The Animal Girl

THE ANIMAL GIRL

Yellow Shoe Fiction

Michael Griffith, Series Editor

Two Novellas and Three Stories

JOHN FULTON

Published by Louisiana State University Press

Copyright © 2007 by John Fulton

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

An LSU Press Paperback Original

First printing

Designer:
Michelle A. Neustrom

Typeface:
Whitman, Gotham

Printer and binder:
Edwards Brothers, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fulton, John, 1967–

The animal girl : two novellas and three stories / John Fulton.

    p. cm. — (Yellow shoe fiction)

“An LSU Press paperback original”—T.p. verso.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8071-3294-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. United States—Social life and customs—21st century—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3606.U58A55 2007

813′.6—dc22                                                                                                    2007015679

These stories first appeared in journals. “Hunters” was published in
The Southern Review
(Autumn 2004), reprinted in
Pushcart Prize XXX: Best of the Small Presses
(Fall 2005), and selected as a distinguished story of 2004 in
The Best American Short Stories 2005.
“Real Grief” was published in
The Greensboro Review
(Fall 2004). “The Animal Girl” appeared in
Alaska Quarterly Review
(Fall 2005) and received a special mention in
Pushcart Prize XXXI: Best of the Small Presses.
“A Small Matter” was published in
Other Voices
(Fall/Winter 2005) and “The Sleeping Woman” appeared in
The Journal
(Spring 2007).

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

For Zoë

Hunters

Real Grief

The Animal Girl

A Small Matter

The Sleeping Woman

Kate answered his personal ad in late summer, soon after she'd been told for the second time that she was dying. She had always thought of herself as shy, not the type even to peruse such ads. But the news had been jolting, if not altogether unexpected, and had allowed her to act outside her old ideas of herself.

The first time her doctor told her she would die had been two years before. The cancer had started in her left breast and moved to her brain. She'd had a mastectomy and undergone a full course of chemotherapy to no effect. A divorcée, she was close to only a few people: her sixteen-year-old daughter, Melissa, her widowed mother, who was now dead, and one good woman friend, all of whom she'd told. She'd worried about what to do with Melissa, then fourteen, whose father had been out of touch since he'd left them years before. And then, after worrying, weeping, raging, and undergoing the storm of insanity that, by all reports, was supposed to end in acceptance, she learned that her cancer had mysteriously retreated and that she would live. Her doctors hesitated to use the word “cured.” Cancers such as hers were rarely, if ever, cured. Yet they could find no signs of carcinoma cells in her system. She returned to work, got her hair done, went on shopping sprees, and thought about the possibility of reconstructive surgery for her left breast. Even a nipple, her plastic surgeon had informed her, could be convincingly improvised. In trying to explain her restored health to her daughter, her coworkers, her friends, she could find no other word than “cured.” And now, once again, the doctors were telling her she had tumors about the size of peas in her liver and spine. She would die in a matter of months.

The news silenced Kate. This time, she told no one.

She selected his ad because of its unthreatening tone. Others had intimidated her with their loud enthusiasm and confidence: “Young
vital fifty-something looking for lady with love for life.” Still others sounded sleazy—“Master in need of pet”—or psychotic, even murderous: “Quiet, mysterious Lone Ranger looking for that special horse to ride into the night.” By contrast, his sounded distinctly meek: “Like books and munching popcorn in front of TV.” He tended toward “shyness with a goofy edge.” He sought “sex, but more, too. Tenderness without attachments.” That caught her eye. She wanted sex. She wanted “tenderness without attachments.” In the years since her diagnosis, she'd kept her maimed body to herself. Now a feeling of bodily coldness and desolation had come over her, and she wanted to be brought back to life. She wanted to be touched—maybe for one night, one week, one month.

Kate's daughter heard his message on the answering machine first. “There's a guy on the machine for you,” she said when Kate got home from work. Melissa stood next to her in the kitchen while she played it. “Kate,” a heavy male voice said, “Charles here. I look forward to meeting you. Gotta say I'm just a bit nervous. I don't know about you, but I've never done this before. Not to say that I don't want to. I do. I'm going on, aren't I? Sorry. You've got other messages to hear, I'm sure.” He paused, and Melissa laughed. Kate wasn't sure what to make of this halting message, though she liked the fact that he was obviously nervous; his voice was nearly trembling. “I guess I should tell you what I look like. I'm tall and have a mustache. See you on Saturday.”

“A mustache?” Melissa smiled suggestively. “I didn't know you were looking for someone.”

“I'm not,” Kate said. Her daughter had the wrong idea. She'd assumed Kate was searching for a companion, was healing and moving on with what would be a long life. It wasn't fair to leave her with false impressions, but Kate couldn't go through all the tears again. She wanted her privacy for now. “Don't, please, get any ideas.”

“No ideas,” Melissa said, laughing. “I think it's great. I think it's what you should be doing.”

Kate hardly expected to be afraid. She took every precaution. She'd chosen a popular coffee shop, often crowded on Saturday afternoons,
which seemed the safest time to meet a stranger. Ann Arbor was hardly a dangerous town. It was clean and wealthy and civic-minded, she reminded herself. It was an especially hot September day, over ninety degrees, but the air-conditioning in the café was crisp and bracing. Kate selected a table in a sunny corner, beside two elderly women wearing pastel sweat suits and gleaming white orthopedic tennis shoes; they made Kate feel still safer. One of the silver-haired women was babysitting an infant and kept her hand on a baby carriage, now and then looking down into it with a clownish face. Students sat at other tables and read books. A toddler ran past Kate, its father in pursuit.

She heard him before she saw him. “Are you Kate?”

She stood, and he presented her so quickly with a red carnation that it startled her—the redness of it, the sudden, bright presence of it in her hand—and she giggled.

“I'm Charles,” he said. He wore nice slacks, a button-up shirt, and a blazer; and was suffering—his forehead glistened—from the extremely hot day. His face was thin, his bony nose and cheekbones complex and not immediately attractive. But it was his hair that surprised her most. Thick, gray, nicely combed: it was the hair of a pleasant, not unattractive older man, a man in his fifties, as his ad had said. Kate hadn't dated for more than six years; her divorce and then her illness had made sure of that. And now, at forty-five, she was shocked to think that this middle-aged man might be her romantic prospect.

When they sat down, Kate noticed the rapid thudding of her heart. She picked up her coffee and watched it tremble in her hand before she took a sip. For some reason, the table was shuddering beneath her. “I'm sorry,” Charles said, putting a hand on his knee to stop it from jiggling. “I'm terrible at handling my nerves. I'm no good at meeting people. It's not one of my skills.” He took a folded white handkerchief from his back pocket and neatly wiped the sweat from his forehead.

His obvious fear assured Kate that he was harmless and maybe even kind. “I meant to say thank you for the flower.” She looked down at the wilted carnation.

“It's not very original of me.”

When she picked her coffee up now, her hand was steady. Clearly one of them needed to be calmer. “I liked what you said in your ad about tenderness,” Kate said. “That's why I called.”

“I'm not usually this adventurous.” He looked over his shoulder and then at her again. “I'm still getting over a divorce. I guess that's why I'm so jittery about all this.”

Things weren't going well, Kate knew. And for some reason, she wanted them to go well with this timid man, and so she continued to be brave, to say what she was thinking. “‘Tenderness without attachments.' That sounded nice. None of the other ads talked about that. I thought that was original.”

He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief again. “I just don't want anything serious. But I don't want it to feel, you know, like just an exchange of … of …”

“Bodies?” Kate said. He sat back in his chair, as if struck, and she felt her face deepen in color. The thought that they were here, in large part, for the prospect of sex was out on the table now. It was a bold and raw motive, for which neither of them, middle-aged and awkward, seemed well suited. But the awkwardness and shame were refreshing, too; Kate hadn't blushed in years.

“I guess,” he said. He patted his mustache gently, as if drawing composure from it. “Not that we have to ever get there. We might just become friends. We might just enjoy each other's company.”

“Sure,” she said, though in fact she felt an unexpected pang of rejection. Was this skittish man already running from her bed?

She changed the subject then, telling him about her job as a loan officer, a serious job that had always suited her rather too serious character; her love for fresh food and cooking; her sixteen-year-old daughter, who right now was a little too absorbed in her boyfriend. “I wish my kid would fall in love,” Charles said, smiling. “He's angry. His mother gave him up when she gave me up. I understand the anger. I'm angry, too. But there's something mean in him that I'd never seen before this.” Ryan, Charles's son, had a mohawk that changed colors—purple, yellow, blue—at least once a month and a lizard tattoo
on his forearm. Charles owned an office furniture and supply store. “It sounds boring, I know. But I actually sort of enjoy it.”

It did sound boring to Kate, who was much more interested to learn that Charles enjoyed hunting. It hardly seemed like something this concerned father and furniture salesman would do. “You kill things?” Kate asked. “You enjoy it?”

He confessed that he did, though he didn't hunt large game. “Deer and elk are beautiful animals and too much of a mess. Field dressing a deer can take the better part of a morning.”