The Second Silence (32 page)

‘What?’

‘That we won’t be having shepherd’s pie for breakfast.’ She managed a smile as unsteady as her knees. ‘I don’t think I could face that.’

‘It’s a deal.’ Charlie smiled and tucked her arm through his, somewhat self-consciously, like an old-fashioned suitor taking her for an evening stroll. Even Rufus rolled eagerly to his feet, as if hoping to be invited along.

There was a moment just then, no more than the space of a heartbeat, when she could have walked away. But when he reached up to brush a strand of hair from her cheek, she knew there was no turning back.

In the bedroom with its picture window that overlooked the lake, Mary sat down gingerly on the bed. It was covered with a faded quilt that looked as if it had been in someone’s family for years. His wife’s? Charlie and Vicky had slept together on that quilt, she thought with a stab of jealousy. Their daughter had probably been conceived on this bed.

Charlie sat down next to her, the old pine frame creaking with his weight. ‘Having second thoughts?’

‘No.’ She turned to him, suddenly certain of what she wanted—for the moment at least. ‘Just hold me, Charlie.’

Whatever lingering doubts she might have felt,
this
felt right. Just like in the beginning. The crook of his shoulder where her head nestled in a perfect fit. The hair behind his ear that tickled the bridge of her nose. The only difference between now and then was in how tightly he held her, like a man who’d once been forced to let go.

‘You know what I missed the most? Your smell.’ He smoothed a hand along her neck, speaking in a low husky voice. ‘After you left, it was almost a month before I could bring myself to change the sheets. Everywhere I turned there was a little piece of you. A strand of hair on the bathroom sink. A note you’d scribbled to yourself. But your scent’—his voice caught—’it was everywhere. Those first weeks after I moved out, I kept thinking I’d misplaced something. But I hadn’t. It was just that I couldn’t smell you anymore.’

His confession released something from deep inside her, something wrapped in layers like a keepsake. She smiled into the warm curve of his neck. ‘I used to lie awake at night, thinking of you and wondering if you were doing the same,’ she confessed. ‘I would have called if I’d thought I could get away with it. But my mother would have listened in.’

He sighed. ‘She didn’t make it any easier, that’s for sure.’

Mary waited for the sharp prick of resentment she always felt, but it didn’t come. Somewhere along the line, without realizing it, she must have found a way to forgive her mother. ‘It wasn’t all her fault,’ she acknowledged. ‘I
should
have picked up the phone. I should have told you …’ She let the sentence trail off. Some things were just too hard to admit.

‘Told me what?’

She lifted her head. Through the prism of her tears his face was a blur. ‘That I was wrong.’

‘I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that.’ He touched the corner of her eye, releasing a tear that trickled down her cheek.

Slowly Charlie undressed her, then himself. Naked, they stretched out on the bed. She felt as she had the other night: a little scared, but not as scared as she ought to have been. Then she’d acted on impulse; it was something neither of them had intended. This, though, was very much considered.

There would be consequences. One or both of them would very likely get hurt. Others might get hurt as well.

At the moment, however, none of that seemed to matter. Nothing else existed. It was just the two of them, face-to-face, the heat of their bodies warming them as evening cooled into night.

He’s all shank and bone,
she thought. That’s what Charlie’s mother used to say. Even his feet were long, with toes like fingers. She smoothed her palm along the bony ridge of his flank. She loved it all. The leanness of him, the beveled planes of his muscles like facets of a gem. She loved that he didn’t shy from being touched in odd places—the back of his knee, the silky dampness of his armpit. He didn’t find it strange. He didn’t think her peculiar. He seemed to love it as much as she.

Mary arched as he brought his mouth to her breasts, taking first one nipple in his mouth, then the other. Teasing her exquisitely. She wanted to cry out that she was ready. She’d been ready for minutes, hours … years. The memory of the other night, when he’d taken her in the grass, was like a delicious dream from which she’d woken to find herself once more wrapped in Charlie’s arms. She cried out softly as he moved lower, tasting her, exploring her with his tongue. An eternity of delicious sensations that lapped over her, one by one.

Then he was kneeling over her, straddling her. His face above hers sketched in shadow. ‘Am I going too fast?’ he whispered.

She shook her head. She couldn’t speak. She was having trouble catching her breath. Charlie seemed to understand and didn’t rush. She felt him glide into her, filling her, wholly and perfectly. Mary shut her eyes, as if to seal the moment. They’d begun to sweat, sticking to each other and pulling away with soft sucking sounds. She knew that if she were to tilt her hips just so, she would come in an instant. And she didn’t want to, not yet. She wanted to prolong the sensations, stretch this moment to cover a lifetime.

‘Charlie,’ she whispered, pushing her fingers into his hair, gripping the back of his skull. She didn’t quite know what she wanted to say. The thought teetered, half formed, on the outermost edge of her mind. Had she been able to voice it, she might have asked,
Why didn’t you take me with you that day? Pick me up and carry me if you had to?

Charlie moved inside her carefully, seeming to savor each stroke that brought them closer to the midnight that would break this lovely enchantment. The moon, caught in a windowpane, gazed down at them like a serene unblinking eye. Even the lake was quiet. No birds calling, no leaves whispering. It was as if the entire world were holding its breath.

She came in a burst, like an exquisite exhalation.

Charlie followed an instant later, crying out through clenched teeth, ‘Jesus.’ He shuddered, his head rearing back, droplets of sweat splashing like warm rain against her cheeks and forehead.

Afterward they lay together without moving, hearts racing, their bodies deliciously joined. She didn’t know where she ended and he began. That was the way it had always been with Charlie.

At last he rolled onto his side. ‘You’re awfully quiet.’ He smoothed her hair back where it had stuck to her temple.

‘I was just thinking …’

‘About what?’

‘Apples.’ She smiled up at the ceiling. ‘Remember that little orchard down by the paddock? How the branches nearest the fence were always bare?’

Out of the corner of her eye she caught the flash of his smile. ‘Yeah, I remember. The horses couldn’t get enough of those apples.’

She stretched, hearing her joints pop. Even that was blissful.

They lay beside each other, holding hands in the darkness, not speaking, neither of them wanting to break the spell. Reality would intrude soon enough. In a minute or two she’d have to get up, call home. Charlie would pad into the kitchen and turn off the oven, from which the smell of overcooked shepherd’s pie was currently wafting. But for now the moment hung suspended, like the moon caught in the window pane overhead.

Mary thought instead about biting into one of those apples. She could almost taste its sweet, gingery flesh, feel its clear, sweet juice running down her chin. She remembered the air, cidery with the scent of windfall. And Charlie, most of all Charlie, standing beside her, tall and lean, his cheeks scrubbed with cold, straining up to reach the tallest branches.

Arriving home the following morning around ten, Mary was surprised to find her mother just getting out of bed—with the help of Noelle, who was struggling, without much success, to pull her nightgown over her head. Doris wasn’t cooperating in the least. She just sat there, arms slack. Like a doll, one of the dried-apple dolls in the window of The Basket Case.

‘Nana, if you don’t help me, I’ll never get this off.’ Noelle had managed to free one arm and was holding the other aloft while she fought to peel off its sleeve.

‘Well, for heaven’s sake, you don’t have to shout! There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.’ Doris’s voice was muffled by the folds of nightgown covering her face.

‘I’m not shouting,’ Noelle said calmly. ‘I’m just trying to—’

Mary darted forward. ‘Here, let me help.’

Together, they managed to wrestle the nightgown off.

Noelle cast her a grateful look over the head emerging in a flurry of snowy tufts, like goose down from a ruptured pillow. ‘Okay, Nana, we’re going to help you into the bathroom now. There’s a nice hot bath waiting for you. Can you stand on your own? There, that’s it. Good, you’re doing just fine.’

‘I’m
not
an invalid,’ Doris snapped as Mary took one arm and Noelle the other. ‘Just a little sore from yesterday. If it hadn’t been for that dreadful woman
…
’ She glowered darkly at no one in particular. ‘Who did you say she was? Emma’s teacher? Schools these days—every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he has a degree in child psychology.’

‘It was the psychologist sent by the court, remember, Nana?’ Noelle said patiently, as if for the umpteenth time. She looked tired and a bit pale, but seemed steadier somehow, more focused, like a boat that had been listing that was now back on course.

‘What happened?’ Mary asked.

‘She lost her balance and fell. Yesterday, when Dr Hawkins was here.’ Noelle’s mouth tightened, but she offered no further explanation.

‘Hawkins? Who’s that? My doctor is Hank Reynolds. You can look it up.’ Doris jabbed a finger at the desk in the corner, on which a worn red leatherette address book sat.

Mary’s heart sank. Was her mother losing her marbles along with everything else? She could hardly bear to think of it. Doris seemed so frail in her nakedness, with her wrinkled skin and flattened breasts drooping like a pair of old socks. Mary realized suddenly that her mother was only a few years younger than the old ladies from church that Doris used to look after, shut-ins whom she’d dutifully visited twice a week, helping out with small chores and seeing that they had enough to eat. To Mary, a child at the time, they’d seemed impossibly ancient. Now her mother was one of them. The thought left her feeling strangely displaced, as if a familiar landmark by which she’d always navigated had abruptly vanished.

‘A hot bath will do you a world of good, Mama.’ She aimed for a cheerful, upbeat tone, hoping she wouldn’t be questioned about last night’s whereabouts, as they lowered Doris into the steaming tub.

She watched her daughter gently scrub Doris’s back with a soapy washcloth, and experienced a dizzying wave of déjà vu. In her mind, she was seeing a similar picture in which the roles were reversed: Doris holding the dripping cloth instead, with the infant Noelle naked and gleaming before her. The memory clutched at Mary’s heart.

As if Noelle had somehow picked up on her thoughts, she smiled down at her grandmother, recalling, ‘This reminds me of when I was little and you used to give
me
baths.’

‘You were like a little fish, slippery as one, too,’ Doris clucked.

‘You used to threaten to take away my rubber ducky if I didn’t stop wiggling.’ She giggled, and incredibly Doris chuckled in return.

Noelle was relaxed with her mother in a way that Mary couldn’t imagine being. She felt suddenly envious of their relationship, wishing she’d known that kind of closeness … not only with her daughter but with Doris as well.
Maybe it’s not too late,
a voice whispered.

When they’d finished bathing her, Mary and Noelle hoisted Doris from the tub and toweled her dry. She leaned on them heavily, as if fearful that she might fall. At one point Mary’s shoe slipped on the wet tiles and she nearly lost her balance. She could see Noelle struggling to stay afoot as well. But together they managed to get her into a clean nightgown and back onto the bed, where Doris collapsed with an exhausted sigh.

‘I didn’t know you could feel this tired from doing nothing,’ she croaked.

‘Would you like me to bring you a tray?’ Noelle offered. ‘Some tea and toast maybe?’

Doris shook her head. ‘No. I believe I’ll close my eyes and rest a bit.’ The pink curve of her skull, visible through her wet hair, made her seem even more vulnerable somehow.

Noelle hesitated before stepping out into the hall. Mary was about to follow her when she heard her mother call out softly, ‘Mary Catherine? Would you mind reading to me a bit?’

Mary froze, her hand on the beveled glass doorknob. Outside their showdown over Noelle, she couldn’t remember the last time her mother had asked anything of her, except to please pass the salt or to pick up a carton of milk at the store. Slowly she turned around and walked back over to the bed. Settling into the chair beside it, she asked tentatively, ‘What would you like me to read?’

‘Bible’s on the nightstand.’

Of course,
Mary thought.
What else would she want read to her:
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
?
She reached for the worn leather-bound Bible. In her mother’s room, once her father’s, too—a hodgepodge of leftover furniture from other parts of the house and porcelain knickknacks that had overflowed the shelves downstairs—she nonetheless felt an odd peace steal over her. The sunlight filtering in through Venetian blinds fell in long slats over the worn blue carpet and quilted floral bedspread. Downstairs she could hear the faint clattering of Noelle fixing breakfast.

The Bible fell open to the page marked by a faded red ribbon but before she could begin reading her mother announced out of the blue, ‘You didn’t fool me a bit, you know—calling last night to say you were staying over in the city. I know where you were. With Charlie.’

Mary was too stunned to deny it. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. Besides,’ Doris added slyly, ‘you’re wearing the same clothes.’

Mary felt angry at being caught in a lie, one she never should have been forced to tell in the first place. She took a deep breath. ‘Charlie and I are grown-ups, Mama. We don’t need anyone telling us what to do.’