Bone River (35 page)

I ran my finger over his mouth. “Yes.”

“I can’t concentrate when you’re doing that.”

Obediently, I removed my finger.

He smiled and went on, “From there...too many jobs. I can’t remember them all. I worked for a blacksmith for a while, and a lithographer, which I had to quit when my mother turned ill. When she was well again, I took a job working for a set builder at one of the theaters and ended up working the circuses that came through town—hauling things for them, mostly. Cleaning up elephant and dog shit and watching to make sure customers didn’t get too familiar, kicking them out when they did. There were women, enough of them. No one the least bit respectable; there wasn’t time for it. Actresses and whores, a contortionist at Selling’s Circus—that was interesting—”

“I imagine,” I said dryly. I let my hand drift down his chest, to his stomach.

His grin was quick and fleeting. “Mostly I worked. I took whatever job I could, whatever someone would pay me to do. Sometimes I worked two or three. By the time I was twenty, my mother had to quit taking in laundry. We had to give up the house. I moved her into a boardinghouse—the best I could afford, which wasn’t much, but the landlady offered to watch over her, and I couldn’t afford to hire someone to do it, and so...The room was tiny and we had to share a bed, which was fine until she became too sick, and sometimes I was working late hours, or hours in the middle of the night and it disturbed her sleep too badly. So I slept on the floor. My life...my life consisted of taking care of her and working. She liked to be read to, so I obliged. Poetry and novels. Dickens and the like. Some philosophy, though in her last days she was too busy railing against the world and my father and it only upset her.”

“She must have been happy when you got the job at the newspaper.”

“I can think of better things to do than discuss my mother,” he said, leaning over me, kissing me.

I said, “I want to know you.”

He laughed. “There’s plenty of time for that. A whole lifetime.”

In that moment, I believed him.

After a time, we began to move about. The world didn’t stop for us, though it felt sometimes as if it had, and I kept reality carefully at bay, as if by not thinking about it I could make it nonexistent. So we did chores and I told him Indian stories; we read my father’s journals and made love, and I went back to drawing the mummy. Now, capturing her seemed even more important, something I could do out of gratitude—she had given me Daniel, after all.

The day I finished the drawing, I felt an astonishing satisfaction. It was the most perfect one I’d ever done.

I said, “I’m finished,” and Daniel glanced up from where he lay on the floor beside me, reading my father’s journal, which had seemingly captivated him. He brought himself up to look at my drawing.

He kissed my shoulder, my bare skin, where my dressing gown had half fallen. “It’s beautiful. Your talents are wasted on science, Lea.”

“Have you found anything else in Papa’s journal?”

“Only more about this experiment of his,” he said. He opened to a page and read, “‘I would have preferred a more quantitative measure for this experiment, but such things are impossible given the circumstances. I can only watch and evaluate; I cannot gain access to thoughts or feelings, but can only make assumptions about them. Phrenology is a great help in this regard. Palpitations show cranial bumps not so pronounced in the animalistic areas, but for one exception: vitativeness and also disturbingly so in amativeness. Very pronounced in perceptiveness areas, particularly tune, time and individuality. Also spirituality and benevolence, therefore perhaps some may cancel out others.’”

“So the experiment was human.”

“He doesn’t say that.”

“But whatever it was, was alive. He says it: ‘We can’t gain access to thought or feelings.’”

“Nor could he if it was a corpse,” Daniel pointed out.

“But in other places, he says he hopes blood overcomes. So it must be a living thing.”

Daniel murmured an agreement. He sounded distracted and lazy. He was playing with my hair, which I hadn’t pinned up since the night we’d spent together. He liked it down, his Pre-Raphaelite painting come to life, he’d said, and I obliged him because I liked feeling that we walked at the very edge of control always, that our desire was an entity with a will of its own, and it took almost nothing to ignite it.

“You’re not paying attention,” I accused.

He pulled me down with him. “I’m enchanted by your hair. Have I said it to you?”

“Almost every moment,” I told him.

He laughed, his chest vibrated beneath my hand. “So many colors of yellow,” he mused, combing a strand through his fingers. “What blond children we would have.”

I froze.

He went still, as if he’d just realized what he’d said. “I’m sorry, Lea. I didn’t mean it. I was just...thinking out loud.”

I made myself smile. “Is that what you want? Children?”

“No.” His arm tightened around me as if he were afraid I would flee. His voice was so careful it squeezed my heart. “I’ve never cared much about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re young still. You’ll have them. A dozen, I should think.” I tried to keep my voice light.

“Don’t say things like that.”

“I’m certain Eleanor will make a wonderful mother.”

“Lea, don’t—”

“And you would be a good father, I think.”

He gripped my arm, squeezing it almost painfully. “Stop it. Stop torturing yourself and me. It’s not what I want. Not unless it’s with you.”

I tried to draw away, managing only a few inches before his grip stopped me. “It won’t be.”

He hesitated. “Are you so certain? I haven’t...I’ve taken no precautions.”

“There are precautions?” I asked in surprise. “You mean you could...keep a woman from getting with child?”

He looked equally surprised. “You didn’t know that? Well, no, I suppose there’s no reason you should. I forget what an innocent you are.”

“I’m hardly innocent,” I said.

“About some things,” he agreed with a grin. “You’ve an uncanny instinct. It’s why I forget. Yes, there are things I could do so you wouldn’t conceive. But I haven’t done them. You could be—”

“No. There’s no need for precautions.”

“Have you ever—with him, did you ever think—”

“A few times,” I said tersely. “But it never amounted to anything. I can’t have children, Daniel. I used to think perhaps it was Junius. But now...you exist and...well, it’s obvious it’s not him, isn’t it?”

“He’s an old man. He was old when he married you.”

“It’s me,” I said gently. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I told you I didn’t care.”

“It’s not as if it matters, in any case, does it?” I pulled away again; this time he let me go. “It’s not as if you and I...”

“Lea, please,” he said, sitting up, reaching for me again. “Don’t make more of this than there is.”

I felt bereft and sad. “I suppose...it was better this way, really. It gave me more time for...for study, and...and one can’t have children stumbling over skulls, can one?”

“You did,” he said gently. He wrapped his arms around me, bringing me down with him again. “Your father had you
stumbling over all kinds of things to hear you tell it, and you suffered no ill effects.”

“It would only make things harder than they are. I already suffer because I’m a woman. Do you know of a single famous ethnologist who is also a mother?”

“I don’t know any famous ethnologists at all. Much less any who are mothers. But artists...that’s another matter.”

I laughed at his persistence. “You are so different—”

“Don’t say it,” he whispered. “Comparisons are odious. I already suffer for it enough in my own mind.”

“You do? How so?”

“The usual things,” he said wryly. “Has he ever heard you cry out in pleasure? Does he touch you as I do? Have you ever served as his succubus?”

I was burning. “You shouldn’t think such things.”

“I know. But I do.”

“The answer is no,” I said, meeting his gaze. “No to everything.”

He smiled. His hand came to my cheek, his thumb caressing. “You’ve no such questions for me? You’re mercifully free from jealousy?”

“You said you’ve never wanted anyone as you want me.”

“That’s true.”

“Even Eleanor?”

“I did want her,” he said thoughtfully. “But it was the kind of wanting you feel before you know what wanting really is.”

“Did you ever kiss her?”

“Ah, now you sound jealous.”

“Because I know your kisses,” I said.

“Not this kind. Of course I kissed her. We were betrothed. But I was very respectful. Gentlemanly, even.”

“Really?”

“Her position...there are rules.”

“Did she respond? Did she want you?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Yes. I thought so, anyway. But now I wonder how true it was. If perhaps she didn’t feel the same pressures I did.”

“Don’t make excuses.”

“Perhaps they’re more than that. Our parents...My mother had this notion that I needed a wife, that when she was gone I would have no one to take care of me, which was absurd, because I was the one taking care of both of us. She hated knowing that my only feminine companionship, besides her, was...well, what it was. She had wanted a respectable kind of life for me, a respectable wife. It became rather an obsession. She wasn’t well, but she kept dragging herself to church, above my objections, and that led to Eleanor’s father, and suddenly my mother developed a bizarre interest in the welfare of Celestials—whom she hadn’t batted an eye over before, by the way, except to call them vermin who should learn to speak the language of the country where they lived.”

“I see.”

“Yes. She wasn’t at her most pleasant then. It was when she began to beg me to find my father. That and this idea that Eleanor and I were somehow meant to be together became all she talked about. I ended up working with the pastor on one or two things—helping collect men from opium dens and that sort of thing, where it took more physicality than praying. He liked me. Eleanor liked me—or found me unobjectionable, anyway. We talked, we reached an understanding, and...I was engaged, with every expectation that when we married I would join Eleanor’s father in his ministry. My mother was beyond happy at the idea that a minister might bring her son in from the pasture and keep him fenced. It was her dying wish for me, just as your father’s was for you. Why do we give dying wishes so much weight, do you think? What if it was simply some passing thought they had, like, ‘Oh, by the way, I’d like you to bring me some cherries?’”

“You know it’s not,” I said.

“Yes. But had she lived, I might have fought it. Not right away, but perhaps I would have when I realized...” He paused. “What about you? Would you have fought your father if he’d lived?”

“Probably not. He raised me to be a dutiful child.”

“A dutiful child with a wild heart,” Daniel said with a smile.

“It would pain him to know that,” I whispered. “What about Eleanor? You said she might have felt the same pressures.”

“Why are we talking about her?”

“Because I need to know.”

His gaze slipped away. “Her mother was dead. Her father didn’t like her ministering in Chinatown—a young, unmarried woman—but he needed her help. Marriage solved many problems. His worry was over my ability to provide for her. It’s not as if the ministry gives much of an income, but she wasn’t used to privation either.”

“But he agreed to your marriage?”

“On the condition that I manage to find enough money to keep my lovely wife. He gave me a year to accomplish it.”

“And so you came here,” I said.

“Sent by your south wind, Toolux,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Providence in the form of a newspaper report and a pretty feather.” He brought me to kiss him. Soft and gentle, the kind of kiss one gives a lover of long standing, more tender than desirous. “I thought it was fate, and it was. But I don’t think it was Eleanor I was sent for.”

I brought him for you. He was meant for you.

I glanced over my shoulder at the settee, the mummy, and then back to Daniel. My desire rose like a tide. His collar was open; I traced the ridge of his collarbone; I pressed my fingers to the pulsebeat at his throat. I wanted to gather it up, to hold it close, to keep it for myself—Eleanor and Junius the rest of the world be damned. I moved my fingers and pressed my lips where they’d been, murmuring against his skin, “Does it bother you, to be fate’s servant?”

His hands dug into my hips, pulling me closer, not a space between us.

He said, “Not anymore.”

I
WAS NOT
ready for the world to return, but it did so anyway.

The window of my father’s room faced the bay, and I heard the shout clearly that afternoon and recognized it, and all my intentions flew, everything I’d been telling myself I would do, gone in that moment, in the sound of his voice. I remembered our life together, how I’d loved him, and I was suddenly afraid of the change I’d told myself I wanted.

I sat up, pulling from Daniel’s arms. “Junius.”

Daniel froze. “It’s just the call for the oyster schooner, isn’t it?”