Northwood

Maryse Meijer

Cover Page

Northwood

Title Page

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

First published in the United States in 2018 by Black Balloon, an imprint of Catapult (catapult.co)

Jacket and book design by Jonathan Yamakami

Jacket illustrations by Rufus Newell

ISBN: 978-1-948226-01-1

eISBN: 978-1-948226-02-8

Catapult titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West

Phone: 866-400-5351

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938765

Printed in China

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication

For D.

Because

a fire

THE WORLD

I don’t draw you anymore.

I want

to see

through the trees.

The way the pen used

to feel,

a weapon, drawing blood from the page:

not a hymn,

not an homage—

why are the best songs love songs I want

to draw

death but death doesn’t make

music. On the page or

elsewhere.

The wood

doesn’t care if you live

or die. It

is dying all the time. Living. Unsurprised.

But I

am not

a wood, I am not a stream I mourn

the branch that

breaks from its body

and I want

to make a mark more than I want

to make love

but I was

only

ever good at this one

fucking thing

THE HIEROPHANT

I’d only been away

for a day no city no

sky I recognized, how full it was,

the hard stars so cold-shouldered

blinking You are alone,

Only not quite:

there was the stream, after all, and the trees,

and ants relentless over the counters,

the foxes fucking their way through the evenings

their screams so human it chilled me,

high slaughterhouse sound

whistling in every direction.

I could not get the fire started and the floors had no carpets

and the boots I brought had a hole in them and the dew

came through.

I went out to the porch and put my head against the post.

I knew what a car was. I knew

convenience stores and dollar hot dogs and coffee

that appeared

when my money appeared and the phone ready to ring

and the traffic like the sea

lapping the concrete coast of the sidewalk,

24 hours, something always open.

I wanted to get away and I was away

and there was that sky that seemed to say, You know nothing.

I took my pencils out, my paper, my ink.

The rough table was short on one leg and when I drew

it rocked from one side to the other.

Moths flew from the cabinets.

I had never been in love.

KINDLING

I saw the light on in the woodcutter’s hut and walked
through the leaves and knocked on his door not knowing
he was there on the porch sitting in the dark a blanket
across his lap he said What. I said I’m alone I can’t start the
fire. My nose dripped. I had no gloves. I thought it would be
warm, my first month in the woods. I just stood there. He got
up and I followed him into the cabin, my cabin, and he took
the box of long matches from the mantel and showed me.
How dry the wood had to be. Stacked just so. Blow. Smoke
in my eyes. How it stung. Squatting side by side I sniffed the
cold coming off him how long did he sit outside like that in
the dark it was so dark. The fire swelled. After a moment he
left. Sparkle.

Snap.

And the burn

ORBIT

I’ll speak just once, here,

about my father.

You were nothing like him:

he was small, lean as a young tree

and scared. He sat in corners

and cleaned his glasses

and tried to smile. He was almost never

there. I mean in his head he wasn’t.

He liked to see me

with my pens, at the kitchen table:

he said I would be

a great artist

though he was an insurance man

who couldn’t name a single painting.

He told me

before he disappeared

about the way he thought

I should love.

Don’t marry, he said,

the one you like best.

That’s the way to keep it, you know.

Friction

slows a thing down.

Love him

from a distance. And he’ll always

be yours.

I said, Yes Dad.

I was ten and uncomprehending.

A year later he left the house

with his pipe and his favorite

shirt

and was found

hanging in a garage

two states away.

I wonder whose heart

he didn’t dare hold close.

I mean,

other than mine

THE DANCE HALL

I knew no one. A bar at the edge of the wood and music I

hadn’t heard music in a week or seen a human face and

there was yours, a miracle, selling tickets at the door; you

took my hand and stamped it black. Jade eyes into mine

and silver hair, older than any man I’d ever thought was

beautiful, your beauty the first thing that hurt and I moved

into the room solid with plaid shirts and me in my black

dress so this is the country. I drank a cup of punch and ate

almonds from a plastic bowl and you came and dug your

hand next to mine wiped your salty fingers on your hip

and looked down at my shirt unironed and crooked teeth

agleam in the yellow light. I didn’t spend a minute saying

no. You led me through the music, under your arm, pressed

against your side, sweat slicking us wherever we touched. I

spun and you stopped me and said Where are you

staying. I saw the ring on your finger. The bottom dropping out.

We talked on the stage steps, half hidden by a ficus. A cup of

punch on your knee, jeans so tight at the thigh I could see

how big you were. I blushed, touched it anyway. Not a sound

from you. Watching my face, little smile, devastation: the

music grew. Where’s your wife, I said, and you laughed: we

would never be in public together again. I think I’m drunk, I

said, moving my hand away. There’s no booze in that punch,

darling, you said, and got me another glass.

ASCALON

St. George—

helmet aslant, boot on the back.

But where is victory?

The staff never moves,

hovers just above the tongue.

He’ll wait forever for that hard kiss.

I make a list: spear, spurs,

silver, speed.

Good luck, George says.

And the dragon

winks.

FIRST

Slapped between the sheets no ceremony you skinned me

stockings to boots I hadn’t shaved I couldn’t spread my legs

you got in anyway. No condom no question Did you want or

Have you got just your hand against my face, a stroke before

the slap. I was dry when you got inside. I hid from you. I

didn’t come. Your skin in my mouth, bitter, delicious, you too

close to see, what was touching me, your breath all around,

the sound of something chasing us. It caught up.

AMATEUR

I drew my way through the year, having dropped out of

everything. That ad for the cabin written for someone like

me, who didn’t know what Get Away Cheap meant; you can’t

get away. I went to live like a nun, pure, distractionless.

One packed bag. I wanted to draw nature. Tired of drawing

people. Instead I drew you: as a tree, a fox, a stream, a dragon,

a devil. I drew you as I used to draw myself, at first to make

more of you, later to get rid of you, and now I don’t draw you

at all, there are other things, and I never got it right.

ADONIS

We met once

two towns over

for breakfast. A diner. Butter

sunk in the muffins. Two plates

of bacon. There was snow

stuck to the windows, a waitress

in blue pulling at her stocking.

We sat on the same side

in a booth and I held your hand so tight.

How strange to have you

out in the world. Coffee. Syrup.

the way you liked your eggs

gutted on toast.

What, you said, your mouth full,

I kept touching

your face. You brought it closer

to mine, looked in my eyes. There was some

promise there. Some bargain. A roach

on the floor. Just let me look at you.

The check came. We left

in separate cars.

ELEGY

For a while in the wood I was drawing scissors. Before the

dance, before your hands, I didn’t even have a premonition

of you, no black mark against the moon, no bad dream

folded into the sheet, it was just me, and that old table, and

my model, lying in my lap. I’d found them in a drawer of

useless things—snapped rubber bands, birthday candles,

half a package of yellowed paper plates. Silver blades, brass

handle, I tested the tips against the side of my finger—oh,

they could cut, those scissors, but not there, no, you couldn’t

chop a tree with them, or make a path; the wood wanted

harder things, a knife, an ax. When I found a loose thread on

my shirt I didn’t think of the scissors, her legs spread on the

table beside the bed: I just put the hem to my lips and bit.

INTAGLIO

The striped mattress, how thin it was, the wire cot beneath

biting into my bones the blankets

folded double did not help.

I don’t know what makes a person willing.

One evening I ran out of ink

and that same evening you brought me three new jars

and we sat testing them to see

if the different colors had different smells

or if black was really distinguishable

via a faint taste of licorice. We laughed like pigs.

Showing each other our colored tongues.

You put your head on my shoulder

and knocked a drop of ink on the mattress,

where it bloomed

and darkened

and dried. I got quiet, watching it.

What, you said.

I shook my head.

I had stripped myself of every other longing,

of every possible

human comfort but in that moment, eating poison

from the jars,

how wealthy I was, how fragile, how strong, like the strange

skin of a bubble that can resist so much and then

nothing at all.

I watched my happiness sink through the unmade bed

where the blanket had been pushed aside,

one stain among many.

Open your mouth, you said,

and I did,

but it was too late, and the mattress was dry.

LABYRINTH

I drove looking for your house your car white I had never been inside

license plate memorized it’s not this driveway this

dead lawn No flags for you no cheap holiday decoration

lashing the bushes you had money. Lots of land somewhere my car

couldn’t take me. Miles of trees I cried after three hours circling

the same mailbox out of gas. Someone came by with a can

filled me up I could have fucked him/ didn’t. I saw

the pictures. Your back door. The dog

licking the screen the endless green of your kingdom your arms

spread wide and the only truly cruel thing you ever said

Darling, you will never find it.

MOTHER

It’s Christmas.

I know.

You have something to cook on there?

Mom.

What are you going to eat?

I’ll go out.

Where? There’s nothing there, I looked.

Looked where?

Google maps.

You’re crazy.

Me?

Well I just can’t make it, I’m sorry.

(quiet) Are you drawing?

Yes.

That’s something, at least.

At least.

I don’t mean it that way.

It’s good for me.

(pause) Is there—

I’ve got to go. This thing cuts out all the time.
And I’m running out—

—a man?

—of minutes. No.

What are the people like?

Like people.

Do you need money?

Yes but don’t send it.

What do you mean don’t send it?

I don’t want anything.

You sound strange.

It’s the phone.

The phone?

Because I hate talking on it and then I say things.

Are you sure—

It’s work. I’m working.

You can tell me—

Mom.

You’ll starve.

(silence)

Are there bears?

(sigh)

Because honey I know you

you’d let one eat you right up—

NIGHT SONG

You brought batteries for the radio.

We danced close, the way we couldn’t at the dance hall,

your cock against my thigh.

We danced those batteries out.

I took them, spent, when I left,

Bobby Hatfield’s sad falsetto

ringing through the copper caps.

Candles quivering against the glass, our shadows

hovering above our heads I will never forget

the spider’s egg opening in the corner, her babies

spilling across the wall as you dug your chin into my neck.

Walking through song after song.

The thing is, you were soft.

The white of a barely cooked egg, the glistening

edge of it, how it trembles on metal.

You kept falling in love.

The spiders

found the cracks, made new nests. They ate

the ants. And the radio sat on the shelf

above the little blackened pan with its scrawny omelets

and said nothing.

DAPHNE

Her back against me catching her

deep breaths. Naked she was smooth as pith

hair caught in a branch I pulled it free.

The women kneel at the root I watch.

How determined they are to bleed. Apollo’s gold eyes

didn’t dazzle me I

prefer the stream she opens her book and learns her trees

the flies are heavy this time of year she

combs them from her

bangs at night she’s thinking more and more

how to

escape it should she escape

where’s your daddy I asked

isn’t he a god

CELL

It worked

sometimes. Blue light in the dark

and your name in black

on the screen hardly ever

showing up. You didn’t need

to call: when you came

I was here.

Every time. Unerring this sense

of pussy and where

to find it.

Strung up in the smokehouse or waiting their turn beneath

the ice—

you know where the bodies are.

You put them there.

SHOPPING LIST

In the market fingering a box of tea I heard you laugh

two aisles over. My hand froze on the plastic; there was a

woman’s voice, laughing with you. I pressed against the

metal shelf, coat buttons tapping the cereal boxes below.

Who knew me here, I wondered, was I still a stranger, a

woman shivering against the Liptons? On the edge of the

wood it was especially dangerous: the one road with its strip

of shops, the bar, the dance hall, the gas station, the Feed

and Seed. Humans. I closed my eyes and heard your heavy

stride. The breeze your body makes so close to mine. You

didn’t slow. I had eight dollars in change and a hole in my

jeans and a fraction of a lover and I felt it, my poverty, how

little I knew, the limits

FREEDOM

Fourth of July barbecue balancing a plate of cake on my

knees my mother said Remember that time you went to live

in that old cabin? Laughing in fresh disbelief I never did

understand why you did that. The mosquitoes whined in my

ear, chewed their way through my ankles. I looked at a girl in

the next yard holding a sparkler against the sky; the smell of

gunpowder, the lethal taste of vodka lemonade. I didn’t say

a thing. Don’t you? my mother said. Remember? How weird

you were on the phone and then coming back to gain all

that weight? The cake slid off the plate, and the dogs lapped

it up. I was walking to the back door. How cold the empty

kitchen was. I was actively not remembering. There were no

parades, in the woods. No firecrackers no dogs no mothers

no refrigerator hum no beers on ice just my hair gathered

in his hands and my back bent in the firelight that was the

time he got in up to the wrist and I stopped breathing. A

stranger in the woods whistling The Star-Spangled Banner

as he passed the window we were both amazed there was

not a single drop of blood when it was over but you’re in the

kitchen you had too much to drink you were there and now

you’re here deep breath see? There’s your husband now,

asking you if there’s an extra jar of hot sauce somewhere

he can’t find it. You can find it, go outside with him, put the

jar on the grill, the sun slapping your face afresh, that girl

still wasting sparklers before it’s even dark the green light

spitting off into nothing and look, your mother has another

piece of cake, and a fork, and you’ll eat a bite of it, just a bite,

and you’ll say how good it is, because it is good, you made it

yourself.

HOOD

You glued together a broken dish. I sat sewing a hole

on your cuff. The rain

tapped down the chimney

smoked

the fire we were trying out

a new kind of

cracker.

A slice of cheese

on the knife. This domestic scene,

new to me, precious, it could have been

the Fifties. Until

your phone

lights up. You stare at the screen.

Damn, you say. Damn, damn.

I freeze. Choke

on a seed

and sleep

for a hundred years.

By midday the wood

is empty of princes and the sink

is streaked with bile.

I’ll never eat

that cheese again,

or thread that dull needle, touch

the jar of glue.

Many nights later you come,

tapping at the glass,

a wolf in wolves’ clothing: what time is it?

What day?

Shh, you say, sh sh.

Strike a match.

Haven’t you cleaned? you wonder.

A beetle in the kettle. It reeks in here.

I reach for your belt.

Making my own coffin.

THE FOOL

The woodcutter saw the marks on my face, heard me

scream when you said you would not come for a week,

saw you through the window pushing me against the wall,

just hard enough to rattle the glass, your arm against my

throat and you saying Stop. Just like in bed but different,

I didn’t scream, then, no one could hear you fucking me,

that was the rule, my favorite rule, I relished it, that silence;

now it chokes me. Your face close enough for me to see the

red thread in your eyes, the gray lines in your teeth: Just

be quiet, you hissed. The room blacked out behind you. I

was shrunk to the size of your thumb. When you let me go

I rolled along the wall, coughing; I saw him, on the path,

looking in, no expression; your hands shaking on your

keys. The fire spat a cinder onto the rug and you crushed it

beneath your boot. My head on the thick leather laces. How

did he know you weren’t killing me? Did I know? Did you?

Cradling the back of my neck you said Darling, get up, and I

stood. Saw the long drop down. Stepped into air

PATH

if I could have seen the forest for the trees

if I could have seen the forest from afar and stayed afar

if I could have known how deep the woods went

if I could have gone less quickly

if I could have gone less deeply, if I could have gone less

if I could have known the danger

if I could have heeded what I did know, that I was the danger

making danger

if I could have held on to something other than your silk side

if I could have kept my hands from seeking that silk so often

if I could stop all this salt

if I could stop seeing these trees

if I could stop the branches of these trees, stop their budding,

their shedding,

their dying, their deaths

how they astound me

if I could see just one more bloom of you

if I could keep a single seed

EMPRESS

Get up, you said. I didn’t. I felt like something pink sinking

to the bottom of a very deep sea. Your shirt on the floor. I

plucked the empty sleeve. Witless. Where was I? Oh yes.

Here. Your beautiful legs. You touched my hair. I spat. It’s

tradition, after all: one in a long long line. Next time I might

like lipstick, mints. The blackbirds tapped the glass. A chain

saw roared. You pulled me up by the elbow; I hit my knee on

the chair. I ate dinner without washing, skin stiff, a spot on

my shirt. Blue beneath my cheek.

I don’t know anymore. I never did. You smiled across the

table and I remembered something else I could do with this

thing: smile back.

PERSPECTIVE

I could diminish you.

Itemize the missing tooth,

the careless clothes,

every time you couldn’t get it up.

The way your age betrayed you.

But why should I make you smaller than you were.

Than you are.

In truth, you look the same from here

as you did from there—

Immortal. Pristine.

SMALL TOWN

I flipped through the plastic sleeve of photos—there were

your children, I didn’t want them at all—but the wife, yes,

let’s take a look. Very cold I said Well she’s quite a lot older

than me. Yes, you said, careful not to be offended, careful,

sometimes, with me, in this way, as if holding a very full

glass of acid. After a while I said She’s pretty in a deflated

voice and you looked at the picture and said Yes again. Like

you regretted it. What are we doing here I said, and you

shrugged, put your hands in your pocket along with the

wallet Being together. Which was true, there in the wood

I was being, moment to moment, as I was nowhere else

before or since. There was a knock at the door. I thought,

breathless, Her. But you went to the door shirtless saying

Yes? And I hid my face in the blanket. That your car? the

woodcutter said. It’s on my lot. Sorry, you said, I’m going

in a moment. He knew you. He knew your wife, too. You

shrugged: small town.

THE WOODCUTTER

His is the hut that butts the clearing.

I spied him tanning hides, stretching skins.

He had your exact width of thumb.

What is the rule for whipping, I inquired; he said

Ask your man. I asked.

Belt and bruise and rose and gold.

And then you withdrew to the window,

your back to me.

What I read there I will never write,

nor will I even think it,

your shoulders sloped just so.

Branch over branch: this is where

it grows thickest.

This is where I crawled in small

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Northwood

Cover Page

Northwood

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

THE WORLD

THE HIEROPHANT

KINDLING

ORBIT

THE DANCE HALL

ASCALON

FIRST

AMATEUR

ADONIS

ELEGY

INTAGLIO

LABYRINTH

MOTHER

NIGHT SONG

DAPHNE

CELL

SHOPPING LIST

FREEDOM

HOOD

THE FOOL

PATH

EMPRESS

PERSPECTIVE

SMALL TOWN

THE WOODCUTTER

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