a dining hall.
The next morning, Lenny brought the coffee cups into the bedroom. She handed Joy the cup of black coffee. Joy sipped it with a slurping noise as Lenny sat down on her side of the bed, blowing on her creamy cup of coffee, envious that Joy’s mouth could withstand the hot liquid in a way hers could not. Joy set the coffee down, picking up the sweatpants that were inside out and stretched across the floor like silly string and dropping them in the bag. Joy threw in a few sports bras that were on the floor. They used to find Rosie asleep in Joy’s piles of clothes.
“What else do we need besides running clothes?”
“Pajamas?”
Joy opened a drawer that spilled over with jeans and button-downs. Joy pulled out a sweatshirt and detangled it from a t-shirt wedged inside the sleeve, throwing both in the bag. Lenny’s dressers were sorted by item. Workout clothes in one drawer, work pants in another. But Joy’s drawers were a potpourri. Joy’s life didn’t require the same structures that hers did. Lenny had learned to love this about her partner, that they could pick their way through relative disorder and come out looking beautiful. When they first moved in together, Lenny used to dump Joy’s clothes out on the bed, folding and categorizing them. “Isn’t this nice?” she’d say. “Don’t you like knowing what you’ll find when you open a drawer?”
“I guess,” Joy would say; but in a few days, it’d be back to potpourri.
Joy kicked the weekend bag into the kitchen. This was when Rosie would have started noisily circling them. She would have noticed the jackets they pulled on, the keys rattling in the bowl by the door, and begun to whine.
When they walked out to the car, Joy went to the driver’s seat. Lenny would have been the one holding the leash as Rosie tried to jump into the front seat, climb her way into Joy’s lap. Lenny would have had to hold Rosie by the collar to keep her from jumping towards Joy. Eventually, when they got going, Rosie would settle onto the elbow rest, looking out at the road ahead, tail wagging slowly back and forth. Lenny put her feet up on the dashboard. She could never do that while Rosie was on her lap.
“Babe, I can’t see when you do that,” Joy said. It was the first time Joy has said ‘babe’ since the incident.
As they maneuvered their way out of the city and finally onto the highway, Lenny reached a hand across the gear shift. Her hand was inches from Joy’s but she couldn’t bring herself to touch them, anticipating the recoil of Joy’s body to hers. Joy had already downloaded their podcasts for the road an hit play on the phone that rested on the empty elbow rest.
“That’s awful,” Joy mumbled as they listened to the report of an earthquake in Guatemala. Joy rubbed their lips together, shaking their head at the road. The radio announcer’s voice was chirpy: Is this something we should come to expect? Said the radio announcer. Will there be a greater frequency of earthquakes in the next 10 years?
“These kids were so young,” Joy said. “Just little children heading to a normal day at school.”
Lenny let out a sound that she hoped sounded comforting. Joy’s whole mood could be changed by a difficult story on the news. After a shooting last year, Joy stayed in the chair at the kitchen counter for two hours, refusing to eat dinner. They sat with Rosie in their lap and said over and over again: “I cannot believe this is our world.”
Lenny didn’t react this way to world events. When there was a tsunami, or another missile testing, Lenny woke up at the same time she always did. She did her morning meditation, flossed her teeth, toasted a rice cake for breakfast. The more the world seemed to crumble, the more she stuck to her routines and refused to acknowledge that the foundation was shaking.
Sometimes, Joy’s reactions frustrated her. “Just don’t listen,” she would say. “Just turn it off.” She couldn’t tell if the news made Joy feel things or if the news gave Joy permission to feel what they already did. At least Joy knew if they were sad or angry: Lenny’s emotions were so deeply buried under the routine; if she could just get herself to put the dishes away then the feeling would not topple her. But she would also never know the weather of her life the way Joy did.
Joy changed the station, strummed their fingers along the top of the wheel in tune with the music. They passed the sign welcoming them to New Hampshire.
“Welcome to New Hampshire,” echoed the cell phone.
“Isn’t it cool how they know when we cross a state line?” Lenny said. She didn’t actually think it was cool. She was just making conversation.
“It’s creepy,” Joy said.
When they pulled into a rest stop, Joy walked ahead of Lenny into the shop.
There was a couple huddled over cheeseburgers. The pair had matching haircuts, their bodies spilling over their chairs. The couple watched Joy walking by, looked at Joy then back at one other. One of them said something to the other while dipping the ground meat into the ketchup. The couple were considering Joy, trying to figure Joy out. Lenny sped up. Lenny didn’t want to see these people watch Joy.
In Lenny’s world, she was always imagining people were thinking about her. She was worrying that the person behind the register realized she didn’t tip. People were not actually considering Lenny. Lenny was petite and white, with bangs that brushed her eyebrows, and small wrists. There was nothing about Lenny or her presentation that confused this hamburger-eating couple, or anyone else for that matter.
She stood close to Joy as the two of them made their way to the bathroom, approaching the women’s bathroom.
Lenny had learned that people actually were staring at Joy, thinking about Joy, sometimes even fearing Joy. They were trying to figure out whether Joy had the jaw of a man or a woman, whether that chest was of a thin woman or of a petite man. Was Joy Latino? Black? Filipino? Joy was biracial, half-black, half-white, and there was a look of relief on people’s faces when Joy revealed this about themselves, the mystery of where they belonged having been temporarily resolved.
After they exited the side-by-side stalls, the two of them walked back through the fast food stalls, the massage chairs, the machine with a fork to grab at stuffed animals. There was a boy pushing the buttons on the machine while watching Joy, head tipped to the side. “People are staring,” Joy said loudly.
“I know,” Lenny said in a near whisper. Lenny had to resist the urge to say: “No they’re not.” Because even though she could see that they were, she wanted to create a made-up world where they did not. She wanted to believe in this made-up world where she and Joy could pack their bags and head anywhere. She’d spent the first twenty-five years of her life going on trips with her family, and her mostly white friends, believing that this world that welcomed her wherever she went was the only one that existed.
Joy ordered diet coke. Lenny stood at the counter surveying the menu. As a child, she’d taken trips on this same highway with her family. They’d stop here. She would get the apple pie that came in a cardboard container, waiting several long minutes until the sugary apple spread was cool enough to eat.
“I’ll have an ice cream sundae with chocolate sprinkles and whipped cream,” Lenny said.
“You will?” Joy looked at their phone. “Doesn’t the dining hall open at six?”
“I want it,” Lenny said. Lenny had some feeling, some feeling she couldn’t identify, some feeling she would prefer not to feel. The ice cream would fix it. If she ate the ice cream, she would be the child sitting in the back of her parent’s car, driving up north. She would not be upset that Rosie was dead and that people were staring.
It worked. They got back in the car. They didn’t have to let Rosie out to pee. They could just keep driving. Lenny put her feet up, and things were better.
She put on the album they’d listened to when she and Joy first met four years before. It was the first concert they’d been to together. Back then, Joy still used ‘she’ pronouns. Joy was wearing overalls that night and kept one of the straps unhooked. Joy weighed more, had softer cheeks, stud earrings. They’d sat outdoors, Joy putting the flannel around both their heads as the rain came down.
“Let’s go to more concerts together,” Lenny had said. It was presumptuous. They’d only been on a few dates. Every time Joy texted her after an outing together, she smiled at the screen. She’d had the urge to climb inside her phone and surround herself with Joy’s words, winking emojis, and seductive selfies. From the beginning, she knew there would be more dates with Joy, maybe more concerts, but definitely more dates. Joys eyes didn’t flit from place to place like the other people in Lenny’s life had. Joy leaned in when Lenny talked, the room getting smaller around the two of them. Even back then, back when Joy wore earrings and called themselves Lenny’s girlfriend, Joy existed in this middle place, between woman and man, sometimes veering closer to one or the other, but only momentarily, before shifting to something else. Joy’s gender changed flexibly, powerfully, and yet Lenny had never been with anyone who was so solidly grounded to this world, to her world.
“Want some?” Lenny said spooning the whipped cream onto the plastic spoon.
Joy shook their head.
“Just a little. Please, I want you to.”
“Stop it Lenny.”
She put the spoon back. The ice cream didn’t taste good anymore.
“Not too fast,” Lenny said as Joy signaled for the exit. The four-lane highway led off into a gravel road. Outlet stores and chain hotels turned into crumbling farms and empty pastures. Joy turned right and the road became dirt. There were evergreens lined up like peaceful soldiers. Welcome to Singing Tree read the sign in white paint.
“Finally,” Joy said. Joy eased off the gas, shifting the car into park. Rosie would have noticed the slowing of the car. She would have perched herself in the armrest between them and started to whine, a desperate high-pitched sound that came from the back of the miniature dog’s mouth. Joy was always the one to get irritated first. “Rosie shut up,” Joy would say.
“That isn’t effective,” Lenny would have replied. Lenny had a higher tolerance for sensory disturbances than Joy did. Five years as a schoolteacher had taught her that. Joy on the other hand was a web designer, helping run a college test prep agency. They worked from home, with Rosie always beside them on the couch, shifting between online conference windows, paging through SAT prep books.
The path had large brown puddles and Joy walked on their tiptoes to keep from dirtying their white sneakers. Lenny marched right through in her hiking boots.
The bells along the top of the door jingled as Joy stepped in with Lenny behind.
“Please wipe your feet,” said the woman behind the counter. She had stringy brown hair pulled tight around her ears and cinched into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Red reading glasses sat low on her nose.
They stomped their feet up and down on the welcome mat with a print of three fat bulldogs. Joy didn’t look at Lenny as the two of them stomped.
The woman finished two more lines in her notebook. The handwriting was small, cursive wedged together with barely any spaces between the words. She dotted three “i”s and crossed a “t.” She pushed the glasses back up on her nose. She looked at Joy then at Lenny then back at Joy.
“We’re checking in,” Lenny said brightly, too brightly. Lenny felt responsible. She chose this place. She grew up going to places like this. She needed Joy to like this so they could build a life where they escaped, where there were clear streams with speckled pebbles at the bottom, where it smelled like cow manure instead of human trash. Lenny hoped that this would make up for the fact that Joy would likely be the only person of color here.
“What’s the name?” said the woman. She opened a drawer, pulled out a binder with neatly stacked papers.
Lenny said her last name.
The woman slid a finger down the page. The nail was appropriately long, filed into a point, with clear polish. She looked up, eyes on Joy, said: “You must be Lenny. I’ll need the credit card you used to book the reservation.”
“I’m Lenny. That’s Joy.”
The woman looked between them. “Ok. Well, I’ll still need that credit card.”
Joy rolled their eyes, stuck both hands in their front pockets.
Lenny smiled, “Right of course, it’s right here.”
“And it’s a fifty-dollar deposit for the dog.”
“There’s no dog,” Lenny said.
“If you’re hiding a dog, I’ll find it.”
“There’s no dog,” Lenny and Joy both said together.
Vanessa Leung, Adaptive Lighting II, Charcoal on Kraft Paper
They walked to the car to get their bags. “She was rude,” Joy said.
“Miserable woman,” Lenny said. Adding, “She was in a terrible mood.” When Lenny was alone, she could ignore the moods of strangers. They had nothing to do with her and it was unproductive to dwell on something she could not change. When she was alone, the moods of stranger was just another element of the environment, like dim lighting or hardwood floors. But when she was with Joy, the moods of strangers were a code she could not unravel. Was the stranger grumpy because it was raining? Or did Joy’s gender ambiguity make that person uncomfortable? Where they blatantly racist or just unconsciously so?
When they got to the cabin, lined their bags up in the hallway and kicked their shoes off, Joy slumped into the couch with their phone while Lenny dragged her suitcase into the bedroom. She began to fill the drawers one by one with her belongings.
Joy would never unpack. Their bag would be unzipped on the floor. When they needed something, they would dig their hands around until they felt for the texture or fabric they needed for the occasion.
The two of them would have taken the dog out at least twice by now. Rosie would have been too distracted sniffing at tree stumps, licking puddles of water, rubbing her nose against damp ferns, or chasing the bird hopping by. Finally, finally, after several minutes she would have lifted a leg—she peed like a boy dog, humped small dogs like one, too.
Lenny walked up behind the couch, felt her chest tighten as she saw the image on Joy’s phone screen. It was a photo of the dog in Joy’s lap, head tucked under Joy’s chin, belly exposed. Joy had the dog’s paw in their hand. It was a live photo, and as Joy touched a finger to the screen the dog’s paw moved, eyes flicked to the right, like she was saying hello or goodbye.
Lenny shifted a hand onto the back of the couch. Joy’s thumb moved to the button on the side of the phone and the image of Rosie disappeared, replaced by a blackened screen.
Vanessa Leung, Adaptive Lighting III, Charcoal on Kraft Paper
The dining hall was made of the same wood as the cabin—a waxy brown. There was a buffet at the center, different color vegetables with long black ladles covered by a silver tin roof. The tables were long, seated fourteen, fanning around the buffet. A group of guests were all huddled at one corner, skinny boys with prominent brand-new Adam’s apples and sleeveless shirts.
“Looks like a rowing team,” Lenny said.
“So many white people,” Joy said and headed for the table farthest from the group of boys.
Joy didn’t do communal tables. There were people Joy liked, loved, adored, would do anything for, and then everyone else. Lenny liked new people; there was no reference point, no history. New people were easy. All Lenny had to do was smile, ask three to four follow-up questions, and nod her head encouragingly. But when she was with Joy, these new people always held the potential to reveal themselves as something else.
Joy took a large piece of brown bread, spread a thick coat of soft butter along the surface. They took a bite, butter lining the top lip before licking it away. Lenny assembled her plate like an FDA food chart. One-quarter protein, one quarter vegetables, half whole grain. Joy skipped the beans and vegetables, stopping at the end of the buffet line, fighting the tongs to get the slippery spaghetti onto their plate. The two of them sat at the end of the long table, closest to the wall. Joy moved the napkin holder in front of them to shield them from the other diners.
The door to the dining hall opened with a jingle of the bells. It was a couple, a man and a woman. The man walked ahead of the woman, shoulders pressed back like he was holding something between his scapulae. He looked at the table with the high-schoolers then steered his wife towards their side of the dining hall. Joy’s jaw tightened. Please don’t sit here, Lenny thought. Normally, she would be rooting for this couple, engaging with strangers a welcome distraction from the long stretches of quiet between her and Joy these last few weeks. But not tonight.
“These taken?” he said. He slid the chair along the ground and it made a squeak. When they returned with the food, the woman’s plate green, the man’s beige, he dropped himself into the chair with an “ergahh” sound. He adjusted the belt on his pants.
Lenny’s teeth felt tight. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
“Where y’all from?” he said.
She responded with the truth, but no follow-up questions for him.
“What do y’all do for work?” he asked.
Lenny continued to resist this conversation, impossibly, like trying to walk on a treadmill set to run. They were seated too close together in a sea of empty tables. If there were other diners around them, if they’d been forced to sit closer due to space constraints, then maybe they could have sat in silence.
“What made you choose this place?” the wife said. She must have been the wife. They had matching gold bands on their left hands. She wiped at the corners of her mouth, a stain of red lipstick across the napkin.
“The dog,” Joy said, looking right at the man for the first time since they’d sat down.
“What kind of dog?”
“Mini poodle,” replied Joy.
“Too cute,” said the wife. “Ours is a chocolate lab. How old is yours?”
“She’s two. She was the runt of the litter. I kept walking by her in the window of the pet store in our neighborhood. Finally, I just went in there and bought her with my credit card.”
“I didn’t even get a heads up,” Lenny said. “I came home and all of a sudden we had a dog.”
“That must have been a wonderful surprise,” the woman said.
“You could say that,” Lenny said.
“Lenny was very happy, eventually. We were all happy.”
“They should play together tomorrow. There’s a big fenced-in area that way. We brought Bernie just before dinner.”
“Well my dog isn’t here. We had the dog when we booked the place.”
They waited, presumably for further explanation.
Lenny sliced a carrot with the side of her fork. The carrot was overcooked and she pushed too hard so the fork screeched against the plate.
“My dog died two weeks ago,” Joy says.
“Aww, but I though you said she was only two?”
“She was two.”
“So, what happened?”
“There was an accident,” Joy said, staring at the couple, refusing to meet Lenny’s eyes.
“What kind of accident?”
“Little Rosie was hit by a train.”
The woman gasped and the man pawed at her shoulder affectionately. “That’s just terrible. Oh my gosh. If anything like that happened to Bernie, I just simply couldn’t go on. You poor thing. You must be in pieces.”
“I am.” Joy leaned in towards the middle of the table.
“Did Rosie run away? What was she doing by the train tracks? I mean of course you don’t have to tell me if it’s too painful.”
Lenny was stuck between wanting to move and wanting to stay perfectly still.
“Lenny was walking her, and I guess, what did you say it was again Lenny? The leash fell? Dropped from your hand?”
Lenny shook her head. A chair squeaked and she felt the sound in her bones. This wasn’t happening. Joy wouldn’t do this to her. Joy wouldn’t make her go back to that day, not here in front of these strangers, not now on their retreat from it all.
“Anyways, the leash fell, one way or another, and the dog was killed.”
“But why would Rosie do that?” The woman said.
Lenny had the urge to hit this woman she didn’t know.
“Why would she run towards a train?”
“I have no idea,” Joy said. “She was such a smart dog.”
They all looked at Lenny. She wasn’t going to do it. Lenny wasn’t going to explain herself, not here, to these people she barely knew. She didn’t owe them anything.
“She wasn’t that smart,” Lenny said. They sat in silence while Lenny chewed the remainder of her carrots, the sogginess sticking in her throat.
Lenny stood up, picked up her plate, and walked away without pushing her chair in.
She didn’t look at the table as she kept walking past the buffet line, to the heavy front door. She pushed it open with both hands and smelled the wet grass.
She walked down the path past their cabin to the stream, crouching down beside it, sticking her fingers in the cold, watching the water redirect around her. There were two small fish, almost translucent. They got close, centimeters from her fingers and then swam away. She opened and closed her fingers, trying to get closer to the fish.
It happened once when Joy was away at a conference. Rosie had sat by the front door whining for two hours. Lenny had already taken Rosie out for a walk, fed her, given her more water. There was nothing Rosie needed except Joy. “Stop it,” she’d said. “Just stop.” She shouted it: “Shut up!” She pulled the dog’s collar hard, forcing her away from the door. Lenny wanted to pick up the dog and hurl it’s twenty-pound body against the wall. Instead, she’d wrapped her fingers around the dog’s middle and squeezed, just a little, just to make Rosie be quiet for a moment, to make Rosie obey her.
It was her neediness, the way Rosie relied on them for everything, food, shelter, water, love. There’d been moments when she wanted to lift Rosie up and throw her just to do something different than what Rosie expected. She would never actually do it. There was no part of her that lacked restraint, if anything there was too much restraint in Lenny.
But this is what scared her the most, this is what kept her from completing the to-do list, from cuddling her body around Joy the way she used to before the incident. What if the leash hadn’t slipped? What if she had let go? What if the evil part of her that she had always known would destroy this one good thing in her life had finally been set free?
She’d been having a lovely day with the dog. The dog hadn’t whined once. The dog’s joy was infectious that day. She hadn’t wanted the dog to die. But what if that part of her, that part that wanted to cause harm, had been like a serpent invisible to her in the tall grass? What if it had snuck in and infected her, made her hands slip from that leash? How could she carry forward, how could she go on letting Joy love her, building a home together, and going away on nice trips, when that serpent could bite at any time?
She ran her fingers along the pebbles at the bottom of the stream. She picked one up, clasped it in her hand and then threw it as hard as she could against a tree.
There was a squish of leaves behind her, a clearing of throat that could only belong to Joy.
Lenny turned around: Joy was there, a hand in each of their front pockets. Lenny felt it again, the clenching inside of her, the involuntary reaction of her body to Joy’s. Joy had pulled on an extra layer, a winter jacket that was overkill on this fifty-degree summer night.
“Hi,” Joy said.
“Hi,” Lenny said dropping the rock she’d been prepared to throw.
Joy came to stand next to her, their shoulders inches apart.
They stood watching the stream, hearing the water rush around the larger stones. “Lenny?”
She was crying. It was a slow trickle, like a faucet left on, but behind it, there was more.
Joy shifted a hip towards Lenny. She smelled Joy, the sweetness, the shampoo they shared. Joy slid a finger between the dimples on Lenny’s back.
She shook her head up and down, tears changing course along her cheeks. She wanted Joy to keep touching her.
There were questions running through her head, a deluge of questions, words, ricocheting inside the walls of her, but she couldn’t open her mouth. She kicked a rock and it stumbled into the water.
Joy grabbed hold of her, squeezing their arms around Lenny’s middle, so tight it made Lenny stop breathing. Joy’s nails pressed into her. It hurt.
Joy was looking straight at her, their grip firm. Joy stepped in closer, until the tips of their shoes were touching.
Lenny felt her muscles loosen, her lungs give in to the pressure around her ribs.
Joy held her like someone who had all the power to decide what happened next.
Vanessa Leung, Adaptive Lighting IV, Charcoal on Kraft Paper
