The next day, John returned before lunchtime to round the cats onto the porch and examine them. Evangeline’s pregnancy was progressing nicely, he declared, and he added that the Three Stooges were fit and happy in their new home. They had already been neutered, too, so Geneva could stop worrying.
Geneva was not worried about the cats. At this moment, she was more concerned about figuring out a way to entice John to stay a little longer. He picked up Dr. Zhivago to listen to his chest, and suddenly, his face sobered and darkened. Pressing his fingers along the side of Dr. Zhivago’s neck, he cocked his head as if listening or thinking hard.
Geneva’s heart plunged. “What is it?” she demanded.
“I’m not sure,” said John slowly, his forehead furrowed with concentration as he withdrew a blood pressure cuff from his medical bag. Solemnly and deliberately, he wrapped the cuff, which seemed absurdly large for the cat, around and around Dr. Zhivago’s foreleg and pumped it up. Geneva watched anxiously as he placed his stethoscope against the cat’s paw and listened intently.
“What is it?” queried Geneva again, her voice a little unsteady.
“Oh, nothing really… uuhm. Dr. Zhivago seems to have a little blood pressure problem.”
“Blood pressure?”
“Not bad, just a little high. What have you been feeding him?”
“Regular cat food. And I bet he catches things around the barn.” She wondered guiltily if mice and frogs were bad for cats.
“Hmm.” Pause. “Hmm,” again. “Well, that shouldn’t cause it. May be a fluke. Tell you what, I’ll come back tomorrow evening and check again. His bronchitis seems to be gone, though.”
“Oh, will you? Thank you! What do you think it is? Will he be all right?”
“I’m certain he’ll be fine. Really, nothing to worry about,” John said briskly. “I just want to give him a chance to calm down. He’s pretty excited right now.”
Geneva peered closely at the cat who was at the moment flopped over on his side, one leg in the air, industriously licking his bottom. He didn’t look too excited to her, but then again, she didn’t know much about cats; she had never bothered to learn much about them since she disliked them so much.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No. Just make sure he gets plenty of exercise.” He produced a catnip mouse and dangled it in front of Dr. Zhivago. The cat leapt at it, snatching it from John’s fingers, and tore out across the yard, frisking his tail and flinging the toy high into the air. Geneva stared after him. He might seem just a little more nervous than usual. It was hard to be sure. Dr. Zhivago had always been pretty rambunctious. He disappeared around the barn with one last shake and toss.
John stayed a little longer to inquire after her arm, and when he noticed Geneva’s anxious glances toward the barn, he reassured her again. “Please don’t worry about Dr. Zhivago. I honestly don’t think there’s anything wrong with him. I bet tomorrow I’ll find everything perfectly normal.”
Nevertheless, Geneva worried all that night and all the next day, and felt insulted when she expressed her concerns to Wayne and Rachel. Rachel pretended to ignore her. A funny look passed over her face, then she walked out of the room. And Wayne! Well! Wayne actually snickered! Geneva knew her brother-in-law didn’t care for cats, but his cavalier attitude made her temper flare. Obviously, they did not recognize the significance of the problem, so she finally chose to ignore their callousness and turned her energies into thanking her lucky stars that John had come along and noticed Dr. Zhivago’s condition. What other vet would take such meticulous care?
When John arrived at the door shortly before twilight the next day, Geneva was waiting for him with Dr. Zhivago on her lap. Getting him and keeping him there had proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated when she was calculating the best pose for effect. She had hoped the sick cat would lie languidly in her arms, but he kept wanting to play with the runners on the rocking chair. Geneva finally had to stop rocking and sit perfectly still to get him quiet.
“Thank you for coming,” she sang out to John as he limped onto the porch. “I’ve noticed he does seem a little feverish. What do you think?”
John looked at her with a stern, solemn face, so different than the one he had greeted her with less than two weeks ago. Geneva’s face prickled with anxiety. He was not the sort of person to let her worry needlessly. Surely there must be some terrible prognosis for Dr. Zhivago, and he was hiding it from her in order to spare her hurt. Gently, he picked up the cat and checked his blood pressure, wrapping the cuff around and around his foreleg once again. There was a long silence as he listened intently into the stethoscope. Geneva held her breath until he released the pressure.
“Well, what it?” she demanded.
The light came on behind John’s eyes. “Just as I thought. He’s perfectly fine. I guess he was a little nervous around me yesterday.”
Geneva almost sobbed with relief. Although she did not like cats in general, she had favored Dr. Zhivago ever since she had found him, a shivering, ice-covered kitten sitting by a city gutter, the sleet coming down hard on his tiny head. He had mewed so pitifully at the passersby who ignored him that Geneva could not help but stop and pick him up. Despite the fact that he was nearly frozen, he had begun to purr loudly the moment she held him under her coat, and he had snuggled so wonderfully that she resolved then and there to take him home with her, despite the fact that her apartment already was home to three other stray cats.
That had been his last grateful moment. Once he got into her home, he had taken over as alpha male, thoroughly intimidating the other cats, demanding the best spot on the bed and the best cat food available. But Geneva never forgot that initial purr, and she always felt a special softness for the fat, greedy adult tom that he had become. He had remained her favorite to this day.
She turned her shining eyes to John’s and breathed, “I’m so grateful,” and then, because she knew she could stop worrying about Dr. Zhivago, she turned her attentions to the charming veterinarian. Certainly, this latest development had caused him to become even more attractive.
John sat heavily in a chair and exchanged pleasantries for a while, then he looked intently at her and after a short pause cleared his throat. “Say, er, Geneva,” he began earnestly. “I don’t know if you’ll feel up to it by Saturday night, but if you aren’t busy, maybe we could do something.”
Geneva’s heart leaped; a flush warmed her to the scalp. Her arm troubled her so little that she was ready to yank the sling off then and there and ask John to dance, but instead she looked at her lap and said demurely, “I think I’ll feel just fine by Saturday. What would you like to do?”
“Well, there’s a new stock theatre in Tucker, and they’ve got a pretty good repertoire. I think tomorrow night they start Midsummer Night’s Dream, and they’re staging it at the amphitheatre in the botanical gardens. Would you enjoy that?”
Geneva glowed at him. She couldn’t imagine a more wonderful evening than sitting among the flowers in the clear mountain night, watching a play about magical love with the devastatingly handsome John Smith. “I’d love it,” she sighed.
“Good,” he smiled. “Rachel told me you majored in theatre. I sort of minored in it, at least I hung around as much as possible. As a matter of fact, I once played Oberon.”
Geneva laughed. “I played Puck.”
“I think the role was written for you! I’ll pick you up about six for dinner.”
She walked him to his Jeep, watching as the engine roared to life and the car spun out of the driveway the way she had hoped to do instead of driving into the ditch. Muted thunder grumbled softly in the west; a flash of lightning lit the clouds building black against the pink and silver sky. Rain all you want tonight, she said to herself, but please, please give us a clear night Saturday! And she took the porch steps more sedately than she felt.
The first part of the new week crawled by like a sloth. Geneva combed through her wardrobe, debated about cutting her hair, and rode more than usual, hoping to catch a glimpse of John near his house. She never did, and soon she began to think she would grow old and die before Saturday arrived. She thought about manufacturing some ailment for her cats so she would have an excuse to go see him in the middle of the night. Ooh, wouldn’t that be romantic? She would bang on his door, perhaps in the pouring rain with a gasping cat in her arms. Her nightgown would cling provocatively, and she would be fainting with anxiety. And he would come, shirtless, of course, and resuscitate the cat, and maybe her, too… Her mind went feverish with possibilities.
Sometime during the night, Evangeline’s kittens were born. Geneva found the five greedy newborns in the barn, and she was just calling Rachel to come admire them when their parents arrived, full of news and excitement. The quilt had placed third in the prestigious competition, and the Gunter’s boy and his bride would come home to a fine house after the November Amish wedding. Not seeing the need to stay when they were anxious to see their errant daughter as well as their pregnant one and their grandchildren, they had cut their visit short.
“I’m going to stay for a few days,” said their mother. “Missed my babies and thought I’d come up and spend some time with you.” She put her arm around Geneva and hugged her. “Besides, I bet you could use some help canning beans. Are they in up here?”
“You’re a godsend,” smiled Rachel. “We’re inundated with them.”
Their father, Ray, stayed through dinner, and afterward they all sat on the porch to be entertained by a thoroughly satisfying thunderstorm. Evangeline left her voracious babies long enough to snuggle in Geneva’s lap; the rest of the cats scattered themselves about the porch, batting at the ghostly moths fluttering in the golden pool of light from the porch lamp. Wayne and Rachel sat in the swing, Hannah’s downy head between them, while Phoebe snuggled in her grandfather’s arms.
Geneva surveyed the scene, remembering her own childhood and the silken cocoon of her parents’ love. Thunderstorms, where the lightning fractured the sky and reminded mortals of their frailty, were special to her because, like Phoebe, she had watched many of them from the warm safety of Ray’s hard, capable arms. She sat quietly, watching the fire split the sky, wishing she were three years old again and life was not so demanding or hurtful. But then she thought about next Saturday and amended her thoughts. Life could still be pretty good.
When the storm passed, Ray rose to look at the washed sky. The striated sun was already half sunk into the nearest mountain, its long rays slanting horizontally through the clouds. “I’d better get on back down the mountain and open up the homestead,” he said. “Get the dogs back from over at the Wilkenses’. Gaynell, you take care of these girls, and keep them out of trouble. Wayne, don’t let these women gang up on you.” He hugged both his daughters and his wife, then caught his granddaughters up to snuggle with them for a moment. They squealed and giggled as he rubbed his rough chin against their baby cheeks.
“Granddaddy! Don’t beard us!” laughed Hannah, her face bright red from rubbing against his whiskers. Ray’s family crowded around to watch him as he climbed into this car and waved as he drove out of sight.
“Well,” said Gaynell after he had turned the corner.” I reckon Geneva and I’ll work on the dishes. Rachel, you’re strictly ornamental from now on. All you have to do is lie around on that porch and love on the children. Wayne, you just sit right there. We don’t need you in there messing things up.” Wayne smiled gratefully at his mother-in-law, and Rachel blew her a kiss as they headed for the kitchen.
Once apart from the others, Gaynell turned to her daughter. “Geneva, honey, we came on home because the family wants to throw Rachel and Wayne a surprise shower Sunday afternoon. You and I have to get the house in shape and negotiate all the business of getting them away from the house and so forth.”
“What fun!” exclaimed Geneva. “It’s about time something exciting happened around here.”
“You’re going to think exciting once those twins get here. There won’t be a good night’s sleep among you!” But Geneva did not hear her. At the word “exciting” her thoughts had turned once again to the small farmhouse on the other side of the flowery pasture.
For the rest of the week, Gaynell rose early and scoured the house while Geneva and Rachel stood aside helplessly and watched their seventy-two-year-old mother haul around chairs and sofas. Geneva’s injured arm prevented her from doing much more than getting in the way, and Rachel was absolutely forbidden to work. At last, feeling too guilty to watch another minute, Geneva went outside to gather wildflowers from the fields, then made huge arrangements for every available table in the house. Afterward, she sat on the hearth and scrubbed out the fireplace with one hand.
Rachel felt equally purposeless, but finally, after she and Gaynell had fallen into a half dozen altercations concerning the state of each others’ health, Gaynell finally relented. “If you have to do something, polish the silver,” she instructed. “You know everybody in the county will drop in to see the babies after they’re born, and you’ll need something to serve them with.”
Rachel sighed and donned her gloves. “I feel like a queen termite. Totally useless, except for procreation,” she grumbled.
By lunch Saturday, the house was spotless, but then Gaynell went to work in the garden. Geneva gathered more flowers and straightened the pictures. Rachel, caught up in the frenzy, polished their glass surfaces. Wayne, not interested in housecleaning, took the girls out to look at the lambs.
Late in the afternoon, Geneva threw down her rag and declared, “Time for someone to wave a wand and turn this sooty lass into a princess. Wish me luck, fat, ugly sister!”
Rachel sneered, snapping at her with a towel. “Okay, poof!” she said. “Oops, wrong spell. You’ve turned into a hippopotamus. But it is an improvement.”
“Har har. Just wait until you see my spell. I shall create such a vision, you poor, dowdy, enormous thing! You cow! You blimp!” She darted to the bathroom, barely avoiding another snap from Rachel’s towel.
Geneva spent an hour bathing and styling her hair. After several false starts at dressing, she finally selected a simple, pale blue, flowing cotton dress with a lightweight jacket, and she knew she looked perfect. Tonight was going to be special for the country twin. She could tell by the way the arteries in her temples throbbed.
John arrived in a bright red vintage Mustang convertible. “Where did you get this?” Geneva asked, delighted at the prospect of flying under the waxing moon, the wind whipping her hair and brightening her face.
“Borrowed it from a friend. I’m thinking of buying it,” replied John, looking smug, but Geneva barely noticed his expression. She couldn’t wait to jump into the car and be off. “I figured the occasion warranted more than a shockless old Jeep.”
“Excellent idea,” smiled Geneva. This John Smith seemed to be clairvoyant, or else he had exactly the same ideas as she for a romantic evening.
The evening was, indeed, perfect. They drove into the haze of the dying day, up to the top of the mountain, then through the glorious sky along the ridges until they turned to descend into Tucker. Despite his immobile right leg, John managed the straight shift well, handling the switchbacks, straightening the curves as one irons a silk ribbon. They drove to a small restaurant with a terrace high atop a hill overlooking the town and sat there, eating and talking, but never ceasing to admire the mountains and the mist as it crept into the valleys and softened the sky’s maiden blush. Geneva leaned her head on her hand and gazed out over the royal mountains. She sighed happily, but even as the breath escaped her, the tears sprang into her eyes.
“I know how you feel,” said John softly, reaching across the table to take her hand. “It is heartbreakingly beautiful. Sometimes I feel like we really haven’t the capacity to absorb the intensity of how the sky wants to make us feel. It’s like having a god for a lover. It’s wonderful, but sometimes it just provokes too much feeling.”
Geneva sighed again and sipped her wine, enjoying the respite from the eternal struggle between the reality of who she was and what she was supposed to be, or what she thought she wanted to be. Right now, she felt complete, her soul mended by the healing mist lying low in the purple valleys and the life in John’s eyes. She looked at him with renewed appreciation. She liked the way he took her nebulous romantic ideas and shaped them into form and clarity. But then she found herself wondering if she were allowing herself to be foolishly led into a fresh heartbreak, if John might at this moment be laying plans for her conquest and rejection. Then she remembered that she was the one who had toyed with such a plot, and she felt herself blush with shame. He did not deserve the treatment she had surely planned to hand to him, and she resolved that she would not be so manipulative, that she would treat him with respect for his transparent integrity, his obvious sensitivity.
They talked about the goodness of the green mountains around them, about the aura of mystery of the more distant blue ones. They talked about their families and what each of them hoped for. Like Geneva, John had grown up in a backwater to working class parents, and like Geneva, he had decided early on that he would break away from the ignorance and poverty he saw in his small, western North Carolina hometown.
“I got away, or at least part of me did,” he admitted, “but not for long. After I graduated from vet school, I joined the army and managed to get out of going to Vietnam. They didn’t need vets there, but I got to go to South America to work with cattle. Don’t ask me why the army was interested in cattle. Anyway, after my discharge—gosh, three years ago, in nineteen seventy-four—I joined a small animal practice in New Orleans, which was a lot of fun, but something always bothered me when I was there. I kept feeling like I was going to fall off the edge of the world. It was too flat, too loose in so many ways. And I got sick of french poodles and society ladies after just a few months, so I ran away and volunteered as an adjunct to the Peace Corp for a year and got to travel around to a lot of different places.
“It wasn’t until I came home for a visit in the fall that I realized that I missed—.” He laughed apologetically. “What I needed was the mountains, and not just this,” he said, indicating with a wide sweep the vast, foreboding hills around him, “but the people, the values, the spirit and stoic soul.”
“Yes, the stoic soul and the redneck attitudes,” replied Geneva, understanding his speech more than she cared to admit. “Sure it’s great being here if you don’t mind being brain dead. I come home only to rest, but I go berserk if I stay too long. It suffocates me.”
“I felt the same way when I left home. Then I realized that what I was choking on was my own excessive ambition. Once I got what I thought I wanted, it seemed like pure smoke. Smoke and ashes.”
“So what do you want now?” Geneva asked, leaning intently into his gaze, sensing the parallels along which their lives lay.
“Reality. Living a real life and not just an advertisement of one in Forbes.”
“So what is reality for you, Mr. John Smith, god of fire and iron, visionary, beloved of Christ?”
He dropped his eyes with a smile, then returned her mocking gaze with candor and humility. “Reality is knowing God. It’s working with your hands. It’s walking the ridges as the sun comes up.” He paused, then added quietly, “It’s the love of a good woman.”
Geneva had partly expected such an answer, but she had not expected the reaction it would cause in her. At his words, she felt as if a thunderbolt had shot across the table, striking her violently in the chest. She experienced a physical pain, followed by bewilderment, for she felt a sudden desire to leap from her chair and run, but she was rooted as surely as the ancient willow oak from which she had swung in the tire as a child. She sat very still and silent, something deep in her heart verifying the truth of John’s words.
“I envy Rachel and Wayne,” John continued, oblivious of Geneva’s apocalypse. “Horses in the stable, dog at the hearth, children in the garden. Even when I was living it up in New Orleans, I never really liked being a bachelor. Freedom isn’t all the playboys insist that it is.”
Geneva studied him, remembering Howard’s “need” for freedom. “So why aren’t you already married? I can’t believe you haven’t had at least forty or fifty offers by now,” she said.
He laughed. “I guess I’ve been unlucky. Back when I was surrounded by possibilities, I had the stupid notion that love could tie you down in ways that I wouldn’t like, and now that I’ve grown up enough to think straight, I can’t seem to find a lady who appreciates me enough to put up with all my quirks. You know, this one resents the time I spend around stables, that one says, ‘forget children, I’m going to have a career.’ One girl I dated for four months and then blew it because I didn’t know she’s afraid of heights.”
“What happened?”
“Took her up to Buttermilk Knob and tried to get her to climb the granite outcroppings. She hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Geneva smiled, “I know what you mean. I made the mistake of taking my college roommate up there. Thought we’d have to call the National Guard to get her down. But surely there are lots of women around here who like dogs and horses and children—and heights. I could name a dozen of my cousins who would lasso you if they could get close enough.”
“Yes? And how many of them have read War and Peace? No offense to your cousins, but it seems that all the smart ones leave. The first girl I met here, real pretty, big blue eyes, sweet smile. I took her to see Hamlet, and she hated it! Came out of the theatre declaring that Shakespeare wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. His plays are full of clichés! You know, ‘To thine own self be true,’ ‘I smell a rat.’”
“‘And ‘it smells to heaven,’” countered Geneva.
“And what about you?” he queried, abruptly turning to her. “Why hasn’t a beautiful, articulate, educated, healthy, outdoorsy woman like you already been snapped up?”
“I guess I’ve been unlucky, too,” began Geneva slowly, unwilling to admit that Howard had thrown her over. A tiny latch slipped into place in her mind as she thought about his abuse of her. She narrowed her eyes and firmly decided that his name would never darken her lips again.
“Ever been close?”
The lie slipped like silk from her mouth, “Heaven’s no! I’ve spent my adult life being disgruntled with men. I guess I’m just too picky.”
“Well, aren’t we a couple of choosy elitists,” smiled John. “Now, I believe we’d better leave if we are to get a good place to sit. We can order our dessert to go, and I’ll have this thermos filled with coffee so we can picnic on the lawn before the performance.”
They drove out to the botanical gardens perched on a gentle slope at the edge of town. John held Geneva’s hand as they strolled to the grassy lawn banked by rhododendrons and mountain laurel. There they spread a quilt on the grass among other picnicking audience members, many of whom glanced their way as they settled themselves.
“We must look like a couple of escapees from the emergency room,” remarked John, indicating his cast and Geneva’s sling. Geneva did not mind being watched. She knew they were the best looking couple there, handicapped as they were. But she felt a general uneasiness descend upon her each time she looked at John, so handsome, so earnest and attentive. She felt herself sinking down into the quilt upon which she sat, feeling submerged in its dizzying pattern. The game that she had hoped to play was getting out of hand; the country twin was becoming too comfortable, too delighted by everything she saw and heard and felt tonight. As if summoning an incubus, Geneva called to her city twin, willing her to come and save herself. She wracked her brain for a reason to stay aloof, to shield herself, to remember why she needed to go back to Washington.
City Twin came, but she was weak and addled. She babbled something in Geneva’s ear about art and society, but the wind blew the words away so that Geneva felt only a soft breath, meaningless. She brushed it aside and turned her bright eyes toward John.
A puff of mist appeared in the laurel behind him. Fairies materialized out of the rhododendron blossoms. Surprised, Geneva looked around. Fairies were rising out of the mist all around them, sitting in trees, lounging on the grass, knitting clover chains, chasing one another amid fireflies just beyond the fringe of foliage around the audience. Music began. On-stage, players dressed in Edwardian finery had appeared, dancing in stately procession.
Geneva was immediately impressed. She had not expected the production to be particularly imaginative or technically sophisticated; she wasn’t interested enough to even pick up a program. She had merely hoped the players would not butcher the language. But already her eye was delighted, and her ear followed the moment Theseus uttered his first lines:
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon; but O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
From there, the play ebbed and flowed like a symphony, binding Geneva in its spell, impressing even the city twin, who slipped quietly by her side as she watched, evaluating, criticizing, admiring.
The production had begun conventionally enough, with the mortals played as genteel ladies and gentlemen, stiffened by layers of clothing, custom, and manners, but when the fairy scenes began, Geneva knew there was a masterful, bold director behind this production. Playing on a darkened stage, the fairies wore headdresses of dimmed neon, and their costumes were painted with glowing paint; Puck wore tiny wings made of fiery sparklers at his shoulders. The magic slowly engulfed and liberated the mortals (and Geneva) until, at last, the final scene erupted with fairy dust and fireworks. It was the most exciting production that Geneva had ever seen.
By the end of the evening, she was tingling, remembering her own short-lived theatrical career and wishing for the first time in a long while that she had not abandoned it. Part of her was alert, actively thirsting for the excitement that theatre offered; the other part drifted along dazedly, feeling as magical and as transfixed as if she lived in the Athenian wood under the influence of Oberon’s wondrous potions. The fireworks shooting over her head, challenging the bright, clear stars, seemed to have no purpose but to signify the intensity of Geneva’s passion for life, for her need for love, and, perhaps because she needed something or someone to absorb that passion, for the man who sat beside her. So engrossed was she in her own feelings that she could not think any farther than this immediate moment and of how she wanted it to continue. If John had asked her to fly to the moon with him, she unquestioningly would have started flapping her arms.
Then there was the long, winding drive home under the midnight stars scattered like quicksilver across the velvet night and the almost-cold air raising her hair into a thousand tiny, invigorating whips. Geneva felt suspended in time, a blaze of motion, a comet. But when they finally pulled up to Rachel’s and Wayne’s darkened house in the early hours, Geneva shook herself, bestirred by the reality of the imminent good-bye facing her. She prayed that he would ask her out tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. She turned to him, smiling languidly.
“I believe I have been enchanted this evening. There seems to be magic all around me.”
“If I could have, I would have slipped you some of Oberon’s potion.”
“You’re better off not having any,” she laughed. “I feel drunk already.”
“It’s the air—I’ve found it intoxicating from the moment I came up to this mountain. Would you like to walk?” John opened the door and helped her out into the velvety night waiting to embrace them. The sky and the earth were larger than ever they could be under the conquering sun. They made Geneva feel dwarfed and frail, as small and insubstantial as the grasses writhing in the soundless wind.
In the silence, John lightly laid his hand on her shoulder and together they walked in their awkward, mismatched gait toward the fence. The horses were bedded in their stalls, but the pasture pulled them, as if they expected to see ghostly forms cantering through the wildflowers.
The moon was gone, long ago stolen behind a shadowy mountain. Geneva stopped at the fence, shivering in the wind, her body begging John to hold her. He looked at her and gently pushed away the hair that had blown across her face.
“Would you mind if I kissed you?”
Geneva was grateful he had finally thought of it. She felt like she had been holding herself back all night, and now she fled to his arms, propelled by wind and feeling. When she kissed him, she felt herself sinking, or floating, into a soft blackness bordered and spangled with vivid colors. As she sank into this bliss, she suddenly felt a tingling current shoot through her body. It hummed and sparked her senses like nothing she had ever felt before, and every nerve in her body and in her heart told her that this must at last be the love she had always yearned for. She felt it to the very bedrock of her soul.
She began to tremble uncontrollably. She forgot who she was, where she was. She felt bewildered for a moment, trying to register the sensation she was feeling, when suddenly John pulled his lips away from hers and stepped back with an exclamation, jerking Geneva with him. It wasn’t until the current stopped that Geneva realized she had been standing in the tall grass resting against the electric fence.
John was laughing. “What a kiss!” he exclaimed. “For a second there, I thought that was you doing that to me!”
Geneva laughed, too, but not as heartily. She was still hoping it was love.
Still laughing, John led Geneva to the house, and despite her reluctance to end the night, she followed docilely. Her lips were burning for another kiss like the last one.
On the porch, John turned to her and pulled her to himself once again. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he murmured, his face nestled in her hair.
“Oh yes. Yes. When?” Her heart fluttered at his assertion that they would see each other again so soon.
“About six? Is that when the party starts?”
“Party?”
“For Rachel and Wayne. I’ve been invited, you know.”
“Oh, yes! That party.” She felt too good to be embarrassed by her mistake. “I thought you were referring to all this kissing.”
He chuckled. “Even without the external electricity, your kisses remind me of Puck’s sparklers, but on a grander scale.” He looked at her a moment more before she wriggled her arm out of the sling and threw it and its twin around his neck and gave him a series of soft little kisses punctuated by her rapid breath. After a few moments of this, John gently disengaged her arms and cleared his throat. “I’d better be going.”
Geneva worked very hard to hide her feeling of being rebuffed. She laughed lightly, “Sorry. Summer nights sometimes do this to me. I’m sure I’ll be terribly embarrassed in the morning.”
“I hope not. This has been too perfect to regret.” He lingered a moment, obviously unwilling to leave. Despite the fact that she had told herself that she would behave more decorously, she fell into his arms again, kissing him with all the passion that sang inside her.
He was delicious. She felt his heart pounding, his hand convulsively entwined in her hair. He kissed her eyes, her mouth, her neck, and she felt him trembling as he caressed her face and throat. Gasping, they gazed at one another. Geneva felt her knees buckle.
“I’d better get out of here,” he said, “before I start begging you to marry me tonight.”
“And then regret it in the morning?” she teased.
He looked at her squarely, the same look of longing that she had seen that first day came into his eyes and bore deep into her. “I doubt it. Good night.”
Geneva had difficulty closing her eyes that night, and when she did find sleep, it was laced with delicious, exciting dreams in which she was running effortlessly across the high ridges gilded with deep, golden grass. I will never be the same again, she sang in her dream. But toward morning, she woke, startled, feeling something she could not articulate calling to her. The sun found her sitting bolt upright in bed, whispering Howard’s name.
When at last she rose after the fitful morning, Geneva felt torn and sorrowful, aching for something beyond her grasp, something she could not name, which was not even fully formed in her mind. She only knew that she was seized by restlessness and a need for something more.
Rachel, Wayne, and Gaynell tried to tease her about her night out, but she refused to be drawn into a discussion of it. Instead, she took Fairhope out for a long ride up across Jim Gordon Mountain and through the valley beyond. As she rode, she tried to sort out her feelings about Howard and about John Smith—about herself. She compared her two lives. She hated to give any of it up, the splendor all around her in the soft, summer mountain days, the glitter and the hard, smooth feeling she got when she stood back and looked at what she had created when she worked at her craft. She felt a wild impulse to ride Fairhope straight over the mountains, into DC, but she remembered forlornly there was nothing left for her there: no lover, no apartment, and no job. She began to regret her burned bridges.
Then she remembered how the ice glittered on the trees in January and the clean, delighted brook where the wild iris grew. She turned Fairhope’s head and broke into a canter toward home. Howard would never love her. He was too busy loving himself. She would give this John Smith a chance, and if he could convince her that life here with him would be worth it she would stay.
She returned by four o’clock, in time to see everyone dressed to go to afternoon church services. Gaynell asked her to accompany them but winked at Geneva so that she would volunteer to stay home.
“You go on,” said Geneva, catching her cue. I’ve been wanting to cook some chili, and to do it properly, I need at least three hours. Come back hungry.”
“We will,” sang out Gaynell as she herded the family out the door. “Back at six thirty.”
Geneva was glad to be alone with her thoughts. She fed the livestock, knowing that Wayne might be having too good a time to take care of that chore later in the evening. As she scooped grain from the bins, she fought an impulse to saddle up again and ride over to John’s house, to fling herself in his arms and ask him to save her from herself. No, better let him come to her. And he would, too, she smiled to herself. He would come to her soon enough, as surely as the whippoorwill finds his mate. She hummed as she ran the vacuum and laid out plates and silverware and went through the music for the party. She wanted everything to be perfect, but frankly felt that it could be nothing but. The smile never left her face as she bathed and picked out a loose skirt and soft blouse. The magic would continue; she could hear it laughing on the mountaintops.