Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  “How does a woman prove adultery?” she asked.

  “Your man step out on you?” asked Ginny, the one unmarried woman among them.

  “Maybe I stepped out on him,” she said, adding more than another drop of whiskey from her hip flask into her morning medicinal.

  Millie raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, stop, Millie! I don’t need your high-minded judgment right now. I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself.”

  “I didn’t say a thing,” Millie protested.

  Elisabeth figured Nate would have to file for the divorce himself, accusing her of adultery with Nemacio. It seemed a small stain on her reputation, and far less severe than how Nate would fare under the humiliation of buggery allegations. The price she’d pay for getting out of her sham marriage. It was also a lever. If Nate refused to file for a divorce, she would threaten to tell the judge about his buggery.

  “With all you talking of divorce, I don’t even want to tell about Bucky,” said Ginny.

  “Who’s Bucky?” Luenza asked.

  Ginny told them about a handsome man called Lucky Bucky from Georgia who’d been pestering her to join him for dinner.

  “I might give him a chance. Seems a decent fella. And clean. It’s not like I’ve got anything to lose,” said Ginny.

  “Don’t be so sure, Ginny. A man can take your happiness if you’re not careful. Trust me, I know,” said Elisabeth.

  “What do you know, Señora Parker?”

  She knew the sound of his voice like her own but didn’t turn around, just kept looking straight ahead like she hadn’t heard him and continued sipping her morning medicinal. Nemacio stepped in front of her, shading her from the morning sun. She didn’t look up, instead stared into her coffee cup like the grounds floating on top might predict her future.

  “I’m asking, Elisabeth. What man took your happiness?”

  “Who are you?” Luenza asked, standing up.

  Nemacio didn’t answer, just kept fixed on Elisabeth. When she finally looked up, her stomach flipped. It’d been nearly six months since she’d last seen him. His curls were longer, but his face was still clean-shaven. His eyelashes curled up thick and long, and his dark eyes pierced through her, looking for something.

  “What man?” Nemacio asked again.

  “That’s none of your business,” she said, flippant.

  “Who’s this, Elisabeth?” Ginny asked.

  He bowed with that ridiculous charm.

  “I’m Nemacio Gabilan. Mrs. Parker’s . . .”

  “Business partner. He’s my business partner,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Luenza, looking Nemacio up and down like she was sizing up a hock of ham.

  “You’ve got a partner in your bookshop?” Millie asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “You got something on the side,” said Ginny.

  “No. Not in my shop. The claim.”

  “Isn’t Mr. Parker your partner?” Ginny asked.

  Elisabeth was about to explain when Nemacio threw the book on her lap, angry.

  “I am not your Heathcliff,” he said.

  “You misunderstood,” she said, slow.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Elisabeth stayed quiet, not wanting to quarrel with him in front of her friends.

  “I’ve come for Álvaro’s guitar,” he said.

  “It’s at my shop,” she said, while Ginny and Luenza and Millie looked on, dumbfounded.

  “I want it,” he said.

  Elisabeth took her time, sipping the rest of her morning medicinal slow. Sipping and sipping for courage. Making him wait. He loomed over, patient. Finally she got up, handing Ginny the empty cup.

  “You need our help?” Ginny asked.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “We’ll come with,” said Millie, standing up.

  “No need. I’ll catch up later,” she said.

  “Let her go, Millie,” said Luenza.

  Elisabeth walked down the hill toward Spilt Rock Books and Print taking tiny steps, slow and deliberate. Her face burned up at knowing he was walking right behind. When they rounded the corner out of sight, Nemacio grabbed Elisabeth’s hand.

  “Elisabeth,” Nemacio said.

  “Don’t! You’ve no right. After all this time. Coming up here now. And for that damn guitar, smashed up as it is!”

  “Please forgive me,” he said, but didn’t drop her hand.

  His gentleness made her even more angry.

  “Don’t you please me! I’ve not been sitting around waiting on you.”

  It was a lie. She’d been waiting. She’d hoped once he’d read the book, he’d come back to her. When they reached her store, she didn’t invite him inside, but he came in anyway. He shut the door, locking them inside, together. Holding herself away, she watched as he blew on his hands and rubbed them together. He slipped off his coat and hat, hanging both on the hook next to the door, like he was at home. Throwing two logs in the firebox, he stoked and blew until flames lit the cabin warm. He looked around at her books and carving tools and paper and ink and prints, and peered into her little back room, seeing Álvaro’s broken guitar propped up in the corner. He picked it up and came back to the front room, cradling it.

  “Lo seinto, mi amor,” he said.

  “No!” she said, holding up her hand.

  She wasn’t going to fall for his Spanish words reeling her in this time. But he put the guitar down and started to sing. She nearly crumpled.

  “Since the night we met, seeking in wandering. A way to forget. But it’s no matter by what path I may depart. I can’t escape from my Malagueña,” he sang, soft.

  Not wanting to lose herself again, she folded her arms over her chest, but his singing started melting her cold heart, softening her into a mushy puddle. When he finished, they looked at each other in the stillness of the cabin as the fire crackled.

  “I don’t want you here,” she lied, hoping he’d believe her.

  “Mi amor,” he said, taking a step toward her.

  Still a little drunk from her morning medicinal, she pushed him in the chest, but he didn’t move.

  “Get out,” she said, weak.

  He placed his hands on his heart like he was in pain. When she pushed at his shoulder again, he caught her by the wrist. She struggled, and he grabbed the other wrist, drawing her in tight up against him.

  “I can’t stay away from you,” he said, whispering heavy into her ear. “I tried. I tried staying away. But you’ve got hold of me.”

  “Let go!”

  She didn’t struggle to get out from under his strength. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, strung out long and messy, pulling her head back. He brushed his lips along the side of her neck, first cold, then warming. She exhaled, shaking under his touch.

  “You want me,” he said.

  He was so damn arrogant.

  “No. I don’t,” she lied.

  He pressed his mouth urgent onto hers then, kissing and sucking too hard at first, then slow and lush, pulling and luring until she went weak on her feet. He groped and fumbled desperate, tearing at her blouse and tugging down her skirt. When she leaned heavy into him, he pulled her down to the floor, his curls brushing her bare breasts.

  “Say you want me,” he said.

  “I don’t want you . . .” she hesitated.

  He stood up. He pulled the curtain shut over the little window for privacy, and then grabbed a chair, slamming it down in front of her. He sat, waiting quiet with his brow furrowed, looking down on her.

  Lying on the bare floor with her clothes peeled half off, she wasn’t cold. Perhaps that’s all it took for her to thaw, a man to sing. Talk about his soul. Tell her what she wanted for her own self. Tear at her clothes. Tell her to beg for him. How pathetic she’d become.

  “Say it,” he said.

  “I . . . I,” she started, her voice shaking. “I don’t want you . . . leaving me again.”

  In front of the fir
elight, he kept his eyes on her while he slipped off his boots and unbuttoned each button on his shirt so slow that she could hardly stand it. When he slipped off his shirt and stepped out of his pants, she held her breath.

  “I need you to say it,” he said, standing tall over her, naked.

  “I want . . . you,” she said, breathing in big gulps.

  He was on top of her then, and she gasped as he filled her world, spinning it full of promises. Consumed by want, they moved together frantic, losing themselves in each other on the floor in front of the fire, loving full, absorbing and consuming. Not out of obligation or duty or guilt or loyalty or custom or law, but with a loving they’d read about in books. The naked, wrenching, blinding love that drowns you in the deep, drains you of all reason. A powerful, truthful loving that holds the earth together at its core. Forgetting. Creating. Making a new kind of love, in and more and deeper with a rhythm both tender and urgent, unearthing a bedrock of desire buried deep. He knew how to pleasure her like she was the only women in the world, and she gave all of herself over to him arching and shuddering and trembling, as he savored her passionate.

  31

  “Thou art to me a delicious torment.”

  They stayed together in her little back room of the Split Rock Books and Prints Shop loving on each other for three days while the spring rain pattered on the roof above. They stopped just to eat and sleep. Nemacio made her thistle tea with honey and fed her pine nuts and cooked her up a slab of beef seasoned with chili peppers he had in his knapsack. As he flipped the meat in the frying pan, she watched the muscles move along in his bare back, terrified the bliss would end. She could hardly breathe for the fear of it, thinking him far better medicine than whiskey.

  When they lay together in bed, she knew every inch of him. His silky curls. His smooth, delicious chest. His flat middle and arms rippled by hours of digging and hauling rock. And that little divot just below his hip bone leading down. She reached out, tracing a finger slow along the middle of his chest to his waist and below.

  “Solo tengo un amor,” he said.

  He combed her hair with a delicate shimmering comb made from an abalone shell.

  “It’s a creature so strong it only needs one single shell. It grabs hold of a rock like this when it gets afraid,” he said, cupping his large hand around her breast.

  Goose bumps rose up along her skin, and she tingled all over.

  “For you,” he said, tucking the comb into her hair. “To hold your hair out of your eyes while you work.”

  “I’m going to divorce him,” she said.

  “Divorce?”

  “He doesn’t want me.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that. A man doesn’t give up his family so easy.”

  “My father did.”

  She flooded open, talking about her family shame. About Henry’s Indian girl and her mother killing herself. About how she wracked with guilt thinking it was her fault. How she should’ve stayed back in Massachusetts to help set her mother’s mind right again. She cried in his arms and he rocked her, reassuring.

  “You did right by God,” he said.

  She scrunched up her nose, not understanding.

  “God’s got nothing to do with it,” she said, wiping her tears.

  “I don’t believe in divorce,” he said.

  She peeled herself out of his arms.

  “What’s that mean?”

  He looked sheepish, as if he had something terrible to say.

  “You made a promise to him.”

  “That was before I knew Nate liked loving on men.”

  “There are no exceptions with God,” he said, sitting up in bed.

  “I don’t give a damn what God thinks.”

  “You can’t mean that,” he said, serious.

  “I do. I refuse to waste the rest of my life waiting on God to fix things. Besides, I’d say you don’t care much what He thinks either, seeing as you’re here coveting another man’s wife.”

  “I didn’t intend to covet what’s not mine. I’m in love with you,” he said, tracing his finger lightly along the inside of her wrist. “But Nate . . . he’s your family. That’s the part I can’t reconcile. I’m wrestling with it.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, nonchalant. “Nate doesn’t care about me, and I don’t need him. I look after myself, and Luenza and Ginny and Millie are more family to me than Nate ever was.”

  She didn’t wait for him to respond but explained how she’d been trading her printing in exchange for mining shares in six claims over the past months.

  “Those shares secure my future, so I don’t need any man,” she said, as if she really believed it.

  “You need me,” he said, confident, like he knew for sure.

  “Want and need are two entirely different things,” she said.

  “Is that right?”

  He pushed her backward on the bed playful, and she giggled.

  “You don’t need this?” he asked, dragging his lips gentle along her collarbone.

  “Nope,” she said, feigning disinterest.

  “What about this?” he asked, licking her nipples, gentle.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head no.

  “You need this,” he said, kissing her tummy and down lower, putting his mouth on her sex.

  She sat up, shocked. She gathered her legs up and closed her knees, embarrassed.

  “Relájate,” he said, tugging at her legs and pushing her back on the soft rabbit-fur quilt.

  He began again, first kissing the inside of her knees, then licking the inside of her thighs with the tip of his tongue, working his way up and up. She gasped, panting nervous. He spread her knees apart, and her legs shook from her hips down to the tips of her toes, and she squirmed, feeling exposed. Laid bare. He held her legs wide open with his elbows and tasted her inside, moving his mouth down on her, sucking slow and slower until she gave in, relaxing, trusting, slipping into blind rapture. He listened to her body, nibbling harder and teasing his fingers up inside faster, until her moans echoed off the plank walls in a new voice saying, over again and again, I need you.

  32

  “Do not seek for things outside of yourself.”

  Nemacio came to her most Saturday nights that spring, sneaking up to her cabin in the dark so they could while away Sundays in each other’s arms, shaking the universe. Come Monday morning, he always made a pot of thistle tea and kissed her passionate, telling her to drink up before slipping back down to the claim before sunup. He said he loved her. Said she was his very own soul. And she believed him, returning to engraving with a heart so full of love that she poured out her whiskey jug and even passed on her morning medicinal with the ladies, taking her coffee black. He filled her with such contentment and hope that a calm sleep came so natural now that she almost didn’t wake up when smoke filled around Split Rock Books and Prints.

  She sat up, coughing in a fit, not quite understanding. Running outside for air, she saw a terrible chaos let loose. An angry wind whipped through the town, sweeping up stray embers from fire rings and striking them down upon cabins, and tents and trees, lighting them ablaze, brightening up the dark night. That pretty little town was no match against the firestorm flying as a mighty force atop the flimsy wooden shanties, sending folks running through the cold night clutching their belongings and screaming, as the fire cracked and roared like a demon unleashed.

  She raced inside for her books and began piling them outside until she realized the futility. Fire was sweeping down the hillside fast, consuming whatever lay in its path. She had no time for the books. Throwing on her dress and boots, she grabbed for the keys around her neck. Sweat dripped from her forehead as she fumbled open the floorboard locks under her bed. She grabbed her tin of money and mining share certificates just as flames broke through the wall, licking the room wild. Gagging with the smoke, she ran for the door and tripped, dropping her tins, scattering the coins and paper bills and certificates across the floor. Frantic, she c
rawled on all fours, her eyes stinging as she grabbed whatever she could reach, stuffing her savings, her livelihood, her independence, her freedom into skirt pockets before the fire broke through the roof, pressing down on her like the devil’s wrath taking its vengeance. As her small sack of gunpowder leaning against the wall popped, she snatched her box of engraving tools and fled out the door with her pockets full of who knows how much, while her entire shop went up in flames behind.

  She ran down the hill with the rest of the townsfolk, away from the firestorm destroying everything in its path, pushed along by the mad wind, and the smell of burning hogs filling the fiery night. She ran and ran until she reached the bottom of Deer Creek Gulch, where the whole town huddled together in the cold night as Manzanita City lit up like Hades. She found Luenza and stumbled over, hugging the boys. She drew a sigh of relief at seeing Ginny, and they all cried, watching the fire destroy so much in so little time. All of their hopes and dreams and new beginnings and hard work, gone in a spark. When Millie and Joe Stamps arrived safe in the crowd with Joe Junior, Elisabeth headed down into the river ravine, picking her way down the trail with the help of the moonlight. Down the hill. Toward the Goodwin Claim. Toward Nemacio.

  At dawn she reached the cabin, flinging open the door to see Nate and Francis curled up side by side against the winter’s cold in Henry’s old bedstead.

  “There’s been a fire!” she said, gasping with burning lungs.

  Nate scrambled for his nightshirt, red-faced. Francis didn’t move, just rolled onto his side looking sleepy and irritated at the intrusion. Nate swatted Francis’s foot.

  “Get up,” said Nate. “Put something on!”

  Francis dropped his leg over the bed, lazy, and sat up bare naked, staring defiant at Elisabeth. She looked around the cabin, frantic.

  “Tell me of the fire,” said Nate, holding her shoulders gentle.

  “Where is he?” Elisabeth asked, still in shock.