“And love me,” he agrees. “The most important part of all.”
By Saturday morning, I almost feel rested, and we have a spectacular day. It snowed two inches overnight, but the morning is so sunny that the brightness actually hurts our eyes. We bundle Lizzie up in a snowsuit and romp around outside for a couple of hours. When I hold her in my arms and kneel on the shoveled sidewalk, she reaches for the nearest drift and shoves a fistful of the white stuff in her mouth. I am probably a terrible mother, but I let her do it. Who doesn’t want to eat snow? I’m sure there are way worse things she’ll try to consume if I’m not constantly vigilant.
We spend the afternoon going out for lunch and getting caught in a parade that seems to be celebrating some high school’s football win, and it is past two by the time we get home again. For a change, I’m not the one yawning, but both Dante and Lizzie look sleepy. I tune the television to a cartoon station while the two of them get comfortable on the couch, then I turn to my own chores. Once I’ve started dinner, I head to the bedrooms to change sheets, gather up overlooked socks, and put away an astonishing miscellany of items that have gotten misplaced in less than a day.
It is far more work, I have discovered, to take care of a household than an individual. But I am two full weeks into my probationary month as Lizzie’s caretaker, and I have not wavered for one second on my decision to keep her. If anything, my determination has grown stronger. If Dante were to tell me he and William had concluded that she was better off turned over to someone else, I think I would steal her away from them. I would wait till they were both in animal shape, and I would take her, leaving behind no clues to our whereabouts.
I have not figured out exactly how I would manage this, though I have pictured myself withdrawing thousands of dollars from an ATM while I looked furtively over my shoulder, expecting pursuit.
In my heart, I do not believe it will come to this. In my heart, I am certain that Dante, William, and Lizzie all realize what I have known from the start. Lizzie belongs with me; like Dante, she is mine, and that will never change.
It is nearly four thirty before I am ready to call it quits for the day. Time to check on dinner; time to check on my loved ones. The casserole is bubbling nicely in the oven, but no one is stirring in the living room. I steal across the floor and turn off the TV, then tiptoe up to the couch, expecting to find both Lizzie and Dante asleep. He’s stretched out full-length, Lizzie curled up on his chest; he has one hand on her back to make sure she doesn’t fall. The fading afternoon light washes the walls with shadowed gold. The room is filled with such a deep sense of peace that I inhale it as if I am inhaling incense.
I pull an old afghan from the rocking chair and carefully arrange it over their bodies. Lizzie doesn’t move, but when I glance at Dante’s face, I am surprised to see his eyes are open. He’s watching me with an expression so intense I cannot read it.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I whisper.
He shakes his head, the slightest motion against the cushion of the couch. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he whispers back. “I was thinking. Sit down a minute.”
I don’t want to disturb the baby, so I settle on the floor beside them. Dante reaches for me with his free arm, and I nurse his hand against my cheek. “She looks so content,” I say. “She certainly loves Uncle Dante.”
He nods, but absently. I can sense his mind working furiously, trying to order his thoughts. His hand has closed over my fingers, hard. He has something he wants to say, if only he can figure out how.
“Hear me out,” he says at last, slowly. “Don’t interrupt.”
I try to keep the astonishment and wariness from my face. What’s this about? “All right.”
He hitches himself a little to one side, enough so that he is facing me without dislodging Lizzie. She waves her arms and makes a little cooing sound, but resettles on his chest. “For most of the past fifteen years, I’ve had it in my head that you could hardly do worse for yourself than to be in love with me,” he begins.
“Dante! How could you—”
“Shh. You promised not to interrupt.”
“But—”
“Shh.” I subside and he goes on. “What kind of life could you build for yourself with a man who is gone half the time—or more—who leads this strange inhuman existence—and who will probably be dead before he’s fifty?”
“Dante!”
This time he just ignores me and keeps speaking. “I always thought you would find someone else—someone normal, someone who could give you what you wanted and what you deserved. I hoped you wouldn’t, but I was prepared to step out of your life if you did.”
“Dante, I never wanted anyone but you—”
“And so that’s always been the reason I didn’t ask you to marry me. Because I thought you could do better,” he finishes up.
Now he falls silent, still staring at me. Suddenly, when it’s my turn to speak, I am mute. I stare back. The color of the room shifts gradually from gold to rose.
“But now,” he says, his words coming even more slowly, his hold on my hand so tight I can feel my bones protest, “now I think this is the way it’s supposed to be. We’re together for a reason. It wouldn’t be selfish of me to ask you to marry me. It would—it would make us a complete family. A strange and bewildering family that doesn’t bear close examination, true, but a family nonetheless.”
He pulls me toward him, or maybe I’m leaning that way; it’s hard to tell. “I think we belong together, Maria,” he whispers. “If you’ll marry me, I’ll find some way to make it work. I’ll fight the changing as hard as I can. I’ll—I’ll stay as close as I can, like I’ve done this week, so that you know you can rely on me. Maybe we need to get a place out in the country, where it’s safer for me to be in animal form. Maybe we should move into Christina’s house. Or maybe not. I’ve got money, we could afford to move anywhere you liked—”
I stop him with a kiss before he can offer any more desperate, hopeful, unnecessary incentives. I press my mouth against his with all the strength I can muster; I have wrapped my arms around his head like some kind of manic turban. He has released his death grip on my hand to slip his palm against the back of my head and pull me even closer for the kiss. If people had told me that this is what happiness feels like, I would not have believed them. It is as much pain as it is euphoria, as much tenderness as elation. I am crying so hard that I break the kiss so I can grope for a Kleenex.
“Dante—yes—of course. Oh God, yes, I want to marry you,” I sob. I have no tissues in the pockets of my jeans and there’s no convenient box on the end table, so I wipe my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I never thought you—and I didn’t want you to feel trapped, caged—Jesus, I don’t mean to keep using animal metaphors. I always wanted you to know that I loved you no matter what you were, who you were, no matter how much or how little you could give me. But I—oh, I mean, if you’re sure—and not just because of Lizzie, but because of me—”
Now he is tugging at my shoulder as he inches his body toward the back of the sofa. “Get up here,” he says. “We’ll make room.”
“I don’t want to wake the baby—”
“She’ll fall asleep again. I need to feel you here beside me.”
He scoots back a little farther and I lift the afghan and squeeze myself next to him on the slice of sofa that makes a narrow ledge beside his body. We kiss frantically for a few moments, but then we pause to catch our breath, to smile at each other, tremulously, through a mist of hope and wonder and tears. Yes, he is crying, too, just a little bit, but he laughs as he lifts a hand to dash away the wetness.
“You didn’t see that,” he said. “Where’s a damn tissue when you need one?”
I lean in to kiss his damp cheek, and then I scrub my sleeve across his face. “I couldn’t find one, either. And I did, too, see you cry. I’ll never let you forget it.”
“So you’ll marry me?” he says.
“I would love to marry you,” I
reply.
He leans in to kiss me again, but it’s one motion too many. Lizzie comes half awake with a fretful cry, and I instantly begin to pat and shush her. Dante takes the opportunity to shove himself farther back and resettle her against his stomach. After a moment, she quiets down again. I feel her small warm restless shape between our bodies, and I know she will not sleep for long.
But for now, the world is perfect. Dante and I lie face-to-face on the couch, arms draped across each other, foreheads touching. From time to time, when we think of it, one of us leans forward to press our lips against the other’s mouth, but we are too tired to kiss much or talk much or even dream much. It is enough, for the moment, to simply be, to simply be together, to fit against each other like puzzle pieces that only form a complete image when their wildly disparate edges interlock. For the moment, I can think of nothing else that I might ever want. Sunset fades around us, turning the room to peach, to azure, to violet, to black, and the three of us lie together, unmoving except for our breath, safe, content, satiated with love.
Sharon Shinn, The Shape of Desire
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