Chapter Text
The exhaustion of the day presses on my shoulders as my oxfords push down the green carpet going up to the nurses' wing. But as I climb the staircase, the weight of the day sheds itself step by step until the only pressure left on me is an ache on my much abused toes. Why I agreed to teach a man with two left feet to dance, we may never know. I pause at the landing, turn, and sigh at the dark impressions of my footsteps lightening by the second. The temporality of it all seems so obvious in hindsight. When one actually takes the time to look back.
With new breath in my lungs, tasting of scotch and cigarettes, I forsake the my thoughts and cross the rest of the hallway to my room. The door stands open, and Trixie lounged on her bed, reading the latest edition of Vogue. But her eyes, they stare through the page and beyond anything within their room. Trixie catches my gaze from the corner of her own and reaches her hand back to tuck a non-existent thread back behind her ear. She refocuses on the present and not inside of her own mind.
I suppose tonight's one for deep thoughts. At least she'll lose that solemn look soon as the good Reverend repays her that dance.
I grin as I pass her bed, too tired and too preoccupied with the promise of bed to notice a shadow of betrayal above her cheeks.
"Bridge, was it?" she asks, her tongue clipped.
I sit on the edge of my bed, feeling the day's work burgeon inside my legs, and face away from her. It takes me a moment to respond. "Yes. The old dears do love it." After all the masks I've worn in my life, I'd think wearing another one wouldn't feel so wretched. And yet, this lie tastes of lead.
"And you accompany it with romantic music?"
Damn. Of all the things to assume. When I finally meet her gaze, it hurts.
"I didn't come down in the last shower." Damn those big blue eyes. "I saw you. With Tom."
Of all the nights. I close my eyes and feel my swollen toes burn. "It's not what you think. Or at least, what I think you might think." Trixie rears back, ready for a bold-faced lie or something equally demeaning. I can't help but feel inhuman.
"Don't make a fool of me," she says with tears in her voice.
Damn her. The masks that had always protected me through the worst of humanity, now damned me to be unbelieved. And Trixie, she didn’t deserve this deception. If anything, she protected herself from the world by embracing the whole of it. If she stood close enough the to pain of the world, she thought she could heal her own pain by healing those around her. Her father, her first patient, drank from the very abyss of human emotion and she drank from the same. Now, every mask I wore to protect myself was slipping. But staring at Trixie’s face, one so open and in such pain, I decided. I decided to let them fall.
"I'm rather hurt you think I would!" If only she knew how unappealing an entire evening of dancing with two men was for me. "Rats! Look, I was teaching Tom to dance..." I pause, "For you." Her eyes perk. "He wanted to surprise you." And just to add to the heady romance, Fred was there, utterly irresistible to both Tom and myself." Trixie's frown didn't waver, but the darkness dancing across her face lessened. "And with the greatest respect, Tom is not my type. At all." Part of me wishes that she would understand why Tom was not my type. And that the words could come from her mouth and not my own.
"And what do you mean by that?" Trixie asks, still caught up in her indignation.
The absurdity of her jealousy! "Well, apart from the fact that he's clearly besotted with you, there are certain things he lacks" - a soft waist to rest my hands on, sweet-smelling locks, a laugh that sounds like the rain in spring - "and certain things he has too much of" - two left feet, a beard - "for me."
Images of her, unbidden, come. Her gentle smile bursts through my memory until tears prick the edges of my vision and my palms begin to ache.
Perhaps a bit too forcefully, I pull my shoes off. With it, the strain of Tom's missteps and another weight, the one I almost dared speak to Trixie, came with it. I gasp at the feeling.
"Are you alright?"
Trixie’s anger cools, but the pain pulling at her features lingers. Those dark thoughts, on the verge of tearing her apart, threaten to crack that beautiful mask of hers. But even through all of her darkness, she still sees others; still puts them before herself. Maybe their darkness is easy to wade through than her own.
I try to speak for the both of us when I say, "John 8:32, the truth will set you free." Her brow furrows. "I'm no Sister Mary Cynthia, but I can't help but feel comforted by it right now."
“How so?” she asks.
Words crash onto my tongue. But gentle words, like “love”, are silenced by “unnatural” and “forbidden”. I gape at Trixie and shake my head.
“Nothing.”
We stare at each other, wishing for something to fill this silence other than our unspoken secrets.