feet in the wet mud on the side of the new grave. “That’s all it is, Emaleth. A matter of survival, my daughter.”
Part of her wanted to return to the graves and the garden, to the iron table beneath the tree, to the danse macabre of the winged creatures high above, making the bold purple night throb with incidental and gorgeous song. Part of her didn’t dare. If she walked out of here and went back to that table, she might open her eyes to discover that a night had passed away, perhaps more…. Something as wretched and ugly as the death of Aaron would catch her again unawares and say to her, “Wake, they need you. You know what you must do.” Had Aaron been there himself for a split second, disembodied and merciful, whispering it in her ear? No, it had been nothing so clear or personal.
She looked at her husband. The man slouching in the chair, crushing the hapless beer can into something round and almost flat, his eyes still settled on the windows.
He was both wondrous and dreadful—indescribably attractive to her. And the awful, shameful truth was that his bitterness and suffering had made him more attractive; it had tarnished him rather marvelously. He didn’t look so innocent now, so unlike the man he really was inside. No, the inside had seeped through the handsome skin and changed the texture of him all over. It had lent a slight ferocity to his face, as well as many soft and ever-shifting shadows.
Saddened colors. He had told her something once about saddened colors, in the bright newlywed time before they knew their child was a goblin. He had said that when they painted houses in the Victorian times they used “saddened” colors. This meant darkening the colors somewhat; this meant somber, muted, complex. Victorian houses all over America had been painted in that way. That’s what he’d said. And he had loved all that, those brownish reds and olive greens and steel grays, but here one had to think of another word for the ashen twilight and the deep green gloom, the shades of darkness that hovered about the violet house with its bright painted shutters.
She was thinking now. Was he “saddened”? Was that what had happened to him? Or did she have to find another word for the darker yet bolder look in his eye, for the manner in which his face yielded so little now, at first glance, yet was not for a moment mean or ugly.
He looked at her, eyes shifting and striking her like lights. Snap. Blue and the smile almost there. Do it again, she thought as he looked away. Make those eyes at me. Make them large and blue and really dazzling for a moment. Was it a handicap to have such eyes?
She reached out and touched the shadowy beard on his face, on his chin. She felt it all over his neck, and then she felt his fine black hair, and all the new coarser gray hair, and she sank her fingers into the curls.
He stared forward as if he were shocked, and then very cautiously he turned his eyes, without much turning his head, and looked at her.
She withdrew her hand, rising at the same time, and he stood up with her.
There was almost a throb in his hand as he held her arm. As he moved the chair back and out of her way, she let herself brush fully against him.
Up the stairs they went quietly.
The bedroom was as it had been all this time, very serene and overly warm, perhaps, with the bed never made but only neatly turned down so that she could at any moment sink back into it.
She shut the door and bolted it. He was already taking off his coat. She opened her blouse, pulling it out of the skirt with one hand and peeling it off and dropping it to the floor.
“The operation they did,” he said. “I thought perhaps …”
“No, I’m healed. I want to do it.”
He came forward and kissed her on the cheek, turning her head as he did it. She felt the blazing roughness of the beard, the coarseness of his hands, pulling a little hard on her hair as he bent her head back. She reached out and pulled at his shirt.
“Take it off,” she said.
When she unzipped the skirt, it dropped to her feet. How thin she was. But she didn’t care about herself or want to