The Rabbit

Alex opened the envelope with a trembling hand. You are cordially invited to celebrate the Thirtieth Birthday of our beloved daughter Emily. It sat on his kitchen counter for several days, a doorway he never thought he would see again. There was no enclosed RSVP. A summons. He left the city.

In the intervening decade since Alex’s exile, the mansion avoided the decay that befell the rest of the town after the mill closed, a rot that started around the edges until it was undeniable and, by that time, had worked its way right to the foundation. On the land before the town and the mansions on the hill were built, decay was good. Essential. It fed new life. Alex’s ancestors cleared the valley, but history was formed by money instead of dirt, so the name on the lips of the townsfolk was always the Hoffsteaders. 

The town kept its family tree lean. The mayor was the son of the mayor, who was the son of the mayor, who was the son of the mayor. The look of dirt under fingernails refused to fade just as the smell of money—either earned or inherited—so it was no small miracle that Alex ended up on the arm of Emily Hoffsteader at her sixteenth birthday party held at the mansion, where he remained for several years until the day he left town for the city. 

The city was far behind him, along with its whimsy. Skyscrapers that serrated the horizon when viewed from a distance revealed themselves as playgrounds once in their shadows. There, you could sit in a deep, soft chair at a coffee shop as the world and its strange flurry of inhabitants flew by the window, an observer in a bright, wide zoo. Parties at the mansion, Alex reminded himself while making his way through the front garden, were quite the opposite. There was nowhere to hide under the shimmering chandeliers from the buzzards who frequented the events, desperate to feed on the carrion of rumour and gossip. Their dark eyes told him—as if he didn’t already know—he did not belong. Emily’s mother’s eyes, he never forgot, were flat and without colour, as she saw the world. 

The rabbit’s eyes, which he hadn’t considered since that night so long ago, were wide and glassy.

The lawn was as perfectly manicured as it was in his youth, a brilliant menagerie of ornate plants, fountains, and birdhouses. Alex wondered if the boundary of the back garden, far from the view of visitors, was also the same. The wilderness at its edges was held back by a high wire fence. He bore a faint scar on his hand from the night he saved the rabbit.

Alex certainly looked the part now, he thought. His hair was trimmed and tame, and his suit held him in a proper posture. As he crossed the threshold, breaking promises made, for a brief illusory moment, he was one of them. The orchestra of conversations carried the wash of memories over him, and the moment passed. Whatever body language or subconscious cues he absorbed from his time there had atrophied. His shoes were now dull, and his suit ill-fitting. He needed a drink.

He waded as politely as possible through the tall grass of affluence, hearing snippets of conversations as he looked for Emily amongst them: To be perfectly honest (said to preface something that was anything but honest); You simply must; I think it’s wonderful; Why not? I don’t see why not. 

He held both a reverence and a mild disdain for these high-born, for they were the same as those in his youth. They belonged to no particular age but were caught up in the currents, swept from one shining place to another by forces beyond their control. A familiar face held court at the bar. “Alex!”

“Hi. Colin,” Alex said, awash with relief at the sight of someone he knew.

Their friendship was another casualty of his exile, which Alex gave little thought to. Colin was a troublemaker, and there was no good reason to see him again. He was friends with Colin in school because he held all the rebellious qualities of their age that Alex was either not brave enough or held too much sense to embody himself. Colin (the Colin he remembered, not this polished stone holding out a glass of champagne for him) was rough-hewn, the kind of person who got drunk and did things but never felt them. He held no opinions on anything except girls and music. The only way he would have gotten into the mansion back in their day was by wearing an apron. Somewhere along the line, he or his family had climbed the ladder.

“So sorry to hear about your dad,” Colin said. The grapevine extended far beyond the town limits. “He was a good guy.”

“Thank you,” Alex said, letting the champagne blossom courage in his stomach.

“That’s one heck of a tan,” Colin said, pointing to Alex’s face. “Where did you get that?”

“The Canary Islands,” Alex said.

“Work or play?” Colin said.

“A little of both.”

“We went to Iceland last year, the wife and I. Didn’t get a tan, but it was beautiful.”

Alex thought Iceland was in a far-flung time, the origins of everything. There was order in its beauty, towering mountains, and weeping falls, but order on its terms, without bending to human will. “I’ve been,” he said. 

Colin raised his glass. “Not bad for two boys from the Barbary.” The Barbary was the nickname of the paupered area of town, spoken either affectionately or derisively depending on what side of town you lived on. Despite hosting two rivers that forked at its south end, the town was sedentary. The stars young Alex longed to see from his window were washed out by the light of the mill.

"Have you seen her yet?” Colin said.

“No,” Alex said, knowing full well who he meant. Her. When Colin first heard Alex and Emily were dating, he said, “You’re seeing her?” Emphasizing you would have been insulting. Alex was handsome and smart. Emphasizing her was stating a fact: She’s out of your league.

As if conjured by the very mention of her, Emily appeared on the balcony of the second floor. At first glance, she looked the same as the last time he saw her on a rainy night ten years ago. Time was kind to her. Her face had softened and rounded into something that was all Woman now rather than Girl. Her skin was pale, the sun’s warmth a faint memory. She still had the soft, doe eyes that wept when he told her of setting the rabbit free. She smiled as the person she conversed with excused himself, a smile that disappeared so quickly that Alex wasn’t sure it was ever there, just a trick of the light. Emily. Her absence was longer than his time with her, but it held up the sky with its weight.

A young child bounded towards Emily, weaving around tuxedoed legs and severe-heeled shoes. Emily lit up, this smile unbreakable, as she swept up the boy into her arms. His hair was the same colour as hers. Alex’s knees threatened to liquefy. Countless times passing schoolyards or library steps, he imagined what their children would have looked like, her eyes and his smile, her ears and his nose, some perfectly imperfect little smoosh of them both.

The child ran off to seek adventure, but Alex knew he would not find it indoors. The mansion was voluminous yet held no capacity for dreams. He remembered thinking that the night he saved the rabbit, when everything was not only possible but at your fingerprints, dreams would be pale, shapeless things without meaning. He needed dreams to light a path. Emily’s path was clear and smooth and flat, with only enough room for one pair of footsteps.

He willed for Emily’s eyes to meet his, the story Colin was unravelling fading farther and farther away. Emily looked out over the party, her hands kneading the railing. Her eyes found his, and the years folded in on themselves. 

“Uh oh,” Colin said, clear and present. “Here comes the old lady. I think I’ll get another drink.”

Mrs. Hoffsteader, the matriarch, headed towards them, her hawkish face and beady eyes only made crueler by time, which no glamorous dress could offset.

“Make mine a double,” Alex said.

As she approached the woman who Alex used to refer to (never to anyone who could carry the words back to her) as the one who cut the crusts off of Emily’s life, the last words she gave him rang in his head. You and I know it, and so does Emily, but she will never admit it. That’s why you must leave her be.

“Hello, Mrs. Hoffsteader,” Alex said. 

“I thought I made myself clear,” she said as if there wasn’t a decade sprawled out between statements.

“I’m afraid I’m confused,” he said, "as much as I was when I received the invitation.” 

“Invitation?” Her nose upturned at the insinuation. “I can assure you, no invitation was sent to you.” 

Emily. The temperature in the room changed as the betrayal, however minute, dawned on Mrs. Hoffsteader. A couple in matching blue regality emerged from the throng around them with arms outstretched at Mrs. Hoffsteader, oblivious to his presence, awkward mercy. 

“We have been searching for you all night, it seems,” the man said.

The man's wife smiled apologetically, with a flicker of eye contact that said, he’s had a few glasses of champagne during the search. 

“There is someone I must introduce you to,” the man said, and took Mrs. Hoffsteader by the arm as tenderly as he would a wounded bird.

Her eyes remained on Alex, but bound by protocol, she silently acquiesced to being led away. Alex swallowed the rest of his champagne and moved through the tide of guests to the stairwell.

Over ten years ago in this mansion, Alex was suffocated, as much by the atmosphere of dinner as by his tie, an awkward knot he’d fussed with in the mirror for far too long before Emily fixed it—he wondered how women knew how to tie a tie and men didn’t—so he excused himself and snuck out the back patio door to loosen his tie and draw some free air.

He much preferred the back to the impeccable facade of the front garden. This was much more honest land: the grass was only modestly trimmed here, and surrounding untamed fields deferred to the high fence, biding their time to reclaim the land. He almost tripped over the rabbit. It was sitting at the base of the fence, staring out towards the fields. 

“Hi, there,” Alex said.

It didn't spook, which made him wonder if it was a pet rabbit that had escaped its cage. The attitude of the Hoffsteaders—Emily’s parents, that was—towards anything with a beating heart that didn’t have money quickly dispelled that thought. Its fur was heavenly soft and unspoiled by matting, burrs, or any evidence of a life beyond the fence. He puzzled over how the rabbit came to be on this side of the fence, as it was so high. The answer lay just a few feet away: a hole in the fence at ground level.

Alex picked up the rabbit and placed it in front of the hole. “There you go.”

It remained still, looking through the hole at the field beyond. 

“It’s OK,” Alex said. “Go on.”

Any longer, Alex feared, and they might search him out. He grasped the rabbit and pushed it through the hole. A sharp edge of wire cut him. The rabbit sat in the freedom of high grass, staring at him.

“You’re welcome. Now, go on.”

It wasn’t until Alex was on the porch, his tie back in the best form he could muster, that the rabbit returned through the hole in the fence.

Alex found Emily waiting upstairs, twisting her velvet-gloved hands.

“You look different,” Emily said. 

“So do you,” Alex said, to his knowledge the first lie he ever told her.

“I wasn’t sure you would come,” Emily said. She spoke as softly as a breath. As always with Emily, in the mansion, under the moonlight, and nestled into him, her words came out of nowhere and everywhere.

“I saw a child,” he said, before he could think.

“Sebastian.” Emily said. “My nephew.” 

“Oh,” Alex said, flush with relief and remorse. “I thought…”

“No!” Emily softened. “No.”

“Emily!” Mrs. Hoffsteader, from below, still attached to the drunk man and his wife. “There is someone here you must meet.” There was no music in the voice. A blunt, imperial instrument. 

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” He said, stepping closer.

Her eyes. “I have to…I’m sorry. I…” And she was gone.

Alex lost side of her in the crowd. He loosened his tie and found no respite. The French doors out to the back veranda were blocked by catering equipment. He fought his way through the choking herd toward the front door. The noise was rising, seeking corners and secret parlours to fill, but this place had no corners and suffocated secrets right out in the open. There were hundreds of instruments all playing at once, not making music but fighting each other for space on the same stage with marble busts of dead ancestors.

A sharp hatred for the mansion bit him, and he imagined it succumbing to decay. Squinting, he could see it. Abandoned and derelict, the only signs of life were a scattering of animal droppings in the overgrown garden and a broken window someone had thrown a rock through.