Blair couldn’t believe how much it hurt. His grin had seemed so sincere, for her alone. His kisses had seemed like they had love in them, not just lust. He’d quoted Bible verses to her!
Thinking about Henry kissing Chandra, his hand grazing her breast, made Blair want to throw everything she thought was true in the garbage. And stomp on it. She knew her feelings were extreme, crazy. She also knew—had known all along—that a relationship that takes place in the band room after band practice, and in no other place or time, was a false one.
It still hurt. A lot.
It was hot that second week of June, well into the nineties, so she wore her white shorts and navy blue halter top. The colors were modest, anyway. And of course she carried her Bible. She went barefoot, meaning she had to jump from one patch of weeds to the next, find pockets of shade to avoid the sun-scorched pavement. By the time she got to Charles’s house, she wondered why she hadn’t worn her flip-flops. She knocked on his door.
He looked very surprised to see her.
“Hi,” she said. “Do you still want to draw me?”
She walked right by him and into the front room of his house. The place was a wreck, with newspapers and dirty dishes on all the surfaces. A pile of laundry, that may have been clean, filled a big armchair. He too was barefoot. She felt very puppyish in his dark and muddled dwelling. She liked how he seemed to be at a loss in her presence.
To remind him, Blair held the Bible against her breasts, and said, “Do you?”
“Sure. Come on out to my studio.”
She followed him out a sliding glass door. They passed through an overgrown yard and entered the open door of a large one-room cottage. There were half a dozen house plants, and these were thriving, with lots of sunlight pouring in the high windows. A big wet-looking painting sat tilted against the back of an easel, the colors gooey and dark, and the air was rich with the smell of oily turpentine. There was also a royal blue settee, exactly as she might have expected, near the middle of the big room. Blair walked right to it and sat down.
“How do you want me?” she asked.
He paused a long time, looking at her, that sadness wilting his eyes. Then he said, “However you’re comfortable.”
Blair stretched out on the settee and crossed her ankles. She shook back her hair so that it draped over the settee top.
Charles laughed and said, “Kind of a cliché, but okay, I like it. Leave the Bible on your belly and let your hands and arms fall off either side of the chaise.”
Blair embraced the new word. Chaise. It comforted her.
Charles moved the big canvas off his easel and propped up a sketch pad. Working with a piece of charcoal, he began at once. Not only the word but the chaise itself was comfortable, and Blair felt herself slacken. Outside of her own home, and all the reminders of who she was, Blair found that her mind tore off in a lot of unexpected directions. Her anger at Henry increased. The pleasure in her anticipation of the warm, expansive summer scared her. She felt pelted by a storm of questions.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked Charles after several long minutes of silence.
He didn’t answer. He’d entered some kind of zone as he drew. Blair wondered if he might fall in love with her. Or maybe he had already. He glanced at her with crisp little peeks, over and over again, each time returning to his sketch pad.
“I asked if you’ve ever been in love before.”
“What do you think?” Charles asked.
“Probably. Maybe when you were young.”
He still didn’t answer, and it occurred to Blair that maybe he was a fag. Most male artists were. It would explain the roses and his sensitive hands. He obviously lived alone, too.
But then he wouldn’t be undressing her with his eyes, if he were a fag.
Charles ripped the sheet of paper off the sketch pad and wadded it in both hands. He let the big ball of paper drop to the floor. He started again. Blair tried to keep quiet and still. A few minutes later, he ripped off another sheet, and this time he cursed.
“I guess it’s not working,” he said.
Blair didn’t move. She liked the curve of the chaise against her backside. She liked the way the earthy smell of freshly watered green plants twined with the industrial reek of oil paints. She liked the hushed sound of charcoal on paper, knowing it traced her shape.
“You better go,” Charles said.
The words reminded her of Henry. The ache of being dismissed. She sat up and put the Bible on the floor at her feet. “I saw my boyfriend at the mall with another girl.”
Charles blinked, and she thought he probably didn’t have a clue what that felt like. He was alone. He was a fag. Maybe he wished he wasn’t, which explained why he looked at her that way. He was trying to go straight. She wondered if she ought to help him. Her church had sent two different boys to a special camp for this. One of her friends said they showed the boys dirty pictures of girls.
It occurred to her that Charles’s homosexuality made her safe in his studio.
“Do you think,” she asked, “it’s wrong to kiss before marriage?”
Charles actually laughed, but then his face softened quickly. “No.”
“What about more than kissing?”
Charles rubbed his bristly chin. “Look. I don’t know.”
“His name is Henry. He’s a Christian, like me, but his church is so different from ours. Their Jesus says yes all the time. Our Jesus always says no.”
Charles laughed again. He picked up his charcoal. “How do you know Henry?”
“We both play in the band at school. He plays cello. He’s really cute. African American. Short-short hair. Big brown eyes with long lashes. He doesn’t have any beard at all yet, kind of baby fat all over him, but under that he’s really strong.” Blair tried to keep herself in check, but continued anyway, saying, “He’s a really good kisser.”
“But you don’t think Christian children should kiss.” Charles was drawing quickly now, his hand sweeping across the pad, his eyes backlit by an emotion she couldn’t name.
“We’re not supposed to. Well. Henry says it’s fine. He says even his pastor would say it’s fine.”
Charles nodded and kept drawing, as if he’d stopped listening.
“He has the softest lips imaginable.”
When she didn’t say anything more for a long time, Charles asked, “What do you play?”
“Flute.”
“Where do the two of you go on your dates?”
“We don’t. We just made out in the band rehearsal room. After practice. After everyone else had left.”
Charles watched her face for a long moment, and she felt as if her sadness was naked. His hand holding the charcoal lowered, and he said, “Look, Blair. Whatever you did with Henry was fine. It was good, even. Some people think sex is sacred.”
Blair stood so quickly she almost lost her balance. She held the top of the chaise until she felt steady again, and then walked over to his easel. The way he’d drawn her sitting on the chaise with the Bible on the floor at her feet made it look as if she’d discarded the Book. As if she were about to kick it aside.
“How would you know?” she asked.
Suddenly she felt furious at everyone. Henry. Charles. Her parents. Maybe even Jesus. She glanced around the studio, as if she were trapped and looking for a way out, though the door was wide open. The walls were covered with charcoal sketches. She walked over to the nearest one, thinking she might rip it down. The woman was naked and so skinny each rib showed. Little sacks of skin hung off her butt. Her shoulder blades jutted like wings. Her head was bald, save a few patches of hair. She looked like someone in a concentration camp.
“Yuck,” Blair said. “She’s ugly.”
She stepped to the next drawing, and saw that it was of the same woman, this time a frontal view. Again, the little sacks of skin, this time her breasts. An open mouth, like pain. The studio, she saw now, was filled with this skin-and-bones woman. Blair turned an
d saw Charles watching her, his own mouth set in a firm line.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“My wife.”
Blair made herself hold his gaze. She tried to not hate herself.
“She died six months ago.”
Blair swallowed. Her hands shook. “I’m sorry I called her ugly.”
Charles smiled. “She would have liked that, to hear you call her ugly. She might have even liked the ‘yuck.’”
Blair saw what had attracted her to Charles all along: he liked the truth, too. She felt it in the way he looked at things, including her. She reached up and touched one of the pictures. Just a knee and then her head. The picture wasn’t ugly, after all. It was beautiful. Charles stood behind her.
Blair felt as if she were entering a vortex. Her entire world swirled. A gigantic toilet bowl, she at the center. All the pieces of her life were at odds. Making out with Henry, and letting him touch her breasts, was a sin. But it had felt sort of sacred, too. That’s what hurt so much about him moving on. Their touching had held so much . . . beauty. But what was beauty? Here was a woman ravaged by illness and she was beautiful.
Blair went to fetch her Bible so she could leave.
“I’d like to draw you without your clothes.” His voice was full, almost liquid.
She’d bent to pick up the Bible, and as she straightened, she kept her back to him. The words contrast and juxtaposition occurred to her. His wife’s wasted body and her own plump, pink one. It might be the Christian thing to do. If it was in her power to ease the man’s suffering, then shouldn’t she?
By the time Blair turned to face Charles, she was telling herself the truth. She wanted his charcoal lines on her bare limbs, belly, and breasts. She untied her halter and dropped it on the floor. She pushed her shorts and panties down to her ankles, enduring a moment of shame, but that moment passed with scandalous speed.
The truth was, she didn’t care that he watched her undress. She felt safe, whole, alive. The room filled with the feeling she got kissing Henry. But the feeling looked so much more complicated for Charles. There was—okay, just use the word—plain lust. But there was also something richer, deeper, more interesting. She stood, stark and full and now terribly sad herself, and waited for him to tell her what to do next.
“However you’re comfortable,” he said.
She thought of retrieving the Bible, for juxtaposition, but her pile of clothing covered it and she was more comfortable without it. Anyway, holding the Bible while naked might be a cliché. She sat in the trough of the chaise, cross-legged.
“That’s good,” Charles said and he went right to work.
He drew for a long time. She changed position whenever she felt like it, and he never complained. He simply tore off the paper and began again.
Blair loved how she felt beautiful under his gaze but confused by a certain detachment he seemed to possess. Occasionally he left his easel and crossed the short distance between them. She would wonder if he was going to kiss her, but he’d only suggest she move a foot or turn a shoulder. When he began asking questions about what it had been like kissing Henry in the band rehearsal room, she thought that talking about it, in this detailed way, was maybe more sinful than actually doing it. And yet, as she talked, he drew with even greater concentration, as if he listened to her only well enough to ask the next question. As if the response he wanted was in her body and not in her words.
The light shifted in the room, casting late afternoon shadows across the drawings of his emaciated wife and raising goose bumps on her own skin. Blair said, “You can touch me, if you want. I mean, just like my arms or something.”
Just saying the words made her feel potent, opulent.
He paused and looked at her, as if tempted. At least she had broken his concentration. But then he returned to drawing with even greater absorption.
“Without faith,” she asked, “how do you not touch someone?”
He smiled but didn’t stop working. “Did your faith stop you?”
“No,” she said. “It didn’t.”
“It doesn’t stop anyone. Look at all those pastors, not to mention politicians, who get caught with their pants down. Sometimes with the wrong sex, too. I can’t abide hypocrisy.”
Neither could Blair. She realized that right then, for the first time. She couldn’t abide hypocrisy.
She said, “I thought maybe you were a fag. I mean, before you told me about your wife.”
Charles put down his charcoal, and a flash of anger crossed his face, like the time he’d sprayed the roses too hard. “Don’t use that word.”
“I thought you didn’t like hypocrisy. I’m just saying—”
“Christians who hate are by definition hypocritical.”
Shame burned from her throat down to the base of her belly, and this time it stayed. Still, she defended herself. “We don’t hate them. We just hate the sin. It says right in Leviticus 20:13, ‘If a man—’”
“I know what the Bible says. I’m tired. It’s time for you to go.”
Blair tried to think of a way to return to that feeling that had filled the studio just moments earlier. She wanted to talk about kissing Henry again, but Charles was tidying some canvasses on the other side of the room. He really was finished with her this time. She dressed quickly, catching her foot in the crotch of her panties and then a shank of her hair in the tie of her halter top. She picked up her Bible and hugged it to her chest, but didn’t leave the side of the chaise. She was afraid of what she would be walking away from.
Charles turned and faced her. He said, “I was raised in a religious family, too. My brother was gay. My parents kicked him out of the house when he was just your age. I’ve never seen him since. I assume he’s dead, though I’ve never found an obituary.”
The vortex snatched up her mind again. All her thoughts swirled, making her nearly nauseous. The cancer-riddled body of Charles’s wife. His brother standing in the flames of hell. The idea of losing Joshua, forever. Henry’s fingertips on Chandra’s breast. The word beautiful.
“Let yourself out,” he said.
She stopped in his front yard to look at her favorite roses. They were in full bloom now, each flower a little fire, with yellow centers and orange edges. When her bare feet hit the hot tar on the street, she let them burn. She felt immeasurably sad, as if, like Charles, she’d lost everything.
Poker
I have moments, brief flashes, when I think I should have married you. You would get this. The ice, storms, science, seals. You would thrive here.
Only you never would have taken the risk. You wouldn’t ever be here.
What risk? Tonight I sit in the galley with a glass of wine on the table next to my notebook. Brian is playing his guitar over by the wood-burning stove, and a couple of the girls are chatting on the couches. We get excellent South American wines on station and can buy them at cost. This one is full bodied and I can taste the Argentine steppes as the fruit slides across my tongue. But you, I’m betting, would scoff at wine talk, the silliness of claiming to taste minerals and soil. Perhaps you don’t drink at all. Your dad, I remember, drank too much.
Twenty-five years ago you wanted me to marry you, and my mother begged me to do it. Now you’re a superintendent of a national park. You live in a beautiful place, and your life is defined by protecting that beauty. That’s a life I could get behind. If I were with you, I’d probably have a few kids. I’d be an excellent cook. I’d be in good shape, hiking trails with you every weekend, teaching the children how to tie knots, pitch tents, pace themselves on mountain climbs.
Instead I’m here at Palmer Station where by day I work as an assistant to the guy who manages hazardous materials. But my days are unimportant. It’s the nights I want to tell you about. Maybe just last night.
The work day—I’ll only say this—was long and exhausting. The Laurence E. Gould, the National Science Foundation ship, had come in. They needed to get a team of paleontologists on some island up the pe
ninsula, and so we had to offload and onload in one day. One very long day. I find I can’t do physical labor as easily as I used to. That’s a shock. Who would have thought I’d ever run out of strength? I’m learning what it means to need rest. Maybe you already know. Maybe having a daughter—I heard you had one—has given you a lesson in exhaustion. I hear children do that.
By seven o’clock we had finished and the Gould pulled away from the dock, its eager team of paleontologists on board. The ship, a mustard and orange hulk, moved away from us into the thick fog, pushing through the pancake ice that has crowded our bay for a week. While her shape was still visible, one of the mates came out on deck and yodeled, eerie and beautiful and plaintive notes riding the fog back to the station. Marty, one of our lines handlers, yodeled back. The Gould slid off into the Southern Ocean, its form blurring until only a patch of fog glowed yellow and orange. The two men exchanged song until there was no longer any visible trace of the ship.
I stood on Gamage Point, the small rocky piece of land next to the pier where the lines handlers had just let the ship go. They were leaving the point now, giving wide birth to an elephant seal who’d hauled out on the rocks to rest. She appeared undisturbed by the lines handlers, the yodeling, the behemoth orange and mustard beast slipping into the distant sea. Or maybe she was disturbed, but not enough to bother launching herself into the water. When all the other people were gone, I approached her slowly and took a seat on a rock very near her head.
She might have said, “Hi.”
And so I answered, “Hi.”
Her nostrils dilated and then quivered.
“Diesel,” I told her. “It does stink.”
She sighed and closed her eyes.
Brian shouted to me from the front door of the boathouse. “Poker, Jo.”
I wanted to lie down next to the elephant seal. Her hide was scarred and tough looking, and though she was bulbous with fat, I imagined she’d feel as solid as the stones surrounding her patch of beach. Her face, though, was liquid with sweetness. From a circle of black dots above each eye grew short, bristly eyebrows. These were matched by many more black dots on either side of her nose, from which two sets of short whiskers grew. Her mouth curved up in a slight smile, or so it seemed from my human perspective, and her nose had a fold across the bridge, giving a pug effect. But her eyes—
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