Her own emotions were a stew of intensity simmering inside a too-small pot. She took the gift from his outstretched hand, his bullrush fingers a stark contrast to the intricately laced knot and bow that wove together and bound the package. As a small child, she had momentarily felt special when her mother was wrapping presents and would enlist her tiny finger to hold the knot so that she could execute the perfect bow. Her mother had taken special pride in wrapping her gifts. Victoria could see that Sam did as well. Unraveling it, she felt brutish and careless, the paper crumpling in her hands, a long lacy ribbon of red refuse curling by her feet. She wanted to apologize.
An exquisitely graceful carving emerged, a seemingly impossible union of solid wood and implied flow. Richly touchable waves undulated freely from the high breast, creating a beautifully draped mahogany gown. Breath almost seemed possible from the deftly carved features of the delicate face. Of all the carvings Sam had previously given her, none had come close to resonating such a visible life force as this one.
Victoria’s eyes dashed to the marvel of Sam’s hands.
“It’s an angel,” he said redemptively, shoving his hands into his pockets. “For your tree.”
Turning it over, she traced a finger, fish-like, down the illusion of feathery softness suggested there. “Sam, this is wonderful. You could sell these.”
His face rose and fell simultaneously, the shadow of hurt left behind a clear sign: this gift presented to her had traveled deeply through the Hades of his soul. Their eyes met in instant apology and forgiveness.
“Can you put it up for me?” she asked softly.
Easily reaching to the top of the tree, he fastened the angel in place. Awkwardness began to balloon around them as they stood staring up at it, the imminent punch of Elliot’s inevitable knock reverberating through Victoria’s mind. Anxiety finally squeezed her manners from her.
“Well, I really must get back to work, Sam.”
He ducked his head, the embarrassment of having overstayed his welcome like a physical slap.
“Yup. I got to get going, too. Just wanted to drop this off for you. See you later, Vic.”
“You coming to the recital tonight?” she asked hopefully.
He avoided her gaze as he stepped back into his snow boots and refastened the laces.
“Would,” he mumbled, “just it being poker night and all . . .”
“Oh, yes, of course,” she hastened to aid his discomfort. “Well, maybe next year. Thanks for the tree, Sam. And the angel. She’s beautiful.”
“Yup,” he nodded as he tossed her a half-smile and left.
Locking the door behind him, her huge sigh of relief was cut short by Elliot’s knock. The event was so synchronized she wondered for a moment if Elliot hadn’t been standing outside listening, waiting for Sam to leave. Cursing her stupidity and thanking her lucky stars, she skitted back to the rear door, where she was confronted by a wall of greenery. Elliot’s tentative second knock was answered by a whispered hiss to hold on while she moved the tree.
“Hol-ee!” he exhaled, as he slid with difficulty through the partially opened doorway. “Father Christmas bring you that?”
“Sam. He just dropped it off,” she said, choosing not to elaborate on how close
his just
had been to a three-way meeting.
The abundant addition of new snow had managed to persuade even Elliot to graduate to winter boots. Victoria noticed that even though they remained unlaced, they still managed to steal some of the freeness from his limbs. He walked out of them, his attention diverted.
“Wow!”
He whistled appreciatively, stepping around the tree, inspecting it and the finely hewn angel crowning it. A playful smile began to toy with his face.
“What?” Victoria demanded nervously.
“Sam carve you that?”
She let the obvious answer speak for itself.
“It’s you.”
“What?”
“The angel. It’s you.”
“Is not!”
“Is,” he challenged back lightly. “Look.”
Her eyes met the blank almonds staring back at her from the steadfast yet delicately carved wooden face. The similarity was so brazenly obvious now she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it right away. Her face mutinied into a blush.
“Seems you might have yourself a secret admirer, Victoria,” Elliot whispered.
Not able to catch the tone of his words, she looked over at him for more information.
“Don’t be silly. Sam and I are just friends.”
“Well, you might be just friends,” he replied, looking her straight in the eyes. “But I can recognize the blunt-force trauma of unrequited love when I see it and it looks to me like this guy is bleeding internally pretty bad.”
“Oh, Elliot. It’s nothing like that. He just likes to carve stuff, that’s all.”
She attempted to sweep the suggestion aside, but Elliot held her eye until she looked away. She felt trespassed upon.
“That melted snow isn’t going to do your wood floor any favors,” he said, gesturing beneath the tree.
Glad for the juncture in the conversation, she turned to the closet. “I’ll give it a mop while you get out the painting.”
Unlocking the closet door she stepped back and checked her watch. The day was flying by hopelessly beyond her control. Elliot swept past her into the tiny room, his movements briskly agitated. She looked in after him. He stood directly in front of the canvas, tense and immovable. Coiled in a twisted heap upon the floor lay the old sheet they used to cover the canvas between their meetings. Clearly something was wrong. She wanted to scream at him to move out of the way. She wanted to scream at him to stay that way forever.
Panic vomited inside her. Elliot slowly stepped aside, the incomprehensible sight of the painting assaulting her. It was ruined. A collage of uninspired red finger-swirls and random yellow splatters defaced it.
Victoria gasped, her eyes racing like wild animals to Elliot’s.
“This makes no sense, Victoria. Absolutely no sense.” He spoke like he was stunned of feeling. “Did you give the key to someone?”
“Of course not!”
“But, it’s supposed to be the only one, right?”
“That’s what Pearl said. Obviously, she was wrong.”
They stood staring at each other, their minds consumed in a search to find the illogical answer that eluded them. How could anyone have known about the painting? Had someone been watching them? Had whoever was calling her also been watching her? Had he become jealous over Elliot’s attentions? She leaned heavily on the doorway, mind manic, heart racing. The painting, exposed now and no longer just the domain of their private exclusivity, seemed to her far more intimate, far more damning than she had remembered. She looked up at him hopefully as he turned to speak.
“You know, Victoria, this isn’t so bad. I think I can fix this.”
Her face brightened. “You can? How?”
“Ya. Ya, with a bit of time, I think I might just be able to salvage this.” He inspected the painting closer, picking at a glob of paint with his fingernail.
“Are you crazy?” she spat. “You can’t salvage it, Elliot. You have to destroy it.”
“Destroy it? Why?”
Victoria bolted up at him. “Don’t you get it? Someone knows about this. If it gets back to Bobby . . .” The words slid away from her but their impact remained on her face.
Seeing the depth of her panic as he turned from the painting, he stepped toward her protectively. “Victoria. I’m sorry. Truly, I am. The last thing I wanted was to put you in harm’s way.”
She looked up at him, incredulous. “It’s not me you have to worry about, Elliot.”
A question narrowed his eyes. “But, it’s not like we’ve done anything wrong. I painted your picture to raise some money for the studio. So what? I’ve painted plenty of girls before.”
The remark stung.
“Actually, I think it’d be best if you don’t come around for a while,” she said defensively. “At least until I find out who’s been in here.”
“Victoria. You think that’s really . . .”
“Yes. It is.”
“And the painting?”
“You have to destroy it. Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. Promise me.”
“Okay. If that’s the way you want it to be.”
She looked up at him, searching for understanding.
“It’s not the way I want it to be, Elliot,” she whispered. “It’s just the way it has to be.”
Christmas came and passed as usual, with full-throttle parties and obligatory visits to the home where they had again endured reruns of Bobby’s mother’s life told through the meager accomplishments of her husband and only son. The dance recital had gone far better than Victoria had expected, with only one case of stage fright other than her own and the occasional misstep. Bobby, true to his word, had refused to attend. Although frustrated over his lack of support, Victoria had also been relieved; she hadn’t had to monitor his simmering hostility on top of everything else. She had been an anxiety of nerves: every random look and snippet of conversation knocking her sideways, dreading the moment when someone would come forward and expose her and Elliot’s intimate secret to the whole town. Nervously, she had scanned the crowd for him. He had not shown up. Not that she could have expected him to. She had asked him to disappear from her life, and he had honored her wishes. But still, disappointment had floated heavily among her fears.
January had blown the valley solid until the middle of February when ferocious storms took over, paralyzing it under a straitjacket of wet and hazardous snow. Expectant mounds had grown higher and heavier with each passing day until warm March winds began to moan and the valley heaved and groaned until winter finally gave birth to spring. Victoria anxiously watched the slowly retreating ice and snow. Shortly after the Christmas recital, her car had suspiciously refused to start. Bobby, declaring the roads too dangerous for her ancient bald tires, had refused to fix it, grudgingly taking it upon himself to drive her back and forth to town each week to teach her dance class and gather the supplies needed to keep life sustained.
The rest of her dull, dark days had been spent in the confines of the trailer, shuffling things from drawer to drawer and closet to closet. The hens had continued their barren ways. Victoria still kept them alive by smuggling store-bought eggs into her basket. Every Thursday her neighbor stopped by to pick up a dozen, have a little chat and provide a break to the daily monotony for each of them. Other winters would have found her almost desperate with boredom, but this year she had settled in, let her imagination run and waited for the phone to ring.
After the painting had been exposed, she had sat through the first few static-filled calls listening with anxious hesitation. Once Bobby had even answered it and had sworn vilely about how stupid people were to dial wrong numbers. But for the most part he was out when the calls came, and she began to wonder if whoever it was knew when she was alone. As time wore on and no word of her trespass had filtered back to her, either through the telephone line or town gossip, she began to lower her guard and trust again that the caller meant her no harm.
The calls had relaxed, their duration increasing, with the conversations mostly one-sided, if they could be called conversations at all. Somehow over the months she’d transgressed from listener to speaker, and the details of what she divulged slipped from the general and mundane to the secret and intimate. The caller proved to be an attentive listener, never interrupting or criticizing, just listening to each word as though what she said was of the utmost importance. Listened to her like no one else ever had. Listened to her as if she mattered, as if she existed. And occasionally he would offer a delicious stroke to her confidence, tell her she was fascinating, intelligent, beautiful.
For a time she was convinced she was talking to Elliot. In her mind seeing his gentle hands holding the receiver he was breathing into, almost feeling them against her cheek, tasting the touch of his lips. But then she’d heard he’d been out-of-town, gallivanting somewhere warm and exotic, far from her and the frigid valley. Then she’d thought perhaps it was Sam, bound by his boyhood loyalty to Bobby, restricted by the fearful knowledge of the magnitude of his feelings toward her, knowing any tangible expression of them would send him reeling to a place he could not go. Would not start what he could not finish. Other times, it was Diana’s son Mark who she envisioned breathing into the other end of the phone. But most of all she imagined the caller to be all three. Elliot’s sensual worldliness, Sam’s protective, unfaltering love and Mark’s cocky brazenness. And it was the thought of their hungry eyes that stirred her to distraction, pressing a warm glow against her cheeks that she panicked to hide when Bobby unexpectedly came up the steps and through the porch door.
Slowly her curiosity about the caller’s identity waned, and she asked the question only as a formality, a way to placate her conscience when it pricked at her, warning against the folly of setting such intimate knowledge into the hands of a stranger. But her reality was that the caller no longer was a stranger, but had become like a dear and trusted friend. Her confidant. Her lover. And she knew her trust would not be taken in vain, that this person who, for whatever reason chose to remain cloaked in anonymity, would not forsake her but would continue to cherish her so deeply that he was willing to have her in the only form he could.