How to Read an Unwritten Language (15 page)

“Draw it again?” I asked.

She did, first extending the particular curves and intersections of the lines of my palm, though no palm yet existed on the page. She continued that seemingly chaotic crosshatching until they led to my fingerprints, where she stopped. After a long pause, she drew the outline of my hand, then gave dimension to all the rounded slopes that circled the center of my palm. Again she hesitated, staring at those five fingers and their empty faces. Meticulously she gave expression to the delicate, echoing curves of my prints, adding slight shadows that hinted at sadness and anger, subdued joy, the possibility of laughter.

When she was done I stared at my hand and its image; indeed, both seemed filled with conflicting emotions.

“Now touch it?” I whispered.

Kate hesitated, then laughed quietly with a hint of resignation. She slid one long-nailed finger along the lines of my palm, just lightly touching my skin: now
we
were pencil and page. But before she could finish tracing me, my fingers reached up and held her hand. Neither of us moved. I pulled her gently toward me. Her eyes narrowed with pleasure, then closed as we settled and twisted on the carpet, and I let her imagine a private sketch of what we did together.

*

And so we began our entry into sexual mysteries that were breathtaking for their very ordinariness: the borders between ticklish and arousing that we'd chart on each other's bodies; an unexpected stomach gurgling or surreptitious fart mingling with the cries and moans we were capable of; the shifting map of our sweaty scents as we accomplished exquisite unfurlings in each other's arms.

Before curling into sleep together we'd practice an intimate ritual. Kate would stretch with languid grace and pull a tissue from the box. “Want one?” she'd ask lazily. When I whispered
yes
she'd lift out another. Then Kate would sop up the excess sperm that dripped from her, while I dabbed her moistness from my penis.

Kate always threw her tissues at the wastebasket in the corner, one by one, and I tossed mine too. We rarely made the target, and our failed shots—crumpled balls of sticky tissue—lay scattered on the floor. Yet in the morning, while on my way to open the bedroom curtains, I saw those little balls as flowers blooming out of the hardwood floor. I'd bend down to gather them up, always surprised how light they'd become overnight—our dried sex was now a delicate white crust, enfolded in the tissues' twists and curves.

*

At first Kate kept even our artistic collaboration a secret from her parents. “They wouldn't approve,” she said simply, and though they apparently disapproved of nearly everything she was in no hurry to include me in that long list. As for me, during my periodic phone calls to remind my father that he had another son, I'd occasionally make a few cryptic comments that hinted at a girlfriend, but Father's terse telephone formality invited little more than another rundown of my latest courses and an estimation of future grades. And Kate was certainly in no rush for introductions. The few stories of my childhood that she could bear to hear made her draw such ugly pictures—the chipped face of a toppled doll, a stain on a rug that looked alive—that I held off any further confidences.

Kate claimed her own childhood wasn't worth the telling. “I'm glad I don't have the kind of stories you do,” she'd say, responding to my skepticism. Though ordinary daily details would have satisfied me, I didn't press her, suspecting that I loved Kate at least partly for her need for privacy—I wanted to embrace whatever was frightened inside her and make it mine. So I was startled, thrilled, and made more than a little anxious when Kate asked me to accompany her home for the Thanksgiving holiday.

*

Kate's parents met us at the front door, their mild faces so nondescript I couldn't quite grasp where her delicate features came from. Her blond hair, though, was clearly a gift from her mother, even if Mrs. Martin's resembled a doll's wig that had been fussed with too much.

“Welcome, dear,” her mother said with a brush of cheeks before stepping back and adding with a smile, “Oh, your hair will look so beautiful when you finally get a decent cut.”

When Kate winced, I saw for one fleeting moment my sister flinching before Father's words after her school play. Then Kate's father reached out and without a word shook my hand, forcing me to introduce myself. We all stood together for a clumsy moment, none of us quite meeting the others' eyes.

“Well …?” Kate murmured.

“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Martin replied with a glance at her husband, and they led us into a home thick with upholstered furniture and yellow shag carpeting. Heavy living room curtains closed out the crisp blue autumn sky, yet even dull light couldn't hide the cold gleam of the porcelain figurines lined up in a curio cabinet: a little band of musical frogs, Jack and Jill lugging a pail together, a barefoot student asleep at his desk, a family of elephants, a quartet of drunks crooning beside a lamppost.

Kate vanished into the kitchen with her mother. I settled onto the couch across from Mr. Martin, who grunted as he fit into a chair, turning a bland gaze on me that I'd been warned was deceptive. Anticipating a fatherly grilling, I was especially nervous about any question touching on life after college—I was still marching through an array of business courses without a clear idea of what I'd do with my degree. What I most cared for at school was the comic strip Kate and I worked on together, but this was another of the many subjects that had to be kept secret.

I needn't have worried—Kate's father hoarded words as if they were in limited supply. He so efficiently parried whatever conversational gambit I came up with that I began to suspect this was his way of drawing me out, of making me give away something he wasn't supposed to know. Adding to my unease were the snippets of casual criticism I heard Kate's mother offer her in the kitchen: “Straighten your shoulders, dear … what do you have against lipstick, anyway?”

Finally Kate murmured an excuse and joined us in the living room. She tucked herself in a corner chair, but instead of speaking she simply joined her father's lingering silence. In the dim light Kate's face began to resemble her parents' bland features, her cheeks so smooth that I imagined her skin was as cold as those tiny figures in the curio cabinet. If only I could reach out and gently stroke life back into her face, her arms.

One slow minute after another passed, and Kate sat so still she might as well have been one of her own sketched objects, waiting for a caption. Afraid she was somehow sinking into her family's gravitational pull, I realized I had to offer her a way out—with words, words, any words I could think of, and I soon found myself in the middle of a slightly manic rundown of my current classes, piling one trivial detail onto another, from the relative weight of each course's textbooks to the statistical likelihood that at least one of my professors per semester would smoke a pipe.

At the sound of my voice Mrs. Martin came out of the kitchen and asked me to help set the table. Trying to hide my reluctance, I joined her with a hearty, “Of course.” Then I extended my living room monologue, loud enough so it would carry back to Kate, and commented on the tastefully arranged bowls and serving plates, the lovely blue-rimmed dishes, the impressively ancient silverware. Mrs. Martin moved from chair to chair beside me, hemming and hmming in vague disapproval until we completed the table's careful symmetries.

The carving of the turkey was a funereal event, Kate's father silently slicing soft white slabs of meat and setting them in even layers on a serving dish. Then the various bowls were passed back and forth with great solemnity and still Kate said nothing. Spooning cranberries onto my plate, and by now crazy with the urge to keep talking, I announced, “Oh, Cape Cod Bells, the most popular type of cranberries.”

Recalling that experimental corner of my father's nursery, I embarked on a disquisition on how the cranberry bush grows in sandy soil that has to be drained before the flowering season. Having given up on me as unacceptably chatty, Kate's parents answered with nods. Kate merely passed the bowl of stuffing yet still I rattled away.

“But what does a cranberry bush look like, exactly?” Kate interrupted, finally joining in, accepting the escape I offered. She faced me, her eyes clear and curious.

“Well, it has small evergreen leaves,” I replied happily. “They're pale underneath, if I remember correctly, and their edges roll back a bit.”

Kate had heard enough of my nursery days appreciate my former skills, and now she lifted a forkful of sweet potato to her lips and asked, “What do the branches look like?”

“Um, they're thin, and connected to a woody stem that's kind of like a creeper. It stays low to the ground.”

“And the flower, Michael? Is there such a thing as a cranberry flower?” she asked, eyes narrowing with pleasure, because of course she knew there must be a flower and that I'd be able to describe it.

“It's light pink, only about a half inch or so across, I think—”

“So tiny.”

“Yes, tiny—”

“What do the petals look like?”

“Well, they're … narrow. But they open out nicely.”

By now released from the spell of her parents, Kate's eyes had almost closed, my words the model for what she limned within herself. Imagining from what strange angle she'd shadow in that flower, I tried to inspire her inner sketching: “Those little petals curl up in the wind, like … arms reaching out.”

“And the stamens? What do they look like?”

Kate's parents took in our words with a raising of eyebrows that, in this household, was equivalent to assaulting pots with wooden spoons. My Kate ignored them, and we continued our invisible, collaborative illustration.

*

On my lap lay a drawing of a coffee mug so enveloped in darkness it seemed to be melting. The cup's shadowy edges also suggested a woman's profile—wasn't that a cheek, an ear, a wave of dark hair? Perhaps I was wrong. The more I stared, the more it switched from shadows to something like a face and then back again, a frustrating ambiguity that reminded me of that Thanksgiving months ago when I wasn't sure at first whose side Kate was on. Even now, though we were living together and content beyond what I'd ever hoped for, sometimes Kate's eyes confounded me as I looked at her across the room or over a spread of pillows—were they blue with gray highlights, or gray with the brightest blue shining through?

Concentrating on Kate's drawing again, I tried to imagine something hot inside the cup—cappuccino, herbal tea, tangy broth—that would help me guess my way into a caption. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs. Kate had effectively moved in since January, but those weren't her distinctive soft steps that stopped outside the door to my apartment, or any friend's that I could recall. With an unhappy lurch in my stomach, I wondered if one of her parents had finally decided to discover our secret.

The knock on the door was familiar—light, yet insistent. Before I could place its signature the door opened. There stood my sister in a dark rumpled skirt, her bright red blouse only half tucked in, her gaunt face forcing out a smile.

“Well, hello, Michael,” she said in a small hoarse voice, and then she stepped inside.

Her sudden appearance so surprised me I could only produce a feeble “Laurie?”

She kissed me on the cheek and then collapsed on the couch, kicking her shoes off. “Oh, I want to hear something else—how about, ‘Good Lord, dear sister, you look as if you've driven across three state lines without a wink of sleep.”

“You have?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Laurie plumped up a couch pillow. “Wake me up in time for dinner?” she whispered, almost instantly slipping into sleep, a curl of hair easing over her cheek as her breathing steadied and slowed.

I hadn't seen my sister, had barely spoken to her since she'd gone off to college last fall, so why had she come here, so obviously in some kind of trouble? I almost shook her shoulders to wake her up, but her calm face reminded me of our darkest days with Mother, when I sometimes checked on my brother and sister at night, always startled at how sleep appeared to wipe the worry from their faces.

Laurie's profile, pressed against a dark pillow, eerily suggested that border of shadows on Kate's cup. I returned to my quiet struggle with the drawing. It was a woman's face, I decided. Or at least that's what I saw now, and my caption would have to make a reader see it too.
I feel like my head is filled with hot coffee
was a possibility. Occasionally I glanced at Laurie as she shifted an arm or leg in her sleep, hoping for inspiration, and then Kate returned, huffing through the door with two brimming bags of groceries.

Her smile dissolved at the sight of a young woman asleep on the couch. “Who's that?”

“Laurie.”

She stared without a sign of recognition and I had to add, “My sister.”

“Your sister?” Her voice rose. “Why didn't you tell me she was—”

“Kate,” I whispered, “I didn't know. She just appeared.”

“Why is she here?”

“I don't know that either. She came in and fell asleep like
that,”
I said, snapping my fingers. “We'll have to wait until she wakes up.”

Kate nodded, her mouth a grim line, and I could see that my sister's sudden appearance conjured up what few stories I'd told of my family—and the specter of those I hadn't. Shifting the bags in her arms, Kate left for the kitchen.

I followed and helped her unpack the groceries. With growing frustration, Kate couldn't seem to remember where to put the cans of soup, the cookies, the brown rice. “The cereal, where's the cereal shelf?” she groused, waving a box of cornflakes.

“Hey, calm down.” I touched Kate's arm lightly, lingering on the sweaty crook of her elbow. She turned and held me, and over her shoulder I saw Laurie stirring on the couch. “My sister needs some rest,” I whispered into Kate's ear. “She drove a long way to get here.”