In the Flesh

by Hilma Wolitzer

  I spoke rapidly, not letting him answer, blocking all his defenses and the ultimate, fearful truth.

  Why hadn’t he rushed into that burning building, anyway? It was his dream, damn it. Why didn’t he smash windows and doors, even scale walls to save us? And who had set the fire in the first place?

  But I didn’t say anything. Instead I put my arms around Howard, adding love to my argument, and trying to assess his mood. “Do you feel better?” I asked, and I began to place strategic kisses on his ears, along his neck.

  “Uh huh,” Howard said, but his voice was low and sad, and his arms around me were passive.

  I freed one of my hands and I pushed the ledger away from us, across the table. But even when he began to kiss me back, it was still there, just on the edge of my vision.

  18

  I STOOD AT THE window behind the frilly curtains in our kitchen and I watched my family take their places in the playground allotted to our building. There was the boy Jason, a tiny nucleus in the sandbox. There were Howard and baby Ann, moving in serene rhythm as he pushed her in a swing. They looked like three brave flags in bright sweaters I’d knitted for them and I became excited with pride as if I’d knitted them and not just their sweaters.

  Deep in the pocket of my apron was the letter from my anonymous friend.

  My Dear,

  Watch out for Howard and Mrs. X of C Building. I am not what you would refer to as a devout person, but I will pray for you anyway.

  Your Anonymous Friend

  The city was full of cranks—lonely, deranged people who couldn’t bear anyone else’s happiness. I should have thrown that letter right down the incinerator. And yet I’d kept it for days. It rested now in pocket lint and was wrinkled from handling.

  Oh, thanks a lot, my loyal anonymous friend. Wasn’t everything perfect before? (Or almost?) Now there was the ache of uneasiness, and I’d have to be guarded, breathe softly so as not to miss the innuendos. Why did Howard really volunteer to help with the laundry? Did he compare my bleach with hers near the double-duty dryers? Never fear. The management had installed klieg lights at the request of terrified tenants. There was nothing clandestine doing in the laundry room. And anyway, I was too big to lurk in doorways and narrow passageways to catch them out.

  But what if I didn’t wait and watch, but simply lifted the window and jumped, spiraling slowly toward him, nineteen stories, eighteen neighbors to wave to in descent. My mother would have shouted to me in comfort, Everyone is dying nowadays!

  There he was, my Howard, the best and most loving father I knew. Protective as a mother hen. (Jason sat on his lap at the dentist’s so the father could absorb the pain of the child.)

  I opened the window and looked down, feeling as lonely and as vigilant as a forest ranger. Howard in the green sweater was standing alone. Both children were together in the sandbox. Cutting across the playground, as if on choreographic clue, came a woman in a red coat. She was wearing boots, of course, and they zigzagged in neat steps until she was near him. Her hair was long, that much I could see, nothing more without tumbling out.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “Don’t do anything!” I ran to the children’s room and looked through the chaos of the toybox until I found them, the binoculars that his other grandfather, that cheap voyeur, had once bought for Jason. “Wait, wait,” I called again, and when I went to the window and brought them into focus, they were standing there and her foot was pointing outward as if she were threatening to go. Howard’s hands were in his pockets where they belonged. They were haloed together in the rainbow nimbus of those rotten binoculars. Her hand touched his arm, but I couldn’t see her face.

  “Mrs. X,” I said. “Go away. Leave town. Everything was gorgeous. What can you know about someone else’s marriage? The sloppy intimacy of it. Could you pit ‘fashionable’ and ‘lean’ against ample and familiar? Could a fall and boots win out over natural curls and this apron? Purple lilies on a blue field. You wouldn’t have a chance. We only need an extra bedroom, and we’re on the management’s list for a five, with terrace.

  “Don’t complicate my life!” I shouted, and the woman on the twentieth floor shook out her dustmop, and dust-curl stars fell on my head.

  Howard gestured and the woman in the red coat turned away from him.

  “Run, run!” I called. “He isn’t worth it. I’m going to kill him anyway in that place you both go, if I only knew where it is.”

  Looking through the binoculars again, I saw him follow her and then they disappeared at the concrete corner of Building D.

  “Murderer!” I yelled. “Help, police!” and my voice went up like a helium balloon. The children were left alone in that mad city, two unarmed Arabs in that sandbox, the Sinai Desert.

  It wasn’t fair. It shouldn’t have been me so big and wounded on the receiving end. Listen, I made compromises too when I saw him that first time, so handsome with all that dark hair like a gangster. And I let it pass when he saw me and said all those needless things about white valleys and Rubens.

  A moment later I looked again and there he came, my Howard, like a victor from battle, and I had to give him credit, he went right to the children.

  So that’s how it was, and I let the elevator make its deliberate climb, nineteen stories, while I rubbed my hands together and made plans. I thought: Here is the evidence around my neck like a heavy chain, as if the binoculars had captured forever that action, that blurred vision, and I could have shown him what I had seen.

  But what had I really seen, after all? Only a woman speaking briefly to my husband in a public place. Asking the time perhaps, or for a match. Stepping out of the wind for a moment to light a cigarette or give directions. It’s a free country, isn’t it?

  And then Howard came through the doorway with his beautiful and powerful weapons: the baby Ann collapsed on his shoulder, her overall leg pulled up over a chapped knee, Jason with a blood-freezing hold on his father’s leg. And himself with rosy cheeks from the outdoors, in a green sweater, in trousers. The idiot eyes of the binoculars banged against my breast.

  Howard tapped his finger on the Formica counter. “I have to quit smoking. There’s no kidding myself. It’s killing me. I can’t blow my horn. I can’t run one block …”

  “Why don’t you just cut down?”

  “Because that’s horseshit. But the minute I think about it, I change my mind. I don’t want to do it.”

  “You can do it, Howard.”

  “Ah, who wants to? You have to die from something anyway.”

  “Listen, you can do it, Howard. I’ll buy you lots of stuff you haven’t had in years, like Blackjack gum and jujubes.”

  “Yeah?” He was dreamy, but interested.

  Jason pulled away from his father and came to me. “Mommy,” he said. “My Mommy.” He patted my knee.

  “Howard, you can give up smoking!” I think I was shouting. Like a fool, I felt so happy.

  “Well, maybe,” he conceded. “With God’s help,” he added, to be cautious.

  “I’ll help you,” I cried. “I’ll even go on a diet.”

  Howard looked at me for the first time. He smiled. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “No no, I want to. It’s the least I can do.”

  I was thrilled with the idea of a joint effort. It was like the camaraderie at a block party in Brooklyn on V-J day. The war was over and we were going to live forever.

  I wondered, did I know anyone with a mimeograph machine? I would make a thousand copies of a letter to my anonymous friend.

  Dear Friend,

  What my husband does is his business and I’ll kill you if you tell lies about him and spread rumors.

  I was going to stick a copy in every mail slot in every building.

  Howard stood and leaned against the refrigerator. I lifted the binoculars to my eyes thinking I was due for a miracle, a vision, but I only saw him, his edges soft pink, yellow, and orange, and the words Frost Free near his left ear.

  19 />
  “LISTEN,” HOWARD SAID. “I DON’T want you to do anything you don’t want to do. If it makes you uncomfortable ….”

  “Lover, it was my idea, wasn’t it? Anyway, I don’t feel uncomfortable. I feel excited.” I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the second boot on. There was no zipper, just a long wrinkled stretch of softness. The boots were a delicate fawn-colored suede, and had a new, leathery smell. “Look,” I said, “they almost come up over my knees.”

  It had been my own idea. Every relationship needs a change now and then, I reasoned, a charming innovation to regenerate excitement. I had seen the boots in a Madison Avenue boutique window, looking buttery and seductive. Of course I knew that I couldn’t keep them. They were only borrowed, so to speak, and the importance of the cause eased any guilt about that. They cost one hundred and twenty dollars, almost my food budget for a month. And they were a little tight on me besides. The salesman was imperious, the way they are in those places. He grunted, exaggerating the effort of pulling the boot over my calf. “These are made for French feet,” he said crossly, pretending a loss of wind. I stood and walked across the pale carpet. My toes were pinched and my legs felt terribly confined, but I tried to walk with confidence. “Are they returnable?” I asked the salesman, confirming his worst fears about me. But he admitted that they were. “Just keep the soles clean,” he advised, smirking, and I was sure I could do that.

  Howard stood in the doorway now, watching. “Hey, kiddo, this isn’t a peepshow,” I said. “Come over here.” And he came in slowly and knelt at the bedside. At my instruction he kissed one sueded knee and then the other.

  “Shall I sit on your lap?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Sure. Why not? God, those boots smell.”

  “Well, it’s an animal smell.” I put my face against his head, listening, waiting, measuring every response with the attention of a scientist. His hair tickled my nostrils and entered my mouth. My buttocks swelled over his thigh and I worried that my weight was too much for him, that his leg might fall asleep. I shifted slightly, making myself lighter.

  Howard was passive, would not take the initiative, so I guided his hand until it found one breast and began to explore it. His mouth followed, his breath vibrating like harp strings against my skin.

  Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought. It wasn’t going to be like those other recent nights when we retired to distant corners of the bed like dispirited boxers after a round of clinches. I felt a rush of hopefulness and joy at the first faint stirrings beneath me. It wasn’t going to be difficult at all. Even the dead weight of my body wouldn’t keep him down. God, I would be impeded.

  He pushed me gently back onto the bed, and I smiled up at him with encouragement. See, it was so easy, just like old times.

  We kissed and I felt him tremble. His tongue thrust into my mouth like a messenger bearing urgent news. Then it idled farther down to my breasts, to my midriff, studied my navel. I moaned and reached for him, cupping him lightly. His hands moved down and touched the boots, seemed startled, moved up and found me. Who needed boots? My thighs spilled open; I was his good, bad girl. I felt like laughing. And I felt aroused too, but not urgent. We had all night if we needed it.

  But he burst immediately, a warm, abrupt surprise that stopped my blood and forced my eyes open to lamplight. “Jesus,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,’ I said, finding my response automatically as if I had said it a thousand times before. Had those magazine doctors advised me to say it? But of course it wasn’t all right. The shriveling had already begun inside me, leaving me bereft and aching. All the other disappointments and suspicions rose now and filed silently across the room.

  Howard lifted himself carefully, a thin string of semen still joining us, and there was that sucking sound, like a rude remark, when our bellies parted. He leaned over and kissed my throat, making me swallow hard over the sadness there. I was willing to try again, to start from the beginning if necessary, but I knew instinctively not to hold him, not to do anything. The very air seemed to contain the tension of crisis.

  “Paulie,” he whispered again. “I’m sorry.”

  “I said it’s all right.”

  “No, not that,” he said. “I mean about the boot.”

  What was he talking about? I raised myself on one elbow.

  “The boot,” Howard repeated. “I got some on the boot.”

  “What?”

  “I got it on your boot. I’ll wipe it off.”

  “Where?” I was sitting up by then, learning forward.

  “Here. It’s not a big spot. Wait a minute.” He went to the bathroom and came back with a dripping washcloth.

  I jumped quickly out of reach. “No, don’t! Wait! I don’t think you should use water. Maybe we can just let it dry and brush it off later.”

  “All right,” Howard said, getting back into bed.

  I lifted my booted leg closer to the lamp and examined it. Ruined.

  “The stain isn’t that bad,” Howard said. “They’ll get darker with wear—you won’t even notice it.” And when I didn’t answer, “I said I was sorry, didn’t I? About everything, I mean. I told you I’ve been tired, that I have things on my mind.”

  “I’ll get the box,” I said. “Maybe there are cleaning instructions.” I was close to tears.

  “Will you forget it?” Howard said. “Will you stop talking about it! You can always buy another pair.”

  “There are special suede cleaners,” I continued, almost to myself, rubbing gently at the spot with a corner of the sheet.

  “Are you going to stop it!” Howard demanded. “I don’t really give a damn about those boots!” He picked up a magazine from his night table, snapped it open at random and pretended to read.

  “Well, I do!” I shouted, jumping up, startled by my own encountered reflection in the dresser mirror; a wild-eyed naked cowgirl. I ran out of the bedroom, down the hallway, ruining the soles too, for good measure.

  20

  I love things,

  their silent waiting grace.

  Unbreathing, faithful things

  that keep the dark

  and hold.

  At night,

  I take a favorite to bed

  and in the phosphorescent light

  of dreams, I see

  it stays.

  Forget men,

  turbulent with heat and pulse,

  now full of want,

  then done.

  September 18, 1961

  My Dear,

  Fore-warned is fore-armed. While you dally, they are making plans. I can only wish you the best.

  Your Anonymous Friend

  AFTER THE SECOND LETTER, I began to have trouble sleeping. Staring out through the bedroom window in the middle of the night, I wished that everyone else in the complex would wake too, that lights would go on with the easy magic of stars in a Disney sky. I looked at Howard, who was asleep, and I could see his eyes moving under those thin lids as he followed his dreams. It seemed that he was sleeping more as I slept less. His breathing had the droning resonance of summer insects. I leaned toward him and saw his nostrils flare with each breath. “Howard? Howard, I can’t sleep.”

  He sighed deeply and his hands opened at his sides, as if in supplication, but he continued to sleep.

  Across the city, my mother and father slept on high twin beds like sister and brother. There is always a night-light, as decorous as a firefly, burning in their hallway, so that my father can find the way to the bathroom. There is a picture of me on the dresser in their bedroom, and another of the children. My father sleeps with his socks on, even in summer. My mother keeps a handkerchief tied to the strap of her nightgown. Do they dream of each other? Was Howard dreaming of Mrs. X? I knew that if I ever fell asleep, I would have baroque dreams that would have challenged Freud, dreams that could be sold to the movies. But terror and faint stubborn hope warred for occupation of my senses and I couldn’t sleep.

 
; Nothing in my life so far had prepared me for this. Maybe I had lived the wrong way, in a kind of willful innocence. Maybe I even read the wrong books. In bed again, I opened the Oscar Williams anthology and turned the pages quickly, but now even the once reliable comfort of poetry was diminished. And in all that beauty of language and cadence there were no instructions for marital emergencies.

  I felt there was no one I could talk to. My mother would have said, “I told you so!” instantly turning mere suspicion into state’s evidence. Judy seemed to have no experience of discord or doubt, and Sherry wasn’t even married.

  Howard pulled himself awake for a moment, stared at the clock, at my bedside light, at the pile of books and magazines, suitable for an invalid, balanced on my chest. “For God’s sake, Paulie, go to sleep,” he said, as if he believed it were a matter of choice.

  This would have been the perfect time to speak to him, to pull the letters from their hiding place and present them as documented proof. Is it true, Howard? Is it true? But what if it wasn’t true, after all? If I spoke to Howard about it, even gently, implying disbelief, something would be forever spoiled between us. And I would be the spoiler. Wasn’t that what really drove men away—the violation of loving trust?

  And if it was true? My heart worked furiously.

  Howard was there, beside me in our bed. That meant something, didn’t it? I lay down beside him again, rejecting all the terrible risks, thinking it was easier in a way to be uncertain and sleepless.

  Once I complained to my mother about my insomnia. She is old-fashioned and believes in remedies. “Drink milk,” she urged. “Do calisthenics. Open the window.”

  My father, who likes to get a word in edgewise, said, “Protein. Calcium.”

  But now there I was, alone in that stillness in which I had a dog’s sense of hearing, could hear beds creak, distant telephones, letters whispering down mail slots on every floor. I wondered, who wrote letters at that hour? Who was calling? Was it true?