Seven Letters

by J. P. Monninger

  “You have it exactly.”

  He bellied away from the yurt entrance to call Gottfried, who had been running back and forth across the long meadow to the sea. I was impressed when Gottfried came at his first recall. Ozzie squatted down and Gottfried crashed into his arms and lap, overjoyed at being beside his guardian again.

  “He’s hungry,” Ozzie called. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Seamus was right, you know? About your hair. It’s Christmas ribbon. And it’s getting redder by the moment beside the sea.”

  “One lies and the other swears to it,” I called back, using one of my father’s favorite expressions. “You have no shame.”

  He stood and looked directly at me.

  “Come to bed with me, Kate Moreton. Please come to my bed. It’s you I want, and I believe you want me.”

  I nodded and walked forward. Not even the fairies could have kept me from his bed.

  * * *

  It was savage. It was love. We hardly made it to his bed, a wide sea of a bed that overlooked the waves running to the shore below. Undressing, slowly undressing and teasing one another, was out of the question. It was too late for that. The entire afternoon had been foreplay and now he took me out of my clothes with complete assurance. We fell on the bed like a sheave of wheat being scythed by a tractor blade. Our bodies collected motion, sensation, and brought it back time and again to something central and important in our kisses. He pushed his clothes away and once, stopped, smiling, to push Gottfried away as well.

  “Go,” he said to the puppy.

  Gottfried retreated a few paces and sat, his head tilted quizzically.

  “Not now,” Ozzie said. “I promise, later.”

  Then we began again, continued again, resumed again. I felt him ready, felt him bursting, and his hands slipped into the right places, the places I needed his hands to be, and I arched to him, giving him everything, giving him a bridge to walk across to me.

  I loved him in that instant. I loved everything about him and I knew, I knew, I knew, it was not love, not true love, but I had never experienced such a connection. Then his body came on top of mine and for a minute, an hour, a day, we kissed so deeply that I thought I might go blind. My body shook. Then he entered me. There was no preamble, no careful planning except that it had all been planning. I pulled him deeper into me and held him, and for a ten count, a million count, neither of us moved. He kissed me again and again, then he stopped, stopped everything, and he put his eyes on mine and said my name.

  “Kate,” he said. “I knew it would be like this.”

  “Yes,” I said, because I knew it, too.

  “Is everything all right? Are you okay?”

  I nodded and put my lips on his throat.

  Then it began to build again. I didn’t know how that could be, how we could be peaceful for an instant, then build so rapidly back to greedy, wanton lovemaking in mere heartbeats. Behind him, the sun faded and gray night began to fall. I listened and heard the sea and a few last gulls began to cry at the fall of daylight. For a moment, everything mixed together: sea and Ozzie and sex and gulls and wind and light and water. Why had I ever considered denying myself this? I couldn’t help wondering. I knew I could press this moment into my memory and hold it for the rest of my days.

  After that, he guided me. He took me as he liked and I went with anything he suggested. My climax lingered and came forward, then retreated slightly, back and forth, and he controlled it by looks he gave me. He was accomplished. He was generous and kind and forceful and gentle. We worked in concert, I knew, and the night grew darker and we continued until he withdrew and told me to follow him.

  “Follow you?” I asked, confused.

  “We’re going to swim now.”

  “Did you…?”

  “No, not yet.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of Milly, of how she would hang on every element of this story. But I vowed that I would never tell her. This was ours alone. I held my hand out to him and he pulled me onto my feet.

  “It’s not far,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  I almost asked for a robe. For something. But then I knew that was exactly what we didn’t need.

  “Come on, Gottfried, you can come, too,” he said.

  We stepped naked into the night. The air felt glorious and clean. I was still proudly aroused and twice on the gentle descent to the water he stopped and kissed me. He put his hands in places that invited me to more and more and more, and then he held my arm tightly as we walked across the rocky beach toward the water. He refused to let us stop. He continued on and I felt the water rising on my legs, my breath shortening, and then, in one smooth motion, he dove forward. I dove with him and the sea moved and pushed around us, and he came to me and kissed me over and over, our lips and tongues tasting of salt.

  “We have this, Kate,” he said. “Not everyone has this.”

  “I know.”

  He lifted me, my legs around his waist, and carried me to the shore. Carefully, slowly, he placed me on the sand and entered me. Above him the stars moved and danced, and I closed my eyes.

  “Now,” he said, “oh, now, Kate. Be with me.”

  16

  We made eggs and toast and a kind of Irish bacon I had never tasted before. We kept the door open and let the breeze come in and out as it liked. I wore one of his shirts, a blue-green flannel, and a pair of old socks he lent me. A tiny nervous voice woke inside my head and asked if this was not all a routine, a postcoital protocol that he had practiced and mastered with other women, but I tried to allay those suspicions. He owed me nothing; he had promised me nothing. We moved back and forth from the stove to the small table he had in one section of the yurt, while Gottfried studied us both. Ozzie tucked his iPhone into a player and we listened to Irish trad sessions mixed with American jazz. Now and then I looked out at the sea and saw the moon sending its lonely light across it.

  “Do you like your eggs dry or runny?” he asked from the small tabletop range, his back to me while he cooked. “Be careful. There’s a right answer.”

  “Dry.”

  “That’s the right answer. Runny eggs are a sin against humankind.”

  “You have strong opinions.”

  “I like an orderly world,” he said, turning to hand me the plate of bacon. “One more second and then we’ll be ready.”

  “I thought you had more dogs than just one,” I said when I returned for another assignment. “I thought you ran a dog shelter of sorts.”

  “Isn’t Gottfried enough? Do you hear that, Gottfried? Kate thinks you’re not enough.”

  “Just trying to assemble the facts.”

  “Oh, I’ve been a way station for a bunch of dogs. I had some kennels for a while outside, but I didn’t like leaving them alone. Now I help out when I can at the local shelter. They come and go.”

  “But Gottfried won’t come and go, will he?”

  “No, he’s here to stay.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  Had a morsel of artificialness crept in between us? It reminded me that, beyond the crazed heat and lovemaking we had shared, we didn’t know each other at all well. We could not be natural with one another, because we did not know how we fit together except in our bodies. We did not have the liberty, exactly, to touch each other, to giving the loving passes that couples could share. It made the cooking and the food preparation slightly formal. We were back to a first date, despite the fact that I walked around his yurt in a pair of panties and smelled his body on every inch of me.

  “Ready, I think,” he said, lifting two plates. “Take these over, if you would, please. I’m going to have a whiskey. Would you like a whiskey?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bushmills. Do you like Bushmills or Jameson?”

  “Is there a right answer again?”

  “There is.”

  He clanked some glasses together and then came to the table carrying two jelly jars of whiskey. He had fil
led them almost to the top. It was more whiskey than I had ever drunk before.

  “You have an Irish hand when it comes to pouring drinks, Ozzie. That’s what my father would have said.”

  “Joy should come in full glasses.”

  “Are you feeling joyous?”

  “I’m feeling I met a wonderful woman. I’m feeling I have miles to go before I know her.”

  He held the back of my chair. I sat. Then he touched glasses with mine. I drank a sip. The whiskey burned in a lovely way throughout my body. He sat down across from me. He took a larger drink and grimaced a little when he did so.

  “As God is my witness, it’s the doctor’s orders,” he said, putting his glass down on the table, then nodded to my plate. “Eat while it’s hot, Kate. Don’t insult the chef.”

  “I’m suddenly feeling shy,” I said, because it was the way I felt.

  “Well, we leap-frogged ahead a little, didn’t we?”

  “You call that leap-frogging?”

  He smiled. He took another large drink and then bit into his toast. He looked handsome and tired and sleepy. He wore a heavy sweatshirt and a pair of shorts. Bare feet. The gray sweatshirt had OHIO STATE stenciled in red across the front.

  “Do you think men and women live on different islands?” he asked.

  “Depends what you mean by islands, I suppose.”

  “Oh, that we have trouble pulling the oars in rhythm.”

  “It felt like we had pretty good rhythm,” I said, because I couldn’t resist.

  He looked at me and took my hand.

  “Why don’t you stay here a while and we can get to know each other?”

  “Here? With you?”

  “For a few days. You have time, don’t you? I know you have to do research, but we can set you up here. Call it an experiment. I have to warn you, though. I don’t have running water. Outhouses and swims in the ocean will have to do. I have a sun shower hooked up outside and that’s fairly reliable when we have a sunny day. I manage to stay reasonably clean.”

  “It’s tempting. But maybe we should try it day by day to make sure it works well for each of us.”

  “Look. I haven’t liked someone as much as I like you in a long, long time. That’s the truth. I’d like to see where it goes. We can stand on ceremony and you can go back to your apartment, but no one is keeping tabs on you. You can be here or there, right?”

  “Right. I suppose.”

  “It seems like fate gave us a few free days. I’d like to know you, Kate. How are you feeling about it all?”

  “Still shy.”

  “We can drive back to Limerick tomorrow and you can pick up anything you need or want. I have to go out fishing some days, and you can come with me if you like. Or better still, you can use my truck and take day trips around Ireland. You can visit Bertie. He really is a source you need to tap. You know how to drive a stick, don’t you?”

  I nodded. Neither one of us had eaten more than a bite. He drank off his whiskey and stood to get more. Watching him, I couldn’t think. This was precisely what I didn’t want to have happen. It would get in the way of my research, I knew, but another part of me, a deeper, more compelling layer, urged me to accept his invitation. I ran through a mental list of objections, but I knew I could make things work if I wanted them to. My schedule was my own.

  “Eat and think. You don’t have to decide this minute,” he said, coming back with the bottle. “I promise to drive you back to Limerick the second you’ve had enough. No questions asked. But I think you’ll like it here, Kate. I have some friends I’d like you to meet. And Gottfried would like it. I don’t see any ragged edges to the plan.”

  He picked up my hand again. He held it as he ate. I ate, too. The sea air rolled into the yurt and made me feel a little crazy. I ate everything on my plate. Gottfried came and put his chin on my knee as I finished. It was two against one, I realized, and that was hardly fair.

  * * *

  We slept with the door open. The weather had been cool enough to kill off any last mosquitoes, and so we could leave it wide open to the sea and the wind that came up after sunset. The sea made its relentless call to us, but now it sounded far away, and lonely, and although I fell asleep in exhaustion, I awoke in the small hours to a pang of fear and worry. I had dreamed of something, something troubling, but I couldn’t fix it in my mind to study it. I also had to pee. I slipped out of the bed and walked carefully through the yurt, afraid I would trip and wake Ozzie or knock myself out in an absurdly awkward fall. But when I reached the doorway, moonlight met me, and I slipped down the stairs of the yurt platform and squatted in the grass. I said a silent thank you to the camping trips my dad took with me. After finishing, I stood for a moment and looked around. Mist covered the slope of the hill down to the ocean. It was one thing, I realized, to study the Blasket Island narratives, but quite another to live as the islanders had lived. True, we had electricity in the yurt, but for the rest it was remarkably similar to the life any of the islanders might have experienced. We would live by moonlight and tides and wind. I was glad of it, calm and happy, and although I could not have said why I had accepted Ozzie’s offer to stay, or why I wanted to be near him, I knew that I did.

  “Your feet are blocks of ice,” he said when I climbed back into bed beside him.

  “I’m sorry. I tried to be quiet.”

  “How do I know you’re not a fairy woman come to take my soul?”

  “You don’t.”

  “I suppose a fairy woman could manage warm feet, wouldn’t she? Was it raining out?”

  “No.”

  “I thought I heard rain earlier. Can you fall back asleep?”

  “Usually. Sometimes it’s hard.”

  “I fall asleep like a stone, but once I wake, I usually have to be sung back to sleep.”

  I felt my stomach drop. I wasn’t certain I had heard him correctly.

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “Yes, you have to sing, Kate.”

  “I’m not going to sing, Ozzie. You’re insane right now.”

  “I need you to sing an old Bing Crosby song. Something sappy and sentimental. It’s the only way I’ll get back to sleep.”

  I raised up on one elbow. In the dimness, I saw him smiling.

  “You almost had me, you horrible man,” I said, shoving him a little. “If I had started singing, I would have made you take me home.”

  “It’s not too late to sing. Come on, we’ll sing together.”

  “I’m not singing with you, Ozzie. Not now, not ever.”

  “Do you have a bad voice?”

  “I have a terrible voice.”

  “I knew you did. You’re very nasal.”

  I shoved him again.

  “I’m not singing, but I am not nasal.”

  “How would you know? I think in this case I’m the better judge. Let’s hear you sing something simple. Try ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’ It will be like a sound check.”

  “You’re ridiculous. You know that, right?”

  “Are you better with ‘Frère Jacques’? Maybe that would be less nasal for you. You might do better with that. Come on. I’ll start, and you do the chase round.”

  “What in the world is a chase round?”

  “It’s the second part, usually given to the person with the weaker voice. The nasal voice.”

  “I’ve begun to hate you.”

  “Don’t hate me. A poor carpenter blames his tools. It’s not your fault you have a nasal voice.”

  “I do not have a nasal voice. Do you think I’m nasal when I speak?”

  “You sound a little goose-ish. Like a duck with a beak that’s too long.”

  He started singing “Frère Jacques.” He sang it low and slowly gathered me in his arms. Each time he came to the end of a line, he paused, waiting for me to sing my part. He sang it twice through, then stopped and kissed my neck.

  “If you won’t sing me to sleep, I will be awake all night,” he said. “It’s not my fault
any more than your duck voice is your fault.”

  “I do not have a duck voice.”

  “Well, that would be the only reason to withhold your chase round.”

  “Nobody on this earth calls it a chase round.”

  “What do you mean by chase round? You mean the part you don’t sing?”

  He sang again, softly, whispering it in my ear. When he stopped, I sang my part. It felt crazy and oddly embarrassing. I would have preferred to put on a small dance recital at the foot of the bed, but he was so adorable pausing and holding me that I couldn’t resist. We sang the round three times, our voices blending, and it was dark and full of wind and sea sounds. On the last round, I buried my face against his neck and that started our bodies again. What before had been lustful and straining, now became something yielding and quiet. He pulled me on top of him and pushed the covers away and I fell against him, self-conscious for a time before he lifted me back with his strong arms and I knew the dim moonlight illuminated me.

  “You’re beautiful, Kate,” he whispered. “You take my breath away.”

  “Tell me I have a beautiful voice. That’s all I care about now.”

  He smiled. Then we didn’t talk for a while. It was still intense and fierce, but we knew each other better now and we kissed with more knowledge and communication. I felt alive with him, happy as I had not been happy in what felt a long time, and we continued pulling together until some of the night had passed. When we finished, we did not move apart. We fell asleep in each other’s arms, and we slept until the sun found us in the morning and called us away from our bed.

  17

  We lived this way:

  We woke at first light and sometimes we went down to the sea with Gottfried beside us. The wind and gulls called to us and we fell into the sea face forward, diving as if we would swim across Dingle Bay, but the water took our breath and gave it back to us in short, exhilarating pants. At times the water tried to soothe us, to ask us to stay, but then the chill broke through that momentary idleness and sent us clambering onto the rocky shingle. Back at the yurt, wet and shivering, we poked the stove for more heat, and dried ourselves as we made black coffee, then we carried our coffee back to bed and watched as the sun filled the yurt. A small Plexiglas top capped the center of the yurt, and the light came there first, pulling at it as bear might pull at a honey jar to have it open. We held hands and drank coffee, and our legs twined together, and sometimes we turned on cello music, low and quiet, and other times we wanted only the gulls. On rainy mornings, when the clouds climbed off the sea and came to rest for a while on land, we read from an anthology of Irish poets, Yeats and Alice Furlong and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Biddy Jenkinson, Jane Wilde, Lady Gregory, the poems repeated or rejected by our own tongues. Sometimes, but not always, we made love again, our passion easy and welcome, a friend that visited for the morning, a promise of what we would turn to in the softening of the day.