Featured Prose | December 08, 2023

In “Wilderness Survival,” which first appeared in TMR issue 46.3 (Fall 2023), a recently widowed mom does her best to support her young daughter, who becomes an avid student of wilderness survival techniques as a way of coping with her father’s death. Genevieve Abravanel’s effervescent story builds toward an unexpected conclusion that offers insight into the bewildering process of grieving and healing in the aftermath of loss.

Wilderness Survival

Genevieve Abravanel

 

I. Water Is Life

I had mostly tuned out the noise of YouTube in the living room when Candy asked me for a condom. I stared at her. She’s ten.

“I’ll just look in your bathroom,” she said.

I sat still for a moment. On the Internet, someone laughed. Then I took a deep breath and walked to the bathroom. I didn’t hurry. There were no condoms in the bathroom. There were a few left in the nightstand, and they weren’t likely to be used.

But when I reached the bathroom, Candy wasn’t there. She was already in the bedroom, sitting on her father’s side of the bed, a frown of concentration as she tried to tear open the orange foil square.

“Let me help you,” I said and caught myself. “Why do you need a condom?”

“I don’t need it.”

“Is this for school?”

Candy shook her head, fitted the foil zigzags between her teeth, and delicately ripped the package open. She grinned as she wiggled the little latex sleeve out, like unwrapping a long-awaited Christmas present.

“What for, then?”

“You’ll see.”

It had only been six months since her father died, leaving us both adrift. My sister kept reminding me that Candy needed time. She would open up, and it didn’t mean anything that we never talked about it.

Candy pressed the condom to her mouth. I made a little squeak of protest. She blew into it hard, her cheeks puffing, her face turning red.

“Is this about … something called a blow job?”

Candy pinched the end of the inflated condom. It looked like a balloon. She turned it in the light of the lamp, and the condom gave off an eerie glow. “It can start a fire.”

“What?”

She looked between the bedroom window and the rumpled red comforter. Her father had picked it out. I hadn’t liked it then, but it had grown on me.

Candy touched the comforter like she was testing its flammability. I needed to get her a therapist. I shouldn’t have waited.

“Hang on,” said Candy, her eyes glinting.

She ran with the condom-balloon into the bathroom, and I found her there, releasing the air. The condom shriveled. Candy fitted it around the mouth of the sink’s faucet. She turned on the tap, and the condom sagged as it filled.

“In an emergency situation,” said Candy, “a condom can serve as a useful drinking bladder.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “Joe Wilderness.”

________

Her obsession had begun while her dad was in the hospital, during the worst of it, in waiting rooms, even at his bedside. She’d started watching on her tablet, and I noticed that instead of homework or Minecraft there was now a bare-chested man demonstrating how to build a shelter from fallen tree limbs. Candy chewed her fingernails and soaked in every demo, every word, like she was committing it to her deepest memory.

Her dad made fun of it once, but lightly. “Who’s this big guy?” he asked Candy, straining his neck to see. “Where’s his shirt? Can’t he make some clothes out of twigs and leaves?”

Candy ignored him, which was painful for both him and me.

“The useless dad,” he said. Oh, his sense of humor, his amazing ridiculousness. At that time, I was always, always on the brink of tears.

“Not totally useless,” I said.

________

Now, Joe Wilderness was the most consistent male presence in my daughter’s life. After school, Candy liked to curl up with her tablet and put on an episode. There are years of episodes, hours upon hours of footage. Joe Wilderness spends months at a time in the wild, live on the Internet. He videos his every waking moment, and my daughter is right there with him, watching.

I let her keep the condom. That night, as I lay awake under the red comforter, a persistent murmur reached me from Candy’s bedroom. That deep, knowing voice with a touch of an Australian accent. Joe came from a blended family: Australian and Thai, a bevy of stepbrothers and sisters. I knew far too much about him. Candy shouldn’t have the tablet at this hour. It was almost midnight.

Inside the bedroom, the covers were tented over Candy’s head. From beneath, a muted glow, flickering patterns of light. Joe’s familiar voice explained about cordage and something called belaying.

For the moment, Candy didn’t know I was there. She was in her temple of sound and light. After my ragged hours in bed trying to sleep, this felt soothing. She couldn’t shut me out if she didn’t know I was there.

I stood and watched the patches of light shift in intensity beneath my daughter’s covers. I felt close to her.

Then she threw the covers off. “You’re there,” she said.

“Yes.”

Joe Wilderness continued to speak, and it was strange to remember that he couldn’t hear us.

Before I could ask for the tablet, Candy made a space for me on the bed. She patted it.

“It’s late,” I said, but I was already crawling in beside her, allowing her to burrow into my side as Joe Wilderness, fully dressed for once, hacked his way across an endless field of snow.

 

II. Fire Is Danger

The next morning was Saturday, and we were both exhausted. But Candy seemed happy to see me. The tablet wasn’t on. The house was strangely quiet. “It’s charging,” said Candy.

“You want my tablet?”

“No.”

Candy seemed to consider how best to phrase her next words. “I want us to try it.”

“Try what?”

“Surviving.” Candy looked away, as if she’d already said too much. The force of her innocence hit me. “We’re doing just fine, baby,” I told her.

“No.” Her tone was urgent but clipped. “Actually surviving.”

I glanced toward the kitchen. “You could learn how to cook.”

She nodded. “I’d have to hunt first.”

“Or clean. We really could clean up around here.”

Candy sniffed dismissively, that smile coming back into her eyes. I would do anything to keep it there. Her eyes had been dull lately. “I have a better idea,” she said.

________

Candy disappeared into the yard for the rest of the day. Late that afternoon, she came and fetched me. I hadn’t heard the tablet since last night.

Possibly I should have kept a closer eye on her, I thought as I surveyed the damage. The yard was completely destroyed, worse than if a pack of dogs had made it their private romper room. The tulip bulbs that my husband had planted were all dug up and arranged in a heap. Sticks of various sizes lay jumbled. Piles of leaves dotted the yard in a mysterious pattern. And in the yard’s far corner, where we used to have flowers, stood a circle of stones.

“What happened to the daffodils?” I asked her.

“The roots are calorie rich.”

I knew she was just echoing Joe. Strangely, I felt a flush of pride that she, a young girl, wasn’t planning to diet.

She led me to the ring of stones. It all felt fairly druidic. “Here, Mom. We’re going to start a fire.”

“I might have one of your father’s lighters somewhere.”

Candy cast me a severe glance. “We can’t use his lighter.”

“No?”

“That’s cheating.” Candy jutted out her jaw. “You don’t think we can do it.” There was the sound of a child’s dare in her words, and I felt myself rising to resist it, as if I too were a child.

“No, no, we can,” I said, though I doubted it.

Candy sighed and took out a knife. One of the steak knives from the kitchen with a black plastic handle. She grabbed a thick branch and dragged it toward her.

I wanted to take the knife from her, but I didn’t because this felt important. Like if I didn’t let her try, she wouldn’t grow up right and would be forever stunted by my inability to meet her where she was.

“Careful,” I said.

With deft strokes away from her body, Candy shaved the branch, wicking away the dark, moist bark. The knife got stuck, and she had to shake it free. “You want to get to the dry heart of the wood. Away from the wet.” She nodded her chin at me. “Go gather leaves and grass. The drier the better.”

My journey around the yard felt unfamiliar. I’d never looked from this angle, from below. How damp everything was in western Pennsylvania in the fall. Moist fungus nestled into the grass; snails and maggots burrowed their slick bodies beneath the logs; everything seemed soft, alive, changing. The ground smelled earthy and nutritive. I was beginning to understand it, this obsession with the natural world. It was full of marvels.

But when I returned from my circuit with a few fall leaves and the tops of untrimmed grass, Candy scowled at me. “Too wet and not enough.”

A tangle of sticks and twine lay at her feet. With the steak knife, she sawed through a piece of twine from her father’s stash in the garage and tied it to a stick, as I had seen Joe Wilderness do once in a video. It formed a small bow. A toy for an elven archer.

“Bow drills,” she said, and nodded with her chin. “There’s one for you.”

With the knife, Candy dug a hole into a broken split of branch. She began to twirl one of the bows in its socket.

I watched her, then fitted the other drill into a small chunk of wood. There was a little notch where the sharpened stick went in. Candy had made it, and it looked real. We spun our bow drills. We spun and spun. I thought of the fairy tales of women spinning: the pricked fingers, the ounce of blood. But here we were in the fading light of the backyard, together in a way we hadn’t been in some time. We had a shared purpose.

After a good hour with no fire, no sparks, no indication of any kind that this drill was in fact intended to produce flames, Candy groaned. I shook out my wrist.

“Maybe we should take a break for dinner,” I said.

Candy shook her head and continued, aggressively, to spin.

I wanted to go in but was afraid I’d lose it, this tenuous line cast out to her in the twilight, so I stayed. We sat together as the evening went from dim to dark and our neighbor’s porch light clicked on. A minute later, ours began to flicker. It needed a new bulb, had for weeks. That hadn’t been my job, changing bulbs, maintaining the house’s chipped exterior. And I was hardly managing my own household jobs: keeping the toilets scrubbed and the counters clean. Though of course, now all the jobs were mine.

Sometimes a voice in my head spoke plainly: You’re not going to make it.

Candy hunched, one shoulder lifted, leaning into the drill, cranking and cranking. My wrist hurt, my back hurt, and my foot had fallen asleep.

“It’s past dinner.”

Candy grunted.

“I can’t leave you out here in the dark.”

“If we make a fire,” she said, “it won’t be dark.”

“You can’t set a fire out here by yourself. That’s not safe. We’re going in.”

“Five more minutes.”

I sighed and set a timer on my phone. Its light flashed, artificial, violating the darkness of the backyard, the wildness of it.

Candy leaned forward. She cranked hard on the drill, and then I saw it. A little orange glow, a quick spark, primal and alive. The spark leaped for the pile of wood shavings and damp leaves, but it didn’t catch.

“Shit,” said Candy, and I bit back a reprimand.

Candy cranked hard again, trying to reproduce the spark, but it didn’t come. She dropped the drill. The timer on my phone went off, bright and chipper, a relentless digital music. I fumbled and silenced it. The phone cast light everywhere. In its glow, we could see the wood shavings, splintery and pale, clinging to our pants and sleeves.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” said Candy.

 

III. Watch the Animals, You Might Learn Something

After Candy went to bed, I returned to the yard and poured water on the drills and shavings. I stomped on them. She would be angry, yes, but I couldn’t risk her strange obsession burning our house down. I was still the parent. Someone had to be.

The next day, if Candy was upset after surveying the backyard, she didn’t let on. It felt like something had shifted between us, or maybe I just hoped so. She disappeared wordlessly to school, and I sat down to work on my freelance assignments. They didn’t pay the bills, never had, but I was choosing not to think about that.

One of my editors, Maureen, who was also a friend, was setting me up on an assignment. As in—she was setting me up with a man I’d never met, even though it had barely been six months, even though I hadn’t remotely asked for this.

Maureen wanted to send me to the monkey lab to meet a guy who worked there and would show me around. I’d turn in two thousand words on the twinkle in his eye for the “cool jobs” section of her teen magazine. Easy.

“You’ll like Harrison,” she said.

“I’m not ready to date.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not a date.”

________

I showed up ten minutes early, intending to get my bearings before being forced into a social encounter, but Harrison was waiting outside.

My first impression was that he was large. A tall, hefty white guy with a curly, reddish-brown head of hair, a copper-colored beard, and an untucked, red-checked button-down shirt. He looked so unlike my husband as to be an alien. My husband had been small and Mediterranean-dark like me.

I smiled. He smiled. Although he seemed friendly, I approached him warily. I wondered what Maureen had said about me.

“I’m here about the monkeys,” I said, and Harrison laughed like I’d made a joke.

I tried to put myself in the right frame of mind for viewing monkeys, but Harrison took me to see fish. An entire wall of clear tanks, a lone fish in each, their tails fluttering and diaphanous.

“These are betas,” he said.

“Why one per tank?”

“Oh, they fight. Watch this.” Without needing a step stool, Harrison held a small mirror up to one of the tanks. The beta immediately began to quiver.

“It thinks it sees another male. It wants to fight.”

“What about the females?”

“They’re pretty aggro, too.”

In the next room were the rats. Cages and cages of them stacked like shoeboxes, more even than the beta tanks.

“These are the young males,” said Harrison. “Two to a cage. The mothers with children. And there are the fathers.” Harrison pointed off to the rats alone in their cages.

“The fathers?”

“We can’t house them with anyone,” he said, almost apologetically. “Once a male has bred, he’ll fight another male. One of them won’t survive.”

And the tour went on like this. Turtles separated for biting. Bunnies too dangerous to breed. Even in the monkey chambers, there were a father and son forced to live apart because they’d wrestled. “It was vicious,” he said.

I nodded as if I expected it.

“But now,” said Harrison, “they tell us every day that they want to be together.”

I considered the father monkey, a silver streak on his small head, and, on the other side of the partition, the son, who was about the same size, if not a little bigger. The monkeys cupped their hands to the glass and tried to see us.

This room, this strange room. Candy would have opinions.

“They’ve defeated the one-way mirrors,” said Harrison.

I smiled at the monkeys, feeling self-conscious, wondering what they saw. I gave the father monkey a little wave. The two monkeys peered through the glass beneath their cupped hands. Then the younger one—the son—bounded up onto a high ledge.

“Shame to keep them in these cages,” I said.

Harrison frowned, and his curly beard seemed to twitch. “They’re like houses.” He cleared his throat. He straightened. “These animals live much longer than they would in the wild.”

“The wild can be brutal.” A quote from Joe Wilderness.

Harrison smiled at me, relaxing again. “True words,” he said.

________

The next day, I went into Candy’s room and nearly tripped. Her stuffed animals were lined up by the door. The lion missing an eye, the stuffed brown bear. Her father had brought home the bear when Candy was small. It seemed so big then. When she was a toddler, it was almost as big as she was.

Candy emerged from behind her bed, crawling on the carpet. At first I thought: a return to babyhood. Regression. Wasn’t that in the grief textbooks somewhere?

But then I saw that she had a dark scarf tied over her face, covering her nose and mouth.

“Careful,” she growled at me.

“Are you an animal, too?”

Candy gave me a withering look, quite impressive given that I could see only her eyes and forehead. “In a fire-prone forest,” she said, “attend to the flight of the animals. Exit in the direction of their stampede.”

She crawled painstakingly toward the door and then collapsed.

“You okay?” I stepped over a stuffed turtle.

Candy turned her head away. “Fallen tree limbs, enflamed. I can’t trespass that way.”

I wanted to tell her that she was using “trespass” wrong, but it didn’t seem the moment. Candy swiveled on her belly and crawled to her bed, climbed up, and opened the window.

“Wait,” I said.

It felt too slow, the way I was moving across the room.

She stuck her head out. We were on the second floor.

“Candy!” I grabbed her, pulled her back on the bed.

Her dark eyes stared at me from above the black scarf. “I am only conducting recon,” she said. “Avenues of escape.”

I hugged her to me, and she didn’t resist. She felt limp in my arms. “Don’t go out the window,” I said.

________

The next day, the line of animals was gone. I decided to enroll Candy in Girl Scouts. They did a little hiking, I understood, and though Candy was a touch old to start now, it could still be good for her.

I went to tell Candy. “Girl Scouts is just like Joe Wilderness.”

“Jenny said they did macramé.” Candy punched her pillow, then fluffed it. “And crafts.”

“Crafts build dexterity.”

“I’m not a Girl Scout.”

I came back later to find an assortment of items on the carpet: the stuffed bear, a tampon, a kitchen knife, medical tape, and antiseptic cream.

Candy sat on her bed, unfurling the tape.

“Is Bear injured?”

“He attacked me.”

I hesitated. Bear lay vacantly on his back, his glassy brown eyes staring up to the ceiling. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No,” said Candy. “No, you don’t understand.”

“Want to tell me?”

She considered me for a moment, screwing up her lips. “Not really.”

I took the knife. “Knives belong in the kitchen,” I said. “Okay?”

But Candy didn’t answer.

Later, I found Bear with a hole in his midsection, plugged with a tampon. His mouth had a faint smile about it. I’d always liked that expression, sort of mystified and wondering, pleased to be a chosen favorite, but now Bear just seemed vacuous to me. Didn’t he know what it meant to be wounded? Didn’t he appreciate Candy’s attempts to save him?

 

IV. Grief in Situ

Harrison wanted a date. He messaged me. “I’d like to see you again, if that’s okay with you.”

It was such a strange way of asking a person out. I messaged it to Maureen. She was all, “Girl, get it.”

“We are way too old for ‘girl, get it.'”

“I’m not.” Maureen sent a tongue-sticking-out emoji.

I emojied her back: eyes rolled up and laughing.

Even though my daughter was technically old enough, I didn’t want to leave Candy by herself. I didn’t even want to leave her with a babysitter, who might falter when Candy started—I don’t know—drowning her animals or setting small fires in the bathtub. My imagination was getting carried away, but only because I didn’t know what to do for Candy, how to be everything she needed.

So I invited Harrison over. “We can get takeout,” I said, and he offered to pick up the food.

Candy chose Thai, and Harrison arrived that evening with two plastic-lined paper bags.

My heart sank when I opened the door and saw him standing there, but not because of him. He actually looked good. He’d trimmed the beard, and I was reminded how tall he was. He carried his extra weight well.

No, it was because Candy was sitting behind me in the living room, probably already smelling the Thai food. Wasn’t I breaking some rule of grief dating? Like, don’t introduce your child to a possible mate until you’re sure? I couldn’t be farther from sure at this point. I hardly knew the man.

I wasn’t clear why it was a bad idea, having Harrison over. I just knew from watching television and reading books that children hated this sort of thing. I took a deep breath. Why was I such a bad parent? When her father died, Candy had refused to go to a therapist, and I had caved. Maybe that too was a dreadful parenting mistake, one I would regret for my entire life.

“Come in,” I said to Harrison, and he smiled.

Candy set the table. She was acting very mature, and I could tell that Harrison was impressed. He didn’t have any children and only ever saw college students at the monkey lab.

“Would you like ice water?” Candy asked him.

“Yes, thank you.” Harrison sat at the table, and he was just so big.

Candy’s father had been more normal-sized, or at least that’s how it felt. At our little square table, I had to look up at Harrison, like actually tilt my chin.

Candy brought him water. Harrison thanked her again. It was getting a little painful. Finally, we were able to eat in relative silence. Harrison tucked into his food with a slow, measured seriousness. I liked how he didn’t rush.

Then my attention turned to Candy, who was examining the chopsticks the restaurant had given us, though apparently they weren’t common in Thailand. Just in American restaurants. She slid the sticks from their paper sleeve, broke them apart, and began to rub the two sticks together.

“Watch out, you could start a fire that way.” Harrison took a sip of ice water.

I locked my gaze on Candy.

She scoffed. “It’s not that easy.” She thrust the chopsticks toward Harrison. “You try.”

“Seriously?”

I forced a laugh. “Candy loves Joe Wilderness. On YouTube?”

I expected her to protest, embarrassed, but instead she nodded. “Joe could probably do it.”

Harrison set his lips and reached out for the sticks. He seemed to be taking this as some kind of challenge. Candy was really good at this, making people feel challenged and getting them to do what she wanted.

He held the chopsticks together and frowned. “I don’t really think this is going to work.”

“Never give up,” said Candy.

I felt a pulse of sympathy for Harrison, who was frowning harder, like this was some kind of gauntlet. My husband would have laughed it off. But back then, there was no Joe Wilderness in this house.

Slowly, awkwardly, Harrison began to rub the sticks together.

“Okay,” I said. “We can’t risk sitting the table on fire.” I held out my hand as if to confiscate the chopsticks, and Harrison handed them over with a grateful sigh.

Halfway through my peanut noodles, we managed to get a little conversation going. I kept steering the conversation away from Candy, who was eyeing the cutlery with an expert’s gaze. At one point, she dipped under the table and popped up again to ask Harrison if he knew what to do in a hurricane.

But otherwise, we managed to talk about his work, which was far more interesting than mine and safer than anything Candy might have to say.

“We have a fire evacuation plan for all the animals,” Harrison told Candy. He explained it in great detail.

Candy nodded. She looked to be taking mental notes. When he paused for a bite of pad see ew, she cleared her throat. “I appreciate your care for the animals,” she said. “But sometimes you just have to save yourself.”

This was straight out of Joe Wilderness and his guide for escaping household fires. I could almost hear his Aussie accent declaiming the very words. Harrison looked like he might choke on his rice noodles. Not long after dinner, I saw him to the door.

It was the moment when one of us could say something future facing like “Let’s get together again” or “What does next weekend look like for you?” But neither of us said anything.

“Thanks for bringing dinner,” I said finally.

Harrison gave an uncomfortable shrug as he straightened and zipped his jacket. “You’re welcome.”

________

The next morning, I found I wasn’t too upset to have bombed the date with Harrison. Well, technically, I hadn’t bombed it: Candy had bombed it for me. But it meant that I didn’t need to worry about having introduced her too soon. It meant that by being a bad date, I could continue to be an acceptable parent. Theoretically acceptable. Besides, Candy had defenses of her own. She would protect her habitat, even if it meant startling off any potential predators.

I wasn’t sure if a man who brought Thai food really counted as a predator, but once I reached Candy’s bedroom, just to check on her, I forgot that line of thinking.

Candy lay on the carpet in push-up position, her fists balanced on an assortment of water bottle caps.

She completed one rep and then leaped up and began walking on the bottle caps.

I stared at her, and to my astonishment, she gave me a small smile. “Conditioning,” she said.

“Let me see your hands.”

Dark bruises shone at her knuckles.

“Candy,” I said, “you have to stop.”

“You don’t control me.”

“Clearly,” I said, and she grimaced. “But listen to me: You can’t injure yourself. It could make you less effective in a crisis.”

Candy considered her knuckles. “A cut could get infected,” she said slowly. “Bruises should be safe.”

“Internal bleeding,” I said.

She cocked her head, then nodded. “I’ll put them back in the recycling.”

“I’m losing you,” I said, totally against my will and better judgment. A sob hammered at my chest, and I made a strange sound, like an untuned cello.

Candy stared at me. “Stay calm.”

“I am calm.” I wasn’t, and we both knew it.

“If you want to help me,” she said, “you can participate in my training. You can come with me for a walk.”

 

V. A Walk in the Woods

“Let’s get lost,” said Candy.

We had just arrived at the trailhead and were heading toward a path to a small waterfall, one of the region’s prime sights.

“The whole point of orienteering is not to get lost,” I said.

“But if you’re following a marker”—Candy waved a hand dismissively at the blue blazon on a nearby tree—”you can’t use your skills. You’re just following someone else’s trail.”

“Humans survived by working together. That’s it. We’re smart, and we cooperate. Otherwise we’d be extinct.”

“We’re dumb, and we fight,” said Candy.

“Also true.”

“And you learn best by getting lost.” In Candy’s words, I could hear Joe Wilderness’s voice. Except he didn’t say that, did he? Did he actually recommend getting lost?

Candy stood at the lip of the woods. She gave me a funny look, then waved at me and laughed.

It was great to hear her laugh. I wanted to soak in that bubbly sound as I watched her step backward and disappear into the trees. A tight wave of panic rolled over me, pleasure now coated in fear. An unusual flavor, like a double scoop of ice cream, though as a parent, I was familiar with extremes. Losing my husband hadn’t been like that. We’d laughed sometimes, but it had only ever been sad.

I stepped into the woods, right where I’d last seen her. It was still daylight, plenty of sunshine left. Candy didn’t have a cell phone. We’d decided not until she was twelve, her father and I, back when we made decisions like that together.

I stomped into the underbrush. It wasn’t easy, though this was hardly the jungle we’d last seen Joe Wilderness hack through with his machete. Soon I lost sight of the path. It took almost no time. None at all, and I was lost.

I took out my phone, imagining that I would follow a GPS line directly to my daughter. It showed me where I was, in a morass of trees.

This park wasn’t large enough for a ranger. It was bordered on all sides by roads. Candy wouldn’t walk into a busy road; she was all about survival. Besides, that would be the same as being found. I thought about calling the police. But Candy wanted me to get lost with her, to be as lost as she was.

I took a few cautious steps forward, watching the GPS bubble on my phone rather than the underbrush. My leg hit a branch, and I nearly tripped.

I took a few deep breaths. Remain calm. I could almost hear Joe Wilderness’s voice. That smug accent. I really hated him then.

Okay, I had a choice. I could use the GPS to get back to the path and hightail it to the waterfall in case Candy was heading to the prime attraction. Or I could try to find Candy. I could use clues in the wilderness: snapped twigs, muddy footprints, compressed leaves. I could track her.

This is what she wanted. For me to find her.

After a few minutes, I was ready to give up. I was bad at tracking. Terrible. It all looked like woods. Every squirrel made me jump and turn, hope in my heart.

“Candy,” I yelled, knowing I’d spook her if she heard. “Come back here!”

Except I was not “here,” a known place. I was somewhere unknown. Unknown-where: akin to nowhere, but lonelier. With a swallow, I took out my phone. I’d lost signal. My bubble was gone.

I tried to think, What would Joe Wilderness tell me to do? Retrace my steps. Go back to the beginning, don’t keep barreling forward. Also, build a shelter and protect my head, and if it was summer, pee on my jacket and wear it as a hat. But I would start with turning back.

It felt like defeat. I hated every step. After I got back to the path, I’d call the police or the park manager or someone. It had been less than thirty minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.

Unlike Candy’s tracks, mine were easy to follow. I’d crashed through the brush like a stampeding beast, only slower. My boots left clear prints in the mud. I stepped on top of one precisely, pointing myself back where I’d come from.

By the time I reached the path, I was exhausted, nervous tension quivering in my jaw.

Candy sat cross-legged on the opposite edge of the path, eyes closed like she was meditating.

“Mom.”

“What the fuck.”

Her eyes flicked open. “Good job.”

I wanted to hug her and also to handcuff her and sling her in the car, never let her tramp through the wilderness again.

“Now, let’s try that again,” said Candy in a patient, teacherly voice. “Only this time, we find water.”

 

VI. Second-Chance Survival

I stared at Candy. “You’re kidding.”

“Am I?”

“We’re going home.”

“I can disappear again.”

“I’ll call the police this time.”

Candy shrugged. She was probably faster than a cop, moving through these woods. What power did I have? I could ground her, and she would take it as a challenge, slip out the window or door, test herself against the elements. Eventually, she would have to survive without me. Maybe this was what she was trying tell me, or herself.

My throat felt thick. “If I go with you—if!”

She smiled.

“We stick together the entire time.”

Candy appeared to be considering, sitting there cross-legged in the mud.

“Please. I can’t do it without you.”

Candy flinched and nodded. They say kids know when you’re finally telling the truth.

We stepped back into the woods, right where I had crashed out. Candy had mud running up one leg and didn’t seem to care at all. I had been a different kind of girl. Makeup, nail polish. Hours at the mirror. And then too tongue-tied to talk to boys but thinking about them all the same.

I followed Candy’s precise, deliberate steps. Noticed how she considered each move, sometimes breaking a branch with her foot to clear the path as we walked. When we reached a fallen log, Candy hopped up on it and peered over the other side.

“Always check for snakes,” she said.

I nodded. I hadn’t known.

We were in the thick of the woods when Candy paused. She put a finger to her lips. “Listen.”

I took a breath. The very earth had a tang to it, the scent of moldering leaves and mud. A bird call, the shudder of a creature in the underbrush. Somewhere very far away, the sound of cars on a highway.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“No.” Candy twisted to face me and hiked a thumb over her shoulder. “Water.”

I hadn’t heard it. It struck me that I was old enough to die easily in the woods, never having learned these skills as a child. This was the first time Candy knew more than I did about something important. Not the rules of a game or a new method of long division but being here in the woods, staying alive.

I followed her. It was hard hiking uphill through the brush, and I longed for the path: those blue blazes, leading me quickly and painlessly to gape at the waterfall and back. My stomach grumbled, loud, and Candy ignored it, except for a small sigh.

“It’s down on the way back,” Candy said when I asked to stop for a minute. My sunscreen was running into my eyes. I was sweaty and thirsty.

“Should have brought Gatorade.”

Candy searched in her pack, pulled out a small, restaurant-style tab of salt. “A few pinches in your water bottle,” she said, and I obeyed.

After an hour of climbing, we reached the waterfall, coming at it from the side. On the lookout across from us, a mother and her young son posed for photos with their phone.

Candy set down her pack. “Let’s get in and cool off.”

“We’re not supposed to go in there.” The lookout had a railing and, I knew from last time, a sign forbidding the very thought.

“Blister prevention,” said Candy. “And you won’t overheat.”

She could see me wavering.

“It might be good for your skin, too,” said Candy. “The removal of debris.”

I thought of the stinging sunscreen. “Fine,” I said, though Candy was already taking off her shoes and stepping carefully onto the wet rocks. She wasn’t asking permission. Maybe she was testing me. I didn’t know if I was passing or failing as I took off my own shoes and followed her in.

The water was cold and delicious. I splashed my way toward Candy. I hooted. This was amazing. Candy dunked the back of her hair until it was slick and dark.

“You look like an otter,” I said, and she splashed me.

As the pair on the observation deck turned to go, I heard the mother say to the son in a loud, deliberate voice, “No, we can’t go in. It’s not safe.”

Candy met my eyes and laughed.

During our wet, squelchy trek back through the woods with Candy in front, leading the way, my mood was transformed.

We’d had a breakthrough. It felt delicate, tenuous, and I wasn’t sure how to keep it from vanishing in my grasp.

“I liked Harrison,” Candy said as she forged forward. I stared at the back of her head, her wet hair looped into a ponytail, clinging in dark, feathery strands to her neck.

“You did?”

“Can you get him back?”

For a flash, it seemed she was asking about her father. Not Harrison, that overgrown puppy of a man.

“I don’t know.” I stepped over the branch Candy had crunched for me. She held a twig to keep it from snapping into my face.

“Can you try?”

“I’m supposed to be the one who decides that.” My voice was uncertain, but I knew I would call him.

________

When Harrison next came over, he brought a Middle Eastern mezze: falafel, hummus, baba ghanoush, and some kind of meaty kibbe. Candy was all smiles. She showed him her Joe Wilderness guidebook, and I was shocked. That thing was like her Bible. I’d never seen her show it to anyone. Candy asked him questions about the animals and laughed at the photos of rats and monkeys on his phone.

It was like she was courting him, but not romantically. She was auditioning him—welcoming him, even—for the role of father.

After Harrison left that evening with a modest peck on my lips and a promise to call, I cornered Candy.

“What were you doing?”

Candy shrugged and banged out a few knuckle push-ups. Then she burped. “Can’t do too much after a meal like that.”

“Was that it? You like the food he’s bringing? Honey, we can order food ourselves.”

She sat on the floor and stretched out her calf, stone-faced.

“I choose who I’m going to date.”

Candy switched to the other calf, reaching for her toes.

“Okay?”

Candy sighed like she couldn’t believe the idiot she’d been saddled with. “Safety in numbers,” she said.

 

VII. Knife Sharpening

“Never cut with a dull knife,” Candy told me. With the tip of the steak knife, she poked at my mangled knot.

We were sitting on the floor of her bedroom, learning ropes. She had several different types of cordage laid out and was showing me the patterns. Currently, I was failing the bowline knot.

“If you can’t tie knots, tie lots.” Candy sang the phrase at me, straight from season four. “But it’s better to actually learn the correct knots for if you ever find yourself in a survival situation.”

“Wouldn’t you rather just go to the beach?”

“The beach.”

“We could rent something. An Airbnb, we could cook.”

Candy dismissed me with a puff of breath.

“Why do you want everything to be so hard?”

Candy considered her knife. “Why do you pretend it can be easy?”

I wanted to hug her then, though I knew she wouldn’t let me. I wanted to take the rope and tie her to me, bodily. To fix her to my person, tying lots and lots of hard nubs in the cordage, connecting us and keeping us safe.

But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even tie a bowline.

Candy gripped her knife and with a sawing motion sliced through my feeble knot.

“Okay, Mom,” she said. “Try again.”

***

Genevieve Abravanel’s short fiction is available or forthcoming in American Short Fiction, the Normal School, Indiana Review, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Her creative nonfiction is forthcoming at Shenandoah. She has received grants and fellowships from the NEH and the American Academy of University Women and is currently working on a novel.