1910 #2
“Make a spirit incarnate. Capture it forever,” she said. “Like a photograph.” She wondered if he already knew about the Spirit Machine.
“Exactly,” he said. He flicked his eyes toward the portrait above the hearth, then steadied his gaze on Opal. Perhaps that was the pull she felt toward him, the recognition of his grief that dwelled inside him like a living being.
“Your wife,” Opal said.
“Hazel.” He said her name like a sigh. She’d died in childbirth and took with her their child. What a tragic way to succumb, while pushing life into the world, as though one’s whole purpose is to flower, then fruit, then die.
Opal faced the man. He held his palm to his chest, then he touched his scar.
What would Opal’s life have been like, had Oren lived?
Would they have married? Would he have danced with her still?
On the riverbank, when they’d finally dried off, Madame de Fleur had lain in the grass, her skin a pale lake, a body of water beside the shore.
Now when Opal conjured Oren she conjured the woman, that lake, the dark.
Opal envied Hazel in this moment, Hazel whose portrait still hung above the hearth, whose very name made the Colonel’s eyes dewy.
The best the Colonel could produce for Opal was a small chess table and a kerosene lamp.
When they sat across from each other, their knees bumped, and Opal felt warmth at all her contact points.
She tried to ignore the unusual nervousness she felt.
She asked him to draw the shades and extinguish the fire and hold her hands. The room cooled.
He closed his eyes. She closed hers. If all relationships are transactional, she must transact. One gives. One receives. She’d done this with Jagr before—anticipate his needs so she wouldn’t be asked for it. In this way, she could pretend she gave herself freely.
The Colonel gripped her hands as though she might slip away.
Sitting there, Opal imagined herself someone else.
A different marriage. A different life. She thought of Jagr and Oren and the baby and Madame de Fleur and all that had transpired since she’d run away.
She was tired. She longed for a resting place, and maybe that made her weak. Maybe that made her a woman.
She opened her eyes to watch the light flickering on the Colonel’s face.
His eyelids were shiny; a swoop of hair draped his forehead.
His jaw pulsed, and when she closed her eyes again, she felt a calmness wash over her.
She thought of the way Madame de Fleur would hold her around the waist, a human belt.
What would it feel like to be Hazel? How might this man protect her? How tempting to relieve herself of her own existence for just a while, to let Hazel’s consciousness settle into her mind? She felt a body steal into her own. His wife.
It was easier to be someone else, anyhow. Freeing. Relieved of self, she had no inhibitions. She could do anything. Be anyone. She squeezed the Colonel’s hand. Her voice was high, clenched, melodic, a song restrained. “Darling,” she said. “At last.”
The Colonel gave no sign of surprise and, yet, no immediate signs of delight. He’d been fooled before. “If this is you, dear Hazel, straightaway, tell me, what pet name did I call you?”
Nobody wants to be played a fool. But desire hides in plain sight, in the details of one’s life, in where one places her gaze, what she notices.
Opal surveyed the curiosities placed about the room, the metal contraptions, birdcages, the smoking hearth, the portrait above it.
Hazel’s head was small, like the bird, but not in an ugly way.
She wore a feathered boa around her neck, and now Opal studied the stuffed birds hanging about the room like trophies, or like reminders, or …
or like a memorial. The birds were grouse.
The Colonel was looking at one now. She recognized the bird’s small head and feathered feet, a bit like the common chicken, but more dignified.
“Grouse. You called me Hazel Grouse.” The Colonel’s hand squeezed tighter. “You spotted one—”
“—the same year I met you.”
His face relaxed, and he looked not so much at Opal as through her.
Before he could say anything else, Opal stretched her body across the tiny chess table and touched his scar.
He did not recoil, though something in him did startle.
Her belly grazed the table. She pressed her lips against his, and they were warm.
Until the day she died she’d remember this kiss, how the warmth held the memory of something familiar and distant.
A woman can want so many things at once, but she has only one body.
She clung to him. He let her kiss him until his body eased and, finally, he kissed her back.
Soon, they were upstairs, in a bedroom. He pressed against her bare chest. Hazel moaned louder than Opal ever had, always keeping her own pleasure to a stifle.
She didn’t know who she was then, lying there, tangled in his limbs, her impulse to pull him closer and closer, despite the obstacle of her stomach.
Though it was dark, she didn’t hide her body, nor did she feel the crush of the Colonel’s weight, which he carried in his arms, braced against the mattress.
The Colonel was gentle, intertwining his fingers with hers, as though, together, they were praying.
And, like a prayer, too, he sank into her while whispering her name, over and over, an incantation: Hazel. Hazel. Hazel.