It wasn't that it was any brighter in the room. Perhaps they themselves had a new brightness. Her head was in a spot where it fit beautifully, and one of his hands rested on a part of her where it utterly belonged. They'd been like that long enough for their breaths to cool, their pulses slow. "Why did you cry, Mary girl?" Aaron asked. "I didn't," she denied, not knowing she had. "There were tears on your face," he said, and laid his lips to the outer corner of her eye to kiss it. "There were?" "Yes," he remembered, "I could taste them." "When?" "Right after I made you feel beautiful."
She reached an arm around his middle and squeezed him, saying, "Oh, Aaron, you did make me feel beautiful…so it must have been a beautiful tear." "That's never happened to you before, has it, Mary?" "The tears, you mean?" "No. I mean what came before them."
"No, Aaron, never before." Her heart was beating rapidly again, realizing that she was openly talking about the act that had always before seemed, if not surreptitious, then at least beyond words. Aaron lay there holding her hand, gently rubbing her arm that lay over his chest, thinking of her body being denied its most precious birthright for her seven mar- ried years, and again, silently this time, he called Jonathan a fool. "What was it that happened to me, Aaron?" she asked, and he pitied her ignorance, yet thrilled to it, knowing he was the first to teach her. He pulled her face close to his neck and moved his jaw across her forehead. "The same as what happened to me later. Didn't you know, my darling, that for a woman it can be as strong and complete as for a man?" "How could I know, Aaron?" she asked, pulling her head back to look up toward his face in the dark. "I only knew what one man had taught me. I didn't know there was any- thing else."
He rolled her onto her back then and leaned across her chest with both of his elbows on the pillow under her, his hands smoothing the hair back from the sides of her face. "My beautiful Mary girl," he said, "You've come to me as innocent as a bride, and I can't thank Jonathan enough. But I pity him his ignorance and what he's missed in you."
He kissed her face all over then, running its smooth, fine length and stopping at each closed eye to feel the flutter of it under his lips. He came to her mouth, and she reshaped it to fit his. But instead he touched hers in a silent command to be still. But when he lowered his lips near hers, she again was ready for his kiss. When he drew back a second time and laid a finger across her lips once more, her eyelids flickered open in puzzlement. But a curl of hair on his fore- head tickled them shut again as she felt the warm, wet tip of his tongue glide over her still upper lip. Her mouth relaxed as the warmth and its following coolness played across her bottom lip, then across one eyebrow and down toward her ear. Then, like hearing the ocean in a seashell, she heard the roar of loud deafness as he licked the inside of her ear.
She squirmed then and rubbed her ear on the pillow under her, and to her surprise, a giggle bubbled out of her.
He backed off a bit and said in mock sternness, "Oh, so the lady laughs at my ardent persuasions." "I can't help it, Aaron. It tickled. Besides, it made me squirm, wondering who taught you all these wicked tricks." "Wicked tricks? Up till now my tricks have been making you feel beautiful, and suddenly they're wicked?" "All right, so they're not exactly wicked…but how did you learn them?"
He thought of the women when he'd been to town, the ones who'd demanded no chivalry. But the woman in his arms now was different, more precious. "Does it matter?" "No," she whispered. Yet having had what she'd had of him tonight, she wanted to own all his life that had gone before. She knew a vague regret at not having been his first, and he felt a bit of the same for her. "Don't let it matter," he said.
And Aaron's mouth set out to make it not matter. His lips began again their interrupted meandering until hers began the same "wicked tricks," and their roles subtly exchanged. Without knowing when she began, Mary was kissing him in the way he'd just taught her. His body's response hearkened again to the tune she played on him, and she learned with it that he was not yet finished being her mentor. Within a tightening arm she felt herself swung upward, rolled onto his stomach, his hands guiding her until she was astride him. "Aaron…" she whispered, feeling oddly exhilarated and shamed at once. "Shhh…it's okay. Let me show you."
And for the first time in her life she looked down from above on the act of love, and with sensual delight felt new- found freedom as her body was given free rein. But she was unskilled at this rhythmic caprice, so he murmured to her and guided her and his hands were there on her hips to en- courage when she faltered. Her hair swayed across her back sometimes. Other times it fell onto his face and chest. Its silken skeins fell into his open mouth as his head arched back, and she learned from him a new kind of gift, one she could give him. And she gave it as she'd never given before.
Lying once again quietly, only their hands touching, there came the sound of a growling stomach, and Aaron suddenly slapped his belly with an open hand, making a loud clap in the silence. Then he curled his body and rocked up and off the side of the bed in a single action. He felt for their clothes on the floor beside the bed, and when he'd found them, said, "Come here, wench, and let me make a decent woman of you." He reached out in the dark, found an arm, and pulled it until she was kneeling on the edge of the bed in front of him. "Put your arms up," he commanded, and she did as she was bid. He dropped the partially but toned nightgown over her head. Then he buttoned up each button, right up to the high, eyelet-trimmed neck, before he said, "You've escaped the eye of the dragon this time, but I warn you, you won't for long." And he put his own pajamas back on, then asked, "Now can I light the lantern?" "Whenever my lord wishes."
He struck a match, and the room sprang into brightness. "Your lord wishes some food. He is hungry as a dragon." "Indeed, I heard the dragon within him roar a minute ago." She couldn't help the giggle that escaped her.
He picked up the lantern, laughing, too, and held out a hand to her. But before leading her out and down the stairs, he took the time to kiss her in the bright glow, holding the lantern aloft. "C'mon, wench," he said, and she followed him, smiling.
They sliced thick slabs of bread, layered them with butter and gooseberry jam, and drank the fresh milk they'd gotten that night, rich with the cream that had not yet separated to its top. He licked the gooseberry jam from her outstretched fingers, and she thanked him with a hesitant kiss that cleared his upper lip of milk froth. Standing in the pantry slicing their second pieces of bread, she curled her bare toes, and he came up behind her, putting his chin on her shoulder, and told her no wench could run from a dragon with toes like that. When his hands strayed upward, she threatened to do them injury with the bread knife. He admonished her lest she injure instead what lay beneath his fondling fingers, and they ate more bread and jam with laughter in their eyes and finally sat, with sleeves in the bread crumbs, holding hands across the tabletop. "We have to go to bed now, don't we?" she asked. "Yes. Even dragons and wenches need sleep." "Even when they don't want to?" "Even when they don't want to. Especially when there's corn to plant tomorrow morning."
They got up then and brushed the crumbs from their el- bows, leaving more on the tabletop unnoticed, each one a beautiful blot on the kitchen Mary had always left in meticu- lous order. They went up with arms around each other, the lantern in Aaron's free hand. At the door to the front bed- room they stopped, and he set the lantern on the floor at their feet. The light, rising to their faces from that low angle, highlighted their lips, leaving their eyes in shadow.
Aaron reached out and touched Mary's gilded lips with his fingertips. "I would never sleep with you beside me all night long, and I wouldn't let you sleep, either. If it weren't for that corn, neither of us would care. But I'd better leave you here."
Then the exaggerated shadows of the two became one on the opposite landing wall before he leaned to pick up the lantern and hand it to her. He went down the hall to the other door, but when he reached it, turned to look back at her. They both stood just so for a long time.
And they opened both doors at once, each turning into a separate room. But they left the doors open, as if the essence of one another might drift through the hall to help ease them into sleep.
When Aaron awoke, it was first light. He came awake as if an alarm had sounded, but none had. He'd slept like something hibernating, after the wearying release his body had needed so badly. The memory of it swept over him now as he got out of bed silently. Before changing clothes, he crept to the open doorway of the room up the hall.
Mary was still asleep, lying on her back, with both hands palms-up on the pillow like a child. Her hair was strewn all over the pillow, and the quilts covered her nearly to her chin. The only parts of her nightgown that showed were the eyelet ruffles at wrists and neck. He went a few steps farther into the room so he could see her features more clearly in the dim, dawn light. Her childlike face looked open, even in sleep, just as it had the night she'd combed her hair back for the dance. He wished she would awaken and raise her arms to him, but she didn't, so he gazed at her, contenting himself with memory.
But the day lay ahead with much to be done, so he went back to his own room, dressed, then crept as quietly as he could down the creaking steps toward the morning chores.
When Mary awoke, it was slowly, luxuriously, slipping into consciousness to test it, then slipping back out after finding she wasn't ready for it yet. When it finally suited her and she opened her eyes to it, her first thought was that something was wrong. The sun was bright and high and Jonathan had not yet clanged the household awake with the stove lids. Looking quickly down at the clock, she found it had stopped at a quarter to three…then she remembered why.
Aaron.
And all the memory of last night followed his name.
How had she ever slept so late? It must be midmorning already! Like a thunderbolt it struck her that she'd forgotten to pump the wash water last night to lose its chill…and she'd promised Jonathan to help Aaron plant the corn. How in blazes was she ever going to do all that after getting started so late in the day?
She tore into her clothes, tore the sheets off her bed, and dropped them over the railing in the hall. Before they hit bottom she had already attacked Aaron's bed, ripping its sheets off. Her hair was still flying free, but she didn't stop to put it up now. Instead, she grabbed her brush from the bedside stand where Aaron had left it the night before, and ran downstairs with it. She could do her hair after the boiler was filled and heating. She scooped up the mound of sheets at the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner into the kitchen with her feet tangled in their trailing folds.
There she stopped in surprise. Simmering on the range was the copper boiler, all filled with steaming water. A smile broke across her face, and she hugged the sheets to her, hanging her head back as she whirled in a circle with her feet twisting into the sheets and her hair flying out behind. Just one happy name filled her being.
He had pumped and filled the boiler for her, and now into his favor she read the compliment of his lover's gift. All the years he'd helped her, doing small favors, all the considera- tions that were so typically Aaron, now found new and un- told value in Mary's eyes. She looked at the simmering wash water, and its warmth was nearly hers.
Standing among the sheets, she brushed her hair and, when it was smooth, went into the pantry where there were clean rags on the shelf. Tearing a strip from one, she caught her hair back with it and tied it behind her neck, then began her washday preparations.
During the warm months the washing was done on the concrete porch where the wooden washer was kept. The hot water had to be bailed from the boiler and carried outside. Two tubs for rinsing were set on a wooden bench beside the washer. These were filled with cold water, pumped from the cistern. The first step in washing clothes was always to boil the white clothes in the boiler on top of the stove before turning them into the washer. But today, getting a late start even in spite of Aaron's favor, Mary procrastinated and scarcely felt guilty when she deferred the boiling till next week. Something had to be skipped to save time if she were to help Aaron at all in the fields today.
Standing on the porch in the sun, Mary worked the handle that made the agitator churn the clothes inside the washer. She looked down past the vegetable garden into the east field, but knew Aaron wouldn't be there. It had already been seeded with small grain. He would be out in the south ten, which was hidden from view by the woods. She looked out toward the south and thought of him there and hurried the day toward him. Through the sorting, soaking, agitating, dipping, wringing, and hanging she worked toward him, breaking only long enough to go into the buttery and dip some fried-down pork out of the crock and put it on the back of the stove to begin warming for their dinner.
The sheets were slapping in the noon wind, the shirts and pants dancing an inverted jig to their own beat. Coming up the field lane beside the woods, Aaron saw the clothes basket turned upside down in the yard and looked for Mary on the porch. But the overturned basket told him the washing was done and she must be inside cooking dinner. He had un- hitched the team, leaving the marker at the edge of the field, and had driven the horses up the lane, walking behind them.
The wind carried Aaron's voice as he neared the yard, guiding them into a right turn with a
"Gee! Gee" guiding the team. Mary could hear him talking to the horses companionably as he came around their rumps and walked toward the well. She stood a few paces back from the screen door and watched him take the tin cup from the long metal finger on top of the pump. She knew he couldn't see her, but thrilled in anticipation as he leaned his head back to swill the sweet water, all the time looking over the rim of the cup toward the house. He hung up the cup, then pumped the handle again and cupped his hands under the rush of water and splashed his face, running his fingers back through his thick hair. She imagined the texture of it under her own fingers. Aaron turned and began walking to- ward the house. She skimmed a hand over her hair and turned to look busy at the stove. "Jesus, girl, you look good standing here," Aaron said, and she understood what he meant. "It's where I belong."
She put both of her arms around him and felt the wetness of the water on his face. He laid his cheek on hers, and it made smacking noises near their ears, with the moisture between their skins. When he released her, she picked up the skirt of her apron and toweled his face with it, then her own. "Did you sleep?" he asked, leaning back but leaving his arms around her waist. "Yes, way too long. Did you?" "Like a cat who got the cream," he answered, and saw a light blush come to her face. She escaped his embrace and turned her flustered attention to their meal.
"Thank you for filling the boiler, Aaron," she said. "Well, it's the least I could do for a lady I kept up half the night." He came up behind her as she carried a bowl to the table, and tugged lightly on her tied-back hair. "I like your hair pulled straight back like that," he said, but she bobbed her head away, saying, "I've never forgotten the wash water before. I don't know what came over me last night." "I do," he said with a teasing grin. "Me!"
His impertinence had her downright red by this time. Aaron was enjoying every minute of it. She looked as enchant- ing as a schoolgirl. Last night in the pantry she'd taken his teasing lightly, but today in the daylight she seemed so bashful. "Mary, if I tease you it's because I'm happy, okay?" he asked.
She stopped in her path from table to stove and looked at him. "Yes, Aaron," she approved, "it's just that it's new to me, that's all." "Many things are new to you since last night," he said, "but every one of them's fine and good." "Yes, I think so, too." "Okay," he said, and they smiled at each other.
They sat down to eat then, but they'd barely begun when Aaron noticed she'd not set the teakettle on the hottest part of the stove for scalding their dishes later. "You forgot the kettle," he said, and she started to get up at the same time as he did. He said, "I'll get it," but when he lifted it he felt it was empty and went to the pump to fill it. Coming back to the table, he came up behind Mary and put his lips near her ear, whispering, "Is something coming over you again, Mary? This forgetfulness is not like you." He planted a bit of a kiss on her neck before sitting down again.
She blushed.
In the early afternoon they walked out to the cornfield behind the horses. Aaron had more marking to do, so Mary began the planting with the hand planter while he finished marking the last of the checkrows. He turned the horses free to crop the grass along the edges of the field before joining her with a second planter. Together they crossed and re- crossed the checkered field, hesitating at each x to push the seeds into the earth.
They broke to fill their seed canisters and later for a drink of water from the fruit jar Mary had left on the grassy verge in the shade of a rock. He opened the burlap-wrapped jar and handed it to her first. After she drank, she two-handed it straight across at him. But taking the jar from her he turned it until the side she'd drunk from was under his lips, the timeless gesture of a lord for his lady. She turned pink as he handed the jar back to her, but feeling a bit bold when he leaned up close, she kissed him on the corner of his mouth, rather surprising both of them.
They worked through the afternoon, thinking of evening. None of the usual monotony of the job struck them, for monotony is an affliction of the empty mind. Both of their minds were full.
As the afternoon glare wore low, they headed home, with the horses dragging the marker and Mary riding atop it. Chores were waiting when they got back, but this time when Mary had finished her own she didn't go to join Aaron in the barn to lend her ineffectual hand. She went in- stead to fix supper and take in the clothes from the line, folding and sprinkling them in preparation for tomorrow's ironing.
The last thing left hanging on the lines were the sheets, cut across now with dapples of late-day shadows. Aaron, walking between the outbuildings, saw Mary at the lines with her arms upraised, plucking at the clothespins and gathering the sheets high so they wouldn't touch the ground. At the sight of her there, as lithe and slim as the long shadows about her, he was struck again with the veritable perfection of their place here together.
Taking the sheets fresh from the line, Mary went to remake the beds, doing first her own, then Aaron's. In his room she thought about all the nights he'd slept there, wondered if he'd ever heard her and Jonathan making love, wondered what it would be like when they did it again, as they surely must.
The smell of supper cooking downstairs brought her back to reality, and she finished draping the coverlet over the bed and went down to tend to her cooking. She was busy when Aaron came in. He kept a stream of talk going as they busied themselves, he at the sink and she at the range. "We got a good start on the corn today because of your help. Thanks, Mary." "No need for thanks, Aaron. I didn't mind it."
"Still, you must be tired. You're not used to doing double duty in the house and fields." "The day went so fast it hardly seemed like work. Anyway, I'll be in the fields again at harvest time. This little bit of work will seem like nothing next to shocking grain." "The day went fast for me, too, Mary. Because you were out there with me."
He had his shirt off, was lathering his chest and arms, and it was all she could do to keep from watching the process, while finally he dried with a towel. "I missed you in the barn though. The cats asked where you where," he teased. Then his voice changed. "I told them you were up here putting clean sheets on the bed for tonight." He said it quietly but not teasingly. She picked up Aaron's dirty blue cambric shirt from the back of the chair and was going to take it out to the clothes basket on the back porch, but he said, "Come here to me, Mary." And she felt a flash of heat go to her face. "I've waited through a million corn seeds and a hundred hours of chores, and I can't wait any longer." He was standing with the white towel slung around his neck, holding onto its ends.
She let the shirt fall back onto the chair and turned slowly to him. She went to stand in front of him and look up at his face, then back down to his bare chest, where a light mat of red-gold hair lay damp after the washing. Then he flipped the towel off his neck and around the back of hers, pulling her toward him. She put a hand lightly on his chest then and could feel the beating of his heart.
"Don't be afraid to touch me, Mary," he said.
And her hand withdrew a little. "It's not decent in the daylight," she said. "It's evening already…call it evenlight." "It doesn't seem right," she repeated. "Do you want to touch me, Mary? As bad as I want to touch you?" he asked.
Her hand was still poised uncertainly between them. She didn't answer aloud, only nodded in assent.
He took her hand and pulled it back onto his chest and moved it back and forth, across the fine, sparkling hairs, across his hard brown nipples. "If you want it and I want it, what could be more right?" His hand still guided hers over ribs, navel, neck, jaws, and back down to his chest. "I don't know," she choked. "I want you to touch me everywhere, like you touched my face last night," he said, his eyes an intense dark brown. "Oh, Aaron, you're beautiful," she breathed. "Am I, Mary?" he asked. "Maybe it's because you're looking with your heart instead of your eyes."
She reached to place her fingertips fleetingly on his lips, saying, "I think I'm looking with both."
He surrounded her then with his bare arms and chest. When his mouth came down on hers, she felt that her hands couldn't pull strongly enough on his back to bring his beauty into her. She rubbed the fingers of both hands straight and hard up the center of his backbone, surpris ing herself with the motions her hands made of their own volition.
His arms reached so far around her slim body that his hands rested on the soft sides of her breasts under her arms. He spread his fingers and felt the vague swellings there, but when he backed a bit away from her to caress her from the front, she took her mouth away from his and said, "Our supper's burning, Aaron." "To hell with supper," he said hoarsely, and kept his hand busy as he pulled her closer again and kissed her. "To hell with the light, Mary, don't be afraid of it. I want you."
And for a moment she was tempted to give in, light or no light. "Please don't make me cook another meal, Aaron. If you don't let me go, I'll have to."
He finally realized that there was a taint of burning pork beginning to drift around them. He turned her loose then, cursing the bad timing but knowing she was right about the meal. She caught the food in time to save it, but wished it had been cooked perfectly, as she'd wanted it for him. They had to eat it dry, cutting off the parts that were too brown, but neither of them minded a bit. Aaron had come to the table without putting on a clean shirt, and sat through the entire meal with those impudent nipples daring her to look at them across the overdone food.
After supper they worked together to clean up the mess, and when the kitchen was clean, Aaron picked up his dirty shirt from the back of the chair, picked up the dishpan, and headed out the door to sling it out at the edge of the back- yard. Then he leaned the pan against the doorjamb, put his dirty shirt in the basket at the far end of the porch, and walked down toward the barnyard.
He knows what he's leaving me alone for, Mary thought as she watched him go, and he knows I'll do it. And from far off down the barnyard he heard the dishpan clank as she opened the screen door and knocked it over. Retrieving it from its resounding spin, she stopped its ringing and took it inside to fill and carry upstairs for her sponge bath. She wished she could bathe down at the kitchen sink where it was more convenient, but what if he came back before she was finished?
As it turned out, that's just what Aaron did, and on pur- pose. She heard his footfalls making the old steps creak, and in a rush of near-panic she whipped the wet cloth over her soapy legs, trying to hurry, knowing she'd never beat him if he came in. She stopped her splashing and held her breath to listen. Her heart beat wildly as she saw the doorlatch lift. Aaron stepped inside.
She was standing in the lamplight with one foot in the dishpan and one on the floor. Dear God, she was beautiful. Her skin was glimmering yellow in highlights and dusked to pink in shadow. He caught a flash of one small breast before she turned in a protective half-crouch away from him, putting her arms over her front to shield it. "Please go out and leave me, Aaron," she implored. He saw her look over her shoulder at the towel lying beside the dishpan on the floor. But she would have had to turn toward him to pick it up, so she left it and kept her guarded position.
But when Mary looked up from the towel to Aaron, she saw that he was looking in the dresser mirror at her full reflection. He had missed very little. "Please, Aaron," she begged again. "I'll go because you ask me, not because it's indecent to stay," he said, and went out, closing the door. She heard him go to his room, then clump hurriedly back downstairs. As she finished her bath, she heard the iron clank of the reservoir lid lifting and the following sound of the pump handle being worked. She figured he must be finishing the other half of the bath he'd started before supper. A smile teased her lips. There haven't been so many baths taken in this house in any three days since I've lived here, she thought.
With the thought and smile still warming her, she dried herself, dressed, put her dishpan out in the hall, and sat down at the windowsill in the fragrant night air to brush her hair.
Aaron was making busy noises down there, and twice she heard him go out onto the porch below her window, but the roof angled there and she couldn't tell what he was doing. The pump sounded again, and after a while he came upstairs to his room, then went back down and outside. She heard the slosh of her bathwater as he dumped it in the yard. She'd forgotten about it sitting out there in the hall! She smiled a little thank-you smile and wondered if he could feel it being conveyed to him through the evening.
When he'd finished, Aaron climbed the stairs for the last time and knocked. She was sitting on the floor at the low sill of the open window. "Come in," she called, and when he did, added, "This is a fine time to knock." But she reached up her hand toward him and said, "Come and smell the night. I think I even smell the first lilacs."
He squatted down beside her with his elbows on his knees, and they stayed awhile, holding hands and smelling spring ease into summer. "Hey, girl," he said, taking a strand of her hair from her neck into his fingers, "I was unfair…but my sense of decency is different than yours. Anyway, you were beautiful."
Soon he said, "Will you come to my room tonight?"
She gave him a short look, then nodded. He got up and blew out the lantern on her dresser, then held his hands out to her and tugged her up. He walked ahead of her down the hall so that she couldn't see into the room as his broad shoulders filled the doorway. But a halo of lantern light radi- ated from inside, and before she saw them, she smelled lilacs coming from somewhere in front of Aaron. When she was fully into the room, she saw two branches of lilacs in a mason jar of water beside the bed. "Oh, Aaron. How did you know I love them?" She went to plunge her face among the violet petals. "I've lived with you for seven years, too," he said, gratified by her pleasure. "I do know some things you like. See here?" he gestured to the dresser. "Chokecherry wine." There were two small jelly glasses beside the bottle of sparkling drink.
"Another of my favorites!" Mary exclaimed. "Oh Aaron…" She gazed across the room at him, honey-hair rich in the lantern light, child's face lustrous with a flush of pleasure upon it. "You have such ways of pleasing. I'm afraid you'll spoil me." "I'd love to have the chance to try. If I could, I'd buy you wine in the finest hotel in the land, but people might frown and point, so we'll have to drink it here instead, okay?" He cocked his head, waiting for her reply. "I never drank wine in a bedroom before," she laughed. "Neither did I," he admitted, and his own rich laughter accompanied her to the dresser, where she filled both glasses. Holding one out to him, Mary said, "Among the things I love, there's chokecherry wine. You're right about that."
She didn't know which was sweeter, the rich red wine or sipping it here with Aaron. They sat on the edge of his bed, and when they had finished, he refilled their glasses. These second ones were shared sitting cross-legged on the bed, fa- cing each other. It was a thing she would never have dreamed of doing two days ago, yet here she was, feeling the glow of the wine and the man. "Will you let me leave the lantern on when we make love tonight?" he asked.
And again her cheeks took on a little of the claret color of the liquid in her glass. "Please don't ask me that," she said. "Why?" "Because it seems indecent." "Like the act of love itself?" he shrugged.
"I didn't say that, Aaron. I didn't even think it." She took a small sip from her glass before going on. "Last night you taught me that it isn't indecent, even between us to whom it's forbidden. When you made love to me, it made the act between Jonathan and me seem the indecent one. How can that be, Aaron, when Jonathan's my husband?" "Darling, I don't know about what passed between you and Jonathan, but I know what didn't pass between you…and without that, the act is a sham."
She felt a ripple of delight thrill through her at his endear- ment, at his casual use of it when she was so unaccustomed to words like that. "But I have always loved Jonathan, and I know he loves me. That should make it good, but it was never like last night with you. Why didn't Jonathan know?" "I can't answer that, Mary. Jonathan never sowed wild oats. You are probably his first and only. Yet nature should have told him somehow."
Again Mary was struck with the unbelievable fact of herself and Aaron sitting facing each other cross-legged on a bed, drinking chokecherry wine and talking about this. She knew it was more than their long friendship that made it possible, that it stemmed also from something Aaron had learned in the city, and she wanted to confirm that, yet she couldn't ask about it. She looked into her glass of wine, screwing up some courage. "It wasn't just nature that told you…was it, Aaron?"
"Mary, if I answer that, you must promise not to let it matter to you, because it doesn't matter to me."
He watched her nod. "You know why I went to the city, don't you?" He didn't wait for a reply, for none was needed. "I felt in the way here. I thought if I left the house to you and Jonathan, the two of you might have more success…more privacy. I've always known what it would mean to both of you to have a family, and I knew that my being here wasn't helping matters between you. And so I went. But the city is a hard place, Mary. There are times a man needs a friendly face, and out of the hundreds all around him there isn't one, at least none he's familiar with. It's like a whole different world there. The factories are nothing but grinding piles of men and machines. And people are treated as if there's no difference between the two. You work your shift with the stink of sweat that's never dried all around you-no sun to dry it, nothing green. Nobody who cares a damn if it's you there at the machine the next day or somebody else. Just a poke in the ribs and a 'get goin', Bucko' from the boss-man when you slow your pace. It's not Moran Township, Mary."
He paused momentarily, looking into his glass. "It was the longest year of my life, and the only thing that made it human was a bit of feeling another human being was near me now and then. There were women in the factory who were used to seeing pasty-faced boys with slack muscles, looking like they'd crawled out from under a rock. I guess they didn't mind a bit of me now and again, for at least I had color and strength from the farm. It was those women who taught me something about what a woman needs. But they were just warm bodies to remind me that I was still alive. They knew their way around men, I'll say that for them. But not one of them is worth one hair from your precious head, Mary." And he reached out to put a finger under her chin and raise it so their eyes could meet.
All he'd been saying had created an ache within her, the ache of knowing Aaron's loneliness and the ache of knowing herself to be loose, like those women in the city. "I'm no better than those women, Aaron, I…" "Don't you ever say that again."
She turned her head to free her lips. "I'm married to one man and bedded with another, and I find I can't even be sorry. I've wronged them both, and I can't find guilt for it." "You haven't wronged me, Mary. What we're sharing is too good, too right to call it wrong." "And what about Jonathan?" she asked. "Yes, what about Jonathan? What about my brother who threw you at my feet, traded you off so he could gain a sire?" "None of that can excuse me or the injustice I've done to Jonathan." "Injustice? Mary, he deserves every injustice in the book after what he asked of you, and all that hypocritical claptrap he comes up with can't excuse him." "What about us, though, Aaron? Doesn't the same hold true for us?" "I'm not making excuses, Mary. I don't feel the need to. I'm not using Jonathan's wishes as a crutch, either. What happened between us happened like a wholesome, growing thing, too good for excuses. I don't need to be ex- cused."
There was a shine of lantern light in her eyes as she looked at him, confessing the rightness she felt about herself and Aaron. Seeing that confession in her face, he said, "Last night you said two people don't have to be friends or playmates to fall in love, remember?"
She nodded silently. "And I told you that sometimes it makes it more fun." "Oh, but Aaron, I never knew." "Mary, until last night I really didn't, either."
The touch of Aaron's hand on her cheek turned her to sweet, shaking jelly as he pulled her forward and kissed her. But their crossed knees got in the way between them, so he took the glass from her and set it on the floor, along with his own, stretching out across the width of the bed to do so. Then he looked up at Mary and reached his hand out to her. And she took it and let him pull her down beside him, beside Aaron, her friend, her teacher, her lover-Aaron, who now seemed all things to her.
He began the magic his hands had played on her last night, but before he could take her gown from her, she sat up and turned the lantern off, knowing he had no intention of doing so himself. They loved again in the dense blackness. It carried the wealth of his murmured endearments, teaching her the way of words before all spoken sounds dissolved.