Chapter 11 #5
“The woman I was choking. She liked that sometimes. She would tell me to put my hands around her neck and squeeze while I was fucking her. She’d say ‘harder,’ but she wasn’t talking about the fucking.
She was talking about my hands, and I would have to tighten my fingers, press harder with my thumbs, and she would buck and arch like a feral mare that I was trying to ride for the first time.
I could barely keep my seat, but I never—” He stopped, put up a hand as the lamp Jane was holding started to waver.
“You told me you were strong, Jane. You have to show me now. Do you have the stomach for this or not, because I’m not sure I do.
You say you want me to tell you things, and this is it.
This is what I want to tell you, and most of what’s inside of me is rotten ugly. ”
Jane stared at him. She held the lamp as steady as she held her gaze. “Go on,” she said.
Her calm was no salve for his open wound, but oddly, it gave him the confidence that she would not allow him to bleed to death.
The urge to say it all at once had passed, and he spoke quietly, gravely.
“I never let go until she told me I could. That was her hold on me. Everything was the opposite of how it looked. No one knew. I never once tried to kill her. She gave me so many opportunities, almost dared me, I think now, and I never took her up on it. Tonight, though, dreaming about her the way I was, I was doing what I couldn’t when I was lying with her.
Tonight, I was going to kill her. She had me so twisted up inside, I was finally going to kill her. ”
He saw Jane swallow. He gave her full marks for not putting a hand to her throat. She had to be thinking that he could have strangled her, so he said it aloud. “I could have killed you tonight, Jane.”
Jane shook her head. “Who is she?”
“Zetta Lee Welling,” he said after a long moment. “The woman who called herself my mother.”
“Of course,” Jane said. Her voice was no more than a whisper. “That’s why you sounded so young.”
Morgan watched her set the lamp on the seat of the chair. He knew what she would do. “Stay there, Jane. Stay where you are.” She came to him anyway. She was fearless. He had been right about her, had always been right about her, and he had been right to be afraid.
He did not know what to do when she put her arms around him.
His hands remained at his sides. She pressed her face into the curve of his neck and held on.
She was the only person who ever held him in just that way, giving comfort but also finding it.
He could hardly bear it that she was touching him, and he thought he would die if she stopped.
He did not know he was crying until she laid her fingertips against his cheek and wiped his tears away. He put his arms around her then and rested his damp cheek against her hair. They did not move until she took his hand and led him to bed.
Jane returned the lamp to the table. “Dark?” she asked.
“No. Let it burn.”
She left the wick as it was and slipped into bed but did not draw the covers up until he was beside her.
“Did you think I was going to run?” he asked.
“I think you still might.”
Morgan lay back and made a cradle for her head with the crook of his shoulder. She did not hesitate to pin him in place. “Better?” he asked when she was done burrowing.
“Yes. For you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might insist on sleeping in the other room.”
“It occurred to me.”
“But you decided against it.”
“Because I figured you wouldn’t let me sleep there alone, and if you were going to be wherever I was, what would have been the point? Was I right?”
“Yes. I am not worried that you’ll try to hurt me again.”
“I was never trying to hurt you.”
“I know.” She laid her hand on his chest. “Where is she, Morgan? Lander?”
Morgan sighed. “You got that from Mrs. Sterling. She told me that you were asking questions this afternoon.”
“She said you met her husband in Lander. Is that where you’re from?”
“I’m from New York City, same as you, Jane.” He chuckled when her head came up as quick and alert as a prairie gopher’s. He placed his hand on her crown and applied gentle pressure until she lowered it again. “Unexpected?”
“Yes.”
“I was born there. Do you know Five Points?”
“I do. I was not allowed to go there. It’s not safe, even now.”
“Well, that’s where I’m told I was born.
My mother, whoever she was, and it’s reasonable to assume she was a whore, had the decency to hand me over to the nuns at St. Mary’s.
I was raised in their orphan asylum. At six, about fifteen years after the social reformers sunk their teeth into the problem of homeless, impoverished, and unwanted children, I was put on an orphan train and sent west. I was so certain I was being punished, and perhaps I was.
I had friends at the asylum. None of them made the journey with me.
Do you know about the orphan trains, Jane? ”
“Yes. When Cousin Frances once threatened to put me on one, I made it a point to learn about them. I did not think it was the worst idea she ever had. Perhaps it was that thought lingering in the back of my mind that prompted me to answer your personal notice. Isn’t it what I did, Morgan?
Put myself on an orphan train? I think, though, that my experience has been quite different from yours.
Is that how you met Zetta Lee Welling? Was she the one who plucked you from the train? ”