He closed the book and held it in front of his waist with his arms crossed before him. “She belongs to you now, son,” he said. “You can kiss her right here if you want to.”
August smiled and turned toward me. He cupped my chin in his hands and leaned down and kissed me, a bottomless, watery kiss that made me disappear into him again, my chest aching with pleasure, my hands held dumbly at my sides. When I reached up to hold him and his kiss deepened, the justice said, “That’s fine, now, that’s fine.” And so we stood looking into each other’s eyes. And then we began to laugh. We laughed until our breath was nearly gone. We laughed until we could not speak. We laughed until my ribs hurt, and August ran his wrists over his eyes, where tears had sprung up and now ran down his cheeks. We laughed with the justice of the peace looking on and we were still laughing when August threw his arms around me and yelled, “To hell with them! Right?”
When we finally broke apart, he took my hand and led me out of the judge’s chambers, racing through the hallway, clattering down the stairs, through the echoing hush of the courthouse lobby, and into the clear light of day. Just across the street stood a huge elm tree and under its spreading branches I saw Edwin. He stared at us and walked up and down and stared at us again and then stood in the shade, wringing his hands. I grinned and waved but Edwin did not wave back.
If just for a moment I thought of my mother, I did not think of her long. I pushed her memory away, the dark red of her wedding dress, the dress plastered by blood to her body on the last day of her life. I nursed my happiness like it was a bubble that could still expand. Much to my amazement, it did.
When the streetcar came along, I climbed the iron steps and made my way behind August, who came along the aisle until he found two seats side by side. He paid the conductor and the conductor dropped our fare into slots in the top of a machine he wore strapped to his waist.
I had never ridden the interurban before. When we pulled out, the hard jolt surprised me. Sparks poured down and we picked up speed and wind whipped in through the open windows. The wheels clattered and the racket inside the car was deafening. Whenever we hit a curve, we all leaned far to the right, or far to the left, until I thought we might tip over. But we did not. We just hurtled along as if we were racing into the future.
August put his mouth against my ear. “Two stops,” he said.
The town slid by. People looked up at us as we passed and the gray river came suddenly into view and just as suddenly slipped away. August pulled the cord and the bell rang. We came to a stop in front of a dry-goods store. We climbed down and August took my hand as the streetcar pulled away. We walked two blocks to a tall yellow house, where we turned up a gravel drive and came along past the raw frame of a building that someone had started at the bottom of the yard. On either side, houses with white cotton curtains blowing out of the open windows so close you could nearly reach out and touch them.
I looked over my shoulder when August climbed the steps to unlock our door, but I did not see my father pounding up the street. I did not see Martha hovering in her irritating, painful way, her gaunt face reproachful, as if my behavior forced her to suffer endless regret. I did not see Hattie, although this left me with some sadness, for I would have liked to have had Hattie at my wedding. I would have liked to have seen her dance down the aisle the way she had danced in the rain.
But too late now. I had really done it. I had left them all behind. A strange feeling of relief juddered through me, down my arms to the ends of my fingertips, down my legs to the soles of my feet.
The rooms were nearly empty but they were clean. In the sitting room, into which we stepped from the porch, a tiny spindly couch with torn blue upholstery stood against the wall. Two wooden chairs and a worn painted table with a scalloped apron had been placed under a window. Beyond that was a room someone had set up to be the kitchen. It had a large window that looked out on the driveway and a very small stove and an old icebox. A rusty sink. Sunlight vivid on the floor. The door to the bedroom opened off of the kitchen and I followed August as he set my valise on the bed. Someone had made it up with a faded green quilt and two flat pillows naked of their pillow slips. There was a washstand with a cracked pitcher and bowl and a small mirror and a wardrobe with one door hanging open and a bare window that looked out over the empty side yard.
August looked at me and then looked around. “It is not much now,” he said. “But you can fix it as you would like.”
“No,” I said. “I like it.”
He smiled and crossed the floor and put his arms around me and dropped his face into my hair. I felt his heart beating in his chest. “What do you think?” he said softly. “Are you tired?” And I shook my head no even though I had never been more tired in my life. I felt his hands slide to my waist. He leaned back and began to unbutton my blouse, each button, one by one. He unfastened my skirt and pulled my blouse from my shoulders and let my skirt and blouse fall to the floor, a pile of green, black ribbons that matched the black ribbons banding my green skirt, like shadows in the forest. I felt his hands on my buttons, my snaps, my hooks and strings, all the trappings that kept me laced and bound and tightened down. He put his hands on my shoulders and very slowly slid them down my chemise, over my breasts, over my ribs, over my stomach, until he could slide a hand between my thighs. He let his hand rest there, still as a stick, and I breathed harder and still he did not move and I breathed harder still and squirmed against his palm, yearning. Looking into his eyes. Breathing harder. Only then did he push me back onto the bed, where my valise fell to the floor. I sat up and pulled my chemise over my head and leaned back on my elbows and watched him. He took his shirt off first and then his trousers and then his drawers. I had never seen him before, but only knew him as a shadow in the darker shadow of the night. Now he stood before me in the slow float of differing light, daylight now and no longer dark, and nothing that was quite his, nothing quite mine, but only a desire that was our whole, then, desire and freedom. I felt light-headed and urgent, restored to myself and new at the same time. He smiled boldly and stood over me, his body light and golden and strong. He lay down next to me and did nothing at first, just looked at me, looked at my skin, my body, my shivering limbs. Then he kissed me and I sank into his kiss. He pulled away and smiled at me and reached down and moved his fingers against me and I cried out and then I was nothing but trembling flooded with blurred light. Only then did he move over me, part my legs with his hands, move me the way he wanted me, move into me. I arched my back and opened to him and then my eyes filled with tears and he kept on and kept on and I had as with a vision the thought that even our dust would be mingled together forever. Each stroke was a seal, a promise, and I moved under him as if against my own will, crying out, and then his voice washed over me, a great jerking groan and I felt him quaking inside me.
In the late afternoon, we finally slept. When it grew dark, the neighbors’ dogs began to bark. I woke and heard footsteps on the gravel outside. I sat up and put my hand on August’s shoulder. I said his name.
“Do you hear something?” I said.
He smiled softly but did not stir.
“August,” I said again. “I mean it. Do you hear something?”
He opened his eyes and looked up at me. “Marie,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
“Why are the dogs acting up?” I rolled over on my side, the room dark now and everything unfamiliar. I felt fear rise in my throat and knew that even though I had gotten away, that old feeling stayed with me like a snake coiled around my heart.
“I do not know. They are dogs.”
“No,” I said. “You should go see.” I thought of my father, who might have made his way across town, his ideas his own and still all about me. I thought of his fist, knotted like a stone at the end of a rope. I thought of the curl of his lip when he smiled. I felt my belly clench around its boulder of grief. He could walk in the night unseen. He could climb our stairs unbidden. He could come upon us in the dark and
he could make us his own.
But August just pulled the pillow over his head and said something I could not understand. I pulled the pillow away and he sat up and in a suddenly sharp voice told me that it was nothing and he was tired and I needed to stop it. I sat very still and held my breath. He punched the pillow and put it back under his head and lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. I exhaled very slowly. Then he rolled over on his side and leaned over the edge of the bed and fished through the pockets of his trousers until he found a cigarette and a box of matches. He sat up and lit the cigarette and then fell back and lay on his back smoking.
“Find me something I can use for an ashtray,” he said. His voice milder then, as if he had perhaps forgotten who I was and had now remembered. The tiny knot inside of me unclasped, like a leaf unfurling from a bud.
I brought him a saucer that I found on top of the icebox and lay down next to him while he smoked and tapped ash into the plate. The dogs kept barking and the evening deepened. I waited for a step on our stairs, a knock on our door, but none came. Whatever worried the dogs, it was not my father.
Finally I said I was hungry. August ground the cigarette out and stood up. I watched him walk naked into the kitchen and as soon as he passed into the doorway, he was August again, the boy I loved, and not the man with the hard voice. He returned with a block of cheese and some cold ham and a plate and a knife and some rolls wrapped in a napkin. I reached for my chemise and he said to leave it alone. I lay back on the bed and felt thrilled by my own nakedness. “There is more,” he said. When he came back he brought two thick glass bottles of beer and a metal church key. He opened one of the bottles and handed it to me and then set the church key on the windowsill.
We ate our supper and drank the beer slowly and did not say much. The dusk light made the room dim and we decided against candles and let the last of the light disappear over us. I lay on the bed with a pillow propped behind my head, with the wet bottle of beer making a cold ring where I held it on my belly as if my body were a table. I could just see the first star as it hung in the window, a perfect pinpoint of clear, cold light gleaming in the sky. I thought to make a wish but I did not know what to ask for. It seemed that all of my dreams had come true.
When we were done, August wrapped the remainder of the cheese in the napkin that had held the rolls. He set the plate and the knife and the empty bottles on the floor next to the bed. He said my name and lay down on his stomach with his arm around my waist and his face in my shoulder. He told me how much he loved me. “Are you happy?” he said.
I nodded. I told myself that I could not imagine that every footstep belonged to my father. I could not foretell disaster every time a dog barked. And I was happy with August. I did not need to tell myself anything about that.
He sighed and burrowed his face into my hair again. He told me that he had never been this happy in his whole entire life. He had never known another girl like me. He would love me like this until the end of my days. He would take care of me forever.
He stroked me as he talked and I felt the weight of his hand on my bare skin and felt my breath catch in my throat. His hand on my skin smooth and strong. His hand on my breast. His lips on my throat. I reached for him then and he lifted me so I could sit astride him and look down at his shining eyes and his luminous face. I leaned down and let my hair fall over us like a curtain. We kissed with soft lips, as if there was a truth that we could find together. And then he groaned and rolled me over and pinned my hands above my head. He would not let me move, but just held me and that was what I wanted then, that and all the world that was him. His very force like a whirlwind tearing through me until I thought I would split and die.
In the morning, I woke alone. I stretched and felt the warmth of the sunlight, the soft breeze from the window cracked on the other side of the room, my skin alive, my bones alive, my heart alive. Joy like a stranger I would have to get used to.
Before long I heard the front door open and close. I was embarrassed by my happiness and shy about seeing August, with whom I had traveled so far the night before that by now he must be unknown to me. I rolled on my side and pulled the sheet over my head. August came in and pulled the sheet back. He looked down at me and laughed. He carried a brown paper sack of rolls. He told me he was making coffee and I should get up and get dressed and go down to the laundry and quit my job, for he was going to take care of me from now on. “I order you to do this,” he said. He reached down and gave me a gentle swat on my bottom. “As your husband,” he said, laughing. His words delighted me as much as they would have had they been the first words of the world. And maybe they were. They felt like words that had made me.
We sat side by side on the little sofa in the front room, my knee draped over his knee. I idly swung my foot and he leaned back and put his hand on the back of my neck. Outside mist lifted from the ground of our new country and vanished. Everything around me as if in a beautiful dream.
As soon as we were through, he kissed me and dropped two nickels into my hand. He closed my fingers around them. He told me that these would be enough to get me down to the laundry and back. Then he stood up and picked up his tool belt and strapped it around his waist. He stood in the doorway holding the door open while I found my coat. He looked like a cowboy I had seen on a long-ago poster for a Wild West show, his tool belt slung around his hips like he carried guns and knew how to use them. I could not believe he was mine forever. I threw myself against him and kissed him again and again. He laughed and took me in his arms and warned me in a thick voice to lay off because he had to go to work. But he cupped my breasts as he said this. Our promise to each other. Our secret prayer.
15
William Oliver stood at the front counter with a tall man who was counting out coins. When he caught sight of me, he gave the man his parcel and then opened the front door for him. The man said something to William Oliver, who nodded and said something in return. They both glanced at me. Then the man turned and walked away.
“Mr. Oliver,” I said.
“Be quiet.”
“Mr. Oliver.”
“I think you have lost all bargaining position,” he said. He clenched his fingers. “Wouldn’t you agree? You did not have that much to begin with, but now you have none. None.” He took me by the elbow and walked me hard and fast into the alley. Dark shadow fell over us. In the street, wagons passed in the daylight. “Morning deliveries are almost through, but there is still time,” he said. His voice was hard and low. He tightened his grip on my wrist.
“I do not understand.”
“Of course you do.”
“Let go of me,” I said. “Mr. Oliver.” I pulled away from him. “I do not work here anymore.”
“No?” he said.
“No,” I said. I tried to step away but he squeezed my arm. Then he bent my arm behind me, as easily as if this had always been the plan.
“I think you do,” he said.
“I do not,” I said. “Let go of me.”
“We will see what your father says about that.” He pushed me hard into the wall, his familiar face queer and twisted in the half-light. “Right?” he said. “Right? Your father will have plenty to say, I can assure you. Two more nights in the woods, Mary. What can you possibly have to say for yourself?”
“Stop it.” I pulled away as hard as I could, but he pressed against me and his arm came up across my chest and pinned me against the wall. “It is time, Mary,” he said. “I have been patient with you. I have given you every chance. I have waited for you to come to your senses. You have chosen another path. Not my path,” he said. “Certainly not the path that any thinking girl would have chosen. But your choice has given me certain advantages. I think you know that your time has run its course. I think even you can see that there is only one thing left to do.”
“You are hurting me,” I said.
He loosened his grip and stepped back a little. I curled into myself and tried to pull free, but still he held my wri
st in one hand. Then he held my arm against the wall over my head.
“Two nights ago, before things had made themselves entirely clear, I went to see your father,” he said. “I walked into that bar and I sat down in front of him. And he knows me, as I have said before, so I was not surprised when he greeted me. I was even less surprised when he poured a shot for me on the house. We had that trouble over your mother, as you no doubt recall, but we have not had any since. Some men might even suggest that your father and I are friends. Despite that, I protected your secret, even when that boy who claims to love you came in and sat at the bar. He was there for a long time. He tucked into quite a few drinks. When he departed, he left a pile of cash next to his glass. Not so big. Do not get too impressed. But more than I expected. He is a carpenter, after all.”
I drew air in like I was drowning and stared at him. “That is not true,” I said.
“No?” He studied me. “You may have even bigger problems than you realize,” he said. “But I am sure we can find a solution.”
I shook my head and again tried to pull away but he moved as a man in great stillness, which is the way that a man moving with too much force always moves, and shoved my arm back again.
“I am done waiting,” he said. “You understand me?”
I shook my head and he slapped me, not hard, just a stinging slap to show me that he could.
“We can do this here or upstairs,” he said. “You choose.”
I shook my head weakly, tears dripping from my nose. I pushed hard and tried to heave him off of me, as if he could be lifted like a stone or a heavy board, but he just smiled and wrenched my arm against the wall. I turned my face away and he leaned in and rammed his tongue into my ear. He shoved his face into my hair, my neck. He ran his hands over my breasts. He lifted the hem of my skirt and began to fumble with my stockings, his hands on my bare thighs. I tried to let myself fall to my knees: I would crawl away, I would go belly first down the alley, I would get away. But his hand dropped and he tore at my skirt and then, as if he could not wait, he shoved his hips hard against me, bucking in short thrusts until he made a stifled sound and shuddered.
The End of Always: A Novel Page 16
