Professed

by Nicola Rendell

  June 4, weather fair, wind from the southeast.

  June 5, perhaps I want a child and no husband.

  June 10, wind at 10 knots from the sou’sou’east. Maybe I want a husband and no child.

  In other entries, in bits and pieces, she wrote about dreams about far-off places, fishing for flounder in the sun, which she took as a sign because in these dreams she wasn’t alone. She had a second mate who looked just like her and who was even more fearless, who’d stand on the bow laughing. She dreamed that dream over and over, and eventually she threw her birth control pills overboard, because she could just feel that it meant there was a baby somewhere out there in the air. After all, she was almost forty, she wrote. If she was going to take that journey, it was time to get started.

  It was an October hurricane. She was far out at sea. The hurricane came up from the Cuba, angry and fast. The radio said caution, all small crafts, caution, warning, caution. She wrote that she listened to the radio and smiled, and then harangued the dispatcher, saying she was sure he was warm and dry, but being out there in the disaster, that was really living, she said, “Do something that scares you every day, boys,” and captains all over the radio said, “Francie Newham, you’ve got bigger balls than the lot of us.”

  The hurricane became gigantic, slowed down and got meaner. For days she spun like a toy in a drain. Then, one night, her ship bumped up against something. She felt the bump and woke up and looked outside, only to see another boat right alongside her. On the boat was a man. She wrote that when he looked at her, she felt lust in her veins and she couldn’t resist. His name was Captain Charles Costa, and he drew her to him like he was a living storm. Even as he helped her across from her boat to his, she knew that the baby in the air was closer than ever. For three days, the hurricane spun and ripped beaches right off the land, and ruined buildings and flooded worlds, while the two of them spun and spun, playing cards and drinking rum and telling lies to one another and knowing it.

  For the next nine months, she wrote that she became a soothsayer of the sea. It was inexplicable but true. Old fishermen still remember it. They say from the day she got pregnant she could reach her hand out over the water and count the lobsters on the ground. For the next nine months she and her baby made fortunes and brought in pots so full that lobster claws poked out, stuffed solid with lobster and seaweed, and she credited the baby. She said she’d dreamt it, and her second mate was the one with all the magic. Together, she dreamed, they would sail all over the world.

  Like her grandmother before her and her mother after that, Francie was out to sea when she felt the labor pains of her second mate coming into the world. She wrote in an unsteady hand that these pains didn’t seem like normal birthing pains because they went on and on with no baby coming. She said she saw her second mate’s fist pressing into her belly, the full shape of a hand, and she laid her hand down over it, palm to palm, like prisoners across the wall of a cell.

  She began bleeding, she wrote, and marked a course for shore. She anchored her boat in the cove and walked to the beach, barefoot and wearing nothing but a shirt she’d stolen from Captain Costa nine months before. They say she came to the shore pale white and not speaking. When they saw her, the fishermen came running to help her, and some of them toasted her, but she said, “Don’t toast yet. Not yet.” The fishermen tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let them, and she knelt down into the water as her second mate came to life, floating for a while in salt water until one of the fishermen pulled her out of the water and said, she’s a fighter this one, she’ll never get tangled in a net. And as the fisherman held up the baby into the sky, like an offering, Francie Newham slumped into the sand and the waves. She looked up at the sky while the water lapped at her ears. They say when she closed her eyes for the last time she was smiling. And with her last breath, she said to name her girl Naomi. “Beautiful in every tongue.”

  I finish reading. The Oreos have dissolved in my mouth. I swallow. I go back over it again and again, even whispering the words aloud like someone just learning to read. It’s one thing to love someone in person. It’s one thing to love their flesh. It’s one thing to admire their eyes from across a lectern and pray to a god you don’t believe in that you’ll see her at the dining hall. But to want to know and love a mind, too? To have some whisper of that hidden land?

  Now more than ever, reading her words, feeling that most intimate part of her here, I know one thing is true. I need to be with her. I have to get to her. I need to get to know her, really and truly know her. Love her, lust after her, understand her, embrace her.

  Fuck the rules.

  Hear that sound? That’s the academic code of ethics going up in flames.

  She’s in my heart, and I’m withering away without her. A man cannot exist on Oreos and whiskey alone.

  Naomi. She’s the only salve.

  I open up my email. I make like the upright professor rather than a guy with shaking hands and his head in the fog. This is the first time I've written an email to her, and staring at her name in the address field, even that rattles me and makes my biceps tighten up with anticipation. Still. Keep your shit together, Beck. Don’t start gushing here on the Yale email server, you ass.

  Dear Naomi:

  Please come talk to me about your paper. I am available this evening at my house.

  Prof. Beck

  20

  I wish I could say I stare into the fire and sip my whiskey and ease into my wingback chair like a legendary nihilist. I wish I could say I contemplate my awesomeness and the certain knowledge of what will happen next like some kind of entitled ass that knows the girl is going to come to him because that’s how assholes think. But I don’t. I reread the message I sent to her about sixty times, then I run upstairs to my bedroom. I wash my face. I wet my hair and put in some gel. I change out of my sweatpants into chinos and a sweater—the first real thick, woolen sweater I’ve ever owned.

  I jog downstairs. To wait. Because maybe, just maybe, she’ll come to me.

  Because of the weather and the time, the house is empty. Nobody milling through, nobody anywhere. Thanks, universe. Thanks for that.

  Through the kitchen window, I see a flash of red. An umbrella popping open.

  I clutch the countertop. It’s her. Holy fuck alive, it’s her. She’s in yellow galoshes and black leggings. She’s wearing a gray hoodie. I loved her in that satin dress, I loved her in that summer dress, I’ve loved her in every damn thing she’s worn, all of it cataloged in my head, but this, this is what I’d been craving. Her, just her, worn out and soft.

  In a hoodie with fucking thumbholes.

  I slap the counter like a gambler folding his cards. I’m done. D-O-N-E, done.

  I clap my hands to my head. Play it cool, Beck. Never know who’s watching.

  As she approaches, I open the door. “Hi, Miss Costa.”

  She looks petrified. “Did I screw up the assignment? Was it late?”

  Oh, Jesus Christ, of course that’s what she’d think. What an idiot. Why didn’t I put a smiley face or something on that email? Idiot. “No, no,” I say, “Not at all.”

  Holding the door open for her with one arm, I step aside to let her in. I take her umbrella from her and have gallant plans to close it, but it gets wedged in the doorway and I can’t get it unstuck.

  I hear her giggle a little, and she slips back under my arm and presses some series of buttons to make the thing close.

  “Nice sweater,” she says, shaking off her umbrella and hanging it on the hook next to the door. The fact is, she’s more at home here than I am. I’m still a stranger in this place. Aside from everything else, I could also just use someone at my side to help me find my way. Umbrellas and fellows and sheeting rain. She knows what she’s doing, and I most definitely do not.

  “Thank you,” I say. I touch my chest with my palm and run my hand down my stomach.

  She gives an approving nod. “It really looks good on you. Some professors wear sweaters
like that and they just…look kinda…” She shrugs.

  “Assholeish?”

  Her face lights up. Yeah!

  “I felt like the leather elbow patches were a gamble, but I decided to go all in.”

  We’re making pleasant conversation, but all the while she’s getting closer to me and I’m getting closer to her. All awareness of personal space is going out the window; all sense of the outside world is zooming out of my head at warp goddamned-speed.

  “What did you want to talk about?” she asks. She’s standing there on the front rug, her boots still dripping. It’s all coming together now that I’ve read that essay. Those are fishing boots. Those aren’t for show. She’s not for show. She’s the real deal. Authentic Naomi Costa, through and through.

  “Come in,” I say. “Have an Oreo.”

  She looks puzzled. “An…?”

  I swallow. “You’ve reduced me to eating Oreos alone. Whiskey and Oreos. I can’t stomach anything else.”

  Her breath catches in her lungs as she inhales and closes her eyes. I’m just inches from her face. Not touching her though.

  “Your essay was fucking amazing.” “Is that the grade?” she says, her eyes not coming up to meet mine but instead moving down to her boots. “Fucking amazing?”

  I nod and give her a rasped mmm-hmmm. “It’s above an A+. Very rare.”

  “Is that all you wanted to say?” she says. Now she looks up at me. There’s a prickle in my hands. There’s a light in her eyes and a flush in her cheeks.

  What I should do is step away. But I just can’t. She’s so gentle, so tender, so lovely. No artifice, no bullshit, just this beautiful woman with a mind that wanders and whips every direction. “Is it true, what you wrote…”

  Her nostrils flare a little, and she’s got her eyes closed again. I place my hand to her cheek. It’s cool under my fingers.

  “That was my mom. Nobody knows that story.”

  Her eyes are damp, glittery with tears. “I don’t know why I wanted to spill it all to you, but it was like I had to, almost. Like I had to let you know.” She smiles. “I don’t think I answered the prompt.”

  “Fuck the prompt.” I place my forehead to hers, and my thumb on her cheekbone. It’s like it makes her forget her thoughts, because the next thing she says is:

  “When I think of you,” she says, “I feel like I’m drowning.”

  “This whole month has been agony. I thought it would get easier, but it’s not.”

  Her head presses against mine, it almost feels like surrender, the way she breathes and slumps towards me.

  “Remember what you said over the lemon bars?” she asks

  “Yes,” I say. My voice sounds as deep as if I just woke up. Every single thing inside me, it’s aching for her to say Yes. Yes. Just yes. Against all reason, against all rules. To fucking rebel with me, to stage a secret revolution, just the two of us against the world.

  She raises her face to mine. She’s wearing no makeup. She’s never, ever been more beautiful

  “I want you to devour me, Ben.” Then she does it. She kisses me, softly at first, but then getting more and more passionate, gripping at my sweater with her hand, pressing her body against mine.

  Fuck, holy fuck. She’s saying yes. She’s saying yes.

  I pull her close to my hips, I’m hard for her, I’ m always hard for her, and kiss her back. Violently, wildly, aggressively, just unleashing one fraction of what I feel inside.

  Finally, I force myself to pull away. I can taste her lip gloss on my mouth, and for a second I’m lost. I hang on to her ass and don’t let go. “Not here,” I say.

  “Then where?”

  I’ve had the place picked out for weeks. Every last step of this fantasy has played out in my head a hundred times.

  “Come to the side window of the Guest Suite,” I say, “Fifteen minutes.”

  21

  I march out of his house like a furious student, like my paper just got horribly critiqued, not wanting anybody to suspect a thing. I slog across the quad to my stairway. Once inside, I take the stairs three at a time with my boots squeaking every time I pivot on the curve. At my floor, I bolt down the hallway shaking so hard now I can barely get my key into the door. Lucy pops her head out and said, “Want to go get some frozen yogurt?”

  Gulp. “I’m fine,” I say. “I think the mystery fish last night at dinner was off.” I make a sort of nauseated about-to-gag face.

  She shifts her nose and cocks her head to one side. Without taking her eyes off me, she reties the bow on her pajama pants. Tonight her hair is down and almost mermaid-like, the curls from the braid now a long string of s shapes.

  “I've got a study session,” I tell her.

  “Since when?”

  “Since now. It’ll probably go late.”

  God, I hope it goes late. I hope it goes forever and ever. Once in my room I lock the door behind me and stand for a moment with my hands pressed to the wood. There’s no time for a fancy outfit, but I put some makeup on. Not a lot. Just so I feel put together. I dust blush on my already flushed cheeks and take a deep breath to steady myself. I feather my eyelashes with mascara, roll on a little lemon sugar, and then take off down the steps again, so anxious to get close to the suite it aches. I know it’s raining, but I don’t care. I’ll stand in the middle of a hurricane for him. Without a second thought.

  At the door to my stairway, I peek out. It’s a lot like peeking out of a medieval prison cell, I imagine. That sort of teeny rippled glass window that I can see out of only on my tiptoes. Outside, I see nobody braving the storm. Dean Osgood’s quarters are at a right angle to me. Peeking up and over, I see his curtains are closed, thank goodness. Still, it’s risky, and I dart quickly from my stairway into the Zen garden, splashing and sloshing and gripping my umbrella with both hands as the leaves from the quad stick to my boots in clumps.

  Inside the garden, the leaves from the Japanese elm are half-fallen. They’re no bigger than minnows, and there are thousands of them on the damp ground. In the lamps from the quad, they’re almost purple-black and as slippery as ice. My heart is pounding in my chest. But I’m neither going to cry or faint, and that’s some serious progress on the toughen-up-buttercup front.

  This is happening. This is happening.

  Fifteen minutes is a lifetime. I count upwards from one to a hundred. Then back down again. I listen to the rain on my umbrella and then focus on how it comes out in gushes from the gutters and into the drains.

  I don’t dare sit down and get my pants all wet, so instead I stand under my umbrella, and try to settle my breathing, but I’m trembling. I breathe in and out slowly. I once heard that the difference between anxiety and excitement is breathing.

  Doubtful. Very.

  Finally, there’s the noise of tapping on glass behind me. My fists clench around the umbrella, and I slowly turn around. He’s there, opening the side window, eyes sparkling with the darkened suite behind him. The walls of the garden protect us from view here. Much safer than the front door. He presses the window open, and offers a hand to help me inside “My lady,” he smiles.

  Oh my God, yes.

  However.

  The window is just exactly the wrong height—it comes even with my belly button—so I have to sort of pitch myself through. I high center myself, and I begin to laugh silently, almost uncontrollably. He’s trying to pull me through, and my jacket is coming off over my head.

  “Oh no,” he says. “Wait, wait, your arm…”

  We dissolve into snickers.

  Clutching the windowsill and squirming around the frame, I whisper, “Grab my leg.”

  He tries to be helpful. He paws at various parts of my body—my ass, my thighs, and not in a sexual way but, well, in a way of a man trying to help a woman through a window kind of way. I can feel him laughing against my body, and periodically, air shoots from his nose. “Move your foot!” he says.

  “Where!” Now my face is smashed up against the radiator. �
�Aren’t you impressed with my grace?”

  “Other foot!”

  Finally, something gives way, possibly part of the shutter outside, and I tumble inside in a somersault and land with a thump.

  There I am, in a slippery wet Gore-Tex heap at his feet.

  He helps me up and then shuts the window.

  I’m struggling with my rain jacket, which has gotten dreadfully tangled over my head. It’s inside out but my hands are still in the cuffs.

  “Stop squirming,” he says. I think he’s trying to touch my head, but instead he palms my face. “Jesus, you’re so adorable,” he snorts. “Stop moving! Let me help you.”

  I hold still. I can’t see him. All I can see is nothing and all I can feel is wet rain jacket all over. But my snickers die down and I hold my arms out like a scarecrow.

  He unzips me somehow and finally I’m free. I smooth my hair. The world now is quiet and still. My jacket falls to the floor.

  Being so close to him, all alone, it makes me speechless and breathless. I’m so nervous, the world is wobbling everywhere I look, and I hear white noise in my head. The chaos of the window gone, it’s him and me and infinity now.

  At my feet, he helps me take off my boots while I steady myself on the windowsill behind me. God, how I love him at my feet. It makes me feel invincible, immortal, worshiped. But I notice, as my second boot comes off, that my socks don’t match, not even close. One is argyle, the other is striped. Well done, Naomi. Well done. “Laundry day.”

  “You’re fucking perfect, you know that,” he says, taking the striped one off first, and then the argyle.

  He begins unzipping my hoodie. Underneath, I’m wearing a pink camisole. Under that? I can’t even remember. My hoodie falls to the floor, and as he removes my tank from over my head, careful not to tangle my hair, I realize it’s just an ordinary, somewhat sad, gray bralette. A favorite, but hardly sexy.