The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,67
in school, Shivani had always called me their “other daughter.”
Mimi swept the porch and took the “pails” (as she called the garbage cans) down to the road. She also vacuumed, mopped the kitchen floor, cleaned the bathrooms, and lectured me on how men “strayed” but it was our job as women to forgive them and guide them back.
Olive came over and helped me shower, gasping more at my ribcage than the shockingly deep bruise. “Oh, Cam, you’re so thin again it’s scary.”
“I know,” I said, to her surprise. “I’m fixing it.”
Everyone brought food. Big David always brought a box from David’s Hot Buns—my favorite scones, cinnamon rolls, marbled rye bread with orange molasses, cream horns.
I ate it. I ate it all.
This time I ate it for me.
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE ACCIDENT, VIJAY FLEW TO OHIO again, the second time in two months—a record for him.
The minute Gabriella left for school, I called Helen. “Can you come over before you go to work?” Helen helped me shower and blew dry my hair (it still hurt too much for me to hold my arms up). She even put earrings on me that Vijay had given me last Christmas. She helped me put on some mascara and lipstick. “God, you look better,” Helen said, “now that you finally slept.” She parted with “Remember what I said about post-breakup sex.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “It hurts to breathe.”
VIJAY ARRIVED WITH A BUNDLE OF PURPLE GLADIOLAS, a box of Klondike ice cream bars, and a bag of books and movies—none of which I’d already read or seen. Ah, a man who remembered details.
He sat on the edge of my recliner. We ate two Klondike bars each, and he helped me fish a piece of the chocolate coating from my neck. His fingers there, along my collarbone, made me flush. When he found the piece, he held it out to me.
I opened my lips to say something—I wasn’t sure what—and he placed the chocolate there. My lips closed, ever so briefly, on his fingers. I let the chocolate melt in my mouth.
Vijay stood, gathered the silver Klondike wrappers, and took them into the kitchen. My heart rapped against my aching ribs, but the pain was almost delicious. Was I crazy? Was Helen right?
When he came back, the mood had shifted, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. He asked about my pain very professionally, what meds I was still taking, when I’d have a follow-up.
“Can I see?” he asked.
I hesitated, mottling. “I don’t have— It hurt too much to put on a bra.”
He laughed, his gorgeous white teeth flashing. “Please. I’m a doctor.”
I liked that he waited, though, until I said, “Okay,” before unbuttoning my denim shirt.
He left the top two buttons alone, and when he opened the shirt he left my breasts covered. He sucked in breath as if something had stung him.
“Hey, doctors aren’t supposed to do that,” I said. “It freaks your patients out.”
When he touched the undamaged side of my ribcage with his fingertips, my skin shivered.
“This bruising,” he murmured. I’d seen it in the mirror. Deep blue-black, a sickening red-purple underneath. It didn’t look natural. It looked as if I’d dipped half my torso in ink.
He lifted the left side of my shirt, his eyes following the bruise up my ribcage. He leaned over to peer at the site, and the proximity of his mouth to my breast made my nipples contract.
Surely he could see my heart pounding through my chest. He lifted the rest of the shirt up to my neck, exposing both breasts, and then, to my held-breath surprise and delight, cupped my white, undamaged breast in his nutmeg-colored hand.
There was nothing diagnostic about his touch.
I thought I might melt into the couch.
“Is . . . is this ethical, Dr. Aperjeet?”
“I’m not your doctor.”
He kissed me, his lips and tongue stealing back the taste of chocolate he’d salvaged for me. Only our lips touched, my injury looming fragile beneath us, and there was something luscious in knowing this was all we could do. The care the moment called for made it reverent.
“Hey,” I asked Vijay the next day, after the delicate, careful kissing had moved on to other unbruised areas of my body, “What did that mean? That phrase you kept sending me?”
He narrowed his eyes, thinking.
“It starts ‘harina harina’ or something like that.”
His brown eyes lit with recognition. “Oh, that. It’s Swahili. It means, ‘Hurry, hurry brings no blessing.’ ”