Finally I said, “I know a nice place for dinner. You interested?”
“Dinner? I don’t know. Where are we?” She sounded as if she couldn’t care less.
“About a mile from a nice place for dinner.”
We were seated at a table toward the rear of the rustic, candle-flickering roadhouse; it was a soft, easygoing, low-pressure kind of place where everyone minded their own business and enjoyed their own quiet conversation. Kitty stared blankly at the menu, couldn’t seem to make a decision. Nodded for me to make the decision for her.
“I’m not hungry anyway,” she said.
But she began to nibble absently on a piece of bread, then she picked at the salad. Her appetite grew as she ate; she began to gulp wine between bites of food.
“Hey, that’s good wine. Treat it with respect; it deserves to be savored.”
She jerked her head up, her eyes shot reflections from the orange candle flame. She had a look of stunned surprise, like someone waking from a dream, but not sure of reality.
“It’s okay, Kitty. It’s okay.”
When the dinner came, she stared at it, then up at me again, then she began to eat, steadily, quickly, one hand reaching for hunks of crusty bread, the other guiding her fork; she stuffed bread in her mouth, then snatched up the knife and began gouging out chunks of roast beef. It was as though she had an overwhelming hunger: an inexplicable need to stuff food, any food, inside her mouth, to force it down her throat with huge swallows of wine. She had a need to fill up a vast and awesome emptiness that was at the center of herself. She watched hungrily, greedily, as I transferred portions from my plate to hers; tapped at her glass with a fork for more wine; choked; swallowed; ate and ate, until finally the food was gone, the bread plate clean.
She sat as still as a statue, staring at her plate, then her hand went up to her mouth and she looked up at me in amazement and confusion. “How could I have done that? How could I have eaten all that food? My God, and I’m still hungry. Joe, I’m still hungry.” She reached for my hand, squeezed it with a desperate pressure. “Joe, after all that’s happened, I’m still hungry. I feel as though I’m starving! What’s the matter with me? How can I think of food?”
She waved her hand and knocked over the nearly empty wine-glass, watched in fascinated horror as the stain spread into an inch-wide line along the white starchy tablecloth. She stood up abruptly, whirled around, collided with a waiter, who nearly lost his trayful of food, then she ran a zigzag course, knocking into tables and against people seated at their dinner and out the door to the parking lot.
I apologized to the waiter, handed him enough for our bill and a good tip, explained the lady wasn’t feeling well. I picked up her shoulder bag, which she had left swinging from her chair, and found her outside, her arms wrapped across her body in the cold night air. I put my jacket around her, my arm around her to lead her to my car. As my hand came to rest on her shoulder, Kitty stopped, turned toward me, her face puzzled and frightened and desperate.
“Oh God, Joe. I’m hungry, hungry, hungry.” She raised her arms, her hands on my shoulders, climbing toward my neck. My jacket slid to the ground as she reached upward and I leaned forward to meet her urgent hunger.
“Kiss me, kiss me, Joe, oh God, oh God.”
The intensity of her mouth on mine surprised me just a little: it was a continuation of her need to devour and consume. Her fingers were kneading and searching along my neck, sliding to my face, touching and tracing where our lips combined. Carefully, gently and firmly, I caught her hands and pulled back.
“It’s all right, Kitty, it’s going to be all right. Kitty, shall we go somewhere? Shall we spend the night together?”
She nodded dumbly, then walked away from me and sat quietly in the car while I picked up my jacket. I drove twenty miles farther upstate, then turned off onto a one-mile dirt road which led to the small four-room log-type cabin, set on three acres of wooded land and fronting on a nearly stagnant lake. My father had built the cabin before I was born; it belonged jointly to me, my older brother and my younger sister. When our children had been younger, we used to take three-week vacations, one group of us leaving as the other group arrived. None of us had made much use of the cabin for the last five or six years; all of our kids had grown up and away from this kind of roughing it. Occasionally my brother and I had come up for a fall weekend in hunting season: the funny thing was, neither of us had any desire to shoot at animals. It had taken a couple of trophyless weekends for us to admit it to each other.
The cabin had been empty and unused for quite a while; it had that kind of dank feel of abandonment, which was slightly dispelled by the fire I managed to rake up, starting with a handful or two of dried twigs. It took nearly twenty minutes, but finally the two small logs caught; the third one, huge and substantial would catch and last through the night. All the time I worked, crouched down to the fire, Kitty lay on her side on the daybed, her face warm and orange, her eyes shining with glints of the flame. She seemed to have quieted down again; to retreat into that dazed unfeeling trance. I went around the cabin, turning on the water and the water heater, setting out instant coffee, which was about all that was in the food cabinet. I had given Kitty a few blankets, had wrapped them around her because she was shaking so badly, but she was still now, pensive, unmoving. I kicked off my shoes and pulled a chair closer to the fire, but before I could settle down, to wait her out, to let her make her own decisions, Kitty called to me.
She sat up, fighting the blankets from her as though they bound her. “Joe, help me.” She pulled at her blouse, the buttons seemed to impede her; she couldn’t manage, her fingers were trembling and shaking. I helped her; tried to calm her, but there was something so desperate about her, urgent and aggressive and insistent. Her mouth clung to mine, then moved hungrily along my face; then her tongue pushed against my teeth, then her mouth seemed to be drawing my life into herself. She whispered and sobbed and gasped over and over again, “Oh God. Oh, my God, my God.”
What happened between us was something far deeper and more vital and fundamental than just a sexual act. It was assaultive and abrasive and self-seeking on Kitty’s part. She had a desperate urgent strength which sought to satisfy that same ravenous, terrified empty hunger that food and wine had not satisfied. Finally she lay back, her head flung to one side, her hand, palm up, over her eyes. She breathed in deep hard gasps, and rivulets of sweat ran down her face and neck. I leaned over her and carefully blotted her face with the edge of the top sheet. She began to move her head from side to side, slowly at first, then faster and more wildly.
“No,” she whispered, “oh no, no, no, no, no, no!”
I caught her face between my two hands, held it still. “It’s all right Kitty. Don’t you know that it’s all right?”
Her voice was eerie: a harsh whisper in the flickering light which shadowed her face and seemed to widen her eyes. “How could I be here with you like this? How could I be with anyone at all? George is alone, in that box. The boys, Georgie and Terry, they’re all alone, everyone is alone.
And I’m alone!”
The last words were a cry of terror and she pulled free of my hands and began to toss her head from side to side, as though her body was pinned by a tremendous weight and only her head was free to struggle. I stroked her face, rhythmically, began chanting to her softly, “You’re with me, Kitty; you’re not alone; you’re with me, Kitty,” and my lips on hers slowed the frantic twisting and turning and struggling, and when she lay still and wide-eyed, watchful and waiting, my mouth moved over her, my hands moved over her, tasting and kneading and arousing and whispering a sense of life back into her. She came alive again, less desperately, less urgently, and this time it was a mutual passion, this time I could join with her in a kind of lovemaking. A kind of affirmation and assurance that she was still a part of life and living and feeling.
She slept for brief periods, sliding away into an intense quietness and motionlessness. Then she would begin to move, as though drawing back from a dream. Her hands wandered restlessly to her face, her neck, then her head started to move, from side to side, negatively. Then, a soft moaning, the beginning of a cry; then she would sit up abruptly, starkly awake and confused, her eyes darting with suspicion about the room, toward the low burning warming fire, then finally at me. I held her, eased her back down onto the pillow, my fingers tracing her dark brows, her fine fragile jawline, her slightly parted orange-flame-colored full lips, the edges of her pale hair against her forehead. I studied her in repose. Her face, relaxed and unguarded, seemed so young and vulnerable and unmarked. Her coloring in the pale-orange shadow was delicate and exquisite, unreal. Then a frown would pull her dark eyebrows toward each other; her mouth would tighten, lips pull back revealing clenched teeth. And it would start again; and I would soothe and comfort her again.
Her body, uncovered from time to time by her struggle against sleep, was more fragile than I had imagined. She had small sharp bones, and the pale skin was pulled so tightly against her ribs it seemed transparent, the line of each bone clearly outlined. Her breasts were round and full and firm; I traced her body downward to the flat belly centered by sharp-edged hipbones; to the unbelievably white-gold triangle, wondering how this small, delicate body had borne children. She seemed at once both childlike and womanly, a disturbing combination. I studied her face intently, trying to catch a memory. She moved slightly, raised her chin an inch, then was totally motionless, and then I knew what she reminded me of. Kitty Keeler, in her absolute stillness, looked exactly like her older son had looked, in his coffin.
Toward morning, stretched and cramped in the easy chair facing the dwindling fire, I fell into a light uncomfortable sleep, then woke in confusion to a low, muffled sound. I jumped up and came beside her. Kitty was lying on her back, her eyes opened wide and staring blankly. She was crying; her whole body was convulsed by waves of nearly silent gasping. Her mouth was open, and very soft, deep, half-stifled sounds came from her. Her hands clutched at the blanket, grabbed and released with each new strangulated sound. I reached my hand out, touched her face; her eyes rolled toward me, blinked, didn’t seem to recognize me or even see me. She drew her body back against the wall; sat up, knees drawn up, arms locked around them to hug herself together. She buried her face against her knees as though to hide and stifle the terrible screams that were tearing up through her body.
“Kitty, it’s all right. Go ahead, Kitty. For God’s sake,
cry.
Let it happen, Kitty. It’s all right to cry.”
She raised her face and stared at me blankly for about three or four seconds, then her face distorted as though surprised by the terrible scream that rose from her throat. All the pent-up emotion, all the held-back grief flooded her, overwhelmed her. She threw her head back against the wall and screamed until her voice was ragged. She slid her fingers up and down along her raw, aching throat, and when she couldn’t scream anymore she sobbed until she could hardly breathe. She took the tissues I handed her, but she couldn’t clear her nose, and the breath came rasping from her mouth.
Finally she dropped her head; her knees slid down, her body became limp. I lifted her and placed her head on the pillow; her legs went straight out; her arms at her sides. She was wearing an old flannel shirt of mine. I buttoned it up to her chin, then covered her with a warm plaid blanket, although it wasn’t the night-chilled air that sent the shudders through her body. I got a cold wet cloth and pressed it against her forehead and over her eyes until she fell into a deep, soundless, motionless sleep.
When she woke, her face was swollen and shiny. She touched her throat lightly with her fingertips and grimaced. Her voice was husky and strained.
“I smell coffee, Joe. Could I have some?”
I waited outside in the clean cold glittering morning while Kitty showered and dressed in the clothes she’d picked out from a closet filled with levis, shirts, sweaters and warm socks that had accumulated throughout the years of so many of us sharing the cabin. From the way she avoided looking directly at me, it was obvious that Kitty needed some time alone to come to terms with what had happened between us during the night. She looked wary and guarded, uncertain as to how she should act: undecided whether she was sorry or relieved that I had been witness to and participant in the emotional explosion that she had been unable to contain.
She looked very small and very young in her borrowed clothes. She had caught her hair back in a rubber-band ponytail and there were a few long damp tendrils pasted along the sides of her neck, one or two strands against her cheek. Her face, shiny and still slightly swollen around the eyes, was devoid of any makeup; her cheeks were flushed, but what made her look different were her eyelashes. They were light blond, as pale as her hair. They looked like snowflakes and gave her face a vulnerable, childlike innocence, contradicted by the deep awareness of her eyes and the tension around her mouth.
She hunched her shoulders against the surprisingly cold bright air, but didn’t want a sweater or a jacket.
“Could we just walk a little, Joe?”
We set off along the overgrown path which led to the lake, Kitty striding ahead as though knowing exactly where she was going. She picked up a long narrow stick and peeled the bark off it as she walked along. It was hard to tell if we were on the old path; the vegetation was so thick and had been undisturbed for so long. Not that it mattered; we were headed downhill and that led, inevitably, to the lake.
She stopped abruptly, not to admire the view; there wasn’t any, just thick foliage, tangled weeds and vines creeping around an assortment of dead or dying trees. You couldn’t see the lake; could hardly see the sky for the overhanging branches. She stood perfectly still, her back to me, then her shoulders flexed and she turned, stiffening her body against the moment she had been preparing for. Her eyes narrowed and hardened with suspicion and her hands grasped the stick tightly.