“Did you sleep?” he asked, leaning back but leaving his arms around her waist.
“Yes, way too long. Did you?”
“Like a cat who got the cream,” he answered, and saw a light blush come to her face. She escaped his embrace and turned her flustered attention to their meal.
“Thank you for filling the boiler, Aaron,” she said.
“Well, it’s the least I could do for a lady I kept up half the night.” He came up behind her as she carried a bowl to the table, and tugged lightly on her tied-back hair.
“I like your hair pulled straight back like that,” he said, but she bobbed her head away, saying, “I’ve never forgotten the wash water before. I don’t know what came over me last night.”
“I do,” he said with a teasing grin. “Me!”
His impertinence had her downright red by this time. Aaron was enjoying every minute of it. She looked as enchanting as a schoolgirl. Last night in the pantry she’d taken his teasing lightly, but today in the daylight she seemed so bashful.
“Mary, if I tease you it’s because I’m happy, okay?” he asked.
She stopped in her path from table to stove and looked at him. “Yes, Aaron,” she approved, “it’s just that it’s new to me, that’s all.”
“Many things are new to you since last night,” he said, “but every one of them’s fine and good.”
“Yes, I think so, too.”
“Okay,” he said, and they smiled at each other.
They sat down to eat then, but they’d barely begun when Aaron noticed she’d not set the teakettle on the hottest part of the stove for scalding their dishes later. “You forgot the kettle,” he said, and she started to get up at the same time as he did. He said, “I’ll get it,” but when he lifted it he felt it was empty and went to the pump to fill it. Coming back to the table, he came up behind Mary and put his lips near her ear, whispering, “Is something coming over you again, Mary? This forgetfulness is not like you.” He planted a bit of a kiss on her neck before sitting down again.
She blushed.
In the early afternoon they walked out to the cornfield behind the horses. Aaron had more marking to do, so Mary began the planting with the hand planter while he finished marking the last of the checkrows. He turned the horses free to crop the grass along the edges of the field before joining her with a second planter. Together they crossed and recrossed the checkered field, hesitating at each x to push the seeds into the earth.
They broke to fill their seed canisters and later for a drink of water from the fruit jar Mary had left on the grassy verge in the shade of a rock. He opened the burlap-wrapped jar and handed it to her first. After she drank, she two-handed it straight across at him. But taking the jar from her he turned it until the side she’d drunk from was under his lips, the timeless gesture of a lord for his lady. She turned pink as he handed the jar back to her, but feeling a bit bold when he leaned up close, she kissed him on the corner of his mouth, rather surprising both of them.
They worked through the afternoon, thinking of evening. None of the usual monotony of the job struck them, for monotony is an affliction of the empty mind. Both of their minds were full.
As the afternoon glare wore low, they headed home, with the horses dragging the marker and Mary riding atop it. Chores were waiting when they got back, but this time when Mary had finished her own she didn’t go to join Aaron in the barn to lend her ineffectual hand. She went instead to fix supper and take in the clothes from the line, folding and sprinkling them in preparation for tomorrow’s ironing.
The last thing left hanging on the lines were the sheets, cut across now with dapples of late-day shadows. Aaron, walking between the outbuildings, saw Mary at the lines with her arms upraised, plucking at the clothespins and gathering the sheets high so they wouldn’t touch the ground. At the sight of her there, as lithe and slim as the long shadows about her, he was struck again with the veritable perfection of their place here together.
Taking the sheets fresh from the line, Mary went to remake the beds, doing first her own, then Aaron’s. In his room she thought about all the nights he’d slept there, wondered if he’d ever heard her and Jonathan making love, wondered what it would be like when they did it again, as they surely must.
The smell of supper cooking downstairs brought her back to reality, and she finished draping the coverlet over the bed and went down to tend to her cooking. She was busy when Aaron came in. He kept a stream of talk going as they busied themselves, he at the sink and she at the range.
“We got a good start on the corn today because of your help. Thanks, Mary.”
“No need for thanks, Aaron. I didn’t mind it.”
“Still, you must be tired. You’re not used to doing double duty in the house and fields.”
“The day went so fast it hardly seemed like work. Anyway, I’ll be in the fields again at harvest time. This little bit of work will seem like nothing next to shocking grain.”
“The day went fast for me, too, Mary. Because you were out there with me.”
He had his shirt off, was lathering his chest and arms, and it was all she could do to keep from watching the process, while finally he dried with a towel.
“I missed you in the barn though. The cats asked where you where,” he teased. Then his voice changed.
“I told them you were up here putting clean sheets on the bed for tonight.” He said it quietly but not teasingly. She picked up Aaron’s dirty blue cambric shirt from the back of the chair and was going to take it out to the clothes basket on the back porch, but he said, “Come here to me, Mary.” And she felt a flash of heat go to her face.
“I’ve waited through a million corn seeds and a hundred hours of chores, and I can’t wait any longer.” He was standing with the white towel slung around his neck, holding onto its ends.
She let the shirt fall back onto the chair and turned slowly to him. She went to stand in front of him and look up at his face, then back down to his bare chest, where a light mat of red-gold hair lay damp after the washing. Then he flipped the towel off his neck and around the back of hers, pulling her toward him. She put a hand lightly on his chest then and could feel the beating of his heart.
“Don’t be afraid to touch me, Mary,” he said.
And her hand withdrew a little.
“It’s not decent in the daylight,” she said.
“It’s evening already…call it evenlight.”
“It doesn’t seem right,” she repeated.
“Do you want to touch me, Mary? As bad as I want to touch you?” he asked.
Her hand was still poised uncertainly between them. She didn’t answer aloud, only nodded in assent.
He took her hand and pulled it back onto his chest and moved it back and forth, across the fine, sparkling hairs, across his hard brown nipples.
“If you want it and I want it, what could be more right?” His hand still guided hers over ribs, navel, neck, jaws, and back down to his chest.
“I don’t know,” she choked.
“I want you to touch me everywhere, like you touched my face last night,” he said, his eyes an intense dark brown.
“Oh, Aaron, you’re beautiful,” she breathed.
“Am I, Mary?” he asked. “Maybe it’s because you’re looking with your heart instead of your eyes.”
She reached to place her fingertips fleetingly on his lips, saying, “I think I’m looking with both.”
He surrounded her then with his bare arms and chest. When his mouth came down on hers, she felt that her hands couldn’t pull strongly enough on his back to bring his beauty into her. She rubbed the fingers of both hands straight and hard up the center of his backbone, surprising herself with the motions her hands made of their own volition.
His arms reached so far around her slim body that his hands rested on the soft sides of her breasts under her arms. He spread his fingers and felt the vague swellings there, but when he backed a bit away from her to caress her from the front
, she took her mouth away from his and said, “Our supper’s burning, Aaron.”
“To hell with supper,” he said hoarsely, and kept his hand busy as he pulled her closer again and kissed her. “To hell with the light, Mary, don’t be afraid of it. I want you.”
And for a moment she was tempted to give in, light or no light. “Please don’t make me cook another meal, Aaron. If you don’t let me go, I’ll have to.”
He finally realized that there was a taint of burning pork beginning to drift around them. He turned her loose then, cursing the bad timing but knowing she was right about the meal. She caught the food in time to save it, but wished it had been cooked perfectly, as she’d wanted it for him. They had to eat it dry, cutting off the parts that were too brown, but neither of them minded a bit. Aaron had come to the table without putting on a clean shirt, and sat through the entire meal with those impudent nipples daring her to look at them across the overdone food.
After supper they worked together to clean up the mess, and when the kitchen was clean, Aaron picked up his dirty shirt from the back of the chair, picked up the dishpan, and headed out the door to sling it out at the edge of the backyard. Then he leaned the pan against the doorjamb, put his dirty shirt in the basket at the far end of the porch, and walked down toward the barnyard.
He knows what he’s leaving me alone for, Mary thought as she watched him go, and he knows I’ll do it. And from far off down the barnyard he heard the dishpan clank as she opened the screen door and knocked it over. Retrieving it from its resounding spin, she stopped its ringing and took it inside to fill and carry upstairs for her sponge bath. She wished she could bathe down at the kitchen sink where it was more convenient, but what if he came back before she was finished?
As it turned out, that’s just what Aaron did, and on purpose. She heard his footfalls making the old steps creak, and in a rush of near-panic she whipped the wet cloth over her soapy legs, trying to hurry, knowing she’d never beat him if he came in. She stopped her splashing and held her breath to listen. Her heart beat wildly as she saw the doorlatch lift. Aaron stepped inside.
She was standing in the lamplight with one foot in the dishpan and one on the floor. Dear God, she was beautiful. Her skin was glimmering yellow in highlights and dusked to pink in shadow. He caught a flash of one small breast before she turned in a protective half-crouch away from him, putting her arms over her front to shield it.
“Please go out and leave me, Aaron,” she implored. He saw her look over her shoulder at the towel lying beside the dishpan on the floor. But she would have had to turn toward him to pick it up, so she left it and kept her guarded position. But when Mary looked up from the towel to Aaron, she saw that he was looking in the dresser mirror at her full reflection. He had missed very little.
“Please, Aaron,” she begged again.
“I’ll go because you ask me, not because it’s indecent to stay,” he said, and went out, closing the door. She heard him go to his room, then clump hurriedly back downstairs. As she finished her bath, she heard the iron clank of the reservoir lid lifting and the following sound of the pump handle being worked. She figured he must be finishing the other half of the bath he’d started before supper. A smile teased her lips. There haven’t been so many baths taken in this house in any three days since I’ve lived here, she thought.
With the thought and smile still warming her, she dried herself, dressed, put her dishpan out in the hall, and sat down at the windowsill in the fragrant night air to brush her hair.
Aaron was making busy noises down there, and twice she heard him go out onto the porch below her window, but the roof angled there and she couldn’t tell what he was doing. The pump sounded again, and after a while he came upstairs to his room, then went back down and outside. She heard the slosh of her bathwater as he dumped it in the yard. She’d forgotten about it sitting out there in the hall! She smiled a little thank-you smile and wondered if he could feel it being conveyed to him through the evening.
When he’d finished, Aaron climbed the stairs for the last time and knocked. She was sitting on the floor at the low sill of the open window. “Come in,” she called, and when he did, added, “This is a fine time to knock.” But she reached up her hand toward him and said, “Come and smell the night. I think I even smell the first lilacs.”
He squatted down beside her with his elbows on his knees, and they stayed awhile, holding hands and smelling spring ease into summer.
“Hey, girl,” he said, taking a strand of her hair from her neck into his fingers, “I was unfair…but my sense of decency is different than yours. Anyway, you were beautiful.”
Soon he said, “Will you come to my room tonight?”
She gave him a short look, then nodded. He got up and blew out the lantern on her dresser, then held his hands out to her and tugged her up. He walked ahead of her down the hall so that she couldn’t see into the room as his broad shoulders filled the doorway. But a halo of lantern light radiated from inside, and before she saw them, she smelled lilacs coming from somewhere in front of Aaron. When she was fully into the room, she saw two branches of lilacs in a mason jar of water beside the bed.
“Oh, Aaron. How did you know I love them?” She went to plunge her face among the violet petals.
“I’ve lived with you for seven years, too,” he said, gratified by her pleasure. “I do know some things you like. See here?” he gestured to the dresser. “Chokecherry wine.” There were two small jelly glasses beside the bottle of sparkling drink.
“Another of my favorites!” Mary exclaimed. “Oh Aaron…” She gazed across the room at him, honey-hair rich in the lantern light, child’s face lustrous with a flush of pleasure upon it. “You have such ways of pleasing. I’m afraid you’ll spoil me.”
“I’d love to have the chance to try. If I could, I’d buy you wine in the finest hotel in the land, but people might frown and point, so we’ll have to drink it here instead, okay?” He cocked his head, waiting for her reply.
“I never drank wine in a bedroom before,” she laughed.
“Neither did I,” he admitted, and his own rich laughter accompanied her to the dresser, where she filled both glasses. Holding one out to him, Mary said, “Among the things I love, there’s chokecherry wine. You’re right about that.”
She didn’t know which was sweeter, the rich red wine or sipping it here with Aaron. They sat on the edge of his bed, and when they had finished, he refilled their glasses. These second ones were shared sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing each other. It was a thing she would never have dreamed of doing two days ago, yet here she was, feeling the glow of the wine and the man.
“Will you let me leave the lantern on when we make love tonight?” he asked.
And again her cheeks took on a little of the claret color of the liquid in her glass. “Please don’t ask me that,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it seems indecent.”
“Like the act of love itself?” he shrugged.
“I didn’t say that, Aaron. I didn’t even think it.” She took a small sip from her glass before going on. “Last night you taught me that it isn’t indecent, even between us to whom it’s forbidden. When you made love to me, it made the act between Jonathan and me seem the indecent one. How can that be, Aaron, when Jonathan’s my husband?”
“Darling, I don’t know about what passed between you and Jonathan, but I know what didn’t pass between you…and without that, the act is a sham.”
She felt a ripple of delight thrill through her at his endearment, at his casual use of it when she was so unaccustomed to words like that. “But I have always loved Jonathan, and I know he loves me. That should make it good, but it was never like last night with you. Why didn’t Jonathan know?”
“I can’t answer that, Mary. Jonathan never sowed wild oats. You are probably his first and only. Yet nature should have told him somehow.”
Again Mary was struck with the unbelievable fact of herself and Aar
on sitting facing each other cross-legged on a bed, drinking chokecherry wine and talking about this. She knew it was more than their long friendship that made it possible, that it stemmed also from something Aaron had learned in the city, and she wanted to confirm that, yet she couldn’t ask about it. She looked into her glass of wine, screwing up some courage.
“It wasn’t just nature that told you…was it, Aaron?”
“Mary, if I answer that, you must promise not to let it matter to you, because it doesn’t matter to me.”
He watched her nod.
“You know why I went to the city, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for a reply, for none was needed. “I felt in the way here. I thought if I left the house to you and Jonathan, the two of you might have more success…more privacy. I’ve always known what it would mean to both of you to have a family, and I knew that my being here wasn’t helping matters between you. And so I went. But the city is a hard place, Mary. There are times a man needs a friendly face, and out of the hundreds all around him there isn’t one, at least none he’s familiar with. It’s like a whole different world there. The factories are nothing but grinding piles of men and machines. And people are treated as if there’s no difference between the two. You work your shift with the stink of sweat that’s never dried all around you—no sun to dry it, nothing green. Nobody who cares a damn if it’s you there at the machine the next day or somebody else. Just a poke in the ribs and a ‘get goin’, Bucko’ from the boss-man when you slow your pace. It’s not Moran Township, Mary.”
He paused momentarily, looking into his glass.
“It was the longest year of my life, and the only thing that made it human was a bit of feeling another human being was near me now and then. There were women in the factory who were used to seeing pasty-faced boys with slack muscles, looking like they’d crawled out from under a rock. I guess they didn’t mind a bit of me now and again, for at least I had color and strength from the farm. It was those women who taught me something about what a woman needs. But they were just warm bodies to remind me that I was still alive. They knew their way around men, I’ll say that for them. But not one of them is worth one hair from your precious head, Mary.” And he reached out to put a finger under her chin and raise it so their eyes could meet.