“Jacques Brel,” she said, turning to me. “Another drink?”
I nodded.
“We will feel better soon,” she whispered. She filled our glasses with Scotch, took two large gulps, precariously put her glass down, lit another cigarette, and sauntered into the bathroom. “We will feel better soon.” She began singing again. She reappeared some time later, her eyes heavy with mascara ind eyeliner and eye shadow. Dark lipstick stained her mouth, there was high color in her cheeks. I could not take my eyes off her. She had begun her drunken cabaret dance toward my mother, swaggering to her in the dark. She was posed in the doorway of death, one hand on her hip, one hand on the frame of the door. “Oh, Christine,” she said in her gravelly voice, looking straight ahead, then closing her eyes, rubbing her cheek on her shoulder, “oh, Christine.”
“Come here,” she whispered and took a few steps forward, moved her shoulder toward me and tossed her head, all style now, all nerve. As she stepped forward her voice took on a different tone; it was a great, consoling hug. “Come here. Oh, please, come.”
I moved toward her. “Sabine,” I said. We were caught in the dance that those who are still alive must do. We were doing what we had to.
“Come here.” She was smiling now, laughing almost. “Come here,” and under her breath the one word, the unbearable word, the word we could not do without, “Christine. Come here, Christine.” Her look was the look of twenty-five years ago, when my mother was my age and she too was my age. I walked to her, I turned away, I moved closer. She was fearless now. I saw her as my mother must have seen her. She was beautiful and strong.
“Sabine,” I said. She looked at me with her twenty-year-old eyes. My mother stood before her again as she ran her hand through my hair and the look did not change back.
“Christine, Christine,” she whispered. I nodded my head and she touched my dream body. I took her hand in a motion of my mother’s, confident, elegant, her lovely hand, her manicured hand, and laid it on my hip where it rested finally. Her soft hand. The trip she had begun thousands of miles away through this long year since my mother’s death had ended finally.
I moved her weary hand up my side and onto my breast. She sighed. I wondered what this hand might do with its firm, nostalgic touch.
“Christine,” she whispered. “Oh, Christine.” I kissed her hand and looked into her dark eyes. She pushed the hair from my face and smiled, tossed her head away from me and looked back, giggling, pouting, squeezing my face in her hands, stroking my head, pressing me to the floor.
“Don’t stop,” I said as we kissed. “Please don’t stop.” Her eyes sparkled. Life could be controlled, the world could be managed, true love would not be broken up. Lives would not be wasted, cut short. Things could be held in place. I loved her very much in that moment with her great saving kisses as she pressed her body that suggested everything onto mine. I loved her as my mother must have. Here, now, everything fell into simple order.
A voluptuous sorrow was propelling us now into a darkness so great, so complete that I could feel it entering me even as Sabine slowly unzipped my dress. With each movement we were going deeper and deeper into that darkness where we might be with her again.
“I will see you again,” I whispered. I was losing sight. She touched me gently and the silence deepened. My mother was calling us from far off. Her voice came nearer as we kissed long and deep. Her voice moved into my mouth. “Sabine,” I said. For a moment she was with us, in me, or I in her, in the center of that darkness where she was still alive, and we talked to her. “I love you,” Sabine said. “I’ve missed you so much, Christine.”
She was warm and safe and she put her great arms around us in the dark. “Oh, Mom,” I said. “I love you.”
But then the light started to come back quite suddenly, in a matter of seconds. “Why?” I said, and I began to cry. Sabine’s eyes were closed but she too was crying when she heard my voice and knew. She did not open them for a long time, but when she finally did she saw that I was not Christine and she began to sob. She touched my face, hating what her hands told her.
Our bodies were so heavy with sadness it seemed they might fall through the three floors of the building onto the street. Though we lay perfectly still, I felt my body of lead to be falling.
Sabine lifted herself up slightly and looked at me. “Ah” was her love call in French to the other side of death where we were sure my mother was, whole, smiling, waiting for us. “Ah,” she said, lifting my face up and seeing my mother again in my calm, even gaze. She smiled. As she dipped into me her sighs were muffled by my flesh as she took my breasts in her mouth, kissed my stomach, and parted my legs, taking me along to the place where it was safe. We moved very slowly, carefully, deliberately, and the descent offered great pleasure as we burned slowly into a fine ash. To die with her. To be nothing but ash. To mix together. To end.
There was rest in that gray ashen place. We were up to our waists in ashes until our waists dissolved, too, and we were not anything anymore — nothing, no one, ash on top of ash on top of ash with her.
From that ash, the world rose up again and called us back, shaped us, and we could not ignore its round call; we were back in my room and we knew that she was far, far away. Betrayed, I gave out a long, loud wordless cry into the empty space and the tears began. “Sabine,” I cried. Her name came back again. I hated it.
“Oh, Sabine,” I said. She shook her head sadly, put a finger — for the world insisted on fingers and we could do nothing about it — she put a finger to my sticky, swollen mouth and outlined it.
We dragged our grieving bodies over every inch of my apartment, lost ourselves, saw ourselves differently, changed the ending of the story for a while, but we always returned. Only our lovemaking could relieve the pain and longing that each of us had created in the other. The warm liquid our bodies gave up changed the atmosphere. It was smelly and dreamy and we floated in the world our sorrow made. We explored long into the day every curve, every contour of it.
“Speak only in French,” I told her.
“Say nothing but with your eyes,” she said.
“Sing me a song.”
“Now you sing me one.”
“Turn over on your back.”
“Put your hair up in a bun.”
“Put on your mother’s bracelet.”
“Let me kiss your ankles.”
“Let me drench you in cologne.”
“Make it all stop.”
“Make everything disappear.”
Day turned into night and night gave way to dawn and dawn to day until we were finally able to sleep in the light, entwined. When I woke up it was dark out. She was sitting up in bed smoking. She turned her head toward me.
“How could I help but love you?” she whispered, smoothing down my wild hair with her hand. I smiled. She reached over me and turned on the light. I put my face in the pillow. I felt some peace.
“I fed China,” she whispered. “We are old friends. Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No, not really. What time is it?”
She shrugged. “I have to leave in the morning.”
“Have you been up long?”