Robert Goolrick: A Reliable Wife

Only Catherine was real, and she had become somebody else, someone unknown to Antonio. But beneath her clothes lay her skin, and, just as Antonio remembered in his skin every blow from Truitt’s hand, remembered every word spoken in anger, so there lay, in Catherine’s skin, the memory of who and what she had been. She had meant the world to him, and he couldn’t let go. Not now.

Not ever.

Antonio found her in the conservatory. It was late afternoon, and the songbirds twittered from branch to branch and the jasmine hung heavy with scent and the roses had begun to bud in the warm hothouse air. The late light fell through the fronds of giant ferns and palms she had bought in Saint Louis. The windows were fogged with moisture. Orchids grew in Chinese pots. She was sewing, folds of fine dark blue, almost black wool covering her lap, billowing out onto the red marble floor.

He sat at her feet, like a dog, patient, benevolent, longing to be loved. He was ashamed of his willingness to be humiliated. She showed him the picture of what the dress would look like when it was finished. It was almost done, a simple dress of elegant shape with buttons that ran from the floor to the neck, with white gauze collar and cuffs. It was pleated down the front to the waist, the pleats held in place by stitches so small they were almost invisible. The wool was thin and expensive, fluid in her hands. She moved the dark cloth swiftly through thin white fingers, the needle flashing in and out, the quiet click of the steel needle on the silver thimble she wore on her finger.

She deftly turned the dress, hauling in the yards of wool to work on the hem. Antonio’s knee grazed the fabric, and he was electrified. Beneath the dark blue was her shoe, and her white stockings, and beneath that her fresh skin, the map of her whole body. Beneath were her sweet scents and her secret places, places he had traveled and dwelt.

“Hattie Reno,” she said softly. “You had a letter from her. I recognized the handwriting.”

“I told them. I had to say something. I burned the letter.”

“She’s well.”

“They’re all well. They miss you. She said the theater was filled with dull people. She said the beer had gone flat since you left, all the bubbles gone away. You amused her. She misses you.”

“Don’t say anything about me. It was another life.”

“Was it, Mrs. Truitt?”

“People change, Antonio. People move on.”

“I don’t. I don’t move on.”

“Hattie Reno was my best friend. Now I hardly remember her. Not out of unkindness, it’s just that things are so different.”

“You’re pretending.”

She put down her sewing for a moment. “I don’t think I am. I got tired of being terrible, terrible to people.”

“You were never terrible to me.”

“We were terrible to each other. It was another time. It was like a madness. Antonio, it’s gone now. You have to make your peace with that. You have to make peace with your father.” She resumed her sewing, the swift stitches going through the dark hem.

“I’m too tired. I’m so tired, you can’t imagine.”

She looked at him. “I know it’s hard. I know he did terrible things to you. You have to forgive now. Unless you do, he can’t forgive himself.”

“You tried to kill him.”

“And then I stopped. I couldn’t do it. Something in me changed. I couldn’t hurt a fly, now.”

“Once you would have done anything for me. You made me a promise.”

“I was another person. Another person made that promise.”

“And that’s it?”

Her eyes flashed. “What do you need that you don’t have? You have his love. You have his money. You have his attention. Make something of that. Make a life for yourself.”

He touched the hem of her dress. Fire shot through his fingers and up his arm. He touched her shoe.

“Don’t do that.”

“It means nothing? Nothing at all?”

“It means nothing. Don’t do it.”

He got up and walked away, the heels of his shoes sounding on the marble floor. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do.

She couldn’t mean it. She couldn’t separate her long past from her present as easily as that. She couldn’t deny what they had been to one another, the things they had done, the plans they had made.

He sat in his room and drank brandy. If he wasn’t going to have his father’s death, he wanted his old life. She couldn’t turn her back on the pleasures of the vices as easily as that. He wanted her. It went off like a gunshot to his brain, and after that he knew nothing. It was all darkness after that.

He walked swiftly back through the corridor and down the long steps. He walked through the great hall under the Venetian chandeliers and into the conservatory. She was still sitting, but she knew he was coming, she must have known, because she had put down her sewing. She sat quiet and calm, waiting for him, her eyes large, the mixed desires she felt written on her face.

He grabbed her hands. She pulled away. He grabbed her arms and pulled her up to him. He pressed himself against her, the full length of his body against the full length of hers, his mouth on her mouth, his hands around her, moving across her shoulders through the fabric of her dress. She was trembling.

She pulled away. “Antonio. Don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

“I have to. I’m so sorry. I have to.”

He kissed her again. He put his hand up along her face, while with his other arm her pulled her close to him. He put his hand beneath her dress, he felt her skin, her warm smooth skin, and the fire was in him and he knew there was no turning back. She wanted this. She had to remember, and she had to want it. He said it over and over to himself.

Then he lost all thought, he lost the ability to think and became pure motion as his mouth and hands took her back to the days and nights in his room in Saint Louis, the days when she had been somebody else, somebody who lived for her body and its delights, somebody who gave herself because she had no care for who or what she was. She had laughed, then, she had been scornful of the ordinary world with its ordinary moral scruples, and he had been part of that, her diversion, her own wild love. They had been twins in their desires, rising and falling on each other’s breath, and he had covered her body with kisses, and there was no part of her that was not his.

She was the delight and the agony of his youth, yet she had not mattered, he now realized. She was only the portal to this sensation of being lost, of floating unmoored high above the earth, and he wanted that back again. It was as close as he could come to death.

She was new. She was a stranger. It was as though she had come to him in disguise, the trappings of her old life gone, the dress and hair and clean face of her new life a costume she had put on to amuse him.

She struggled against him. She fought, and this too drove him on, made him feel unbound. He could have her when she didn’t want him. He’d done it before. When she was angry with him, he could still have her. When he had been too rude or too drunk or too late, she would still come creeping into his room while he slept and lie down beside him and let him take her, because she had nowhere to go, because she believed that her life was in the gutter and he was the gutter in which she lived.

He tore at his shirt, and her hands scratched at his body, her nails drew blood, and she started to scream, to call Mrs. Larsen. He held his hand over her mouth and lifted up her skirt, tearing at her stockings and her underclothes until her flesh was beneath the palm of his hand. Then things grew calmer. He breathed more gently. For just a second, there was no sound except the twittering of birds, as his hand moved toward her sex, as he covered her mouth and she didn’t make a sound.