Time After Time

by Elizabeth Boyce

  “That’s what’s changed?”

  Her hands stilled. Finally she said, “I think I’ve always loved you, Theo. That is to say, I don’t think I ever stopped.” He wanted to reach for her. He wanted to crush her beneath him and kiss every sweet inch of her. But her words had frozen him.

  She continued, “I had been telling myself I didn’t for so long it was difficult to admit I did. When we married, there was scarcely time to draw breath, let alone ponder everything that changed in a few brief weeks.” She stood up and removed her corset and chemise. “I was trying to guard my heart, Theo. But where you’re concerned, that’s impossible.”

  Quite nude, she knelt to scoop up her discarded hairpins before crossing to the armoire, shuffling around for a nightdress and drawing it over her head. Each movement was precise and elegant and detached.

  She loved him. Had always loved him. Couldn’t resist him. Was that right? If so, would it be in bad taste to jump on the bed and holler?

  Still frozen, however, Theo enjoyed the spectacle, taking the excuse to try to make sense out of this evening. Their fight, their joining, this confession: it was too much to be believed. She sat at the vanity and began brushing out her long, brown tresses. He stared at her reflection in the mirror and blinked several times. It was as if a warren of rabbits had burrowed in his ears. He could hear the timbre of her voice, but the words didn’t make any sense. She … loved him.

  “Are you ready to sleep?” she asked with a full smile, looking at him in the mirror as she tugged her brush against a snag.

  Sleep? He had too many questions! Picking just one out of the ether, he said, “So many letters, Margaret. There were so many letters. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her brows knit together. “I thought I had. I thought you knew. Does this really change so much?”

  “Yes!”

  He needed to touch her. He stumbled from bed and half-knelt behind her to braid her hair. He ran his fingers against her scalp and down the thick, honeyed lengths in his hands.

  This touch felt somehow more intimate than their coupling had. The daily ritual of it felt worshipful and reverent. This was how he loved his wife. Through a thousand quiet touches, each one a silent prayer of thanks and praise. He sectioned her hair carefully and began pulling the pieces together in a rhythmic pattern.

  It was magical. Who had first figured the braid out? How did it work? As he watched the plait take shape, he knew this was the architecture of intimacy. This moment was the foundation of their future life together. The life he had always wanted was his — even with everything he done and seen. Even with the precariousness of life. Margaret loved him. He loved her. He fumbled with a blue ribbon. Once it was in place, they both moved toward the bed.

  “Whatever is the matter?” Margaret asked, pulling back the covers and sliding in.

  “You said you didn’t love me. Couldn’t love me. I didn’t believe you at first, but … more than a year.”

  “It only seems a change if you have changed your mind.”

  Theo climbed atop her, setting a hand on either side of her face and leaning close. “So this has been what’s wrong, Margaret mine? You were finally able to admit that you loved me and thought I did not reciprocate?”

  She closed her eyes and whispered, “Aye. I could not see any of your former tenderness in you. Your letters have grown so short.”

  He brushed his mouth over her neck to make the devising of words difficult before rolling on his side, facing her. He waited for her to look at him again. He couldn’t articulate what he needed to without being able to see the gold-brown windows to her soul.

  After a long minute, she opened them and he said, “Margaret, the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve done … it chills me to me to the soles of my feet. I don’t think I can tell you. I don’t think I want to. But never mistake my reticence for lack of affection. Never doubt I love.”

  Her hand grazed over his cheeks, accepting and comforting, but then she laughed. “That promise didn’t work out well for Ophelia.”

  He kissed her softly. “I am no Hamlet. I have loved you for many years. More than you know. You are my wife. I have always been faithful to you. I have always cherished you, even when you were absent from me. I will for the rest of my days. And beyond.”

  “You had better, Theo Ward, because I cannot survive another broken heart.”

  “Shall I tell you, then, of the war?”

  She nodded. And so he tried to find the words. “It will hardly surprise you to know you were right. I act now, every day, in ways that would have been unimaginable to me a year ago. But ennui, Margaret, is too weak a word for what is left inside a man once he’s walked a battlefield … ”

  He talked for hours. Margaret brushed the tears away from his cheeks and whispered over and over again, “I’m so sorry. I love you.” He reciprocated in kind.

  Slowly, the tension in his muscles receded. She was not running. She was not horrified. She loved him still. Perhaps he could have everything he wanted.

  After his tale had ceased, he bundled her close and waited for the slowing of her breath. The promises they had made to one another tonight he wouldn’t have any trouble keeping.

  Chapter XVI

  In the final week of his leave, Theo ensured that Margaret was scarcely more than an arm’s length away from him. Often far closer.

  “Samuel Dix is a fool,” he murmured against her neck one afternoon when he pressed her into a hidden space between the woodpile and the kitchen.

  “Oh?” Margaret panted.

  “To have a woman who wants to be his wife close at hand and not to take her? Let the record show that I couldn’t resist you. The moment I knew you wanted me, I had to make you mine. Taking you in the stable was entirely mercenary.”

  “Yes, you get all the credit. I had nothing to do with it.” She writhed against him like a hydrilla in a stream.

  He chuckled. “I didn’t say that. The musk of you. The flash of your smile. That indecent dress you wore to the dance. They were all designed to addle my brain. And they did. For which I should punish you.”

  He squeezed a sweet handful of her bottom and she squealed, cuddling into him with a gasp. “Theodore Ward!”

  “I love the sound of my name on your lips. Sometimes I think I hear it on the breeze at night, you gasping it, just like that.” His hands wandered farther.

  She swatted at him and tried, half-heartedly, to put some space between them. “Are you going to make me crazy all day?” she demanded.

  “Yes. And then tonight, we’ll explode together.”

  And so it was, until the days of his leave had ticked away: whispered words of love, tortuous moments of expectation, and blessed release. When he found himself again on the platform boarding a train for the front, Theo once again moved between everyone assembled, ending with Margaret.

  He cupped her face. “I love you.”

  “I love you,” she responded. Her tone was unwavering. Certain. Thank the Lord.

  “I will return to you.”

  “I know. However long, whatever the cost, I will wait.”

  He kissed her then. A kiss to fill the encroaching loneliness. A kiss to provide sustenance for their separation, however long it might endure. After their lips separated he paused, breathed in her scent, and released her, running to the train. He worried if he tarried any longer that he might not go.

  He watched out the window for a long time, until the blurring of foliage was burned into his mind, obscuring the haunting memory of Margaret’s eyes. Those beautiful, brown wells, fearful and strong at once. Before they had reached camp, he had started a letter.

  Dearest Margaret Mine,

  I am but half an hour removed from you and already I ache for your touch. I feel as if in the past week, we have achieved the promise tha
t was whispered to me the first time I saw you. In that moment, you caught me beyond redemption. I knew at the first touch that you would change my life. For everything we have been through, it was always before me: what I thought we could be and knew somewhere deep inside that we would be.

  Oh, the years we have wasted, the tribute we have given to our pride and to the expectations of others! I would mourn those lost embraces and phantom existences, but that they have brought us to the present moment, when I have you and know the value of what I possess. The trust and love shining in your face this morning, Margaret, was worth a lifetime of sacrifice.

  But now we face the present alone, for who knows how long. A winter of waiting, surely — and hopefully only one more fighting season beyond that. I can only endure the separation because I know we are now committed to a shared vision of the future and because I feel that our love burns brightly enough to allow for both the future of our marriage and the nation to be warmed by it. I will do my service and return to you, knowing we will be blessed by my participation in the cause of liberty. From now on, we will be selfish and retain our blessings to our own family, however.

  I close now, remembering you in my arms this morning with the first strains of day dancing through the window. I will not speak of things that might insult your modesty, but you will know, I think, to what I allude. You are the melody of my life, Margaret, and I find my purpose in your arms and in your eyes.

  Your loving husband,

  Theo

  • • •

  My dearest Theo,

  All day after you left, we were bereaved. The singing of birds outside the window was an insult to our mood. Did they not know we were a household in near mourning? Slowly, in the week since you left, we have become accustomed again to life without you. But it is for me a half-life. Less than that, really. I do not know whether your visit home was a net good or ill. I was tolerating your absence before. Now I am as one trapped in a nightmare without end. Come back and revive me with a kiss.

  No words could spring from your pen that would insult my modesty, Theo. Where you are concerned, the term has changed meaning. To be modest with you is to have decorum, to be appropriate for the situation. And since our situation is marriage, love, passion — then nothing should be held back.

  I dream about the muscles of your chest and the iron bands of your arms, which shelter me from the vagaries of the world. I dream about your mouth, which gives me life. I dream about your mind, Theo, about your laugh, about the comfort and love, which radiates from you and centers me. During our years apart, I was unmoored in the stream of life. I thought I was more stable, but I mistook the constant, predictable rolling for something good. But it was just sameness. Empty, roiling sameness.

  You fill me up in every sense. Make me whole. Give me back to myself. The endless, cold, hollow nights that stretch before me until you return, Theo, should serve as enough reminder for a lifetime that I cannot be without you and will not do so again.

  I love you,

  Margaret

  Chapter XVII

  April 6, 1863

  My Very Dearest Margaret,

  With each missive, I try to decide what is the best time to write to the woman who enjoys my whole heart. Is it night, when I should be in her arms, showering sweet kisses on every inch of her skin? Is it the morning, when the same sun that warms my brow shines down on her? Is it afternoon, when the tasks of the day are half-finished and longing for home begins to set in? I cannot decide, and so I write during them all.

  Then, Margaret, sometimes I feel you are very cruel to have left me so bereft. To have taken such possession of me that I cannot relish anything that is not you. I never anticipated, not in my wildest fever dreams of love, that it would be possible to be as consumed by thoughts of another as I am of you. The absorption I feel for you, the oneness that connects us even over the course of miles, is beyond all rationality. I feel pleasure only when I am reading your letters, but it is a pleasure only you yourself could surpass.

  Yet it is not enough, is it? Not nearly enough — if it were true oneness, then I would not feel the keening emptiness. I would not need to imagine your hands sliding over my skin, substituting my rude hand for your absent one. I would not feel half a man, incomplete because I am not able to tell you about my day or ask your advice or feel your laugh.

  I think I could only have to come to feel for you as much as I do in an environment such as this. The mortality of man has become for me a very real thing. It is a knowledge for which I am grateful, but which I could never wish for anyone — you least of all. It enhances all of my life’s sweetness and makes poignant all my joys.

  I close with yet another profession of my hunger for you. When I return, never again to be parted from you, I will demand payment for the desires you have created in me. If you work a lifetime, perhaps we will achieve parity.

  I love you, Margaret mine, beyond my ability to convey so with my poor pen.

  Yours,

  Theo

  • • •

  April 18, 1863

  My darling,

  As the months grow warmer, I find myself burning for you. Is not that strange? I would think that cold loneliness might be pleasant on the now hot nights. But I find the opposite is true.

  Every inch of my body yearns for your touch, and despite my frequent recitation of the reasons why you are away, my skin does not understand. It is like an unruly child that will not accept any explanation. I wake, searching the bed for you. I prepare coffee for you at breakfast, and am surprised when you are not there. I float through my day, aware only that the brush of my chemise against my stomach is not your hands, that the press of the chair against my legs is not your lap, that my brush moving through my hair at night is not your fingers.

  I hope someday to remember that I am without you temporarily. At the same time, I fear becoming accustomed to this state of being. For years, we kept apart from one another, subverting the natural order. Now I cannot continue the charade any longer.

  You spoke in your most recent letter about a ghost Margaret whose hands acted on my behalf. I am sorry to inform you I am haunted by a horde of ghost Theo. Your hands, your tongue, your member — all have been very busy in my dreams. I know now you will demand that I show you once you return — but I am afraid my program for you will be too rigorous. I have need of every part of you and plan to keep you most busy.

  But to turn to things outside the bedroom, I follow the movements of your regiment as best I can, given your hints and the reporting in The Constitution. As the fighting intensifies again, we fear for you. Please do not cease to write, even briefly, for any gap in letters causes worry.

  I close now after searching for your scent in the armoire. It is nearly faded now, although one scarf does retain that blend of salt and soap and sweat that recalls you. Return to me soon, my dearest heart.

  Your loving wife,

  Margaret

  • • •

  Theo read Margaret’s words again. The creases of the letter, received only a few days before, were already worn from opening and refolding. This was a letter to cling to for a lifetime — a relic of the woman he had finally, after so many wasted years, won. He tucked it into an interior pocket over his breast, where it joined carte-de-visites of Margaret and Mother and a book of Psalms. He slid the buttons of his coat closed, checked his watch, and turned to the men behind him. Some were digging, while others were placing the branches they had cut into the breastwork.

  Five days prior, they had crossed the Rappahannock River and marched toward Fredericksburg, Virginia. The day before, there had been a skirmish with Lee’s army. Now they were inexplicably waiting. They’d spent the day putting up fortifications in hopes that Lee would attack and they would be able to make a decisive victory. Theo was less confident, but at least his men had a task
before dinner.

  Theo looked up at the sky, which was the beautiful blue that only appears in early evening. The sunlight had just begun tending toward gold. He smiled at several birds that lofted overhead and turned back to the field before them.

  That was when he noticed it: rabbits and foxes dashing out of the woods. One or two, that he could rationalize. But there were dozens, all running toward the line. His eyes swept back and forth. Yes. He was right. Before he could make sense of it, he heard a scream that chilled through his body. His breath caught in his throat. His heart paused. Everything stilled for an instant and then that noise that horrible noise, rocketed through the wool that had gathered in his ears. The Rebel Yell.

  He scooped his rifle up and shouted orders. There was a rush of activity around him. Men jumping to their feet, scrambling for their guns, and whispering hurried prayers. Then before them, thousands of the enemy poured from of the woods. They seemed to have materialized from the trees themselves. Theo didn’t understand, wouldn’t have believed, if the proof wasn’t before his eyes. Somehow, they had been flanked.

  He raised his rifle and shouted, “Charge!”

  His feet moved under him by instinct. All sound had disappeared. All he knew was the rush of air against his cheeks, the burning in his limbs, and the throbbing in his fingertips. Somehow he had raised his weapon and was sprinting toward the enemy.

  The report of a weapon shattered his cocoon, and Theo was conscious of a sharp pain through his thigh. He folded like a trap and everything was still. Somewhere in the farthest cabinet of his mind, a memory unwrapped itself: Margaret reclining before him on a bed of straw with moonlight in her hair.

  Theo closed his eyes, and everything faded to black.

  Chapter XVIII

  Margaret sat by the window looking out over the garden. Her embroidery had fallen into her lap, and her hands were clasped over one knee. It was late afternoon on one of those spring days when anything seemed possible: the overripe buds on the dogwood trees bobbed in the breeze, the scents of herbs and flowers mingled into a potent blend, and the various greens of the shoots in the back bed spoke of regeneration. Margaret believed them. Theo would be home soon. She knew it.