Women of Fox Way #2
Back in what Calla called the good years and Maura called the early years and Persephone called that time before things got strange – that is to say, before Artemus came along – these three women were even more a unit than they were in Blue’s childhood. Or maybe they were just a different kind of unit. When Blue was born and Artemus disappeared, they had to come together to care both for the child and for Maura, who was in the strange position of being both a new mother and deeply in grief. They became more practical and more grown up and though they did not love each other any less, they all became a little less in love. But they had started being less in love when Maura had met Artemus because their relationship was very triangular and it’s difficult to maintain a good triangle when one of the points is head over heels with a mysterious stranger from a forest.
The loosely defined something that had existed between the three of them before Artemus showed up had started during one of the endless sessions they’d spent on the roof, patching holes and cleaning the gutters and generally trying to improve the odds of the house remaining in one piece through the winter. After several hours of hard work, Calla had gone down to the kitchen to fetch beers for all of them (a rare treat that they’d gotten after a fabulously wealthy and fabulously superstitious old man had paid them a considerable amount to improve the energy flow of his enormous house on the outskirts of town) and they laid back under the shade of the beech tree and drank slowly.
Persephone said, “I don’t mean to make trouble, but I do think it is a little rude for you two to kiss while I’m not around and not tell me anything about it.
Maura and Calla’s heads jerked sideways in mirror movements to look at Persephone, who was lying between them.
“How do you know about that?” Calla said, sounding a little angry.
“I’m sorry, we should have told you,” Maura said, sounding extremely sheepish.
“I’m not cross,” Persephone said, which relieved Maura, though it was difficult to imagine an emotion like cross in Persephone. “But I did want to say that it might be nice to be included.”
“Oh,” Maura said, not quite surprised but a little bit startled all the same.
Calla considered. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Only if you’d like to include me, of course,” Persephone clarified.
Maura realized that she did want to include Persephone, very much, but somehow she hadn’t admitted it to herself until just now. “I would,” Maura said. “As long as Calla would.”
And Calla did. It was remarkably easy to move from two of them kissing to three of them kissing, and they didn’t bother to label it more precisely than that. They didn’t even think much about what it was. They were quite simply together. They lived in one house and slept in one bed and ate their meals together and it just made sense to all of them. At least it did back then. They had all agreed that they were allowed to see other people if it ever came up, but none of them had really been expecting it to come up. Undeniably, something about them had broken when Maura started seeing Artemus. They had agreed that they were allowed to date other people, but they hadn’t agreed that they were allowed to fall madly in love with other people. But falling madly in love isn’t something you can tell a person not to do, so Calla and Persephone accepted it, and they accepted it when Artemus vanished, though Persephone did so with more good grace – or perhaps only with more vagueness – than Calla.
While their relationship changed after Artemus, they remained firmly a unit. Maura was fairly certain at this point that nothing short of death could shake that. They had their own bedrooms now, and they kissed each other less often these days (though they had not entirely stopped), but they were still together. They still belonged to one another, and now they had a child. In the absence of a father, they thought three mothers would do just fine, and that was what they were to Blue. Sometimes, on sad or lonely nights, they would all end up back in the queen bed in the room that was now just Maura’s and curl up together as they had in the old days, Persephone’s head resting on Maura’s chest, Maura’s legs tangled up with Calla’s. After Artemus had disappeared, Maura had had a brief spell of terror, thinking that she would be alone for the rest of her life. But it quickly became clear that she would never be alone, not the way some people were. She would always have these women, who had from the beginning loved her better than Artemus ever had, and, somewhat to her surprise, they still did. Maura wasn’t sure she deserved them. But in the end, that didn’t matter, because she needed them, and they would love her regardless.
As Blue was growing up, Maura wondered sometimes if she should explain her history with Calla and Persephone to him, but she found that she didn’t need to. He might not know specifics, but he understood better than most adults did what they meant to each other. It was the most natural thing in the world to him that his mothers held hands and sometimes piled together in one big bed and kissed each other. It was how they existed as a family, and always had. Maura felt unbelievably lucky to have a child who so easily accepted what even to her sometimes seemed difficult and complicated. But then, Blue had always understood love better than anyone else she knew, even when he was very young. The prediction of the death of his true love broke her heart because she understood that he would be the kind to love entirely and faithfully and for life. That such a love would be cursed seemed unspeakably cruel to Maura. She could only hope that the love of his family would carry him through somehow.