The Bleeding Heart (56 page)

Yes, everything was different, when you traveled, when you placed your body on foreign terrain and submitted yourself to a different set of standards. Things that would be intolerable at home were perfectly acceptable: no hot water in a little Greek hotel; a mattress like a set of little lumps in Toledo; a shower stall in a pensione in Málaga that was set in the middle of a big front room where a bunch of scary-looking men sat all day and all night playing cards; handsome young men on the make, scouring the cafés at Nice, looking over your clothes to see how much money you had. They never approached Dolores.

Yes, it was all right abroad, when it would have enraged you at home. It was all right abroad because it was
interesting
, in Cal Taylor’s sense. Interesting. Love, too. It was easier to love away from home, where you didn’t even give last names, where you didn’t have to worry about next week’s consequences, where it didn’t matter about character as long as the smells and tastes were good, the night full of stars, the Parthenon white and shining from the outdoor cafe on the hill above.

That wasn’t real, somehow, although it was. And what she was going home to was real, somehow, although it wasn’t. All the hours lost, pacing her imagination, marching her mind, far from the apartment in Cambridge where she sat. But there were real things too. An easy life, an ideal life. A good lecture that set off sparks and left her with four students clamoring with questions; an easy schedule, which meant time to finish her book. Nice life, full of life, streets full of kids and warm sun and odd little shops and restaurants, concerts, movies: what more can one ask? The richnesses of the globe there to be sampled, tasted, flirted with, ignored, rejected. Friends, long argumentative evenings, hilarious evenings, then silence, stretches of silence and solitude. Everything one wanted.

Except one thing.

She touched Victor’s hand, which was lying on her belly, touched it lightly, running her finger over his finger, thinking: fingers, more sensitive than anything but mind. Thinking how strange they were, hands: all built the same but all different. She loved all hands: strong when they worked, the bones protruding, each delicate maneuver causing a delicate shift in the beautiful and complex mechanism. So strong, the bones, the knuckles, the tendons, the veins. All of it together created a topography that was incredibly subtle and complex and beautiful. Heights and valleys, pinks, blues reds, creams, browns. Over all of it, the tender flesh that needs caressing, needs to caress. Strong and tender, firm and gentle. No way to split that apart: hands were always both at one time, they took as they gave, gave as they took.

Victor’s hands were long and slender; hers were short and delicate. His were big-boned and strong but looked fragile; hers looked fragile and light, but were strong. Victor had wrenched a rusted cap off Mary Jenkins’s heating unit, just a few weeks ago. He had lifted Dolores’s heavy packages of books and carried them down to Mary’s car to be delivered to the post office. Of course, that was arms too. Hands went into arms, and arms also were beautiful.

She too had strong arms, strong hands. Alone, she’d lifted Elspeth’s body and carried it indoors, Jack shouting at her, she barely hearing him, not caring to hear, holding her child against her body, the inert head against her breast, the inert body against her womb, crying so hard she made Elspeth’s body bounce as if it were alive, quick, beating, acting, saying, sneering, all of which it had done a week ago, three days ago, yesterday too, even this afternoon, a few hours ago, who knows how many?

If only we’d come home earlier.

As if it were alive. Crying so hard that she felt she could make a miracle, could by her own intense energy, her own agony, bring the life back. Crying: sneer at me again, Elspeth, hate me again, only be alive! This body, how precious every cell of it was to her, soft and hard, boned and muscled, tender and vulnerable and tough and fierce. This body that had come out of her body, had come out imperious, monstrous, needing, crying, clinging, yearning, demanding, loving, hating….

She felt Victor’s hands, strong tender hands, with her hands, and they woke up, the hands, although the mind that governed them was still asleep, and by themselves they found her breasts and held them.

Four days.

Victor sprang into her eyes standing behind Edith in her wheelchair, his hands dangling at his sides, the eyes empty, the body thin and unused looking.

No! No!
her mind screamed.

She saw herself on a podium before a class of five hundred, her voice sounding dry and pedantic, her glasses perched on her nose, lecturing on Renaissance figures of speech, finding the whole purpose of life in tropes.

No! No!

Well, what then?

Yes, because in spite of everything, and in spite of her trying not to look at it, Victor still had it all. Power and money and connections; Edith, the house, the children. And her. He’d broken his bargain again, and this time Edith would not find out, would not ask, would not even wonder. This time she meant it: just come home most nights and don’t tell me about it and don’t let me smell it on you. But they slept apart. How could she even smell it? Yes, he’d go back to Alison, if she’d have him, or Georgia, if she was still around. He’d find someone to keep him alive, while Edith kept him safe.

But not Dolores. Because her role was given and set: she was supposed to keep someone else alive. Which she didn’t want to do anymore, and anyway wasn’t very successful at.

Four days.

Well, but after all, if it had not been doomed to end, would you have been able to savor it so? Savor all of it, the pleasure and the pain. In French,
pain
means
bread.

She closed her eyes. No, there was no justice. The question was, was there love? Life simply would not arrange itself for her neatly, lay itself out like chessmen on a board. Miranda and Ferdinand, playing at chess, agreeing on the rules: he will cheat and she will forgive him. Men’s rules, still, always.

Tony, trying that day to teach her to play chess. She, in frustration, had knocked the board over, scattering the pieces, crying out, “Oh, I can’t stand these bothersome fucking rules!”

“They’re not
my
rules, Mom,” he said, hurt.

Well, who the hell’s rules were they, then?

Four days. A lifetime, perhaps. Who knew what plane would crash, when the dream train would reach the last stop, when the heart, willful and beaten, would choose to stop, would just give up? All of us, round plump children, long skinny children, brown and yellow and pale and pink and red and chocolate, all born with the cancer inside, tearing around from clinic to clinic, seeking diagnosis, cure.

She let herself relax against Victor’s body, and he moved closer to her. Her warmth and his melted together into heat. She turned her head and tried to smell him, but his scent merged with her own. She settled against him comfortably.

Four days.

Not very long.

But for now he was there, his flesh against hers, his warmth with hers, his heart beating against her backbone, and the bed was warm and his hands on her breasts were soft and strong, and her breasts were strong and soft, oh so soft, so soft.

Marilyn French was a novelist and feminist. Her books include
The Women’s Room
, which has been translated into twenty languages;
From Eve to Dawn, a History of Women in the World
;
A Season in Hell
;
Her Mother’s Daughter
;
Our Father
;
My Summer with George
; and
The Bleeding Heart
. She died in 2009.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1980 by Marilyn French

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

978-1-4804-4489-8

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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