Page 4 of The Woods

On her way back to Polly’s room, she stops to check in on Quinn. He’s sitting amidst chaos, clothes pulled free from suitcases but not yet put away, his collection of sneakers in a pile that’s already claimed the room with its stench. Panda, their border collie rescue, who never leaves Quinn’s side, is happily lying down next to him on a pile of T-shirts. The only thing set up is the TV and the Xbox. He sits in front of it, a headset tamping down his brown curls, a sheen of sweat on his tanned face that even at fifteen still has a babyish quality to it—so similar to his father’s.

He sees her and pulls the headset down. “Hey.”

“I thought you needed Wi-Fi for that?” Alice points at the Xbox.

“Not for all the games.” He starts to pull his headset back on.

“Quinn,” she calls out before he can disappear back into his virtual reality. “Can you please do some unpacking?”

He lets the headset rest back on his neck. “When will the Wi-Fi be on?”

Typical Quinn, answering her question with a question that is unrelated and in no way helpful. Annoyance prickles through her. “I don’t know exactly,” she snaps back. “Just get off that stupid thing and unpack properly, for heaven’s sake.”

She’s not even through the door when the guilt bleeds through the annoyance. She gets so short with him now, but they’ve never had the easiest time. She was sick all through her pregnancy with Quinn, and to be honest, he was a bit of a surprise, arriving red-faced and outraged, four years after the twins were born. The girls were in preschool, and Alice had been looking forward to getting back out into the workforce. She’d been the one to stay home with the twins because Geoff was an English professor at the time and made more than she did working in the pharmacy.

After her difficult pregnancy, giving birth was a relief, until she realized she had a colicky newborn on her hands. And he stayed fussy right up until eighteen months. Lucy was the only person who could soothe him; she would sit beside his baby seat and talk to him softly, holding up toys for him to look at, singing soothing songs to him and stroking his cheek. Polly tried with him as well, but she was loud and rough, itsy-bitsy-spidering up his stomach too aggressively, planting hard, wet kisses on his cheeks, making Old MacDonald animal sounds that scared him.

That’s why he loved Lucy best—right up until the day she died. His father was a close second, followed by Polly and then Alice. Or at least that’s how it feels. As a child, Quinn had been clingy and needy, but Alice never got the knack for soothing him. He’d rail against her, she’d snap at him, he’d punish her with silence and lock his bedroom door, then she’d feel guilty and try to fix it. It was a nasty cycle that no parenting book could remedy. They got along a bit better when he became a teenager, because he was less needy and she was less impatient. Somehow, they stumbled into a clumsy sort of harmony. Then Lucy died. And Quinn blames her. He’s never come right out and said it, but she knows.

A mother always knows when her child hates her.

She hopes that the move helps him. Hopes the reminders of Lucy from the old house no longer haunt him. Over the past year, Alice had found Quinn in Lucy’s room many times. Lying on the bed, staring at the wall, tears streaming down his cheeks. The pain of losing her child was unbearable, and she almost didn’t make it, but then to see the pain in her other children brought on a whole new level of grief. Pain laced with a sense of profound failure and helplessness.

She takes a deep breath and steps back into Quinn’s room with a smile. He glowers at her return but slides the headset off. “I was thinking we’d order pizza or Chinese for dinner,” she says, because those are his two favorite kinds of takeout. “Your pick. We’ll see what this town has to offer.” He nods but eyes her with suspicion. At least it’s not hatred.

Geoff

Of course Alice would label the setting up of his writing studio as non-crucial. Of course she’d step in to delegate what he should be doing instead. The verbal tirade against her is loud in Geoff’s head as he unwraps the gray dinnerware that Alice bought for the new house. She didn’t even ask his opinion, not about the new dinner plates, or the new glassware, or the new towels. Not to mention moving, and worst of all, inviting her crazy mother to live with them.

Alice had shown him photos of the house online. He’d agreed that it was an amazing find, mostly because he’d finally have his own separate writing space. And yeah, her mother didn’t have anywhere else to go—but it’s the principle that matters, isn’t it? The way she just bulldozes ahead with things like she’s the goddamn CEO of the family. As though she knows what’s best for everyone.

But if that were true… He doesn’t let himself finish the thought.

He’s the one who got them where they are today. He put in the work that bought their first house and paid the bills when the kids were little and Alice wasn’t working. Day in and day out, slaving away as an English professor to privileged snots who cared more about social media and what parties they were going to get drunk at than real literature. It was only fair that, as soon as Alice started making good money as a pharmaceutical rep, he got a turn to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. A dream he’s had since before he and Alice even got together. It was Alice’s dream to have kids, wasn’t it? He made that happen and now it’s his turn, plain and simple.

She’d been all for it in the beginning. Super supportive and encouraging. It was after the first novel, the one that his agent couldn’t sell, when she started to get critical. He didn’t know that there was a time limit on the pursuit of your dream, that only one novel was allowed. She came into his office, saw the new novel Post-it notes on the wall, and said, “You’re writing another one? Does this mean you’re never going to go back to teaching?” From that day on things shifted. She started to get her little digs in. Started demanding more of him. “Could you at least get some laundry done during the day, do the grocery shopping once a week? It would be nice to come home to dinner made once in a while.” As though his days were empty and needed to be filled by her.

She didn’t understand the process at all. That every good writer has to go through the rejection process first. That most writers don’t get published until their second, third, or even fourth finished novel. It’s only been two years since he quit teaching, for Christ’s sake, and one of those years was spent grieving the greatest loss of his life. Did she expect him to write through that? Probably. Now that she’s moved them all out here, she’s back to verbally castrating him.

He puts a tall, thin-stemmed wineglass down too hard on the stone countertop, causing the stem to break free, which makes an oddly beautiful chiming sound as it slices deep into his thumb. Blood drops quickly arrive across the thin line of the cut and drip onto the island. He pulls a piece of paper towel off a roll and wraps his thumb in it.

“Fuck this,” he whispers, chucking the broken glass into the trash and heading out the back door.

Alice

When she came back from asking Geoff to unpack the kitchen, Polly was lying on her bed, picking at that damn scar. Her eyes were red, which Alice feared was from crying. She ignored it, which she’s learned is the best tactic, and went right back to unpacking. Polly eventually got up to help, and now Alice has unpacked almost an entire duffel bag of clothes and Polly is hanging things up in her closet. Alice is about to suggest Polly keep at it and she’ll check back in a bit when the doorbell rings.

“The Wi-Fi guy?” Polly asks, her face brightening. The expression reminds Alice of Lucy so much that it feels like a hand suddenly clenches her heart. She often sees her dead daughter in the face of her living one. A painful side effect of having identical twins. Some days the similarity is so strong that it catches her off guard.

“I’ll go see,” Alice says. “You keep going, you’re doing a great job.” She squeezes Polly’s arm on her way out of the room. The therapist told her it was good to incorporate touch as much as possible, “so that everyone in the family not only senses the connection but literally feels it as well.” This is easy for Alice. She’s always been the affectionate type—and she loves her family. She just has to pick the right moments with the kids: in passing and never linger or make them feel like she expects anything back. Watch their moods like the weather and act accordingly, she’s always reminding herself. Does Geoff ever think like that? she wonders, heading for the door. Does he think about what the kids need from moment to moment?

It’s not the Wi-Fi guy standing at the front door but the realtor, Sabrina. Pulling the door open, Alice is flooded with self-consciousness; her hair is greasy and pulled back into a messy ponytail, she’s not wearing any makeup, not even a pair of glasses to hide the dark circles under her eyes, and is in her grubbiest clothes to clean and unpack. Sabrina, on the other hand, looks as though she’s been spat off the realtor.com webpage.

“Congratulations on your new home!” She holds a bottle of Champagne out to Alice.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Alice says, taking the bottle from her, knowing full well that she does it for every client who helps pay for the massive white Mercedes SUV she arrived in. Alice waves her away from the front door and into the kitchen. “Come on in and have a glass with me.”

Sabrina shakes her head at the suggestion. “Oh no, I only wanted to drop it off and say congratulations. I don’t want to intrude.”