Her

Her response was sent four days later.

                I hadn’t really thought about whether I’m lonely or not. I suppose I don’t spend enough time dwelling on things to ever have it come up. I think this is kind of callous sounding or something, but maybe the anecdote is just to stay busy. Don’t sit around thinking about those people or whether or not you’re lonely and you probably won’t be lonely. I know that makes me sound simple, but I believe in the power of positive thinking.

David and I are having the best time that we’ve had in months. Being around him, even for a few days, reminds me that he’s the sort of person that I could spend a lifetime with, which seems kind of crazy to say at my age. Like, the other day, he just called me in the middle of the day, when he had this tiny little break at work, just to say that he was thinking of me. It’s nice to feel special, to feel loved. Have you ever felt that? If not, you’ll love it when it happens.

I think I understand what you are saying about living in the west. The feeling of the place is cavernous. It makes you want to write big poems about the grandeur of the soul. Out east, everything seems a bit more insular. I’m not sure which is better.

                After she awoke she sat for a while in bed. The sun made bits of shadow dance on the wall. She was sleeping in a yellow room, with two small square windows. It had been her boyfriend’s sister’s room until she left for college, and now she was inhabiting it, a stranger’s bed, a stranger’s room. Her toes were cold. The sheets were almost impossibly stiff and- tucked tightly beneath the mattress, so that she could not wrap the covers around her as she liked. Little drafts of cold occasionally slipped beneath the sheets with her and she shivered.

                The visit was going well. Her glasses were on the bureau next to her bed. She only put them on when she was by herself because she was certain they made her look librarian like and unpretty. The family breakfasts in this house were large and well attended events. In some ways, they unnerved her. Breakfasts at her family home were rare and haphazard. Often, she and her sister would eat in the living room, reading a book, or watching a show, while their parents finished up. The meal was never particularly formal.

                She found that she liked to ease into her mornings, slowly and surely. She enjoyed an hour or two of quiet in the morning. Something about the first voice of another person, if it came to early in the morning, was like a piece of glass being shattered on the floor. She knew it was silly and that everyone in the family meant well when they said, “Good morning, and how are you?” which she cheerfully answered, the color coming into her cheeks as she smiled brightly back at them, all the while wishing that she was back in bed or wandering some old country road, listening to the birds or the sound of a distant mower.

                If she lay in bed for a few moments longer perhaps she’d be ready for that sharp hello. Or better yet, better yet, maybe she could sneak outside before anyone else was up, walk down the driveway past the magnolias and find a quiet place to sit. Life is an interpretative act, a jigsaw puzzle spread out on the floor of the mind. What did his father mean when he said that he liked her choice of major? Why didn’t his mother offer her a glass of wine?

                She slipped out of bed, into her clothes and contacts and walked downstairs. Something was going to have to happen with her breath before she spoke to someone from within five feet. The house was old and the stairs creaked, reverberating in her mind as if they were fireworks booming. She wanted to be a ghost. She wanted to slip through walls and observe a conversation about herself without her being present. She had to walk through the kitchen to get to the front door and to her shoes. It felt like a really slow adventure novel.

                His mother was washing dishes at the sink. The kitchen was south facing, and a large bay window brought in the first bits of morning light. In the yard, evergreens shifted in the breeze. A row of yellow daffodils ran in a row along the house, interspersed with Hollie and azaleas.

                “Oh darling,” Janet said, turning from the kitchen sink, arms half-covered in flour, “how are you this morning?”

                She didn’t remember the crash or the rescue in detail. Bits and pieces of it came back to her in flashes. She couldn’t remember if she knew that guy sitting next to her was attractive before or after the crash. He said he remembered seeing people, strands of hair floating aimlessly before they were carried to safety. Now sometimes when she remembered the crash she was those same people, but she knew that they weren’t a part of her memories, but of his.

                “I’m lovely,” she said, “just lovely.”

                “I’m sorry if I woke you up,” Janet said, turning back towards the sink and spreading dough across a baking sheet, covered in flour. “I wanted to make something nice for everyone. Not that they’ll appreciate it,” she said, smiling.

                She didn’t know how to escape, or whether she even needed to escape. How could it be so terrible to have a conversation with someone’s pleasant mother? Her hands white knuckled the chair as away from Janet’s gaze, she had to either make a move towards the door or sit and be a part of the morning, sacrificing that bit of solitude that she knew she wanted.

                “Can I get you anything?” Janet asked, and Lauren sat, pulling her chair around to face the kitchen, so they could talk together with ease.

The first few days at his house passed in just such a way. Early morning breakfast with the family, in the afternoon, someone would suggest an outing and they'd make their way to a lake, or a shop, or a market, or for a short hike to find some flowers or a few boulders with some water running over it that his littlest sister was convinced was a waterfall. She felt the most natural with the girl, Elsa, seven years old. Children were disarming like that, capable of only being themselves, which was enchanting. Maybe the enchantment that adults feel with children is only the loss of this ability. Though she was nineteen and possessed of good looks and some intelligence she already missed being a child. 

On the morning of the third day, after an expansive breakfast of eggs and toast covered in hollandaise sauce along with roasted potatoes, she set out with Elsa to hunt for flowers. It was difficult to be parted from David for even a short period of time. She felt that what was happening between them was magical. It was as if a part of herself was connected to him, like a spool and thread, and as she wandered away from him into the thick grass, she felt herself unwinding. 

And yet at the same time it was a relief to be parted from him. She had lived for eighteen and a half years without feeling connected to anyone in quite such an oppressive way. How nice it was to walk among the grass with this little girl. They were hunting for butterflies. 

"You have to be very, very quiet," Elsa reminded her. Elsa had pig tails held in place by two large white ribbons, but her expression was of a general giving commands at war. 

"I understand," Lauren said, smiling once Elsa had turned her back. 

They walked through long grass, left a bit wild, running up to her knees and Elsa's waist. The ground was a bit wet, and she knew they'd have to take off their shoes before returning to the house. Her feet made a slight sucking sound as they gathered and released the mud. Elsa didn't necessarily remind Lauren of herself at that age. Lauren had no been so confident. She'd been bookish and mostly avoided visitors by reading whenever they were around. She had been shy by nature. However, Elsa reminded her of childhood none the less. 

"Shhh..." Elsa said, holding up her hand. "I found one." The butterfly was perched on a bit of saw grass, bright orange wings expanding and contracting. It was really just a very well-dressed insect. But beautiful. Elsa crept up as quietly as possible behind the butterfly and threw her net out over it. "I've got it," she cried, holding her net aloft, and for a moment she did, but the butterfly, sensing its danger, fluttered wildly about and wound up making its way out of the top of the net and hovering in the distance for a moment before disappearing into the grasses and small trees. 

"Why did it go?" Elsa asked, fighting back tears from her fierce little face. 

"I guess it prefers flying to being in a net," Lauren said, bending to cup Elsa's chin in her hands. The little girl pulled away quickly and scampered ahead. In truth, Lauren was happy to see the butterfly escape. Who wouldn't be? 

After she read the e-mail she crept upstairs, hearing each slight creak of wood as if it were thunder. She was in the precarious position of desiring David and yet still feeling some fraction of herself drawn to H. Could a person exist in fractions? She did not know. This was the first time that she felt that she’d truly been in love.

She brushed her teeth vigorously, in round small circles. Most days she thought she had a pretty face. Though sometimes it would surprise her, the small nose and pale skin of her reflection rising up to meet her, was she really so white? At night, David would cup her chin in his hands and tell her that she was beautiful, running his fingers along her cheeks and across her lips. And in those moments she could almost believe that she was pretty, though some small part of her always stood back, reserving judgment for some later day.

The top floor of the house was warm in the evenings. David kept the window of his room open, and the smell of honeysuckle would drift in and out with the wind. They had established a kind of routine after five days. She’d knock on the door of his room after the lights were out, so the two of them could process the day. Really, the first night she’d only meant to process the day. Certainly, her mind was capable of wandering elsewhere, but she’d intended to speak only of what his mother thought of her, and how his father laughed so easily. Really, her mind was always in two places. His room was no exception.

She said, “I think I’m falling in love with you,” lying sideways across the bed, her head resting in his lap.

His eyes were alight when he responded in kind. And, in the occasionally beautiful wisdom of the young, they had the good sense to stay silent afterward, to let the gravity of the moment wash over them. Later, they talked of his parents.

“I’ve always loved my father,” he said, absently stroking her hair. “My first memory is of my father. I can feel the sun on my back, and I’m walking across the grass towards my father, and he’s leaning down to pick me up, his hands impossibly large and warm. I don’t know. I might have made it up.”

“That’s strange to me, though I’m glad you have it. I like everyone in your family. It’s like watching the pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly.”

“We’re not always perfect.”

“Of course not. It’s just that my dad was really different than yours. If I had a real first memory of him it would be of him reading the newspaper, very quietly.”

They talked in this way for a while, of family and the way things were before they knew each other and world was set aright. The feel of his fingers on her clavicle was electric. It was as if the wings of a butterfly were flapping against her skin. And beneath that giddy feeling of his touch was another feeling, more violent that she felt herself struggling to control. Perhaps he only wanted to kiss her. Perhaps she only wanted to be kissed.

He placed his index finger on her calf and ran it slowly up the back of her leg, sending slight shivers through her body. The blinds were shuttered, pale fragments of moonlight lay on the floor. The moment before anything happened between them was full of bifurcation. She both wanted and did not want him at the same time. She simultaneously burned for him and yet, a part of her held back still, thinking of his parents in the next room; strangely, she thought also of the crash, of the tendency of things to fall apart. Could she trust that the hand on her leg would always be there?

The moon was spinning behind a wreath of clouds. In the distance, an owl was hooting. Throughout the evening she maintained, deep in some core part of herself, a distrust for everything that was happening. She felt that if she gave herself over entirely to the moment that there would be no chance to step back. Would she enjoy it more if she just let go? She didn’t know. She never planned too. Even as she burned, she thought of the colder days to come.

The family was up early the next morning for breakfast. David’s father had plans for them to pick blueberries.

His mother was in the kitchen, expertly pouring bits of dough into two cast iron pans. “Have you really never been berry picking?” she asked.

“No,” Lauren said, slightly ashamed now that she had never gone to pick berries. Picking berries hadn’t ever occurred to her, or anyone in her family, she suspected, as something that you could do.