My Oxford Year(71)
Antonia slowly but deliberately descends the stairs. William points his cigarette at her, his face contorted, a bomb ready to go off.
I reach for the door handle; I think better of it. Because Antonia calmly takes one more step down to William, bringing herself eye level with him.
I’ve never seen two people speak so clearly, yet wordlessly, to each other.
William finally moves. He goes to toss his cigarette, but Antonia snatches it from him. She takes a long drag, tips her head back, and exhales. She looks back at William and tosses it onto the pavement. William hangs his head, but looks up at his wife, a conqueror who has been conquered. She is right there for him.
She takes his shoulders as he falls forward, the top of his head finding a place to rest between her breasts. His hands find her hips, settling there with long-held familiarity. She runs her palms down the length of his back, up and down, up and down, the way you rub a dog when it’s come and put its head in your lap. William turns to the left, toward me, and I see his eyes are closed, his lips a tight, straight line, a mask of tension. Antonia drops her head back and looks up at the sky, mouth open, sucking in air.
I don’t know whether it’s the sight of their unguarded pain or intimacy that causes me to finally turn away, but I do.
I walk back into the parlor to find Jamie still on the couch. His eyes open as I approach. “Listen,” he begins.
“No, stop. Just stop, Jamie. Enough. I’m sorry they ambushed you. Just to be clear, I didn’t ask them to come. But I’m not sorry I called them. They have a right to know what’s happening to their son.”
“You don’t want to get involved in this, Ella. It doesn’t concern you.”
“It does. You know why? Because I’m the one who’s here now.” I’m channeling Antonia. So when Jamie opens his mouth to protest, I continue. “You told me nothing’s changed. And I believed you in that moment because I wanted to, but, Jamie. Everything’s changed.” I watch this land in his eyes, the sad recognition of a truth denied. “It doesn’t have to stop us, this.” I gesture between us. “But we can’t ignore it either.”
I sit down on the edge of the coffee table, right in front of him, knees to knees. “You know me well enough by now to know that I like having opinions.” He snorts at this. “But luckily for you, I’m good at it. People pay me for my opinions, but I’m giving them to you for free. So keeping things from me isn’t going to keep me from having opinions. It’s just going to keep me from having informed opinions. Which is pointless.” I take his hand. I take a risk. “Do you want me here?”
He looks into my eyes and I get a flash of the Jamie from our first tutorial. “Of course.”
“Then treat me like I’m here. Don’t shut me out. Don’t act like it’s already June eleventh. Because it’ll come soon enough.”
After a moment, Jamie sighs. “So we carry on, then, together?”
I nod. “Together. We’ll go in March. The weather will be better anyway.” Everything will be better, I tell myself.
After a moment, he picks up my hand, bends it back at the wrist, and kisses the palm. He lets his lips linger there. His eyes close. He inhales. He murmurs, “‘We are here as on a darkling plane. Where ignorant armies clash by night.’” He opens his eyes, looks over my hand at me. His eyes, though tired, call to me like midnight pools. The hardest part of this is the fragility. The shroud of look-don’t-touch over these moments of connection. The are-you-all-right-how-do-you-feel filter.
He drops his head. I reach out and run my hand through his hair. He turns his head into my palm, like a cat. He leans forward, and places the top of his head on my chest, between my breasts.
“I swear,” he mutters. “If that man is day, I’m night.”
His hands find my hips.
He turns his head to the left.
As I begin rubbing my hands down his back all I can think is, Day and night are just two sides of the same planet.
Chapter 24
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, A.H.H., canto 50, 1850
Ever thought about what it would be like to set up shop on a bathroom floor? I hadn’t either. Now I’m an expert. I could teach workshops.
The secret is cushions. Pillows don’t cut it. They’re for amateurs. You want a big, sectional, one-piece cushion off an Oxfam couch placed perpendicular to the toilet. You’ll want a blanket that’s breathable (no microfiber, even though it would be easier to clean) that he can throw off depending on his internal temperature. You’ll also want a space heater for the cold days, an oscillating fan for the adrenal fatigue days, and—this is crucial—find a cleaning product with a scent that doesn’t make him more ill than he already is. Last but not least, find a video online that teaches you (step-by-step, it’s harder than you’d think) how to convert a regular light switch into a dimmer. Why? So that, when he’s dashing into the bathroom at three A.M., he can avoid that refrigerator-light-right-in-the-face experience. You’ll learn that light can be painful.
I like to sit, as I am doing now, on the marble countertop, my back against the mirror, a book on the 1832 Reform Bill in my lap. Jamie moves slightly, restlessly. My senses attuned, I know what’s coming. He throws off the blanket and pivots toward the toilet. I sit forward, but he holds out a hand. Wait. He hovers over the bowl for a moment, testing the waters, so to speak. I give him space, but I watch him like a hawk. Sometimes Jamie gets faint when he vomits, and about a month after he started the trial he lost consciousness and cut his forehead open on the edge of the toilet-paper holder. That face I once thought was too perfect to be handsome now has a white scar right through its left eyebrow. I got my man-with-a-story face, after all. After that, I insisted (and he finally acquiesced) on joining him in here.