This struck Marta as funny, but she tried not to show it. “That doesn’t seem possible.”
“Well, I know what I saw. And I saw cat planes. They’re flying above us right now, Marta. Planes full of cats.” Dean turned on the AC to dry the sweat from his face. “Planes full of cats full of peanuts.”
Marta giggled despite herself, and Dean, encouraged, leaned over to her, hot and hungry. He put his big hands on either side of her face and kissed her. Then he pulled back and looked her in the eyes, earnest for only a flash, before eyeing her pout, her breasts, her waist. “I don’t see what all we have to fix,” he said, running his hand back and forth over her lap. “But I’ve got the boots for the job.”
Earlier that afternoon, in the front seat, Marta hadn’t wanted to give Dean the inch that he would make into a mile, but she’d relented and kissed him back. An inch from Marta, she’d figured, was a mile away from Mackenzie. And now, here they were, circling back.
Dean stood up from the olive-green floor and roused Marta from her thoughts. “I know what we can do in five minutes.” He smiled. “See a coat closet around these parts, my lady?”
Marta didn’t answer. She walked to the front window of the Forgiveness Hall and stared out the window. She could see another plane taking off across the road, rising like an X in the pink evening sky. From her angle, she couldn’t tell if it was toy-sized or life-sized.
Dean came up behind her. “Planes full of cats full of peanuts,” he whispered. Marta didn’t move. Dean’s chest against her back was as thick as a shield. Inside him, the stone was sinking deeper, a lead ball dropped into the sea.
The first time Marta saw the Fincastles exchange stones, she thought she might be hallucinating. It was, after all, only a month after her father left—six months to the day after her brother’s death—and the phase she’d been going through was nothing short of troubling. Her new hobbies included playing tic-tac-toe on her forearm with an X-Acto knife, pulling the school fire alarm non-chalantly on her way to the girls’ room, eating still-frozen pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She’d also taken up sleeping in the bathtub, covered in bath towels, and clutching a dry bar of Dial like a teddy bear. So when, one Wednesday night from her bedroom window, she saw her neighbor Lucas Fincastle pry what looked like an apricot kernel from his wife Florence’s sternum, Marta thought for sure she’d completely lost her marbles.
But then, the following Wednesday, it happened again. Marta was in bed with the lights off, staring out her window at the Fincastles’ house trying not to think of her brother’s car and the cliff and the sound her mother had made after the phone call, when Lucas and Florence entered the honey glow of their bedroom, sat down facing one another on the pink quilted bedspread, and reached out reverent palms to one another’s chests. Marta sat up, curious. She fumbled for her glasses. The Fincastles closed their eyes and breathed in unison. After a minute or two, they grew vibrant and bright, nearly violet in tone, before throwing back their heads in ecstasy and plunging their hands into one another’s hearts.
When it was all over and their eyes were open and Marta, agape, gripped her windowsill equally terrified and turned on, Lucas and Florence both held a glossy brown stone the size of a billiard ball. The Fincastles took turns sniffing the stones, turning them this way and that, and rubbing them over their tear-stained cheeks. After some time, they held the stones up like cocktails and toasted one another. Then they caught each other’s gaze and flung the stones to the floor, grabbing one another in desperation. Lucas pressed Florence’s face to his own like she was his last, good hope. Florence clawed at Lucas’s back and buttocks as if set on devouring him. A lamp was kicked over. A series of ecstatic screams ensued. Marta removed her glasses and stepped away from the window. These were not the neighbors she knew from over the fence, the bird-bath-and-begonias people who had once traded mulching tips with her father. These animals, these Fincastle freaks, were suddenly both monsters and gods. They were everything that Marta—now, for the first time ever—had ever wanted to be.
In the morning, a new day dawned as if nothing extraordinary had taken place. Marta woke and looked at the Fincastles’ drawn bedroom window and second-guessed herself. She went downstairs and opened the freezer and brought out three frozen pancakes for breakfast. She took a glass of tap water and her mother’s pink pills to her bedside. And then, back in her room, set on a game of tic-tac-toe, she saw them, out the window, the two brown stones, perched with toothpicks over water jars, on the Fincastles’ side porch. They glowed like polished mahogany in the morning sun, and Marta stared at them until they stared back—the sad, soulful, brown eyes of God.
Over the course of the next two weeks, Marta watched the stones sprout, then grow, into a pair of intertwining, spindly palms, each with a white, wheel-sized blossom that smelled of sex and citrus. And over the course of the next six months, Marta watched the Fincastles repeat their ritual nearly thirty times, each time appearing to grow not only closer in love, but to some sort of universal truth, as well. Their eyes and bodies glowed with an inner light that Marta came to assume was wisdom, materialized. By the time Marta’s father seduced his chiropractor and Marta’s mother had her stomach pumped, the Fincastles’ porch was a jungle, the Fincastles’ lives seemed complete, and Marta, the spectator, sensed something brown and round taking hold within herself.
That night, at Forever Together’s orientation dinner, Marta and Dean sat with a couple named Alex and Alex. They were of indeterminate gender, both dressed in white, and both with short hamster-colored hair and triangular sideburns. When Marta looked at them across the table, she thought of two saltshakers. She thought of a life without pepper. She felt a flicker of envy for what it must be like to love someone so similar to yourself.
“So, Alex and Alex,” Dean said with emphasis, as if pointing out to Alex and Alex that they shared the same name. “What do you two do for fun?”
Alex and Alex looked at one another and then at Dean.
“That’s why we’re here,” the one on the left said. “We’ve forgotten how to have fun.”
“Yes,” the one on the right agreed. “What Alex said.”
Marta could see Dean was trying to contain himself, so she mashed her foot on top of his beneath the table.
“Well,” Dean said. “What did you used to do for fun?”
The Alexes shrugged in unison, like two synchronized swimmers. “We don’t remember,” they said.
Dean looked down at his bean cakes and radish salad. The retreat had cost nine hundred dollars and Marta could tell this was what he was thinking about.
“We come here every year,” one Alex said. “Which means it’s either working …”
“Or it’s not,” the second Alex said.
Marta picked up a piece of parsley and twirled it between her fingers. “Well, we’re here because …”
“Because I have too much fun,” Dean interrupted.
Marta frowned and opened her mouth but nothing came out. Dean took a big gulp from his water glass. Marta watched him drink, then she narrowed her eyes. Somewhere nearby, perhaps in one of his new hiking socks, there was a flask.
“See, Alex and Alex,” Dean went on, “according to Marta, she lives on the Island of Reality and I live on the Island of Denial. You know, Destination Head-in-the-Sand. Marta thinks I’m not facing my demons and, truth be told, Alex and Alex, I don’t have any demons except her.”