Chapter 3: Thank whatever gods
Jane believes Alban, her eldest son, is the slowest eater wandering the earth. Charra eats like her. Huge amounts, preferably standing up, as if someone could snatch it from him at any moment unless it disappears fast enough into his mouth.
"He's not picky", Maura had defended Alban as if any complaint about his eating habits would offend her as well. Which was probably the case, as Jane realized later.
"He picks out every bite himself and eats it as if he expects it to bring out the flavor the longer he chews on it", Jane had observed. "If that's not the definition of picky, I don't know nothing no more." Maura had glanced back at her scolding, openly repulsed by Jane's choice of grammar and the way she talks about their children in front of them.
It is Tuesday evening, one of the two times during the week when Maura keeps her appointment with Dr. Larkspur, and Jane manages dinner with two toddlers by herself.
It is one of those nights she did not follow Maura's parental guide, that the doctor tries to slip in casually throughout the day. Something Jane mostly decided to ignore. It is not that she has never proven Maura's theories wrong before, God forbid. However, disobeying those oh-so-subtle advices usually bites her in the ass eventually.
So tonight, by 8 p.m. (the new midnight, by Jane's "motherly" calculation of time), she managed to feed the boys dinner and then run them a bath, which usually helps them sleep more soundly. However, she did not consider what Maura refers to as the "afterbath hunger". Jane figured there was nothing she could do but to feed them once more, so she trudged back into the kitchen and got the leftovers out of the fridge that had not even cooled, yet.
Now she is watching Alban eat his pasta. In his tempo. Charra has disappeared someplace after emptying his plate, obviously not able to stand the excruciating boredom of watching Alban wait forever between two bites. He is not stalling. It is simply the way he is.
Jane feels her eyelids drooping, so she reaches for an orange and starts peeling. Maura will probably eat it when she comes home. As long as Jane can keep herself from peeling all of their oranges, Maura should be able to manage.
Out of habit, Jane puts one piece next to her son's plate. She immediately regrets adding something to his plate, but feels badly when she considers taking it away. Especially since Alban's gaze focuses on the fruit intensely.
Suddenly, he pushes one of his small fingers into the soft flesh of the fruit and says: "Pshhhht, one gotta get dhe juice out. And dhen – pshhhhht – put apple juice inside. And dhe orange juice into dhe apple – pshhhhht."
"And then?" Jane asks amused, eyebrows raised automatically to give her question an expression, while her hands are occupied with the peel. That has been the hardest thing for her to learn. She has to use her facial expressions extensively with her son, but at work she needs to go back to an unreadable face most of the time, especially during interrogations.
"And dhen you got apple pie." He pulls up his shoulders, which still seem to reach his ears as he does it, puts his hands out, palms up, and raises his eyebrows. "Simple like dhat."
"As simple as that, huh?" Jane repeats after him slowly in order to show him the way it is said, and grins. "Could you continue eating as simple as that?" She asks and signs, her orange-task finished.
But I am, Alban signs while he chews purposely. A moment later, he tentatively puts his fork on top of his knife and then taps on the backside of the cutlery with his juice-covered pointer finger.
"Mama?" he asks and Jane's heart melts every time he says it like that. "What dhe hugest mountain?"
"What is the hugest mountain?" Jane again repeats his words as if she is making sure she has got his question right. Maura and she have been taught how to casually practice with Alban throughout the day in addition to his speech training by professional tutors. "Mount Everest", Jane continues with an answer and signs "highest peak". She honestly thinks an interesting conversation is developing. This is what these kids do to her fortunate, motherly self.
"Nope", Alban replies, neither irritated nor smart-aleck. He taps the elevation of his fork again and explains: "Dhis. And you gotta jump from here – pshhhhhht – in dhe water."
Jane's eyes follow his finger, as it draws a circle in the air, and then lands on some random spot on the table. She wonders whether Alban has recognized the sound of splashing water during his bath earlier, even though his hearing aid was off.
"Dhere, dhe water", he explains further as if he could hear Jane's thoughts. She smiles at him again as he shoves another spirelli noodle into his mouth. How many minutes since the last mouthful?
"Mama?" Same procedure. "What is dhe deepest water?" Alban emphasizes the word he has skipped before, showing great concentration.
"Well, I guess", Jane muses, wishing Maura could provide the correct answer, "it's somewhere in the Pacific." She makes a motion that says "deep" and one that looks like big waves.
"Nope", he pipes in, "it's dhe well of dhe hugest mountain." He is very pleased with himself and Jane has to laugh at her wish for the right answer just moments ago, as well as at his cleverness.
"Simple as dhat. It's right here." And again he is pointing at that random spot on the table, which does not seem so random anymore.
"Uh-huh", Jane says, giving him an impressed look that seems to fuel his train of thought even further. "That's the deepest water, you say?"
"Yes. From the hugest mountain. Only widh a rocket you can fly dhere, you know..." He chews and thinks. His eyes sparkle whenever a rocket gets mentioned. "Mama? Who flies dhe fastest rocket?"
I have no idea, Jane offers, since even if she did know, it would not compare to Alban's understanding of the truth. Her son opens his eyes widely and leans a little closer to underline his wisdom: "Dhe rocket-flyer!"
As simple as that.
.
Maura loves coming home – particularly on Tuesday nights. Of course she enjoys her family's company, but coming home to a silent house, where sleep has already claimed its occupants, gives her the chance to indulge in one of her favorite activities lately. It is something like meditating.
Throughout the day, all of them would leave things around the house where they do not belong. To Maura, they seem like clues, allowing her to decipher who left that particular item there and why.
Alban is the one most likely to leave one of his toys, preferably on slim ledges, where the ladder of a fire truck is to close the distance to the next surface, as if he is following a secretive task of creating pathways, for tiny creatures to come out and use them at night.
Charra is the one most likely to plant something that he regards as a necessary tool for himself to accomplish something else. Once, Maura found a pair of kid scissors stuck in the mane of the antique rocking horse her adoptive father Arthur had given the little knight on his second birthday. When showing her discovery to Jane, the detective had marveled: "Just imagine you're off to slay a dragon and, lucky you, have got your weapon with you at all times!" For a second then, Maura had considered cutting back on the stories of St. George, the famous dragon slayer of Abyssinia, for both Charra and Jane.
Jane's clues are the ones that are most likely to have no purpose, as she would usually drop whatever item when getting distracted by something else. Such is a pair of children socks in the kitchen cabinet, next to the jam and peanut butter, or her tooth brush, which appears to be capable of ending up just about everywhere that is not the bathroom, most of the time with the tooth paste still on top and untouched.
It is ten past nine when Maura opens the front door to their house, where only Eli is greeting her, loyal as always. He wanders around her feet and curls his tail around her calf as Maura slips out of her winter coat and heels. As she takes a moment to breath in the smell of her home, she catches rather quickly on to the fact that Jane's clues are deliberate tonight. Which must mean the detective knows about Maura's Tuesday night's routine. A warm feeling sweeps through her.
Only two strides behind the entrance door lies an artificial rose. As soon as Maura picks it up, she is positive it is one of the flowers thrown at the protagonist's death bed after the soprano's final aria. "Dido and Aeneas" was the first opera Jane and Maura ever went to see together. Nine years ago already.
"I don't think you were supposed to keep this", Maura says to the quiet house, enthralled.
In the living room, she sheds her blazer and finds a DVD on the coffee table; nothing out of the ordinary in itself, but the title says "Invictus" and Jane has put a post-it on it, saying Yeah, good movie. Fine sports, too. Maura finds herself smiling.
Then, there is a hand-sized ring in the kitchen, made of colorful baste, that Ethiopians use as a stand for the jabanaas, their coffee pots. A bittersweet memory invades her mind. Jane had received that ring from Tayanne, the woman who used to cook for them during their first stay in Ethiopia. The two of them had been sorting wheat grains for hours together.
Later that year, they had canceled their plans to go back to Ethiopia, because of civil disturbances among the Oromo students. Maura could not help but think of the demonstrations against recent unjust decisions by the Ethiopian government to dispossess the land of many Oromo farmers. The government had answered with violence and imprisoned, beaten, shot and killed University, High-School and even Primary School students who were voicing their protest.
Shortly before Maura's, Jane's and the kids' second visit to Ethiopia, in 2017, a message reached them, that the young cook had died suddenly because of a gastric ulcer. Jane had been crushed and later took on the task of providing for Tayanne's younger siblings, who had no other family left; that was why Hannes, Maura's dear friend in Ethiopia, had given Tayanne a job at his house in the first place.
"There's more", Jane says and shakes Maura out of her thoughts. The detective looks tired, but very relaxed. Without her heels, Maura has to stand on her toes to give Jane a kiss. She is truly home. It is a place to shed work attire, to be openly worn out, to lose countenance. A place that means security and freedom.
Jane takes Maura's hand and guides her toward the study, Eli following their every step. The charred tool box is standing on top of Maura's desk, and the medical examiner's eyes widen with realization.
"Those objects came from your box?" She asks in astonishment.
"All but the DVD. That was just to let you know I read your letter", Jane smirks. "You keep your diaries and journals, I keep stuff in there."
For a moment, they both simply stand and stare at the box. It is not even knee-high, a lid on top and two slim drawers at the bottom make the storage room for Jane's memories.
"Actually, my e-mail to you, when I waited for you to come home from Ethiopia, wasn't the last time I wrote you", the detective speaks again. "I started a letter to you when Harris had you, but after I got you back I just stowed it away in here. I do that with a lot of things."
Maura softly nods in comprehension and thinks back to Tayanne's gift Jane had laid out for her. She has not seen it since Jane brought it back from Ethiopia.
.
There is no room for Maura's curiosity that night. She is consumed by Jane and her own overwhelming desire in only moments after entering the study. They barely make it to their bedroom.
Their love, their want for each other's bodies, has edged toward fierceness during the last year. The self-awareness, the exploring and the tenderness have yielded to something raw. They are absentminded, familiar with each other's needs, and they get to the point with an urgency that declaredly does not leave much room for romance.
There is some sort of reflex Maura has that Jane loves to provoke. She found out about it years ago, long before they had sex for the first time. It had been raining that day, pouring really, and they had gone grocery shopping together. Maura had carried the bags up the driveway in a hurry and Jane tried to fish the house-keys out of the doctor's trouser pocket. Maura jerked at her touch, causing Jane to blush and chuckle, then blame it on the unaccustomed proximity between them.
The first time they slept with each other, it happened again. Maura had been guiding Jane's fingers, and, as they ghosted over Maura's underbelly, she would flinch and shiver, but told Jane to keep her eyes closed.
The next time, Jane had found the spot deliberately, right under Maura's navel. She discovered that it was actually more like a line that went from one hip bone to the other.
"What is that?" Jane had chuckled, as she stroke along Maura's abdomen, and watched as her touch sent little shocks through Maura's body.
"I don't know", Maura breathed. "It's involuntary. Don't you have that sensation when someone touches you there?"
"No." Jane could not stop chuckling, amused disbelief mixing with her awe of Maura's body. "You should know what kind of reflexes there are in the human body."
"You're right", Maura contemplated. "I never … questioned it. I've had that reaction ever since I can remember. It happens even if I bump into a table with that part of my body."
"Oh."
"What?"
"I thought it'd be exclusive to my touch." Jane smirked and Maura replied, "Wouldn't you like that?"
Tonight, Jane brushes over that part of the abdomen of the writhing woman underneath her with her lips. "What does it feel like?" She whispers against Maura's skin and even that gets her a slight reaction, a twitch of Maura's stomach muscles.
"It is a stomach drop", Maura breathes out, her brows knitted in frustration because Jane has stopped what she is doing. Maura hates it when the other woman does that. "Like when you're falling asleep and suddenly get the sensation you are falling for real."
"Like riding a roller coaster."
"Oh, I wouldn't know", Maura whimpers, lacking in concentration and urging Jane to continue.
And, as Jane's kisses travel further, the detective decides what to get Maura for Christmas this year.