“Sam?” I hear back, faintly. “Wait just a second. I’m in the bathtub.”
I take off my coat and my boots, undress as I walk down the hall, enter the bathroom naked. He is standing on the bath mat, a towel wrapped around him. “Oh. Hello,” he says. “Wow. Nice outfit.”
“Get back in the bathtub,” I say. And when he does, I climb in, too. I lean against his chest, watch water cascade over the side. “Oops,” I say lazily. It’s pretty, the sight of the brief little waterfall.
“Is the water too hot?” King asks.
“No, this is just how I like it.”
He picks up the soap, and I watch his big hands in front of me, lathering up, then rubbing across my breasts, my stomach. “King?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think you could love me?”
His hands stop moving. “You mean … now?”
“No, I meant … generally.”
He sighs, and for a moment I feel as though my insides are shrinking, folding in on themselves. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s too soon. But then I hear him say, “Oh, Sam. What else would I do with you but love you forever?”
I sit so still I can hear him breathing, and he is breathing very quietly. I think of a conversation I had with Edward recently. I was sitting at the kitchen table and he was standing over me, trying out some fancy hairdo. He was saying how similar King and I were, that it was no wonder we liked each other so much. “I mean, you were both running around with your helmets on backward,” he said, “living lives that were totally oblivious. Thank God you met each other so you could wake up!”
“I wasn’t oblivious,” I said, and Edward said, “Oh, come on, can’t you see the difference in yourself?”
“Well,” I said. “I know how to change a furnace filter now, if that’s what you mean. I can unstick a garbage disposal.”
“Oh, I think it’s a bit more than that,” he said.
So it is.
I lean in closer to King, close my eyes, and suddenly I am a little girl again, sitting on the grass outside my house one hot summer day, resting after a solitary game of hopscotch. There are Johnny-jump-ups growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk; the clouds are circus animals; there is lemonade in the refrigerator; my shorts are a fine, faded red. My father is due home at any moment, and I like to watch him get out of the car and take long strides toward me, his face full of loving intention. I run to him, and he lifts me up. And then, together, we go inside, toward whatever else might follow. We are full of faith, blessed by it. I remember, now.
For Jean-Isabel McNutt
Elizabeth Berg, Tapestry of Fortunes
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