Chapter Three Frankie #3
We had reached a thicket of white birch, deep in the woods. She turned and leaned into me, looking into my eyes and down to my lips. “You know what else drives me mad?”
“No,” I whispered, my throat thick, feeling I should pull away from her. It was unbearable being that close, feeling her sweet breath on my cheek.
“That you never seem to see me looking at you.”
“I do… I have… I only…” I was tripping over my words, breathing too fast, my heart beating so hard I was sure Pearl could hear it.
And that was when she kissed me. And yes, it was she who kissed me first. A fact she reminds me of and chides me for regularly.
As I lay pinned on the floor at the Ayers house, I looked around the dusty room and up at Pearl on top of me, her face inches from mine, her breath warming me but giving me chills at the same time.
“I can see it so clearly, our house. Our home,” Pearl said, looking around.
“I’d be here each evening with nothing more than an apron on,” she said teasingly. “Waiting for you to come home.”
I felt the heat of my face as I blushed.
“You,” Pearl went on, “my dashing husband, who has been off doctoring, saving people from incipient diseases.”
“Dashing husband?” I cut her off, one eyebrow cocked in the way I knew Pearl found irresistible. “Why can’t I be your dashing wife?”
Pearl shook her head, looking flustered. “Because that’s not the way it works, Frankie. There are rules. Rules we all have to live by. Or pretend to at least.”
I sighed deeply, in no mood to hear about rules. I tried to get out from under Pearl, but I was trapped.
One of the things I loved most about Pearl was that she didn’t give a damn about rules. She’d always forged her own path and never got in trouble for it because of who she was, who her father was. She was a girl used to getting her own way every time, which was why her comment surprised me.
“I often think about it, though,” Pearl admitted now. “A life with you…” Her voice trailed off. “But to do it properly, like civilized people do, we would have to pretend.”
“Pretend,” I said, spitting the word out like a bitter stone. I bucked my hips, managed to unbalance Pearl and climb out from under her.
“Would it be so hard?” Pearl asked. “You dress that way anyway—wearing your uncle’s cast-off shirts and trousers, his worn boots.”
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been most comfortable in trousers and boys’ shirtsleeves.
When I’d been forced to wear dresses as a child, I felt ridiculous, like I’d put on a costume for Halloween.
When I meet strangers—which is rare, not many strangers pass through Boone’s Ferry—I am often mistaken for a boy, and I never bother to correct them.
I rubbed the back of my still-sore head, pulled my old wool coat around me tighter, then reached into the pocket and drew out my pipe and pouch of tobacco.
“We could go away,” Pearl said, voice soft and light as a cloud.
“Far off over the hills to a place where no one knows us, a town we’ve never even heard of!
We could introduce you as Frank. Bind your chest. Get you suits of fancy clothing.
” She smiled that fox smile, looking at me. “We could even put a beard on you.”
I took a breath and held it, released it slowly. “I’m afraid my beard would tickle you when we kiss, my love,” I said. Pearl burst into laughter and reached for my pipe, tucking it into my pocket, then put her arms around me and pulled me back down to the floor. This time I was on top.
“Please, Frankie,” she said, looking up at me, eyes pleading. “Can’t we run away together? We could leave tonight. I have some money. And you, you’re so clever, and—”
“Where would we go?” I asked.
“Anywhere. Anywhere but here.”
“Is here so terrible?” I asked. “We have our families. I’ve got my work with my uncle. And we have this place, our secret house. We can go on meeting here every day, there’s no one to stop us.”
She frowned. “It’s not enough and I—”
I kissed Pearl hard as I unbuttoned her dress, ending the discussion.
There was no more talk of husbands and wives or running away.
No discussion of why we couldn’t just go on being girl and girl hidden away from the world in our secret house.
There was only our lips, my tongue exploring the topography of my lover’s body, like a cartographer charting new land.
Here a freckle, there a little hair where it shouldn’t be, a dimple no one else but Pearl’s mother had ever seen.
Pearl’s body went rigid and she pushed me off, sat up, stared wide-eyed at the window with its pulled-back curtain.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing…” Pearl said, pulling her dress closed. “I thought I saw…”
“What?” I asked, heart hammering. Had someone been there at the window? Had someone seen us?
“A horse,” Pearl said, shaking her head. “I thought I saw the head of a horse looking in at us. But that’s impossible, isn’t it?”
Every hair on my body stood up as a chill washed over me. I turned, looked back at the window. But there were only the bare trees outside, and our own reflection: two girls in each other’s arms on a dirty floor in a falling-down house.
“You’re right,” I said. “Impossible.”