Read Online The Wilding by Benjamin Percy - Free Book Online Page B

half-moon bruise to the nail. He talked seriously about aperture, megapixels, the light being all wrong. She thought he was so funny, not really a boy but a funny little man. When she asked him what he liked so much about photography, he brought his hand to his chin and rubbed it, completely earnest, unaware of how theatrical he appeared. Many of his movements and speech patterns were like this, like he was putting on a show, playing adult. Finally he said that he liked the way the camera stopped time. “It’s like a superpower. I can freeze something forever, exactly how it was. Do you know what I mean?”
    She knew. She kept a shoebox in the back of her closet. In it were trinkets from the past—her retainer, pressed flowers, a pencil sketch of a horse, love letters from old boyfriends, a blue ribbon from a district track meet, and some photos, among them a shot of her soon after she graduated from high school. That summer, with a group of girlfriends, she had climbed South Sister. The photo caught her at its summit, among the clouds, balanced on a knob of basalt. She wasn’t facing the camera, but staring off at the ragged jawline of the Cascades. She wasn’t smiling, but looked happy, satisfied, and stared hard into the distance as if she was about to journey there and only needed to steel herself to the idea.
    So there was the woman who tucked her son into bed each night, who baked cookies and dirtied her knees in the garden—and then there was the other woman, the one on top of the mountain, the one Karen lately couldn’t get out of her head. For years she had been neglecting that person, shoving her down into a hole, containing her behind walls mortared by makeup and casseroles and laundry detergent.
    That used to be me, she thought when she sat on the edge of the bed and studied the photo—or sometimes, in disbelief, that’s me?
    That’s who the anger belongs to, the woman who climbs mountains, who wants her life to count for something, to mean something, and these past few years she has steadily come to believe that isn’t the case.
    Now her husband walks past her, through the living room, across the short hallway, to the dinette, where Graham is again seated, watching them. Justin pulls up his chair and retrieves his napkin off the floor. With his fork he stabs at the remains of his salad. “I’m so busy I can’t get my own work done. It bothers you so much, call someone.”
    She follows him as far as the hallway and stops there, between rooms. “Don’t you think that’s your job?”
    “I told you I’m too busy.”
    “To call someone? You’re too busy to call someone?”
    “No. I thought you meant—” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “If you want me to call someone, I can call someone.”
    “I want you to call someone.”
    “Okay. I will.” His eyes are still closed. “Let’s change the subject, okay?”
    “Okay,” she says and means it. She doesn’t want to be angry. Especially in front of Graham. She steps into the dinette and goes to her son, puts her hands on his shoulders, squeezes. “It’s okay.” He bends his neck to look up at her and she puts her hand to his face, which seems to change every time she looks at him. When he was younger, he used to walk around the house in his woolly socks and shoot lightning bolts from his fingertips—zapping her on the elbow, the knee—and one day he startled her in the bathroom and she jerked a hot curling iron to his forehead. He still carries the scar, a little reminder of the moment, just above his left eyebrow. It was an accident—she kept telling him that—it was an accident. But she had hurt him, and when you hurt your child, it doesn’t matter whether you meant to or not. The hurt is there, imprinted on them, because of you. The wrong word or a raised hand no different from the toxins in so many foods, working their way into them, changing them for the worse. She touches the scar now and then kisses it.