She slipped out of her sweatpants and thermal shirt, swept them into a pile with pointed toes, and stepped into the claw-foot tub. It was deeper than their old tub, and she inhaled the steam rising from the hot water. With her calves propped on the opposite rim, she gazed at her knees, her feet. They splayed out in opposite directions, a sign of her effortless turnout. There were hard knobs on the tops of her toes from decades of pointe work. Her black hair draped over the edge of the white porcelain, and she felt the warm air coming up from the vent stirring it. The furnace in the basement was doing its job, sending heat out through its veins.
This was what she needed. After nearly three months of turmoil, of deconstructing the status quo, finally she could relax. Her limbs melted into the water, though her thoughts weren’t as easy to soothe.
Her body, when it was moving, stretching, spinning, leaping, was a wonder that made her grateful. A machine of muscle and flesh. But lying back, naked, unmoving, all she saw were bones and the flat angles of her stomach. She looked more like a stick insect than a woman.
Friends called her exotic, but Orla had never figured out why her strangeness was so appealing to people. She gave the impression of towering over her husband when in fact she was only an inch taller than Shaw. But everything about her was long, exaggerated. Even her facial features. A couple of her less politically correct friends enjoyed asking new acquaintances to guess her ethnicity. They’d say Greek, Persian, Italian, Israeli, Peruvian, Syrian. When they gave up, she told them she was just another Generican—a generic American. But that never satisfied their curiosity. So she’d tell them about her Venezuelan/Irish mother, and her Filipino/French/American father. Then they’d ask, “How many languages do you speak?” only to be disappointed by her answer. Being a Generican who spoke only English didn’t fit with people’s idea of who they thought she should be.
She carried these dichotomies with her, the half-admirable/half-disappointing realities of her life. Not quite a woman of the world. Not quite a star in her field. Not quite beautiful in any traditional sense. Other women expressed envy for her slenderness, but Orla longed for a little flesh, some softness to her breasts. She’d never loved her body more than when she was pregnant, and when everyone marveled at how quickly she returned to her pre-pregnancy physique, Orla missed the roundness, the goddess she had briefly been.
Shaw’s physical attraction to her had always been strong, but that was only one element of her intrigue; by example, she kept him motivated to keep forging ahead with his difficult, and sometimes elusive, creative goals. He’d enjoyed being a stay-at-home dad, but since he’d found oil painting—and his subject matter—his focus had realigned. At thirty-eight, he considered himself in his prime. He’d lived enough to have real experiences to draw on, and he’d explored everything; at last, his talents and interests were clear.
She wasn’t accustomed to that feeling yet, that he had important work to do and hers was finished. Even if they’d stayed in a city, it might have been hard for her to figure out what to do next. But here? It was never that she didn’t want to encourage him, or take a step back to give him his moment to shine. But his plan meant embarking on an entirely new life. Some of her lumpy misgivings had been selfish; what would she do out there in the wilderness?
Under the bathwater, her hands made fists around invisible stones, rubbing, rubbing. She’d caught herself doing it, worrying those invisible stones, many times over the preceding weeks. Every day she’d spent at Walker and Julie’s, the thought surfaced: We don’t belong here. Shaw might once have been Mr. Outdoorsy, but for going on two decades, his “survival” had required trendy coffee and a choice of Vietnamese restaurants. He liked gallery openings and the IFC Center. He experimented with his facial hair and wore garish colors with spectacular aplomb. Once upon a time he’d left Plattsburgh precisely because he was too weird for his flannel-and-jeans-wearing family. Walker, all grown up, didn’t tease him anymore and embraced his return to the North Country. But in the face of such isolation, Orla understood this new way of life was something they couldn’t play at. Shaw had accepted Walker’s gift of two of their father’s long guns—a thirty-ought-six rifle with a telescopic sight and a double-barreled shotgun—and planned to hunt. He swore he still remembered how to dress a deer, something he’d done his entire childhood, but Orla only knew him as a man with hands reddened by paint, not blood.
There would be real-world consequences if they ran low on food—no running down to the corner bodega, no ordering in from whatever restaurant they craved. And what if one of the children got seriously hurt? How long would they have to wait, or drive, for help? They’d prepared well, but that didn’t quell the anxiety.
It didn’t feel right.
It didn’t feel right, and she couldn’t explain it to Shaw, this hunch. (This woman’s intuition?) He would say she just wasn’t used to it. And he would be right. He would remind her of her early days in New York City, a teenager taking classes, auditioning, overwhelmed on a daily basis. But she’d found her place, made her home. That’s what he expected of her here and she didn’t want to let him down, so she kept the unnamable misgivings to herself.
She lurched to her feet, letting the cooling bathwater cascade down her body. She’d committed to Shaw and her family. Her children needed her strength—her flexibility—and she needed to demonstrate the fine art of being adaptable. With more resolve than she’d felt all day, Orla grabbed a towel and quickly dried off.
Her sleep sweats were comfy and warm. The pants left her ankles exposed, but the sleeves hung over her hands, the result of her constantly pulling the fabric over them and balling it into her fists. The design on the front commemorated the Empire City Contemporary Ballet’s thirty-fifth anniversary, the letters crumbled and faded, worn from age and washing. When she emerged from the bedroom, Shaw was quietly closing Eleanor Queen’s door, having just said his good-nights.
“I’ll be in my studio,” he whispered and threw Orla a kiss. “Roomy!” He opened his arms, gleeful, and the word echoed in the stairwell as he went down.
She headed to Tycho’s room, to the right of hers and Shaw’s and farthest from the stairs. The mothball scent from its most recent life as a closet lingered, but the bunk bed just fit, leaving two feet of walk space beside it and enough room to open the door. Orla went in cautiously, and, sure enough, he lay snuggled on the bottom bunk, fast asleep, his stuffed moose clutched in his hand.
She stood by the window for a moment looking out toward the garage and beyond, taking in the eerie glow of the moon curtained by clouds, and the slow descent of fat flakes of snow. Though Shaw and the real estate agent had told her which direction each side of the house faced, she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t shaken old habits—to her, “north” meant Harlem, the Bronx; “south” meant Tribeca, Battery Park. Maybe the sun would steal into Tycho’s room in the morning, pry open his eyes with molten fingers. Maybe it wouldn’t bother him; he possessed the young child’s gift of sleeping deeply in odd positions and strange circumstances. Still, they needed to get blinds or curtains for all the windows. She was planning on doing a lot of online shopping come Monday afternoon, after their satellite internet and phone were installed. It would be a relief to be reconnected to civilization, with constant access to the outside world and streaming entertainment.