IT WAS WARM in here since the windows were closed tight and the heat had been turned on. The small rotating fan on top of the end table made a buzzing sound as it rotated from Joe to Alberta as if it had a bet on who would make the first move. The cup-and-saucer ride spinning in front of this house cast, against the ceiling, intermittent spools of light that seemed to move to the whir and click of the fan blades. The table lamp was steady though, with a soft, yellow glow, and Alberta focused on that because she was feeling dizzy from all the circular motion and the warmth as she sat on the edge of the chair by the window and waited for Joe to say something.
But Joe wasn’t saying anything, he was just standing by the vestibule door with his hand still on the knob, asking himself what he’d just done. What was he going to do now, because after his bold move of laying on Alberta’s doorbell like he owned it, he really didn’t have any other moves planned. He felt like wood right now, so unlike him to feel this self-conscious, and he was ready to claim what small piece of him that didn’t look like a fool and head right back out the door.
“Joe.” She said his name as a complete sentence when she saw him turn to leave. His name was the subject and the verb right then and her voice shook. But Joe still wasn’t talking as he turned back around to face her, he was just standing there in the half glow of the table lamp, so she said her sentence again, phrased it as a question so that he wouldn’t leave. “Joe?”
All he could muster up right then in response was a comment about her appearance. “You look very nice, Alberta, I mean, with your hair out and all, very nice,” he said, and Alberta could see his eyes go larger from across the room.
“Take a seat,” she said, and her voice didn’t even feel like her own rising up through her throat. Joe did and wished at that moment that he’d left some music playing next door, something to fill the stretch of space between the chair by the window where Alberta sat and the couch where he did. She was even hard to look at, sitting there. Short robe that barely covered her knees, slender legs leading down to bare feet, hair out of that cage she usually locked it in, all fluffy now, lips shining, pouty lips, the only part of her he’d been able to see back then in that darkened room at Pat’s was her lips. He remembered now how he’d trace them with his fingers, telling her what a beautiful mouth she had. He started to remind her that he used to do that, but he wasn’t sure how she’d take to being reminded about that life. He himself hardly wanted to recall that life of hers that extended beyond him. And it had extended beyond him. Hated to think about all the men she’d probably had; base, drunken dogs most of them. Though she looked so far removed from that life sitting there now. So small, frail even. So inexperienced. She looked exposed right now, sitting there, and he felt as though he’d just opened her bathroom door by accident and caught her naked. So out of respect he tried not to look at her, even as he was drawn to look at her and ended up then looking at her pretty bare feet.
“I honestly don’t know what to say, Alberta,” he began in a dry, cracking voice. He reached into his T-shirt pocket and pulled out his smokes. “Guess I can’t do this in here?” he asked.
“I don’t own any ashtrays,” she said as she shifted in the chair, and her thighs felt so soft rubbing against each other from the way she’d lavished on the mineral oil.
He let the pack of cigarettes fall on the coffee table and cleared his throat. “My apologies, Alberta. I mean, I swear to you I really can’t explain it, you know, why I never realized, but then you never said, I mean, who would think, I mean, right next door. You knew? I mean, all this time, I mean years and years? Did you remember me? It’s just that one minute I’m playing my horn and the next minute I’m seeing what I couldn’t see, the past, what, seventeen years?”
“And?” she said, wanting him to go on while the oil was still slick along the surface of her skin before she reverted back to what she’d been for the past years, a hate-filled woman in a holy dress.
Joe was still grappling with his words, trying to make her understand how he felt, once he could understand it. Just knew that he was sitting in her half-dark house getting all worked up over the sight of her now with her hair out and her bare legs. He meant no disrespect, he was saying right now, when he hadn’t come back like he’d promised the night that Cheeks was stabbed.
She was thinking, as he talked, that nor did she mean him any. That she knew he had a wife who he loved, knew it was wrong of her to entice him the way she was doing right now, but she wanted to turn her life around, she told herself now. Because she was like a car that was trying to come out of a skid and that had to veer in the other direction to right itself. And that’s all she was doing right now, she told herself, she was just going to the other extreme for a minute while she got back on course. That’s all.
“I mean you no disrespect either, Joe,” she said as she stood and watched Joe walk toward her, watched his strong, dark hands lightly caress the pink satin ribbon that held her thin robe in place. “As God is my witness, I mean you no disrespect.” She was half crying now as she said that she just needed to be held tonight, that’s all. Because she’d been through a lot and she was tired and lonely and sad.
“Oh God, Alberta. Come ’ere. Let me hold you. Let me. Everything’s gonna be okay in the long run,” he whispered. “You right too, ’cause you do need some comforting. I always could comfort you too, couldn’t I, Alberta. Damn.” He ran his thumbs along the perimeter of her hairline, from her forehead to her cheekbones. “It’s such a sin the way you kept all your prettiness all caged up like you were ashamed of it. Don’t you believe the Lord wouldn’t have made you so beautiful if he didn’t want to show you off? Huh?” He smoothed his fingers through her hair. “You pretty as an angel, you know that.” His swollen lips touched the skin on her forehead right where her mother had marked her. He pulled his lips from her forehead and let them slide down the bridge of her nose. “If I don’t hear you say for me to stop,” he whispered, “I’m just gonna assume that you don’t want me to stop. Huh, Alberta, ’cause Lord knows I don’t want to stop, and soon I won’t be able to anyhow. Lord. Alberta. It’s on you, now. Damn. I know you must miss the feel of a man’s arms holding you closelike, tenderly. Don’t you? Let me. Please, Alberta, let me.” He had all of her in the circle of his arms. She was a small woman, slight shoulders, thin arms, her arms hung loosely at her sides. He wanted her to lift her arms, to hold him. Told himself that he wouldn’t go any further if she didn’t hold him too. She was too vulnerable right now, so as hard as it would be for him, if she didn’t give him some kind of signal besides standing here with her passivity intact, he’d just peel himself away.
She lifted her arms and hung them around his neck. How natural it felt, as if she’d hung her arms around his neck every night for the past seventeen years. His mouth was at hers now as their breaths got all tangled up and they could no longer tell which heart was thumping in which chest, whose sobs were whose. He undid the pink satiny ribbon holding the robe together and pulled it through the loops and let it fall to the floor. He slid his hands under the robe and almost gasped at the feel of her skin that was giving off an oily steam. He thought he might explode right there against her in the middle of her living room and there was nothing he could do about it until he felt her pulling him, nudging him, and when he became aware of his surroundings, they were all the way through the house, at the basement door. He scooped her up and carried her down. And the darkness down there was so movable, so loud, that they didn’t even hear the fireworks going off outside. And Alberta thought that it was like cotton down there with Joe. So loose. So free. Finally, free.