This is the third and final installment in the three-part episodic short story "Deer and Daughter." I recommend reading the Chapters One and Two first. Enjoy!
Be sure to check out the New Years Companion Piece Challenge, because there is only one more week to make a submission!
I've included two songs, "Oblivion" by Bastille, and "The Path (A New Beginning)" by Gustavo Santaolalla. They both fit thematically in with Chapter Three, and tie the whole series together, since I used Bastille on Chapter One and Gustavo Santaolalla on Chapter Two.
Chapter One: http://chandlerrydwrites.blogspot.com/2014/01/deer-and-daughter-chapter-one.html
Chapter Two: http://chandlerrydwrites.blogspot.com/2014/01/deer-and-daughter-chapter-two.html
Chapter Three—When They Find Names
Wednesday
It shot a long melody up her arm, down her spine, and into her womb. He was touching her hand.
“I do,” she said softly, twirling the rose on her finger tips.
Whenever she raked the mulch, the tines would dig deep under the surface, and flip the whole lot upside-down, until it had texture and beauty and freshness once again—like she had breathed onto it and changed herself just as much as the ground she was raking.
“Can I?” he asked.
She would rake a whole patch, and then see the contrast in the ground before her—old: flat, ugly, but unobtrusive; new: rippling, waving, teased in the wind and by his breath, and silhouetted against the evening sun, but begging, begging, begging.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes,” she wanted.
His fingers were the tines. He ran his hand through her fair hair. She let her head fall forwards—he would catch her, catch her, catch me.
She jumped.
“Madison,” he called. A bird chirped overhead, and the wind swirled through the trees.
She looked up. He was walking out, carrying the sign.
“Could you put this out by the road? Here’s a mallet, if you need a little something extra.”
She blinked it away.
“Sure,” the gardener nodded. She took the sign and mallet.
“Look, I’m sorry about this. But I don’t come here often enough for it to be a worthwhile investment anymore.”
She took a step back. Apparently, she used to be a worthwhile investment. The gardener wasn’t sure which she liked the least: the thought of being worth an exact monetary value, or being not worth it.
“I’ll recommend you to the next owner, for sure,” he continued, always with the underhanded insults. “You’ve been one helluva gardener. The place looks beautiful. I’m so grateful for all the work you’ve done.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but, of course, he had to mean that she was just the gardener, nothing more, that the land was more beautiful than she, and that he was only grateful for what she did for him, be it gardening, or whatever else he called “work.” In that sense, she derived that he was calling her nothing more than an alley girl.
“I’m glad I’ve been around, too.” She meant it, probably more than he did.
She turned and walked off down the driveway. She had to put the sign in, to rub it in. The gardener reached the end of the driveway, where her boss couldn’t see her, where she didn’t have to be one helluva gardener. She threw down the sign and mallet, and dropped against a tree.
What am I going to do? she thought. I want a little something extra.
She knocked her head against the tree to clear her head of it. She was on the verge of being alone once again.
This week sucks.
As she looked across the road, she heard a rustle in the bushes, and she instantly raised her head. She heard a second noise, and stood up. The gardener began to walk forward, stooping to grab the mallet. Her head whipped from left to right—she wasn’t sure from where it had come. The mallet rested at her side, and if it were a blade, it would have been sheathed by her hand.
She crept forward, through the trees to where the property bled into the street.
A yelp echoed through the trees, coming from across the road. It’s her, she thought, the deer. Her heart beat fast, her pupils dilated, her fingers trembled, and each step was cautious, but her breath held steady. As she made her way to the road, she did not falter.
Suddenly a dark blur burst out from the bushes across the road: the mama-deer, followed closely by the fawn. The mother dashed across the road, straight towards the gardener. (The fawn was by her rake once more, and the mama-deer was charging once again, but this time, the gardener had resolve. This time, she had a broken heart.) She raised the mallet.
The deer and daughter froze, as if captured by the strength of the solitary figure, where the tool melded with her body, where she set her jaw and held her gaze, and with a solid face that was neither provoked nor frightened: simply prepared. Her brown eyes were like the trees. Her hair was like the afternoon sun. Her lips were like the brick house.
The deer stuck out its legs and skidded to a halt. Both mother and fawn gave her terrified, wide eyes, and then turned and bounded back across the road and into the bushes from where they came.
The gardener lowered the mallet. She turned, walked back to the sign, picked it up, and pounded it into place by the road. She headed back up the driveway.
“Why do you have to leave? Why can’t you sell one of your other houses?”
“I told you, it doesn’t make sense anymore to live here.”
“Doesn’t make sense? What are you talking about, Farrel? When has it ever made sense to live here? It’s a million miles away from the nearest airport, it’s no vacation home—this is a house to retire in, to raise a family in, not for a weekend getaway.”
“It made sense when I bought it.”
Her thoughts were like pine needles. They covered everything. And they hurt.
She stopped at the moving van.
“You seem to be in a hurry.” Her voice was steady, her eyes were penetrating, her face maintained complete composure, and she said it flatly, without a single word accentuated—everything monotone, everything uniform, everything closing in around her.
He smiled. The sick bastard. “I’m selling all the furniture with the house, save for a few things. And I already live out of a suitcase.” He shrugged. “There’s not much to pack.”
She nodded. “Do you have a Realtor?” the gardener asked.
He set a box on the truck. “Yeah.” He put his hands on his hips. “I’ve got a great Realtor.”
“I hope the house sells well.”
“I think it will. I bought it fast, so hopefully it will sell fast, too.” He swayed his head. “And I’m sorry, about all this, and about…I just hope you don’t feel,” he searched for a word with his hands, (oh! those hands,) “guilty,” he said. “And I hope you can forgive me—it just was a bad idea.”
That was it—she was a bad idea. Not a beautiful distraction, not a nice anecdote, not even a pleasurable error. She was simply a bad idea.
The gardener turned to leave. She couldn’t stand the suffocating small talk. The nerve of that sick bastard. She took one step away before turning around again.
“Didn’t it mean anything to you?” she asked, pleading, hoping, and condescending, all in the same six words.
He put his hands up defensively. “Look, Madison,” (his brows begged her,) “we can’t—”
“And why not?” she interrupted. “Give me one good reason.”
His eyebrows shot up. “One?” he asked, incredulous. “I can give you ten good reasons! One: I have a girlfriend. Two: I love her. Three: I was planning on proposing to her! Four—”
“Stop!” she called. “That’s not the point, Farrell.”
“Then what is the point?” he asked. “What is the point?” He put his hands by his side and stood like a tree.
“The point is that you can’t just go on pretending like what we did never happened.”
Oh, god, those hands.
“I’m not, okay. I’m not. I tried to do the right thing. And you know what happened? It played out.” He leaned forward and jabbed his finger in the air. “For once in my life, doing the right thing, doing the…chivalrous thing played out. It worked, for chrissake!”
“And what about me? Where does that leave me?”
He threw up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t know. And look—I’m sorry.” He stepped towards her. “I’m sorry, Madison. I shouldn’t’ve…I just…I don’t know where that leaves you. That’s not for me to figure out.”
“Farrell…”
“And I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for. But I’ve made up my mind. I’m selling this house. You’ll keep your job. But man,” he scoffed. “Regardless of which decision I make, I have one angry woman and one happy woman. At least this way, I’m doing the right thing.”
She knew it, too.
“Is that why you didn’t return my calls last night? You were with her?”
“Please,” he said, “let’s not do this right now.”
“I was attacked,” she said. “By a deer.” It sounded rediculous out loud. He didn’t laugh, however, he took it stoically, because she liked that he always took her problems seriously, and for the first time, she was forced, by circumstance, to realize that those same qualities that she loved in him, some other had woman loved first. She wasn’t the first. She had no claim. Some other woman had planted the seed. She was merely the gardener.
“Attacked?” he asked.
She nodded. She pulled up her shirt, but not as far as she would have for herself, or even for him, if circumstances had been different.
“Oh, oh, oh,” he said.
Oh! she dreamed. Oh, god, those hands.
“Why did it attack you?” he rushed and kneeled before her. “Can I?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “It was a mother. I was near the fawn.”
He gently touched the edge of the bruise on her stomach—the one farthest away from her chest, not closer, like she might have wished. He wasn’t wearing any latex gloves, like he did for his patients, (on account of him being a doctor,) but his hands still felt extraordinarily cold.
“Have they healed at all? Have you felt lightheaded, or had abdominal pain, and is there any bigger bruises, or have you been—”
“I’m fine,” she said, shoving her shirt back down. He leaned away.
“You could have hemorrhaging, or a rib fracture.”
“I don’t need your help.”
He stood up. “Then at least go see a doctor.”
She looked him in the eye. “Right after you go see therapist,” she spat.
“Madison—”
“Did it mean anything?” she asked. “Was it even special?”
He softened. “That’s not a fair question.”
“After all we did together, after all this time. It can’t be for nothing.”
He trembled as he sighed. “It’s not for nothing. It’s,” he paused, “just not anything for us.”
No. Not anything.
“You’re right,” she said, shaking her head in short oscillations, trying to shake off a thought, a hope, or maybe a memory... “It’s not—It’s not anything for us.”
The gardener turned and saw the pain in his eyes, the crinkled brow, and the slightly parted lips. She could never kiss that man again. So she walked away. She hopped over the short black fence, onto the mulch, and treading over the pine needles. She knew in the pit of her womb that he was watching her with sad eyes, and with sad hands. The gardener never looked back.
She crossed the property, like the deer had when she’d been protecting her young: quickly, and afraid.
“It can’t be for nothing.”
“Not anything for us.”
Oh, god, the sick bastard, why?
She wished she could cut off his fingers, gore him with the rake, drown him in the bucket, and bury his body under the shed. But that was just the tools talking. Of course, she would never do that. She was always curious, but even love cannot bring curiosity into hatred. She just wished she could run away.
The gardener aimlessly walked out of the shed. She didn’t want to work. She only had one glove. And she only had half a heart.
She sat down near the edge of the property, uprooting tiny weeds and tossing them at the brick wall marking the boundary line.
This week sucks, she thought again. Sucks so much.
She wanted him, she wanted him so bad, but he couldn’t come to her because of anything other than because he loved her back. He kept talking about how it was the right thing to do, the sick bastard. It really would be the right thing to do if he came to her, but she didn’t want it to be that way. He had to love her back. If he knew what was actually happening to her, and that it was happening to her, and not his fiancé, he would come running like a stupid dog. But no—she wanted to be loved, rather than merely needed.
As she was sitting, thinking (or, more accurately, moping,) she heard the deer yelp in the distance. It was as if it were her own voice were echoing back to her through the woods, terrifying, but her fear had broken in her and made her no longer care about her own safety, and she forgot herself, she only felt her own motherhood—that was how attuned she had become to the deer’s cries. When she heard it in the distance, she instantly leapt to her feet.
She seemed to forget her boss. It was flowing through her blood. She was protective. She started off running towards deer or the daughter—at that point, it didn’t matter.
Then there was the
Screech(seemedtocarrylongintothe)—Thud.
“No,” she called out. “No,” she cried. She ran along the wall, faster.
It reached her before she got to the road. The fear was in the deer’s eyes again. The deer was limping, with blood soaking her leg, and splattered across her side. She was alone. They both were.
(It was above her, lording over her, rearing to strike and give her the bruises, one instant moving slowly, the next, it was like fast-forwarding through a dream, and she scrambled away to grab the rake with her right hand.)
This time was different. Neither was afraid of each other anymore, only afraid of their own circumstances.
The deer limped towards the wall, turning to reveal the shattered bone sticking straight out of her leg, jutting like a tree branch, causing her leg to be twisted and crooked. It flapped every time the deer took a step.The deer looked straight at the gardener, and in that instant, their eyes were the same: tired, broken, and scared to death of what to do next.
She looked at the gardener for a second longer. The deer had realized that the gardener no longer posed a threat. She turned her head away from the gardener, took a few surprisingly strong steps towards the tall brick wall, and then leapt it in a single bound. The deer was gone.
She stared at the wall for a moment, and turned away from it and from her, and walked back towards the shed. The image of the bone was locked in her head. They had both been alone.
“Madison!” she heard her boss yell. He broke through the trees. “Madison, I’m sorry.”
Her hopes soared for a split-second.
“I’m sorry. You were right. It can’t be for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing, because I’m—”
“Madison, I’m sorry I keep dragging this on, but I need to know something,” he said slowly. “I need you to be completely honest with me, alright?”
He knew. He had to know.
She nodded.
“I need to know,” he said and suddenly turned as if to leave, but then quickly turned back again. “Are you pregnant?”
She looked him straight in the eye. The bone was still sticking out of that poor deer.
“No,” she said flatly.
“Thank god,” he gasped.
She walked past him, walked off to the tool shed.
“Madison,” he called after her.
She turned back to him. He was only a few feet away.
“Are you absolutely sure,” he said, “I mean completely positive that you’re not pregnant.”
She smiled bitterly. “I am completely positive.”
He nodded slowly. He took a step back. His eyes were searching hers, at first hard, and then softening into a look that almost broke her heart.
“Alright,” he said.
What did you think of the grand finale? Any feedback is good feedback. Leave me your thoughts in the comments.
Image Sources:
"DiDiDado." DiDiDadoOrG. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014
<http://www.dididado.org/long-distance-lovers/>
<http://bethsmomtoo.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html>
Video Sources:
Bastille. Oblivion. 2013. "Bad Blood." Youtube. Web. 18 Jan. 2014
Gustavo Santoalla. The Path (A New Beginning). "The Last of Us: Video Game Score." Youtube. Web. 18 Jan. 2014.
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