The Steel Kiss

But last night, walking into the Toy Room and, on my command, opening her eyes, Alicia was as delighted as I’ve ever seen her. She gazed over the workbench, the saws, the tools, the hammers, the chisels. My new implement, the razor with the tiny teeth, my favorite. My child. I loved seeing her pale brow and cheeks, lit by the blue-white reflections shooting from all the steel surfaces.

But what really entranced her was what I constructed with those tools.

“You made these?” she asked last night.

“Did,” I told her uncertainly.

“Oh, Vernon. They’re works of art.”

And, hearing that, my life was about as perfect as it could be.

A good day…

But just after that, last night, we grew very, very busy and, after, fell fast asleep. Now this morning she wants to see more of my handiwork.

Before I can turn away or hand her a robe she’s out of bed, and Alicia does in her way what I have done by sharing the room with her. Because now, in the light, she remains naked and I can see her scars clearly. This is the first time she’s allowed me to view them full. The high-necked dress or blouse covers them when she’s clothed. The thick sheltering bra and high panties when she’s half naked. And when we’re in bed, the lights are always low to nonexistent. Now, though, here’s every inch of her body to see in sun-splayed clarity: the slashed breast and thigh, the burned groin, the patch where her arm bone poked through her pale skin after being so fiercely bent.

I hurt for this woman—because of these scars and the scars within, all going back to her husband, years ago, that terrible time. I want to make her whole, make her perfect again, untwist the arm that her husband twisted, unburn her low belly, mend her breast. But all I have are my steel tools and all they could do is the opposite of my good intent: cutting and crushing and snapping flesh.

What I can do, though, is to ignore the troubled skin, which is not at all difficult, and show her—it’s quite obvious now—how much I desire her. And, I think, in this way I can heal the other scars, the ones inside.

I’m devoting a portion of my life to that task. Making her scars vanish.

Alicia looks up at my eyes and comes close to smiling. Then, it’s time, she enwraps her bothered flesh with a sheet stained from us both because it’s what any normal couple would do upon waking. She walks to the shelves, and once more looks over the miniatures I’ve built with my panoply of tools.

I construct almost exclusively furniture. Not toys, not Kids-R-Us plastic or mismatched wood glued together by children in China. But fine-worked, quality pieces, only tiny, tiny, tiny. I spend days on each piece, sometimes weeks. Turning legs on a model maker’s lathe, using the precious razor saw to make even seams, lacquering chests of drawers and desks and headboards with ten coats of varnish, so they are smooth and shiny and dark as a still autumn pond.

Alicia says: “This’s as good as anything you’d find in an artisan’s workshop in High Point. North Carolina, you know. Where they make real furniture. Really, Vernon, amazing.” And I can tell from her face she means it.

“You told me you sold things for a living. eBay and online. I just assumed you bought things and marked them up and sold them.”

“No, I wouldn’t like that. I like making things.”

“You shouldn't call them ‘things.’ They’re more than things. They’re works of art.”

I might be blushing. I don’t know. And for a moment I want to hug her, kiss her, but not in the way I usually grip her and taste her finger or mouth or nipple or groin. Just hold my lips against her temple. This might be what love is but I don’t know about that and I don’t want to think beyond this now.

“It’s quite a workshop.” She’s looking around.

“My Toy Room. That’s what I call it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this is what you do? You were all mysterious.”

“Just… ” I shrug. The answer of course is Shoppers. The bullies, the rude, the people who humiliate for sport. Vernon Griffith sits in his dark room and makes toys…  Why bother to get to know him? I need somebody chic or cool or handsome.

I don’t answer.

“Who buys them?”

I can’t help but laugh. “The people who pay the most are the American Girl folks. Mostly they’re lawyers and doctors and CEOs, who’d do anything, spend any amount for their little girls.” I know they don’t appreciate the pieces—even the ones I charge a thousand for—any more than they would a hunk of molded polyurethane. And I doubt they enjoy their children’s faces when they open the package (I suspect the kids’ reaction is a millimeter above indifference). No, what the businessmen enjoy is showing off to neighbors. “Oh, look what I had commissioned for Ashleigh. It’s teak, you know.’ ”

(And I always reflect on the irony of parents’ buying for their adorable little ones a chest of drawers made by the same hands that have cracked skulls or sliced tender throats with a lovely implement.)