Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (10 page)

During the walk back to Music Street—past the field of sheep, past the pomelo house, the swans, the store, and at last the church—I had time to reconsider my day’s itinerary. Instead of turning right down that light-filled, tree-lined street, I could return to the school to observe the children, help the teachers grind the flour and knead the bread, or I could cross the state road to the library and put in a few extra hours (though extra hours were typically discouraged) or I could go to the church and confess my sinful thoughts, not to the priest, who was likely not in, but to the imported statues who presided over the stained-glassd nave and to the rays of sun that streamed colorfully through them or—and this was the least appealing choice of all—I could continue on to the apartment, where I could read a book in translation about foreigners in love, Var’s many emissions accompaniment to my act of martyred devotion.

I lingered at the corner of Music Street and the state road holding the metal signpost. I circled the pole briefly, as if to show someone, anyone—the priest who might have been crossing the grass from the church to the refectory, a town employee who happened to be standing at an upstairs window looking down, someone in a car driving past who was extraordinarily observant—that I felt, if only for a few moments, a painful pin of hesitation, along with several preemptive stabs of regret. Then, overcome by the tedium of my other choices and by the hot feeling of pleasure that traveled briskly through me when I gazed in the direction of that snowy, forbidden street, the dirt road, the woods, I let go of the sign and walked quickly toward our meeting place.

I saw, even before I saw the young man, that the first icicles were beginning to form on the waterfall. A row of frozen phalli seemed a chilly portent. I sat down on the bench next to him (though not touching him) but could not speak, so struck down was I by the realization that despite my modern American hairstyle, my explicit fantasy life, and my shamefully inappropriate invitations, I was, at heart, a tea-loving English librarian, the result of a well-mannered curmudgeon and a prudish ex-nun, who could not possibly make advances upon a man in a public place, most certainly not a man as young as the one in question. The pinprick of guilt I had felt at the crossroads coursed through me like a hideous transfusion.

And yet I was also calm. I suffered calmly for I possessed within myself a faith, born of desire, that everything would right itself in the end. Meanwhile, the sight and sound of the water persisted like emblems of pleasure that, as time passed and we watched, were rushing away from us.

I conferred briefly and to the point with myself as with an unfamiliar woman upon whom everything depends:
Is this truly what you want to do?
I asked.
Yes
.
Are you willing to take responsibility for your actions?
(Siobhan’s voice.)
Of course
.
Do you realize the gravity of the situation? I do!
Ecstatic as a deranged bride, all my thoughts turned faithfully toward consummation.

As if ethical considerations were not enough, the snow softly and steadily continued to fall; had I been bold enough to linger with him at the bench, we would have soon found ourselves covered like two iced dolls upon a cake.

“Shall we go for a stroll?” I said aloud. By then he must have thought I had lost my nerve.

To show the young man I meant business, I strode ahead of him, returning to the trail we had carefully come down on. Instead of turning left back over the pond I walked tentatively right through a dense tunnel of trees I knew led to a gated garden, and beyond that, a house. It was a path I generally avoided but I turned to it now like an old, forgotten book, with the hope that I might open it and find something new.

He walked closely behind me. I had already begun to expect this. The sight of his snowy footprints following mine no longer filled me with fear for my personal safety but I felt a faint sense of menace at the thought of our imprints being seen together, the fact of our leaving evidence behind, however fleeting. I was intermittently startled by the simple fact of his presence, of which his footprints were a stark reminder. I was like a reader on a train who is so absorbed by her book that she slips in and out of contact with her surroundings—one moment forgetting her destination, the next jolted by signs of its imminent proximity.

Like spring, winter has its share of newborn openings and fresh paths. In the absence of leaves, another world is illumined; the ancient ways become more evident. Walking through the tunnel of snow-lined branches was like traveling inside a long cage of the most intricate ribs. The cage was still, black trimmed with white, while we were red as a beating heart within it. The pond was on our left. I scanned the trees on the right for openings. I took the first one I saw. The young man was silent. He was an excellent follower. Not once did he fall behind or encroach too closely upon me. I searched for shelter of any kind; I would have settled for a large tree. I wondered if he knew I was plunging ahead aimlessly with nothing more than a libidinal sense of purpose to guide me.

The path narrowed and rose up. I sensed we were nearing something. At last I saw, at the top of the next ridge, a small gray house backed by a stand of towering black trees that all leaned slightly to the left like meddlesome spectators. Miss Marple-like, I scanned the path in front of us for footprints but it was smooth. I turned back to look at him. “Here,” I said, nodding as if to say, “Here is the place I was looking for,” when in fact I meant, “Here. It will have to be here. There is nowhere else.”

He nodded as if he had heard and understood both versions. The attentive quality of his silence moved me; it seemed suited to the priesthood. What a frightfully attractive priest he would have made. I smiled at the thought and waited for him to join me.

I felt the need to pause before the house. It was a Cape Cod cottage with a chimney and one snow-covered window on each side of the door. Snow had collected as well on the front steps. The threshold looked like a wedding cake.

“Do you want to go back?” I asked and turned to look him in the eye, that dark evasive eye. I felt morally obligated to give him a last chance to escape.

“No,” he said quickly and shook his head. As he did so, some of the real snow that had fallen onto the snowflake pattern of his hat fell to the ground. “Do you?” he asked. It was his first question of the day, his second in our short history.

Slowly, methodically, I repeated his question to myself. I did not charge forth unthinkingly. Indeed, I proceeded mindfully as a Buddhist; his posing of the question only infixed my desire for him.

“God, no,” I said. I had never been so sure of anything in my life and I was not decisive by nature. I placed my black boot festively upon the frosted steps. The door was fastened with a simple iron latch. As I lifted it, though I reminded myself repeatedly that the path had been smooth, the steps white, I could not rid myself of the feeling that we were on the verge of intruding upon someone.

The door opened easily and quietly. There was no one inside. The only sounds were the soles of our boots scuffing the wood floor. He began at once to remove his hat and coat, which alarmed me, I could not help but read his movements as foreshadowing. The thought of him soon shedding the rest electrified and petrified me.

Petrification being closer to my natural state, I stood in my coat and hat and inspected the house’s interior. It looked as if it were intended for one rather ascetic occupant. There was a small wooden table and one wooden chair at a window on the left. In the back left corner, a black wood-burning stove. A modest kitchen on the right and at the back and above us, a loft built crudely by hand.

I could have stood there all day gawking at the house’s unwrought interior, studying its architecture, speculating about its owner, had the young man not began to stomp the snow off his boots, in a manner that was uncharacteristically rambunctious. He seemed at once nervously excited and full of hesitation. It was only my fear of him losing patience that finally drew me up the loft’s treacherously steep stairs. Despite being raised in a home in which the wearing of shoes was banned, I couldn’t bear to take my boots off prior to ascending. It seemed entirely too suggestive. (What’s more I had a fear of slipping in my socks and falling to my death in advance of our encounter.) At the top of the stairs I removed my boots. Dutifully the young man followed me but left his boots on.

The house smelled mildly of Murphy’s oil soap and cedar, the loft of dust and absence. Upstairs, resting on a plank floor, we found a twin mattress covered by a blanket. I sat down opposite the mattress and was grateful for the near dark; for the lack of windows, the impossibility of eyes peering in at us. There was only an inverted triangle filled with horizontal slats. My own eyes soon adjusted. (Soon enough I would be grateful for that too.) As I took off my hat I was gripped by twin fears that I was supposed to be at the library or with Maria.

“What day is it?” I asked, trying to conceal my panic.

“Friday,” he muttered, sounding mildly offended, as if my ability to forget the day was tied to or perhaps synonymous with my ability to forget him.

“That’s right,” I said, involuntarily using the voice of a library proctor who’d administered an exam he’d passed easily. At the thought of it being my day off, of Maria being at the nursery until two, I relaxed slightly.

He stood next to the dangerously low railing and looked down as if contemplating suicide. I felt a wave of concern for him, joined with a new sense of responsibility. After luring him out of school through the snowy woods and into an abandoned house, was I not ethically obligated to seduce him? His cheeks were red with what? Shame? Arousal? Some tantalizing mixture of the two? Was he too suffering from a moral crisis or was he just cold? He looked ashamed. I took off my coat and moved toward him.

“Do you want to go back?” I asked yet again, unable to shush the relentless librarian in me who felt she ought to promptly return him to his homeroom.

“No,” he said quietly with the steady expression of one who does not wish to stray from the topic at hand. I touched his face, which seemed to make him happy, though the happiness was only evident in his eyes. His skin brought to mind Maria’s, the downy fur of baby animals hidden from view: asleep, untouchable, now unbelievably mine.

He may as well have been shirtless so apparent were the lines of his body in his white thermal shirt. One could see he would be well suited to a varsity sports team; when he moved he moved as if in service of a greater goal. And yet there was something sketch-like about him; perhaps it was merely youth, the impression he gave of one not quite frail but also not yet finished. I stifled the urge to say something idiotic about his beauty, grateful and amazed that I had any stifling power left whatsoever.

“I’m so frightened of you,” I said. “I’ve never been so frightened of anyone.”

“Are you being serious?” he asked, that dark look of his darkening a touch.

“Of course I’m being serious,” I snapped. Was it far-fetched to expect him to understand me?

“I’m not a scary person,” he said. “I’m a scared person.”

Was he being earnest? Or was he simply skilled at saying what needed to be said in moments of impatience? He hadn’t been laughing or even smiling as he said it. Perhaps I’d become suspicious in middle age.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered, laughing a little of that gravelly laugh, the sound of which pressed a button somewhere within me. I was satisfied with his answer and resolved not to confuse him with anyone I had known before, to approach him with an open mind, as a book I had yet to read. Though the very thought, pathetically, reminded me of Var. I had to wonder if all our problems were in fact my problems, if I would carry them from bed to bed like a lady’s purse: the same tissues, the same compact, the same small bills. The matter of the stuck window asserted itself but I turned with even greater assertiveness away from it.

The house, which had seemed warm when we entered, now felt cold as a barn. I wished I could put my coat back on without sending the wrong message. We would have to touch soon, if only to keep our teeth from chattering. I didn’t want to hear his teeth chatter, nor did I want him to hear mine.

“Shall we get under?” I asked, eyeing the blanket, afraid he would decline. Surely a power differential exists between a highly attractive young man and a moderately attractive middle-aged woman. I felt frightfully unsure of myself.

As he nodded and bent down to remove his boots, I avoided seeing his feet. Even dressed in socks, feet are disconcertingly intimate. Though now there are moments at the library or in the apartment just before I drift off to sleep when I close my eyes and picture them—his feet, his teeth, any part of him, as clearly as I can just for the pleasure of it. My ability to do so, evidence of our intimacy. But then I had never seen him read a book or drink a glass of water or eat a piece of bread; only twice had I seen him sit in a chair. How could I possibly have seen his feet? I felt then the extreme disorder of things; I felt a compassion for us having gone about everything in such an unnatural sequence. I made my way to the mattress, (as if I could escape him there).

To cope with my mounting fear I examined the loft. Even as he lay down next to me, I was studying the rafters, the crude wooden pegs that had been used in place of nails, the stainless steel hook upon which I had neglected to hang my coat. There was a deep silence yet no sound of air in or out. It appeared that, like me, he was holding his breath. He kept his body at a polite distance, close enough so that I did not feel rejected but not close enough to touch mine. The blanket, which he had pulled up to his neck and whose olive green I could just make out, was, I realized with delight, virgin wool, incongruous with the ascetic’s house and perfectly suited to us. Perhaps the owner received it as a gift from someone with slightly more luxurious tastes than her own. Or perhaps her skin was very sensitive, someone like Var or Maria who suffered from psoriasis and could not wear common wool next to their skin. These were my quotidian thoughts as my young lover lay next to me for the first time. Despite my romantic notions about the two of us inhabiting an island separate from the main, in our first moments together we were two islands, near but not touching, each of us surrounded by perilous depths.