The Oregon Experiment (43 page)

In the next few minutes she heard Joey describe to Scanlon the episiotomy she’d had “in honor” of his birth—“they sliced me from the vagina to the rectum,” she gloated—and her attempts to self-catheterize after her hysterectomy—“the hardest part’s finding the hole!” She’d told him these stories verbatim a dozen times.

As the pain subsided and Naomi and Sammy slipped into the shared bliss of nursing, Scanlon sat down at the other end of the couch with the Douglas paper. He put his feet up, sipped coffee, and flipped pages with a display of domestic pleasure that bordered on gusto, as if he deserved praise for not sleeping with Sequoia last night.

The rustling newspaper was finally too distracting for Sammy, who twisted away from her nipple, snarling. He spit up, and Naomi wiped his chin clean, then fish-kissed him until his mood improved.

“Alert the governor,” Joey called from the kitchen. “The
Queen Elizabeth
makes a port of call.”

Filling the picture window, Kitty’s motor home dropped its stabilizers at the curb and with hydraulic shrugs and jerks leveled itself. Naomi never understood why it took so much longer to get out of RVs than cars, why no one simply pulled up and hopped out. Like the preparations of royalty, involving ante rooms and courtiers, mysterious rituals forestalled disembarkation.

“What’s this one called again?” Joey shouted from the kitchen.

“Kitty,” Scanlon shouted back.

“Hmm,” Joey said. “I’ll bet she is.”

How could Scanlon bear it? “Doesn’t it skeeve you out?” Naomi whispered. “Taking the full blast of your mother’s libido?”

He leaned toward her, whispering even softer. “She just feels threatened by Kitty.”

“She always acts like that. You’re oblivious,” Naomi said. “What’s it called in porno? A facial?”

“
You’re
oblivious to the fact that hers is just a more perverse version of
your
lovemaking with Sammy. Hers is creepy and sad. Yours is truly sick.”

“I’m sick? You’ll take it wherever you can get it. Even with your mother.”

“All your sensuality,” he hissed in a stiff-jawed whisper, aware of his mother in the next room, “all your love. He’s right there with his face in your boobs. I was your surrogate nose, now he’s your surrogate lover.”

Yes, she knew he felt praiseworthy, but he also held it against her that he’d denied himself Sequoia. “And last night, what was on your mind when you wanted to mount me?”

“To make love to a consenting adult. Sammy’s like an object—”

“Which adult?” she said. “Was it me getting you horny, or visions of Sequoia in her hot tub?”

He took a slow tight breath—as close as she’d get to an admission.

“Why didn’t you just fuck her?”

“I didn’t want to,” he said.

“You wanted to last time. I can’t imagine she was disappointing. Or maybe you let her down. I never mentioned that sex with you hasn’t lived up.”

His face went red. “It was great with her. Amazing. She’s got sexual instincts you can’t even imagine.”

They were faced off like animals, circling with bared teeth. They’d
wounded each other and were now calculating how much more they were willing to risk. Then Scanlon fell back to his end of the couch and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I did it with her.”

“Get a load of Dolly Parton!” Joey exclaimed from the kitchen.

Through the front window Naomi watched Kitty’s red-carpet descent from the RV, her arms wrapped around the belly of a giant stuffed panda. Scanlon had retreated, he’d apologized. Why wasn’t victory any sweeter?

When she awoke, two hours had passed. Sammy lay sucking on his toes next to her in bed. She’d been so exhausted and had slept so hard she needed to sort through the last hours, separating dreams from reality. Yes: she and her husband had said those savage things. Yes: she watched Scanlon and his parents lined up at the kitchen table dunking and sucking at coffee cake like mirror images of one another. No: she hadn’t watched Kitty take Scanlon’s hand and lead him with Sammy on his shoulder up the steps of her pink RV. Yes: when Kitty held the baby, she’d watched Joey’s hackles rise, and she smelled her own edginess too. No: Scanlon hadn’t filed for divorce. Yes: she’d called Sequoia herself and invited her to Christmas dinner, two weeks early, three o’clock, we insist.

And yes, this was
definitely
not a dream: she’d set out plates and glasses on the table and chose napkins from their mishmash collection in the linen closet: two red damask that she’d bought in France, a few striped from Crate & Barrel, and then a single floral-patterned one that she took into the bathroom, where she peed a torrent, then used to wipe herself before rolling the napkin neatly and slipping it into a silver-plated ring for Sequoia.

In Naomi’s driveway, Clay heard a child singing. He glanced over his shoulder as Sequoia and her daughter came pedaling up behind him.
Trinity
, he thought the girl’s name was. She stopped singing when she saw him.

Sequoia dropped her kickstand as Naomi came down the steps. Sequoia hugged her, and then Clay. They all discussed the weather. Naomi said how lucky they were for a break in the rain, and asked if the café was busy over the holidays, speaking the bullshit of the sad and stupid world. She was better than that.

In his pocket, in his fist, he squeezed a plastic troll with a plume of blue hair. A present for Sammy.

Then Scanlon’s mother called from the kitchen stoop and they went inside, the house too warm with cooking, too filled up with family. Another old broad stood on the hearth looking at photos of Sammy in fancy frames on the mantel, holding a three-foot panda perched on her hip. Clay fingered the troll in his pocket and decided he’d leave it there. Cheeks were kissed. Scanlon’s father pawed Sequoia. Everyone was trading pleasantries. Global warming was irreversible; corporations owned the U.S. and enslaved whole peoples; species became extinct at the rate of one per hour; and people still said, “What color is your lipstick?” when it was obviously red.

Naomi told everybody where to sit, pointing Clay toward a chair at a card table, butting up to the dining table and standing an inch lower, spread with a cloth and crowded with dishes. Sequoia made room for a huge wooden bowl that had ridden in the wire basket between her handlebars. Chairs scuffed. As Sequoia scooted in, Scanlon’s father angled for a glimpse down her shirt. Scanlon’s mom and the panda broad exchanged a glance and rolled their eyes. Naomi and the baby sat beside Clay. Sammy grinned at him, blowing spit bubbles. A tiny hand tugged on his, and when he turned around, Trinity was looking up at him like she knew who he was, and then whispered, “You’re here.”

Scanlon laid out a platter of ham. The smell was very good. In Yaquina, they used to cobble together three or four tables for holiday meals. Cousins, nephews, grandparents, aunts. He’d lied about going down to Crescent City to spend Christmas with his mom. His uncle would never let him in the door.

Scanlon kept an eye on Naomi. She was drinking from Sequoia’s mug. He didn’t think she’d make a scene, but inviting Sequoia meant mischief, and he knew Sequoia suspected it, too. “Cheers, everyone,” he said, and they raised their glasses. “Welcome.”

Geoff piled his plate with slices of ham, then passed the platter across the table to Clay, who took a big helping of meat and heaps of everything else. The ham platter passed without stopping from Naomi to Sequoia and past Trinity to Joey, who tipped it back toward the little girl.

Her eyes widened and she forked a pineapple ring onto her plate.

“What’s the pink stuff?”

“Ham,” Joey said.

“What’s ham?”

“A porker,” Geoff said. “Oink-oink. It’s pig.”

Horrified, Trinity watched Geoff stab his fork into a huge hunk, hold it in front of his face, then fold it into his mouth. “Joey,” he said, chewing blissfully, “why did I ever leave you?”

Trinity burst into tears, burying her face in her mother’s lap.

“Damnit, Dad,” Scanlon said.

Sequoia stroked her daughter’s hair. “We’ve talked about this,” she said soothingly. “Some people eat animals.”

“Is it Buster?” Trinity whimpered.

“No, honey. It’s not Buster.” Then, to the others, Sequoia explained, “Our neighbor has a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. A pet.”

“Excellent pets, I understand,” Geoff said. “Loving, loyal. Cleaner than dogs.”

“Buster’s a real friend,” Sequoia said, patting her daughter’s back.

Still sniffling, Trinity lifted her head from Sequoia’s lap and unbuttoned her blouse, took a breast in her little hands—the hummingbird breast—and closed her mouth on the rosebud nipple. Beside him, Scanlon could see Geoff’s thighs swaying back and forth.

“After dinner,” Geoff said, his gaze fixed on Sequoia, “you should come out for a tour of the motor home with Kitty and me. Your daughter can stay in here and play with Sammy and the big panda.”

Scanlon felt his face go red. His eyes darted to Naomi. She’d been watching him, and she knew he’d flushed not over the affront to their guests, but from jealousy, possessiveness.

“We’ll have a drink,” Geoff told Sequoia, reaching his arm around the back of Kitty’s chair. “Just the three of us.” His thighs went to double time, and Kitty stuck him through his trousers with her crimson nails.

Joey finally caught a whiff of what was going on. “Very classy, Geoff. At Christmas dinner. Again.”

“Please, Mom,” Scanlon said.

“No. I think the assembled guests might appreciate the historical continuity. It was at Christmas, the year before he left me—”

“No one’s interested,” Geoff cut in.

“—that he hit it off with a friend of my sister’s who’d joined us for dinner. And Geoff proposed …” In deference to Trinity, she held up three fingers and mouthed,
a three-way
.

“Okay,” Geoff said. “Nice story.”

“Really, Mom,” Scanlon said. “Enough.”

“But I haven’t gotten to the punch line. You always cut me off before the punch line.” She held up her hands for drama. “Number three was a—” again, for Trinity’s sake “—M-A-N.”

Kitty’s fork clattered on her plate.

“I wonder, Geoff. Did you ever get that area of yourself, shall we say,
explored
?” Joey took a belt of her drink.

“Well?” Kitty asked. “Did you?”

Geoff calmly filled his mouth with creamed onions.

“Made for some awkwardness in the Christmas celebration,” Joey continued. “You invite a man over for a honey-glazed ham, he doesn’t expect it’s a euphemism.”

They ate supermarket pie. Naomi had agreed to make some, but the prospect of baking produced visions of her husband collapsing onto Sequoia, spent and sweaty, his mouth at her neck, her cozy bungalow warm with cinnamon, butter, sugar, yeast, and ginger. So they were eating Tillamook French vanilla ice cream on pumpkin pie from Fred Meyer.

“When in the course of human events,” Sequoia was saying, “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands—”

“I know, I know,” Scanlon said, “but those words sound pretty different depending which side of the dissolving you’re on. We need to ask ourselves why the United States would let any part of the country go without a fight.”

Sequoia had laid the floral-patterned napkin over her lap as soon as she sat down. Twice she used it to wipe her fingers—she and her daughter did most of their eating with their hands—and once to wipe her mouth, and after nursing she wiped a dribble of milk from her breast. She still had no idea how special this napkin was.

“We’ll win people over,” she argued. “With principles, and with respect for humanity and the earth. Not violence.”

Clay’s head twitched. Throughout the dinner, as Naomi kept watch on Sequoia, Clay lurked closer: resting his arm over the back of her chair, letting
Sammy suck on his pinky. When he put his face down in Sammy’s and rubbed noses, she whisked her baby into the kitchen to nurse.

But Clay followed her and sat in the chair beside her, swiveling so his knees touched her thigh. “Come by my place again soon.”

She scooched away from him. “Very busy now. The in-laws.”

“After they leave.”

“I’m getting back to work.”

He screwed up his face, revealing the dark hole at his molars. “You mean perfume?”

“All the time I can.”

“The photo’s good for when you’re not there,” he said, then tore at his thumbnail with his teeth. “Maybe I could get a few more.”

She closed her blouse tighter around Sammy’s head, remembering the night of her labor: his breath as he coached her, the potent mixture of gasoline and amniotic fluid, his bristly scalp scraping her face as he lifted her hips and adjusted her pillows.

“If it would help,” he said, “while you’re working sometimes, I could watch Sammy. Good for him to get to know me.”

“Probably not a great idea,” she said, and Clay followed her back toward the table as she burped the baby. But then she stopped in the middle of the kitchen and turned to him, looking him in the eyes. “You should focus on your own child and the mother. Truly, I’m rooting for you, but without some changes you’ll have a hard time convincing her parents or a judge that you’re not an unfit father. It sucks, I know, but it’s how the world works.” She knew she was crushing him, but also that he needed to hear it. “Throwing bricks through windows doesn’t make a better world.” She turned away and returned to her seat at the dining table.

“How many secessionist movements are nonviolent?” Sequoia asked Scanlon. “Successful ones, I mean.”

“Less than five percent.”

“So we’ll be one of those.”

Scanlon conceded her a smile. “We will,” he said. “We’ll try.”

And Naomi saw Sequoia brighten at his “we.” If Sequoia had doubted whether her
sexual instincts
held sway over his commitment, to her ears that single syllable rang out a resounding endorsement. In his wife’s presence, no less.

Still chewing her last bite of pie, Sequoia plucked the napkin from her lap, opened her mouth, and made long, slow swipes all around her lips and
across her chin and cheeks. And then she froze, surprised and aghast, already recognizing the smell as she touched the napkin to the tip of her nose and took a quick, shallow sniff. To her credit, the shock passed from her face as a series of recognitions and understandings revealed themselves. She folded the napkin carefully and set it beside her plate. She waited three breaths or five before slowly turning her head, and when their eyes met, they both smiled, tightly, and Naomi’s nostrils flared: she could smell her mark on Sequoia’s face from here.