Sleeping Brides Page 13

  “Well, thank you,” she said awkwardly. When her beeper went off, she was clearly relieved. “Excuse me. I’ll only be a moment.”

  “To be a tiger,” Anton mused when she left. “I hope you know how much you mean to me, Storme. I think the world of you. Loving you comes natural to me, as natural as the beasts around us.”

  He was a wolf, an animal amongst animals, seducing me with his rugged allure, but that was not his intention. If he said he cared for me, it was because he meant it. I felt the same, but I couldn’t say it back. Knowing my history with Daan, Anton did not expect me to, not yet.

  In the quiet that followed, I studied the tigress and her cubs, wondering if she preferred the safety of the zoo or if she longed to return to the jungles of her home. As I thought it, an apprehension seized me, a feeling of impending doom, as if I were facing my own bitter fate. In the brevity of such fear, before I shook it away, I did not know if that fate was the tigers, or Anton.

  ***

  Winds beat against the phone, drummers of the sea. I waited patiently for Rosalind to speak, knowing her duties as part of the deck crew of an ocean liner required her constant attention, even when she was off the clock. With the phone tucked to my ear, the cord leashing me to the kitchen wall, I poured food into Franklin’s bowl, trying to decipher the sounds concealed by the winds.

  “Mama,” Rosalind shouted, coming back on the line.

  “Captain,” I returned.

  “I wish,” she grunted, breathless. “Sorry that took so long. We’re experiencing a little bit of flooding, but a hull door was stuck. We couldn’t get it to close.”

  “Is it closed now?”

  “Of course,” she replied with a pride that indicated she was the reason why. “What was I saying?”

  To Franklin’s displeasure, I left his bowl half-full. His backside was growing as wide as an old man’s. “You were telling me that as soon as your internship is over, you think you might come home for a few months.”

  “No might about it. I’ll be there. I think I’m sea weary.”

  I leaned against the counter, my mind jumping around. “Listen, if this isn’t something you want to do anymore—”

  “No, I do,” she insisted. “I love life at sea, but it’s hard. I need time on land. I can’t remember what it feels like to stand up straight.”

  I didn’t buy it. Rosalind was the waves; she was the brine. “Is there a boy you’re trying to get away from?”

  Rosalind laughed. “No. There’s a boy I’m trying to get to, kinda. It’s Papa. He wants to see me.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah. He got ahold of me a few months ago. We’ve been talking.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Is that okay?”

  It tore at me that she felt she had to ask. “Of course it is. Every daughter needs her papa.”

  “He’s been asking about you.”

  Before Anton, such a confession would have confined me, kept me to the wall like the cord of the phone, but not anymore. Daan was extinct. There was only Anton. “He can continue to ask,” I said. “I’m not interested in reconnecting with Daan. He was a rambling daydream. I’ve awoken to a man who loves me like a man should love a woman, a man who stays by my side.”

  It was a slip. I hadn’t yet told Rosalind about Anton. She was practical. The speed at which things were moving with Anton was not. It’d be hard for her to understand. She was a child of a new millennium, ruled by computers and algorithms. I was of an age when love was free and fast, riots were common, and music was flesh. Rosalind’s generation would probably change the world, but my generation had inspired it.

  “And who is Anton?”

  “Somebody,” I said, and I filled her in. By the time I finished, we were both exhausted.

  “He sounds charming,” Rosalind said. By the sound of her voice, she didn’t consider charming a good thing.

  “He’s poetic,” I defended. “And he’s incredibly carefree. There’s no pretense. He doesn’t try to impress me with fancy suits and expensive dinners, and I don’t pretend to be a sophisticated art hound. We spend almost every night in together, because that’s where I’m comfortable, and so is he.”

  “Every night?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  Rosalind sighed. “I don’t believe in playing games, but you can’t make it so easy for him. Make him work for it. If he isn’t willing to put the work in now, he won’t be willing to put the work in when things get tough. You need someone who can weather the Storme.”

  “Funny,” I said dryly. I couldn’t imagine things getting tough with Anton. That wasn’t us. We didn’t fight. “He told me how much he cares about me. By doing so, he made himself vulnerable to me. That isn’t easy. It’s incredibly tough, especially for a man.”

  “Yeah,” Rosalind relented. “I hope so.”

  I wasn’t hurt by Rosalind’s suspicions. It was exactly how I expected her to react. In some ways, it was how I’d raised her to react, so I changed the subject. “When do you think you’ll be home?”

  “I still have a year left on my internship. Once it’s complete, so are my studies, so I’ll probably wait until then to come back. That way, I can stay home for as long as I want.”

  A year. It was the curse of motherhood to raise a child then be denied them for so long. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, Mama. I’m glad you’re happy, but be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “He won’t hurt me,” I assured her. “I’ve seen his heart.”

  I said my goodbyes, and I made a cup of coffee and sat outside on the porch. It was a moonless night, but the light from Rosalind’s window lit the yard in front of me, pleading with me. I understood Rosalind’s concern, but she didn’t know Anton. She didn’t know us, how we were together. When she did see us together, then she would see how right we were.

  “I know what I’m doing,” I promised her, looking up at her window. “I love him.”

  And with that, I made an irrevocable decision.

  ***

  Stretched upon a ladder in my front room, my arms spread out like branches, I watched as a drop of blue paint fell from the brush I held onto my cutoff shorts. I imagined more drops falling, like warm rain on a lake. One day, when I could afford it, I would leave the house to Rosalind, and I would make such a lake my home, a place where I could bathe in nature while Anton mastered his sculptures.

  A knock on the door made my visions real. Allowing myself the excitement of a girl half my age, I opened the door for Anton. “Boyfriend,” I greeted.

  “My love,” he returned, kissing me on the cheek as he came in. “Have you decided to turn the walls of your front room into a mural?”

  “No. I’m changing things around. Do you like the color?” It was a grey-blue, much mellower than the shade in my kitchen.

  “Yeah. It’s my favorite.” He kicked off his shoes, rolled up the sleeves of his sweater, and coaxed the paintbrush out of my hand to pick up where I had left off. He didn’t need the ladder. His arms—the arms of a man who chiseled and toiled—could reach the ceiling.

  I liked the way he made himself comfortable in my house. It meant he was comfortable around me. Daan never had been. To Daan, I had been something precious to grasp and command, but he had never been truly at ease, not even with the drugs.

  “It’s no coincidence I chose this color,” I revealed. “I want you to move in.”

  Anton stopped painting. “Really?”

  “Really. I don’t want to spend another night without you.”

  He beamed, a prince and a pauper, the earth and the air. “Does this mean you love me?”

  “It might.”

  Promptly, he dropped the paintbrush and picked me up. “I would fight a million wars to be with you,” he claimed.

  “No wars. I don’t want you to leave me.”

  “I won’t,” he vowed. “As long as you don’t leave me either.”

  “Never. I wou
ld never leave you.”

  He kissed my forehead as he set me down. “Good. Because you bring the sun. I need your sun.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Skin Breaks

  One Sunny Year Later

  “I did it.”

  Soaking in a bath, the warm water covering my body like a lover, I stretched my arms above my head, excited. Since she was a heartbeat in my belly, I’d been proud of Rosalind, in everything she was and everything she wasn’t, but today was a new sensation. Today, I was proud of myself.

  “I did it,” I said again to the empty house, strangely emotional as I ran a washcloth along my leg. “Stellar.”

  I’d completed my certificate in Business Management. Between working extra hours to help Mr. Hartono keep the company running, despite his resistance, and spending time with Anton, earning my certificate had not been a priority, but it had been a necessity, especially as the grey in Mr. Hartono’s hair took over and another raise in salary was missed.

  My taut lunch breaks at the library were over. I’d turned in my last assignment a few hours earlier, braving the winter chill for one last session on the computers. I’d done well on the assignment. I didn’t need to wait for my marks to know I’d passed. In a few weeks, my certificate would be hanging on my wall, a beam to hold onto when the company turned to rubble.

  I’d left a message with Rosalind from the library payphone, but she was in seas unknown. It could be days before she called back. As I still hadn’t told anyone at the office about the course, the burden was left on Anton to celebrate with me when he returned home from his studio. I doubted he would mind. There were many ways I wanted to celebrate, and very few of them involved clothes.

  When the heat from my bath was gone, I slipped on a long T-shirt and went to the front room. Nostalgic, I threw a pile of albums onto the sofa, like a fortuneteller spreading her cards, and I picked one at random. Muddy Waters. Perfect. I stuck it into the stereo and danced through the night with Franklin at my feet, my body swaying to the sullen harmony, the letdown and the gospel. I danced until my soul hurt.

  That was how Anton found me when he came home. “My love,” he greeted, worn out by the clay that stuck to his hands. He went to the mess on the sofa and began to sort through the albums.

  I turned off the stereo, impatient to share my news. “I submitted my last assignment today. I’m done with my certificate,” I said, anticipating his reply.

  Distracted, Anton picked up an album and read the song list on the back.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked.

  “I heard you,” he said casually.

  I folded my arms, tucking myself away from him. “Do you have anything to say?”

  Leaving the albums on the sofa, he joined me by the stereo and kissed my cheek. “It’s great. Well done. Do we have any more of that apple sausage?”

  I was pierced by his response, but I allowed his weak acknowledgement to be enough. It was too good of a day to allow a wound. “I gave it to Franklin. It was about to go off.”

  “I’ll pick some more up at the shop tomorrow.” Anton extended his hands out to me. “Time for bed. Will you join me?”

  I followed him upstairs, but I did not sleep. His indifference kept me awake, churning my passiveness into frustration. I wished Rosalind had been available to take my call. The conversation would have been an accolade, not a lazy compliment. I faced Anton and studied him, trying to decipher if his insult had been exhaustion or apathy.

  “Are you staring at me?” he mumbled into his pillow, resistant to wake.

  “I’m annoyed,” I told him, my voice low though there was no one else to hear it. “I had important news to share with you, and you acted like it was nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, stirring. He pushed a clump of my hair away from my forehead. “You know I’m proud of you. I’m always proud of you. It goes without saying.”

  “But sometimes it needs to be said. I support you in almost everything you do. I celebrate your every victory. I need you to celebrate my victories too. I don’t have many of them.”

  “Of course.” With abiding tenderness, he pulled me into his arms and placed my hand on his chest, securing it over his heart. His skin was warm beneath my touch, melting my insecurities. “Everything you do is worth celebrating.”

  I wasn’t finished talking, but I felt better, so I nestled my head where our hands lay and I closed my eyes, glad I wasn’t alone.

  ***

  The morning was full of delays. I woke to an early snowfall, which painted the neighborhood with delicate white strokes. Anton had already left for his studio. Cold, I hurried downstairs to turn on the radiator and brew a pot of coffee. The radiator banged to life, but my coffeemaker did not. Deciding to pick up some on the way to work, I hurried to dress and went to my car, but it was as dead as the coffeemaker.

  “What the hell!” I screamed, banging the steering wheel.

  My keys hung from the ignition, useless. Reluctantly, I ran a mitted hand along the largest key on the ring. I had no choice. I got out and I opened the garage as if it were a tomb. “Hello, Grandpa.”

  I had not driven the motorhome since my travels with Rosalind. I had planned to sell him on, but it was hard. Grandpa was a bucket of rust and bolts, but he had proven his worth, time after time.

  “If you start, I’ll keep you forever,” I promised as I turned the ignition, my breath frozen within a coffin. Grandpa obeyed, resurrected. “You’re gonna outlive me!” I cheered, and I pulled out of the driveway and headed to work.

  Traffic was painful. The commute was slow in the snow. With no hope of stopping for coffee, I prayed Mr. Hartono had a potent fusion in his box of tea. I’d drink acid if it helped make the morning more bearable. I’d been up all night, letting Anton show me how much he loved me. It’d been weeks since the night of Muddy Waters, when I’d finished the course. Ever since, Anton’s lust had been insatiable. I let the memory of his touch entertain me as I crawled to work in the motorhome, a caterpillar on the roads. By the time I arrived, I was an hour late.

  “Miss Cloet, I’m glad you made it,” Mr. Hartono called from his office as I passed by. “Can you join me for a quick chat?”

  “Certainly,” I said, shaking the snow off my coat before I sat. The flakes melted into the brown carpet, which hadn’t been changed since I first started working for Mr. Hartono. Nothing had, except for the computers.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked.

  “Actually, I would love one,” I answered honestly, determined to choke down whatever brew he gave me, as long as it was warm and sizzled with caffeine.

  He prepared the tea in silence. The problem with a man as subdued as Mr. Hartono was that, in his silence, I could not discern if he was tired, contemplative, or troubled. He set my cup in front of me, along with a large manila envelope that had already been opened. Ignoring the tea, I looked inside the envelope, but it was empty. Before I could inquire about it, Mr. Hartono reached behind his desk and lifted up a wooden frame, inside of which was the certificate I’d earned in Business Management.

  “It arrived a few days ago,” he explained. “It was addressed to the company, not you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have opened it. I hope you don’t mind that I took it upon myself to frame it.”

  The school must have sent the certificate to my work address by mistake. I didn’t know how to respond. Mr. Hartono’s gesture was warm and genuine, I would have expected nothing less of the man, but he must have disapproved. My intentions had been revealed. I was loyal to the company, but I did not have faith in it.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t want you to worry,” I told him. “I’m not looking for work elsewhere. You took a chance on me. I came to you as a nameless mother with a newborn, and you hired me. I was living in the motorhome…” I shook my head. “It’s because of you I have my daughter.”

  “Miss Cloet, please, stop,” Mr. Hartono beseeched. “I’m proud of you. I realize this achieve
ment is important to you.” He pushed another envelope towards me, which looked like it was full of cash. “This entire company is proud of you. Your success is our success. Unfortunately, I can’t offer you a raise with your new qualifications, as much as I wish I could, but please accept this bonus as our recognition of your achievement.”

  I was overwhelmed by his generosity, but I left the envelope alone. “I don’t think I can accept that.”

  Mr. Hartono grimaced. “Don’t get too excited. It’s not much.”

  “But it’s something,” I said with appreciation, accepting the bonus. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t require thanks. I only ask that you feel comfortable sharing achievements such as this with us in the future. We’re your family, Miss Cloet.”

  “I will,” I promised, feeling foolish I had thought any differently. I was overjoyed, the chill of the morning gone. “I actually finished the course a few weeks ago. I was thrilled.”

  “As you should be. I can’t imagine it was an easy feat, especially being a single parent.”

  “She’s halfway across the world.”

  “A parent’s job is never finished, no matter how far your child is. Does she know?”

  “Yes. I spoke to her last week.”

  “Good,” he said, nodding his head. “You should know I asked Babetta to help me choose the frame. She’s waiting at your desk with a giant cake. Please forgive me if I don’t join you. I have work to catch up on.”

  “Of course,” I said, standing, my certificate and bonus in hand. “Will I save you a slice?”

  “Please do. I’d like that very much.”

  Leaving Mr. Hartono’s office, I glanced back briefly. Already, his head was bent over a pile of paperwork, his tea next to him his only comfort. It was no life for a man. I would be devastated if the company went under, but maybe it would be for the best. Then Mr. Hartono would be released from his shoebox.