Chapter 1 #6
I do not remember getting into the bedroom, but I lie down dutifully on the bed. I stare at the ceiling. I take deep breaths. But even though I’d trust Evie with my life, or my daughter’s, all I can think about is the distance between me and the baby. Fifteen feet, maybe, with a door between us.
I get up, wrench open the door. Evie is in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove. It smells cheesy and rich and my mouth waters. She holds Molly in her free arm, careful to keep her far from the flames.
(Which is more than I can say for you.)
Evie grins. “Look, angel. Your mama’s awake.” She turns to me. “How do you feel?”
“So much better,” I lie.
Evie looks at me gently. “Listen. This is hard.”
I nod. “I know.”
My neck prickles. I do not have to turn to realize that Evie has moved the couch to its original spot beneath the living room window. Dragging it back to the middle of the floor is the first thing I do when she leaves.
Sometimes I look at my baby and calculate the mathematics of her existence: the sweet parabola of her cheek, the constant of her heartbeat, the daily derivative—-her rate of change. The limit I can feel for her, which skates along the axis of infinity.
And sometimes I look at her and think she will be the death of me.
When Adam comes home from California, he kisses me and then Molly. He marvels over the dimple in Molly’s chin and how her hands move in an elegant ballet, like she is signing a language we don’t speak. With the three of us here, it feels perfect. We are perfect.
We order a pizza for dinner, and Adam encourages me to have a glass of wine, because one can’t really hurt when I’m nursing (you know better). We give the baby a bath together, and then Adam gets her into fresh pajamas while I shower in the guest bathroom.
Sweet--smelling and damp--haired, Molly nurses while Adam unpacks his bag. He sits down on the bed, watching Molly at my breast. “What does it taste like?”
“Sweet.”
Adam blinks up in surprise. “You tasted breast milk?”
“Well,” I say, shrugging. “Yeah. I wanted to know.”
Molly’s eyes have closed. Her fist falls away from me, and her mouth pops off the breast. Gingerly, I transfer her to the bassinet beside the bed. When I turn back, my pajama shirt still open, Adam’s eyes darken. He leans down, his tongue flicking over my nipple.
“Very sweet,” he murmurs, looking up at me. He kisses his way up the globe of my breast. “So fucking sweet.”
“Adam,” I whisper, “the doctor said six weeks.”
His mouth trails a path up my neck. “There’s a lot we still can do,” he says.
It has only been a little over a week since I had the baby; my stomach is marshy and my breasts blue--veined. In these past few days I have felt needed, but not wanted. Until now.
Adam and I scoot under the covers and he turns out the light.
His eyes gleam in the darkness. I feel young, alive, foolish.
He peels off my top and pulls me against his chest, tangling our legs.
One of his hands spears into my messy braid.
The other trails under the elastic band of my pajama bottoms, but I pull at his wrist and shake my head.
I’m still wearing a thick pad and bleeding.
So instead, we face each other, sipping from each other’s lips like teenagers, like we simultaneously cannot take the next step and cannot wait to take the next step.
This was why, when I was younger, my father did not allow Adie and me to be alone with a boy. Privacy allowed for kissing. Kissing led to babies.
I mean. He wasn’t wrong.
I was sixteen when Henry Lavalle moved to town.
Rumor had it that Henry had gotten into some trouble at his school in Atlanta and was kicked out.
Henry’s father was an insurance salesman who spent a lot of time away from home.
Henry’s mother was tiny, like a wren. Since she’d been married, she had never cut her hair (First Corinthians said But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her), and when it wasn’t pinned up, it reached past her knees.
Ironically, on Sundays, I had the most free time.
Of course there was church, which lasted hours—-Sunday school first, then coffee and fellowship, and then the sermon.
Afterward came a potluck, when my father would mingle with his congregation.
Adie played with the younger girls, and my mother gossiped with the church ladies.
It was easy to slip away, unnoticed, as long as I was back in time for dinner.
I liked to go to Beecham Lake. I’d stop at home and get the sketch pad that I hid under my mattress.
If I had managed to scrape enough money together to buy paints, I’d bring them, with a thermos of water.
Worst--case scenario, I just used a carpenter’s pencil, whittled to a thick graphite point.
One Sunday in the height of summer, I made my way to the lake.
My white dress was sticking to my skin. I sat on a burned patch of grass that wouldn’t stain the fabric and turned to the sketch I’d done in colored pencils the week before—-a swamp squaggin—-or green heron, if you weren’t from Alabama—-its beaded eye bright yellow and its legs orange.
A low whistle sounded behind me. “That looks so real it just might fly off the page.”
I whirled to find Henry Lavalle smiling down at me, the sun crowning him like royalty. “What are you doing here?”
“Following you.” He dropped to the ground beside me. “What do people do around here for fun?”
His vowels were flat and sharp, big city, not rural. “We don’t,” I told him.
“Maybe you should.” His eyes flashed, a green gleam. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
“My name’s not Jack and I’m not a boy,” I muttered, flipping to a fresh page of my sketch pad.
“Oh, believe me, I know . . . Eloise.” He reached out, tracing a finger along the hem of my dress.
I sucked in a breath. I could feel it, as sure as if he’d touched my skin. “You should go.”
“Why?”
“Because I was here first.”
When he grinned, his teeth were white as a wolf’s. “So now you own the lake?” He moved so that he was sitting between me and the water. “What are you going to draw?”
I narrowed my gaze. “Well, I don’t know, since you’re blocking my view.”
Henry laughed. “Then draw me.”
I stared, waiting for him to back down from his challenge. When he didn’t, my fingers curled around the pencil. “Fine,” I said.
I regarded him the way I would have studied any object in an art class—-the angles of his jaw, the way the light tangled in his hair, the shadow of his eyelashes on his pale cheeks.
“Hold up,” he said. Then he yanked his shirt over his head and leaned back on one elbow, bare--chested. “Better,” he decreed.
I had seen naked torsos before, made of marble or immortalized in oils. I’d seen little boys splashing in the lake. But Henry Lavalle was no little boy. I tried to see him as an amalgamation of lines and curves, but my heart was beating so hard it made the pencil shake.
I wasn’t going to let him get a reaction from me, because I knew that was what he wanted. So I sketched, losing myself in the process.
He talked while I worked. He told me about his sister, who had died of glioblastoma, and how after that his parents had gotten more religious.
He admitted that what got him kicked out of school was setting a fire in the office of his guidance counselor—-accidentally—-but then again, he shouldn’t have been smoking a cigarette when he broke in to hack into her computer and change his chemistry grade to passing.
When I finished, I put down the pencil and critically regarded the portrait.
I had done a decent job. I’d cut off the picture above Henry’s neck, so that it was just the play of his muscles across his chest and abdomen that filled the field.
He plucked the sketch pad out of my hand and grinned.
“I see you concentrated on the important parts.”
He pulled on his shirt, buttoning it. I started to rip off the sheet of paper for him, but he stilled my hand. “You keep it,” he said. He leaned down and brushed his lips over mine. “In case you miss me,” Henry added, and he left me shivering from the inside out.
The next Sunday, I could hardly sit through my father’s sermon. I was going to sneak back to the lake. Would Henry? Did he want to see me? Would he kiss me again?
My father was talking about elm rot, how you could cut off a limb and save the tree.
It was a parable for sin, and he was quoting Matthew 5:29–-30: “. . . If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Hell . . .”
I wondered where Henry was sitting.
“And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away . . .”
I only realized that I had stopped listening when my father called my name. I froze. It was the middle of the sermon; had he noticed me daydreaming?
He beckoned, waving me onto the dais.
Moving slowly, I climbed the steps. “It is hard enough to carve away sin from ourselves,” my father said.
“But what do we do when the tree is our family, and the rot is in one of the branches?” He put his hand out for me, waiting for me to take it.
“Tough love,” my father said, “is true love. We cut off the diseased branch, so that something hale and healthy can grow in its place.” From his trouser pocket he pulled a piece of paper, which he unfolded for only me to see.
It was Henry’s bare torso.