Meg Wolitzer (25:43)
The Margaretville shop N save stays open 24 hours as a service to hunters, hospital employees, sex workers and other creatures who work at night. Viola in pre dawn debates, Poppers and pharaoh snakes in the fireworks aisle at the checkout line. Hunters discuss a bobcat one saw on his drive into town, a mama probably looking for food before the real snow arrives and locks the county in place. Seeing Viola, their talk zips closed. She knows they call her Dark lady, which she sometimes enjoys. The cashier rings her purchases, poppers, a small axe, mint tea for sleep. Still talking to the men collected under the announcement board, though they've gone silent. They watch her pay and leave her puffed black coat trailing like a cold remark. A numbness in her forehead is framed in pain, a cricketing in the temple. She is always on the verge of a headache. The shop N save is always, always open. She is always 49. Outside, pale light crowns the higher mountain peaks, though the parking lot is dark. Other hunters low under a street light. Violet positions her bags in the trunk, overhearing ideas in their mumblings. I was going to. She would, until one of the men, emboldened by her lack of attention climbing, calls out, need help? She keeps her gaze on him and swings the trunk closed. Trying to say hi, he says. Being polite, his friend adds. She pulls a cigarette from a pocket and pauses, as if waiting for a light, an extinct ritual from a former life. The men blink. She finds a lighter in another pocket. The original hunter seems to decide the smoke is meant to anger him and blooms. Where you from? He says. Not here. She exhales smoke toward where they move from foot to foot, like deer that cannot smell the origin of disturbance. The shop nsave doors whistle. A man wearing hospital scrubs emerges, carrying groceries. He walks toward a different part of the lot and then, seeing them change his course for the encounter that had for the men changed from something they understood. Everything okay? The EMT asks, her blank eyes poised. Violet spits loose tobacco onto the ground. He turns to the men. Everything okay? They push one of their own forward, a lantern thrown in front. Just being friendly, he says. Viola uses this interruption as cover to get in and start the car. The men move aside. In the rear view mirror she watches the EMT holding his bags do gooder, maybe. She takes the road that leads into the foothills and parks at the base of the woods she heard the man discussing. Viola follows the tracks down the county road, in and out of the tree line until it jags into an embankment by the creek. Another awareness grows alongside hers as she walks, royal blue and not solitary. The bobcat is pregnant, Violet thinks, watching it move down the frozen stream, slow and exposed. It must be injured, but there is no blood on the trail she follows, avoiding the mud crust whose sound would betray her. The movement of a cat's shoulders, out of sequence with its forward motion, pleases her. The cat slips on its way up the other bank. Her grasp is firm. She pushes a blade into its neck. A pink dawn flurries beginning, the animal draped like a bride over her legs. Viola sits in the snow and drinks. Viola was 49 in 1917 when she met the woman who would immortalize her. Viola's husband, a temperless Swede, was fighting in France. Their seven year old daughter, Bea, had been good natured before her father left, but now it was like living with a gathering storm. Always some petulant bruising remark, a brush hurtling through air. Every morning Viola left for the factory, buoyant with relief. She loved the factory women who under the wasting lights discussed how they missed their husbands rarely, if at all. She didn't know women could speak so candidly, but she'd never been among so many protected by war's isolation. Samara was the pinnacle of that candor. Her administrative role at the factory allowed her to walk the line and chat. Her wide, expressive mouth made everything she said sound scandalous. Even when she let the younger girls go to catch some school, she befriended Violet and Bea, bringing them food they could never afford during the summer of 1917. They drink Samara's whiskey in Viola's cold water, walk up, the smell of the fish shops souring through the windows, fanning themselves deepened the stink, but it made them laugh. Their friendship loosened whatever fist always seemed to grip Viola's breastplate. She confessed to Samara that a longing rose inside her whenever she walked a street with a view of the river. Sometimes she feared it would split her in two. Samara knew a way to lessen that woe. She called it the occupation. Typically the conversion procedure was harder for women. The men could bite each other on the neck, but women had to receive permission. The subject had to be certain. A week after the hunters, the EMT approaches Vala in the shop and says, I'd love to know your name. He says, so the next time those guys bother you, I can at least say, hey, don't bother. In the moment that passes, his smile reconsiders, then strengthens. This is where you say your name, he says. She says, viola. He retreats a few glancing steps, pretending to be moved by beauty. Outside they load her car. How many fireworks does a woman need? He says, you never know when I'll need to shove one up a hunter's ass. He laughs, apologizes for the hunters as if he is their mare. She says, I've been through it before. 10 times today. I bet a hundred. She likes that. He laughs when she curses. His hands look strong and soft and while he speaks, one rests on his lower stomach. She knows it is where he wants to touch her. The EMT is not a stand up straight man but hovers lower in his body. He's young, relatively speaking, but like many white men in middle age he looks flowered older. Violet asks what he thinks of her house. The yellow and white reminds me of my grandparents cottage, he says. We spent summers swimming in a stream like yours. You see the stream? She is pleased. I didn't know it came out this far and so loud. You hear it too. Noting his confused look, she explains, sometimes I think only I can see how pretty it is here. How long have you lived up here? Forever. They sit on the couch with tumblers of whiskey. She asks what it's like to be an EMT and he says it's a lot of waiting until it's not. He says he has healer hands and asks to touch her. She places the glass on the table, removes her sweater and lies on the carpet. The EMT drains his drink and places his palms against her back. When was the last time anyone touched her? He digs in with his fingertips. She has what he calls an ancient coil in her lower right back where she keeps people she loves. She dislikes so called healers, but dislikes more that he is right. I'll make you a stake for your trouble, she tells him. After you cook. He gestures to her kitchen, the sink and counters covered in plants. Viola sets one place at her table and prepares the meat on an outside pit. She serves him the steak, pours herself more whiskey, and sits across from him. You're not gonna eat? Not hungry, she says. He cuts a forkful and swears that the area's hunting helps its animals. A progressive and a hunter, she says, though there's no way around the body craving meat. The animal prefers to live. I'm too old to pretend. Yeah, you're so old. He grins. Middle aged. I'm middle aged too. He seems happy to share this. You're not against hunting, are you? She says. I'm a hunter too. He removes his shirt and jeans. She sits astride him on the couch. He whispers that he wants to build her a house. She doesn't mind the sentiment. It's been decades since someone pressed their cheek against her heart and shuddered against her. On the night Viola ceased to age, she'd received a letter from her husband in France outlining his return. They'd move in with his family after she quit the factory. The war was ending. Survivors were coming home. Viola and Samara shared a bottle of rye on her fire escape. Viola was grateful for Samara's company. She'd never seen a woman move through a room like a cleaver. The rye worked her mood loose, and she asked about the occupation. Samara said that inability to handle sunlight was a myth. It was more of a strong aversion that had been exaggerated by men who couldn't handle it. Like most things, the truth has contradictions that don't fit neat theories. She said. We don't turn to ash. We just usually had long nights and are nursing plasma hangovers. Human blood was not the only way to receive sustenance. They could hunt animals, though. Samara considered this beneath her. She made deals with meat factory bosses and had first pick after the slaughter. You'd be surprised how easy it is for an older woman to go unnoticed. When her husband returned, Viola would have to mend darn, keep polite. Samara reached over and untied the top of Viola's dress. Viola felt the chill of her skin meeting air. Samara pressed her lips against Viola's. The feeling made Viola want to choose something for the rest of her life. Are you sure? Samara said, and Viola said, please, yes. In the morning, the EMT does not leave but chooses a contemporary short story collection from her library, two RIs to her. The next day he works his hospital shift and returns with a bag of groceries, flowers, mint salt. He works another night shift. She goes with him. New love makes joining someone at work seem fun. He opens a wall sized cabinet revealing racks of blood shining in bags. A powerful pulsing overwhelms her. He pulls a hammock from the attic, hangs it outside. She watches from the shadows on the porch. He leans against a pine, pulls his arms overhead to stretch. The crescent of pellucid skin above his belt adds itself to the work, shifts and blurs time. She doesn't know how many nights have passed. She likes rubbing moisturizer she doesn't need into her cheeks or while he reads in the other room. Samara would call this love jail, Violet thinks. She knows how it feels to wear nothing and lie beneath the sun. In the waning days of war, Viola's new appetite became a second body. She could watch it as if she were a bystander. She engaged in nocturnal benders that ended at Samara's apartment, where she stopped herself in ice baths. Plague shuttered the city. A telegram from France arrived. Her husband was missing. Bea retreated into the room of herself, where Viola became a foe. Viola was the oldest she'd ever be and no longer needed food. She was a novice, immortal, and though Samara was a veteran, she was unwilling to teach. She didn't want to explain, for example, why her longing to leave had not lessened but calcified occupation plus Violet's age had combined to quadruple desire. Samara was in her 60s, safely beyond middle age. When Viola and the EMT hunt. His gear and blinds amuse her. He lines up a shot to find she's been streaming in from another direction. Both methods prove effective. Bodies pile up. Their love is bad for the animals. Showing off is new to her, as is someone anticipating her tricks. Even in deepest cover, he finds her. If you think you're being watched, he says, you are. One night a whiff of impermanence makes her crave concrete answers. Does he want to stay with her? No town, no job, just his body and hers. There is a way, but he must be certain. The future tense makes him grow still. He makes an excuse and leaves. Though Viola's aging halted, her hair and nails grew so fast she could shave her head and have floor length hair within weeks. Menstrual blood disappeared for months, then returned with painful hemorrhaging. No longer able to take care for Bee, Viola took her to live with her Swedish relatives. One evening in the middle of the century, mother and daughter passed each other on the Street. It took Viola a moment to understand that this hard woman was her daughter. Bea had exceeded her in age and looked to be in failing health. Violet realized that the girl with her was Bea's daughter, who'd inherited her grandmother's lavender eyes. Bea belonged to another time that moved like a barge away from where Violet was pinned to the dock. She'd already forgotten Bea's birthday and her own split with regret. She left the city in the 1960s. Viola worked as a flight attendant. She hunted in the Scottish Highlands, prowled bars in Golden Guy for a while. Travel allayed her restlessness. Samara was right. It was easy for a middle aged woman to go unnoticed. The other flight attendants were on their own thresholds. After college, before marriage, before babies, after changing careers. But Viola worried that instead of being freed, she'd been forgotten. She longed for her chin to sag. Any indication that she was still alive. Perhaps this was why people invested in religion or children or causes to pass time pleasantly while watching something grow. Human tendencies genuflected through time. Hemlines and mothering trends advanced and and receded. The child became the nucleus of the house. They even had their own room for toys. It sickened Violet to watch mothers be controlled by their toddlers. At the turn of the century, the idea of youth reached the age of 40. Violet's body seemed newly valued. Men's gazes, once trained solely on college aged asses, lingered on hers. Factories, planes, space travel, the Internet. Though the structures varied, they were built from hubris, stitched with greed. New mandates after 911 required flight attendants to submit to regular reviews and Violet could no longer fly with anonymity. She moved to the western Catskills, where she spent years in and out of hot flashes chased by an unleavened smell. Fertile and not fertile. Then not joints swelling, trapped in a developmental doorway. She kept routines she did not need, like market shopping, to tend the last ember of being human and lived timelessly in the woods that were silenced by by snow for half of every year. She'd been middle aged for a century. Intuitions deepening, minor and major knives growing along the walls of her understanding. She was a cave, purpled with stalactites. She could smell feelings in a room. The EMT shows up after weeks carrying chanterelles. He's foraged. Viola participates with a few bites. Worm thick, spiced by earth since it serves no purpose. Food is something she understands but doesn't enjoy, like perfume and holidays. What do you do for fun? He seems distracted. The question belongs to an earlier stage of courtship, like he is returning to an improperly filled out form to correct mistakes. She shows him her arsenal of fireworks and he lines up an impressive display. Colorful sparks soar above the woods. I'm surprised you don't get noise complaints, he says. She notices a stab of effort in his voice, as if trying to recall what brought him here. No one would come all the way out. She's been with local men before, though none from his generation. A dirt farmer with soft hands, his wife, two brother lawyers, their wives. Her favorite was a married salesman who she saw for a year before his shame grew too large. Occasionally he slows on her road, elderly but still possessing the same dazed, blinking calm, trying to determine her house amid whatever appears. But she never loved him, or the others, or even Samara. She never lost breath when leaving them, or when they stayed away too long. In the 1960s, Viola was traveling through the Midi Pyrenees when she met a cunning woman who taught her how to glamour homes. If what appeared to the visitor was a pleasant memory, they'd get along. If it was troubling, their connection wouldn't last. One lawyer she'd been excited about was startled back into his car by whatever he saw. She never had a chance to ask. His bumper took a chunk out of her hedgerow when he roared away. Most guests couldn't see the stream, the feature that was dearest to her, powered by some relentless turbine. Every so often it would produce a cherubic beaver, moving its weight front to back over a lichen thick rock. Before she met the emt, these rare sightings had been the highest delight of her endless life. Viola finds him in the home of a local bartender. Their bodies are paralyzed in television light. Maybe this is the woman who wants him to build her a house, Viola thinks, hovering outside the window. Heartbreak slows the hours as months creak by. Viola's hair grows past the floor. She dyes it, lights out black from a shop N save kit. The memory of her birthday returns. She spends November 15th shivering in a scalding bath. She cloaks her house so he'll find only ankle breaking rats if he tries to visit, adds a few cats to her home, and a tall dog named Oberon who stands like a masthead in the yard every so often conjuring a single day splitting bark. One day, still new to the mountains, Viola came across Death on a train platform in Arkville. Death wore an impeccable hoodie under an acid wash blazer and stood beside an elegant suitcase checking a timepiece. She sensed Viola's stare and looked over her gaze, a climate. She raised a delicate hand and saluted. Viola returned the gesture. They were workers who shared a commute. She wondered if they could be friends, since neither needed anything from the other. It must get lonely being that essential. Viola thought she knew how that felt. The train arrived. Death moved through the car of sleeping travelers, selected a window seat, removed her watch and laid it on the tray table in front of her. No passenger stirred. No one notices. Remarkable women. A little boy gapes in Shop N Save's firearms aisle, where Viola wears remnants from her past lives. A corset under a one shoulder dress from the 80s, belted in the style of the 90s, boots from her first life's job. She misses the factory. Women who snuck flasks, spit seeds, bit. She hadn't known there were women like that, but since then she has been them all. The little boy's mother snatches him away, but he wants to keep looking at the dark lady. Viola points one glowing shoulder at him, shows her teeth, and then zips it, all her mirth and misery, under the purple coat, and leaves through the whistling doors. That evening Viola wakes, she soaked in sweat. The wind swirling in the hollow sounds like a passing big rig. No one is in the meadow blanketed with snow or on the hill milked in the waxing wolf mo. But Viola repots plants in the kitchen, uneasiness growing. Finally she feels a presence behind her. Devour me, it says. Samara stands in the center of the room, arms raised for a hug. She is in town to check out the whole upstate thing. Girl, she says, you look rough. I could use a party, violet admits, you could use a haircut. No matter. Party's here, babe. They are naked for days. They throw a log into the fire. They finish the whiskey. Samara tells her that the word for the EMT is narcissistic. My seventh, no, eighth husband was one. Diminishing returns. They leave you starving. She laughs, which is the worst thing you and I can be. What did you do to him? Viola says. Poor man, he did not go easy. Samara suggests they kill the EMT too, but Viola refuses. Killing him would bring no relief. Well, I'm going to have to eat something, samara says. I'm not here to ski. I know a place, viola says. They drive to the shop and Save and chuck tote bags and firewood into a jangling cart. Samara humps the bear statue and tries on fluorescent hunting gear. It is good to be with this unruly woman in a cheap grocery store at night. Night they've been friends for a hundred years. When they'd arrived, the parking lot was empty, but when they load their bags into the car, hunters watch from under every street lamp. Hello, boys, samara calls, driving away. Viola directs her to the unmarked door at the back of the hospital. She leads them through a series of hallways until they reach the cabinet of blood. Samara leans on the counter for support. Why do I have the urge to bless myself? They fill the tote bags, retreat through the hallways, and load the car. Hurry, viola says when she hears someone behind them. Samara climbs into the car. Wait. The EMT's face is mapped with pain. Talk to me, Viola. Why have you disappeared? Samara lowers the window and observes him with flat gray eyes. Her pallor has been flawless for centuries. Who's that? He says. Who is that? That's the guy, samara says when they drive away. You need to leave the woods more. The EMT takes up with another local girl, homely, with pretty eyes. They have two boys, indistinguishable from the other county kids. One moves to Canada. The other marries a local girl like his mother. One night toward the middle of the century, the EMT administers to a pile of steaming meat in his backyard. He is in his 70s, lymph nodes stuffed with cancer. She smells it coursing above the meat. Stink, metallic, salted. It seems unfair that he gets to die. A windless rustle, a certain unsound. He doesn't have to see her standing inside the tree line, owl quiet, to know she meets him again in this town or that a man or not, sick or well, a doctor, a stoneworker, and he runs his systems on her. Sometimes she doesn't have the energy. She tells him she's been through it before. Sometimes she accepts his dances, his tongue, attempts to summon love's old frictions until inevitably the drumming subsides. A girl on the verge of adulthood arrives in November when, when the forest's reddish growth makes the mountains appear rusted. She has compiled a map from four semi accurate ones procured in visits to Town Hall. She has sweet talked a hunter who liked her lavender eyes. This determination, paired with a hard countenance, has separated her from everyone she's ever known. The girl walks onto the empty meadow and the word ancestor occurs to her as if from clear air. Each step presses it into the moss. Ancestor. She feels the Devonian gaze of hemlock's ancestor, the rocks that pinned the stream. She scolds her hammering heart. The house will arrive or it won't, and if it doesn't. She'll just go home. Nothing in her life has prompted such breathlessness. Something in the meadow seems to unlock and turn toward her. The stream begins a louder chatter. It sounds like it's saying, hello. I won't leave. I'll wait forever.
