Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  Reaching it had taken ten minutes of walking while neither Robert nor Adelaide spoke a word.

  She stepped up onto the painted floor and took a seat; her skirts covered the width of the wooden bench, leaving Robert little choice but to seat himself opposite.

  He waited for some sign, and with his eyes called her, but she looked up at the leaf-screen overhead and remarked, “It’s cool here.”

  Her remoteness hurt. He didn’t know how to perforate it, to force her to bend or mend or end this indifference she had espoused.

  “It’s been a long time since we were on a picnic.”

  “Yes, it has.”

  He untied the dish towel. “It’s not as fancy as Mrs. Smith’s, but it’s what I could manage. Corn gems, currant preserves, cheese and ham.” He piled a selection on a cloth napkin and offered it.

  “Thank you.” She arranged the napkin on her crackling skirt, toying with it distractedly, bringing points up like mountains surrounding a valley. She studied the food instead of him, but showed no interest in eating anything. He chewed some cheese, which seemed to lodge in his throat, then gave up the effort.

  “You aren’t eating,” he said.

  She rested a hand on her ribs and flashed him a glance. “I’m sorry. I’m not really very hungry.”

  “Neither am I.”

  He set aside their napkins and sat watching her gaze at the gardens sparkling in the sun. He bent forward, bracing his forearms on his knees.

  “Happy birthday, Addie,” he said quietly.

  Her attention shifted to him and stayed. For a moment he saw undisguised yearning in her eyes and the same affliction that had narrowed his throat, but she quickly hid it, dropping her gaze.

  “I’m sorry I’m not more cheerful. I know you meant this to be a festive occasion. You’ve gone to all this trouble, and I... I...”

  Her eyes could no longer refrain from resting upon his. They returned, illuminated with regret and hurt he could not comprehend.

  “What’s the matter, Addie?”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “You don’t act like you’ve missed me.”

  “I’ve missed you, Robert, so very much.”

  “May I come and sit beside you?”

  “Yes.” She lifted her skirts, and when he sat, they covered most of his trouser leg. His knee pressed her thigh within the voluminous petticoats as he took her hand.

  “I love you, Addie.”

  She closed her eyes and dropped her chin, though not before he caught a glimpse of tears.

  “I love you too,” she said to her lap.

  He touched the crest of her cheek. “Why does that make you cry?”

  “I don’t kn–know.” She had begun to sob quietly, her shoulders curled forward. Her sorrow reached within him and seized him about the heart.

  “Please, Addie... don’t cry...” He took her in his arms but the embrace was awkward, complicated by her wide hat. “Addie, darling... shh...” He had never before used the endearment; it resounded in his own head and gave his stomach a clenched feeling. “There’s no more reason to cry, because everything is perfect. I’ve asked your father permission to marry you and he’s said yes.”

  She drew back, her wide eyes streaming. “He did?”

  “Yes, a year from now when you’ve finished school.” He reached up and removed her hat. The pin clung to her topknot of curls and disheveled them, trailing one strand, like a drop of honey, down the side of her neck.

  His news released a fresh flow of tears. He felt helpless in the face of them, groping for the proper means to end them, certain it was not within his power. Nevertheless, he took her face in one hand and drew her to his side, where his hammering heart at last pressed against her arm. “What is it, Addie? You’re breaking my heart and I don’t know what to do for you anymore. Don’t you want to marry me?”

  “I can’t... you must not ask m–me.”

  “But I am asking. One year from now, tell me you’ll marry me.

  She pushed back and said, “No.”

  His fear became brittle, intense. He reacted instinctively, gripping her arms and forcing her into his embrace, kissing her with furor, need, and an unholy terror unleashed by the possibility of living without her when he had known since he was thirteen that he would marry her one day. Her resistance vanished and the kiss became a terrible thing, a heavy-hearted trade-off of uncertainty and desire, a lament, an exquisite end of their vernal longings, with her arms about his neck and their mouths wide. He flattened her breast with one hand and she whimpered against his tongue.

  “Addie, let’s go where we can be alone.”

  “No...”

  “Please...” He kissed her again, openly caressing both her breasts through the crisp dotted Swiss and layers of softer underclothes.

  “Robert, stop. We’re in the middle of the public gardens.”

  He knew where they were: he had chosen it to preclude the possibility of just such a scene.

  “Come with me, Addie, please.” His voice was hoarse.

  “Where?” Hers was thin.

  “I know a place. I delivered plant stakes here once for my father.”

  “No.”

  “How can you say no when you feel yes?”

  “We can’t.”

  “Please... where we can see each other. I want to see you, Addie.”

  Voices drifted to them from beyond the boxwood hedge, and footsteps sounded on the gravel, coming their way. Robert released Addie, keeping her stirred with an intense gaze while reaching for her hat.

  “Put it on. Let’s go.”

  Protected from view by Robert and a partial cascade of grapevines, she adjusted two hairpins and rammed a pin through the straw hat. He handed her her parasol, took her elbow and left via the only path, exchanging inane greetings with the intruders. Beyond the boxwood border he took her hand and led her at a rush through floral lanes to a break in the greenery where they were forced to dip low and remove Addie’s hat to make their way through. Beyond lay a cart path in a patch of uncultivated woods, leading to a white shed with crossbucked doors. Before it stood a pony cart filled with the heads of flowers plucked by the gardeners from the plants the previous day.

  Robert tried the doors. They were unlocked, but inside, the shed was crowded with gardening tools, buckets, lath and trellis wire, leaving a little patch of floor, and it strewn with garden soil.

  “Damn.” Robert swept a glance over the woods around them. He struck off toward the front of the pony cart, hauling Addie along behind him, stepping over the wagon traces, which rested on the ground, tilting the cart forward and spilling its load in an array of wilting color. Down upon it he took her, already kissing and embracing her as they fell to the resilient floral cushion.

  “Robert,” she managed, “your new suit...”

  “I don’t care.” The stains of rose petals and marigolds and larkspur had already soiled his elbows during the fall.

  “But someone will come.”

  “It’s Sunday. The gardeners are all at home.”

  He kissed her as Adam had kissed Eve before she found the apple tree, then rolled her to her back and leaned over her, studying her face in the dappled shade, framed by fading flowers and wilting greenery that gave up a spicy redolence.

  “Oh Addie, you’re so pretty.”

  He sat up and stripped off his jacket, tossed it aside and took her in his arms, rolling to his back with her atop him. Many long, wet kisses later, when his knee had forced her skirts high between her legs, and their mouths were swollen, they paused for breath.

  “Addie, I love you so much,” he breathed.

  With their gazes locked, he rolled her to her back.

  “Robert,” she whispered, “my new dress...”

  A petal fell from his hair onto her face, where it remained as he spoke. “Let’s take it off too.” Her green eyes fixed upon his and she swallowed as if with great difficulty.

  He struggled to his knees, drawing h
er after him by one hand, the petal from her cheek drifting to her skirt. When she sat, he got behind her, freed a long row of buttons and turned her dress down to her waist. Beneath it she wore a white cambric shift gathered at a scooped neckline. He kissed the slope of her bare shoulder, then moved around to face her on his knees. Her shift was held together by a white center bow. It disappeared at his tug, the ribbons falling to the depression between her breasts. He put his face there and pressed her back down, kissed her breasts first through white cambric, and saw them naked for the first time as she lay upon the wilting flowers of yesterday.

  “Robert, we can’t,” she whispered breathlessly when they’d kissed again with their legs plaited.

  He continued his seduction, wooing and weakening her with touches and kisses while the spent blossoms lifted their haylike scent into the cool green woods. Her murmurs and flushes and closed eyelids spoke of acquiescence until he brushed her skirts up and touched her beneath them.

  She uttered a cry and pushed his hand away, but he persisted. She was wearing stockings and garters and one bright tear in the corner of each closed eye. Her jaw was clenched.

  As his hand found its destination she cried out and recoiled, scrambling away from him as if in revulsion.

  “Stay away from me!” She was on all fours, sliding down the tilted wagon, taking dead flowers with her. Her eyes were wild and rabid.

  “Addie, where are you going?” He sat up.

  “Stay away!”

  “I’m sorry, Addie.” He reached out one hand in appeal. “I thought you wanted to.”

  “No!” She lurched back, posed on all fours, like a dog, her eyes dark and terrified.

  “I won’t hurt you. I promise I won’t touch you again. Dear God, Addie, I love you.”

  “You don’t love me!” she screamed. “How could you love me and want to do that to me!”

  Her voice rang through the clearing, carrying to the public gardens, he was sure. People would come running if she continued.

  “Addie, what’s wrong with you?”

  He could see she was in a state of irrationality as she struggled to her feet and stood hunkered forward, like a Neanderthal brandishing a spear, while attempting to draw her shift into place with her other hand.

  His throat was tight with fear. “Let me help you with your dress. I won’t touch you anyplace else, I promise.” He moved toward her warily, but she backed up and yelped, “No! Stay away, I said!” tripping on her dress, soiling the hem and stumbling.

  He stood by helplessly while she began babbling, scrabbling her bodice into place, her eyes searching the ground as if confused about the litter of dead flowers. “... all these roses... must get home... shouldn’t have come here... birthday... Sarah will know...” She scuttled backward some distance before turning and running with her clothing still disheveled.

  “Addie, your hat! Your umbrella!” He grabbed them and jogged after her. “Addie, wait!”

  The last he saw of her was her stained dress, opened up the back as she lifted her skirts and ran as if red lava were at her heels.

  The following morning she was gone.

  CHAPTER

  14

  And now it was Christmas Eve, five and a half years later. All that time he had carried guilt and confusion as well as the memories of their unresolved love. He needed resolution; absolution, maybe—he was not sure.

  He sat in the parlor at Rose’s, in a stuffy room with thick velvet curtains, a round black iron stove and a good two dozen lonely men. He alone, among them, seemed sober. The cigar smoke hung like fog. The beer-soaked floorboards emitted a malty smell. He imagined he detected, too, the odor of human secretions and felt befouled by his surroundings.

  The menu on the wall seemed to leer at him; he turned his head to look at something else. A brassy-haired bawd was petting the buttocks of a man with a large boil on the back of bis neck. The old harlot who ran the place was smoking a cigar and squinting at him through the haze. Robert shuddered and studied his knees. Another whore came down the stairs. The harlot came to him and said, “Ember is free now. How ‘bout her?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll wait for Eve,” he replied, the name strange on his tongue.

  “You’re sure about that bath now, honey? We don’t want our girls catching nothing.”

  “I’m sure. I took one this afternoon.”

  He waited a total of forty minutes, wondering what Addie’s customer would look like when he came down, imagining sordid pictures of Addie ministering to someone who resembled the thickset miner with the boil on his neck.

  He watched every man who came downstairs, guessing which one was Addie’s. He guessed right—she descended minutes after a tall, scraggly fellow with skin the color of a mushroom who came down running his thumbs under his suspender straps. Addie disappeared into the hall momentarily as every girl did after every descent—presumably depositing her earnings under the gimlet gaze of her employer. Returning to the parlor, Addie was signaled over by Rose, who spoke while nodding in Robert’s direction. Addie’s head snapped around even before Rose finished speaking.

  Across the smoky, stuffy room tension immediately stretched between the two of them like a turnbuckle. He nodded, sitting straight on a hard chair with his hat and cane on his knees.

  She stared at him, her expression unreadable, before beginning to thread her way across the room.

  His palms got sweaty. Surely his chest would implode. He thought, I’m not at all sure I can do this, not to her and not to me.

  She wore an open kimono, sheeny and black, with large orchid flowers; stockings, garters and black slippers with high heels. Her underwear showed in the break down the middle.

  “Hello, Robert.”

  “Hello, Addie.”

  “Rose doesn’t like it when you call me that.”

  He cleared his throat and said, “Eve,” and after an interim, “Merry Christmas.”

  “Sure. What can I do for you?”

  He knew nothing of whorehouse protocol. Was he expected to pick a selection from the menu here and now?

  “I’d like to go upstairs.”

  “I’m working, Robert.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Ten seconds of electric silence, then, “I can’t do any favors for old friends.”

  “I don’t expect any. I’ll pay whatever is required.”

  She studied him with a deliberately flat expression, then turned away. “Get one of the other girls.” He caught her arm and swung her around.

  “No! You!” His expression was grim, his grip indurate. “It’s time we had this over with!”

  “This is a mistake, Robert.”

  “Maybe so, but only one in a long line of many. Where do I pay?”

  The madam and a huge, menacing Indian woman were already moving toward them. He dropped Addie’s arm and the pair fell back.

  “Upstairs,” Addie answered. “Follow me.”

  In the midst of the crowd Rose halted Addie with a pudgy, beringed hand. “Don’t forget now, Eve—no special considerations for old boyfriends. He pays like all the rest.”

  “Don’t worry, Rose. I wouldn’t dream of cheating you.” And to Robert, “Come on.”

  Her hair was cropped straight across the forehead and bottom, Oriental fashion. He watched it refuse to sway as he followed her upstairs and through a door on the left. Inside, his eyes took a quick flight around the room—the pad on the bed, the egg timer beside it, the butter bowl, the gold scale, the clock, the pot beside the door: an airless, windowless cubicle where he was, one in a progression of thousands.

  Addie said, “I’ll take your coat.” She hung it on a tree in the corner and laid his hat and cane on a hard, armless wooden chair that had probably been used for more than a hatrack. He resisted the urge to pluck it off and hang it on the tree, too.

  She returned to the door and closed it, lounging back upon it, watching his eyes search for locks.

  “No locks here, honey,” she said in a co
rnsilk voice. “But don’t worry. Nobody will come in unless I scream.” The implication chilled him. He wondered how many times she had, and how badly she’d been hurt before anyone reached the door.

  “I have a request, Addie.”

  “Eve.”

  “Eve,” he repeated. “Please don’t call me honey.”

  “Sure.” She still lounged against the door. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  An immense silence passed while she stood against the door and he tried to pretend she was a stranger.

  “This your first time in a place like this?” Addie inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re required to ask—did you take a bath?”

  “Yes, this afternoon.”

  “Good. This we’re not required to ask—is it your first time?”

  A moment, then, quietly, “No.”

  She boosted away from the door and said on a gust of breath, “Well, then... about the business.”

  He reached in his pocket for his pouch of gold dust, but she came to him and pressed his hand to detain it. “Not so fast. We can talk a minute first.” She circled him, running her hands over his trunk, making broad swipes that crossed his watch fob from above to below and back again. He clenched his stomach and held it taut.

  “If you collect the money first, then fine. I’ll do like everyone else.”

  “Just relax, Robert... relax. We’ll get to that in a minute. We need to talk about what you want.”

  He wanted her to stop rubbing him the way she rubbed every other man who entered this room. He wanted her to grow back her beautiful blond hair and put on a decent dress that covered her. He wanted to scrub the filth off her face and take her to a church somewhere and kneel beside her and put this sordid room behind them forever.

  “What do you want, Robert, hmm? This is the way it’s done. You tell me what you want and I’ll tell you how long it takes and that way neither one of us gets surprised in the end. How does that sound, hmm?”

  “Fine.” He dropped his hand from his gold pouch pocket.

  “We can do it quick and slick. See the egg timer? It’s a dollar a minute that way.”

  Sweet savior, an egg timer. How many men could churn through here in intervals that short? Without time for even a pretense of affection?