After Hugh decided to leave Marg and live with Sylvia, after Marg and Sylvia went through the arduous process of repairing their relationship, the three of them recovered a kind of balance. They never spoke about it but Sylvia was sure that Marg was relieved, untied from the burden of the wheelchair that she hadn’t bargained for, and untied, probably, from the memory—about which she never said a word—of the pregnancy she had lost.
The affair had started at a cabin in the Adirondacks that Marg had rented. She’d looked for a long time for a place that would accommodate a wheelchair. It was before the internet and every few days she would phone Sylvia with a description and together they would try to picture it: the sparkling lake, the rattan sofas, the plaid upholstery, the tall pines, the sound of the loons. The cabin Marg finally found was farther away than she had hoped and it had two stories instead of one, but there were ramps to the doors on the main floor and a bedroom with double doors that opened to a view of the lake. Marg, Hugh, and Sylvia had gone with another couple and another friend, an older man, graying but youthful, maybe ten years older than all of them. Sylvia assumed Marg hoped to set her up with him.
The air smelled of pine cones and lake water. Inside, the cabin was musty, its windows shuttered. There was a stone fireplace, three over-stuffed couches, and book shelves filled with old paperbacks: mysteries, romances, detective stories. It was only when they released the little brass latches that kept the shutters closed that they noticed the flies: piles of flies dead on the floor, flies pressed against the window panes, still buzzing, in their slow death throes. They were even thicker on the second floor, covering the floors and beds in thin, black, pulsing blankets. Sylvia was dismayed but Marg got to work immediately. She pulled out an industrial vacuum cleaner she found in a closet and asked everyone if they minded if she just vacuumed them up. “It may be cruel,” she said, “but effective. More effective than sweeping, anyway.” She looked especially at their friend Roger, who was a vegetarian and had already explained his position on killing living things in the car on the way up. No one minded. The vacuum made a loud roar and Marg moved through the rooms, aiming its sucking mouth into the mounds of flies. When she directed the wide wobbly plastic tube to the flies that clung to the window in ones and twos, she said sorry sorry. Sylvia and the others could hear her soft quick voice, sorry sorry sorry sorry, under the roar. The flies were gone in under an hour.
Barbara Leckie has previously published a short story in The Literary Review, and is currently working on a collection of stories tentatively entitled Older Women.
