Outside, the night was warm for January, and windless. Light from the pool scattered like gems over the rosebushes. They were bare, waiting for spring, hung with a few sluggish leaves. She crossed to the pool house, where spiderwebs gave in to her, spreading themselves over her hair and shoulders as she reached in to turn off the pool light. There was only the moonlight now. In its wan mist she could see the lawn, crystal-frosted. Through her feet she could feel the dark buzzing soil, its coursing underworld. In one swift move, she swept off her nightgown. She wasn’t cold. She slipped off her panties and stifled a laugh, afraid someone might hear. A breeze brought her skin to life; the night licked her with its scratchy tongue. She lay down in the grass, naked. It tickled her bare back and she began to laugh again. This time she didn’t stop herself. Let them come, the triplets and George, the Bauers and Fromms and Attenboroughs. Let them go home to their kitchens to talk about the crazy lady, the barenaked one laughing here, her arms splayed on the grass, wreathed in cobwebs, the green ants losing themselves in her hair and in the crannies of her thighs. She could smell it all when she turned her head to the ground—the ants and the grass, the frost and ice and eucalyptus resin, roses and cherries and the warm cement of summer, dandelions and dog shit, the slime-coated frogs who swam up through the pool drains from the nearby creek, tree bark and bees and clouds of gnats, sunscreen and slippers and the dirt that clung to her garden shears, barbecues and woodsmoke and parting clouds, the rain, the wind, the valley fog, and, somewhere in the middle of it, the faintest trace of spring. She grabbed a handful of grass and yanked it from the ground. Soil crumbs hung from the roots. She shook a few blades, placed them on her tongue, and kept them there, chewing, just to see how they tasted.
The Prayer Room Page 30