In the Flesh

by Hilma Wolitzer

  Finally I went to your toolbox in the hall closet and took a wrench, the heavy one that bends my wrist when I lift it. I went for the jar of peanut butter as if it were an enemy, an invader of our unprotected household. The wrench was a murder weapon. I lifted it over my head and brought it down so hard that the glass shattered and fell in a musical rain to the floor. The baby, catching on, banged out a wild tattoo on her high chair tray; and Jason took two plates and crashed them together like cymbals. Bam! Pow! Smash! Let everyone be warned!

  Later, Judy told me that there is a little gadget for opening tightly closed jars and bottles. I bought one at the five and ten. It is called Un-Screw.

  Paulie

  35

  I DECIDED ON DOUGLAS, although it might have been Nathan almost as easily. But he was a married man, after all. Could I be both homewrecker and wrecked home at the same time? It seemed too complicated. And where would Nathan and I have gone together? My apartment was out and he had a wife waiting at home. To his office, then. I saw it all. It would have to be on a Sunday or a Wednesday when he had no hours, when you couldn’t find a doctor in all of New York even if you were dying. But I’d have one all to myself. Could you do it in such a sterile atmosphere? Would the roll-paper on the examining table shred? I imagined my feet conveniently arranged in stirrups while Nathan scrubbed up, but then I remembered that Nathan was an ear man; he would never have that kind of equipment. I wondered idly if I’d have performed miracles for his art. If he could have followed with his own hands those shapes he worshiped, would he have become Leonardo? The truth was I could not imagine it at all, even with a man who loved the human body that much.

  My cowboy would be easier. He had his own room, no visible attachments. His parents and sisters and ex-girl friend were all far away in mythical Montana, a state I could not even place on the map inside my head. Nathan did seem more sensual than Douglas, but I was willing to settle for the relative simplicity of plain lust. How wise I was becoming, refining the differences between passion and sensuality.

  We went directly from class. Creeping up the long staircase to his room in an East Village brownstone, I had an irrational fear of being seen. By whom? This was the way it probably was for Sherry in her chosen life, following fragrant young men up stairways to strange rooms, new events. It might have been less extraordinary for me too, if I had never known Howard.

  The place was a mess, which made the seduction seem more spontaneous. Wouldn’t a man prepare in some way, at least by making the bed in the morning before he left, or by gathering up the clutter of magazines and glasses and ashtrays? Douglas made vague apologies for the disorder, but I thought he had probably never noticed before that he lived this way.

  What next? We had had so many long talks about his work, about his family back in Montana, about his ambitions and his dreams. I thought we would start from there, with some sympathetic conversation for starters. Or maybe we could get a little high to ease things. There was bound to be some marijuana in all this rubble. Or he could offer me a drink? Were there clean glasses?

  But there was hardly time for cocktails or conjecture. Douglas was on me in an instant. I was still breathless from all those stairs and I couldn’t understand his urgency. He had seen my body so many times before. I should have been ripping off his clothes instead. But Douglas managed everything himself.

  The bed looked as if it had already been loved in. We flung ourselves down on old wrinkles and twisted blankets. He looked even younger now undressed, more innocent, not a shadow of experience on his body. Briefly, shockingly, I thought of them, of Howard and Mrs. X. Could she appreciate his body without having witnessed its changes? And then my attention went to Douglas, who clamored for it with his crazy heartbeat, his invading tongue, with his bronco-busting thrusts, who was finished before I could think, and then lay winded on my breast. “Whew!” Douglas said. It was only the excitement, he explained, the first time and all. But was it good for me anyway? he wanted to know. We were still fastened like match people. The next time was going to be better, he promised.

  I didn’t know he had meant it to be so soon. In a little while and with hardly any effort, he was ready again, but I was not. I was determined not to be cheated again. My turn, I thought. I pushed aside the medal that hung from Douglas’s neck chain. It had dug its impression into my chest the first time around. I embraced him, teeth set for success, eyes shut for fantasy. And I conjured up everything I could possibly use, rummaged through ideas like a madwoman, like a thief looking through jewelry for the real thing. Why wasn’t this enough, damn it—this panting little blond god, getting set to thunder inside me again, his kisses so urgent and sweet, his breath as fresh as my children’s? I didn’t know. Why did I need old erotic images, movie stars, other people’s husbands, fantasies of private acts in public places? Oh God, wasn’t anything going to work? And Douglas was riding now at the head of the posse, banging his way into the underbrush. Wait for me! I wanted to shout. And before it was too late, I let Howard in, lifted my own hips with new energy, holding that kid in a bearhold. It was all confused. Douglas was whimpering and I was holding him, holding Howard, who also watched jealously from the window, from the foot of the bed, who opened his mouth over mine to hold back the cries.

  36

  DEAR HOWARD,

  YOU ALWAYS SAID that you didn’t believe in anything but yourself, remember? But I could tell that you were superstitious anyway. You knocked on wood discreetly under the table, and you avoided ladders and spilling salt. So I thought you might be interested in the results of my horoscope reading.

  I know I was just as much of a skeptic, that I used to call them “horrorscopes” behind Sherry’s back. But after all these years of resistance, I’ve finally let her chart mine for me. Maybe sometimes you have to open your mind to other possibilities outside yourself. I’ll be honest with you, I was disappointed at first. The lingo sounded absurd, all that rising and all those houses. I was hoping there’d be tall, handsome strangers in the offing, or long voyages and even mysterious letters. (Although you’d think I’d had enough of those.)

  Sherry said that I was a romantic, that I should have gone to a gypsy tea-leaf reader instead. Astrology was a science, for God’s sake, not a game. Oh, I said, I thought that was astronomy, I always get them mixed up. She was insulted and for a few minutes she was petulant. What was the use of trying to deal with such a pigheaded, know-it-all nonbeliever?

  I swore that I was sorry and begged her to give me another chance. I had tried almost everything else already. For weeks I played solitaire, saying to myself, if this one comes out, it means Howard is on his way back. Then, saying, that one didn’t count, it was only a warmup. If I won the next time, you were really coming home. I kept losing so I changed my strategy and I decided if it didn’t come out, that would be a sign of my changing destiny. But later I found the ten of hearts under the mattress in the baby’s crib. How could I help but feel suspicious, sardonic?

  The daily horoscope in the newspaper looked like a fake. It was too impersonal, intended for too many people at once. How could it be that all Capricorns were destined for lousy travel conditions on the same day? My father, the super’s wife, Mamie Eisenhower, Dr. Pearlman, Beverly in L.A.; if they all decided to get on a jet plane together, would it go down in a minute like a kamikaze Zero?

  I weighed myself at the drugstore a few times, just to get those little printed fortunes that come with your weight. But they were as enigmatic as fortune cookies, and didn’t seem like reliable predictions at all. Things like: Success comes from within, or: Friendship is the key to many doors. And the scale is way off, besides.

  “I’m ready,” I told Sherry. “What’s going on?”

  But it wasn’t to be that fast or that easy. It wasn’t enough for Sherry to know just the date and place of my birth. She had to know the exact time too. I couldn’t find my birth certificate, so I had to ask my mother, and you can guess what that was like. She wanted to kn
ow what I needed it for: a passport, a divorce? Well, whatever it was, it was my funeral. Then her face lit up with revived memories. There I was again, that pushy, over-sized, fetus, trying to gain the world through the eye of her cervix. Oh the torture, the blood!

  But it was worth it in the end. I mean my listening and waiting for the information. 3:32 A.M. That’s when I was born. In the middle of the night, in the middle of a snowstorm, maybe the worst one in the history of New York. They couldn’t get a taxi, of course, and the snow came up to their knees. When her water broke, it formed icicles under her dress.

  Ma, I wanted to say, forget it, I was there, remember? And I know that you’re born in someone else’s agony and die in your own. But finally, I was able to rush off to Sherry with the necessary facts, and she went to work on them. I sat there and watched while she consulted books and charts and drew diagrams. She kept making little sounds like “ummm” and “ahh!”—sounds of discovery and surprise. By that time I was impatient. “What is it?” I asked, but she quieted me with a wave of her hand and kept scribbling and mumbling.

  I went for a walk and when I came back Sherry was nodding and smiling as if she had the best news in the world for me. Well, I said to myself, if astrology is good enough for kings and horseplayers, it’s good enough for me.

  It was a very involved report, pages really, dealing with almost every aspect of my life. But I’ll give you only the highlights. The main reason things have been so bad for me, and between us, is because my progressed Venus was in direct opposition to Pluto. But things are definitely going to change. What I mean is, this is going to be a propitious time for me, for creative endeavor, for financial investments, for sound health. And yes, Howard, even for love. Definitely for love. It looks as if I’m heading for some wonderful months ahead. My sun is trining Uranus. I know that sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, but you Scorpios are like that, always feeling superior to your environment.

  I’ll tell you something else, Howard. Sherry says that you and Mrs. X aren’t exactly a match made in heaven either. Of course she didn’t have specific data to go on, but Sherry would bet anything that Mrs. X is a two-faced Gemini with the sun rising in her second house, and I can go along with that. Gemini and Scorpio—forget it!

  So I’m due for some splendid luck and you’re heading for a fall. Someone else might be vindictive and overjoyed with the prospect of revenge, but you know how I am. Do you remember how I even used to muster up sympathy for you and Renee?

  I went home that night, feeling hopeful and lighthearted. When I got to the nineteenth floor, the couple next door, our warriors, were waiting for the elevator. They were all dressed up. She wore an evening gown and a corsage. He was wearing one of those dinner jackets made of cut-velvet upholstery. He was snapping his fingers and moving his hips in time to a bossa nova playing in the elevator as the doors closed behind them. Good sign, I said to myself. The lion shall lie down with the lamb, or at least they’ll go out dancing.

  I felt so elated that I sat down in the kitchen with a fresh sheet of paper and a newly sharpened pencil. There’s probably a poem in all this, I thought, in that aura of celebration. And all those lovely astrological words—cusp, constellium. But I couldn’t write anything. I suppose it was the elation. Elation and depression, they can both burn you up in a flame of feeling. But I don’t care. There are good days ahead, Howard, and it’s only a matter of time.

  If you’re still skeptical, go out on some clear night and look up at the skies, at those dizzying galaxies of planets and stars. Or better still, go to the Hayden Planetarium and hear that voice like God’s in the darkness naming the parts of the universe, and see how superior and sure of yourself you feel then.

  Aquarius

  37

  JASON AND ANN WERE crazy about Douglas, even though he referred to them as “the boy” and “the girl,” as if they were kids in a Tarzan movie, two rudimentary creatures, as yet undefined and unnamed. Douglas called me Babe, a strangely pleasing word that combined toughness with innocence, and implied a playful familiarity. We were playful together. Douglas’s youthfulness was largely responsible for that. Not that I wasn’t still young myself. I only had a few years and a few pounds on him. But experience had imposed gravity. I was a householder, a mother, a lapsed wife, while Douglas was only himself, free to be frivolous if he felt like it. He initiated pillow fights, and body assaults with shaving cream and Reddi-Wip that became sexual encounters without even a transitional pause. When he was serious, or tried to be, I felt maternally indulgent, a little condescending, and yet inevitably aroused.

  He was so sweet. When he came to our apartment, he often insisted on cooking for us, on making grilled cheese sandwiches, his “specialty,” that were weighted with grease and overflowing with the cheese that glued them to the plates. He made up games, the dangerous, thrilling games of an older, fearless child, offering his own body as a playground.

  “Watch out! Somebody’s going to get hurt!” I’d say, and it was usually him, coming up bruised but flushed with triumph. The children, as easily faithless as I, climbed his back as they had climbed Howard’s, pulled Douglas’s ears and hair, and rode the snorting and rearing horse he became for them for what seemed like hours. To wall-neighbors, we must have sounded like an ordinary family just having a boisterous good time.

  But we weren’t like a real family at all. There weren’t any of those terrible complexities of mood, of power struggle and ambition that seem built into marriage. We were more like Tarzan and Jane ourselves, intelligent savages in a primitive jungle existence, a day-by-day pursuit of survival and pleasure.

  Douglas’s disposition was as regular as a pulsebeat; he never seemed restless or bored. What’s more, he had terrific physical endurance. In bed he was invariably ready. We limited our lovemaking to his apartment, because I dreaded the complications of his being discovered by the children one morning in their Daddy’s “place.” Although I daydreamed often about Howard discovering us and becoming wild with jealousy and remorse. He would certainly have envied Douglas’s sexual stamina and would have felt threatened. As for me, it was reassuring in that time of crisis. See, I could have said, it’s me who’s responsible for all this activity, me who’s the inspiration for this animal lust. Still, I wasn’t absolutely sure. Douglas could be carrying around erections the way other young men carry wallet condoms, in optimistic anticipation of meeting someone to use them on.

  I never spent the whole night with him, just fell into short recuperative dozes between rounds, from which I’d be awakened, punch-drunk, but game, by his busy hands, his curious mouth, and by the reckless insistence of his penis, hammering for entry at all my doors. He was always hard before foreplay. Foreplay was obviously a concession to me as WOMAN, that awesome being whom God, in His infinite wisdom, had made different.

  Douglas hadn’t been illuminated by Freud yet, and he didn’t appear to be burdened by castration fears or Oedipal guilt, those famous softening agents. He could simply think himself erect, or get that way somehow in the ephemeral passage of dreams. “Babe?” He whispered it in a voice that was tentative and belied his desire.

  “You’re going to burn yourself out,” I whispered back once, but that was only good for laughs. He was as reliable as an Eveready battery, as persistent as a drill.

  Yet there was a thoughtful and old-fashioned aspect to Douglas, an honorableness that made him gallant. He always took me home, rousing from postcoital stupor to get dressed, buttoning himself up wrong like a thick-fingered, sleepy child. And he’d see me right to the door.

  Later he’d send little notes, often written in verse, that congratulated me on my charms and celebrated his own happiness. They had a commercial quality, like those greeting cards that aim for aesthetic distinction by using several dots after each line, Thinking of you……….…Loving you…………. Keeping warm by the glow of memory…………. The notes reminded me of his drawings, and yet I knew he was sincere, and I was touched.

>   Douglas phoned between visits too, his voice husky with intimacy. At those times he was youthful as well, wanting to gloat, to recount the activities of the day before in a kind of code or double-talk that couldn’t be understood by any possible interceptor. Sometimes, I could hardly understand him myself. He’d ask after the “twins,” and for a moment I’d be confused, thinking he was referring to the children, when it was really my breasts he meant, those “twin peaks of Paradise” that showed up with such frequency in his poems of praise.

  In that melange of nicknames and endearments, Jason called Douglas Doggie. It was more than just an infantile mispronunciation. Jason, like most children, could be surprisingly accurate, and I suppose Douglas was a kind of animal to him and Annie, a labile one that could change with ease from a prancing pony to a cuddly, tail-wagging dog.

  When Douglas visited on Saturday, they never confused him with Howard, who would arrive on Sunday. Howard, even in absentia, was still Daddy, that title earned through history and permanently installed in memory.

  I wished the children would give Howard some of the hints I was dying to drop myself. Or that someone would. Where was his anonymous friend?