Margaret from Maine (9781101602690) (7 page)

Chapter Seven

H
is apartment was charming. From just inside the door, Margaret looked around the small living room, the tiny kitchen, and felt herself at home. It reminded her—at least at first glance as he went about turning on lamps and moving a set of dishes off the kitchen island—of a well-provisioned ship. She had been on a sailboat once with Thomas, up in Bar Harbor, as a passenger on a lighthouse tour. She had loved that boat and especially its size, the efficiency of its features and cupboards. She felt the same affection now as she examined Charlie's apartment. Tidy, she thought. Shipshape.

“This reminds me of a boat I was on once,” she said, scanning the room, her eyes falling on knickknacks, picture frames. “I've always liked small spaces.”

“It
is
small,” Charlie said, still moving through the kitchen. “But I like it. The State Department provides it for people in transit. So a lot of this stuff doesn't belong to me.”

“I meant it as a compliment,” she said, seeing how he could have taken it the wrong way. “Our farmhouse is a second job all in itself. There's so much cleaning and so much clutter, and on a farm . . .”

She trailed off.

“I'm going to open a nice bottle of wine,” he said. “A small glass?”

“Yes, please.”

“Please make yourself at home. Have a seat, or you can come in here and sit at the island while I get the wine.”

“Yes,” she said, “I'd like that.”

She moved into the kitchen, feeling slightly absurd in the ball gown. How silly ball gowns were, really, when you came down to it. She had to tuck the skirt of the gown behind her legs as she climbed up onto the stool next to the island. She felt a tender wave of emotion seeing a bouquet of faded wildflowers in a vase at the center of the table. The flowers had been kept too long—daisies and a purple flower like a bearded iris, but not quite—and their petals had fallen on the smooth, black top of the island. She fought the urge to grab a sponge and rid the table of the petals. Too many hours cleaning up after Gordon, she decided. She took a breath and tried to remember what it meant to be alone with a man.

He moved around the kitchen well, his trailing leg not an obstacle, apparently. The situation could have been awkward, she imagined, but she did not feel that it was. Perhaps it was for him, she couldn't say, but he didn't seem bashful or nervous. He kept his attention on the wine bottle and smiled when he stuck the bottle between his thighs, yanked, and then held up the cork as though he had removed someone's appendix. He smiled.

“Success,” he said.

“How long have you lived here, Charlie?”

“Oh, a little over a month and I'll be here another month before my posting. I just finished grad school. People who are injured, military folks, I mean, they generally have to decide to go on with a military career or refocus somehow. A lot of us go to grad school. It's free, essentially, and it gives us a little time to acclimate back to civilian life. In my case I went and now I'm training.”

“Where did you go to grad school?” she asked as he poured her a glass of wine. Red, and a dot spilled out onto the countertop. She caught that he mentioned his injury but didn't explain it.

“The Kennedy School at Harvard.”

He looked at her, the bottle cocked before he poured his own glass.

“Okay,” he said, his eyebrow arching slightly, “that sounds more impressive than it is. A ton of these grad schools are very happy to get ex-military folks, especially from the academy schools. We're good bets and we bring our own funding, so, yes, I did fine there, but it isn't really as laudable as it could be. There were plenty of people a lot brighter than I am who didn't get a place.”

“You should be proud of it. It's an accomplishment.”

“I had a lot of questions after my service. A lot of opinions. The Kennedy School was a terrific place to ask those questions and to air those opinions. I didn't always like the answers, or agree with them, but the discourse was sincere. They have an amazing faculty.”

“It sounds like time well spent.”

“It was,” he said and raised his glass, which he had finished off filling by giving the bottle a twist. “To you, Margaret. I admire you.”

“Me?” she asked and took a small sip. Her stomach felt empty and she cautioned herself not to drink too much.

“It can't be easy being a single parent. And the circumstances, with Thomas, well, you know what I'm saying. Have you always wanted to be a farmer?”

She smiled. It was often humorous to see people stumble over the whole farm business. People valued farmers, at least in conversation, at least in a theoretical sense, but they knew little about them.

“I'm not sure anyone ever decides to be a farmer,” she said. “For Thomas it was simply a family occupation. He had always done it, and when he returned from the University of Maine, he fell back into it. The land tempts you and you forget about the work sometimes. But I like it. A good part of the year, I love it. The winters get rough.”

“And that's where you met? At UMaine?”

“After, actually,” she said. “My plan was to teach. I had just started in a second-grade classroom one town over when I met Thomas. He was local and so was I and we were of a similar age. It's funny how that happens, isn't it? It's almost like it was when you were a kid on the playground. You made up teams from whoever was around. A lot of my girlfriends found they weren't so choosy about guys once a little time went by. But I liked Thomas immediately and I could see he was a good man. We courted for a year and a half or so, then we got married. I was twenty-four, almost twenty-five. He was two years older. We lived on the farm for a while, planning to fix up the other house, and then he decided to join the reserves.”

“Did he know he might go over?”

“As an abstract possibility, maybe. It's hard to stand on a farm in Bangor, Maine, and imagine you have some future responsibility in Baghdad or Kabul. But he went with his eyes open. I can't say he didn't. He wasn't there very long when he was injured. It all seemed sort of make-believe. That sounds strange, probably, but that's how it struck me. He had a group of young kids with him and they were gung ho, but Thomas just wanted to come home.”

She looked at Charlie. He listened with a soft smile on his face. He took another sip of wine.

“After he was injured, the bottom dropped out of things for a while. And we had been living on the farm, well, I told you about the extra house on the property . . . and it seemed natural to remain there. It was good for Gordon. At least Thomas knew he was a father. I'm glad about that.”

“Do you think about going back to teaching?”

“Think about it, but I've gotten so lazy I don't know. The idea of putting on school clothes and driving in a little car to a job and then hurrying to get Gordon from school, then dinner, and so on, it feels overwhelming. It felt like too much at the time, anyway. It still does, I suppose. I can be useful around the farm and I like the cows. How's that for a job qualification? Liking cows?”

Sitting with the wine warming her belly, she wondered if she was dithering. In a second chamber of her mind, she tried to calculate how long it had been since she had been alone with a man. A man of interest, so to speak. It felt—except for Thomas—as if she hadn't flirted with a man since her college days. She wondered if that could be true. And while she enjoyed talking with Charlie, and liked his gentleness more and more, she wondered how this evening would go. Had she misread the signs? And what exactly did she hope might happen? They were alone and that felt thrilling, and yet they seemed intent on vetting each other's resumes. Was that how it had always been? She supposed things had to begin somewhere, and she took another sip of wine to embolden her, curious what it would require for him to cross his petal-strewn countertop and kiss her. How difficult it must be for a man, she thought, to feel you needed to always make the first move, initiate any physical contact. Of course women could do that nowadays, and they did, but the social contract still put it chiefly in a man's hands. She wondered how she had never appreciated the treacherous waters a man had to navigate. Unless he had the nature of an ape, a man had to read a thousand signs and intrepidly move forward. She made a mental note to discuss her observation with Blake. How strange she had never considered it before.

As if reading her mind, though, he stood and moved closer and turned her chin up slightly so he could kiss her. She luckily put her wineglass down in time to feel him step into contact with her thigh, his lips warm and pleasant on hers, his hand reaching around her back and resting on the bare skin above her bra line. It felt good to kiss him, but not as wild and as exciting as it had at the ball, and she started to pull back, falling into the idea of more conversation, when he suddenly surged forward and kissed her with everything.

Her body burned back. Again, a second part of her brain registered with wonder the powerful surge she felt spring up from her loins, her gut, her throat. She made a small animal sound, an absurd noise that she hardly knew came from her, and then slid off the stool and pressed every inch of her body into his. He was strong; he was incredibly strong and he kissed her over and over, his mouth on hers, his tongue somewhere, his maleness abrupt and emphatic and entirely present. He kissed her over and over and he began walking her backward, lifting her and kissing her, and she turned to paste. Her groin felt urgent, it felt impossibly full and in tune with his, and she let him lead her to his bedroom. She stopped to unzip her dress, and because it wasn't hers, because she did not want to ruin it, she put a hand on his chest and made space so that she could step out of it and hang it on the back of a chair. That gave him a moment to take off his jacket and then he covered her again with his arms, his body, and she moved onto the bed and he kept kissing her, his body bent absurdly forward as he stripped out of his pants. She saw his artificial leg in quick glances, but she kept her eyes on his. Then he moved on top of her, and something sharp poked at her from the bedspread, and he reached beneath her and grabbed a book and chucked it into the darkness. She sensed they both listened for it to land, but it didn't, it made no noise, and she couldn't help it, she laughed, and so did he, and he broke from their kiss long enough to say, “It must have fallen on something soft.”

“Or maybe it went out a window.”

She felt him laugh, she laughed, too, and then suddenly every need of his came into the room with them, and she met his needs, and she kissed him over and over and gave her body, took his, then gave her body again and again, each part, one after the other, for as long and as fully as he would have it. She kept her mind in check, not letting it go to Thomas, or to Maine, or to anything except this man beside her. Her body felt like a clatter of dice rolling across a green felt, and she did not know what number would turn up, or what the wager might be, but she gave in to the chance and her heart felt thrilled.

Chapter Eight

G
ordon dreamed of the basement stairs. The stairs led from the kitchen directly to a dark place in the basement. He did not like the stairs, nor the basement, for that matter. The basement smelled of dirt and water and raspberry preserves. A jar had broken there long ago, but the odor never left; the sticky juice clung to the wooden shelf and the cement floor like a bloodstain.

His eyes fluttered under their lids. His breathing became short and uneven. His bladder pressed to be released, but it was not painful, not overly full. His right leg kicked a little—at spiders, probably, at rats—and his foot happened to touch the side of a toy truck. In his sleep, in his childish obliviousness, he mistook the side of the truck for his mother's foot. Instantly his heart settled. He rolled a half turn onto his belly and spread his arms out like a man falling. Only he was not falling. He was in bed, and his mother was near, and in his universe nothing else mattered.

The basement dream disappeared. All dreaming disappeared and he slept down deep in his body, his breathing measured and quiet, his long lashes touched with the slightest moisture, his skin warm and quiet on this soft spring night. The saw-chuck guy, fallen to the floor in Gordon's newest turning, kept his rifle aimed at the dark space under the bed, his vision sharp and ready for the appearance of any monsters, any creatures of bed dust and rug scatter that dared to threaten his boy.

* * *

Charlie felt he could kiss her forever. He had never experienced anything quite like it. How did such a thing happen? He had been with women before, a reasonable amount anyway, but he had never felt this tremendous urge to kiss. It reminded him of high school kids groping each other in the local library, but Margaret was not a kid and neither was he, and yet here they were. It did not matter how he kissed her. He could begin softly, delicately, and little by little the kisses would build until the entire world seemed contained in them, until her body pressed into his and he had to run his hands everywhere, over every inch, and then, like the tide, like water pulling back through marsh grass, they would subside and become gentle again.

“Where did you come from? Where did you come from?” she whispered.

“Shhhh.”

Then more kisses. He felt his body respond and he entered her and continued to kiss her, the kiss an anchor, and in some way he could not define, the sex, the bodies joined, meant nothing. The kiss meant everything, it obscured and conquered everything, and the movement of their bodies together was a secondary gift. To be able to kiss and to have that, too, that second thing, was nearly more than he could bear. He whispered her name, realizing that they could find this in each other whenever they wanted. He drove into her and felt his body grow urgent and heavy, but then her kisses brought him back, and they glided together in perfect rhythm. Outside a wind pushed a branch beside the streetlight and the shadows fell through the window and covered them, and sometimes he kissed her mouth, and sometimes he kissed the wavering motion of a branch, and spring air leaked quietly into the room and lifted the edge of a piece of paper somewhere on the floor.

After, after it all, he kept kissing her. She continued kissing him, rising into him, and he held her and felt his body tremble and she kissed his neck, his shoulder, and he wondered if love could begin like this, as simply as this, and if it could stay by its own power.

“You're lovely,” he said a little later. “So lovely.”

“I can't believe how it feels to be with you.”

“I've never . . .”

She shook her head against his shoulder. The tree shadows danced on her ribs and across her breasts. She raised herself up and kissed him. For an instant everything began again, but she broke away and slid to his ear.

“Do you have any eggs?” she whispered. “I am so hungry. . . .”

“Oh, you just get better and better.”

“Because I'm hungry?”

“Yes. Exactly. Exactly because of that. I've got eggs and bacon, both fresh from a farm nearby. I can make you breakfast. It's the only thing I have to eat.”

“I'm famished.”

“When we kiss . . .”

She shushed him. She put her fingers over his lips.

“I'm going to wear your shirt. I'm not eating eggs in a ball gown. Get up and rattle those pots and pans. It's the least you can do for a girl.”

But he couldn't gather the necessary determination. He rolled on top of her and kissed her and the marsh began to fill again with water. He kissed her over and over, and what he wanted to say was something about love, about what she meant in his arms, but he remained silent and full, his eyes on hers.

* * *

He cooked well. He wore a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that said
Army
on its front, and she wore a large white shirt of his, its length at midthigh. She drank an enormous glass of orange juice. She could not begin to describe how good the juice tasted. She passed it over to him and he sipped it on the run, his attention on the stove. The bacon smelled remarkable. At some point he had turned on a swing station, something low and pretty, and now and then she caught a riff of familiar music. The music made it seem that a party took place down the hall, in another building, and their pleasure, she felt, was enhanced knowing they did not have to go there. Twice while he cooked he stopped and kissed her.

“Do you have any idea how long it's been since I was awake past midnight?” she said.

“What time is it, anyway?” he asked and slid a plate toward her. He put his own plate in front of his spot, but he waited for the toaster to ring. When it did he pulled out the slices—thick rye—and shook his hand at the heat. Then he sat down in front of his plate and smiled at her. He took her hand and held it.

“Twelve twenty,” she answered. “The witching hour.”

“I'm starving. I was too nervous to eat in front of you at the ball.”

“You were nervous? About going to a ball with me?”

He nodded. She squeezed his hand. He poked his chin a little to tell her to eat.

“I liked you, Margaret. I wanted to impress you, I guess.”

“You did.”

“Please, eat while it's warm. Don't insult the chef.”

She held his hand with her left hand and ate with her right. He had scrambled eggs, adding pepper and paprika, and they tasted delicious. She bit a piece of bacon in half. She had always been a sucker for bacon, but she rarely tasted bacon as good as the pig they raised on the farm. Someone had matched that bacon here in Washington, D.C., and she ate the remainder of the piece in greedy bites.

“So,” she said, “I could protest and tell you that I am not this sort of girl, but I guess it's too late for that. Do you think I'm a shameless hussy?”

“Yes,” he said, “I definitely do.”

He wiggled her hand and looked at her. Then he moved off his chair and kissed her on the neck. She felt her body respond—it amazed her how her body responded to him—and then he moved back to his chair.

“I think you're wonderful,” he said. “Your reputation is safe with me. It's just one of those things.”

“I haven't had one of those things, but I believe you. I can't even tell you what you did to me.”

“It was amazing, wasn't it? I'm not fishing for compliments. I'm just surprised at how natural it all felt. It's never been quite like that for me.”

“I mean everything,” she said. “You've been kind and thoughtful. You
are
thoughtful.”

“It's all a pose. I'm really very shallow. How's your breakfast?”

“You even cook well.”

“Just breakfast. That's my entire repertoire. Oh, and I'm not too bad on a grill. Do you like to cook?”

“I do. It's a little wasted on Ben and Gordon, but I do. I'm always trying something new. I like looking at new recipes. I make soups. On the farm we have a lot of fresh food.”

“It sounds like a good life.”

“It is most of the time. I have my bad days, like anyone, but for the most part it suits me. I'm a dairy farmer and proud of it! Support your local dairy!”

She smiled and he smiled back. He ate. She bit into a piece of rye bread and liked it. She wanted more juice. She stood and went to the fridge and when she passed by him he put one arm around her waist and drew her toward him. He pushed back the hair along her neck and kissed her there, just beneath the ear, and it sent a jolt through her body that made her flinch and move to one side. She nearly spilled the juice.

“Should we talk about tomorrow?” he asked, returning to his food. “Today, actually.”

“Please.”

She poured juice into the glass they shared. Then she climbed into her seat again.

“I'll pick you up at eight. We need to be early for security checks and so on. It will probably take us an hour to clear security, then they have a buffet for you. You can have a second breakfast there.”

He smiled. He reached over and took her hand again.

“Anyway,” he continued, “some of the bill sponsors will be buzzing around. Congresswoman Gilden will be there. She's one of the main sponsors and she carried it through the House. She's from Illinois. The nice thing about the bill is that it cuts across party lines, so there won't be the usual muttering from one side or another not liking it. Politically it's very safe. Then President Obama will come in shortly before ten. He's usually prompt, from what I've heard.”

“Have you met him before?”

“Once,” Charlie said. “He's very relaxed, very low-key, but he has astonishing charisma. Maybe all presidents do, but he's good at working a room. That was my impression, anyway.”

“How long will the actual signing take?”

“Not long. It's ceremonial. He'll want you behind him for photo ops. And a few press people will probably ask for your name, but that will all be handled by the PR folks. Then by ten thirty, eleven, you're done. The president will leave and then people will wander off.”

“Have you done a lot of these?”

“No. One or two. This is the biggest bill yet.”

“We can handle it.”

“Then we should go somewhere fun. Do a little sightseeing. Unless you have other plans. We can go see the monuments if you like.”

“I would love to see the monuments, but I don't want to take up your whole weekend.”

He looked at her. He wiggled her hand again.

“You are my weekend,” he said. “I thought that was pretty obvious.”

“I was hoping so.”

“I'm crazy about you, Margaret. Too crazy, maybe.”

“I feel the same way.”

And she did. That was the remarkable thing. She knew it suddenly and also knew it to be true. It was that easy. She rose and slid into his arms and she kissed him. She felt as though she could kiss him every minute of the day and never grow tired of it. When she lifted her lips off his she whispered that she had to go, that she needed to get back to the hotel, that she needed to be where Gordon could reach her. Besides, she said, it felt like she should be alone on the night before the signing. He nodded. And it did not surprise her when he pulled on his coat and made movements to go as she dressed back in the ball gown. He was the kind of man who would see her home, who would make sure the babysitter got back safely, and who would never think of putting a woman in a cab and sending her off. She wondered as she followed him out the door if someday, some distant day, Gordon would be the gentleman she knew Charlie to be. She hoped so. She could think of nothing better than to meet the world with the kindness and consideration that Charlie demonstrated in the smallest action. It was enough, almost, to wish to write a letter to his mother.
How you raised your son,
she would say,
did not go unnoticed
. One day, she hoped, a woman might think that same kind thing about her.