Annie was not so much interested in Saint Augustine’s finger as in the fact that Sean was willing to tell her a secret. She listened to him devoutly, as if he were revealing a divine mystery.
When Annie flirted she didn’t always admit to herself that she was flirting. Sometimes she preferred to suspend her mental faculties so that she could flirt, as it were, without her mind watching. It was as if her body and mind separated, her body stepping behind a screen to remove its clothing while her mind, on the other side of the screen, paid no attention.
With Sean now, in the kitchen, Annie began to flirt without admitting it to herself. He told her about his relic and said that, in consideration of the fact that she was Catholic, he would show it to her. “But you mustn’t tell anyone. We don’t want these heretics shouldering their way back into the true faith.”
Annie agreed, laughing. She stretched her body even farther back. She knew that Sean was looking at her and, suddenly, dimly, she became aware that she enjoyed being looked at. She saw herself through his eyes: a willowy young woman, leaning back on her arms, her long hair falling behind her.
*
“Have you got a basket?” said Malcolm, coming into the doorway. His hands were covered with dirt and he was smiling for the first time that day.
“There can’t be that many,” Sean said.
“There are hundreds. I can’t carry them all.”
“Make two trips,” said Sean. “Make three.”
Malcolm looked at Annie leaning against the sink. The ivory comb in her hair gleamed as she turned her head toward him. He thought once again of Sean’s ability to surround himself with youth and vitality. And so he said to her, “It’s damned pleasant out in the garden, Annie. Why don’t you come help me. Let old Sean boil the water.”
He didn’t give her a chance to refuse. He led her by the hand out the back door, waving goodbye to Sean with the other. “I’ve made a little pile,” he said, once he had brought her into the garden. “It’s a little wet but you get used to it.” He knelt down by the pile of artichokes and looked up at her. In the light from the house he could make out her figure and the slopes and shadows of her face.
“Make a basket of your arms and I’ll fill it,” he said. Annie did as she was told, crossing her arms with the palms of her hands facing up. On his knees before her Malcolm began picking up the artichokes, placing them one by one in her arms, gently pressing them against her stomach. First there were five, then ten, then fifteen. As the number increased, Malcolm became more precise in the positions he chose for the artichokes. He furrowed his brow and fit each artichoke snugly into place among the rest, as if linking pieces of a puzzle. “Look at you,” he said. “You’ve become a goddess of the harvest.” And to him she was. She stood before him, slender and young, with a profusion of artichokes sprouting from her belly. He placed one last artichoke high up on her chest, accidentally pricking her.
“Oh, sorry!”
“I’d better take these in.”
“Yes, by all means, take them in. We’re going to have a feast!”
*
When Maria came into the kitchen and saw Sean standing over the stove, peering into the pot of water, she became uneasy. She of course understood quite well what Sean was up to. She saw the looks he gave Annie, noted the affected tones of his voice when he spoke to her. “You girls can have the blue bedroom,” he had said, and his voice had tried to sound grand and generous.
She moved to set down the silverware on the kitchen counter but caught herself before doing so. It would make too much noise. Instead she stood holding it all, watching Sean from behind, quietly enjoying the fact that she was watching him without his knowing it.
The room she and Annie were staying in had only one bed. Maria had noticed that at once. When they first went in, carrying their backpacks, Maria had looked at the bed, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Annie was also looking at it. It had been a moment of unspoken understanding. The understanding said: “We are going to sleep tonight in the same bed!” But, in front of Sean and Malcolm, they couldn’t say a word. They both knew what the other was thinking but they only said “This is great” and “Oh, a canopy bed. I used to have one of those!”
*
Malcolm knelt in the garden, savoring the vision of Annie as a goddess of the harvest. It had been a long time since he had felt such foolish delight. In the last years, at home, Ursula was often in a bad mood. Malcolm tried to find out what was bothering her, but his attempt only seemed to madden her further. After a while, he had stopped trying. They went about their daily lives communicating only when it was absolutely necessary.
Now he picked up the last few artichokes Annie had been unable to carry. He put them against his cheek to feel how cool they were. As he did this, he was overcome by a feeling he recognized from his undergraduate days when he had first met Sean, a feeling of the beauty of the world and, along with this, his duty, or destiny, to apprehend it, so that it would not go unnoticed before it passed away. Living with Ursula, fighting with her, had narrowed Malcolm’s life to the point where he had lost this ability, this awareness. It wasn’t her fault. It was nobody’s fault.
*
Sean dropped the artichokes into the boiling water one by one. Annie was standing next to him. Their shoulders were touching. He could smell her skin, her hair.
At the table Maria was wiping off the silverware. She was hunched over, squinting at the spots, and rubbing her nose from time to time with the back of her hand. Some artichokes were also on the table. Now and then Annie shuttled a new batch from table to stove, handing them carefully to Sean, who dropped them into the enormous pot with the eager abandon of a man tossing coins into a wishing well.
*
The sight was certainly a happy one, thought Malcolm as he stepped into the doorway, holding his small charge of artichokes. The pot on the stove was steaming. Annie and Sean were washing dust off plates exhumed from the cupboards. On the far side of the kitchen Maria was stacking silverware into neat piles. It was a scene of rustic simplicity—the vegetables harvested from the garden, the mammoth hissing stove, the two American girls reminding Malcolm of all the country girls he had ever glimpsed from train windows: slight figures beckoning from side roads, paused on their bicycles. Everything spoke of simplicity, goodness, and health. Malcolm was so struck by the scene that he couldn’t bring himself to intrude upon it. He could only stand in the shadows of the doorway, looking in.