by Sharon
No one knew better than he what an adjustment it would be for her. He knew better than she did. That she would like it here meant everything in the world to him.
Gazing out the window of his silver Mercedes, she was very much herself. He watched her for signs of revulsion. Surprise was all he saw, an amazement so profound, he could only catch echoes of it. She spoke little, but she smiled at him, and nodded at his explanations. What she did say was cheerful; strained, of course, but he had expected that—the trip, the change… He had hope, real hope.
That lasted until they were at his home, late in the evening after dinner, when he came quietly into a room where she sat unwary and alone. She had removed her kapp, and held it to cover her face, the cords on her wrists standing out tautly. Her body bowed like that of a punished child. The shudders she had controlled for many hours ran through her unchecked.
He felt a hissing blankness.
"My grandmother used to rock me in her arms." Her head lifted. She stared at the crushed kapp with an expression of simple curiosity. "Do you think you could?"
He took her in a light grip. Her hair caressed his cheek, carrying in its mass the fragrance of a Wisconsin rain. "How? Show me. Like this?"
"You do it just right," she said, and fell asleep within minutes, so quickly that it scared him. He stayed as he was for many hours, holding her, wishing he could protect her from her dreams.
Being Susan, she didn't tell him for days about the circumstances under which she had left her family.
Susan woke with a sense of struggle, of fighting her way out of a dream. But then she felt warmth against her back and breathed in the scent of clean skin that was not hers. Alan. She sat up and tenderly watched him sleep, with the feeling of mild shyness that had come gradually to life since she'd left Wisconsin with him the day before.
Now she'd spent a full night in his arms. It meant something; a watershed… like baptism.
Her stomach compressed into a knot. She had a task she'd set for herself, and she wanted to do it quickly and have done with it, with no drawn-out agony or faltering. She was going to change to the English way of dressing.
There was no question that it had to be done. She'd seen the half-hidden smiles at the airport yesterday, and felt the curiosity. Then, at the restaurant where he'd taken her, when she'd left him to comb her hair, one of the men who waited on tables had grabbed her by the arm.
"Who let you in? You can't come in here hassling our guests!" he'd said, and put her out the back door. When they found out whom she was with, they just about wrapped themselves around her knees apologizing, or around Alan's knees, anyway. They had thought she was soliciting for a cult. As protective as Alan was toward her, it took her a little while to get him to see in it anything to laugh about.
It had been somehow important to put a good face on things, more important than it might have been on the safety of her home ground. She'd pretty well hidden the panic that came at her like tides in a windstorm, one behind the other, always one more. She no sooner weathered one but another would rear to replace it.
By late evening she had been unable to brace herself anymore. She'd gone to lie down because she didn't know what else to do. To rest, she'd told him. She had been pretending to sleep when Katelyn Fisher came by. She dimly remembered the lawyer Alan had sent to draw up a contract with the movie company. Odd, she'd thought at the time, to bring someone all the way from California to have a part in an agreement she and Alan could have come to on their own. Alan had gotten a peculiar smile when she'd said that, and she had seen that it offended his sense of how the world was, with her assumption that people would keep their word to each other without having it written down and made into law.
She could barely hear Katelyn speaking to Alan. They were quiet, probably so as not to disturb her. Their voices had a soothing quality for her, making her feel the way she had as a child lying in bed, hearing adults talking late in the kitchen when times were hard, after a death or a fire. Mostly Katelyn spoke. Once, Alan laughed. Presently she heard Katelyn say something like, "I wasn't sure if anyone's had time to be practical," and then something about "getting Susan's measurements from wardrobe."
Then Alan's voice came more clearly. "Maybe it's because I've come to associate it so completely with her, I don't know. They don't look medieval to me anymore. She says the skirts are warm in winter and cool in summer. Amish girls ice-skate in them, play softball in them, run races… Anyway, it's part of her religious practices. Her life's so screwed up right now that the last thing I want to do is push her into anything."
Then she'd understood. Katelyn had brought her clothes. English clothes. Quietly relieved, quietly depressed to have the decision over and done with, she'd gone to sit alone in Alan's bedroom, waiting for him to come up.
Before releasing herself to sleep, and then on waking, she thought about the clothes. Maybe it would be like having a whole new skin. Maybe she'd feel itchy and new and brave, like coming wet from a chrysalis. So she let Alan sleep and went to the small, sumptuous room that belonged to his clothes. She found what was meant for her and dressed quickly, avoiding looking in the mirror that stretched right from the floor to the ceiling. She didn't like the sensation of that much mirror. It couldn't watch her, any more than a piece of furniture could, but it gave her that feeling. Furniture that watched people—it might have been one of Alan's thoughts, a piece of one of his movies. She almost smiled.
She turned her attention to the new clothes, looking down at herself, at the pale peach-colored linen skirt fine as handkerchief linen, and the soft clinging top. If there was going to be a feeling of metamorphosis, she didn't want to miss it.
Nothing came.
The new clothes felt like a costume, something to wear in a play. Real clothes weren't made by strangers. It was a part of impersonal English ways.
Yet when she took a step, the linen was light against her, and comfortable. Her hands went to her shoulders, rubbing the weightless fabric against her skin.
She wandered toward the living room, touching the expensive mysteries there, the rich fabrics and brass-trimmed table, the lights hidden as decoration, the paintings and sculpture she didn't understand though they stole her breath away with their unexpected beauty.
So far from home. She couldn't conceive of it, being in Wisconsin and California all in one day. The plane had hardly seemed to move. It hung up there while land flooded away, the fields and farms broken bits in a dusky kaleidoscope. Toy miles, but try and walk them…
She was gone. Well and truly gone.
This morning Daniel would deliver the letter she'd written to her father. She could see in her mind how her father would look when he saw it, the raw flush that would burn his skin, the way his hands would tremble when he opened the paper, making it tremble too. She hated the thought. How could she live with it? There were moments when she wondered how she could live with any of it. Removed completely from its familiar surroundings, the self she'd always known might be such a stranger, she wouldn't recognize it.
Familiar things. Daniel. He looked south, mornings, when he went out to chore, toward Rachel. Maybe today he'd look west too.
In the downstairs bedroom Anna shared with Grandma, they'd be getting up. First thing, Anna would put up Grandma's hair. Susan had done it for years, and there wasn't much that felt nicer than Grandma's hair when it hung loose. It was like puffy fleece, and smelled sweet and milky like new lambs in a field. She tried to recapture how it was to touch Grandma's hair, softer than soft mostly was. Threading her fingers into the weight of her own hair, she lifted on her toes, slowly arching her stiff back, breathing in deeply, stretching muscles that felt cold and unwell, closing her eyes and remembering.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Alan. He had leaned his shoulder up against the edge of a white wall, and he was watching her as if it were the most important thing he'd ever done. Bare except for a pair of jeans, his hair mussed from the pillow, he had about him the heart-lifting
sensuality that had frightened and excited her from the beginning. His eyes carried a sleepy delicacy, their color very bright, like light through colored glass above the faint pink slumber bands on his high cheekbones. On waking, his skin was marked like that; and sometimes also when he made love to her, when he made both of them feel fiery and desperate and joyous with need. She'd looked up at him at those times and seen his eyes brilliant, his cheekbones tinged with fever colors. She'd paid with burning coins to see that.
"Do I look English?"
"No." He walked to her. "Like Rapunzel or Snow White. A myth fighting its way to life." He kissed the tips of his fingers and slid them over the side of her face.
Her heartbeat became hard and uneven.
His thumb smoothed along her jaw, moving back and forth, testing the skin, his gaze searching. His hand came to rest under her chin and lifted her face. He spoke softly. "What's happening in you?"
She tried unsuccessfully to put her thoughts into words and tried to turn her face away, but his hand brought her inexorably back.
"Susan?"
She hadn't meant to back away from him. It was the strange dizziness that made her pull back. The sliding glass door to the garden stopped her. It was cold against her shoulders, and she lay against it as if it were a chilly sheet. "Are you going to take me to bed?"
So much was in his face: desire, pity, a kind of gentle amusement. "Oh, yes."
But instead of moving, she slid down the glass and sat on the marble floor, her hands sinking into the skirts fluffing between her raised knees. The knot in her stomach pushed up into her chest and turned hot. She'd never been more fascinated by his eyes, by the delicacy of their color, the cool blue-green, lighter than his sun-warmed skin. "I guess after all this, it would be pretty… pretty crazy not to."
His expression changed, and he came down before her, saying something she didn't hear, maybe wasn't meant to hear, that soft, worried exclamation that she'd decided was his substitute for prayer.
"The world's a pretty crazy place," he said, "full of tricks. You can tell me things, Susan. You can tell me anything at all. Everything."
"I was thinking…" The words didn't want to come.
"You can tell me."
Her eyes were stinging hot, her vision blurred. She realized with overriding self-disgust that she was going to cry. She'd had enough of emotion, and wanted to push it away. Anger almost stopped the tears, anger at the continuing surprise of her own turbulent nature, at how she couldn't get it organized, but his voice broke her again. He said her name, the sound so gentle, it came inside her like a shadow and sent soft quivers down her spine. He used that same voice sometimes when they made love, and the timbre brought up a new heat patch spreading over her chest.
"About things. About how things are. People just get so hurt, do you know? My mother—" Her voice broke. "When Rachel left, Mother couldn't keep her food down for three days. She was nursing then, and her milk wasn't right, and the baby cried all the time. When I think back to then, that's what I remember, I remember the baby crying and crying…" Choked sobs tore at her words, pulling the syllables apart, making their rhythms frightened, uncontrolled. Tears ran into her hair and left hot, sparkling tracks on her skin. His palm slid over them, clearing them away. "I can't pray. I just can't. It's like drinking from a spring I've poisoned. I talk to Him, but it's like there's no one there."
She just cried then. It was too hard to think, too hard to talk. Her throat became peppery. Her head ached. Around her ears, her wet hair had turned cool and ticklish on her skin. In a moment she became aware that he had taken hold of her hands, had penetrated the tightly curled fingers. His flesh felt good. The sobs decreased, hoarse whispers of breath.
"You've never poisoned anything," he said.
"I don't know." Her throat was dry. She opened her mouth to cough and two tears ran in from the corner of her lips, tasty, salty on her tongue. "How can this work? What happens to a sheep that goes to live with dogs? He'll stay a sheep—he can't change like that—but he'll take on the ways of a dog. What's left then? He has no place."
His gaze found their joined hands and fixed there before returning to her face. His fingers didn't tighten their hold, but she felt the gathering pressure in her imagination as if it had happened.
"I'll make a place for you, Susan. We'll make a place together."
Thoughts she didn't speak came and went in her mind.
"Don't ask me to take you home," he said. "I can't."
She sighed, and shuddered. "Who says I want to go home?"
"Oh." He got something close to a smile, of pure relief. She touched one of the smile lines that edged his mouth, when he said, "Are you afraid you'll be unhappy?"
"I think I'm afraid I'll be happy." Her voice was raw, hoarse.
"Afraid because you have all this guilt?"
"I've got this guilt and that guilt over there, and the guilt in the next room, and the guilt all the way to the moon."
"That's impossible. I've got the guilt all the way to the moon. Wait. I'll be right back." He returned shortly with a cool cloth to touch her cheeks, her chest, wherever emotion had left heat stains. When it was done he drew her up and close. "I'll make it right for you. Whatever it takes, I'll make it right."
He would if he could. She knew that now. If he could, he'd take the earth apart and rebuild it for her piece by piece. He would have tried. He had faith in the power of their love; faith that was so real she could almost see it, like something she could hold in her hand, except that it would be too big, too wide, too lovely to touch. It wasn't like the old kind of certainty he had. She remembered a time not long ago when he wasn't much but cynical. Now he believed in something outside himself.
She had given him this. In some mysterious way she knew it came from her, as though from a mother who'd given birth to an awesome and wonderful supernatural child. And that was something that had to be good.
It's good, Lord. Isn't it good?
She felt the beginning of an answer like a smile that started way inside in her chest, more a sensation than an emotion. And then the good feelings were outside too—his hand stroking her face.
"Do you remember once you told me you wanted to feel what I feel?" he said. "I want that now. I want to take it all. Every place that hurts. To have it and hold it and keep it away from you…"
"You can't."
Under her cheek she could hear his heartbeat, steady and a little fast. "Maybe I can," he said.
She stood back, shook her head, wondering at her odd smile, which still hovered way down.
"Let me try," he urged. "I want your guilt. Give it to me."
"I can't. How can I?"
"Pretend it exists. Pretend that it's a physical thing. What would it look like?"
"Oh, bad. Terrible. Dark. Black. If you held it up to the sunlight, you couldn't see through it. There's nothing living in it. It's a black, greasy, quivering blob, like a jelly."
"Give it to me."
"I couldn't. It's a terrible thing. I couldn't give it to anyone. It's too awful."
"Give it to me." He put out his hands.
She laughed suddenly, softly. "Then it's yours. Here. Take it." She put her hands within his, then drew them back. "What will you do with it?"
"Leave that to me. You don't have to worry about it anymore. It's gone. But I can't leave you empty. I'm going to give you something in return. Close your eyes."
"What is it you're giving me?"
"Good things. Love. Sunshine. Happiness."
"What do they look like?"
"Close your eyes. You tell me what they look like."
He was pretending to put things into her hands, one by one. She began to see them. "They look like peppermint sticks. They are peppermint sticks, and each one has stripes on it of a different color."
She opened her eyes and looked into his, and found they were tender, whimsical.
"Maybe we can find new ways," he said.
"Not dogs or sheep?"
His smile grew. "Maybe sheep dogs."
Something in the way he said it stuck with her and made her smile the rest of the day whenever it came into her mind.
She learned something about Los Angeles that day. You could find peppermint sticks there in many colors. He took her to a store and found them for her, these things she'd pulled out of her imagination. There was a sudden moment's uneasiness when she stepped outside and the flash of awareness struck her, like a hard, clear light, that all around her, even to the horizon on all sides, were strangers and strangeness, and surprises, and ideas that were wrong and worldly. But then there was Alan beside her, and sun on her arms, and new flowers and endless variety, more than she could have thought up in a lifetime.
I have to do this right, he thought. No slipups. Like music that couldn't be turned off, the history of the things he'd brought into her life kept playing in his mind. It couldn't go on the way it had. The cycle of hurt had to stop. It had to get better. He had to make it better.
He was a family now, with her. A family—that unit he'd never understood, the legend invented to sell cereal and station wagons. What a crazy world. Finally he saw what it was like to be alive in it.
He was careful where he took her that first morning. There were things to avoid: crowd, paparazzi, places where his appearance would draw attention. Beyond that, he chose at random.
He showed her the small Japanese house he'd built in the back part of his garden. She'd smiled, surprised at the Zen austerity, the paper walls, and tatami floor mats, and said, "It's plain!"
He drove her to buy candy, and then to a public garden with rambling fragrant pathways. He drove her to a ranch outside the city where friends raised and trained animals for movies and television. An anteater ran its tongue over her toes. She rode a camel. An ostrich took food from her palm. She helped bathe a baby elephant, and it teased up her skirt with its trunk.