As they got closer to home, Anne began increasingly to dread the moment that would have to come. Laura had asked if she could see Anne alone for just a few minutes. Anne knew that some complaint must be forthcoming, whether it would be about wages or conditions she was unsure. Or perhaps Laura wanted Anne to confide in her; that would be worst of all. But now she would have to be alone with her. How could she deny her? It was a simple, straightforward request: a few minutes alone.
Anne and Michael carried the children, already in their pajamas, into bed, and Michael went to bed himself. Laura sat in the kitchen, waiting for Anne.
“Hi,” she said, as Anne came into the room. “Is now a good time?”
Anne smiled nervously. “It’s fine.”
Laura reached into the deep pocket of her dress. “I got you this present, and I wanted to give it to you while we were alone.” She handed Anne a small box wrapped in scarlet tissue paper tied with white wool twine.
Anne opened the box. Inside it was an amethyst necklace, one large stone in a floral golden setting, hung on a delicate chain. She took it out of the box. The stone picked up the weak light of the kitchen and held it: lucid, chaste. It was beautiful. It was exactly the sort of piece Anne would have looked at in the window of one of the antique shops on Fayerweather Street. She would have looked at it lovingly; she would have lingered on the street in front of it, then walked away, deciding she couldn’t buy it. A little cloud of self-pity would have descended on her, which she would have had to shrug off. She would have said to herself that it was an indulgence she didn’t need, the children needed something, or the house. Still, she would have gone back, looking, every time she stopped for something on that street, until someone had bought it and it had disappeared forever. And she would have mourned.
Anne felt the necklace warm and thicken on her palm. She didn’t want it, she didn’t want it because Laura had given it to her. She began to wonder if she could give it away: to her mother, perhaps, or Beth. But looking at the girl, she knew it was impossible. Laura was watching her like a teacher who has waited till the class has been dismissed to give the smallest child, the slowest child, a test.
“It’s beautiful, Laura,” said Anne, “but you must take it back. You shouldn’t have spent so much money.”
“I wanted to. I wanted to give you a present you’d never forget. So you’d think of me whenever you wore it, and remember.”
Kissing Laura, thanking her, Anne felt the words close around her. The girl wanted remembrance, and Anne had hoped that after she left the house, Laura would be forgotten. She saw now that this would never happen. Laura would always be with her, reminding her forever of the failure of her heart. The jewel would be a witness: she would never be able to think that Laura had been impervious to the life of the house, that Laura had not understood her. Looking at the necklace in her hand, Anne knew that Laura had broken into her life. And she could no more welcome her than, standing naked, she could welcome the voyeur’s face at the window, silent, seeing, intimately holding in his mind’s eye all that she would never give.
S
HE AND ANNE WERE
just alike: she knew it now. Their families were just the same, their parents didn’t love them. She was the only one who understood Anne. Other people thought they loved her, said they loved her, but they came to her for what she gave them. They came to tell her things or to be near her, thinking from her looks that she was always rested, always glad to see them. But Laura knew when Anne was tired, fearful, lonely, when she was angry and wanted to be by herself, when she wanted her children and did not want them. She knew what Anne’s husband didn’t know: that she had moved away from him. That she had; while he was away, looked at another man as she had not looked at him. She had felt it in the air as she lay sleeping in the room above them, Anne and that man, the electrician, sitting so late in the kitchen, drinking tea. She could feel Anne’s body and the man’s desiring to be near each other. She had prayed above them that the two might not embrace. And they had not embraced. She knew that. She had prayed that the man would go away, and he had gone away. He would come back, but she would keep Anne from him. She must keep Anne from him or Anne would be lost. Swallowed up, desiring the body of another person. And she must keep Anne from the woman Jane. Or else she would be lost to the proud world. She had found, in Ecclesiastes, the words God sent her for her understanding: “And I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters; he who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her.”
She would not allow Anne to be taken in. Jane, the proud woman, would fall before her feet. She had prayed for guidance and had opened to Ezekiel. “Her proud might shall come to an end; and she shall be covered by a cloud.” So the woman would disappear and Anne would never see her. Anne would know, through the will of the Lord, that only Laura loved her. She would see that even her children did not love her. That Laura loved her with the pure love, stronger than the love of children, or the love of men’s desires, or the love of father, mother, or the proud love of the mind. She would see, and it would not be long, that only Laura loved her with the Spirit, before which all other love must be consumed and die.
Now that she knew Anne loved her, now that she knew that they were just alike, she could start. Now she could teach her, give her messages and guidance, pull her from the love of others, the temptation of false love. The hour was upon them. Now she would touch Anne with the burning hand of love: the flesh of Anne would burn and open. And the Spirit would fill her, driving out the error of her life. Oh, she was ready now, Laura could see, to know that her life was an error, that she had put her treasure where the moth ate and the thieves stole. But no more. Laura would help Anne to leave behind all that she thought she loved.
And then the children, too, would follow. She did not mean that Anne should not be with her children. “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Jesus had said it. She, Laura, would help Anne with the children. Anne would care for them, and Laura would instruct them. There was no need to keep the children from their mother. Only they must learn in time, as Anne would learn, that that love, too, was false and a delusion. That children must leave mother and father. That only the love of the Spirit was abiding. That all other love was death.
She imagined how their life would be. First Anne would leave her husband. Laura did not like Michael, the husband. For Christmas, he gave her two books:
Fear and Trembling
and
Waiting for God.
He tried to tell her about them. But she didn’t care. Books would lead no one to the Spirit. In the Scripture she found all she needed. The rest led astray. He talked to her in the voice he used with Peter, the voice that rose and fell in false curves. She saw the shape of it, the shape that said, “See, there is nothing that you know.” She would pretend to read his books because that would please Anne.
She would let Anne read books if she wanted to when they lived alone together. When she had left her husband. How had Anne been able to lie with him? She must have done what Laura did. Had closed her eyes and let the Spirit leave her. Had covered herself over with white sleep. A cloak, a cloud. Then opened her eyes and saw the dangerous, heaving body. And heard him crying out. Sleeping in the room beside them, Laura had heard his cry, the first night he was home, as he lay with his wife. She had not heard Anne cry out. Because it could not bring her pleasure. Pinned unmoving underneath.
Often she thought of what their life would be like. Hers and Anne’s. They would go away from everyone they knew. They would live together in a small house by a lake. Anne would cook and clean the house and tend the garden. Laura would sew and read the Scripture. In the evenings, late, they would drink tea together. Laura would speak of the Spirit. Anne would brush Laura’s hair for her and kiss her thankfully for having given her her life. When the children went away, they would see no one. They would die at the same moment. Holding her hand, Anne would let Laura lead her to the throne of God.
She had feared the husband could raise up his hooves and crush her underneath. Could lift his wife onto his back and carry her away. But Laura knew now that his power was nothing compared to hers. Was not even as strong as the power of the other man. For he had had another woman, and Anne knew. But that was the hand of the Lord. And Anne would know soon that the love of men was the root of death.
Because she had loved Anne, Laura had lain with Adrian. He had not wanted to at first. The Scripture said you should not lie with men. But had not the good woman Naomi counseled Ruth to lie upon the floor where Boaz slept so that the work of the Lord could come to pass? So she had been wise and cunning, knowing that only if she knew the love of men could she keep Anne from it. She had thought once that she might make Adrian marry her so she could be near Anne. But now she saw it was not necessary. Now she saw how easy it would be to show Anne no one loved her, that what she thought was love was like fresh grass that before her eyes would wither into nothing. Into dry stalks, into air.
Although she had lain with men, Laura was still innocent. Her body had been there but not her spirit. She remembered nothing of it. She had closed her eyes and caused her spirit to depart. She had come to him again and again, and he had taken her into his bed out of pity. It was through pity she had got to him at first. She had said to him, “No one’s ever said that I was beautiful. Or even pretty.” It was so easy to make them do what you wanted. She pressed the button of his pity; like a cheap top of the children’s, he had moved his hands, his arms.
She asked him to turn the light out, not out of shyness, as he thought, but so he could not see her laughing. He made her touch him. “Sometimes I need a little help at first.” Then she didn’t know what they did. Only her body lay there, but her spirit traveled. Afterwards, her spirit entered her body, and she saw him lying next to her, worn out, trying to catch his breath. Love, they called it, what they did. She thought of that as they lay together, their flesh damp like dough left out. She began to laugh because that was what they could call love. He asked what she was laughing at. I’m happy, she said. That was all he needed to hear. Then he could roll over and sleep. He lay on his back, his mouth open, snoring, making loud disgusting noises like the animal he was.
She knew that it was Anne he wanted in his bed. She knew that it was Anne he thought of as he pinned her underneath. Once he told her how lucky she was to be living in the house with Anne. He said it thinking she would think he meant she was lucky to have the job. But she knew he meant she was lucky to walk on the same ground, eat the same food, to see her first thing in the morning, to sleep as she slept, hearing, through the wall, Anne’s breath.
“Was Anne ever your lover?” She asked him that as he cooked an omelet for her. She had found, in the drawer where he kept string and tape, a picture of Anne with the children. They were sitting on her lap, smiling, nearly babies, clumsy on her knee. She sat holding her babies, and her face was golden, the face of light. Seeing the picture, Laura worried. How would she be able to convince Anne that her children, too, were grass that would wither? “Anne Foster my lover?” Adrian said and laughed. “I thought about it once, but it was crazy.”
So she knew that it was Anne he thought of as he lay above her.
“I would never take Anne for my lover,” he said. “Not just because of Michael, who is my friend, but because I’d always be afraid that she’d go to bed with me because she thought it was her fault that I desired her. That she’d have to make it up to me.”
“Don’t you think she likes sex?” Laura asked him. She hated him so much that she could hardly speak. At the end of the world, the Lord would wither him with one blast. He was a creature drunk on lust, hardly above an animal. She couldn’t even try to help him. It was not to help him that she lay with him; it was for Anne.
“I’m sure she’s very ardent when she’s with Michael. But she
likes
sex, she doesn’t
need
it.”
“Not like me,” she said, giggling. It was so easy to know what they wanted you to say.
He knew nothing about Anne. Laura knew that Anne desired the man who drank tea with her every night, his gut sticking over his belt like a pig. And she knew that Anne knew that her husband had another woman.
Christmas had revealed the truth to her. Anne with her family. Alone among the ones who claimed to love her. In the future, Laura knew, Anne would look back at that Christmas as the time when Laura gave her the necklace. She would hear Anne saying, “That was when I knew
you
were the one who loved me. Only
you
.”
Poor Anne. Since she did not yet know the love of the Spirit, she was hurt by her parents showing her they didn’t love her. That they loved only her sister. Laura couldn’t remember anymore what it felt like, the pain of thinking she was alone because her parents loved only her sister. Now when she tried to remember, she was covered by the thin white sleep. The peace of the Spirit that came when it was needed. Nothing hurt her now. She felt no anger, no bitterness. Only love. The pure love of the Spirit, which shone like the sun. That was how she loved Anne. That was how Anne loved her. In the Spirit, there was no suffering.
Now Anne must suffer. She must stand in her parents’ living room alone, knowing they didn’t love her. Anne’s parents were exactly like Laura’s. Anne’s sister was exactly like Debbie. Laura had seen in one minute that Anne’s mother had never loved her.
“It’s hard work, taking care of two children,” Anne’s mother had said to Laura. She was small like Laura’s mother, and like Laura, Anne stood above her mother in a way Laura could tell Anne’s mother hated. Laura’s mother had said to her, “Don’t hang on me. You make me sick, hanging on me.” She knew Anne’s mother had said that to her. And it had hurt Anne as it had hurt Laura, before the Spirit kept her from all hurt.