Seventh Wonder (12 page)

“We fell out of love.”

His voice was so low, Meg wondered whether she had heard him correctly. Had he even spoken at all, or had she merely imagined it?

He took a cautious step toward her. The moonlight streaming through the window cut across his brow and illuminated his eyes as he lifted his chin. Meg felt the crumbling of his inscrutability like the insistent tremor of an earthquake. The determined set of his jaw confirmed what she already knew: that he found it difficult to reveal so much in such a short span of time. She wondered how many months or years it had been since he’d last shared of himself in this way - or indeed, whether he ever had. She felt a sudden, irrational need to protect him from his own discomfort.

I should stop him, she thought. Let him know it isn’t necessary for him to explain any further, that he doesn’t owe me an explanation. I’ve not yet earned his trust.

She feared what would become of them once he’d divulged whatever it was he felt the need to say. How would he be with her, once she had his secrets? Would this easy harmony, this natural synergy they shared be left intact or in tatters? Perhaps the sense of mystery enshrouding their respective pasts was the largest contributor to the electricity that hummed between them: always more to discover, puzzles to solve.

But about this she was deeply curious.
We fell out of love
.

By the time she opened her mouth, she was no longer sure of whether she intended to stop him, or prompt him to continue. In the end, his mind worked faster than hers.

“Her name was Catherine - my wife. We met at Dartmouth when we were even younger than you are now.” John’s mouth tilted in a weak smile. “She was never easy to love. Not like—” He swallowed his words, shook his head to clear the thought that had formed there.

“We fought passionately, and somehow I convinced myself it was part and parcel of loving someone so deeply. That we’d grow older and wiser, and we’d do it together, and then maybe we wouldn’t fight so much. I was only able to convince myself of this because, in between the fights, we were happy. Really happy - or at least I thought we were. And when we married and Catherine wanted a baby, I told myself this was part of the growing. That this was what came next in life’s natural order, and this was what I owed her as her husband, someone who had vowed to love her for the rest of our lives.

“For two and a half years we tried to get pregnant.” His face lined with sadness. “I was scared at first, and then, for those brief moments when we allowed ourselves to think it may have worked - that we were about to become parents - I was actually excited. And then it grew exhausting, this continuous cycle of hopefulness and frustration. It was even harder for her than it was for me, I’m sure. We became so singularly focused, and the disappointment became more and more devastating with each passing month.

“But she wouldn’t hear reason. She became fragile, so easily torn apart whenever one of her friends would happily announce her own pregnancy. Whenever I tried to suggest that we take a break from it all, she would get so upset.” His eyes blurred beneath a pall of unhappy memories.

A moment later he blinked it all away, and his gaze once again found Meg. “We weren’t happy, Meg - neither of us. Nothing proved that fact to me better than an incident that happened a few days after she returned from a trip to visit her mother. I overheard her on the phone with one of her friends. I’d come home early from work, and I heard her in the kitchen, telling her friend Helen she was going to leave me.”

He dropped his head into his hands, and his tall frame, normally held so nobly erect, sagged in remembered defeat. Meg’s hand twitched. She thought to touch him, comfort him in some small way, but she stilled once more when suddenly he barked a humorless laugh.

“The thing of it is, I’d have stuck by her. As miserable as we were, as unhappy as we made each other, I really don’t believe I ever would have left. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing that day. I was shocked and angry, but I was also relieved - and that fact broke my heart more than any of the rest of it.

“I planned to confront her about it. It was a few days later, and I left work early, because I could barely concentrate. I was surprised when I got home and found she wasn’t there. She had a car, but she didn’t work at the time, and she rarely went anywhere in the afternoons.

“So I waited. I thought of everything I wanted to say to her. I was going to ask her to stay, to work it out with me. This was the right thing to do, I decided. But I wouldn’t beg.

“Christ, I was so angry. I was indignant, and sad, and just...destroyed. I hated both of us, for letting this happen to our marriage.

“When she came home hours later, I could tell something was off. She’d been crying, I knew immediately. I thought, This is it. She’s going to tell me she wants a divorce.” His voice quieted several decibels. “And instead she told me she was sick.” He drew in a shaky breath as he plowed a hand back through his mussed hair. “Two months later she was gone.”

John glanced up just in time to catch the tear that detached from Meg’s lower eyelid, before she could wipe it away. He stepped forward as it rolled down her cheek, and wrapped his hands around her shoulders. He gave her a light squeeze, imploring her to meet his eyes.

“Do you know why I’m telling you this?”

Meg worried her bottom lip between her teeth. She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

John sighed. “I’m not completely certain either,” he whispered, perhaps to himself. “I guess I’m telling you in case you were tempted to compare yourself to her. Catherine was a wonderful woman in many ways, and I have no doubt she would have made an incredible wife to some man. I just...wasn’t that man. I know that now. She wasn’t ‘the one’ for me, and I couldn’t be that for her either.

“She should never have died so young, but she did, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. I’ve made my peace with it - that’s why I didn’t mention her before.” He bent his knees, crouching slightly to look into Meg’s watery eyes. “I think what I’m most afraid of is that, by admitting how weak I was, I’ll lose you, too. So please, don’t let this change anything between us. I may not have fought for Catherine the way I should have, but I swear to you: I learn from my mistakes.”

He left the rest unsaid.

* * *

They ate a late dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup from the lodge. Meg watched while John created a number of rough sketches, scrawled the particulars of their hike across pages of grainy white paper with the same brooding contemplation she reserved for her journal entries. A tree branch, a cliff face, an animal carcass. Even the scorpion.

Meg was still in an introspective mood, only now for an entirely different reason. John made her feel special. She just couldn’t decide whether she was deserving of the pedestal he’d seemingly placed her upon. She felt like both a treasure and a fraud.

He kissed her as he stood to clear the dishes. Meg inspected him from behind as he stood at the sink, a bleach spotted towel tossed over one shoulder. His shirt was untucked in the back, and his collar was loosened. He wore the disheveled look well.

As he turned back around, he pushed his shoulders down and rolled his head from one side to the other, wincing slightly as bones popped and muscles strained.

“Are you all right?” Meg asked.

“Fine,” he replied, dismissing her concern with a wave of his hand. “Just a little stiff, that’s all. My shoulders tense up when I draw.” He flexed his fingers, grimaced a bit more. “And my hands.”

“Would you like a massage?”

The question was out before she could begin to question the wisdom of it.

He looked at her in surprise. Meg gulped. “I mean, I could help with your hands at least. I know how...sort of.”

He smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Have you got any oil?”

“Nothing that smells good, I’m afraid.” He opened a cabinet and retrieved a bottle of olive oil. “Will this do?”

Meg smiled faintly and nodded once.

They scooted their chairs together on one side of the table. John propped his elbows on his knees and proffered his hands, fingers spread. Meg warmed a small amount of the oil between her palms, then pulled his left into her lap. She began the way she’d been taught, loosening the thick cords of muscle from his elbow to his wrist. She rolled her knuckles beneath his palm and gently squeezed each of his digits from the joint to the fingertip. John’s eyes flicked constantly between her face and their interlocked hands. His breath leveled and deepened.

She repeated the same process with his other hand. Her fingers were tired and her wrists were sore from lack of practice, but she was driven by John’s occasional grunts of pleasure. She was nearly drunk off the way he looked at her.

When she finished with his right hand, she was unprepared for the disappointment she felt at being so. The cottage had nearly blackened, which further thickened the bulwark of intimacy surrounding them. “Come on,” she whispered, standing.

For a moment he simply gazed up at her, perplexed. When he finally stood, Meg walked toward the bed, listening to his quiet footsteps as he followed.

“Lie down,” she said, gesturing. “On your stomach.”

John walked obediently to the edge of the mattress. He paused only inches from Meg. “Should I...?” He pointed to the buttons on his shirt. She sucked in a quick breath, then nodded, knowing what she was up against. She didn’t bother glancing away as he slipped the buttons through their buttonholes and allowed the worn cotton to fall off his shoulders, leaving him bare chested. Nor did she avert her gaze when he crawled onto the mattress, his muscles flexing over his bones as his torso stretched and twisted.

He punched the pillow to fluff it, then lowered himself onto his stomach. He turned his face to look at Meg, and she in turn cleared her throat and blinked away errant thoughts.

She clambered onto the bed and straddled his denim clad rear with her knees bent and her shins pressed into the faded red blanket. Her hands found the base of his spine and stroked upward in circles of expanding circumference.

John moaned as she pressed her fingertips, then her knuckles and palms into the knots of tension beneath the surface of his skin. “My god,” he murmured. “Where did you learn to do this?”

“A girl in my dorm taught me,” she replied.

“I’ll have to send her a thank you note.” His statement was muffled by the pillow mashed against his cheek.

The girl’s name had been Karen. She was a philosophy major whose interests included Hatha yoga and the various forms of massage therapy. She was constantly in some degree of trouble with the resident advisor, Meg remembered, for burning incense in her dorm room. The day she’d persuaded Meg to come over for a lesson in massage technique, her eyes had watered from the overpowering fragrance of eucalyptus and patchouli wafting from the slow burn of it. The lamps were draped in silk scarves, and The Doors played over the hi-fi, rounding out the decidedly psychedelic milieu.

As Meg pushed and rubbed at the rungs of muscle lining John’s back and shoulders, she tried to remember everything Karen had taught her. Trigger points and transverse friction. Postural distortion, vibration and lymphatic drainage. Effleurage, petrissage, S compressions. She rocked the heels of her hands against his scapulae, loving the feel of his solid, unobliging muscles as they turned pliant and malleable. She imagined she was sculpting him from a soft hunk of clay, feeling his perfection take shape beneath her capable fingers.

When he shifted beneath her, she felt a throbbing warmth between her legs, that tingling rush of anticipation she so dearly loved. Gradually she eased the pressure in her hands. John flipped over onto his back and grasped her hips, pushing her into a seated position just over his pelvis. Meg’s hair spilled forward as she tipped her chin downward. She inhaled deeply as he cupped the side of her face, first with one hand, then with both. Slowly she rolled her spine, vertebra by vertebra, bowing toward him.

* * *

When their lips met, John slowly rolled her over, adroitly reversing their positions. His breath came heavily in her ear as he pushed and minutely writhed against her. Meg spread her legs, allowing him to fit his hips between them.

Without breaking their kiss, John sat up and plucked at the mother of pearl buttons on her shirt. His hands were no match for the rapid blur of his thoughts - they felt uncoordinated and clumsy, tripping down the front of her shirt. He was thankful when Meg stilled his hands with her own and took over the unwieldy task of undressing.

When she finished with the buttons, John stopped her before she could shed her shirt. He was too in love with the way she looked with the fabric gaping open, offering a shadowed glimpse of her cleavage and bra, the ivory skin of her stomach. He slid his hands around her bare waist and pulled her down to him, kissing her throat and the divot in her breastbone.

“On your stomach,” he said in a firm whisper.

She climbed off of him, and her shirt fell off one shoulder, drawing a muted gasp from John. Suddenly he had no further use for the shirt; he tore it off her with one hand while dexterously unclasping her bra with the other. He watched as the scrap of satin shimmied down her arms. From his vantage point behind her, there was only the suggestion of her breasts swaying free, the convex curve of flesh on either side of her ribs as she flattened herself against the mattress.

John propped himself on one elbow beside her and used his right hand to draw light circles against her naked back with the tips of his fingers. Meg quietly whimpered, and he squeezed his eyes shut, willing his body to stay the course rather than jump twelve steps ahead. He could almost palm the entirety of her lower back with this hand alone; he liked the feeling of being able to fit so much of her within his grasp.

A moment later she lifted her face off the pillow. “Your turn again,” she whispered. She used her hands to push off the bed but caught John’s hands before they could fondle her breasts. He arched an eyebrow at the teasing smile that slid into place. Soon, she mouthed.