Authors: Susan Minot
No, said Ann. It was just a sound to show she was still there. No. But why ever speak again? What was worth saying? Harris, she thought. She certainly couldn’t say my Harris now.
Starkly in an instant she saw herself as she really was—alone in a wood standing among blue shadows with no sounds and the air a sort of black ice. She had no coat. All the people she’d known had forgotten her. Her mother, biting off thread between her teeth, couldn’t hear her, and her father with his eyes turned sorrowfully inward did not see her. They never had. Those she loved did not need her. Lila and Carl danced together in a bubble. Ralph Eastman picked lint from his sleeve. Buddy tucked in his shirttails, jumped in a truck and drove away. Fiona Speed showed the back of her hat, heading downtown in a cab. They all had more important concerns, they were all in their own lives, and there was no room for her. At night their doors were shut and through lit windows she could see them consulting one another, checking the baby, looking after business, licking envelopes, turning back the bedcover, shutting off the light switch, while she was left stranded out in the chill night in the true human state, lost, in the dark, alone.
She would not have Harris, she would not have anyone. Harris would have someone. So it was going to be worse for her. She saw now that she would have it worse.
He was saying something, a murmuring was coming from his direction. He was a new person. Did people ever stop changing? They surprised you with fresh pain. Sometimes they surprised you with happiness, but the pain was the sharper surprise. There was no way to protect yourself from it. People could always change and always hurt you. Of course it went in the other direction too, you could hurt them when you didn’t intend it and that too was out of your control.
She put down her flag and tried to listen.
He sounded hypnotized. I never pictured it with her, he said. I pictured it with you. He laughed strangely. I didn’t even know you, and I pictured having a child with you. He turned toward Ann and looked into her face so she might explain to him this extraordinary thing.
And he appeared again. Harris. He couldn’t be, but he was. It was the Harris she’d first seen and his face was suddenly very close and she didn’t know if she’d gone to him or he’d come to her but his arms caught her up with a quickness that jolted her heart and set it going wildly. She felt his wet cheek on her face and reached to the tears which had not appeared in his voice and touching them opened doors she’d shut and she felt again a warmth spreading and felt his breath against her ear.
I thought it would be you, he muttered, and a sob disappeared in her hair.
There was nothing to keep in herself. She took his face in her hands and kissed him feeling so near that it was like her face looking out at her own self and her spirit opened wider to him. It could not stop. That’s what love was, she thought, throwing open everything and not having it matter if it would go on afterwards. Nothing went on forever. Her bones knew it and her thickened breath knew it and that’s what she became. She did not think what anything else meant she simply went out to him unquestioning and immediate and unprotected. He was going away, that was true, that would always be the truth for them, he would always be going but she would not protect herself, she would not withdraw her heart. She
left behind negotiation and reason and passed understanding and moved into belief.
He took off his coat, wrapped it around her and lowered her to the ground. She was limp, he paused above her. She drew him down and thought of the rock garden and of swaying against him and of the sail closet lying on his chest and years ago when he had turned around with his sunglasses on at the station holding up her
these yours?
keys and years before that with the salt marshes flickering by and her reflection in the window and she remembered years ago on the boat with the slicing bow how she’d seen another boat on the horizon barely moving with sharp sails and how nothing moved. Her heart was going madly, his mouth was near but did not touch her mouth, his eyes were half-closed.
Look at me, he said.
She thought she’d been to the end of him once but this was further. There was nothing to hold onto but him. She let go of everything and held onto the underside of a cliff with only air around. Her body was being plowed up the middle. It was being split along the sides. Her throat opened up. She let go of hope, there was no more hope. She let go of the future and let go of the memory of all she’d ever lost. It trailed off behind her. None of it mattered. Harris was cupping her chin, Harris pinned her legs.
A dot of light hit his eye.
Is your head alright? he said, and a pine smell came up when he moved his elbows. He held her head. It was like holding the world in his hands, he said. Beneath her were sloping roots and against the sky the outline of a fir tree like black antlers. Something splashed in the water. His head blocked some of the stars. She untucked his shirt and felt the skin of his back, her hands small on his wide back. Your fingers are the same as the air, he said. Each time he touched her in a new place she unraveled more and it was not time anymore but thread, she was a thousand threads and they stretched out and it would never go away. This would stay always, his hair soft as feathers between her fingers, his cheek pressing the hollow of her eye, they would never leave. His hand slid over her
throat and tucked into the front of her dress. A tremor went through her. You alright? he said. Oh yes, yes. He took down her strap and smoothed her shoulder and tugged at her clothes pulling them away. She gasped when his mouth found her nipple and he stayed there, flooding her. He worked down the other strap without moving his mouth. Please don’t stop, she thought
stay like that always
and she felt exposed to the night till his other hand came over her. He was steering her, she rose to it, she could not get enough of what he was doing to her. Her fingernails dug into the ground. Where was he taking her? She didn’t want to know. Who was she? Who cared. She tilted beneath his hips, he moved over her like a mountain. Inside she was crashing like the bottom of a waterfall. His fingers touched her ear then his hand spread out and covered her face.
There was nothing to seal off the world. The black sky did not cover them, it was the opposite of a covering, it drew them up. The sky was an example of how far distance could go. I go on forever, it said, nothing can be contained. She was the same, she went on forever. She felt everything in her. Good and bad were not so different, she inhabited them equally. She was never more herself and yet never so altered
this is what you were made for
his departure was there in each touch and she went toward that departure without reservation or need for proof, she went full-fledged. Every nerve had him running through it, electric for him. Only in another person’s arms could this happen.
For a moment they were still. His face against hers was dry with his beard slightly rough. His tongue slipped into her mouth. He found her tongue and sucked at it. A groan came from low in his throat. He lifted her dress and ran his palm down her legs and switched to his knuckles. The dark hulk of his shoulders moved to cradle her hips. His face lay on her stomach. She squeezed her knees against him. His hands slipped under her pulling her underwear inching it down to her ankles. His face tipped down and his tongue was there wet, it slid in the wet opening and silent bright explosions went off in her head flashing down her spine and fizzing
up through her neck into the bones above her eyes and spreading in a fan. She clutched his collar. His hand came up roaming over her chest and her chin and her throat. He pried open her mouth and felt her teeth. He looked at the length of her then rose like a wave and turned her over. Her dress ripped somewhere, she was being thrown off balance, her arm flung out. He pushed apart her knees. One of her shoes was still on and the toe of it dug into the earth. She stayed very still. He pulled one shoulder back and flattened her on the ground. There was something in her he needed, he was going after it, his hands were searching for it. She twisted like hot glass. He flipped her back over and stared down kneeling above her, something rose from her skin a heat she never knew she had. She watched him unbuckle his belt. His face had a look she could not read, he was intent and concentrated and deep in himself, pushing off his pants and struggling to kick them off. In the soft air she saw the outline of his hip and flank and leg and then the dark root floating stiff from his silhouette and didn’t dare touch him there right away. His chest came down warm on her warm skin and she reached down to take hold of him and wrapped her palm softly around him and he sighed in a new way and she gripped him more firmly. Her throat seemed thick and crowded with words but to speak would be to scatter sand. She saw different sorts of light in her head, squares of window light and the driveway light of fanning headlights, dots of light on swaying masts and the petal light under an awning, the mint blue light on a porch, the buttercup light of the tent, clouds lit with cloudlight, his teeth in the dark. His fingers were inside her like wet clouds. She grew wider, the outline of his hair in disarray rose again and he took her hand aside and reached for himself and lowered himself down pushing against her, shoving gently then finding her and slipping in.
Her legs went up around him. She had not felt empty till now being filled she saw that everything without him was empty. Her head stretched from side to side, her breath stopped. In that instant everything was suspended and complete, there were the
tiniest threads connecting the stars to the tops of the trees to the outline of his ear to the end of her lifted toes. Her head was rolling inside and she shuddered around him and pulled him close.
She was being thrown slowly off a cliff and she made a great arc and didn’t drop but stayed up and flew and kept flying and instead of falling could dip down and not hit the ground. His hand was under her lower back, he was moving over her. She had endless capacity, she could go on endlessly, nothing would stop her. This flying would go on forever. His mouth vibrated over her breast, nibbling at her, and when she was gone it would still be there in history, she would be forever unraveling and peeling back for him. He pulled her knee to his chest, he could crush her if he wanted, it would be stamped on her soul. He unfolded her and looked at her body then at her eyes then back over his shoulder at her foot in the air. He was propped up, she was beneath him flying. She flew over fields with animals grazing, over couples embracing, she flew over people shouting and bodies lying lifeless on the ground, past children playing—they stopped and raised curious faces as she passed overhead—she went over crashing rocks and foamy water. His arms were straining holding himself up, elbows locked. He made no sound. He stared down. Her shadow zoomed. It stretched out over the ground then bunched up fat over a bump in a hill then flat again like a dark mat on the speeding water, turned fuzzy-edged and serene over a grassy plain. She could not tell where she stopped. He swooped down, kissed her, pulled up again. She could not tell where … her nerves were fluttering, her hands curved around him.
Later her life would be full of things, full of houses and children and trips to the sea and husbands and hats with brims and dogs catching sticks and tables to set and lists to cross off and she would have left singing behind and the stars would never look this way again, they would be further away but at odd unexpected moments something of the stars might strike her and it would be as if someone had branded her forehead with a hot iron. She could not name it, the thing hitting her for an instant, and would not recall what
had once been in her head at another time with other stars, but she would have the sense that she’d lost something and not know what it was and not want to find out. She sensed it might be too great to bear.
He poured over her and everything she’d ever learned poured by
I will blame this on the unborn
she thought knowing the meaning was slanted and other tilted phrases drifted by torn
all the past is in these three days
not making sense either. A powder green statue stood in the rock garden, trees were flashing by his profile, she was put in different positions and at the end was supposed to choose one, there were thorns against a green sky, people waving on the pier, a purple eel curled on sand, planes taking off and landing. Her back was bent. Someone was kicking up dust. Her clothes were ripping slowly. I
am scaling the leader
she thought. A hillside of goldenrod shook, a crest of red dune grass blew,
I am arranged for an explosion
. A door slammed shut. Her hair was undone and blowing. Pages flapped. He was moving another way
do you like that? tell me
. On a windowseat lay a woman naked, outside a man was hammering, below in the red library an old man nursed his nurse’s breast. There was music playing down the hill, music playing in the other room, stools lined up at a bar. A man sat at the bar and pulled a woman over when she walked by, she was a stranger in tight-fitting clothes, he lifted her skirt and took her from behind pressing her breasts on the counter, his teeth were clenched. His pace changed quickening, she was being rolled over boat hulls half-submerged. He hauled her through fishermen hauling in heavy nets. Lilies were open undisturbed in spreading light. A screen window slit down the middle. He put his hand over her mouth. A tail flicked the water, a mermaid diving down. Lights came on underwater. She was in floodlights on a stage. The audience was all men, row after row of level eyes watching her barelegged. She moved an ankle, moved an arm, she took off her skirt. They watched her hold it up, studying her. She rose around him, he lifted her. She lay on an airplane wing, the flaps were up, she was tilted, she managed somehow not to fall off
do you know how
that feels
. She was being blown, the wind was fierce, she was being strangled, she wanted to be strangled. The woods were shady, a deer stood alert in a clearing. She was tied to a tree, her wrists were tied, the deer was trussed, its hooves bound together. His hand was on her ankle, his hand held her wrists, it held her throat. He threw her onto her back, he threw her off a cliff. She was spread wide, she was soaring tilted like a bird over the unstirred desert with shadows a mile long. The wind howled. Her arms were beating and her wings flapping. The air was vibrating. She was in a yellow cloud and black figures behind the swirl were watching I
will blame this on the unborn
. She strained upward
Harris Harris
clinging upward. She was coming up to a rise. He did not hear her. The men were hammering, the men were watching, the music was playing. He went ahead of her then she caught up and went past ahead of him. She came to the top of the rise. The hills went off in the distance. They kept going and going and going and light was bursting. It burst her apart. She was trampled by light, convulsed in the swirling air. Everything was rippling and she was buried, rippling in waves of light and it fell like yellow dust. It fell around her, dissolving, dissolving, and she dissolved with it falling in dust forever around her falling and falling until it stopped.