Кристина Клайн - A Piece of the World

“What for?”

“I have an idea in my head, but I can’t envision it.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t get the damned angle right.”

He knows I don’t want to. I feel shy, self-conscious. “Ask Al.”

He shakes his head. “Al’s done posing, you know that.”

“Maybe I am too.”

“You’re always posing, Christina. It’s not as hard for you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Al is restless. You know how to be still.”

Patting the arms of my chair, I say, “Let’s face it, Andy, I don’t have much choice.”

“That’s true, I suppose. But it’s more than that.” He strokes his chin, thinking. “You know how to be . . . looked at.”

I laugh a little. “What an odd thing to say.”

“Sorry, that does sound odd. What I mean is I think you’re used to being observed but not really . . . seen. People are always concerned about you, worried about you, watching to see how you’re getting on. Well-meaning, of course, but—intrusive. And I think you’ve figured out how to deflect their concern, or pity, or whatever it is, by carrying yourself in this”—he raises his arm as if holding an orb—“dignified, aloof way.”

I don’t know how to respond. No one has ever spoken to me like this, telling me something about myself that I didn’t know but understand instantly to be true.

“Right?” he says.

I don’t want to give in too soon. “Maybe.”

“Like the queen of Sweden,” he says.

“Come on.”

He smiles. “Ruling over all of Cushing from your chair in the kitchen.”

“You’re just teasing me now.”

“I swear I’m not.” He reaches out his hand. “Pose for me, Christina.”

“Are you going to make me look like death warmed over?”

He laughs. “Not this time. I promise.”

AFTER ANDY LEAVES the kitchen to get his painting supplies, I slide off my chair, pull myself along the floor to the open door, and winch down the steps to a shaded spot in the grass. It feels cool and springy under my fingers. I rest there, waiting, propping myself on my arms. When Andy comes to the doorway and sees me, he squints. Walks down the steps and circles me slowly, cocking his head. Directs me: “Like this. Tucked under. Leg back.” I feel like a heifer at the livestock fair. He has a pencil in one hand and the sketch pad in the other. Then he opens the pad, settles with a grunt on the stoop ten feet away, and starts to draw.

After a while, my back starts to feel sore. I say, “It must’ve been at least an hour already.”

“It’s not so bad, is it? Out here in the sunshine?” Andy looks at me and back at the pad, sketching.

“You said twenty minutes.”

Holding the piece of charcoal aloft, he gives me a big smile. “Come on, Christina. You know a boy will say anything when he’s trying to seduce you.”

“That’s for sure.”

He raises his eyebrows.

I don’t say anything more.

A few minutes later he says, “Hey, where is that pink dress? The one you wore to John’s wedding?”

“In the hall closet.”

“Would you put it on?”

“Right now?”

“Why not?”

I’m tired. My legs are throbbing. “We’ve already been out here longer than you promised. This is enough for today.”

“Tomorrow then.”

Though I roll my eyes, we both know I’ll agree.

Early the next morning, I ask Al to get the pink cotton dress from the closet. He lays it on the dining room table and I shoo him out of the room before wriggling into it and pulling it down over my hips, then call him back in to fasten the buttons. When he’s done he says, “I always did like that color.”

Al’s not one for compliments. This is as good as it gets. I give him a smile.

When Andy appears in the distance an hour later, I watch from the kitchen window. He makes his way up the hill with his tackle box, hitching one leg forward, pivoting slightly, grunting with the effort, and I find myself oddly moved by his sweet mix of bravado and vulnerability.

Strangely, my hands are clammy. Like a girl waiting for her date.

“Oh, Christina!” He gives a low whistle when he comes through the door. “You are—marvelous.”

Despite myself, I blush.

“It’s a nice day to be outside. Let’s get something for you to sit on so you’ll be more comfortable.” He sets his tackle box on a chair. “I saw a pile of quilts in one of the front bedrooms.” He disappears upstairs, emerging a few minutes later with an old double wedding-ring I made over one arm and his rickety easel and sketch pad under the other. “I’m taking these outside. Shall I come back and get you?”

“Well . . .” Ordinarily I would say no. But dragging myself down the steps and across the grass in this dress might ruin it. “I suppose.”

I watch as he sets up his easel in the same patch of grass as the day before. He unfolds the quilt and lays it on the ground, pulling the scalloped edges to smooth it. Then he comes back inside to get me, standing very close, and puts his shoulder under mine as he pulls me up from my chair. I haven’t been this close to a man I’m not related to since I was with Walton. I am acutely aware of my body next to Andy’s, my fragile bones and papery skin against his warm solid chest, his muscular arm clasping my gaunt one. My senses suddenly sharpen; I possess the eye of an eagle, the ear of a cat, the nose of a dog. His breath on my face is sickly sweet. I hear a faint click between his teeth. My stomach lurches as my brain registers the smell. “Is that . . . butterscotch?”

“Sure is.”

He doesn’t notice that I turn my head away.

With his arms wrapped around me, under my elbows, to support my weight, he half walks, half carries me outside. My heart is beating so loudly I almost wonder if he can hear it. Gently he sets me on the quilt—adjusting my legs, smoothing my dress, tucking my hair behind my ear—before rooting around in his jacket pocket. He pulls out a cellophane bag filled with the wrapped amber candies. “I warn you, they’re addictive.”

“No, no—I don’t want one,” I say, putting up my hand. “I can’t abide the smell. Much less the taste.”

“How can that be? Everybody likes butterscotch.”

“Well, not me.” The memory is so painful I have to catch my breath: Walton’s scratchy cheek against mine, one hand on the small of my back, his breath on my neck as we dance at the Grange Hall . . . “Someone I knew was always . . . sucking on them.”

“There’s a story,” he says, tucking the cellophane bag back into his pocket. “Let me guess. The boy you alluded to yesterday?”

I look away. “I didn’t allude to any boy.”

He spits the butterscotch into his hand and flicks it into Al’s rosebush. Adjusts the easel, props his pad on it, opens the tackle box. “I’m sorry to tell you this,” he says, pulling out his pens and brushes, “but I suspect we’ll be here for more than an hour today as well. In case, you know, you’re concerned you won’t have time to tell me about him.”

For a while I am silent. I listen to Andy’s pen scratching the paper. Then I take a deep breath. “It was . . . a summer visitor.”

“One summer?”

“Four. Four summers.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty, the first year.”

“Around the age I was when I met Betsy,” he says, holding his hand out in an L shape and squinting at me through it. “Was it serious?”

“I don’t know.” I swallow hard. “He promised me that . . . that we would be together.”

“You mean that you’d get married?”

I nod. Is that what he promised? I’m not quite sure.

“Oh, Christina.” Andy sighs. “What happened?”

Something in his manner makes me want to confide things to him I’ve never told anyone. Even painful things, shameful things.