Unwritten Laws 01(84)

“That’s the first time I’ve done this since James died,” she said softly.

He hugged her gently. “This is the first time I’ve ever done anything outside my marriage.”

Viola closed her eyes, and he realized what a stupid thing that was to say. “Do you think anybody heard?” he asked.

“They’ll think we were banging on the machine to make it work.”

When at last she opened her eyes again, he felt a mixture of unreality, guilt, and euphoria that would not diminish for many weeks. More than one boundary had been crossed in that room. The sin of adultery paled in comparison to the tribal law they had broken. Only one taboo was greater—a white woman sleeping with a black man. Viola was forbidden fruit in more ways than one, and Tom wondered how much of the intensity he’d experienced might be attributed to that fact.

“I’ve got a problem,” she said, her voice disturbingly practical.

“What?”

“One of those witches from up front is liable to be waiting right outside this door.”

“What’s the problem?”

Viola took his hand and guided it along her inner thighs. Her panty hose were soaking wet.

“Don’t worry,” he said, taking down a refill bottle of developer for the machine. He removed the cap and splashed some of the chemical across his shirt and trousers, more onto the floor, and some onto Viola’s panty hose.

“We’ll tell them I was on the floor working under the machine, and you spilled this in the dark. You can go home to shower, and I’ll do the same.”

“What about fixing the machine?”

Tom lifted the black sheet of film from the tray atop the developer and held it up in front of the safelight. He saw the white outlines of a hip joint, its ball and socket clearly visible. “I think we fixed it the old-fashioned way.”

“That chemical’s stinging me,” Viola whispered. “Ohh. I need to get to the bathroom.”

Tom swallowed hard. This was the kind of moment Gavin Edwards would handle with the suave detachment of Hugh Hefner, but Tom felt only confusion and guilt.

“It’s all right,” Viola said. “I don’t know what to say, either. But I do need water down there.”

He kissed her forehead. “I just want you to know this meant something to me.”

She smiled and touched his cheek. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t know that.”

He took a deep breath, then opened the door and let in the harsh light of the real world.

What followed this incident was a forty-five-day period of mutual obsession that oscillated wildly between panic and bliss. Sleep was impossible, but Tom realized that the euphoria he experienced during the hours he spent with Viola somehow made up for the deficit. Yet that euphoria was punctuated by paralyzing episodes of fear. They tried not to make stupid mistakes in the clinic, but it was impossible to endure a day without one at least closing a hand around the other’s, and most days they did more than that. Thanks to clever sabotage by Viola, the X-ray developer broke down frequently during this period. They spent so many hours “repairing” it that even Dr. Lucas—a noted skinflint—offered to buy a new machine. Four times during those weeks they met at the clinic after hours: twice to “inventory surgical instruments,” once to “make a purchasing plan” for a new autoclave and instruments, and once with no excuse at all. Craziest of all, three times Tom went to Viola’s home while pretending be on late-night house calls.

Those hours in Viola’s house were the most revelatory of Tom’s life. Viola had always seemed modest in the clinic, but in the privacy of her home she shed her modesty with her clothes. She had no difficulty granting Tom’s desire that she sit or stand and be stared at from all sides, while he tried to take in the profound simplicity of her beauty. Her skin was soft and without blemish. This perfection was partly youth, he knew, but even with young white women, whom he saw unclothed on a regular basis, he had the impression that no limb was quite aware of what the others were doing, that the whole was very much a collection of parts. Viola was all of a piece. Each part flowed into the next with seamless fluidity, so that medical terms like ventral, dorsal, medial, and distal blurred into meaninglessness.

Her abandonment of modesty extended much further than nudity. In her daily role as a nurse, Viola was a model of self-possession, politeness, and rectitude. With some adult patients she spoke only when spoken to; with others she was as intimate as a family member, providing comfort while moving things along without the patients becoming aware they were being “handled.” Throughout, her rich voice remained carefully modulated, like a cello being played by a master of control. In her own house, though, Viola spoke without restraint. She purred, keened, groaned, shrieked, sang—all without a trace of self-consciousness. The first time Tom heard her laugh with complete freedom, something in his heart leaped, as it had when hearing the trilling of a bird in the forests of his youth. It was then that he understood something of what those children must have felt when she focused all her attention upon them in the clinic, chanting softly, entrancing them with the Creole language of her girlhood.