The Sea of Light (18 page)

“Oh no. Talk, talk, talk.”

“It feels like a land mine.”

The mask falls into place and grins. “Don’t worry, okay? I’ll make it feel better.”

“For God’s sake, Bren—that is hardly the issue.”

Then she says it, out loud, for the second time in sixteen years:

Shut up, Chick. You talk too much.

She says it softly, though, and for a second the mask falls away, the tears refusing to spill are real, raw need mingling with fear on her fingertips touching me. Please, she says, please. And I know it’s wrong, but what I know offers no alternative. Something else seizes power. Tosses me up in the rift between body and mind. Mercy. Desire. With nothing to betray but a vase full of ashes. She rocks against me, I rock back, and I just can’t help it. I love her so.

*

A rule—one of Bren’s, in fact: When set in motion, physical acts appear graceful if unimpeded, allowed to find their natural rhythm and inevitable cessation. Stopped midway, however, they appear clumsy, full of error.

Another rule—one of mine: When error begins, analysis follows. This is the distinguishing quality of human nature.

So it is graceful, almost perfect, to move into a room with one hazy light on, pushing clothes slightly aside, and feel this swaying together, this swell that comes with the electric pulse of mouth on flesh. To hear breath, only breath, not know if it pours in and out of my own chest, or hers, motion of her hands against a thigh, then this fluttering wave of wet dissolution, crumbling of knees, curling up of toes, and the force spreads through each nipple, arches the back of my neck. I let my tongue trail the perimeter of her ear, can sense her making short, short sounds that seem lost, and urgent. But in the middle of this trembling half-blindness I feel wisdom rear its ugly head again. And I begin to see. That her eyes are shut tight against something monstrous. Her face remembering pain. She is pulling clothes off left and right, very quietly—mine, her own—in a terrible hurry. As if anxious to get this thing over with.

That’s when grace begins to elude me.

“Bren, wait.”

“No.”

“Can we just—”

She waves it away.

I sit on the bed’s edge, half-dressed, half in and half out of a deep, enveloping want. Light blurs the walls. She has opened her eyes now but doesn’t look up, concentrates on removing each sock, letting down a zipper, undoing buttons, until she is naked and, watching, I feel something push up inside me and cry to get out, examine the shape and breadth of shadows darkening her body, quick surge of pain in my own throat at this sudden rush of recognition: how much I adore that body, the skin taut over bone and muscle here, but a little flabby now with the onset of age there, altogether strong yet wildly imperfect—a body to be adored, and also forgiven. I ask myself if I can take the punishment of self-denial. Tell myself: Of course you can, lady, you’re not some saint in a frayed-rope shirt, and this is no demon and no angel but your friend here of sixteen years. You are both just women, nothing more, nothing less. In the twentieth century, thankfully, and not the fourteenth. Where there are no heavenly rewards, you say, and no hellish punishments—only life to be lived. So just do the right thing.

That’s when I decide not to fight the tide. Realize that I must not be the one who rejects, not tonight. Maybe she is making the right moves with the wrong person. Or else maybe the wrong moves with the right person. But only the future can show which is true.

For now, grace and perfection have fled utterly, clumsiness reigns. I offer a leg and she pulls a sock off with one strong motion that lacks even a touch of romance, tosses it emphatically to the floor, as if to say, It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. I offer the other leg. Same thing. Then stand, feeling cold and dry, peel down everything else I’m wearing, dump it all without ceremony, and sit completely naked on the bed. Doggedly, she sits beside me. I see it bubbling up just below the surface of her eyes and twitching lips, a barely suppressed panic. She is functioning, now, on stubborn automatic. Places a hand on each side of my neck, closes her eyes, pulls me forward to kiss. I press against her arms and feel them shaking. Run fingers over her breasts, where the nipples are soft and flat and the sweat is of fear, not arousal.

She hauls me down sideways on the bed.

That’s when I halt all the motion.

When I reach—simply, surely, as if I’ve done it a million times—hold her face calmly in my hands, thumbs stroking her eyelids, gently, until she opens them, and looks, and sees.

“Bren. I’ve known you so long,”

She hears, lets it sink in. For a moment, it seems she might cry. We watch each other’s eyes. Until she rips my hands away like scabs, clamps her own hands over my eyes and pushes with force so that I roll far away on the bed, blindfolded.

“Don’t,” she says fiercely. “Don’t look. Don’t you dare.”

*

Girls used to say it, say it all the time. At sleepover parties. In bathrooms. Locker rooms.
I’m getting undressed. Don’t look. Don’t look.

Most didn’t.

Some were like me, and—once in a while—would steal a peek.

I do that after a while. Peek across the bed, where Bren is stretched on her back over the peeled-down blankets, one arm covering her face. Her body’s tense, the muscles fixed, and she seems frozen in the soft light of the bedside lamp. After a while I move closer. I dare to pass a hand over shoulders, breasts, belly, then back up to neck and chin, run a hand over the arm she’s thrown across both eyes.

“Sweet lady. It’s all right.”

But I take my hand away. It’s all this touching in the first place that caused everything, anyway, caused such tension and terror.

I tell myself I should have known. Then accept the fact that I knew all along, just ignored it.

The radio alarm’s digital face glows bright green. Seconds shift rapidly. Minutes. Not touching seems to work. Soon her arm slides away to reveal the entire face, stiff with humiliation, apology. Her eyes meet mine. Silently say they are sorry, so sorry.

“Bren, it’s okay.”

“No.”

“It is. Don’t hurt over this. I think it was a mistake, you know? Maybe you’re just not ready to be touched.”

She blushes. Even in the dull light, I can see it, and am suddenly amused. Knowing so well how very properly mannered, controlled, terribly formal this woman can be. A stickler for propriety and discipline, stiff spinal pole, regular pain in the ass. And despite that, so sweet sometimes. So gentle, really. I’ve seen it, in the way she would touch Kay.

She clears her throat. “Do you mind if I turn out the light?”

“Go ahead.”

In the dark, her struggle is palpable. I sense it. And stay well on the other side of the bed this time, avert my eyes to watch the glow of Cambridge streetlamps filtering through blinds, listen to an occasional car pass by.

“Bren.”

I wait for a response that doesn’t come.

“Bren, look—do you need to be alone? You can tell me, you know.”

But she reaches for my hand, presses it lightly in hers. Then our hands rest together on the bed. Our fingers interweave. And I feel, suddenly, very tired. Capable of this, and no more: one hand, lightly holding. It makes me know, suddenly, certainly, that she was not the only one flayed by fear tonight; and this one action, this holding of hands, has taken all our strength.

She pressures my fingers. Her own are shivering.

“Chick—”

“What is it, sweetie?”

“The last few days with Kay, I saw something weird. It was once, when we tried—never mind.” She tells me fractured, half-comprehensible things then, in between long dead pauses. Something about objects washed with light, and burning. I encourage but she can’t continue. I wait. Finally feel her effort crumble on the other side of the bed.

I am praying silently now, thoughtlessly. Praying to any saint who might exist, and listen. To my own mother, dust in a dark, dark coffin, deep scar in my memory. Asking for assistance. Patience. For mercy and courage.

Holy Mary. Mother of God. Our light, our sweetness, and our hope. To you we something or other. Something. Or other. I’ve forgotten the words. To you we lift up our voices? To you? We cry. Maybe. Banished children of Eve. No. Yes. Banished children of Eden. Of Eden? Of paradise. Your different children, the ones locked out of paradise. Instruments. Of thy peace. So let me finally know it. You. The act of it. The art of you. Teach me the true act of love.

After a while I can feel her sleep. I ease our fingers apart, pull a sheet and blanket up to her chest. Then I leave space between us on the bed, huddle under blankets myself. Until I sleep, too.

*

She isn’t there in the morning. Actually, it’s Boz who does a perfect job of waking me up—licking my face all over, pressing into my belly with leathery tough paws. I pet, pat, pull at him. He grunts happily. Then flops down with his massive head against my breasts, gives me adoring glances.

Am I your new Kay? I ask him.

It doesn’t seem to matter.

The room is mine. Entirely familiar. Yet there’s a strange sensation, waking up in it now: as if the night is not over, is somehow still waiting to happen. I smell fresh coffee, hear water running. So I get up, naked and chilly, toss on a robe. I’m a sucker for fresh coffee. And, maybe, for other things.

Bren is rattling around the kitchen. She’s fully dressed, looks showered, spry, avoids my eyes.

“I walked him already.”

“Ah.”

“Coffee?”

“Sure. Black.”

I sit, feeling sleep’s crust on eyelids and lips. Things seem mildly surreal somehow, and I must look a mess. She’s whistling again—whatever monotonous tune she was whistling last night, just before we became graceful and then clumsy—and pours coffee into a mug, blows steam from her face as she hands it to me. The mug rattles out of her hands and scalding black spills over napkins, the tabletop, my lap, the chair. I jump, flapping drenched folds of robe.

“It’s okay!”

She’s thudded into her own chair and is pressing her cheeks with both fists, lips tightening. Boz slinks out of a corner and circles around us. I kneel beside her.

“Bren. Sweetheart. It’s okay.”

“I am such an idiot.”

“If you’re referring to last night, that was my mistake too. But talk to me. Please talk to me. Maybe it will help.”

She shakes her head,

“You can’t know unless you try.”

She breathes, a painful sigh. “I don’t—”

“That’s it, come on.”

“I just don’t remember how.”

“How?”

“I’ve forgotten.” She blushes. “How to make love, I think. The fear of it—it’s disgusting. I’ve forgotten that I ever was a lover.”

“When you’re ready, you’ll remember.”

“And here you are. My friend. But what do I do? I use you. I abuse you.”

“Listen, Bren, that takes two.”

I say this, knowing it’s a fruitless panacea, poor salve for profound wounds.

“No. You don’t understand.” She stifles herself, ashamed. “Kay and I—”

Then, I remember her struggle last night, and think I know what it is she can’t say.

I can imagine it, can attempt empathy, but in the end she is right—I wasn’t the one there—exposed minute by minute to the physical devastation of a lover, seeing someone whose form had once been beautiful and arousing become unrecognizable, distorted. Mopping up every conceivable type of bodily secretion. Trying, in the midst of all this, to cling to the memory of desire.

To watch friends die—even a parent—that’s different. Terrible, and all those things. But, in the end, less intimate. Not the same as watching the co-protector of your most tender vulnerabilities die, watching your own desire die with them. And if the love is there, you will fight it, fight against that extinguishing of desire, in any way you can.

“You don’t have to,” I say gently, “but if you want, you can talk about it.”

“It’s too—in
here”
—she massages her stomach. “But we would. Sometimes, even when she was really sick, we would. She didn’t feel—attractive. I mean, it wasn’t exactly the first thing on her mind. I think she just did it for me.”

“Made love?”

“Sure,” she says, wryly, “in a way. Something like that.”

I reach to touch her knee, her arm, tell myself to back off. And wonder if I can ease any of this pain for her, after all; wonder do I even have the right to
try. Because the pain is hers alone, in the end. Bren is the one who’ll drive back north this afternoon to face life for one in a house built for two. The bedroom she shared is half empty. The garden Kay nurtured on weekends will be dry now, shrubbery and grass unattended, and there is furniture accumulated over the course of a decade. Kay’s clothes are still hanging in the closet. Her insensitive relatives will continue to ask insensitive questions. Bren’s own family will, as usual, be more or less absent. There is no one there to share it with, because all these burdens are carried in secrecy—self-imposed secrecy, I say—a secrecy, she will claim, imposed by the world. Still, no one else can step inside the pain of that with her. Not even a best friend. Not even a best friend who loves her.

I can’t dent a piece of that armor, can’t pierce an ounce of isolation. Here I am: this imperfect servant of suffering humanity. And I cannot fix a goddamned thing.

“Listen to me, Bren. I’m your friend. I am here for you, I’m not going anywhere. I love you, sweetie—don’t you know? We can be pals who just hold hands if you want—”

“No!” It comes out a sob.