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Under a clear blue sky, with the hot sun beating down, I guided his penetration. This time, this marvelous first time, I really allowed myself to enjoy the feel of him inside me, lifting me with him into the kind of paradise I’d read about but never experienced.
And when his arms finally clasped me, I groaned from the pure ecstasy of having made him one with me at last.
“You’re crying,” he said when it was over. “It was so wonderful. I’ve finally reached you, Audrina. After trying so long, I’ve broken through that barrier you put up a long time ago.”
Yes, he was right. A barrier that Papa had constructed to keep me always bound to him.
“Sometimes I thought it was because you just didn’t love me as a man, only as a companion.”
“And still you kept right on loving me?” I asked with wonder.
“I could never stop loving you, no matter what.” His voice was hoarse, gritty with emotion. “You’re in my blood, part of my soul. If you never let me touch you again, I’d still want to wake up and see you asleep beside me. I said what I did only to shake you up and make you fear you might lose me to Vera. Audrina, there are times when you seem so remote and aloof, almost as if you’re in a trance, or caught in a spell.”
Quickly I leaned to kiss him, to stroke where I’d never wanted to touch before. He groaned with the joy and held me tighter. “If ever I should be so unfortunate as to lose you, I’d look the world over until I had another Audrina—so that means I’d go to my grave still searching. For there will never be another you.”
“Another Audrina? Did you know another Audrina?” I asked with a shiver that raced up and down my spine. Why had he said that?
His hands were warm on my skin, his eyes warmer. “It’s just my way of saying I have to have you and no one else.”
It was sweet to hear him say that and I easily shook off the sudden chill of apprehension and forced some leaden weight away from my soul, from my heart and conscience. Young and joyous as I’d never been, I laughed and turned to him again. I teased him with kisses and small touches, and wantonly I explored his body as many times he’d explored mine. For I loved him so much then that I could have died for him. And once I’d thought all this so sinful and evil. Damn Papa for making me think that, for spoiling what could have been like this all the time.
Twilight flooded the sky with its rosy farewell to the day, flaming the cloud bottoms crimson, streaking violet shot through with saffron. Folded in his arms, I watched the sun sink into the bay beyond the river. I watched as Arden fell fast asleep. For the first time after making love, I felt clean, and worthy of staying alive.
Unlike Papa, who loved the First Audrina best, Arden loved me for what I was, not for what he wanted me to be. I wrapped him in my arms as I watched the colors reflected on the water, different from the colors in the house. I lay there and began to think I hated all that stained glass, all those Tiffany lamps and shades, all that art deco and other false, manmade colors that gave me false fears. What did I have to fear now?
In the middle of the night I awakened. I thought I heard Sylvia calling my name. “Aud … dreen … naa.” Softly, repeatedly, my name called like that.
I’m coming, Sylvia, I thought-waved to her, as I often did, and somehow my messages seemed to reach her. First I had to lift Arden’s arm from my waist, then carefully I shifted from the heavy weight of his leg thrown over both of mine. When I was free I bent above him and stroked his cheek, kissed his lips.
“Don’t go … where are you going?” he sleepily asked.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I whispered.
“You’d better be,” he murmured sleepily, exhausted from hours of making love. “Need you again … soon …” and then he slept.
Sylvia was deeply asleep, curled up on her side, looking angelic in sleep as she always did. I kissed her, too, feeling full of love for everyone. Asleep she had never looked anything but beautiful and normal.
On the way back to where Arden slept and waited, I thought I heard my name called again. It seemed to come from the playroom … her bedroom. Was she jealous because now I’d found a man who loved me more than anyone had loved her?
I had to go to the playroom. I had to go and face up to her terror, which had always prevented me from enjoying Arden as I should have. It was in that rocking chair that I’d seen the three boys assault the First Audrina, and that had been the first step to force me away from normalcy. The second step to take me even further away from ever enjoying sex was Papa and all the things he’d done to Momma, and said to me. And the third step, taking me miles and miles away, was Papa’s indifference to how he hurt my aunt. But it wasn’t my horror, I told myself. It was Papa’s, it was hers, too, that first daughter who’d died before I was born.
Again Upon a Rainy Day
What compulsion had driven me to the First Audrina’s room and forced me into this chair where I sang foolishly? As I rocked, an ingrained terror of this chair that had tormented my childhood stole over me and made me a child again. Something whispered and told me to get out and leave before it was too late. Go back to Arden, said a wise part of me. Forget the past that can’t be changed, go back to Arden.
No, I said to myself. I had to be strong. I had to overcome my fears and the only way to do it was to deliberately evoke the rainy-day scene and make it happen again … and this time I’d stay with it until she died—and cast her memory forever from my life.
As I’d done before as a child, so I did again as a woman. I rocked and I sang and soon enough the walls softened and became porous before the molecules divided and I was inside the First Audrina’s memory again.
I saw my mother as she must have been when the First Audrina was alive, looking so young and pretty as she warned, “Audrina, promise you will never take the shortcut through the woods. It’s dangerous for young girls to go there alone.”
She was wearing one of her lovely watercolor printed voile dresses that fluttered in the breezes cooled by the river. All her favorite colors and mine were in that dress. Shades of green, blue, violet, aqua and rose. Her beautiful hair was loose and bannering out. Even as I thought all of this, I was planning to disobey and take the shortcut home.
Momma stooped to kiss my cheek. “Now, obey me, even if you are late for your own birthday party. It can’t start until you arrive anyway. Just forget the shortcut and ride the schoolbus home.”
But Spencer Longtree rode the school bus with his gang of roughneck buddies. They said such nasty, ugly things to me. I couldn’t tell her the awful things they said.
“U… G… L… Y…” shrilled Spencer Longtree, who hadn’t taken the school bus home. Risking the woods wasn’t sparing me his awful presence. “Audrina Adare has got ugly hair … spelled—”
