Touchy Subjects: Stories

by Emma Donoghue

  What was most unsettling was that I couldn't tell who was chatting up whom. It was a battle made up of feints and retreats. As we sipped our coffee, for instance, I murmured something faintly suggestive about hot liquids, then panicked and changed the subject. As we crowded back into the hall, I thought it was Lee's hand that guided my elbow for a few seconds, but she was staring forward so blankly I decided it must have been somebody else.

  Over dinner—a noisy affair in the cafeteria—Lee sat across the table from me and burnt her tongue on the apple crumble. I poured her a glass of water and didn't give her a chance to talk to anyone but me. At this point we were an island of English in a sea of Irish.

  The conversation happened to turn (as it does) to relationships and how neither of us could see the point in casual sex, because not only was it unlikely to be much good but it fucked up friendships or broke hearts. Sleeping with someone you hardly knew, I heard myself pronouncing in my world-weariest voice, was like singing a song without knowing the words. I told her that when she was my age she would feel the same way, and she said, Oh, she did already.

  My eyes dwelt on the apple crumble disappearing, spoon by spoon, between Lee's absentminded lips. I listened to the opinions spilling out of my mouth and wondered who I was kidding.

  By the time it came to the poetry reading that was meant to bring the conference to a lyrical climax, I was too tired to waste time. I reached into my folder for the only way I know to say what I really mean.

  Now, the word in Cork had been that Sylvia Dwyer was deep in the closet, which I'd thought was a bit pathetic but only to be expected. However.

  At the end of her reading, after she'd done a few about nature and a few about politics and a few I couldn't follow, she rummaged round in her folder. "This poem gave its name to this conference," she said, "but that's not why I've chosen it." She read it through in Irish first; I let the familiar vowels caress my ears. Her voice was even better live than on the CD from the library. And then she turned slightly in her seat, and, after muttering, "Hope it translates," she read it straight at me.

  your tongue and my tongue

  have much to say to each other

  there's a lot between them

  there are pleasures yours has over mine

  and mine over yours

  we get on each other's nerves sometimes

  and under each other's skin

  but the best of it is when

  your mouth opens to let my tongue in

  it's then I come to know you

  when I hear my tongue

  blossom in your kiss

  and your strange hard tongue

  speaks between my lips

  The reason I was going to go ahead and do what I'd bored all my friends with saying I'd never do again was that poem.

  I was watching the girl as I read "Dha Theanga" straight to her, aiming over the weary heads of the crowd of conference goers. I didn't look at anyone else but Lee Maloney, not at a single one of the jealous poets or Gaelgoir purists or smirking gossips, in case I might lose my nerve. After the first line, when her eyes fell for a second, Lee looked right back at me. She was leaning her cheek on her hand. It was a smooth hand, blunt at the lips. I knew the poem off by heart, but tonight I had to look down for safety every few lines.

  And then she glanced away, out the darkening window, and I suddenly doubted that I was getting anywhere. What would Lee Maloney, seventeen last May, want with a scribbled jotter like me?

  I sat in that smoky hall with my face half hidden behind my hand, excitement and embarrassment spiraling up my spine. I reminded myself that Sylvia Dwyer must have written that poem years ago, for some other woman in some other town. Not counting how many other women she might have read it to. It was probably an old trick of hers.

  But all this couldn't explain away the fact that it was me Sylvia was reading it to tonight in Galway. In front of all these people, not caring who saw or what they might think when they followed the line of her eyes. I dug my jaw into my palm for anchorage, and my eyes locked back onto Sylvia's. I decided that every poem was made new in the reading.

  If this was going to happen, I thought, as I folded the papers away in my briefcase during the brief rainfall of applause, it was happening because we were not in Dublin surrounded by my friends and work life, nor in Cork cluttered up with Lee's, nor above all in Shanbally where she was born in the year I left for college. Neither of us knew anything at all about Galway.

  If this was going to happen, I thought, many hours later as the cleaners urged Sylvia and me out of the hall, it was happening because of some moment that had pushed us over an invisible line. But which moment? It could have been when we were shivering on the floor waiting for the end-of-conference ceili band to start up, and Sylvia draped her leather coat round her shoulders and tucked

  me under it for a minute, the sheepskin lining soft against my cheek, the weight of her elbow on my shoulder. Or later when I was dancing like a berserker in my vest, and she drew the back of her hand down my arm and said, "Aren't you the damp thing." Or maybe the deciding moment was when the fan had stopped working and we stood at the bar waiting for drinks, my smoking hips armouring hers, and I blew behind her hot ear until the curtain of hair lifted up and I could see the dark of her neck.

  Blame it on the heat. We swung so long in the ceili that the whole line went askew. Lee took off all her layers except one black vest that clung to her small breasts. We shared a glass of iced water and I offered Lee the last splash from my mouth, but she danced around me and laughed and wouldn't take it. Up on the balcony over the dance floor, I sat on the edge and leaned out to see the whirling scene. Lee fitted her hand around my thigh, weighing it down. "You protecting me from falling?" I asked. My voice was meant to be sardonic, but it came out more like breathless.

  "That's right," she said.

  Held in that position, my leg very soon began to tremble, but I willed it to stay still, hoping Lee would not feel the spasm, praying she would not move her hand away.

  Blame it on the dancing. They must have got a late license for the bar, or maybe Galway people always danced half the night. The music made our bones move in tandem and our legs shake. I tried to take the last bit of water from Sylvia's mouth, but I was so giddy I couldn't aim right and kept lurching against her collarbone and laughing at my own helplessness.

  "Thought you were meant to be in the closet," I shouted in her ear at one point, and Sylvia smiled with her eyes shut and said something I couldn't hear, and I said, "What?" and she said, "Not tonight."

  So at the end of the evening we had no place to go and it didn't matter. We had written our phone numbers on sodden beermats and exchanged them. We agreed that we'd go for a drive. When we got into her white van on the curb littered with weak-kneed ceili dancers, something came on the radio, an old song by Clannad or one of that crowd. Sylvia started up the engine and began to sing along with the chorus, her hoarse whisper catching every second or third word. She leaned over to fasten her seat belt and crooned a phrase into my ear. I didn't understand it—something about "bothar," or was it "mathar"?—but it made my face go hot anyway.

  "Where are we heading?" I said at last, as the hedges began to narrow to either side of the white van.

  Sylvia frowned into the darkness. "Cashelagen, was that the name of it? Quiet spot, I seem to remember, beside a castle."

  After another ten minutes, during which we didn't meet a single other car, I realized that we were lost, completely tangled in the little roads leading into Connemara. And half of me didn't care. Half of me was quite content to bump along these lanes to the strains of late-night easy listening, watching Sylvia Dwyer's sculpted profile out the corner of my right eye. But the other half of me wanted to stretch my boot across and stamp on the brake, then climb over the gear stick to get at her.

  Lee didn't comment on how quickly I was getting us lost. Cradle snatcher, I commented to myself, and not even a suave one at that. As we hovered at a
n unmarked fork, a man walked into the glare of the headlights. I stared at him to make sure he was real, then rolled down the window with a flurry of elbows. "Cashelagen?" I asked. Lee had turned off the radio, so my voice sounded indecently loud. "Could you tell us are we anywhere near Cashelagen?"

  The man fingered his sideburns and stepped closer, beaming in past me at Lee. What in god's name was this fellow doing wandering round in the middle of the night anyway? He didn't even have our excuse. I was just starting to roll the window up again when "Ah," he said, "ah, if it's Cashelagen you're wanting you'd have to go a fair few miles back through Ballyalla and then take the coast road."

  "Thanks," I told him shortly, and revved up the engine. Lee would think I was the most hopeless incompetent she had ever got into a van for immoral purposes with. As soon as he had walked out of range of the headlights, I let off the hand brake and shot forward. I glanced over at Lee's bent head. The frightening thought occurred to me: I could love this girl.

  The lines above Sylvia's eyebrow were beginning to swoop like gulls. If she was going to get cross, we might as well turn the radio back on and drive all night. I rehearsed the words in my head, then said them. "Sure who needs a castle in the dark?"

  Her grin was quick as a fish.

  "Everywhere's quiet at this time of night," I said rather squeakily. "Here's quiet. We could stop here."

  "What, right here?"

  Sylvia peered back at the road and suddenly wheeled round into the entrance to a field. We stopped with the bumper a foot away from a five-barred gate. When the headlights went off, the field stretched out dark in front of us, and there was a sprinkle of light that had to be Galway.

  "What time did you say you had to be in Dublin?" I asked suddenly.

  "Nine. Better start back round five in case I hit traffic," said Sylvia. She bent over to rummage in the glove compartment. She pulled out a strapless watch, looked at it, brought it closer to her eyes, then let out a puff of laughter.

  "What time's it now?"

  "You don't want to know,"she told me.

  I grabbed it. The hands said half past three. "It can't be"

  We sat staring into the field. "Nice stars," I said, for something to say.

  "Mmm," she said.

  I stared at the stars, joining the dots, till my eyes watered.

  And then I heard Sylvia laughing in her throat as she turned sideways and leaned over my seat belt. I heard it hissing back into its socket as she kissed me on the mouth.

  When I came back from taking a pee in the bushes, the driver's seat was empty. I panicked, and stared up and down the lane. Why would she have run off on foot? Then, with a deafening creak, the back doors of the van swung open.

  Sylvia's bare shoulders showed over the blanket that covered her body. She hugged her knees. Her eyes were bright, and the small bags underneath were the most beautiful folds of skin I'd ever seen. I climbed in and kneeled on the sheepskin coat beside her, reaching up to snap off the little light. Her face opened wide in a yawn. The frightening thought occurred to me: I could love this woman.

  "You could always get some sleep, you know," I said, "I wouldn't mind." Then I thought that sounded churlish, but I didn't know how to unsay it.

  "Oh, I know I could," said Sylvia, her voice melodic with amusement. "There's lots of things we could do with a whole hour and a half. We could sleep, we could share the joint in the glove compartment, we could drive to Clifden and watch the sun come up. Lots of things."

  I smiled. Then I realized she couldn't see my face in the dark.

  "Get your clothes off," she said.

  I would have liked to leave the map-reading light on over our heads, letting me see and memorize every line of Lee's body, but it would have lit us up like a saintly apparition for any passing farmer to see. So the whole thing happened in a darkness much darker than it ever gets in a city.

  There was a script, of course. No matter how spontaneous it may feel, there's always an unwritten script. Every one of these encounters has a script, even the very first time your hand undoes the button on somebody's shirt; none of us comes without expectations to this body business.

  But lord, what fun it was. Lee was salt with sweat and fleshier than I'd imagined, behind all her layers of black cotton and wool. In thirty-four years I've found nothing to compare to that moment when the bare limbs slide together like a key into a lock. Or no, more like one of those electronic key cards they give you in big hotels, the open sesame ones marked with an invisible code, which the door must read and recognize before it agrees to open.

  At one point Lee rolled under me and muttered, "There's somewhere I want to go," then went deep inside me. It hurt a little, just a little, and I must have flinched because she asked, "Does that hurt?" and I said, "No," because I was glad of it. "No," I said again, because I didn't want her to go.

  Sylvia's voice was rough like rocks grinding on each other. As she moved on top of me she whispered in my ear, things I couldn't make out, sounds just outside the range of hearing. I never wanted to interrupt the flow by saying, "Sorry?" or "What did you say?" Much as I wanted to hear and remember every word, every detail, at a certain point I just had to switch my mind off and get on with living it. But Sylvia's voice kept going in my ear, turning me on in the strangest way by whispering phrases that only she could hear.

  I've always thought the biggest lie in the books is that women instinctively know what to do to each other became their bodies are the same. None of Sylvia's shapes were the same as mine, nor could I have guessed what she was like from how she seemed in her smart clothes. And we liked different things and took things in different order, showing each other by infinitesimal movings away and movings towards. She did some things to me that I knew I wanted, some I didn't think I'd much like and didn't, and several I was startled to find that I enjoyed much more than I would have imagined. I did some things Sylvia seemed calm about, and then something she must have really needed, because she started to let out her breath in a long gasp when I'd barely begun.

  Near the end, Sylvia's long fingers moved down her body to ride alongside mine, not supplanting, just guiding. "Go light," she whispered in my ear. "Lighter and lighter. Butterfly."As she began to thrash at last, laughter spilled from her mouth.

  "What? What are you laughing for?" I asked, afraid I'd done something wrong. Sylvia just whooped louder. Words leaked out of her throat, distorted by pleasure.

  At one point I touched my lips to the skin under her eyes, first one and then the other. "Your bags are gorgeous, you know. Promise you'll never let a surgeon at them?"

  "No," she said, starting to laugh again.

  "No to which?"

  "No promise."

  When Sylvia was touching me I didn't say a single one of the words that swam through my head. I don't know was I shy or just stubborn, wanting to make her guess what to do. The tantalization of waiting for those hands to decipher my body made the bliss build and build till when it came it threw me.

  There was one moment I wouldn't swap anything for. It was in the lull beforehand, the few seconds when I stopped breathing. I looked at this stranger's face bent over me, twisted in exertion and tenderness, and I thought, Yes, you, whoever you are, if you're asking for it, I'll give it all up to you.

  In the in-between times we panted and rested and stifled our laughter in the curve of each other's shoulders and debated when I'd noticed Lee and when she'd noticed me, and what we'd noticed and what we'd imagined on each occasion, the history of this particular desire. And during one of these in-between times we realized that the sun had come up, faint behind a yellow mist, and it was half five according to the strapless watch in the glove compartment.

  I took hold of Lee, my arms binding her ribs and my head resting in the flat place between her breasts. The newly budded swollen look of them made my mouth water, but there was no time. I shut my mouth and my eyes and held Lee hard and there was no time left at all, so I let go and sat up. I could feel our nerves p
ulling apart like ivy off a wall.

  The cows were beginning to moan in the field as we pulled our clothes on. My linen trousers were cold and smoky. We did none of the things parting lovers do if they have the time or the right. I didn't snatch at Lee's foot as she pulled her jeans on; she didn't sneak her head under my shirt as I pulled it over my face. The whole thing had to be over already.

  It was not the easiest thing in the world to find my way back to Galway with Lee's hand tucked between my thighs. Through my trousers I could feel the cold of her fingers, and the hardness of her thumb, rubbing the linen. I caught her eye as we sped round a corner, and she grinned, suddenly very young. "You're just using me to warm your hand up," I accused.

  "That's all it is," said Lee.

  I was still throbbing, so loud I thought the car was ringing with it. We were only two streets from the hostel now.

  I wouldn't ask to see her again. I would just leave the matter open and drive away. Lee probably got offers all the time; she was far too young to be looking for anything heavy. I'd show her I was generous enough to accept that an hour and a half was all she had to give me.

  I let her out just beside the hostel, which was already opening to release some backpacking Germans. I was going to get out of the car to give her a proper body-to-body hug, but while I was struggling with my seat belt, Lee knocked on the glass. I rolled down the window, put Desert Hearts out of my mind, and kissed her for what I had a hunch was likely to be the last time.