Evening. Nessa Rapoport
winter air charges my skin. When I close the colored glass, I can hear the reassuring thrum of the heat. In the linen closet are the worn beach towels we took to the cottage every year. I feel the ridge of Tam’s initial, and hers is the one I take as I slip off my skirt and pull my sweater over my head.
It is bliss to be by myself, bare. Mapping the length of the room, I notice the slap of my feet, iridescent in the low radiance of the filtered night sky. When I turn the clover-shaped taps, the water rushes out in a glistening coil. Rummaging around the back of the closet, I find it: Ballerina Bubbles, Tam’s much-coveted Chanukah present of decades ago. I lift off the torso of the pirouetting girl and pour in all the powder that remains.
Mounds of froth erupt. I skim the surface with my toes and then step in, molding my back to the curving porcelain until the steaming water is scant inches from the top.
The silence, when I close the taps, is complete. I am going to stay here through the night, I decide. No harm can befall me.
In a second, I am twelve, stretched out on the dock of Nana’s cottage, the sun glazing my back where I lie, dreaming of love, lulled by the lap of water against wood, a minnow flicking between the slats, the far-off drone of a motorboat signaling the particular indolence that only a dock in summer can impart.
I am trying to imagine kissing, picturing the tongues I have read about, hours of turning faces and someone’s passionate hand. In my renewed innocence I am almost asleep when I sense rather than hear the opening door.
“Eve?”
I know Laurie’s voice immediately but do not seem capable of speech. Instead, I sink further into the water’s delicate embrace.
Laurie is too circumspect to turn on the light.
“You may sit,” I say regally.
He perches on the hamper.
I can decipher his face and the two glimmers of his hands. Lacy shadows waver over him.
When I was in love with Laurie, I was maddened by the wait between his sentences. Now, hypnotized, I do not care. The quiet lengthens steadily; neither of us will intrude upon it.
I am savoring a rare placidity when Laurie says, “You cut your hair.”
“It’s growing back,” I assure him, as if everything else will be as it was.
“Remember those nights we stayed up late?” Laurie says. “Eating the sugar cookies your mother kept in tins?”
I listen.
“You and Tam sat across from me, howling over something that set you off, an inside joke you never could explain.”
Stillness.
“Is it warm in there?” says Laurie.
“I’m in the womb,” I tell him dreamily.
But the bath is cooling. I would like to add hot water, feel heat stream beneath me in prickly currents, but I will not sit up. Suddenly, I am as self-conscious as my primal namesake, innocence dispelled, wondering how she got herself into this predicament.
“Do they miss me downstairs?” I ask.
He pauses, and the room’s encompassing history reasserts itself: What is the present day? I have been here long before you, and I’ll be here when you’re gone.
“I’ve missed you,” comes Laurie’s reply.
I do not want him to break this spell by moving toward me.
But I have forgotten Laurie’s grace. He raises the towel heaped on the floor and holds it like a screen in front of him. I walk toward the pale square until it is all that is between us; I cannot see his face. When I turn my back, Laurie’s arms envelop me.
I feel his clad body behind mine, not with desire but with innate sympathy, two night creatures taking each other’s measure. I want to stand like this, enfolded in him, Tam’s towel damp against my skin, forever.
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