Take Me Home

Chapter 7

Toward morning she awoke on the sofa and lay in the precarious peace between sleeping and waking, while the ceiling receded, and the walls withdrew, and the room became spacious and vaulted and filled with sunlight and music and the scent of flowers. She sat erect on the edge of a hard bench of dark and polished oak in the posture of primness that she would never lose, and the sunlight slanted in through high Gothic windows of stained glass and touched with transparent flame the arrangements of lilies and carnations and white, white roses that were massed in woven baskets before a pulpit.

She was in church, and someone must have died and been buried, for it was only after a funeral, unless it was Easter, that so many flowers were displayed before the pulpit. Yes, yes, she was in church, and the music she heard was coming from the great pipes of the organ, which were concealed by the lattice behind the choir loft, and there was a beautiful man in a frock coat standing below among the flowers in the slanting sunlight. The music was something by Bach that she could never remember, and the man was her father, whom she could never forget.

The music stopped, and there was a long silence disturbed by no more than the merest whisper of movement, and then the man, the minister, her father, began to read from an enormous open Bible, and his rich voice, sonorous and penetrating, was like a golden resumption by the organ that had become quiet, and his head in the soft and shining light was massive and leonine, its tawny hair swept back like a flowing mane.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

She sat quietly on the oak bench beside her quiet mother. The beautiful words in the beautiful voice of the beautiful man seemed to reach her from a great distance and a remote time, from the Mount itself and the day they were spoken there. The adoration of the woman beside her, the wife and the mother and the worshiper, was a tangible emanation that could be felt like the air and smelled like the scent of the flowers. Ivy had learned long ago that her mother did not come to church for the same purpose that other people came. Other people came to worship God, but her mother came to worship the minister. This had at first seemed to Ivy a fearful defection, a flagrant incitement of God’s wrath, but she had later lost her fear with the loss of her belief, not in God, but in the power of her father to incite in God any responses whatever. Thereafter, in the presence of her mother’s adoration of her father, she felt only a terrible sense of inadequacy and isolation, as if she had been excluded from their love by the same passion that had created her.

She listened uneasily, with a feeling of shame, to the text her father read. She always felt, when he talked of meekness and humility, that she was a passive part of an enormous hypocrisy, for he was not meek, nor was he humble, and he was in fact the vainest man she had ever known or would ever know. Not only was he vain in petty matters, the effects of his voice and hair and every studied pose, but also in his utter inversion, a narcissistic absorption in himself which made impossible any awareness of the pain that others might suffer, or any genuine compassion if he had been aware.

He was not really a good man, but he gave the impression of goodness, nor was he a brilliant man, but he gave the impression of brilliance, and so he exploited the illusion of being what he was not, and he was extremely successful in the ministry of God and Church. There was in Ivy’s life from her earliest memory a succession of churches in a succession of towns, each of them better than the one before, and so she sat now in the last and best and listened in shame to the golden words of an ancient sermon, but then she was suddenly not sitting in church at all, but was standing before her father’s desk in his paneled study at home, and his voice continued from church to study without interruption, although it was saying in the latter place something entirely different in an entirely different tone.

“Ivy,” he said, “this is your Cousin Lila, whom we have been expecting. She has come to spend the summer with us. We hope she will like us so well that she will want to come every summer for a long time.”

Ivy turned to face her cousin, and her life, which had seemed until that moment to have a certain orderly purpose that could be traced in the past and anticipated for the future, had in an instant no purpose and no past and no future at all. There was only this moment of awakening at the end of an emptiness that had no meaning because it had no Lila. Lila was slim and shimmering, beginning and end, and she held out her hand in an aura of light. The hand was cool and dry and wonderfully soft, and its touch to Ivy was an excitement.

“Hello, Lila,” Ivy said. “I’m so happy you’ve come.”

“Thank you,” Lila said. “I’m sure I shall enjoy my visit very much.”

This was, Ivy thought, only a politeness, and she had a feeling that Lila had no certain expectation of enjoying herself, and that she had, in fact, come unwillingly to spend the summer. Ordinarily Ivy would not have been particularly concerned about the attitude of a guest in the house, especially a relative, but now she felt that it was desperately imperative that Lila, this shining cousin, should truly enjoy herself so much that she would never want to leave, or leaving, should long to return.

“I’m sure you girls will find a great deal to talk about,” the Reverend Dr. Theodore Galvin said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to excuse me now, as I have some work that must be done. I’ll see you at dinner, if not before.” Ivy and Lila left the study and the house and sat down together in a glider that had been placed under an elm tree on the side lawn. Lila was wearing a white silk dress without sleeves, and her skin above and below the silk was a tawny gold. Her rich, curling hair was black and full of shimmering light. Looking at her, Ivy felt all edges and projections, an awkward assembly of ugly bones. This wasn’t true, for she was almost as attractive in her own way as Lila was in hers, but Lila had already, as she would always have afterward, the unintended effect of making Ivy feel plain by comparison.

“How old are you?” Lila said.

“Sixteen,” Ivy said. “Almost seventeen.”

“Are you? I’m nineteen, almost twenty. I wanted to work this summer until time to return to school, but my father wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t want me at home either, however, which is why he packed me off out here.”

“I’m very glad he did. What kind of work did you plan to do?”

“Modeling. I was promised a place in a shop for the summer. It wasn’t a very good job, to tell the truth, but it would have been experience. I think I’d like modeling.”

“You’d be certain to be successful, you’re so lovely.”

“Do you think so? Thank you very much. You’re pretty too, you know.”

“I’m not really. You’re only being kind.”

“Kindness is not one of my virtues, and you shouldn’t be humble. A pretty girl who knows it, is prettier than a pretty girl who doesn’t know it. The knowledge does something for her. It lights her up inside.”

“Well, anyhow, I’m pleased that you think I’m pretty, whether I am or not. I wonder why we have never met before. Don’t you think it’s odd?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“I mean, your father and my father being brothers and everything. I’ve never seen your father at all. My father hardly ever even mentions him.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t.”

“What do you mean? Why shouldn’t he?”

“They never got along, you know. Uncle Theodore’s a minister, of course, and Father’s a kind of black sheep. He likes good living and whiskey and women and things like that. One of the reasons he sent me out here, I’m sure, was simply to get me out of the way. With me gone, he can bring a woman to the apartment any time he pleases. I’m too old to go to the kind of camps he used to send me to in the summer, and he had this ridiculous notion that I should not be permitted to work and live alone, and so here I am. I think, besides, that he thought it would be good for me to spend two or three months in the house of a minister. The Christian influence, I mean. Every once in a while, he gets to feeling guilty about the kind of atmosphere he’s subjected me to. It’s silly, of course, and it never lasts long, but here I am, anyhow, and we shall have to think of ways to make the most of it and enjoy the summer together.”

“What do you like to do? Do you like to swim?”

“I love to swim, and I love to lie for hours on the warm sand. Is it far from here to the beach?”

“Not far. We can drive the distance easily in half an hour. I don’t drive yet, though. Not without Father in the car. Do you drive?”

“Of course. I had a car of my own, but I smashed it up, and Father is punishing me by making me wait until I’m twenty-one before I get another.”

“We’ll drive to the beach every day, then, if you wish. I’m sure Father will let us have the car unless he needs it, and he doesn’t very often. Not for a whole day at a time, at least.”

“Won’t I be a nuisance to you?”

“Oh, no. Why should you think so?”

“Well, you’re pretty and almost seventeen. I should think in the summer that you’d be wanting to go places with boys. Do you have lots of boy friends?”

“Not many. Father is very strict about such things, boys and dates and such things, but I don’t really mind. I’m not very interested in boys anyhow.”

“Aren’t you? Why not?”

“I don’t know. Just not. You’re older, though, and may go out as often as you please, I’m sure. After you’ve been seen, there will be all kinds of boys wanting to take you out. Almost all the college boys are home for the summer, of course.”

“I can’t say that I’m terribly excited about it. College boys are a bore, mostly.”

“Do you like older men?”

“I can take them or leave them alone.” Lila looked at Ivy from the corners of her eyes and her lips curved slightly in a strange little secretive smile. “I think I’ll prefer to spend the summer with you.”

Sitting on the glider, watching with an air of abstraction the patterns of sun and shade on the green grass of the side lawn, Ivy had the most delicious sensation of pervading warmth, as if she were sinking slowly into a warm bath. It was the best of good fortune to have acquired her lovely Cousin Lila to love for a whole summer, but to be granted already the implications of being loved by Lila in return was the most incredible fulfillment. She stirred and lifted one hand to her breast, feeling there a sudden and pleasurable pain.

“Is there anything in particular you would like to do now?” she said.

“Your father said that your mother would not be home until this evening. Is that true?”

“Yes. She had to attend a meeting of one of the women’s societies. Of the church, you know. Apparently it was quite important, something she couldn’t miss, and she said to tell you she was very sorry she couldn’t be here to meet you when you arrived.”

“I don’t mind. I quite understand. I wonder what it would be like to have a mother. My father divorced my mother when I was a child. Perhaps you’ve been told about it. I haven’t seen her for years, although in the beginning, right after the divorce, she came to visit me once in a while.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t be. I’m not. I suppose she was unfaithful, since Father got the divorce and custody of me. I’m glad it turned out that way. I doubt that Father would be considered a proper parent, but being in his custody has proved interesting for the most part, even though he has often considered me a bother and sent me away, to school or camp or someplace, to be rid of me.”

“Why did you ask about Mother? When she would be home, I mean?”

“I was just thinking that we might go for a walk. It’s pleasant to walk along the strange streets of a strange town. They change, somehow, after the first time, and are never the same again. But I wouldn’t want to be gone when your mother gets home. She might think it was rude.”

“We have plenty of time. We could walk for an hour at least. Would you like to go?”

“Yes. Let’s go. Will it be necessary to tell your father?”

“No. He’ll never miss us. He pays very little attention to anything unless it is brought directly to his attention.”

They had begun to walk, and they continued to walk for an hour under arcs of branches on tree-lined streets, and at some special second in the course of the hour their hands happened to meet and cling, and it was at once a sign of acceptance and a shy beginning of exploration. When they returned to the house, Ivy’s mother had not yet returned, but she did soon after, and after another hour, perhaps longer, they all sat down to dinner and sat with bowed heads while the Reverend Dr. Theodore Galvin said grace with subdued sonority. Ivy looked through her lashes at Lila across the table, and Lila was looking at her at the same moment in the same way, and it seemed to both that they shared an ineffable secret, and they smiled secretly.

If there was any symbol of the summer, it was that secretive smile. It seemed to develop a separate and somnolent existence of its own, so that it permeated the atmosphere and became a quality of the sunlight, the whispering rain, and the silent, moonlit nights. It was always present, the quality of the smile, and it had, Ivy thought, both scent and sound. The scent was the essence of a delicate perfume that was caught only now and then in a favorable instant, and the sound was the softest sound of a distant vibration, like the plucked string of a conceit harp, that could be heard only in the depths of profound stillness. Sometimes in the middle of doing something, of reading or making her bed or playing tennis or coming down the stairs, she would suddenly smell the scent or hear the sound in a brief suspension of all other scents on earth, and she could never remember certainly when she smelled and heard the scent and sound of the secretive smile for the first time, but she thought it must surely have been the first night Lila came to her room, which was a night not long after Lila’s arrival at the house.

She had been asleep, and she ascended slowly from the deep darkness of sleep into the moonlight flooding the room through open windows, and the smile was in the room with the moonlight, the sense and scent and sound of it, and Lila was there too, beside the bed. Spontaneously, with the ease of instinct, Ivy held out a hand, and Lila took it in hers and sat down on the bed’s edge.

“You were sleeping,” Lila said. “I’ve been watching you.”

“Did you speak to me or touch me?”

“No. Neither.”

“I must have sensed you here to have wakened as I did. Do you hear something?”

“No.” Lisa sat listening, her face lifted to the moonlight. “No, nothing. Do you?”

“I think so. Perhaps I’m only imagining it, though, it’s so soft.”

“What kind of sound? Someone in the hall? Someone outside?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s more like music. A string vibrating.”

“It’s the moonlight. Didn’t you know that moonlight makes a sound? Haven’t you ever heard it before?”

“No. It’s lovely, though. I love the sound of moonlight. Why do you suppose I’m hearing it now for the first time?”

“Because I’m here. I make you aware of things. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“I can make you aware of many things you never knew about before. Are you glad I came?”

“Yes, I’m glad, and I’m glad you wanted to. Why did you want to?”

“I was lonely and wanted to be with you. I’d rather be with you than anyone else. I couldn’t sleep. I kept looking at the moon through my window and wanting to be with you, and so I had to come. Do you think your mother and father would be angry if they knew?”

“I don’t think so. Why should they?”

“Perhaps they wouldn’t think it right for us to love each other. We do love each other, don’t we, Ivy? Didn’t you feel it immediately? Haven’t you known it right along? We are the truest of lovers with the best of love.”

“Yes. It’s true. Our own true love.”

The words were spoken with a strange, instinctive ease and they were a prelude to a kind of delirious and sensuous excitement such as Ivy had never experienced. As if in a dream she shifted in the bed to permit Lila to slide in beside her. And in a continuing dream she felt herself enfolded in Lila’s arms, and the warmth and intoxicating softness of Lila’s body, the sweet pressure of her lips on her mouth and throat transported her into a world of dizzying sensation. For the first time her own body seemed to come fully alive. There was a wild singing in her blood, a delightful trembling in all her nerve ends and suddenly her arms and her lips and her whole body were as eager and demanding as Lila’s.

It was not until afterward that Ivy became aware that love had ceased to be one thing in a moment and had become another thing entirely, although what it had been was included in what it became, and neither was he aware until later that there was in her ecstasy the deep and grievous sadness of irreparable loss.

And so for Ivy there was the summer and the symbolic smile, the ecstasy and anguish of what was gained and lost and of learning to know and accept herself as someone quite different from the person she had thought she was, or had thought she could possibly be. There was also in the passing of days and weeks and months an accretion of guilt and unspecific fear that was something quite apart from, and far deadlier than, whatever specific fear of discovery she might have felt in relation to her mother and father. But guilt and fear were still, and would for a long time be, of less effect than love, and at the end of summer, when it was time for Lila to go away to her father and then to her school, everything was of no effect at all in the dreadful desolation and loneliness in which Ivy was left.

“You’ll never come back,” Ivy said the night before Lila departed. “I have the most terrible feeling that I’ll never see you again.”

“You’re wrong. Next summer I’ll come, if your parents will have me. I’m sure that Father will be most happy to dispose of me so conveniently. In the meanwhile, I’ll write to you. Does your father or mother ever open your mail?”

“I don’t get much mail, but I don’t remember that they’ve ever opened any.”

“Nevertheless, I’d better be careful what I write. You’ll understand me, however. I’ll make allusions to places and times, and you’ll know what I mean.”

“I wish I could go away with you.”

“One day you shall. I’ll become a model, and we’ll have an apartment together. Good models are paid quite well, and I’ll have some money from Father besides, when he dies. He’s lived so hard that it’s very likely he won’t live to old age. I think his liver’s gone bad.”

“One day. It seems so indefinite and far away. How long, do you think?”

“Maybe sooner than you imagine. You’ll be eighteen in a little over a year. I think I may leave school for good next spring. Maybe soon after that. Isn’t the moonlight lovely? It’s like the first night I came here to your room.”

“I can hear it. Can you? You must listen very intently. It makes me so drowsy. I feel as if I were floating away on the sound of the moonlight, right out of the window and away forever.”

“I wouldn’t want you to float away forever. Then you wouldn’t be here when I return next summer.”

“Let’s not talk about that. About your going away, I mean. I can’t bear to think of it.”

“Would you like to sleep for a while?”

“I think I would, but I don’t want you to go away. Will you stay here if I sleep?”

“I’ll stay for another hour and watch you. I love to watch you when you’re asleep. You look so incredibly innocent, like a small child.”

“Will you wake me before you go back to your room?”

“Yes. I promise. Go to sleep now. Listen to the sound of the moonlight.”

She lay quietly in the cradle of Lila’s arm and went to sleep to the sound, and all through the fall and winter and spring that followed, lying alone at night, she always listened for the sound and waited in the darkness for it to come, and at first it came quickly and clearly, without delay, but then it began to be more and more elusive and remote, and finally could not be heard at all. With Lila gone, with only an allusive letter now and then to assure her presence on earth, the domination of guilt by love became uncertain, and the unspecific fear, which her father might have simplified as the fear of God, assumed slowly a commanding place and became a constant threat. During the time of the three seasons, Ivy was balanced precariously between one thing and another, standing in the time of decision between two ways to go, either of which was possible. But she made no decision, and the seasons passed, and Lila returned in the fourth season, the summer, and then there was no longer a decision to be made, and no way to go but one. The quality of the secret smile was again in everything, and the sound of the moonlight could again be heard, but there was nevertheless a significant difference between the first summer and the second, and the difference lay in an increased consciousness of an enormous commitment and in the dangerous consequences the commitment might entail.

It is possible to hide from the senses forever something that can only be seen, but it is not possible to hide from the senses forever, or even for very long, something that can be felt. Awareness may come slowly, but it comes certainly, and it carries conviction even if there is no material evidence to support it. And so it happened in the second summer that even so insensitive an egoist as the Reverend Dr. Theodore Galvin became uneasily aware that the emotional climate surrounding his daughter and his niece did not satisfy his conception of the effect of a normal attachment. He reluctantly discussed it with his wife and found support for his suspicions, which were by the support immediately transformed into conviction. They decided between them that something would have to be done to prevent a consummation they did not know had already been accomplished, and their idea of what to do was to institute a kind of police action. They imposed such sudden and severe restrictions and engaged so palpably in surveillance that both Ivy and Lila knew almost at once that they were under unspoken indictment.

“They know,” Lila said.

They were sitting on the glider under the tree on the side lawn. To Ivy the familiar patterns of sun and shade were the shapes and signs of a corporate threat. It did not occur to her, however, that there was any escape from it by retreat, or any choice left to her except the one that had been set. There was Lila, or there was nothing. There was hope, or there was hopelessness.

“Yes,” she said. “What can we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do. Not now. They’ll surely send me away.”

“If they do, I’ll go with you.”

Although Ivy was not clearly conscious of it, the they was not used in simple reference to her father and mother, for already the specific had been absorbed by the general, the smaller overt threat no more than a sign of the greater and deadlier one of which it was a part. They were the enemy in an ancient conflict, the accusing host.

“You can’t,” Lila said. “It’s not time. We’ll have to wait.”

“I can’t stand it if they send you away. I think I’ll die.”

“You won’t die. You’ll wait. In a few month you’ll be eighteen, and then you can come to me if you wish. In the meanwhile, I’ll prepare for it. Father knows a man who runs a model agency, and he’s promised to take me on. When I leave here, I’ll go to work immediately.”

“Suppose they try to stop me from coming. Do you think they could?”

“Your father and mother? They may try, but there’s a limit to what they can do. They won’t make an open issue of it, you know. They couldn’t bear the disgrace if the truth became known, and so, after all, you will be able to control the situation. As a matter of fact, I suspect, whatever they do or say, that they’ll be relieved to have you go. They’ll pretend afterward that you are dead.”

“How will you let me know when and where to come? It wouldn’t be safe to write.”

“Not here, of course, but I can send it to another address. To someone you know who will pass the letter on to you. Write to me when I get home and let me know where.”

Lila was right in assuming that she would surely be sent away, but it was done indirectly with no open reference to the reason for it, and indeed with the pretension that it was not being done at all. The Reverend Dr. Theodore Galvin, a master of indirection, simply wrote to his brother, Lila’s father, that it had become apparent, for reasons he would prefer not to divulge unless they were specifically requested, that it would be better for everyone concerned if Lila were ordered to come home. The black sheep brother knew his daughter rather well, and he had no wish to know any more than he already did. He wrote Lila to come home and did not ask for reasons. Lila went. She said good-by politely, expressing her regret at having to leave, and the Galvins said good-by just as politely, expressing their regret at having her go, and the pretension was sustained to the end. The Reverend Dr. Galvin drove Lila to the station with her luggage, and Ivy went to her room and lay down on the bed and had for the first time in her life a sincere wish that she would often have later, which was the wish to die quietly and quickly without pain.

The period that followed was an extremely difficult one for Ivy, but she lived it somehow in intervals of days, often certain that Lila would never send for her as she had promised, but finally the letter came that fulfilled the promise. The definitive break, the departure from her home and parents, was accomplished so quietly that its finality was implicit in its quietness.

“Going?” her father said. “Where are you going?”

His face was perplexed and wary.

“I’m going to live with Cousin Lila.”

There was a brittle, defiant note in her voice.

“I forbid you to do so.”

“You may forbid me if you please, but it won’t stop me. I’m going.”

“If you leave against my wishes, I shall consider you dead. You will never be allowed in this house again, or in any house of which I am master.”

At this moment his face was like a stranger’s.

“I expected that. I’m willing to accept it.”

“Very well. Go when you are ready, but don’t speak to me again. I won’t want to say good-by.”

Ivy’s mother stood with the man she adored, and Ivy could not remember afterward a single thing she did or a single word she said, either of reproach or regret, in the time of parting. Everything was understood, but nothing was expressed.

And so began the life of Ivy and Lila together, and for a while it had gone wonderfully, and for a longer while it had gone well, but then it had begun to go bad. One cause of the growing badness was Ivy’s recurring and deepening depression, and another cause was Lila’s duality. Unlike Ivy, she was not wholly committed, and she could be one person in one time and another person in another time, depending on the times and their demands. The night of Ivy’s flight and meeting with Henry, the bad time getting worse had become as bad as it could be, but in the relationship with Henry, although the time was still bad, it was a bad time getting better. Lying in darkness on Henry’s sofa, she believed at last that it would be possible to have with him a saving alliance that would absolve her of the past and secure the future, and there was in her belief a compelling urgency to test it. The possibility was directly contingent, she felt, upon present circumstances, and what could be accomplished here and now and with this man could not be accomplished hereafter in another place with anyone else.

Getting up, she walked through the dark into the bedroom and stood beside the bed on which Henry lay. He was lying on his back on the far side with one arm crossing his chest on top of the covers and the other arm, the near one, stretched out at his side. She could see him only dimly in the dark room, but his breath was drawn and released with the rhythm and depth of sleep.

“Henry,” she said.

He didn’t answer, nor even stir, and there was no break in the rhythm of his breathing. She got into bed and lay beside him, very carefully not touching him until she was entirely ready, and then she reached for his hand and laid it deliberately on her breast. He stirred briefly, making a whimpering sound and Ivy held her breath. She squeezed his hand with hers, placed it more firmly on her breast and felt a surge of strange emotion in her.

Henry grunted and suddenly turned.

“Who is it?” he mumbled.

“Henry... Henry, I... I—” Ivy’s voice broke off in a faint whisper.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, then in the dim, uncertain predawn light she saw his eyes widen as he became aware of where his hand was resting.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

He laughed uncertainly. “No. Of course, not.”

“Henry, would you like to kiss me?”

Instead of answering her, he turned fully toward her and placed his lips on hers. It was a groping, tentative kiss and Ivy could feel a terrible trembling in her body. She was suddenly cold and she wanted to push Henry away, but she suffered the kiss to go on. Then she felt his hand pressing more firmly on her breast through the thin cloth of the nightgown. After a moment he removed it and put both arms around her, pulling her closer. She resisted momentarily, her body still strangely cold, then yielded. He brought her soft, quaking flesh against his lean hardness and Ivy felt panic begin to blossom deep inside her.

She was mashed against Henry now and he was kissing her, this time not so gently. His mouth was urgent and a little rough and suddenly his hand crept under the nightgown and was caressing the bare flesh of her breasts. His thumb and index finger toyed with the nipple of her lift breast, massaging it gently. A wild current of feeling rode like quicksilver through Ivy’s veins. She wanted to scream and cry. There was a stirring of desire in her — like the remembered delight of the hours spent in Lila’s arms — but there was a difference she couldn’t fathom and she couldn’t fight down the horrible, crawling fear that suddenly clutched at her vitals.

Suddenly, without conscious volition, she arched against him, pushing against his chest with a terrible frenzy. She withdrew slightly and in that moment she lashed out at his face, raking the nails of her left hand across it. Henry cried out in pain, then cursed.

Ivy scrambled out of the bed, clutching her nightgown to her quaking body. Henry got out the other side of the bed and quickly turned on a lamp. Blood was trickling down his cheek from the gashes left by Ivy’s nails. She had hurt him and she was sorry and there was a deep sadness in her for him. She wanted to ask his forgiveness but the fury she saw in his eyes held her back.

“You rotten bitch,” he said. “You goddamn queer.”

“Henry, please, I thought I could—”

“Shut up, damn you!” he raged.

He put his hand to his face, then lowered it and stared at the smear of blood across fingers and palm, and his eyes were suddenly sick with shame. Turning, he walked into the bathroom and she could hear water running into the lavatory, followed by the sound of the door of the medicine cabinet being opened and closed. She wanted to get up and go after him, to heal his wounds by the miracle of her intense desire, but she thought with despair that miracles did not come to pass, and on one moment of irrational fear it had become too late for the healing of anything. She did not blame him for his cruel words, which had been spoken in reaction to her cruel act. He hadn’t called her a tithe of the evil things she was, and today, instead of buying a Christmas tree, as she had planned, she would gather her things and go away before she could cause him more trouble and shame in return for his kindness.