Kathleen Valentine (4 page)

"Flynnie, for most people lobster is a treat. We don’t live on it all summer."
"Most people don’t go diving every few days."
"Yeah." I pick up the yellow legal pad by the sofa. He is working on a poem. "Lobster-diving isn’t a popular sport in Kentucky."
"No wonder you left it." He assembles the ingredients for his masterpiece on the counter. Everything Flynnie has ever cooked for me was delicious. "Why do people live in places like that?"
The power goes out just as we are sitting down to eat. Flynnie fires up the oil lamps and the soft flickering glow makes the room even cosier.
"One of these days, I’m going to rig up a way to run the CD player on lamp oil," he says but the rain is hammering the roof so hard we wouldn’t hear it anyway.
We clear the dishes away in silence, the rain isn’t letting up and it makes conversation more like a shouting match.
As I stack the plates in the drying rack the little bird in the cuckoo clock cuckoos eleven.
"Are you staying?" he asks not looking at me.
"I guess so."
He nods and gets me a clean white t-shirt from his dresser. "Here, you get first turn in the bathroom."
While Flynnie splashes around in his bathroom, I snuggle down in his comfortable bed and stare up at the rain pelting the skylight above. This is how it is with Flynnie and me. I get my feelings hurt, or have a bad day, or just feel lonely, so I climb Flynnie’s bluff and he makes everything alright. He comforts me and bolsters my ego. He makes me dinner and invites me to spend the night. We crawl into his warm bed, chat for awhile and then drift off to sleep. Deep in the night a foghorn blows, Max barks in his sleep, or a ship’s bell clangs in the channel. Sleepily we move into each others’ arms. That’s when the real enchantment starts for then Flynnie is at his best.
We do not speak. We pretend this is all happening in a dream. Flynnie makes love to me so sweetly, so deeply, so caressingly that I am reduced to the tender, beautiful, lovable girl that he seems to see me as but which I can never accept. When finally the first pink of dawn grows out of the far horizon I sleep the best sleeps of my life.
It is always the same. When I wake there is coffee on the stove and hot muffins on the table with a note saying "gone fishing" or "diving with Danny" or "business on the mainland", followed by "hope your day is wonderful." And the next time we see each other we act as though nothing has happened.
Flynnie carries an oil lamp to the bed and when he is snuggled in beside me, blows it out and puts it on the floor. He slides his arm under my head and says, "Sweet dreams."
"Flynnie," I say, "do you love me?"
There is a long silence filled with rain and distant fog horns.
"Yes," he says. "I do."
"Why haven’t you ever said that to me before?"
He rolls onto his side and traces my cheekbones with his fingertips. "Good question," he says finally. "I guess because I know that you’re still looking for Mr. Wonderful and I ain’t him." He sighs. "And I’m tired of getting my heart broken."
"Oh, Flynnie." I kiss his fingertip and move closer to him.
He leans over and kisses me softly. "Go to sleep, Babe."
"No," I whisper. "I don’t want to keep pretending nothing happens when we’re together. I don’t want to wake up in an empty bed tomorrow."
He is quiet for a long time. "When you pretend something doesn’t happen, it makes it easier when it stops happening."
He is lying very still not touching me. I push back the quilt and touch his face with my fingertips drawing them along the plane of his hard, lined cheeks and down through the prickle of his beard.
"You’re a beautiful man, Flynnie," I whisper. I slip my arms around him kissing his mouth softly. "You’re the most beautiful man I know."
The sound he makes is strange—half a laugh, half a sob.
"I’m going to make everything alright," I tell him, snuggling close, sliding my leg between his thick, bowed legs. "I’m going to make sure you never get up and leave me again."
In the darkness I feel his smile.

DANSE AVEC MOI

Jean-Luc has powerful arms. He is not a large man but every bit of him is steely and intense. Just now his arm around my waist crushes me against him and the pressure of his thighs against mine are determined and single-minded. I gasp for breath and he tilts his head back to look at me with those ice blue eyes. He whips me around effortlessly and smiles. I am not a small woman but when he holds me like this I am a child, a rag doll, a puppet on the strings of his private rhythms.
His face is inches above mine and I can smell the intoxicating fragrance of him—a mixture of pine boughs and leather, wine and fresh air. He looks as though he is going to kiss me. It is a maddening habit of his that he will let his mouth come so close to mine that I burn for its touch—then he pulls back and looks at me teasing. The one thing he knows—more than any truth on this earth—is how much I yearn for him.
He tightens his grip on me and turns again, carrying me with him. He throws back his head and laughs with the turn. It is so hot here. He doesn’t seem to notice the heat but I am not accustomed to these steamy tropic-like nights. I find the air thick and suffocating.
The music stops. My feet return to the ground. He steadies me then guides me to the open door. Outside lanterns hang in the giant pin oak trees creating dozens of little moons orbited by thousands of tiny night creatures.
Old women sit on the porch fanning themselves with dried palmetto leaves, chattering in the exotic staccato of this beguiling music they speak. I have only heard this language since coming here with Jean-Luc. Now that I am his wife he can bring me with him to visit his family and the people he has loved all his life. During all the years we lived together in the Northern city that is our home his rare trips home were solitary ones. Whether his family knew that he shared his life and his bed with a woman I did not know but now that we wear matching rings I am welcome among them. To me this is an unimaginable world.
When he walked into my office and my life years ago I could not have envisioned this elegant, reserved man with his portfolio of sophisticated illustrations and softly accented voice in this remote and torrid swamp land.
In the shadows of the night he takes my face in his hands and kisses me as no one else in the world can kiss me. His kisses stir rivers in me that I never knew I possessed before him.
"Ah, Bebe," he whispers brushing aside my hair and letting his breath cool my ear. "You are so exquisite." And he kisses me breathless.
The old women stop rocking and there is tittering. Jean-Luc releases me saying he will get us wine. I lean back against the wall gulping sweet night air and he strides along the porch flirting with the old women in the odd music of their language. They laugh and slap his legs and backside with their fans. I watch his solid, compact body in fine white shirt and tan trousers until he disappears into the room filled with heat and light and laughter. No one from our world, from the publishing house where I spend my days surrounded by technology and academics, from the design studio where he creates as ably with PC and stylus as with pen and ink, would imagine him in this environment.
"It’s my parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary next month," he said one morning as we sat over our Sunday breakfast of café au lait, brioche and apricots. "I think that would be a nice time for them to meet you."
Light streamed through the clerestory windows of our loft. Music from the CD player was slow and dreamy. I love our Sunday mornings together—filled with music, good food, laziness and lovemaking. We are still newlyweds though we have been together a long time.
"How wonderful," I said. "How long will we be gone?"
"A week maybe. We can fly down for the party and spend a few days with them and then I’ll show you New Orleans. You’ll love New Orleans."
In his soft drawl the words New Orleans sounded like a mirage of pastel light and carnival music. New Orleans, I knew, was his destination on the few occasions when he went "home". The prospect of going there together excited me.
"Yes," I said. "Can we eat in sidewalk cafes and go to jazz clubs?"
"We can hardly avoid it," he said smiling.
"Can we stay in the French Quarter?"
Jean-Luc has the most rapturously beautiful smile. It captured my heart the first time I saw it and has never lost its hold on me. He is a stern-looking man normally. Focused and not inclined toward nonsense. But when he smiles his light blue eyes sparkle and his teeth gleam, the long dimples that bracket his mouth soften his stern face and shatter the illusion of severity.
"We will do everything, Bebe, I promise."
From the air the Mississippi Delta looks like a great white scallop shell opening into the tropical blue of the Gulf of Mexico. Jean-Luc wears the headphones of his iPod. From his relaxed expression you would think he is listening to music but I know better. My husband is an ambitious man with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Right now he is listening to audio books—masterpieces of world literature. The seat belt light flashes on and he removes the headphones and leans forward to kiss my shoulder.
"Look," I whisper pointing out the window. I always sit by the window when we fly because I love the mysteries below. He tucks the iPod into place beside his laptop and closes the leather case filled with pens and brushes and books and drawing pads. His illustrations are exquisitely rendered and he works on them obsessively. He says they are his children and he cannot bear to be away from them for even a day.
On the ground he shoulders the garment bags and I carry the large box wrapped with golden paper and gold ribbons. It contains the carrickmacrosse tablecloth I chose for his parents. It is an elegant gift—one any mother would adore. The first thing I notice when we step from the body of the plane is the heat—heavy, intense and penetrating—a feeling I soon learn to dread.
At the car rental desk he thumbs through the plastic cards in his wallet and selects the all-purpose platinum one. The girl behind the desk is coffee-colored and beautiful. She looks at him in an open way that I find disturbing but he appears not to notice.
It is one of the great enigmas of our relationship that we find each other so alluring. Despite his thinning hair and hard features I find him utterly devastating and the fact that he finds my lush curves so enticing awes me. After a life time of diets I have finally stopped trying to change my body thanks to his adoration of it.
It never occurred to me that his family would live anywhere in Louisiana other than New Orleans. When we head northwest out of the city he tells me that it will be a three hour drive. I am astonished. My refined husband bears no resemblance to a small town boy. After we travel through an endless sea of open grain fields and enter the dense, moss-covered swamplands I am speechless.
The population of his town is less than that of the building I work in. The houses are small, wooden and neat with large, continually occupied front porches. The trees are mammoth. Their branches extend across entire yards, propped up here and there by metal poles. The people are like Jean-Luc, compact, dark and handsome. They treat us like celebrities. His parents cannot do enough for us. We are given the only room in the house with an air conditioning unit—one which Jean-Luc bought for them years earlier but which they never use. It is a blessing for me.
Watching my husband here is fascinating. I feel I do not know him as he chats in this curious, lovely language. He introduces me as "ma femme Beverly" to women who clap their hands together and kiss my cheeks. To men who catch me round the waist, twirl me around and pronounce me something that I do not understand but which makes Jean-Luc laugh.
He laughs a lot here. He sits on the porches with his feet on railings drinking wine and, when he remembers my handicap, translating the conversation for me. He goes fishing early in the morning and returns slightly drunk bearing lines of the ugliest looking fish I have ever seen. He takes me to the only clothing shop in town and buys me dresses of soft, gossamer-light cotton in luscious colors—deep rose, violet and seafoam green. They drift over my body making me look wanton and voluptuous. He presents me with a pair of gold hoop earrings big enough to wear as bracelets.
And we dance. Every night there is a party. Everyone goes—children, old people, teenagers and long-married couples. The food is surpassed in quantity only by its quality. The music is lively filled with guitars, violins and accordions. My husband does not miss a dance. I have never danced with him before except for a polite waltz at some company function. I watch his face and the laugh lines I never noticed before are deep and beautiful. He holds me tightly when we dance, carrying me with him. There is such joy in him. I cannot stop looking at him—at the way he moves and talks and laughs amid these people. He flirts with all the women and banters with all the men. He is proud to bring me among them. He caresses my face when he talks to me, holds me close against him as we walk together as he would never do in the city. He kisses me often. Everyone looks at us and smiles but he only looks at me.
After the parties he brings me home to his parents house and makes love to me so slowly, lingeringly, taking half the night. He has become a man I scarcely glimpsed before.
Tomorrow we leave for New Orleans. I will be more at ease in a city, a place more familiar to me but I fear to lose this man who captivates me so. This morning he woke me early and took me down to the bayou. In a wooden boat we rowed out into the gray mists rising through veils of Spanish moss sweeping the still waters. He made love to me as soft coral light infused the pale morning haze and brown pelicans watched from tree branches.
I am wearing the rose-colored dress tonight. Because it pleases him so. I sit on the porch rail as I wait watching flashes of heat lightning in the distance, wondering if I could ever be part of this world. I feel the brush of his thigh as he steps over the rail and straddles it behind me. He snuggles me tightly against him lifting a glass of wine to my lips.
"Très adorable, Bebe," he whispers in my ear. He brushes aside my hair and kisses my neck.
"I love you, Jean-Luc," I say turning.
He kisses the wine from my lips and says, "J’taime, Bebe." His hands caress my hips and thighs. I melt from the heat of my love and the night, longing for this dreamworld to claim us both.
Inside the music begins again. I turn to him hungry for his mouth. He pulls away, stands and takes my hands.
"
Danse avec moi, Bebe
."
"What would you rather do?" I gasp. "Dance or make love?"
He laughs and pulls me to my feet. "
Ce qui est la différence?
" he asks.