by Meg Wolitzer
Suddenly he pulled off his jacket and clomped onto the dance floor, saying “Excuse me, excuse me, sorry,” as he made his way through the crowd. When he reached Natalie he held his jacket out to her like a suburban husband approaching his wife at the end of an evening with her fur coat in hand, gallantly holding the sleeve-holes open so she could slip in her slender, pale arms. Natalie stared at him and his jacket, confused. “Here,” he said. “Why don’t you put it on?” he suggested. She started to protest, and then something made her change her mind, for she stepped in front of him, facing away, and let first one arm fall into a sleeve, and then the other. Then she looked at him in a serious, grateful manner, and disappeared back into the crowd, where she was enveloped by men, dancing with her eyes closed, for one night forgetting.
9
Thrilling in Bed
In the thick of death, why does love survive? No, that wasn’t the interesting question, Peter thought. The interesting question was: In the thick of death, why does desire survive? For it was desire he felt for Maddy at one in the morning, even as she turned away from him in her sorrow and distraction. Sara was dead, and everyone was overcome with sadness, but still, in the late-night confines of this room, Peter remembered exactly what the smooth taffy-pull of sex felt like, and he wanted it again.
But there was no place for sex anymore in this marriage. Slowly, sex had been elbowed out, starting with the pregnancy and culminating in the death of Sara. When he reached for Maddy now, at one in the morning, she shook her head and whispered, “The baby’s awake.”
“Oh, he’s not looking,” Peter whispered back. “This won’t traumatize him.”
“You never know,” said Maddy. “It’s the ‘primal scene,’ right? It’s a really big deal. Dr. Blandish has a whole chapter on how important it is to be modest around your children.”
“I’m so sick of Dr. Blandish,” said Peter. “Who does she think she is? And besides, I witnessed the so-called ‘primal scene,’ and it didn’t screw me up for life.”
“You did?” said Maddy. “What exactly did you see?”
“I was six,” he said. “I had a nightmare; I think it was about being chased by big yellow shoes, and I left my bedroom and walked right in on my parents. My father, who as you know is a pretty substantial guy, was lying right on top of my mother. I figured, with the way he was lying, she’d have to be dead. But she wasn’t, she was breathing hard. No one noticed me, and I just stood there in the darkness at the foot of their bed, wondering how she could breathe like that with my father on top of her. Finally they saw me, and all three of us screamed at once.”
“Well, I don’t want Duncan to see us,” Maddy said.
“You don’t want to see us,” said Peter. “Or feel us. Or anything.”
“You’re right,” she admitted finally. “I guess I don’t anymore.”
His sex drive had always been more powerful than hers, but that hadn’t troubled him. He had associated his interest in sex with his maleness, considering it strictly a gonad issue. Back when he was single and unattached, he would sometimes lie on his futon in his burglar-friendly East Village apartment, located directly above a Jamaican head shop where the reggae played day and night, and the potent spice and flower smell of sinsemilla wafted up through the vents. Peter would sprawl on his back, listening to the music and getting a contact high from the smoke, which he topped off with a beer and a few broken-off rectangles of Ghirardelli chocolate, and he would think about having sex with an assortment of women—admirable ones such as social workers or lawyers for the disadvantaged, and lurid ones such as lap dancers with strategic beauty marks. He used to think about his sister Dana, whose breasts tormented him in adolescence with their proximity—both to him and to each other.
In recent years, he masturbated to the image of a girl named Arquetia who had been one of the students in his homeroom class at the school where he taught, and whose skin was of a profound, almost waxed shade of black. “Fuck me, Arquetia,” he once heard himself whispering into his pillow. Sometimes he masturbated to Maddy’s image, a stand-in for her real self which had become inert and unwilling. Occasionally he masturbated over Sara, an activity that had begun as soon as he met her in college, and which continued on, to his embarrassment, after her death.
Sometimes at night now, lying beside the infinitely sad and unwilling Maddy, he thought of Sara and became excited. One night last week, after Maddy had refused him again and turned over and went to sleep, he allowed a single hand to creep down and grab himself. Then swiftly, neatly, he had a silent orgasm, Sara’s face hovering above him, her phantom hand resting lightly on his.
ONE NIGHT IN the middle of the month, the entire household went to the summer carnival, a corny annual affair set up in the Caldor parking lot. There were roulette wheels, zeppole and sausage stands, and a big glass cotton-candy machine in which sugar was spun into billows of flyaway, pale blue hair. There were the usual rides, too, including the Spider, a truck with bumper cars on it, and a surprisingly big Ferris wheel hovering above everything. They wandered through the carnival in a group, idle and hot.
Peter stood beside Maddy and Duncan at a shooting gallery, aiming his air rifle at a row of tin ducks that clacked mechanically past. One by one he knocked them down; his aim was sure, and the man behind the counter presented him with a large green stuffed animal that was supposed to be either a dog or a bear, it was unclear which. Duncan liked the ambiguous animal, and immediately reached out for it, so Peter handed it to him.
Shawn and Adam were having temporary tattoos applied to their arms, and Natalie stood alone off to the side, gazing up at the Ferris wheel. “I used to ride Ferris wheels all the time when I was growing up,” she said. “The bigger the better.”
Peter decided that he would make a friendly gesture toward Natalie now; it seemed to be the right thing to do, especially since Maddy had always complained that he hadn’t liked Sara, which of course wasn’t true. But the truth could not be told. “Mrs. Swerdlow,” he asked, “would you like to go up?”
So up they went, onto the Ferris wheel, sitting side by side in a small, swinging car that hung suspended above the parking lot and the crowds below. He never quite knew what to say to Sara’s mother; it was always somewhat awkward. “So,” he said now. “It’s quite a view.”
“Yes,” she said. Then her capacity for small talk was used up. “You don’t like to talk about your relationship with Sara, do your?”
“There’s not much to say,” Peter said. “She was mainly Maddy’s friend.”
“Oh, cut the crap,” said Natalie.
He stared at her. “Excuse me?” he said.
“I know what went on between you two,” she said. “Did you think I didn’t?”
Peter was horrified. He couldn’t imagine what he should say next; there was no etiquette book to instruct him. “But you’re her mother,” was all he said, breathless suddenly.
“You’re damn right I’m her mother,” she said. “And she told me things she told no one else. I know all about you.”
Before he could even think of a reply, the Ferris wheel suddenly stopped moving and their car was left swaying near the top of the sphere. For a few minutes there was nothing—no sound, no movement—and Natalie and Peter didn’t say a word. Finally there came a loud squeal of feedback from below, and then an announcer’s voice began to speak over the P.A. system. “Due to a mechanical error,” the voice said, “the Ferris wheel is temporarily stalled. Will all people on the ride please remain calm. Do not try to exit the Ferris wheel at this time.”
“My God, we’re trapped,” Natalie said.
“Oh, this happens every summer,” Peter said. A crowd was forming below, and he could see Adam and Shawn, and then Maddy, with Duncan strapped to her back. The big stuffed animal was still in the baby’s arms, a blob of green. Maddy waved to Peter, and he lifted his arm obediently in response.
“I’m starting to feel a little dizzy,” Natalie said. “Like I might faint
, or throw up or something.” She did seem rattled, her face sweaty and pale. Perspiration collected in the little vertical groove above her lip—the philtrum, that place was called; he remembered this obscure fact from studying a chart of the human body. Oddly, he thought that she had a beautiful philtrum, a perfect, tiny column.
“Don’t look down, Mrs. Swerdlow,” said Peter. “Look at me. Only me.” She obeyed him, turning her gaze fully to his face. He saw again how pretty she was and how delicate her features were, as Sara’s had been. She looked right at him, unblinking, and he perceived a gratefulness in her expression. The sudden vertigo seemed to pass, or at least to shift. “There,” he said. “You’re doing fine. Are you feeling better?”
She seemed to think about it, realizing they were suspended in air but that nothing bad was going to happen; no freak carnival accident, the top story on the local news. “Yes,” said Natalie. “Yes, I am. Thank you,” she added softly. “Peter?” she continued. “I didn’t mean to upset you before. I would never tell Maddy, you know.”
“She would hate me,” he said simply.
“I didn’t say it as a threat,” she said. “It’s just that, talking about Sara, knowing everything about her … it’s the only way I can keep her around.”
“I know what you mean,” he said, for this was exactly the way he experienced Sara, too. In his case, though, he kept Sara alive through his silent thoughts, his nocturnal fantasies, the elegant pornography he drummed up for himself in which he and Sara lay twined on her couch, the radiator spurting heat into that already overheated living room.
“She thought you had beautiful blue eyes,” Natalie said now. “Like little swimming pools. And you do.” Peter felt himself grow flushed. “And also,” Natalie continued, “she said that you were … well, I probably shouldn’t say this …” Her voice faltered.
“What?” said Peter. “Tell me.” Nothing could surprise him now. They were swaying in the metal car of a carnival ride, and it was as though they might never come down; they were stuck up there forever. They could say anything, and none of it would matter later.
“She also said,” Natalie went on, “that you were thrilling in bed.”
Peter felt the blush deepen, darken. “She really said that?” he asked. “Thrilling?”
Natalie nodded, and Peter stared out over the side of the car, waving vaguely again at his wife and child. A vain pleasure coursed through him, his entire body somehow weakened at the idea of Sara thinking this about him. Thrilling. His heart sang in response. He wanted to reach out and hug Sara’s mother in gratitude for telling him this detail, but he didn’t dare move. He suddenly imagined embracing Natalie Swerdlow, their bodies colliding high above the ground. Thrilling, he thought, confused and happy, as the ride was suddenly jolted to life, and the big wheel began to turn, bringing them slowly down to earth.
MADDY BOUGHT A Ouija board at the Toys “R” Us out off the highway. Inside the huge store, mothers and fathers dragged plastic wading pools across the floor, while their children scattered, lost in the hangar-sized existential void. Maddy felt lost too, disoriented in this formless space, wheeling her cart around with its snap-in baby seat, then standing on line behind a family and their own shopping cart that was stuffed with toys that would forever require an expensive dependence on AA batteries. Duncan began to flail and emit his little cat mewl, and she fished around in her purse and found his pacifier. It had a single hair wrapped around it, which she whisked away and then plugged the thing into the baby’s mouth. Who knew whose hair that was? And anyway, if she kept giving him pacifiers now, the baby would need his mouth jammed with plastic for years to come. He would develop a stunned, vacant expression that would never leave his face. She was obviously a bad mother.
Maddy waited, gripping the cart, while the family in front of her emptied their cart so each ugly or violent item could be dragged across the price scanner. Then it was her turn, and the cashier rang up the Ouija board and handed it back to her in a big plastic bag. Once outside the store, she pulled the bag off. If she could have, she would have tried to use this thing right here in the parking lot, so powerful was her desire to speak to Sara again. But it was raining outside, a light drizzle that sent families scurrying like chicks to their family-sized vans. Maddy lifted the baby into the old red pickup truck and belted him into his Fisher-Price seat. Then she took the wheel and headed back to the house, thinking only of Sara, and how soon, in some insane way, she would be speaking to her.
Maddy had never believed in the supernatural; all things that involved “eerie” coincidence had seemed to her merely random and dull. But grief quickly turned you into a believer. Maddy had spent a series of nights lying in bed thinking about Sara, imagining the two of them sitting by the lake at Camp Ojibway, sharing those first, hesitant confidences. What had they talked about? Other girls, of course—which one was mean, which one was a psycho, which one a hopeless, pathetic loser. They talked about the books they liked, usually novels about troubled young women who are committed to mental institutions. And they talked about boys, too, whispering confidences to each other, describing what their different experiences had actually felt like. Sara had told her of how a boy’s hand, grazing across the convex surface of her breast, had made her almost want to die with happiness. Maddy had listened attentively, imagining that there might be a time in the future when a boy would touch her own breast, and when she too might experience such sensations. She had admired Sara for being the one to try out all these experiences first, for being the royal taster, the first girl she knew who had actually been touched all over, and who had let herself be finger-fucked, as they so indelicately called it then, by an older, deeply excitable boy.
But that afternoon by the lake had taken place so long ago that it had become an antique, a quaint, irrelevant fragment. Maddy wanted Sara back so badly that she would have taken any version of her: the young girl by the lake, the college student, the scholar of Japanese, the desirable woman ringed by a corona of men. Sara, who had always generated in Maddy a sequence of jealousy and guilt. Of course Maddy had loved Sara, and Sara loved her; who else could she really, really talk to?
But love would not end with this death, and neither would jealousy. It all stayed alive and vivid and disturbing, except it had no place to go, no vessel to be poured into. So the Ouija board could be that vessel, a quick fix. In childhood, she and her brothers had played with a Ouija board, and it remained Maddy’s only conceivable conduit to the dead. She carried the flat box home in the truck, then took it upstairs discreetly, not wanting anyone to see.
Maddy pulled open her dresser drawer now and hid the Ouija board there, under all her clothes and beside the latest bottle of sweet-tasting liquor she had stashed there. This time it was Cointreau. Maddy took a long drink from the bottle, and then another. She had a low tolerance for alcohol, and pretty soon she felt a responding fluidity in her legs and a flush in her cheeks. She capped the bottle and stuffed it back beside the Ouija board, noticing the copy of The Upbeat Baby beneath it. These were all secret, embarrassing objects. The drinking felt illicit because she did it surreptitiously; it was medicinal and necessary and private. So, in its own way, was the Ouija board. Peter would have made fun of her if he had seen it, so she decided she wouldn’t show it to him. Instead, she would simply use it by herself in the middle of the night, while everyone else was fast asleep.
But tonight, as it turned out, everyone was wide awake in the middle of the night. Adam had another one of his sleepwalking episodes, rising from his bed as if summoned by Sirens, and stumbling around in the upstairs hallway. “Oh, shit,” said Peter, rolling over in bed. “He’s walking again.” Peter and Maddy opened the door of their room and peered out; Adam was moving through the hall in that clumsy drunken gait, and they watched as he opened the door of Sara’s room and marched in. There he saw a sleeping woman in the bed. He regarded her for a moment, and then he lay down beside her. Opening her eyes, Natalie let out a squeal, and within a se
cond Maddy and Peter and Shawn were all packed into the room. A light was turned on, and everyone tried to comfort Natalie and awaken Adam at the same time. Adam was confused and embarrassed, apologizing to Natalie repeatedly, until she asked him to stop. Finally Shawn walked him back to their room and put him to bed. Maddy stayed with Natalie, waiting there until she was completely calm, and Peter hung back uselessly, then finally retreated.
“Can I get you some water?” Maddy asked Natalie, as the two women sat on the edge of the bed. Sara’s mother nodded, so Maddy went downstairs and returned with a glass of midnight water, warm and served in one of Mrs. Moyles’s chipped mugs. Natalie drank gratefully, gulping it down like a child.
“He really frightened me,” said Natalie when she was done. “I thought for a second that maybe Sara really was here in the bed.”
“Mrs. Swerdlow,” Maddy began carefully, “have you ever thought about trying to contact her?” Then she told Natalie about the Ouija board that was hidden in her dresser drawer.
“I can’t believe you would waste your money like that,” said Natalie. Then there was a pause. “Although I suppose,” Natalie added, “there’s no harm in trying it.”
So Maddy crept back into her bedroom, where Peter was again asleep, and she slipped the board from her drawer, and the two women went downstairs to the kitchen. The only light in the room emanated from the sunburst clock. Natalie and Maddy sat at the table, which gleamed in the dim light and was still slightly sticky from dinner.