The Disinherited (35 page)

The ring was knotted to the ribbon, blackened and deformed, as if it had been held briefly in a fire. Erik worked the knot free with his nails, took the ring and tried it on his little finger. It was small, barely fitting the first joint. The girl’s hand was stretched out on the pillow. In sleep her face was pale and child-like. He took her hand and held the ring beside it, put it on the second-last finger of her left hand, wedding band, wondered if this was the poet’s intention, to have the ring passed through the family this way, as a sign. The girl sighed and turned over in her sleep, took her hand away and slid it under the covers, between her knees. Miranda would be asleep now. She had told him that Katherine Malone would be staying there with her, the two of them together, they had lots to talk about, Miranda said. Erik switched off the light and got into bed with the girl, leaving his underwear on, careful not to touch her. But as he settled in she moved against him, her back against his back, the soles of her feet flat against his calves. Her breathing was still slow and regular. He tried to breath with her, adjust his body to hers, convince himself he was sleepy even though it was less than twelve hours since he had woken up. With his eyes closed he could see the cemetery, Brian’s face as he held him by the throat. If Richard had left him the farm it would have only been a problem. His body was still and his breathing was slow but something inside him fought this, was still high-pitched and alarmed. He could take care of this girl, take her out to Edmonton with him and help her have her baby. Every night they would sit cross-legged in his new apartment, all the cards face-down, picking them up in pairs. He was drifting in and out of sleep, dreaming that the land would finally rebel, rise up and out from under the concrete, toppling buildings and smashing apart roads and factories as thoughtlessly as an animal shrugging off flies. The girl had turned and put her hand on his belly, moved down and tugged
at his underpants. He pulled them off and rolled on top of her. She had her hands on his hips, belly pushed against his, her hands on his hips pulling him inside of her, her head arched back on the pillow, mouth open and smiling. Slipped her hands up his sides onto his back and shoulders; he could feel the ring catching on his back, it was harmless, he would leave this girl to live her life without him; her fingers soothed where the ring disturbed, played up and down his spine. The tension in him faded and inverted, everything was dulled, hardly awake. He tried to sense the body in her, this life she carried which he had mistaken for death, as if either extreme was equally dangerous, to feel the extra heartbeat of this hidden child, to feel something for this girl who moved beneath him in harmony with Richard’s death, finally drawing the tears out of him, opening his throat and his belly but knowing nothing of what she was doing, living out her own fate in this one night they borrowed from each other; the girl’s mouth was open, neither smiling nor frowning and the moon shining through the window caught her teeth like a row of gravestones, a row of grey-green gravestones, a row of grinning masks of the poet; and at the end of the row, identical to all the others but cut off from them was his own face, transparent and desperate that there would be something to forgive him, swallow and forgive like a mother who has only imagined her children; and then the girl made small noises, her body fluttering, her mouth closed and turned into itself, its own release which was absolutely private and removed from him, this new beginning.