“You were the last thing I expected,” he said. “I didn’t mean to cross any boundaries.”
“You didn’t, Charlie. You read me exactly right. You read me more accurately than I read myself, actually.”
“It’s not some sort of seduction scheme,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“I know that.”
“I need a drink,” he said and took some of his wine.
She had a drink, too.
“Now what do we do?” she asked.
“I want to dance with you some more.”
“I want that, too.”
“Everything a little at a time.”
“Yes.”
He put his hand against her back. Crack the egg, she thought. She leaned back into his arm a little. She listened to the music. The lilacs, the damn lilacs, she thought. Her heart beat hard under her ribs. The impression of his lips on hers remained scalding. She tried to remember her last kiss, Thomas’s last kiss, and she could not. Probably at the airport, she decided. Probably when he was leaving. A kiss of parting. He had stood in the airport with his uniform on, his chest broad, his shoulders draped with duffel bag straps, and he had kissed her good-bye. He had never kissed her hello again, and she had not felt a man’s lips until this moment, this evening, and it flustered her. Each thought that came into her head chased its tail. She could not say what would happen next. She could not say what she hoped happened next.
* * *
“Terry invited us for Sunday brunch,” Charlie said.
He held Margaret in his arms. The music had shifted to something slow and hypnotic, a song he didn’t recognize. The sax player ran a low line of notes that suggested cities and alleyways and street cats. Charlie couldn’t decide if it was too much, given the venue. Still, he liked having Margaret in his arms no matter what. He felt no space between them any longer; when he moved, she was there, receiving him, anticipating him.
“Who is Terry exactly? She’s been awfully kind. I can’t thank her enough for the gowns.”
“I am going to be working for her husband in Burkina Faso. In West Africa. She runs in a pretty rarified circle, but she’s down-to-earth. She has two kids. She arranged for some congresspeople to sponsor a bill on hand surgery for veterans . . . it’s a long story. Her husband was the deputy ambassador to Ghana under Bush. She stayed back in Washington to raise the kids. If Washington were a big high school, she’d be student council president.”
“How old is she?”
“Late forties, maybe. Maybe early fifties. She has a beautiful home overlooking the Potomac. She throws Sunday brunches once a month. They’re informal and friendly, unlike a lot of get-togethers in this city. She’ll make you feel welcome. You will be welcome.”
The music began to curl back and close on itself. Charlie pulled Margaret a little closer. Her body fit his. You could never tell when you took a woman in your arms how she would fit, he decided. He had known runway model types who had felt like coatracks to dance with; Margaret fit him exactly. It had something to do with the way she moved, with her body’s willingness to meet his. It took fortitude not to pull her absurdly in to him, and the tension of not doing so proved more pleasurable than he would have guessed.
“I need a little air,” Margaret said when the music stopped. “Could we step outside again?”
“Of course.”
He led her out. In the same spot they had occupied before, she took her phone out of the small clutch bag she carried and checked for messages.
“Sorry,” she said as she folded it closed, “I know that’s rude to do, but with a little boy I have to do it.”
“Everything quiet on the western front?”
“No messages, so that’s clear.”
“Well, that’s good news.”
“Gordon’s a good boy. He doesn’t make many waves.”
“He struck me as a nice boy.”
“He’ll play with the meerkat, you know? He’s just a little shy. I don’t know if it’s a phase or just his disposition. It was kind of you to bring it.”
“I thought it might make taking his mom away easier on him.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“Do you need more wine?”
She shook her head.
“More dancing?” he asked.
Instead of answering, she leaned into him and kissed him. He kissed her in return. The kiss grew and tightened and advanced.
“Would you like to leave here?” he asked when they broke apart.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. My brain feels like a bee’s nest.”
“We can stay or go.”
“Where would we go?”
“We could go eat something. There are plenty of restaurants open around here. Or you could come back to my place. It’s not far. It could be anything you want it to be. No pressure. I like you, Margaret. I think you understand that. I’ve liked you from the minute we started talking.”
“I’m so out of practice for all this, Charlie. It’s complicated.”
“I’m sure it is. On the other hand, it’s just us being together. We can stay right here, too. I’d like that. That would be fine, too. We can dance until they kick us out of here.”
“I think I want to be alone with you,” she said. “If that’s what you want, too.”
“That’s what I want.”
“I might change my mind. I can’t promise what I’ll feel like.”
“I understand.”
“We’ve just met.”
“I know, but it doesn’t feel like that.”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m still a Catholic girl at heart. I can hear the priests and nuns whispering in my ear.”
He laughed. She looked at him for a moment, surprised, then she laughed, too. He wanted her to realize it didn’t have to be so serious.
“It can be whatever we want it to be,” he said. “No expectations. I like spending time with you.”
She nodded.
“Another dance,” she whispered, leaning into him.
“Okay.”
“Then let’s see.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t expect any of this. This is out of left field.”
“For me, too.”
“Is this now officially a date, Charlie?”
“I think it qualifies.”
“My friend Blake said it was a date, but I didn’t believe her. I thought you had to keep me busy for the weekend. That it was your responsibility and you were simply being kind.”
“To tell the truth, I was looking for a way to ask you out without it being awkward. Then Terry suggested the tickets.”
“You’re a tricky devil.”
“No, interested in a woman. A beautiful woman from Maine.”
He led her back to the dance floor midway through the next number. The crowd had thinned, or people had moved closer to the bar, but now they had more room to dance. Charlie held her close. She put her cheek against his shoulder and kept her eyes closed.
Chapter Seven
His apartment was charming. From just inside the door, Margaret looked around the small living room, the tiny kitchen, and felt herself at home. It reminded her—at least at first glance as he went about turning on lamps and moving a set of dishes off the kitchen island—of a well-provisioned ship. She had been on a sailboat once with Thomas, up in Bar Harbor, as a passenger on a lighthouse tour. She had loved that boat and especially its size, the efficiency of its features and cupboards. She felt the same affection now as she examined Charlie’s apartment. Tidy, she thought. Shipshape.
“This reminds me of a boat I was on once,” she said, scanning the room, her eyes falling on knickknacks, picture frames. “I’ve always liked small spaces.”
“I meant it as a compliment,” she said, seeing how he could have taken it the wrong way. “Our farmhouse is a second job all in itself. There’s so much cleaning and so much clutter, and on a farm . . .”
She trailed off.
“I’m going to open a nice bottle of wine,” he said. “A small glass?”
“Yes, please.”
“Please make yourself at home. Have a seat, or you can come in here and sit at the island while I get the wine.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’d like that.”
She moved into the kitchen, feeling slightly absurd in the ball gown. How silly ball gowns were, really, when you came down to it. She had to tuck the skirt of the gown behind her legs as she climbed up onto the stool next to the island. She felt a tender wave of emotion seeing a bouquet of faded wildflowers in a vase at the center of the table. The flowers had been kept too long—daisies and a purple flower like a bearded iris, but not quite—and their petals had fallen on the smooth, black top of the island. She fought the urge to grab a sponge and rid the table of the petals. Too many hours cleaning up after Gordon, she decided. She took a breath and tried to remember what it meant to be alone with a man.
He moved around the kitchen well, his trailing leg not an obstacle, apparently. The situation could have been awkward, she imagined, but she did not feel that it was. Perhaps it was for him, she couldn’t say, but he didn’t seem bashful or nervous. He kept his attention on the wine bottle and smiled when he stuck the bottle between his thighs, yanked, and then held up the cork as though he had removed someone’s appendix. He smiled.
“Success,” he said.
“How long have you lived here, Charlie?”
“Oh, a little over a month and I’ll be here another month before my posting. I just finished grad school. People who are injured, military folks, I mean, they generally have to decide to go on with a military career or refocus somehow. A lot of us go to grad school. It’s free, essentially, and it gives us a little time to acclimate back to civilian life. In my case I went and now I’m training.”
“Where did you go to grad school?” she asked as he poured her a glass of wine. Red, and a dot spilled out onto the countertop. She caught that he mentioned his injury but didn’t explain it.
“The Kennedy School at Harvard.”
He looked at her, the bottle cocked before he poured his own glass.
“Okay,” he said, his eyebrow arching slightly, “that sounds more impressive than it is. A ton of these grad schools are very happy to get ex-military folks, especially from the academy schools. We’re good bets and we bring our own funding, so, yes, I did fine there, but it isn’t really as laudable as it could be. There were plenty of people a lot brighter than I am who didn’t get a place.”
“You should be proud of it. It’s an accomplishment.”
“I had a lot of questions after my service. A lot of opinions. The Kennedy School was a terrific place to ask those questions and to air those opinions. I didn’t always like the answers, or agree with them, but the discourse was sincere. They have an amazing faculty.”
“It sounds like time well spent.”
“It was,” he said and raised his glass, which he had finished off filling by giving the bottle a twist. “To you, Margaret. I admire you.”
“Me?” she asked and took a small sip. Her stomach felt empty and she cautioned herself not to drink too much.
“It can’t be easy being a single parent. And the circumstances, with Thomas, well, you know what I’m saying. Have you always wanted to be a farmer?”
She smiled. It was often humorous to see people stumble over the whole farm business. People valued farmers, at least in conversation, at least in a theoretical sense, but they knew little about them.
“I’m not sure anyone ever decides to be a farmer,” she said. “For Thomas it was simply a family occupation. He had always done it, and when he returned from the University of Maine, he fell back into it. The land tempts you and you forget about the work sometimes. But I like it. A good part of the year, I love it. The winters get rough.”
“And that’s where you met? At UMaine?”
“After, actually,” she said. “My plan was to teach. I had just started in a second-grade classroom one town over when I met Thomas. He was local and so was I and we were of a similar age. It’s funny how that happens, isn’t it? It’s almost like it was when you were a kid on the playground. You made up teams from whoever was around. A lot of my girlfriends found they weren’t so choosy about guys once a little time went by. But I liked Thomas immediately and I could see he was a good man. We courted for a year and a half or so, then we got married. I was twenty-four, almost twenty-five. He was two years older. We lived on the farm for a while, planning to fix up the other house, and then he decided to join the reserves.”
“Did he know he might go over?”
“As an abstract possibility, maybe. It’s hard to stand on a farm in Bangor, Maine, and imagine you have some future responsibility in Baghdad or Kabul. But he went with his eyes open. I can’t say he didn’t. He wasn’t there very long when he was injured. It all seemed sort of make-believe. That sounds strange, probably, but that’s how it struck me. He had a group of young kids with him and they were gung ho, but Thomas just wanted to come home.”
She looked at Charlie. He listened with a soft smile on his face. He took another sip of wine.
“After he was injured, the bottom dropped out of things for a while. And we had been living on the farm, well, I told you about the extra house on the property . . . and it seemed natural to remain there. It was good for Gordon. At least Thomas knew he was a father. I’m glad about that.”
“Do you think about going back to teaching?”
“Think about it, but I’ve gotten so lazy I don’t know. The idea of putting on school clothes and driving in a little car to a job and then hurrying to get Gordon from school, then dinner, and so on, it feels overwhelming. It felt like too much at the time, anyway. It still does, I suppose. I can be useful around the farm and I like the cows. How’s that for a job qualification? Liking cows?”
Sitting with the wine warming her belly, she wondered if she was dithering. In a second chamber of her mind, she tried to calculate how long it had been since she had been alone with a man. A man of interest, so to speak. It felt—except for Thomas—as if she hadn’t flirted with a man since her college days. She wondered if that could be true. And while she enjoyed talking with Charlie, and liked his gentleness more and more, she wondered how this evening would go. Had she misread the signs? And what exactly did she hope might happen? They were alone and that felt thrilling, and yet they seemed intent on vetting each other’s resumes. Was that how it had always been? She supposed things had to begin somewhere, and she took another sip of wine to embolden her, curious what it would require for him to cross his petal-strewn countertop and kiss her. How difficult it must be for a man, she thought, to feel you needed to always make the first move, initiate any physical contact. Of course women could do that nowadays, and they did, but the social contract still put it chiefly in a man’s hands. She wondered how she had never appreciated the treacherous waters a man had to navigate. Unless he had the nature of an ape, a man had to read a thousand signs and intrepidly move forward. She made a mental note to discuss her observation with Blake. How strange she had never considered it before.
As if reading her mind, though, he stood and moved closer and turned her chin up slightly so he could kiss her. She luckily put her wineglass down in time to feel him step into contact with her thigh, his lips warm and pleasant on hers, his hand reaching around her back and resting on the bare skin above her bra line
. It felt good to kiss him, but not as wild and as exciting as it had at the ball, and she started to pull back, falling into the idea of more conversation, when he suddenly surged forward and kissed her with everything.
Her body burned back. Again, a second part of her brain registered with wonder the powerful surge she felt spring up from her loins, her gut, her throat. She made a small animal sound, an absurd noise that she hardly knew came from her, and then slid off the stool and pressed every inch of her body into his. He was strong; he was incredibly strong and he kissed her over and over, his mouth on hers, his tongue somewhere, his maleness abrupt and emphatic and entirely present. He kissed her over and over and he began walking her backward, lifting her and kissing her, and she turned to paste. Her groin felt urgent, it felt impossibly full and in tune with his, and she let him lead her to his bedroom. She stopped to unzip her dress, and because it wasn’t hers, because she did not want to ruin it, she put a hand on his chest and made space so that she could step out of it and hang it on the back of a chair. That gave him a moment to take off his jacket and then he covered her again with his arms, his body, and she moved onto the bed and he kept kissing her, his body bent absurdly forward as he stripped out of his pants. She saw his artificial leg in quick glances, but she kept her eyes on his. Then he moved on top of her, and something sharp poked at her from the bedspread, and he reached beneath her and grabbed a book and chucked it into the darkness. She sensed they both listened for it to land, but it didn’t, it made no noise, and she couldn’t help it, she laughed, and so did he, and he broke from their kiss long enough to say, “It must have fallen on something soft.”
“Or maybe it went out a window.”
She felt him laugh, she laughed, too, and then suddenly every need of his came into the room with them, and she met his needs, and she kissed him over and over and gave her body, took his, then gave her body again and again, each part, one after the other, for as long and as fully as he would have it. She kept her mind in check, not letting it go to Thomas, or to Maine, or to anything except this man beside her. Her body felt like a clatter of dice rolling across a green felt, and she did not know what number would turn up, or what the wager might be, but she gave in to the chance and her heart felt thrilled.
Margaret from Maine (9781101602690) Page 7
