The Geometry of Love Read online

  Life isn’t filed chronologically, as an endless progression of nights, each one looping into the next: February 7, February 8, February 9. Some of it is filed in the sub-sub-basement, twenty-four-hour search, or forgotten in the floor-to-ceiling stacks back where the library staff has painted over the windows and the air conditioning doesn’t quite reach. Experience is stored a little here, a little there, scattered about in conversational groupings like so much furniture in my mother’s old house. Here by the fireplace, a couple of chairs are arranged with a table on which to set your drink; up its creaking stairs to the landing there are some transitional pieces: a half-moon table with an empty chair, a silvery mirror on the wall above them. The tabletop is decorated with a bowl of flowers, don’t examine them too closely as they are artificial and need dusting. It’s grouped by category. We would not, for instance, find someone sleeping on the kitchen table in an upstairs bedroom nor a bureau mirror screwed into the back of the divan.

  The order, of course, is illusory. Don’t look too close as you will find the furniture is not bolted down and can be rearranged by the disaster of death, or upended by the cacophony of change. Murder’s earthquake twists all the doorjambs out of plumb and shakes the china from the shelves, shatters it on the hard floor.

  In the house of my life, you sit at the kitchen table with my mother, talking quietly. It is the kitchen of my childhood, with the metal-rimmed Formica table and the tidy countertops. A washrag hangs over the rim of the sink. I cannot hear your words, can only hear the low buzz of your voices like a hundred quiet bees, trying not to wake me.

  I creep down the front stairs, where you cannot hear my footsteps. We will come upon one another with surprise. I turn into the dining room, follow the flow where it seems to angle narrow past the front room to the little swinging door, like a hole in the back of a deep tunnel. I can hear something happening in there; then someone turns up the volume. It is loud enough now, too loud, and the sound seems to engulf the space around me, to soak into things, the chairs, the table, its bowl of fruit. The rug slithers curiously; the drapes sway. I feel the house is filling up with sound, like a flood level rising; the furniture is holding its breath, treading water, listening at that shuttered door. Behind my back I feel the weight of it, like my life, italicized with meaning, leaning, pushing me to the point: See.

  I am pulled, too, to the kitchen by the weird music of your rising voices, like the beating of wings. Now I can make out words: Sky. Why. Run. Rays. Lays. She. Me. Me. Then I am at the door, reach to the handle, huge above my head, my eyes at the level of the keyhole, a yellow-bright cutout against the deepening room, lit only by the light around the ajar door. My hand grips the handle, and I push it open. She is standing at the stove, her back to me, her shoulders stiffen at the sound of the hinge, my footsteps on the cool floor. The conversation precipitously forgets to flap its wings, drops to the floor, and the words scatter under heavy things, inaccessible. You are not who I think you are but a stranger, no wait, a man I have seen around, at the house sometimes, Mr. Stuart? My mother’s smile, without words, flutters to you as a bird between branches. Your hands are folded harmlessly on the table. There are coffee cups, two saucers, a plate of toast. You need a shave, but you look at me, speak some words.

  She turns from the stove, steps between us. She carries two cups in her hands, and her face wavers wan with the ribbons of steam. She is silent or shouting, I cannot tell. Then the arc of the water is like some gorgeous splash in the yellow light, littered with glitter and searing silver, and I can hardly bear to turn my face away as it splashes across my face, burning, burning.

  No, not across me but a man, my father. I can see them fighting from the crack in the hinge of the kitchen door. The loud words drew me here from my bed, shook me, whispered to me like a sibling, come quick, something, something bad is happening. She is angry, shouting, her hair and dress askew, and he is at the table. I can see the edge of his leg, one hand dangling his cigarette near the floor. I can hear his low voice, the creaking of the chair as he eases his anger through it. His low voice is like the sound of a bell: doc, clock. She is turned away, weeping, angry. You can’t, you bastard. You can’t.

  In one awful, lovely motion she scoops up a coffee cup and throws it, its liquid flying, like a lash of hot light splashes him, the cup strikes above his eye. I can hear the cup meeting his hard skull, see the impact in the sudden surprise on his face. And he pulls back, stands up fast, plunges his face into the folds of his angled sleeve, his hands brush at the coffee on his clothes. He holds his arm across his eyes a moment, as if weary, blots the coffee away with this sleeve, like a man at work wipes the sweat from his face. One hand flutters to the eye, rubs it ruefully, not even anymore angry but exhausted.

  Jesus, Meri. He bends to pick up the sharp shards of cup on the floor. It’s cancer. It’s not my fault.

  The coffee makes a weird burn on his face and chest, like the pattern of the melanoma later, spreading from the smudgy place on the nape of his neck, a hand reaching around and across, lays its shadow on him, on his face, his mouth drawn now like a laceration. His face is misspent by surgery, at the last, the skin pulled tight in places in a starburst scar. The shape of his mouth is forgotten under the irregular splatter of cancer, tobacco-colored, the wheeze of hard breath.

  And then it was gone, his skin shaved away by the doctors, a miracle, I thought, his face hardly changed but for the sudden oldness of it, his eyes so far back and deep it seemed he could see to the edge of everything, wherever that is.

  He went back to the old ways, then, working the ground and planting and more working the ground, as if to catch up for the lost time of the last lazy year or two. He got one more season, got the winter wheat in before the frost brought him home.

  And for a time he lay on the couch, his back to us, until he complained of pain behind his eyes, and the pressure. I remember her face, the set of her mouth, always at opposites with him in the amber light. She urges him to eat, piles on seconds. I remember her spooning a pile of mashed potatoes onto his untouched plate, seconds when he cannot touch the first. I know it’s because of the thing that’s growing inside him, although I do not know whether she feeds him to give it strength or swallow its appetite. He is cross, angry as ever. I come upon them in the dining room and his hand grips her arm, shakes her, once, twice, as if to get some words from her drawn mouth. But then he has to sit down, takes his face in his hand, My head is pounding. Sitting across the table from him I can feel the thing growing, snuggling into the crevasses of his cozy brain, like an animal curled into its den against the winter.

  The doctor sends him away, downstate to the big hospital. Too far, she says, too far, and goes back to chopping vegetables. She is browning butter in the skillet, and the bitter smell of it stings my eyes to tears. The meals we make we can’t possibly eat. She puts the food on the table in steaming bowls, all of them heaping and too hot to touch. Lima beans, she says, spooning them onto my plate. Here, take a roll. Won’t keep, she says. I watch her heap the leftovers into the scrap bucket for the hens. The next day she cooks more lima beans, more rolls, more of everything as if her body needed the cooking to live.

  On the day he leaves Mr. Elkhart drives him, and my mother sits on the porch in her swing, shelling beans, her hands the only animate part of her, the rest made of stone. As he is leaving, you can see him fumble a moment, stall. He puts his little case down on the hood of the truck, pauses, embarrassed, pats his pockets for something, his keys. These he pitches up to the porch, they strike the wood and skitter under her feet. I reach for them, and they are cold and irregular in my small hand. Then he simply picks up the case again, like picking up the string of events. As he puts a hand on the door handle I run down the steps. I want to stop him, embrace him, tell him something I have no words for.

  He does not stop but only turns away, pitches his case into the bed of the truck, and my mother calls from the porch: Don’t.

  I look at her face, and sh
e says only, He don’t want you. I hesitate on the grass off the bottom step, cautious, ready to fly, and in the pause he climbs into the passenger side.

  That ends it. When he pulls the door to, the unoiled hinge is the sound of a heartbreak.

  I think Love is born crooked, it is an irregular shape that encompasses many points, not a square, certainly, nor even a parallelogram, not planar at all but something quite out of phase with the solemn procession of everyday life, its lines drawn about points not only here and there, but now and then, her and him and me, me.

  We cannot quite name Love, cannot point it out on the street or introduce our friends to it at a party. Imagine we are sitting in the porch swing. We let the evening fall around us, the low sky engraved with feeling. Our murmur is punctuated by the passing of neighbors on the road out front, we wave, or go down to the curb to meet them but unexpectedly there is Love, an outstretched hand to shake, telling a story to pass the time.

  Or in the small hours of the morning there is that light tapping on the window of the back door, and we, can’t sleep, get up from our chair in the kitchen, let it in, greet it warmly, pour it a cup of steaming tea against the chill night and offer Love a biscuit to try to make it stay awhile.

  We bring to it our own flavor, expectations like a taste in my mouth I cannot quite name, like Saltines with honey or roast pork with oranges, a mix of common flavors that blossoms in our mouth into something new. You cut a piece of roast with the edge of your fork, and I watch your contented face as your mouth closes over it.

  It is a fine spring day when I open the door to the bell, and it is my Aunt Anne, her children out in the yard behind her. Run and play, she says, gingerly lifting the rim of her dark hat, patting her perfect hair into imperceptibly better shape. Later I can see the women at the window, both serious, my aunt still fingering the rim of her hat, my mother’s face grave and white like stone. I turn away before they can signal me to come inside. Later, after all the people have come and gone, my mother comes to me upstairs to tell me that my father is dead.

  Yet here, at the last, is a memory of you: the sweet leavings of the mimosa blossoms, the evening breeze a cooling wash after the heat of the day. It is early yet, and we lie in the grass, admiring the sky barely tinted and screened with the coming darkness. The grass is cool and lovely at our elbows and necks, the backs of our legs, each blade fluttering and light.

  You are talking and the sound of your voice is what holds me, cradles me. I listen, and it keeps me safe. Your arms on me, around my head build a barrier, your face, your mouth on mine, it is warm beneath your body but somewhere your voice turned. Your body is a barrier that works both ways: It protects and, too, encloses my heart.

  You are talking to me at the table. I watch your mouth closing over a slice of the pizza you have ordered. When the bell rang you got up to answer it, just as if you lived here, as if it were for you, and then it was. I could hear the delivery boy’s voice at the door, the usual transaction, $7.23, and you pulled the money from your pocket, said only Thanks, closed the door on him. I imagine him to be a high school kid, barely driving, his worn cap pulled low on his face. He wishes he needed a shave. I hoped somehow he would remark the stains on your clothing, the cloaked rage on your face. But he says nothing, does not think of 911 or imagine the worst is about to happen. He slips your money into the bank bag he carries and zips it shut. I hear his car shift into reverse and pull out into the street.

  I wanted it to be different, you say, fiddling with the ring on your finger, sliding it to the first knuckle and back, a nervous habit. Your mouth softens, betrays a brief uncertainty. We are at the tranquil center of the whirlwind. You stretch your legs out, look over the wreck of our kitchen, sigh. You idly play the ring against the tabletop, the metal sounds, alliterates. It is a bitter fricative f-f-f-f, and I close my hand around it to relieve its stutter. We are too tired. Around us, the ruined kitchen waits for something to happen. I can hear the plink, plink of something dripping onto the floor. Every so often something shifts, drops, shatters, like the falling of very slow rain, or tears, kept very quiet.

  The gun waits, too.

  I consider the gun. At this point the possibilities seem still possible: I could grab up the gun and tell you to go. Now, I shout, waving the barrel in front of your surprised face, watching you back slowly away.

  I could just ask you to leave, and you could go. I didn’t know, you’d say, your face puzzled and pained. Of course I’ll go.

  I could get up from my chair and walk out the door. Would you, openmouthed, let me leave?

  I think I could soften your mood, provided I am cautious, do nothing wrong, for once. You know I love you, I could say, if my mouth would form the words. I can imagine this scene ending in bed, your warm weight on me; your angry hands, for now, gentle, a blow muted, a caress discovered, something in you satisfied.

  I know the real possibilities are narrowed to one or perhaps two, filed in the card catalogue of my memory not under C for choices; but more likely D for disaster or even F for fatality.

  In the end it makes no difference. I cannot change this. I can only get up from my chair. From the drawer in the bedroom I bring the ring you gave me that long-ago day and lay it on the table in front of you. In your big fingers it looks very fine, a circle too small to hold us together. You examine it a moment as if not understanding. We do not say anything, and I do not look at you. I fetch the broom and the dustpan out of the pantry and wearily begin to sweep up the shattered pieces of the things that are my heart.

  Then your voice is raised.

  I hear your chair crash against the floor as comprehension brings you to your feet. I feel your hands on me, an arm around my waist, your hard form aligned along my back, your voice in my ear. We struggle, entangled with the broomstick, our feet unsteady on the rubble. Our bodies knock against the table, and it becomes a shuddering line. The salt shaker bursts on the tile. The napkins are a cluster of fluttering wings, falling, falling to the floor. The gun goes skittering over the edge, makes a breaking sound, but does not fly apart or go off. Our feet move as if we were dancers almost, but for the unforgiving step, and we accidentally kick the gun into a corner, forgotten.

  Darcy, I told you, your whisper is hard and cold, like the steam off ice. I told you you’d just get into trouble.

  I am crying, now, as if I cannot stop, as if I were always weeping, my face wet and flavored with salt, my nose running. In the back of my throat is an anxious damp that makes my voice unreliable. It doesn’t matter for all I can do is sob. I have to go, please. I remember your hands, when your gentle hands were on me, moved me, unresistant.

  You’re my wife. You’re mine. You force my hand open and thread the ring back onto my finger in an awful echo of something else.

  We struggle, and you are pulling me towards I don’t know what. You bring me around to face you. You pin one of my arms against the counter, bang it on the rim of cold tile once, twice, until I let the broom fall. Your strong arm is tense and lovely with the current of muscle beneath the brown skin, and the pain in my arm is sharp. Your other hand is on my face, it forms a corner to catch my chin on. Your hand pushes me into the cabinet, pounds my head against its glass. My hair goes flying; I can feel it like fringe on an old rag, it curtains my face. You bang my head on the cabinet behind me, use my head to shatter the door. The glittering shards fall like danger all around us. I can feel the glass sprinkling in a tender shower down my face and neck, into the collar of my shirt, grinding between our bodies. You push your body against mine, and I can feel you want me, the bundle in your pants suddenly pounding to get in, jamming me against the counter in a long bruise and with one hand you reach for the buttons of my pants. And I have to get away, slide along the counter, half-falling, reach safety, someplace.

  I am pulling away from you, grasping at things, breath, balance, a last plate in the sink, this morning’s crust flies underfoot, a mug shatters, newspapers from somewhere, a bottle of soda hits
the floor, fizzy and liquid, the edge of the sink in my slipping grip.

  If you think anybody cares about you, you’re mistaken, you say. I’m the only one.

  My hands pull at the slippery faucet, explore the sink behind me for handholds, anything. Then there is the hard clutter of broken dishes, of cutlery under my fingers. My hand chooses the simplest line and a voice in me says: Use it. The knife slides under my hand, the blade serrates the creases in my fingers as the handle slides home, a sudden turn from bread slicer to what? Weapon.

  I feel the shock of it first in your encircling arms: There is the feeling of hard blade scraping bone, and I pull down on it fast and hard, use both hands, jamming myself in close to you, your turn. There is a shudder in your grip, your pale face, immobile, eyes inward, afraid. Your arms fall away, suddenly weak, and I am forgotten. A weird damp on the web of my thumb spreads outward, drips warm and dark. When you fall it is fast and almost quiet. I can hear my breath like a roar in my ears, hear the shifting of plates and pieces of plates under my feet, the low fizzing of the pop, the hush of the air conditioner. You are so still. I grab the keys up in a wad, and the gun feels heavy in my hand. As I run I slam the door behind me, a final closing.

  It is only a small turn to the left, no more than fifteen degrees, not even a sharp turn, nor seemingly deliberate. I am roaring along the damp highway again, my headlights barely cutting a path in the darkness, ducking under the overpasses and around the big curve south of town. In this place they have put up a concrete wall so that I do not go sailing off my side and into the opposite lane, and I am not sure I appreciate the effort. Another underpass and a gentle turn will release me from this memory, will send me into the bridge abutment, and around me the yellow barrels would fly suddenly sixty miles an hour and pieces everywhere.