When Brody steps through the front door, he’s delighted. “Two great minds!” he exclaims. “I was going to suggest we stay in and cook! I almost stopped at the store as I was coming through town, but I thought, ‘No, what if Melanie’s already all dressed up? Wouldn’t want to disappoint her.’ This is great.”
“It’s pretty simple,” I warn him. “Shepherd’s pie and a salad. And store-bought cake because I didn’t feel like baking, too.”
“Perfect. I’ll love it all.”
He does, too, taking third helpings of everything, even the mediocre cake. “I think you have a tapeworm,” I tell him. “Otherwise, you couldn’t possibly eat this much all the time and stay so slender.”
“That’s it. You’ve discovered my secret. I hope you’re not repulsed.”
“Ew. Is it contagious? Transferrable?”
“Studies are inconclusive,” he says. “In fact, I’m part of a research group trying to determine if tapeworms can be passed on through activities like kissing. I was hoping you’d be willing to be my research partner.”
“Now that’s original,” I say in an approving voice. “That’s not a line any guy has ever used on me before.”
“And that is my goal,” he says, standing up and starting to clear the table. “Introducing you to joys you have never yet experienced.”
After the meal, we settle in to watch television. I have about five DVDs and no cable service, so our options are limited, but he claims he’s always wanted to see the new version of Sense and Sensibility, and we pop the disk in the player. Truth is, the movie is just an excuse to get comfortable on the couch, both of us slouching down, shoulders touching, then hands entwined, the occasional kiss exchanged.
Truth is, soon enough the movie becomes nothing but background noise. Like high schoolers at a drive-in, we start making out, kissing madly, slipping our hands inside each other’s clothing. But unlike those hormone-crazed teens experimenting with sex for the first time, we’re not driven and desperate. We’re leisurely, amused, relaxed, and tender. And talkative.
“Very pretty,” Brody says when he peels back my shirt to find a daisy-patterned bra beneath it. “Do the panties match?”
“No, I needed black underwear with my black skirt. But my blouse was white, so no black bra.”
“But please tell me you have a black bra.”
“Oh, is that your particular fetish?”
“I would say it’s a universally flattering look for women.”
“You’re easy.”
“You have no idea.”
Pretty soon we’re down to three items of clothing between us, though my bra is hanging from my shoulders so loosely you could hardly say I’m wearing it. We’re stretched out side by side on the couch, wrapped together so tightly I’m not at all worried about slipping over the edge, and I’m starting to get a little high on the pure unadulterated opium of physical touch.
“This is where we have to start making decisions about boundaries and intent,” Brody says.
“We do?” My voice is breathless.
“Yeah, ’cause if we aren’t careful, there are gonna be some messy fluids pretty soon, and while that doesn’t bother me any, it’s your couch, and—”
I’m laughing so hard that my body is shaking his where it presses against mine. “Messy fluids! You’re killing me with romance!”
He kisses my cheek and nibbles his way to my earlobe. “It was a magician’s trick,” he whispers. “Deflecting you from the real issue at hand.”
His breath tickles, and I pull my head back. I’m trying to get a good look at his face, hard to do when it’s so close to mine. “Are we gonna have sex?”
“That’s the real question.”
“Well, yeah. Aren’t we?”
He kisses my mouth. “Well, yeah. Here or somewhere else?”
“Well, I wasn’t feeling too particular, but since you brought up the fluid thing—”
Without another word, he sits up, leaving me briefly chilled. Then he scoops me into his arms and jogs into the bedroom with me bouncing against his chest, laughing again. It seems pointless to keep any underwear on at this juncture, so we’re both naked as we slide under the deliciously cool sheets and instantly seek each other’s heat again.
“And then the next question—” he begins.
“Oh, my God!” I exclaim. “Do you always talk this much?”
“You’ve known me for six weeks now. You know the answer to that.”
“I mean, during sex?”
“But this is an important question.”
“Yes, I’m on the pill. No, I don’t have any diseases.”
“Same here. I mean, I’m not on the pill, of course, though I understand they’re working on birth control for men—”
I make a sound of exasperation deep in my throat and pounce on him, covering his body with mine, kissing his mouth as hard as I can. His arms wrap around my back, suddenly drawing me in so tightly that my skin burns and my bones ache. And it feels so good, so good. I cannot remember the last time I have rested on someone else, relied on someone else, given myself completely to someone else, holding nothing back. For a brief time we are as frenzied and focused as those teenagers in the backseat of a car, as seduced by sensation, as bent on a single exquisite goal, and even Brody, for those pleasurably laboring minutes, abandons conversation. And yet we communicate all the same.
* * *
It’s not more than five minutes that we have been lying there, languorous and entwined, before Brody begins talking again. We’re spooning in the bed, his right arm resting on my waist, our hands clasped and snugged up against my heart. I feel spent but triumphant, utterly at ease, as if I have come to rest in a palatial resort after months of arduous travel.
“When I was eight years old,” he says without preamble, “I fell into a frozen pond and almost drowned.”
“Oh, no,” I say through a yawn. It’s hard to get too worked up by a story that clearly has a happy ending.
“My whole family had gone to visit some friends of my dad’s. They lived way out in the country somewhere, and they had a pond in the backyard and a collection of ice skates they’d amassed over the years. There were two kids who lived there, boys about my age, and they took my sisters and me out to go skating. It was, like, ten degrees out, and I remember being really cold before the whole adventure even started.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Plus I wasn’t a very good skater—and neither were those boys—and people kept falling down and it wasn’t as much fun as I’d thought it would be. And then someone tripped and someone else crashed into me, and two things happened at once. Someone’s skate ripped across my leg and cut my thigh right open. And too many of us hit the ice at once, and it cracked, and I fell in.”
The story is starting to get more exciting. “Wow, you must have been scared.”
“So scared and so cold that I think I went into shock. These days it’s hard for me to sort out what I remember and what I think I remember because I’ve heard the story so often. But somehow they dragged me out of the water and back to shore, where I was bleeding profusely and shaking so hard I couldn’t talk.
“And Bailey. God love her. She was so calm. She just took charge. She told the boys to run back to the house to get help. She told Brandy and Bethany to start pulling off all my wet clothes, starting with my trousers. The blood was gushing out of my femoral artery and Bailey, cool as you please, takes off her belt and makes a tourniquet on my leg.”
I’ve now turned over in his arms as if to hear the story better. “How old was she?”
“Fourteen.”
“And she knew to make a tourniquet?”
He nods. The bedroom is dark, but we left a hall light on, and it’s just bright enough that I can see the outline of his face. “She did it right, too, or so the paramedics said later. Anyway, so once Brandy and Beth have taken off my clothes, she takes off her coat and has them move me onto it—so I’m not lying on the cold gr
ound—and then she tells them to lie down on either side of me and try to keep me warm with their own body heat. Bailey takes off her sweater and wraps it around my legs and feet to keep them from freezing. The whole time, she’s talking to me, telling me everything’s going to be fine, the ambulance will be there in a minute. Beth’s crying, and Brandy keeps telling her to shut up, which means Brandy’s terrified, but everybody does what Bailey says. And pretty soon the ambulance comes and they take me to the hospital and I have frostbite and a big-ass wound, which is now a big-ass scar, but otherwise everything’s just fine.”
“Wow,” I say again, snuggling closer. “I hope Bailey got recognized by the hometown paper or something for saving your life.”
“Yeah, you know, there was an item about it on the local news the next day, and I think her Girl Scout troop actually did a recognition ceremony for her, but that’s not the point of the story.”
“There’s a point to this story? Because, you know, a lot of times, with your stories, there isn’t.”
He puts a hand under my chin and tilts my face up, leaning back enough that he can look me in the eyes. For someone who can be so silly, he looks deadly serious. “To me, that’s what love looks like,” he says. “Most of the time it’s just in the background, but in extraordinary circumstances, it’s extraordinary. Creative, unstinting, tenacious, and drastic. The day I met you, I knew you would have reacted just like Bailey did—you would have done whatever you had to do to save Ann.”
“Oh, God, please don’t tell me I remind you of your sisters.”
He doesn’t quite smile. “Not in the way you look or talk. In the way you love whatever you have chosen to adopt as your own. I realized that’s what I’ve been looking for my whole life. I realized nothing else would ever be good enough for me.”
I’m silent a long moment, but I don’t squirm free, and I don’t look away. “Love. That’s a pretty big word for people who’ve only known each other a few weeks.”
“It’s what I want for the long term,” he says—adding, as if he can’t quite help himself, “though I’ll take sex for now.”
I poke him in the ribs hard enough to make him yelp. “Lucky for you, the sex is good enough to carry us through for a while.”
“I’ll say.” His fervent voice makes me giggle, but I quickly sober up.
“It’s too soon to know anything for sure,” I say, and now I lean my head forward again to rest it on his chest. “I have a hard time letting my guard down enough to love someone.”
He strokes my hair with one hand. “What do you think my chances are?”
“I’m thinking you like love so much that you make it easy for people to give it to you.”
“So my chances are good.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“If it helps any,” he says, “I think I fell in love with you that first day. When you cried in my arms and then—suited back up in all your armor and pretended it didn’t happen. So strong. So defiant. And so wounded, all at once. I wanted to kiss you then.” As if to make up for this omission, he kisses the top of my head. “Everything I’ve seen since has just intensified the feeling.”
“That’s sweet,” I say. “But I think you just know how to deal with women.”
He laughs, then tugs on a fistful of my hair. “So tell me a story. I told you one.”
“What kind of story?”
“Anything you want me to know.”
I lie there a few moments in silence, while he continues to brush his hand across my hair and down my back. I hardly want to tell any heroic-older-sister tale after the one he’s just recited; I can’t think of anything I’ve done that’s quite so dramatic, anyway. And that’s not the point of this little exercise, I think. The stories are stand-ins for emotions. His gift to me was love. I think what he needs from me is trust.
I have never yet admitted to him in so many words that Ann is the creature he believes her to be. But if I trust him, that’s exactly what I’ll do now.
“When I was sixteen or so, and we’d been living here for about a year, Debbie and I went on a hike with our Girl Scout troop. Ann wanted to come along, and the Scout leader didn’t mind, so I brought her. I can’t even remember where we went—Pere Marquette, maybe, over in Illinois. There were probably thirty girls along that day, a whole busload of us, and a handful of parents. Naturally, people got separated on the trails, and eventually Ann and I got lost. We’d even lost track of Debbie along the way.”
I wriggle closer to him to absorb heat from his skin; I still get chills thinking about that day. “I had no idea where we were. I couldn’t hear voices from the other girls. I didn’t have a compass. I knew you were supposed to be able to tell north by which side of the trees the moss was growing on, but since I didn’t know which direction I was supposed to go, north didn’t help me much. This was in the days before everyone on the planet had a cell phone, so I couldn’t call for help. And we had about two hours of daylight left.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t want to panic Ann, but I vaguely remembered hearing somewhere that if you were lost, you should stay put, so search parties had a better chance of finding you. So when we came to a sort of clearing where I thought we might be visible from overhead—in case someone sent a helicopter for us—I said, ‘Let’s sit here for a while and play a game.’ So we counted the different kinds of trees we could see and the birds we could identify and the bugs we saw—plenty of bugs. And after about twenty minutes, Ann said she was hungry and wanted to go back. And I said, trying to sound cheerful, ‘Well, honey, I think we should wait here till someone comes to get us.’ Of course she asked why, and I said, ‘I’m not sure I can find the way back.’ And she said, ‘Oh, I can.’ Cool as you please.”
I’m silent a moment, but he, for a wonder, doesn’t speak, just waits. “So I said, ‘Really? You’re just a little girl. How can you know the way back?’ And she said, ‘When I’m a puppy, I can always find my way home.’”
I resettle myself in Brody’s arms, but he’s still quiet, letting me tell the story at my own pace. “Well, it was a dilemma for me,” I say slowly. “I was the big sister. I was the one who was supposed to do the rescuing. And Ann was six years old. Could I possibly believe a child of that age could lead us out of the woods? Wasn’t she likely to get us more lost? But it was true—she’d always found her way home before. And I really didn’t want to spend the night in the park, cold and hungry. So I said, still casual, ‘That would be great if you think you won’t get lost. But as soon as we catch sight of the rest of the troop, you’ll have to turn back into a little girl. They don’t know your secret.’ And she just said, ‘Okay,’ and she turned herself into her other shape.”
I detour from the main story for a moment. “She takes the form of a white husky with pale blue eyes. Most beautiful creature you ever saw. At this stage, still a puppy, all big paws and playful energy. But with an expression—I can’t describe it. You could have lined up a dozen white huskies in front of me, and I’d have been able to pick Ann out in a heartbeat. This dog just looked like her. Still does.”
Brody risks a comment. “I’d like to see her that way sometime.”
“Stick around. You will.”
He kisses my head. “Another incentive.”
I resume the tale. “So Ann starts sniffing at the ground—picking up our scent, I suppose. Of course, whenever she changes shape, she sheds her clothes, so that presents me a bit of problem. I take her little sundress and knot it real loosely around her neck, so she can slip into it when she changes back. I carry her sandals, and I just leave her underwear behind.
“Pretty soon she takes off, still sniffing the ground, and I follow her as fast as I can. I actually have to call her back a couple of times because she gets so far ahead of me. I was lost, so I don’t know for sure, but she never seems to lose the trail even for a moment. And about fifteen minutes later, I hear voices ahead of us, calling for us. The Scout leaders had reali
zed we were missing, and a hunt was already on.
“On the one hand, I’m hugely relieved, but on the other—where’s Ann? I don’t want us to make it safely out of the wilderness just to have her exposed as a shape-shifter. I can’t call for her without everyone else hearing me, so I stay back where I am and start whistling. And then whispering. ‘Ann. Ann. Where are you? It’s time for you to come back to yourself.’ That’s what I always used to say whenever I wanted her to take her human shape again. ‘Come back to yourself.’ But she doesn’t hear me or she’s off in the woods playing or—I don’t know. So I stand there, a few yards away from the rest of the troop, hearing people calling our names, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Pretty scary.”
“And then I hear one of the Scout leaders cry out, ‘There she is! Ann, we’ve been looking all over for you! Where’s your sister?’ And I hear Ann’s voice, totally human, totally calm, saying, ‘She was right behind me. Look—there she is.’ And I step out of the woods and everyone runs up to hug me, and then the Scout leader starts yelling at me that I have to be more careful, don’t I realize how dangerous the woods are? What was I thinking, going off alone like that? And how could I have let my little sister walk barefoot along the trails? And I tell everyone I’m sorry, and Debbie brings me some water, and pretty soon we’re all back on the bus again going home.
“And never, not for a minute, did Ann act like it was a big deal. Then, or later, when I tried to get her to talk about it. She wasn’t lost, she wasn’t afraid, it didn’t bother her to switch between shapes. It was just as easy to be a dog as to be a human—and more useful, at least some of the time. To her it was like—like choosing to stand up or sit down. Whatever felt right at the moment. It was the first time I truly understood that shape-shifting wasn’t something that just happened to Ann. It wasn’t like getting the flu or the measles. It was part of her. Like hair. Like hands and feet.” I shrug. “Or like paws and a tail.”
“Although from what I’ve seen of Ann,” Brody says, “that’s how she would have accepted anything in her life that could be considered outside the norm. If she’d been born deaf, or with only one arm. She wouldn’t have been fazed at all.”