by M. J. Rose
Noah got up, took our bowls and relit the flame under the pot. “My mother never believed that I had gotten drunk and smashed up our car when I was nineteen, either,” he said.
“This isn’t going to work.”
“What isn’t?”
“Telling me some sweet family story about how your mother didn’t believe you were capable of acting out. It won’t convince me that I’m wrong.”
He didn’t argue and he didn’t try to finish the story that he’d started to tell. Using a fancy ladle I’d never used before, he refilled our bowls and put them back on the table. The fragrant, piquant smell wafted up in the steam.
“Eat,” he said. “Nothing you are saying will convince me.”
“Nothing?” I asked after swallowing a spoonful.
“Probably something, darlin’—but it’s also probably something that you won’t tell me.”
I thought about that. Even if there was something I could tell him, I didn’t have any facts, either. I only had my educated guess after listening to a man talk about his demons for weeks and weeks.
Yes, Alan was destructive, but only toward himself. He had devoted his whole life to justice. To protecting the innocent.
Who was he protecting now?
I spooned more of the gumbo into my mouth. If I kept eating, I wouldn’t be tempted to speak.
“If there is something, you really should tell me.”
More gumbo.
“Morgan?”
Okay, maybe I could do this. Maybe I could steer him toward what I’d realized without saying anything that was privileged. “Why those four girls, Noah? Why poison? Why would he go to all that trouble to kill them in front of the whole world? And if he did, why admit it? What did confession buy him? There are a million questions. Do you have answers for them all?”
“Not yet, but we’ll get them. I know how you feel, but I don’t really care why he confessed. Besides, even if he hadn’t, there’s enough circumstantial evidence on his computer that most juries would convict him.”
“That may be. But he didn’t do it.”
Before I knew it, I was looking into the bottom of the soup bowl again.
“Do you want more?” Noah asked.
I shook my head. “Three bowls? No.” I laughed.
“So how did you break your hand?”
“Wrist. I slipped on a patch of ice helping Nina over a snowdrift.”
“There have been more broken bones in New York City in the past three weeks than in the past two years combined. You sure it doesn’t hurt?”
“Sure. Yesterday it was throbbing, now it’s just a dull ache. You get used to pain.”
“You can, but why would you want to?”
“Sometimes you have no choice.”
I was following the subtext and was sure he was, too. He got up and began clearing the table. It felt luxurious to have him do this.
“You want some tea?” he asked. “I’d suggest coffee but it’s late, and I think you need to sleep.”
“Thanks. Tea is fine.”
He filled the kettle, got out the mugs and the chamomile tea bags, and cut a lemon.
“Honey?”
For a second, I thought he was using the word to address me, then realized what he meant. “Sure.” There must have been something in my tone because his hand froze in midair and he held my glance for a few seconds. “You’re having a rough time, aren’t you?” he asked.
I nodded. “You, too?”
Now he nodded.
We were like dashboard figurines, silently bobbing our heads.
I stood up. Walked to him. Pushed him away from the stove. “Let me. Let me make you tea.”
He watched me clumsily take out two tea bags and put one in each mug, then use one hand to spoon in the honey. The kettle started to sing.
It was awkward but I managed it, poured the hot water, stirred it together and squeezed in the lemon. Then I picked up the mug and offered it to him.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not you. It wasn’t even about you. I know I have a lot of work to do with Dulcie, but I’m going to do it on my own. Mitch isn’t part of the solution.”
He smiled. “At least you’re thinking straight about one thing. Come on, bring your tea. I think you need to get into bed, with the covers pulled way up to your chin, and the television turned on to an old movie.” He held out his hand.
Sixty-Eight
I stood by the bed and Noah undressed me—slowly, without any suggestion of sexuality, but with extreme tenderness. He pulled my sweater over my head and then smoothed down my hair where it had gotten ruffled. His hand soothed me like a lullaby. “Where’s your nightgown?”
I pointed to the bathroom. “Back of the door.” I stepped out of my shoes.
He came back with it and laid it on the edge of the bed. He undid the button and the zipper on my slacks. I started to tug at them with my one good hand, but Noah pushed my hand away and pulled them down. He held my left arm up by the elbow and I stepped out of my pants. I knew I should object and tell him that I could do all this alone, that I didn’t need anyone to help me. I meant to say it. But while I was thinking about it, he knelt down and pulled the sock off my right foot, and then my left. It wasn’t so bad having him help me.
Standing behind me, he unhooked my bra and helped me pull it over the cast on my right arm. I slipped it off my left. He did not touch my skin with his fingers, but I felt his breath on the back of my neck and felt the rough fabric of his jeans where his left leg touched mine, seemingly inadvertently.
He stayed behind me and lowered the nightgown over my head, holding it while I maneuvered my right arm through the sleeve, and then pulling it down for me.
“Now,” he said, folding the comforter back, “get in.”
Noah pulled the covers up, then found the remote, turned on the TV and surfed through the channels until he found what he was looking for.
“Perfect,” he said, even before I knew what it was.
He was right, though.
Roman Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.
It was exactly the right movie for a night when everything is complicated and there don’t seem to be any solutions.
“Before I fall asleep, can you hand me the phone? I need to call Dulcie. I need to start getting this straightened out.”
“What are you going to say?”
“I’m going to explain how I feel about—”
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“You can try.”
“Tell her you miss her and you are picking her up on Sunday after her performance and that she’s coming home with you.”
“That might not be the best way to deal with—”
“Morgan, you have spent so much time trying to handle Dulcie and analyze just the right way to deal with her. Some rules won’t hurt her. And one of them is that you are the mama and she does what you say. Call.”
I started to argue, but there was something so simple about what Noah was saying. He wasn’t overthinking it. Wasn’t worried about ramifications and psychological issues. Just the truth: I am your mother and there are some things you have to do.
I called.
Noah got up and stood by the window, watching out for me, I thought, as I kept my eyes on his back and shoulders until my daughter got on the phone.
Dulcie asked me how I felt. I said I was fine. I didn’t want to tell her about my accident over the phone. I’d ask Mitch to tell her. Or I’d wait until I saw her. We talked for a few minutes about how her performances had been going. She didn’t bring up the television audition. She was a little distant, but agreed to come home without any argument.
“I’m exhausted,” I said to Noah when I hung up the phone.
“I bet you are.” He walked over to the bedside table, turned off the light, took the remote, set the timer so that the TV would shut off when the movie ended, and then pulled the covers to my chin. “Time to go
to sleep now, darlin’.”
“Are you going home?”
“No, I’m going to stay in the living room. The couch there is more comfortable than a lot of beds I’ve slept in. I’ll be fine.”
“No, that’s crazy. Why don’t you—”
“Shh. I don’t want to roll over and smash into your wrist. Don’t worry about me. Just go to sleep. No alarm, no ugly buzzer set to wake you up. I’ll do it, just tell me what time, and I’ll do it.”
I closed my eyes and listened to the movie soundtrack. My wrist still hurt, just enough that I was aware of it, and it was awkward to find the right position for the cast, but I fell asleep more easily than I had in a long time.
Wednesday
Two days remaining
Sixty-Nine
I woke up to the sound of music playing—bluesy jazz that somehow fit a cold winter morning. First I thought it was a CD, but then realized it was Noah, playing on the small upright piano that had been my grandmother’s and then my mother’s and was now mine, stuck in a corner of the den— not a worthy instrument, but a sentimental one.
He played for ten minutes and I stayed under the warm comforter, thinking about him, about how he’d slept on the couch, thinking mostly about the fact that he’d stayed.
“Good morning,” he said when he came in a few minutes later with a mug of steaming coffee that smelled stronger than what I made. Even though coffee was my finest hour in the kitchen, compared to Noah’s mine was only passable.
While I drank the coffee, Noah ran my bath, and when it was full and steaming, he helped me into the bathroom.
“I can take my nightgown off.”
“Okay, just holler if you need any help.”
I pulled the nightgown over my head, eased it over my right arm and then carefully got in the tub, resting my right arm on the ledge, hoping it would stay dry. I’d just sunk down under the hot water when I heard the knock.
“Yeah?”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
“If you sit up, I’ll wash your hair. I know how tough it is to do this stuff with only one hand.”
Grateful, I sat up, leaned forward and shut my eyes.
Noah massaged my scalp with shampoo. It was an utter indulgence to lie there in the fragrant water and have this strong man minister to me. I’d never be able to go to work after this, I thought. After he rinsed my hair, he took the washcloth, squirted my fragrant lime and verbena body gel on it, and then he washed me. It was gentle, helpful, and not erotic at all. And then he was done.
“I’ll leave your towel here,” he said, putting it on the hook near the bath. “Or do you need help getting out?”
I wasn’t sure. “Maybe. I feel a little off balance.”
He picked up the towel, threw it over his shoulder, then held out his hand. As soon as I was out of the water, he wrapped me up in the big terry-cloth sheet.
Standing behind me, he patted me dry. I’d never felt so indulged in my life. Then, taking a fresh towel off the rack, he used it on my hair, gently squeezing out the excess water.
It was warm and humid and smelled so good in the bathroom, and Noah’s hands were so large and sure of what they were doing. I couldn’t remember anyone ever having done these things for me before. My mother certainly had dried me off after bathing me when I was a very young child, but that memory wasn’t accessible. Besides, she was my mother, and as avuncular as Noah was being, he was still a man. A man who had once been my lover. He was standing in my bathroom without his shirt on, and under my bath towel I was naked.
Over at the sink, Noah turned on the dryer and worked the hot air through my hair, using his fingers instead of a comb.
“That’s dry enough. We have to get you dressed now and make you breakfast,” he said, leading me out of my own bathroom as if I were the guest and didn’t know where to go next.
We stood in my walk-in closet and Noah unwrapped the towel. Now, finally, his eyes moved over my flesh. I felt the look as if it was a touch, but he didn’t acknowledge either his appraisal or my reaction. Instead, he let me stand there naked as he went hunting through the drawers, finding first a black bra and then a pair of black lace underpants.
Then he started to dress me.
Noah pulled the bra up over my right and then my left arm, lifted the straps into place, snugged the cups around my breasts, and then pulled the two ends around my back and hooked it. I let out a long breath. My flesh goose bumped. My nipples hardened. I wondered what he was thinking. If he had any idea how he was making me feel.
He bent over, lifted my right foot, and put it through the leg opening of the panties, then did the same with my left foot. Using both hands, he pulled them up over my calves, my knees, my thighs, my hips, and then smoothed them into place.
I shifted, rotating my hips involuntarily.
Noah was looking through my clothes again. I willed him to turn around and touch me more. Nothing happened until he grabbed a dark gray cashmere sweater off the shelf, turned back to me and manipulated the sleeve over my cast and then up the rest of my arm, adjusting it with his hands, smoothing it with his fingers so that I wasn’t sure what created the sensation—his fingers or the soft wool. Then the other arm. Done, he buttoned the sweater from the bottom up and tugged at it so that it lay smoothly around my waist and over my hips.
Once more, Noah went looking through my clothes, now finding a pair of gray flannel slacks. I put my hand on his shoulder and he pulled them slowly up to my waist. He zipped up the fly and snapped it closed.
Except for his shirt, we were both dressed then, standing in my closet, face-to-face. My hair was still damp. His hands were still on my waist, and then there was no space between us anymore. We were wrapped up in each other, Noah’s lips smashed against mine. My good hand was on the back on his neck, pulling him even closer to me.
His hands moved to all the places they had just been, no longer innocent and helpful; now they probed. Over my sweater, cupping my breasts, running up and down my spine, slipping between my thighs, tickling me though the flannel.
There is a kind of want that takes over your consciousness, that blocks out time and logic. Your body responds to it involuntarily. You stop thinking. You don’t care about anything but the touching and the feeling. Wings flutter inside your rib cage. You are lifted up.
My hips ground into him, his arms went around my back, his hands grabbed me and pulled me closer, until there was no closer that I could get.
Slowly, in the same order he put my clothes on me, he now took them off. He unbuttoned my pants, unzipped the fly, pulled them down around my ankles and helped me step out of them. Then he got down on his knees, I thought to help me take off my underwear, but he buried his head between my legs, blowing hot breath through the lace, making me squirm and thrust forward.
I gasped. I couldn’t get a deep-enough breath. I couldn’t get what I wanted fast enough. I wanted it to take forever.
Noah unbuttoned my sweater and pulled it off of me, going very carefully when it was time to manipulate it over the cast.
While he unhooked my bra, I went to work on his jeans with my left hand, fumbling with his fly but managing.
Finally, all of our clothes out of the way, his glorious bare skin was pressed against mine.
“You need to understand…” Noah said in between kissing me on the neck and behind my ear “…that it’s not wrong to want to feel something other than pain.”
Did I answer? Nod? Say yes, you are right?
I don’t think so.
It was all in the movements. All in the sensations. There was nothing I needed to put into words. There were other ways to tell him that he was right—with my lips, with my fingers, the way I opened my legs to him.
We were on the floor and Noah was hard against my stomach and his fingers teased me, making me finally ask him for what I wanted, still not with words but with my legs wrapping around his waist as I pulled him to me and thrust up against him until h
e slipped inside of me.
I bit into the soft skin of his earlobe and my tongue licked inside his ear. He kissed my lips. Then pulled back.
“This, what we’re doing now, it belongs to you.”
And it did. Noah making love to me, with all of his body, with all of my body responding, with the smell of him, rosemary and mint flooding my senses, with the softness of his hair on my chest and the heat of his breath on my neck. There was just the two of us in that small space. In a normal room, where there would have been space, the ghosts of my patients and their issues and problems would have come along for the ride. But this journey was closed and tight, and there was no room for anyone but us. The two of us. Our bodies intertwined, my cries mixing with his one deep sigh that reached out and stroked me as softly as the fingers that were fluttering across my back.
And then, there, with only the two of us in a space that could barely contain us, I forgot that it was morning and that it was cold and that there were people who would be waiting for me, or that I was scared to let someone inside. Noah was already inside. It was out of my hands. And then there were no more thoughts.
Seventy
Dearest,
I am almost done. I thought I would feel some elation at my accomplishment; after all, everything has gone according to plan and I’m still not the one they blame. I should feel something, shouldn’t I? A sense of completion, at least? Or some satisfaction at having outsmarted the police?