Garden of Thorns

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  He swallowed. “Sure, I remember.”

  “You looked gorgeous in that kilt. It kind of turned me on.”

  “Really?” Maybe he could rent a kilt outfit here in Texas…. He imagined Travis Ward’s response to such garb.

  “Sometimes I really regret what didn’t happen that night.”

  “That makes two of us,” Mark replied.

  Her eyes were soft, cautious and yet flickering with puckish humor. She finished the rest of her pastry and licked her lips. “You know, we should call the Guinness Book of World Records. We’ve been in foreplay since last June sometime.”

  Mark managed not to spew coffee and crumbs all over the kitchen. He set the mug down with a clunk and wiped his hands. “Hilary, come here.”

  Only a small table lamp shone in the living room. The radio was tuned to the Dallas classical station, and something tender wafted into the shadows. The couch was wide and soft. Hilary curled as snugly against his chest as he’d remembered, half beside him, half on his lap. Her black pumps tumbled onto the floor. Her mouth tasted of cinnamon.

  It was encouraging how well she could kiss, delicately, rather hesitantly, but with an imaginative flair of her tongue he found very stimulating. Hilary had style, no doubt about it.

  How appropriate that his fingertips should be so sensitive from last night’s frustrated music. He had started to feel like a steam engine with a blocked throttle. Puffs were coming from his ears even now, probably, but he reset his gauges and dials. Control yourself, calm down….

  Her dress zipped up the back, unfortunately. He contented himself with stroking its smooth satin and monitoring Hilary’s racing breath. His hand followed the sleek nylon arrows of her legs, ankle to calf, knee to thigh. I’ll be damned, he thought. She was wearing stockings and garters, not pantyhose, the modern chastity belts which were the devil to get into. Her skin was silkier than the stockings. Careful, he told himself. His hand retreated to her knee and waited.

  Her face was hidden in his throat, her breath bathing his larynx. She sighed. Her hand against his chest tightened into a fist; the other one kneaded his back. “Go on. Please.”

  Mark went on. His fingertips touched lace. Black lace, he was willing to bet—Hilary would have coordinated underwear. He found elastic and, with a cooperative slither from Hilary, tugged. He didn’t look at the flimsy garment to see if he’d been correct but tossed it aside.

  His nostrils filled with the warm scent of her body, a light perfume that reminded him of pale and fragile rosebuds. Like Lucia’s garden on an April afternoon, her prized antique roses just starting, tentatively, to bloom. He imagined Hilary like Lucia’s garden in June, blossom-rich, the sweet heady aroma of roses so thick he felt as if he were bathing in it.

  He was starting to sweat, steam building in his skull and in the pit of his stomach. Patience, he thought. Gentleness. A couple of choruses of “Give Me a Man With a Slow Hand”.

  He played her like he’d play his guitar, aware of every subtlety of her breath and body—sharp inhalation, slow exhalation, quick arch, prolonged wriggle. After a few minutes she was moaning, demurely, as he would’ve expected. He resigned himself to her tearing a handful of shirt off his chest, and focused on the tousled top of her head before the sight of her legs splayed to his touch made his eyes fall from their sockets. The steam in the pit of his stomach was condensing, rusting his resolve.

  Patience, he told himself, and was rewarded by her surprised, “Oh!” Her shudder at first threatened to buck her out of his arms and then left her limp in them. He flexed the blood back into his fingers, thinking, She didn’t fake that. As if Hilary would ever fake anything.

  “Oh,” she said again, breathing a long sigh of astonishment and gratification.

  Leaping up and thrusting his fist into the air in triumph wouldn’t do, Mark told himself sternly. Neither would pushing her down on the couch and giving vent to the steam that was choking him. There were certain proprieties to be observed. He’d pick her up and carry her into the bedroom.

  “Oh,” she wheezed. “No one’s ever touched me there before. I’ve never felt like that before.”

  No, he’d help her to her feet and have her walk; he’d never be able to carry her up those stairs. “You don’t mean that, sweetness, of course you have.”

  She stiffened. Her hand released his shirt. Oh God, he asked himself, what did I say?

  Her smothered voice said, “Ben wasn’t trying to make me feel good. He wanted to hurt me.”

  “Hey.” Mark heaved her up so he could see her face. It was slightly crumpled, flushed pink and damp. Her eyes stared with incredulous horror. “Hilary, I wasn’t talking about him—God, what a time to bring him up—I meant….” What did he mean? He raked through his memory, not so much trying to remember what he’d said, but why he’d said it.

  She pulled herself from his arms, smoothed down her clothing, and sat with her back to him. There was the zipper. Mark raised his hand toward it and stopped. If he could’ve bitten out his tongue and laid it at her feet, he would have. His teeth were clenched tightly enough to bite through iron. His sinuses twinged with unrelieved pressure.

  Hilary’s voice was fast approaching its usual cool precision. “There’s never been anyone but you, Mark. I thought you knew that.”

  “Why should I know that? I—I assumed you’d dated guys in France, that you’d gotten a little more experience….” He knew with awful certainty that that wasn’t what she’d wanted him to say. No assumptions. Yeah.

  “I dated, yes. Some of the guys were really nice. Some of them just wanted a casual, meaningless grope and fumble. No thanks—I don’t need that.”

  Mark’s hand dropped away from the zipper. “I guess I wanted someone else to take the responsibility of—of teaching you.”

  “I’m not asking you to take any responsibility for me.”

  He grasped her shoulders, with some inchoate intention of playing his trump card, declaring that he cared for her. But she flinched away. In his stomach, steam turned to ice. “Goddammit, Hilary, haven’t I proved by now that I won’t hurt you? That I won’t force anything on you?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t you see? It’s like being mutilated. I keep thinking that phantom limb is still there, that I can reach out and touch it. But it’s not there, it’s not there at all.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mark told her. “Haven’t you been paying attention this last half hour or so?”

  The radio announcer was droning something about Mozart, punctuated with sprightly tinkling harpsichord phrases. If this scene had a soundtrack, it was some soulful ballad like “Foggy, Foggy Dew”. She didn’t seem to hear the music. She probably hadn’t heard him, either.

  Mark scooted down the couch. Very carefully, as if Hilary were either fragile or poisonous, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. She didn’t relax against him, but she didn’t pull away, either. She was very still, taut and controlled. It occurred to him that he’d never seen her cry.

  They’d broken up last summer. They should’ve stayed broken up. And yet leaving her would be like strolling past a terrible accident, bloody bodies strewn across the pavement, offering no aid. It would be like amputating part of his own body. “How long were you in therapy?” he asked, his breath barely stirring the tendrils of her hair.

  “Not long enough, obviously. My mother took me to this old guy with a beard—Freud’s little brother, I think—who’d been getting rich off her and her friends’ bored social butterfly routine. He told me that unconsciously I’d been leading Ben on because he was some sort of father figure to me, and I needed to work through my incestuous desires before I’d recover.”

  “Jesus,” Mark groaned. “What crap!”

  “Then I went to one of the college counselors, and she pointed out how Ben wanted power, not sex, and that helped a little. But therapy can’t do everything. You know that.”

  “Oh yeah, I know. Therapy just gave me a handle on
my folks’ divorce, on Karen and the baby and my own break-up. I had to tote my own barges and lift my own bales. It was only last year I finally felt I was free of all that. After I met you.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be free. Maybe I never wanted to, until I met you.” She lay back against him, adopting a relaxed attitude, and yet still stiff, still wary, still turned away. “Mark, it’s not fair. You’re giving but not getting anything. We can go on into the bedroom. I’ll be all right.”

  His eyes crossed at the prospect, and his body reminded him that it’d been a year since he’d last broken his sexual fast. Not that he’d been waiting for Hilary, necessarily, it was just that he disdained the cheap fix. Typical of her to call his bluff.

  Her face was hidden by her bowed head. He considered the nape of her neck, slender and fragile, like sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey bending before the executioner. “Sure. And you lie there with your eyes shut and your teeth gritted, thinking of England or Regensfeld or whatever, doing your duty. What you’re giving me now is your trust, and I know how valuable that is. When you’re ready to move on, I will be too. Boy, will I be ready.”

  “Your self-restraint is admirable,” Hilary said.

  “So give me an Oscar—best performance by a sensitive New Age guy.” She turned, inspecting his expression. Her face was pale again, no longer crumpled. Her eye make-up had smeared just enough to make her eyes look bruised. He let her see the weary bitterness in his own face—if she wouldn’t fake anything, neither would he. “I’m all right,” he said at last. “For God’s sakes don’t start feeling guilty about me.”

  She smiled in similar weariness. “I was paying attention this last-half hour, believe me. I was absolutely riveted. Maybe next time…”

  A door crashed open in the neighboring town house. A woman shouted, her voice not muted nearly well enough by the wall, “You don’t care, do you? Three lousy little words, that’s all I ask, but no, you don’t give a damn!” The sound of a male growl receded from the building. The door slammed shut. A car started up, then sped off.

  Three lousy little words, Mark repeated to himself. I love you. Hilary had never once demanded those words, just as she’d never demanded an accounting of his past lovers. He’d said “I love you” to Karen often enough, and the words had frayed and broken. Actions were more meaningful than words.

  “Words are comforting,” said Hilary. “Words are metaphysics. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh.’ I’ve always wondered if physical love wasn’t once considered sacrilegious because when you start touching and kissing you stop talking.”

  “Could be,” Mark said obligingly.

  A sudden burst of music from next door, a country-western singer wailing the old standard “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, stopped as suddenly as it started. A crash against the wall made the windows rattle.

  Maybe, Mark thought, he should take Hilary to a junkyard, give her a sledgehammer, and let her beat up a few old cars symbolizing the male of the species.

  “Do you want to finish the coffee and whatchamacallits?” Hilary asked, her self-possession intact.

  “Sopapillas? They’ll be cold by now.”

  “Well, yeah, so am I. I’m sorry, Mark.”

  “Will you please stop apologizing?”

  “Yes, dear.” Hilary pulled herself away and stood up.

  Mark noted from the corner of his eye that a bit of black lace was draped rakishly over the philodendron on the end table. He decided he wouldn’t mention it.

  Hilary thanked him with a smile. “Would you like me to ask Nathan tomorrow what it was he wanted you to do for him? When he was talking about Arthur’s biography and Osborne and everything….”

  “Oh, yeah, when he broke off to fetch Count Dracula. Would you please?”

  They said their goodbyes, Hilary pale and composed, Mark somewhat less so. When he walked out the door he kicked the newspaper that lay on the front walk, then guiltily retrieved it and laid it on the Astroturf doormat. His mouth still tasted of cinnamon, and the hand with which he rubbed his aching sinuses carried the scent of roses. The sweetest roses, he thought, always had thorns.

  The night was starting to clear, the cold wind sweeping away the clouds. A star or two shone out, interspersed by the twinkling lights of airplanes. The van was chilly, but Mark didn’t turn on the heater.

  Osborne House was dark, not a light showing. Mark visualized Jenny’s pine bedstead, the Navajo blanket mounded over her sleeping body, the gray kitten curled at her side. Or was a man—Kenneth, perhaps—curled at her side? No, not Kenneth. Surely Jenny had too much class for Kenneth.

  Swearing under his breath, Mark turned the corner and went home to a cold shower and his guitar.

  Chapter Six

  Hilary parked in a space marked “Staff”, locked her car, and walked purposefully toward the entrance of the Lloyd. This morning the building’s granite seemed less pink than beige, sparkling in the sunshine just as it had in the nighttime floodlights. Dogwoods frothed with white blossoms along the sidewalk. Windblown daffodils huddled in the shelter of the building. A mourning dove called gently, either summoning its mate or issuing an all-points bulletin: “I’m available”.

  Hilary plunged out of the cold, blustery morning into the still air of the museum. She might have imagined the carousel of people and voices last night; now the atrium floor was a smooth expanse of marble, glowing pale and austere. To one side a custodian looped the cord around his floor polisher and pushed it away. A guard strolled down one of the galleries, his steps echoing. Beneath the ficus trees a woman arranged postcards at a souvenir counter. Maybe the counter had been disguised as something else during the reception, a table of crystallized fruit and flower petals, perhaps; Hilary didn’t remember seeing it. But she’d been pretty giddy last night—if not quite giddy enough.

  Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment and pleasure, and with more guilt than she’d have liked. This morning she hadn’t been able to slip on her pantyhose without touching herself curiously. But the glow was gone. Last night she’d lain awake, pacing the floor of her own mind, replaying the evening again and again.

  Just because the ending had been wrong didn’t mean the rest hadn’t been right. She didn’t want to torment Mark. He hadn’t meant to imply she’d enjoyed Ben’s attack, like one of her mother’s friends who’d found it all too thrilling, like a bodice-ripper novel. Mark was tiptoeing so warily around her emotional house of cards that inevitably he’d sometimes lose his balance and knock it over. She resolved never again to start anything she couldn’t finish—even though it would be safer never to start anything at all.

  Now she was safe in a museum, where voices were subdued, passions controlled, senses refined. She’d gotten her job here on her own abilities, not through family connections. She hadn’t driven by Osborne House on her way to work; a glimpse of Mark’s sturdy body and flashing grin would’ve been nice, but body and grin weren’t all she had to interest her.

  Hilary pushed through the door marked “Offices—Private”, and started down a corridor. She peeled off her sweater, hoping her blouse, corduroy vest, and wool skirt would pass as properly businesslike attire.

  Nathan appeared out of a doorway. Even though he had replaced his tuxedo with a sweater and slacks, he reminded Hilary more than ever of a penguin. In fact, the steaming mug he carried was printed with a cartoon of a polar bear lurking massively among a group of penguins.

  “Hilary! Right on the dot! Come on, get your caffeine fix before I put you to work.” Nathan whisked her into a small room where the crassness of a bank of vending machines was mitigated by posters of past exhibitions. A window overlooked a grove of young sycamore trees, their white bark glistening, the haze of green on their branches dancing in the wind. Hilary accepted a foam cup of coffee and passed on the doughnuts. Nathan took one, so casually that she realized with a smile that he already had a crumb of sugar glaze at the corner of his mouth.

  Wiping his hands, Na
than ambled back into the hallway. Just opposite the door a video camera swiveled back and forth like a vulture hovering over a water hole, ready to pounce on vandals and thieves. Nathan waved at two passers by and recited a couple of names Hilary didn’t quite hear. The people nodded. Hilary offered them a crazed smile and trotted after Nathan.

  He opened a door marked, “Director: Wesley Bradshaw”. An outer office contained a secretary’s desk and two upholstered chairs where petitioners could gather moss. A statue of a Hindu goddess was balanced on a pedestal in the corner, treading bronze skulls beneath her bronze foot. Hilary frowned—those bright green dots scattered over the goddess’s ample thighs indicated corrosive bronze disease. A plaque on the pedestal read “Courtesy of the Coburg Foundation”. It must be here to be treated.

  Nathan knocked on the inner door and opened it without waiting for an answer. “Here’s our new assistant, Wes. Hilary Chase. I’m going to turn her loose on the Regensfeld collection. Hilary, this is Wes Bradshaw.”

  A burly man rose from behind a desk the width of Osborne’s front hall. A telephone, a felt-tip pen, and a legal pad containing four lines of cramped writing sat like desert islands on the expanse of polished walnut. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Chase,” said Bradshaw in a lotion-smooth voice at odds with his physique.

  His handshake was limply tentative, and Hilary suppressed the urge to wipe her own hand on her skirt. “I’m very pleased to be here, Dr. Bradshaw.”

  Bradshaw looked at her so intently that she wondered for a moment if she’d dribbled coffee down her blouse. His features were crowded in the center of his face like a logo on a basketball, leaving his broad cheeks and high hairless forehead vacant. His mouth was an incongruous rosebud above his heavy chin; his eyes were an indeterminate blue that matched the indeterminate mousy brown of his remaining hair. A good, gray academic bureaucrat, Hilary calculated. A safe choice for Museum Director.

  A couple of years ago she’d heard about the previous director of the Lloyd. He’d been altogether too aggressive in weeding out fakes and forgeries, reproductions and replicas. Hilary could sympathize with the museum trustees, faced with attendance and upkeep figures. If they acquired only undisputedly authentic items, their entire collection could be housed in a telephone booth. Surely Bradshaw’s compromise was the best possible one, to clearly label, for example, Arthur Coburg’s Van Meegeren forgery.