“How then?” Samantha asks.
“Explain it to them,” Megan says, waving her hand. Her eyes have an unfocused look that Jennifer doesn’t want to see. That she wants to pretend isn’t there. She repeats what she told Megan: that emotion lives in the body, and so does memory. A betrayal in the right shoulder, guilt in the ball of the foot.
“So when you give us massages,” Amanda says, “you’ll be able to tell us about our emotional state?”
“Probably,” Jennifer says. “If you want me to. Yes.”
“Oh, that’s intriguing,” Amanda says. “You might tell me things I don’t know.”
“Yes,” Jennifer says, “but usually once I say it people recognize it.”
“Oh!” Erica says. “This is going to be like a treasure hunt.” She turns her shoulder toward Jennifer and points. “This knot right here. What does it mean?”
Jennifer’s getting nervous. She doesn’t want to be called upon to perform parlor tricks. She doesn’t want to expose anyone’s pain. “Now, now,” she says, in a mock-scold, “no freebies.” Then, to show her goodwill, she puts her hand on Erica’s shoulder and works the knot a little.
“Ohhhhh,” Erica says, a noise of painful pleasure.
“Don’t worry,” Jennifer says, patting Erica before removing her hand. “We’ll get that out.”
“Can my appointment be right now?” Erica asks, and then someone else jokes about laying Erica out on the table and what the management would say, and how much they’d have to tip, and where the cute waiter is with the promised incredible desserts. To Jennifer’s relief the conversation spirals away from her.
Later, after the passengers of Jennifer’s car have said goodbye to the passengers of Amanda’s, Megan leans against Jennifer and says, “What do you sense about me?”
And because Jennifer is determined not to ruin it, she puts her arm around Megan, squeezes her, and says, “That you’re wonderful,” and not That you’re very sad.
I Think I’ll Go
She tried for a while to pretend I hadn’t kissed her. Kay, I mean. We both tried to pretend. But there had been a perfect intimacy between us, and now it was gone. She was no longer completely herself with me, nor I with her. Now our friendship was a role to play, the part of Kay, the part of Maggie Jean. Being in her company was like mourning a dead person while sitting down to dinner with her ghost.
There were exceptions. Of course there were. Nothing is ever one thing all the time. Nothing is consistent, least of all what a person feels. That morning in Zietz, in Germany, Kay in the blooming garden. That was an exception. She tucked a flower into my hair, touching me like she wasn’t afraid, and I wanted to weep, I wanted to catch her hands and press them to my mouth, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t, and still I was so glad. By the time we’d crossed the border from France I’d been weary to the bone, and sick to death of my weariness, discouraged by my own discouragement. I remember rattling along in the back of a truck, past white flags flying in some smashed-flat town, and thinking with some disgust that I, too, had surrendered. Here was the end of something. Dead cattle and smashed-up towns. Here were the dragon teeth and pillboxes of the Siegfried Line, long tank traps, fields just dotted with foxholes. Here were the white flags flying, and in one little village a town crier calling the people together with a bell.
Once we passed two little girls playing in a front yard, and they were so absorbed in what they were doing they didn’t notice us until we were almost upon them, and when they did they froze. Just froze, and stood there, like people in a painting. A woman—their mother—hurried out of the house. She didn’t look at us, as though if she didn’t look we wouldn’t be there. She grabbed each girl by an arm and tugged them backward toward the house. We were rolling past as this happened. I leaned so far out of the truck to watch them, Kay caught hold of my sleeve. I saw a child’s hand, still extended, and then it disappeared, and the door shut, and they were gone, and so were we. The whole thing seemed to happen without a sound, like a scene from a silent movie. “Be careful,” Kay said. “Don’t want to lose you.”
I don’t know if she really said that. I like to remember that’s what she said.
Despite everything, Germany was beautiful.