Quiver by Tobsha Learner Page A

to turn me on. I want him inside me. I ask him please, now. Do it now! He stops and listens. My voice is suddenly gigantic in the silence.
    Slowly he enters me. He feels larger inside me, different. We come together for the second time.
    The next morning I found an old letter when vacuuming around the couch. It was neatly folded and tied with a red ribbon. There was something familiar about the way it smelled. The letter was written in a spindly female hand. At first I thought it was French, but then I recognized some of the wordsas Italian. I slipped it into my pocket, as I was running late for work.
    It was only later when I was having a coffee with Gina that I remembered the letter. She was able to translate it for me.
    16 July 1942
    My darling Alberto,
    You have been gone for over six months and I am beginning to forget the sound of your voice. The house is looking beautiful, especially the pomegranate you planted over the front porch. They have no winter here and the sun is like down south, always on the back of your neck. Yesterday your mother brought over some plums she grew herself. She told me not to listen to the Australians. That as an Italian you have the right to fight for who you believe in. It’s easier at work. I think the women have forgotten that you exist!
    Harry, the foreman, gave me a copy of
II Actione!
He’d found it in the men’s section. I read it from cover to cover. It even smelled of Sicily! I miss you, Alberto. Please come home soon.
    All my love
    Leonie
    I folded up the letter and put it in with the old wedding dress and medal that lay carefully wrapped in a box at the bottom of the cupboard. Somehow I felt that it belonged there.
    I got my period today. I suppose it was predictable, but I had convinced myself that this time I really was pregnant. I’d had all the signs: my breasts were aching and swollen, and I’d even had a slight discharge. So when I saw the blood on the sheetsI was filled with a heavy despair. Adrian didn’t help. He shouted at me this morning for using his razor. At the time I was too distressed by the blood on my thighs to answer him. Anyway, I don’t even shave my legs—I get them waxed for free at the salon. I put it down to work stress; it’s the end of the tax year. Adrian’s gone crazy, he’s obsessed with the idea of paying off the mortgage early. After he left, I happened to glance at the razor. There were tiny flecks of black hair stuck in the blade. I’m a natural blonde, and Adrian is a redhead, or he was before he started going bald. It’s a mystery.
    I spoke to our neighbors yesterday. Mrs. Harris has been living next door for the past twenty years. She knew Mr. Alberto Mantilli really well. She thinks the letter might have been from his wife. She died long before Mrs. Harris’s time and old Alberto never talked about her. I wonder if Adrian would go silent like that if I died. Recently I’ve been wondering whether he loves me at all. He never says it, you know, the words. I used to pass it off as typical Anglo-Saxon behavior, that maybe he just hadn’t had the training to express his love for me. Now I don’t know.
    He’s gone away on a two-day conference in Canberra. Last night I went out to a South American bar with Gina and Mary from the salon. It was great—free drinks for the ladies and a fantastic band playing calypso music. Mary got talking to this really handsome boy from Colombia while I danced with his brother. He looked about sixteen, although he told me he was twenty-three. It was great flirting and later he told me I was beautiful.
    By the time I got home I was drunk. Not real drunk but drunk enough to forget that Adrian had gone away. I stumbled out of the taxi and down the garden path. The pomegranate loomedover the front porch. It looked far larger than the scraggly little thing Adrian had nearly pruned to death earlier that summer.
    I finally managed to fit the key into the lock; once inside I noticed the corridor light