Gwen, in Green

“Honey,” he said, “the noise is bad, but that bad?” There was heavy equipment working around the clock. The dredges were ­a constant, if distant, roar. There were occasional hoots of air horns as the dredgemen signaled. On the island, drag lines were working. They reached their land via a sandy detour. The road next to the beach had been dug away and a small bridge was under construction. It was never quiet. “In another few months we’ll have it all to ourselves again. In fact, it’ll be more private than ever. There’ll only be one way to get here, over the bridge. There’ll be a high wire fence around the canal, so no one will be able just to wander over on our side.”

“Yes,” she said. It was the only hope she had. She was helpless against the workers in the marsh. “But wouldn’t it be divine justice if we could kill all of them?”

“Jesus, you’re bloody-­minded this morning,” he said, kissing her and hurrying off to shave and prepare for work. He thought about it as he shaved. By itself, it could be idle conversation, even if it was desperately out of character for a girl as gentle as Gwen. The pup came in and chewed on his foot, and George jiggled it playfully. When he finished, Gwen was sitting in the big room, hands on the arms of the chair, eyes unblinking, straight ahead. He was shocked, for she was directly in the light of the glass doors and the morning sun and her face looked strained, washed out.

“Do you feel all right?” he asked.

He had to repeat the question. “Oh, sure,” she said.

Little things. Her appearance. She was still losing weight. The space between her thighs was back. Her face looked thin. The un-­Gwenlike talk about killing. And the house was becoming a botanical garden. Every available inch of sunny window space was occupied by pots containing the flytraps. The demand for insects was so great that George had given up. She fed the flytraps raw hamburger, rationing them to one bit per week. She never seemed to tire of feeding them, dropping the hamburger bits onto the small, black trigger hairs, and watching the trap close. Little things. Her pleasing but rather puzzling reversal in her attitudes toward sex. From a woman who wanted to hide the shameful act under the covers, she’d developed into a wild and wanton sexpot. She liked new things. On Sunday she’d suggested they do it on the lounge on the balcony, in the open air, in broad daylight. Wild, absolutely wild. And then, not once but three or four times, he had come home to find her standing ankle deep in the waters of the clear pond, her head tilted back and her arms hanging limply at her sides. Once he’d seen her swaying in the breeze like a tall sunflower. It was, when you put all the other things together, it was sort of frightening. And that last thing, that was the last straw. The cleared areas were overgrown. He’d gotten out the mower. She, hearing it start, had run out, teased him out it, and taken him inside to distract him. And they’d stayed in bed late that very morning. It was as if she didn’t want him to mow the new growth. He was bedamned if he was going to let the damned jungle move back in and take over all of it after all his hard work clearing it.

Little things. Her moodiness. Sometimes he had to speak to her two or three times before she heard. Sometimes she looked at him without recognition in her eyes. And if he didn’t know better, he’d have been a suspicious husband because of the innovations she’d introduced into their lovemaking. Once, when she suggested a particularly weird position, he said, “What the hell? Are you experimenting with a kooky lover or something?”

“Reading books, darling,” she cooed, urging him into the position, which, he found, was interesting, if rather athletic.

“Gwen, you don’t look so good,” he said one day. “Why not have Doc Braws check you over?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

Then there was the flytrap-­gathering expedition. “Honey,” he said, when she went off toward the bog with a small trowel and a basket, “those damn things are eating us out of house and home now.”

“It’ll be cold soon,” she said.

“Hell, they’re used to the cold. They’re tough little beggars. They even live through ground fires.”

He followed her, nevertheless. She scooped up only weak-­looking specimens. He tired of it and walked back to the clear pond. He was thinking it might be nice to find some tadpoles somewhere and put them into the pond. The croaking of frogs would, at least, offer a bit of counterpoint to the incessant roar of the heavy equipment. Funny that there weren’t frogs there, anyhow. In all his swimming he’d never even seen a minnow. The only life he saw in the pond was the plants and the mosquito larva. He’d been meaning to talk with the game warden and find out about getting some fingerling bass to stock the pond. Be nice to stand on the balcony and cast for a couple of largemouths.