In Medias Res

by Yolanda Wallace

  “So I thought. The call came on the weekend before my birthday, so I went back to bed thinking ‘Happy birthday to me.’

  “The arrest was all over the news the next day. That’s when the details began to come out. E. J. and several of his fraternity brothers went bar hopping on Friday night. All of them got too hammered to drive so they decided to take the L home. By home, I don’t mean the McDougald estate. If they had gone there, there wouldn’t be a story. One of the members of the group has an apartment in the city so they decided to go there to keep the party going a while longer.”

  I took a quick sip of wine as the story got harder to tell.

  “Jason Cooper, the victim in the case, boarded the train at the Halsted stop. He didn’t know E. J. from the man in the moon, but he thought he was cute so he smiled at him. E. J. took offense and started verbally abusing Jason on the train. E. J.’s a big guy—six-four, two hundred twenty pounds. Jason is half a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter. He tried to defuse the situation, but E. J.’s friends—filled with a potent combination of testosterone and alcohol—inflamed it even more.”

  “The proverbial Greek chorus?” Jennifer asked.

  “Exactly. When Jason got off the train at the next stop to try to prevent a confrontation, E. J. followed him. E. J. beat him up and slashed him in the face with a straight razor. He fled the scene thinking there were no witnesses, but a security camera caught the entire incident.

  “When I met with the McDougalds on Sunday to hear E. J.’s side and plan my defense, E. J. confirmed that what the press had reported was accurate. He displayed zero remorse and he insisted on having his day in court because he wanted to prove that what had happened wasn’t his fault.”

  “How was it not his fault?”

  “I’m getting to that part.” Jennifer looked as indignant hearing about the meeting as I had felt during it. I gestured for her to be patient. “I knew there was no way I could win on the facts. Not with a client sitting in court practically gloating over what he had done. I reported that to the senior partners and suggested they try to broker a deal with the DA for a reduction of the charges.”

  “And?”

  “The partners wouldn’t go for it. They said a plea bargain wasn’t an option. It would imply guilt and, as far as we—they were concerned, their client was one hundred percent not guilty. The partners wanted me to prove that E. J. was provoked. That Jason goaded him into violence by coming on to him.

  “E. J. turned a man’s face into a Picasso painting and carved ‘fag’ into his forehead because the guy smiled at him on the L, and I’m supposed to use homosexual panic as a defense? I couldn’t do it. There was no way I could stand in open court, point my finger at the victim, and accuse him of something as heinous as smiling.

  “The partners called me insubordinate and threatened to place a formal letter of reprimand in my personnel file if I didn’t mount the defense they wanted. I told them they could stick their reprimands up their asses and I quit. I packed up my toys and I left. Now I’ve been essentially blackballed. No other firm will even take my calls, let alone consent to an interview.

  “The case went to trial a couple of weeks ago. The firm trotted out its go-to guy to sit first chair. Unlike me, he did exactly what he was told. It makes him look like a homophobe, but if he makes partner, I’m sure he won’t care. He can use the resulting bonus to buy a new moral compass. Closing arguments are Monday morning, so jury deliberations should begin on Monday afternoon. Then the real waiting game begins to see who gets proven right—me or the firm.”

  Jennifer gave me a standing ovation.

  “What was that for?” I asked when she sat down again.

  “There aren’t many people who would choose principles over a paycheck.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but I miss my paycheck.”

  “Are you okay for money?”

  “I have enough in savings to tide me over for a while. I just hate watching the balance dwindle as I transfer part of it to my checking account each month.”

  “Tell me something.” Jennifer reached for the last bit of salad in the bowl. “Did E. J. lash out at Jason because he didn’t want Jason to make a pass or because he did and he didn’t want his friends to know it?”

  I had asked myself the same question a dozen times—if E. J. were secretly or latently homosexual—and I had come to the same conclusion each time. “If he is gay, we don’t want him on our team.”

  Jennifer looked at me through narrowed eyes.

  “What?” I asked as I poured myself another glass of wine.

  “I’m giving you a chance to change your pronoun.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said ‘we’ again. We don’t want him on our team. Was that another slip of the tongue or are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “You guess?” When I reached for her empty plate, she pulled it out of my reach. “The dishes can wait.” She leaned forward in her chair. “Talk to me, Sydney. What revelation did you have as a result of being on this case? Did talking to E. J. hit too close to home? Were you afraid you’d end up like he did—so filled with rage that you lashed out at anyone who showed an interest in you?”

  She backed me in a corner and I came out swinging. What did I have to lose?

  “I’m not E. J. I’m nothing like him. The case didn’t teach me anything. You did. When you went to Darfur, I couldn’t imagine not seeing you every day. The reality was even worse. I died a little bit more each day you were away. Each time you leave, it gets harder for me to let you go.”

  “Each time I come back, it gets harder for me to stay.”

  “Stay with me.”

  I reached for her hand. Once more, she pulled away.

  “I told you before. One night with you wouldn’t be enough for me. I need more than that.”

  “I can give you more than that.”

  She looked at me hard, her eyes examining mine. “Careful, Syd,” she said. “For a minute there, I almost thought you meant that.”

  “I do mean it. I love you, Jen.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t do this to me, Sydney. Don’t say those words to me unless you’re willing to back them up. Until you are, we don’t have anything to talk about. Thanks for dinner. It was…enlightening.” She pushed her chair away from the table and headed for the door.

  I had finally been honest with her—with myself—and she didn’t believe me. I felt my one chance at happiness slipping away, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to approach her.

  I had hoped that she would take my confession at face value and not question me. I had hoped that I would tell her how I felt and she would open my eyes the way I had opened my heart. That she would sweep me into the bedroom and show me what I had been missing all those years I had been hiding my feelings from her—and myself.

  She opened the door but I pushed it shut before she could walk through it.

  “Don’t run away from this,” I said. “Don’t run away from me.”

  She rested her head against the door as if she wished she could crawl through the peephole and disappear out the other side. “We’re not teenagers, Syd. I can’t be with you like this and pretend it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Believe me, it means everything.”

  “What about Jack?”

  “He is a mistake that I intend to rectify as soon as I can. In the meantime—”

  Pressing my body against hers, I pulled her coat out of her hands and let it fall to the floor. I ran my hands through her shorn hair and kissed the back of her neck. The skin there was so soft and warm. I wanted to know what the rest felt like.

  “Sydney, don’t.” Still facing the door, she refused to turn around.

  I did a little refusing of my own. I refused to listen to her. Reaching under her—my—shirt, I lightly ran my fingertips over her skin. I started on her lower back and moved around to her stomach. I moved one hand up to her ch
est. I slid the other down the front of her jeans.

  My left hand kneaded her breast. My right slipped inside her underwear, felt the coarse hairs. When my fingers found the hard knot between her legs, she gasped and sagged against me.

  “Don’t you want this as much as I do?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t.” She finally faced me. “I want it more.”

  She kissed me and it was like high school all over again. Back then, she and I used to lock ourselves in my room and practice kissing when we were supposed to be doing our homework. I would pretend I was kissing David DiNunzio; she would pretend she was kissing Rachel Nicholson. When the marathon sessions were over, I would pretend that I didn’t feel anything for her. I didn’t want to go on pretending.

  “Who taught you to kiss like that?” I asked breathlessly.

  “You did.” She leaned in to kiss me again but pulled back at the last minute. “Are you sure about this?”

  “I can show you better than I can tell you.” I took her hand and led her to the bedroom. The place where I slept with Jack but fantasized about her.

  When I was with Jack, I reverted into the fifteen-year-old everyone had called Pizza Face. I was so self-conscious that I couldn’t enjoy myself. Being with him felt like a performance. I couldn’t come with him. I would come close—pardon the pun—but I had to finish the job myself after he fell asleep. I played a good game, though, so he never knew the difference. Or if he did, he never let on.

  It wasn’t that way with Jennifer. I wasn’t frozen with her the way I was with Jack. I felt comfortable with her. Relaxed. She made me feel beautiful—supermodel gorgeous like she had promised I would one day be. I wanted her eyes on me. I wanted her hands on me. I wanted her mouth on me. One touch from her and I found what I had been searching for all my life. I learned what desire meant. How it felt.

  With Jennifer, I didn’t think about myself. I thought about her. About pleasing her. About what she wanted. And then I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t fantasizing or pretending. I was with her. And I couldn’t get enough.

  “How long have you wanted this?” she asked.

  I groaned as her fingers slipped inside me. My back arched against her and I pulled her closer. “Since the day I met you.”

  “Then what took you so long?”

  “Better late than never,” I said, staring into her loving eyes.

  I had heard that when one woman makes love to another, the pleasure is twinned. You feel what she’s doing to you, but you also feel what you’re doing to her.

  I knew what to do because I knew what I wanted Jennifer to do to me. I knew how to touch her because I knew how I wanted her to touch me. I knew how to kiss her because—well, because she had already shown me how.

  My hands on her were hers on me. Her mouth on me was mine on her. My name on her lips was hers on mine.

  The spasms began. Gently at first, then with greater and greater intensity. My initial “Oh” of surprise quickly turned into a full-throated cry. Jennifer echoed the sound.

  When it was over, she said in a voice filled with awed surprise, “I can’t believe we’re here.”

  Neither could I.

  “I always wanted it to happen,” she said, her fingers drawing lazy circles over my bare back, “but I never thought it would.”

  I held her hands in mine so we could talk about the thing we had never talked about before. The thing that had kept us together and apart for over twenty years: our love for each other.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked.

  “What did you want me to do, club you over the head and drag you back to my cave by your hair?”

  “If you had, we could have been here a long time ago.”

  She shook her head. “You weren’t ready.”

  “But I am now?”

  “You’ve taken the first step. The question is, can you go all the way?”

  I grinned at her to remind her what had just happened. “I think I just did, don’t you?”

  She shook her head again. “The first step was admitting it to yourself. The second step was admitting it to me. Going all the way is admitting it to everyone else. Are you ready to do that?”

  I didn’t respond to her question because I didn’t know the answer. I wasn’t eager to leave the safety—the sanctity—of my bedroom. There, we could be anyone or anything we wanted. No one could interfere. No one had to know.

  I kissed her, then pressed my ear to her chest, listening to the steady beating of her heart. A heart that I would soon break. “I love you, Jen.”

  She kissed me on the top of my head and closed her eyes. “I love you, too, Syd. There. I said it. Better late than never, right?”

  We went to sleep entwined in each other’s arms and woke up the same way.

  Everything looked different in the light of day. It felt different, too. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

  “Any regrets?” Jennifer asked as if she expected me to respond in the affirmative.

  “No,” I said, wrapping her arms tighter around me.

  “When are you going to tell him?”

  The night before, I had been reckless and impulsive. The morning after, I was much more deliberate. I didn’t want to screw anything up. Not when I was so close to getting everything I had ever wanted.

  “I’ll tell him tonight at dinner. Sometime between the appetizer and the main course. I don’t want to hit him in the face with it when he first walks in, but I don’t want him to get too comfortable or I might lose my nerve.”

  “I would offer to come with you, but I think I’m the last person Jack would want to see.”

  “You think?” I rolled over to face her. “No matter what happens, last night was the best night of my life. Never forget that. Being with you is something I’ve always wanted. Don’t let anyone, including me, ever tell you otherwise. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  *

  I spent the whole afternoon planning what I would say to Jack. I would break the news to him first, then Patrick, then my parents. Jack would be hurt. He would be angry. But I felt prepared to take the barrage of abuse he would throw my way. I couldn’t predict my family’s reaction, but I didn’t expect it to be positive.

  Jack and I had reservations at Ambria. When I’d made them several weeks before, I’d had no idea then that the restaurant’s romantic setting would prove to be so ironic.

  I arrived first. Jack called from the hospital to let me know he was going to be late, so I treated myself to an extra glass of wine while I waited. When he arrived half an hour later, he looked like he had been put through the wringer. His eyes were red-rimmed and his hair and clothes were disheveled. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he had lost a patient. A routine procedure had gone horribly wrong with no obvious explanation why. A surgeon’s worst nightmare.

  It would have been incredibly callous to tell him about me and Jennifer at that moment, so I decided not to. Jack needed comfort, not additional grief. My big announcement could wait.

  I broke the news to Jennifer the next day.

  She gave a presentation at the hospital about the genocide in Darfur. Her words were powerful, the pictures that went along with them even more so. Many people in the audience were moved, me included. I was so proud of her. My confidante. My best friend. My lover. My all of the above.

  Afterward, we met for lunch in the cafeteria. Frequent interruptions from well-wishers made talking—and eating—difficult.

  “How did it go last night?” she asked, pushing away the remains of her grilled chicken sandwich. “I got worried when you didn’t call. I almost drove over to your place a hundred times but I didn’t want to interfere. Are you okay? How did he take it?”

  I toyed with my salad, moving the wilted lettuce around my plate with my fork. “I didn’t tell him.”

  I looked up expecting her to be surprised. To be angry. Instead, she looked disappointed. And vindicated. As if she had expected me to let her down. That was eve
n worse. “May I ask why not?”

  I told her what had happened.

  “He’s like you when he loses a patient,” I said. “The world comes to an end until he can figure out what went wrong. I couldn’t kick him when he was down. I will tell him but not right now.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. When the timing’s right.”

  “I understand your reasons for not saying anything last night, but the longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be for you to tell him. If you keep waiting for a perfect time, you’re never going to find one. There’s always going to be something in the way.”

  “Nothing has changed,” I said, trying to salvage the situation. “I’m not giving up on us. I’m simply putting us on hold for a while. I still want to be with you. I just can’t right now. I’m his in name only. In every other way, I’m yours. We both know that. Isn’t that enough?”

  “You know the answer to that question so don’t ever, ever ask me that again.” She pulled a pen and a piece of paper out of her bag and scribbled a quick note. “I’m late for a meeting with the hospital administrators. They want me to crisscross the country giving the little speech I just gave, but HR wants to know when I’ll be ready to make rounds again.” She looked at the note in her hands as if deciding what to do with it. Then she folded it in half and slid it toward me. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

  “Jen, wait.”

  She waved her hand to indicate that she didn’t have time. She punched the Up button on the elevator and stood in front of it with her head down until the doors opened. I read her note as she waited for the other passengers to disembark.

  “I won’t be the lie you tell,” she had written.

  She boarded the elevator and I ran after her, shoving my hand between the doors before they could slide shut. I stepped inside. The doors closed behind me. I held up her note. Since we were the only ones in the car, we could talk without worrying about being overheard. I was going to ask her what her message meant, but she wouldn’t let me get a word in.

  “I’m not going to have an affair with you,” she said, punching the button for the next floor. “I’m not emotionally equipped for that. If you’re mine, be mine. You don’t have to tell the whole fucking world about it, but telling your husband would be nice.”