Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [84]
“So you would know,” he says. “It was not her I wanted.”
Slowly the breath escapes me. I look down at my hands. It is this he wants: my flesh, my body, my bones. He takes a step forward and I slowly raise my eyes to look at him. And then I feel her presence all around us, for we are in her house, and she is compelling me to finish what we started.
The painter stops in front of me, looks at me intently. “What is it?” he asks. I stare at him, and her unseen presence envelops me like a mist.
“She is here with us,” I say.
He shakes his head no. “She is dead.”
My eyes travel around the room searching for some confirmation of this fact, but my uneasiness persists. “I am afraid.”
He meets my gaze. “It is not her you fear, but yourself.” Then he extends his hand toward mine, and I place my fingers in his own. It is a simple gesture, but it feels as if we hold the heat of the earth within our hands. He draws me gently toward him, and the fear falls away, leaving only a deep current of desire. I find his lips then: search for their taste and warmth and softness. I feel his hands encircle my waist, glide beneath the fabric of my dress, caress my skin. The muscles deep within me tighten. Our bodies press together and I pull him back onto her bed, burn to feel his weight on mine.
The painter’s hands move quickly, tearing at the laces and the whalebones and the stays, endeavoring to find an entrance to the bone house that is me. I push myself against him, rub my flesh into his, cannot merge our bodies as tightly as I wish. And despite his words, I feel her there within me, urging me on. For in her bed my transformation is complete: in that moment he possesses both of us, myself and Dora, buried somewhere deep inside me.
Perhaps in spirit I am not my mother’s child after all, but the daughter of the great-bellied woman, she who follows only rules of her own making.
* * *
Afterward, we lay together.
“What will you do now?” I ask.
“I do not know.”
“Will you finish her portrait?”
“No,” he says. “Your mother was right.” I smile at this: the two of them in unlikely accord. “I have no other commission,” he continues, his voice trailing off. There is an awkward silence, as we both contemplate the meaning of this.
“I had thought to make a journey when my work here was complete,” he says tentatively.
“You are fortunate to have such liberty,” I reply. I feel both disappointment and envy at his words, and turn away from him to conceal my dismay. Slowly I rise and begin to pull on my servingwoman’s clothes: the clothes that bind me to the Great House and its secrets.
The painter raises himself up on one elbow. “I have no wish to drift forever,” he says earnestly. “But I’ve not yet found a place where I belong.”
I stop dressing and turn to him. His naked chest glistens in the light of the taper.
“Perhaps it is not a place you seek, but a person.”
He looks at me and I feel the heat rise in my face. I turn away and pick up his tunic, but as I do the miniature tumbles forth from the bedclothes and drops to the floor. I stoop to retrieve it and see at once that the glass has shattered: a neat web of lines now encases her. I glance up at him anxiously; feel that we have transgressed her. The painter reaches over and gingerly closes the frame, protecting her from further danger.
“It will be safe in the chest,” he says.
I cross the room and lift the chest onto the table. I feel for the secret latch along the side, and once again, as if by magic, the top springs open. And there beneath the lid, I find the answer to our questions, for the swaddling clothes have disappeared.
And all at once I know where I will find the boy.
* * *
We finish dressing quickly, the painter eyeing me curiously when I tell him we must hurry. I grab my cloak and he follows me out the door, just as dusk begins to close in upon us. Without thinking I take his hand, pull him along through the forest behind her cottage, along a path just barely visible through the trees. We do not speak and there is little noise other than the sound of our feet upon the frozen