Gravity Box and Other Spaces (13 page)

William let out a weak cough. He had been sick since Cambridge, but in the last six days he had grown worse. Conny touched her fingertips to his forehead. Hot. She glanced at the bottle of laudanum on the bedside table. William hated it, but it did help him sleep during the worst of his fevers and coughing fits.

She left the bedroom door slightly ajar and went down to the kitchen. A puddle covered the tiles by the door and threatened to become a stream. She took the mop and dabbed at the water. There was no energy to her work. It was just something to do. A knock at the door made her look up to see Geoffrey framed in the door window, rain pouring off his wide-brimmed hat like a veil. She let him in.

“I asked at the post office where you were,” he said. “They asked me to bring your mail. Said you hadn't been down in a week.”

“Five days, actually.”

She hung his coat off the back of a chair in the corner and set his hat on the seat. She ran the mop over the new puddle he made and closed the door.

He dropped a bundle of envelopes on the table, then stood back, hands in his pockets. Conny thought he looked just like a boy expecting a scolding.

“We haven't seen you since Reading,” she said.

“I'm working at the foundry.”

Conny waited. She expected a reaction, a recognition, a response—from herself, but nothing happened. She pulled a chair from the table and sat down.

“In Birmingham,” she said, “you worked in a warehouse. Ipswich it was a street cleaner and in Bath a stable. I'd gotten so used to you being wherever we were that it took three more moves to realize that you'd abandoned us. Five years since you and I started. Eight before that with just William. A lot of time and effort to just walk away from.”

“I didn't—”

She waited for him to finish. When he said nothing, she continued. “He got very sick in Cambridge. I thought he'd die. I forgot all about you then. I didn't think about you at all till just now. Isn't that odd?”

Geoffrey's face twisted in a painful scowl. Conny thought his scar would open. “I wondered—” he looked toward the ceiling. “Is he—?”

“Upstairs. Still sick.”

Geoffrey sighed. “He hasn't written anything since Cambridge, then.”

Conny stared at him, a chill settling in her bowels. He gave her a quick, wry smile, then sat down across from her.

“Did you ever ask him if there'd been anyone before you?” he asked.

“No.”

Geoffrey gestured at his face. “William wrote a story in university about two boys who became best friends. He didn't know a lot about friendship. The university journal
wouldn't print it, but the word got around that he'd written it and that it was about me and him. Some lads took it on themselves one night to exact moral realignment. I don't remember much besides William holding me in his arms, screaming, him with a bloody nose and me with a map of the Suez Canal across my face.”

“So had there been?”

“What?”

“Anyone before me.”

“Just me.”

Upstairs, William began coughing again. Conny listened, willing it to stop. When it worsened, she stood.

“Stay,” she said. He nodded, and she went up to William.

A few days later, during another afternoon downpour, his fever broke. Conny cleaned him up and changed his sheets, then cleaned the rest of the sickroom. At one point she noticed him watching her, eyes half-lidded. His face moved as if to smile. Perspiration slicked his cheeks.

Toward evening the rain stopped, and she opened his window to rid the room of its oppressive air. She mopped the floor hoping that too would help. When she finished his room, she went into his study.

Boxes of books were stacked against one wall. A plain table served as a desk. Conny picked items up and put them down, not really straightening anything. He had yet to do any work here. His desk stood ready—paper waited on one end, the ivory pen and ink bottle by the lamp, and the bulky typewriter he almost never used on the other. She picked up the bottle: the same one, all this time. The traces of their blood must have long since disappeared. Perhaps some few molecules had worked into the glass
wall. He always refilled it when the ink ran out, the bottle and the pen constant, lifelong companions.

She ran the mop lightly over this floor and took the bucket down to the kitchen. She was hungry but too tired to bother cooking anything. She tore off a piece of bread and poured a glass of wine and went up to her own room, just across the hall from William's. She lay down, closing her eyes without expecting to sleep, wondering what it would be like to stay in one place forever.

She opened her eyes to a wash of brilliant moonlight silvering the walls of her room. The silence around her seemed like the night was holding its breath. She was absolutely awake. Her pulse beat quickly, as if something had frightened her from sleep. It was only then she realized that she
had
actually slept.

No light shone in the empty hall except a dim glow that peeked out from the stairwell from below. Curious, she went to the staircase, but could hear nothing but silence. She descended the stairs taking care to be as quiet as possible.

The main room held a bluish light like water-reflected moonlight that muted color and detail, yet gave the impression of perfect illumination. She paused on the last step, letting the feel of the old wood against her feet register as solid, as real. A faint breeze shifted her hair, tickling her face. Movement caught her eye. She stared across the room, against the wall, by the long divan. Another movement—an arm shifted, swimming through the unreliable light. Conny stepped to the floor and threaded her way between chairs and tables, and stopped before the couch.

The arm moved again and a face came up out of shadow.

“He's writing again,” Geoffrey said.

Conny made her way over to him and perched on the sofa edge, her hip against his side. She walked her fingers across his stomach. He snatched her hand and held it, running his thumb up and down her palm.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

She tried to find a way to misunderstand him, but she knew what he meant. “Since Cambridge. A little before, maybe.”

“For both of us, then.” He lowered his arm and looked at her. “I ran away after Reading. I blamed you. I thought we shouldn't be doing this, and it was you kept finding me and insisting, but that wasn't it. I wanted to see if I could live on my own.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “Sure. If you can call it living. Tasteless food, stale air, meaningless routine. No reason to get up in the morning except that it's too bright to sleep. You?”

“I've been too busy taking care of him to notice.”

He gave her a skeptical look. Then, abruptly, he frowned and sat up.

William stood at the bottom of the stairs, a long nightshirt covering him to his shins, staring at them. He held a thin sheaf of paper in his hand.

Conny's lungs emptied in quick succession as her thighs relaxed. The coils in her stomach released across her ribs, along her back, through her arms, and ebbed away. She folded against Geoffrey. Where their skin touched sweat oiled the contact—it let them slide minutely with each inhalation and exhalation; at the exact line along which their skin parted, evaporation cooled them. Moisture ran from her shoulders, into the runnel of her
spine. In the stillness she heard the faint scratch of pen nib on paper.

“My God,” Geoffrey breathed, “the man's prodigious.”

Conny nodded. She opened her eyes. Across the room, by the window, William hunched over the small table, working.

“What do we do if he dies?” Geoffrey asked quietly.

Conny raised herself on one arm. “That's not funny.”

“Wasn't meant to be. It's a serious question. We ought to think about it.”

She kissed his neck, licked the salt from the hollow of his throat. “Not now.” She lay back against him, and he ran his fingertips lightly along her sides and over her hips and buttocks. His gentle touch still surprised her.

Conny closed her eyes but could not sleep. Geoffrey's question nagged at her. In the nearly two years since Norwich, William had never really recovered. His coughing peppered the nights, and he obstinately refused to see a doctor. Geoffrey regularly threatened to pick him up and carry him to one, but it never happened. Still, William seemed no worse. Conny imagined him like a stone balanced on an edge, waiting for a sufficient tremor to send it tumbling. He needed to be in a sanatorium, but neither she nor Geoffrey could bear to do it. At times their inertia almost let her believe Geoffrey's occasional delusions that they had no reality of their own away from William—that they existed only in the benevolence of his incessant scribbling.

“We go on,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“If he dies. We go on.”

“Can we?”

“Shh.” She listened to William working. It was in these moments she imagined herself as a pyre, a fire eating
everything down to charred debris, but then William moved his pen again stirring the ashes, and phoenix-like, found something more to burn.

Conny trudged up the steep path. The late afternoon light angled through the trees in shafts. Devon was peaceful—she liked this place more than any other. She tried to imagine living the rest of her life here. This time it was possible, she decided. The three of them had achieved a kind of equilibrium. The last year had been the best.

It was nearly dark by the time she got back to the cottage. Geoffrey sat at the foot of the steps. He looked up at her, his face taut and grim. From the house she could hear William shouting. Something shattered.

“What happened?” she asked.

Geoffrey shrugged. “He threw me out.”

She dropped her bag beside him and ran up the stairs.

Furniture had been moved around, a table turned over. Ceramic shards littered the floor. William squatted before the fireplace. As Conny came up behind him she saw him shove a handful of pages into the flames. They curled up and blackened almost at once. Even before they were gone, he threw more in.

“William!”

She grabbed the next stack from him and he fell. He stared at her for a few seconds as if he did not know her, and then he jumped to his feet and took the pages back, pushing her away. He flung them into the hearth.

“Damn them! Damn you!”

Conny tried to get the rest of the manuscript from him. He whirled around and caught her with an elbow. She staggered onto the couch, breathless, and watched as he tossed the rest of the pages to the fire.

“Damn! Damn! Damn it all!”

His face seemed to compress, caught for an instant between rage and hurt; then the tears came and he howled. Conny held him. His thin body convulsed. He screamed and shook, made motions to push her away, but without any force.

“I'm tired,” he said.

Conny led him to his bedroom and helped him undress. She could almost pick him up now. She drew the sheets and eased him onto the mattress.

He reached up and touched her face. “Don't go.”

Startled, Conny stared at him for a few moments. She took off her clothes. He watched her with an expression of gratitude. Naked, she climbed into bed with him. He laid his head on her breast and idly ran his fingers over her stomach, her hip, her other breast. After a time his hand became still and his breathing deepened.

Conny watched the last light fade and the room pass into night, not wanting to move. She heard Geoffrey come back into the house. She listened to the heavy tread of his boots to the kitchen, then back into the living room. Finally, he came into the bedroom.

“Conny—?”

“He's sleeping,” she whispered.

“No,” William said. He lifted his head. “Join us, Geoffrey. Please.”

“You told me to get out.”

“I know. I'm sorry. Please.”

Geoffrey drew himself up.

“Conny?”

“Please,” she said.

Geoffrey undressed in the doorway. As he did, William's fingers began moving again. At first Conny was more surprised than excited. His fingers slipped between
her thighs. She moved her legs apart to give him access. This time she did not simply lie open for him. She reached beneath the thin leg he had thrown across her thigh. He sucked his breath between his teeth.

Then Geoffrey stood by the bed. She could not see his face, and she doubted he could see her well by the dim light through the open door. She brought her free leg up and kicked the sheets down.

“Please,” she said.

William scooted to the far side of the bed. Conny rolled toward him and kissed him. The bed shifted as Geoffrey lay down. She felt his hand on her hip. She raised her leg and Geoffrey's fingers slid inside her. She pushed back toward him. He pressed against her, kissed her shoulders, her neck. Conny caressed William. He bent toward her and traced the shape of her breast with his mouth. William reached across her and grabbed Geoffrey's arm. They all stopped for the moment making a tableau, a kind of completion. Conny bit her lip to keep from crying.