Exposure

years for one more night like this.”
“How lucky that you don’t need to.”
Lucky. Never before a word I’ve had paired with my disorder. Perhaps I’m being too rough on myself. Those years I spent in self-exile may have been pathetic, but they taught me great empathy for the women who came to my bed. I learned languages, read many books, bonded with lovers as I hadn’t known a person could—briefly, yet completely. I immersed myself body and soul in recipes and wines and songs and sex, relishing their nuances as I never would have, had my life been more complex. More external.
For all its faults, it was a rich time. It made me patient, introspective, humble. It made me worthy of lying beside Caroly now. Not a waste at all. And yes, perhaps even lucky.
“You’re a very smart woman.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be you teaching me deep stuff about myself?”
“We’re not the same people we were in March. I’m not a prostitute or a shut-in.”
“And I’m definitely not a virgin.”
I laugh then drag my lips down her neck until she shivers. “And thank goodness for that.”
Three more days we have here, days of blissful nothingness, the only stresses being drives to town for food and wine, and the thought of those journeys rouses just the faintest wriggling of worry in my belly. I want to feel everything new this place can offer. A real bath for the first time in years. Enough nights in a strange bed for it to become familiar. Days away from my routines, my cabinet and my hobbies, my kitchen, my security. Time enough that perhaps even my sanctuary of the past half decade will look new upon our return, novelty to be discovered in all the spaces and items I take for granted. That I’ve taken for the entirety of my universe, for so long.
I wonder what my mother would say, if she were alive to hear me announce my travel plans.
“Why in heaven’s name would you want to go to Provence?” she might demand. She had agoraphobia as well—not as severe as mine, but it kept her happily confined to the only city she knew. “If it can’t be found in Paris, it’s not worth looking for.”
I might tell her, “The sky is bigger, and the air smells cleaner. It’s quiet and there are more stars than you can count.”
She wouldn’t be moved. But perhaps if I told her, “I fell in love. That’s why I’m going.” That, she might respect.
She’d have done anything to keep my father, of that I have no doubt. Unfortunately for her, his wife was equally attached. The mother of his three legitimate children. But to turn one’s life inside out for love… Yes, I think my mother would approve. Surely choosing to have me turned hers upside-down, shook it like a boule d’eau until the miniature snowflakes became a blizzard, her careful landscape never to look the same once the waves settled. Settled as a woman settles for a son, when it was his father she’d truly wanted, wanted until the day she died.
I sigh noiselessly, holding Caroly tighter.
Should some child come into being as a result of our affair… Well, it will be different. Different than how I arrived. No souvenir of a love lost, no living proof of a doomed romance or a tainted marriage. Merely a new person, some odd little companion to guide through the world. A big world, at once scary and breathtakingly wondrous, to discover alongside a father who would fundamentally be seeing it for the first time himself.
If, of course.
A very big and serious if, and one whose answer I’ve been told before.
“Caroly.” I whisper it, softly enough that it won’t rouse her if she’s fallen asleep.
After a pause, “Yes?”
Do you know for sure that you don’t want children? But all I manage is another, “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I want to ask, as badly as I fear to.
Again, my breathing gives me away. “What are you thinking about?”
“You said once…you don’t want children.”
A long, heavy pause answers me. “I told you I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. And I’m scared it might end up with my mom’s issues. Or mine, or—”
Or yours, she was about to say. She revises. “You told me you couldn’t offer anyone that.”
“Because I hadn’t left my flat in over three years. You may as well have asked me if I’d like to dance on the moon.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“My mind isn’t sure of anything. But my world is quite different, these six months later.”
I hear her swallow. “I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m still learning how to even be somebody’s girlfriend.”
“Of course.”
She raises my hand and presses my knuckles to her lips. So often when she doesn’t know what to say, she kisses me. As though the words her mouth seeks are written on my skin.
“Next fall I’ll have lived with you a year,” she finally says. “I might have a new job title. You might propose to me, or break up with me. Or I could do either of those things to you.”
“You’re saying, ask you again, further down the road.”
“I think I’m saying, never say never. Before this spring, I could only imagine lying here with a man like you…” She pauses for a breath. “I’m trying to say, right now is so exciting. I don’t want to miss any of it, worried about predicting the future.”
Yes, the present. I’ve never been good at basking in the moment. Anxiety’s always had me squinting into the distance, scanning for threatening shadows. The only times I exult in the present are during sex, and while mired in the hypnosis of mending a clock. Even now, in this bed, wrapped around the woman I love, my mind is fixated on questions that only time can answer, lamenting wasted years that no measure of regret could ever reclaim.
At length I ask, “What are you thinking about?”
“How strong your arms feel.”
I