Delicate: Stories - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mary Sojourner, now sixty-four, started writing at age forty-five. She is also the author of Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire and is a contributor to NPR's Morning Edition. She teaches writing in Flagstaff, Arizona.

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Delicate

Honey kept getting prettier and prettier. That was what scared Frank the most. He'd heard that people with that sickness, the big C, were supposed to lose everything, their hair, skin color, flesh, almost their humanness. Honey had always been a fine-looking woman, a little on the hefty side, with that combination of heat and dignity that made guys catch their breath. There was bad, beautiful magic in the way the sickness sharpened her cheekbones, the way her lion gold eyes got bigger and bigger with every pound the sickness ate. It, they had taken to calling the sickness It, made her model pretty. It scared him to much worse than death.

They were in a little motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, when he knew they were in for the time when death would start to look like a picnic. Honey had slept fine the night before. Earlier, wandering the downtown streets, the two of them playing Fred and Marge Tourist, she'd had to stop a lot to catch her breath, but Flag was a mountain town, seven thousand feet up, so it hadn't been a big deal. They had no plans, that was part of the plan -- no plans.

Frank bought beer and hoagies and chocolate cake, and they rambled up to the pine-shadowed park for lunch. He watched her swinging on the kids' swing, her thin, dry hair glistening in the sunlight. He remembered when he might have swung beside her. They'd walked slowly back downtown, and that was when she'd started leaning on him, laughing breathlessly, hugging his thick arm. They had stopped for coffee in a hippie café and listened to the chug of Creedence Clearwater over the CD speakers.

"I was a mom then," she'd said wistfully.

"I was a grunt," he said, "like you didn't know."

Later, she wanted to make love, moving slowly and delicately above him. Looking up at her face, he'd puzzled again at her growing beauty. It nearly drove him numb and useless, till he made himself think of someone else's lush body, that woman's plain face and, betraying, had moved up into Honey's loving flesh.

In early morning, she crept from their bed. Frank heard her. He always heard her. She closed the bathroom door, as she had each time, and turned the shower on full force. She hadn't even bothered to turn on the light. He hated that. The idea of her in that blackness, like a wounded creature curled up into the coolest, darkest corner of its lair. In all his life, he'd never felt as bad and mean and helpless as he did at those times, lying there minute after endless minute, while the shower ran and ran, not quite muffling her desperate noises, and he couldn't knock on the door. It was thirty minutes before the pills took and she turned off the water. He'd watched the thin green second hand on the travel clock creep around.

It was barely dawn when they woke. Honey stretched and sat up, leaning against the pillows piled along the velour headboard.

"Frank," she whispered, "get me a cigarette."

He looked up at her glittering eyes, faded gold around the pinpricks of iris. He started to remind her of the doc's orders, then stopped himself and lit cigarettes for both of them. The blinds were drawn, but a good, strong, early morning light came up fast in the window. There were few sounds, just the purr of the big trucks, moving through, not stopping. Honey smiled at him.

"There's nothing like that first smoke," she said. "Isn't it nice here, so quiet, such a sweet little town? I'd like to stay here forever."

He nodded. It seemed he had lost the way to speak to her. He lifted a pale curl away from her face. She laughed.

"Glad one of us can do that..."

She pulled his head down to her breast and rubbed his bald patch. He was a short man, furry-chested, solid as a keg above his thick, strong legs. "Built for comfort, not for speed," Honey liked to say. Tight against her cool skin, he wanted somebody, something to finish it for them right there, in the peach light, with the faint smell of love still on their bodies, her fingers slipping through his hair. She had made him promise he'd go on -- find somebody, love again.

"My kids are grown," she'd said. "You're just a young punk. There's lots of good women out there."

She had tried to tell him that, pissed off and scared as she was, she had gradually started to see things different. She'd found a new beauty in things. He couldn't see it. They'd been divided before, her jealousy, his bad temper, but they'd always found their way back to each other, to "seeing with the same eyes," she called it. This time was different. He pressed his face into her, but without the cover of her rich flesh, he felt only bones.

Five years together. He'd heard people say that time went faster in your forties. He hadn't noticed that till he met her. She'd been forty-four, him forty-two when they met, both of them drinking a little too much, both of them fed up with romance. She'd said she'd been jukeboxed half to death. It was no surprise they met in a bar. It was a shock that it worked.

He'd gotten used to stopping in at the Cordial on Friday nights. It was one of those places with no windows and a doorway that had been kicked in and rebuilt so many times it looked like most of the customers' faces. They were largely younger guys, carpenters, cops, roofers, small-time hustlers. He'd met a few of them on the jobs. They didn't mind that he was a little older. Young as they were, most everybody was divorced or in lousy marriages. Sandy, the chunky barmaid, poured a fair shot and kept the beer ice cold. And, there were dancers. Young broads, mostly lezzies, tough enough to keep the occasional frat party in line, smart enough to make you think you wanted them.

He'd been sitting next to Tiger, a fierce little butch who was in love with Miss Sheila, a tall, delicious, sweet-faced dancer, the first time he saw Honey. Tiger was staring off into space. She said she couldn't stand to watch men watch Miss Sheila, and she couldn't stand to not watch. Suddenly, she straightened and stared over his shoulder to the front door. "Toss you for this one."

He swiveled on his stool and watched the woman walk toward them. She had a plain face except for the eyes. Her pale hair was pulled back into a bun. He couldn't figure out why he kept watching her. Nobody else paid any attention. She might have been somebody's wife. Or mother. She wore Levi's, high-heeled boots, and a turquoise fake fur jacket that was a little too snug across the tits. She glanced at the bar, saw him, and stared straight into his eyes, like some big, proud alley cat.

Lady lion, he thought. And surprised himself. He was no poet. He'd hated words since he'd found out in Laos they changed nothing.

She walked to the far end of the bar and sat down between two guys. Sandy pulled a face. She hated women, swore they couldn't drink and never tipped. The woman ordered a draft, left the change in front of her, and turned to watch Miss Sheila, who had just planted her high-heeled foot square in the middle of some college punk's chest and sent him flying off the stage. Tiger bought Frank a beer. The woman grinned.

"Make your move, asshole," Tiger hissed.

"Thank you so much for sharing," Frank said and made his move.

He got up, walked over to the woman, stood behind her, his heart ricocheting off his ribs, and watched her in the cracked mirror, till she looked up, saw him, and smiled. It was easy. She turned around, told him her name was Honey, and told him not to make a joke about it. She said she was hungry. Surprise, he was too. It was Friday. They both loved shrimp. He named a place down by the lake and that was fine. He would follow her to her place, she would drop off her car, and they would drive out together.

On the way, she talked a lot. He liked that. She told him about her four kids, three gone, one still in the house, driving her crazy. He especially liked it when he said, "Bad...