The church bells are chiming noon when they leave Rousseau’s house, and the sun is high.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Come. I know just the place.” The inn is called La Châtaigneraie, and the courtyard where they are led to a quiet table is indeed surrounded by chestnut trees festooned with towering snowy coneflowers. A sweet young girl takes their order. Her father, presumedly, pours the wine. A mother with a sleeping baby sits at a far table with her husband, laughing at his banter. A butterfly alights on the vase of flowers set in the middle of their table.
If I die soon, I will have at least had this, she thinks. I will have known happiness. If I had died just a few weeks ago, I would never have believed what I was missing. The thought wounds her in a strange, delicious way. She wants to keep poking at it, reminding herself to take it all in.
She drinks more wine than she should. The giddiness she already feels marries with the alcohol to take away her last ounce of reluctance.
“Have you planned where we’re going?” she asks Morton.
“Just upstairs,” he says when he’s paid the bill and smoked a cigarette. “Are you ready?”
She nods.
Their room is large and full of light and peeks through the lacy chestnut blossoms out over the courtyard. It’s just a simple space beneath the eaves, with wallpaper of blue morning glories climbing from baseboards to ceiling, and a cotton rug. Morton cranks open the windows and Edith sits on the bed.
“This is lovely, isn’t it?” he asks her.
“Yes.” She wonders if he has ever brought a woman here before. They were kind to him in the courtyard. Did they recognize him? She swats the thought from her mind.
She is afraid she will fail him. And if so, this could be the last time they are together. This new worry flits around her wine-dazzled brain.
He sits beside her and reaches for her chin, gently tilting her face toward his. His eyes are as kind as she’s ever seen them.
“You’re afraid,” he says.
“Yes.”
“We needn’t make this fearful at all. Not at all.”
“I’m not good at this,” she says. “At so many things in my life, I’ve worked hard to excel, to learn. At this, I am an abject failure.”
“Perhaps you’ve never given yourself a chance. We needn’t scare you today. There’s nothing to fear. I promise.”
“I fear it all,” she says. “It’s as though I’m broken. It hurts me. It always hurts me.”
“You weren’t broken at Montfort. You were alive. I know I’m right about that, yes?”
She nods and feels tears quivering in the inside corners of her eyes. “I never cry. I detest women who cry. Why do I always cry with you?”
“I don’t know,” he says, and puts his arm about her. “But we won’t make you cry, no matter what. Or do anything that will make you sad. We’ll just be here together. Alone together! No one watching. No one interrupting us.”
She turns to take in his face. He is the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen. She reaches out and touches his glossy black mustache. Never once has it hurt her lips when he’s kissed her, as Teddy’s always has. And his cheekbones, so noble and high in color, as sweetly tinted as Duchesse de Brabant roses. His lower lip so strong, so masculine. Other women have come before her in his heart. Others will follow. She’s no fool. Morton will never love her as she loves him. But how beautiful, how freeing, to know she doesn’t care.
He cradles her face in his hands and kisses her lips so gently she barely feels it. And then he kisses her eyes, her nose.
“My love,” he says. “My darling.” His voice is lulling.
She feels so young before him. So untested. How absurd it is to be a forty-six-year-old woman with no experience. Why isn’t he laughing at her?
His lips trifle with the curl of her ear. “Do you know, you have the most beautiful ears. Like seashells.” She touches her ear with pleasure and feels herself blush.
“There’s some color in your cheeks again!” he says. “Now you’re here with me!”
Don’t miss this! Feel everything, she tells herself. And remember.
He removes his own jacket with a ceremonial seriousness, carefully places his shoes side by side under the chair by the desk, unfastens his pocket watch and sets it gently on the bedside table along with the crisp square of his white linen handkerchief. Then he goes about the business of unpeeling her layers. Madness that women should dress with such complexity! Like Valentine candy hiding beneath layers of ruffled papers.
“Can we draw the curtains?” she asks.
“And rob me of one of my greatest pleasures? Seeing you? No one can see us.”
“I’m afraid to be seen by you.”
“But you’re beautiful!” he says. When he’s managed with her help to remove her corset, he tenderly traces the red lines and welts of its cruel embrace with his fingers, “Poor love,” he says, then leans down and kisses her puckered flesh. “It’s cruel what we put women through. Men would never tolerate it. And for what? As though you’re not beautiful without it.”
Nearly naked now, she struggles to cover her breasts, so exposed in the dappled light. He has stripped her down to just her drawers. They are voile, refined and elegant, edged in Burano lace and fastened with mother-of-pearl buttons as tiny as a baby’s first fingernails. All these years of exquisite underwear and not one man has ever seen any of it.
She reaches up and slips the studs from his sleeves and shirt, aids in the removal of his collar and cuffs. He laughs. “Well, aren’t you helpful,” he says, hanging his shirt on the chair. When he strips off his thin jersey undervest, she discovers his chest is surprisingly broad and muscular, covered in dark curling hair. His nipples are as brown as walnuts. He lies down on the bed beside her, propping himself on his elbow to see her better.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” he says. “Of you. From the day we met.”
His words fall on her like water on a parched and dying plant. She feels herself leaning toward them, drinking every sweet drop.
“All I want,” he says, “is to make you feel marvelous. Do you understand?”
She nods.
“I hope you’ll feel things you’ve never felt. Wonderful things.”
“I just don’t know if I can . . .”
“Shhh . . .” He puts his fingers to her lips. “Anything that doesn’t feel wonderful, we won’t do, we won’t continue. If you don’t like anything, you’ll tell me.”
She laughs, for she feels like he is stating the rules before a game, the way they do before lawn tennis.
This is happening, she tells herself. This is really happening. No dream. No story conjured late at night alone in her bed. But a real moment, with his ticking watch on the bedside table, the sound of his breath, the dark perfect hairs on his wrist, the tiny scar on his cheek, the dot of black in his blue eye, the scent of lavender mixed with another more dusky sweetness. Her senses are heightened, thrilled by every detail. Will I remember? Will I remember? she wonders. When he leans down and kisses her, she feels it in layers. First, the sweetness of his lips, then the soft searching of his tongue, the weight of him, and at last, the extraordinary heat of his chest against her breasts.
Drawing away from the kiss, he runs his lips down her throat, makes circles around each breast as he did in Montfort, lingering and teasing her with his tongue; then his kisses move down the meridian of her belly, which makes her gasp. How has her body become such a crucible of sensations? Ordinary places feel sensitized. When his fingers find the tiny buttons of her bloomers, she worries that they’re too small for a man to unfasten. But he conquers them one by one, slipping them gently through the fine-stitched buttonholes. She realizes as he slides them from her hips that she has never been thoroughly naked b
efore a man. With Teddy, she wore her nightgown. And there was no touching, no sweetness.
“My God, you’re beautiful,” he says, modeling the lines of her waist and breasts and hips. “As slender as a young girl.” So many touches, so many caresses, it’s as though he has a thousand hands. His face is lit with pleasure. He really thinks me beautiful! she tells herself. He parts her legs and with his fingers softly begins to explore. What she feels is so exquisite, so beyond anything she’s ever known.
“You’re flowing with honey,” he says. “You want me, Edith. Do you know it? Do you realize? Not all women respond like this. You want me.”
“I do?” she asks. “I do!” she says. The same exact words she spoke twenty years ago at an altar, a shivering numb bride. What a different meaning they hold now. She did not want Teddy Wharton then. She never wanted Teddy Wharton. She must not think. She must feel. . . .
Suddenly Morton’s gentle probing locates the very bud of all sensation. By parting the petals with soft touches, he has exposed her long-suppressed desire. Stroking the spot with circular caresses, he makes her arch her back, lose her breath. The sensation is nothing she’s ever known or imagined, fiery and tingling and urgent. And when he slides down to press his mouth to this very spot, this vortex of pleasure she never imagined was part of her, and worships it with his lips and tongue, something happens. First, she sees nothing but white light beneath her lids. Then a sensation like quicksilver shoots to every part of her. She gasps, she calls out his name. Ripples of flame roll over her again and again and again. The convulsions stun and thrill her. An effortless ecstasy, close to agony. The shock of a body sliding into cold water, biting on a lemon, standing too close to a flame. But with no pain. No pain; just utter rapture. As intense as pain, but for the first time, pleasure.
“What’s happening to me?” she says when she can speak. “What’s happened?”
Morton smiles down at her, pleased.
“You don’t know?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
“It’s never happened before? You never made it happen yourself?”
“No. Is it all right? Am I all right?” She is still softly shuddering.
He laughs aloud. “You climaxed, darling. La petite mort.”
“La petite mort?”
“Each time we die to be reborn again.”
“This has happened to other women?”
“Not often enough,” he says, amused.
“It’s normal?”
“In a perfect world.”
She sits half up, feeling utterly spent and blissful. More relaxed than she’s felt in her entire life.
“Can it happen more than once in a lifetime?”
“It can happen every day. Ten times a day . . .”
“No,” she says, lying back down. “I wouldn’t want that!”
Morton roars, and then kisses her, still laughing. She feels how hard his heart is beating. Her own lips feel swollen and sensitive. He lifts her hand and draws it to his chest.
“Touch me too,” he says, his voice dark and longing.
His chest is perfectly modeled. The vestigial breasts, like a statue’s, hard as stone but covered in dark fur. He guides her hand lower. She has never felt a man’s member before, has never imagined how heavy it might feel, how firm. He lays it into her hand like a gift.
“Are you afraid?” he asks.
“No,” she says, and it’s true.
He shows her how he wishes to be stroked. She feels awkward, but interested. She wants to do it right. She wants to make him happy he chose her. Is there anything she wouldn’t do to please this man who seems like an offering to her from the gods? The answer to a thousand hopeless prayers . . .
Morton seems swept away by her touch. His member, velvety on the outside, so marble hard on the inside, satisfies her hand as much as her hand seems to please him.
“It’s perfect,” he says. “Perfect.” His voice is ragged. The out-of-control sound of his words frightens her. But she remembers the pleasure he bestowed upon her. She wants to give it back. His breathing is torn, worrisome, interlaced with moans that move her inexpressibly.
“Edith,” he whispers, his voice husky, lost.
“My love,” she says, observing how his back arches, his eyes shut tightly. The arcs of his glistening black lashes flare on his cheekbones. His lips part. He stops her hand very suddenly and sits up, then raises his body over hers.
“Guide me into you,” he whispers.
“I . . .”
“Don’t be afraid. I promise I’ll stop if it hurts. Guide me in.” How kind he sounds. But she can tell there’s effort in what he’s saying. She takes hold of him. There’s no going back now. She is stepping over the line. But they are doing this together. Lovers. Partners. His member feels even more swollen. Far too big. She doesn’t quite know where it should go. But it knows. In a fluid, honeyed movement, he is entering her. The feeling is as far from pain as she can imagine. No resistance. No friction, just shining light and sensation.
She hears a sound spring from her lips. A sound she has never made before.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks.
“No. Don’t stop.”
He plunges fully into her and holds for a moment, and then pulls away, enters again and pulls away. Just as he has done a thousand times to her before in other ways. A metaphor for everything he’s been to her. Approaching. Retreating. Mustn’t think. Can’t think. Suddenly, it’s easy not to think! His breathing is torn and insistent. Together, the sounds they make could be agony. How close agony is to joy! She never knew. Never knew. Never knew. She is caught in the vortex again. The quickening. She finds herself thrusting upward to draw him in deeper. She wraps her legs around his hips. She wants more. She wants all of him. They are one. Ensnared in the swirling. The sensation is even stronger this time. Every nerve ending sparking. White light! She gasps and cries out like someone falling.
And then he cries out too. She feels his whole body shudder. Even inside her. Shivering. Quaking. Tears flow down her face. They will not stop. When she opens her eyes, all she can see are the frills of white blossoms through the open window kaleidoscoped by her tears, shimmering in the soft blue breeze. It feels like the beginning of the day all over again.
“You’re a brave girl. I knew you would be. A wonderful girl.” He touches her face. “You’re crying!”
“Only with joy,” she says. He kisses her nose.
“I’ve made you happy.” He sounds so pleased, she feels effervescent. “You did it beautifully, Edith.”
“Did I?” she asks.
“Brilliantly. You are very special. Very, very special, chère!” His voice is paternal, and soothing. She is preternaturally proud.
He lifts himself off and lies down beside her. “Lie in my arms for a while,” he whispers, accepting her into the crook of his shoulder. “Before we go back to being tourists. But,” he says, after a moment, “I think it’s safe to say I’ve taken you somewhere you’ve never been.”
“You have,” she whispers. “The most wonderful place. I hope to visit often.” Later, as they gather their things, she leans out the window just far enough to snap off a sprig of chestnut flower. Sliding it into the pocket of her skirt, it’s the last thing she does before they go out into the world together, lovers at last.
TWELVE
We met the other day at the Louvre, and walked to St. Germain l’Auxerrois. Then we took a motor and went over to Les Arènes de Lutèce and then to St.-Etienne-du-Mont. . . . Then we walked to the Luxembourg, and sat for a long time in a quiet corner under the trees. But what I long for, these last days, is to be with you alone, far off, in quietness—held fast, peacefully, “while close as lips lean, lean the thoughts between” . . . there is no use trying to look at things together. We don’
t see them any longer. . . .
Edith watches helplessly as each day ticks by and the calendar forfeits its leaves. At eleven-thirty on a perfect May day scented with an aroma not unlike gumdrops, just five days before she is to sail, Cook drops her off at the station and she wanders into the echoing crowds. The electrically broadcast announcements for trains buzz incoherently. The vendors promise buttery pastries and coffee. Feeling lost, and sick at heart, she searches for Morton. What if he doesn’t come? It’s possible. With Morton, anything is possible. Then, there he is, elegant and crisply turned out, leaning by the entrance to the platforms, waiting. His face completely alters when his eyes find her, his mood turning playful. Her own heart opens and sings out like a bird sprung from that ever-ticking clock. Climbing aboard the train, Morton lifts her to reach the first step, then kisses her right in the doorway. Openly, deeply. He laughs like a naughty boy. It’s part of his pleasure, pushing her to do things she once wouldn’t have dared.
But she’s energized. Thrilled to be with him.
“A full day together,” she says.
He squeezes her hand and leads her to a compartment where an older woman in black sits, tatting with ecru thread. She nods and smiles at them, her hands flying in circles and knots.
“Bonjour, Madame,” Morton sings out.
“Bonjour.” The woman looks from Morton to Edith, then back to Morton again. Then she lowers her head again to her lace making. Morton takes the moment to grab Edith by her waist and pull her to him, kissing her with tongue and lips, daring the old woman to watch. But the old widow’s eyes are fixed on the results of her airborne bobbin, conjuring tiny picots with ease and artistry, choosing not to note their embrace.
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