Shakespeare's Trollop Part 10

That stopped Beanie's anger like a dash of water; that question of morality, and the fact that she'd recollected that I was still standing there listening to all this family turmoil.

"Thank you for saving Uncle Joe C," Beanie said more formally. "The police tell me that you saw someone in his yard before the fire started?"

"Yes."

"But you couldn't see who it was?"

"Too dark."

"Probably some juvenile delinquent. These kids today will do anything, anything they see on television."

I shrugged. Beanie had always reduced me to gestures and monosyllables.

"But it bothers me that it was cigarettes," Beanie said, and then she sounded as if she were talking to a real person, me, instead of The Help.

I knew this from Bobo, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be wise to reveal that. "The fire was set with cigarettes?" That was expansive and unrevealing enough.

"Joe C says he didn't have any. Of course, the fire marshal thought he might have set it himself, smoking in the living room. But Joe C says no. Would you like to go in and talk to him?"

"Just to see how he's doing."

"Bobo, take Lily in, please." It might have been framed as a question, but it was clearly a demand.

"Lily," Bobo said, holding open the wide door to Joe C's room. As I went by him, he lay his hand on my shoulder briefly, but I kept right on walking and kept my eyes ahead.

Joe C looked like he was a thousand years old. With the liveliness knocked out of him, he seemed like a pitiful old man. Until he focused on me and snapped, "You could have moved a little faster, girl! I got my slippers scorched!"

I hadn't spelled it out to myself, but I suddenly realized that now that Joe C didn't have a house, I didn't work for him. I felt my lips curl up. I bent down to him. "Maybe I should have just walked on by," I said very softly, but he heard every word. His face told me.

Then I squirmed inwardly. Just as his trembling jaw had meant me to. No matter how mean he was, Joe C was very old and very frail, and he would not let me forget that, would trade on it as much as he could. But I could walk away, and that was what I chose to do.

I walked away from the old man, and from his great-nephew, and I closed my heart against them both.

Chapter Ten.

I was sickened by the world and the people in it, most of all by myself. I did something I hadn't done in years. I went home and went to bed without bathing or eating. I just stripped, brushed my teeth, pulled on a nightgown, and slid between my clean sheets.

The next thing I knew, I was peering at the bright numbers on the digital clock next to the bed. It was seven minutes after three. I wondered why I was awake.

Then I knew there was someone in the room with me.

My heart began that terrible pounding, but through its rhythm I heard the sounds of clothing being removed, the zipper of a gym bag, and it came to me that I was not attacking the intruder because on some level I had already recognized who was in my bedroom.

"Jack?"

"Lily," he said, and slid under the covers with me. "I took an earlier flight."

My heart slowed down a little, to a rhythm that had more to do with another kind of excitement.

The smell of him, his skin and hair and deodorant and cologne and clothes, the combination of scents that said Jack Jack filled my senses. I'd planned on making him wait to come down to Shakespeare, wait until I'd talked to him, told him I'd been unfaithful to him-sort of-so he could decide without seeing me whether or not to leave me for good. But in the private dark of my room, and because Jack was as necessary to me as water, I reached behind his head, my fingers clumsy with sleep, and worked the elastic band off his ponytail. I ran my fingers through his hair, dark and thick, separating it. filled my senses. I'd planned on making him wait to come down to Shakespeare, wait until I'd talked to him, told him I'd been unfaithful to him-sort of-so he could decide without seeing me whether or not to leave me for good. But in the private dark of my room, and because Jack was as necessary to me as water, I reached behind his head, my fingers clumsy with sleep, and worked the elastic band off his ponytail. I ran my fingers through his hair, dark and thick, separating it.

"Jack," I said, my voice sad to my own ears, "I have some things to tell you."

"Not now, okay?" he murmured in my ear. "Let me just. . . just let me . . . okay?"

His hands moved purposefully. I will say this for us; we put each other under a spell in bed together. Our troubled pasts and our uncertain future had no place in that bed.

Later, in the darkness, my fingers traced the muscles and skin and bones I knew so well. Jack is strong and scarred, like me, but his is visible all the time, a single thin puckered line running from the hairline by his right eye down to his jaw. Jack used to be a policeman; he used to be married; and he used to smoke and drink too much, too often.

I started to ask him how his case, the one that had taken him to California, was going; I thought of asking him how his friends Roy Costimiglia and Elizabeth Fry (also Little Rock private detectives) were doing. But all that really mattered was that Jack was here now.

I drifted off to sleep, Jack's breathing even and deep by my side. At eight, I woke up to the smell of coffee perking in the kitchen. Across the hall I could see the bathroom door opening, and Jack stepped out in his blue jeans and nothing else. His hair was wet and dragging over his shoulder. He'd just shaved.

I watched him, not thinking of anything, just feeling: glad to see him here in my house, comfortable with the warmth in my heart. His eyes met mine, and he smiled.

"I love you," I said, without ever meaning to, as if the sound of the words was as natural as breathing. It was something I'd held inside myself like a secret code, refusing to reveal it to anyone, even Jack, who'd devised it.

"We love each other," he said, not smiling now, but this look was better than a smile. "We have to be together more."

This was going to be the kind of conversation we needed to be dressed to have. Jack looked so clean and buff that I felt sleazy and crumpled in contrast.

"Let me get a shower. We'll talk," I said.

He nodded, and padded down the hall to the kitchen. "You want some pancakes?" he called, as though the earth had not just shifted to another axis entirely.

"I guess," I said doubtfully.

"Cut loose," he advised me as I stepped into the bathroom. "It's not every day we work up enough guts to talk about how we feel."

I smiled to myself in the bathroom mirror. It was still cloudy from Jack's shower. In it I saw a softer, gentler version of Lily; and since I'd hung it at just the right height, I couldn't see most of the scars. I avoided noticing them from long habit, avoided looking at them and thinking of what my body would look like without them. I did not remember exactly what my torso had been like with no white ridges, or my b.r.e.a.s.t.s without circles incised around them. As I did from time to time, I caught myself regretting I didn't have something more beautiful to offer Jack, and as I did every time, I reminded myself that he seemed to find me beautiful enough.

We eyed each other cautiously as we sat down to eat. Jack had opened the kitchen window, and the cool morning air came in with a gust of smells that meant spring. I heard a car start up and glanced at the clock. Carlton was going to the Singles Sunday-school cla.s.s at First Methodist, and he'd be home at twelve-fifteen, right after church. He'd change and then drive over to his mother's house for midday Sunday dinner; it would be pot roast and carrots and mashed potatoes, or baked chicken and dressing and sweet potatoes. I knew all that. I'd spent over four years learning this town and these people, making a place for myself here.

Before Jack and I even began our conversation, I knew I wasn't ready to leave. True, I had no family here in Shakespeare; true, I could clean houses as well in Dubuque (or Little Rock) as I could in Shakespeare. And true, my business had suffered a lot in the past year. But I'd won some kind of battle here in Shakespeare, and I wanted to stay, at least for now. I began to tense in antic.i.p.ation of a fight.

"I don't have to live in Little Rock," Jack said. I deflated as though he'd stuck a pin in me.

"I do a lot of my work by computer anyway," he continued, looking at me intently. "Of course, I'd still need to be in Little Rock part of the time. I can keep my apartment up there, or find a smaller, cheaper one. That'd be more to the point."

We were being so careful with each other.

"So you want to live with me here in Shakespeare," I said, to be absolutely sure I was hearing him right.

"Yes," he said. "What do you think?"

I thought of what I'd done yesterday. I closed my eyes and wished a lightning bolt would hit me now, to prevent me from ever telling Jack. But that didn't happen. We'd always been honest with each other.

"I kissed someone else," I said. "I won't let you hit me, but if it'll help you feel better, you can break something."

"You kissed someone," he said.

I couldn't look at his face. "It was an after-funeral thing."

"You didn't go to bed with ... ?"

"No." Did I really need to elaborate? Hadn't I been honest enough? Yes, I decided.

I stole a glimpse at Jack. I saw Jack's face tighten. Instead of hitting something, he looked like he himself had been hit. He was gripping the edge of the table.

"Is this someone . . . would this happen again?" he asked finally, his voice very hoa.r.s.e.

"No," I told him. "Never."

Gradually, his grip on the table relaxed. Gradually, his face looked human.

"How old are you, Lily?" he asked, out of the blue.

"Thirty-one," I said. "Thirty-two, soon."

"I'm thirty-six." He took a deep breath. "We've both been through some times."

I nodded. Our names still cropped up in the news every now and then. ("After a brutal gang rape mirroring that of Memphis resident Lily Bard's, a Pine Bluff woman was admitted to University Hospital. . ." or "Today Undercover Officer Lonny Todd was dismissed from the Memphis police force after charges he had an improper relationship with an informant. Todd is the latest in a string of dismissals in the past four years on similar charges, beginning with the firing of Officer Jack Leeds, whose relationship with the wife of a fellow officer led to her murder.") "This is the best I've ever had it," Jack said. He was turning white as a sheet, but he went on. "You had a..." and he floundered there, stuck for a word.

"I had a moment of sheer stupidity."

"Okay." He smiled, and it wasn't a funny smile. "You had a moment of stupidity. But it won't ever happen again, because you said it wouldn't and you always keep your word."

I hadn't ever thought of myself as the epitome of honor, but it was true that I kept my word. I was trying not to be surprised that Jack was being so calm and level about this.

He seemed to be waiting.

"I said it wouldn't," I repeated. "And I always keep my word."

Jack seemed to relax just a little. He gave himself a little shake, picked up his fork and took a bite of his pancake. "Just don't ever tell me who," he said, not looking at me.

"You're getting so wise." Jack had a real problem with impulse control.

"It's taken me long enough." But his smile this time was a real smile. "So, you never answered me."

I took a deep breath. "Yes. I want you to move in. Do you think we'll have enough room here?"

"Could I put an office in the exercise room?"

A little stunned by how easily it had been settled, I nodded silently. I'd hung a punch-and-kick bag in the middle of the second bedroom. I could live without it. I'd use the kicking pads in the aerobics room at Body Time.

Then I tried to imagine Jack sharing my bathroom full-time. It was very small, and counter s.p.a.ce was next to none. I wondered what we would do with his furniture. How would we divide the bills?

We had just complicated our lives enormously, and I was scared of the change. There were so many details to work out.

"You don't look very happy," Jack said. He was eyeing me from the other side of the table.

"But I am." I smiled at him, and he got that witless look on his face again. "I'm scared, too," I admitted. "Are you, a little?"

"Yeah," He confessed. "It's been a while."

"At least one of us has had prior experience. I've never done this."

Jack took a deep breath. "Would you rather just go on and get married?" he asked, every muscle in his body rigid. "That might be good, huh?"

I had to take my own deep breath while I groped for the right words to tell him what I felt. I hate explaining myself, and only the fact that I simply couldn't hurt Jack impelled me go through the discomfort of it.

"If it wasn't for other people, I would marry you today," I said slowly. "You know how happy the papers would be if they found out? You know how people would pat us on the backs and congratulate us? 'Those two poor wounded souls, they've found each other.' "

Jack's face was beginning to collapse, so I hurried on with the rest. "But that's no reason for us to bypa.s.s any happiness we can have. You know what I would really like? I'd like to be married to you with not another soul in the world knowing about it, at least until it was old news."

Jack didn't know if I'd said yes or no. He was struggling to understand. I could tell by the way he learned toward me, his eyes focused on my face.

"It would be just for us," I said, sure I'd failed in what I was trying to convey. I had always been a private person.

"Married is what you would like?"

"Yes," I said, surprised at myself. "That's what I would like."

"To be kept secret?"

"Just for a while. I'd just like to get used to it before we told anyone."

"Now?"

"No." I shrugged. "Anytime. But they put the names of people who've applied for marriage licenses in the paper. How could we get around that? Providing you . . . ?" I felt very anxious as I waited for him to speak.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I'd like that, too." He looked sort of surprised to discover that he would, though. He put his hand over mine where it was resting on the table. "Soon," he finished.

I tried to imagine that Jack did not feel about me the way I felt about him. I tried picturing Jack tiring of me in a month or two, opting for some woman in Little Rock who was more convenient and less p.r.i.c.kly. I projected myself into that position of pain and rejection.

But I couldn't imagine it,- I didn't count on much in this life, but I counted on Jack's love. Though he'd just confessed it this morning, I'd known Jack loved me, and I'd known it with certainty.

I wasn't going to jump up and down and scream and run home to tell my mother we needed to pick out china and reserve the church. The time in my life I might have done that had long since pa.s.sed by. Now that I had Jack, I had everything I needed. I didn't need the congratulations and gifts of other people to confirm that.

"d.a.m.n," Jack said, grinning like a maniac. He jumped up and began swinging his arms as if he didn't quite know what to do. "d.a.m.n!"

I felt as radiant as if I'd been painted with light. Without knowing I was standing or moving I found myself glued to Jack from head to foot, our arms wrapped around each other, the smiles on our faces too silly for words.