The Wood of Suicides (14 page)

By the time I located my laurel arbor, lunch hour was almost up. I settled between the twin trunks as I had done on countless weekends before then, reeling from the heady scent of the leaves. In the distance, I could hear the bell for fifth period and couldn’t help thinking of the sunburst-carved door of his classroom sliding open, the girls filing in from lunch, and my beloved looking as I had last seen him. The thought of going back to him glimmered in my mind. I rejected it promptly. It wouldn’t be right unless he came to me.

I was asking too much of him, I knew. It was too much to expect him to decide whether I lived or not, to respond to an ultimatum he knew nothing about. Huddled beneath the laurel, I felt how slim my chances of survival really were, and sobbed at the impossibility of me making it out of those woods alive. The hour slipped by, indifferent to my suffering. From the grounds below, I heard the end-of-day bell sounding. I closed my eyes and rested my head on my knees. My heart gave a violent wrench. I counted ten minutes, twenty minutes, without him having come. Then, soft and swift, came a rustling of leaves all around me. I looked up and saw him standing above me, overwrought in his tweeds and white shirt.

“Oh!” he cried out, a crippled sound. “Oh, my girl.”

And he fell over me, covering my face with kisses, framing my face with his hands, moving his hands over my thin shoulders, under my thick coat. He removed me from my coat, letting it bunch under us, in the dirt. I tried to sit up, offering my lips for a live kiss, a waking kiss. He pulled me back down, kissing my neck instead and tugging at my sweater. My god, things were moving so fast. “Do you want this?” he muttered between kisses. “Do you want this?” My cold, blunt fingers dug into the skin of his neck. I rasped, sobbed. The death rattle of the pills in my coat pocket was the only answer that I could provide.

1
.
The long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart with a monotonous languor. All choked and pale, when the hour chimes, I remember days of old and I cry. And I’m going on an ill wind that carries me here and there, as if a dead leaf.

P
ART
T
HREE

I
’ve never known a silence like that which came over us, once he had done what he had to do. The sky had darkened to a velvety blue and, against it, the laurel leaves were as black as thorns. I lay on my back, naked save for my kilt, and trying not to think too hard about the bloodshed, the dampness inside me, and everything that I’d lost. He stroked my arm, said my name. I felt raw to the touch, even there—as if a layer of my skin had been stripped away, along with the essential membrane. I began to cry.

He was very kind. He took me in his arms and made his apologies, letting me wipe my tears on his shirtfront, as on that first day. Though disheveled—his shirttails out, his trousers unbuckled—he was dressed, and I was grateful for this; I didn’t think I could stand to feel his skin against mine, so soon after the fact. It wasn’t long until my eyes were dry again, though my voice was mournful as I broke away to ask him, “Are we lovers now?”

“You make it sound like a death sentence,” he laughed bitterly. “No, we don’t have to be. Not if it hurts you. This was bliss for me, but I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.”

I began to cry again, despite myself.

“What is it now?” he asked warily.

I threw myself upon him, caressing him, kissing him amidst sobs.
Please, love me,
I wanted to say.
Please, don’t leave me. Don’t ever say that again.

He must have been regretting involving himself with such a volatile young creature. Nevertheless, some masculine instinct for flattery told him what I needed, what I wanted to hear. My name was repeated, along with terms of endearment—“sweetness,” “my nymph,” “my glory”—and words to the effect that he loved me, that I was sacred in his eyes, and that he would never be more than a brute, a crazed fool who had stumbled upon me in the woods and defiled me. I told him that I loved him; that I was bound to him forever; that I wanted to be his lover, no matter what. I told him that he could have me again and he moaned gratefully, telling me it didn’t work that way, that a man needed time in between. He kissed me on the mouth and told me that I should get dressed, that I must be freezing, turning away tactfully to zip and buckle his trousers.

I ferreted in the undergrowth for my bra and panties, dressing with my frail spine toward him. He watched me as I buttoned my blouse with trembling hands and shook my hair out over the top of my sweater. In the distance, buildings loomed, bright-windowed through the night-blackened woods. “It’s late. You should be getting back to your friends,” he said. “You should be getting back to your wife,” I responded, with less levity than I had intended.

I
T
WAS
only the first time, yet already I felt that my life had become infinitely more complicated. He left me on the edge of the woods with a deep, lingering kiss and a promise that he’d find me on Monday; that we’d be together again as soon as possible. I shied away from the thought, even as I nodded and leaned in to give him my lips one more time before we parted. He turned south, in the direction of the parking lot. I headed west, past the sleeping science wing and toward the dormitories.

In the corridor of my dorm, I almost collided with Sadie Bridges, who informed me that I should hurry if I wanted to make it to dinner. I shook my head speechlessly. I had no desire to be seen in the dining hall, feeling that all the evidence of the wretched deed was written in my rumpled uniform, my unkempt tresses, and the odor that clung to me—an unpleasant odor like bleach, covering up something rank, humid, and feminine. I went to the washroom and ran myself a bath, stripping off my clothes in the misting mirror. Inspecting my naked form for changes, I thought that I could perceive a certain ripe, tarnished quality that hadn’t always been there. I turned away in self-disgust.

I could only hope that what I had read about the contraceptive properties of hot bathwater were true, lowering myself into the steaming tub. I closed my eyes and lay back, welcoming the sterile tide as it washed away the sin, with its residue of blood, dirt, and seed. When I tried to recall the act, I instantly felt his weight upon me and a splitting pain between my legs. There was no pleasure to recall; all the same, I felt my lips burning at the memory, and a throbbing in my loins. I recognized this at once for what it was: the curse of renewed desire.

I may as well have spent that evening in hell, so extreme and variable were my emotions. There was despair, which had me sobbing, dry-eyed, into my pillow, and thinking desperately of the canister of pills—still in my coat pocket, and as well-stocked as it had been that afternoon. There was disgust: for myself, for my lover, and for the sordid, undignified act. There was fear, physical and spiritual. There was delirium, sweet and fey and frenzied, which could have seen me stripping off my clothes or, just as easily, tearing off my own flesh in strips. There was repentance, which had me yearning to be a child again, in my mother’s arms, hidden from the world of men. Finally, there was the desire, constant as a heartbeat, which made suicide and repentance equally impossible.

By morning, I was numb. Unable to cope with the emotional turmoil of the night before, I had forced myself to adopt a new construct of feeling: one that did not distinguish among any of the prior sentiments or even the more fleeting, positive stirrings of triumph and tenderness. It was as if I were looking out over the whole spectrum of my emotions all at once—a mountain scape of blissful peaks, crags, and lows. Naturally, this made it difficult for me to act, even think. On Saturday afternoon, I took my books to the library and was less productive than ever. At Sunday Mass, I was unmoved by the sermon and found myself staring instead at the stained-glass windows of the chapel: pure, glazed windows that reminded me of my broken state, the sanctity from which I was eternally severed.

I
STILL
hadn’t managed to break out of my passivity by Monday, though I remembered Steadman’s promise that he would seek me out. Instinctively, I clung to my companions, hardly daring to venture from one classroom to the next without another girl by my side, acting as my
dueña.
The two occasions when I did glimpse him from afar, walking alongside Mr. Wolfstein and standing outside his classroom with a coffee mug in hand, I felt faint and didn’t allow myself to be seen. Our promises to meet each other again as soon as possible died away with last period, where I sat beside Marcelle drawing staid Japanese mountain scapes in black ink.

That evening, I found myself fretting over the broken engagement, half-convinced that it was he who had been avoiding me and that his passion must have cooled over the weekend. My former ambivalence was forgotten as I pined after Mr. Steadman, counting the hours until our inevitable meeting in the next morning’s English class. I selected my undergarments with care and laid them out with my uniform, letting my imagination run wild with thoughts of how free we really were, the unlimited caresses and compliments that would now be showered upon me—provided I could keep him interested.

In the morning, I took extra pains to make myself presentable, staining my lips “cinnamon” and donning an Alice band to keep my hair off my face. I arrived at his class in a flurry after biology, my cheeks flushed from the cold. He was cleaning the blackboard with small, fussy gestures. There was a vase of red chrysanthemums on his desktop. We were not yet alone, so our eyes could only meet briefly. Nevertheless, I noticed his suppressed smile of tenderness and felt myself responding; felt my body softening as the morning light, with all its dancing dust motes, flooded through the window and into my heart.

He was fluent, he was limpid, he conducted himself with ease. He shot me meaningful glances, full of black, liquid fire, as he read from
Don Juan
—seeking my face with every mention in the poem of the words “heart,” “love,” and “desire.” As for me, I didn’t take my eyes off him, sitting back in my chair with my legs gracefully crossed and my hands folded in my lap. I sat in my newly acquired wisdom, watching him and reminding myself that the lines of his body were known to me; that the touch of his hands was known to me; that the lips he recited with had been in contact with my lips only days ago. He was mine, all mine—never mind the strip of gold on his finger, the three days we’d spent apart. I rejoiced in my knowledge of him, which made me feel as privileged as a visionary who’s just seen the face of God.

He had us close our books five minutes before time was up so he could hand back our essays from the week before. One by one, the other eleven girls were called up to collect their work—some returning to their desks with scowls, some beaming. By the time that the bell went, my name still hadn’t been announced. My classmates clattered to clear the room. “How odd, Laurel, I can’t seem to find your essay.” He smiled at me as I approached his desk, making a show of rifling through his papers. “Give me a moment, it must be in one of these files . . .”

A
FTER
THE
last girl had slipped through the door, Steadman smirked and retrieved my paper from where it had been lying the whole time, facedown at his elbow. As I reached in to accept it, he took hold of my wrist, swiftly pulling up the sleeve of my gray sweater. Laughing, I loosed myself and made for the door against his protests. He was silenced when he saw me slide the door shut and bolt it from the inside. I glanced at my grade and returned to him, simpering as I stashed the paper inside my satchel.