There were other stories that came to mind that she hadn’t told, even though they were on the same theme, and revealed more about how they had managed to go the distance of twenty-five years together. The children were gone, and they were returned to each other. Emma, too, had grown old and sleepy and soon would no longer agree to lift herself onto arthritic legs for a slow pass around the park across the street. So she would walk alone soon. Her friends had continued on, telling funny stories about relationships they had when they were young. She let the subtle current of the lake carry her a little away from the group, remembering that first journey she had taken with her husband.
THEY HAD HITCHHIKED to the bridge, crossed the black swift-moving river, and then walked the last five miles on country roads to the farm where his mother and younger brothers still lived. The grey dusk, a kind of ugly sour colour against the paler snow, turned into a slick night of freezing rain. In the city, this kind of weather was an irritation, making people walk like Charlie Chaplan on the slanting sidewalks, but here, in the intense darkness, she was disoriented. All the girls her age, nineteen, were growing their hair long, and writing poetry about getting back to the land when they weren’t baking inedible loaves of insufficiently risen brown bread. They had already decided that they would have natural childbirth and grow all their family’s food themselves. And that the fathers of their children would be gentle with animals, delivering the spring lambs that never went to market.
But here she was, cold, wet, barely able to keep herself upright, while he walked just a little ahead of her to her left, as though protecting her from traffic, non-existent on such a night. She was annoyed at her own vanity, having refused to wear a winter hat. By the time they reached the fork in the road that he said was the halfway point, her long hair was clinking like wind chimes, Rastafarian braids of ice. She was intrigued by him, but not yet sure if he was worth this night of misery.
Through the first few miles, gingerly walking with her arms stretching out for balance, she wondered if he thought of her only as a friend. He was protective, true, but his easy nature and the way he led the way through familiar territory suggested that there was no erotic tension growing in him. Even when she fell, and he hauled her up by the arm, he didn’t linger. But the tension was growing in her. His voice was sinking into her body as though she heard him through an inner ear in her chest. He was impractical, one of the few guys studying English literature, head in the clouds, often walking right by her in the hallways at the university. She knew he went home on weekends to help on the family farm, and that suited his beard, his loose jeans and the muscles she could make out under his work shirts. The strength in his upper body was gentle somehow, natural, a result of chores and long days out harvesting the fields before classes started, which was different in quality from the hard mean-looking muscles of the guys in her classes who worked out at the gym or played competitive sports.
She had worn a new Indian silk top tied with tassels at the throat, rich scarlet and purple and gold. The ice from her hair was melting on the back of her neck, running in little rivulets down her back and chest, between her breasts. She hoped the dye wasn’t running, as it sometimes did with these inexpensive imports that she loved. There was a chance, a small chance, that he would see her skin tonight, the smooth firm breasts she was so proud of, and she would prefer to avoid anything vaguely comical, such as bands and stripes of strange colour branding her like a zoo animal. She could smell the incense rising from the shirt, even from beneath the wet wool smell of her coat.
Only later would he tell her that he couldn’t remember her name. Her first name, Dulcie, of course he knew, but her last name had slipped his mind.
Years later he said, “It would have been all over for us before we even got started if my mother had wanted a formal introduction. As we were walking up the driveway, I was thinking, McDougall, MacDonald, McTavish. I had the Mc part down, but the rest—I had no clue.”
“That was some formal introduction,” she said. “Like something out of the movie Deliverance.”
“Hey, hey. Watch what you say about my family. I resemble that.”
THAT FIRST NIGHT, close to the farm, at the gravel pit glowing a fainter grey in the intense dark, he kissed her, with his hand slipping so naturally under her jacket to her breast. She had been slightly alarmed by that, but was also lost in those first tentative explorations of his mouth. Things had sped up over the course of a walk on a rainy night, and if he hadn’t known her name, alarm would have overtaken attraction.
They turned into the long driveway. Only one light seemed to be on and Dulcie wondered if they were arriving too late for supper.
“Will your Mom mind meeting me this time of night? Has she been waiting?”
He laughed and said, “Ma doesn’t know I’m bringing anyone with me.”
“She doesn’t know? You didn’t ask her if it’s okay?” Dulcie was horrified. This isn’t how she imagined things at all.
“She likes our friends to come around. Don’t worry about Ma,” he said.
So that was it. They were friends, despite the kiss in the gravel pit.
Dulcie and Graham walked around the back of the farmhouse where Graham bent down to pet an old dog, that had been barking deeply, yet without much enthusiasm, since they turned in from the road.
“Hey, Pushkin. How’s it going,” he said to the dog, scratching it under its matted chin. Dulcie had never seen a dog this unkempt, with shanks of matted fur hanging off its thick black coat. Hay stuck out of its fur and it seemed to be smeared with mud, or was it manure?
“Do you let that dog in the house?” she asked and hoped he wouldn’t catch the incredulous tone.
“Pushkin’s an outdoor dog. She’s a sweetie, the last of Ring’s pups.”
Pushkin curled up again on the muddy rag on the porch floor as they removed their boots. They entered the farmhouse through the back door, stepping onto a rag rug. Dulcie looked down the dimly lit length of the hall, ugly wood paneling, old tiles lifting from the floor. The house looked every one of its more than 100 years, but without charm. It had been cheaply updated in the 1950s. Eleven children later, the house was battered, electricity flickering dimly thanks to ice lining the power lines outside. And it was eerily quiet.
They reached the end of the hall and turned right towards the kitchen. In her peripheral vision, she saw something strange on top of a freezer—denim, plaid, coiled with energy. Before she made sense of it, two boy-men jumped from shoulder height onto Graham, yelping like wild dogs. Amazingly, Graham stayed upright and the three of them boiled in an exuberant male knot. One of them had his forearm locked around Graham’s throat, practically lifting him from the floor. Graham was shorter than his brothers. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over, and Dulcie was introduced to Derek and Jimmy, the two brothers still living at home and running what was left of the farm after their father’s death years before. Neither brother would look her in the eye, a bashfulness she thought then. But later the same trait allowed the brothers to drift away from the farm and family in the decades to come.
“BUT YOUR MOTHER was the scariest,” she said later, remembering the sound of the chair legs against the floor in what used to be called the parlour, her heavy breathing, her snuffling, laden approach to the kitchen. She was wearing a handmade sack, patches of floral fabric, polyester and summer cottons cobbled together, over brown stretch pants. She must have been close to 300 pounds. Her hair was wiry, eyes small within the abundant flesh of her face, yet her lips were bright with red lipstick. And she had good cheekbones. She ignored Dulcie, rocking from foot to foot as she went to check potatoes boiling on the stove, slamming the pot lid, then aiming and landing in a chair close to an old wood stove.
The only thing she’d said to her directly, as Dulcie got up to set the table with forks, no knives to be found, was, “You a college girl, and that’s the best you can do?’ lifting her fleshy arm, indicating Graham. At first, Dulcie thought sh
e was being criticized for the way she was setting the table. There weren’t any knives in the drawer. And only bent spoons. Later she found out that they never had knives. Knives disappeared into the barn to fix hinges, or just disappeared and were dispensable.
She only understood that his mother’s comment had been meant as a joke when Graham went to his mother, wrestled her head against his chest and kissed her grey hair.
“You love me, Ma. Admit it.” She pushed him away, still not looking at Dulcie, but pleased. Her ruby-bright mouth was freshly lipsticked and her hair had been combed, probably when she heard the dog barking and knew Graham was on his way in.
The affection between them made Dulcie relax. After they ate fried eggs with the darkest yolks, like tropical sunsets, homemade buns, mashed potatoes and gravy, Dulcie and Graham went back to the barn to spread hay for the cattle. The cows either were pregnant or had calves.
“Do you need to milk them every day?” she asked, knowing nothing about farming but trying to sound like she did.
“You’d never freshen a herd of dairy cows all at the same time. These are beef cows. We just keep one for milk.”
She helped him by gathering armfuls of sweet dusty hay and filled the trough, ducking between the cows. They frightened her with their mass, the weight they were carrying on their small hoofs. With just a shift from foot to foot, they could crush her. The straw hissed like fire in her arms, the crackling sound, not of sparks, but of bursts of summer tickling her nose. She felt satisfied when a cow immediately lowered its head and pulled the hay lazily through heavy lips, chewing as though it had all the time in the world.
Graham called to her and she emerged from between two brown cows to see him sitting on a stool with his cheek against a black cow, his hands gentle on her swollen side.
“This is my favourite, Cosmo. Do you want to feel her calf?” he asked her. She squatted beside him and he held her hands over the rough coat. There was a rolling movement, then a shape like a sharp fin gliding beneath the surface, and she jumped back.
“Whoa, Nellie,” he said, laughing at her skittishness. And she moved towards him again, trusting him. The unborn calf undulated against her breast and she turned her head to tell him what she felt and he kissed her again.
He took her up to a bedroom facing northeast, with peeling violet paint over white plaster, where wooden boxes were stacked to the ceiling.
“This is the bees’ room. You can sleep here.”
“With the bees?” she asked, alarmed. “Do they ever come out at night?”
He laughed and kissed her forehead as he settled her into the three-quarter bed, lumpy, covered with a heavy handmade quilt made of simple squares of fabric, much like his mother’s clothes. No art in its construction, only practicality where nothing was wasted. She felt like a child being tucked away for the night.
“They’re all asleep,” he said. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The hives go back out in the clearing once things start flowering.” He kissed her again and said, “No stings.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. I’m staying in the other room,” he said.
“With your brothers?”
“The boys’ room. Yes. This room was for my older sisters.”
“Where will you sleep?” She had only seen one bed in that room as she passed by.
“I’m used to sharing a bed.” Then he looked away, suddenly shy. She thought he was a little worried about the intimacy they both knew was coming, in a week, in two weeks, soon. But later she understood that he had been confident and sure about their sexual life beginning. He was only ashamed of the poverty he came from. By bringing her here, even if he couldn’t remember her last name, he had been affirming a choice he had already made.
The wind had picked up once the freezing rain stopped and the window frame whistled, mournful, eerie. She was cold, but if she closed her eyes, she smelled summer in the waxy sweet smell of the hives held in limbo. A faint musty smell, but unmistakably honey. Then he lay down with her and they kissed, body to body, although still fully clothed. The room continued to chill as the wind blew harder and he moved her so that the quilt was free to cover them.
“Sounds like wolves,” she said. “That wind.”
“It could be wolves as well as wind. They come out of the hills this time of year. Sometimes you can see them near the barn.”
He turned off the light and pulled her towards the small window. Her eyes couldn’t adjust to the country darkness. There was only the touch of his hand, the sound of his breath.
“They eat the afterbirth shoveled out of the barn. We’re in the middle of calving season.”
“Really? Nature can be gross sometimes,” she said.
“More like not wasteful. This is a hard time of year for animals, and nothing gets hurt. Just your sensibilities,” he said.
“I’m really not that sensible,” she whispered to him, desiring him and quickly doing calculations in her head. She was a few days away from the end of her cycle and probably wouldn’t get pregnant. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait.
Mouths, hands, bellies pressed moist with heat between them. They kissed most of the night because to not kiss made her mouth feel strangely dry and bereft. They were slick with desire and satiation and desire again. She heard her voice, but it was not her voice. Her breath and his breath on her face in the dark filled her lungs perfectly. He filled her perfectly.
She woke before he did, just as the sun lifted above the barn, sliding into the violet room. Someone was starting a fire in the wood stove downstairs, but no warmth had started to rise through the grate on the floor. Then she heard a strange pounding sound like a fist repeatedly hitting flesh and the table legs creaking against the floor. It was a sexy sound and she slipped down further, nuzzling against his bare chest. The skin along her ribcage was fused with his, had to be pulled free to allow her to shift position, waking her further as the downy surface of her skin resisted and then tore free.
Then she noticed the dried blood near his armpit. Lifting her head, she noticed more blood on his neck, smeared across his chest. His sleeping face was stippled with blood. She lifted the heavy quilt and looked down at her naked body. Her torso and hips were bloodstained, too. Or was it red dye from her blouse? Across her chest was a stain, a bluer red than blood. But there was definitely a dried smear of blood on her left breast. She was a mess. The only pain she felt was a soft throbbing, a sunburn-like sensation between her legs, but satisfying, nothing ominous. Neither of them seemed to be cut. Then she was fully awake, finally realizing that her period had started, had probably been flowing strong all night, made heavier by her sustained desire. In the total blackness of night, her slickness hadn’t seemed surprising. The aching knot deep in her belly had felt like the most intense desire she had ever experienced. And the result was this: when the sun came up they looked like hyenas after a frenzy. Horrified, she tensed and her throat clenched and held back tears, wondering how she could hide this, dreading him waking up. In his state of light sleep, he must have sensed an abrupt shift in mood and his eyes immediately opened.
He looked at her, alarmed, tensing and sitting upright in the bed. For a moment, she forgot about the blood and wondered if he didn’t recognize her, but then she realized that her face, too, might be streaked with blood.
“I’m sorry,” she said, curling her knees to her chest.
She looked at him again and saw that he looked frightened. It wasn’t disgust, she didn’t think. Quickly, she answered what he hadn’t asked.
“No. It’s not that.”
“Not the first?” he asked. “I’ve heard for some women, it’s tough. They … ”
“No. Don’t worry. It must be my period. Oh, God, what a mess.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Did I seem to be in pain?”
They both laughed.
He told her to relax, lie in bed, he’d be back. Before she let him leave, she licked her hands and
cleaned the blood off his cheek, the iron taste of it returning to her through her fingertips. His clothes covered the rest. He was gone longer than she expected. She heard a metallic rhythmic sound outside the window, like some reluctant soul being pulled up into the light. She heard him singing and realized he must be at the pump outside, filling the trough for the cattle. He called to his brothers who were working in the barn, “I’ll be back.” But still she waited. At least she had her backpack with her in the room and had been able to find a tampon. The sheets were bloodstained. She didn’t know how she would be able to face his mother. Then she could hear him talking in the kitchen, and eventually, his footsteps on the stairs.
He was carrying a basin and facecloth.
“The sheets too,” she said and suddenly started to cry. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She was also appalled, ashamed, mortified.
He sat next to her on the bed, held her face and kissed her nose, then licked it. Touched her left cheek with his tongue.
She pulled away. “How can you stand to do that?”
“Dulcie, you taste like dulse.”
And with that, they belonged to each other.
They washed each other’s bodies with the warm water he must have taken from the reservoir of the wood stove because it was rusty, even before the blood tinted it. They took turns with the cloth and her skin tingled with cold in the trails he left behind. She washed his feet even though they were clean.
“Appropriate for a Sunday morning.” he said.
“Just like that slut, Mary Magdalene,” she said. Because they were both studying English, they could laugh at the same references. “Your mother would probably agree. How did you explain the basin?”
Blood Secrets Page 5
