William was smiling, more in relief at having found the place than at my attempt at humor.
“Hungry?” he said. He pulled me in and kissed me—a slow, deep kiss. His chapped lips scraped mine, but just as I leaned against him for his warmth, he pulled away. I wondered at his behavior.
Footprints led to the house. William tugged me along beside him. The door wasn’t barred or locked. It had an old-fashioned iron latch that William lifted, and the door swung with a rusty groan. From the doorway, his pleasure in the way the light came into the room was evident. The place was just that, one room with a fireplace, a sink, a few cabinets, a rusted refrigerator against a wall, a small couch, a table with four chairs. The dust muted the color of everything, all of the furnishings in various forms of dissolution. Mice had eaten into the couch cushions. Trails of feces and matted animal hair carpeted the wood floor. The old wool braid rug had unwound itself. In the corners of the room twigs and grass formed burrows and nests. An intricate coating of mold swaddled the plates arranged on the table. You could see that at one time food had covered the china surfaces. The whole scene suggested that a family had gotten up from a meal and left; their belongings, the accoutrements of their lives forsaken.
An open doorway beyond the living and dining area revealed a bedroom and a small stairway. The roof had partly given way above the bed, and the bedclothes had been shredded by animals. I felt as if the house was a crime scene that hadn’t yet been cordoned off, and I expected a figure to emerge resembling Mr. Parmenter, with his bloodied hair. But no one appeared. I could hear William’s camera, its mechanical whirring. I went outside. The weak sun flitted off the snow. Birds darted, frantic shapes winging from the canopy. I smelled the pine and took a breath to clear my lungs of the smell of the house.
William came out. “What do you think?” he said.
Del would have said it was a nice place to leave a body.
“Kids probably come here to have sex,” I said.
He looked back at the little cottage, then he came up close to me in the snow and wrapped his arms around me and kissed me again, and though I would rather not have had sex in the cottage, I could tell he had brought me here just for that.
“Isn’t this place amazing? Did you see the table still set? The metal toy cars? I think I had a set of those when I was little.”
The house, the parents and children each with their own place, the mildewed calendar on the wall, the decaying stuffed animals, the doll with its mangy hair and moldering pink dress—these things were poignant reminders of what a family could be, of something he might have. I was touched but uneasy.
“I wonder what happened?” I said.
William took my hand and brought it to his lips.
“Marry me,” he said.
The sun was up now, and the house seemed more benign in its slant of light. “What?” I said, foolishly.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s get married.”
I thought of Del and Rory and their commune marriage ceremony that may or may not have happened, of Del’s love of sex in the outdoors, and in abandoned cars, and my envy at her ability to live her life in extremes. I remembered my story about the Eve of St. Agnes, how I’d awakened to him in my apartment, and how that had seemed, at the time, almost fated. Was marriage—a husband—the next step? Would my mother offer to plan a wedding at the house like she had for my sisters? And then I remembered the night at Anne’s, Del and someone else in the hallway outside the little upstairs room.
I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to have him for my own. I let him draw me back into the cottage, and down onto the old rug, where we consummated our childish yearning for something beyond ourselves. If there were ghosts to watch us, I did not see them. I stared up past his shoulder at the way the sunlight came through a hole in the roof, and I stared at it until the brightness blinded me to everything else around me. Like the barn, I thought, watching the spot on the ceiling.
She lies on the narrow bed. The sun filters through the curtains onto her bare legs, leaving strips of light, and when the curtains flutter the shadow moves like light on the surface of water. The field is alive with bees, chicory, the low drone of dragonflies. Summer. Like those afternoons we’d spend in the field by the old house, stamping down the long grass to make rooms, and corridors leading to rooms. She moves, suddenly, swinging her legs to stand—not dead, her long hair flying out around her shoulders, and the narrow trailer door is flung open, a shadow stretches across the floor from the doorway and footfalls come up the metal steps. The room is a swirl of movement, of arms and legs, two bodies falling together on the bed. Heat. A pan drops from the shelf above, the quilt slips, the bodies send up dust. I see his back, the white T-shirt, the jeans, her hands sliding the shirt up to reveal the pale skin, the ridges of the spine, the mole on the shoulder blade, shaped like a heart.
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