The Clairvoyants(45)
An open doorway beyond the living and dining area revealed a bedroom and a small stairway. The roof had partly given way above the bed, and the bedclothes had been shredded by animals. I felt as if the house was a crime scene that hadn’t yet been cordoned off, and I expected a figure to emerge resembling Mr. Parmenter, with his bloodied hair. But no one appeared. I could hear William’s camera, its mechanical whirring. I went outside. The weak sun flitted off the snow. Birds darted, frantic shapes winging from the canopy. I smelled the pine and took a breath to clear my lungs of the smell of the house.
William came out. “What do you think?” he said.
Del would have said it was a nice place to leave a body.
“Kids probably come here to have sex,” I said.
He looked back at the little cottage, then he came up close to me in the snow and wrapped his arms around me and kissed me again, and though I would rather not have had sex in the cottage, I could tell he had brought me here just for that.
“Isn’t this place amazing? Did you see the table still set? The metal toy cars? I think I had a set of those when I was little.”
The house, the parents and children each with their own place, the mildewed calendar on the wall, the decaying stuffed animals, the doll with its mangy hair and moldering pink dress—these things were poignant reminders of what a family could be, of something he might have. I was touched but uneasy.
“I wonder what happened?” I said.
William took my hand and brought it to his lips.
“Marry me,” he said.
The sun was up now, and the house seemed more benign in its slant of light. “What?” I said, foolishly.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s get married.”
I thought of Del and Rory and their commune marriage ceremony that may or may not have happened, of Del’s love of sex in the outdoors, and in abandoned cars, and my envy at her ability to live her life in extremes. I remembered my story about the Eve of St. Agnes, how I’d awakened to him in my apartment, and how that had seemed, at the time, almost fated. Was marriage—a husband—the next step? Would my mother offer to plan a wedding at the house like she had for my sisters? And then I remembered the night at Anne’s, Del and someone else in the hallway outside the little upstairs room.
I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to have him for my own. I let him draw me back into the cottage, and down onto the old rug, where we consummated our childish yearning for something beyond ourselves. If there were ghosts to watch us, I did not see them. I stared up past his shoulder at the way the sunlight came through a hole in the roof, and I stared at it until the brightness blinded me to everything else around me. Like the barn, I thought, watching the spot on the ceiling.
She lies on the narrow bed. The sun filters through the curtains onto her bare legs, leaving strips of light, and when the curtains flutter the shadow moves like light on the surface of water. The field is alive with bees, chicory, the low drone of dragonflies. Summer. Like those afternoons we’d spend in the field by the old house, stamping down the long grass to make rooms, and corridors leading to rooms. She moves, suddenly, swinging her legs to stand—not dead, her long hair flying out around her shoulders, and the narrow trailer door is flung open, a shadow stretches across the floor from the doorway and footfalls come up the metal steps. The room is a swirl of movement, of arms and legs, two bodies falling together on the bed. Heat. A pan drops from the shelf above, the quilt slips, the bodies send up dust. I see his back, the white T-shirt, the jeans, her hands sliding the shirt up to reveal the pale skin, the ridges of the spine, the mole on the shoulder blade, shaped like a heart.
19
William and I drove home, gripping each other’s hands, and went to the courthouse downtown and applied for the license. I’d decided we were a perfect match—each of us devoted to our art and each understanding what a life as an artist meant—hours of every day spent working, and then a late dinner, and talk about unrelated things, the secret of our projects kept close. I vowed that as his wife I wouldn’t pry—that I’d accept his need to remain quiet about his work. When he was ready he would share his new images with me.
The next afternoon, about the time that Mary Rae’s body was lowered into the frozen ground in the Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow’s cemetery, we were married by a registered leader of a church I’d never heard of before. He was also an accountant with an office in his house on Cascadilla Street, within walking distance of my apartment. The man was short, round, with wire-framed glasses and wisps of long hair. Ben Franklin, William whispered, his mouth by my ear. We were nearly giddy. The officiant had a few children we saw scatter as we were led down a dim hall to the office. The house smelled of the meal cooking for dinner—a roast seasoned with sage and rosemary, and the strong scent of pine from the Christmas tree I spotted in a room we passed. I superimposed, fleetingly, the abandoned cottage in the woods on this happy scene.
The accountant’s wife, tiny, with dark, bobbed hair, was our witness. On the shelves in the office were heavy books with moldering spines, the gilt of their titles indecipherable, and I was reminded of my grandfather’s books that lined the shelves of the old house, and of Sister’s missal hidden away in my bedroom there, and then, in a crushing way, of all the childhood dreams of dashing, potential suitors I was giving up, as if in marrying William I was entering an entirely different type of abbey. I had a moment of indecision in which it seemed I’d agreed to marriage to prevent Del from taking him away—as if the rings, and the vows, and the “till death do us parts” really meant something. At the same time I believed this was all a game, and that once tired of it, I could simply undo what I’d done with another trip to the courthouse and more paperwork. I regretted agreeing with William not to tell Del what I was doing, not inviting her to be present. She would have tried to talk me out of it; I suspected William knew this as well. In my confusion, I began to cry.