The Shape of Desire

  Dante pulls into the driveway and cuts the motor. I’m out of the car before I realize someone is on the porch. I didn’t notice him a second before; he seems to have materialized from nowhere. It’s William, of course. He’s wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt and slouchy jeans, and he looks even thinner and stringier than Dante. His hair—a twilight brown instead of Dante’s midnight black—is tied back in a ponytail, so I can’t tell how long it is, but last time I saw him, it was past his shoulders. He’s smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t say anything as we come up the walk and climb the stairs.

  “You know those things will kill you,” I feel compelled to observe as we halt beside him on the porch.

  His grin is ferocious. “Doubt I’ll live long enough to find out.”

  He’s not kidding. Although he’s five years younger than Dante, today he looks five years older. Up close, I can see the heavy streaks of gray in his hair, the slight sagging of the muscles on his bare arms.

  “So have you recovered?” Dante asks him.

  “Seem to.”

  I glance at William; he is so thin and so pale that he could have been brought down by anything, from malaria to AIDS. “What was wrong with you?” I ask.

  “Got hurt,” he replies tersely.

  “Badly enough to see a doctor and get a blood transfusion,” Dante says.

  That must mean William had been at death’s door, because I have never seen Dante seek out medical attention for any wound or illness. “How dreadful!” I exclaim with easy sympathy. “But you’re better now?”

  “Good as ever,” he says and gives me a grin. I can’t help but think of the word wolfish.

  Dante gives him a hard look. “And you haven’t had any relapses?” He says it in a meaningful voice, as if he’s asking something he doesn’t want to put into words.

  “Nope. I think I’ll be just fine.”

  “Good,” Dante says. “When did you get here?”

  “Friday. Would have been gone already, but she asked me to stay.”

  Dante’s frown returns. “What’s this about?”

  William sucks on his cigarette again. His face has lightened to genuine amusement. “You mean you don’t know? Oh, you’ve gotta go inside.”

  Dante’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t pose any more questions, just pulls open the screen door and steps into the house. I’m right behind him. I see William pitch away his cigarette before he follows.

  We’ve stepped into a big, gracious room with windows on two walls letting in copious amounts of cheerful autumn sunshine. To the left an archway leads to a hallway that would take us to bedrooms and bathrooms; directly in front of us, the living room opens into a dining room that is equally sunny and inviting. Some of the furniture is well-worn and old, some is newer and brighter, but every piece works together to create a welcoming ambiance. Lace curtains drift over the windows; a brick-red rug warms the floor. An ebony baby grand piano takes up one corner of the room, even though none of the three of them can play. Their mother was a very good musician, Dante has said, but no one has touched the keys in twelve years or more.

  Christina stands in the middle of the living room, holding a sleeping infant against her shoulder.

  Dante comes to a hard stop and I have to skip to the side to avoid running into him. “Jesus Christ,” he says.

  “I have something to tell you,” Christina says in a lilting voice.

  “Yes, I suppose you do,” Dante replies grimly.

  William slinks in behind us and slips past Christina on his way to the kitchen or the basement or some other part of the house. If he’s been here since Friday, he’s undoubtedly heard the whole story, and it’s clear he isn’t particularly interested in refereeing an argument between his brother and sister. I stand motionless beside Dante, not sure if I should excuse myself so they can fight it out or stay to make sure they don’t kill each other.

  “I had a baby,” she says. She’s smiling in a sort of soft, unfocused way. She pats the child’s back, clothed in some fleecy item covered with a pattern of ducks and dogs. I can’t tell from the design or the color if the outfit is meant for a boy or a girl.

  “It’s yours, then? You gave birth to it? You didn’t adopt it or—or find it somewhere and decide to keep it?”

  “Her. I had her,” Christina emphasizes. “Yes, she’s mine. She’ll be three weeks old tomorrow.”

  Dante is shaking his head. “How could you do this? How could you be so careless?”

  “I wasn’t careless. I wanted a baby,” she says.

  Dante glares at her. “I thought you realized—”

  She interrupts. “I realized that you think it’s a bad idea for any of us to have children, but I don’t ever remember telling you I agreed.”

  Dante throws his hands in the air and starts pacing. I take the opportunity to edge toward the piano, out of the way. I can’t stop staring at the lumpy little bundle pressed to Christina’s chest. I’m dying to hold her, but it seems too soon to start cooing and fussing over the baby. Not while Dante is so angry.

  “Only an idiot wouldn’t agree!” He is ranting now. He’s stalking and gesturing and tossing his head, but he never gets too close to Christina. I don’t know if he’s afraid he’ll smack her or if he’s afraid he’ll take one look at that tiny, new face and fall in love. “You’re a goddamn shape-shifter, Christina! You turn into an animal! How can you take care of a baby? Who do you think you’re going to leave her with when you’re in some other form? Do you suppose the neighbors will understand when you want to drop her off for a day? ‘Oh, I can feel myself turning into a bat or an owl—I need to have someone watch the baby for a while.’”

  “Well, I’m on maternity leave until January, but I’ve already looked into babysitting services that provide overnight care,” she says. Her voice is level, her stance dignified. She seems much calmer than the Christina I’m familiar with. Maybe the pregnancy has changed some internal blood chemistry or recalibrated her brain waves. I’ve read about that happening to women sometimes after they’ve had babies. They develop allergies or reverse decades-long psychological problems. Maybe having a child has turned Christina into a serene and focused person.

  “Oh, and that’ll come in handy once you’ve shifted and you can’t pick up the phone to call them.”

  Christina shakes her head. “That’s not how it works for me. You know that. I can feel the change coming on—I’ll have plenty of warning. I’ll be able to take her someplace safe before anything happens.”

  Dante churns to a stop and slams his fist into his open palm. “Goddamn it,” he says. “Even if you could take care of her—even if you managed to keep her safe from you, from her own mother—how could you do this? She’ll be another one. She’ll be just like us. We shouldn’t have kids, Christina! People like us aren’t meant to breed.”

  “I don’t know why you think that,” she replies in a reasonable voice. “Our parents had children. Their parents had children. We have aunts and uncles and cousins who are just like us, and I’m sure some of them have given birth by now. You’re the only one who seems determined to stamp out our kind.”

  “Because our kind is an abomination!” he shouts.

  For a moment, there is absolute silence in the room. I think all of us are shocked. I know I am; Dante has never voiced such self-loathing before, not to me, anyway. I know he has always been adamantly against the notion of having children, but I thought he simply did not want to make a child suffer through the strange, difficult half-life of the shape-shifter. I had not realized he saw himself as grotesque, misshapen, atrocious.

  He glances between us, looking a little shamefaced. I think he is sorry to have said the words—not because he doesn’t believe them, but because he wishes he had not revealed that dark secret. He tries to pull himself together. “I suppose it can’t be undone,” he says now in a quieter voice. “I suppose she’s here now, and there’s no more to say.”

  The baby gives a funny little hiccupping cry and
scrunches up all her limbs. Christina bounces a little in place, and the girl subsides again, scrubbing her pink face against Christina’s shirt. “You could ask me about her,” she suggests.

  I decide it’s safe to speak up. “What’s her name?”

  Christina smiles at me. “I thought about Jane, but I decided on Elizabeth. Lizzie.”

  Dante snorts with what might almost be amusement. Even I get the reference. The poet Dante Rossetti had a long-suffering wife called Lizzie, and then a long-term mistress named Jane. Neither of them led particularly happy lives. Lizzie, in fact, died of a laudanum overdose not long after losing her own baby. I think, but do not say, that the name could hardly be less propitious.

  “And the father?” Dante asks.

  “Stevie was back in town for a few months at the New Year—you remember, I told you that.”

  “Oh, right, right. Well, you could have done worse, I suppose. Does he know about the baby?”

  I can only vaguely recall who Stevie is. Some childhood friend, I think. For some reason I associate him with Juneau. Maybe he lives in Alaska now and only returns to Rolla now and then to visit aging relatives? At any rate, I know I’ve never met him.

  “Not yet. Though I told him I wanted to get pregnant and he didn’t seem bothered by the idea.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t know what a bunch of freaks we are in this family,” Dante mutters.

  “I don’t think we’re freaks,” Christina says. “And Lizzie isn’t, either.”

  I step closer to her. “Could I hold her?” I ask. “Would that be all right?”

  Christina’s smile is blinding. I wonder if she thought none of us would make even that small gesture of acceptance. “Of course you can!”

  I take Lizzie in my arms, cradling her so that her head rests in the crook of my left elbow. She is awake, and her muddy blue-brown eyes study my face for an instant and then glance away. Her cheeks are a fat, healthy pink; her pursed lips glisten with tiny bubbles of saliva. The finest, faintest, silkiest streaks of black hair lie like cobwebs on her soft skull, and I see that Christina has managed to gather enough of them to Velcro in a yellow bow.

  I am instantly and utterly smitten.

  “Hey, Lizzie,” I croon, unconsciously beginning a slight, rhythmic swaying motion. “Aren’t you a beautiful little girl? I’m Maria, I’m so pleased to meet you. How do you like life here on Planet Earth so far?”

  She responds with some inarticulate monosyllable, her little mouth briefly forming what looks like a smile, though I’ve been told babies this young don’t really smile. Still speaking nonsense sentences, still bouncing her gently in my arms, I turn away from Christina and Dante and start a slow circuit through the house. I don’t encounter William in the kitchen, the bedrooms, in the hallways; he must have slipped into the basement or out the kitchen door.

  When I make it back to the living room, Dante and Christina are still talking, but their voices are quieter and Dante looks much less angry. He shows no inclination to hold the baby, though, so I sit on the worn chocolate-colored sofa and lay Lizzie in my lap. Her head is near my knees and her little legs kick in the general direction of my stomach. Her arms work with a continuous flailing, as if she is a windup toy gaining all of her energy from this particular motion. I take hold of one of her tiny fists and gently pry it open, setting my index finger against her palm. Instantly, her fingers close over mine with a grip that is unexpectedly strong. It is as if they cannot relax from their natural inward curl unless they are forced flat by an external pressure.

  The things I love most about babies are the minute fingernails on their littlest fingers. How can there be anything so small, so dainty, so perfect? For some reason, it is the detail that convinces me they are really human, truly miniature versions of the people they will grow up to be.

  I know I should be asking all sorts of traditional questions. Is she gaining weight fast enough? Will she take a bottle? How is she at sleeping through the night? I should inquire into Christina’s own health. Did you have any complications with the pregnancy or the birth? Are you eating right, getting enough sleep, suffering any postpartum depression? But they seem like mundane and trivial inquiries for such a magical child, for this gift straight from the capricious universe.

  I look up and find Christina smiling at me—pleased, perhaps, at the goofy, besotted look on my face. I burst out, “Do you just love her more than anything else in the world?”

  “I really do,” Christina says. “I didn’t know it was possible to love anything this much.”

  We stay for an odd and uncomfortable lunch. The baby is sleeping in the other room, so half of Christina’s attention is focused on the hallway through which any sounds of distress will issue. She’s made some kind of pasta dish and a simple salad. Dante is too annoyed to eat much, and William uses silverware as if it’s the first time he’s ever attempted the feat. Christina has opened a bottle of champagne, but none of us drink very much of it. We are hardly a festive group.

  “You know, if you need to, you can have me come out sometime and watch the baby for a weekend,” I say as the meal draws to a close. “Or you could leave her with me for an afternoon if you come into the city.”

  Dante shoots me a look of supreme vexation, while Christina’s face lights with a smile. “That would be awfully kind of you,” she says. “But are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course I’m sure. You have my phone number, don’t you? And my e-mail address?”

  “I must have them somewhere, but why don’t you write them down for me? And I’ll give you mine—I changed my e-mail address last year, you might not have it—”

  “Maria’s never spent much time with babies,” Dante says, his voice overloud. “You might need to give her a refresher course before you leave Lizzie with her for an entire weekend.”

  “I used to babysit all the time when I was in high school,” I reply frostily. “And I kept my cousin Beth’s baby for an entire week when she was in the hospital with pneumonia.”

  I don’t need to defend myself; Christina isn’t alarmed. “I’d never spent any time around babies, either, before Lizzie came along,” she says. “Everybody told me how hard it would be, but it’s been easy. She’s such a joy.”

  William looks up from the ruins of his pasta, laying his fork aside as if he’s given up trying to feed himself this way. “Has she changed yet?” he asks.

  “No,” Christina says, her voice ever so slightly defensive.

  William gives me that wolfish smile again. “That’ll be a fun time for you,” he says. “Put a baby to bed in the bassinet, walk in a half hour later to find a kitten. Or worse.”

  “I guess I’ll deal with that when it happens,” I say.

  “If it happens,” Christina interjects. “I didn’t change shapes until I was three. Mother thought I might never do it.”

  “Would to God that Mother had been right,” Dante growls.

  William leans back in his chair and nods over at his brother. “It’s getting longer for you all the time, isn’t it?” he says. “Your stays in animal shape.”

  Dante nods curtly, not looking at me. “Twenty or twenty-two days in a row sometimes,” he says.

  “You ever think it will be permanent?”

  “William!” Christina exclaims.

  Dante shrugs. He still won’t look at me. “Hope not. Can’t do anything about it, so I don’t lose much sleep thinking about it.”

  William jerks his chin at me. “You go to Maria’s house when you come back?”

  “Usually.”

  Usually? I think. Where else do you go? Is there some precious moment of your human time that you spend with someone else? But I think I know why he gave that answer. He thinks it makes him look dependent and weak if he admits that he comes straight to my door. He thinks it makes him look as if he loves me more than he wants his siblings to know.

  “What if she’s not there?” Now William’s restless eyes flick to Christina then back to Dant
e. “That’s what happened to me a few weeks ago. Christina was in the hospital having Lizzie. I had to break into the house. I was afraid one of the neighbors would see me, so I hid out by the old cemetery until midnight. Naked as a baby. If somebody would’ve seen me, they’d’ve thought the graveyard was haunted for sure.”

  “Or they would have shot you,” Dante says flatly.

  “Well, it didn’t happen,” Christina speaks up. “He knows I keep a spare key under the stone rabbit in the garden. He just forgot it was there.” I can supply the observation she’s left out: William sometimes goes so long without becoming a man that all sorts of human details slip away from him. I wonder how long William generally goes between bouts of shape-shifting. I wonder how Christina managed to communicate with him and convince him to return here today so that both of her brothers could be present at the same time.

  “You should carry a key with you everywhere you go,” Dante says, tugging the leather cord out over the neck of his black T-shirt. “That’s what I do.”

  “That’s to Maria’s house?” William asks.

  “It’s to a storage locker where I keep clothes and papers and things,” Dante says.

  “I’ve offered him a key,” I feel compelled to say. It doesn’t bother me if his siblings know how much I love him. “Don’t think I haven’t.”

  William has leaned forward a little to examine the sturdy strip of leather looped through the dangling brass and triple knotted at the back. “It’s a little long,” he says. “Does it ever catch on anything?”

  I’m suddenly beset with a whole new class of worries as I imagine Dante strangling to death because the cord has tangled on a fallen branch and he can’t get free. He knows what images are in my head because his voice is hard and curt. “I’m taking bigger shapes,” he says briefly. “I need the extra room. If you’re always turning into something that’s the same size, you could make it shorter.”