“It’s waning,” Vivien said.
Sebastian looked up too.
“The reverse of a waxing moon is called a waning moon,” she continued. “When the moon is decreasing in brightness.”
“I think this moon is appropriate then,” Sebastian said softly.
He was looking at her, not the moon. Vivien met his gaze. She let him take a step closer to her. And then another.
“Vivien,” he said. But nothing more.
She did not consider stopping him. To do this, Vivien thought as his lips kissed her lips, was to be alive. To do this, she thought as his lips moved down her throat and to her collarbone, was to fight back at death. It had been so long since a man had touched her that Vivien felt off-balance when desire spread through her. Sebastian steadied her, holding her in his arms, which were strong from working in these fields.
Sebastian did not taste like David, He did not feel like him. His skin was rough, his mouth full of the taste of tobacco and red wine. Later, Vivien would think that she lowered to the ground first. She dropped to the damp dirt and lifted Lotte’s sweater over her head. She unbuttoned her dress, and watched as Sebastian cupped her breast, slipping it from her corset. The waning moon illuminated their naked skin as clothes dropped off each of them.
When he entered her, it was as if something she had lost was returned to her. She half sat up, surprised by that feeling.
“I remember,” she said out loud.
Sebastian paused in his movements. He lifted her so that she was sitting facing him. The shift in position sent a thrill through Vivien, and she heard herself moan.
He kissed her hard on the lips.
“Are you mine?” he whispered. But then he chuckled and shook his head. “This is not what I mean,” he said.
She told him to stop talking.
For a while that night before the funeral, Vivien remembered how it was to be alive. But when morning came and she saw Lotte’s face, the grief etched there perhaps forever, Vivien felt only shame at what she had done.
Lotte had managed to dress in an old black dress that was too tight for her more ample body.
“Vivvie,” she said at the sight of her friend putting two loaves of bread into the oven to bake. “You need to write it.”
Vivien felt flushed from the heat of the oven, and from her own guilty conscience.
“Write it?” she said.
People were approaching the house. Robert and the boys would carry the small wooden coffin up the hill to the family cemetery. Already, Robert was out there, digging Pamela’s grave.
“Pamela’s obituary,” Lotte said, her voice hoarse from crying.
“Oh, Lotte,” Vivien said. “I can’t. I only do that for people I don’t know. People I don’t love.”
The door opened and Sebastian walked in to the kitchen. Vivien could feel his eyes on her, but she refused to meet his gaze.
“But you have to,” Lotte said. “Tell the world about my Pamela, Viv. Tell them how she is, what she’s like, so no one forgets.”
“No one will forget,” Vivien said.
How she wished this man would go away. But he stood there, waiting. Her cheeks burned.
“You have to,” Lotte said again.
Vivien knew that grief made people unreasonable. Selfish. It was unrelenting and illogical.
She put her arm around her friend.
“Of course,” she said. “I will write the obituary.”
FIVE
If you see acquaintances of yours in deepest mourning, it does not occur to you to go up to them and babble trivial topics or ask them to a dance or dinner. If you pass close to them, irresistible sympathy compels you merely to stop and press their hand and pass on.
—FROM Etiquette, BY EMILY POST, 1922
9
What Her Mother Taught Her