by David Payne
“It is a story, Harlan,” Addie whispers, and she is weeping now. “You should have married her, not me.”
“So I intended, Addie. Clarisse accepted me that day. We were lovers for three years, almost four. We became engaged. Weighing our situation, we both felt we had to tell Paloma and my father face-to-face. So, we booked passage home to Charleston. We boarded the Nina there, as did you, dear. We took the same upriver trip. This was all four years ago. They met us at the landing, just as we met you. Understand, Addie, Paloma hadn’t seen her daughter since she was that swaddled bundle either. We came down the gangway, smiling, arm in arm. They were smiling, too. At first. Then Paloma’s expression sobered. She turned absolutely gray. ‘Mamá!’ Clarisse cried, grinning with all that light and life up in her eyes. And then, ‘Mamá? Mami?’ with concern, and her face fell, too. ‘What is it, Paloma?’ Father asked, but she covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head. I thought I knew, Addie. I thought the fact that we were lovers—which she could hardly fail to glean—had shocked her. I thought that when we announced the purpose of our visit, when she saw that my intentions were honorable, Paloma would be pacified. But it wasn’t that. It had nothing to do with that. Do you know what it was?”
“Tell me,” Addie whispers, though she’s afraid she knows, and her hand has crept to her breast, her fingertip is at the button, circling and circling the polished shell.
“Father didn’t see. Nor I. It took a mother’s eyes. Paloma took Clarisse’s hands in hers. She stared at them, the backs, and then the palms. Then she turned to Father. ‘Do you not see whose hands these are? Do you not see whose grin?’”
Harlan leaves the question there to hang. The room is hushed.
“She is your sister after all,” Addie says.
“She is my sister after all.”
“Oh, Harlan! Oh! But how…”
“She’d been with him, with Father, before the faro game.”
“And with her old master, too.”
“With Wenceslao, too,” he says. “And Paloma never knew until she saw my father’s grin in her grown daughter’s face.”
“My God! My God, Harlan!”
“You begin to see the predicament in which I found myself.”
“And what did you do? What did you do then?”
“Exactly, Addie. What does one do then? Briefly, each of us went mad. Mad. We wept and raged. We fought. We reconciled. We asked ourselves if we could live with it. We answered yes. We tried. I tried. Repeatedly. Each time, I failed. The notion filled me with revulsion in some deep way that I was powerless to change. How can I reproach myself for feeling the same horror felt by all mankind?”
“No, my dear,” she says, “of course you can’t. I understand. I understand!”
Now Harlan takes her hands, and she surrenders them. He bows his head and kisses them.
“And Clarisse?” she says.
He shakes his head. “Clarisse felt differently. So, little by little, Addie, we, who’d loved each other more than anything on earth, came to be bitter, silent enemies. I did all I could to make the parting amiable, to make it kind. But she’d given everything, you see. Everything. Even her religion. She’d damned herself for me, and there was no way back—or so she felt. And so she took my withdrawal as a betrayal, Addie. I had to be strenuous with her, strenuous and stern, in order to escape. And this is where I came to see the difference in our characters, Addie, this is where I came to see my fault and my mistake. It was when I crossed the line of race. Cuba cast its spell on me, and I forgot the truths of my own faith, where it’s written, ‘Of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession and they shall be your bond-men forever.’ My compass was struck by lightning and degaussed. I wandered, Addie. I wandered as my father had and almost lost myself, like him. I came so near, so near. Do you see? But I put this sorry episode behind me and set out to reform myself and live a proper life.”
“And you met me.”
“And I met you. Understand, Addie, my intentions toward you were honorable from the start. And are. For a year before we met, I hadn’t been with her, not until…”
“Our wedding night.”
“Our wedding night.”
“Our wedding night, Harlan! Tell me how I am to bear it?”
“By understanding what only dawned on me today. I thought Clarisse had accepted it, Addie. I thought she’d set me free. But that is not the case. My sister has begun to throw on me.”
“To throw…”
“Don’t you see? All the pain and discord of the last two days—this is her doing, Addie. It’s brujería, witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft, Harlan? Witchcraft? Tell me how I am to understand that. Help me to believe.”
“You must trust me, Addie. You must understand I’ve traveled in a world that you know nothing of and make a leap of faith toward me. If you can’t, then I release you from your vows. Because I need you, Addie, I need your strength, your love, your courage. I need you to fight for me, as I intend to fight for you.”
“I will try! I will try!” she says, almost in despair. “But, Harlan, if such things are possible, if they’re true, how is one to fight them? What is one to do?”
“Truthfully?” he answers. “I don’t know. Through faith in God and in each other—those are the only weapons we possess.”
And they fall silent now. They gaze into each other’s eyes and weigh what has been said. But something has been left unsaid, too, and Addie says it now.
“I saw something in the woods last night, a pot, I think. It was covered with a cloth, but I think it was the same as the one you described.”
His eyes smolder. “You believe me then?”
“I don’t know what I believe. I’m trying to. But, Harlan, do you think…?”
“Yes, my dear?”
What happened in the swamp, the voice she heard, and what she felt toward Jarry when he came…All this passes now through Addie’s mind, and was it not, in some way, like a dream, a spell? And what if the voice with whom she conversed wasn’t that of God, or from God, not that of some good angel? What if it was tempting her, as the serpent once did Eve in such a place? Would this not explain so much that is confusing now? For her, a woman of her class and station, a white woman, to feel such feelings for a slave…Could this have a natural cause? What if…oh, what if!
“Do you think it could affect me, too?”
Harlan blinks. “Of course…Of course it could! But has something happened, Addie? Have you felt…?”
“No,” she says. “No, nothing, I just…I…”
He takes her hand and presses it. “I understand, my dear. I understand. It’s natural to be afraid.”
“What is it she expects, though, Harlan? What is it she wants?”
“Everything, Addie. Don’t you see? Me. This. Wando Passo. She wants it for herself and for her children to inherit. Our children. Hers and mine.”
“Ah,” says Addie. “Yes, I see.”
“I left her and came to you by choice,” he says. “It was you to whom I chose to wed my future, to be the mother of my children. I love you, Addie. Love me back. Believe in me, and we will win.”
“I don’t know if I can love you now.”
“Can you not try?”
His expression queries and implores her. He touches her, tries to kiss her, but she pulls away. Yet his eyes linger, questioning and unconvinced. He tries again, and this time she does not reject his hand. And it is unlike before, when he went on ahead and left her by herself. Now, seeking to recover what he’s lost, he is with her. Harlan is completely with her now.
TWENTY-FIVE
I think we need to talk,” he said.
“I have a better idea,” said Claire.
Leaving the water running, she climbed out, dripping extravagantly on the tile. Her upper body was flushed, and she came toward him, grinning, lik
e a confident madwoman who meant to do him harm. Grabbing a fistful of his hair, she kissed him violently, opening her mouth wide and sending her tongue probing. Ransom instantly went hard and felt some old, familiar disappointment at his cock’s lack of character. It was rare, though not unprecedented, for him to feel objectified by female lust, yet tonight was such a time. Having waited for this moment, dreamed of it, he had mixed feelings when it arrived, and, really, shouldn’t he demur? Claire had last night. Right when they’d been at the tipping point, she’d had the guts and self-regard to pull away and say, “How is this supposed to work?” And did he have any less? The answer, the sad answer, apparently, was yes.
“Do you love me for my heart and character, or only for my bod?” he asked her in a feeble effort to preserve some shred of dignity.
“Only for your bod,” she said, popping his shirt buttons as she rolled it off his back.
“Well,” Ran said, watching as she seized the zipper of his pants. “At least we’ve got that straight.”
Claire laughed, and he did, too, despite concerns that it was not a joke. He hadn’t seen her this uninhibited in quite some time, if ever. She seemed right there, completely without shame or subterfuge. And it would be wrong to say that her address lacked tenderness; it didn’t. He had to wonder why she was suddenly so turned on; not enough to ask, though. Even as they began, Ransom knew he would be mulling that question for some time. Right now, sacrificing any vestiges of self-respect, he was content to fuck his wife till they were raw.
With her hand on his cock, like a rosy infant both muscular and soft, Claire stepped into his boxers, which were hung up at his knees, and pushed them to his ankles, stamped on them, before dropping to her knees and going down on him. She took him whole into her mouth, and let her lips cling like half-moist crepe as she drew back and stood. Her tits, small and full, still hot from the bath, grazed his chest. Grasping his shoulders, she pushed him to his knees and put both hands behind his head and pulled him into her bush. Looking down greedily, she made little thrusts into his face, turned on not just by what he did, but by watching herself act. (Ran surmised this from fragmentary glimpses, as she let him up, occasionally, for air.) Too aroused to stick with one approach, she turned away and leaned across the vanity. Like an orphan who has stumbled on the factory where all the love and chocolate in the universe are made, Ransom stood and screwed his fists into his eyes, then wiped the wet that had spread around his mouth like lipstick on a drunk Parisian whore. Her eyes were waiting for him in the mirror, her grin, the happy predator’s. Reaching back, she guided him in, and as he fucked her from behind, her eyes in the mirror never left his face. Ransom watched the heartblood migrate to her face, saw the veins form and plump—throat, temple, brow.
“No,” she said, “lower, hold it, harder, there, like that.” Pushing from above, she forced his cock to mash her clitoris with every stroke, and then she pushed too hard and he washed out on a wave of secretory ointments. Looking down, Ransom saw the puckered circle of her anus and nudged experimentally.
“Is that what you want?” Undeterred, Claire fumbled the drawer open, took out the K-Y, and uncapped it with the same hand she used to smear them both.
“Oh, oh, gently, buddy, gently,” she said as he shoved in, but Ran felt madness coming over him, something careless and unstoppable, and he pushed hard, harder, with no gentleness at all. In the mirror now, her eyes were closed, teeth gritting, and her tits, her full little tits, jerked and whiplashed forward with each backthrust she made. His own face, when he glanced at it, seemed vivid, too, relaxed and clarified, but almost lugubrious in the midst of fucking that exceeded fantasy, exceeded his highest anticipated good. Then, like a swimmer who’s held her breath as long as she can stand, Claire made a gasping cry and shoved him, hard, away. Turning, she took his cock, and Ransom picked her up as Claire raised both knees shoulder-high, and they went at it that way, face-to-face, at jackhammer speed and rhythm, and she stared, open-eyed, with something in her face he didn’t like, almost defiance, as though daring him to miss a beat. He didn’t. They went on, perfectly matched, like oarsmen to the coxswain’s cadence, and finally her face softened, sadness colored it, and she groaned, “Ohhh,” she put her lips against his ear and whispered, “Come on, fuck me, fuck me, don’t you, don’t you think, don’t you think of…” Ran began to come now, too. “Stopping,” she whisper-cried, “ohhh…OHHH, FUCK…OHH, FUCK…OH, FUCK… don’t you, don’t you fuck me, don’t you stop, oh, don’t you, don’t you, stop.”
Lost in lush and irresistible mixed messages, they fell back, spineless, boneless, against the countertop, then spineless, boneless, to the floor, where they lay naked, sweating against cold tile. Like a patient on the table as the anesthesiologist applies the mask, Ransom drifted out, and when he came to, Claire was kissing his cheek.
“How was that for sexual healing?”
Smiling with besotted happiness, he watched her beautiful bare shoulders disappearing, one by one, into her robe. As she closed it, though, something stopped her. Claire looked down and wiped her inner thigh, stared at what was on her fingertip.
“You came?” Her face, as she turned and asked, was wondering and pleased. “How…”
Ransom sat up quickly. “Claire…”
Now everything in her expression began to run downhill.
“This was it, this was all I wanted, Claire,” he whispered desperately. “Just this one time to be with you the way we used to be. Don’t be mad, okay? Please.”
“You’re off your meds?”
“I’m going to the pharmacy tomorrow, okay? First thing. First thing.”
She simply stared at him, and her eyes filled.
“Claire…”
She broke eye contact now, gazed at the wall for perhaps three seconds as though something in the distance had come into focus; then she sashed her robe and left without a word or another glance at him.
Still in the grip of postcoital fatigue, Ran lay back on the floor and closed his eyes. Having died of the operation, he experienced difficulty deciding to come back from the white light in the tunnel where the ancestors await. And the conversation he should have had with Claire he now had with himself. Though it was true he’d flirted with the edge, he hadn’t jumped, had he? He hadn’t gone over into the abyss. Nothing really bad had happened. Things were still retrievable. All he’d wanted was to reclaim his manhood with his wife—Claire could understand and forgive that, surely. After all, she had in the past.
Taking the hard road back to life, Ran got up feeling arthritic, stumbled, used the doorknob as a crutch. Following her to bed to talk, he found Claire fast asleep.
Ransom looked at her, and happiness crept over him, followed by a twinge of sudden doubt. Was she breathing? For a moment, Claire looked almost dead. Her face seemed relaxed and younger in the way the faces of the dead are said to shed their cares and to approximate a stage of youth. Even when he put his ear close to her lips and heard her breathe, touched her skin and felt its warmth, Ran wasn’t fully reassured. A wave of grief washed over him, as though he himself had caused her premature demise. Yet she wasn’t dead—he knew she wasn’t—but the grief came, nonetheless, on and on—such grief, oh! Oh, such remorse! Ran actually began to weep. And why? For what? Wasn’t what had just happened in the bathroom good? Wasn’t their closeness the plausible beginning of that new beginning he had hoped for? Why, then, did it feel like something else? Why this sudden dark foreboding? Premonition somehow mingled with the smell of sex. And the strange thing was, the grief didn’t really feel like it belonged to him. It felt like it belonged to someone else.
With tears still streaming down his face, he walked into the hall, and there the hamper lay in wait. On top of the soiled heap, Claire’s pink panties, exactly as before. Ran stopped. His grief vanished as suddenly as it had arisen. Around him, the house went still.
Another clue…
The voice whispered, and Ransom felt the zing of fear. What if? he thought
…What if the journey wasn’t leading someplace good, wasn’t leading him toward his True Self, but someplace…else?…
Oh, go on, check them out, you know you want to.
The voice had a certain point. And if he picked them up and looked them over, if he checked for signs—suspect seepage, crust—what harm? Who would ever be the wiser? If there was something to discover, better to learn it now and face facts. If not, better to know that, too, surely, and spare Claire further unjust doubts. A spot check might exonerate her, mightn’t it? Well, no, not really—it might only prove that she was being careful. Ran suddenly grasped the crucial fact: the only definitive evidence the panties could provide was of a damning sort, the evidence to convict. And if he examined them now, would that, too, constitute a crime of sorts? Would it mark, in effect, the end of marital trust? Would it mean the end of his ambition to be the husband she wanted and deserved? It would, wouldn’t it? And if he ever meant to be that different, better man he’d always believed he could be but had never actually been, wasn’t it also true that Ransom had to start the process somewhere? Didn’t he, in fact, have to start right here, right now, and walk away?