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GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY, A NOVEL
Installment Number Twelve
Carla leaned against an elm tree at the side of the adobe and wiggled her toes in the dry dirt as she watched the sunset. The head of a pink orange dragon she was regarding deliquesced, and she glanced back at the shuttered window of the guest room. Leah spent a lot of time in her room, especially in the evening after the dishes were done.
Writing a letter, Carla thought.
In the two months since Leah had been there, she'd written six letters and received twice that many; and one morning after Leah had gone for the day, Carla found a breakfast setting laid at the kitchen table, apparently for her, and, under the plate, she found a letter to Leah. Without considering how it had come to be there, she read it, sure that Leah had intended her to. The identifying names, words and phrases had been elided with a black marker, and the black had seeped through the notepaper creating spotty islands; and because the writer had written on both sides, Carla could not be nonchalant but had to struggle to read everything that was left to read. She didn't find any more letters under plates (neither did she find her breakfast place set for her again), but she did find censored letters laying around the house, and she read them, too, sometimes exhausting herself in her efforts to make sense of them. But she never missed the profession of love from the sender that was in every one, among the black islands. She would read these professions many times, stinging with jealousy and tugging at a strand of dark hair. She had been afraid to ask Leah about the letters, as Leah had known she would be.
She walked around to the front of the adobe. The open front door was at the same end of the house as where she'd stood, and she sat on the single step of the roofless porch. A recessed set of three many-paned windows, duplicated in the den at the back of the house, fronted the living room. Beyond them was a recessed wooden door that opened to the master bedroom. It was kept locked. A redbud tree grew beside it. Seven budding shrubs spanned the ground between the tree and the porch. She wondered when Leah would finish her letter.
She sat there until the brightest planets, and then the stars, became visible. She hugged her knees and planted her palms on either side of her and pushed up.
She quietly went inside and tiptoed to the guest room. The door was open a few inches, and, in the light through the gap, she saw a horizontal section of sand-colored wall and a corner of the desk that was pushed against it. Leah had switched the bed with the desk. There was no sound, sign or shadow of her.
She's in there, Carla thought.
She heard paper being torn. She heard Leah shuffle her feet and clear her throat.
Those scraps won't be in her basket in the morning, she thought.
If Leah was distracted, she was also fully aware of Carla's satisfaction with her presence. They played cards and listened to the radio. They cooked and watched television. They'd driven into Chassen where Carla had bought a color set. Her old black and white had been relegated to a waist-high table against the wall in the living room between the curio cabinet and the guest room doorway. They took walks. Their favorite walk was through the woods after dark, without a flashlight. There was no danger as long as they covered their feet and legs for protection against snakes and stayed on the trails. But the impenetrable darkness made it seem dangerous, and, for Carla, the walks were more trials of faith than walks.
Leah, who was not afraid of the dark, tried to frighten Carla, who was, by acting as if she were scared and pretending she saw or heard things she didn't see or hear. Sometimes she would swerve unannounced into the bushes alongside the trail leaving Carla alone. The correct response for Carla was to stand silently and motionless until Leah returned, which Carla learned to do after fruitlessly shouting the first couple of times. Still, Carla would often burst into a shower of shrieks and giggles because she thought she should. She told herself that Leah spooked her for the fun of it, not to frighten her. Leah would have said, if asked, that she frightened Carla to cleanse her of the more resistant terrors of harsh daylight truths.
Carla thought she shrieked and giggled because she should and fooled herself. But Leah wasn't fooled. Carla couldn't hide from her the successful result of the exercises: Carla's genuine terror.
"You should learn to not be afraid of the dark," Leah would say as she stepped up to Carla, and for Carla the darkness was lightened.
It's weird I have such strong feelings for her, Carla thought as she skirted the living room, circling the fuchsia garden print couch.
"Carla! I'm going into the den," Leah shouted from in the guest room. Carla jumped, ran to the den door and stopped.
She deliberately suppressed a feeling, like that in the woods at night, of fearful excitement, which had become characteristic of her mood whenever Leah was near, and crossed the threshold into the den, taking one step down onto a brown shag carpet. The club chair, to her left, faced the back windows. Many catalogues, glossy and dull, colorful and gray, fat and thin, open and unopened, new and tattered, garlanded the room.
Carla crossed to the window and tapped a fingernail against the glass. Leah came and sat in the club chair. She had a fat paperback book in her hand, and Carla noted what seemed to be an envelope sticking out of it.
"I'm getting a pitcher of tea," she said, leaving.
Leah twisted the switch on a frosted glass lamp hanging above a table between the club chair and the brown corduroy sofa. The television, a console, was in front of the windows, but was pulled out from them.
"I want to read you something I found," she said, opening her book where the envelope stuck out. "'We shun because we prize her Face/Lest sight's ineffable disgrace/Our Adoration stain.' Emily Dickinson. Provocative." Carla carried in a tray, balancing the pitcher of tea and glasses of ice on it.
"I didn't hear you," she said. She emptied a packet of Sweet-As-Sugar between the two glasses and poured the tea. She placed Leah's glass on a saucer and tucked an iced tea spoon beside it. "Maybe you could read it again," she said, handing Leah the saucer with the glass and the spoon, which fell into Leah's lap.
Carla resumed her stance at the windows. Leah sipped her tea. Carla flipped on the back porch light, and, instantly, flying insects zipped chaotically through its penumbra, out and back in, bumping against the bare bulb, some of them dropping to the plank wood porch. She licked her finger and rubbed clean spots on the glass.
"'We shun because we prize her Face/Lest sight's ineffable disgrace/Our Adoration stain.'"
Carla stepped to the screen door and watched a June bug dragging itself toward her to join its kin hanging on the screen. A light breeze blew. She'd been lonely sometimes before Leah came, but she felt her confidence, now that Leah was there, wane just a little.
"I'm thirsty," she said, sat down and squeezed lemon into her tea. "Okay, Leah. Who's the letter to?"
"My brother."
"The one you said you were close to?"
"I have no other."
"Okay." She drank her tea.
"Did you change your work plans, Carla?"
"Yeah, I did. I even cut down my schedule. I go into Chassen only two nights a week. Sunday and Thursday."
"Is Thursday the same man as last night?"
"No, he's a regular customer. Eighteen months now. He's happy as can be because he's one of only two."
"I assume he ought to be. How about some more tea." Carla obligingly went through the ritual: Pour tea, add sweetener, squeeze in lemon, stir.
"Carla, I have an idea you want me to tell you something."
She knows too much, Carla thought.
Leah knew that when she read in the den, Carla watched her. Carla would sit the distance of the room and watch, and she would persist until Leah shut her book and suggested something they could do together. Once Carla waited and watched for three hours.
"Okay, yeah. What is it with you and all those letters?"
While she waited, Carla would have conversations with Leah, in her mind, and they revealed the measure of Leah's regard for her. It was great. She would well up with affection for her friend.
"They're from Zena, my sister-in-law."
"She's married to your brother?"
"Yes, Carla."
"She writes odd things to you."
"We've been friends a long time."
Carla was silent.
"What's Rosemary? Some kind of nickname?"
"Don't be silly. Rosemary's a legitimate name. It's my name. Leah is my middle name."
"Okay, but Leah, she says she's going to murder someone. Stuff like that. Christ."
"She's married to my brother and we've been friends a long time."
"Yeah, so. How long?"
"I was thirteen and Zena was eleven when her family moved in around the block from the Brandon clan. Carla, where's that bag of big pretzels we bought?"
"I think she's strange."
"All right, I'll tell you something about Zena. Zena Brandon, nee Madder, moved to town on a brisk fall afternoon, and I brought her home with me before she'd slept her first night in Linn, which you know is my hometown."
"First time I've heard it."
(Geography of the Body will continue with Installment Number Thirteen on the last day of July. Enter webspawner.com/users/fictioncookie2 into the ADDRESS BAR of your web browser to see Installment Number Eleven.)
Geography of the Body is written by S. Plant and is copyrighted.
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