This Is How I'd Love You (21 page)

Her skin raw, as though already ripped open to the evening’s breeze, she gazes at the spot on the wall just below the window. The inkwell cajoles her with its fullness. Hensley stands, her bare feet sure beneath her. With his very first letter between her lips, the paper damp and woody in her mouth, she transposes it, nearly entirely from memory, onto the wall. The first black mark sends a thrill from her fingers up her arm and into her throat. Her skin is consumed with goose bumps. With a deep breath, she continues, vandalizing the plaster with alacrity.

I’ve spent parts of entire days imagining which vowels and consonants might govern the plans for the pieces with which you entice me.
How strange that I can almost hear one of your gentle pawn’s voice in my head, unsure of everything but its pale coloring. Your words, however, have created a self that has kept me occupied through the days and nights that masquerade here as dark, endless caves full of horrors.

By the time she places her head back on the pillow, her fingers smeared with black, his words are permanently stretched out before her. She stares at them until exhaustion prevails.

When she awakes the next morning, his words prod her into consciousness. She wants only to begin another letter to him. She wants to exist only within their correspondence.

Teresa, dressed in her brother’s clothes, watches from the doorway as the typewriter keys fly up and strike the ribbon with incredible force.

Hensley looks up at Teresa. Her hair in her brother’s hat, his boots on her feet, she is dressed for work.

True to form, Harold has sent his third morning telegram in as many days, and Teresa hands it over without ceremony:

I must speak to you. This loss is ours to share. Grief spans the distance but my voice cannot. Please travel to El Paso this afternoon to receive my call at 3pm.

In her other hand, Teresa holds a black metal dish and a small trowel. She sets them down on the coffee table.

“These are for you. Berto says there is a place just west of town. Past the dry creek bed. There are three cottonwoods whose branches nearly overlap. Just beneath their canopy, where the dirt feels cool. You might get lucky.”

“I know that place,” Hensley says, then scoffs. “So—what? I’m going to pan for enough gold to buy a ham? Or a bolt of linen?”

“How else? If your inheritance is like mine, you will starve waiting for it.”

“Harold will settle things. I will have something to live on.” As she says it, Hensley realizes the totality of her dependence upon him.

“Until he does you that favor,” she says, pointing at the tools. “Or if you’d rather, I have an extra pair of boots at the house.”

Hensley drops her hands to her sides. “Why did he go down there, Teresa? He should be
here
.” She stomps her foot for emphasis and looks at the chessboard, still fielding its current game. “Right here. Playing this stupid game.” Through her tears, she mocks him: “Protect the king. Respect the queen. Use the bishop. Know the next three moves. See the future. Understand the end.” Hensley picks up the board and hurls it, with all the pieces, onto the floor. She is pale, stunned by her own anger.

Teresa bends down and picks up a black bishop that has landed near her feet. “My father liked the game, too. Some nights, he played with his boss.” She sets the pawn on the table beside the pan and the shovel. “I bet they would’ve liked each other—our fathers. Played chess all night long. Lamented the destructive capabilities of their own species.”

Hensley wipes her eyes, the scent of ink lingering on her fingers. She nods, smiling. “Perhaps. Wax poetic about the dangers of power and its misuses.”

“Exactly. Are you going to town like that?”

Hensley looks down at her nightclothes. “I suppose not. I better change. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to use those,” she says, motioning to the tools.

Teresa nods. “Suit yourself,” she says and heads for the back door. Isaac scoots between her feet, eager to follow her out. With her hand on the screen, Teresa—the spitting image of her brother—turns to face Hensley again. She looks handsome and strong. “Nothing ever ends, Hensley. Games were made up so that people could impose a beginning and an end. Feel powerful, in control of time. Life is not a game. Even when it’s over, it is not the end. He will always be with you.”

Hensley crosses the floor, her sheer nightgown clinging to her changing body. She wraps her arms around Teresa’s neck but doesn’t say a word.

How she’d like to believe her! What she’d trade to possess this certainty!

Teresa holds her as tightly as she can manage, stroking her uncombed hair.

“I wish . . .” Her chest heaves with regret. She buries herself further into Teresa.

Their embrace—if seen from the street—resembles the desperation of the final good-bye in an illicit love affair. But it is not. Nobody passes by, nobody misunderstands their love for something sordid.

Soon Hensley is dressed and ready for the Ready Pay truck that picks her up just outside the house.

 • • • 

H
arold has arranged for the El Paso Mutual Telephone Company to host his call to Hensley this afternoon. The office is cooled by a large fan in the corner that pushes Hensley’s hair up and away from her face with its power. She holds the line while the call is originated in New York.

“Hensley? Can you hear me?” Her brother’s voice is suddenly in her ear, sounding just as it always has.

“Yes, I’m here.” Hensley pictures her brother, his nearly always chapped lips speaking to her from the Naval Yard office in Brooklyn, his pants perfectly creased, his shoes polished, his brown hair clipped close to his scalp.

“Oh, Hen,” he says, sighing heavily, his voice momentarily thin. “How are you managing?”

Hensley looks at the dirt underneath her fingernails, a geographic hazard. She wills herself to speak without crying. “I am just in a daze, really. Trying to understand . . .” This is as much as she can say before her voice withers beneath the weight of her thoughts.

“You are very brave. And I will be always grateful to you for handling all the arrangements. I’m sure it was just what he would’ve wanted.”

Hensley pictures the brown hillside where her father is buried. “He would’ve wanted you here, Harold.” The line crackles with static as though she has spoken too loudly.

“This is not an ordinary time, Hennie. I would have been there if it had been at all possible. Can you forgive me?”

Hensley nods. “Of course I will. This is just the worst thing, Harry. The worst . . .”

“I know. He was just so stubborn. If only he’d stayed here. If only . . .”

“For God’s sake, it’s not his fault, Harold. He’s the one who’s died. Don’t blame him for that, too.” Hensley wipes at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“But now what, Hensley? Have you answered Lowell’s telegram?”

“What did that cost you?”

“Not as much as this telephone call.”

Hensley glances out the window at the traffic in front of the train station. A man in dungarees and a big straw hat lugs two suitcases behind him. Three women share a parasol as they stand in the sun, waiting. Two horse-drawn carriages are loaded with crates that have bright red stripes across their middles and the word
dynamite
written in block letters inside the stripe.

“Well, then, get to the point. Let’s be efficient and not waste time on the trivialities of our emotions.”

“Don’t overreact, Hensley. I only wanted to hear your voice. To make sure you are safe.”

“I am, yes. Safely devastated.”

“And we do need to determine how and when you will return. Have you a schedule in mind?”

The authority in his voice irks her. “Who says I am? I have no plans to do so.”

“Don’t be unreasonable. If you’re angry at me, or Lowell, don’t let it foul up your life.”

“I didn’t think we had time to discuss our emotions.”

“I know you’re susceptible to all those romantic notions, Hensley. But regardless of what I’ve said about Lowell in the past, he is willing to be honorable now. Let go of your girlish ideas. Every life is full of mistakes. There is nothing unusual about that. Forgive him for the past. Begin again.” His voice is earnest and pleading.

“I appreciate your advice, Harry. But I have no immediate plans to return to New York.” She closes her eyes and pictures the wall in her bedroom back in Hillsboro, the words being the very closest thing she can imagine to a home right now. “Girlish ideas are more tenacious than you’d imagine.”

“So I’ve heard. But, Hennie, I know that’s not you. We were both raised to think. That’s his legacy. Use your mind to solve this problem. I know you’ll come to the same conclusion as I have.”

“But it’s not
your
problem to solve, so your thinking is different from mine.”

There is a silence in which Hensley thinks he may have been disconnected.

But then his voice returns. “How is your health, Hen? Are you eating?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’ve a dear friend. She’s taken care of me through it all.”

“What a relief. I hadn’t thought there’d be anybody there but miners and Mexicans.”

Hensley smiles slightly as she fingers the telephone cord.
“El burro sabe más que tú,”
she says, using the only saying Teresa has taught her.

“What’s that?” he says. “I think our connection is going bad.”

“I’m here, Harry. I appreciate the phone call. And the telegrams. I know that you want what’s best.”

“Okay. Good. So you’ll think about it? You will let me know?”

Hensley nods, but then realizes he cannot see her. “Yes, I will,” she says, wondering if Mr. Reid has yet received the letter about her father.

“Good. We’ve only each other now, Hen.”

Hensley feels her throat tighten with emotion. “Yes,” she manages to say. “I know.”

“Much love to you,” he says before the line goes quiet and then turns to a flat buzzing signal.

N
early a week after his injury, Foulsom thought Charles had a decent chance of surviving the train ride, so they loaded him with some other gravely injured soldiers onto a Red Cross train to Rouen, where an ambulance from Base Hospital #12 met them.

Gradually Charles has become able to spend more than an hour sitting up and he’s glad to hear lots of American voices, men from St. Louis who took over this abandoned racetrack from the British a couple of months ago. Charles’s bed is with several others in the small room adjacent to the administration building. The nights are getting cold and he often reads Hensley’s letters just to try to remember what sunlight feels like.

This evening, Rogerson appears in the doorway, his eyes glancing across the room, searching for Charles.

“Looking for me?” Charles says, running a hand through his unwashed hair.

“Reid. I never figured you for a gambling man. But here you are hiding out at the racetrack while I drive those muddy roads by myself.”

They shake hands, Rogerson careful not to look at the place where Charles’s leg should be. He’s had four nights in a row full of evacuations, so they let him take a day of personal leave.

He stands in the corner watching as two nurses transfer Charles into a wheelchair. Rogerson sits beside him in the dining hall. The dinner includes chicken thighs stewed in a makeshift tomato sauce that is thick and syrupy. Both Charles and Rogerson have rings of the red sauce clinging to their lips.

“Is it really tasty or just not white mash?” Rogerson asks as he licks the back of his fork. “I can’t tell.”

“Not sure it matters, really, does it?”

“Right. Not really. Just curious.”

“It’s all relative. Isn’t that what we’ve learned? Otherwise, I wouldn’t find myself suddenly envying that fella who blew off his own toes, oozing blood through the leather of his boot—remember him?”

Just as he says it, a nurse calls out his name, a letter in his hand. Rogerson bounds off the bench and collects the latest dispatch from Hensley. As he returns to his place beside Charles, he smiles and says, “See? Good day.”

But when Charles reads the letter, his mood darkens. He wipes hard with his napkin at the sweet sauce stuck to his lips.

“What is it?” Rogerson asks, gnawing a bit more on one of the bones on his tray.

“Hell,” Charles says, “he’s dead. Mr. Dench.” He hands the letter to Rogerson and brings his head down on the table, banging it twice so that the rattle of cutlery and dishes echoes in his ears.

He is gone. Charles goes over her words again and again. Just ink on paper. What does it really mean? It is not the same death that resides here. It is not visceral and indisputable. It is simply a scattering of letters, an assortment of words that litter the paper. Could she be mistaken? Is it really true that the man is gone? Will he never receive another letter from him?

Though they are just words to him, he understands that somewhere in New Mexico, their meaning is real. She is now an orphan, bereaved and alone. The sweet dinner has turned sour in his stomach. He longs to see her now more than he ever has. He wants to comfort her in some way, to alleviate her suffering. But he is stuck here, useless to himself and to the heartbroken.