The first time he fell in love?
Warm Springs, summer of 1927. Not so long ago. He was twenty-three years old. He was in love with the place first. The dark-shuttered inn with its ship-mast turrets and bell-shaped porches, like some overgrown Japanese fortress; the silver, silky-skinned swimming pool (where now he was not the only one clinging tight to the edge); the acres of rolling green lawn. It was the kind of grass that called for picnic blankets, and on sunny days for lunch they were wheeled outside and lowered from their chairs to the ground. There were chicken legs and lemonade and watermelon, and the children—there were many children—spit the seeds in the grass. In the afternoon there were Bunko games on the porch and there was a radio playing Fiddlin’ John Carson and there were women in sunhats and bathing costumes and children shrieking and splashing. At night the lovebirds—there were many lovebirds—snuck out to the lawn to lie beneath the loblolly pines and gaze up at the stars in the silky-skinned sky, the picnic blankets still rough with bread crumbs beneath them.
What was her name?
Well. He never knew her name. She had no name.
What? Did he never kiss her? Did he never take her to the lawn under the stars?
Well—Oliver shifted on the edge of the bed—there was no one to kiss, no one to take. Everyone was taken. There was just the place, first and last. There was the lawn and its lovebirds. He wanted to be in love under the stars, but all the lovebirds already loved each other.
“Oliver, I think you’re playing with me.”
“I don’t mean to. I meant to tell you a story, like you asked for.”
“I meant a real story.”
“You’re asking if I been in love. I wanted to be. If it was to happen, that’s where it would have happened. Everything was in place.”
“And now?”
The bed was the biggest either had ever been in, with four feather pillows each the size of a winter hog, and a gold damask duvet that was still made up beneath them. They were on the bed, then, not in it, sitting with their legs hanging over its edge, and whether they would eventually be under the bedclothes, whether they would be kicked to the end of the bed, to the floor, whether the Hotel Chanticleer’s chambermaid would need to gather them up to wash or could just smooth them out in the morning, neither of them was yet sure.
“Now,” said Oliver, “I’m in love with a redhead who walked through my office door. When nothing was in place.”
Elma felt the blood rush to her cheeks. She didn’t know if he meant he had never been in love, or had never made love, and if she preferred that he had never been in love, or never made love, before her. “Saving yourself for me, is that what you mean?”
Oliver gave a nervous laugh. “I suppose it is.”
“Well, I never was in love.” Quickly she added, “Not before.”
She could sense him putting together the right words. “Not with Winna’s father?”
“Oh, no. Lord no.”
“I intend to be a father to her, you know. Winna and Wilson too.”
“I know you do,” she said, and tentatively she patted his knee. They hadn’t touched each other since that afternoon, when she’d helped him stand in front of the church. They had both been so embarrassed by it, his stumbling helplessness in front of Freddie, her straining to keep him steady while someone fetched his cane. She’d never been more confused, holding her new husband straight with one hand and straightening her hair with the other while the man who was supposed to be her husband looked laughingly at them both. In her arms, Oliver had felt like a store mannequin falling over at the waist, and now as she patted his knee—he didn’t flinch—she felt again that dead doll weight.
“You can’t feel that, can you?”
Now Oliver was the one blushing. He shook his head.
“This one”—gently he took her hand around the wrist and drew it over his lap and dropped it onto his other knee, his right one, the one farthest from her—“this one I can feel.”
Through his tweed pants she could feel the sharp skull of his kneecap, and under her thumb, the twitch of his thigh.
She drew back her hand. She remembered the last time they’d been in—on—a bed together, how foolishly she had thrown herself at him. She would not make the same mistake. She would behave like a proper bride on her wedding night, if there was a way tonight to salvage propriety. She would wait for her husband to remove her dress. Now at least she was wearing one.
But Oliver, she was coming to see, did not like to take initiative. He liked to ask her which way she liked things. Did she want the reverend to read First Corinthians? (She did.) Did she want to invite his mother? (She did, though she’d left for Savannah early, to avoid the wedding, Elma thought, leaving the house on Main Street empty. None of his family had attended the wedding, not a cousin.) Did she want Wilson to sleep in the same room as Winna, or the same room as Nan? (It was his house. He could decide. Didn’t he know that sometimes a girl wanted someone else to decide?) It was that freedom she’d craved, after so many years locked in her father’s house, and yet she didn’t know what to do with it; it made her feel unsteady on her feet, as though at any time she could make the wrong choice, and she would fall and take them all down with her.
Did she want to stay the night at the Chanticleer, after all that had happened that day? It wasn’t a real honeymoon, he’d apologized—he liked to apologize—but he’d thought it would be a nice surprise, a quiet place for them to spend their first night together as husband and wife. But if it was too much, if she wanted to go home to the farm, or to the house—whatever she wanted.
What she wanted was to lie down on the gold damask duvet, which was exactly as fine as she’d imagined, while her new husband climbed on top of her and pounded back the disgrace of the day, the disgrace of the year.
And so here they were. There was the wingback armchair. There was the fire sputtering in the fireplace, their own fireplace right there in the room. There were the electric sconces, two of them above the bed. Part of her wanted to turn them off so she might sit unseen in the dark, but she liked the soft, yellow light they cast on the dark ribs of the wallpaper, like sun on the ripples of the creek. She sat with her hands in her lap.
“Elma Rawls,” she said aloud, trying it out.
“What?”
“Elma Rawls.” She looked at him. “Gone take a while for me to get used to that.”
“Elma Rawls,” he said, “it’s going to take both of us a while to get used to this.”
“Used to what?”
He cast his arm back over the bed. “To being married.” A bead of sweat skated down his temple. “It’ll take time, I reckon. We can take our time. If that’s what you want.”
“Are you asking me what I want?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“I want to lay down,” she said.
Oliver braced his hands against the edge of the bed and lifted his torso and swung it back and to the right a foot, toward the headboard. It was so warm in the room that he’d taken his suit jacket off, and through his shirt she could see his biceps tense. His arm muscles were well-formed—from years of carrying his weight on his crutches, she would learn—and he had a certain dexterity, didn’t he, a contained kind of comfort in his own body, as though it were a jalopy only he knew how to drive. Steadily he pushed back one more time, lifted his left leg just above the knee—she shifted down the bed to give him room—then pivoted his waist, cranking both legs onto the bed with his right, so that his body lay before him now. He arranged his arms behind his head, settling into the pillows. The underarms of his shirt were dark with sweat.
“Been a long day,” she said, slowing herself down, because she felt that she might hurtle forward if she let herself.
“You must be tired.”
“I am tired.”
He patted the bed beside him. “Come on, lay down and rest, Elma Rawls.”
She looked at the great expanse of the bed. “You got to take your shoes off first, Oliver.” They were both wearing their shoes and she realized how sore her feet were, how pinched her toes. She began to take off her heels, unbuckling the straps and standing them up on the floor at the foot of the bed.
He looked down at his feet. His face was figuring out what to do.
“You must want to take your shoes off, Oliver, after such a long day.”
“I do. It’s just . . . it ain’t so easy.”
“Let me.” She reached for his left foot, and he pulled back his right one.
“Wait.”
“What is it?”
“Can you . . . can you get me my jacket?” He pointed to the table, where his cane was propped against the armchair, and over the chair, his jacket. She handed it to him. It was heavy, and from the inside pocket he took a silver flask. “Do you mind if I have just a taste? It helps, sometimes, with my nerves.”
“Oliver Rawls. You got something up your sleeve?”
He laughed. “I don’t drink much, I promise you. If you mind, I won’t—”
“I don’t mind,” she said, though she did, though she was thinking now of Freddie and of her father, the two men she didn’t want to be thinking of on her wedding night. “That’s not—gin, is it?”
He shook his head as he took a sip. He downed it quickly, as though it were cough syrup. “Whiskey.”
“What’s whiskey taste like?” She remembered the way the gin had made her head light and liquid when she was in labor.
Oliver thought. “Strong.”
“Can I try it?”
“It’s very strong, Elma.”
“You saying I can’t handle it?”
“I think you could handle just about anything.”
“Hand it over, then.”
He did and she took a sip and her throat burned and tears came to her eyes, but she put on a face like she’d just had a sip of Earl Grey.
“Do you like it?”
She said, “It tastes like axle grease.”
He laughed. “I told you it was strong.”
“Give me some more.”
“Elma.”
“Give me some more!”
He handed it over. She took another swig. It was like the terrible, wonderful sting of dunking her face in the cold creek.
“Look like you the one with something up your sleeve.”
“No.” She returned the flask to him. “I don’t drink, either.”
“Really? With—?”
“Never. I hate the stuff.”
“Me too,” he said, and took another sip.
“Is it helping? With your nerves?”
He sighed. “It’s my leg.” He knocked on the left one, and to her surprise—was she drunk already?—it made a sound, a metallic thump.
“Does it hurt?”
“No, ma’am. Can’t feel a thing.”
Carefully he lifted his pants leg from the thigh, and at his ankle she could see the place where his shoe, which had a thick platform heel, like a woman’s house shoe, was bolted onto what looked like a metal brace. A brace, then. It was why he walked the way he did. All at once she was flooded with the relief and dread of understanding. That shoe was like an ugly baby (yes, she was drunk already, or half drunk; she could feel the whiskey spreading its wings across her chest); it was like a baby with a harelip, or one of the tiny, hairy babies at Coney Island. Gathering her courage, like she was set to take another shot, she took his shoe and cradled it and lowered it into her lap. Oh, she was glad for the whiskey. She eased the pants leg up farther, and he let her. The brace was fitted on either side of his calf, which was pale and skinny and nearly hairless, like a boy’s. She looked at his leg. She didn’t dare look him in the face. Her own face was flaming. Quickly, like she might touch a stove to see if it was hot, she touched his shin. “Can you feel that?”
Then she did look up at him. Her husband’s eyes through his glasses were warm and faraway and silver. He shook his head.
She crept the pants leg up farther, until it was bunched above his knee. Up went the brace, as far as she could see, farther. She touched his kneecap, more confidently this time, like she might touch the stove after being reasonably sure it wouldn’t burn her. “That?” she said.
Again he shook his head. He swallowed. He was thinking, she thought, that she might keep her hands moving in their upward direction, and she was thinking she might do the same. And thinking it, she lost her nerve and dropped her hands to his calf. She rubbed her palms around it, first gently, then more vigorously, her knuckles knocking against the brace. She thought suddenly of Winna. How she would jog Winna’s legs, pressing her knees against her chest when her belly was upset, and then her constipated baby was in her head when she was supposed to be making love to her husband. Her brain felt loose. Winna and Wilson were with Nan. Nan would nurse her. Elma’s breasts were full but Winna hardly nursed at night anymore; Winna would be fine. Nan was at the new house, Dr. Rawls’s house. Oliver had already hired a man to move what little they would bring with them—the crib, the rocker, their clothes, some books, the sewing machine—and Oliver had decided, because Elma wanted him to decide, she couldn’t decide anything else, not today, that the man should go on and move Nan too. And although Juke was no longer there, though he had, over the course of the long afternoon, been escorted by the sheriff to the jailhouse, Nan would be safer at the house in town. She was safe. She could stop worrying about Nan. Who was she to think Nan needed her?
It was her father she was worried about. What kind of bed was he sleeping on tonight? How long would they keep him?
She shook her head. The whiskey was making it hard to keep her mind where she wanted it. Oliver’s eyes were closed. He looked pleased, though if he couldn’t feel pain, she reasoned, he couldn’t feel pleasure. She was kneading his dead leg roughly, like a firm dough. What was she doing? It was easier at Christmas, when she had decided to be a tramp. It was easier before that, in Freddie’s truck, when she had no choice but to be a tramp, when being a wife was a far-off promise, and all the things that would happen had not happened yet. She was massaging Oliver’s calf and thinking of Freddie, that first time, how she had not even had to decide to take off her drawers, how he had yanked them aside and sat her down on his lap, her spine wedged against the steering wheel, her breasts mashed against his liquor-hot mouth, without need for the pillow talk that was now, she was learning, the harder part, the husband-and-wife part, the part she would have to do for the rest of her life. It was that hungry, wordless part she wanted now, the part that was like the liquor, fast and painful, in and out.
“Oliver?”
He opened his eyes. Her hands paused on his leg.
“What can you feel?”
She thought she saw the crotch of his pants pulse. It rose and fell and was still. But her brain was loose and the smoke from the fireplace was making her eyes water.
He tapped his left thigh just below the groin. “Here up,” he said, “I can feel everything.” He adjusted his glasses. “But I can’t do everything.”
She nodded. “I see,” she said, but she didn’t see.
“Do you want to? See?”
She blinked. “See what?”
“My leg. Everything. Whatever you want.”
“Are you asking me what I want?”
“I want to be honest with you. I’ve—I’ve seen you. It’s my turn. I don’t want to hide anything from you, Elma.”
She shook her head.
“No? You don’t want to see?”
“No. I mean, no, I don’t want to hide anything, either.”
“No,” he agreed.
“Let me.” His foot was still cradled in her lap. She had grown used to it.
“There’s a pin through the bottom. You just—kind of push and pull. To release it.”
She struggled with it a moment.
“You need both hands.”
Then she sprung it loose and the brace fell slack. She untied the shoe and pulled it off his foot. She untied the other one. She put the shoes on the floor beside her own.
There were three leather straps. One across the calf, one just above the knee, and one around the upper part of his thigh.
“It’s easier to take the trousers off first,” he said.
She put her hands in her lap. “Shall I turn off the light?”
“No. Leave it.”
He loosened his belt and without being told she began to slip the trousers down, first unbunching the left pants leg, then drawing them both around and over the brace and off. She did this slowly, carefully, as though removing a drop cloth from an antique piece of furniture.
His legs lay before her like two buttered noodles. One leg was a good two inches shorter than the other. His shirttails covered his shorts. His eyes were closed and his face was turned, as though he were the one seeing them for the first time.
“Oliver? You all right?”
“Never let anyone do that before.”
“It’s all right, Oliver.” They weren’t so awful, were they? Did a man need legs to be a man? “It’s all right,” she said again.
The first two straps she unbuckled wordlessly and without help. It was a puzzle, one she could solve, a place to focus her mind. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw his crotch move again, but she kept her eyes on each buckle, each clasp.
The last strap was laced instead of buckled, like a woman’s corset. Elma had never worn a corset before and she felt queasy unlacing this one. It was a puzzle, she told herself, a knot to untie. Her fingernails were long and she scratched his thigh and she apologized.
“No, no,” he said.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all right.”
And then the last strap was undone and she could lift his leg out of it. “Does it hurt?” He shook his head. She thought of the feeling of lifting a log down by the creek. The kind you expected to be heavy but instead was hollowed out. She turned to rest the brace in the chair, and it slipped and she rearranged it, and then the cane slipped and she rearranged it, and when she turned back to the bed Oliver had unbuttoned his shirt and removed it and then he removed his undershirt too. He blotted his face with his undershirt and dropped it to the floor. Now he was in his shorts, very clean, very white shorts. She tried to keep her eyes on his arms, his very strong, very white arms, the dark hair on his chest. The legs weren’t so awful, were they? So terribly awful?
She took the flask from the nightstand and took another sip and shook her head with the heat of it. “I finished it,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” he said.
She sat on the edge of the bed and he unfastened the buttons on the back of the dress, eight pearl buttons she had sewn on by hand. They had been buttoned once—Nan had dressed her—and now they were unbuttoned, and they would not be needed again. She was sorry to take off the dress, but she did. The whiskey was just enough to help her drop her slip and brassiere and drawers to the floor in a puddle at her feet. She watched her husband watch her. To keep her hands busy she removed the pins from her hair, which was falling from its twist. He said, “I didn’t think you could look more beautiful than you did in that dress.”
She could feel her cheeks blushing with the whiskey. She wanted to be under the bedclothes—it was what married people did, wasn’t it, they did what they did under the bedclothes—but she couldn’t imagine how they might get under them together, how she might have to help lift them out from under his body. So she lay down beside him on top of the gold duvet. The feather pillow floated up around her ears. She felt a sad, futile longing for the pillow, for its weight on top of her, her legs around its great mass. Her red hair was kinked from the bobby pins and it lay in waves over her breasts, which were full of milk. She prayed they wouldn’t spill.
Quietly Oliver shimmied out of his shorts. She sat up on an elbow to help him, but he didn’t need help. It took him some time.
She had not lain down next to Freddie, other than in the bed of his truck, where there wasn’t room to stretch out flat, let alone to study his manhood. It had been dark, the headlights off and the moon dull, everything quick and cramped and confused. It was Genus’s manhood that hung in her mind.
Oliver’s manhood was like a little white sleeping mouse. Every once in a while the mouse would twitch its tail in its sleep. Part of her wanted to reach out and pet it. Part of her wanted to leap from the bed.
Oliver spoke to the ceiling. “We make a fine pair.”
“Oliver,” she said, though she wasn’t touching him, “you make a fine man. You’re a fine man.” He was fine, wasn’t he? He was fine.
“I’d like to do everything. I would. Maybe I can.”
“You’re fine, Oliver,” she managed. “You’re a good, good man.”
He gave a pitiful laugh. “A good man.” He looked at her, suddenly desperate. He took her hand, and between their naked hips their wrists were pressed together and she felt the blood coursing through his veins. “I want to. I promise. Maybe someday I can.”
She drew her hand back, laid it on her stomach. “But not tonight,” she said. She meant it as a question.
“Not tonight, darling.”
She understood he didn’t want to try and fail. Not on their wedding night.
“No,” she agreed. They lay there for a few minutes, breathing deeply, the firelight making shadows on the wall. She sat up a little and then lay back down, just to feel her head sink into the pillow again.
“You can change your mind,” he said.
She turned her head to him.
“I’ll understand. If you want to go back to him. Now that he’s back. Now that you’ve seen me for what I am. If—”
“Oliver, what? Go back to who?”
Neither one of them had said his name. “Freddie Wilson.”
Elma sat up. She looked down at her husband. “Good gracious, Oliver! I hate that man! Don’t you understand? I hate him!”
Oliver gave a meek nod. “All right,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
“I hate him,” she said again.
“I’ve tricked you. I didn’t mean to, but I’ve tricked you.”
“No,” she said. “No, you haven’t.” But she did feel tricked, she did feel deceived, and now she felt angry—angry for his apology, his adoration.
“It’s your choice,” he said. But he was wrong. She had no more choices left.
He looked at her hopefully. The fire flashed whitely on his lenses.
“Enough looking,” she said, and snatched the glasses off his face, and now there was nothing more to take off.