Refuge
by Kitty Beer
“I want you to marry me.”
She lies there in the silken warmth of their bed, damp with the liquid he has just spilled into her, looking up at him. He has stopped buttoning his shirt, for emphasis.
“I want you to marry me,” he repeats, with an edge. “We belong together.”
His shirttails are hanging over his briefs. His legs just the right length for his tall frame, just the right amount of muscle, just the right amount of dark hair flecks. She meets his eyes.
“Isn’t it too soon? It’s hardly been a year….”
“It’s been almost two years since he died, Crea. Don’t tease me.”
He turns his back. He’s pulling on his trousers, roughly.
“Fair needs a little more time. She adored her father.”
Her tone has taken on the pleading whine she hates, and he loves.
“Of course, darling.” Now he sits on the bed, caressing her hair, breast. “Say, in a month, in March.”
“A springtime wedding,” she murmurs, curling towards him. “The spring of 2043, it even sounds romantic. Oh, Han, how lovely.”
He rewards her with the tender kisses reserved for her submission. His mouth lingering pressure on her eyelids, neck, lips, heat that kindles her belly in spite of herself.
When he leaves, she turns to the blue morning light at the windows, the spray of black tree branches. An enormous nest&emdash;a crow’s or a squirrel -- looms jauntily in a clutch of twigs. Still tenaciously there after the raging storms of the last week. Faintly comes piano song, Fair’s morning practice. The elegant wisps of music from a distant peaceful time help her tears that blur the tree and sky. She’ll have to tell Marcel.
After washing--using so much water that Marguerite the housekeeper fumes--she stands by the window. The fence is finally complete, shutting out the rabble from the broad lawn. All at once, there is the mysterious little old woman again, more visible now that she must stand inside the fence, a dark, brooding waif. She’s incongruously wearing big black rubber boots, dwarfing the rest of her. White face tilted up to quiz the windows of the house. Many mornings now she lurks there, but not hiding, proud. Why don’t they drive her off?
Fair at the piano glances up to smile at her mother, missing a note and pounding the next one vengefully. Such a lovely little girl, barely eleven, with burnt-red curls and delicate features. Such a determined little girl, out to fight her demons. A fierce little girl.
Marguerite tries to persuade Crea not to go out today.
“I’ve got to go to work,” Crea insists.
“No, no. You won’t go down to the lake flats! The streets are all flooded. The refugees are dangerous.” Marguerite rants in her flamboyant French Canadian way, Latin with passion. “What will Captain Hanley say? You’ll catch a cold, it’s too difficult…”
“Thanks, Marguerite. I’ll be fine.”
Wearing a slicker and boots Crea takes off on her bike, down the hill towards the town. Because she must see him. Her job could wait until tomorrow, could wait for days. No one at the Guardian office would consider it odd for her to stay home in the aftermath of such a storm. But she needs Marcel, like oxygen.
The road at the bottom of the hill is clogged with them, families and their belongings crammed into assorted vehicles&emdash;wagons pulled by horses or motorcycles, oddly crafted conveyances lashed to bicycles or wheelbarrows, here and there an old car. They’re all headed north, and Crea is headed across through the town center, so she manages to ride past them fairly fast, splashing through pockets of muddy water. One stark-eyed woman carrying a baby is wearing a once beautiful coat in tatters, muddied shoes without toes. The baby is screaming, but nobody seems to notice.
Word is they’ll close the border soon. Thousands of these Americans are streaming across into Canada every day now, driven by the heat and drought, poisoned air and water, impending chaos. Their dream is the northern wilderness, but there are too many of them already, and even those newly settled want to stop the surge.
Crea manages to follow behind a convoy of Guards, trucks full of hearty men in gray-blue uniforms. She waves to Lieutenant Renaud and he salutes with a smile. She’s one of their own -- she belongs to Hector Hanley.
Speeding past the lakefront shacks still flooded by the wild rains, past the marketplace, the computer café, and on up the next hill. Across from the church, Marcel’s little storefront manages to look jaunty in spite of peeling paint. As she passes, she imagines she glimpses him among his paraphernalia, redeemed clocks, toasters, TVs, coffee pots, lamps. Dark hair falling aslant over his forehead, square sure hands adjusting some intricacy of screw or bolt. The nape of his neck.
The Guardian office is operating at a high pitch. Two days were lost because of the storm, and today at noon is the deadline. Crea plunges into the pile on her desk searching for an acceptable story. Fuel cells have been recharged and her computer is working. So she begins, “Bake Sale Features Giant Gingerbread Castle.”
Shortly after noon she’s walking as casually as she can down to Marcel’s shop. Sunlight sparkles the lake. In the distance the worm of refugees appears benign, almost peaceful.
She goes around to the back door and waits in the room where he lives. Table and chairs, couch, cooking range, ladder to sleeping loft. Her first time here she had been aware only of gratitude that she didn’t have to live cooped up in a place like this&emdash;such a spare, shabby, cramped corner smelling old. She’d sipped warily at the tea he gave her, with a vague dismay that bordered on repugnance. But she kept coming back. His tirades excited her: against the authorities, the “bull-headed” Guards, the “despotic and inept” government, the “blind idiocy” of 20th century industries that had poisoned the Earth, the new Zorian religion (“cult crap”) that everybody was falling for. She loves his anger. She wishes she could be angry.
Now she seeks him out for more reasons than she cares to admit. She’s drawn here like someone in a fever seeking clarity. He wakes her from a dream.
She can hear him in the front room chatting with a customer, saying goodbye, closing and locking the door, its bell chiming. In a moment he’ll be here, already she’s warm with him.
When David died, Crea and Fair mourned among strangers, in a strange land. They had just crossed the border from Vermont a few days before. One morning he was a vibrant vigorous young man, by afternoon a gray depleted ghost, by nightfall dead. They buried him just outside Montreal with the countless other cholera victims. They tried to mark the spot, but they’ll never be able to find it again.
Captain Hanley saw her a few weeks later standing in line for travel documents. Froth of pale blond hair countered by brown eyes, wide welcoming mouth countered by thin aloof nose, body round and lithe at once--her beauty a sum of contradictions. He ordered his sergeant to devise a problem, and she was brought before him. Already fragmented by grief, and now faint with new fear, Crea cowered by his desk. He was enthralled.
To Fair, Han is their hero. One day they were languishing in a crowded smelly tent with dozens of other miserable refugees, the next they were installed in a luxurious suite with running water and more food than she’d ever seen. She adapted with amoral speed, taking to fine living with nonchalant ease. By the time the child dimly realized, months later, that Han was in the process of taking her father’s place in their lives, she was too far transformed to object. Anyway, her heart is closed and locked, her father safe inside.
Crea’s heart is not so secure. While she watches Marcel stoke his stove, she knows that her eyes are resting too long on his shoulders, hands.
“Marcel.”
But, on his knees jabbing the coals, caught up in his perpetual fury, he misses her urgent tone.
“Don’t see how they can police that whole border,” he growls. “Sure, conscription’s gone from three to four years now, but they’ll need every man and woman just for that. They’ll have to start shooting people.”
“Hopefully not,” she murmurs.
She’s slicing the cheese she brought, standing at his little table. The room is so small they’re barely four feet apart. He slams the stove door, too hard, stands up eyes blazing.
“How can you, my smart and so beautiful dear friend, stay one minute longer in that man’s bed?”
“Marcel, he wants me to marry him.”
But she knows her eyes are saying hold me. Marcel reads her look, takes a step closer, shrugs and turns away. He’s tried that before. Their one kiss, weeks earlier, had opened for a moment to the piercing sweetness of love, before she whimpered and tore away.
So he answers gruffly, “Of course he does.” His back to her, shrugging.
She slips the sandwiches to plates, he brings mugs of coffee, folds his spindly form into a chair. She curls in the cushions of his tattered couch. Instead of saying, “Listen, he says next month, he means it this time,” she says, “Fair and I could move into town. We could take those rooms at Celeste’s. She has a piano too.”
Saying this and seeing how he glows, it actually takes shape, like a little round truth. Certainly she can leave Han and let herself fall in love with Marcel. The coffee is so strong she realizes in a pang that he used his precious drinking water supply for this. She can help him, yes, they’ll make a cozy brave life together.
He dares to smile. “Would you?”
“I’ll see what Fair says.”
When the sun blazes briefly red just before it sets, she’s walking her bike slowly up the other hill to the stately house that is her home now, lifting her eyes to its promise.
Electric lights are starting to go on in the windows and along the drive. Behind her in the darkening valley there is no electricity any more. Only a few solar-generated lights for the lucky ones.
Wheeling her bike around to the side, she again catches sight of that little black shape against the far fence. Instead of calling for a Guard to dispel it once and for all, she sets off running towards it, boots spattering mud ridges.
The woman unmoving watches her. Face to face, Crea is the more disconcerted of the two. The huge dark eyes hold her astonished. In the tiny bent and bony body, those looming, furious eyes.
“Who are you?” Crea demands.
“I know who you are.”
A tremulous sharp voice, French. Their frosted breaths meet.
“Why are you always standing here?”
“I am Fleur Chamois. You’re living in my house.”
Fleur’s gray hair is awry under her black cap, but her shabby coat is elegantly cut. Mouth a folded down triangle amid a web of wrinkles. Crea hatless, coat open to the soft pink of her angora sweater, stares down at the audacious little bundle.
“This is Captain Hanley’s house.”
But Crea knows this is a lame defense. The house was requisitioned of course, like all the other spacious houses now occupied by important Guards and their families.
“They took it from us. Almost exactly five years ago today, February 2038, when my husband was sick. Tellement malade, tellement.”
“Has he died then?”
“My Bernard. He died, yes. He was killed by that.”
Crea goes limp against the fence.
“My husband died too,” she murmurs.
Fleur ducks her head and her eyes come up luminous. “You loved him?”
Crea nods turning her face to the fence, pushing her forehead into the fragrant chill of freshly cut wood, pine from the forests dying so fast they can hardly use it quickly enough before it rots. Tears hot on cold cheeks. Fleur reaches up with a mittened hand to briefly touch them.
Crea turns. “I’m so sorry you lost your house.”
“I’ve put a curse on it.”
“What do you want me to do, I have a child.”
“What you have to. But you’ll never be happy there.”
“Oh,” Crea breathes, slumping with deep exhaustion, “I know that well enough. I don’t expect that.”
***********
The American ambassador’s wife is wearing blue silk with a red and white tiara. It’s incredibly tacky, but somehow the effrontery works as defiance, which it’s meant to do, because Tildy Mellon is a smart woman. The border has just been closed, only hours earlier. Her compatriots are now officially the beseechers they have already been for some years now. To enter Canada they either have to sneak across risking prison or even death, or possess elaborate papers proving their vital importance. At this very moment, the last miserable mass of American refugees is plodding through the town below. Of course, many of the resplendent guests around the dining tables in the glittering hall are Americans like Han who got here in time, a decade ago or more, and now share in the glory of power over desperate people.
Han at the head of the long host table in full uniform looks regal, on his lapels the gold braided sheaf of his rank, white hair cropped close to angular head, sharp benign eye on everything. Ambassador Mellon, in contrast, though a fit and handsome man, shrinks visibly. Lieutenant Renaud, when he’s not checking Han for subtle cues, keeps his beefy face full on his gorgeous little vamp of a wife. He may close borders, but they say he can’t keep track of Madame Renaud.
Crea in strapless white, a single strand of pearls at her neck, going through all the polite rituals, is amazed that others respond to her as a calm, charming woman when she’s feeling frantic. From the other end of the table Han beams at her as always, continually calling attention to her with a nod or wink so nobody is likely to forget that this vision of female perfection is his.
The potage, a doubtless delicious blend of potatoes and leeks, leers up at her while she toys with it, throat closed. Boise Leonard, a plump brown-skinned man clever enough to have emigrated from Atlanta years ago, is regaling her with a banking story. She beams at him in gratitude. Boise’s wife Ruella, splendid in lacey lavender, has just placed a red-nailed hand on Han’s arm to emphasize a point. Han leans towards her appreciatively, turns his eyes to meet Crea’s.
Before the thought even comes, Crea goes cold.
The pleasant hum of conversation continues amidst the clink of plates and forks. Waiters weave in and out, plates of venison arrive garlanded with pineapple, murmurs of admiration crest. Crea has to be persuaded to relinquish her soup spoon. She sits very still, freezing her gaze on Boise’s chin. The odor of the meat nauseates her.
Han knows. Of course, how could she have been so idiotic as to believe she could hide Marcel from him, his loyal staff, his spies. Every single time she crept in the back door of that little shop to her secret license, he was told about it. And she had thought she had the freedom to choose!
She cuts the meat in small pieces and disperses it around her plate. Her skin feels intolerably hot, and the cold pearls that have taken on her heat burn her.
“So Canadian Mutual has a very good chance of coming out on top,” Boise is boasting with his mouth full. “You wouldn’t believe the odds, and it’s not all luck, I can tell you, it’s sheer nerve and verve.”
She murmurs and nods, sips wine, wills her eyes away from Han. Relief, fear, mortification, defiance. At last one thought manages to form and hold: she can go now. She and Fair can pack up this very night and go to Marcel for good. She imagines him opening the door, his serious long face lit with joy, the magical kisses.
When the fish course comes, Crea is hungry. She devours the tangy trout while regaling Boise with an anecdote about Fair’s music teacher. On Boise’s other side, Madame Renaud has tired of toying with the Mayor, and now chimes in with a story of her own. It seems that her daughter, who wins equestrian prizes, was given a new horse for Christmas. She has named it Hector in honor of their esteemed leader. Isn’t that wonderful?
Crea realizes that to her left Ambassador Mellon has been sitting in a silence almost as strained as her own, in spite of the valiant efforts of the kind little Mayor’s wife next to him.
“Are you staying at the Laurentian?” Crea asks him. “Do you find it comfortable?”
“Very comfortable,” he intones. “Thank you.”
What more can she say? Too bad your country is falling apart? Crea puts her napkin to her lips and lets herself look at Han. He and Ruella are listening incredulously to Tildy Mellon, who must be convincing them that she for one is not cowed. But when Han’s eyes go to Crea, he beams and winks just as smug and possessive as before.
In the bathroom, Crea cools her cheeks and chest with cold water, touches up her hair, seeks comfort in the glowing reflection. What can he be thinking? What’s he planning to do? Ignore it? Surely he will repudiate her now. He’s only waiting for the most humiliating moment. Then, as she watches her beautiful face contort, she realizes that Marcel is in danger. Perhaps at this very moment he’s opening that door not to the dream of Crea and Fair, but to Guards who seize him, drag him away. Of course they can fabricate charges against him, he’s already suspect for lack of zeal. His arms are bound, his brave face bloodied.
Light in the library is so low that the books on the top shelves are shadows. Crea steps across the soft carpet to the glass doors. In March and April before it gets too hot these doors are kept open to the deck and garden. She cups her hands to see if she can catch a glimpse of Fleur.
Slowly she knows Han is already there, behind her, waiting. She turns. He’s sitting in a high backed chair. He flips on the table lamp beside him.
“Darling,” he says. “Taking a break? It’s going well, I think, don’t you?”
“Han…”
She starts the sentence, starts to step forward. But doesn’t finish, doesn’t step forward.
Words not spoken roil the air between them. The faraway sounds of their partying guests can’t infer upon this wild silence. He watches her, fingertips tapping each other meditatively.
“I’m tired,” she finally says.
“Of course. You really shouldn’t have worked today. It’s noble of you, but really, darling.”
Crea makes a face that she hopes looks sheepish.
“We’ll sleep in tomorrow,” he says. His tone means sex.
He waits a moment, then gets up and moves to her. His hands are on her bare shoulders. His hands are cold. He presses her to him, reaching into her dress for her breasts. Just enough of an embrace to assert control.
“Now,” he says, stepping back in satisfaction, “we must go and applaud the speeches.”
“Han, please, don’t.”
“Why, my darling, whatever can you mean? Get hold of yourself and charm them all, as you do so well.”
It’s Ruella Leonard who gives the final toast. Her lovely cinnamon face is alight with excitement.
“And so, my friends, Canada is now safe. The hordes of unfortunates and bandits have got to stay home. If it comes to war, so be it. With the help of our heroic Guards, we’ll keep on building and protecting this great land of ours.”
“Hear, hear!” “Vive le Canada!” “Go, Ruella!” “Victory!”
Ambassador Mellon goes so far as to touch his glass to his lips, but his wife Tildy stonily and rigidly glares. Her red white and blue looks even more garish against skin that has gone clammy white. As Crea numbly picks at the last of her blueberry mousse, she yearns to embrace Tildy, her suffering and her bravery. But she won’t. She won’t make any such gesture. And Tildy will continue to see only the gorgeous serene creature who pleasures the enemy.
Marguerite has drawn the drapes in the bedroom. The covers of the big plush bed are turned down in welcome. Han’s brandy waits on the bedside table. It’s almost midnight and the last sounds are fading into hush. Crea lifts one curtain. Stars are brilliant and the muddied grass has taken on an icy sheen. Of course Fleur would not be there now, but she’s disappointed. She lets the curtain fall, unclasps her pearls. They lie warm in her palm.
Han is taking off his boots, jacket, shirt, looking at her looking at him. She feels her breath quicken. In a flash of self-loathing, she sees the extent of her complicity. She wants this world of luxury, security, indulgence, wants it for herself. She wants this sexual subservience, this man with a will of iron.
She places the pearls carefully in their box, slowly unzips her dress as Han comes to her, pushes her to her knees.