“Because I love you,” he said. He sounded angry. “I love you, and you can’t do this to yourself.” He put his hands on her upper arms—arms he could nearly encircle, now, with one hand—and pulled her against his chest.
He’d told her many times he loved her but until that moment she’d never believed it. The force of the belief undid her. All those weeks of self-control—she saw what an illusion that had been. There was no self-control. There was need, only need. She sobbed against his shirt until the fabric was wet, while he stroked her hair and said again and again how much he loved her, and she had been half-alive without this, a plant without water. When she finally stopped crying, they climbed into his pickup truck and went to Sonic for cheeseburgers and tater tots.
She remembers this now, sitting alone at her kitchen table, miles and miles from there and then in her dark and silent house, drinking herbal tea while the son she had with Tommy sleeps. It’s a rueful amusement to think of the coda to that dramatic scene—the pickup truck, the Sonic, the tater tots. No doubt she tore a little slit in a ketchup packet and squeezed a careful dollop onto each tot, as was her habit. Sitting on the warm leather seat of his truck, her whole body still wrung out and shuddery from crying, Tommy singing along with the radio, looking at her with his meaningful eyes. Oh, Tommy. How he could make her cry.
Subterfuge
My house has two front doors. The first is a wooden one that opens onto a screen porch I use as a repository for houseplants and the larger souvenirs from my travels, the wooden coyote from New Mexico and the china elephant from Thailand. I went through that door, leaving it open; caned my way over to the second door, the one with the screen; and looked at her through it. She smiled when she saw me, but she has a serious face, and somehow the smile did nothing to make her look less serious. Her face is squarish, until the jawline, which is well defined and declines gracefully to her perfect arc of a chin and probably saves her from looking mannish. Her eyes are green and somber. Is she really a blond? I don’t know. Her hair is that blond that’s dark enough to be persuasively natural. Her eyebrows are brown, darker than her hair, but light enough that the hair remains plausible.
“Ms. Riley?” she asked, and when I nodded, she said, “I’m Jennifer.” She was holding a large contraption that turned out to be her massage table. Over her shoulder was a big green bag.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jennifer,” I said. “Please come in.” I could hear my accent deepening, as it does when I’m being polite. My screen door opens out, so I began to push it toward her and she shuffled her burden out of the way and we did an awkward dance that ended, finally, in both of us being inside the house.
“I might be confused,” she said, resting the folded table against her leg. “I brought everything for a massage, but the woman at the library told me you needed someone to look in on you. I didn’t know if—”
“I never said that,” I interrupted.
“Oh, all right, I—”
“Sue thinks I can’t take care of myself, but I can. I called about a massage, that’s all. I don’t need some kind of paid companion. I don’t need any other kind of help.”
“All right, then, good,” she said. “Good.”
“I will not pay someone to pay attention to me.”
“I understand,” she said.
The silence was awkward, and I was sorry for it. Sometimes I am more snappish than I intend. “We’re neighbors of a sort,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Across the pond.”
“I saw you out on your deck the other day,” I said. “I waved.”
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you close up.”
“And you as well,” I said. I’d been hoping, I realize, for more reaction than she gave me to the news of this connection between us, but she stayed calm and businesslike. Only now does it strike me I’m lucky she didn’t ask how I knew the distant woman on the porch had been she, since my story was that I’d contacted her only because I’d seen her flyer and wanted a massage. One doesn’t want to tell a new acquaintance that one poked through her mail.
“So,” she said, glancing around, “if you’ll tell me where to set up, I’ll do that, and then we can talk.”
“Where to set up?” I repeated blankly.
“The massage table,” she said, indicating the contraption with a nod.
“Oh. Oh, yes, of course,” I said. I experienced a startling moment of panic. In employing this ruse to meet her, I had failed to consider the necessity of committing to it. In what room of my house was I willing to take off my clothes and have a stranger touch me? In no room at all. I must have looked as dumbfounded as I felt, because, trying to help, she asked, “The bedroom?”