The Safekeep(44)

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Isabel woke up and it was dark. The window on the wrong side of the room, the space all odd, the sheets too rough on her skin and the shifting heat of a body nearby. Eva was twisting next to her. She was dreaming badly, breath stuck in her throat—choking.

Isabel reached for her. They were both naked, and the knowledge of it pushed through her with a fright—and then was gone. Eva jerked, clutched Isabel’s arms, then softened. Exhaled. Did not quite wake up. Isabel was not quite awake herself. She cupped Eva’s face and drew a line with her thumb: from the top of Eva’s forehead down over the rise of her nose. Over the bridge of it, over her lips, all the way to her chin. She did it again, and then again.

“What are you doing?” Eva whispered. Her eyes were still closed. And then, “No, don’t stop, keep doing that.” She smelled like deep sleep, like trapped heat.

Isabel said, “My mother used to do this. When I was young, when I had nightmares.” The top of Eva’s forehead, the line of her nose. Her mouth, the dip below.

“What did you have nightmares about?”

“Airplanes. Bombs.” She paused, finger pad to Eva’s bottom lip. “Girls at school. People knocking at the door. Wanting to get in.”

Eva opened her eyes. It was too dark to see properly, but there was the glint of her eyes moving, the droplet sound of her mouth opening under Isabel’s touch. She put the edge of her teeth to Isabel’s thumb, did so softly, and then closed around it. Sucked it in.

Isabel inhaled. Held it, held it. Released, pressed her thumb to the wet flat of Eva’s tongue. She had never touched another person in want. She had now. She had gulped at the cup of it. Her hands were no longer the same; her belly, her cunt. At Eva’s mercy, trapped behind the cage of her teeth, she had grown a new shape.



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Sunrise came with the early hand of summer; loud, birds and birds. Eva slept on Isabel’s chest. Her back was a good width, a broad width. Isabel ran a touch from the one end to the other end, shoulder, spine, shoulder. Each stroke a dry rustle of a sound. They breathed.

Neelke came at seven. From upstairs, Isabel heard her bike over the gravel, and the opening of the door, and the gentle clattering in the kitchen. She lifted Eva off her as quietly as she could; Eva slept on. Isabel got dressed: trousers, blouse over bare breasts, and that is how she went downstairs to greet Neelke. Her mind was humming, a full emptiness, her body sore and present. She could feel embarrassment just beyond her, out of reach.

Neelke took her in with a brief confusion, eyes sliding over and off her; gaze to the floor as Isabel spoke. Isabel wasn’t sure what she looked like: her hair, her face. She could not care much. They sat down and went through the list of what needed doing for the week: the windows, the laundry, the grouting. She said, “I will be taking my breakfast upstairs.”

Neelke nodded, eyes down. Isabel said, “Do not go into Eva’s room. She’s resting.”

Neelke said, “Eva’s room,” as though she was unsure which one that was. She couldn’t have been, and yet Isabel told her: “My mother’s.” She said it sharply, then swallowed, a round egg at the base of her throat. My mother’s.

Neelke looked at her now. Her eyes were so big. There was a tightness at her mouth, a stillness to the way she held herself. She had noticed something on Isabel’s neck.

Isabel covered the soreness with a hand and said nothing of it. She took breakfast upstairs. The carrying tray she had bought when Mother’s illness bound her to the bed. She had often made this trip during that final year—balancing a supper, a clattering of plates, glasses, through the drawing room, up the stairs. Mother’s room.

Eva was still asleep. The day was bright behind the curtains. The room smelled like bodies, like—like how they had smelled, pressed close together. Rubbing, rubbing. Isabel had pulled Eva into her lap at some point in the night. Had sat back against the headboard and kept Eva in her lap, straddled, and touched her like she was trying to figure her out: the slick of her and the depth of her and all that made her go ah. Wet had pearled in her thatch of curls. She had kept her mouth slack to Isabel’s ear and said, How do I feel? and Isabel had answered: Good. You feel good.

Afterward, Eva had not looked at her when she’d said: “Louis will come back soon.” She was still shivering, still coming down. She had put her face to Isabel’s neck. And Isabel had said, “I know,” and it had come out roughly, and Eva had said very quickly: “Oh let’s not think about it let’s have this just for now we will only live now and what comes will come and we won’t think about it and—”

Isabel had kissed her. She did not know what else to do. At first she thought Eva had been crying into the kiss, but no: she was laughing. Uncontrollable and terrible. “Shh,” Isabel had said. “Shh now.”

She put the breakfast down on the bedside table. She opened a window. A ray of light cut across the bed, across Eva’s arm; across her bare breast and a map of marks, red and smarting. She wondered whether Louis had ever done as much, given her as much. Saw her and was undone by her as much. Isabel’s stomach churned, a sharp tug, and she turned away from the image and shut her eyes to it.

For a moment she was lost. She walked around the room, she wiped her damp hands on her blouse. She touched things: the edge of the wardrobe, the edge of the secretary. As a child Isabel would crawl under the secretary while her mother was writing letters. She would put her hand to the underside of the wood to feel the scritch-scratch of the pen. There were initials carved into the bottom of the drawer: EDH. Her mother’s name was Elisabeth, and her mother had probably once been a child hiding under the table, too. Isabel didn’t know what the D or the H stood for, and had never asked.