Five #3
I don’t mind the sex. It’s easier than conversation.
Whenever he tries to talk to me, I go blank, afraid I’ll give something away.
When we kiss, I close my eyes and focus on the sensation.
I don’t mind his broad hands around my waist or his mouth on my breasts or, after the initial pain of it, the sensation of him inside of me.
Hattie wasn’t lying when she told me he was sweet.
But still, at times it seems like the three days will last forever and the guesthouse resembles a locked room and he asks me what’s the matter and I don’t know what to say.
On our last night, we have dinner in a little Creole restaurant.
The owners congratulate us, light a red candle in the center of our table.
We order étouffée with crab and thick slices of French bread, and when the waiter leaves, Cyril leans forward, a flicker of candlelight across his face, and says, “Odette, I’m a little nervous to go to war.
” I shift in my chair. When Al came home, he stayed closed in the bedroom a month, pulled the covers over his head whenever anyone passed through on their way to the kitchen.
Bernard drifts off midsentence sometimes, lost to us.
Still, what do I say to Cyril? That nervousness is insufficient, he should be terrified instead?
I take his hand. The waiter sets our bowls and plates on the table.
We don’t speak of what’s to come. Walking back to the guesthouse, he says, “Overseas, whenever I’m frightened or lonely, I’ll picture meeting you in California when you least expect it.
Showing up there in my uniform on your front steps. ”
Back at the Laurent house, late at night, Cyril and I sharing his narrow childhood bed, I stare into the dark, unable to sleep, listening to the moan of water running through the house’s pipes until even that is over and all is hushed.
After a time, I slip off the covers, step over Cyril’s bag carefully packed with the few items he’s permitted to bring to Shreveport in the morning, and walk into the hallway.
I’ll drink a glass of water in the kitchen.
One small thing I can do to pass the time.
But at the end of the hall the bathroom door swings open and here’s Hattie, smelling of jasmine from her bath.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her hair wet.
We’re face-to-face, hope knocking me breathless. She’s going to reach out and touch me. She must want to. But she averts her eyes, steps aside. “Sorry. I hope you weren’t waiting long.” She says it as though she doesn’t know me.
I’m frozen. The faint click of her bedroom locking. I follow the steam from her bath. I take off my clothes and lay my body where hers just was, the tub empty and hard against my spine. I stay until it hurts less.
When I go back to Cyril’s bed, he spoons me.
I fall asleep hard, and in seconds it’s morning, Cyril’s head inches from mine on the same pillow, tears pooling at the bridge of his nose.
I smooth them away with my index finger.
He cries harder and I slip my hand under his cheek.
He turns his face into my palm. In just two hours he’ll be boarding the bus to Shreveport.
Terrible as it is, I’ll be relieved when he’s gone.
That night Hattie says she has something to show me. “Come,” she says, and leads me down the stairs and to her sewing room door. We step in together, nearly a year’s worth of Thursday afternoons burning between us. “Here. I hope you like it. I hope it gives you the space you need to work.”
On the far side of her studio, she’s set up a table under a window. There’s a stack of paper, a jar of pencils, a tin of paints, a set of brushes. “Thank you,” I say.
It isn’t what I wanted. She’s moved the changing screen, pulled it open as far as it can go, and placed it between her workspace and mine.
Alone in Cyril’s room, I try to write Delphine a letter.
So much I can’t say. It would be reckless to put it in writing and I wouldn’t know where to start anyway.
I draw her a picture of Cyril’s twin bed with its rumpled sheets.
Below the drawing I write, I married Cyril Laurent on Saturday morning, January 6.
When I see you, I’ll tell you everything.
I tell her that I’m writing to her from Cyril’s little bedroom desk that he used for his schoolwork when he was a boy.
That on it is a brass paperweight engraved with his initials.
That he still seemed like a boy this morning, boarding the bus with his bag, waving as he went.
I tell her I’m afraid for him. For myself, too, though she’s the only person I’d admit that to.
I get a letter back ten days later. She tells me they found a house, lovely, with an apricot facade and shaded backyard with stepping stones and a fountain.
She can’t believe it’s hers. On to you now, she writes.
I picture her stuck like I was, not knowing what to say if she isn’t able to say everything.
Frowning like she does, barefoot and pacing, a hand through her hair, slipping into her chair again, writing the only thing that’s true enough: Maybe we can’t have all the wild things we dream of without some punishment for taking them.