Even So

by Lauren B. Davis

  “What do you want to do?”

  Emphasis was everything. It was the knife edge that allowed her, for the moment, to absolve herself of responsibility.

  “You know what I want to do,” he said. And these words contained the memory of every touch, every look, every whispered word over the past weeks. They carried the remembered scent of earth and lumber and heated skin and sweat.

  It occurred to Angela she might say, I think you are mistaken, sir. I am a gardener, and the only soil I wish to till is that of a vegetable patch. She looked at his hands. They were strong hands. The wrists, too, were strong, and the forearms, downed with golden hair. She considered playing the ingénue, and then thought about those arms around her waist. Would she be a girl? Or a woman, full of passion and blood and heat?

  “I do,” she said. “I know what you want to do.”

  “I do not wish to complicate your life.”

  “I don’t want my life as it is.”

  She watched the glass approach his lips, the liquid the colour of garnets. She watched the way he held it in his mouth, so tenderly. He swallowed. She thought soon she would taste that same wine, suck it in on his breath, savour it as she ran her tongue over his teeth. He noticed her watching his mouth and smiled.

  She raised her own glass but was lightheaded even before the alcohol took effect. This was another world from any of the worlds in which she lived — not wife, not mother, not friend, not good community citizen, not funeral director to squirrels. Just this circle of light. This sacred ritual of wine. Whatever she was entering, it was separate. It was a temenos, a sanctuary, dedicated to the god of … of what? Passion. She chose that.

  She was aware of her motions, the articulation of her wrist, the deliberateness of it, aware of the cool glass on her lower lip, aware of the molten jewel flowing in. A part of her expected bitterness, wormwood and ash, by way of warning, but it was ruby honey, smooth as syrup and sweet as dew. It tasted like the answer to everything.

  Carsten picked up his knife and fork and cut into the meat, bloody, black and red. Her meat (her flesh?) was not so raw. A pleasing pink and grey. It tasted like an eraser. She added salt and pepper.

  Carsten repeated, “I do not want to complicate your life.”

  She drank again. With the second mouthful, the river of electric warmth flowed along her limbs, her arms, her legs. Her muscles relaxed. The world was as golden as the hairs on Carsten’s forearm.

  Later, she would understand how in that moment that her vision was distorted; she would understand how, faced with the lava flow into her belly, that her soul, her sanity, her better self, if you wanted to call it that, put its face in its hands and scuttled off to higher ground. But just then, in the glow and heat of that lava, she put her fork down and said, “Something is happening between us. I admit that, and I admit more. I want it to happen.”

  He put his fork down as well, said, “I must be clear, Angela. I do not want a family.”

  “Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you? I have a son who’s off to college soon. Me being his mother will never change, and he already has a father. He doesn’t need another.”

  As she spoke, her mind, in turn, took notes. So, Carsten was not a family man. In a strange way, it gave her power. Being a mother was a formidable thing and being a man who did not want a family was a juvenile thing. She saw her Viking wearing, for the first time, the clothes of Peter Pan. Wendy was always the one in charge. She said, “What happens between us, or doesn’t, has nothing to do with my son.”

  “And does it have nothing to do with your husband?”

  He had her there. The husband was on her side of the ledger sheet, but differently than a son. A son was forever. A husband was, it shamed her to realize, perhaps only a chapter in her life. Carsten waited. His hands rested on either side of his plate, but he made no move to pick up knife and fork. In Carsten’s face, Angela saw, in that wide-open stare, in the way his features arranged themselves so definitively, so professionally, in sophisticated amusement, that whatever a husband was or was not, the responsibility for him, for the consequences of … whatever it was they would have, would be entirely hers.

  How still this moment was. One of the enchantments of alcohol was the deceitful pseudo-clarity, the sudden conviction that one was finally seeing things as they were. Angela understood that the veil she’d been looking through had been lifted. She saw, high on Carsten’s cheek, two small red lines. They marred the skin where the double blade of his razor had nipped him. She looked at it and thought how skin was thin, for all of us, and we all had our defences.

  A candle on the table offered a buttery glow. Garnet wine. Ruby razor cut. Amber of flame. She trapped that image in her memory and even as she trapped it, she knew she was trapping it. This would be the moment she remembered, when she saw Carsten as imperfect, as someone who would not rescue her from her numbing life, but someone who would force her to be responsible for her decisions, her hunger, her passions, come what may.

  “Why don’t you leave my son, my husband, my family to me? All I ask is that you be honest. If you want me, say so. If you think we have something between us, then say so.” She was Wendy, demanding Peter admit the real reason he taught her to fly.

  Carsten smiled and took her right hand. “Beautiful Angela. Be careful what you ask for.” He brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed them.

  Her left hand lay on her thigh. Her engagement ring with its big square-cut diamond and the pavé band gleamed, but dully. How enamoured of that diamond she was when Philip first presented it to her, on bended knee by firelight in a cabin in the Adirondacks on New Year’s Eve. She had waved her hand about like a symphony conductor for days, but by this time she rarely even cleaned it.

  “I don’t want to be the one to do the asking,” she said.

  “An old-fashioned girl?” He chuckled. “Angela. The angel. Messenger of God. Carrying a burning sword, perhaps?”

  She thought how dangerous she was. An angel. A bright flame. She thought how he knew her; he saw her in a way Philip never had. To Philip, Angela … Angie, was a name as ordinary as milk and toast. She was as ordinary as milk and toast.

  Carsten held her hand now in both of his and they had to lean toward each other as he put his elbows on the table. The table was small. He filled her sight. Their faces were near.

  “I am Viking, you know. We have a habit of invading the lands of other men.”

  This sounded slightly theatrical, and she was not sure if she was meant to laugh, to take it as a joke, but his eyes did not look like the eyes of a man trying to be funny. The wry amusement had been replaced with something darker. She stiffened, pulled back, or tried to, but he did not permit that. Her hand was captive.

  A long time later she would acknowledge that, had she been entirely sober, she would have seen how ridiculous it all was, but by then such perspective would be entirely useless.

  “You are not happy, Angela. If you were happy with your life, we would not be here. I would not set foot inside the boundary, yes? So maybe — no, not maybe — definitely, I am thinking you want me as I want you. I want to see you flame-bright. I believe I can make you burn again.” His lips were on her knuckles.

  And so, the game was no longer a game. Angela could no longer hide behind flirting, behind play. The coal was already alive in her. She was incandescent. She thought of what would come next. Of where.

  She said, “I don’t even know where you live.”

  He moved the plates, his with its bloody remains, so that they could hold hands more easily.

  “We know very little about those things in each other’s lives.” He squeezed her hand. “We must remedy that.”

  He told her something about coming to America and about Nancy, his ex-wife, an architect. They lived in her house, all renovated in glass and metal, with grey walls and abstract paintings that to Carsten looked like exploding poppies. She was, he said, very firm in her ideas of what was beautiful and what was no
t. She was, he said, very firm in all her ideas. He felt as though he was living in a beautiful but chilly hotel, with a concierge who did not appreciate him dragging messy, leaf-dropping, dirt-trailing plants into every room.

  “We were different elements,” he said. “Where she was air, I was earth.”

  He worked at a nursery, but the work was unfulfilling. When their marriage ended, he couldn’t afford to stay in Hoboken, not even with the small income he had from his house in Denmark, which he had rented out. He found a job, a better one, as a designer for a nursery in Hamilton, and had a small apartment there. Two years later the owner decided to retire and put the business up for sale. Carsten went all in. He took out loans and bought the business. That was five years ago. He had done well enough, with a few high-profile projects and the university, the Philadelphia Flower Show, and residential developments.

  Angela’s wine was finished. Carsten raised the carafe, which was somehow empty, and asked the waitress for another. She brought it and he filled Angela’s glass.

  “I still don’t know where you live.” She giggled. “You do live somewhere, right?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I’m telling you. I put everything into the business. There’s a shower, a fold-out couch, a fridge. I have an excellent coffee maker.”

  Angela couldn’t help it. She laughed. She pictured him among rows of Japanese maple, hydrangeas, gerbera daisies, pots of pansies, marigold, and nasturtiums, with spider plants, birdhouses, and wind chimes hanging from the rafters, and everywhere the hothouse smells of earth and growing things.

  “You’re telling me you live in your garden centre? How bohemian. Do you keep your books on shelves made from bricks? Bead curtains?” She saw his puzzled look. “It’s a university student thing. Never mind.”

  “Does this shock you? Do you think less of me because I do not have a lot of money?”

  There was, perhaps, a little defensiveness in his voice. She said, “I know men with money. They don’t impress me.”

  “What does?”

  “Intelligence. Passion. Involvement in the world. Someone who stands up and fights for what he believes.”

  “What? Nothing about muscular thighs?”

  She slapped him lightly on the hand, picked up her glass and drank. “Thighs, certainly, but I’m more drawn to a broad set of shoulders.”

  “This is good to know. I myself am attracted to the long curve of a beautiful neck.”

  He reached over and ran his finger from the line of hair behind her ear to her shoulder. It sent a shiver up her spine and she shuddered, which made him laugh and he withdrew his hand, leaving a trail of icy heat.

  “But I will not always live in this place. Perhaps you have made me want more, getting to know you. You have inspired me. I have made a change, and that is what I want to show you. I have bought a house.” The expression on his face was like Philip’s when he gave the new car to Connor.

  Angela settled her hands in her lap for a moment and then reached for her glass. This talk of changes, brick and mortar ones, was unsettling. It occurred to her she did not know what she wanted at all. This feeling, yes. This talk, yes. This shiver and shudder, yes. Perhaps it was the wine. She shouldn’t have drank so much. But it was part of the thrill, too. The danger, the climb and fall, the twist and turn. The being out of control. All at once the ground felt slippery under her chair. The men at the table behind her laughed too loudly and she sensed their jokes were vulgar. The congealing meat on her plate seemed obscene. She scrambled for a way to slow things down. What kind of fool, she thought, didn’t ask where she might end up until she was already chug, chug, chugging up the rickety rails? Her kind of fool. The wine tasted sour, but still she wanted it. Fool she may be, she thought, with a sort of nihilistic delight, but she wanted what she wanted, and didn’t she have a right to it? Didn’t she have a right to be fully herself? It was amazing how quickly the wine in a glass disappeared. She vowed there would be no more tonight. She had to drive home. She would be responsible.

  “Don’t change your life for me, Carsten.”

  His smirk returned. “Not for you, but perhaps because of you. Look, it is quite simple. I see a woman I want. She belongs to another man —”

  “I belong to no man.”

  “No matter which way you define it, it is.” He held up his hand to stop her speaking. “But it does start me to think of what I want, what kind of life. And what I decide is that I do not want to be the old man living alone without a proper kitchen and bedroom and garden. One cannot say what tomorrow will bring, let alone five years from now. Look at me. Did I think I would be living one day in New Jersey? I did not. You would be surprised at how few people in Denmark dream of living one day in New Jersey.”

  That made her laugh, and she saw it pleased him.

  “This is absurd,” she said.

  “Too soon? Ah! Too much. But still, there it is.” He clapped his palms on the table. “Come on. We need a change of scene.”

  AND SO, A SHORT TIME LATER, Angela found herself pressed up against a wall, his mouth on hers.

  What was there to say about a first kiss that hasn’t already been said? Was there a new word for the sensation of breath against cheek, for the scent in the hollow of a man’s neck, for the tug of his fingers in a woman’s hair, or how a woman felt when claimed by the power in a man’s hands? And what of those sensations, the thrill when lip first grazed lip, and then when mouths grew urgent, when hips pressed into each other, bemoaning (you’ll pardon the word) the clothes between? Shallow breathing. The hint of the dinner they’d eaten, the steak and salad and wine that lingered on his tongue?

  They were on Jackson Street, a leafy, lamplit lane of Victorian houses in the old Mill Hill section of Trenton. One might imagine it was the 1910s, not the 2010s, or was she being too romantic? He had taken the key from his pocket with a flourish and ushered Angela up the stone steps of the house into which he would move in two weeks. Red-brick with a towered, patterned mansard roof, hooded windows, and wrought-iron railings, and standing proud beside the more modest cottages on either side. Inside the double-door vestibule, a graceful oak staircase led to the second floor. To the right was a large formal room with a cast-iron fireplace and a bay window. There was no furniture. A cheap fake-gold chandelier hung from an ornate plaster medallion in the ceiling. The light was bright, bouncing off the white walls. Before them the hallway led to the kitchen at the back of the house. Angela caught a glimpse of white cabinets and noticed the wide-plank flooring of the entrance way and living room didn’t continue into the kitchen but was replaced by ill-matched laminate. She thought about renovations done on a shoestring, and about how much it cost to add the greenhouse onto her house in Princeton. It probably would have paid for this entire house twice over. Their footsteps echoed, and the air was slightly musty. She imagined ghosts.

  “What do you think?” Carsten asked. He worried the keys in his hands.

  “What great bones,” she said, and it was true. The ceilings were high, the proportions graceful. She wandered into what must have been the dining room, situated between the kitchen and the living room. The walls, showing all the old plaster imperfections beneath, were painted the colour of dark clay. She opened a double cupboard and found a small butler’s pantry, with grooved shelves for plates. She moved into the kitchen and Carsten followed her.

  “It has a good garden,” he said. “And because I have been living in the office for these years, I have saved. The house is not expensive. Very cheap. I have money to fix things. If I am careful.”

  “If you put in French doors, then, here, it will bring the garden in, don’t you think?” Angela started making plans. “Gut the kitchen, knock out the wall between the dining and living room. Fix the floors and stain them dark, lighten the walls. Marble countertops. Built-in bookshelves around the fireplace and a seat in the bay window.” She chattered about this and that, subway tiles on the back splash, and wouldn’t a big blue Viking stove be wonderf
ul? She meandered back into the other rooms. She opened a door, found a half-bath with a stained white toilet and cracked sink. She closed the door, said, “That will have to go.” She reached the stairs, eager to see what was above, whether the bedrooms kept the fireplaces they were sure to have had once.

  Her hand was on the newel post, her foot on the first step, and then his hand was on hers. She turned, and his hands were on her shoulders and her back was against the wall, her feet on different steps. And of course, this would happen, why else was she there?

  She thought, This is just a kiss. I can have this kiss.

  In a sweep of vertiginous memory, she relived all the kisses she had endured, not wanting any of them as she wanted this one. Didn’t she deserve to feel Carsten’s lips against hers, if for no other reason than she so desperately hungered for it, craved it with every nerve on every inch of her skin? Yet, even then she knew she was unkind.

  But it was just a kiss, wasn’t it? With the traces of meat and wine on their breath, about which nothing new could be said.

  Like all things, it had to either recede into nothingness or transition to something else. She pushed him away. He groaned, hung his head, and then looked up at her, his face flushed. She had crossed so many lines, and her head was beginning to clear from the wine. She checked to see if she had regrets and found only a hard nut of defiance in her chest. She took the lapels of his leather jacket in her fists and jostled him a little, laughing. His hands went to her hips, but she shook her head, no. He nodded. She saw in his face what she realized in herself: there was sweetness in what one couldn’t have, what one delayed. Never having been one for delayed gratification, this surprised her, and she wanted to let it build. Foreplay, of course, of the most intense sort. She told herself there were still lines she might not cross.

  “So,” he said, “you’ll help me decorate?”

  And at that she burst out laughing.

  Angela

  On the drive home, she stopped at an all-night drugstore and bought Listerine. In the car she took a swig and swished it around her mouth, banishing the scent of wine. She didn’t want to spit it out the window and so she swallowed. Other than a slight headache and a desire to lie down, she told herself there were no ill effects. It had begun to rain, gently, and the streets were darkly glazed. She thought she’d pass a breathalyzer but didn’t want to take the chance. The streets grew wider, the houses more suburban. She passed schools, and then Rider University and her grip on the steering wheel relaxed. The sensation of Carsten’s mouth, his hips, his hands, rose up and she giggled. She should have been ashamed of what she’d done, but she tingled from head to toe. She was alive again. She had been awoken by a kiss, she told herself, even as a quieter voice, somewhere in the back of her mind, begged her to reconsider.