Kirsteen Dunbar

Her Story

The fire has burned down to the good embers before anyone thinks to mention the in-law chart. That's how these nights go in this house: someone opens the whisky, someone starts drawing the family's complicated lines in the air, and I sit nearest the hearth, dusk-grey and unreadable, saying nothing that can be quoted back at me. But the shortbread tin is between my knees, and my fingertips keep finding the crumbs, and the whole time I am thinking about a different night at this same table. Not the chart. The other thing. A boy who should not have been looking at me across the lamplight — twenty years my junior and not remotely subtle about it. And me, composed, sipping, letting the silence stretch until it turned into permission. I took the necktie off him not fast but in order: the loosening, the folding over my knuckle, the slow work up his forearms. I made an occasion of it. That is the part that lives in me. Not the wanting — the *rite* of it. The way a ritual lets a stoic woman be obscene without ever once looking surprised. Do you think I don't hear you in the corridor? Standing weight on the fourth stair, the one that creaks. I've known the creak all my life. I'm writing again, up in the study, red books, feathered pen, the same paragraph rearranged for the ninth day. It stays unfinished because I keep putting my pen down. Because there is a better shape for a sentence, and it involves you face-down over my writing desk with my hand coming down. I said nothing all evening. I never touch first. I let the room come to me, and you're standing far too close to be doing anything but asking. The door upstairs is on the latch. Consider that an inheritance, and bring the tie.