Marcia Talley: Sing It to Her Bones

I counted on my fingers. “December?”

“That’s what I figure. A little Christmas package for the old parental units.”

I thought I was saying words like how wonderful and I’m so happy , but what came out was babble. When I could finally put two words together, I said, “Emily, I’d like to come and stay with you, to help out when the baby is born. If that’s okay.”

“I’d like that very much, Mother.”

Many minutes later, after we finally said good-bye, I levitated around the house, picking up newspapers, watering the houseplants, loading the dishwasher. Then I thought about Katie and the precious little life she had carried, both snuffed out before they had a chance to bloom, and I felt guilty about being so happy.

While I waited for Paul to get home so I could deliver the news that he was going to be a grandfather, I strolled down the block and around the corner to Maryland Avenue. At Aurora Gallery, I bought Emily an iridescent dragonfly pin, beautifully crafted by a local artist. As Jean was wrapping it up, I spotted a hand-painted tie. “And I’ll take that, too,” I told her. Forty bucks. What the hell, I’d send it to Daniel. “To Dan, with love,” I wrote on the card when I got it all to the post office. No way was I going to write “Dante.”

On May 22 Jennifer Goodall was graduated with the rest of her class. Paul delivered this news upon returning from graduation exercises at the stadium where the reporters were busy snapping pictures of the Blue Angels, the navy band, the president of the United States, and the hat toss, ignoring my husband for a welcome change. Paul hung his academic regalia in a plastic garment bag, zipped it up so hard that the bag tore, then placed a long phone call to his lawyer.

I was suspicious when I heard the news. “Did you change her grade? Pass her after all?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well, how could she graduate then? Wasn’t it a required course?”

“Apparently the academic board waived the requirement.”

“Why? Was she a star athlete or something?”

“What a cynic you are! No, I suspect somebody browbeat the board. Maybe she cut a deal. Offered to drop the charges against me if the academy would allow her to graduate.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Outraged. A number of us are planning to write letters of opposition, for all the good it will do. But I’m enormously relieved, and disappointed, too. Relieved that it’s over. Disappointed that the truth about her accusation will never be resolved.” He grasped my shoulders, searching my eyes for understanding. “I wanted to be exonerated, Hannah! I wanted you to know I’d been faithful. Beyond all doubt.”

Beyond doubt. My mother says I have to make up my mind one way or the other-either Paul slept with that woman or he didn’t-and then deal with it on those terms. Better advice than I got from the therapist, and about two hundred dollars less expensive, too.

Speaking of therapy, that’s how I ended up on the beach at Manchineel Bay, eating conch fritters out of a paper container resting on my stomach. Paul sprang the trip on me as a surprise. “I’m taking you to the Virgin Islands. No argument. I’ve chartered a sailboat out of Tortola.”

“A sailboat! Ha! That’s just what I need.”

“It’s therapy, Hannah, like getting back on a horse after you fall off.”

So there I was, waiting for Paul to return from the Cooper Island Beach Bar with two piña coladas. He plopped down on the towel next to me and handed me my drink. I took a sip, moaned with pleasure, then set the glass into the sand next to me, twisting it back and forth, digging a little hole so it wouldn’t fall over. Gentle waves licked at my toes. Another day in paradise. I watched our charter vessel, Visage , bob and sway at anchor in water so crystal clear that it seemed to be suspended in air.

“Paul?” He had returned to his paperback book.

“Umm?”

“After I finish my stint at the law firm, do you think I should go ahead and have that breast reconstruction?”

He laid his book open on the sand and turned to face me, sunglasses askew, propped up on one elbow, sand sugaring his knees. He looked adorable. “Do it for yourself, honey, not for me.”

“I was looking in that little shop up there.” I pointed toward an island boutique behind the Beach Bar where earlier I had spent nearly thirty minutes looking at tropical beach wraps and swimsuits. “There are a couple of bikinis I could wear if I had two decent boobs to hang them on.”

“Hannah, you know I love you no matter what. I want whatever makes you happy.” He reached up and touched my hair, which had blossomed, surprisingly, into a profusion of brownish gold ringlets. “Significant change in hair texture,” Dr. Wilkins had written on my chart after my last examination.

I smiled at my husband, feeling waves of affection wash over me. With his finger, he traced a line along my shoulder and down my arm. When he picked up my right hand and gently kissed my fingers, I knew we wouldn’t be sleeping in separate cabins anymore.

Marcia Talley lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she is the systems librarian. Sing It to Her Bones , her first novel, won the Malice Domestic Grant for unpublished writers in 1998. When she isn’t traveling or sailing, Marcia Talley is busy working on the next book in the Hannah Ives series.