The Stars Are Fire(5)
On her way home from her mother’s, Grace asks herself why it is she can’t tell Gene how she feels about the way they make love in bed. After all, there are only two of them in the marriage. Is it that she fears that either Gene or she would explode if she were to do that? Isn’t it enough to know her own distress about sex? If Gene were to die, would she go into a deep rocking mourning as her mother did?
That night, after Grace has put the children to bed, she slips her slicker from a hook and walks down her front path to the sidewalk. She has maybe a minute before Gene will notice her absence. It isn’t much, but it’s everything. She is who she is, nothing more. Free to note the fog rolling in, the leaves letting go of raindrops. That the older couple across the street have already gone to bed. That her hair is frizzing lightly in the mist. That she doesn’t care. That her children are inside asleep and don’t need her. That by morning she won’t be able to see out the windows. That she will probably never learn to drive. That she can move only the distance her feet can take her. That she could begin to go on long walks with the babies in spite of the weather. That someone will notice these errand-free excursions and begin to wonder. That Gene will say, when she returns to her family in less than a minute, that he is going up. That she must listen to the inflection in his voice and watch his face to know if she is to go up with him, or whether she can sit at the kitchen table and have another cigarette.
When Grace undresses for bed that night, she doesn’t put on her nightgown, but slides naked into the bed, uncovering her breasts so that Gene, when he climbs the stairs, will see. She doesn’t know if she is doing this because the posture is a challenge to him, or if in remembering the early days together she wants to have that again. Gene, when he reaches the room, looks surprised and turns his back to her to undress. Grace wants to cover herself, but doesn’t. This one night, is that so much to ask?
Gene comes to bed hard and flings off all the covers. Too late, Grace realizes that there will be nothing gentle tonight. She has set a challenge after all. He enters her at once, when she’s not ready, and the thrust is painful. He pounds, as if knowingly, at the cut necessary to give birth to Claire and Tom, the place where she is most tender, and she has to bite her cheek to keep from crying out. She tries once to shift him, but he pins her arms back behind her head with one of his, and that posture and her helplessness set him off. He roars, lets her arms go, pulls out, and faces the other way, leaving Grace to be the one to locate the covers and pull them up and over.
When she returns to the bed, she is sore and has to hold the sheet to the place where she suspects she is bleeding. It seems unlikely now that she will ever have a fond nickname for her husband.
Three weeks after the unspeakable night that has not been repeated, Grace takes what has become her nightly walk to the sidewalk. She notes, in addition to the growing number of puddles that dot the dirt road and the lilac trees bent double with their waterlogged and dead flowers, a swath of blue at the western horizon beneath dark cloud. Her body fills with joy. Tomorrow the wash will hang from an outside line, and she will dry her hair in the sun.
Dry
A gap between two rows of houses gives Grace an exuberant pie-shaped view of sparkling water, the sun high in the east over the ocean. She runs out the door in her flower-printed robe and looks at the blue sky and the cherry tree and raises her arms in a mixture of thanks and relief. She catches a glimpse of tangerine, and Rosie is beside her, laughing at Grace and their good fortune. “Thank God,” says Rosie.
“Finally,” says Grace.
She opens all the windows to let the fresh air in and dances through the rooms. She empties the linen cabinet, washing the contents and hoping for sun-dried sheets by dinnertime. The towels will dry scratchy in the breezes, the way they should. A soft towel is a coddle, doesn’t get the dead skin off.
Before ten in the morning, the town of Hunts Beach has happily surrendered, white sheets flapping along with colored towels and blue shirts and pink dresses and gingham aprons and green bedspreads. It’s a marvel, Grace thinks, as she walks the neighborhood streets, the soil underfoot emitting steam in the cool, dry air. Every so often, a slight wind causes a spotty and brief rain shower from tall oaks. Mildew begins to disappear as if by magic. Nearly every window in every house is open, even though the temperature can’t be above fifty degrees. She tips her face to the sun as she walks. Life-giving. Grace thinks the fluttering sheets and clothes are not, after all, a sign of surrender, but instead a symbol of survival.
Gene comes home early, before Grace has even started dinner. All the wicker baskets she owns are full of loosely folded laundry ready for the iron tomorrow. She sees his car, towing a trailer, from the side window. He parks at the edge of the grass, close to the screened porch. Grace opens the door to see what’s under the tarp, and with a flourish, Gene reveals a secondhand wringer–washing machine, a present to Grace. She knows precisely what the gift represents, a belated apology for a night that doesn’t bear thinking about. But she can’t help but be intrigued by the object, its big agitator tub and its wondrous wooden rollers that squeeze the water out of the wash more efficiently than any pair of practiced hands can do.
Together, they roll the heavy machine down the shallow ramp of the trailer and stare at it on the grass. All wringer washers are on casters, Gene explains, because they’re meant to be rolled to the sink so the rubber hose can be attached to the spigot. It’s tough going moving a washer across the lawn, but Grace wants to get the job done before too many neighbors see. A wringer washer is a prize. Only Merle, Gene’s mother, and Dr. Franklin’s wife have them as far as Grace knows. She and Gene heft the machine up and over the lip of the screened porch and then again into the kitchen. Claire, in the playpen in the living room, squeals when she hears her father’s voice.