I Shall Not Want

I

She got the call she had been expecting on Christmas Day, at the Ellis house, after dinner but before the pie and cake had been cut. The kids had fled to the family room, leaving behind a litter of china and adults with elbows propped on the table, finishing off the wine.

Clare's cell rang, a number she didn't recognize. Maybe a wrong number. Maybe a parishioner who had bottomed out on the hardest holiday of the year. "I have to take this," she said, rising. Dr. Anne waved her away.

In the living room, she flipped open her phone. She listened to what the man on the other end of the line had to say. She said, "Yes, sir," and, "Thank you, sir," and hung up. She stood there a long time, staring at the Ellises' tall tree, heavy with children's homemade ornaments.

"Clare?" Gail Jones stuck her head in the door. "If you need to go somewhere, I can drive you."

Clare shook her head. She walked past Gail, back into the dining room. The chatter fell silent as they saw her face. "Are you all right?" Karen Burns stood up. "Is everything okay?"

"My Guard unit's being called up." Clare didn't know where to put her hands. She settled for wrapping them around her arms. "We're going to Iraq."

II

She refused all offers to drive her home, although she agreed to let Geoff Burns notify the rest of the vestry. She walked through the darkening streets of Millers Kill, past windows framing twinkling trees, past strings of fairy lights and illuminated plastic Santas, past closed-up houses whose inhabitants had fled to Florida or Arizona.

She walked past her own house, around the square, beneath fuzzy candy canes and reindeer hanging from the old-fashioned-looking streetlights. She walked past stores closed for the day and galleries closed for the season and old mills, closed for good. Walking is prayer, someone had told her, and she believed it.

Eventually, exhausted and numb from the cold, she turned around and headed back. Before she reached the rectory, she stopped at St. Alban's and let herself into the chilly, dim space. On the deep stone sill beneath the nativity window, she had set a retablo she had found with a single votive. She lit the candle, and Our Lady of Refuge sprang to life in hot pinks and blues, a motherly smile on her face, welcoming all into her sheltering arms. Clare thought Octavio Esfuentes might like it. She thought about him, dying terrified and alone in an alien land. Thought about herself doing the same thing. "Holy Mother," she whispered, "Be with us all when we're frightened and far from home."

The rectory was scarcely warmer than the church. She cranked up the thermostat and lit the fire she had laid this morning. Russ had told her a fire sucked heat out of a house, but you couldn't prove it by her. After she had gotten it going, she felt warm enough to shuck her parka and make some hot cocoa. She had just retrieved the pan and was assembling ingredients when a banging at the kitchen door nearly caused her to drop the milk carton on the floor.

The door opened before she could get to it. Russ came in, stomping his boots, clutching a hideous arrangement of red and green carnations and gold-painted holly. "I thought you were locking up nowadays." He shut the door behind him.

"What are you doing here?" She accepted the ugly flowers while he took off his parka. "I thought you were working all day."

"I asked Paul to finish up my shift. He only had his kids until noon. Then his ex got 'em." He nodded toward the carnations. "These are for you. Sorry. The only place open was the Stewart's out by 117, and they didn't have a big selection." He finished untying his boots and kicked them off. "I thought I ought to bring flowers when I asked you to marry me."

Clare, who had been mentally inventorying her pantry for things she could offer him, stared. "What did you say?"

He relieved her of the flowers and set them on the pine table. He took her hands. "Marry me. I'm sorry, I don't have a diamond." He squeezed her fingers. "It feels like you need a pair of gloves more than jewelry."

"I was out walking." She pulled her hands away. "What do you mean, marry you?"

"We can get a license tomorrow at the town hall. Judge Ryswick can waive the waiting period and do the thing right in his office. We can be husband and wife by lunchtime." Russ ran his hand through his hair. "No, that doesn't take into account buying rings. We'll have to go to Glens Falls for that."

"I don't want to get married by Judge Ryswick tomorrow. That's-" The light went on. "Somebody told you I'm being deployed." She shook her head. "Good God. I knew the town grapevine was fast, but I didn't know it was that fast. I only found out myself two hours ago."

"Geoff Burns called me." Russ smiled a little. "I guess I'm going to have to stop calling him a dickhead."

"And so you what, thought you'd rush over here like a swabbie in On the Town and marry me before I shipped out? Thanks, but no thanks."

"Clare-"

"I have to see to the fire." She went through the swinging doors into the living room. He followed her. He stopped by the sofa as she knelt and jabbed the poker at the inoffensive logs.

"I don't want you to go." His voice was low.

"I don't want to go either." She didn't look at him. "My whole life is here." She inhaled. "But I knew what I was getting into. Which is more than I can say about becoming a priest." She got onto her feet and turned toward him, a big man in khaki and stocking feet, hands jammed into his pockets.

He looked at the floor. "When I say I don't want you to go, I mean I don't want you to die."

She went to him then, wrapping her arms around him. He folded her into his embrace and rested his chin on her head. They rocked together.

"You're cold."

"It was a long walk. And I'm a little scared."

"Burns told me it was Iraq. He didn't say how long your tour is going to be."

"A year. I've got two weeks to report."

His arms tightened. He breathed in. In the quiet, she could feel him silently enumerating everything that could happen over the course of a year in a war zone. When he finally spoke, he surprised her. "I went to Linda's grave this morning."

She looked up at him.

"I had this idea of-I don't know-talking to her. Like people do in the movies? So I got there, I stood around in the cold, I felt like a posturing fool: then I realized; I don't need to do this. She knew the truth. About how I felt about her. She was headed back. Headed toward me. She forgave me before she died. I just had to-I don't know-forgive myself the same way." He ran one hand through his hair. "It sounds stupid when I try to say it."

Clare shook her head. "No."

He smiled, one-sided. "There were already fresh flowers against her stone when I got there."

"Ah."

"Much nicer than the ones I managed to get for you."

She laughed.

He tightened his arms around her. "I don't want to spend another year kicking myself for what I should have done or not done. So tell me what I can do for you, love. You want me to go away? Help you pack? Take care of your house while you're gone? What do you need from me?"

No more waiting, she thought. No more time. She smiled slowly. "Make love with me."

He stared into her face for a heartbeat, then let her go to strip off his shirt. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am!"

She was still laughing when he hauled her against him, bare-chested. He kissed the corners of her mouth and her jaw and her neck, yanked her sweater over her head and flung her bra across the room; kissed her shoulders and breasts and nipples until she was gasping and incoherent. She trapped his face between her hands and brought him back up to her mouth, exchanging deep, drugged kisses that made her head spin.

She tried to tell him, The bedroom's upstairs, but he was tugging at her skirt, saying, "I want you naked," and the fire was hot against her back, and his hands were running between her legs and she thought she was going to die if she didn't have him right now.

He kicked away his pants and shorts and there they were, face-to-face and skin to skin. Everything stopped. His hands were shaking. Hers were, too. She touched the fading pink lines and puckered circles marking the violence that had nearly killed him.

"Not very pretty," he said.

"No." She looked into his eyes. "But it's you."

"Yes."

She didn't smile. "Yes." She stepped into his arms, listened to the hiss of his breath as they pressed together, his skin hot against hers.

"Oh, God, you feel good." He buried his face in her neck.

"Um." His hands were moving over her again, making it hard to think. "I should let you know I'm on-oh, God-birth control pills. To regulate my cycle." He moved down her body, using his tongue and teeth now, as well as his hands. "But I don't have-oh, yes, do that again-any condoms or anything."

He looked up at her. "Clare, the last time I was with someone new I was twenty-three years old. I'm not worried about diseases, I'm worried I've forgotten what to do."

She laughed, then gasped. "That's okay. I've forgotten what you're supposed to do, too."

He laughed against her belly, a low rumble that sank into her bones. He got off the floor and half sat, half sprawled onto the sofa. She climbed onto his lap. Leaned forward. Kissed him. Teased him, with her mouth and breasts and hands, until he was clenched and trembling. "Now, please." His voice was heavy. "Please, now."

He looked into her eyes as she took him inside her. "Oh, God," he breathed. "Clare…"

"With my body I thee worship." She didn't know if he recognized the words.

"I do," he said. "I will." Then she moved, and he moved, and every thought fled like sparks up the chimney as he kissed her and licked her and stroked her with his long, clever fingers, over and over and over again. Her slick-wet skin felt taut, fever-hot. She clutched at him, closed her eyes, opened her eyes, watched his face glazed with pleasure, a face she knew like her own and had never seen before.

He slid down, braced his legs, thrust hard into her. She cried out.

"Tell me." Rough and hard.

"I love you." She didn't recognize her own voice.

"No. Tell me you'll come back."

"Russ-"

"Promise me. Promise me you'll come back."

He battered at her. Fingers moving. So good. "I can't-"

"Promise. Me."

"Oh, God!" She broke, snapped, arched, tore open to him. "I promise, I promise, I'll come back to you, I'll come back to you, I'll come back…"