Curled in the Bed of Love Read Free

Automatically, Claire rejects even the slightest physical risk, before she remembers that she’s not pregnant anymore. A sonogram enabled her doctor to explain the mistake of nature that made her miscarry this time: the
corpus luteum,
an enlarged ovarian follicle that normally functions to produce the hormones needed to thicken the lining of the uterus and anchor the fetus, in Claire’s body swelled like a cyst, filled with mysterious internal debris. No planning, no propitiation of the gods, could have prevented the random error.
    â€œI might,” Claire says. “It depends on whether you’d be willing to follow a few simple rules. Like staying out of the breakers. Like no tipping the kayak on purpose.”
    Sam squints at the vulture circling above them as if held in orbit by their presence. “I hate to have to tell you this, but one of us must be dead.”
    Claire flops back onto the stiff, brittle grasses, arms outstretched, and the vulture veers away at this sudden movement. Sam lazes beside her for a moment and then stands and peels off his shirt.
    Claire sits up. “What are you doing?”
    He shucks his pants. “I’m going swimming. I’m going to go say hello to those big white oafs out there in the water.”
    â€œSome militant environmentalist you are. Leave those birds alone.”
    â€œI’ve swum in a flock of brown pelicans before. They were feeding all around me. They’re not fragile.”
    Cheeky thing. Those birds have survived on earth, nearly unchanged, for millions of years, and in comparison Sam and Claire are only dust motes in time’s eye. But she knows better than to urge any modesty on Sam. Last weekend, when Sam, Russell, and Claire were driving out to the Point Reyes headlands, Claire steered around a dead skunk and then pulled over and walked back to drag it from the road with a stick so the vultures could feed in safety. Sam protested. “Don’t interfere. We are not nature’s housekeepers.”
    The birds scatter and regroup when Sam approaches the water. He wades in slowly, and Claire can imagine his feet sinking into the velvety silt. When he reaches deeper water, he dog-paddles silently, without a splash, and the pelicans slowly drift in his direction, close enough that he could reach out and stroke one of these abashed beauties. Slowly, he lifts one hand from the water and beckons Claire to join him.
    She strips to her bra and underpants. Mud sucks at her toes until she too reaches deeper water. The birds have scattered again at her approach, and she and Sam have to wait for them to return. Claire has a moment when she fears the pelicans won’t come back, fears her wishes are too extravagant to be granted. But soon the pelicans bob close enough that she can hear the clicking of their elongated beaks, see their yellow eyes, pools as mysterious and cool as amber.
    Sam has a slaphappy grin on his face. He looks drunk. Claire should be grinning like that. But she’s not. She has frayed the wiring of her nervous system so badly that the only electrical charge it can deliver is weak, erratic.
    Though she doesn’t trust Sam’s reassurances, Claire goes along on the kayak trip anyway. They rent a kayak in town, load it intoClaire’s truck, and drive along the shore of Tomales Bay. They put in at Heart’s Desire Beach, argue briefly over who gets to sit in back and steer. Claire gives in and climbs into the front seat. They paddle clear of the shore, where at low tide the mudflats can strand a craft in a sticky goo that holds it in place but won’t support your weight if you step out to reach shore.
    Sam’s questions peter out more quickly than usual, maybe because they are caught up in the rhythm of their work, maybe because the rhythm binds them to the intent purposefulness of this wild place. Turkey vultures cast off and circle on the air currents that curve around the flanks of Inverness Ridge,