The Safekeep(75)

She considered it now again. The frost had touched it as it did all the other houses in the street: fogged up its windows, pulled tight over its doors. Glistened on the brick. To its left, a narrow family home. To its right, another home, this one broader, taller. Attached, it was, to everything that touched it.

The Hebrew scripture was inlaid in what once must have been a gold-painted stone but was now graying, dull. She stepped closer. In Roman letters, the quote announced itself: Isaiah, 56:7. Isabel drove back home. Her Bible she kept in her room, on her shelf. The little hare leaned its little back against it.

Isabel found the quote. For my house will be called, she read, finger next to the number seven, a house of devotion for all.

She sat on the edge of her bed. She touched the page, and it was thin, and the letters so black against the grain of the paper. She touched the word house. She touched the word devotion.

She put the Bible away and went downstairs to finish the day: to sweep the rooms and wash this morning’s dishes and peel potatoes for dinner. Inside her the words repeated themselves, tumbled around: my house, my house, my house, echoed with her hands in a bucket of suds; devotion devotion devotion, a loop, drying a single knife. A single fork. A small teaspoon, its twisted neck; its drop of a head.

Night fell quickly. She fed the fire, turned on the radio. She poured herself a glass of wine and sat by the hearth with a half-eaten plate; potatoes, beans. A cut of meat, burnt and tough. She lifted her skirts and lowered her stockings and opened her legs and let them warm by the grate. Her knees were red and bruised easily. They looked to her like hard fruit gone bad. Someone knocked on the door.

The house held its breath. Isabel thought she had not heard it right, that it was the knock of a branch against a window or something that had fallen in the other room. She sat very still and listened.

The knock came again. Thrice in a row.

Isabel pulled up her socks, pushed her skirt in order. She went to the door. The wine had gone to her head too quickly and she felt flushed, unsteady. Again: a knock. It wasn’t urgent, wasn’t a demand, simply an interval of a thing. I am here, it said. Come to me.

Through the glass Isabel could see the shape of her, short in a big winter coat, rubbing herself warm on the stair before the door. For a moment Isabel thought that she had made it up; that she had fallen asleep by the fire and was dreaming the walk from the hallway to the door. But the cold was biting here, and her belly too hollow and the dread too sharp to be any sort of fantasy.

She opened the door.

“I walked from the station,” Eva said. Her teeth were chattering. She was in a hat but the ends of her hair that peeked out below had frozen. Her shoes weren’t winter shoes. She laughed and said, “I didn’t—think, God this was a bad idea, oh God I should—”

She made as if to turn, as if to go away, and Isabel reached out and didn’t touch her—was careful this time. “No,” she said. “No, please—please don’t go. Please. Come in. You’re—you’re freezing, come in.”

It was very quiet outside. It was quiet inside, too. Isabel could barely hear the whine of the radio from the kitchen. It started to snow, faint and so soft. It would gain in force tonight. It would blanket the garden. The earth was frozen solid and the snow would stay.

Isabel said, “The fire is on in the kitchen.”

The light from inside the house spilled out low and orange. Eva’s eyes were shiny.

They went inside. Isabel felt pulled to the left of her body, not quite there, floating. She took Eva’s coat. Eva shivered. She was in the same two jumpers, the ones with the holes. The hems of her trousers were wet. Her shoes were wet.

She was a body needing to be held but Isabel was not allowed to hold her. Isabel walked ahead, Eva half a step behind her. She thought: What if I try to take her hand? But Isabel was not allowed to take her hand. The kitchen was warm. Isabel went to turn down the radio, went to clear her dinner and put it on the counter, went to get something for Eva, didn’t know what. Said, “Please, sit. Do you—want some tea? Or—wine? I have…”

Eva stood, stranded, between the fire and the table. She looked around her, sad. A wry smile like she wanted to make fun of something: herself, the room. The shivering hadn’t lessened when she sat down. Said, “Wine,” a flat word.

Isabel reached for a glass and now knew what it meant to be so distracted by another’s presence that she could barely move. Now she knew of that suffering, too. She poured the wine, miserable. She gave Eva the wine and found that her heart had not grown any lighter over the months, had not grown any lighter at the sight of Eva. She loved her. She might always.

Eva did not drink right away. She extended her hands toward the fire. Isabel wondered if she had done so as a child, sitting where she did now. Eva could see, from where she sat, across to the dining room: the glass vitrine. Isabel knew the moment she noticed it, and noticed it was empty, and said nothing of it and so Isabel volunteered, gestured at the corner of the room: “I wrapped them up. For you. And—and other things. They’re in boxes. If you… if you’d like—”

“Ah. Is that what you wanted me here for?” Eva said. “Is that what you wanted to give me? Boxes?” She turned to Isabel. “Did you want to send me off with boxes?”

“No,” she started, but Eva would not let her answer, added a fast:

“Packed it all away. Very neat, very efficient. Can’t imagine you wanted all of that lying around, now knowing who it belonged to, knowing—”