The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Twenty-One

GABRIELLA WAS RIGHT. IT HAD BEEN EASIER TO LIVE WITH blinders on.
Easier . . . but not better.
I found there was more space and light in my thoughts. More room and energy in my head.
I felt as if I’d taken off a blindfold. I didn’t know when, I wasn’t sure why, but it was a blindfold I’d quite deliberately tied into place myself.
Vijay was right: Bobby had done me a favor.
After Vijay had to return to New York, I was touched by visits from his mother. Shivani would bring fresh flowers and massage lotion on my legs, because it hurt to bend.
“You and Vijay are both single now,” she said. “I do not understand this way, this ending.”
“I don’t understand it, either,” I said. “Not really.”
Shivani rubbed lemon-scented lotion into my calves, an act that seemed strangely intimate and made me shy. “We must fatten you up, my girl. I will bring you your favorite.”
“Oh,” I said. “I love your halva.” I longed for it with the fervor of a junkie.
Shivani nodded, businesslike, taking the order. “It should not be,” she said. “The two of you alone.” She tilted her head at me as if trying to read something. I remembered that when Vijay and I were in school, Shivani had always called me their “other daughter.”
Mimi swept the porch and took the “pails” (as she called the garbage cans) down to the road. She also vacuumed, mopped the kitchen floor, cleaned the bathrooms, and lectured me on how men “strayed” but it was our job as women to forgive them and guide them back.
Olive came over and helped me shower, gasping more at my ribcage than the shockingly deep bruise. “Oh, Cam, you’re so thin again it’s scary.”
“I know,” I said, to her surprise. “I’m fixing it.”
Everyone brought food. Big David always brought a box from David’s Hot Buns—my favorite scones, cinnamon rolls, marbled rye bread with orange molasses, cream horns.
I ate it. I ate it all.
This time I ate it for me.
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE ACCIDENT, VIJAY FLEW TO OHIO again, the second time in two months—a record for him.
The minute Gabriella left for school, I called Helen. “Can you come over before you go to work?” Helen helped me shower and blew dry my hair (it still hurt too much for me to hold my arms up). She even put earrings on me that Vijay had given me last Christmas. She helped me put on some mascara and lipstick. “God, you look better,” Helen said, “now that you finally slept.” She parted with “Remember what I said about post-breakup sex.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “It hurts to breathe.”
VIJAY ARRIVED WITH A BUNDLE OF PURPLE GLADIOLAS, a box of Klondike ice cream bars, and a bag of books and movies—none of which I’d already read or seen. Ah, a man who remembered details.
He sat on the edge of my recliner. We ate two Klondike bars each, and he helped me fish a piece of the chocolate coating from my neck. His fingers there, along my collarbone, made me flush. When he found the piece, he held it out to me.
I opened my lips to say something—I wasn’t sure what—and he placed the chocolate there. My lips closed, ever so briefly, on his fingers. I let the chocolate melt in my mouth.
Vijay stood, gathered the silver Klondike wrappers, and took them into the kitchen. My heart rapped against my aching ribs, but the pain was almost delicious. Was I crazy? Was Helen right?
When he came back, the mood had shifted, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. He asked about my pain very professionally, what meds I was still taking, when I’d have a follow-up.
“Can I see?” he asked.
I hesitated, mottling. “I don’t have— It hurt too much to put on a bra.”
He laughed, his gorgeous white teeth flashing. “Please. I’m a doctor.”
I liked that he waited, though, until I said, “Okay,” before unbuttoning my denim shirt.
He left the top two buttons alone, and when he opened the shirt he left my breasts covered. He sucked in breath as if something had stung him.
“Hey, doctors aren’t supposed to do that,” I said. “It freaks your patients out.”
When he touched the undamaged side of my ribcage with his fingertips, my skin shivered.
“This bruising,” he murmured. I’d seen it in the mirror. Deep blue-black, a sickening red-purple underneath. It didn’t look natural. It looked as if I’d dipped half my torso in ink.
He lifted the left side of my shirt, his eyes following the bruise up my ribcage. He leaned over to peer at the site, and the proximity of his mouth to my breast made my nipples contract.
Surely he could see my heart pounding through my chest. He lifted the rest of the shirt up to my neck, exposing both breasts, and then, to my held-breath surprise and delight, cupped my white, undamaged breast in his nutmeg-colored hand.
There was nothing diagnostic about his touch.
I thought I might melt into the couch.
“Is . . . is this ethical, Dr. Aperjeet?”
“I’m not your doctor.”
He kissed me, his lips and tongue stealing back the taste of chocolate he’d salvaged for me. Only our lips touched, my injury looming fragile beneath us, and there was something luscious in knowing this was all we could do. The care the moment called for made it reverent.
“Hey,” I asked Vijay the next day, after the delicate, careful kissing had moved on to other unbruised areas of my body, “What did that mean? That phrase you kept sending me?”
He narrowed his eyes, thinking.
“It starts ‘harina harina’ or something like that.”
His brown eyes lit with recognition. “Oh, that. It’s Swahili. It means, ‘Hurry, hurry brings no blessing.’ ”
Then he continued blessing me in the slow, unhurried way my current condition required.
I’D MISSED A SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT WITH ANOTHER attorney because of the accident. I’d called to explain, had apologized, and then had been amazed to discover I was talking to the lawyer herself, not a secretary. The woman answered her own phone. That seemed promising.
Sue Ellen Lippincott looked like she could be my grandmother. Her office was a cozy house, not at all like the slick attorneys’ office I’d visited downtown.
Davy took half a personal day and drove me there. I spotted three different cats—one who sprawled on the lawyer’s desk, belly up. Yes, this was the attorney for me.
Sue Ellen made me a cup of tea, then asked me about what had happened with Bobby. I realized I was tired of talking about it. Finally. That felt good.
“I want this divorce to be as clean as possible. I don’t want to screw him over; I just want to protect my daughter and keep my farm.”
She instructed me to make a list of our belongings and draw up a list of how I’d like to divide them. “You have to list everything. Anything of real value we’ll need to discuss.”
It felt wrong to move through the house, in my stiff, careful gait, filling a notebook with our possessions. Is this what a marriage came down to? Accumulated stuff?
The kitchen stopped me. All the pots and pans, the gadgets, the cookware, the spatulas and spoons should be Bobby’s, right? But . . . without him in the house, I would have to cook.
I realized I wanted to. I’d wanted to all along.
Once, Bobby had come into the kitchen as I was pouring pasta into a colander, but instead of saying thanks he’d snapped that the pasta was ruined. The colander had no legs, so, temporarily, the pasta sat in its own water until it drained. What the hell was the big deal? It had been sitting in its own water seconds before on top of the stove, but Bobby threw it out.
He’d often taken knives from me in a condescending manner, as if I were a child. He’d added more salt or spices to anything I’d put on the stove. It’d always been good natured—“Oh, Cami can’t boil water,” that sort of thing . . . and it was true that twice I’d put broccoli in a steamer with no water beneath it, filling the house with the smell of char and ruining two good copper pans. We’d laughed about it, but now I felt insulted. I realized I’d been insulted at the time but had stuffed it down, because, as Gabby had pointed out, that had been easier.
Those memories made me list quite a few items from the kitchen I’d like to keep.
In the bedroom, I came across my wedding band and slid it on. How much would it be worth? The ring, with its four tiny sapphires and diamond, had belonged to his great-grandparents. They’d been named Roberto and Carmella, so inside the ring, our own initials, R & C, were already engraved, along with the words Amore per sempre.
When I tried to take it off, it stuck, and I had a moment of panic before I managed, with some flaming in my ribs from the effort, to pull it off.
I TOOK TO MAKING MY TURTLELIKE WAY DOWN TO THE BARN in the mornings to sit in the barn lot. I’d bring a cup of coffee to watch the sun rise and the horses wake. Gerald always followed me, then sat on my feet. I noticed spiderwebs bejeweled with dew, deer rising from sleep in the far reaches of the pasture, and a mockingbird who surveyed the start of each day from our weathervane. One morning, six fat rabbits grazed on the hillside while Max lay at my side. “Some dog,” I scolded.
I tried to be present with an open heart as the bones in my torso knitted and healed.
I prayed for the ability to forgive.
I began to find it. When I played with a twig and watched Gerald leap and twist to catch it—marveling at his agility in spite of his missing leg—I felt sorry for Bobby. He wasn’t happy. Even with his little adoring waitress lover and their perfect puppy.
Most mornings I did wake up happy. This was enough—this goat trotting to greet me, tickling my legs with her beard.
This was enough—this gorgeous, wounded horse who’d protected me.
This was enough—my sleepy daughter sweeping the barn aisle. This amazing person in the world—Bobby and I had failed in many ways, but not in this. That made it impossible to hate him.
I also recognized I hadn’t seen these things when I was with Bobby. I’d been too busy tending to his happiness, checking in on his moods, walking on eggshells around his gloominess.
I’d totally lost sight of what I wanted. I’d become the woman I’d never wanted to be; I’d become the woman I’d disdained my mother for being, but that she hadn’t been at all.
I ached when I thought of Gabriella’s statement: I miss us. All of us together, the way we used to be. I missed the idea of having a partner, someone in my corner, a soul mate. But Bobby had never really been those things. I’d spent lots of time and energy, oh so much energy, creating the myth that he was.
Which meant I now had a lot of free time and energy on my hands.
What was I going to do with it?