Written for the 2022 Cabb Valentine’s Challenge

“She makes a storm in the living plasm and a new adjustment. And sometimes it is like a madness.”

– The Sea and Sardinia, D. H. Lawrence

 

 

Night falls early during this part of the year, especially when February’s skies threaten snow.

Shadows hide him as he paces the balcony with his meager offerings in hand—a rose and a small package of homemade chocolates.

So little.

The smallest offering when Catherine has given … so much.

Valentines’ Day—navigating the occasion’s landmines since he was a bewildered boy, later, a lonely man, and now…

Second guessing himself and everything to do with the holiday, he enters the bedroom. It’s empty, and he has time to glance around. She’s changed from work, her office clothes strewn on the bed. He glances at the nightstand and the book upon it, The Sea and Sardinia, by D. H. Lawrence. The evening previous, Catherine had read him a bit before falling into an exhausted slumber. Their days have been hectic extremes, but she still provided him with prose that sounded more poetry describing an island they would never, could never, visit. Prior to that she’d read Sandstorms, Days and Nights in Arabia, and before that Two Towns in Provence.

In recent weeks, the books she has chosen–and he has enjoyed through her recounts and readings—are from a wide world. At her bedside are also a stack of food magazines, with essays on meals from Bangkok and Bangalore, Oslo and New Orleans. Her newly blossomed—perhaps revived—wanderlust has paired with her latest forays into gourmet cooking.

Which reminds him, she promised him a meal tonight.

After all she does, she wants to cook for him. It’s too much.

Lost to his thoughts, he doesn’t notice her returning until she walks in, a red velvet gown he’s never seen swishing gracefully around her legs.

“Oh, Vincent. I’m so glad you’re here. I—” She stops at sight of his face. “What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong?

I can pretend almost every other day that what we have is enough, that what I give you is enough, but Valentine’s Day…

Contrite, his arms open in a helpless gesture.

“I’m sorry, Catherine. I bring you this … foul mood.” He sighs. “And scant gifts.” He lays them on the quilt like an insufficient offering. “On today, of all days, you should be celebrated. You deserve dinner in Paris …” He touches the book. “Or Sardinia. Or at least somewhere in New York.”

He peers out the window.

“You should have a Giverny-sized garden of flowers instead of a planter of roses on a balcony. I would show you a sunset in Cyprus, furnish the finest confections of Europe if I could. Sometimes I…”

She nods and sits in front of him on the bed.

She must be used to his self-pity by now, his inadequacies, his inability to give her the life she deserves.

They are her true companions.

She gathers his presents into her lap, then takes his hand and draws him next to her.

Smelling the tea rose, he can feel her delight. He was able to find her favorite flower, at least, even if only one.

“You deserve those things, too, Vincent.” She counters, “If we could go there together, I’d book us tickets in a heartbeat, but since we can’t … we’re here.”

She shrugs and drops her gaze.

She could say stuck.

She could say jailed … constrained by love, by circumstance.

Bound, in every sense.

“I asked the librarian for travel memoirs because I hoped you would enjoy…” She looks up, aghast. “Did you think the books have been because I wanted to get away from New York? From you?”

He cannot answer. She seems to take his silence as a yes.

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew. I got these for us. The magazines too. I wished to bring some of the world to you.”

He nods in return—an agreement, if not a full acceptance. He always assumed her motives to be pure, to be honest, if not fully explored. They’ve hadn’t spoken of it. Their lives ever complicated, made even more so of late. It had been hard to make the time.

As if she hears his thoughts, “We’re so busy,” she says, “but you’re important to me. We may never travel to Sardinia, but we live in the largest city in America with all its … possibilities. I figured Italy or Paris can come to us.”

Head lowered, he stammers, “But I want you to see those places—”

She won’t let him finish.

“Vincent, am I happy?”

He can nod yes.

“Do you think I want to visit those places without you?”

He doesn’t. Still, he must ask. “Would tell me if you weren’t happy?”

As if questioning a child, “You’d know, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“There’s no life without limits, remember?” She stops him with the words and a tug of his hand. “And I will take the gifts you’ve given me over any others in the world.”

A caress of his jaw. She pulls him close.

“I love you, Vincent.”

Her lips brush his, a tantalizing beginning…

The door to the bedroom surges open and bangs against the wall.

*SLAM*.

For a moment, framed in the doorway, stand two small silhouettes.

“Momma! Dadda!”

Tiny feet patter to them.

“Speaking of gifts,” she murmurs to Vincent’s ear before three-year-old Jacob scrambles up the bed. His year-old sister follows but needs a lift, her wide arms say. Her father obliges, and she makes a quick crawl over to her mother’s lap.

“Where’s Samantha?” Catherine asks as she and Vincent peer behind them, blankets and stuffed toys littering their wake. “I thought you two were napping.”

“No nappin’!” the boy exclaims.

“But where is Samantha?” Their mother questions again. “She’s watching you today.”

Having the young woman babysit the children at their home Above had been a compromise to the possibly dangerous repairs Vincent needed to finish Below. His and Catherine’s offspring were famous, near infamous, for escaping their minders to find their parents.  

“Shhhh…” Jacob puts a finger to his lips, blowing rather wetly. “She sleeping,” he whispers loudly. 

“How did you both escape, Jacob? You aren’t allowed to help your sister out of the playpen by yourself. You know that,” Vincent scolds.

“Didn’t.” Their son protests, shaking the shaggy curls he won’t let anyone cut. “Carrie climb over.” Then adds with a proud chin jutting, “Me open gate.”

Husband and wife share a pointed look.

“And all without waking Samantha,” Catherine says in a tone both shocked and awed. “She must either be tired from the Valentine’s hubbub Below, or you two escape artists tuckered her out today.”

Samantha wouldn’t be the only babysitter to fall victim to “No-sleep, no-stop” Jacob and Caroline.

“Possibly both,” Vincent guesses.

“Well,” Catherine continues with an exasperated huff, “since you both are very awake, we should get your bags together for staying with grandpa tonight.”

As usual, the children ignore them in favor of their own agenda.

“Was ist das?” The little boy homes in on Catherine’s chocolates, already being played with mercilessly by his sister. Without waiting for an answer, the boy yanks them out of the baby’s chubby grasp.

Holding it above his head and kneeling high, Jacob expertly keeps the package in question out of his sister’s range, triggering an impressive shriek. Catherine takes back the candies in turn, causing the child to protest as loud as the baby.

Vincent waits for quiet before answering, “Ein paar pralinen,“ in the German their son seems to be picking up well from Mischa, Sophie and Eli.

“These are a present from daddy to me,” his wife clarifies.

The betrayal that dawns on Jacob’s face would almost be comical if it wasn’t followed hard upon by further angry howling, first from him, then his sister, because—although she may have no clue what injustice has been wrought—she trusts her brother to know when crying is called for.

Catherine stands, assessing the situation, and with a look that her husband can only label as a lawyer’s shrewdness, begins over their cries, “But…”

The children quiet a decibel.

“I’ll share, if … you both help me get your bags packed.”

The boy sniffs and nods, and the girl illustrates understanding by raising her arms to her mother.

“But, Catherine,” Vincent protests, “they’re for you.”

She shrugs, picking Carrie up. “Life is about compromise, and bribery may be required at this juncture.”

“But they will receive sweets from everyone Below tonight as it is.”

“Yup,” she responds, still unfazed.

She twirls and balances the baby on her hip as she has done hundreds of times.

Finally, he questions, “You’d send them to Father under the influence of sugar?”

“So what?” She rejoinders somewhere between laughter and pique. “He’s going to do the same to us tomorrow,” .

This is not a lie.

Despite the diligence with which Father protected teeth and tummies from the demon of sugar during Vincent’s youth, the man now had no qualms spoiling his grandchildren with as many cookies and confections as could be gotten Below. Nor did he have any issue with sending them back to their parents bounding off the walls.

“We have a limited window for our Valentine’s date, Vincent. And you listen here …” Catherine glares half-comically … but only half. “Any sacrifice to get these kids ready so we can move on to our dinner … and dessert, I will make.”

Dessert? But he was bringing dessert, which she is currently bargaining away.

When he can merely offer a confused expression, she elaborates.

“I’ve got a Valentine’s gift I want you to open.”

A present?

What more gift could she offer him? 

She’s given him this home, two beautiful, rambunctious and too-clever-and-capable-for-their-own-good children, a bed to share—even if it is sometimes to only collapse in after unending days of non-stop work, parenting, compromises … life—this perfectly imperfect existance she shares with him.

Yet she has another gift that—with constant and abashed gratitude—he must accept.

He always understood love was about giving.

He never realized how much it hinged on accepting.

“You needn’t give me any more than you already have, Catherine.”

She bounces their daughter and shrugs, not heeding his protest.

He sighs, but with a smile, and looks about the room.

“All right,” he accedes. “This present, where is it?”

She blushes.

Then, with rising confidence, winks.

“I’m wearing it.”

It takes a moment for his mind to catch the message his body has already received.

His baser thoughts, seizing their moment, run roughshod over his uncertainty.

You know, there are other gifts you can give her … and places you have taken her that most definitely need revisiting.

“Come on, Jacob.” Vincent scoops up the toddler. “Let’s get you and your sister ready to spend the night with Grandfather.”

 

Very fine is my valentine.

Very fine and very mine.

–“A Very Valentine”, Gertrude Stein