Four Times Blessed (34 page)

             
“Stop. It’s fine, really.” I try out a smile for him. “I really do have a problem.” My voice cracks and I feel my lids fill with standing water. I close them, frustrated with all their crying lately.

             
“Excuse me, please. I need to go change.”

             
I turn with my eyes still closed and take the first step blindly but surely, and continue more or less that way into my room, through the low hobbit door, and into the crawlspace.

             
Heat itself is stifled in here, unable to do anything more than fidget around the water in the air. I can hardly breathe. Good.

             
I feel slick sweat behind my knees when I curl them up, and press the heels of my palms into my boiling eyesockets, everything too hot and wet.

             
There are some plunking noises from outside the almost closed door.

             
Lium’s head pokes through the opening and cranes around. As soon as he sees me, I turn straight ahead. Though it’s silly to pretend I haven’t noticed him. He shouldn’t have to see me like this. I despise myself even more when I realize I’m relieved. That he’s granted my silent wish and found me.

             
He crawls to my side. Then he pivots, and slouches against the wall. I stare absently. He puts an arm over my shoulders, and I feel his heat shake the air right before he nudges me back against him, bowing his head over my hanging neck.

             
He presses on my knees, but I know they’re covered in sweat so I jerk them down. He tenses, but I didn’t mean that, so I make up for it by pressing my face into his chest. Curl a fist up and rest it there as well, catch folds of his thin, moist shirt in between my fingers. After a moment where he is very still, his other arm comes around me, and he holds me.

             
I melt with the heat and relief. Lium rubs my back with steaming hands, speaking warm words into my hair. Even as I’m listening I don’t remember what he’s saying, but the words flow through me, taking some of the heat with them.

             
After a while, I’m drenched and so is he. I don’t know what he’s doing in the stillness, but I’m not doing anything. Not even thinking. So it surprises me when I speak.

             
“I’ll miss you.”

             
He pushes the little floating hairs back from my forehead and kisses my cheek. Curls lick the back of my neck. He is a great friend. I think someone blessed us. Lium’s arms run with trickles of water, and I watch them make their way, haltingly, then rushing down his skin, over the hairs and the drawings and the scars, and fall onto my legs, and our hands that rest there.

             
I squirm and look up at him, all flushed skin and darkened hair.

             
He tells me, “It won’t be the same. You won’t need a guard. And you’ll be busy.”

             
I don’t like the thought of being too busy for him, I find. It doesn’t seem right.              

             
I think I’ve borrowed his dreamworld when I say, “But we’ll stay friends, though. We can be some of those old people, who sit around in chairs and gossip during family get-togethers, while everyone brings us food and asks us our advice. Can you imagine us two giving them all advice? We’ll have them running all around this island.” I watch his reaction, but I don’t understand the shifts in his features.

             
I stir in his arms, meaning to get some space and reason with him, but when I do I spot a tempting spot and before I know it I’ve settled my cheek into the luscious hollow by his shoulder, and gripped him tightly. He grips me too, the little movements he makes to accommodate me are genius. I never want to move again. My muscles become so very heavy.

             
“Hey.”

             
Lium jostles me so easily. I sit up and rub my eyes. He looks so warm, like he’s very sleepy. That’s how I end up feeling all day, and he seems to as well.

That evening, after a light supper of shellfish, salad, and bread, the brothers go and I have another dress fitting. It’s all in one piece finally, they’re just trying to get the seams all aligned with my edges.

             
When it’s done, I go outside and sit in a rocking chair on the front porch. I have faint, faint memories of sitting out here on the cool stone steps with my mother. She would say to me, “Crusa baby, come outside and look at the stars with me. They’re beautiful tonight.” And I would trundle out after her in my pajamas and we would crane our necks up and look at the sky in quiet.

             
She tried to point out the North Star, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper, I think. I can’t really find them myself anymore because that was a long time ago and plus I was never exactly sure I was following her finger to the same star she was talking about. There were too many close together and the distance was too big. She didn’t really know any of the other constellations, I don’t think. If I wanted to know that I would probably have to go ask a fisherman. But my mother still thought each and every one was beautiful. I could tell it in her face, her soft, wondering smile. I liked to watch her as much as I liked to watch the stars.

             
Now whenever I picture her, I know the lines and contours mostly come from the photo of her I see every morning and night along the staircase. But sitting here, I don’t need to rely on an image so much to find her.

             
I don’t usually think about her, not because I don’t love her, but because she hasn’t been here for a long while. But tonight my zizi kept saying, your mother would’ve loved this dress, over and over again and crying. I wonder if she’s right. I know what kind of clothes Eleni and Cassie would love, so maybe she is.

             
Eventually, it gets a little chilly. I turn to go inside. Then I almost have a heart attack.

             
“Come here and sit.” My Uncle Groton beckons me over with a gentle wave. I take a seat on the very edge of the bench.

             
“You are marrying that Andrew.”

             
“Yes.”

             
“You do not have time for other things.”

             
“I know.”

             
“So what were you doing the other night with the dancing?”

             
“Nothing. Dancing, like everyone else.”

             
“Fine. You say you dance and that’s it, I believe you,” he says. Then he says nothing, and I wait, dying to be excused.

             
“Just don’t go ruining everything. Do you understand me?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“The marriage you are having, it is good for you, child. We want for you to marry this good boy. We love you very much, but this far in, so close, anything is too suspicious. I wasn’t going to say it to you, but some people are talking.” I stay very quiet, very still. 

             
“For now, it’s nothing. A sweet girl under the influence of a boy like that. You believe everything he tells you, I know you do, deep down in your little heart. But if you did do something that you could not deny, my dear, we would be disappointed.”

             
I’m too stunned to bow my head, so I turn to the side. I have to imagine it, how people would look at me, and the shame is…it’s fierce.

              I’ve had enough, but my uncle, he goes on, “Do you know how hard it is to make an arrangement? At your age, people go quick. I would give you a new guard, but that would make things worse, I think.” I start feeling dizzy.

             
It seems my uncle’s done. He makes me hold his hand and swear that I have faith in his judgment, he says, I do, I say, and loyalty to the family, I do, I say. People here do this a lot when they’re making promises. You hold hands and you say I do. I’ve done it more times than I can remember.

             
But I think this is the first time I feel reluctance as I do it, because I don’t know what it is at first that makes me swallow hard when he grips my hand. It’s distracting, feeling so wrong and so right, so even when I realize my throat is too thick, I’m done with it.

              The next night, I have a nice dinner with Andrew who tells me about his plans for when he gets back home. He’s a busy boy. Ambitious. I will have a husband with great ambition.

             
At the end of our date, he walks me back to the green. He takes my face in his hands, and looks at me. Maybe it’s because he’s comes and goes and comes like he does, that my senses are on high alert.

             
Now, so close, the tangibility of his body and my own are startling. I notice the little hairs on his skin, the way the tissues are warm, twitch and tug. Words I’ve studied and forgotten become music behind my eyes. I hear his breath and it’s husky and shy.

             
He leans forward, and his hands are very hot and a little moist but I don’t mind. I hold very still. Curious and excited and scared. All the attention of his body on mine goes to my head, I think. I think he’s braver than I thought when he touches his lips to mine, and I feel brave too when I accept it.

             
It’s a funny touch. Sweet and soft. We pull apart. Our faces are still very close and Andrew’s cheeks are brushed with scarlet. It’s pretty. He squeezes my shoulder before he steps backward down the porch. It’s a little funny. I should find a place for it in the portrait of our life I’ve been working on, that’s washing over the back of my mind now, but something keeps me from it.

             
I go to bed exhausted, but I can’t sleep. Eleni is out in Milo’s old room, but I don’t want to wake her to tell her about my first real kiss. I finally splash cold water on my face and go lay down again. This time, I just feel stretched and drained.

I try to study before breakfast, but I end up disassembling and reassembling my pen instead. “That one’s your mother,” Cassie says, out of hand but it leaves me with a strange rush. I nod. She carved it here when she was little. Lucia Marie. My zizi’s is there too, Angelina Marie. I feel a wish my mother wasn’t dead that pulls me out like the tide. I do notice when Larissa appears and puts her hand over mine. I also notice my engagement bracelets, a moment after, cool and thin.

I take my hand back and focus again on my page. The black and white is too mesmerizing, though, and instead of reading, I imagine my mother is here.

Still alive.

She kisses me.

She really is so beautiful.

             
I tell her I’m afraid to marry Andrew. That I don’t want to anymore. She asks what he’s done, and I tell her it’s my fault because I just don’t think I can be married. I’m not strong enough. Not womanly enough. Not selfless enough. She coos and hugs me because she’s my mother. And to her, I’m a child so I’m small and girlish and must be given everything, even as I’m hers, so I’m really strong and womanly and selfless. She tells me don’t marry him, don’t.

             
I’m cool and shaky. I decide to go up to the lab without Lium. I hold the bracelets in my fist while I’m at my station. Their clacking is messing with my analysis. I miss my mother for a bit, then yes, then no, then yes then no, then I’m fiercely glad she’s not here to see that I’m a failure. I sit still in my spinning chair and wait, because I miss her again, and my zizi says that time can insulate just like water.

              The next week rushes by. I take my final boards and become a certified AIS at the Great Proficient level, New England Colony Base-Specific. They tell me I get the highest score on one of the tests, but I don’t listen anymore. I’m good. That’s what they wanted, so they don’t need to act so surprised.

The next Saturday morning is alright because I pretend Andrew isn’t coming today for me to marry him in seven days. I serve people breakfast, wash dishes, chop vegetables, it’s all very nice except for the knot in my stomach which I also ignore.

Then I knock over a tray of waiting crostini and my zizi tells me I need some fresh air. I spend all day in the graveyard, cleaning it.