annashay 
by Barbara Westwood Diehl
EM WASN’T INVITED to go with them. She has never been invited. But this time, instead of kissing her husband goodbye through his car window, she had settled herself in the passenger seat and slammed the door. There was nothing he could do about it.
During the drive, he hadn’t made any of his usual small talk. No pointing out that the gas at Oceanic was three cents less than Exxon, that the new Mexican food place had closed already—the obvious observations he likes to make at regular intervals to break any uncomfortable silence, empty talk, the comments that Em tends to ignore. She likes to look through the passenger window for the less obvious. For the unexpectedly lovely, yes, like the gangly and profusely blooming rosebush she had spotted in front of a graffitied, abandoned building—but also the threats, like cars weaving through traffic with blacked-out windows or the coyote that appeared from nowhere once, panting, snarling, crossing the road in front of her.
When they park in a large, empty parking lot and she sees him pause with both hands on the steering wheel before shutting off the engine, he is still at a loss for small talk, or any talk. If he is happy at the thought of meeting his old friend, he doesn’t show it. She weighs offering some cheerful small talk or remaining silent. She chooses silence. She isn’t going to make this any easier for him.
Now, she follows her husband and his friend Justin through the woods behind the high school both men attended together. Thorny branches cross the narrow path, and every few minutes the men push them aside and the branches swing back at her. No one apologizes. They are deep in conversation. Actually, Justin does all the talking while her husband listens.
She has no idea why her husband has to meet up with his friend every year on the same day in April. Same time in the afternoon. Same Franklin High hoodie—she notices that Justin is wearing one too—even when the weather is warm. Her husband doesn’t have any other interaction with the guy. No phone calls, no emails, no texts, They’re not even friends on Facebook. When she asks about this ritual, he shrugs and says, ‘It’s a guy thing.’ He doesn’t look her in the face when he says this.
The thorns, sticker weed, pierce her shirt, and pinpoints of blood dot one pink sleeve. A shame. She liked that shirt, a lot. It will be ruined by the end of the day at this rate. She yells, ‘Hey,’ and the men look back at her, blankly. She waves one of the branches in their direction, points to a scratch on her wrist, and her husband gives her his “sorry” look.
Justin points a branch in her direction and says, ‘En garde.’ He smiles when he says this, but the smile is stretched tight and full of teeth. A muscle flexes in his too-tight hoodie sleeve. His eyes are steady, unblinking. It’s a ridiculous act, that swashbuckler stance, but still, it makes her queasy. As if that en garde means, I am pretending to be a threat, but maybe I am a threat pretending not to be—let’s find out.
Two can play this game. Em grabs a stick from the ground. She steps forward. ‘Lunge.’ She swats Justin’s pretend sword away. ‘And parry.’ She steps back, holding the stick in the air.
He holds up his empty hands and says, ‘Touché.’ She shouldn’t feel this way, but she experiences pleasure when she sees a scratch on his hand, the blood seeping into the lines of his palm. She feels an unexpected satisfaction in her well-executed lunge, her aim, her catching this piss-poor excuse for a pirate off-guard. She wants to let out a victory yell but stops herself. It’s too quiet. For a long moment, her husband seems to hold his breath, like he’s expecting something to explode. He’s pale. Then his friend sucks the blood off his palm and laughs. Her husband laughs, too, but not as hard. Em thinks, my God, Justin has granted him permission to laugh.
She looks from her husband to his friend and back again. ‘Is this what you two were like in high school?’ She tries to make this sound like a joke but knows she’s no good at it. What she thinks, what she doesn’t say, is how this isn’t a good look for either of them, two grown men. Especially for her husband.
Justin slaps her husband’s back, hard enough to make him stumble. ‘This is exactly what we were like in high school.’ Justin turns away first and walks on. Her husband catches up with him. Em follows.
Because of the prickly branches—catbrier? cocklebur?—the path doesn’t appear to have been used in a long time. But then they come to a small clearing where there are orange and purple Fanta cans and mini liquor bottles on a stump. Some are upright, as if someone had lined them up for target practice. A few minutes later, she spots a girl’s blouse hung on a branch inside a pine, half hidden. The blouse looks as if it has been bleached, over time, by sun and rain. Faded cartoons on the fabric, more Disney princess than Marvel superhero. Shredded by birds? Maybe pecked because a pink blouse with cartoon characters has no place on a branch in the woods.
The men stop and look around them. Justin spots the blouse and says, ‘How the hell could it get up there?’
Her husband shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets. ‘That’s not it. It’s probably right where you left it.’
Em looks at her husband then Justin. ‘Wait. What would you be doing with a girl’s blouse?’ Silence. As if she’s not there at all. ‘Hello. Anyone home?’
Her husband kicks a grape Fanta can into the brush. Then a row of Smirnoff bottles. He’s not a guy who litters, who kicks things. Em makes a face at him. This time, he turns away.
Justin points down a rocky hill at some large, flat stones at the side of a stream and grins. ‘That’s the place.’ He descends, zigzagging like a snake down the hill, never slipping on the rocks and mud, never looking back.
Em is not sure if she can descend the hill to the stream without falling or spraining an ankle. The last thing she wants is to be helpless, at anyone’s mercy. She hesitates, looks up into the trees for birds and, she admits to herself, scraps of pink blouse in a nest. She looks for woodpeckers, deer, toads, mountain laurel, honeysuckle, the sweet and natural things she expects to see in woods. But these woods feel lifeless.
Justin waves his arm and calls to her husband. ‘This is the place. Come on down, bro.’
Her husband knows that she is wary of descending steep, rocky hills. Usually, when they are hiking and come to a place like this, he takes her hand. Usually, he tests the ground with his own feet to make sure that the rocks won’t budge, that the ground isn’t too slippery. He tells her where to place each foot until the ground isn’t so steep. Until she feels safe. He’s good that way.
She looks away from everything growing wild and tangled and watches him. A grown man in a teenager’s hoodie. He looks down at the large flat stones by the stream’s edge and up at the sky, blinking.
He scratches the back of his neck then thrusts his hands deep into his pockets. ‘It’s embarrassing, really, the stuff you do when you’re kids.’
His friend waves him on again, and her husband descends, slowly, shoulders sagging. He calls back to her over his shoulder, so quietly she almost doesn’t hear him. ‘You don’t have to walk down to the stream. The stones—they look like they’re in deep. Like they’re stable. But they’re really not.’
Em has come too far to remain in the dark about what these annual boys’ trips are all about. She turns sideways and digs each foot into the ground like a guide had shown her at Yosemite. She remembers how a slab of mountain the size of an office building came crashing down that day, how climbers and hikers died, but her own small group had been a safe distance away. Her life has been a series of small misses.
When she is almost to the stream, one foot slips in a patch of wet grass and mud, but she stops herself from falling by grabbing a branch. Like the branches across the path, this one has thorns, but not where her hand is clutching it. Another near miss.
Justin and her husband are bent over a large, flat rock. Coming closer, Em can see an X scratched onto its surface. The X feels childish, like something a kid would do with a stone. A game of pirates marking where a treasure chest is buried.
Justin lifts one side of the rock. ‘Hey, give me a hand here, bro.’
Her husband stands up, glances back at Em, and shoves his hands deep into his hoodie pockets. ‘I think it’s time to quit this, Justin.’ He clears his throat, stands up straighter. ‘We were kids. Stupid kids. Time to quit this.’
Justin lowers the rock and stares at him. ‘I said give me a hand here, bro.’
Her husband mutters something. Em hears her name and words that sound like he’s pleading.
‘Could someone tell me why we’re lifting rocks behind a high school?’ She feels light-headed but takes stock of herself—the strength of her arms and legs, the thorny branch she still clutches—and braces herself.
The two men lift the rock, and a small black snake slides from the mud underneath toward the stream. Justin backs away, blocking Em’s view, but not enough.
She sees the pink blouse where the rock had been, where the snake was hidden. Surprisingly, the blouse is folded, as if it has been laundered and put in a dresser drawer. Then she notices the rip at one shoulder seam and threads where some of the buttons had been. There is a dark stain like fingers trailing down the front of it. She’s even more light-headed.
The woods are hushed. Or she has lost her hearing. No birds call. No leaves rustle in the wind. The world stops breathing.
Justin laughs and points at her. ‘Your face. If only you could see your face.’ He fake screams, high pitched, with his hands fluttering next to his face. ‘Your face looks like a horror movie. I’m thinking Jamie Lee Curtis in Prom Night.‘ He slaps her husband’s back. ‘Am I right?’
He takes a mini Captain Morgan bottle from his hoodie pocket, swigs the rum, and offers it to her husband.
‘No thanks. I’m good.’ But Justin pushes the bottle into her husband’s chest, and he drinks the rest of it.
Em points to the rock and thinks of the small black snake burrowed into the pink blouse. ‘Is this what you did in high school?’ Her husband wipes his lips with his sleeve.
Justin takes the empty bottle and puts it back in his pocket. ‘This is exactly what we did in high school.’
Her husband is such a small man. She hadn’t noticed that before now.
‘We were kids. You do stupid stuff when you’re a kid.’ Her husband—a nameless nothing. Even his voice is small.
‘But I was worse,’ Justin says this like he proud of being worse. Happy, even. ‘But you, bro. What’s the word? Complicit? That’s it. My right-hand man, my first mate.’ Justin looks at Em. Her chest. ‘One more pink blouse for old time’s sake?’
Em thinks, this is how it was the night—or the nights—two high school boys tore a pink blouse from a high school girl. This is how it felt. Standing in the mud, on slippery, unsteady rocks, a snake slipping through the brambles somewhere. Fanta and little rum bottles left behind in the clearing. All of them light-headed from liquor and excitement. For one or two of them, fear. One last moment of feeling clean.
Her husband holds up the folded pink blouse. He strokes the blouse, as if he is soothing it. Or himself. He closes his eyes.
She raises her arm with the thorny branch and swings at him, swings at the Franklin High hoodie, swings at his back and head, his legs and crotch. Careful to miss the buttonless pink blouse.
oOo
Barbara Westwood Diehl is senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry appear in a variety of journals, including Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Poetry South, Painted Bride Quarterly, Five South, Allium, Split Rock Review, Blink-Ink, Midway, Free State Review, Ghost Parachute, Pithead Chapel, and New World Writing Quarterly.
