Part 1 of this story, originally published in St. Thomas University's The Nashwaak Review is available in Tuesday's post; part two is here.
THE WOMAN WITH DEADLY HANDS (Excerpt 3)
By
Beverly Akerman
He backed away from the bed and looked at her,
spread-eagled, her breasts like filled goblets, her rose-tipped nipples, the
darkness of her mons. “Make sure they’re tight enough,” she said, pulling
against the ties.
“You
look…” he said. “Luscious,” he said, “yes, luscious,” and she moaned.
But then he told her to wait and left the room.
The woman was tied up, all she could do was wait, wait and worry, first only a
little, then more than that. To take her mind off things (would he come back or
had he simply left her there? How ridiculous, she knew his suit was in a puddle
on the pink rug beside the bed!), she started thinking about the novel she’d
just started reading, The Hummingbird’s Daughter.
When Maître Robichaud returned minutes later,
the azalea in one hand, the olive oil in the other, he realized at once she was
doing that distancing thing. “Stop it,” he said. “This is your life, this is
our life.” She soon forgot about anything else as he ran the azalea over her
lips, her cheek, down her neck and collar bone, then lower, to circle her
nipples. None of the leaves or petals died.
She saw his erection and wondered what
penetration would feel like, if it would hurt. But she wasn’t afraid, and she
had a brief image of herself as a living crucifix, then she spread her legs in
invitation to his hands and tongue and, for once, stopped thinking completely.
Some time later, just after Maître Robichaud
helped her turn onto her stomach, her arms still firmly out of reach, he spread
her legs again, poured the olive oil into the curve of her back and massaged it
across her hips and her buttocks and into the clefts between her legs. As
Maître Robichaud finally, achingly, lowered himself onto her, into her, she
writhed and called out a passage from Ginsburg at the precise moment that,
across the street, the icicle lights glimmering in miniature constellations, in
their own king-sized bed, Jake breathed the same line into Gary.
As autumn segued to winter, Maître Robichaud and the woman enjoyed a
period of contentment. They had their work, their love affair, their friendship
with the Blooms, their hobbies--to her regular reading she added gardening
books, and together they planned for the spring, while he gave her an
autographed copy of Coltrane’s 1962 Ballads, worth a small fortune--and they
even had family as he introduced her to his nephew, his brother, and his
sister-in-law. (As she refused to wear the asbestos gloves in public, the visit
passed in a torment of apprehension). The lovers were happy in even the most
mundane occupations--raking leaves, planting crocus bulbs, putting away lawn
furniture. But, being only human, theirs was a happiness that could not last.
To each and every version of paradise there is a unique serpent spoiler.
The woman gradually became frustrated over
Maître Robichaud’s relentless effort to understand her deadly hands, while for
his part Maître Robichaud chafed at all the time she spent reading and became
dissatisfied with the limits her affliction imposed on their love-making. The
woman, afraid of touching him in the turnings of intimacy, insisted her hands
be tied to the bedposts. Maître Robichaud was startled to discover after a
while that he pined for more pedestrian loving contact: the casual hug, the blessing
of falling asleep tucked together like spoons, of waking to find himself in her
embrace.
By February, the darkest month, the lovers were
sniping at one another with regularity. Maître Robichaud wanted to move in, but
the woman refused. More than anything, she wished never to hurt him. She was
sure if they were together too much, they might grow complacent, careless.
“I’m sick to death of discussing my childhood,”
she told him, stir-frying a chicken and vegetable dish one evening. “Constantly
rehashing my parents’ deaths. Besides, who really remembers much from when they
were six years old?”
“My nephew does,” said Maître Robichaud.
“Oh for God’s sake,” said the woman, banging
her wooden spoon down on a mess of cookbooks and turning on him. “Your nephew’s
ten years old!” She wore a white skirt and low-cut white blouse (he liked her
all in white, that she knew), with a full skirt cinched tight at the waist
(ditto) and black fishnet stockings with four-inch heels (ditto squared).
Maître Robichaud stared for a long moment. Tea
lights guttered on a linen spread garnished with four place settings. “I don’t
suppose you’d like to go upstairs?”
She said, “The Blooms are coming over.”
“Yes, of course.” He eyed her deliberately. “What
about right here?”
“No,” she said.
He turned and slung his suit jacket over the
back of a chair, loosened his tie, and went to the fridge in search of the
wine. “I understand,” he said.
“I don’t think you do,” she said.
He opened and closed a kitchen cupboard. “Where
are all the glasses?”
“In the dishwasher, for Christ’s sake.”
“Your
language,” he said. “You’re breaking one of my cardinal rules.”
“I didn’t realize you were in professional
conflict resolution mode. Anyway, this is still my house,” she flung back, “and
I’ll say whatever I bloody well choose, any way I choose to fucking say
it,” (She’d been nervous that evening
and had started drinking before he arrived).
Maître Robichaud retrieved the glasses from the
dishwasher. He opened the utensil drawer to comment on the mess inside.
“If you don’t like it, there’s the door, don’t
let me stop you.” She kept her back to him, busy at the stove.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” he said.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re impossible to
argue with?”
“I’ve lived in war zones,” he said. “I’ve stood
between people ready to cut each other to pieces. I’ve stared down the barrel
of a gun, of a hundred guns. As problems go, this is nothing much.”
“Nothing much…”
“I mean it’s hardly insurmountable.” The cork
popped (he’d found the corkscrew in the rat’s nest of a drawer). “Maybe this’ll
help.” He brought her some wine and kissed the side of her neck.
She pulled away.
He sat at the table, leaning over to unlace his
shoes.
She stirred the rice, and banged the pot lid
down. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
He straightened up with alacrity. “You’re
kidding.”
She turned and looked at him. “Why would I joke
about this?”
“I’m just…surprised, is all.”
“You’re surprised,” she said.
“Not unpleasantly,” he said.
“Oh, well. So long as you’re okay with it.”
“And you’re not?”
“I’m having an abortion,” she said.
“But why?”
“It’s not enough to have a lover I can’t
caress, you also expect me be the mother of a child I can never really touch?”
“Let me call the Blooms, put them off a week.”
“Screw the Blooms.”
“They aren’t really my type.”
A strangled sound issued from the woman’s
throat. The doorbell rang. “Send them away,” she said.
Maître Robichaud left the kitchen. The woman
heard murmuring. She wiped her eyes with a paper towel. Shoes banged sloppily along
the hardwood hallway. Then, before she was ready, he was back, leaning against
the doorframe. “‘Woman trouble,’ I told them. I doubt they bought it.”
“I’m in trouble all right.” She pointed her
spoon at his feet. “Your laces are undone.”
He looked down, then back at her. “We should
talk.”
“Don’t you have a set of special rules to
govern this discussion?” She grabbed her wine glass and gulped down half its
contents.
“Should
you be drinking in your condition?”
“You think every problem can be solved by
negotiation?”
“Pretty much.”
“Get out of here,” she said. “Please. Just get
out.”
Maître Robichaud went.
Over the next three days, he phoned her thirty-seven times. She never
answered, never returned his calls. He resorted to sending letters, which she
returned, marked “undeliverable.” She wouldn’t come to the door when he rang (he
thought using his key might be over-stepping). The Blooms phoned to tell him
her walk remained unshovelled, her newspapers accumulating at the front door.
Early on, Gary
saw her open a second storey window and pitch a clutch of long-stemmed red
roses into the snow, where they lay like blood spatter from a suicide.
“Ah,” Robichaud said, clearing his throat, “then
she did get them.”
One afternoon, Jake pounded on the door, a box
of groceries against his hip--milk, decaf coffee ground for a French press,
Toblerone, peaches, mangoes and strawberries. The woman opened the door. She
thanked him, swaying silently for a moment, eyes brown-circled, hair straggly.
She wore a pink silk kimono. She said, “Tell him I got rid of it,” and shut the
door.
Weeks passed. Maître Robichaud shovelled her
walk and cancelled her newspaper subscriptions. He kept calling: Did she want
him to bring her food, books, magazines, jazz CDs? After another ten of these
daily messages, she finally responded, asking him to please bring her some spiced
olives, Macadamia nuts and Miles Davis, mentioning in passing that she hadn’t
the heart for reading anymore. Maître Robichaud was shocked--reading had
consumed at least four hours of her day, even after he’d shown up--but he was
relieved she would speak with him again, that she would let him bring her
things, even if it was only to the front porch.
Another month passed. The snow was almost
history; everywhere the lawns were reduced to muddy brown pulp.
In early April, Maître Robichaud squared his shoulders as he mounted the
stairs to the woman’s small cottage. He rang the doorbell. After a moment, a
window on the second floor scraped open.
“Who’s there?” she called.
He backed down the stairs so they could see
each other.
“Go away,” she said.
“I’m coming in,” he said, holding up his key.
The door swung inward and he followed it, calling, “Where are you?”
“You know perfectly well where I am,” said the
woman, coming down the stairs.
Maître Robichaud said, “I’ve had just about
enough of this.”
The woman’s laugh reverberated as she came down
the staircase. “I bet you practiced that line all the way over here.”
He flushed.
Her pink silk kimono hung open over a white
flannel nightdress that came to her knees. She was barefoot and free of makeup
but her hair looked clean enough. There was the distinct smell of lemon in the
air.
“I’m waxing the floors,” she said. “I found
this big old electric floor polisher in the basement, with sheepskin pads for
buffing. It’s surprisingly relaxing,” she said.
“Really,” he said.
“You think I’m crazy.”
“Now why would I think that? Just because you’ve
holed yourself up here for four months, ignoring my phone calls and letters--”
“I answered your phone calls.”
“After three months of nothing,” he said.
She slumped suddenly on the stairs. “I’m sorry,”
she murmured. “I get light-headed sometimes.”
“Are you eating enough?”
“No worries on that score. Maybe I have low
blood pressure every now and again.”
“Not enough fresh air,” he said. “Not enough
sunlight, or vitamin D.”
“It’s winter,” she said. “No one gets enough
sunlight or vitamin D.”
“It’s spring,” he corrected. “Can’t we stop
this sniping and have the conversation we should have had four months ago?
Please?”
END EXCERPT 3
Read the FINAL installment tomorrow. Or buy the book: USA link, UK link.
