Quiver

Slowly he enters me. He feels larger inside me, different. We come together for the second time.

The next morning I found an old letter when vacuuming around the couch. It was neatly folded and tied with a red ribbon. There was something familiar about the way it smelled. The letter was written in a spindly female hand. At first I thought it was French, but then I recognized some of the words as Italian. I slipped it into my pocket, as I was running late for work.

It was only later when I was having a coffee with Gina that I remembered the letter. She was able to translate it for me.

16 July 1942

My darling Alberto,

You have been gone for over six months and I am beginning to forget the sound of your voice. The house is looking beautiful, especially the pomegranate you planted over the front porch. They have no winter here and the sun is like down south, always on the back of your neck. Yesterday your mother brought over some plums she grew herself. She told me not to listen to the Australians. That as an Italian you have the right to fight for who you believe in. It’s easier at work. I think the women have forgotten that you exist!

Harry, the foreman, gave me a copy of II Actione! He’d found it in the men’s section. I read it from cover to cover. It even smelled of Sicily! I miss you, Alberto. Please come home soon.

All my love

Leonie

I folded up the letter and put it in with the old wedding dress and medal that lay carefully wrapped in a box at the bottom of the cupboard. Somehow I felt that it belonged there.

I got my period today. I suppose it was predictable, but I had convinced myself that this time I really was pregnant. I’d had all the signs: my breasts were aching and swollen, and I’d even had a slight discharge. So when I saw the blood on the sheets I was filled with a heavy despair. Adrian didn’t help. He shouted at me this morning for using his razor. At the time I was too distressed by the blood on my thighs to answer him. Anyway, I don’t even shave my legs—I get them waxed for free at the salon. I put it down to work stress; it’s the end of the tax year. Adrian’s gone crazy, he’s obsessed with the idea of paying off the mortgage early. After he left, I happened to glance at the razor. There were tiny flecks of black hair stuck in the blade. I’m a natural blonde, and Adrian is a redhead, or he was before he started going bald. It’s a mystery.

I spoke to our neighbors yesterday. Mrs. Harris has been living next door for the past twenty years. She knew Mr. Alberto Mantilli really well. She thinks the letter might have been from his wife. She died long before Mrs. Harris’s time and old Alberto never talked about her. I wonder if Adrian would go silent like that if I died. Recently I’ve been wondering whether he loves me at all. He never says it, you know, the words. I used to pass it off as typical Anglo-Saxon behavior, that maybe he just hadn’t had the training to express his love for me. Now I don’t know.

He’s gone away on a two-day conference in Canberra. Last night I went out to a South American bar with Gina and Mary from the salon. It was great—free drinks for the ladies and a fantastic band playing calypso music. Mary got talking to this really handsome boy from Colombia while I danced with his brother. He looked about sixteen, although he told me he was twenty-three. It was great flirting and later he told me I was beautiful.

By the time I got home I was drunk. Not real drunk but drunk enough to forget that Adrian had gone away. I stumbled out of the taxi and down the garden path. The pomegranate loomed over the front porch. It looked far larger than the scraggly little thing Adrian had nearly pruned to death earlier that summer.

I finally managed to fit the key into the lock; once inside I noticed the corridor light shining. In my drunken haze I assumed that Adrian had left it on for me. The kitchen light was on too. I’d only eaten a couple of peanuts that night, so I was starving. There was a smell of cooking, something I didn’t recognize. I thought that maybe Adrian had left a container of take-out food in the microwave, but it was empty. I made myself some toast and honey, and ate it quickly to stop the room from spinning. I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the bedroom so I lay down on the couch.

I open my eyes and look down at my body. Under a long, old-fashioned white linen dress is my belly. Swollen, pregnant. I run my hands over my body—I am large. I shift my weight, feeling the baby press against my lower organs. My bladder feels tight. I am so happy

, I want to cry out to Adrian to tell him. I sit up, and feel long hair fly back over my shoulders. I look down—it is black hair, long black hair. Terrified, I stand up, the sudden weight of my womb sending me stumbling against the couch. The carpet has changed to an old-fashioned floral. As I fall, I realize that the room has no sound. No echo. I’m dreaming, I think, and shut my eyes, trying to wake up. I open them again, but nothing has changed. My belly protrudes in front of me. My feet, normally small with tiny toes, are not my own. I walk soundlessly toward the bathroom. It is behind the same door, but the white tiles Adrian and I put in have been replaced by old-fashioned green ones, and the shower unit has been replaced by a huge white enamel bath. There is no sink—only an old tin baby’s bath propped up against the cracked wall. I lean over and pick up an oval shaving mirror that hangs off a bare hook.

My hands shake as I lift it up toward my face. Staring back from the mirror is a completely alien face. I scream. I mean, my mouth opens and I scream, but no sound comes out. I lift the mirror again. She is in her early thirties, with a long angular face, high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes. Long black hair frames her face. It is the eyes that terrify me. They are full of pain and sadness, but totally vacant. They are the eyes of a dead person.

The next day I had a terrible hangover, not to mention a neck-ache from sleeping with my head pushed up against the arm of the couch. I glanced at my watch and realized I was an hour late for work. I didn’t remember my dream until much later at the parlor, when I noticed that a long black hair had wound itself around my wedding ring.

I found another letter the day after Adrian got back from Canberra. This one was in English. Bad English. It hadn’t been sent. It was tucked behind the bathroom cabinet and the wall, all folded up as if someone had left it there for me to find. I think it was from the woman, the one in my dream. I think she was Mr. Mantilli’s dead wife. I don’t know why, but I hid the letter from Adrian. Before I’d even opened it. I knew immediately that he mustn’t ever see the letters. I guess I thought he’d never understand, like the way I could never tell him that I saw things. Knowing Adrian he’d probably send me to a shrink or ban me from drinking with Gina.

I waited until he left for work and then I opened it. It was on expensive paper that had yellowed with age. A mold stain covered a quarter of it, but the spidery writing was still visible underneath.

13 August 1942

Mi darlin Harry,

I love yu, truelly I do. But I donta think we meet in the park by the ponda no more. People are talkin an their mouths are cruel.

Please understand mi love.

Leonie

The letter really depressed me. I hid it in an old makeup box I keep in my underwear drawer.

When Adrian came back from Canberra he seemed to have reverted back to his normal self—you know, tired every night, obsessive about the crossword, worried about money. Then gradually, after two days, a change came over him. Chicken cacciatore on Tuesday. Fettuccine puttanesca on Wednesday. He’s a meat-and-two-veg man from way back. I started to really worry.

Then on Friday, after watching a late-night Western, Adrian opens his briefcase and brings out a riding crop.

“What’s that for?”