Web of Angels (24 page)

“How was that hand hurt?” Callisto asked.

“Burned,” Cathy—or whoever she now was—replied. “Stove. My mother thinks there probably won’t be a scar.”

“I see.” Such pain could be punishment or distraction or relief from what could not be said. Callisto drank her white wine. It wasn’t white, but a translucent gold, and slightly sweet though labelled dry, which did not mean dry, but without sweetness. This was how people used words to mean other than what they were, creating enclaves of secret language.

“Nothing hurts like childbirth,” Eleanor said. “They say you forget but I didn’t. That’s why I only had one.”

“How much does it hurt?” Cathy asked, eager to learn the degrees of pain, as if there was something that could wipe out all else.

“There is worse,” Mimi said.

“Like what? Name one thing, Mom.”

“Watching someone you love lose their mind.”

“Dad hasn’t lost his mind,” Eleanor said. “He’s just different.”

“I was talking about my mother. I never told anyone this, not even Jake.” Mimi looked wistfully at her empty wine glass, wondering if she could ask her daughter to open another bottle. “Every day I’d come home from school, worried that I would find her dead.”

“Like my sister. You think about the ways,” Cathy said.

Mimi nodded. “She often told me she would kill herself. But she died in the war like many others. I was afraid I would pass her illness on to my children. When you quit school, Eleanor, I thought it was the beginning.”

“I’m not sick, Mom.”

“Just bossy!” Judy said, Eleanor slapping her hand as she tried to sneak it toward the wine.

“My mother died in a car crash because she’d been drinking, but even now no one in my family admits that she was an alcoholic,” Ingrid said.

“My mother was neither ill nor drunk.” Callisto paused, but there was no inner protest. The wine, which didn’t affect her, had lulled the others. “She punished me by having a pet bird destroyed. Did you know that darkness is not black?” After the budgie died, she had watched colours float in the night, humming to herself until her voice was hoarse. In the morning her mind was clear, all feeling banished. She had cleaned herself up, removing what had been left inside, found the nightgown, and put it on. Then Sharon had tumbled forward to walk up the basement stairs.

“She let you have a pet?” Cathy asked.

“To teach me a lesson.” Callisto looked at the girl, but her eyes were shielded so that no one could tell whether she found this inconceivable or not. “That is my mother. I don’t have to honour her for donating an ovum. It’s nothing sacred. Frogs do the same. But she gave birth to me and that can’t be changed.”

“If a minor can be emancipated, so can an adult.” Ingrid’s eyes were the grey of a deep, cold lake with horned snakes below and thunderbirds above. “I’ll adopt you.”

“And be my mother?” From inside there were hoots and shouts. Callisto smiled. So this was how smiling felt.

“But Mrs. Lewis isn’t a baby,” Cathy said.

“That doesn’t matter. Amy was adopted by her foster parents and changed her name to theirs when she was twenty-five.”

“May I call you Mommy?” Callisto asked, making her face as serious as usual, smiling only when everyone laughed.

While they filled more baskets, Ingrid told jokes:
Bear bells are a good warning device, the trick is getting them on the bear
. And:
Lint is an effective fire starter, just take it out of your belly button before lighting the match
. And:
The pilot told the hunters that their game was too heavy for the plane, but they insisted that they’d taken three elks on a bush plane before; so up they went and down they came and when they got out of the wreckage, the hunters said, damn, this looks like the place we crashed last time
.

Cathy told Judy that she didn’t have to turn into a suck just because she got her period.
There was only a little bit of pink on her new glasses
, Judy protested, but the older girl teased:
that’s how it starts
.

Mimi said:
In China there are ancient paintings of Nuwa, the Chinese snake goddess who created human beings and grants women children
. And,
You have to use more detergent in the dishwasher
.

Callisto, pouring the detergent, said, “I do not! In ancient China there were no dishwashers.”

Slightly tipsy, they loaded up Eleanor’s minivan. The baskets looked festive, beribboned, starry tissue paper mounded over fruity oils and gels. They waved to Ingrid, the only one with a driver’s license who was entirely sober, as she backed the car out of the driveway and onto the street, then headed toward the refugee centre. Up and down the road tree branches shook, bending toward the park as the east wind brought the smell of rain.

I
t was past midday when Callisto got home, expecting to relieve Josh of his babysitting duties. But nobody greeted her as she walked upstairs, the house sleepily humming and creaking from first to second to third floor. She stopped on the landing. On her right was the office, the laptop on top of a filing cabinet, the maple tree outside the window shining bronze. To the left was the bedroom, Dan napping, a book fallen to one side. A framed target on the wall, a scroll painting of chrysanthemums with a Tang dynasty poem. Two nightstands, a prizewinning novel on one, the
Economist
on the other. A pine wardrobe, dressing table, bed with extra foam to make the surface soft, floor-length velvet curtains held back with a velvet sash. Nothing here was hers. As a cloud passed over the sun, its light softened. The windows were up, the scent of lilacs on the cross-breeze. Dan was lying on his back, hands behind his head, cupping it. There was a guitar on the chair. His eyes opened.

“Hi hon.” He yawned, rubbing his face, sitting up. “The kids were using me as a jungle gym. It was more exercise than the handball. Did you get it all done?”

“Yes,” Callisto said. “Where are they?”

He smiled. “I gave Josh some money and told him to take them to Christie Pits. How was my mother?”

“Interesting.” He laughed. “Where did the guitar come from?” she asked.

Dan’s knees were drawn up, his elbows on knees, chin on hands. He was a bit taller than she was, a bit broader. Enough to comfortably hold his wife if he was allowed. “It’s my old guitar. I got it out of the basement to jam with Josh. I found some sheet music too. I still like those eighties songs. We can do some Tears for Fears and some Foreigner. We tried it out before he left. Not bad.”

“You sang? Outside the shower?”

“Ha, ha. Yes. I can change too, by the way.”

“Don’t change too much.” Callisto sat on the bed, looking at him. This at least she must be allowed. His eyes were as dark as charcoal, fringed with dark lashes, his short hair sticking up. She wished to touch the hair, to know if it was bristly.

“I should do some work. I’m just feeling too lazy,” he said. “I’ve got to keep my strength up for Sunday dinner with my family. What are we having?”

She considered his question and she considered another. Was the kiss on her forehead the only one she would ever receive? Surely this much she was allowed. She leaned forward, her lips touching Dan’s, warm lips, neither dry nor wet. His lips pressed into hers and her lips wished to part.

Inside there was fear, little ones weeping.
No burning, no hitting
, someone cried. And someone answering,
It’s just Dan. He won’t hurt us
. But their terror was not assuaged.

Anyone else would have pulled away, unable to bear it. That was why there had been so little sex for a while. But her lips parted and his tongue touched hers. This much she allowed herself, putting her hands on his head to feel the softness of a brush cut. On TV she had seen people speak of positions, variations, boredom. She had known all the variations before she was eight and wished to experience none. But surely this was possible, to touch her husband’s face, discovering the roughness of a shadow beard, the cartilage of his ears, the tender folds of skin along it. Turning his head, she touched the ears with her lips, then with her tongue, a sharp taste, roughness here, smoothness there, a low growl in his throat. This much yes. And perhaps his throat, the hollow of it, the pulse. Just that.

Inside there was fear, the little ones paralyzed.

His smells: shower gel, shaving gel, deodorant, lemon, tea tree oil, smoky, he’d sneaked a cigarette, chocolaty lips even though he’d brushed his teeth. He always brushed his teeth for two minutes and washed his face, but miraculously he’d missed a speck of chocolate on his lower lip.

His hands were on her shirt and beneath it her breasts wished to feel his palms. Her nipples were hardening, her breath coming faster, feeling the cloth and his hands and wanting only his hands. He reached under her shirt, cupping her breasts, skin on skin, the nipples harder, larger as the palms caressed. He pulled the shirt over her head and she allowed it.

Her own hands reached back as if they knew what was required, unhooking a bra, floating it down her arms and
off the bed while he unbuttoned his shirt, shrugging it off, reaching for his pants. Her hands unzipped her slacks, pushing them down with the underwear in one motion. She perched on her side of the bed, gazing at her husband so that she could know him in his skin, this man who was hers though she had never seen him naked. Others of them, of course, but not her. Not until now. He waited, looking while she looked, and she wondered what he was seeing as she noticed his collarbone, his nipples, small and hard in the aureoles surrounded by hair, the line of hair down the centre of his chest, his belly with a puckering at the belly button, the thickness of hair around his pubic bone. His feet were long and narrow, legs thick in the calves, his knees square, one knee dimpled. A round birthmark. The hair on his arms and legs was fine and dark. There was a bare place on his right thigh. She would like to stroke it. He was erect.

Little ones watched.
It’s not so big
, someone said.
Just regular. Cuz we are big now
.

She stroked his leg. He kissed her shoulder, he lifted her left arm, licking the underside, and her skin was electric. Her hands ached with it. She stretched out her right arm and he kissed the fingers, his lips softly mouthing each one.

Inside, the little ones said,
It’s just Dan. This is boring
. Turning their backs, they ran to their playroom.

She was propped against the many pillows as he licked the inside of her other arm, and along her side, and in the crease of her thigh, and the outside of her thigh. She ached, light shooting up through her feet as she arched, wanting him to hurry while he lingered along the inside of her legs, first
one then the other. He was kissing her belly and there was no more question of what was allowed only of what she wished. His tongue found what she wished and the heat was hotter than her temper, flames along her arms and her legs and her belly. She did not scream, but she moaned and just when the heat was unbearable, he was inside her, legs wrapped around his back, rocking together, legs tightening as he moaned.

And then she said, “Again.”

This time he held her close, his fingers finding their way between her legs and inside. She moaned with the heat and she said, “Again.”

Afterward she lay back and the room seemed very far away until the fluttering inside calmed, the wetness evaporating. When she went to pee, she smelled the bitterness of sperm, the musk of herself. She put her hand down, raised it, inhaled. An adult odour, a woman’s smell. And through her, the others felt what it was to have made love for the first time.

“I got you something for Mother’s Day,” Dan said as she got back into bed.

“A present for us?” In the soft light of the bedroom, in the thrumming of a house without children in it, she could be excused for saying “us” instead of “I.”

“It’s beside the laptop. I thought you’d see it when you got home.”

“I came in here,” she said.

“Well, it’s time to get rid of that dinosaur in the kitchen that you put CDs on. I downloaded some classical music onto the iPod. That’s why it’s not in the box. But it’s new. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I didn’t expect anything.” She was the one who listened to classical music at night. The others inside preferred rock or country or pop. A gift for her. It was astonishing: he’d seen her, he’d known her as if she had every right to exist out here. And so she dared to lie with her head on his shoulder, his arms around her. One more thing: to fall into sleep, her breath slowing with his as if there was only one breath.

The slam of a door woke them up, and they scrambled into their clothes as she discovered how suddenly and wonderfully the mind could clear when children were calling up the stairs to their naked parents.

Mother’s Day was over, the moon just past full illuminating the backyard brighter than lamplight. A fat raccoon followed by her babies, having fed well on city leavings, waddled across the deck, looking for a comfortable place to use as a latrine. Perhaps right here in front of the glass doors, where she could admire her reflection.

There was a plate of cookies beside the laptop. And coffee. She wouldn’t drink coffee, it didn’t taste nice. The cookie was good. She nibbled around the chocolate chips, saving the best for last.

“Mommy …” Nina was in the kitchen, a dark-eyed elf in pajamas, tilting her head as her mother turned to look at her with a rounded face and a smile like her little sister’s, puffy-cheeked, a tangle of hair falling over her face.