This Is How I'd Love You (34 page)

He studies her face. What he’s hoped for has begun to fade. She is real. This is happening and he is alive.

“It is true that I’d hoped for a less complicated situation. But you are that girl. Hensley,” he says, reaching his hand out for hers. “You are still that girl.”

“Like this?” she asks, holding her skirt tight against her abdomen. “Really?”

Charles imagines the child curled up within her abdomen. A child that she will hold and nurse and teach to read. A child with chubby little knees and elbows, endless questions, and arms designed to reach for what seems unreachable. “Just like that,” he says.

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” Hensley says quietly, fidgeting with her fingers. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Why are you here?” she murmurs as she pulls the bundle of letters from her satchel. She presses them against her bosom. “After I confessed to you, your letters stopped. As I expected. But now . . .”

Charles furrows his brow. “Confessed?”

She nods and changes the subject. “Tell me about your injury.”

 • • • 

T
hey sit side by side in the circus trailer, the jubilation from the performers and the audience seeping in through the cracks, and he tells her about the day he lost his leg, his feeling of riding over the ocean and hearing her voice, so clearly telling him to survive. He tells her how he fought to return to his life because of those words. Her eyes fill once again with tears and she tells him about having a vision of him, gravely ill, just like Berto. She imagined another young woman tending to him, and she spoke to Berto the words she hoped someone would speak to Charles. She did, in fact, beg him to live.

How can they explain this? They do not try.

Arty returns with her dinner, which Charles happily watches her eat. She offers him half, but he has no appetite. He is still afraid that this, too, is a hallucination. He tells her this and she nods.

“We must devise a way to know that it’s all real,” she tells him. “Think.”

Charles doesn’t think. Instead, he does something that he cannot believe he has the nerve to do. “This has to be real,” he says and then he kisses her on the cheek. The scent of sawdust and pickled vegetables clings to her skin.

When he opens his eyes, she is not smiling. “Mr. Reid,” she says. “I’m emotional as well. But we cannot let ourselves forget the facts.”

“What do you mean?”

She stands, placing her dinner tray beside the sink. “I’ve chosen this path. God knows where it will lead, but it is mine alone. I could never burden another, especially you, with this. You made it home.” Her voice catches and she bites her lip to steady herself. “You must carry on. Remember, we will always exist for one another.”

“You can’t be serious,” Charles says, standing, gripping his cane tightly. “If ever there were a reason to believe in the purpose of my survival, it is now. It is you. The letters will exist, but so must we. They are not a replacement, not a substitution.”

Through tears, Hensley says, “They must be, Charles. You will have a wonderful life. Another girl will love you better.”

Charles cannot respond. He imagines unbuckling his wooden leg and feeding it to the lion; stranding himself here in this trailer until he can convince her. Instead, he pulls up his pant leg and displays to her the wood. Its dull finish blackened by ink, by her words. “This, Hensley, is how I love you now. I live in the reality we created. Your words guide my every step. If they’d given me a wooden heart I would’ve written on that, too. I want whatever path you’re taking.”

Hensley bends forward, inspecting the script. It is slightly smudged but fully legible. Her lungs feel thin and empty. Those are her words. He is real and all that she’d thought he might be and she cannot ruin him. For a moment, she allows herself to imagine the place where the prosthetic attaches to what’s left of his leg. It makes her cringe, thinking of his loss. She does not trust herself. Her life has become a series of mistakes, misjudgments.

“Someday you’ll be glad,” she says. “When you have your own child, and a wife who’s not taking in mending for the circus.”

Before he can reply, Arty returns to collect her empty dinner tray. He stands between them, surveying their morose faces. “So is it all decided, what’s real and what’s true?”

Charles extends his hand to Arty, thanking him for his hospitality. He turns to face Hensley. “I told you long ago what I believed. None of that has changed.”

Hensley reaches out her hand to him, placing the stone back in his hand, “This is yours,” she says, its warmth and weight heartbreaking. “I’m so glad you’ve survived.”

Charles shakes his head. “No,” he says, transferring it back to her. “Keep it. Let it be what I cannot.”

T
hat night, Hensley hides her tears from Arty.

“Courage is not my strong suit, either,” he finally says, as he throws his feet against the wall into a handstand.

Hensley watches his face turn crimson. “I don’t understand.”

“You probably feel real brave because you’re sad and you brought that on yourself. But sometimes it takes even more courage to be happy.”

Hensley busies herself with untying her boots. “You are a strong man, Arty. I don’t for a moment think you’re a coward.”

“Two different things,” he says simply. “Strength is in the muscles. Courage is in the mind.”

Despite his comments, and the sick feeling in her stomach, Hensley believes that she has been brave. Her arms and legs quiver as she climbs into bed, her entire body afraid of never seeing him again. She holds the stone in her hand, letting her eyes close on this most unlikely of days.

Dear Mr. Reid,

I wish I might’ve known more sooner. I wish I had not wasted my recklessness on Lowell Teagan. I wish so many things were different. Most of all, I wish this stone were your hand.

C
harles Reid returns home, his mood fluctuating with every block. Her face—its freckles and pink lips, her slightly curved eyebrows perched atop her perfectly granite eyes—made him euphoric. Just being in her presence, sitting there watching her eat a mediocre dinner, was remarkable. For all the time he’d spent imagining their meeting, he’d never thought it would happen in a circus trailer. He’d also never thought she would be the one ashamed of her circumstances. He’d imagined she might not want to attach herself to him once she saw how much of him had been lost. But it was clear there inside the wood-paneled walls that his injury was not a hurdle for her.

When he arrives home, his father is still up, reviewing contracts in the study. “Charles,” he says when he sees his silhouette in the doorway. “Let’s have a game.”

“I’m exhausted, actually. I really need to take the leg off.”

“Do it in here. I’ll not faint. I’ve already got my first three moves planned.”

“Chess?”

“When was the last time we played?”

“The holidays, I think.”

“Too long. I’ll fix you a drink. You disassemble yourself.”

Dutifully, Charles eases himself into a chair beside the board. He pulls up his pant leg and unbuckles his prosthetic. The release of the pressure is at once a relief and also the beginning of a different kind of pain, obtuse and vague. He massages the skin around the stump, urging it to accept its freedom more gracefully.

His father plays white, beginning with the same three moves he always does. He winds up with one of Charles’s pawns and takes a long congratulatory drink. Charles’s mind wanders to Mr. Dench and the chessboard in Hillsboro, his last move, and their unfinished game. He wonders what Mr. Dench would say about the wisdom of courting his daughter under the current circumstances.

“I’ve just about got your bishop, son. Where’s your head?”

Charles blinks slowly. “I told you I was tired.”

“Is it the girl? The one you mentioned?”

Charles smiles. “Trying to distract me more, are you?” He moves his bishop only slightly out of harm’s way, hoping for an early finish.

“Come on,” his father says. “I take offense that you would attempt to let me win. Do you think I’m so inferior?”

Charles sighs, shaking his head. “She’s more than just a girl. I’m afraid I may be done.”

“And yet we’ve never even had her for dinner? Don’t be impetuous. A match is much more than romance.”

Charles nods, regretting that he’s begun this conversation. “Indeed. Much more.”

“You are the heir to an enormous fortune, son. She must be suitable in every way. Her family, her manners, her sensibilities. Dabble in romance, but do not marry it.”

With his thumb and his middle finger, Charles knocks over his own king. “Conquered,” he says, reaching for his prosthetic.

“Don’t be dramatic. The ending is far from foregone. I’ll go easy on you.”

As he straps the wooden leg back onto his body, he lets the tightness distract him from all that he might say to his father. He stands and puts weight on the prosthetic, cringing. “I think it is foregone. But not in the way you do. I’m really quite tired. Please excuse me.”

His father watches him limp toward the doorway. “Charles,” he says, replacing the chess pieces, “you mustn’t pity yourself. There are much worse things than this.”

Charles hesitates in the doorway. He knows his father must be referring to his injury, but at that moment, the only part of his life that Charles mourns is that he’s left Hensley there in that trailer. He is instantly overwhelmed by the memory of her on top of that stack of chairs, so far above them all, but her smile so wide and genuine that it lit up the tent.

“You’re right,” Charles says, “there are much worse things.” He knocks his cane once against the walnut threshold as a good night.

 • • • 

T
he next morning, Charles finds her brother in his office at the Naval Yard in Brooklyn. The smell of sea salt pervades the hallways and waiting areas.

“Captain Dench?” he says, knocking gently on the open door.

Harold’s eyes leave the page and he stands as soon as he sees Charles. He invites him into the small, chilly office. “Charles Reid, sir. Served eight months at CCS Thirteen as ambulatory medic.”

“Thank you, Mr. Reid,” Harold says gravely. His eyes linger on the cane and he says it again. “Thank you. Please, have a seat.”

Charles notices that Harold’s freckles are darker than Hensley’s but their placement is similar. It is a detail of their meeting he will not soon forget.

Harold makes a mark on the paper in front of him and then closes the folder. “What can I do for you, Mr. Reid?”

“First, I wanted to offer my condolences to you on your father’s death. You may know that he volunteered to write letters to some of the men overseas. And I was one of the lucky ones. We were long-distance opponents in a fiercely fought chess game.”

Harold’s face crinkles in confusion. “My father? Sacha Dench?”

Charles has come prepared for the disbelief. In fact, he pulls one of Sacha’s first letters from his breast pocket and lays it upon the desk. “Yes, your father. He was supremely generous with his pen. You’ve no idea how we covet mail over there.”

Harold pulls his shoulders into a shrug. “Huh,” he says. “No kidding. May I?”

Charles nods, looking at the stacks of folders and oversized envelopes atop every surface. The business of war. Effortless signatures authorizing—what? A few extra cartons of cigarettes? The use of cheaper gauze? Another hundred young horses? Another thousand russet potatoes?

When he’s finished, Harold refolds the letter and slides it across the desk. He rubs his eyes with closed fists. When he looks back at Charles, he seems both tired but somehow more alert. “Forgive me if I seem confused. My father was an enigma, even to me. Or, especially to me. But I’m grateful that he was able to offer you some comfort while you were overseas.”

“Indeed, a great comfort. Your sister, too.”

“Hensley?” Harold straightens at the sound of her name.

Charles nods. “In fact, her letters continued after your father’s death. And I’ve actually come here to inquire, if I may . . .”