Chapter 28
The next morning is Sunday. I wake up and put on a bathing suit and a thin top that only touches my skin over the shoulders because forefathers, I don’t even know how hot it is because the humidity’s so awful. Even the bee on my windowsill just ambles around. I flick him out, accidentally dropping the screen onto my cousin Berto down on the front porch, oops, then twist up my hair into a bun and hear someone playing the water glasses downstairs. I smell incense in my head. No. It must be the twelfth Sunday since the last time Father Julian was here. Which means the downstairs is a church today.
And my marriage is in two weeks.
I don’t know how that can be. It doesn’t feel like September.
I can’t complain even in my head about having to sit through church because God will hear it and I shouldn’t make Him feel bad, so I turn around and think real hard at my closet. I figure Jesus won’t mind me wearing sleeveless if it’s the difference between me passing out or staying conscious for the mass so I just go ahead and keep the shirt and slip on a skirt that’s light but comes to my knees.
There.
I’m helping my zizi move all the benches and chairs into rows when the priest smiles a gentle smile and asks me to sit with him. He asks me about marriage, Andrew, and sacraments. I’ve thought of a thousand ways I could give him a bad answer, so five minutes later when he’s still smiling and blesses me, I ask him if that’s it. He grins and says yes, he’ll be pleased to see me again in two weeks.
The mass is short. I think Communion takes up half the time. I appreciate it because what with the questioning and the sitting stuffed shoulder to shoulder with my fidgety cousin, who I guess didn’t run away last night, which gives me more a lack of surprise than anything, and hot flashing zizi, I’ve doused myself five times over with sweat.
Finally, Father Julian tells us to go in peace and Eleni mumbles all over my ear with a breath that’s as humid as the day, “Thanks be to God,” and my zizi gives an Amen that sounds oddly like a reprimand, and we three give a quick kneel and sign of the cross and then head out right on the tail of the recessional to the sounds of the others shoving hymnals into the priest’s crates and Larissa’s warbling.
I’d let my hair down to cover my shoulders. Now, though, I pick it up off my neck and I decide it’s the most amazing sensation I’ve ever felt. I close my eyes and can’t help the heavy sigh as I flop down by the green. It’s a perfect spot to listen to my zizi talk with everyone coming out and be close enough to nod and smile at whoever if she needs me to.
Cassie comes over and grabs me and Eleni and we take a plodding walk around to the other side where there are some big trees with some shade. I’ve only just gotten the sweat to dry off my arms and legs when Eleni says, “Crusa.”
“What?”
“Someone wants you.”
I groan and lift my heavy head off the ground. Ugh. There is someone with a very serious face standing there.
“Good morning, Lium.”
“Good morning.”
I get up. This morning was the longest I’ve gone without seeing him, in the daytime. I wonder if he’s done with being my guard.
“I was just about to go back and help my aunt. We’re having a lot of people over for lunch today. I’ve got a minute before we start, but that’s really it. Did you want something?”
“I’ll walk with you.”
I shrug and start around the path. He comes up beside me, and I ignore him.
At the meetinghouse, I tell him goodbye and go through the open doors. I stop dead in my tracks, though, as he’s slipped through too and now he’s gotten in front of me. On purpose.
I know this was a church ten minutes ago, but I start thinking some un-churchly thoughts, clear and strong. I don’t know why, he’s just getting on my nerves.
“Hey, stop. I want to talk to you for a sec.” He trails after me when I sweep by. I think I should have paid better attention during the mass. But I didn’t. I do roll my eyes, although like I said he’s behind me so I guess he can’t see that.
At the base of the stairs, I turn around. He comes up short like he wasn’t ready for that. He runs a hand through his hair, crouching his head down.
“Yes?” I say.
“Listen, I’m sorry for last night.”
I keep my face composed. It’s not what I expected, but that in itself is becoming something expected with him.
“It’s fine.”
“I shouldn’t have left you in the woods. I waited for you, but you didn’t come in, I-”
“I said don’t worry about it. I like the graveyard. I just sat there for a little while, and then I cried, and then I went in the window.”
He looks like somebody just stuffed a snowball down the back of his shirt. I wish I had a snowball right now. I would rub it all over my arms and chest and face and even take a bite out of it, acid rain be damned.
“You cried?” he says like it upsets him.
“After you left. There were definitely tears, yes.” I mean to sound stiff but it just comes out stringy. He closes his eyes and opens them again.
“I’m sorry. I…” I stop whatever speech he was moving on to with my hand on his chest. I take a moment to close my own eyes. But his face is still there, still hanging on me when I open them, maybe even worse than before. Great. I feel too guilty goading him on like this.
“Stop. It’s fine, really.” I try out a smile for him. “I really do have a problem.” My voice cracks and I feel my lids fill with standing water. I close them, frustrated with all their crying lately.
“Excuse me, please. I need to go change.”
I turn with my eyes still closed and take the first step blindly but surely, and continue more or less that way into my room, through the low hobbit door, and into the crawlspace.
Heat itself is stifled in here, unable to do anything more than fidget around the water in the air. I can hardly breathe. Good.
I feel slick sweat behind my knees when I curl them up, and press the heels of my palms into my boiling eyesockets, everything too hot and wet.
There are some plunking noises from outside the almost closed door.
Lium’s head pokes through the opening and cranes around. As soon as he sees me, I turn straight ahead. Though it’s silly to pretend I haven’t noticed him. He shouldn’t have to see me like this. I despise myself even more when I realize I’m relieved. That he’s granted my silent wish and found me.
He crawls to my side. Then he pivots, and slouches against the wall. I stare absently. He puts an arm over my shoulders, and I feel his heat shake the air right before he nudges me back against him, bowing his head over my hanging neck.
He presses on my knees, but I know they’re covered in sweat so I jerk them down. He tenses, but I didn’t mean that, so I make up for it by pressing my face into his chest. Curl a fist up and rest it there as well, catch folds of his thin, moist shirt in between my fingers. After a moment where he is very still, his other arm comes around me, and he holds me.
I melt with the heat and relief. Lium rubs my back with steaming hands, speaking warm words into my hair. Even as I’m listening I don’t remember what he’s saying, but the words flow through me, taking some of the heat with them.
After a while, I’m drenched and so is he. I don’t know what he’s doing in the stillness, but I’m not doing anything. Not even thinking. So it surprises me when I speak.
“I’ll miss you.”
He pushes the little floating hairs back from my forehead and kisses my cheek. Curls lick the back of my neck. He is a great friend. I think someone blessed us. Lium’s arms run with trickles of water, and I watch them make their way, haltingly, then rushing down his skin, over the hairs and the drawings and the scars, and fall onto my legs, and our hands that rest there.
I squirm and look up at him, all flushed skin and darkened hair.
He tells me, “It won’t be the same. You won’t need a guard. And you??
?ll be busy.”
I don’t like the thought of being too busy for him, I find. It doesn’t seem right.
I think I’ve borrowed his dreamworld when I say, “But we’ll stay friends, though. We can be some of those old people, who sit around in chairs and gossip during family get-togethers, while everyone brings us food and asks us our advice. Can you imagine us two giving them all advice? We’ll have them running all around this island.” I watch his reaction, but I don’t understand the shifts in his features.
I stir in his arms, meaning to get some space and reason with him, but when I do I spot a tempting spot and before I know it I’ve settled my cheek into the luscious hollow by his shoulder, and gripped him tightly. He grips me too, the little movements he makes to accommodate me are genius. I never want to move again. My muscles become so very heavy.
“Hey.”
Lium jostles me so easily. I sit up and rub my eyes. He looks so warm, like he’s very sleepy. That’s how I end up feeling all day, and he seems to as well.
That evening, after a light supper of shellfish, salad, and bread, the brothers go and I have another dress fitting. It’s all in one piece finally, they’re just trying to get the seams all aligned with my edges.
When it’s done, I go outside and sit in a rocking chair on the front porch. I have faint, faint memories of sitting out here on the cool stone steps with my mother. She would say to me, “Crusa baby, come outside and look at the stars with me. They’re beautiful tonight.” And I would trundle out after her in my pajamas and we would crane our necks up and look at the sky in quiet.
She tried to point out the North Star, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper, I think. I can’t really find them myself anymore because that was a long time ago and plus I was never exactly sure I was following her finger to the same star she was talking about. There were too many close together and the distance was too big. She didn’t really know any of the other constellations, I don’t think. If I wanted to know that I would probably have to go ask a fisherman. But my mother still thought each and every one was beautiful. I could tell it in her face, her soft, wondering smile. I liked to watch her as much as I liked to watch the stars.
Now whenever I picture her, I know the lines and contours mostly come from the photo of her I see every morning and night along the staircase. But sitting here, I don’t need to rely on an image so much to find her.
I don’t usually think about her, not because I don’t love her, but because she hasn’t been here for a long while. But tonight my zizi kept saying, your mother would’ve loved this dress, over and over again and crying. I wonder if she’s right. I know what kind of clothes Eleni and Cassie would love, so maybe she is.
Eventually, it gets a little chilly. I turn to go inside. Then I almost have a heart attack.
“Come here and sit.” My Uncle Groton beckons me over with a gentle wave. I take a seat on the very edge of the bench.
“You are marrying that Andrew.”
“Yes.”
“You do not have time for other things.”
“I know.”
“So what were you doing the other night with the dancing?”
“Nothing. Dancing, like everyone else.”
“Fine. You say you dance and that’s it, I believe you,” he says. Then he says nothing, and I wait, dying to be excused.
“Just don’t go ruining everything. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“The marriage you are having, it is good for you, child. We want for you to marry this good boy. We love you very much, but this far in, so close, anything is too suspicious. I wasn’t going to say it to you, but some people are talking.” I stay very quiet, very still.
“For now, it’s nothing. A sweet girl under the influence of a boy like that. You believe everything he tells you, I know you do, deep down in your little heart. But if you did do something that you could not deny, my dear, we would be disappointed.”
I’m too stunned to bow my head, so I turn to the side. I have to imagine it, how people would look at me, and the shame is…it’s fierce.
I’ve had enough, but my uncle, he goes on, “Do you know how hard it is to make an arrangement? At your age, people go quick. I would give you a new guard, but that would make things worse, I think.” I start feeling dizzy.
It seems my uncle’s done. He makes me hold his hand and swear that I have faith in his judgment, he says, I do, I say, and loyalty to the family, I do, I say. People here do this a lot when they’re making promises. You hold hands and you say I do. I’ve done it more times than I can remember.
But I think this is the first time I feel reluctance as I do it, because I don’t know what it is at first that makes me swallow hard when he grips my hand. It’s distracting, feeling so wrong and so right, so even when I realize my throat is too thick, I’m done with it.
The next night, I have a nice dinner with Andrew who tells me about his plans for when he gets back home. He’s a busy boy. Ambitious. I will have a husband with great ambition.
At the end of our date, he walks me back to the green. He takes my face in his hands, and looks at me. Maybe it’s because he’s comes and goes and comes like he does, that my senses are on high alert.
Now, so close, the tangibility of his body and my own are startling. I notice the little hairs on his skin, the way the tissues are warm, twitch and tug. Words I’ve studied and forgotten become music behind my eyes. I hear his breath and it’s husky and shy.
He leans forward, and his hands are very hot and a little moist but I don’t mind. I hold very still. Curious and excited and scared. All the attention of his body on mine goes to my head, I think. I think he’s braver than I thought when he touches his lips to mine, and I feel brave too when I accept it.
It’s a funny touch. Sweet and soft. We pull apart. Our faces are still very close and Andrew’s cheeks are brushed with scarlet. It’s pretty. He squeezes my shoulder before he steps backward down the porch. It’s a little funny. I should find a place for it in the portrait of our life I’ve been working on, that’s washing over the back of my mind now, but something keeps me from it.
I go to bed exhausted, but I can’t sleep. Eleni is out in Milo’s old room, but I don’t want to wake her to tell her about my first real kiss. I finally splash cold water on my face and go lay down again. This time, I just feel stretched and drained.