Her husband shook his head. She could hear his hair rubbing back and forth on the pillowcase. I’ll probably see you before then, he said. You have a funny habit of showing up in my dreams. You’re always hanging around.
He said it with exasperation, but he didn’t mean it. Together they had developed a talent for hanging around. How else could they have built their wealth of solace and closeness and ease? They lived surrounded by the dear familiar. Eva had been folding laundry when he asked her to marry him. He had been warming leftover noodles on the stove. On the television played a spooky show that they liked, whose characters and conflicts they knew so well, had seen so many times, that they could drift in and out of conversation, or become absorbed with the task of mating socks, of stirring pans, to still return and feel they hadn’t missed anything at all. When Eva turned around to glance at the screen, she nearly fell over her husband (not yet her husband), who was on his knees among the washcloths and the turtlenecks still spread across the floor. He opened his hand, like a magician about to make a coin disappear, and there sat a ring. Her grandmother’s ring; she recognized it at once. But how did it ever end up in his hand? There had been forethought, conspiracy! Her very soul rushed forward to meet him. She dropped to the floor and they held each other, laughing and weeping, with all the beloved things of their life arrayed about them, the butter popping in the pan, the detective muttering on the television, the water stain from the leak last winter floating on the ceiling above their heads.
Recounting the moment later, she shivered at the possibility that it could have happened differently. I would have been embarrassed! she cried. A dimly lit restaurant, a horse-drawn carriage? A banner pulled by a propeller plane across the sky? Some women she knew had become engaged on faraway beaches, strolling underneath the moon. Ugh, she said. It was horrible to contemplate. There were so many opportunities for the process to go awry. She felt lucky her husband had asked the right way, the solely acceptable way, which was exactly the way that he had.
But saying so was obvious. For if he had asked in a different manner, if he had taken her to the top of a mountain, or buried the ring in a chocolate dessert, then he would have been a different person, and she would never have married him, now would she.
Would she?
With a pang she remembered the dizzying sensation she had felt while walking through the city. Anything was possible. Anything, more dangerously, was imaginable. Why was it so easy to feel the bus driver’s hand holding her own as he led her up the crumbling stoop to meet his father? And how did she know that the man on the elevator preferred his eggs soft in the middle, served on little dry triangles of toast? Every glance, every encounter, contained within it a dark, expanding universe of intimacies, exploding like dandelion fluff at her slightest breath, flying up and drifting about and taking stubborn root somewhere. Which was why she understood, with absolute certainty, that the slightly lame, foolhardy fellow, the one riskily crossing the street, would, if given the chance, bury his head between her legs, inhale, and utter indecipherable words of joy, making every inch of her vibrate with the sound.
Did you hear me?
Yes, yes, I heard you, she says, and sinks her hands into the damp head of hair, lightly closing her eyes, feeling her body hum, wondering how did she ever—
Eva?
Her husband was propped up on his elbow, looking at her curiously.
You asleep? he asked.
That night she dreamed once more of the king. He heaved open the oaken doors to the hall and hung there, his bent figure thrown into shadow, before he staggered through. The men gathered in the great hall stopped what they were doing and turned to him and stared. They seemed hardly to recognize their king, his face filthy, his eyes haggard, his lean body stooped with exhaustion and pain. It was as if they could scarcely believe he was not dead. A young boy was the first to come to his senses and run forward to the king, who hesitated, then laid his hand, with a sigh, upon the child’s shoulder. Rousing themselves from their disbelief, the men sent up a shout. The king had come home. His enemies, who had snatched him from the battlefield, could not keep him. The voices of his men echoed through the hall, but the king did not share in their rejoicing. He smiled at them faintly. Leaning on the boy, he limped to a dark corner, sank down on a bench, tipped his head back against the stone, and closed his eyes. Eva stood pressed behind a pillar, close enough to see how his face twitched with grief. She looked down and found she was carrying a basin of water, its cool weight trembling slightly in her hands. The water, she knew, was meant for the king. But before she could move to him, a hush fell over the hall, the men parting as another walked slowly through their midst and with quiet steps approached the body resting on the bench. The man was tall, his hair gray, and when he stood before the king, he seemed to cover him with light. My lord, the man said, in a voice of such gentleness that the king then opened
