The Geometry of Love Read online

  A sparrow has found its way in the stair window where the screen is torn. The noise is strange in the still heat, a fluttering, muffled, as if against velvet. It is in a panic, pumping its wings against the glass, then it swoops in a long shallow arc up, up into the second floor with a small cry. It lights on the hall fixture a moment, testing the current, air or sunlight, before it careens, a brown streak, through the open doorway of your room.

  You are lying on the bed, smoking, no shirt, stocking feet, when I follow the bird into your room. I am carrying the broom, bristles high, like a weapon. Behind me you close the door, and we are trapped, the three of us in this small space, smelling of you, warm with your body heat, and the hot, white light from the window, the sound of the bird pounding its small body against the walls here and there before it finds the window glass. It is a flutter of panic, and you throw the window wide, punch out the screen; it falls end over end into the grass below. In the commotion the curtains come down too, the bedside lamp is overturned by the falling rod, the cocked shade throws light in unexpected places, and the bird is caught up in the tangle of fabric and things, our bodies added in, the bird lost in the curtain folds. Your hands at last trap it against the floor, make for it a little net of curtain fabric cupped gently in your hands, as if holding it from harm.

  Got it.

  It quiets in your hands, and we sit on the floor. I look at your freckled chest, your forearms braided with muscles, your splayed legs. You let me look, take a long drag on the cigarette that dangles in your mouth, as if to say, Now what? about me or the bird. You are figuring the distance to the window, the angle of your legs, the length of the fabric.

  You stand, lift the curtain out of the tangle. You lean your hands out the window, and I peel back the folds of fabric, down to a feathery bundle. The sparrow flutters free, goes up and out, with a cry it joins the sapphire sky.

  Six

  You are the sun, I tell her.

  It has been a cold January day, and I was home from school because the snow was too deep; it lay huge like some sleeping animal, the drifts curled around the house, along fences and against the ridge of road out front. The storm came in during the night, silently but for the weather bulletins on a scratchy channel from Enid. And in the morning I come tearing down the stairs snow, snow! in my pajamas, to find my mother and father in the kitchen, him at the table in his stocking feet drinking coffee, her at the stove, tending sausages as they sizzled. He is fiddling with the newspaper, turning pages impatiently, as if looking for something. He barely notices when I come in, and I stand at his side, my hands on his arm. He only shakes them off, goes back to his newspaper, rubs the back of his neck. She shushes me. I go to the back door, my breath drawing a snowflake of steam on the window. The road out front has disappeared, the landscape blindingly white, snow frosting the trees and rooftops, dripping off the chicken house and blocking the doors everywhere. The snow smoothed all the edges, made unrecognizable the furnishings of the yard and beyond, a tree stump, a pile of unsplit wood, the wheelbarrow. Somewhere under everything is the marble I lost yesterday, like a small sun. I think it must be still warm from the heat of my hands and will burn a hole in the snow, clue me to its tiny universe. The whole of the scene was overlooked by the lowered branches, of trees, hanging heavy with the weight of snow, then the white winter sky, barely distinguishable from the ground, the horizon smudgy and unlined with details about what is above and what below. It is as if the whole thing were interchangeable, topsy-turvy, the snow clouding the whole scene with uncertainty and grace.

  Once the breakfast things were washed and put away, she zippered me into my snowsuit, and I pushed out the back door, ran into the yard to print my steps all over. The snow brought everything in close; the crunch of my boots was huge in my ears. The wind scatters my steaming breath, replaces it with fresh chill that pinks my face and stings my throat. I rolled down the slope from the road at the front, each movement a whisper of nylon, like a seasonal reverse of a wind-flapped kite. Sam runs alongside, sniffing and barking, picking up chunks of snow on his withers, his prancing steps smearing in the deep.

  The house is up to its knees in snow and hung all over with accents of white, on the roof, the sills and porch rails, on the overhang in back. At the bedroom window I can see her motionless, looking out, her face pale, her eyes hard. She watches me, and I wave and dance, unanswered, Hello, hello.

  Once we had printed our presence, Sam and me, through the whole yard, tracked all the smooth snow into ruffled footprints, and shattered snow banks to the hard northerly wind, I thought about going in, about the warm, still house and dry clothes. Every so often a gust would pick up a handful of snow and pitch it like pebbles against me, and I turned my face away from its sting.

  I stomped the snow loose from my boots on the back porch and stepped out of them gingerly, on tiptoes. I shouldered loose of the snowsuit and hung it on the hook inside the kitchen. In the heat, the chill melted, the snowflakes freckling its shoulders lost their faces, turned instantly to sequins of damp. I kept my hat on for a while, a knitted navy cap with a long tassel, and poked around the house, warming up like an elf in her street clothes.

  I went up the back stairs and ran a bath, the steam pouring out of the stream like the faucet in reverse, clouding the air and drawing a curtain on the window. I stripped down to my skin, pitching my clothes on the floor, and the tasseled cap made an extravagant line among my clothes. My skin was unexpectedly pale but crimson on the fringes of my fingers and toes, on the tops of my thighs. I rubbed a circle of clear on the mirror and examined the numb red of my nose and ears. I eased myself into the warm water, soaked my swollen fingers and toes back to pink. I lay in the tub, all of me turning warm and liquid, breathing in the steam, and listening to the tingle of my limbs and feeling my parents move around downstairs.

  My mother had been feeling bad for a couple of weeks, and as I ran through the house, I had glimpsed her through the door of their bedroom. She stood in the amber half-light at the center of the room, facing in no particular direction, as if wondering what to do and hugging her breasts as if she were cold. The shade lets in a fraction of silver light reflected off the snow, and the combination of shade and gilt, the melancholy cast of her face, her bowed head, makes the room seem somehow churchlike, holy, and I am reluctant to speak but only quietly pass by the door, as if I were never there at all. She knows I was there, though. I have tracked a dusting of snow through the house, like a trail of bread crumbs, and the floor is in places speckled with pinpricks of water, like freckles, evidence of my existence.

  Every now and then his voice or hers is raised to a pitch and then everything falls silent. In the afternoon, though, they spin apart. She is in the bedroom, lying down. The jingle of a zipper, the slamming door tell me he has gone out to the barn. There is soup simmering on the stove, sending out signals of the coming evening. The house seems anxious, quiet, though acting nonchalant—in the front room, the sofa, the armchairs, the runner leading up to the stairs, everything holds its breath and acts as if it weren’t quite paying attention, though I know this isn’t so. I pretend to look away, flounce onto the sofa with a schoolbook, and out of the corner of my eye the fireplace screen seems ever so slightly to relax its ramrod posture. A curtain quivers in the window. The candlesticks strain at something, listen to the wind outside. Everything waits, motionless and strange: Even the heater falls silent, and the sunlight hardly dares to come in the panes, as if averting its eyes. Out the window, as the evening gathers on the horizon, the snow looks unnatural and bright against the darkening sky, as if it would extend the day if only the sun would stay. The wind settles down at last, all day its gusts blew the stinging snow in swirls and gathers, like the popping of oil from the skillet, only this one burning cold.

  Then it’s nearly dinnertime, and the light slips in the window at last, gray-blue with evening. Later I will go upstairs to my quiet room to do some more homework. At last my father has consented to lie on t
he couch. The television is running the news, turned down low the announcer’s voice is like a murmur of conspiracy, and I have the idea my father is talking back to him, a dialogue of annoyance and dismay. Outside the window, the stars are coming up with pricks of bright, like holes where the day accidentally shines through. She stands at the stove, stirring the soup. She slices a boiled egg into it at last, the last step, I know. Her wrists look impossibly frail, the spoon oversized in her delicate hand. I am at the table, flipping the pages of my science book, idly pretending to study although I think she knows the difference.

  What are you up to? she says. She pokes the rolls into the oven, lets the pot holder fall onto the counter.

  I follow the line with my index finger. It is 93,000,000 miles from Earth. The sun is the light, heat and energy for everything.

  See, I tell her. You are the sun.

  She smiles a little wanly, and I am afraid she will have to be sick again, as at breakfast and lunch, too. There is a bruise on the underside of her forearm, bluish and strange, and I am overcome with tenderness.

  We revolve around you, I tell her.

  And she says, Oh, and who is we?

  On the counter beside her I put the Tabasco bottle. This is Mercury. It’s very hot.

  (On the table, the mustard.) Venus.

  Further, Earth is the salad.

  I put Mars on the floor just beyond, the bread basket.

  Jupiter is Sam, lying quiet just outside the doorway.

  Saturn. (A chair pulled from the dining room table.)

  Uranus. (The bowl of fruit, flourished, and I do a little dance.)

  Neptune. (The floor lamp in the parlor, and as I pass I rattle its shade and the light swings crazily on the walls.)

  And I, I am Pluto, I call from the front room, arms up, exuberant, over the sound of the television. My father stirs, as if his heart were beating again, a little. I can see her twice framed by doorways, and she wags her spoon at me, laughs, applauds, while Jupiter, very quietly trying not to be noticed, creeps over to sniff under the napkin of Mars.

  I am sitting out behind the coop, watching the sun fall into the wheat field beyond and trying not to get caught smoking a cigarette. The day has been warm, and the light is a fire in the paint box sky, but as the evening gathers, the breeze is unexpectedly cool. You have been poking around the house, around me, all day, as if we were playing a game of hide and seek. You caught me coming up the stairs from the basement, in the hall outside the bathroom, in the pantry hunting down the lima beans. You, I discovered standing by the window in the dining room, out checking the mailbox, in the dining room drumming your fingers on the table, early for dinner. I encountered you, hands-off, eyes down, I skirted your edges, making way for you, as if your touch would burn. When I walked out just now, I could feel your eyes on me from your window. I have at last slipped loose of the movement in the house, hanging out the towels on the line and then walking on past, lifting the line over my head, idly, looking as if I had seen something in the field beyond, in the cottonwood that throws its shadow into the yard, in the rim of gathering gloom along the fluted creek, in the shifting greens of the wheat, in the shapes of town stamped on the horizon. I loosened the string of the apron, but I was careful in case my retreating back were spied from the back window, by you or someone else. I can hear you coming across the way, your boots scuffing on the bare dirt path. While I wait, I look out over the fields Mr. Elkhart farms. The wheat is still young, small and green in the field, each blade a perfect miniature, fresh fingers tickling the underside of the wind. The day had been fine and bright, although I was indoors for most of it. When Mr. Elkhart works the field, he brings the disc up close to the yard, a few paces from where I sit, churning the surface to a froth. Every little bit, he tells my mother, looking up to where she is standing on the porch, drying her hands on her apron. He is an oldish man, his callused and brown hand adjusts the bill of his cap. At harvest the combines bring a coating of fine dust into the house, kicked up in whorls by the wind and carried into the sky. From my windows I can count the farms around, each one signed with the dust from the combines, like an X marks the spot.

  It feels good to be idle, and I am reluctant even to smoke, my hands are so lazy after the day. I am trying to act as if nothing is happening, as if I weren’t waiting for you. I can hear the towels idly flapping on the line behind me, your footsteps out by the clothesline pole, you pause briefly to wonder where I have gone. This place is sheltered from the wind, from eyes, from movement, from life.

  When you come around the corner I am glad, though, you have caught me at last.

  Give me a pull? I can barely hand you the cigarette but you have crouched in front of me to take it. Instead of handing it back you flick it away, blow the smoke to the side in a whistle. Your face is so near, and when you come to kiss me my face is trapped by your hand on my jaw, and you caress me with your mouth, your other hand finding the neckline of my dress, an upswell of breast. Your touch ignites a flicker of feeling inside, like lighting a burner, and I am overtaken with desire. I find I can answer you, my mouth on yours. Then the feeling turns on me, I feel trapped, too, of a sudden, with your hands on my dress, my leg, a caress and, too, a finding. I push you away.

  Don’t. My face is turned from your kisses, and your laughing face nuzzles my neck. Don’t. I don’t want you to.

  I know you do.

  Your hand is pressed between my knees, another on my back hard pulling, and you slide me toward you, onto the grass without purchase, under you. Your kiss is convincing, and my body answers you, arches to you, aches, without my heart, skirt puddled around, your warm hands cup my soft spots.

  No, don’t, my voice rising, my hands against your shirt, your arms, finding only hard muscles, straining, your face swelled and smiling, a flash of pleasure.

  Please. With one hand you take the pin from my hair, let it fall in a wave over your hand. Your kiss on my neck, the curve of my breasts, it feels good until the feeling turns again, the fear and pleasure both show on my face, and your face is brought near if I could open my eyes and look on your face.

  Let it happen, you tell me. I can only look away, feel the grass pressed against my cheek, your body pressing mine into the uneven ground, your arms as if to keep me close. Let it happen. You are fiddling with the buttons on my dress, your fingers feeling out the unfamiliar shapes of the fastenings, rubbing on new skin.

  Please don’t. I am overtaken with panic. Your hand reaching under my skirt. Please. Please don’t. Your hard groin pins me against the ground, against the cup of your hand, your warm fingers skin on skin. A moment only you need to unfasten your pants but in that brief break, a quarter-rest in your rhythm, I gather up my limbs and push free, nearly weeping, relieved, breathing hard as I gather myself together. I look away, as if the cool horizon could quiet my heart, trying to fasten the loose buttons on my dress, to cover the lace that has come awkwardly to light.

  Tease, you say, sitting back on your haunches and snatching at the hem of my skirt. I am pinning up my hair again, looping the hank of it against my scalp, reclaiming the loose strands from the breeze with my hand.

  Your idle hand, casual on your waistband, quietly refastens those buttons. You take a cigarette from my pack but do not light it, lean back against the side of the coop, sigh your frustration.

  Just wait, you say past the cigarette in your mouth.

  I brush the grass from my skirt. The leaves of the tree seem to flutter a warning on the wind. And I walk to the house.

  My mother’s face: The skin around her eye is deeply colored, black and green with patches of yellow. I can remember being held close up, squeezed along the line of my body until my face touches hers. I have a bow on the front of my dress that I am worried about crushing. My hands pluck at the bow, smooth it from the pressure of embrace and then move to her face. What’s that? She winces.

  I fell, she says. Your father and I were talking, and I fell. Later in the day I can see him out b
y the barn, sitting on the stump by the door. He is smoking a cigarette and rubbing the back of his neck. The bend in his back makes him look overweary and drawn, as if he did not have the heart for it that day.

  I carry your face around inside my heart, like something semiprecious, a stone, it is a hard place in my heart that I pick at but cannot peel away. It comes to me in dreams, your face at our wedding, certain and open, as if that were my one glimpse at your real face, everything else a mask.

  I wonder that I could not see this coming, that I could not read it in the twisted clouds hanging over the fields or in the pattern of blood on a towel, read like tea leaves.

  Perhaps it is in the nature of things, in riding uncertainty’s rollercoaster alongside the people we love, that we believe we can predict the next stop, the progression of loops and hills, next a steep grade, always followed by a freefall downhill, some of us holding our arms up and waving, others clutching white-knuckled the safety bar, all of us screaming our heads off and laughing or shouting or weeping. A sudden curve at the bottom of the hill throws us into one another before we begin another climb, each hill is steeper than the last and longer is the moment of stillness at the top of the climb, when we can look out over the treetops. The wind on our faces is a brief breath of cool air, the yellow sun warms our faces, then the cars tip over the edge, each time we plunge faster and more terrifyingly on the pinch of track, plummeting, the screams singing in our ears.

  She bought yards of cloth. In the years before, when she had a sewing room, the shelves were stacked with cheap cotton she had gotten from the remnant table, a few yards here or there, so there was always something to make, some project with which to worry her hands. She and I have loaded up on a weekday and gone into town. She drives us past my father out by the barn without a wave. He watches us go and my hand flaps, like some useless thing unanswered in the car window.