In Medias Res

by Yolanda Wallace

  He’d just arrived and I couldn’t wait for him to leave.

  He’s your husband, I reminded myself. Just relax and let it happen.

  “Last night was the first night we’ve spent apart since we got married,” he said. “I didn’t handle it very well.” He laced his fingers around my waist and pressed his hips against mine. His semi-erection poked against my stomach. “Have you gone to your favorite place yet?”

  Assuming he meant Sloppy Joe’s, I tried to think of an appropriate response. “I didn’t want to go without you.”

  He frowned and I wondered if I’d given myself away. “That’s never stopped you before. You make a beeline for that place every time you come down here. The only company you require there is Mr. Hemingway’s, not Dr. Stanton’s.” He kissed me on my forehead and let me go. I was grateful for the reprieve. The bulge pressing against my navel was distracting. “You know something?” he said, taking another sip of his beer. “I think your friend the pedi-cab driver would be perfect for Jennifer. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, trying not to appear as shocked as I felt. He made it sound like Jennifer was into women. Nothing I had seen or heard in the previous two days had led me in that direction. If Jennifer were gay, why was she living with Marcus? Was he not, as I’d assumed, her husband? Was he simply what he’d claimed to be when I’d talked to him on the phone—a sidekick? A roommate and nothing more?

  I quickly re-examined the videotaped images I’d seen the night before. I thought back to the smile Jennifer and Marcus had shared. They had smiled at each other not like they were the only two people in the room, but the only two people like them. And when I’d teased Jennifer about her and Patrick having feelings for each other, I’d known then why that wasn’t the case. He might have had feelings for her, but she hadn’t felt the same way.

  Why had I blocked out something so important? What other secrets had I forgotten? What else was I supposed to know?

  “You more than anyone knows how much Jennifer loves the athletic type,” Jack said. “Your new friend definitely fits the bill. Not that I was looking.”

  “No, heaven forbid,” I said, pretending to be jealous. I was so accomplished at doing what was expected of me that I wondered how good I was at doing what came naturally.

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “Who?” I didn’t know if he meant my old friend or my new one.

  “Jen.”

  I borrowed one of Marcus’s lines in order to save my ass. “She’s off saving the world again. I couldn’t get through to her.”

  “I can’t believe she agreed to another stint so soon after the last one. I thought she would have taken some time to get all that madness out of her head before she subjected herself to another round of it. She was home only a week, if that long. Where is she this time? She’s not back in the Sudan, is she?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. Was I supposed to know?

  Jack nodded sympathetically. “I have a couple of contacts with Doctors Without Borders. I could give one of them a call and find out. Not that it would make much difference—one war is as deadly as another once the bullets start flying—but I’m sure it would ease your mind to know exactly where she is. I remember how upset you were when she volunteered to go to Liberia after the violence there began to spin out of control. You barely slept for almost a week. Is that why you’re here now, so you can walk the floor at night without keeping me awake?”

  It sounded like a reasonable explanation as any. “You found me out.”

  “She’ll be fine,” he said. “She always is. Remember her motto? ‘I might not know much, but one thing I know how to do is stay alive.’”

  Jennifer was as lost to me as Jack was, but I somehow felt her absence more. Probably because I had seen how happy and how close we used to be. Dancing goofily in our prom dresses. Ganging up on my brother. We didn’t just look like sisters. We had acted like them as well.

  “What am I supposed to do if she forgets how to stay alive?” I asked.

  “She won’t.” Jack held my face in his hands and peered into my eyes. “Why don’t you ever worry about me like that?”

  “Have you ever given me reason to?”

  I doubted it. He seemed too staid to do anything that would cause me to lose sleep over him. He would be home when he said he would. He would call if he had to work late. He wouldn’t forget birthdays or anniversaries. He was a romance novelist’s dream. So why didn’t he feel like mine?

  “I am the antithesis of all those bad boys you dated in high school and college,” he said. “I try to be as dull and boring as possible. It’s why you married me, isn’t it? That and the fact that I’m hung like a horse.”

  “If you say so.”

  Why had I married him? Had it been love at first sight or had friendship blossomed into more? Had he swept me off my feet or had I needed convincing? Had he chased me or had I gone after him?

  “Tell me our story.”

  “Don’t you remember it?” He asked the question so seriously that I thought he might finally be on to me.

  “I want to make sure that you do.”

  “If you’re putting me on the spot after less than two years, I can’t imagine what you’re going to do after fifty.”

  “More of the same, only worse.”

  Despite his mild protest, he granted my request. We made ourselves comfortable on the couch and he told me how we came to be.

  “I suppose you could say Jennifer is the reason we’re together. She and I fought tooth-and-nail all through med school to see who could get the best grades and the best girls. If she and I weren’t so competitive, I never would have met you,” he said, still nursing his beer. Out of sorts, I was already on my second. “My shift was over. I should have been on my way home. With nothing better to do, I decided to challenge Jennifer to a little one-on-one.”

  An image of a basketball court with faded paint and rotting nets popped into my head, but I didn’t know if it was the one from Jack’s story or something I’d seen on TV. Still, I felt a spark of hope. Perhaps Jack was the missing link. The piece of the puzzle I needed to make the rest fall into place.

  “She and I were in the middle of the game when you showed up to take her out for your regular Friday let-me-tell-you-what-a-shitty-week-I-had get-together,” Jack continued. “Before that night, I had come close to beating her—if losing by single digits instead of double counts as close—but I had never taken a game off of her. I looked so hapless that night I managed to make you feel sorry for me. You gave me some pointers on my form and my defense. With your help, I was finally able to take her down. When my final shot swished through the net, I think you celebrated even more than I did.”

  He chuckled at the memory.

  “Jennifer was so angry with you for ‘turning on her,’ as she put it, that she bailed on dinner. You, however, graciously allowed me to serve as her stand-in. I spent the next two hours trying to convince you not to judge me solely on my athletic ability—or lack thereof. It must have worked because you agreed to see me again. We moved in together three months later. Six months after that, we were married. I’ve never been certain if you said yes to me or to the opportunity to watch eighty-one free Cubs games from the roof of my apartment building. You said it was me, but I have my doubts.”

  “Let me ease your mind,” I said. “It was the Cubs.”

  He nodded as if he’d been expecting the joke. My memory might have been faulty, but my personality seemed to be intact. Despite everything, I was still the same person.

  I had hoped Jack’s retelling of our story would prompt a flood of memories like the home videos had the night before. When he finished, I didn’t know anything other than what he’d told me. He felt like a guy I was chatting amiably with while killing time in an airport bar, not the man I’d promised to spend the rest of my life with.

  “Did I leave anything out?” he asked.

  Plenty. When wa
s the first time we slept together? When was the last? What had happened in the past few days—the past few weeks—to make me want to forget who I was? Why couldn’t I remember anything about Jennifer, the woman I’d declared my “best friend for life”? Why couldn’t I remember anything about him or our life together?

  “No, I think you covered everything.”

  His right hand slid up my thigh. The action reawakened something in me that had stirred to life when I was with Marcy: an overwhelming need for human contact. I wanted to connect with someone. Someone tangible, not frozen in time on a videotape.

  I was tired of wandering aimlessly. I wanted my life back. All of it, not just the bits and pieces. I wanted to remember the good times as well as the bad.

  Ready to face whatever I was running from, I tried a little shock therapy.

  Straddling Jack’s lap, I cupped a hand over his crotch to check the state of his arousal. He groaned, then ground his hips against my palm.

  I unzipped his fly and reached inside to free his insistent member. He pulled my shorts and underwear down and guided me onto his shaft. I pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the floor. I raked my nails across his back, bit into his shoulder. Clutching at him, I pulled him deeper inside me.

  “Come on,” I said. “Make me feel it. Make me remember.”

  My hips thrust wildly. He tried to keep pace—to match my rhythm—but I was like a woman possessed.

  “Jesus, Syd,” he gasped. “What’s gotten into you? You’re like a different person.”

  I was tantalizingly close to the edge, but I couldn’t quite make it to the other side. I couldn’t concentrate with him babbling about my performance.

  I covered his mouth with my hand. “Shh,” I said. “Don’t talk.”

  He drew one of my fingers into his mouth and I felt a sense of déjà vu. I had been in that situation before. The build-up. The anticipation. The loss of control. I had felt those sensations before—but not with him. Never with him. Or any of my other partners. Only with—

  Everything stopped.

  Jack came, grunting as if I’d punched him in the gut.

  He kissed me as he fought to catch his breath. “You were right,” he said, resting his head on my chest to make the moment last. “Whatever you’re working through doesn’t have anything to do with us. That was unbelievable. Definitely worth waiting five months for.”

  I looked down at him. “Five months? Has it been that long since we were together?”

  He combed his mussed hair with his fingers. “We used to go at it like rabbits before we said ‘I do.’ After we got back from our honeymoon, life started getting in the way, and before we knew it we were, for lack of a better term, two ships passing in the night. When I was coming from work, you were heading to it and vice versa. You were too busy trying to make partner to notice, but I certainly did. If we made love once or twice a month, I considered myself lucky. But it’s been months since you let me touch you. Four months, three weeks, and six days, to be exact.”

  I climbed off his lap. “Why don’t you give me the minutes and seconds while you’re at it?”

  I was irritated with myself for leaving him twisting in the wind for so long and with him for allowing me to get away with it. I was tempted to call him an enabler, but it wasn’t his fault I was too much of a coward to face whatever was bothering me. Instead of owning up to my issues, I had buried them so deeply that I could no longer reach them. Or had that been the point?

  “Why is sex such a sore subject for you?” he asked. “You shut down every time I bring it up, but lately, it’s even worse. Ever since the firm assigned you to the Slasher case, you’ve refused to let anyone get too close, me included. The armchair psychiatrist in me is tempted to say you’re identifying too much with one of the principals in the case.”

  “Do you think I’m a victim or a defendant?” I didn’t appreciate being compared to either.

  He smiled wanly. “You tell me.”

  Why would I relate to anyone in a case as gruesome as the Subway Slasher’s? Granted, I didn’t know all the details, but even the name sounded grisly. If I had known I’d been involved in the case, I would have asked the guy on the flight from Chicago if I could have borrowed his copy of the Tribune when he was done with it so I could have seen what I was a part of.

  Jack held up his hands in surrender. “Babe, I don’t want to fight with you. Let me have my moment. Today is the first time in a long time that you didn’t make me feel like you consented to sex simply as a favor to me. It felt like you were enjoying yourself, not fulfilling a marital obligation.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise. I had been attempting to fill a need, but not the one he had in mind.

  I had hoped sleeping with him would bring us closer together. Instead, it had driven us even further apart, leaving me with more questions than answers. Why was it taking me so long to figure things out? And why had making love with my husband felt like a betrayal? If he was the person I had committed myself to, body and soul, why did I feel like those things belonged to someone else?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jack called dibs on the shower. While he was gone, I forced myself to perform the task I had been avoiding. It was time for me to face my fears. All of them.

  I retrieved the wedding video and slid it into the VCR. “Here goes nothing,” I said and pressed Play.

  Shot from a camera mounted in the rear of the church, the video was filmed by a professional. What it made up for in quality, it lacked in charm. The prom night video—filmed by my brother, my father, and my best friend—had captured a slice of my life, shaky images and all. The wedding video, by contrast, was more like a documentary with no point of view. Its only objective was to chronicle, not illuminate.

  I watched as guests were ushered in and took their seats. Instead of speaking in reverent whispers, they were nearly as rowdy as a European soccer crowd. The din subsided only when the ushers began escorting first my grandmother, then Jack’s, down the aisle.

  The processional music began. Ushers saw my mother, then Jack’s, to their seats. My mother, resplendent in a beaded beige dress, was beaming like it was her wedding day. Jack’s mother, on the other hand, looked like she’d been sucking on an exceptionally sour lemon. Seeing her again reminded me of her disdain for me. I had bent over backwards to please her, but nothing I had done had worked. In her eyes, I would never be good enough for her son.

  Maybe she was right.

  A side door opened. Reverend William Hughes entered the room, followed by Jack and his best man/younger brother Jimmy. Jack looked nervous. Jimmy looked like he couldn’t wait to find the nearest bar—or had spent too much time in one the night before. The four groomsmen who trailed behind him—my brother included—seemed to be in similarly rough shape.

  At the altar, Jimmy fiddled with his bow tie until a sharp look from Jack made him stop. Then everyone turned to watch the bridesmaids enter.

  My sister-in-law Kristin began the slow parade. I recognized her right away. The same was true for the four women who followed her: two of my former sorority sisters from college, my workout partner from the gym, and Jennifer’s girlfriend Natalie Zabriskie. Each woman’s hair was styled in similar fashion—upswept and held in place by a spray of baby’s breath. All five were dressed in identical black satin gowns held up by the thinnest of spaghetti straps. Sheer red scarves draped across their shoulders and trailing down their backs provided a dash of color. The scarlet accessory matched the bouquet of roses in their hands.

  My nephew Kris was the ring bearer. The flower girl accompanying him down the aisle was a beautiful little redhead from his second grade class. I remembered Kris taking great delight in telling everyone she was his girlfriend. She, on the other hand, hadn’t gotten the memo. She had liked the attention he paid her, but she had shied away every time he had tried to kiss her. “Boys are icky,” she had eloquently explained.

  Jennifer, my maid of honor, appear
ed next on the screen. She had the same dress and hairstyle as the rest of my bridesmaids, but her bouquet was larger, denoting her higher rank in the bridal party.

  I moved closer to the TV screen, expecting realization to wash over me like a tidal wave, but Jennifer remained maddeningly out of reach.

  She walked with her head up and her shoulders square, as if she were balancing an invisible book on her noggin. She took her place next to Reverend Hughes and turned toward the back of the church. Her smile seemed a little off. It looked brave, not genuine. As if she were pretending to be happy instead of actually enjoying the moment. I had been too nervous to notice it at the time, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty.

  The organist pounded out the opening strains of the wedding march. All the guests rose as one and turned to await my grand entrance. Watching the tape, I was filled with as much anticipation as they were—and I was waiting to see myself.

  My face hidden by a white lace veil, I walked down the aisle on my father’s arm. He stood next to me at the altar while Jennifer bent to straighten my train.

  Reverend Hughes said a few words to welcome everyone and to reiterate the reason we were there. He followed up with a lengthy prayer that left our souls lifted and our necks sore. I could see several guests rubbing theirs after Reverend Hughes said Amen.

  After the congregation sang “Amazing Grace,” the “official” part of the ceremony began.

  Reverend Hughes asked, “Who gives this woman in marriage?”

  Dad replied, “Her mother and I do.” Then he kissed me on the cheek, symbolically handed me off to Jack, and joined my mother in the front row.

  Jack and I exchanged vows without interruption—no one stood when Reverend Hughes uttered the always dramatic “Speak now or forever hold your peace.” I expected Patrick or Jennifer to do or say something to break the tension, but they remained mute. He was too wobbly from the night before; she was too concerned with doing her job as my maid of honor. I could almost see her counting items off her mental checklist.