“On Halloween night,” he says, “I told you I loved you. You didn’t say anything then, you haven’t said anything since. I meant to tell you again, tonight, but the very first words out of your mouth were about my liking you better if you weren’t yourself.”
Why did I say that? If I weren’t so angry, I might be ashamed.
“But I can’t possibly like you any better than I do. And when you said that—well, I’ve taken a lot of blows in my life, boxing and whatnot, but I’ve never felt one like that. Like a mule kick it was, to the chest.”
Why did I say that?
“A person gets to wondering, he gets nervous, he loses his confidence along with his hand. The girl laughed with him when he had both hands. The girl kissed him when he had both hands. But now she hardly looks at him. He blames his hand.”
“That,” I say, “is the stupidest thing I ever heard. You don’t laugh with your hand. You don’t kiss with your hand.
“Do you Blackberry-Night with your hand? I wouldn’t know, of course, because I had no young man on Blackberry Night. He ran away.”
“I didn’t run away!” says Eldric, but his lion’s lips begin to curl.
“I find myself wondering what a proper Blackberry Night might be like,” I say. “The sort of Blackberry Night where the young man doesn’t remember words like
Eldric is smiling.
“You can get by without a hand.”
“You don’t love a person for his hand.”
“What do you love a person for?” he says. “I mean, what do
Here it comes at last. I have to admit I don’t love anyone.
“I love a person for knowing I need to be touched. I love a person for cleaning blood off my forehead. I love a person for knowing I need to be a baby again and singing lullabies. I love a person for knowing I’m not a Dresden figurine. I love a person for fidgeting me up a wolfgirl.”
What am I saying? I’m brave when it comes to punching Petey or fighting the Dead Hand, but I’m a coward with words. What am I saying? My scalp crawls with centipedes of fear. But how can I know something if I don’t say it?
“I love a person for communion, communion with wine and coats and help and trust—even if that person feels he’s doing all the trust and gets grumpy. I love a person for knowing I’m the Amazon of the Swampsea, and for helping me be even more Amazonian, although he oughtn’t to deal out those little butterfly punches, because that’s cheating.
“I love him for making me laugh, and I love it that I make him laugh—”
There are no end to the things I might say. I feel my heart unfolding. I’ve felt that unfolding before, but I haven’t let it be real. Pay attention, Briony; pay attention!
“I love a person for knowing I should run about on Blackberry Night, even if I didn’t know myself, and even if certain unforeseen and complicated things ensued, and I love him for playing with the children, and for making the children adore him, and for trusting that I can be Robin Hood—”
Really, I could say anything, and it would be true. Except—
“Except when a person acts like Cecil, and worries about his own manliness, and thinks it a good thing to show a girl he’s manly, because girls love strong men, of course they do, they love it when someone holds their wrists too hard, and makes their lips bleed, and crushes out all their lace and froth and gleam.”
Eldric draws a forearm across his eyes. He’s crying again. “How stupid I am.”
“Yes,” I say.
He laughs and he cries. “You’re right, and I can’t bear it. I never thought that I could ever act like Cecil.”
I lay my hand on my heart. Our parents teach us the very first things we learn. They teach us about hearts. What if I could be treated as though I were small again? What if I were mothered all over again? Might I get my heart back?
My heart is unfolding.
But isn’t that what Eldric did? He mothered me and fathered me and gave me back my heart. I have to tell him.
I tell him my theory about the treading in and scuffing out of brain paths. I explain about going back to being a baby.
Eldric cries and he laughs.
“Every so often,” I say, “I might like to hear about my adorable apricot ears.”
He laughs, he cries, he holds out his arms.
I step toward him, I let him fold his arms around me. It’s not embarrassing when Eldric cries.
“I’d like to look at your fidget,” I say, “but I feel I must warn you about all the paths I have to scuff and tread. It hardly seems fair. Perhaps you should return when I’m grown.”
I’m joking, of course, except that I’m not. By the time I’m grown, Eldric will have moved on to a girl who’s really grown-up.
“This is the grown-up girl I like,” says Eldric. He takes my hand. He slips his fidget on my finger. “The watchmaker was very kind,” he says. “He let me use his shop, and he loaned me his two hands.”
Moonstones. Those are the non-pearls that glitter. I don’t recognize the yellow sparkling stones. I ask and he tells me. The ring is set with moonstones and yellow diamonds.
“I think of us as sun and moon,” he says.
My heart is a smushy mess. If hearts truly had strings, I’d say he was plucking mine.
He whispers to the baby Briony. He adores her darling apricot ears and tiny fingernails. He whispers to the grown-up Briony. “I don’t want another girl. We can tread out the paths, I know we can.”
“But I don’t know if I’ll ever sing again.” And now, at last, I’m crying. One can stomp out brain paths, but one can’t stomp out a voice path.
“But you trod out the path of the memory of your darling apricot ears,” says Eldric. “Did you think you ever would?”
I did not.
“Then we can tread out other paths,” says Eldric. “We’ll stomp them out, just like that. Some will be hard, some will be easy. We’ll do it together.”
Perhaps he was right. I look at the ring. “How did you know it would fit?”
“I don’t know the twelfth declension,” he says, “but I know how you like your cream and jam. I know every one of your fingers.”
“I love it,” I say. “Did you know I would? Did you know that too?”
“Yes,” he says.
We walk to the motorcar. I step on the running board, but he catches at me.
“I love you.”
Word magic. If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth.
Acknowledgments
Love and thanks to the HTGs and the Foos, who inspire, celebrate, console, and encourage. I can’t imagine a writing life without each and every one of you. Thanks in particular to Dian Curtis Regan for the crucial feedback she gave in her eleventh-hour role as “innocent” reader, and to my brilliant editor, Kathy Dawson, who throughout the many tricky revisions, never lost sight of the soul of the story. Thank you!
