The Naked Gardener by L B Gschwandtner

poof of bubbles splashed back at me. Foam clung to my fingers.
    “That’s totally different.” He went all logical then. “We’ve been gliding together for years. We know each other. We’re a team. We know how to work together.”
    “You hang glide alone. You don’t need a team.”
    “But we have a system we’ve worked out. If someone gets in trouble we have a plan, and we have confidence in each other to execute it.”
    “And women can’t work as a team? Can’t execute a plan?”
    “That’s not what I’m saying. You don’t know these women well. You’ve never canoed with them. They may be a bunch of airheads. You might get stuck with them on the river in the middle of nowhere. What if something happened?”
    “Like what?”
    “Like anything. You know the water. It’s unpredictable. And you’ve told me the Trout River is all but wilderness until the falls. It’s crazy to do this.”
    I turned back to the dishes. Maze sat down at the table and alternately stared at his tea mug, then out the little cow windows. It was getting dark. Crickets chirped. The barred owl hooted. It was their time of day. Dawn and dusk. Maze put down the mug. I sat down across from him.
    “You can’t keep doing this.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Trying to put a line around me and tie me down. It won’t work. I’m not her. I’m sorry your wife died. I’m sorry she got cancer. I’m sorry you still miss her so much. But I’m not her. And you can’t hold me so tight just to reassure yourself I won’t leave you like she did.”
    He frowned. A deep line appeared between his eyebrows. His face reddened.
    “This is not about her.”
    “Of course it is. It’s about you not being able to let go of her and not wanting me to have the autonomy I need to breathe. If you keep holding me so tight, you’re going to crush the life out of us.”
    He squirmed in his seat and pushed at his mug. It made a rasping sound against the wood table. “I think this is about you not feeling connected enough to us to give up some of your independence so we can really be a unit. And you think you’re competing with a dead woman but in reality you’re using her to keep us separated. I don’t understand why.”
    “That’s not true,” I almost whispered it. I was getting so angry I was afraid of what I might say. Or do.
    “Well it’s not about my dead wife, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
    “Then this is about you.”
    “Of course it’s about me. What else would it be about?” He was almost yelling.
    “I was hoping you’d be able to think about me once in a while.”
    I got up. My chair nearly fell backwards. I caught it and gave it a shove against the rough floor.
    “I think about you all the time,” he said. He was calm now. Logical again. “We can’t keep doing this.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Fighting over whether we’re going to be permanent. We have to make a move one way or the other.”
    “Are you giving me some kind of ultimatum?”
    “I think maybe I am. You have to decide to stay or go. You can’t have one foot inside the door and one foot outside. It doesn’t work.”
    “That’s really funny. I’m the one who found the farm. I’m the one who planted the garden and got you to help fix up the barn and the coop. I made a studio for myself from the old pig sty and … ” I stopped to take a breath.
    “That’s all just about the place,” Maze said. “A relationship is not only about the place where it happens but what happens inside it. What about me? Am I just another one of your art works?”
    “That’s a terrible thing to say,” I told him.
    “Maybe it is, but at least it’s honest. You accuse me of wanting a replacement for my dead wife when you’ve just replaced one temporary man with another. Anyway, if you’re so tied to this place, then maybe I should leave. Why do you need me here anyway?”
    I rushed by him headed for the barn door. All I could think was to get out of there. But he grabbed my