Authors: Laura Wiess
He heaved a sigh, closed the book, and rose. His gloves were stained with old blood and his clothes were rumpled and putting off that same unpleasant odor, but I didn’t dare make mention of any of it, plus I knew Mrs. Boehm wouldn’t care.
“Congratulations on the doe you killed today,” I forced myself to say, and we made our way through the hall and up the stairs.
“Yes, well, she wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but I can still use her,” he said cryptically, pausing outside his wife’s bedroom door.
I waited, watching as he hesitated, and then, when he finally drew a deep breath and turned the knob, I went on past to my room next door, not to listen but to be…aware.
I had just taken out fresh pajamas and unbuttoned my blouse when I heard voices rising, his harsh and hers wild.
I went to the adjoining door and put my ear to it in time to hear him say, “You cannot keep doing this! I’ve done everything in my power to help you, Margaret, but it won’t work if you don’t try!”
“Try for what, this horrible, sterile existence? Why would I want to live this way for another thirty years, Thaddeus? I’m dead to you already, you’ve all but buried me, and—”
“I won’t do it, Margaret. I
can’t.
I’ve had to live with what I’ve done for eighteen years now, and—”
“So have
I,
Thaddeus! Don’t you think
I
have to live with it, too? Don’t you think I deserve
some
small happiness out of—”
“I will not discuss this again,” he said. “From now on any request you make to see me must come through Nurse to ensure it’s for a valid medical emergency. Good night.”
“Thaddeus.” Her voice was flat. “I know.”
Silence.
“Pardon me, Margaret?”
“I
know,”
she said, and her voice was rising again. “I know everything about you. I know about your mother—”
“Margaret.”
“And how my father found you—”
“Please.” His voice was wire tight and shaking. “Don’t.”
“I know it
all,
Thaddeus, so yes, I think you
will
spend time with
me, because I’m all you have, do you see? I know
everything,
even how my father treated your mother—”
“He eased her pain,” he said automatically.
“Oh, yes, he certainly did that,” she said with a strangled laugh. “You’re a physician, Thaddeus; deep in your heart of hearts, you know what he did to your mother. You know and you just can’t bear to acknowledge that your beloved mentor deliberately took her from you while you stood right there trusting him, isn’t that right? No, do not turn away from me! I know about your family and their disease, and even knowing everything, every ugly, filthy little detail, I still love you and…where are you going? Thaddeus?”
I stepped away from my door right as hers clicked closed and held my breath, praying he wasn’t going to call me out and punish me for my part in this. Instead, his abrupt footsteps passed and I heard the door to his room close.
And I heard Mrs. Boehm weeping as though her heart was breaking, so I knocked tentatively on the connecting door and called softly, “May I come in?”
The weeping didn’t stop, didn’t pause, and so I eased open the door and hurried across the carpet to the bed, heedless of anything but the wrenching sound.
“Shh,” I said, perching on the edge of the bed and brushing her wet curls back from her face. “Everything will be fine.”
She just shook her head, hands over her face, shoulders shaking.
“He’s just surprised,” I said, hating to make excuses for him, but the strength of her sobs was beginning to scare me. I did everything I could think of to ease her pain; rubbed her arms and stroked her hair and handed her tissues and shut off the overhead light and switched on the bedside lamp and wetted a washcloth and blotted her hot, streaked face, and when she finally opened her eyes in the dim light, her gaze was broken, disconnected, and feverish, scaring
me even more, and when she took my hand in hers and whispered,
My heart is breaking, oh God, feel it,
and placed it over her breast and I stiffened in shock and tried to pull away, she whispered,
No, don’t,
like she was carrying on a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. I sat frozen as she whispered to herself and held my hand to her racing heartbeat, and sweating, I prayed she would release me so I could go.
What additional horror that lay beneath the covers should never have been shown to me, but in her delirium—and I
must,
I must think of it as a delirium or it will haunt me—she revealed the final operation meant to cure her unseemly desires, not a hysterectomy as I’d been told but a madman’s artwork of amputation and stitching, the scar tissue shiny and tight and streaked red, the genital mutilation bringing a panic so strong that I wrenched free of her grip and wiped frantically at my hands and my arms as if ridding myself of a thousand insects, backed away, leaving her lying there, eyes closed, breath heaving, sinking in on herself.
I stumbled to the door and Dr. Boehm was there, eyes unfocused, bloodshot, and damp with tears, syringes in his bare, ungloved hands. He looked at me and said, “Go,” and I went, I ran to my room, and while I was grabbing things, my Ciro’s photo and for some reason a pair of bedroom slippers, I heard him say with infinite tenderness, “I’m going to administer something that will end the pain, Margaret, for both of us, and then I’m going to lie down beside you. Will you have me?” and her voice, cracking with joy, “Yes, oh yes, please…”
Oh, God, I ran, I ran down the stairs and out the door, and there was no one there. I saw a flashlight bobbing at the back of the property and it was Peter, saw him open the workshop and pause, then
slip inside, and a dim light went on and I took off running to him. I smelled the place yards before I reached it and, unable to call, ran inside and skidded in a slick, spreading puddle, skidded into Peter, who stood frozen, and I followed his gaze…
The pregnant doe had been gutted and laid on her side on the table, her front legs parted and the fetal fawn laid in between them, front legs broken to form humanlike elbows stitched up to encircle the mother’s neck, head tilted up as if nuzzling her nose. A doe skin lay in a heap on the floor, buzzing with flies and leaking terrible fluids, and there amid a pile of partially chewed entrails and awash in chemicals, lay one last starving, shrinking, terrified fawn, hiding its face in the wet carcass, jerking to rise and falling sideways, cringing and thrashing, and I shrank back because its belly was eaten open and its intestines—
“No,” I whispered and would have gone down had Peter not grabbed me and pushed me back toward the door.
“Go,” he said grimly, looking around the slaughterhouse and seizing a cinder block from the floor. “It’s too late.”
“No,” I sobbed. “Wait, we can take it—”
“Go!” he shouted, voice cracking, and I went, and behind me I heard a terrible thud, and then the cinder block fall and he was beside me again, breathing hard and leading me across the yard and helping me into the front seat of his rattletrap old truck, and I couldn’t stop crying and patting my pocket for the Ciro’s picture, but it was gone, I’d lost it somewhere, along with my bedroom slippers, and as we pulled out I saw Nurse on her knees in a pale spill of porch light, disinfecting the cement lions flanking the front door, and she didn’t even look up when we drove away.
I sat there a moment, shuddering, then reached out and shut off the CD.
Wiped my eyes. Wiped Gran’s eyes.
Gave her a little Gatorade from her cup and wiped her nose.
Went into the kitchen and stood looking at the pile of apples in the fridge.
Took six out and, hands shaking, started slicing them for the deer.
Hunting season started in a little more than two weeks.
Seth wasn’t in school today.
I tried calling him five times, but he never answered his cell so I finally gave up.
It was hard, not knowing if he was sick or if he’d just cut out.
Harder still not to go to the office to see if Lacey McMullen was absent, too.
But I didn’t.
After school I all but ran to Gran’s and it was funny how even with her so sick, being with her could still make me feel safe.
Heart, are you great enough For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“We’ve crossed the state line, Louise,”
Peter said quietly a while later, as I huddled silent and numb against the passenger door, staring at the dried blood on my shoes. “I’ll either have to leave you somewhere or marry you now, whatever you choose.”
“Marry me,” I said dully, because I didn’t want to be alone.
We stopped in a little town and had a justice-of-the-peace ceremony. The details are hazy but I remember the justice asking if we were in trouble, and I knew by the way he said it that he was asking if I was pregnant, so I said yes and started to cry, and he married us in a real ceremony; I have the official marriage license to prove it.
We got hot dogs at a drive-in joint and a room at a cheap motel. He took one bed, I the other. We slept like the dead.
I moved through those first weeks in a thick gray cloud, barely speaking, plagued by nightmare sights and smells, always curled into myself, trusting no one, missing my mother and, even more, the Ciro’s photo, barely able to think about what had happened at the Boehms’, if either of them were still alive, if Nurse was still there or the state home knew or even cared that I was gone.
Peter was very kind and cautious with me, speaking quietly, watching me closely, teasing me into reluctant smiles, making sure I ate and even bought me a ring, a plain sterling-silver band he found in a pawnshop.
Good deals were necessary, as all we had was what he’d left with.
I, of course, had nothing.
We found a medium-sized town where newcomers weren’t noticeable and rented a small apartment. He got a job working nights on the railroad loading freight and I waitressed days at the local diner. We saw each other briefly in the morning and again at dinner. I never realized it then, but now I believe Peter had done that deliberately to give me time to adjust, to get to know him without feeling threatened or obligated or scared.
Peter carried a story of his own, one I was too oblivious at that point to ask about.
I’d never worked for money before, never had even five dollars to my name, and the first night I realized I was allowed to keep the quarters I’d slid off the tables, I was ecstatic. I danced home, spread it all out on the counter in the kitchenette, and ignoring Peter’s good-natured amusement, counted it out and vowed that if tips were left for good service, then I would become the best waitress in the country.
That was the first time I had ever seen him laugh aloud and was surprised to see he had two denture plates, one for his four top front teeth and one for his bottom front two, both held in place with metal that hooked to his side teeth. The moment he saw I’d noticed, he flushed and stopped laughing.
“Wait,” I said, but he just shook his head and disappeared into the bedroom to get ready for work. I felt bad then because I knew I’d embarrassed him but didn’t know how to make it right because other than his name and the fact that he was Dutch, I didn’t know anything at all about him.
I know that sounds ridiculous now, in an age when nothing is sacred or private, when people go on talk shows and spill the ugliest parts of themselves, the darkest tragedies and the most degrading behavior, but it wasn’t like that back then. There was a process, and yes, Peter and I jumped the gun by marrying, but then we backed up straight to the beginning and began the slow, steady dance of getting to know and trust each other, and falling in love.
Because we did fall in love.
After all I’d seen of love dying, it was a miracle to feel the joy of its birth.
Peter loved to fish and on Sundays I would pack a picnic lunch and we would drive out to a lonely stretch of the river and I would read (and sneak peeks at him) while he cast from shore. Sometimes I would open the bags with our lunch and find a little surprise from the five-and-dime—a bangle bracelet, a pretty little hand mirror, or a bottle of lily of the valley cologne—and he would smile at my delight, and yes, it did take me far too long to realize that he was wooing me.
The idea electrified me like nothing else ever had, pushing all the darkness and sadness aside and making me look at him, our apartment, my ring, the small amount of time we were able to spend together…I looked at it
all
differently.
Now the idea that, when I rose from the bed, he would tumble into it, into the warm hollow I’d created with my body became a thing of blushing intimacy, and I began wearing just a dab of lily of the val
ley cologne to bed so my scent would be there when he slipped under the covers after I left in the morning.
I noticed how the sun glinted off his thick, black hair, smooth and shiny as a crow’s wing, and how he would sing when he was in a good mood or wanted to make me laugh, Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” before he left for work at night, and in the morning, a little more tiredly but twice as loud and silly, as I left for work, he would stand at the front door and belt out Maurice Williams’s “Stay,” making me laugh and blush and half run down the street, always turning back to wave, always seeing him waiting there, watching me with a smile. People looked at me with kind amusement, men saying, “He’s got it bad, sister,” and women asking if he had a single brother. It made me dance all the way to work and smile at everyone, even the crabbiest customers who sent their food back or made a mess of their table and left me a nickel tip, but I didn’t care.
He was singing to
me.
I started setting aside tips each day because I wanted to buy him a surprise in return and decided on a transistor radio I saw in Woolworth’s. That way our apartment would have music, and maybe he would sing to me even more, maybe love songs like “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” or “I Only Have Eyes for You.” And maybe he would ask me to dance, only I didn’t know how and the thought panicked me so much that I asked one of the other waitresses, Coral, how to dance, and she grabbed the cook out of the kitchen, a short, round little man with a five o’clock shadow and a cigar stub stuck between his lips, and fed the jukebox two whole dollars, playing slow songs just to teach me.
I bought the transistor radio, then went to the library and found a Dutch cookbook, got a library card, and brought the book home, poring over it in secret and trying to find something not too hard and not too expensive that I could make for him as a surprise. I decided on a
rice pie, a wonderful-sounding yeast-crust pie with a vanilla-and-milk rice-pudding-type filling, and made it on Saturday so we could take it to the river with us on Sunday.
It was a beautiful Sunday and I took care with my outfit, wanting to look beautiful and desirable and feeling frustrated at my scant wardrobe. Still, my hair was curled and my lipstick perfect and I smelled of lily of the valley, and the pie and the radio had been secretly and carefully tucked into the picnic basket.
The riverbank was deserted as usual with only the occasional car of churchgoers passing by, and as we spread the blanket beneath the tree, he said he’d been thinking of taking on some extra work, not double shifts at the railroad but at a nearby construction site where they were looking for good, strong temporary laborers.
“We could bank that extra money, Louise, and when we have enough, maybe we could buy a little house somewhere,” he said almost shyly. “I know you want a home of your own, and things would be pretty tight, we’d have to sacrifice, but I think we could do it.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, just an idea.”
“It’s a great idea,” I said, overcome. “Oh, Peter, it’s a wonderful idea!” And without even thinking I threw my arms around him, and the moment my body touched his, a bolt of electricity shocked us into stillness, but only for a heartbeat, because his arms came around me in a way that promised never to let me go, never to let me down, never to hurt me or betray me or live without me, and he breathed my name on an exhale as sweet as the sunny day, and I lifted my face and he lowered his and kissed me.
And kissed me.
And kissed me.
And probably would have kept on kissing me had a car not slowed on the road and a woman said, “Right out in broad daylight! Shameless! You young people have no morals at all anymore!”
And Peter, eyes bright, mouth curved in a wide smile, pulled back slightly and, winking at me, called, “I hate to break it to you, lady, but this young person is my wife.”
“Baloney,” an old man next to the woman snapped. “Nobody kisses his wife like that, especially out in public!” Scowling, he stepped on the gas, and the enormous old Plymouth chugged off in a cloud of dust.
We looked at each other and laughed and he kept his arm around me, and oh, the glory of nestling my head into the curve of his neck and shoulder, the absolute rightness of knowing all I had to do was lift my face and he would kiss it, of discovering that if I reached out, he would reach back, clasp my hand, hold tight, lift it to his lips, and kiss it, watching me, dark eyes glowing.
I gave him the radio and he got so quiet that I thought he didn’t like it, but that wasn’t it at all. He said that no one had bought him anything since his parents had been killed in the war and he was so touched that I started to cry because I hadn’t known that, hadn’t known that he was an orphan, too, and because of how miraculous it was that we’d ended up together.
Then, because our stomachs were rumbling, he switched on the radio while I laid out the food, and of course, the first song they played wasn’t a beautiful, romantic love song but Brenda Lee’s sassy “Sweet Nothin’s,” which of course he had to sing along to me, grabbing my hand and pulling me up to twist with him on the grass, and I was laughing and twisting and singing right back as if I’d lived my whole life for this one joyous moment and, oh, the freedom of being silly, of teasing and flirting and seeing the gleam of appreciation in his eyes.
Out of everything that has ever happened to us our whole lives, that one magnificent day with the sun and birds and the river and the
discovery of the homemade Dutch rice pie, which almost made him cry, and the transistor playing in the background of so many kisses was, without a doubt, the most beautiful.
We didn’t talk of darker things that day, and we didn’t run straight home and fall into bed, either.
No, we ran straight home and spent a hot, sweaty, panting hour kissing on the couch, an hour that left me dazzled and topless, left him frustrated at having to stop and get ready to go to work.
“You can’t lay there like that,” he said hoarsely, looking at me. “I’ll never leave, Louise. I swear you have to put your shirt on or I’ll stay and then I’ll get fired and we’ll lose our apartment and end up out in the street and—”
“Oh, all right,” I said, giggling and pulling my crumpled shirt over me. “There, is that better?”
“No,” he said with a weak grin. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“Ever?” I said, suddenly solemn.
“Ever,” he said and gave me a tender kiss. “I knew that the minute I saw you.”
“Really?” I said, gazing into his eyes and running a fingertip down his cheek.
“Would I lie to you?” he said.
“No,” I said, and a smile that held all the happiness in the world blossomed.
We made love for the first time that next Sunday on my sixteenth birthday, not out in the open at the river between eating, reading,
and fishing, but there together in our bed with the rich, buttery summer sun melting in through the blinds, the transistor playing “Forever” by the Little Dippers, with his mouth sweet, hungry, soft, and everywhere, with his work-roughened hands slowly lifting my slip up over my head, unsnapping each garter and peeling down my stockings, easing off my bra and panties, cupping my face, and stilling my trembling, laying me down, hands sliding up beneath me, lifting me to meet him and whispering,
It’s all right, I won’t hurt you,
and then he did but only a little, and I understood the pain and knew it wouldn’t last and it didn’t, and we went on, and I discovered there is nothing in the world like being taken by a good man who loves you.
“Oh my God, the nice parts are almost worse than the horrible parts,” I blubbered, laughing and grabbing two tissues, one for me and one for Gran because she was crying, too.
Seth had to work late again, so me, Sammi, and her boyfriend decided to go over to the bowling alley and surprise him, first time ever.
Too bad he wasn’t there.
The girl at the shoe rental counter gave me a funny look when I said,
Hi, I’m Seth’s girlfriend, is he working tonight?
And she said,
No, not till Monday, I think,
and this
bad
feeling washed through me, and I said, “Oh, okay, you don’t by any chance know where he is, do you?” And you could see she knew something but she wasn’t going to tell, so I pulled out my phone to call him, and then Sammi said, “Wait, isn’t there a party at Connor’s tonight?”
So we drove over there, and yeah, there was definitely something going on, and Seth’s car—his new old MG—was there. We stopped and they waited in the car while I went to the door, and it was unlocked, so I just walked right in and it was a party all right. I saw Seth
hanging out talking to Connor and Phil and this weird undercurrent ran through the room and Seth looked up and saw me, blanched, and then looked to the other side of the room to the keg where a whole mess of people were, including Lacey McMullen, the blue-eye-shadowed sophomore.
He got up fast, came right over, said, “Hey, what’re you doing here?” and put his arms around me. I wished I’d asked Sammi to come in with me because I would have given a thousand dollars to see who he was looking at over the top of my head, but I didn’t, so I never knew if it was Lacey.
“C’mon, let’s go out to the car,” he said, so we did.
I told Sammi it was okay, she could leave now, and I did it on purpose because that MG is a two seater and that shotgun seat is
mine,
and yeah, he might have come alone but how weird was it that Lacey was here, too, and I wasn’t?
Sammi and her boyfriend left, and me and Seth got in his car. Thank God the top was up because I was so upset I was shaking, and said,
We went to the bowling alley to surprise you, only guess what?
And he said he was sorry, but yeah, he lied because he just wanted a night out on his own with the guys because he didn’t have a lot of time to himself anymore, and he knew that if he’d just come out and said that, he would have hurt my feelings, so he thought it would be better to make up an excuse.