We sat by the stove with two colas she’d also brought, having learned from her uncle of my disease. I assured her it wasn’t contagious, and we let it drop, because further discussion of my personal condition was unnecessary. Yet she filled the little cabin with observation and curiosity on the strange turns life has in store. I was reminded of my letter to Anne Waring, but only briefly before advice on nutrition, doubts on Wadmalaw society and the paucity of dance music thereabout, not that she craved dancing all night, not any more, or not like she used to, recently. She stared off, speaking her mind on the difficult adjustment to anyplace new at this stage of life, and the abounding beauty of this place. The beauty made adjusting easier, but not entirely easy, but then life is never entirely easy. Is it? And so on, sounding her stream-of-conscious opinions off the backboard, who was me, wading in the stream, in a dazed sort of way. I corrected her English when a word could squeeze in edgewise. She rambled like Topsy (no wig), grateful for each correction, though I assured her I was no authority on the language. “Ah! Mais oui! Vous etre!”
My observation went beyond accent and content to the comparative level. I imagined her naked, as men will often do, though I hadn’t done so with Anne Waring, my fantasized love. Not that Anne was beneath such fantasy; it was I who failed to indulge, though she did carry the genetic code for burdensome rectitude and was never so playful, even as a child. That didn’t deter our childish bonding. Our chance moments of intimacy were more awkward than thrilling, but comparison remains unfair; with Aníse I was making up for lost time, a sentiment unique to the Holy City. Imagining Aníse au naturale was tantamount to watering and feeding the anarchy germinating in my soul. Well, it germinated mentally at any rate. I didn’t dwell on it, or wouldn’t allow it, because beyond the mental realm it may as well have been Timbuktu, where I could not go, because you can take the man out of the society, but you can’t take the society out of the man, or some such—this I firmly believed as I backed away in my mind.
Yet there I stood at an appropriate distance, peeking under her sweater, so to speak, whereas my ideal love had remained fully clothed for decades, as it were, in my mind. Anne Waring and I shared a bath and a bed as children, and what I felt as romantic potential could have stemmed from surrogate sibling bonds that merely compensated for my loneliness. I don’t know; Anne was a tomboy, and I’d seen her plenty in a t-shirt and dungarees and more or less assumed the body she’d grown into and accepted that as a vague concept, simply never considering the ultimate contact. I only pondered love, true love, the way most people ponder the future, with its house, children, nice cars, lovely things and a daily schedule spinning tirelessly as a wonderfully ornate carousel; and the painted ponies go up and down. It was on the radio just then, Joni Mitchell singing about the seasons of life and so on, and it was a time of reflection on life and values for most of the world. But this too was rationale. I merely wondered what Anne was doing that moment and felt regret and gratitude that she couldn’t see me then, imagining this black woman naked; oh, God, now on her hands and knees, crawling over in predatory dominance.
Most men are weak for the female form; so women present what drama they can, to draw men’s attention and test interest and manners as well. Aníse reminded me of school days and our raucous glee over the first real breasts we saw in National Geographic, but Aníse wore a black dress in a scant, French cut beneath her fuzzy sweater with no spear and delicate hands with long, painted nails instead of spatulate, work-hardened mitts. Her social dexterity was simply, like her dress, French. She was nothing like what I’d known but different in every way, except of course for her black skin, thick lips, kinky hair, flat nose and blood relations.
She pressed on, her curiosity driven by a need to fit the greater puzzle. Oh, but it was difficult, so recently arriving at such a beautiful but primitive place. Was it not? And then it was difficult aussi, not knowing how long a body would stay, before, perhaps, needing to move again to somewhere else. “Do you not think of this?” I nodded, yes, though I knew this was it. Where would I go? Yet I commiserated. What could we ever do, two people like us? How should we feel, she and I, here and now, with and without, trying to make do and keeping our minds open to discovery but still not knowing? Her mode and manner were not shown in National Geographic or anywhere I’d been or imagined.
I absorbed her as I had not apprised a black woman. Her Negroid features were typical, but the French nuance rendered her uniquely foreign, a bit tedious but pleasing in her playful accent and impish eyes, or, in a word, complex. Well, I’d denied racism my whole life, insisting that my sole distaste was for ill-mannered, unclean and ignorant people, who, coincidentally, happened to be black around here. And there I was, proving myself true to racial neutrality, adhering instead to hormonal integrity, which likely proved nothing but was good to feel.
With regular frequency in town then you could observe that species known as the great liberal snowbird, who in time would vanquish our town as no Yankee general had dared dream of. These advance scouts often spoke aloud on the blatant stupidity of things, things done far more intelligently in the North. The snowbirds audibly deplored the “blatant stupidity” of the customer lines in our post office that ran as lines should, with seven separate lines cuing from seven windows, instead of one main line cuing to the next available window. The reason for this antiquated lineage was unspoken but understood, since a street-sanguine postal patron would not choose the shortest line but rather the line with the fewest blacks. One black could require food stamps, welfare registration, welfare checks, welfare renewal and/or replacement documentation, assistance with food stamp forms, questions and translation to the surface from the muddy, rocky bottom, taking as much time as nine whites, or thirteen.
Aníse was obviously not of that world and proved my cleverness besides, though I thought best not to run my observation up the flagpole for a salute. I felt satisfied that she was different and had my attention. It was harmless. Where could it go?
Her lipstick and, yes, eye shadow, complimented her natural mystique, her general allure rounding out with lustrous skin, perhaps more dazzling in firelight. Her good posture went prouder still when she caught me sizing her up, and I thought to ask if I might check her teeth. But that wasn’t funny either, and she’d likely ask back why I would want to check her teeth, leaving me to explain another obscure, ill-timed joke at someone else’s expense. So instead I imagined good manners and said, “Sorry. I’ve been sizing you up.”
“Sizing you up?”
“Not me. You. I’ve been assessing you. Appraising you. Seeing how you are.”
“Ah. Yes. I’m fine. Thank you. And you? How are you?”
“Yes. I’m fine too. Thank you.”
“Ah, Arthur.” She touched my hand with cool fingers and overflowed with brimful warmth. “You are welcome.”
I mean like that, taking a potentially awkward moment and turning it into the greater communion. Meanwhile, her teeth were perfect. I suspected dentures, but she smiled and caught me again, looking closer; but she held the moment of good cheer and proved me wrong again by displaying mottled, blue gums, inherited from her great grandfather Luzon. Oh, if the venerable membership of the Wadmalaw Hunt Club could see the courtship underway!
I sensed directly that she didn’t mind my inventory as she began her own, as if such a measure for measure is natural and acceptable at that phase of what arced between us, the voltage of which was apparent to all parties by that time. I assumed her scrutiny would be less rigorous, on the physical side anyway, since women are more flexible there, scrutinizing more keenly on the security, stability and financial-fluidity issues. Besides, I wasn’t fat or slouched. What did she see? What did she seek?
Let her look. In the meantime I struggled with the cost/benefit ratio of the evening’s endeavor, weighing hormonal return on the one hand and practical liability on the other. I repressed both with moderation, polite conversation and gratitude for dinner and company.
&
nbsp; She’d heard that I was a lawyer, besides being an alcoholic. I disabused her of the lawyerly notion, assuring her that I’d practiced the law for more years than were good for my health, and the law was likely a causal factor in my drinking, given the stressful nature of a career in law and, moreover, the habitual drinking of my peers. My occupation and its hazards remained in flux, I said, though for the time being I preferred the occupation, or avocation at any rate, of oysterman and crabber, like her Uncle Jim, more or less.
She laughed like a deb at a ball on hearing this comparison of myself to her uncle. Her mirth was contagious but made me wonder; was I so obviously removed from elemental viability? She laughed on, promising that it wasn’t me but rather her uncle; imagining him as a lawyer. I doubted her ruse, it was me on the mudflats she found amusing. In any event, she either saw Jim as something less, or saw me as something more, neither of which was fair.
Yet she laughed, heartily and uncontrollably, covering her mouth and failing, till she took her sweater off and said something like, “Oh, my, my,” and laughed again. I hoped she hadn’t been a loose woman, which should have told me what else I hoped for. She was clearly primed for spontaneity and fun and would likely consent to a casual romp, a friendly fling, a one-night stand or whatever a bit of the cure for heartache might be called. I knew from my infrequent visits to the bars in town that this practice was called sport fucking, which sounded vile, meaningless, seductive and convenient. She proceeded, flirting doggedly as a waterman jigging over a known hole.
I assured her that her solitude, if continuing, would be self-inflicted; she could attract company at will, including men her own age. I avoided further profile of those she could attract; that she would be better matched with a man of similar social strata seemed obvious. I further assured her that wealth could assume myriad measurement on Wadmalaw beyond financial security, and a dance partner who might keep pace was no doubt available thereabout, or certainly within range.
She stopped laughing then to tell me she was forty-one and practically an old woman. Unless you happen to be fifty-eight, I did not say. I constrained my response, because anything I said encouraged her, recalling my longstanding theory that a man does not achieve sexual dominion but is simply chosen, and whether he’s chosen or not will determine the disposition of his evening, which has nothing to do with his best or worst but reflects only ambient female appetite. I too sensed the deep hole; I was in it, resisting the bait bouncing mere inches from my every sense.
The old, inhibited sense raised its long snout then, with images of family and friends and a chill up my spine. I’d been decades since engaging in a significant flirtation, and I understood that the difference between a normal young man and a dirty old man is the tally of their years. Nothing changes.
We took a reprieve for dinner. I was indeed famished, I said, turning our talk to daily regimen, her family’s history as I’d recently learned it, the changing times and again, as talk in the region must, returning to the beauty abounding and oh, the weather. It was in the sweet digestive aftermath that she moved to make the place tidy, cleaning up the dishes, utensils, napkins and soda bottles. I moved to tend the fire in the box, sliding past her close enough to warrant a head turn, yet we felt each other’s breath, pausing as we knew that a pause was good as a leap; and just like that, we closed the distance still, till nothing remained.
Just like that, I pecked her on the lips. “There. I did it,” I said, as if to show something or other or make another obscure point about clearing a hurdle. She came on in, responding as a lonely woman in gentle embrace might do, and, truth be told, we made a kiss with a gravity field of its own.
She did not say yes, yes again, yes; I only imagined that too, having just that day read Joyce’s last paragraph of Ulysses several times. She did say, “Yes. Arthur,” which I presumed was the answer to the thumping loneliness, dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement between us. What else did we have in the whole wide world but the moment and each other? I’d been called dispassionate by those presumably in a position to know, those who failed to arouse that which they lamented.
Aníse had no complaints for the duration of the evening, from arrival to departure, or for many evenings to come. She merely murmured assent, that I follow the step of the dance she could show me. Mutual needs notwithstanding, I think our secondary motivation was also mutual and significant, and that was a dash of adventure in the face of so much loss. Because, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, the dash of this and pinch of that was precisely why we’d come to Wadmalaw in our ignorance and bliss, and so we spiced something to serve up together. It was about time.
We’d been too long without, years for me, weeks for her, and I for one gained sudden insight and perspective on life and its converse dimension, in which a soul might regret those aspects of a great wide world that were missed, beginning with a kiss. A sweeter, more succulent exchange I had not known.
She held me, moving quickly through embarrassment to her own realization of the impracticality between us. What if? She stepped back, flustered, to sort the implements for re-bandaging my hand, to proceed awkwardly in this new expression of caring, leading to yet another kiss and from there to the greatest expression yet. I could not help comparing this woman again, this time to the one most recently known in the so-called biblical sense, my former wife. Impracticality aside, Aníse rose in my esteem, beginning with her skin, its color like all skin in the pale flicker. Liberated from the nuance and ache of clothing, we moved past visual to tactile, her softness transcending what hurdles remained; if this wasn’t practical, then a lunker won’t lunge at split shrimp on a three ought hook with a rising barometer at slack flood and run like a bull.
To share my intimacy with Aníse further would be indelicate. I will annotate here for further comparison, however, not so much to analyze the physical or behavioral difference between two people, namely Aníse and the ex-wife, but rather to show variable natural sugar contents thereof.
Eudora’s lament of our waning years was uttered infrequently but all too often as a means, I suppose, of explaining the terrible predicament our marriage had put her in. To think, she could have done so much better; why Rutledge Reid himself wanted to … blah blah blah. The specific charge of the plaintiff here was: You sure nevah could stack up to nobody I know’s idea of a lawyer.
Maybe my deficiencies grew; God knows Eudora stayed as ignorant of my work as she was of the English language relative to grammar, syntax and usage. What could we share in sweet embrace? That’s what it came down to, descending deplorably to zero. The spirit between Eudora and me didn’t matter in the beginning, what with the mere thrill of her lying prone and naked instead of posing in one of those Villager outfits with the ruffled blouse, the tweedy skirt, the unspeakable bobby socks, the tediously predictable green muffler and oh, my God, the virgin pin, all of which made her look like a school girl who skipped down the street in a sci-fi thriller and stumbled into a diamatrix and got spit out of the old-lady machine. She signaled receptivity with a reluctant parting of her knees and a marginally reduced tremble, I think, but subtlety was lost on both of us. I was allowed entry to the royal chamber only as long as appropriate to make the necessary discharge. No loitering, please.
I didn’t realize while serving time with Eudora that the female partner in conjugation does have the option to squirm and verbalize. I’ll grant her a degree of responsiveness the first few years, when I took longer than good taste warranted, till her heavy breathing signaled the stretch for her. It went something like, Oh, Awthuh. Oh, Awthuh. Awthuh. Oh.
Of course I had no choice but to resolve my personal crisis with an earful of encouragement or rapprochement, one or both, as if it hardly mattered to a bestial man like me. Likewise, I won’t detail sexual relations with Eudora, other than to point out her rare and constrained orgasm as a mixture of gratitude and accusation. Oh, the things I made her do. What? Breathe hard and fight the release?
I can still hear her bar
itone indifference needing to know, please, “Are you done yet?”
In the last ten years or maybe twenty, past the point when the spirit between two people must compensate the dilution of so much, she dropped the Awthuh part and crossed the finish line impersonally: Oh. Oh. Oh. Imagine an orgasm on a doily, and there you have it, Eudora’s sweet embrace. “Excuse me; I have so much to do. Be a dear and clean this up? Please?”
I shitchu not, and I’d have considered her behavior normal among all women for the duration of my life, had not free will and circumstance steered me to Aníse.
Aníse, on the other hand, enjoyed the benefits of exposure to international style, fashion and presentation. She grew up in a popular tourist destination. Unlike Charleston, arrived upon by the teeming refuse driving down the highway, Guadeloupe was a poor but exotic Caribbean island popular with European tourists, mostly the French. She wore very little, all cut to advantage, whether an abbreviated blouse with no sleeves or a dress with a daring, taunting neckline. She remained equally attractive without garb, and though I had to request repeatedly that she please shave her legs, because the nubs were like three-penny nails on my skin, she failed to comply only because she forgot, not to prove her will or anything.
Remembering, she made herself as smooth to the touch below the hips as she was above. Factor that with continuing sparkle and warmth, then discount the equal level of anxiety afflicting both women, and a fair comparison is still precluded by the judges’ decision that women of two different leagues cannot be compared.
That is, “Don’t stop, Sugar. Don’t stop, Sugar,” may sound impersonal, and as well suited for one sugar as another, but that sort of thinking felt negative and unnecessary to my peace of mind. Besides, I didn’t sense her to be promiscuous but rather neglected and lonely—and oh, so new and different from what I’d known. Maybe that perception too is a terrific convenience. I didn’t care. I’d taken fifty-eight years to get there. She was monumental, a woman I loved looking up to, a profile I would store away and cherish forever, and the view available from the summit or the valley was vast and clear: I thought Aníse would have felt better than my ex-wife, both physically, mentally and socially, even if she were white. That she was not, only felt like cream gravy, delivering me from what ailed me on many levels, including stratospheric removal from town. Make no mistake, the Covingdale patron had gone to orbit.
In a Sweet Magnolia Time Page 19