Chapter VIII. 1953 #2
“What’s it all for?” Mary inclined her head toward the altar.
“The cloth is for the season. Ostara is the next Sabbat. You call it Easter. The renewal of life. The balance between light and dark restored. New beginnings. And the yellow … it reminded me of spring. Of the sun. Same thing for the flower petals.”
Her words came more rapidly. “There’s honey in the chalice.
A touch of sweetness for abundance and transformation.
” She took a step closer, their shoulders touching.
Mary could feel the heat of her, and she leaned into it ever so slightly.
“Candles for ritual practice and meditation. The knife is called an athame. It guides energy. Sometimes I use it for herbs during rituals. And the crystal.” She set her drink on the altar, lifted the crystal, and placed it in Mary’s hand, wrapping both of hers around it so they both held the stone.
Mary could feel the flutter of her heart in her throat as Sharon tipped her head closer, her breath warm against Mary’s neck.
“Rose quartz. It can be used for so many things, but I put it here not that long ago because I wanted something. Even though I thought I couldn’t have it.”
With her free hand, Mary also set her drink down next to Sharon’s. Another offering for what they both wanted.
“Isn’t it pretty?” Sharon tipped their hands toward the sunlight, the light pink of the crystal sparkling.
“I tried to forget. I swear I did, Mary. But I couldn’t.
I put it here only with the intention that it was reciprocal.
I never want you to do anything you don’t want to.
” Her voice wavered, and she drew in a breath.
“I put it here to attract and encourage love.”
Before Sharon could say another word, before she could remember all the reasons not to, Mary turned her head and pressed her lips to Sharon’s.
Sharon crushed her body to Mary’s, a small sigh escaping her lips that set Mary burning.
She couldn’t think. Couldn’t control the surge of her mind.
There was only the heavy ache in her lower abdomen, and Sharon’s mouth and tongue.
Sharon’s hands now in her hair, on her jaw, and then on the zipper on the back of her dress.
In a sudden panic, Mary wrenched herself away. It was an automatic movement that had nothing to do with her desire. She stood, panting and hating herself, as she watched the shock and confusion pass over Sharon’s face.
“I’m sorry. I thought—”
“No, it’s not that. I do. I want…” Mary flushed with embarrassment, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I don’t know how.”
She understood the mechanics of a man. How their bodies came together and apart.
The rough, almost violent nature of it. But this was different.
With Sharon there would be a hidden softness she had never even truly understood about her own body.
There had been moments, alone in her bedroom, where she thought she was on the edge of understanding, but her mind would drift, reminding her that such things were indecent, and the sensation would recede, and she would spend another day learning to tamp down yet another frustration.
“It’s okay,” Sharon said, and traced her fingers down Mary’s neck. Her collarbone. “I’ll show you.”
AN HOUR LATER, Mary sat cross-legged before Sharon wearing only her slip as Sharon marked a symbol on her chest with ash and rose oil.
“A sigil. So you might know the truth of your heart and the courage to heed it,” she said, before trailing her lips and tongue and teeth over the same spot.
There was not time that evening to learn everything about Sharon’s body.
The small moan she gave when Mary gripped the outside of her thigh.
The birdlike sound she made when a kiss deepened.
How she sometimes laughed during orgasm.
How her hair reflected like burnt gold in the late afternoon light.
All those stolen hours. Tiny bits of time here and there that weren’t nearly enough to hold back the leviathan of their need.
Always touching. Tasting. Learning. A lifetime wouldn’t be enough.
If Mary were to die before she had her fill, she would find a way to resurrection.
A way to roll back the stone of her mortality if it meant even one more afternoon with Sharon.
A month passed. Then three, spring deepening into summer’s dogged heat. Another afternoon of false appointments served as Mary’s reason for lying beside Sharon, their legs tangled together.
“You should join The Path.” Mary twirled a single lock of Sharon’s hair and let it drop, watching how it held shape. Her own hair never held curl like that. Her mother always made a point of sighing each time she tried and failed to get Mary’s hair to behave.
“I knew it. You’ve been trying to convert me all along,” Sharon said. Mary pinched her arm, wishing she could take the skin between her teeth instead, feel the gentle give of it, before letting her mouth roam other places.
Mary sat up abruptly. She meant it as a joke, but as the idea took root, she realized it wasn’t a joke at all. The levity in her voice dropped away. “I’m serious. We would have more time together. Wouldn’t have to do all this sneaking around.”
Sharon scoffed. “Somehow I very much doubt that.”
“You know what I mean. We couldn’t be public, but at least we could see each other more often.
” Mary settled onto her elbows, the idea taking flight.
“It’s so beautiful there. It really is. Like a storybook.
Horses, and these gorgeous open pastures, and these ancient woods you can get lost in.
You could still … worship. Is that even what you call it?
You would just have to come to church on Thursday and Sunday. And the services are lovely.”
Sharon waved her hand and laughed. “Slow down there, cowgirl. So, I join The Path and then what? Move into a little house in the woods and wait for someone to finally call me a witch because I’m not married and having babies? That’s what they would expect of me. The same they expected of you.”
“It’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” Sharon leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to Mary’s cheek.
“I couldn’t do it, Mary. Punish myself like that.
Not even if it meant seeing you every single day.
Living one secret is difficult enough. Pretending to be a happy housewife while you’re doing the same thing a few houses down would be like dying over and over again. ”
Mary wanted to set fire to the truth of Sharon’s words. Everyone in Hawthorne Springs looked askance at a woman who’d not managed to find a husband before she aged into a full crone at twenty-five.
“You’re right.” She sighed. “I wouldn’t want to force that on you. It’s not who you are. But maybe you could visit one day. We could take a walk in those woods. Get lost for a little while,” Mary said.
“Just a little while?” Sharon slid her hand up Mary’s thigh. “What if I want to take longer than that?”
Mary opened her mouth to respond, but Sharon had shifted her touch, and she gasped as her thoughts shattered under the pressure building with that sensation.
“I’ll come,” Sharon said, nipping at Mary’s bottom lip. “But only if you do first.”
IT WAS THE first Bible study Mary had been to since she went back to Rich’s looking for Sharon. Her absence had been noted and commented on to the point that Robert brought it up over dinner.
She nodded and promised him she would go the following week.
But now, standing outside Hester Carrington’s house, she wished she was home with the baby, curled together under the quilt as she counted each miraculous finger and toe, their breath mingling in the way their blood had when Mary carried her safely inside her own body.
But Hester flung the door open and pressed a glass of red wine into her hand as she pulled her into the warm, yeast-scented kitchen.
“Look who I found!” Hester called as they entered. The group of women turned, their lips already stained burgundy from the wine as they exclaimed and then fell on her.
By her third glass of wine, Mary relaxed into the old patterns of church gossip, punctuated by the absence of any Bible talk, and realized she was having fun.
With Sharon, it was different. A burning without relief.
A need. There was ease in being with her, but there was nothing easy in it.
Here, she knew her role. Understood it as inherently as breathing. Here, she didn’t have to try.
She looked for Vera and found her in the center of a cluster of women, sipping her wine and smiling as she leaned forward to catch some salacious bit of chatter. She waved, and Vera waved back.
She wanted to barge in and pull Vera away.
Politeness be damned. She hadn’t seen her best friend in far too long, and she wanted a long talk between just the two of them, but there were already eyes on her.
Suspicions over her absence she needed to mitigate.
Instead, she let herself fall into conversation as Hester pressed yet another glass of wine into her hand. And then another.
The wine loosened her. It had been some time since she had this much to drink, but it felt good to let go and pretend, even for a moment, that she had nothing to hide. Nothing to worry about.
When Hester offered yet another glass, she didn’t refuse. Halfway through it, she passed from tipsy to fully drunk.
“We’ve kept after Vera all the time. Asking about you.
” Hester pressed close, her eyes too wide and wine glazed.
“She kept saying she didn’t know. As if y’all haven’t been thick as thieves since you were little girls.
” She gave a small hiccup and covered her mouth.
“She’s sly, that one. Keeping secrets. We were starting to wonder if there was a baby on the way. ”
“No. No babies. Doesn’t want one.”
The words bubbled out of her, her mind numbed and made stupid by the wine. It was only after she spoke that she realized what she had done. Her stomach twisted, and a heat crawled up her neck as she fought the urge to be sick right there on Hester’s pristine kitchen floor.
Hester raised an eyebrow, her pink mouth forming a perfect circle. Theirs was a god that believed in babies. In good wives and hard-working husbands and a nursery that was always filled.
“Doesn’t want one?” Hester’s voice pitched upward into disbelief. “How could you not want a baby? It’s not natural for a woman not to want a family. And how would you even go about making sure you didn’t…” Hester inhaled a sharp intake of breath. “Oh.”
“I didn’t say. It’s not…” Mary said, but her brain would not form a coherent thought. Her tongue felt swollen and clumsy, and she swallowed and swallowed, but it did nothing to ease the sensation that at any moment she was going to bring up what she’d eaten at lunch.
Another woman approached, squealing some exclamation in Mary’s direction, but Mary could not hear over the roaring in her ears. A rush of blood and regret she tried to ignore as the room pitched around her.
Hester gestured toward Vera, and Mary could see it all unfolding. A fire eating until it was satiated. How every ear would turn, greedy for scandal, and she would watch it all because she could not move. She would be forced to watch this terrible mistake, and oh God, what had she done?
One by one, they fell. A gathering of Eves in the garden, infatuated with the promises of a serpent.
They did not bother to hide behind their hands or false smiles.
Did not bother to lower their voices to whispers.
For this was a reaping of feminine failures, and they were the victors gathering their spoils.
Pink frosted lips lifted into sneers. Eyes narrowed and manicured fingers pointed in accusation.
Mary sagged against the countertop. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, but no one heard. Every gaze was trained on Hester, who was making her way toward Vera, her wine sloshing over her hand so it dribbled down her wrist like blood.
“Vera,” she said, her tone one of sisterly, Christian concern. “I was chatting with Mary and…”
Around Mary, the room hummed, Hester’s words fading in and out.
She caught at every other word, but she could piece together what Hester said.
Suggestions for Bible verses that would lead Vera back to the path He’d chosen for her.
A reminder that it was only His hand that could give or take away.
How divine it was to raise up a family in His image.
What an aberration to deny her womb what it was designed so lovingly for.
“Can we pray for you now, Vera? That you might find your way back to Him?”
Mary could not tell who said it. If it was Hester or all of them in one voice lifting their fallen sister up in prayer. The lights were too bright, their voices too loud.
Vera stood across the room, her gaze locked on Mary as the other women crowded around her.
Mary wished she was dead. That God would reach His all-knowing hand down and smite her.
Anything not to see the stricken expression on Vera’s face, her eyes filling with tears she didn’t bother blinking away.
Anything not to be forced with witnessing her own betrayal.
Mary hadn’t meant it. Hadn’t meant it at all.
She was drunk and babbling, and Hester came to her own conclusions.
She had to apologize. Tell Vera it had all been a mistake. She would never betray Vera in such a way, and it had been the wine. She could tell Hester she’d been mistaken, that she’d misheard, if only her throat would open and let her talk reasonably.
She closed her eyes and took a settling breath. But when she opened her eyes, Vera had already fled.