The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison [66]
Bigelow looks down at what aren’t the woman’s old winter boots, the ones he knows. Apart from being pulled over her feet and ankles, they’re not even boots. He tugs at the left one and she opens her eyes, she sits up on her elbows. There’s nothing in her expression to forbid it, so he pulls the boot and it comes off in his hand—a seal flipper, unadorned, uncut, unstitched. Unlaced, because what need is there for laces? The animal’s hide has been emptied of its owner, tanned and lined with dry grass, its pointed nails intact, its pearly lustrous fur smooth, the black leather marked with wrinkles too faint to feel. He touches them: soft. As soft as her own skin.
Having taken the left, he has to pull off the other, just to be sure there’s a foot inside, that the pointed nails and the sleek fur aren’t parts of her. But no, the foot slides out, as smooth as its mate, toes rosy and damp from the heat in the boot, a little grass caught between the smallest and its neighbor. He pulls the blade out with his teeth. The smell of them—not the usual cheesy smell of feet, but fishy. Like the sea.
Bigelow puts the boots together at the foot of the bed, side by side, gently. He buttons his shirt and the fly of his trousers, watches as she goes into the other room, pausing by the table, the gifts arranged on the surface. She smells the cocoa, opens the packet of needles, ignores the two spoons. She sets a tubful of snow on the stove.
MAKING HIS WAY HOME, Bigelow feels as if he’s suffered some kind of attack, a delirium. Perhaps I have, he thinks, patting himself through his clothes, feeling the body beneath the coat, the muscles of his thighs as they flex to climb the hill.
HE GETS THE CHAIR off a man who’s heading back south. Argues him down from his original price, eight dollars, without remorse. Even if it was his dead wife’s favorite. Bigelow can’t think about other men’s problems.
The headpiece is inlaid, cherry and mahogany and other, lighter woods, oak, pine. Leaves and flowers and stars. Little iridescent circles, nacreous, made of seashells, mother-of-pearl. And tiny chips of some black stone, it must be obsidian. Bigelow runs his fingers over the design. A broad, strong seat, polished by years of use, gleaming. And strong, he tests it and it doesn’t creak. The armrests finish in eloquent scrolls that match those on the crest of the headpiece. One spindle has been mended, but it’s a good job, barely visible.
He points the place out to her anyway. Watches her face, a thoughtful frown. “Here,” he says, pulling her to her feet. “Like this.” And he sits in the chair and tips back, as far as it will go, then lifts his feet so that it rocks forward. “Now you,” he says, and he stands. With his hands on her shoulders, he positions her before the chair, pushing down when she hesitates to sit. He waits for her to rock, but she doesn’t, she just frowns at the chair’s slight movements that echo her own.
“All right,” he says, and he steps down on the front of one rocker, setting the thing in motion, her hands holding the armrests, her feet propped on the front stretcher. She lets the motion slow, then, after a moment, leans forward, pumping her head like a scaup or an eider, one of the smaller ducks, elegant with their black plumage, like the buttons on her dress. There’s something funny in the movement, but he doesn’t smile. He knows she can be touchy about such things.
“Look,” he says. “Use your foot.” He nudges her shoe with his own, but she shakes her head, preferring to keep her feet on the stretcher, as if it were a perch. Her chin goes back and forth with the effort of locomotion. Actually, he thinks, watching her, it isn’t a bird she resembles. Sometimes, walking on the shore, he startles a sleeping seal, and the animal hurries toward the water, throwing her head out before her, her sleek body following. He watches the woman rock. How could he have imagined her as a bird?