“What are you cooking?” he asked, and she started a bit, as if caught doing something indecent by watching him. But she smiled and turned back to the stove.
“Eggs,” she said. “There were five tonight.”
He smiled. At this time of year, when the hens were molting, eggs were scarce. The precious few they had were usually saved for other cooking purposes. To fry them and eat them so was as close to lavish as their eating habits came. He figured, and rightly so, it was her way of gifting him, for he loved fried eggs.
When he had covered the pails in the buttery, he went outside, down by the well in the yard, and took off his shirt. Pumping with one hand, he leaned toward the running water and splashed his arms. He had to keep starting and stopping the pumping action several times before he had splashed all of his face, neck, and chest. The water was like ice. It raised goosebumps on his arms. It caused him to suck in his belly with a heaving gulp before he backed off and shook his entire torso like a nickering horse.
He had forgotten a towel, so he came running up the porch steps and burst through the kitchen door like a shivering pup, cold drops of water spraying from his lips as he exclaimed, “Brrr!”
Mary turned from the range, grabbed a towel from the stand at the sink. “You could have washed in here with warm water,” she said when she brought it to him, wishing she could rub him warm and dry with it. But the eggs were delicately done and they needed taking up right now, so she threw the towel at him, returning to the stove.
“I thought it might make you uncomfortable,” Aaron said, watching for her reaction from the corner of his eye, rubbing himself. She kept her back to him.
He threw his shirt back on haphazardly, leaving it unbuttoned, and sat down at his place. Coming to her chair she saw how the white shirt clung to the skin of the chest where he’d not quite dried it. They began their meal without words. Sometimes they would look at one another, but it seemed as if they had reached the saturation point. Any more gazes would burst an invisible bubble.
She ate one of the two eggs on her plate, then said, “I’m full, Aaron.” He half-smiled, covering her hair, eyes, neck, face with one glance, answering, “So am I.” But he took the other egg from her plate and finished it before sitting back. She poured his tea, using a small strainer to catch the leaves.
“Why did you make tea tonight?” he asked. He knew why, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“Because you like it best,” she answered, knowing he knew why.
Aaron lit the lamp, shut the back door to keep the chill out, and returned to his tea and her.
“You know a lot about me, don’t you?” he questioned over his raised cup.
“Like what?”
“Oh, like…that I like tea better than coffee…that I like fried eggs, things like that.”
She shrugged her shoulders, as if suddenly bashful. “We’ve lived here in the same house for most of seven years. Of course I know a lot about you.”
“Yes. But it seems you learned more about me than I did about you. You have a way of knowing a man’s needs.”
“It’s a woman’s job to know a man’s needs. Besides, all they are is food, clothing, and shelter. It doesn’t take much knowing to see how to fill those.”
“Is that why you came here—to tend to our food and clothing and shelter? Jonathan’s and mine?”
She folded her hands in her lap, hunching her shoulders up and catching the hands between her knees. “I came here because…because from the first minute I saw this place I loved it and I wanted to build a life here…with Jonathan.” Here she glanced all around the comfortable kitchen, bedecked in blue-and-white gingham checks, touched by the hominess she’d created, the plants growing at the windowsill, the crisp curtains at the windows and around the counter that held the sink. “The two of you seemed to rattle around in this house, and I guess it’s true that I enjoyed the idea of having it to tend to. And the two of you need a woman to do for you.” Here she hesitated again. “But I came here ever so proud to be Jonathan’s wife.”
Aaron gazed steadily at her. “A marriage should be built on more than pride,” he said. “Food, clothing, and shelter aren’t enough either. What about love?”
He was leaning back, his chair angled away from the table, an ankle crossed over a knee as he raised the cup to his lips, studying her.
“We have that, too,” she said, “it’s just…”
He waited for her to continue, but when she didn’t, he said, “You’re very different, you and Jonathan. It strikes me that if either of you were to choose a friend, you would not choose each other, yet you chose to marry.”
“You don’t have to be friends and playmates to fall in love,” she stated, her hands still clasped between her knees.
“No, but sometimes it makes it more fun.”
“Fun? I didn’t need fun. I needed security. When Daddy died…well, I couldn’t live at Aunt Mabel’s forever. And Jonathan needed someone here. Maybe those don’t seem reasons enough to marry, but they were at the time, and love came afterward. I didn’t think of a husband as a playmate or a friend, and I still don’t.”
“No, because you’ve always had me for that,” Aaron said.
Their eyes caught and held, and she resisted owning up to the truth of that, lowering her eyes then from his direct gaze. But the lack of anger in his flat statement made it hit home.
“Yes, I guess I have,” she admitted quietly.
“But Jonathan has put an end to that, too, hasn’t he?” Aaron asked, still in his relaxed pose, one elbow resting on the table edge.
“Oh, I hope not,” Mary said, looking him directly in the eye, feeling again how she had missed his friendship these last weeks. His brown eyes darkened, brows drawing together as he met her gaze and held it. Then he sighed.
“Mary girl,” he said and, leaning forward, reached toward her hand, which now lay on the tabletop next to her cup and saucer. Touching only her little finger ever so lightly, he confessed, “I find it harder and harder to be only your friend.”
She looked at their hands, her heart hammering formidably as his finger slid from hers. He stood up, taking his cup and saucer. “Let’s do the dishes,” he said, “I’ll help.”
She got up and gathered dishes in front of her. He did the same, and they went to the stove together to wash them. She filled the dishpan with water from the reservoir and pumped cold water to add to it. She kept the dishpan on the rear of the stove where the water would stay warm while she worked. For the second time tonight, he took a dish towel from the breakfront drawer, and they worked side by side until the kitchen was clean.
9
The sun was down now and it was purple outside as they finished the dishes. Aaron went out to get wood for the woodbox so it would be full in the morning. He brought in two big armloads, then said he’d go shut the hen house doors and that he thought he’d left the granary open, too. After he was gone, her mind held the picture of the ridges the wood had made in his chest where he’d carried it against his still-open shirt.
The warm ride from town in the sun and the work in the chicken coop had left her with a grimy feeling, so she took a basin of water upstairs to her room. Without lighting the lamp she washed herself with castile soap. When she had finished, she took a clean nightgown from the dresser and shrugged it on, buttoning the front up to the high, eyelet-trimmed neck and tying the blue ribbon that gathered it beneath her breasts. Then she put on her flannel robe and went down to empty the basin in the backyard. The grass was cold now under her bare feet, so she hurried back inside. She put the basin away under the sink and lowered the lamp on the table, leaving it glowing softly. She made her way upstairs by the faint reflected light it cast around the stairwell.
Aaron was standing downyard, pondering the strange situation they were in when he saw the kitchen lamp dim, then a moment later the lamplight in an upstairs window, from her bedroom, hers and Jonathan’s.
Then Aaron went inside to the kitchen a
nd turned the skeleton key in the lock, something unheard of here on the farm, though the key hung loosely in the lock at all times. Then he lowered the wick on the lamp. As it spluttered out, he was left in darkness.
Mary was standing at the mirror brushing her hair, and she counted the familiar creaks of the stairs as Aaron came up. She inhaled deeply. The suggestion of lavender stayed with her as she heard Aaron go on past her closed door. He went down the hall to his own room, and she heard the sound of his dresser drawer opening. She continued brushing and was trying to count to a hundred strokes, but the numbers kept getting mixed up in her head, so she parted her hair freshly down the middle, then went to sit leaning against the pillows, her back against the headboard, as she braided her hair.
There had been no other sound from Aaron’s room. When Mary heard a light tap on her door, she jumped as if a rifle had cracked in the stillness. She couldn’t seem to force a word up into her throbbing throat, so she just sat holding her unfinished braid as the door opened slowly and Aaron stood there.
“May I come in, Mary?” But still her words would not come forth, and he came to the foot of her bed and stood, watching, while she formed the last braid with shaking hands.
He was wearing light cotton pajamas, and it crossed her mind that she had never washed them for him. Where had he gotten them? She had never seen a man in pajamas before.
“Why don’t you take your braids out, Mary?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you with your hair down before.”
And as if his words were the force that controlled her movements, she began undoing the braid she’d nearly finished. He watched her as she freed both of them, then tried to comb through them with her fingers. All the while, her eyes stayed on him. He turned to look over his shoulder and, finding the brush she’d left on the dresser, picked it up and came to stand beside her. She followed him with her eyes, still holding onto the trailing ends of her hair, until he was above her and she was gazing up at him.
He took her by the shoulders and turned her away from him and slowly began brushing her hair. He stroked its full length, to the middle of her back. He touched her nowhere else. All she could feel was the tug of the bristles and the hammering of her heart. Then he put a hand on her forehead and pulled her head backward until her hair hung free against his stomach and the top of her head rested on his chest. Her eyes were closed as he ran the brush over the center part of her hair, and he brushed at it repeatedly until he had obliterated it, and pulled her hair straight back as she’d had it the night of the dance.
In the lamplight he saw the ivory sheen of her arched throat, and it threw his heart into wild disorder. Then his hands slowly went around the front of her neck until, under her hair, she felt his thumbs pushing her head back up. When she had straightened it, she felt the warmth of his body flattened against her back. His first kiss was laid lightly upon the hair he’d just finished brushing.
“I thought I could keep from coming to you, Mary,” and his voice was unlike she’d ever heard it, intense and low.
“It’s wrong, Aaron.”
“It’s not wrong yet. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll leave. But you have to say it.”
It was an effort for her to breathe. “I can’t say it, Aaron.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, knowing he was being unfair. Standing as he was, behind and above her, he could see her chest breaking with her heavy breathing, knew she wanted him, too, and that he was making her decide for them both.
“There is no such thing as being sure,” she answered.
Then she felt his two hands slide from her neck, down over the front of her nightgown, until she was no longer aware of the heat against her back. There was the warmth of Aaron’s hands on her breasts instead, pulling all her senses there as he caressed them, moving slowly, slowly, contouring their undercurve, brushing more lightly across the erect nipples before flanking them with his fingers until their hardness became sweet pain. It agonized and thrilled her at the same time. She knew she must stop him, but lacked all will to do so.
He straightened then, put a hand on her back while moving around to sit on the edge of the bed, facing her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders, ran them down the full length of her arms until he reached her hands; then their fingers interlaced, and they sat with palms together, fingers squeezing in near pain, until he forced her arms straight out from her sides. The lamplight glimmered on his russet curls as he tipped his head to one side, but she saw only a brief movement, for her eyes were closing. He kissed her with the soft, light, first touch of discovery before releasing her hands and pulling her nearer. Her arms hung where he’d left them until she felt his tongue lightly tracing a circle over her covered lips.
When at last he felt her arms close around his shoulders, his tongue became more demanding, forcing her mouth open and feeling her response. He chased her wandering tongue with his until he stilled it, explored it, captured it. She was responsive but hesitant, until he nudged her tongue into action and she responded fully.
Separating to look into each others eyes, she found his face in the lamplight was just as she remembered it. She put both her hands upon it, and his eyes closed while her fingertips traveled over every part of it. They crossed his forehead, starting in the center and separating to cover its breadth to his temples. She laid her fingers gently on his closed eyelids before tracing down his nose and stroking his cheeks toward his jawbone in the direction she remembered his whiskers grew.
“I wanted to do that this afternoon,” she revealed.
“Yes, I know.” It was no revelation at all, for he’d read it in her face back then. His eyes remained closed.
At last she touched his beautiful, wide mouth.
His eyes opened slowly, and she felt the need to say his name.
“Aaron…” Mary said, her head tipped slightly to one side. He understood that after all these years the name was suddenly different to her.
“Hello, Mary.” He smiled as if he’d just met her, too.
“I know you far better than I did at suppertime,” she said.
“You haven’t begun to know me, Mary,” Aaron said.
“I want to know all of you,” she said.
As if the sweet ecstasy of their gentle introduction could satisfy him no longer, Aaron suddenly changed. He tipped Mary sideways across his lap as he lowered his open, demanding mouth to hers. He pulled her so tightly against his chest that she couldn’t tell whose heart she felt pulsing between them, his or her own. When at last he released her, he barely had the breath to groan, “Oh, Mary, Mary…” as he cradled her, rocking her.
Never in her life had Jonathan stirred her like this. What Mary was feeling now made the past longings of her life vague promises that had never been fulfilled. The heat in her body was a thing so unreconcilable that it scared her. She’d never felt it before, not with an intensity like this, and she didn’t know what to do with it.
But Aaron knew.
He moved away from her and laid her flat across his knees and untied the blue ribbon that circled her nightgown. Using both hands, he started at the high neck of it and began unbuttoning. But when he reached the button under the blue ribbon she put her hands on his to stay them. “Aaron, please turn out the lantern.”
His eyebrows drew together, then relaxed. “Let me leave it on, Mary.”
“No, Aaron, please.” Her heart was hammering with frightful timidity now. In spite of her longing for Aaron, she still felt the stringent restrictions, the proprieties that had always regulated even her most intimate behavior.
“Mary, are you afraid of the light?” he asked.
“Yes,” she quavered, and her wide eyes told him it was so.
“But your body is beautiful. Where’s the shame in that?”
“Please, Aaron. I can’t. I never have, not in the light.”
He got up and walked to the lamp and lowered the wick until darkness sank around them. He returned to where she sat on the edge of the bed, and
knelt on the floor in front of her. Reaching his hands up to her neck, he again ran them over her shoulders, but this time the nightgown fell from them and in the dark she clasped its fallen folds around her waist, even as the delight of his caress touched her naked skin.
Never had she imagined a man taking as much time as he was now. He touched every inch of her back and stomach, running his hands up her sides and forcing her arms up to his own shoulders so he could run his hands under her arms and over her breasts. At some time while his vagabond hands roamed over her, her neck grew limp, her head lolled backward, and she groaned, “Aaron, what are you doing to me?”
For an answer she felt a warm wetness on her breast, followed by the roughness of his tongue. He loved the sweet smell of her, and as he took his mouth to her other breast, could taste the cleanness of her firm flesh. Her small, hard body was as perfect as he’d known it would be, but he damned the darkness that hid what he could only feel.
It was so dark in the room that all he knew was what he tasted and touched. He felt her tight, small fists clutching the nightgown under his chest. So he stopped kissing her then and put both hands over hers, but he could feel her fists knot tighter at his touch.
“Don’t be afraid, Mary,” he whispered.
“But I am, Aaron.”
“I’ll teach you not to be,” Aaron promised.
“But Jonathan never…” She stopped, realizing what she’d said and wishing she could draw back the name.
“Jonathan never what?” he asked in the dark, and his voice held no rebuke. But she found she couldn’t say it. This sort of frankness was totally new to her. In Jonathan’s arms there was no talking and, so, no such inhibition.