by Diane Munier
I don’t want to leave him. I don’t want to be apart from him. It’s not sick. I’m done with that. It just is. I want him…sickness, health, rich, poor, until the River Jordan, and even then if I go first, I’ll wait in the light, my arms reaching for him.
It’s still dark when I see it, the bright shape, the finger drawing close, and I gasp, ready to protect Spencer, ready to shield him as it draws near, and comes close, so bright, and I feel the warm touch over my heart and I close my eyes.
It was always hers…the scar she made when she touched me there.
I tried to tell Mom at ten years old.
“No,” she said. “Don’t ever say that again. Ever. They’ll think you’re crazy. They’ll lock you up in here and you’ll never come home,” she said this to me that day, hanging over my hospital bed.
So I put it away in one of the rooms…in my head. I put it there for safe-keeping…the touch that melted my skin.
Mom said it was a bullet, the same one that killed Fred, stopped his heart. But I knew it was Frieda. I always knew.
She died for me.
When I open my eyes it’s dark and quiet, and Spencer is whispering my name in his sleep, and maybe it was a dream, the light…and her touch.
I know my skin will stay marred in the same way. I know that I am healing. And my life will speak of this light touching me in the dark. And people…my own children…will hope.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Thirty-five
There is this new place Spencer and I have found, this new world we’ve somehow had the good fortune to land upon. We are stepping from the sanctuary of our boat now and making our ways onto the dry land. He wears a pilgrim hat, me a bonnet. No turning back.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, moving his hand through my hair.
“I’m thinking of pilgrims,” I say. We are still lying in his bed, and it feels like a dream.
He laughs. “Thanksgiving?”
“You and me disembarking a row-boat. Entering a new country.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm.” He tries to read it…my brain. His big hand is cupping the back of my head. “I look like Roger Chillingworth and you look like Hestor Prynne,” he says.
“Wasn’t Roger…old?” I think of saying, ‘thirty-seven,’ but I don’t.
“I guess. But I could work with the pilgrim idea…it could be like a French maid if I took my trusty knife….”
We are silent then, comfortably silent, as his hands smooth over me. “Your skin is so soft,” he says running his hand down my arm and gripping my fingers, “Except for your hands. These hands are very hard working,” he says, lifting the subject, slowly kissing each of my fingers.
He sounds playful but when I raise my head and look at him, he has tears in his eyes.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” I whisper.
“You should have,” he says firmly.
“I upset you.”
“I’ll live,” he smiles sadly. “We said ‘love,’ right?”
“I did,” I say.
“I did first,” he reminds, one brow lifting.
“You’re braver.”
He shakes his head and resumes the finger kissing, “I don’t think so. Not even close.”
The dogs are pushing their noses at us. They’ve had the run of the place. Spencer gets up and I’m knocked into silence watching him. He’s beautiful, but he wouldn’t say so. His lack of interest doesn’t take it away though—he’s beautiful. Not only because I love him. He’s gifted with beauty.
He pulls on his boxers and leads our cheerful amigos out. He’s back quickly, but he’s not happy. He gets into bed with me and I can feel it in him, the trouble. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. That living room…I don’t know how you’ve come back here. I was an ass to…French fries. You should have told me to shove the whole hot pan of grease….”
I don’t want to get out of this bed. It’s all so much easier lying here. “Hush. You took my fear away.”
He eases some. “Sarah…do you see yourself staying here?”
He’s made me see myself without him. He’s made me look in to the future and I’m alone.
“I mean…could you ever leave here?” His arms twitch around me.
“It never came up.”
“Have you made sure…I mean you went to college.”
“Now and then. I did most of it on-line.”
“And what about your work? Your company…?”
“I visit time to time.” I’d seen Aaron at the funeral. He had the good grace not to question me about work.
“Can you leave here? Do you do alright when you’re away? Is it some…you’ve heard of agoraphobia?”
I rear back to look at him. “You think I have it?”
We stare at one another. “I have no idea,” he whispers.
“I don’t,” I say.
We resume our positions, holding one another, my head resting on his chest.
“Sarah, I’ve been a damn tumbleweed you know.”
“I don’t, Spencer,” I whisper, because I don’t know much. He’s started to tell me, from his being here, backward to Oregon to the Pacific trail. He’s told me that much, but not the before. “You were boxed in or something. You said it had no bearing on right now?”
“Yeah. I’m an ass. Every time I look at myself next to you, I cringe, baby.”
“What I’ve been through Spencer…what I’ve shared…there’s nothing remarkable there so don’t over-think it.”
“You don’t see yourself, Sarah.”
“You see how low it sets the bar for me? I’ve heard people say that…you’re functioning. It’s a miracle. I heard that a lot in the hospital. So what…functioning now becomes this walk on the moon? I’m functioning. So what? Other people have to go to college…contribute. I just have to…get dressed!” I think of all the times Mom told me to put my pants on. It makes me smile.
“You’re smiling,” he says. “Thinking about right now? Your birthday suit?” he asks skimming a hand over me.
I laugh. I’m not but close enough.
“Sarah…you can’t know what you mean to me. I want to say it….”
Mad kissing. Nothing between us. We make love, this love, this painful, desperate joy. There is no slowing down, such an eagerness…to join. But first, just his hands on me, his fingers touching, the pads on each one rough and soft…his touches, his eyes intently watching his hand…on me.
“You’re mine,” he tells me as his fingers stroke between my thighs, and I am wild and crazy now, insane to feel him touch me, and my hand is over his and I break apart and this rippling euphoric heat lets loose in me and what a trick…of God’s…to put this in place, to create us with such a capacity. To share this…in love…to let us fly.
He pushes into me and I am like a water-slide in there, a wicked ride and he says, “You’re hot inside, you’re so hot,” as he gasps and pushes himself in and out, and he’s telling me in frantic whispers how beautiful I am and how much he loves me. He’s a talker now, a revealer. He’ll never let anyone hurt me, he says. He’ll never let anyone hurt me again. I’m his.
After he fills me, we lay like that, sweaty and not wanting to break the chain. He keeps tension on my hips, holding me to himself. He is kissing me, softly kissing me, and I can easily bear his weight, just now, he can’t crush me.
“I love you,” he tells me.
“I love you,” I repeat.
“I guess…would you marry me?”
“Yes,” I say with a certain amount of surprise because I already know I would.
“You would?” Now he’s surprised.
“Yes,” I say again.
“I can’t believe it.”
“Why? You think there’s someone else?”
“Oh, you’re settling for me?”
“I’m not getting any younger.”
We do get separated then
as he rolls me around on the bed and I squeal.
Later….
We are in the shower and he is soaping every inch of me praising my body like one might a new religion. I know I’m average, but it’s like he’s making me beautiful while he goes on, it’s like I’m becoming beautiful. I think even I can see it. Even knowing I’m still average.
I wash his back and he has his hands on the wall and his head is bowed and he’s groaning. “That feels so good,” he says. I reach around and grip his pole, and I guess men are like that all the time when a naked woman is nearby cause he is, always like this until we have just done it, then he goes soft but I haven’t seen him that way, I haven’t looked.
I have soap and I hold him there and he likes it so much he leans back into me, shows me how to do it better, gripping my hand like I had his earlier, and I stroke him that way and I feel so in control of him, and it’s new and it’s powerful and generous all in one because I love him with this crazy feeling. And he comes in the air and a little on the wall and his body shudders and never in my life…have I experienced this.
So later….
We share secrets now, so many already, and how he came on the wall and he called it, ‘the little fishies,’ as he washed it off and that was pretty funny. I’m still laughing on the inside when I answer the door. I figure it’s Mom, but no she’s back at work, or probably Leeanne wanting to make sure I remember I’m driving her and Pearlie to the cemetery later.
But I open the door and it’s neither of those, it’s a woman and she looks…expensive. Now she is beautiful. And right away I know. Somehow…he belongs to her.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Thirty-six
This strange woman at Spencer’s door looks over my shoulder, her face lifting like she sees the thing she’s ached to see.
Spencer is behind me. He stays where he is, center of the room.
“Erich,” she says.
“Spencer,” he repeats. “Do you really think I’d keep his name?”
“Oh,” is all she says and I get out of the way as she flies past. She has thrown herself against him and his arm has gone around her, the other hand hangs limply at his side. He looks at me, but mostly it’s her.
He’s Erich.
She is crying and he just seems to allow it, not disrespectful, but not moved. Not touched. I realize my hands are gathered over my mouth, like I’m trying to hold in any kind of reaction. Is fainting allowed? I might. I feel the swim and move to the wall because I need a spine. I don’t want to sit on the couch because that would bring me further in to the room and I can never be trapped here again. I do not like feeling surprise on this level…here. Not here.
Cataclysmic as it must be to hold her, to see her, to feel her emotion, his eyes are on me now. “Are you alright?” he asks.
I nod and the woman pulls away, her face only, so she can look into his. But her arms she keeps around him. “I’ve been so worried.”
He doesn’t answer that, chews on his lip. “Sarah,” he says to me, “I’ll….”
I nod, eager to get outside. I don’t want to leave him, but I can’t stay. He has not introduced me and I know him well enough to understand this is deliberate.
I go out, hearing her voice. She asks who I am.
I go down his stairs. I hurry. A month ago I didn’t know him. I didn’t pine for him. He had no power over me. A month ago. Now there’s only him. I am locked in. I am locked in.
Across the street Cyro’s drapes are open, and behind he cares for Dusty.
I think I want him—Cyro—his presence a mighty oak…diseased, yes, but still standing. But if I go, he’ll say what’s the matter and I won’t answer. I’ll make him eggs and he’ll be happy, he’ll take them. He’ll let me be strange. He won’t ask twice.
I see Mom’s car. She is going to go back to work today, but she’s still here.
She sits in the kitchen, at the table, a cloud of smoke fogging the overhead light, Mom’s light, a bowl by her elbow holding the bones of so many others…she’s devoured.
“Cyro has a dog,” she says instead of all the other things she might.
He does.
“He seems to…he likes it.” She looks off, pinching her top lip with her thumb and little finger, same hand that holds the cigarette.
I don’t know this place. It’s hers. I have no home, I have a piece of all the homes, but none that’s mine.
“She over there?” Mom asks nodding toward Spencer’s.
“Who?” I say.
“Miss Hoity-Toit.”
I have to laugh.
“She came here first. Calls him Erich,” Mom says.
Now I’m not laughing. “Who is she?” I say since she’s so full of knowledge this morning.
“Hell if I know. Queen Bee.”
“What about A. R.? You spent time with him. Cyro was going to run his plates but he never did.”
“Cyro still up to that?” She blows a raspberry and stubs out her smoke. “He said his company rented out the house. He had work in the area.”
“What kind of work?”
“Investigative, he said. Insurance.”
I don’t believe that. He’d always been watching Spencer.
“He’s gone anyway,” she says, steepling her hands against her chin and staring off.
“Think any more about moving out?” I never bring these types of things up.
She’s surprised. “Maybe.”
I already know she’s not going anywhere. I leave the kitchen and go to the window that looks across to Spencer’s. The view isn’t great. He never did finish cleaning the fence row. But I can see over there and the house is quiet, like always.
Mom comes up behind me. “Figure he’ll go back where he came from?” She’s looking over there with me.
“He…asked me to marry him.”
I feel her insides contract. It’s subtle of course and probably my imagination, but I feel it. I don’t even know if he’s already changed his mind.
Mom’s hand is on my arm. “Did you say yes?”
I look at her briefly and nod.
“Sarah,” she whispers, and I can’t tell what kind of whisper it is, but her hand falls away.
After a minute, she’s back in the kitchen, I hear the chair scrape and hear the match, but I don’t answer their forlorn call. For too long I’ve served those very cues, and now…I don’t want to.
What is clear, I need to get dressed for Leeanne and Pearlie. I have a lot to do.
Back downstairs and Spencer has not appeared to knock on my door. I am in the kitchen making Cyro a sandwich to take over before I go to Pearlie’s. Donna had to go home, but she’s contracted for a moving company to pack up Pearlie’s house. Leeanne and Pearlie fly out tomorrow, also me, and Spencer…Erich...maybe Cyro, are taking them to the airport. But now there’s an if…if…if….
But today, Pearlie says good-bye to the grave. She is leaving Merle here until resurrection day, she says, when the body is called out of the earth and they’ll meet in the sky.
Mom’s head is on the table now. She naps here sometimes, like that, usually too much wine when she does and I don’t see wine today. Today it’s the news. I’ve said yes…to him. And I don’t know if he meant it…now…this hour later while he’s still in the house with the woman who calls him Erich. I don’t know, and my hands are shaking as I lay turkey on bread.
I put it together, and Mom raises and sees what I’m doing and I ask if she wants one, and she doesn’t answer, but comes to where I am working at the counter and she gently elbows me aside. “I’ll do this.”
“It’s for Cyro,” I say.
“I’ll take it,” she says.
“You?”
She looks at me. “I can’t take the man a sandwich?”
I have too many answers, too many things I could say, words not even strung together, but they’re crowding my throat like men looking for work, raising their fists saying, ‘me next,’ to the union bos
s or something. What in the hell does she mean, ‘can’t she take a man a sandwich?’
She never has.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Thirty-seven
Mom takes the sandwich to Cyro’s. I watch her walk across the street. It’s not that she hasn’t…wouldn’t go over there. There have been reasons over the years, since Sue died.
But she doesn’t go like this, for him. Not even after they took his leg, not even then. I went. He became mine. It all became mine.
But I’m watching her now. I’m watching the world tip upside down and turn itself inside out so the lava cools and turns into new countries and the old countries compost and overheat and burn into a molten mass deep in the place where a heart should be.
That’s how the earth renews…every once in a while. That’s how it renews today.
I am going to drive Merle’s Cadillac to the cemetery so I’m walking to Pearlie’s. I pass Spencer’s house and a chunk of my heart rips away as I do not see him and he does not call out to me. When I reach the rental next door, an expensive car sits in the driveway and a man bursts out of the door.
“Hey, excuse me…Miss?”
He’s another one, tied to the strange woman…to Spencer. I stop because it would be weird not to. He wears tan colored pants and a white shirt unbuttoned, a white t-shirt beneath. It’s chilly out, but his sleeves are rolled to his elbows and he’s big, but not fat, just big and he moves loosely as he hurries down the steps and up to me. He looks like he’s slept in the shirt. He has dark close-cropped hair and a handsome face, and he wears jewelry, a necklace of some kind and a ring, a big ring that says he’s accomplished something.
“You’re Sarah Sullivan?” he says getting close enough.
“How…do you…know?”
“Sorry.” He actually blushes and smiles and strong teeth, white as the shirts. “I’ve seen your pictures.” He points to Spencer’s house then, “Erich.”
I am a quick thinker, slow speaker. I know it’s A. R.. He took pictures. It’s a hell of a thing to learn.
“Oh,” he says, “I’m Erich’s…cousin. Davis.”
I already knew. I just knew.
