Evening II

They lay on his coat on the moss and she felt the sticks and roots which she had not felt before as he was crashing over her. The grass by her cheek and the same as her cheek and the same as the air and all of it was part of the universe and his hand by her chin air and all of it was part of the universe and his hand by her chin and his face curved on her neck was part of it too.
Maybe I will after all.
What?
Have your baby.
He pulled her closer. I'd love that, he said. They could say anything now.
Might not be so simple, she said.
No.
With you married to someone else.
It would be ours, he said. That's how bad I am, I would like it.
But you would stay with her.
He didn't answer. She still had the conviction of his hands on her and did not yet feel the misery which she knew was coming. Misery was just outside the circle around them, waiting in the darkness. They held each other and his weight was more real than his going away.

There were things she'd not asked him and things she'd not said and she did not wonder what she knew or what she had learned but merely felt what had happened and felt what it meant. She did not need to explain it, she simply had it. He was asleep in her arms and the stars which had been spilling and spilling had stopped and were motionless and she knew that what they'd had was not enough but believe it would have it be.

Then the white ceiling opened like an eye and she saw what the ceiling might have seen, how she'd never put words to it.

All her life she'd listened to talk, life was full of talk. People said things, true and interesting and ridiculous things. Her father used to say they talked to much. There was much to say, she had said her share. How else was one to know a thing except by naming it? But words now fell so far from where life was. Words fell on a distant shore. It turned out there were other tracks on which life registered where things weren't acknowledged with words or given attention to or commented on. It might have been said, These two had a story. One might have said she'd found in him a great thing, that she'd found more than herself which was everything and found more than life. And even saying that she would not bring back what was gone. She did not know if it had been the same for him. She would never know. She only knew for herself. Nowhere did it show. Without being shared, what they knew had faded into a kind of mirage. It became One of Those Things. She could not let what passed between them matter too much afterwards so that when the memory tried to assert itself it had been pushed down by reason and habit and time, eventually becoming no more than a scruffy hidden sear on a scruffy hillside. She had worked to rub it out. That this had been forgotten once and would be forgotten again suddenly seemed worse to her than her own life ending.

Evening

It was dark around her ankles, he was braiding her hair into the wet grass. She felt hollow with a jaw of bronze. She could not sleep, the air inside her was twisting around.

They stood for a long time in the rock garden meeting each other's bodies for the first time too shy to stop standing and find the bench Ann Grant had mentioned.

They stood and each time he touched a new place she sort of fell off an edge and each time he said something she dropped deeper into herself and further into the night around them. She would have fallen over if he'd not held her up. Her hand was on his shoulder and she thought, this is his shoulder with my hand on it. He had a sort of mirthful look on his face when he'd pulled her sleeves back and looked at her shoulders with the pale line of the shirt in a scoop, but when he looked down now he was not smiling. His mouth came close and kissed her mouth.

How could that have ever stopped? How could his arms have gone? He nuzzled her neck, he was insistent at her shirt sending thrills through her and she laughed. Do you always behave this way with stranger? she said.

You are not a stranger, he said. Isn't there some place we can go?

--

A great wind blasted up clearing the smoke and she saw her feet beneath her standing at the edge of a cliff. So that was it, that was the other part. It came to her in this little shed. So this is what the night is for, she thought, this is what arms are for. This is why that window is there, why people sleep at night, why they lie beside each other, what life is. This was the point. She split out of the world with him and everything around them became something sealing off the two of them with no time in it and no endings and no loss or worry. She was full. She set herself back against him very slowly and was silent for a while then turned and touched his face like an explorer with an archeological find and kissed him and lay back again. The great thing was happening to her. She looked up and saw the white painted rafters showing up in the darkness and smelled the wet rope in the corners and saw the pointed flags hanging against the windows in the pitched roof. Her mind spread evenly over everything. Falling falling nothing had ever sounded like that falling in love.

Every defense she'd ever consciously or unconsciously taken refuge behind suddenly dropped like the buildings you saw demolished in clouds of dust and in its place a new scaffolding was thrown up, a structure upon which she could build a life. His arm was integral to this structure and with its support she felt wide and strong. There seemed to be no difference between herself outside and in. Up until then her personality had been a thing fluctuating in and out of sight like grass underwater and now it was all equally in focus. She was solid, whole. She saw through the window a spiky branch black as antlers in the moonlight.
Look, she said.
He looked. Do you love trees too?
He pulled her near, staying quiet as he did it. He did not know what he did or how everything was changed.