American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [34]
It isn’t supposed to be anything. It’s just a story.
She laughed a little. You’re right. So why do I care?
You care because you’re a caring person.
That’s when she put her hand on his neck and it brushed his collarbone and he flinched and pulled away. There was a look on his face that pierced her.
I’m so sorry, she said. Let’s forget about this.
I can’t forget about it, he said.
Then he took her hand and put it back on the same part of his collarbone and a flash burst in her brain as if she herself were made of light and she saw the reflection of a woman’s hand curved and distorted in the brass of a saxophone and then a shimmering sound swept through her and she was dancing in a crowded room.
She pulled her hand off. It’s too much, she said.
What about here, he said. He put her hand on his shoulder and she saw the perspiration blooming on the back of the woman’s dress in the courtroom in New Orleans. She saw the man standing in uniform with his back to her. She felt the woman tremble when the verdict was called out.
And here, he said. He put her hand on his back and she saw Pearl warming coffee on the stove and the odd lavender light that came at sunset into the little apartment coloring the white stove and the yellowing cabinets and the stained porcelain sink.
Here, he said, and now her hand was lower on his back and she saw Joe and Vivian in Greenwich Village, sitting by the river, driving to Massachusetts, talking in a car with the rain hitting the windows.
Then he moved her hand to his neck and she saw a woman swaying underwater, her black hair floating weightlessly like ink. Then the woman became one of many women, hundreds of bodies swaying like underwater tombstones.
I can’t do this, she said.
She closed her eyes.
Why not? he said.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Then she looked down.
I can’t do this to you. It’s too much.
He dipped his head as if to look into her downcast eyes. He smiled. He lifted his chin as though he could lift her up with a simple gesture.
I can take it, he said. He was still smiling. I’ve taken worse. He whispered: We’ll figure it out.
She allowed herself to look at him.
Don’t you see? he said. It’s all inside me.
She was scared now and he was the one who seemed unafraid.
I’m the one who can help you now, he said.
So I wasn’t even able to do my job. She looked away again, her eyes tearing.
No, this is your job. This isn’t pitying me. This is giving me some way to fight for you. This is what I do best.
His face was lit up and there wasn’t the usual anger around his mouth. He looked younger and older at the same time.
She wiped her eyes and gave him a pained smile that he thought was inhumanly pretty.
Always a soldier, Honor said.
Your soldier, he said.
CHAPTER TEN
Vivian
She saw him at night in her dreams a dark figure shadowing her along a riverbank and catching up with her the boats in the river sliding past ghostly passengers watching her in her final moments on shore because he was coming for her that much was certain and he would bring her back with him and he was coming closer she could feel him he was a mystery in the blackness that she kept trying to deny but their reflections in the dark water were even darker and as his approached hers there was the reflection of the saxophone case too like some mad sea animal searching for her, hunting her down and now they were right beside her and she would have to give over to this wrong love or she would lose him or she could fall over into the water and it would all be over she would just let herself fall into the river and then she was falling and the water grabbed her hungrily and she sped down a dark channel and in the dark water weeds and debris wound around her as she was pulled quickly by the current and then it stopped the dream stopped and she woke up screaming and he wasn’t there how could he be he was not supposed to be she had told him to go home he was supposed to be home she was not his home.
She had not wanted to go with Pearl to meet him at the dock.