He held her, thinking he was in no mood for sex, but then he was growing hard under her empty belly and filling up with a hungry and desperate mood to connect.
“Can we?” he asked, his hands buried in her hair. Wanting to be inside her skin and her body and her heat.
“Not yet,” she said, sliding down the mattress. “Soon.”
“You don’t have—”
“Shh. I want to.”
Her hair fell over his chest and stomach and her arms curved like wings over his legs. He hadn’t the strength to savor her touch, instead he gave in, gave over and she quickly brought him around with her soft hands and her warm mouth. He came with a thunderous shiver through his chest and a wet hiss of air through his teeth.
“Dais,” he whispered, another shiver going across both shoulders. Then one more out his ears and he was still.
She pulled the covers over them. They fell asleep side-by-side. Shoulders nestled, his right arm along her left flank, the tattooed K’s pressed tight together.
“COME HERE,” CHRISTINE SAID from Key West. “It’s beautiful. You can take the studio apartment and live on the beach. Come here and be in the sunshine. Fall into the ocean. Do nothing. You can come here.”
“Come,” Francine said. “It’s beautiful here. It’s apple blossom time. We’re rolling in eggs and strawberries. You can be in the carriage house. Come here, darlings.”
“I guess we could,” Daisy said, washing dishes.
“If you want to,” Erik said absently.
“I don’t know. I mean— Shit…”
A wine goblet slipped out of her soapy fingers and smashed in pieces on the tile floor. She jumped away, screwing up her face. “God dammit, I hate that sound,” she said.
Erik froze, staring at the glistening shards.
He was remembering another time. Another broken sound. A plate flung against the wall. A jagged rubble falling at his feet. His first marriage in pieces.
“You don’t fight for anything you love,” Melanie cried. “I can’t stand your complacency anymore. I plan our vacations. I plan our time and you just show up. Without an impassioned opinion, you just go where I tell you.”
Erik stared with a dawning realization.
She’s waiting for you.
Make a decision. Do something.
Lead your life, don’t just follow it around.
“Let’s go,” he said, opening the cleaning closet door and reaching for broom and dustpan. “We’re going. We’re getting out of here.”
She looked at him, her eyes brimming as he crouched down and started sweeping up the mess.
“Let’s just get in the car and drive,” he said. “Drive down the coast. We’ll stop in Maine, we’ll stop in Boston, we’ll stop in New York. We can make it up as we go along. Let’s head for La Tarasque and take it from there.”
“All right,” she said. “I want to take Kees with us.”
“So do I.”
“I can’t leave him alone in the empty h—”
“We’ll take him with us,” Erik said. “Not everything has to be a thing.”
The dustpan filled with broken glass, he stood up. He kissed her. Took a step away but then stopped and kissed her again.
“Go pack,” he said.
Friends offered their lake cabin outside Bangor, Maine so they made it their first destination.
They had been easing back into sex for a little while. Slow and careful and conscientious. Tonight they coupled with a savagery. It wasn’t making love. More like trial by fire.
It burned bright in the hearth, the charred logs slipping and crackling and popping. The clear yellow flames throwing shadows on the walls and the shadows throwing waves of heat onto the bed.
The bed was dead center of the cabin, like an altar. Erik lay on his back and Daisy was on top of him, going at him with a vengeance. They were still fully dressed, only what was necessary had been bared or undone. Over him, she was burning, too. Burning hotter, harder, and he was buried in the immensity of her need. She writhed under his touch, a wild and dangerous thing. Her lips were open, her throat strained, but still no sound came from her. Under normal circumstances, this would indicate she had reached the pinnacle of pleasure and he would coax her with his voice.
Come. Come to me.
But now the soundlessness only signaled how desperately she was still trapped in grief.
He took her hands in his. “Cry,” he whispered. “Cry to me.”
Her head lolled, her skin burned, something in her seemed to crumple and she came down off him, crashed gently down into the pillows. He rolled to her, ignoring the tangle of his clothes, slid his hand to the back of her neck, into the hot dampness of her long hair. His mouth found hers. He pulled his arms from his sleeves as she unbuttoned him, lay back long enough for her to pull his pants off. Then he was on her again, her mouth in his again. His hands were stripping her clothes off sure and strong. He wanted to throw them at the hearth, consign them to the flames and burn them. Burn all of the hurt away, reduce it to ash so he could show her who he was.
On fire with fearless purpose, he moved over her, held her down and pushed deep into her, kissed her open-eyed.
“I need you,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I’m here.”
“Help me.” Her teeth chattered by his ear. She clung to him, her face in his shoulder, limbs trembling as the storm rolled through.
“I’ve got you, Dais. I’m not afraid of what you’re feeling. I can’t love you without loving this too.” Gently but firmly he took her head in his hands, took it off his shoulder and made her face him. “Look at me now.”
She tried but could not focus on him.
“Look at me,” he said. “Look in my eyes.”
She breathed in, deep, held it a moment, her eyes trying to settle on his.
“Look at me,” he said again. “Look only at me.”
It took a few minutes, her breath hitching in and out of her lungs, but gradually her eyelids ceased flickering. Her gaze locked into his and her body grew still. His hand caressed her face, thumb running beneath her eyes and over her mouth.
They stared. They breathed. The heat of the room coalesced into a bubble, sealing them up in peace. Time relaxed. The flames were dying down to embers. The cool blue of a fire a thousand times more powerful. He kissed her, nudged her lips open with his and moved into her mouth, finding her tongue. He grew hard inside her again, reared his hips back a few inches and then settled deeper into her. She spread her legs further and her hand pressed the small of his back. He slid into her, out of her, feeling himself disappear into her body, down into the core where their halves had made a whole.
It was the most love we ever made. A new spire on our cathedral. I don’t have to tear it down. It can stay there and be beautiful.
An almost triumphant desire surged in him, strong, bright and true. It crashed through the roof of his mind and the fabric of time slowly split down the center.
“Come back to me,” he said, throwing out the hook.
“You,” she said, caught and drifting toward him. “Only you.”
He tried to keep looking in her eyes as she rumbled beneath the plate of his desire and bucked him up. He held on until the long line of her throat opened to the ceiling and her edge touched his. They came together, and this time it was her voice that turned inside-out and ricocheted off the walls, while he threw back his head and made no sound at all. His voice retracted, coiling around the inside of his skull. An enormous noise. Like a cathedral bell ringing.
Daisy. Daisy. Daisy. Daisy.
He fell down by her, his chest heaving, eardrums pounding. Her hand dropped heavy on his head. They were both soaked, salty and dripping and spent in the damp, twisted sheets. The windows were opaque with steam. The air of the cabin pressed down on them from all sides as the edges of the universe wove back together.
Slowly she got up, came around to his side of the bed, beckoning. He took her hand and foll
owed her to the door. They stepped onto the porch and gasped together with visceral relief as the cool of the evening swept over their bodies.
Outside was purple, velvety twilight. The air was a soft towel blotting away the sweat of their lovemaking. They were isolated deep in the woods, not a human soul around and only the sounds of nature creating a low background hum. Hand-in-hand they went down the short path to the edge of the lake and waded into its cool depths.
As the water closed over his head, Erik’s skin and bones dissolved. He couldn’t tell where he stopped and the lake’s embrace began. He came up, raking his fingers through his hair, running them over his face, then toppled back into the drink. Over and over, they both sank beneath the surface, rinsed themselves clean, wrung themselves out, then dropped under again.
Suffused with a beautiful weariness, he moved to a shallower place where he could kneel in the soft sand. She swam up to him, floated into his lap, her arms around his neck.
“I’m so happy right now,” she said. “I didn’t think I ever would be again.”
He cradled her to his chest, fell into the green of her eyes as he went looking for her mouth again.
“I love you,” he said. “You’re the love of my life.”
He turned in the silky circle of her arms, drawing them around him from behind. “Hold on.”
With her cheek snugged tight against his, he pushed off and glided toward the middle of the lake. She streamed out behind him like a cape.
Hold on, his heart sang. Hold onto me.
DAISY’S ORIGINAL DUE date arrived. Kees should have been born today. Or perhaps he would’ve been born already.
The day bristled with a strange longing, looking from Daisy to Erik and back like an expectant puppy with a leash in its mouth. They took themselves for a long walk down country roads. They sighed a lot but didn’t say much.
In the late afternoon, they lay in the hammock at the far end of the porch at La Tarasque.
“What are those flowers?” Erik asked, pointing to the drifts of magenta pompoms on the other side of the railing.
“Monarda,” Daisy said. “Bee balm.”
The fluffy flowers were thick with bees. And as Erik and Daisy lay still, hummingbirds began to approach. First one. Then two more. Hovering with blurred wings as they fished for nectar.
“Messengers,” Daisy said. “They get into dark places and heal.”
“I’ve never seen them this close,” he said.
“Maybe they have a message.”
They swung a while in silence.
“It’s not like he had a personality yet,” Erik said. “Although when I saw his face and he looked so serious… And my mother said it was how I looked. He became a person to me. Like I could see that would be part of who he was. Or who he was supposed to be.”
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Daisy asked.
“I don’t know. Why? Do you feel like he’s gone to be born somewhere else? As someone else?”
“He was ours,” she said. “I mean, we made him. We shared him. He was born of us.”
“Our cathedral,” he said, seeing the new spire rising above stained glass and bells.
“I’ve always gravitated toward the idea that souls are an eternal source of energy and these bodies of ours are just shells,” Daisy said. “Going through IVF really solidified it for me. Seeing pictures of the dividing cells and it was all happening in a dish, in a lab. Was Kees’s soul present at that time? What about those embryos we froze—is the soul frozen inside them? I can’t believe it is. Bodies are just the shell. Gender is part of the shell. The soul comes along later, by choice. I really believe this. Souls have a purpose and their energy belongs with a certain other energy. They go where they belong. It’s not random…”
Erik closed his eyes, perched on the edge of whatever she was going to say next. “Go on.”
“Kees was supposed to be ours. That soul belongs to us. It just caught a bad ride this time.”
“A bad ride?”
“A body that didn’t work out. A defective shell. The soul is still ours. It’ll come back. Maybe as a boy again or maybe as a girl. But it’ll come back to us.” Beside him, he felt her shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s dumb, but it makes me feel better. I can believe in it. I mean, you came back to me. So Kees will, too. Somehow.”
Erik was quiet. As she spoke, a cloud of sparkling yellow lights began to creep across the inside of his eyelids. Moving left to right like fireflies. Something loosened in his chest. Daisy’s words fell into place like Tetris blocks, each one turning and rotating to accommodate the next, assembling a greater structure.
The soul caught a bad ride this time.
It’ll come back.
It’s ours. It belongs to us.
“I believe it too,” he said. “I didn’t know I believed it until I heard you say it.”
For the first time since the stillbirth, Erik felt a flicker in his heart. A tiny spark of hope. He cupped his hands around it. Breathed gently. Treated it like a feather of memory. Or a newborn baby. He couldn’t grab for it. It had to come to him.
“I can still feel him in my hands, Dais,” he said.
“I’ll always feel him in my hands. Our hands were born to feel that soul.”
“It’ll come back then.”
“It will.”
Daisy curled into him. He ran his mouth over her hair.
“When we get home, let’s finish that damn screened-in porch,” he said. “And then plant bee balm all around it.”
DOWN IN KEY WEST, Erik dreamed often of his father. It was a dream he’d had for fifteen years. In a golden boat, on a lake, hauling in golden fish, while Byron stood on the shore, cheering his son’s catch.
Who do I look like? Erik yelled over the water.
And Byron called back, You look like me.
“Come take a walk,” Erik said to Christine.
It was an overcast day. Every now and then a bit of lazy rain came through. But the air was soft and the waters of the Gulf were warm. He and Christine gathered a few shells, then sat on the beach to talk.
“You told me once,” Erik said, “you’d never forgive the father of your children. But you’d listen to the man you loved.”
“He was the love of my life,” Christine said, arranging her shells on the sand in front of her.
“You also told me he gave you the necklace when you signed divorce papers,” Erik said. “But that’s not what happened. Is it?”
Staring at her collection, Christine shook her head.
Erik set the backs of his fingers on her cheek. “I’m not angry and I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said. “I just want the story. Nothing will upset me now, Mom. Nothing.”
“It was the only lie I told you,” she said, hugging her knees.
“You were protecting me,” he said. “I understand. Did he leave it behind?”
“On the bedside table,” she said. “I never saw him again.”
“But why…” He took his cap off, scratching his head then replaced it. “Why pass yourself off as divorced? Why not just let him be missing? Or say he was dead?”
“Missing was too hard to explain,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you and Pete he was dead because what if he showed up again? Missing was cruel and left the door open for too many questions. Divorce worked best. You boys could accept it and it got everyone else to shut up and leave me alone. I was slightly out of my mind at the time. Deep in survival mode. I got us out of Clayton, slapped together a skeleton story and beefed it up by saying I didn’t want to talk about it.”
Erik wrapped arms around his knees as well. “And the child support payments for me and Pete?”
“That was Farfar,” she said. “He sent those. He helped me keep up the pretense until you were both eighteen.”
The shoreline blurred as Erik’s eyes welled up.
“You naming the baby after him,” Christine said, touching his arm. “He would’ve been so proud.”
Erik sniffed hard, turned his head to wipe his face on his windbreaker. “What do you think happened to Dad,” he asked. “If you never saw him again, if the divorce was a fabrication, then in your heart, what do you believe? Do you think he’s dead?”
“No. He’s alive.”
Erik reared back a hair. “You believe or you know?”
“I believe.”
“So…?”
Christine didn’t say anything. She sat cross-legged now, her hands twined against her ankles. The wind blew wisps of her silvery-blonde hair around. Her face was tanned, lined and far away.
“You kept his ring,” Erik said.
She nodded.
“And you kept his name,” he said, the revelation dawning as if the clouds parted to let a sunbeam through. “You won’t marry anyone because he wouldn’t be able to find you.”
She smiled at the waves. “We all have our weaknesses.”
“You could marry Fred and not change your name.”
She didn’t answer. Her smile hinted Erik was sadly missing the point.
“Do you think it was another woman?”
“It was the river world.” She looked at Erik then. “It gets touchy-feely from here,” she said. “You don’t have to believe what I believe. I’m just telling you the context I had to put it in.”
“Something happened after the accident,” Erik said. “Didn’t it? Trudy and Kirsten told me he was never the same after.”
“But they knew him before,” Christine said. “I didn’t.” She drew a deep breath, running a hand through her damp hair. “We didn’t have the knowledge back then, Erik. It was nineteen sixty-two. Trauma was barely a concept, much less a medical condition. The terminology to address traumatic brain injury didn’t exist, let alone treatments. I don’t remember even hearing the diagnosis of TBI until the Iraq War. Back then, the diagnosis was one word: lucky. They said he was lucky simply to be alive.”
“But something was changed.”
“So many words for it now,” Christine said. “Pick one. PTSD, you know about it all too well. Or you could say he suffered absent seizures. Or he had problems with emotional processing. An empathy deficit or a depersonalization disorder. Alexithymia—that’s a word and a half, it means you have difficulty recognizing or describing emotions.”
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