| |
Branches of the small mesquite tree at the edge of the driveway scratched like claws on the roof of Jamie’s car, a sound he felt along his spine. How could Mae listen to that every time she came home? Fuck. He’d have to hear it—no, would gladly hear it a thousand times. It was the guardian at the gate of paradise, paradise being Mae’s pea-soup-green converted trailer.
A warm quivering filled him, so intense he couldn’t tell if it was hope or anxiety. He imagined her bare skin, her lips, her gentle touch, ecstasy upon ecstasy all afternoon. Then all night, they’d be curled together in post-coital bliss, her perfectly proportioned moon-white body against his not so perfect dark brown one, a yin-yang ball of love.
He parked behind her gray Focus, turned around to the back seat, and collected the bags of Hatch chile products he’d bought on the way out of town, then got a plastic zipper bag containing a toothbrush, a little tube of toothpaste, and a box of floss from the glove compartment. He’d been eating green chile pistachios on the drive, and their lingering presence would taint a kiss.
He froze with one foot out the door. A kiss. The prelude to all that would follow. Jamie’s pulse accelerated. His heart felt full of tiny seeds, ready to explode. A nuclear pomegranate. He wanted her so badly it hurt—but they’d never done this before. Fantasy slammed into reality. He hadn’t made love to a woman for well over a year. Closer to two.
Mae’s sweet-tea voice came through his fog. She was out of the car, waiting for him to move. “Let’s go in. It’ll be kinda hot since I’ve been gone all day, but it’s a nice place. Niall put a couple of his sculptures in here—the ones he thinks he can’t sell. You’ll like it.”
She held her hand out with a playful little come-here gesture, and started for the house. Jamie thawed enough to follow.
The big shaggy-barked mesquite tree that shaded the tiny porch groaned in the wind. Its strange curly beans crunched underfoot, and its thorny branches snagged in Jamie’s braids. If he took a step the thing would pull his hair out. He dropped the bags and grabbed his head, lifting his hair up to reduce the feeling of being dragged by the scalp. Anxiety rattled his body like the tree’s leaves in the wind. “Fuck—fuck—fuck!”
Mae stopped and looked at him. “What in the world ...?”
His hands trembled as he tugged at a stuck branch. “It attacked me.”
Smiling with her lips together like she was trying not to laugh, she helped untangle him.
A thorn pricked his finger and he jumped up and down. “Ow. Fuck.”
“Take it easy, sugar. Hold still and I’ll have you free in a jiffy.”
“Hate stuff in my hair.”
“Okay. But get your hands out of the way so I can see what I’m doing.”
“Sorry.” Feeling small and embarrassed, he stood still while Mae finished the job. “Thanks, love.” He gave her a quick squeeze and picked up the bags, then stopped at the bottom of the steps. He could see why the tree was moaning now. “Fuck. Your tree’s rotten.”
“It is?”
“Yeah.” He gave the mesquite a shove, opening its flaw wider for Mae to see. What he’d initially taken for a curve in its rough shape was a crack down the center of its trunk. It creaked like a hinge, half the tree swaying out over the carport at the end of the driveway. If the wind blew hard the tree could split in two. He took a fallen branch from the ground and stuck it in the crack, plunging it in about eight inches deep. The crevice was full of a soft black powder of rot or fungus. “Jeezus. Looks like the devil’s arse crack.”
“Sure does.” Mae peered into the crack. “That’s so strange I never noticed. It’s still growing all these fresh leaves and beans. I’ll have to ask Niall about a tree surgeon.”
She sounded more intrigued than worried, but the tree was bad. Scary. Jamie dug the stick in and wiggled it. Some of the rot fell out. He shuddered and jumped back, shook invisible dirt off his pant legs. Lily Petersen. Jamie dropped the stick. The fucking tree was like Lily Petersen.
Mae touched his arm. “You ready to go in?”
“Dunno.” He sat on the porch steps, elbows on his thighs, bags at his feet. Everything he hadn’t told her pushed against the inside of his skull. Seeing Lily’s soul. And the reason why he could. “I’m stumped. Sorry. Wasn’t a dead tree joke. I mean—dunno. I’m—” He raised his eyes to hers. “Stumped.”
“About coming in or not?”
“Sort of.” Looking down at his feet, he noticed a mesquite twig had stuck its prongs into his ankle. Suppressing the cringe reflex, he pulled it off and flung it away. Stupid how something so small could scare the bloody crap out of him, but thorny plants, like anything that could sting or bite, sent him to the edge of panic. “I had all these fantasies, y’know? About seeing you again. What we’d do. Who I’d be.”
He’d imagined he’d be some kind of normal person. Thin, fit, sane, successful, strong. Not someone who saw souls and leaked energy. The only part he’d managed was successful—moderately. Lately he’d let go of thin, accepted the pace of his emotional progress, controlled his spiritual anomalies as well as possible, and had been almost content with himself, bordering on confident—until he was alone with her. A deep, unsteady breath came out on the edge of a laugh. “Wanted to do it like some love scene in a movie and I can’t. I’m still me.”
Mae stroked his hair and kissed his forehead. “I should hope so.”
She unlocked the house. The interior was around a hundred degrees even with the thermal blinds closed. Along the wall across from the pointy-legged fifties couch and chair stood two of Niall’s smaller sculptures, a javelin thrower made of rusted metal rings and bars, and a grazing sheep, curly with old springs and horseshoes. The sculptures made Jamie feel momentarily at home, the work of an old family friend welcoming him. Mae turned on the air conditioner. Jamie put the chile products in the kitchen and scurried toward the bathroom to brush his teeth, patting the sheep on his way through the living room. It was hot. He winced and shook his fingers. “Ow.”
Mae had that trying-not-to-laugh look again. Something hummed overhead. The ceiling fan began to turn, dislodging a spider on a thread. It spun like a passenger on a fair ride. Jamie swallowed an unmanly squeak and almost ran into the bathroom.
He closed the door. Fuck. What else could go wrong? Two phobic freak outs, burning his fingers on the sheep, and now the fan. Mae hadn’t touched the switch. Neither had he. She would ask more questions. Like she had on the drive.
Tell me about your life. He’d tried, but he’d sounded like the publicity on his web site. Come on, sugar, that can’t be all. So he told her that he’d painted his apartment and put in a flower garden. That sounded healthy. Didn’t tell her he hadn’t unpacked or bought furniture yet. Of course, she asked again what he’d done with Cara.
The answer was too complicated. He’d dodged it. Always good with cats.
And lamps? The lamp went on when you did that.
Fuck. Yeah, I heal appliances. Home improvement Reiki.
There was a fine line between lying and keeping secrets, and he’d been walking that tightrope for ten weeks now. No wonder he was so anxious. It wasn’t just his insecurity. He should have asked Mae to heal Cara, not done it himself. Poor cat got to him, though. He hadn’t been thinking. If he told Mae how the gift had come back, he’d have to tell her everything. He hadn’t even told his therapist everything. He wasn’t sure he’d even told himself.
He brushed his teeth and used some of Mae’s mouthwash. The clean feeling and the sense of control calmed him, but then he looked in the mirror. Sweat and thorns and wind had made his hair look like ... what was Mae’s weird Southern phrase? A hoo-rah’s nest. He probably stank, too. She wouldn’t want to make love with him all smelly.
His unsteady fingers struggled with his shirt buttons and stopped. Idiot. He couldn’t just jump in her shower in his first five minutes in her house. What in bloody hell was the matter with him? He opened the door and grasped the doorframe. “Fuck. That wouldn’t be sexy. It’d be bloody stupid.”
Mae strolled down the hall, talking on her phone. She turned her head away from it to speak to him. “What would be stupid, sugar?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Jeezus.”
She resumed her phone conversation. “It fixed itself?” A pause. “Reckon I can’t thank you, then. ’Bye. I gotta go. Jamie’s here.” She ended her call, frowning. “That’s so strange. Niall’s been promising to fix that fan since I moved in and now it just turned itself on.”
She looked at Jamie, apparently waiting for an explanation. He shrugged right-left. Her gaze dropped to the gap in his shirt, and her little smile came back. Embarrassment crawled over him like ants. “Need a shower.”
“So do I, but we can wait.”
Did she mean what he thought she meant? Shower together later? Like foreplay?
Mae said, “Come on. Sit down with me. Relax a while.”
He made a show of softly beating his head against the door and followed her back to the living room. Collapsing on the couch, he knocked his skull against the wall behind him, this time by accident, hard. “Jeezus.” The humiliation was suddenly funny. He snorted a loud laugh. “Bloody fucking hell.”
She sat beside him, tucking her feet under her, facing him. “What?”
“Nothing. Everything. Been so long it’s ...” Like being a virgin again.
He clasped her hand and leaned back more carefully. She shifted her position to cuddle up side by side, resting her head on his shoulder. His body responded with a subtle erotic stirring. Yes, they could wait. Get comfortable, be quiet for a while, no pressure, no questions.
As they held each other in silence, his nerves almost stopped buzzing. He began to sing to her quietly, an old love ballad. Mae snuggled and slid her hand inside his open shirt.
Something in her energy changed, a hesitancy and lightness in her touch as if she wasn’t sure how hard to squeeze a soft person. He squirmed. “You’re hugging my fat.”
“I’m hugging you.”
“But it bothers you. I can tell.”
“Only a little. More like, you’re different, that’s all.” She moved her arm up higher, to his chest. “If you’re happy at this weight, I’ll get used to you. It’s okay.”
“Happy.” He kissed her head and sat up, making her let go of him, and buttoned his shirt. “Dunno about that. More like ... mmm ... just how things are, y’know?”
“Relax, sugar. This is not a big deal. Sing to me again. It was sweet.”
“Nah. Can’t. Keep bouncing out of it, y’know? The mood. Got to have clean clothes. Flowers. Fix dinner. We’ll have to plan a date. Do it right.”
“You don’t have to do anything right. Just having you with me is right.” She scooted close again and began rubbing his back and his neck. “I’ll like the date with the flowers and dinner. It’ll be romantic, but you don’t have to do it to impress me. You already have.”
“How? Getting attacked by a tree? Smacking my head into the wall?”
She put her arm around his shoulders and drew his hair back from his face. “Look at me, sugar.” He met her eyes. They seemed darker and greener, with little gold flecks like light in a forest. “Last time I saw you, you were so broken. There wasn’t a day went by I didn’t think about you. I worried for months. I was afraid you’d kill yourself.” She stroked her palm over his cheek. “But you didn’t do that. You held on. That’s how you impressed me. I’m so proud of you.”
He hugged her so close he felt he could pull her through his skin, molecule by vibrating molecule. The pomegranate heart burst, seeds falling everywhere inside him. The tightrope shook. He was only half as well as she thought, and nowhere near as strong. He couldn’t even explain why he was alive, and she was so impressed with that achievement.
The strong, brave man she thought he was would tell her. The man he was could hardly breathe.
––––––––
He let the screen door close behind him. It bounced ajar and he tried to force it shut, but it stuck. Like the door to the spirit world.
The groaning tree dropped a pod at his feet. Click. The wind blew it across the boards of the porch. Shhh. A dog barked across the street, and others for blocks around took up the alarm. Jamie breathed against the fears. Dogs. Truth. Rejection. The tree. Lily’s soul.
Mae’s voice startled him. “You okay, sugar?”
“Yeah. Will be in a bit.”
She opened the door, gave it a shove at the base with her foot so it closed, and sat on the paint-peeling railing, her back to the tree. “You need some space, I can go in the bedroom, but I don’t want you sitting out here when it’s this hot and we danced so much.”
“Jeezus. You think I’ll calm down if I know you’re in the bedroom?”
She smiled. “The guest room, then. Or the kitchen. Come on back in. The house is cooling off.” Her head tilted to the side, she studied him for a moment. “Especially now that the fan is working.”
“Fuck. You know that was me, don’t you?”
“Home improvement Reiki? You been playing dodgeball all day. You healed Cara and the light went on, we get here and the fan fixes itself—and all you’ll tell me is what I can find out on your website. Or little stuff. You painted your apartment. You made yourself a flower garden—”
“Jeezus. That’s not little. You’ve never been depressed. You have no idea. That was fucking huge. Took a whole fucking month of therapy to get that far.”
“You said you just did it last month. Haven’t you been in therapy since December?”
He squirmed his shoulders, looked at her feet. They were as big as his, country-girl feet. Her legs swung, then stilled.
“You’re holding back,” Mae said. “I can tell. And it bothers me. I want us to get closer, not have some kind of wall up. I have to know you again.”
“You know me. Jeezus. Better than anybody.”
A sharp intake of breath, a light in her eyes. “I do.” Two happy syllables. Do-oo. She snapped her fingers. “You’re right. I know what’ll calm you down. A swim.”
It was part of his anti-anxiety strategy, had been for years. If she’d suggested the town pool it might have worked. But she wanted to go to the lake.
Mae changed into her swimsuit, and Jamie stopped at the thrift store for shorts that would do for swim trunks. They didn’t talk much on the drive to Elephant Butte. While they waited behind a truck with a boat trailer, the electronic sign over the gate to the park scrolled through a series of announcements, including an upcoming triathlon.
“Me and Daddy are doing that race,” Mae said, bubbling with enthusiasm. “We been training up here. Water’s a little chilly, but it makes me go fast.”
Fuck. If he’d died, some piece of him could have floated up at her. She and Marty could have looked down and seen a bloated corpse, a blond-haired black man, unmistakably Jamie even in decay. He felt sick.
The sign changed. Lake elevation: 4,313 feet. Air temperature: 99. Water temperature: 76. What had it been in March? Fifty? Colder? He should have died of hypothermia even without the rocks.
The sign changed to promote recycling. The truck and boat moved on. Mae hung her annual pass on the rearview mirror and Jamie drove to the same campsite he’d used for his death trip. Someone else was camping there now. He started to park across the street at the playground.
Mae said, “This is a good spot to reach the running trail, but the swimming’s better further in. It drops off kinda deep here.”
“I know.”
She looked surprised. “You’ve been in the water here?”
His voice came out weak and tight. “Yeah.”
He’d been on the verge of trying to tell her. Delay came as a relief. He steered back onto the road and followed Mae’s directions to the safer place to swim. The lake was blue and cheerful and full of boats. Like the life he’d made since his survival, it didn’t look like a place where death met miracles.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised you’ve been here,” Mae said. “Guess I think of you camping for rock climbing and stuff, not at a lake.”
“Can’t climb anymore.” He flexed his right fingers. Residual effects of his accident in December tingled along his last two fingers. “Nerve’s still fucked. No grip strength.”
“Still? You can play flutes again, can’t you?”
“Yeah, took about two months, but I got the agility back. It’s the ...” He crossed his thumb inside his palm. “That part.”
“Oh—yeah. Your ulnar nerve does do that.”
“You had that stuff in school already?”
She blushed. “No, I’m not that far along. I looked it up. Trying to picture how you were healing, what you’d have to do for rehab.”
“Jeezus.” He was touched. Mae’s way of missing him. Trying to imagine what exercises he’d have to do. He reached past the roo and squeezed her hand with what strength he had.