But he did not come this far to punk out at the moment of truth.
Charles dropped his pants and underwear to the floor. He started to unbutton his shirt, and almost heard the tsk from his wife, and remembered himself.
He approached the bed. Cordelia wore a bored, but impatient look. He couldn’t do this. He had to do this.
Charles climbed up and fell over her. Her face curled in annoyance at their closeness, and he wanted to bark at her that there was nothing he could do.
She reached her hand forward and grabbed him so suddenly that he gasped. “Limp. Clock is ticking.”
“This isn’t helping.”
“I’m not here to help,” she said. “I’m here to be the vessel by which your children come into the world. Nothing more.”
“Right.” Charles closed his eyes and tried to think of something that might stir him, but there was no image strong enough to erase the reality waiting underneath him.
But he was a man, and her hand against his organ, no matter how unwelcome, gave it the tiniest spark of life, and that was enough.
Charles pushed against Cordelia’s thatch of hair and entered her. Her expression didn’t change. She may as well have been enjoying an afternoon nap.
He thrust against her, at first slowly, afraid of angering or annoying her, but then faster and harder. He worked to convince himself he was enjoying the act, when he had never in all his life been so averse to sex as he was with his wife, in this moment, on their wedding night.
“This is going nowhere,” Cordelia remarked. Judge. Jury.
“Give me a minute,” he replied, through gritted teeth.
“That’s about all you have left.”
Charles blocked her out. He tried to clear his mind, but there was no use in it. He knew where he was, and only one thing could take him away from here.
Catherine. He saw her in those red stilettos he’d bought her. She lay on her back with one heeled foot pressed into his chest. Her sex glistened for him. Called to him. Huck. I want it dirty the first time.
Charles cried out in shock as the orgasm rocked through him.
Cordelia smiled tightly, pulled her nightgown back into place, and rolled to her side.
Seven
We All Have Our Paths
Clancy Sullivan was a tiny little thing. Although close to three months old, he could have passed for a child born that very day. But while he was small, his little limbs jabbed to and fro, and his smile lit up his whole cherubic face, and Colleen suspected his traumatic birth would not stop him from having a long and wonderful life.
“He’s beautiful, Rory,” Colleen said as she played with Clancy’s baby toes. He was soft and warm in her arms. She realized how rarely she’d been around babies by how wondrous she found this child’s feet. They were hardly anything at all, just whips of digits with the teensiest sliver of nails. She pinched them softly with her fingers and the chubbiness of the silken, unmarred skin was almost too much. Even more, the scent, which must be unique to babies, she thought, had the strange effect of stirring her womb.
She would look this up later, in one of her medical books. Surely there was a biological, if not evolutionary, connection to how strangely appealing babies were to women.
Clancy ripped out a peal of laughter. Rory squealed back in delight and went in with both hands to tickle his belly, probably hoping to elicit more of what Colleen thought had to be the purest joy she’d ever seen.
No, she thought. Rory’s was the purest.
“He just started that a couple days ago,” Rory said proudly. His face again dissolved into that of a bona fide tickle monster for the next few moments, before his mother, Josephine, emerged from the other room with a rag over her shoulder and a look of intense purpose.
This was Josephine Sullivan’s first grandchild, and she took her new charge of grandmother very seriously.
“Time for a feeding, little lamb,” Josephine said and lifted the infant into her arms to the soft protests of Rory. She smiled at Colleen. “It’s so nice to see you again, Colleen. Please give your mother our warm regards.”
“I will, Mrs. Sullivan.”
“If we left it to Rory, he’d do nothing but play with the wee one,” she added, though her consternation had a touch of admiration at the end.
“The temptation would be too much for me as well, I’m afraid.”
“I guess she’s the expert,” Rory said when they were gone, with just the hint of an eye roll. They both laughed.
“You are lucky to have a mother who’s here to help and knows just what to do.”
“I am,” he agreed, with a look toward the door they’d disappeared through. “Carolina couldn’t even feed him for weeks. She’d try, God knows she wanted to so badly, and it just took so much from her. The doctor finally forbade it. It broke her heart and her spirit.” He shook his head and sighed into his lap. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did for her, Colleen. I wasn’t sure…”
“No use in fussing over what might have been,” she chided. She reached forward and tried to pat his leg, but the gesture, what remained of whatever had been between them, was so awkward she decided to keep her arms folded.
“You wish I didn’t know this about you,” Rory said.
“What?” Colleen asked and then laughed. No use in playing coy. “What can be said about it? Some are born with the voice of an angel. Some can lay hands on another and heal.”
He smiled. “There’s not much to equate the two.”
“No?” Colleen smiled back. “Still. I don’t understand it myself. All I know is, it works, and as long as it does, I’ll use it to help others.”
“This is why you wanted to become a doctor.”
Colleen looked to the side, thinking. He might not understand her desire to study who she was, and even dissect it. “Partly. It might seem like cheating, to know whatever science can’t mend I can assist with… but I see it another way. That when God has given us a gift, we’d be foolish to waste it on principle.”
“I don’t think it’s cheating. I think you have something no one else has, and you have an opportunity to use it for good. You have used it for good.”
“Not no one else.”
Rory’s eyes widened. “You know someone else who can do this? Heal?”
“Evangeline,” she said and wholly enjoyed his scandalized expression.
“How did I… so this must be a Deschanel thing. What about Charles? Augustus? The others?”
“I’ve already said too much,” Colleen said with a wink.
“You’re too much,” he said.
“Besides,” Colleen said, returning to the point. “I believe wholeheartedly in the purity of science. I intend to take whatever I learn in my studies, and whatever science and technology has allowed me to do, and push it to the fullest extent. When I hit a wall… that’s where the other can come in.”
Rory watched her. “You really are the most unusual person I’ve ever known.”
“I won’t ask ‘how so,’” Colleen said with a guarded chuckle.
“Good, because I wasn’t going to tell you!”
“When will the three of you leave for Boston?”
“Thanks to you, we should be able to leave by the end of summer, in time for fall term. Carolina hated that her illness might have kept me from starting on time, but I don’t think she realizes that none of this… law school, the future, none of it would be… without her…” Rory trailed off and checked the clock on the wall. “Carolina will be waking soon. I know your plane leaves in a few hours, but are you sure you won’t stay and say hello? Or, goodbye, I suppose, since next time you’re home, we’ll be in another state.”
Colleen rose. She looked around the room, one she’d seen many times growing up, as it was where Rory had grown up. It was different now… everything was different now. Rory was married to their mutual childhood friend, she was married to her future, and the world around them had already proven that none of this would ever com
e easy.
“Give her a kiss for me.” She took Rory’s hands in hers. “And you’ll call me, if anything else happens? If anything comes up that you… need me for?”
Rory nodded. He kissed her cheek and then dropped her hands as he reached for the door. “You’ve already done so much, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a relief knowing my wife and child will always be safe as long as you’re in our lives.”
“I’ll always be in your lives,” Colleen said and immediately worried about the implication of such intimate words.
Rory smiled. “One day, I hope to be holding your little one, Colleen.”
She laughed; stopped short of telling him that, on top of all these lovely abilities, the Deschanels were plagued by an ancient curse that she wasn’t about to pass on to anyone else. “Doubtful.”
“Maybe our children will play together. Hell, maybe they’ll even date one day! Wouldn’t that be something? My son, marrying your daughter?”
Colleen couldn’t help but imagine such a future, caught up in his silliness, but she wouldn’t lie, either. “Children aren’t in my future.”
He tapped the door and sighed. “What a shame that would be, if the best, most natural caregiver I know chose to forego an experience I can only describe as the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“We all have our paths, Rory.”
Mine takes me far, far from here.
* * *
Maureen’s calves were on fire. Her feet trembled in her heels, wobbling her balance. She’d lost track of time well over an hour ago, and from her unnatural angle, bent over Mr. Blanchard’s desk, she had no view of a clock.
She’d wonder if he was still there, still paying attention, but a slight shift in her stance, an attempt to get comfortable, had him chiding her in an instant. Contrite, she’d grit her jaw and bite through the pain of the position.
A week ago, he’d ordered her to stop wearing panties to the office. He said it so casually, in passing, as she took the stack of folders from his arms. “Looks like it may rain,” he remarked. “Miss Deschanel, I’ll ask that you not wear underwear in my office again.”
And then he walked off, and she replayed that conversation in her head at least a hundred times, looking for any other possible interpretation of his words.
The next day, trembling and naked under her skirt, she’d taken the streetcar and imagined every last businessman and woman seated knew her secret. Knew, and were judging, as God was likely judging.
She’d been so nervous as she stepped through the office. Had she heard him wrong? Maybe he’d ordered her never to bring glassware? Or neckwear? That seemed far more likely than hearing him right, though her peculiar boss had asked other things of her that were unorthodox.
But then he’d asked her to order Italian for him, and then followed the request with, “You did as I asked?”
“Yes… yes, sir.”
“Good. Extra sauce on the meatballs, Miss Deschanel. Don’t let them forget the parmesan this time. They always look for ways to cut costs at my expense, but damn if their meatballs aren’t the best in town.”
And now, spread wide for his perusal, Maureen understood this was an escalation of their previous late evening encounter in his office. She could pretend she hadn’t heard him pleasuring himself—that familiar crisp zip of his pants—but pretending was the work of little girls, and Maureen was a woman. She knew she was a woman, for her boss was a man with exquisite tastes. He was no Peter Evers, seeking below his maturity to cover for the lack of his own.
Her sex throbbed. The air in the office had a light chill, and the exposure, combined with the occasional rumble and passing of air of the air conditioner across her flesh, teased her in a way she had never been able to tease herself. No man had made her this wet… had ever made her long to be entered like a wild animal, rutting away their primal instincts.
It was torture. Knowing he could see this, that he could see her desire laid so bare, made it all the more worse.
At last, she heard his clothing shift as he stood. His steps were the only sound in the room, the light presses and depresses, one after another, against the shag carpet.
Mr. Blanchard’s hand cupped her right buttock. Squeezed, released, and then did it again, marveling in a light whisper at the supple responsiveness of her young flesh.
His fingers moved inward, toward the throb, which now sent the blood coursing toward her head in such a rush she saw stars. His fingers splayed along the outside of her vagina, in a fan. Then, the middle one dipped inside of her, and Maureen’s moan emerged all the way from her belly.
He left it there, unmoving, as her groans devolved to whimpers. She was an animal on the inside, an animal she fought to contain from turning around and mounting him, bucking like a wild animal as she took her most basest desire. Now, now, now, take me, take me, take me.
When she pressed herself back onto his hand, a move she couldn’t have stopped herself from making with all her willpower, he tsked her, and as punishment, slowly removed it. The sound of her own juices following him aroused her more than anything that had come before.
She heard, but did not see, the light sucking sound as he slid his finger into his mouth and tasted her.
“If you leave now, you can catch the 7:55 streetcar,” he said.
Eight
Summer Island, Maine
When Augustus was young, his father made them travel. In his own youth, August had spent a summer on a Grand Tour, a now antiquated coming-of-age ritual for young men of standing and wealth. He wanted the same for his own sons and daughters, he said, and so they spent their summers and break periods on road trips, with the looming promise that, when they were all old enough to enjoy it, he’d take them around the world.
They traveled mostly around the South, sometimes dipping up as high as Virginia or Kentucky. Once, he took them to Boston. August Deschanel didn’t say this, but everyone knew he’d met his first wife, Eliza, in Boston, when they were in college. She was a Yankee, which was an oddly backward word their family still used, even today, to describe her.
When August died, the traveling ceased, but Augustus never forgot his father’s words to him, on the day they’d stopped the car at Plymouth Rock for a family photo. Son, the only way to truly know and appreciate the world we have is to see the world beyond.
Summer Island felt more like the end of the world, but it definitely had a sense of beyond. It was an hour by ferry from Portland, at the mainland. The ferry station was clouded in dense, blinding fog, and when they were greeted by two men, Anderson Edgewater and Bill Whitman, the first thing out of their mouths was to question whether they had all they needed, as the next ferry was two days hence.
I suppose so, Augustus had thought, but any of his own doubts were stifled by his wife’s wide-eyed wonder at the remote island, which even in the dead of summer felt cool and damp, the way he imagined the moors in Wuthering Heights. A lighthouse at the top of the nearby hill shined its beacon through the fog, landing over the high tide of the choppy Atlantic.
The men took turns reciting the things they thought Augustus and his wife ought to know on the short drive that took them first past a wildlife refuge, and then down Heron Hollow Road, which Whitman explained was the road the Deschanels lived on. Augustus had never seen a heron in his life.
The island, they said, was just 2.2 square miles, with a population of around two-fifty, now in the summer, though just under a fifth of those would drop off in the fall. Summer birds, they called them, and Augustus understood because they had something similar in their snow birds who came down from the North in the winter.
“Everyone knows everyone here, and I ‘spect you will soon, too,” Whitman said. “That is, if you intend to stay?”
“The summer, perhaps,” Augustus answered, though his mind was already twisting around the business he’d left behind.
“Ayuh. Well, I ‘spect you’ll want to know Mayor George Cairne, in any case. He sees afte
r the town year round… we used to have one of those city boys in here overseeing things. Didn’t know a thing about a thing. We voted him out and put one of our own in the job. He’s born and raised here, like many of us. The Cairnes, Farnsworths, McElroys, Shepards, Aldridges… all good folks, and you’ll wanna get to know them. Summer is the best time to know your neighbors, though the winter brings us together in a most unique way.”
“We don’t have much here, but we have what we need,” Edgewater added. “We of course have a town hall, and we have law, same as anyone. We even have a library, should you be needing that.”
“I love to read,” Ekatherina said, and Augustus learned this fact along with the men.
“There’s Flanders Grocery, our only one on the island. Flanders, he gets regular shipments, so you shouldn’t find yourself lacking anything.”
“Unless you need something fancy pants,” Whitman said with a light sneer.
“Yeah, unless that,” Edgewater said. “There’s a True Value, and a good four or five restaurants, including the one my wife and I run, Edgewater’s, which is nice if you’re looking to take the missus for a date night. But The Clam Shack will do for a quick bite, and I’ll never turn one of Jack’s burgers away. If you need a drink, most of us end up at Fisherman’s Wife. Some more’n others.” He cast a glance at his friend.
“Do you fish, Mr. Deschanel?” Whitman asked.
“No,” Augustus said.
“Shame,” Whitman replied. “Deep Sea Tackle is here, in any case, should you be wanting to take up the hobby. The boys there’ll take care of you. Teach you, even.”
Edgewater went on, as they rounded a tight bend. “You didn’t come with children, but our schools are good, or as good as they can be out here. We’ve got three churches. One Catholic, one Methodist, and one of those new non-denominational types who welcome everyone. You’ll find nearly everything the town has to offer smack-dab in the center of the island, along Androscoggin Avenue. The rest is no more’n a block or two off the main path. I left a map on your dining room table, not that you’ll need it after a day or so. Aldridge Beach is nice for a picnic this time of year, but your house has its own stretch that’s just as nice, and with less folks running around.”
Nineteen Seventy-Four Page 7
