Unburying Hope (8 page)

When he knocked later, she opened the door,
stood awkwardly, wondering whether to lean against the doorjamb or to stand
upright.
 
She felt like she was
fourteen and the neighbor boy had knocked to give her a book she’d need for
homework after a sick day.
 
With
her mother sitting at the square bridge table behind her, she had blushed and
dug her toe into the ground, making small talk until the boy’s energy burnt out
and he walked backwards with a half hearted wave, “I’ll see you at school
then.”

Eddie stood still himself, saying perfunctory
hellos.

Feeling the heat of the new cashmere on her
prickled skin, she stepped aside and invited him in, a lovely warm sweat on her
cheeks, a flush in her lips.

She’d made them both a cocktail.
 
He’d stopped at one so she poured them
each a glass of water.
 

He was shy, looking around her apartment like
he was scouting a stakeout but then he relaxed.
 
They laughed a bit and then came closer physically on the
sofa, Celeste felt an electric shock between them when they both mentioned
living in the tropics some day.

Eddie told her in a quieted voice that the
heat of the flatlands between the mountains in Afghanistan had not been what
he’d expected as a born and raised Detroiter.
 
He’d expected to feel warm there with some humidity but the bone
dry dust, the oppressive heat, then the quick change to freezing weather in
higher altitudes, along with the deafening shelling had obliterated any sense
of similarity, any connection to the hot and humid summers of his childhood.
 

“Were you homesick?” Celeste asked.

He pulled his head back like he had been
poked, she thought.
 
He sputtered
and looked away, unable to communicate.
  
It was as though he was reticent to talk about
anything he didn’t bring up himself.
 

Celeste sat, took a deep breath in.
 
She reached for his hand and said,
“Have you ever been to Florida, or Hawaii or the Caribbean?”

His eyes lit up and a smile crept across his
face.
 
“No, I haven’t.
 
But I want to have a dive shop and I’ve
read about lots of places and I think I want to move to Hawaii.”

As he told her about Florida tornadoes and
Caribbean tropical storms that ruled out those locales, she breathed more easily.
 
He was brought back to life by talking
about his dreams.

She found herself interjecting what she knew,
about storm windows, about coastal cottages and their ability to withstand high
winds.
 
She heard herself tell him
about the cottage she wanted to live in some day, surrounded by trees with the
sweet oxygenated air she had read about on the Hawaiian islands.

He’d looked around her apartment and said ‘How
do you survive here, then?
 
Why are
you still in East Detroit?
 
Family?”

This time, she felt herself deflate, her
dreams punctured by the heavy weight of her own lack of momentum, her
paralysis, her inability to animate her own dreams.

Her mother was dead, the old lady was
dead.
 
She had Frank.
 
And she had her steady job.
 
Maybe she’d never have the courage it
would take to buy a plane ticket, pack up and leave behind what she had known
all her life, even with Frank leading with his already strong vision of moving
to South Carolina.
 
She felt the
betrayal of her inner voice that spun warm, creative dreams, not knowing if she’d
ever be able to make simple, devastating changes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “there’s nothing wrong
with you living here.
 
I just felt
we were so alike.”
 
He enveloped
her with his arms.
 
“Maybe we can
push each other, get ourselves off our asses, out of Detroit, to Hawaii.
 
Unless you have family here, I can
understand staying for family.”

“No, my mother died a long time ago,” Celeste
said, feeling the words with a gingery lightness.

“So what’s your plan?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What is your signpost?
 
What do you need to have, to get
yourself to move?
 
Money?”

“No.
 
I could move.
 
I’ve got my
buddy Frank, though.
 
I’d miss
him.
 
And I don’t know what I’d do
there.”

“You’d go out with me,” he said, pulling her
close.
 
“You’d go for runs with me
on the beach.
 
We’d hike, we could
surf.
 
I bet you’d look hot in a
bikini.”

Celeste blushed.
 
Wearing tight clothes was already stretching her comfort
zone.
 
Walking around with her
breasts and belly and bottom hanging out of skimpy swimsuit material would take
some getting used to, even if it was probably too hot to wear heavy sweaters
and jeans in Hawaii.
 
It seemed
innocent and safe talking about moving with him, there was something solid
about how he carried himself, but she did blush at the growing intimacy.

The lightweight emerald green cashmere sweater
lay meltingly on her chest skin, it didn’t sit pronounced against her like her
old navy wool blends had.

Shopping with Frank had in unglued her,
trashing her old coverings like the falling off old siding on abandoned houses
in Detroit, replacing her threadbare clothes with silky, soft fabrics that made
Celeste feel full, appealing, to herself if not to men.
 
Could new clothes really shake her to
her core as it felt like it had?

The stylish body conscious lycra dress to go
with a new pair of brown riding boots with a short stacked heel, or with the
two pair of short pumps – kitten heels, Frank had called them.
 
Short enough to walk four blocks from
the bus to the office but still sexy from the side and back view.
 
She’d never thought of herself from a
side and back view, and that’s probably how the years had slipped past her,
eyes blindered forward, no real goal in sight except for buying a house
someday, saving from every paycheck, not knowing how or when but propelled
gently from work day to work day with hardwood floors, a cottage exterior and
high ceilings in her day dreams.

“You ever think you might be root-bound here?”
Eddie asked.

“I don’t know what that means,” Celeste said,
a little embarrassed.

“It’s when a plant’s been forgotten so long in
its pot that its roots grow around and around instead of out.
 
Plants need to be re-potted into bigger
pots with fresh soil every once in a while, or put into the ground so their
roots can grow outwards instead of strangling inward on each other.”

“Well, that’s a pretty vivid description of my
life,” she said, looking closely at his face.
 
She could see a little boy in his tired manly face and she
could see the mask he was wearing, sitting in her living room.
 
It wasn’t a mask to inspire fear in
her, it was more a mask to hide his own.
 
She watched as he thought a bit about whether or not he had hurt her.

“I used to help in my grandparents garden out
in Livonia”, he said.
 
“And we’d
get plants from the nursery that were more expensive than they were worth and
my grandfather showed me how they’d been uncared for so long that there was
almost no dirt left in the pot, the roots had taken up all the space.” he said.

She felt him lean in to tentatively kiss her.
 
His chest was rock hard, his jaw line
angular but he pressed into her in a rounded way that blunted the physicality
of his strength.
 
As though he was
positioning himself to not be an aggressor.
 
He moved intently but calibrated to her responses, which
were, to her surprise, warming at a deep level.
 
She could feel his tension.
 
He wanted to get closer but he held himself back in a gentle
way, like a boy who didn’t yet know whether his touches were welcome.

She heard her own voice, entreating the
kindness she knew was in him, ‘I’m not ready to sleep with you.”

“That’s cool,” he said, pulling his hands away
from her, holding them in the air as if she had a gun and was robbing him.

“I figured you came for sex.”

“Look, I know I’m hot”, he said jauntily, “but
I’d be an ass if I just came over for sex.”

“But you said you’d swing by.
 
At 9:00 at night.”

“That’s what people say when they don’t want
you to know how much they want to see you,” he nudged her.
 
“They get their butts over when they’re
invited, they don’t wait a couple days, they show up pronto.”

Celeste blushed.
 
“Be serious.”

“I am,” he said, “I’ve been trying to date you
for months.
 
But you’re attached at
the hip to your buddy at work, so I never figured you’d call me.”

“Why didn’t you ever call me?” Celeste asked,
“Christ, I’m old fashioned,” she said with embarrassment.

“You’re a good girl, you never gave me your
number” Eddie said.

Celeste choked on a denial.

“I don’t give a shit who you’ve slept with,
I’m talking about your character,” he said.
 
“You’re a good person.”

“I feel like I’m being interviewed for a job.”

“So now we’re stalemated,” he said.
 
“You’ve got your ‘I’m not ready’ wall
up and I’ve met you with my ‘I can wait you out’ hillside gun spots.”

“What?” she giggled.

“I’m gonna wait until your wall wants to be
breached.”

“That sounds hot.”

He leaned in and lifted the bottom of her
green cashmere sweater up an inch away from her skin.

“You’re sweating,” he said.

Celeste felt her heart throbbing.
 
He was wearing his soldier mask but she
could see that he wasn’t really at war, he was working towards a diplomatic
opening of the gates.

Chapter
Ten

“Let me take you out to get something to eat,”
he said, standing and offering her his hand.
 
“I know it’s late, but we can get a bite and get to know
each other.”

It was his gentleness that wooed her, she
thought.
 
A huge juxtaposition
against his muscles, his jaw set in perpetual seriousness.
 

“What’s the red all over your hands?” he
asked.

She looked down and saw the flakes of the
spray paint, she must have gotten some of the wet paint on her hands when she
peeled off the gloves earlier in the dusk with Frank.
 
City Hall was large, a big stone building and she’d painted
thirty four red electric cars with tears and done a big black slash through the
HOPE letters around it exterior.
 
“I was doing a little painting,” she said, her voice halted.

He looked around the apartment, and she shook
her head, “Not here, I was helping a friend.
 
I’ll go wash up, then I’ll be ready.”

She walked into her small bathroom and closed
the door, scrubbing the five or six paint freckles from her skin, then cleaning
under fingernails and washing all the shreds down the sink.
 
She’d have to be more careful, next
time.
 
It was strange to think that
what she was doing, the graffiti, was something she’d have to hide.
 
It had been her alone for so long, then
a comfortable sneaky thing helped by Frank’s lookout duty.
 
She wasn’t sure someone in the military
would appreciate defacing public property, so she scrubbed until her hands were
pink from pressure then returned to her living room.

He called a taxicab and opened its door,
motioned her in.
 
When they
arrived, he paid the cabbie and again held the car door for her, then held her
hand as they walked towards a late-night diner.
 

“I’ll be right back,” he said suddenly.
 
She watched him run ahead to the
restaurant door, kicking and holding it open with one leg, grabbing the handles
at the back of an old lady’s wheelchair, gently raising her wheels over an
awkwardly placed doormat.
 
An old
man had been fumbling with the glass restaurant door and his wife’s wheelchair,
also holding the leash of an elderly service dog, a Labrador wearing a green harness
with some kind of patch on it.
 
The
man patted Eddie on the back and shook his hand in the restaurant vestibule,
saluting Eddie with a stiff, from-the-elbow motion.

Celeste felt a flush of tenderness towards
both Eddie and the stranger who stood at attention in front of him, his frail
body rocking unsteadily forward, leaning against the equally fragile dog.
 
As Eddie walked back out to her, he
looked away shyly, took her hand again and led her into the diner.