X, I couldn’t make you see it. You didn’t understand.
He did see that he had struck a well-worn nerve. “It’s all right.” Awkward in the closeness of the cave, he put his arm around me, very warm against the coolness of our refuge. “What’s your husband’s name?” he asked, a diversion.
But the thought of my husband was not a pleasant distraction. James may be well versed in adultery, but this was all very new to me, and I was not prepared for the sudden rasp of remorse. It came out of nowhere. I covered my face with my hands and said, “James,” miserable.
There was a pause and a pyramid of rock chips outside the cave’s mouth, reflecting the bright sun.
X, quietly: “I feel sorry for James. It’s cruel, that everybody should make him be somebody he’s not.”
The simplicity of those words. X was right. For God’s sake, I had never thought of it that way. James had always been doing the right thing, fighting against his nature as if it were an affliction. If he couldn’t keep it entirely at bay I could not fault him for that. I couldn’t keep my doubt at bay, either; the least I could do for brave James was honor his desire to blend in and give my tacit approval to his trips to Idaho Falls. It seems impossible, I know, that I had never realized until that moment how backward we all were. The suggestion that James was not afflicted but rather victimized was so novel it stunned me. I had lived my whole life in that town. There is marrow in the bone, and the bone does not break easily.
2.
X left his car right out in my driveway for the world to see. No one in Rexburg drove a hybrid; it was obvious as sin. I could have had him pull it into the garage but by the time we made it to my big house on the Bench I was far too tired to care about propriety.
Ground clouds had settled by midmorning, veiling and lowering the sky. We would have thunder in the afternoon for sure. I made some token gestures toward hospitality, pouring lemonade and getting out a box of ginger cookies, waving X toward the back porch that looked south and west to the side of the very mountain we had just climbed, blue and indistinct in the slow-gathering clouds. The R was hardly visible. I collapsed into a deck chair, my whole body vibrating with the need for sleep.
X asked me questions.
Had I always known about James? I had.
Where was he now? Off with his...his boyfriend, I guessed (had never said that word, either.
Strange thing to say so matter-of-fact, my husband and his boyfriend.) Every weekend, or just about. As far as I knew he was always with the same man and I had gotten all the tests and was clean, thank God.
“Thank God.” We chuckled at that.
“He must love this man over in Idaho Falls.” I guessed so. I was glad James was in love.
“You’re not jealous?” “No.” Simply.
“Why not?”
“I want him to be happy. I know it seems strange, X, but he is my husband and I do love him. He deserves happiness. This life we have together...this isn’t enough for him.”
“I guess not.”
“How could it be?”
A neighbor’s cat broke from a line of shrubs, ran rabbit-hopping down the slope of the back yard. All the dandelions had gone to seed.
“Well, what about you?” X said.
“Me?”
“What are you getting out of your marriage? Happiness?” X had one leg stretched along the length of a slatted wooden footrest. The hair along his shin was dark just like Adam’s. “Have you ever been in love?” he asked me.
I turned my face toward him, nodded, rested my cheek against the warm wood of the chair. “I’ve had it,” I said. “I’ve had enough of this place.”
There were fires in the fields. Across the dim ocher expanse of the valley, wan columns of smoke rose and wavered, broke apart on the wind. I imagined that to the farmers tending those fires, the smoke was strong and thick, the fire hot and close, fearful in the way it consumed the remnants of their fields. The smoke stung their eyes until they poured with tears; above them the wind scattered their offerings into nothing. They threw more and more and more into the flames, but always the valley wind smeared their altars with an unseeable hand. When the last of the withered stalks went into the flames they would say with uncertainty, In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
From my view deck on the Bench, with X backslouched into his chair only a foot from my hand, all the threads of smoke looked weak, and pale, and the same. In the gray-green margin where the wind took them they blended into a seamless haze, one bank of fog below the fogged and motionless sky, one mournful spirit that crouched, hesitating, over the still fields. From where I sat, all fires were the same fire, pleading the same mute prayer. Al the votaries recited their testimonies in identical, passionless words, learned by rote, but the right words, by God, In The Name Of Jesus Christ Amen. Do what you are told and no more, and no less; the hand of God will blur you into one pleasing gray formless haze. Like a child finger-painting.
Birds tumbled through the haze, through the smoke bank soft as prayer. A fly walked on the rim of my glass. Its tubular mouth touched, tapped; then it lifted into the air. X’s hand drooped of the end of his armrest, long fingers slightly curled.
Inside the house, my phone buzzed to alert me that Katherine had left a message inquiring about a strange car in my driveway. I would never return that phone call.
Hard bones of wood slats against my fatigued back.
I took X by the hand and led him inside to the guest bedroom, and the two of us lay down together on top of the crisp blue duvet, and sleep took me at last.
**
We woke in the same instant. Our limbs had fallen together in sleep. X was so still, so still, barely a breath; he felt heavy with concentration, and I was as light and free as smoke. We were disoriented for many long minutes, fascinated by the proximity of one another’s skin. He had ended up, somehow, with an arm thrown over my body, long elegant golden hand flat upon the bed. My hand traced the shape of his, slowly. It had the shape of earth: these are the runnels that cut down the distant hillsides in crooked clefts, the contours of hill that bloom with color in the summer, that bleat with green in the dry times, oh X, the perfect elongated Bench of your hand, the shape of the world, the shape of the earth.
I stroked the back of your hand, X; my touch was as light as a moth’s leg. My thumb passed over and between your fingers, and through the dry valley of the space between your rough knuckles, and back again, to tour the world of your beautiful still hand. And soon I was aware of your breathing, a steady, deep rhythm, slow. I thought, Has he fallen asleep again? But then I recognized from the Adam days the expectant tension of your body and the warmth of your mouth near my neck.
Kiss me. It has been so many years. Adam, walking through the weeds out past the transformer box with the grasshoppers scattering in the sun, turned to look at me. I saw the shadow of the water tower, a teacup in midair. Kiss me.
**
Nearly every summer afternoon over Rexburg a towering bank of clouds mirrored the brown of the earth. Nearly every summer afternoon I held my breath eager for the fire flash, the fast exhalation of light across the cloud face that covered the whole of the sky, that pressed me down against the earth under warm golden weight. And the smell in the air before the storm struck – petrichor, electrified dry dust taking the sacrament of rain. Salt, the sweat of our bodies mingled together, the smell of X’s shoulder where I pressed my face to muffle my cry as he pulled away, cry because the momentary loss of him was sharp; but when he released himself it fell on my thigh hot and sudden as the touch of God and I laughed with the rapture of relief, and he fell beside me on the bed with a sigh like thunder, his leg kicking involuntarily, rocked by a rough wake. I sank into sleep again with a warm throb spreading across the base of my spine, and it stayed there so I felt it in my dreams.
I dreamed of great warm open spaces under a blue sun in a sky clear of smoke, overflown with thousands and thousands of birds. The sound of their wings drowned out al
l other sounds, even the sound of God’s voice; the sound of their wings was the sound of X’s deep steady sleeping breath, inhale, exhale, my X.
3.
I was sore the next morning. The ache in my hips startled me. X laughed at the way I hobbled. He said I walked like a cowboy.
“Well, it’s your fault.”
“Yee haw.”
We ate apples in my kitchen and kissed the juice from each other’s mouths. It was Saturday; James would be home this evening, and I would have to face my infidelity straight on. And X had already been in Rexburg for days.
“I’m leaving on Tuesday,” he said. “Heading to Yellowstone.” “Oh.” Tuesday was cruelly close.
“If you want, you can come with me.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s stupid, I know, considering last night. But at least I can keep this a secret. If I left, I couldn’t keep anything quiet at all. The whole town would know I’d gone and they’d know why.”
“Is that so bad? You don’t even like it here. You said you’ve had it.”
“But it’s the only home I’ve ever known. Everyone I love is in Rexburg. My family. What would I do? Just up and leave, and then what?”
“Find someplace you like. Find a job. You’re educated. You could work.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“You’re right. It’s not. It’s damn hard. The world is crazy. The world is shit. And the world is full of magic. You deserve to see some of it. Come with me. It doesn’t have to be forever. If you hate the world more than you hate Rexburg, you can always come back.”
“I could never come back if I left that way.” Never. I remembered sparks flying from the tire of Marsha’s pickup, the timid way she moved, gathering her clothes. I had said nothing to her. Don’t concern yourself with an adulterer.
“Then go somewhere else. Find a place where you can be alive. Maybe James will find a place where he can be alive, too.”
James. He’s what decided me. “I should leave. If I don’t just go, James will never go either. He’ll be stuck here forever, pretending.”
“But you can’t do it for him. Do it for yourself.”
“It’s for me, too. It is. I want to go. But I have to talk to James first. I can’t just leave without any explanation. Let me talk to James first.”
X put his arms around me. He smelled like apple peel, fresh and smart. “All right. Talk to James. You have my number. I’ll be waiting.”
But only until Tuesday.
4.
When James came home, relaxed and happy and jingling his keys, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. Funny – two years of his weekends away and I never batted an eye. It had all been so easy to justify when it was just him getting what he needed, that thing I couldn’t give him. Now that I’d found a need of my own, the whole arrangement was suddenly shameful.
I showered to avoid talking to him. I fixed dinner in silence with my hair still wet, set his plate on the table, took mine off to the spare bedroom. He tapped on the door, and I told him to come in, but the conversation I wanted to have was reluctant to start. Instead I deflected his attempts to find out what was wrong with tight, cold courtesy and denials, and hated myself for doing it.
Eventually he gave up and went to bed, looking frightened and frail. I could hear him putting dishes in the dishwasher, turning off the lights, letting the water run in the master bath upstairs while he brushed his teeth. I curled up in the bed that still smelled like X. My thoughts were all of James, of how he and I used to talk about our favorite books during those three brief hopeful months before we married, leaning across the chipped white tabletop of a Dairy Queen booth, tending toward one another, laughing. I remember how fervently I’d said to myself, He makes you laugh and he loves books. What else do you need? What else? It will be okay. Just do it. It will be okay.
It was all a mirage, of course. All three months of laughter and ice cream, the certainty that we were doing the right thing. You chase a mirage long enough and sooner or later the sun sets, and fantasy settles back into the earth and the ripples calm and you are alone in the desert. That, or you die of thirst.
Sunday morning James let me sleep in late. A good thing, since I hadn’t fallen asleep until just before sunrise. He opened the door tentatively and found me awake, the blue duvet pulled up around my face. He wore one of those sweater vests he loved with the long-sleeved crisply ironed white shirt beneath. The Official Uniform of the English Professor, we used to call it, and then we would laugh, back in the days when we did that sort of thing.
“Do you want your toast?” He made me toast every morning with orange juice. Every morning, as long as he wasn’t in Idaho Falls.
“No.”
“You okay?” No answer.
“Are you sick? Please tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m going to stay home from church today.”
He withdrew, looking profoundly upset, confused, looking like he might cry. I wished I could make myself run after him and take him in my arms, smooth his hair, tell him it would be all right, we would stay like this forever because what more do you need, no one would ever have to know about Idaho Falls or X or any of this.
A bird called outside, an emphatic lifting note. I remembered X’s bird profile, his long sharp nose against the sky up on R Mountain. Up on R Mountain where he had kissed me the way James never could.
I did not move from the bed until well after James had left the house.
5.
“You haven’t been yourself lately, so I called your Visiting Teachers. They’re coming over with their husbands to give you a blessing.” James in the kitchen, tall studious James with his arms folded and his shirt tucked in.
“I don’t need a blessing, James.” I need to talk to you. I need to tell you.
“Why would you refuse one?” Accusatory. Suspicious. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but a blessing will help.”
Hocus pocus, I refrain from saying.
Making sandwiches, setting them on a plate, still feeling the warm weight of X’s body bearing down against mine, stirring up powdered lemonade in a crystal pitcher. Drop in a few ice cubes. Crack, crack. James vanishing upstairs into the bedroom where he’ll stay until Katherine and Danae and their husbands arrive.
This was all a mirage, I want to call up the stairs to James. But I stand alone in my kitchen and say out loud to nobody, “The sun is setting.”
They ring the doorbell. I open it promptly. We’re smiles all around and “We missed you in church; James says you’re not feeling so well.”
Danae has large front teeth and acne scars and limp hair and a limp personality but she still managed to find a husband who bends her over their foot-board every night. She says, “Your house is so beautiful, I always think that whenever we come to see you, what a beautiful home. It’s lovely.” Lovely, lovely. “And what a view.” The R on Our Mountain squints at us across the valley. It’s turning orange in the sunset. How tiny and weak Rexburg looks from the top of that mountain, how puny our temple is on this nobody hill.
“Well, we brought our husbands,” Katherine says in a low voice. We’re in the kitchen now and she’s running water in the sink so the men can’t hear us whisper. “We brought our husbands and they prayed about it and they are ready to give you a blessing. You and James both if he wants....”
James joins us in the kitchen, puts his arm around my waist like he’s supposed to, kisses the back of my neck, a formal gesture, a peace offering, a display of husbandly concern for Katherine’s benefit. I shiver and stop myself from pulling away. That is not my place, to rebuff my husband.
“I think you should,” he tells me. “You need guidance right now. I don’t know what’s eating at you, but whatever it is, the Lord can help.”
The pleasantries are over and nobody has really touched the sandwiches or the lemonade. Danae’s husband, a man with a protruding gu
t and a loud laugh, pulls a chair away from the dark wood dining table and suddenly it’s down to business. There were always too many chairs at that table, a futile anticipation of the children to come, three boys and four girls maybe and all of them with scrubbed faces and nice shoes on a Sunday night while I carry in the pot roast from the kitchen, James sipping a 7-Up with this trouser socks pulled up so neatly, feet crossed on the footrest of the La-Z-Boy.
Our children are waiting to be called over from beyond the Veil and
What the hells’ the Veil anyway, X says, interrupting the scene. Or his voice, anyway; X is not here at all, of course, except in my imagination, where he is bare-skinned and vivid and breathing.
I try to define it for him inside my head where he can hear me.
Like the border between Heaven and Earth? Even my thoughts have a question mark at the end.
Oh, come on. Slow honey-voice, dark honey-voice, X.
I sit in the proffered chair. What else can I do?
The men lay their right hands on my head, left hands on each other’s shoulders. I fold my arms and close my eyes, just like they taught me in Sunday school. Reverent. Katherine and Danae sit on the loveseat with the subtle floral pattern and are likewise reverent. James haunts the living room, too intimidated to participate. I open my eyes to look at him, his strained pale face; we catch each other’s eyes and we both blush and I close my eyes again.
And it begins.
“I bestow on you this blessing, that it may guide and comfort you in your turmoil. (Turmoil, I like that.) You are God’s beloved daughter, and He knows your heart. Know that God has a divine plan for you, that He guides you, that He sees you and loves you.
“Even your suffering and confusion are part of God’s plan. You will be rewarded, not only in Heaven, but on Earth, with peace and the blessings of the family. God knows you will be strong and bear this burden.
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