How I Live Now

13

Something in the air shifted after the visit from the doctor.

Not exactly because of anything you could put your finger on but if I had to guess I’d say that the magic we were trusting to keep us safe from the outside world suddenly seemed too fragile to protect us forever.

Everyone was quieter than usual that night. Piper and I wedged ourselves into one of the big chairs and were reading Flashman together and it was late but still light enough outside to read with the help of a candle or two and all the windows and doors were open to let the warm air in along with the smell of honeysuckle, and the dogs were dozing near us and Piper suddenly stopped reading and looked at me in her solemn way and said Are you in love with Edmond?

And I thought for a minute about the best way to answer and then I just said Yes.

She stared at me with the Family Stare, the one that normal people don’t ever do because it might be considered impolite to crash around in another person’s innermost thoughts without their permission, and then she said Well I’m glad you love him because I do too.

My eyes filled with tears then, I couldn’t help it. I put my arms around her and we just sat like that with my tears running down into her hair and the night coming down darker and darker and the soft feel of it all around us.

She asked if she could sleep in my bed that night and I said yes and we went upstairs and lay close together in the narrow bed and I wondered if maybe she missed her mother, and then around halfway through the night Edmond came in saying he was lonely and he lay down too only facing in the other direction since it was the only way he could fit, and then around sunrise Isaac wandered in too wondering where everyone had gone and when he saw us he just smiled a little and went down to the kitchen and brought up the big brown teapot and some mugs on a tray and we all piled together on the bed on top of each other like puppies and drank our tea while the sun streamed in thick and yellow through the window.

And it was Edmond, with his oddball sense of what hasn’t happened yet, who knew we had to mark that day out as special and he said It’s going to be hot, let’s go down to the river for a swim.

So we collected our towels and blankets and Piper packed some food in a basket and we put on shoes and changed out of the clothes we’d been living in every day for weeks and into nice clean ones, and Isaac called the dogs and Piper got Ding from the barn, and then with a feeling of getting a day off from school which may have been totally weird but was how we felt, we set off.

If you climbed up the footpath and walked and walked, up past the lambing barn, along the edges of about six more fields eventually, after an hour, with the little Ding Ding Ding of the bell around Ding’s neck for company, you came to a river. Edmond said it wasn’t as good for fishing as the part we drove to that first day but was better for swimming because it was deeper. And it ran along the edge of the most beautiful meadow you’ve ever seen, so full of poppies and buttercups and daisies and wild roses and hundreds of other flowers I didn’t recognize that if you squinted at it from low down it looked like a blizzard of color.

Next to the river was an ancient apple tree just starting to lose its blossom and Piper and I laid out blankets half under it and half in the sun and then we sat down in the shade to try to cool off while the boys threw off their clothes and leaped shouting into the freezing water and then tried to splash us and called us to Come In Or Else! and finally we got tired of them teasing so we just thought Why not? and Piper took off all her clothes and I took my jeans off and we tiptoed in holding hands, screaming a little and jumping up and down because it was so cold.

Like everyone always says, It’s beautiful once you’re in.

The feeling of the cold water and the hot sun and having the river just flow over your skin like a dolphin wasn’t something I had enough words to describe but was the kind of feeling you never forget.

I got cold quicker than any of the others, who were having races and sitting on rocks by the edge like turtles to soak up the sun before jumping in again, so I got out and flopped down on a blanket in the warm sun and waited patiently while the heat stopped the shivering in my skin and gradually warmed my blood all the way through and then I just closed my eyes and watched the petals fall and listened to the heavy low buzz of fat pollen-drunk bees and tried to imagine melting into the earth so I could spend eternity under this tree.

Then Edmond and Piper came out of the water, Edmond put his jeans on and they both took turns making cold handprints on my stomach which I pretended not to notice, while Osbert and Isaac floated around in the river with the dogs, Isaac humming a melody and Osbert humming the harmony not quite in tune and it was nice for a while to have Osbert be part of our gang instead of the one who always had more important things to do.

Edmond lay down a few inches away from me on the blanket and lit a cigarette and closed his eyes and after a minute or two I could feel the heat from his body flowing into mine, and when Piper came over with both hands full of petals and threw them up in the air so they drifted down over us both, Edmond laughed and asked What was that for? And Piper smiled her solemn smile and said For Love.

Eventually everyone came out of the water and for hours and hours and hours we lay under the tree and talked and read and occasionally someone got up to throw a stick for the dogs and Piper played with Ding and made tiny woven wreaths of poppies and daisies to decorate his baby horns and Isaac whistled back and forth to a robin and Edmond just lay there smoking and telling me he loved me without saying anything out loud and if there ever was a more perfect day in the history of time it isn’t one I’ve heard about.

The sun waited to go down longer than usual that day so we kept putting off the moment we had to leave and the boys and dogs swam in the river again and eventually we all headed back practically in the dark, dog-tired and too happy to talk much.

I guess there was a war going on somewhere in the world that night but it wasn’t one that could touch us.