Chapter 11 #3
What did it mean to give someone up? I kept asking myself, as I got dressed or checked the mail.
That sense of ownership inside the agreement never totally made sense to me.
I didn’t own Sarah any more than she owned me.
And if I didn’t own her, then how could I give her up?
Maybe this was the real intention of the pact, I thought—to allow me to relinquish the sense of ownership itself.
This was the agreement at the root of any marriage, wasn’t it?
Of any true, equal relationship, for that matter.
To give oneself wholly, to commit entirely, without expectation, without claim.
In a sense, Sarah and I were being asked to cast off our previous selves and to meet nakedly on this new, conjugal plane.
We were being asked to love with our hearts open.
Sitting at my desk, watching the clouds, I became more confident of this reading.
It was the lesson of almost every faith, wasn’t it?
Lose yourself, submit yourself. In every tradition, the highest, most noble act was to discard the petty distractions of ego and serve another.
By promising to give up Sarah, I was in effect promising to humble myself before her as my new God.
I was no longer backing into our life together, checking over my shoulder.
I was striding forward confidently, without qualm, emptied out.
Brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed, I went through the whole contract in my mind again, confirming my new understanding. Yes, I thought, the universe, or my own mind, whatever it was, was bringing us together in this generous way. It was preparing us for our ultimate, joyful, giving union.
Did the complete reversal of the miracle’s stated meaning seem odd to me?
A little bit, but not really. The universe was built on exactly this kind of reversal, by my thinking.
It was always about the rich becoming poor, the celebrated becoming despised, the meek inheriting the earth.
Every role bled into its opposite over time.
Just as the seed became the tree became the seed again, every meaning turned around and become its mirror version.
Lying in my bed, turning off the light, I came to the conclusion, as I had so many times before: the only immutable law of the universe was irony.
All of this was happening without my ever seeing Sarah in person.
We remained locked in our different rooms, the proverbial bride and groom before the wedding.
She was back at home but being kept under close watch by Phil and a hired nurse.
The doctors had strictly limited her range of activity, allowing her to amble around the house and watch TV, but not much else.
The librarians were giving her as many sick days as needed.
But eventually she couldn’t stand it any longer, and we began plotting our reunion.
She told Phil her memoir class was starting up again, and she wanted to get back into it.
The workshop was a nice, sedate activity, she argued, without any physical perils.
Not that she needed anyone’s permission.
We agreed to meet at the Barn on our usual night, at the usual hour, with all our favorite provisions, and although I felt some flickers of doubt around the plan, I didn’t say anything.
It turned out my faith in Sarah was much stronger than my faith in God.
The cold rains started up again that week, which meant the last of the summer was truly gone, devoured by the incoming season.
I went to the Barn early and prepared our room.
I unfolded the bed and sprinkled it with a few rose petals from Safeway.
I opened a bottle of pinot noir and let it decant.
I would’ve lit candles, but our love was still a secret from the world, at least for the time being, and we didn’t want to give ourselves away with a telltale light.
The people of our town were too curious and not to be trusted.
Sarah arrived after dark. I watched her car drift down the street and come to a stop in front of the puzzle shop, the rain making jagged slashes in the lamplight.
I saw her get out of the car and open her umbrella, the black membrane snapping to.
I saw the pulse of light as the car door locked.
I saw her cross the street to my side and disappear from view.
I heard her footsteps as she climbed the stairs and paused on the landing.
I heard the main door open and the footsteps continue down the hall.
It was a delicious moment. For weeks we’d been apart, our only touch our voices on the phone.
Now, at last, she was coming close. Her body was walking toward the door to our room.
She was almost there. Had I ever loved her so purely before?
I wondered. In that moment, on the edge of her presence, I thought I might have loved her more than I’d ever imagined possible.
At last, the door opened, and she was there, standing in the shadow, backlit by the low hall light.
She had on a yellow raincoat and a cast on her wrist. Her cheeks were a little sallow, her eyes a little dark and bagged, but her skin seemed softly to glow.
Her aliveness was so vivid and yet so delicate in that moment, it seemed like she could vanish again at the slightest sound.
I couldn’t believe I’d come so close to losing her.
She took off her coat and leaned her wet umbrella against the wall.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said.
“It’s cold in here,” she said.
“Is it too cold?” I said. “I can turn up the heat if you want.”
“No,” she said. “It’s fine. I’ll warm up.”
I didn’t go to her at first. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to touch her or not.
She didn’t come to me, either. For whatever reason, we both seemed tentative.
Not because of God, but only because we’d been apart long enough that the open invitation to each other’s bodies had lapsed.
We had to rediscover our rules again. It was kind of sweet. There was no rush.
She sat on the hide-a-bed and I poured us both glasses of wine.
“So how was your day?” I said, handing her the glass.
“It was fine,” she said. “Yours?”
“It was fine,” I said. “I got some work done.”
“The book is going all right?” she said. She knew it was still a boring question. The status didn’t change much day to day. It was like asking about the weather.
“I got my words in,” I said.
“Good for you,” she said.
I sat down next to her on the squeaking bed.
The mattress was so thin the metal frame pressed against the backs of my legs.
Someday, we’d have a beautiful mattress of our own, I thought, with memory foam, covered in clean sheets with a high thread count, but for now, this was our nuptial bed.
The windows were streaked with rain, a patter of droplets blowing against the glass in light gusts.
“You’re feeling okay?” I said.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just the collarbone and wrist are a little stiff. My head is okay.”
“And driving over here was easy?” I said.
“I’m seriously fine,” she said. “You and Phil, such worrywarts.”
“You can’t be too careful,” I said.
“I think you can be, actually,” she said.
I leaned toward her and we kissed. Softly, the seal was broken. I leaned back and sipped my wine.
“How do you like your nurse?” I said. I didn’t want to rush anything, much as I wanted her. Now that she was back, her body was doing all its tricks on me, working its power.
“She’s amazing,” she said. “Nurses are the best people in the world.”
“Have you been watching anything good on TV?” I said.
“Mostly just nature documentaries,” she said.
“I just saw one about grasshoppers today. They molt five times in their lives, did you know that? It’s so incredible, to see them squeezing out of their old bodies.
Five times. It’s only on the last one that their wings are finally fully grown. What a life.”
“Are these the grasshoppers who eat their husbands?” I said.
“That’s a praying mantis,” she said. “The male grasshoppers sing a mating song. They have eardrums in their abdomens.”
We didn’t want to hurry anything, but we both understood we had a finite amount of time in our room.
She had to be home in a matter of hours, or else she’d be missed.
We were there for a reason, which was to reconsecrate our love, and so there was a certain seriousness as we finally got started.
There were no sideways glances this time, no double entendres, no jokes.
We were here for an almost ceremonial union, and we didn’t want any distractions.
Carefully, we took off each other’s clothes, with special attention around Sarah’s cast, making a great effort to avoid stretching her arms over her head or getting anything snagged.
We managed to get our shirts off, and our own shoes and pants.
We helped each other with our respective underwear.
And then, naked, we knelt facing each other on the bed, taking our time on the verge of this sacred transgression.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” I said.
“Just a little headachy,” she said. “But it’s nothing. I’ll be back at work next week. How about you? Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re sure you’re not a little scared of God?” she said. “You seem a little nervous.”
“Maybe a little,” I said.
We kissed longingly, and our bodies pressed against each other. We were warming up. We kissed again, with more ardor, and she began stroking me. My fingers grazed the slickness between her legs.
“You’re worried that God is watching us?” she whispered.
“Kind of,” I said.
“I didn’t think you were the type,” she said. “Such a believer, it turns out.”
She continued stroking, and nothing dire happened. No locusts descended, no floods came. We kissed again, and no thunderclouds appeared. We were still there, together, in the darkness of our room. Her body was pliant, full of heat.
“He likes to watch people, doesn’t He?” she said.
“He must,” I said.
“He kind of gets off on it,” she said.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Why don’t we show Him something then?” she said. And like Adam and Eve, we lay down beside each other on the creaking hide-a-bed and fucked.