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When she looked at you, she began to speak.
With these words she did not chastise you as you had so many times received, her face close enough for you to feel the life of them. Although, you really could not hear much of anything she said past the thing that you wanted, at this time.
Shadows moved. Voices outside, down below. What you did hear from her, you wished you had been absent for.
Perhaps she knew that you had not been listening, and so said it, for effect. But why, really, you would never know. What you knew were those words, when you heard them. Felt that you would never stop hearing them from her. From you.
“You could have been such a great man, Rufe. Such a very great man.”
A subtle kind of imprecation. The worst of them all.
Her eyes told you she was not sorry, but you also saw that she had not wanted to go there, to skewer you in the perfect entrapment of self - criticism, to reach through your ribcage to your heart.
You died, then, in the eye of minds, beneath her gaze. No words had ever shaken you so greatly, and she lay there, slightly smaller than you, thin, an arrow, from which facts could fly free.
You had the thought then, growing stiff and cold beside her, that not even your father had ever pierced you so much.
You said nothing. And you waited, prayed, in this transfer of power, for her to leave, for her to accept her winnings, when you remembered that it was her hand in your shackles. Your head across her heart.
You saw on her face the current that could kill, now somehow on the surface of so much dark water, deeper than imagination and beyond experience. Faultless. Brazen, and you, too cavalier, roughing the edges of this moment, but you knew the end. You knew that she could do anything.
And no blame left your lips. It would have fallen, like petals beneath her gaze, some soundless beauty that ends in a pathetic surmise: "Dana, you're so much more than I'll ever be."
But you could never say that.
Or turned to teardrops on her breast, near to where you were held, so close to "one of them," the weight of you beside her as you lay on the floorboards, your cheek to her shoulder. The feelings there could fall. And, in that strange bit of time, she allowed it.
What hapless work. Here, with little idea of what you were seeking, just knowing that she could provide it, your movements reached for her, held her hand, your arm draped over, across, waiting for her to do the same. Fingers gripped yours, at last, and around came one of her arms. You knew what you wanted, because you felt it. You felt everything, all.
Work for her, probably, but how splendid, this holding of you. You began to feel of your own softness, that which was behind the mask of "make them" and "my orders" and "must inflict."
She held you, then, as no one ever had, so no one ever did.
It is true, no blame left your lips, no goading, no chiding, no cloaking of threats or omissions of truth. But something else did. It ran like water, and your eyes filled, with it, perhaps, though she did not look at you, this woman at whom you had cast so many stones.
You could say this.
"I'm sorry, Dana."
In it, love, grief.
And you saw there in the currents of her face that she was wrong. You watched the conclusions unfold, and there you found features that were, really, more like yours than they were different. Her eyes, like ice, a freezing burn of some unfortunate knowing.
It was not sex that you wanted from her.
Oh, you had waited long to catch her in a moment of thoughtlessness, this artful, intelligent woman, so full of questions and with answers to them all.
In you now, something formed, like intuition, or epiphany.
It was in this time, now, that you saw it for what it was. You did.
You saw, with eyes of understanding and some backlogged intellect, the repression of some thing that had once been uproarious - and it left you, at first, bewildered, then afraid, and then steady in your awareness, your hand like an act of God's. You entered empathy with arms outstretched, went blind in its soft, christening light, and then realized, through fear, that you would live. Touched it, whatever it was, and came away again, still unholy, unpunished, but somehow complete, a swelling in your breast like a heart, your hands tainted but imploring, a child's.
Wondering, just when, and just how, you had outlasted this.
You looked to where her arm stretched upward and yours followed it, your fingers around her wrist in the most tenderly imprisoning clasp, neither a vise nor a sieve, as if to ask, what makes some shacklings finally enough?
Are these, here, the bones that reacquaint us with goodness?
Her eyes sparked, but she did not yet understand, for you acted before reconsideration, faster than she could respond, before, in that wake, she saw your maiming, and then you.
And then you, as if touched by fire, sprung back. Let her go.
Such a simple thing, really, but you rose to your feet quickly, stood a distance from her because you did not trust yourself. Your hands could go under the flare of your temper so quickly, past your heart, past the high kingdom of this consciousness, to the old world.
You saw past you to see that she was delighted, in this, and you felt it as if it were your own.
That you had to be kin, surely, for this kind of understanding to pass.
She spoke to you, then, and you heard surprise, felt "thank you," as if this were all she wanted, although she did not say it. Felt an eschewing of shame like so many lifetimes as she came forward, paused in front of you, and her eyes held you, more tenderly, more effectively, than arms ever did.
A part of you wished that you had gone for her, as at first you had arranged to, but you also knew what she saw - the delinquent boy, the slaver of twenty - five, ungainly, unknowable, impossibly volatile. Guilty, already, of actions beyond reason, beyond humanity.
Skin too fair, too freckled, hair combed neatly and still damp - for her.
You saw, as you had before, that which could never be. Dove for the rage that was to come - and came up wanting.
You thought you might be ready to hear it, to bear it, then, should the words come as she slid past - if it killed you.
The strap across her chest now, bag at her hip, standing poised. Her face ashen but her eyes alive. They saw no reason for mourning.
"Goodbye, Rufe."
You stood, unmoving, dumb but not indifferent, searching with your meager education for some logic, linearity, coherence, a story for these emotions, to curse them away, sew up this chasm, finding none. Needing, desperately, a prayer to face it all, in the quiet of the attic, as you are opened up to weeping.
She went past you, down the ladder, quickly, straining for freedom. Breaking into a run outside when you went to the window. Going home. Dana.
And you, clutching your sides, weeping at nothing, holding yourself now, in the fierce, dry wind.