OCTOBER 19, 1956
Plum, bird, sarsaparilla—
Adele opens the door and goes to the stove to put on water for tea. Herbs from the woods she’s gathered—hemlock, yarrow, burdock—followed by instant coffee. We drink it outside on the porch, no matter the season. Her thick boots, her mangled hands. She says we drink outside so that we don’t forget to hear what the birds have to say on the matter.
She says, her voice soft this time, “Loving another woman’s husband. Tsk. Dangerous.”
She says, “You better be careful. Love can be more powerful than herbs.”
I tell her, “Never!” and laugh, but I stop bleeding; my body grows thicker around the waist. In the morning I leave the cabin where the smell of Otie is everywhere, lean against my favorite oak, and retch into the leaves.
Adele says, “There’s only one way now, and that is forward.” She gives me hemlock and yellow lady’s slipper.
I don’t tell Lex when he shows up at my door that night. I grab his hands and pull him to me. His green eyes glint in the western light, shafting through the window. He says, “If only we had music, Lena-belle,” and I say, “Oh we do, Lex-i-con. We do,” whistling the entire tune of “Saint Anne’s Reel.”
He pulls me to the floor. He lifts my shirt off of my shoulders, puts his lip against my nipple, twines there.
I am laughing. I am cooing.
I say, “Lex, you coon you,” and then there is the music we find there—starlight, murk, flicker—and then crawling toward the bed, where he sleeps wrapped around me until dawn.
WE WAKE EARLY. HE HAS LOST HIS JOY IN THE nighttime—he wakes with his brow furrowed. He is shaking, which always means he is back at that war and its eternal battlefield. I climb out of bed, throw a sweater on, and make us coffee. He joins me at the table. Puts his face into the steam and breathes in. “Lena,” he says, eyes desperate. “What are we doing?”
I take a sip of my coffee. Look up to face Otie, who is blinking from the corner. I say, “We are animals.” Outside: jay, crow, chipmunk.
He touches my finger with his thumb. Rubs it there. “Stephen,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“Stephen,” I say. I don’t say: I am with child. I look out the window: red leaves falling from the maples, beech leaves rattling.
“I’ve done so much wrong,” he says, and I don’t deny it. I don’t deny either of us our wrongdoing in our quest to be loved.
I kiss him on the lips—bristle, moist, coffee-dank—before he walks down the trail to the house below, where his wife is already up, cleaning the stalls, milking.