Page 61 of The Woods

Admittedly, she was reluctant to even mention the incident in the woods out loud again. She’d talked to a doctor about it on the Monday after. A doctor who’s a client and a friend. He’d checked her head and eyes and hadn’t found any sign of a concussion. She’d asked him if the hallucinations might be from a brain tumor. He’d asked her a series of questions, looked in her eyes again, and said there was no reason to believe she had one. “Maybe I’m going crazy,” she’d said with a little laugh, hoping he’d reassure her that she wasn’t. Instead he’d asked her how old she was.

When she said fifty, he whistled. “Periods have stopped?” She’d told him more or less, with just the odd spotting. He went over to his desk and came back with a pamphlet titled “Am I Losing My Mind or Am I in Perimenopause?” He’d handed it to her and said, “It might explain a lot of what you’re talking about today, and often the simplest answer is the right one.” None of it felt very simple to Alice, but she didn’t tell him that. She took the pamphlet and thanked him for his time. She didn’t bother telling him that her husband and mother had both gotten lost in the woods and come out acting differently, wearing different clothes. He’d probably just blame all of that on her aging body too. She left his office discouraged and embarrassed, resolved that the less she thought about it or talked about it, the sooner she’d be able to forget it.

The strangeness of the day intensified when Alice got home from work. She’d arrived to an empty house and Panda pacing at the back door. She’d opened it to let her out. The dog went racing toward the woods, stopping right at the edge of the path to growl. Alice was about to go back inside when she saw her mother appear through the opening in the trees. Something seemed odd, and as she got closer Alice could see that she had dirt around her mouth and streaked across her face.

“Mom?” Alice rushed out to meet her. “Are you okay?”

Her mother’s head snapped up, as though Alice had broken some kind of spell. “Hello, dear. Did you have a good day at work?”

That’s when Alice noticed that the dirt was not only around her mother’s lips but in between her teeth and on her gums. It looked like she’d eaten fistfuls. Alice put both hands on her shoulders. “Mom, what happened?”

Her mom shook her head. “What do you mean?”

Alice began to brush at the dirt on her mother’s face. “You’re covered in filth.”

Her mother knocked Alice’s hand away. “Oh dear. I must have wiped it on myself.”

“Wiped it from what?” Alice asked, confused.

“I stumbled a little coming up the hill and put my hands down to catch myself.”

“No. It looks like you fell mouth-first into a pile of dirt.”

Her mother scoffed. “Don’t be silly. I didn’t realize it was still on my hands and must have wiped my mouth.”

Alice didn’t buy it, but she didn’t push it either, because she didn’t want to know. What answer would satisfy? Then a terrible thought dawned: Was this a sign of dementia?

She went with her mother to her cabin to help her clean up properly. Then she suggested her mother lie down for a little while. Surprisingly, Beverley agreed. Alice looked for the cats, but they were nowhere to be found. Normally they would have been weaving in and out of her mother’s legs the minute she walked through the door. Alice checked under her mother’s bed, but they weren’t there. She went into the living-room area and found them huddled together under the couch, looking like one giant multicolored dust ball. She tapped the floor to encourage them to come out, and they slowly slid along on their bellies until they were within reach. Alice gave them all scratches under the chin, which brought them out even farther and got them purring.

“Can I do anything to help with dinner later?” her mother called out from the bedroom. At the sound of her voice the cats skittered back under the couch, one of them letting out a low growl. Alice wasn’t sure which seemed stranger, the cats’ reaction to her mother’s voice or her mother offering to help with dinner.

“Ahh, no, that’s okay, Mom. Just get some rest,” Alice called back, pushing herself up off the floor. She waited a few seconds to see if the cats would come out. When they didn’t, she quietly let herself out of the cabin.

Now Alice takes a sip of her wine, staring out into the woods. There are still a few leaves left on branches, but she focuses on the ones swirling to the ground in a hypnotic dance.

The back door pops open and Alice startles. It’s Geoff, holding his own glass of wine and wearing a coat and a winter beanie.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks, easing himself into the chair beside her. “I’ve put the food in the oven. It should keep for one drink.”

“Of course not,” she answers, even though she’d prefer to be left alone with her thoughts.

After leaving her mother’s cabin she’d gone straight to Geoff’s writing studio to tell him what had happened with Beverley. He’d listened, looking sympathetic, and promised to check in on her more throughout the day when Alice was at work. He’d said all the right things, but Alice felt like deep down he wasn’t really that concerned. He’d changed the topic too fast, offering to get takeout for dinner.

They’d left the cabin together, but Alice forgot her phone so went back for it while Geoff carried on to the house. His laptop was sitting open, and curiosity got the better of her, as it always did, and she snuck a peek. It was a different story from the one she’d read the last time, and it was good—really good. The setting, from what she could glean, was the woods.

She’d left the cabin feeling hopeful that Geoff might get something published after all. But the hope was laced with disquiet. It was a sense of something lurking, just out of sight. Is that a perimenopause feeling? she’d wondered. Or women’s intuition?

Geoff sits down next to her, and she scolds herself for begrudging the interruption. She should be grateful that he’s taken care of dinner, and that he wants to sit out there enjoying a drink and talking. Their relationship hasn’t been this good for years. She should just relax for once and enjoy it, stop looking for fault, stop being so anxious about everything.

“Tell me about your day,” Geoff says, sounding sincerely interested.

“I met a woman at the bank this morning,” Alice tells him. “Ruth Crowley. She owns the other half of the woods.” Alice shifts in her seat so that she’s looking at Geoff.

His eyebrows rise in interest. “Oh wow,” he exclaims. “What was she like?”

“Odd,” Alice says, not sure how else to explain the woman. “She warned me about the woods. She said we should all stay out of them. That it’s safer to admire them from afar.”

“Well, it’s too late for that now, isn’t it?” Geoff says, sounding pleased and a little bit excited.