Your voice reaches me always.
And I answer constantly …
My tenderness … apparent to you
in the breeze of summer evening
and in the words that become your own response.

The quilts were folded on the chest at the foot of the bed, the bolsters and cushions piled high against the headboard. Sheets and pillowcases she’d stripped from the mattress were bundled with their towels in the wicker basket Vincent brought up from the bathing chamber. Tidy enough, she determined, pausing to adjust the beveled cheval mirror. Oval, mahogany, inlaid, with oak-leaf carvings and lion’s claw feet … beautiful.  

More so, the two of us reflected in it. A star of memory rose. There were no words. No words billowing enough for the pleasure that suffused and warmed her.¹ 

Such wild love.

In reluctant circuit of the bedchamber – I don’t want to leave! – she snuffed the candles save those bright-burning in one tall, wrought-iron stand, leaving the full hamper just inside the doorway. Liz would be along later – to put the room to rights, as she’d phrased it the night before – on her way to ready another suite farther down the corridor,   a necessity explained with only the directional drift of her hand.

Last night, on their journey below, while Eimear lagged mesmerized by the reflection of stars in a still, black-water pool, Vincent had whisperingly told her of Kanin’s return to Olivia, of the invitation he planned to tender – a precursory visit – of his wishful dream to bring his family north for now if not for good. He’d paused then in his telling, closed his eyes and sighed before continuing. “But the public exposure of a move, its awaited – and likely debated  – outcome …” Olivia’s answer might be slow-coming, Vincent forecast, if she considered the possibility at all.

Privacy was a nebulous thing Below, even in a community with doors. Of this Catherine needed no reminding. And so she was not surprised when Liz, regarding the occupancy of the room she would prepare the next morning, had named no names. Both of them circumspect, their shared knowledge of Kanin’s fragile and pending proposal a confidence to be honored, the two had exchanged a glance in understanding, and Liz, gesturing to the perfumed blossom on the dresser, had asked only for her opinion. Peonies, do you think? Or maybe tulips?” 

Her answer had been quick and sure. Lilacs, if you can find them. The guest lodgings, surely as enchanting as these, were rooms Olivia would – hopefully – love.

Seated now on the footstool in the ante-room, bent over his knees, Vincent knotted his boot laces. One had snapped when he pulled it tight, and he’d spent some concentrated minutes splicing and rethreading the cord only to have it break a second time. Now he coaxed the nearly-too-short string through the brass eyelets. Both boots were wearing down at the heels, she noted, the toes crosshatched with abrasions. Though he regularly rubbed them with neatsfoot oil, the leathers kept supple, as soft as moccasins, the left was newly split at the bend of his ankle. Others might pitch the offending shoes to the back of the closet and grab up another pair, might simply venture out to acquire something new-enough from Goodwill or Ladies of Charity. Not so easy for Vincent, his fit was … specific … his second- and third-best spares in his trunk a three-hour walk away.

She’d read … something while she waited somewhere … a magazine left on a bench at the Queens precinct. Tactical Gear, was it? Duty boots, she remembered. Heel cups and toe guards, flex grooves for traction. Boot strings made from parachute cord. Surely they’d bear the stresses of his work. Why have I never thought to– She couldn’t imagine he’d be able to tell her his size. Shoes later. Laces for now. Once above, she’d check the phone book for an army surplus store, an outdoor gear shop. Eimear would know of one nearby, or Flynn …

A curtain of red and gold hid his face, but she saw the strands ripple, heard his puff of frustration. Not so easy, the balance he enforced. He made it look so, though she knew better. Rarely did he allow his annoyances, his wishes-otherwise, to show. But she would be his safe place and he was learning.

She swept back his hair, gathered it up. He straightened and sighed and, as she worked her fingers into the mass at his nape, tipped the weight of his head into her hands. Tangles. Snarls. Did he simply rake his nails through after a swim and call it brushed? How had he ever managed without her? But now there was no time for her turn with the comb.

Her palms rested on his shoulders, she stroked the tendons of his neck with her thumbs. The layers he wore could not contain his enticing warmth. “Are you ready to go?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “But … yes.”

His cloak was draped over the back of a chair. She scooped it up. “I borrowed this earlier,” she told him.

“I remember.”

His resigned expression recast itself, became – briefly – soft and tender, then grave as she passed him the garment. Then … guarded.

“There’s a rip,” she said. “More than one actually. A lot of mends already.”

A hesitancy fluttered up, one she couldn’t place, couldn’t own. In her mind’s eye … a flash … then another, another, and in the mental strobe, she sensed the taking of stumbly steps along a narrow, rock-strewn path, a cold sense of plunge to either side.

“There’s no fringe, no, umm, decoration,” she went on, despite her uncertain footing. She’d teased him before about his cloak’s string of bunched trim – the dangly bits, she’d called them – embellishments to the garment he, flustered by the arch look she cast him and her purposefully smoky tone, couldn’t adequately explain. But this time her attempt to distract him went unrewarded. “I guess it’s an old one,” she finished.

He stared at the pieced panels of brown leather and black wool draped over his arm. The rugged lines framing his mouth deepened. “I’ve worn out several over the years,” he said. “Damaged them beyond repair. Parts from one would be harvested to make another. A second, even a third, is necessary; I … can’t be without. Those with service left in them I packed away. One … this one … I meant only to … … … keep. In the rush to leave with the crew, in the urgency, I took it from the top shelf of my wardrobe. I … forgot. I didn’t … think.” After a moment he settled the cape to his shoulders, the scrubbed-at stain ghostly proud on the leather patchwork lapel.

“And I didn’t notice,” she replied, “when you left home wearing it or any time since, until last night.” She covered the blotch with her palm. “Then this is my …”  

His hand enveloped hers, holding to the spot. “I’ve not worn this cloak for years, Catherine. Not since … that night. I shouldn’t have– I wouldn’t want to– I never meant to remind you.”

A few months after her release from the hospital, she’d jogged through the park alone to the bank where they’d shoved her out, determined to reclaim the territory, only to veer away at the last minute over-washed with a gray chill. Hours ago, in the bathing chamber below, upon first spying the discoloration, she’d known a frisson of that same fear. Now she was glad to see it. Gladder than glad. He forgot. I didn’t notice. How far we’ve both come. The rust badge was evidence, tangible commemoration of their physical meeting. The long-hovering shadow-threat faded to a wisp of recollection, was whisked away on a freshet of air through the corridor, as if the deep-centered force of the tunnel world had taken a cleansing breath. At last.

Behind us,Vincent. It’s all behind us. Today is what matters. And tomorrow and tomorrow. We have so much to look forward to. Together … together, we dwell in possibilities.²

She trapped his fingers in an insistent grip. “Thank you,” she murmured. “For our beginning. For beginning … all this.” A stutter of surprise in his pulse … a letting-in of light? And with what he must believe – there is no other direction! – the starched lines in his face softened. He drew her into his arms, returned the kiss she proffered, his lips on hers lingeringly grateful, softly promising. Convinced, she was sure. Ready.

Her bag slung from his shoulder, he leaned past her to open the guest chamber’s gleaming door to the passageway. “Oh, wait,” she said. “Something fell out of your pocket. It’s on the dresser.” As she wheeled for the bedroom, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his hand clutch at the fabric at his breast.

Maybe a minute gone, having stopped for one last sniff of the rose-scented white-petaled peony blossoming in its vase, when she returned, the sitting room was empty. She rounded the vestibule, looked to the junction. Thirty feet up-passage, he leaned against the tunnel wall, her duffel lumped on a low ledge of stone. Metal-caged oil lamps suspended from the ceiling cast wide circles of light, but he stood in a wedge of thin shadow. Though he didn’t study the floor – instead he watched for her – in more than one way, she worried, he seemed … braced.

“What is it?” she asked. If he’d been a child, she’d have pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, checked for a sudden fever.

The medal and the silver talisman dangled from the ring she’d hooked her forefinger through; the paper was trapped in her palm. “Something I found inside Eimear’s house,” he said, reaching for the two charms she held out. “The medal I recognize, but the other …” He rubbed at the engravings on the amulet. “I was drawn to it. It seemed required. I … meant to give it to her.”

“St. Michael,” she agreed. “The patron saint of the warrior, the protectors. I don’t know the other’s significance. Maybe Eimear will tell us.”

“Maybe.”

“But that’s not what I meant, Vincent.”

His focus shifted into a distance over her shoulder, but with a slow blink, he returned his gaze to hers. “I know.”

“What’s wrong?” She opened her hand. “Is it this?” She looked down at the cause of his distress. A page torn from a small book reduced again to a square, a few typed lines showing front and back. Its creases were many, she’d discovered, the paper soft from repeated unfoldings, but only nights ago, his cloak her pillow, it had been rock-like in his pocket, leaving an imprint on her cheek, she remembered. Without looking at the print, he took it from her, tucked it again to its secret place. Out of sight, he seemed to say, though given his ragged sigh, not out of mind. Not out of mind at all.

Some buried hurt blazed up, dry embers flared by a callous wind. Apprehension? Embarrassment? She couldn’t tell, but still, he didn’t hide. He let her in, let her see. Oh, Vincent. You bear nothing alone now. Nothing. She would stand shelter. Always.

“Did you read it?” he asked.

“I did,” she confessed. “It’s poetry. Rilke.”

“Yes.”

“You love his work.”

“I do.”

“But not these poems,” she stated. Not so long ago, she’d have had to take his hand to keep him close, cup his chin to turn his face her way. Now he paid only half-attention to a swirl in the dust at his feet. He glanced up at her, his gaze at once direct and hesitant. Perhaps he waited only for the fitting question, the key to a long-locked door. “I don’t understand, Vincent.”

“You couldn’t. I’ve never shared … this.”

“If you’ll tell me, maybe I can help. It is … only words.”

“And words can never hurt me?”

She had to admit they could. They could wound terribly. Even words written decades before his birth and unaddressed to him could carry a sharp edge of meaning, slip as a knife might, in, in, between his ribs.

“But these are old words,” she countered. “You’ve not worn this cloak for three years. They’re words from before, words you’d forgotten you’d put away. Don’t you see? They’ve surprised you. Whatever they meant then, they can’t possibly mean now.” She edged her hand in between his folded arms, urging him to walk on. I’ll love you through this, whatever it is. Whatever it was. 

He’d drawn himself taller and broader of stance, whether encouraged by her argument or to resist it, she wasn’t sure. Now he drew a breath as if to begin the telling …

Voices rose in the intersecting passage, gained pitch … and, waving as they passed, three upper-school-aged girls hurried through the junction, their chatter uninterrupted by the sight of them standing so close, so intently engaged. “You’re kidding, right?” one was asking. “That’s exactly what he said,” another replied. Their ensuing fit of giggles faded away, but the aroma of coffee was suddenly stronger … the dull clatter of dishes, the distant whistle of a kettle no illusion. Only a single, silent pipe ran the corridor to the rooms they’d used, but three laddered the cross-passageway, each brisk with morning announcement. Hollow tolling thuds, trilling pings, the double tap, the triplet … This was not the place for disclosure. Not the time. As if to underscore that decree, the noise of it nearing, a utility cart bumped and rumbled along, its handler humming. Joyful music, anticipatory. The Mazurka from Coppélia. The community was afoot; the workday begun.

She mustered a rueful smile.

He frowned. “This seems a secret now between us, Catherine. I didn’t intend … … … to leave you this way.”

In the coming fraught day, she knew – the lines of poetry would repeat in the background of her mind; she’d parse and dissect, search for meaning, for the connection between the few typeset words and the melancholy in his expression. Too much, for too long he’d confined to a dark place of lonely examination. Already, she’d counted the days until they could resume their life together at home, now she cursed the separating hours. Responsibilities aside, she would stand here – here! – if he needed her. She would hear anything; his voice – calling out to her even in despair, his utter trust – was her great happiness.³ But she understood now – he has to know I do – he took his wrongs and wounds, his regrets, deep inside, unfathomably deep, each with the tight solitude of a seed,⁴ and only time, time he had the right to determine, would crack open the tough husk-shell. Until then, she would be the necessary light, the steady warmth required.

His mouth was so deeply, too deeply, turned down; though he searched her face, his eyes were clouded. He struggled so with obligation, with time, with the unexpressed. She’d not allow him contrition, wanted only to offer him reprieve. Until they could be together again – until their Later  – she’d not want him distracted by guilt. Her concern was not burden, her puzzlement not mistrust.

“Rilke isn’t Shakespeare,” she murmured, loathe to part from him under suspicion of disappointment or frustration. “Maybe he didn’t know everything.” His brows rose, as ever so slightly he pulled back, his eyes lighting, she determined – she willed – with faith … at least with curiosity. “But he said one thing you really should believe,” she went on, reaching up to stroke his jaw. The laceration there had paled, its ridge-line nearly undetectable now, to her eye, to her fingertips. “Love consists in this,” she said. “That two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.⁵ Privacies aren’t secrets, Vincent. There’s a difference.”

He’d told her months ago; she should have heard him. There’s a place, miles beneath the city – a nameless river that runs through the darkness. Sometimes I go there.

Sometimes, he’d said. Meaning more than once. 

Privacies. He might always have them, she realized – the rubbled under-earth of his visible life.⁶ And didn’t she have her own? Was everything to be drawn from the shuttered storeroom into the light? There’s a difference. Olivia struggled with Kanin’s lie, his secret, but Kanin’s falsity hurt others, those who loved him, trusted him. Privacies were otherwise … a personal pain. 

Enough … for now. Whenever you’re ready to tell me. Enough … if ever.

Only the briefest stutter of time passed before he caught her hand, pressed first his cheek to her palm, then a kiss to its center, then moved his lips to the bend of her wrist, opened his mouth against her quickening pulse. His eyes fluttered closed and he breathed deeply in and out once, twice, against her skin. No words. No words, only thankfulness in his sigh, apology tempered with promise.

He bent for her bag and, hand-in-hand, they started for the dining hall. They stepped from the rough-hewn passage into an atrium, its ceiling soaring high. One level up, curtained with flowstone, a window opened to a chamber; through it, lantern light gleamed, opalescent and ivory, cream and pearl, a painterly sunshine spilling out. Behind the calcite draperies, shadows passed, conversation rose and fell, a baby’s wail was soon met with a mother’s crooning song, tones that wooed, no doubt, a toothless smile, a waving fist. Half a dozen corridors rayed off the courtyard; in one laughter rang out. For weeks, since the first evidence of incursion, since the cumulus cloud of the Unknown had threatened, these tunnels had been hushed, Vincent had told her. The society tentative, extra-aware. Kanin’s crossing of the perimeter, his reported findings, had loosed the community’s self-damped voice, returned a large measure of normalcy to daily life.

She smiled, imagining Eimear’s reaction to the word. Normalcy. Magical, maybe. Astonishing. Mythic. Certainly not … regular. A world far, far from normal … but now, hers.  

They traversed the plaza, nearing the passage leading to the colony’s center. Torchlight flickered along the walls and ceiling, the shadow-dance of approaching foot-traffic and the breath of conversation. Liz – still a bend of corridor away – issued no-nonsense housekeeping instructions to her charges. Her as-yet-unseen helpers might be twice her age or teenagers, but she bossed them all equally. Once Catherine had compared her to Mary, meaning only that Liz, as caregiver of the northern tunnels, was as able to clean and stitch up a wound as she was to give haircuts, and Vincent had laughed. Bent double and laughed, a whole-body laugh, shoulders shaking, hoots and whoops and howls that left him wheezing and wiping his eyes. In response to her What? What’s so funny? he’d managed only to lift a warding hand before bracing himself on his knees and letting loose again. It had been … glorious.

Now he pulled her into the shadowy recess of an outcrop of stone, returned her duffel to the ground. Her hand in his, he passed his thumb back and forth over her knuckles. “I’ll want to hear,” he said.

“About Flynn?”

“Um hmm.”

“I don’t know how he’ll take this, how he’ll feel.” Or how I’ll get word to you. An ache of parting lodged beneath her ribs.

“I know how he’ll feel.”

They shared a long look. “I wonder if Eimear slept at all,” she said.

“I sense in her … a determination. And great love. She’ll see this through.”

Voices – Liz again, and now, clearly, Wren in answer, an indistinct murmur likely Eimear’s. Soon, he’d take a fork in the tunnel, descend to his work. Soon, Wren would lead her up and out. Too soon, their time together once more measured in minutes, in seconds, it seemed. So much left unsaid.

“Thank you, Vincent, for accepting Eimear … here … without a question.”

“I have no questions.” His arm went around her waist; his breath was warm at the curve of her ear, his voice a deep, sultry husk. “I love you.”

I love you. Every time was as the first – as thrilling, as heated, as soft, as bright. Everything gathered, everything gleamed.

“I miss you,” he whispered. “I need you close. If I arrange a room for you … would you come? It’s far from your work, I know, and I am … required … at levels well away from here. I might not be able to … stay with you. We might have no more than an hour every eve–”

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

Sweetly he embraced her, and when she nuzzled in, his encircling arms drew her closer still. She’d have slept pillowless on bedrock had he asked, crossed a dozen rope bridges over plumbless gorges for that single, splendid hour. 

“Yes.”

_____________________

Title: John O’Donohue. For Marriage. To Bless the Space Between Us.

Opening Quotation: Louise Glück. Sunset.

1. Mary Oliver. The Sun. New and Selected Poems. 1993. (paraphrased)

2. Emily Dickinson. I Dwell in Possibility.

3. Louise Glück. Sunset. (paraphrased)

4. John O’Donohue. For Freedom. To Bless the Space Between Us.

5. Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters to a Young Poet. No. 7.

6. John O’Donohue. For the Unknown Self. To Bless the Space Between Us.