A story by Lisa Franklin
Maybe she was at the stove, stewing plums in a pot, the sweet fruit scenting the kitchen, Mason jars lined up on the table awaiting the warm jam. The boys were at school, her husband at work, the only peace she ever got. They weren’t home to hear the shriek of metal, to see her lift her head or watch her pull back the curtain or answer the door to the stranger.
Maybe the accident had already happened, maybe she was still shaken when she saw him standing there as if he already owned her. His dark skin, his suit, his tie. So different from her husband with his hard hat and coveralls. What was he selling? Someone was always knocking to offer something: vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias. No, it was nothing she could touch or hold.
They sat, he on the couch, the middle cushion, she in the chair across from him. She remembers this now, months later, as her hand cups her belly. She was aware then of her thighs beneath her skirt and the angle of her legs, of how her feet rested in her high heels. But, no, she was merely a woman in pedal pushers and sneakers. It was how he looked at her that made her feel as if she wore a strand of pearls at her neck, perfume in the soft spot pulsing at the base of her throat.
She watched his smooth hands as he set the briefcase on his knees, heard the latches snap open. She felt herself sinking beneath the soft brown puddle of his gaze, into the tight embrace of her chair. She had never seen anyone with such beautiful skin, the color of polished burl.
“Can I get you something? Water? Coffee?”
He did not look up from his papers. He did not smile. Or maybe he did, but only with one corner of his mouth. “No. Thank you. I have what I need.”
His voice, deep and unfamiliar, vibrated through her bones.
She had taken him away from his spiel, he was annoyed. She felt scolded. He cleared his throat, adjusted the knot in his tie, started again, his words like waves pounding, pouring over her, one and then the next. She heard the sound but not the meaning. She understood he wanted something from her.
He made a motion toward her, toward the rug.
“You’re dripping.”
“Oh!” She rose from the chair and hurried into the kitchen. At the sink, she shivered, ran cold water then hot. She picked up a towel but couldn’t remember what it was for, tried to think of her life before that moment, of branches scratching her arms as she picked plums from the backyard tree, the older boy taking the younger one’s hand as she shooed them outside, the growl of her husband’s truck as he drove off, but her mind would not let her linger, shoved her thoughts away and slammed the door.
Maybe then. Maybe the crash was then.
He must have heard it too. Maybe they both reached for the curtain. Maybe he was standing behind her, so close she could smell the spice of his aftershave, the faint tang of his sweat, could hear the quiet scrape of his suit jacket against his shirt when he moved. Or he was standing feet away, against the edge of the table, pen in hand, impatient. She sensed his determination, his need to follow through. The heat from his skin radiated toward her.
“I just need to—” she said.
She does not know how one body found another, over the space of a room, over the resistance of gravity, over the weeping in her mind, how a minute expanded and contracted. She will never be able to explain how the plums boiled away and burned, how she was left with only broken glass glinting on the pavement and another beating heart.
Lisa a Franklin is a writer, photographer, and career coach. She lives in Walnut Creek, CA, with her husband and two cats. In 2018, she discovered through a DNA test that her biological father was someone other than she had always believed.