The Taste of a Woman Read online

  So between his mad genius and her sweetness I kinda keep the band together. Well, that’s what a bass player is supposed to do. Isn’t it?

  The Taste of a Woman

  Five weeks now Flora had sent her son Cody over to Jessie’s house, weeks turning into months of Saturday mornings bringing something new for her pantry or discovering what manly kinds of things needed doing around the homestead that Jessie might not be able to do, pregnant alone, her husband flying Saber Jets in Korea. Cody had run so many errands that he knew where everything was in the house. He knew what needed attention out on the farm and was accustomed, as if it were his own house, to pausing briefly at the screen door with a bright halloooo then walking straight in. This time he stumbled into the room and, in a flash, realized he’d intruded upon Jessie nursing her brand new baby.

  His eyes stayed on her a beat too long but he couldn’t help himself. It was one of those moments of attachment with the added consequence that attraction gives, and he knew immediately that she not only had seen him watching but had read him like a book.

  And for that, he was embarrassed.

  He had kept his interactions with Jessie formal, if on a somewhat friendly basis, knowing no other way. But he was aware of a mysterious femininity about her, a quality somehow different from that of his mother or the girls he went to school with. Something about her that was at once attractive and startling. This frightened Cody. And so he kept his distance, relying upon the courteous, respectful postures his parents taught him for social occasions.

  “Sorry,” he said, turning his head.

  Jessie looked amused. Perhaps it was his fumbling manner. Perhaps, it was more than that. A curious look of knowing crossed her face, the kind one sees when the wise decide to tinker with the neophyte.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Come on!” she said. “It’s just... normal.”

  Cody turned toward her now, taking in the scene entire, the baby in her arms, her blouse open, her long rust-colored hair brushing the baby’s cheek, a shiny green ribbon mingling with strands of hair, loosened and drifting over her shoulder. He was conscious of his inclusion in a realm where teen-aged boys were not invited.

  “You act like you’ve never seen a woman nursing.”

  Cody wanted to answer in many ways, several of which he tried out in his mind, none of which, it turns out, could he bring himself to speak. Finally, he just settled upon the plain truth. “No, I haven’t,” he said.

  Jessie knew that answer before it was said and showed nothing to suggest she was the least bit ruffled or troubled.

  She raised an eyebrow to him. “Well, your mama surely nursed you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I... I think she was dry. Least that’s what somebody said later on when they thought I wasn’t listening.” His embarrassment and awkwardness compounded the pressure he felt to offer something to fill the empty spaces so he said what he immediately regretted: “well, there were plenty of cows around... ”

  Jessie laughed. “Poor boy,” she said, in a manner which Cody took as heartfelt, yet it made him wince.

  Then came an uncomfortable moment in which Cody thought he should probably be somewhere else, maybe most anywhere else, but at the same time he thought he darn well didn’t want to be. His should was in a deep argument with his want when she broke into his paralysis.

  “Would you like to watch?” She said.

  Cody flushed. He couldn’t discern what this meant. Oh, he knew what she’d said, all right, and even what might follow after that, but what did she intend? Was she being motherly or was she... well, was it something more? He found himself worried. Maybe someone would be looking in the window. Maybe god himself would reach down and strike him dead. A sense of wrongness washed over him but mixed with it was an unexpected push - no - more like a craving urgency to see this through. He was in the presence of something grand.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, “I would.”

  Upon reflection, he thought he may have said that “yes, ma’am,” a little too strong but it was what it was and she didn’t seem to care.

  She turned her head toward the baby as if giving gesture with her eyes to the permission she’d offered, and Cody, now with no eyes upon him, let his own follow the direction of hers down to the tiny mouth squeezing and compressing and slurping at the nipple tip, the veins of the breast bulging with heat and succulence, the pink of the nipple too wide for the child to slurp altogether into its mouth, swelling and pulsing with each urgent gulp.

  “What does that feel like?” he said, not realizing how bold he’d suddenly become.

  She stared at him and he wondered if he might have spoiled everything. Well, it was too late now.

  Jessie looked away from him, then down to the baby drawing one of her delicate essences into him, then looked away again. Cody was grateful. She was taking him seriously and had set aside her shyness for him.

  Suddenly she turned her eyes directly to Cody as if she had just in that very instant come across the right word.

  “Dreamy,” she said.

  “Dreamy?”

  “That’s it. Dreamy.”

  Cody sat down and leaned over. Jessie remained facing him, quizzically, offering the scene of herself in all its magic.

  A moment passed and her face blushed and then registered what appeared to be a sudden thought, or a remembrance, or maybe it was a realization of some kind out of a distant connection, and just after that, a change in her expression as if the weather itself were shifting before his very eyes, as if she were hesitating on the edge of something strong, a thought, perhaps, which might carry risk or danger, not sure how to proceed, turning it over and over in her mind. Her eyes fell on Cody with his eyes upon her and she was warmed by that, suffused with good will, that feeling which comes in moments of unselfconscious giving, where generosity prevails against all that might make it want to contain itself.

  “You’ve never tasted breast milk?”

  “Guess not.”

  She lowered her head to the baby, then raised her eyes to Cody. Cody was now a passenger in a boat riding whatever wave came his way.

  “Would you like to?”

  If Cody had had time to think, or if the situation had been more public, it would have been altogether different, but recognizing the narrow gap in formality that rarely opens, and feeling attracted to was happening in a most hypnotic manner, and at the same time, now strangely confident about it, he quickly leapt into the gap afraid it might close as fast as it had opened.

  He nodded.

  Jessie reached her fingertips to her chest, touching the point where the blouse places its edge of modesty against her rising bosom and, hesitating briefly, grasped the hemline and pulled it deliberately to the side, revealing her other breast. She straightened her back as she did so and it appeared to Cody that the breast was rising toward him, even from this distance, rising and closing the separation between them.

  He decided not to do much thinking just now, just let things happen, for whatever it was that seemed lined up in this most unusual channel of time, had opened before him and was moving forward, and so to do his part, he came closer, checking, as he did so, for approval in Jessie’s eyes, which she kept directly upon him as if to say, “I meant what I said, do not fail me now.”

  He was within touching distance and she had not flinched. Her eyes only showed gentleness and expectation. She pulled the blouse further to the side and with two fingers lifted her breast ever so slightly toward him.

  Cody leaned in, over the now sleeping baby, so close he could smell the milk fat spilled upon the baby’s face and kept on leaning until he was within inches of her. He paused there, making sure he recorded every detail so that later, me
mory could lavish him with articulate images of her... Jessie let him, knowing more than he imagined.

  He looked up at her in a little break of indecision and helplessness.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  He touched his mouth against the swollen nipple and pulled back then touched again, this time parting his lips until the tip fit snugly between them. He squeezed his lips together and Jessie giggled.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said and pressed herself against him.

  “Now try,” she offered.

  He did, awkwardly at first, then slowly, like the infant he used to be, struggling with newness, with impulse and unfamiliarity, with the generous opening of this deep connection, mysterious and mesmerizing, then with rising amounts of vigor at last he swallowed.

  And pulled back, suddenly

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “Wow!” He said.

  “Why wow?”

  “It’s weird.”

  “Why weird,” she said with a cock of the head to one side.

  “Not like milk at all.”

  “That is milk, Cody Houston, The Milk of all Milk.”

  “I know, I know.” Cody was stammering.

  “You mean not like the cow’s milk you know all about.”

  “It’s different. It’s... ”

  “Go on,”

  “Acrid.”

  “Acrid?”

  “Yeah, like instead of white, grey tasting. .”

  She laughed a gracious laugh and then let a small smile creep over her face. Through watery eyes, which without warning had rushed upon her, she saw his face moving slowly into focus and with the backs of two fingers, brushed his hair from his forehead. A spot of her milk still clinging to his lip now sharpened into focus. Her teeth slipped over her lower lip in a gesture of concentration and she wiped the drop from him, looked at it on her thumb, then after a brief moment, pressed it through his lips onto the hollow of his tongue.

  “Remember that,” she said. “That’s the first taste of woman.”

  He nodded then touched his lips briefly to confirm the covenant.

  To Jessie his lips appeared swollen, reddened. First taste, she was thinking, what a nice coupling of words, first taste, and she allowed herself to tread water in that slow current as the moment itself did not want to pass.

  Her face changed again and she straightened her body and it looked to Cody as if she was shocked by something. He almost asked what is was but she broke the tension as her face transitioned to a smile. Her thumb was resting near is lip, her fingers stair-stepped across the periphery of his face. She reached behind his head and pulled him to her, moving her lips side to side over his lips, pushing her tongue gently to the tip of his tongue, once, twice then withdrew, then closed the gap twice more, briefly, as a girl might take a last nibble of her lollypop, leaving behind a part of her, inside him.

  “That’s the second taste of a woman,” she said.

  Then she turned sharply from him.

  Cody only sat and watched.

  She reached to remove her sleeping baby from her breast and place him in the bassinet beside her. She moved now in the unconscious and graceful arcs of mother over her child, unaware of Cody, or even, it seemed, whatever it was they had just experienced together. She tucked the baby in his sheets with a “tut tut” and a sigh and spread the blanket over her.

  The baby was content. She herself, content. She turned to Cody and faced him, her clothing still loosened. She sat without changing the moment or the intensity of it, allowing a last savoring, then reached to button her blouse.

  As she did so, she cocked her head to one side in that unselfconscious way a girl zones out sometimes, sitting before a mirror, straightening her clothes. A little jolt of laughter shook her just as she looked up at him with yet one more wisdom framing itself in her face. But this one she would not say, raising her eyebrow slightly and nodding her head.

  And with that, Cody knew the moment was over.

  He paused when he reached the door, placed one hand on the door facing and looked back, allowing his imagination to recreate the moment he could not have predicted nor would ever forget. It was a gift. Generosity. But it had also been frightening, especially now that fear was matched by a stronger sense of pleasure. He thought about saying something which might have sounded a bit like, “thank you,” but thought better of it. She would not wish to diminish the moment that way. All that was left to him was to start his turn to the door.

  But Jessie called to him. He was about to say Yes, Ma’am but he wasn’t sure how to address her now. Instead he just held her in his eyes and waited.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

  Cody waited.

  She cleared her throat.

  He waited.

  The moment swelled in the room. Then it fell.

  “Thurman’s coming home next week,” she said. “He’s finished with his tour of duty.”

  There was a pause in which their eyes met and held.

  “I guess... ” and she turned away from Cody then, busying herself with the baby’s blanket... “I guess I won’t be needing your help around here any more.”

  Cody held her in his gaze for a moment, nodded, and then turned toward the door.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  A Language for Allye

  Allye was an old maid at 27. Spinster. Recluse, already. She’d made her decision long ago and her path was clear as far down the road as anyone could see.

  When she was 11, on her uncle’s farm, a couple of neighbor boys caught her in the barn and made her look at their ugly, hairy penises. Her uncle drove them off or they would have stripped her naked. After that she was afraid of boys, stayed as far away as possible, made herself mousey-looking, invisible. Her breasts didn’t even grow beyond a couple cumquats and that was just fine with her. In this manner she simply retained the appearance of an 11 year-old far into her twenties.

  She lived with her sister Carrie, her husband Don, and their two children. The two sisters had inherited a generous three story Tudor with cultured grounds and there was room enough for all. Allye had the mornings to write poetry and the afternoons for tending to the children home from school while their father managed his law practice and their mother ran an elite clothing shop for women. Allye did a little cooking and minding the house to make herself useful.

  She was neat as a pin. Everything had its place and if it wasn’t where it ought to be she would put it there. Everything about her was small, self-contained, succinct. Even her handwriting was so tiny it took a magnifying glass to read it.

  She wrote small poems.

  today

  the sun

  didn’t want

  my window

  That was it. A six-word poem. Anything more would be a stretch for her but sometimes she would allow herself to relax just far enough to write a Haiku.

  the sudden jonquils

  leaned over the reticent pool

  April afternoons

  --she bundled these little sums in little stacks and stored them in her trunk. Clearly, she was an admirer of Emily Dickinson and in many ways, lived just like her.

  Mornings she sat in the sunroom, rays of light streaming in, nature doing what nature does at the hands of gardeners and architects out beyond the window lights. She had a habit of braking the monotony and the writer’s block that came with it by strolling through the garden, stooping occasionally to weed the flowers. One morning she reached down to remove a foreign plant and someone grabbed her by the wrist.

  All she saw when she recovered her wits was hands waving in her face like windshield wipers on steroids. That would be Rodolpho. That’s how he talked.

  Rodolpho, the Mexican gardener, was bor
n deaf. Never talked. Never learned to read. Having no language he had to invent one. He did so by creating a manner of speaking with his hands, not signing in the usual sense for he had no words to sign. There was no vocabulary. What he signed was meaning.

  Thus, when he drew back Allly’s hand and then released her, he waved his hands across her vision as if to throw an obstacle in front of her, his way of signaling a blockade from danger.

  When she pulled back he pressed his thumb and forefinger together and ran it along the side of the index finger on the opposite hand, generating a motion that imitated whittling or slashing. By this he signified cutting, or laceration, or pain, a threat to bodily safety. He repeated this motion several times, shaking his head and making hissing breath sounds. The plant Alice was about to grab was poison oak.

  She got the message. Rodolpho got rid of the pest. She thanked him as best she could and went inside.

  Perhaps out of gratitude, perhaps for some other reason, she found herself watching Rodolpho more closely. His knowledge of gardening was phenomenal. From his roots in Mexico to his work in California, he had been exposed to a wide range of plants and a large number of gardeners who were more than willing to share their knowledge. He moved with grace. He was almost invisible in the environment he created. The plants flourished.

  Allye had a problem. Little, perhaps to someone not so fastidious as she but to her it was a pox from the devil. She suffered from eczema. Not badly, but enough to make her meticulousness shiver with discontent. Her doctors flailed away at her little rashes, but mostly they were unimpressed and did not fully appreciate how a three millimeter spot hidden in the crook of her elbow could cause such mental anguish. Perhaps their lack of enthusiasm scuttled their therapeutic attempts. In any case, the rash went away and came back on its own blithe schedule, seemingly just at the time it would be the least welcome, for example, the hour before a dinner party, the kind of exposure Allye loathed most, a captive circumstance requiring her to reveal her shy nature to a gaggle of cackling humans eager to impress each other.