The Human Stain

It isn't the nicest place, but it's a place. Go to it! Fuck until all hours, but then go. There was the thunderstorm on Memorial Day, a thunderstorm ripping, pounding, volleying through the hills as though a war had broken out. The surprise attack on the Berkshires. But I got up at three in the morning, got my clothes on, and left. The lightning crackling, the trees splitting, the limbs crashing, the hail raining down like shot on my head, and I left. Whipped by all that wind, I left. The mountain is exploding, and still I left. Just between the house and the car I could have been killed, by a bolt of lightning ignited and killed, but I did not stay—I left. But to lie in bed with him all night? The moon big, the whole earth silent, the moon and moonlight everywhere, and I stayed. Even a blind man could have found his way home on a night like that, but I did not go. And I did not sleep. Couldn't. Awake all night. Didn't want to roll anywhere near the guy. Didn't want to touch this man. Didn't know how, this man whose asshole I've been licking for months. A leper till daybreak at the edge of the bed watching the shadows of his trees creep across his lawn. He said, "You should stay," but he didn't want me to, and I said, "I think I'll take you up on that," and I did. You could figure on at least one of us staying tough. But no. The two of us yielding to the worst idea ever. What the hookers told her, the whores' great wisdom: "Men don't pay you to sleep with them.

They pay you to go home."

But even as she knows all she hates, she knows what she likes. His generosity. So rare for her to be anywhere near anyone's generosity.

And the strength that comes from being a man who doesn't swing a pipe at my head. If he pressed me, I'd even have to admit to him that I'm smart. Didn't I do as much last night? He listened to me and so I was smart. He listens to me. He's loyal to me. He doesn't reproach me for anything. He doesn't plot against me in any way. And is that a reason to be so fucking mad? He takes me seriously. That is sincere. That's what he meant by giving me the ring. They stripped him and so he's come to me naked. In his most mortal moment. My days have not been carpeted with men like this. He'd help me buy the car if I let him. He'd help me buy everything if I let him. It's painless with this man. Just the rise and fall of his voice, just hearing him, reassures me.

Are these the things you run away from? Is this why you pick a fight like a kid? A total accident that you even met him, your first lucky accident—your last lucky accident—and you flare up and run away like a kid? You really want to invite the end? To go back to what it was before him?

But she ran, ran from the house and pulled her car out of the barn and drove across the mountain to visit the crow at the Audubon Society. Five miles on, she swung off the road onto the narrow dirt entryway that twisted and turned for a quarter of a mile until the gray shingled two-story house cozily appeared between the trees, long ago a human habitat but now the society's local headquarters, sitting at the edge of the woods and the nature trails. She pulled onto the gravel drive, bumping right up to the edge of the log barrier, and parked in front of the birch with the sign nailed to it pointing to the herb garden, hers the only car to be seen. She'd made it. She could as easily have driven off the mountainside.

Wind chimes hanging adjacent to the entrance were tinkling in the breeze, glassily, mysteriously, as though, without words, a religious order were welcoming visitors to stay to meditate as well as to look around—as though something small but touching were being venerated here—but the flag hadn't been hoisted up the flagpole yet, and a sign on the door said the place wasn't open on Sundays until 1 P.M. Nonetheless, when she pushed, the door gave way and she stepped beyond the thin morning shadow of the leafless dogwoods and into the hallway, where large sacks heavy with different mixes of bird feed were stacked on the floor, ready for the winter buyers, and across from the sacks, piled up to the window along the opposite wall, were the boxes containing the various bird feeders. In the gift shop, where they sold the feeders along with nature books and survey maps and audiotapes of bird calls and an assortment of animal-inspired trinkets, there were no lights on, but when she turned in the other direction, into the larger exhibit room, home to the scanty collection of stuffed animals and a small assortment of live specimens—turtles, snakes, a few birds in cages—there was one of the staff, a chubby girl of about eighteen or nineteen, who said, "Hi," and didn't make a fuss about the place not yet being open.