by Liza Nelson
Joe took a step closer.
“Go home.” I remembered his son’s hand gripping mine so tightly in the ambulance. I stood up and my thigh knocked against the worktable’s sharply mitered corner. The smarting pain brought tears to my eyes.
“Oh shit.” It was all mixed up, what I felt for this man I barely knew while my daughter stared at me through the wrong eyes. The rain racketed down on the tin roof. The studio began to reel, the shelves of shiny objects circling in tighter and tighter toward some centripetal force.
“Blue, for God’s sake.” His breath on my cheek, my arms rising, his fingers in my hair, my mouth turning, his neck like velvet, his chest, his hips against mine.
“Damn us both.”
Later, lying beside him on an old patchwork quilt among loose beads and broken shards, I realized that the rain had stopped. He described his life before Esmeralda, a paragraph of simple declarative facts. Born in south Georgia. One year of community college. A stint in the post-Vietnam service. His marriage in San Diego.
“Oh God, this is crazy,” I interrupted him. “I do not live like this. I have screwed around in my time, but I have never ever been someone’s other woman. I can’t be that. You have to leave your wife. Oh Christ, what am I saying. I don’t even know you. This is nuts. I don’t even know you.”
“Blue.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? What do we have in common? You are eight years younger than I am; our life experiences have been completely different. We didn’t even grow up with the same music. Stop smiling, I’m serious. My life is my daughter and my art. Your life is, or should be, your wife and your son and your animals. I hate to tell you but I am afraid of animals, especially horses. Not to mention we are every cliché in the book. I refuse to be a cliché.”
“Godiva Blue, you couldn’t be a cliché if you worked at it for the next ten years.”
“Yeah, like hell.” I lay back down beside him and made him look at me. “About your marriage,” I began.
“Mari wants to move back to California. She’s had a definite job offer this time, in a big accounting firm in San Diego, and her family is there. She says she has never been happy here.”
“I was about to say I don’t want details.”
“I know.” But he went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “Mari says that if she were the man and I were the woman I’d move with her. She says I might resent it, even hate her for it, but I’d go.”
“She’s right,” I said, not wanting to.
“I know, but knowing doesn’t solve a thing. I will not move.”
“No more. I don’t want to hear more.” I peered down the lengths of our bodies, unearthly under the glimmer of watery stars through the high window, past our four feet sprouting comically like flowering stalks. His jeans and shirt lay jumbled with mine on the cement floor near cans of ochre and vermilion. There is no denying the longing that rushed over me. Shit, the no-holds-barred desire. Apologies will not make it right. Excuses will not make what happened go away. I put my arms around his skinny, naked male chest and held on tight.
We were not alone again, Joe and I, not that way, for over a month. We talked, of course. I told myself it was turning into friendship, that friendship was possible between men and women, right? Even highly charged friendship. I had been alone as a woman for so long; didn’t I deserve friendship? He’d call and we’d yak like teenagers, on and on about God knows what. Amazing, isn’t it, how much people who barely know each other find to talk about when the chemical mix is flowing. A couple of times we did meet somewhere for coffee or a beer, but if we were in a bar and his hand grazed mine reaching for his glass across the table, I quickly pulled my hand back so he wouldn’t get ideas.
Bullshit. Let’s get real, Godiva. I knew what I was getting into. Maybe I didn’t admit it, but I knew. How we stood together between cars in the parking lot at the Waffle House in Perry three days before Halloween. Talking one moment, kissing the next, sucking together like magnetic dolls. Unavoidable as gasping for air to keep from drowning. Sure, I pulled back, eventually, but I was lost to desire. There is no other way to say it. Whatever conversation we had was beside the point.
In November there were two more encounters. Only two. One at a motel toward Gainesville, one at Cleo’s while she was in Boca Raton, conveniently leaving me keys with, I swear, a wink. I never discussed Joe with her, never mentioned his name, but she made it clear she knew. If anything, she enjoyed the intrigue. Her artist and her cowboy getting together. Shit, getting it on.
I assume that’s why she dropped Thanksgiving on my head, that tortuous afternoon with Joe and Mari and Philip, the slimy contortions of avoided glances and inevitable comparisons. I was chewing my turkey leg with fangs of jealousy I thought I’d left behind forever at the eighth-grade spring dance when Carl Epstein dropped me for Susie Ware. If the comparison sounds juvenile, that’s the point. Closing in on forty years old, still under the sway of eighth-grade emotions. They did not make me any happier now than they had when I was thirteen. Stop and desist, I ordered myself. Go cold turkey on young Joe. But when he called later that night, off I went, God-knows-why.
I mean, I am not your typical middle-aged spinster aching with the lonely need to connect to others. I have never been a lonely person until this fall. I have always made a clear distinction between “alone” and “loneliness,” just like they do in the women’s mags. I have had good reasons to choose alone—well, alone with Dylan.
But I can’t talk about Dylan yet, or I will break down and that will be the end of any sorting, any working through toward some kind of clarity.
Anyway, I always kept my life full enough with my art and Dylan. And this fall, I had actual other people in it besides. Louise and I were going for coffee after school a couple of times a week. She’d started a course toward her master’s at the University extension center and credited me for her decision. She had no idea I’d faked the I Ching’s message, of course, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her. She thought it was such a big step to take the course, and for her I guess it was. Her husband—a typical southern macho-man if I ever met one, though I didn’t share that insight with Louise, either—was bent out of shape that she was spending evenings away from home. I mean, my God, it was only a Spanish course that met once a week.
Then there were the Franklins. We finished Treasure Island and were deep into A Wrinkle in Time when the doctors said David could go home the week before Thanksgiving. He was still bedridden with his injured spine, but much more lively. I brought him a magic set. To Myra’s credit, she was a willing magician’s assistant and even learned a few tricks herself. We’d begun to like each other, Myra and me, amazing as that sounds. She often invited me to go along when they drove back down for his physical therapy.
God knows, Myra is not someone I’d ever call my friend. I believe the hospital in Perry is as far from Esmeralda as she’s ever traveled. And she chews gum constantly, wads of it. But our lives, seemingly so different in most of the particulars, have their similarities. For one thing, Myra has been a single mom all of David’s life. When she was still pregnant, David’s father went to prison on charges she does not talk about, and he hasn’t been seen since. I caught inklings of the pressures she must be under, bits of conversation I overheard between her and her mother and her ex-mother-in-law and, once, that pompous Reverend Brasleton. Everyone in Esmeralda knows Myra’s business and won’t let her forget it.
So with all these new friends, not to mention Cleo and Dylan, I had no reason to be lonely. Shit, I didn’t have time to be lonely. At school all day, in my studio until midnight most nights getting ready for Cleo’s show deadline. But the idea of Joe would not stop interfering. I’d be working away and a net of missing him would drop over me, would tighten and cleave until I could not lift my arms to work.
Then last week, Cleo did her little number. Dylan tucked away at my mother’s, right? Mari off with Philip to visit her family in California—leaving Joe behind, whe
ther by his choice or hers I wasn’t sure. So Cleo could not leave the erotic danger of coincidence to chance. Oh, no, she had to invite us for dinner.
I stewed for about half an hour, wasn’t going to go, was going to tell Cleo to cool it. Then I said to hell with it, go for it, live it out. So I decked myself out in my gauzy embroidered dress, the only clothing I own that makes me feel female sexy, the way the light stretchy material clings and falls, and went off to chez Gallagher with bells on, literally, my Christmas bell earrings.
We ate shrimp and dirty rice, drank too much wine. Somewhere along the way, Cleo conveniently disappeared into the kitchen. Joe came around the table, leaned close and lifted a heavy twist of hair where it lay loosely braided on my bare shoulder.
“Oh Christ, don’t do this,” I said, not meaning one word. “I’m too …” His fingers grazed my cheek and neck and all I could think was how long had it been. To have a man stay all night in my bed, God, how long had it been?
The next morning, he was up before the sun. I heard him puttering around in the kitchen, making us buttered toast we ate on the back step wrapped together in an old cotton blanket against the early chill after the moon had set but before the sun had risen. Not dark exactly but as if all color had seeped out of the world. I have always been horrified by the idea of color blindness but for that half hour I appreciated the subtleties of a monochrome life. The lawn chair a darkish gray, the grass and bushes a lighter gray, his bare hand on my bare thigh gray upon gray yet distinct. By the time I could begin to make out the first pulse beat of palest beige which would gradually deepen into familiar rust reds, sandy browns, yellowy greens, Joe was gone to his animals and I was heading into my studio, our rhythm together as established as if it had been in place for years.
Three days, four nights, we lived our little dream life. As soon as Joe came back to the cottage after work, we ate grilled-cheese sandwiches or peanut butter, whatever was fast and easy. We made love in my old iron bed like two bear cubs. Furry, playful, animal sex. Afterward we lit a fire, and he stretched out on the carpet, his back against the clawfooted couch, while I sketched. Him mostly. Around ten or eleven, we drove to his place so he could check the livestock and horses. I did not go inside Mari’s house. I sat on a bale of hay, stroking the barn cat or walked with Joe on his rounds. Neither of us slept much, but we didn’t care. We were operating on pure adrenaline.
I reported to school for a few hours every morning, checked the systems, made the repairs I always make over Christmas vacation, cleaned up. It was easy work, almost restful. I spent the afternoons tearing it up in the studio, working like crazy on my razor-blade heart—a fitting choice as it has turned out—wowing myself on the oxymoronic beauty of the imagery. The razor-blade chips were a bitch to work with. I wore gloves and still ended up with a million cuts. I didn’t care. A certain quality of pain was what I was after, along with a mirroring sheen.
I remember this afternoon, as if it were years ago, picking up a pair of ornate agate buttons, weighing them in my palm, trying to decide if I should use them. I ran my thumb over their swirly smoothness and realized I was disgustingly happy. I knew what we had was limited. I can’t even say I pretended we were in love. But my creativity and sexuality were swirling together, giving me incredible energy. I was giddy, I was tipsy, I was dance-on-the-tabletop drunk with selfish carnal pleasure. Have the gods ever allowed selfish carnal pleasure to go unremarked?
When I heard the truck, I ran outside still holding the buttons, hoping Joe had somehow managed to get away early; it was New Year’s Eve and I had champagne chilling. No Joe, only the mail truck.
I have always loved getting the mail, the delicious spark of anticipation walking to the mailbox. Back when we first nailed it up on the post, Dylan and I painted Day-Glo fish on the sides of the box. After ten years, the original metal was beginning to show through, giving the fish tails a phosphorescent quality that pleased me a lot. I was feeling kind of phosphorescent myself.
Bills, solicitations, a postcard. I laughed at the three-dimensional photograph of an erupting volcano before turning it over to read the greeting.
OAHU IS GLORIOUS. YOU’D LOVE THE LIGHT AND COLORS, JUDY, ALL BLUES AND GREENS. AND DYLAN, THE BOYS ARE ADORABLE. XXXOOO GRAM
P.S. DYLAN DEAR, I ENJOYED OUR LITTLE CHAT WHEN I CALLED. BACK AFTER THE NEW YEAR BEARING GIFTS.
People talk about their hearts stopping: Believe them. Everything stopped. Heart, lungs, nerve endings. The works. They started again, of course, in time for the heart to finish its beat, but I will be forevermore someone slightly else.
The brain, at least the conscious thinking part, must have stayed stuck longer. I found myself in the kitchen, the postcard in my right hand, those agate buttons still squeezed tight in my left. I was shaking uncontrollably.
“This is some kind of crazy mistake,” I told myself over and over until the tremors eased. I rechecked the postmark—last Saturday and no return address, no hotel where she could be reached. There had to be some mistake. Where was Dylan if she wasn’t with my mother? I called Hilton Head and got the machine.
But there had to be an explanation. Cass Culpepper would be able to explain; she’d gone with Dylan. I saw them drive off together with my own eyes. When Louise called me to say Cass had called her to say they’d arrived, I was in the middle of putting on my dress for dinner at Cleo’s. I should have wondered right then why my mother or Dylan hadn’t bothered to touch base, but I didn’t. I was a fool.
Louise phoned again the other day to say Cass was back. And again I was not paying full attention. Joe was here. God forbid I give his presence away, and besides, I was impatient to get back to him. I did say to Louise, I remember saying it, that I hadn’t been able to get my mother or Dylan on the phone. I did ask Louise what Cass said they had been doing.
“You know Cass, she is always so vague, but she did mention how nice your mother was,” Louise said. That should have been the biggest tip-off of all.
I keep going over in my mind how I could let five goddamn days go by without communication. So many lost opportunities. Why was I so nonchalant? I should have known in my bones that something was off. I did call. But when I left messages on my mother’s machine and did not hear back, I let myself assume they were trying me when I was in the studio or taking a walk. After all, I didn’t have a machine for them to leave messages in return. I even joked to Joe one evening that they must really be living it up, that, knowing my mother, Dylan was going to come home with a complete new wardrobe. Five days did not seem all that long at the time, but now.
I tried my mother one more time. The machine. I dialed the Culpeppers. The phone was becoming my lifeline. Cass would clear this all up. Five rings, six, seven. When I finally heard the girl’s disinterested “hello,” I was already in the act of hanging up. I could not speak.
Yet I was very calm driving to their house, walking up to the front door, knocking, saying hello to Louise’s boy, the one with the freckles. Then I was inside. Louise and Cass loomed toward me, all out of proportion, as if I were staring at them through an empty soda bottle: Louise in a red sweater, her back against a table, a book clutched to her chest; Cass barefoot in a fluffy yellow bathrobe, the left side of her head covered in a towel, the right side a short thick mass of shiny black hair.
“Godiva honey, is something the matter?” Louise said and put her hand over her mouth like the speak-no-evil-monkey. I caught a whiff of myself in the mirror by the door, my shirt buttoned wrong, my face blotched and puffy although I had not shed a tear.
“You tell me, Cass.” I stepped toward the girl, wondering at the strange sounds leaving my mouth.
Cass bent over and rewound the towel around her hair. Then she straightened and looked calmly into my eyes. She spoke without the least surprise, as if she were picking up a conversation begun some time before.
“She wants to find her father.” Cass has perfected that noncommittal half-dead voice girls her age aspire to. “The man
in the picture. She says you kept him from her and the picture is proof.”
Louise gasped.
Outside someone slammed a car door. I heard a male voice calling, “Barney, come on home.” My fists clenched.
“She’s doing fine, though,” Cass went on. “I’ve heard from her.” The girl’s face was maddeningly blank. How much I hated her I could not begin to measure.
“Heard from her? She called here?” Louise asked, genuinely shocked.
“Wrote. I got the letter today. Not at the house of course.” Cass glanced toward Louise, then me with what I took to be the beginning of a smirk. “She knows what she’s doing, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” I began to laugh then, and I knew I was losing control big time. When I stopped laughing, I was choking. I had to work to catch my breath. “You will show it to me, now.”
“I’ve already thrown it away, but she said to tell you she’s fine if you asked. We hoped it would take until at least Tuesday before you figured out she wasn’t at her grandmother’s.” She shrugged. “You’re actually two days late.” A cut to the bone and she knew it.
Speechless doesn’t begin to cover it. Oh, the urge I felt to punch the words out of that tight little mouth was blinding.
I turned and walked out of the house. I don’t remember driving home, but suddenly there I was in Dylan’s bedroom, speaking aloud the names of her old stuffed animals—Squinchy, Target, Marshmallow, Pally, Momo—as if they knew her secrets and if I asked they’d tell me. The rain pounding the tin roof drowned out any answers they might offer. I left them, left the room as I found it, closed the door and went to stand on the back porch.
Another winter rain was building up across the Gulf. Behind me the screen door banged open and shut with the wind. Gusts of wet salty air pelted my chest and forehead and knees. My cigarette sputtered out in the ashtray already half filled with water. I had never felt such utter despair. The night Evie Pinkston’s brother called and told me about Evie being shot in the neck, the night my father finally let go while I stood at the foot of his hospital bed, clutching the metal rails and sobbing, those moments of death were beyond my control. This, this was much worse. This was raw fear, with a slimy underside of guilt.