In the seat beside him, Stella shivered. He took his hand off the window button.
“Temperature okay?” he asked. She turned from the window. Her now-short hair was peppered with early gray above her ears. The pinkish tint of the glasses turned her brown eyes toward black, made the purple half-moons beneath her eyes even darker.
“It’s fine,” Stella said. “Thank you.”
Her voice sounded like a grandmother’s, soft and sugarsweet. In fact, everything about her screamed “grandmother”: the half-sized glasses, the way she held onto the seatbelt with one bird-bone hand, the slow sighs that she didn’t even know she was making. Still, she held herself straight up in her seat, not allowing her head to lean on the seat rest.
“Your mom bring the glasses?” he asked, to hear her speak instead of sigh.
Stella touched the earpiece as though she’d forgotten she had them on. “I rang a nurse,” she said. She took the glasses off and folded them. “Had them brought up from the gift shop. My vision’s gone haywire.”
Stella had her head back at the window. He watched her while he drove. The disease had tightened her round face, made her cheekbones seem higher and larger. His instinct was to reach between the seats and take her hand. Reassure her:
They got it all, everything’s fine.
But he couldn’t stand to see her turn back toward him, to see her eyes hidden behind the lenses.
But she surprised him by reaching her hand out to his across the space. He took it, even though he needed to shift. He didn’t understand much about what was happening or why, but he understood that you didn’t waste time and you didn’t turn down an extended hand. Her hand felt light and empty, a discarded crab shell.
With her other hand, Stella rubbed at something on the window. “I’m tired,” she said. It seemed to be the beginning of a sentence. He waited, her hand lighter and lighter in his own. The only sound was the rev of the unshifted car and the squeak of Stella’s finger against the window. These sounds stretched out so long he thought he might have misjudged, maybe there wasn’t more she wanted to say. He let his foot farther off the gas—they were going 20 in a 40 now—and opened his mouth.
Stella tightened her fingers on his. “I’m tired,” she said again. “But I was thinking …” she broke off, rubbed the window harder. A car came up behind them, blinked its lights. He shifted the wheel to the right, gave them space to go around. His ears felt like they were the only thing alive, listening for her.
She looked at him finally, gave him a smile that didn’t show her teeth. Her fingers unraveled from his. “You should shift,” she said. He did, and the car gave a grateful lurch ahead. They drove in silence the rest of the way home, Stella’s soft-shell hands holding tight to her seatbelt.
That night, he was surprised when Stella got into bed next to him in only a T-shirt. He’d picked up
Cancer Husband
, and found it wasn’t that bad, if a little froufrou for his taste. Of course, he’d started with the chapter on sex. Very vanilla, but still.
Stella reached out and took the book from his hands. She closed it without letting him mark his place and dropped it on the floor beside the bed.
“No more reading,” she said.
Hearing her say that made him smile. She used to say that all the time, when she wanted his attention for cuddling, for sex. He rolled toward her. Her body took up less space now—still her, only smaller, as if she’d been slightly shrunk. Still the same curves, the waist that hollowed out toward her round hips. He felt huge next to her, a dangerous giant who might roll over and crush her.
He couldn’t resist her play. He put his hand soft against her arm, slid it up beneath the shirt sleeve. Her skin was cool, but for the first time in a long time, her muscles didn’t tighten in pain at his touch.
“No more reading?” he said. “Why, do you have something better for me to do?”
Stella put her nose against his neck, inhaled deep.
“I might be able to think of something,” she said.
He swallowed hard, unable to speak. How does it feel when your wife comes on to you, finally, finally, after cancer? You feel like the earth has been out of axis, but you didn’t notice, until just now, when everything rights itself and settles in, the way it’s supposed to be.
“I’ve missed your body,” she said. A sigh, but different from the sighs she’d made in the car. “I’ve missed
my
body.”
How to say he’d missed her body too? He didn’t know, so he answered with his fingers on the curve of her hip, followed the slimmed half-circle of her ass. No underwear. The crease where the bottom of her ass met her legs was soft and smooth. Just the feel of it made his hand ache to slap it.
He almost did slap her, but took his hand away, fisted it around the blanket. How could he even think of it? He didn’t know, couldn’t imagine what kind of person he was to want it the way he did.
Stella’s lips moved smooth against his neck. She took his hand from the blankets, but laid it back on the edge of her hip, where her T-shirt met her skin.
“Undress me,” she said.
She sat up, and he pulled her shirt off over her head. And there was her star, right above her right nipple, the red heat of it dulled. He wanted to put his finger on it, to lick it and taste it like sun-warmed earth. He thought it would burn his tongue.
He said, “Does it hurt?”
“Stop asking,” she said, and her voice was brisk, but also tired.
He nodded. Even to himself, he’d started to sound like a quiz book. How are you? What do you need? How do you feel? It was as if he didn’t know what to say when he wasn’t asking about her. He searched for something about his own day that would be interesting to her.
I thought about fucking you the way we used to. I thought about clamping your nipples until you cried, until you could sleep and smile again.
Stella put her own finger over the star, pressed harder than he would have thought.
“Sometimes it hurts,” she said. “Not now.”
She dropped her hands, put them on his hips.
“Anyway, I don’t want to think about it,” she said. “Can you just fuck me?”
Her voice was beyond Type A into bitter, a spit of bad tastes. It hardened his cock and made him nervous to touch her, at the same time. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, exposing the full length of her soft, white neck, the pulse that talked to him there. He leaned into the pulse, put his lips against the thin blue line.
“Yes,” he said. “I can fuck you.”
But, then, he couldn’t. He wanted to, he tried, but the star kept shining up at him off her skin, a beacon to remind him. Everything he did—his tongue at her pink nipples, avoiding the scar, his fingers down her pale belly, even the moment when, finally, he entered her, every ounce of him, his entire cock, inside her—at every moment he was making love, he was taking care. He didn’t realize it at the time, he thought they were together in this slow, languid night. But right before he came, he opened his eyes and saw her looking somewhere else. Her body moved in the slowmotion rhythm he’d started, but her mouth made small noises of pain. He tried to rise up off her, but he was already coming, too late to stop, and his shudders made his “I’m sorry”s sound tinny and hollow, as if they were coming from light years away.
Stella didn’t come on to him again. He wasn’t surprised, but he still hoped for it, watched for her to take the lead when she felt okay, but there was nothing. She didn’t even undress in front of him.
Within the week, Stella started work again, and they settled back into what he thought of, sadly, as their old rhythm: too much work-work and house-work, passing each other on the stairs or in the kitchen, hands full of laundry or dinner. He’d thought that once someone got sick, the way Stella had been sick, you didn’t, couldn’t, just go back to normal. That you never took life for granted, or passed each other in the hallway without touching.
He started masturbating in the shower. One hand on his cock, the other against the shower door, in case she came in to pee. He was embarrassed for himself, for his desire, but he didn’t want to embarrass her, or make her feel worse. He used Stella’s soap—it smelled of sage, which smelled of her—lathering it until he could slide his fist up and down. Although he tried to think of other things, his mind was all Stella, Stella in nipple clamps, her ass beneath the flat of his hand. Keeping quiet, coming with Stella in the house but without her, made his teeth ache and the bottom of his stomach clench up in cramps. And, still, he couldn’t stop. The pain cleansed him somehow, made it safe for him to be around her.
But after two weeks, he couldn’t stand not touching her anymore. He put his arms around her one morning while she was dressing and kissed the bare back of her neck. The smell of her sage soap and her curves against the fabric of her skirt made him press his hips into her ass, harder than he’d meant to.
Stella leaned against him, bare shoulder blades into his chest. She let her head fall back onto his shoulder, and he kissed the side of her mouth. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her breath, minty and sweet.
“You’ll make me late for work,” she said against his lips.
“Do you care?” he asked.
She shook her head no, and he turned her toward him, pressed his mouth hard to hers. His hands followed her lower back down to her ass. He cupped his palms around her curves and pulled her hard against him.
Stella made a small cry into his mouth. Panic spread up through his chest. He let go of her body, stepped back.
“Jesus, Stella, I’m sorry,” he said. But even in his panic over hurting her, he couldn’t stop looking at her body. How her nipples were like stars too, a constellation against the sky of her chest. How her waist curved in and then swelled into hips. His cock twitched, sending a mixed flood of arousal and shame. Worst husband of the year award, right here.
“Don’t you dare,” she said. Her voice was shaky, something he hadn’t heard before. “Don’t you fucking dare tell me one more time how sorry you are,” she said.
He nodded. His body was heavy, heavy. His hands, his head, his cock shrinking against his thigh, everything held on the bed by this strange gravity. He vowed he would masturbate every day, he would take a lover if he had to. He would not ask anything more of Stella, of her body, than what she offered him.
Stella stepped closer to where he sat. And there was her star, shining with its red heat. He couldn’t look away. Did his eyes feel pain? He thought they might.
“Touch it,” she said.
But he couldn’t until she took his wrist and brought his fingers to her skin. The star wasn’t hot at all. It felt like Stella’s skin, only more so. Thicker, tougher, with six small rays leading out. And she didn’t flinch when he pushed a bit against the small points of it. Instead, he thought she might be leaning into him harder.
He pulled his finger away, looked down at it in his lap. Did the tip of it burn, or was it only his guilt that made the skin seem hot? He couldn’t tell.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
Stella put her hands beneath her breasts, lifted them up, her nipples pink stars in their own right. His cock tried to stir, but stayed down beneath the weight of air.
“I need you—” Stella started, and then got down on her knees in front of him. There was no rug, and he worried about her knees on the hardwood, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“I can only say this once,” she said. “Maybe, maybe I can’t say it at all.”
When Stella tried not to cry, her nose pinkened at the edges. It didn’t happen often. He’d seen it once, maybe twice, since he’d known her. The splotches of pink made him happy, not because he wanted her to cry, but because he suddenly felt less alone in this thing that had happened.
Stella covered his hands with her own, then lifted her chin until her brown eyes looked right into his.
“I need you to stop fucking me like I’m dying,” she said, and her lips moved fast, like she was afraid they would stop. “I’m not dying. But every time you touch me soft, every time you ask if I’m okay, another little piece of me falls off.”
Something started within him, a pain he had not known. It began at the inside of his chest, flowed outward to his skin, his arms. His breath hitched and came ragged. He wondered if he was having a heart attack. He squeezed Stella’s hands, and she squeezed back.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to walk out of the room, and when I come back, I need you to fuck me like I’m actually alive.”
Then she stood and turned. Still stuck to the bed, unable to rise or move, he watched her walk out of the room, the strength of her bare back, the way her ass filled out her skirt. The star he couldn’t see, but could still feel, not as heat, but as light, guiding him.
“Baby,” she said and her voice was strong and sure from out in the hallway, “You’re going to have to get out the crocs today.”
At the sound of her voice, his body came free of the gravity that held it. He could raise his hands, stand. His cock, too, rose as high as it could beneath his jeans. Before she came back in, he pulled open the nightstand and dug the nipple clamps from beneath the stack of books they didn’t need to read. He looked at the clamps in his hands, their pointy teeth, and remembered the contrast their silver shine made against Stella’s skin. The way she sighed in release when he clamped them to her nipples. He smiled and slid the clamps beneath the pillow for later. Let her think he’d forgotten, let her wonder. He was the one in charge, after all.