This Is How I'd Love You (37 page)

Couldn’t sleep. The porter brought me a whiskey. I saw a shooting star out the window.

Does it hurt?

Not too bad usually.

I’m sorry.

You should be, because if you could have seen that leg . . .

Was it the most handsome part of you?

By far. Definitely. No way you’d ever resist me. No way.

C
harles has found a small bungalow with jasmine vines growing across the front porch to rent near his medical school. It has two small bedrooms, a bright kitchen, and a living room with a fireplace. Each morning, he listens to the hammering of a resident woodpecker searching for its breakfast and wonders if today he will have a telegram.

Ever since the impossible afternoon on which he disembarked three stops before Hensley, they’ve continued to write letters. She is staying with Teresa, who traded the goblets for a dairy farm outside of San Marcos.

She was standing upon the platform in all of her womanly beauty when I arrived. Her long dark hair contrasting starkly against the white blouse she had tucked into blue dungarees. Berto was waiting for us in the truck, similarly transformed into a strong, capable man. The only evidence of his bout with polio is a pronounced limp. I told him that all the best men have one these days. They remain grateful to you for your care.

I exist outside of their routine. They rise long before the sun and by the time I wake, there are gallons of milk jugs already emptied, ready for the afternoon. Occasionally Teresa allows me to prepare their lunch, but mostly she insists that I spend the mornings on the porch watching the black-and-white herd meander across the green hills. I do so dutifully, losing myself in the memories of our train journey. I’ve already written to Marie, conveying my endless gratitude for her tenacity and loyalty.

The landscape here is so green and soft. It reminds me of my mother. As I walk, I close my eyes so that I can imagine the tender breeze is her touch. There is a border of cypress trees that cast steep shadows in the morning and evening and I step into and out of their darkness, mimicking a sort of shadow tag that I remember her playing with us in the park. The rosemary plants coax me back toward the house, as well as the scent of Teresa’s lamb stew and blistering, buttered tortillas.

Charles spends each evening reading her letters, closing his eyes against the night air and imagining what he would tell her if she were next to him.

I’ve never been so lonely in my life. That you are just a hundred miles away is torture. I’d gladly trade the smell of the sweet jasmine for the smell of manure if it meant I were closer to you. I wish you would allow me to be there. Each evening I worry that the next day’s news will be unwanted. I try to stay focused on the stack of books they’ve supplied me with here, but inevitably my thoughts turn to you and your well-being.

Your mother’s memory will serve you well. After all, you are standing in the same dirt that she once did, my dear Hensley. We both know that the mystery of this absurd continuum called life will remain unsolved. But the mysteries contain comforts, too.

A
fter dinner one night, Hensley takes a walk by herself while Teresa and Berto help themselves to another piece of pie. The pain started that morning, a sharp, ebbing ache. But now it radiates from her thighs through her back and beneath her rib cage. Walking only keeps her from falling down beneath the intensity. She does not want to worry these two who’ve given her so much, but she is sure she must be dying.

As she turns the corner of the pasture, she can no longer pretend that she wants to be alone. Her throat is dry and her legs shiver with exhaustion. “Teresa,” she calls out, moving slowly through the pain.

Teresa is ready, meeting her at the bottom of the porch steps with her hair tied back. She puts her hand upon Hensley’s back.

“Oh, Teresa,” Hensley whimpers. “Help me. I am dying. Help me,” she cries, leaning into her.

Teresa takes her elbow and somehow maneuvers them both up the two steps and into the house. Hensley closes herself in the bathroom, hovering over the toilet, buckled over in pain, wondering how long she has.

From just outside the door, Teresa’s voice calls to her. “I’m coming in, Hen.”

Before she can answer, something within her bursts. Her skin erupts with goose bumps and her legs quiver as the warmth trickles down the inside of her thighs, past her knees to the white tile floor. A new pain begins, hard and focused and insistent.

“Teresa,” she calls, “I can’t. I can’t.” She leans against the wall, her face drained of all its color. Her lips move soundlessly. “Please,” she finally says, her voice thin and terrified.

Teresa already has towels in her arms and she places them on the floor. “You can,” she says, calmly, easing her onto them and handing her a wet washcloth, which Hensley clamps her teeth upon, sucking the water out. “You can and I will help you.”

“Teresa,” Hensley says, her eyes shut tight, “you must tell Charles. Tell him that even when he goes on without me, we will still exist. He loved me just as I’d thought he would.”

“Hensley,” her friend says in a calm and certain voice, “you are not dying. You are going to deliver your baby. Like your mother before you. And her mother before that. Just breathe. Try to focus your mind.” Teresa pushes Hensley’s hair away from her face and watches her lips come together in an intentional exhale. “That’s it. Nice and slow. You are just fine.”

Darkness settles over the farmhouse, making her efforts seem louder than they are. Teresa is unfazed by the blood and fluid and the intensity of her moaning, but when she sees the dark hair on the crown of the baby’s head, so startling and perfect, she is momentarily silent. Then, finally, she begins again. “Hensley. Keep going. Push again,” she says, her voice drowned by Hensley’s.

When the baby’s head is in Teresa’s hands, it is only another moment before the entire child, slick and warm and miraculous, has fallen into her arms. A girl. Her eyes blink slowly and a nice, healthy protest begins in the back of her throat.

Teresa places the child on Hensley’s chest, her hands wrapping nearly all the way around her small torso. Hensley’s arms reach immediately to cradle her.

Through the open window, the night whispers its soft cadence of lonely animals. Teresa delivers the afterbirth and cares for Hensley, remembering her mother’s protocol in the darkened sheds and bright courtyards of their past.

Hensley marvels at the warmth of her daughter. Her small, fierce mouth and smooth, perfect skin. She fits just right against the curve of Hensley’s body.

Immediately it occurs to Hensley that this is where her actual life begins. Outside, the wind blows and the darkened sky twinkles. The rhythmic hum of what must be crickets, but could pass for the world’s collective heartbeat, enters the room.
Dear baby,
she begins.
Can you hear it? This is our world. Welcome.

 • • • 

T
hree weeks later, when Charles arrives for his first visit, he drives the motorcar he recently purchased, anticipating that one day he would be transporting his new family home.

Hensley hears it before she sees it. She’s sitting with the baby in her lap, a fog of fatigue and trepidation clouding her mind.

When Charles stands beside the car, his hat in one hand and his cane in the other, she desperately hopes he will love the child. It is for this moment that she has waited. She knows it is likely, perhaps even reasonable, that when he sees the child, he will realize the permanence of the path she’s on and it will deter him. Or, even worse, if Hensley were to recognize in his face some resentment of her daughter, she knows she could no longer love him.

He maneuvers each porch step carefully, his prosthetic’s shoe kicking the side of the stairwell with a regular rhythm. At the top, he says, “Hidden talent number twenty-three: percussion.”

She watches his face carefully as he apprehends the bundle in her lap. He sets his hat on the chair beside her and bends his face close to Hensley’s ear. “She’s no mistake, Hensley. What a beauty.” Then, with visible tenderness, Charles touches the baby’s forehead slightly and Hensley feels it everywhere.

Hensley sheds tears full of relief and also regret. She wishes her father could know how it all turned out. His appreciation of this bounty would make it all the greater. She whispers impossible promises into the baby’s fresh ears.

They sit together and marvel at her smallness and the strength of her grip. Her little yawns and curling toes are thrilling. It is clear to Hensley that he loves her more than either imagined possible.

“I’ve named her Olivia. After my mother.”

Charles nods. “Of course. Olivia Dench Reid?”

They both say the name silently to themselves. Their daughter.

He reaches for Hensley’s hand and says, “Real,” as he pulls it to his lips.

“I’ve a new favorite sound,” Hensley says, raising her eyes to the field in front of the house.

“What’s that?”

“That little automobile of yours. I heard the tires turn off the main road. Their rubber crushing the pebbles made my fingers go numb.”

Charles smiles. “Wait until you ride in it. It’ll make your whole body go numb.”

Hensley laughs, imagining the day. Sitting beside him, his hat tossed on the seat between them, their daughter in her lap, the engine announcing their departure. Together. Traveling toward an absolutely unknown future. The uncertainty of where it might end trumped by the fact that it is.