“I can’t,” she’d whispered, and he’d waited in silence for a moment and then gone away.
As the darkness faded, she’d gotten up and walked to the airfield without saying goodbye to Jamie.
Now Caleb was beside her again, but he wasn’t kissing her. He was shaking her by the shoulder. Except, as she opened her eyes, it wasn’t Caleb but Kate. Marian reached to cover herself, but a blanket had already been pulled over her naked backside. Out the window, bands of pink blazed among gray clouds.
“He sent me to check on you,” Kate said. “He said he lost his temper.”
Marian turned her head away, looked at the logs again. She couldn’t summon the energy to be embarrassed that Kate had found her lying exposed.
“Did he do this?” Kate said.
“Of course he did.”
“No, this.”
Marian looked. Kate was holding the mangled diaphragm on a handkerchief.
She nodded.
“I know what it is, you know.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m sure you think I’m just an old maid.”
Ordinarily, she would have been interested in whether Kate was implying experience or just knowledge, but not now. She said, “I don’t think about you.” As an experiment, she rolled onto her side and curled her knees in, holding her breath to keep from gasping at the rawness between her legs. She hadn’t moved in hours. She had the sensation of cracking out of a thin pane of ice.
“You don’t want a baby?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
Marian had not considered the question in practical terms. She had so far avoided considering anything. Again some thought of washing came to her. She imagined walking into the hottest pool of the Lolo Hot Springs, sanitizing herself like Berit boiling jam jars on the stove.
“Nothing. I can’t do anything.”
“Aren’t there…rinses and things? Can’t you drink something?”
“Do you have those things here? Because otherwise I don’t know how I’m supposed to get them.” Throwing bitterness at Kate like clumps of mud.
Another long silence. “I might be able to get you another one.” Kate held up the diaphragm. “If that’s what you want.”
Marian had already refrozen in place, but she made herself crack loose again, lift up on her elbow. “You could?” This small piece of kindness, suspect as it was, nudged her out of her stupor, toward a precipice over which could only lie the full brunt of misery. With effort, she sat up. A painful pressure came into her head; a different one settled in her groin, raw and hot.
Kate wrapped the handkerchief around the torn rubber disk, put the bundle back in her pocket. “But if I get you one, you can’t let him catch you with it.”
“He might feel it.”
Kate looked toward the door. “Maybe it’s better not even to try. It might make things worse.”
“No. Please get me one—please. From where, though?”
“I have friends in England. They’re legal there, but it’ll take a while, so you’ll have to fend him off, or just keep him from—” Averting her eyes, she made a small flicking gesture with her fingers. “I’m going to light the fire, and then I’ll run you a bath.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“If you have his baby, we’ll never be rid of you.” She crouched beside the fireplace, struck a match. The logs flared and caught.
* * *
—
She decided, lying in the bath, that if she simply willed herself not to be pregnant, she wouldn’t be. Her body was only a vessel for her will, so why not? Other women simply hadn’t been strict and forceful enough within themselves. She could seal her womb against him. She slid deeper into the tub, lay unmoving in the water. Thin rafts of bubbles drifted and broke apart like clouds.
* * *
—
And since it turned out she wasn’t pregnant, she concluded her will had succeeded. She knew this was not true; she believed it anyway.
She resumed her aimless movements around the house and ranch.
In April, as a late snow fell, she encountered a bear in the forest, thin after the winter, humped and shaggy, its back dusted with white. The animal lifted its head. The black nose throbbed, nostrils pinching closed as it sniffed the air, examining her scent. She carried a rifle across her back but did not draw it, kept still. With its heavy shoulders the bear shoved the earth away, stood on its hind legs. Small, assessing amber eyes. Something humble in its posture to balance the immoderacy of its size, the extravagant length of its curved pale claws.