Girl Woman | Woodsman Wolf

Here is what you’ll bring to grandmother’s house:

• two eggs
• flour
• cocoa powder
• a baggie of your mother’s herbs from her grow closet (for her glaucoma, your mother claims, and don’t even think of sneaking any)
• the bill from QVC with STOP GIVING THEM MY ADDRESS in your mother’s thick, block lettering
• the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog, like gross (what, your poor, old grandmother can’t order underwear?), but you’ve seen her granny panties and can’t imagine her in anything lacy or sheer, and who would want to see her in that anyway
• a QVC corkscrew, not that your grandmother drinks—you couldn’t even find cooking sherry last time you rifled through her pantry, though Lucas says he’ll buy you wine coolers whenever you want
• a can of QVC bear spray (she’ll order anything off there, I swear) because she’s apparently hearing wolves now, though there aren’t even coyotes in these woods
• a twin pack of Gillette razors, might be gross, might not (trust me, you don’t want her mustache getting wild), and you think of Lucas’s beard, how it’s just beginning to silver, how you hope he never shaves it
• the QVC rape whistle on a crimson lanyard the color of your riding cloak (she ordered it for you, says there’s been a lot of creeps in the woods lately, revving their trucks on those old logging trails at all hours)
• the Pure Romance catalog, like double-gross (what, your poor lonely grandmother can’t have fun?), like triple-gross when you see it’s addressed to your mother
• the latest Cabela’s catalog, its dogeared page showing a smiling, flannelled man in snug jeans, the one your mom swears looks like your grandmother’s neighbor—Lucas, she means, though of course, she doesn’t know you know his name, would have a hissy if she did—she says your grandmother has a crush on him, which is unimaginably gross
• a bottle of Call of the Wild, the QVC perfume your grandmother’s started wearing that smells of dead lilacs, and the plastic-bottled vodka Lucas likes, the kind he’ll make you try even though he knows it burns your throat, but he’ll say drink up so you do, until the liquor numbs your lips, and maybe that’s when you’ll tell him about your grandmother’s crush, and he’ll laugh and say, Oh really? like he’s trying to imagine her in lingerie, like he’s forming the mental image and not getting grossed out at all, and you’ll punch him lightly on the shoulder saying what the hell, and he’ll grab your wrist, hold it in his own large, calloused fist, and tell you never, ever touch him like that again
• the SensoCam security camera (at least it’s not from QVC for a change, your mother says, wedging it into your basket and saying don’t take any shortcuts), the one your grandmother needs help setting up, that Lucas will ask what she even wants it for, is she rich or something, and you’ll shrug and try to remember whether her silver is real or not, not that you’d ever say anything to Lucas, though you don’t have to—Lucas has a way of sniffing out the truth, the way he says he can smell it on you whenever he knows you’re lying, whenever you sit there in the dark of his truck, his fingernails tracing the scar on your neck across your collarbone, until his nail catches at your bra strap and tugs—and his large eyes will go all far away as he murmurs about what he’d do with all that money, how you could live like a king out here, in these woods, in the heart of the heart of the forest, and nobody would ever hear a thing
• ten Lotto scratch-offs, twice her usual, not that she ever wins more than a buck or two (oh let the old woman have her fun—besides, she told me she’s feeling lucky)