Then she had to stop, sit on the closed lid of the toilet and weep.
Finally, she and Alex were down to the last two drawers in the master bedroom: the ones in the bedside tables. To Val, this was a subcategory of intimate. Your bedside table drawer was beyond private. Sacrosanct. Secrets lived there.
“On count of three, dump them out,” Alex said, patting the stripped mattress. “Ready?”
They grabbed and tossed items, clearing the drawers quickly.
Alex tossed three issues of Playboy on the recycle pile. They had a good laugh over the dated illustrations in Meredith’s copy of The Joy of Sex. They piled up more prescription bottles, tissues, pens and pencils, KY Jelly, eyeglasses, lozenges. Clipped newspaper articles and recipes ripped from magazines. A set of silver Ben Wa balls that chimed.
Holy shit, Mom, Val thought, eyes wide.
Postcards. Letters. A Rosamunde Pilcher paperback in Meredith’s drawer. A hardcover copy of Sho-Gun in Roland’s.
And then, from each side drawer, a rubber-banded stack of cards.
“What are these?” Val said, sliding off the rubber band and fanning them out. Across the bed, Alex was doing the same. The cards were three-by-three squares of heavy paper, each handwritten on one side. Val’s eyes flicked from one to the next, seeing the same sentence over and over.
September 7, 1962. I’d like to be faithful to you another year. Roland.
September 7, 1963. I’d like to be faithful to you another year. Roland.
September 7, 1964. I’d like to be faithful to you another year. Roland.
“‘September seventh, nineteen sixty-four,’” Alex said, reading from one of his cards. “‘I’d like to be faithful to you another year. Meredith.’ I don’t understand… These all say the same thing.”
“These, too,” Val said. “September seventh is their anniversary. They’d be married twenty-seven years this fall.” She counted twenty-six cards. Of course. It was July. This year’s card hadn’t been made yet.
I’d like to be faithful to you another year.
“What does it mean?” She looked at Alex, who looked back, slowly shaking his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think you should keep them.”
Speechless and bewildered, she nodded. Her mind raced with thoughts as she put the cards in order in two piles and rubber-banded them.
“Let’s get a beer,” Alex said.
They put four Rolling Rocks in a bucket of ice and grabbed a bag of potato chips. They sat on the back porch steps, looking out at the small yard. Meredith and Roland had planted sensible, evergreen shrubs and low-maintenance perennials. No pots and urns of annuals, no vines that required pruning and tying and training. This was a garden that could take care of itself. It only needed an occasional day’s weeding, a day one chose to spend in the garden as a treat, not a chore. Val remembered days when she’d see her parents out in the little yard together, tidying things up. Then collapsing, tired and dirty, into chairs with beers. Holding grubby hands and admiring their work.
I’d like to be faithful to you another year.
“They weren’t each other’s first spouses, were they?” Alex said.
“No,” Val said. “Second marriage for each. Both divorced the first time. I wonder…”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes filled up. “I wish I’d found the cards sooner,” she said, her voice trembling. “I wish I’d known about them. Mom and Dad should’ve been buried with them.”
Alex’s forearm was warm across her shoulders, the hand on her neck icy-cold from holding his beer. “It’s all right,” he said while she wept.
“They’re gone. It makes no sense. I have no family anymore. I mean, I have, but… Christ, what am I saying? You know what the fuck I mean. Shit…” She broke down again and Alex rocked her.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “Trust me. I know.”
“Jesus, do you do this every day?”
He laughed in her hair. “Not every day. Well. No. I do think about them every day. Wonder what became of them. But you have a place where you can go see them. Go visit. And you have the things of theirs you’ll keep forever. Just like I do.”
He laid his handkerchief on the ice in the bucket a minute, then gave it to her.
“You and your little snot rags,” she said softly.
“It’s clean. And you love them.”
“I do.” She pressed the cool damp to her burning eyes, then opened her other beer and took a long, soothing pull. “God, the more I think about those cards, the more I’m in awe.”
“Of what?”
“Well, how many couples treat fidelity as a given, and how many sit down before they marry and lay out the rules? This is what being faithful means to me. This is what I want, this is what I expect. This is what I consider cheating. This is forgivable. This isn’t. You know?”
She wrapped her arms around her calves, chin on knees. As the idea in her head grew bigger, she felt the need to become smaller.
“And how many,” she said slowly, “do it every year? Sit down and renew the terms. Take the pledge again.”
“But the words,” Alex said. “The words they used aren’t a pledge. I’d like to be faithful to you. Not I promise to be or I swear to be. I’d like to be. I want to be. It doesn’t guarantee success. Only the desire. It’s a pledge of a desire to be something.”
“They didn’t promise forever,” she said. “They took it year by year.”
“I guess they knew marriage evolves over years.” Alex had moved into the same position as she, arms around knees. Their hips, shoulders and beer bottles touched. “I guess they each learned a lot the first time around.”
“Maybe fidelity was a problem with their first spouses.”
“And when they got married, they decided to lay it all out from the get-go.”
“I’d like to be faithful to you another year.”
“We’ll talk again next year.”
Val turned her cheek and looked at him. He looked back, the wind ruffling his hair a little. His finger reached to trace her eyebrows, her nose, her mouth and along her jaw, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“A pledge to the desire,” he said. “Not the act. I kind of like that.”
“I’m so glad you were with me,” she said, softening under his touch. “It feels like you were supposed to be here. We were supposed to find them together.”
He nodded, looking deep in her eyes, his fingers continuing to outline her face. The moment shimmered hopefully between them, reaching out to touch as well.
You’re old enough, dear, it said.
The kitchen door bounced open—“Whoa, my darling”—and Roger came out singing, “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me…”
The moment yanked its hand out of the cookie jar and retreated.
“Rog has a brilliant idea,” Trelawney said.
“Oh?” Val said, a pulsing desire curling up in her stomach.
“Road trip,” Rog said. “We hop in the car tomorrow and drive to Stowe.”
“Shotgun,” Alex said.
“Let’s go,” Trelawney said. “Let’s just do it. The four of us.”
“And Tony Orlando,” Roger said.
Roger laid out a firm plan: “We leave at dawn, sisters.”
They pulled out of the driveway around eleven-thirty.
“Dawn means anytime before noon,” Roger said, passing around coffees.
They took turns at the wheel and made good time through the rolling farmlands of southeast Vermont. They’d talk and laugh for an hour, then lapse into thoughtful, sighing silence. Then Roger would belt out, “Whoa, my darling,” and startle everyone into singing “Knock Three Times.”
They pulled into the drive of the family’s ski house, the trunk loaded with groceries and beer.
“This was a good idea,” Val said, putting her arms around Roger as they grilled steaks on the little back deck.
“I’m full of good ideas,”
he said. “Full of shit, too. But good ideas.”
Val examined his casted arm. “Still hurt?”
“Nah,” he said. “Itches more than it hurts.”
“Still. A compound fracture. Must’ve been gruesome.”
“I puked when I saw the bone,” he said. “All over Lark House’s nurse.”
“She must’ve been enchanted,” Trelawney said. She’d braided a garland of dandelions and wore it around her head.
“Mm.” Rog dug his finger underneath the cast, scratching. “I need to call her later.”
“Oh,” Val said. “This wasn’t a one-time puke, I see.”
Roger laughed. “No, we’ve been hanging out. Broken bones and barf: it’s the newest thing in seduction.”
They sat at the picnic table, eating, drinking and telling funny Lark stories into the night. For nostalgic laughs, they decided to cram into the downstairs bedroom with its two sets of bunk beds. Three larks and a cuckoo.
“No snoring,” Val said, taking one bottom bunk.
“No farting,” Alex said, taking the other.
“No jerking off,” Rog said, climbing above Alex, who punched his leg. “Ow.”
Silence as Trelawney clambered up to her bed over Val.
“Come on, Trey,” Rog said. “Don’t cry. Make a rule.”
A loud sniff. “No leaving.”
Val listened as the talk died away and silence filled the room. She knew the sounds her siblings made at rest—the deep cadence that marked Trelawney’s slumber and the faint whistle that signaled Roger’s. As soon as she heard both, she reached over the headboards separating her from Alex and caressed his head.
Hand in hand, they slipped upstairs to the master bedroom.
“It’s time,” she whispered as the door shut behind them. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s time.” His arms closed tight around her. Her forehead fit to the base of his neck like a puzzle piece. He smelled like soap and water. His hands slid up the back of her tank top, so warm on her bare skin. His mouth drew up her throat, hands gliding around to cup her breasts.
“I knew one day we’d be here,” he said.
She slid his shirt over his head. “I think I knew, too.”
No more words as they took off their clothes and lay down. Val stretched out on her back on the bed, and he came crawling along her. His hands dug beneath her head like a cradle. Boxed in by his thighs at her sides, his weight soft and warm and heavy. His eyes even heavier in the moonlit room. Her palms slipped along his shoulders and back, feeling the lean, solid, adult mass of him. He was all man now.
Her man.
“I knew it,” he said.
She touched his mouth. “Knew what?”
“This.” His mouth brushed hers. “Us.” His kiss went deeper. Then it went harder. Val cried into his mouth, arching up and opening wide. His legs pushed hers apart then he burst into her like a sunrise, like a ten-fingered chord on the piano. He slid deep, hot, golden and syrupy and she thought she would fly apart at her joints, splash in puddles of joy on the walls. He made some indescribable sound, and she made yet another. For ten seconds all was madness: they grappled wildly, twisting, writhing, trying to kiss, trying to breathe, trying to be everything.
Then he stopped. His hands took her wrists, pressed them against the mattress and the universe came to a slow halt with him.
“Wait,” he whispered. He lay still within her, hard and huge, filling her up to her eyes. Up on his elbows like a cobra, cradled in her thighs, he rested his forehead on hers.
“Are you all right?” she said. He nodded but didn’t speak, didn’t open his eyes. She understood this wasn’t the plunge. Not yet. He was still poised at some final edge and she knew him so well then, knew beneath his desire to do right by her was a fierce and sometimes uncontrollable passion. And he was about to unleash it on her. About to hold her down and fuck the top of her head out into space, or scoop her up and love her with glorious tenderness, or both—quite possibly all those things at the same time.
He was so fine at that moment. He was what she wanted. All she wanted.
“One day is today,” she said.
Their eyebrows rubbed as he nodded and she felt their thoughts blur and blend. She knew he wanted to be all things to her, and he wanted all of her selves with him, or else none. Anything in between simply wouldn’t work. Not with Alex. Not with this one day.
“I want to stay with you,” he said.
She pushed against his grip and her hands flew free like birds, arcing up around the back of his neck.
“No leaving,” she whispered. “It’s the rule.”
In the cool, gray morning they woke and looked at each other, caressing without talking. Alex shifted sideways to lay his head on her heart. Val imagined its rhythm was erratic. Little stabs of anxiety kept piercing her at odd moments. A faint sense of unease, laced with the mountain of things that needed to be done in the wake of her parents’ death. And glazed with the overwhelming loss…
“Remember the Oral Dissertation?” Alex said.
“No,” Val said. “Was I there?”
His smile was patient.
“Yes, dumbass, I remember.”
“Afterward when we fell asleep a little while,” he said. “Squashed on the daybed. I was lying like this, with my head on your heart. I fell asleep listening to it. When I woke up, we were spooning. My head was against your back but I could still hear your heart beating. I remember thinking…”
“What?”
He put a finger on her lips. His eyes closed. He listened. “I love your heart.”
Emotion welled up in her throat and eyes, spilling down soft and warm on her face.
“I haven’t made love in…” Her voice fractured and she couldn’t go on.
He pressed his lips to her sternum, then laid his cheek down again and smiled at her. “A long time?” he asked.
My whole life, she thought.
The last man she’d been with was Javier Soto, and she’d been so sad, so bewilderingly blue after her decision to stop hiring him. He was getting too close to her. And for all he was a good soul and a fantastic lover, something about his painful past and damaged psyche made Val recoil. It wouldn’t work. If she didn’t leave now and hurt a little, she would undoubtedly be left later and be destroyed. She’d always seen Jav as the kind of guy who left a woman in a smoldering pile of ashes.
She thought about him often though. The affair—could you call it that?—left her singed and smarting from brutal self-realization: I’ve never made love.
Jav made her reflect on the string of boyfriends in her wake. She felt no regret, but no warmth in the remembering either. It all seemed childish now. Cheap. Relationships chosen and arranged exactly to her needs. Dating men she could easily control. She nearly always got what she wanted and real life didn’t work that way. Love didn’t work that way.
She’d never made love.
No dear, you’re not old enough yet.
After Jav, Val went without intimacy of any kind. A celibate interval of hard work and harder thinking as all her ideas of love were re-negotiated. Her body, sated on months of decadent sex, closed for renovations. Her heart put up a velvet rope and hired a bouncer. The next time she let anyone in, it would be for love. The kind you made, not bought.
“Don’t cry,” Alex said, his thumb moving across her lips.
“It’s been a long time,” she whispered. “And I feel like I’m home now.”
Her eyes and fingertips wandered over him. He had beautiful skin—tanned golden warm in summertime. Like melted Kraft caramels. Whenever she touched her tongue to it, she expected to find it sweet, bits of sugar clinging to him. On his right forearm was the inked Unisphere showing South America. Around his left upper arm was an intricate band of lines and letters. His parents’ names in a beautiful script, encircling his bicep. Between them was a thicker, darker band, in stern block letters: ¿Dónde Están Los Desaparecidos?
Where are the disappea
red ones?
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, caressing her face.
“Alejandro,” she said, lost in his eyes, his name heavy and sweet in her mouth.
“I want to be your home.” His lips ran soft across her brow. “I want to wake up every morning and listen to your heart. I want to be the last man you slept with. When you say it’s been a long time since you made love, I want that time to be a matter of hours. Because I loved you last night. And I’m going to love you again tonight.”
He pulled her tight into his arms. All the anxiety cracked like a brittle shell and fell away. Her chest filled as her hand slid along Alex’s neck, fingertips finding the pulse beneath the curve of his jaw. Feeling it beat with her own.
She was small in his arms but love was a gigantic thing, spilling out her pores, a sparkle at every tip of every hair on her head. His kiss filled her mouth, all his passion and pain, all his strength and weaknesses, all his past and all their future.
“Lie back,” he said, shifting to put his head on her heart again. “Rest now.”
“So much to do,” she said softly.
“We’ll get through it,” he said. As he always did when any of the Larks had a problem.
We’ll get through it. We’ll work it out.
Val’s mind shuffled through her years of high school and college Spanish. “Vamos a sobrepasarlo,” she said.
Alex lifted his head a little. “What?”
She bit her lip, sure she had it wrong. “Vamos a sobrepasarlo? We’ll get through it?”
His sweet smile unfolded, the dimples creasing on either side. “Kind of. Sobrepasarlo… It’s more like you’ll avoid or evade something entirely. Get around it. Not through it.”
“What should I say then?”
“Vamos a superarlo.”
“Now say what I did before.”
“Vamos a sobrepasarlo.”
“See, that’s sexier,” she said. “The shape your mouth makes around it is hot.”
“Well then, fuck it.” He laid his head back down. “Who cares what it means as long as it looks good in your mouth?”
An Exaltation of Larks Page 13