“Hazel, I’m so sorry. I’ve been saying stupid things. You lost someone in the war?”
“No. I lost no one in the war.”
Hazel spoke harshly, half-jeering. Gallagher made a move to embrace her. For a moment she held herself rigid against him, then seemed to melt, to press herself against him, with a shudder. A wave of sexual desire struck Gallagher like a fist.
“Hazel! Dear, darling Hazel…”
Gallagher framed the woman’s face in his hands and kissed her, and she startled him with the vehemence of her response. They stood in a patch of blinding sunshine. Beyond the cabin, air shimmered with sunshine, there was a glare like fire. Hazel Jones’s mouth was cold, yet seemed to suck at Gallagher’s mouth. Awkwardly, like one unaccustomed to intimacy, with a kind of desperation she pressed against him, her arms around him tightening. There was something fierce and terrible in the woman’s sudden need. Gallagher murmured, “Hazel, dear Hazel. My dear one,” in a rapt, crooning voice, a voice distinct from his own. He drew her into the cabin, stumbling with her, their breaths steamed, nervously they laughed together, kissing, trying to kiss, fumbling to embrace in their heavy outdoor clothing. Gallagher drew Hazel to one of the twin beds. Beneath the loose, discolored sheet the mattress was bare. A smell of skunk, bestial, intimate, lifted through the floorboards. It was a strangely attractive odor, not so very strong. Fumbling, laughing, yet without mirth, for she seemed very frightened, Hazel was pulling at Gallagher’s jacket, and at the belt of his trousers. Her fingers were clumsy, deliberate. Gallagher thought As she has undressed the child, the mother undressing the child. He was astonished by her. He was utterly captivated by her. So long had Hazel Jones resisted him, and now! In a swath of blinding sunshine they lay on the mattress, kissing, straining to kiss, continuing to fumble with their clothing. Gallagher had long advised himself She is not a virgin, Hazel Jones is not a virgin, I will not be forcing myself upon a virgin, Hazel Jones has a child and has been with a man but now, this Hazel Jones was astonishing to him, gripping him tightly, drawing him to her, deeply into her. In a frenzy the woman’s mouth sucked at his, he was losing consciousness of himself, in a delirium of animal urgency and submission. In the woman’s arms he would be obliterated, this was not natural to Gallagher, had not been his experience, not for many years. Not since late adolescence, when Gallagher’s sexual life had begun. Now, he was not the stronger of the two. His will was not stronger than Hazel Jones’s will. He would succumb to the woman, not once but many times for this was the first of many times, Gallagher understood.
Her hair that was damp with perspiration stuck to his face, his mouth. Her breasts were much larger, heavier than he’d imagined, milky-pale, with nipples large as berries. He was not prepared for the lavish dark hair of her body, spiky-black at her groin, lifting into her navel. He was not prepared for the muscular strength of her legs, her knees gripping him. I love love love you choked in his throat as helpless he pumped his life into her.
By quick degrees the sun expanded to fill the sky.
21
“The breath of God.”
A wayward breeze that would drive her in a sudden, unexpected direction that was yet determined, purposeful. She, and the child who was her own purpose.
22
A man wants to know. A lover wants to know. Wants to suck the very marrow of your bones wants to know.
A man has a right. A lover has a right. Once your body is entered in that way, he will have the right.
Telling him of what can’t be told. A lover wants to know what can’t be told. For some secret must be offered. It was time, and more than time. She knew, though she was not his wife and would not be. This girl at my high school in Milburn, d’you know where Milburn is, and he said No I don’t think so and she said When we were thirteen her father killed her mother, her older brother and her, and then himself, with a double-barreled shotgun in a back bedroom of their house they lived in a funny old stone house like a storybook cottage except it was old, it was sinking into the earth. And he said Jesus! what a terrible thing shifting uneasily was she a close friend of yours and quickly Hazel said No then Yes but not a close friend then, when we were in grade school she’d been and Gallagher asked Why did the father do such a terrible thing, was he insane? desperate? poor? with surprising naiveté for one who’d been in the war and had been wounded in the war Gallagher asked and Hazel smiled in the darkness, not Hazel Jones’s bright yearning smile but a smile of rage Are those reasons for killing your family and yourself, are those the recognized reasons but Gallagher mistook Hazel’s trembling for emotion holding her tightly in his arms to protect her as always he would protect her Poor darling Hazel! It must have been horrible for you, and for everyone who knew them and Hazel smiled Was it? for the thought had never occurred to her. SayingHe was the town gravedigger. As if that was the explanation. Gallagher would accept this explanation.
Hazel knew it was not true of course. No one in Milburn would have thought it was horrible. It was the gravedigger murdering his family, and himself.
Because he’d murdered them all. No one remained to grieve.
23
Why? Because it was time.
Hazel Jones would come to live with Gallagher in the red-brick house he’d bought for her in Watertown and of course she would bring her son. For the child’s sake she had consented, they would remain as long as seemed expedient as long as the man believed he loved her for the gravedigger’s daughter had not the right to bypass such an opportunity and when two years later the child was offered a piano scholarship at the Portman Academy of Music Gallagher would buy a house in Syracuse and they would move there.
My little family they were to him. Never in his adult life had Chet Gallagher been so happy.
It was meant to be. It was the breath of God. That my son would be a pianist, he would play before large audiences and they would applaud him.
“But why do you care so much, Hazel?”
Gallagher put the question to her gently. He was smiling, and stroking her hand. Always he was touching her, caressing her. He adored her! But the stubbornness in her, the curious adamant unyielding will, concerned him. Her primitive soul he thought it, then was ashamed of himself for such a thought. For he did adore her, he believed he would die for her. And the child he loved too, though not as he loved the mother.
“Because”-Hazel paused, wetting her lips, confused or seeming-so as at such times she seemed shy, uncertain, her eyes avoiding his so that Gallagher could not confound her with his equanimity-“music is beautiful. Music is-” It was here that Hazel’s voice dipped in that way Gallagher found both charming and maddening, you had to lean your head close to hers, to hear. And if you didn’t hear, and asked Hazel to repeat what she’d said, she would shrink away in shyness, self-conscious as a young girclass="underline" “Oh, nothing! It’s too silly.”
Afterward hearing the solemn muttered words he had not quite heard at the time Music is the one thing.
“” Why do fools fall in love‘…“
Why the hell not? He was forty-two years old and not getting any younger, smarter, or better-looking.
Laughed at himself in the bathroom mirror, shaving. This was the face he’d used to shield his eyes against-literally!-seeing at any hour and especially in the clinical unsparing light of a bathroom mirror. No thanks! But now, Hazel Jones downstairs in the kitchen preparing breakfast for him and Zack, a woman who actually liked to prepare breakfast and wore a floral-print apron while preparing it, Gallagher was in a mood to confront his own face without that old urge to slam a fist into the mirror, or puke up his guts into the sink.