If I Forget You(46)

“I love your mind,” Margot says.

And they eat then and the steak is good and tender and the salad crisp and there is a good baguette to bring it all together and around them the rain falls in sheets and the wind rattles the old cabin and bends the trees, but Margot doesn’t care, because suddenly she feels like she is home and maybe there is nothing to be afraid of, after all, and it has been a long time since she has really felt that way.

After dinner, they stand in the screened-in porch, staring out at the storm over the cove, and Henry puts his arm around her and she leans into him. The wind is moving the water on the small lake in great sideways waves that splash over his dock below. They stand there for a while in silence, and maybe Henry is right, that you can slow time if you just try really hard, if you give in to silence and give in to storms like this. She has lived forty-two years and for the first time she is realizing how profoundly beautiful something as simple as a thunderstorm can be.

Soon, though, the wind dies down and the sky starts to lighten and the only thunder they hear is far off in the distance. From the north side of the lake, the sun emerges through the clouds and they watch its golden light spread to where they stand and they can see the fast-moving clouds disappearing above the hills that surround them until, other than the water that is still running everywhere and the steam suddenly burning off the deck, it is as if the storm never visited here.

That night, the moon is stuck behind the hill across from them and they can see it not yet risen and gauzy through the trees. The stars are out in force and the bright stripe of the Milky Way looks close enough to touch above them. It is warm.

“It’s dark enough now,” Margot says.

“What do you mean?”

“To swim. I want to swim now. You won’t be able to see me.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Henry says.

Margot takes off then, through the screened-in porch and out onto the lawn and down toward the dock. She can hear Henry behind her, following. When she reaches the dock, she doesn’t hesitate, quickly peeling off her T-shirt and unfastening her bra and then wriggling out of her jeans and sliding her underwear down. He is next to her now and she can hear him doing the same thing, but she doesn’t look over, because she wants to be the first one in the water.

And then she is running the four or five steps to the end of the dock and letting herself go like a child, jumping as far as she can, and then hitting the water with that surprise, and she is under. She comes up and pushes her hair out of her face just in time to see Henry’s nude body launching off the dock toward her.

“Oh, it’s cold,” she says when he pops up next to her.

“Are you kidding?” Henry says, and then shouts, “It’s beautiful!”

And his voice echoes off the hills and back to them.

Margot swims in then toward the dock until her feet reach the bottom near the side of it. Henry is with her. She is with him. He is in front of her, and in the dark, with the water up to their shoulder, he leans his face into hers and they kiss, softly at first, and then with urgency.

“I’m an ice cube,” Margot says.

“It feels good,” Henry says.

“Let’s go in.”

Then in the dark they are gathering their clothes into their hands and running up the small incline to the screened-in porch, and then they are inside and wrapping themselves in towels, and Margot is aware of his eyes on her in that moment when she came into the light of the kitchen, dripping wet and nude, and she does not care. Henry is behind her, his arms around her, his mouth on her neck, and she is lifting her head to allow him to kiss her on the nape, and she reaches her hand behind her and deftly drops his towel, and he is in her hand now, full and familiar.

It is fast and furious. Her hands splayed out on the wooden kitchen table, Henry behind her, that moment when he enters her, the feel of him, his hands strongly on her hips, his breath in her ear, and she is loud, for no one can hear them.

Afterward, he collapses on her back and his arms are slumped around her, his warm face pressed against the back side of her heart. They stand there for a while like that, apart but together, curved like a sculpture.





Henry, 2012

Sometime after midnight, Henry builds a fire, and it takes a while for it draw, since it is not that cold outside, but the kindling is dry, and soon they are sitting cross-legged in front of it, still wrapped in towels, watching and listening to the fire crackling in the hearth. He is mildly and pleasantly drunk. Once he got the fire lit, Henry turned off all the other lights in the house, so it is just the light from the fire, yellow fingers of light licking up the walls.

Margot slides over and puts her head in Henry’s lap. He runs his fingers through her hair and says, “I have something to tell you.”

“Not tonight,” she says. “Don’t tell me anything tonight.”

“Okay,” he says. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” she replies sleepily.

Henry stares at the fire and plays with her hair, letting his fingernails graze across her scalp, and the last thing she says before he hears her softly snoring is “Oh, that feels good.”

For a while he stays like that, listening to her snore, watching the dance of the flames, and then he slowly tries to wake her and she comes to just enough for him to help her up the stairs and into his bed, her towel opening as he lays her down, the entirety of her visible to him for a moment, and then he brings the sheets and the blanket up over her and she moans pleasantly and turns over on her side.