Gwen, in Green

Gwen enjoyed the outside work. It was pleasantly warm, the sun was brilliant. There was enough wind to cool freshly created sweat, and it was sort of nice, at the end of the day, to look back and see where they had cut, the parklike, clear spaces under the trees, the openness in direct contrast to the lush growth of spring in the sur­rounding woods. She liked the fires, too. A cold beer was fine after hours of hard work bending, stacking, pulling, carrying, and cutting. She was the official tree shaper, armed with a small saw, powerful clippers, and a critical eye. Soft green branches fell as she shaped and patterned. Limbs too low to the ground fell to the saw.

She attributed her restless sleep to the tiredness of her body. The vague dreams were disturbing, but dreams were no new thing to her. As a child, she had always dreamed, in color, in painful vividness, and her dreams had almost always been bad. Child dreams were running in some thick­ness which slowed her movements to a crawl, while an unseen but terrible something closed in on her. Child dreams were being in a school room, suddenly discovering that she was naked. Her brush-­clearing dreams were more vague, forgotten when she awoke save for a faint sense of unease, and were associated, she felt, with her aching muscles. This, she felt, would pass. Exercise never hurt anyone.

The change in her feelings toward the house bothered her more than the fitful sleep and the dreams. The friendly house had become just a house, a space of darkness and shadow. A childish feeling of threat.

In addition, her old hang-­ups were making themselves felt. She was unable to achieve the feeling of abandon­ment, missed it, resorted to faking her climaxes when George wanted to make love during the day or with the lights on. She felt an overwhelming urge to drag the protective covers over her body to hide the shameful act, but fought this urge. She was not going to disappoint George, was determined not to have to hear questions, should she reveal that she was having a relapse into the neuroticism of her younger years.

Days alone in the house were filled with make-­do tasks. She was becoming a perfectionist housekeeper. When George complained, she laughed at herself. “Is it that bad?”

“Honey, I can’t even lay down my hat without you hanging it up in the closet, and it’s been so long since I’ve used a dirty ashtray I feel indecently tidy. Do you know that you’re gotten up three times already to empty this one particular ashtray?”

They were watching television. She had, she realized, been more interested in watching George, and leaping up to clean the ashtray after each of his cigarettes, than in watching the program.

“Find something to occupy yourself,” he said. “Take a lover. Get a hobby.”

“Sure,” she said.

She drove the M.G. into town the next day, bought sixty dollars’ worth of art supplies, moved things around in the studio room, and became an artist. George examined her efforts, kept as a surprise, and grinned. “Looks like trees,” he said.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Why in red?”

“Why?” She shrugged. “It’s not really red. Sort of maroon. They look that way in the mornings with the sun on them.”

“Send that gal to an eye doctor,” George said. He hugged her. “Go, girl. I’m pleased to see you interested in something.” He laughed. “Even red trees.”

She’d taken art lessons, knew the basics of composition and the handling of colors, but had, she felt, precious little talent. But she liked the fresh smell of the paints and the ting of turpentine. She spent long hours, while George was working, in the studio. Her subject was almost in­variably the view out the windows, toward the marsh. Trees.

“Trees again?” George would ask.

“I’m going to become the definitive painter of twisted oaks,” she said.

“When are you going to clean up this outhouse?” George asked playfully.

“You’re never satisfied. When I was a perfect wife you complained. When I let the work go, being a genius seri­ously involved in putting every variety of tree onto canvas, you complain.”

“Just as long as you don’t sublimate your sex urge into your work,” he teased.

The trees fascinated her, held her, dominated her. She thought trees, painted trees, dreamed trees. George cut trees, burned trees. The great American pioneer was to the creek, and spreading out, clearing around the clear pond now, being noisy and sweaty and happy, bellowing his songs as he worked, calling to Gwen to get the lead out with the cold beer.

Gwen dreamed that a furry little animal with long, sharp teeth was crawling over her body, chewing, taking her flesh, biting into her soft breasts, decapitating her nipples. She woke, screaming.

“Wha, wha,” George mumbled, sitting up.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just a dream.”

“Honey, go to sleep,” he said, wrapping her in his arms, all warm and moist and very male and dear to her. She slept in his arms and did not wake.

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