“I won’t hurt you, fella,” Gwen said, in the voice she used to cajole squirms of delight from her adopted domestic pets.
The small, dirty, gray beast made a zigzagging advance, a few staggering steps to the right, a swaying movement to the left. Indirect as the course was, it closed the distance between them. In a sudden hush, she heard the hissing sound, saw saliva drip from the white, dead-meat mouth, opened wide.
The opossum is considered by many to be the leper of the animal world. Not by Gwen. She knew. She had empathy for any dumb beast.
But was she being menaced by this small, usually timid animal?
Perhaps she had stumbled near the animal’s den and it was driven to unusual bravery to protect its home and its young. She looked around for a hollow tree, saw only low-growing brush and runted oaks. The area had been burned over not too many years past. Here and there a fallen log told of once proud, huge trees, but the new growth was young, weedy, dusty hot in the sun.
With awkward movements the opossum came closer, hissing wildly now, glaring at her with small, dull eyes. She backed off a few steps, saying softly, “All right, it’s your turf, guy. I’m leaving.”
To fend off a foolish, vague sense of threat, she laughed.
Brush closed around her as she left the clearing. The heat of the August afternoon seemed suddenly oppressive. Sweat beaded on her neck, ran down to dampen her blouse. George and the real estate man were out of hearing. She felt very much alone and very much ashamed to be frightened by a small, harmless animal, but a noise behind her caused her head to jerk around, sent a stiffening through her body. She turned casually and began to walk back along the twisting animal trail. The opossum began a lumbering run, overtaking her rapidly.
She left her pride behind. Low-hanging branches beat her face. Breathing hard, she veered off the trail and crashed through the brush. She slowed as she heard the voices of the two men, managed to look almost normal as she emerged from the brush onto the damp, black mud of the creek bank. Her slacks had a rip in the leg and there was a scratch on her cheek. George seemed not to notice her agitation. He had broken off a blade of marsh grass from the creek’s edge and was chewing it thoughtfully. His coarse blond hair was mussed from walking through the woods. His shirt was darkened by perspiration. He stood with his legs apart. He was a stocky, masculine, handsome man, beautiful in Gwen’s eyes. He winked a brown eye at her, chewed his blade of grass, kicked at a fallen log. She laughed, tensions relieved. Last week he had chewed a toothpick while kicking the tire of a new M.G. sportster. At her laugh, as if he knew, he grinned at her in that way he had and, as always, it made her feel warm and melty inside.
“So you know the situation,” the real estate man was saying. “If it weren’t for what those bastards”—he paused and looked quickly at Gwen—“are doing you couldn’t touch this piece of land for a fraction of what we’re asking.”
A crackling in the brush behind her turned Gwen’s head. The opossum had followed her. It came out onto the black mud and paused, swaying, hissing, dripping saliva.
“I’m not saying it will be quiet around here for the next couple of years,” the real estate man said. “But if you know the problems and can accept them it’s a helluva buy.”
“No, Gwen,” George said. “I absolutely refuse.” It was an old joke between them. The real estate man looked at Gwen blankly, resenting her intrusion into his sales pitch. Gwen giggled nervously at the phrase, which was repeated each time she looked pityingly at a stray dog or cat.
The opossum surveyed them, hissed, advanced directly toward Gwen. She moved closer to her husband. “George?”
“Now you’re not afraid of a little old ’possum,” George said. “Not the fearless tamer of fierce, wild pussycats.”
“Hey,” the real estate man said, as the opossum continued to move hissingly toward Gwen’s legs. He moved rapidly, seizing a hefty fallen limb.
“George,” Gwen wailed, as the animal made a lunge which she avoided by skipping aside.
The real estate man put his shoulder into the blow, breaking the opossum’s back. It struggled, feet and neck jerking. He hit it again and again until it was still. Then he poked it with his stick, turning it over. “Female,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“Funny way for a ’possum to act,” George said, his arm around a shivering Gwen.
“Rabid, probably,” the real estate man said. “Had a couple of rabid foxes earlier.”
Gwen shuddered. It was a terrible way to christen their new home site.
2
“George,” she said sleepily, her breath hot on his neck, “now that you’re rich, will you leave me for some pretty young girl?”
They were in George’s lazy position, she sprawled atop, her breasts soft and hot against his chest. He liked to lie that way for a long time.
“Maybe I won’t leave you,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just hire a hot-and-cold-running French maid.”
“I’ll kill you,” she promised.
“You already have,” he said, moving his loins. “No life at all left in the poor little beggar.”
“Serves him right for being greedy,” she said.
“You only complain afterwards,” George said.
“That’s bragging, not complaining,” she said.
The room air conditioner activated its compressor with a whang and a bellow. In the new house there would be a central unit, quiet, efficient.
She tried to concentrate on the new house, envisioning its spacious rooms, trying to see in her mind the view from the balcony: dark, tidal Possum Creek and the wide, gray-green marsh.
It was not cool. Where their bare bodies made contact there was a slight stickiness, a damp feeling. Yet, feeling uncomfortable as the fires within her banked and the sex-induced amnesia faded, she reached for the sheet, pulled it over her legs and rounded rump. George sighed, but said nothing.
“It’s sinful,” she said.
“Humm.”
“In bed in the afternoon,” she said.
“Delightfully sinful,” he said.
At least she could tease about it now. She had made progress in seven years of marriage.
George dozed. He made a funny little buzzing sound in his throat. She was alone. Softened, he was still inside her, but she was alone and, although she had come a long way to be able to lie thus, she still felt more at ease with the sheet over her. Underneath the light covering, body heat made for perspiration. And in her mind, underneath the comfortable blanket of her love for George, she felt the old shame grow.
“Don’t think about it,” she told herself.
She thought about it when she was alone or when she was lying with George after sex and he was off, away from her, resting, dozing. Then the change came over her and she felt her body dirty against his. Although she’d been winning the battle for years, the fight was not over. There comes a time in life when one has to accept oneself as one is, when it is no longer possible to fool oneself. There were times when she thought she’d won, finally, but then she would remember, or the old hurt would begin to pound like an abscessed tooth and she would hear his voice in her mind:
“Gwen, Jesus, you’re all screwed up. Maybe you need help.”
But she was not the one who had had an affair with Grace Dowling, shameless bitch that Grace was. She was not the one who had betrayed, and just ten months after both she and George had vowed eternal love.
In more controlled moments she considered George’s affair with Grace to be the turning point; she could, almost, be grateful to Grace. At such moments, if she had been granted the ability to change the past she would have erased her mother. Dele her, as the crosswords said. Strike her out. Make her nothing more than a blank space in her mind.