“Wanna trade?”
It was an old joke.
Jesse’s nose was almost as broad as it was long, with a rounded Santa Claus tip. Hers, like her father Jake’s, was long and thin with a little hump. Night and day, black and white, they had chosen their noses to joke about.
“Sure, I’ll trade.” She kept it light. What did he have on his mind or up his gold-and-red-paisleyed sleeve?
She watched her husband pat himself dry, and then he turned to face her. He leaned back on the redwood vanity of his creation; in its doors graceful irises supported milk-glass dragonflies. She escaped his gaze and fiddled for a moment, letting a little of the water out of the tub. Yes, two could play this game. In fact, two were. Except that Jesse’s affair with Caroline had been on the table for a while. She was still holding her lover hidden in her hand, a trump card whose value she was unsure of. She reached for a can of shaving cream, shook it and pressed the button, releasing a cloud of foam onto her fingertips. Then she lifted her long right leg and began to paint it soft white.
Jesse was leaning over her. “Here,” he said, taking the razor from her, “let me do that.”
Emma looked up at her husband standing over her. The sharp steel glittered. A shadow crossed her clear blue eyes.
“I’m not going to cut you, woman.” He chuckled and reached for her calf. “Now give me that long pretty leg.”
Her grin looked silly as she did as she was told.
Jesse pulled his robe around his middle and settled on the edge of the tub. Then in slow careful strokes he pulled the razor up and up again, pausing to dunk it now and then, leaving little foam islands in the warm bubbles.
He stroked gingerly over the dead-white scar on her left shin, a testament to the first time she had locked herself in the bathroom to scrape away her adolescent fuzz. “Emma, you open this door this minute, do you hear?” Rosalie Fine had cried. When she finally did, she’d left behind a bathtub full of bloody water and a six-inch piece of shin skin curled up just like a potato peel.
“Would you relax?” Jesse goosed her in the ribs beneath the water.
Gradually she did. She leaned back against the end of the tub and closed her eyes. She listened to the man on the radio sing of old love and new tricks and wondered what Jesse was up to.
When he finished with her legs, he started on her toes, lathering them with soap and kneading, massaging, finding tender places he hadn’t explored in ages.
She wondered, as she stretched even longer, her limbs liquid like warm maple syrup, what had happened to the times when they used to play like this before making love.
Now he was sucking her toes. Nibbling. Tickling. Licking in between. A hotline of electricity zapped straight up her legs, making her damp in a way that the tubful of water couldn’t.
The next thing she knew, he had lifted her up and out and had wrapped a blue bath sheet around her. He was rubbing softly through the nubby cotton, drying and warming her at the same time. But gently, judiciously, thinking about what he was doing. He concentrated on the hollow just above the flare of her hips, the tender spots behind her knees. Now he was rubbing her temples, the top of her head as if she were a pup. She tried to fight it, wanting to stay in that distant place from Jesse where she’d been so long, that place which neither gave her pleasure nor caused her pain, but the momentum had already carried her too far to catch herself. She was falling. She was done for. She was gone.
Emma turned and pressed herself full against him. She smelled the minty fragrance the shaving cream had left on his warm neck. She nuzzled there, her tongue tracing the contours of the little scoop beneath his Adam’s apple.
“Jesse,” she breathed.
“Yes, babe,” he answered and lifted her once more. He carried her quickly past the bright-blue lacquered stairs, through the long living room, back into their bedroom, where he gently lowered her to the now-cold bed.
Outside, the rain had revved up, gathered force and speed. This was a storm now, banking against the tall windows that looked out across the valley to the tops of the mountains on the other side. But the mountains were invisible as gray sheets of rain filled the air. Naked, Emma shivered.
Heat was only a touch away. Jesse threw aside his robe and pulled her to him. He gently stretched her out full length. Nose to nose, her feet atop his, their toes pumped up/down, up/down, in a love calisthenic from the good old days, now almost forgotten.
He nibbled at her bottom lip, then let her suck his in. How long had it been, she couldn’t remember, since he had moved over and let her do what she did so well? Best kisser in her class, even when she’d been caught by Rosalie practicing her technique in a church park the summer after the sixth grade. Kissing was an art, she thought, a talent. It could be developed, but you had to have a God-given gift for it, like painting, or sculpting, or writing, or music, to understand all its shades and nuances and do it well.
Which she did, but Jesse hardly ever let her. In that, as in all things, he wanted to direct. It was his mouth over hers setting the rhythm, his tongue pushing hers back. Why could she never convince him that the appeal was in the play: Your turn, kiss, mine, I’ll raise you, suck, I’ll see you, rub, ours.
But this time his mouth was listening, attentive. He let her lead, and then he answered. Once again, his mouth received. Then as she began to rock her full length against his, slowly looking for the places that felt the best, he followed. He was letting her dance.
Around and around they whirled, twirling in tandem, the rhythm and the posture ever changing. The motion and the heat grew and grew and grew, and then he found her center, and he nuzzled there, suckled there, drew it all out of her, pulled as if he were a magician, pulled all the vibrating light right out from between her legs. He dangled everything she’d ever been or wanted to be on the tip of his tongue. Then he raised his head for a moment and lowered his wet mouth on hers. She could smell her heat and taste it. He whispered, teased as his fingers replaced his mouth, then the insinuating question, “Now? Now?”
When finally she could resist no longer, she grasped him, pulled him down into her, and answered, “Yes, damnit, now!”
It was good, oh God, it was so good. She couldn’t remember when it had last been like this.
She was soaring, lights and colors flashing behind her lids. The rain outside was pummeling, falling so hard she couldn’t hear Jesse. She knew he was speaking, but she couldn’t make out his meaning.
And then she did.
“Is this how he does it to you? Huh? Is this the way you like it with him?”
Her blue gaze snapped open into his brown one. His face was contorted with rage.
“Jesse?” She heard her voice, soft and small, coming from the far-off place where she’d been. She sounded like a little girl.
“Yes, bitch?”
He wasn’t kidding. Something had gone very wrong. She tried to turn, to lift herself out from under him, but his big hands, strong, beautifully articulated sculptor’s hands, grabbed her by the shoulders and pinned her down.
The long slow stroking had become a whole different thing. He pumped raggedly into her now. Their pelvic bones clashed and pounded. Her pale skin was going to be marked black, purple and blue.
“Jesse, you’re hurting me!” she yelled right into his face.
“I know.” An ugly grin pulled his lips tight, showing his ever-so-perfect teeth. “Like you hurt me, babe, fucking with that son-of-a-bitch.”
She twisted, but he followed. She pushed with her hips, but his determination was too strong.
“Oh, no, you’re not getting away. I’m having you this time, Miss High and Mighty, my way.” He drove again and again and again inside her. “Isn’t this the way you like it, you and your boyfriend?”
“Jesse,” she gasped, “what the hell are you talking about?”
Lie, lie like a rug, she said to herself. Don’t admit a thing until you see how far he’s caught you out.
He laughed. It was a very
nasty sound, the laugh that boiled up out of him when he was angry. She had never believed the laugh before, had thought it a stagey bit of business, his James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope routine. But this time she was a believer. He’d scare her pants off, if she were wearing any.
“Don’t play coy with me, you whore,” he snarled, and then he pulled himself out of her so quickly it was like a slap in reverse.
Before she could move away, he grabbed her and flipped her over. Her hands scrabbled to hold on to the side of the bed. He held one hand on the back of her neck, shoved her face deep into the pillow. The other hand was beneath her belly, lifting her up. He plunged into her again.
“Jesse, stop! I don’t want to!”
“I don’t give a shit what you want. What you want is that prick Tony, isn’t it?” He punctuated each phrase with his cock.
Who the hell was he talking about? Tony Boccia, the restaurateur who’d hired her to cook in his kitchen from time to time, who’d helped arrange her cooking abroad, was a beautiful and charming man, but was also as queer as they come. She almost wanted to laugh. Jesse, oh Jesse, how could you be so wrong? I told you you should have met him.
He was still pumping. She’d never felt him this hard before. She was going to die before he came.
“Do you think I’m a fool?” Behind her his voice was ice. “Did you think you could flaunt it in my face and I’d never know?”
He slid a hand up under her, searching for a nipple he found, and squeezed.
“Jesse!” she grimaced.
His mouth was on her ear. “Don’t you like it, my precious? A little pain? You could have used a bit of this years ago.”
Was that true? She felt dizzy, sick to her stomach. The tub, the warm bubbles, the slow stroking, the excitement, the aphrodisiac of guilt, the fear, the pain: she wasn’t sure where one left off and another began.
“I never slept with Tony.” Her words slurred against the pillow.
He ripped himself out of her once more and flipped her over again, slamming his body down flat atop hers. His face was inches away. On her wrists, his hands were steel bands.
The question came slowly, his beautiful voice insinuating, coaxing, almost sexy, almost to the end. “Well, if you didn’t fuck Tony and you didn’t fuck me, and I know damn well I haven’t been getting any, then who the hell were you fucking this weekend?”
His gaze drilled hers. Did he think if he looked hard enough he could read the answer printed in scarlet letters on her brain?
“Answer me.” He shook her wrists, and her hands flapped as if she were a chicken. “If not Boccia, then who?”
Emma had thought about the possibility of this moment for months now. She had carefully turned it this way and that as if it were a miniature, like the tiny moment frozen on the cameo she wore on a gold chain around her neck. And she had decided that when the moment came, if the moment came, she’d never say her lover’s name. No matter what, she’d lie. No matter whether Jesse thought it was Tony while the correct answer lay, probably still sleeping now, right up the hill.
“Nobody, that’s who.” Emma spat out the words while she screwed her eyes shut to hide their lie.
Jesse collapsed then. All the air sputtered out of him as if he were a great dirigible and her words had perforated his silver skin. He let go of her wrists, rolled off her and flopped over on his back.
“You make me crazy, do you know that?” His voice was weary. It sounded as if it came from far, far away. “You never fight fair, Em.”
“What’s fair?” she spat. “That you have a lover and so you wish I did, too? Would that make you feel better?”
Besides, I fight any way I can, she thought. And now I’m going to run while I can still get out of here.
She sat up slowly, testing the waters. Jesse didn’t move.
She edged off the bed and gingerly stood as if she expected the floor to slip away. Her robe was hanging on the doorknob.
Jesse rolled his great bearlike head and looked at her. “Where are you going?”
“To make some coffee.”
He sighed, but he didn’t move to stop her. His head rolled back and he stared at the ceiling.
Then she got while the getting was good.
Standing in the kitchen now, Emma carefully ground, then measured French dark roast coffee into a paper filter and poured boiling water over it. There was no sense in depriving herself of a good cup of coffee, she thought, just because her marriage was crumbling into ruins.
Jesse stepped into the room. He leaned against the countertop. “Em, I’m not letting this go. You have to tell me what you’ve been doing.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything, my man.” She was sloshing hot water now in her growing anger. He’d been cheating on her for months now. Who the hell did he think he was?
“Tell me!” The escalation was quick. Again Jesse was approaching fury, hot rage this time, different from his bedroom ice.
“Why? You want to swap war stories? You want me to tell you all about my lover, Jesse, and you’ll tell me what you and that tramp do in bed? Want to compare notes?”
At that Jesse slammed down his empty coffee mug so hard that it shattered, leaving only the handle on his forefinger.
“Leave Caroline out of this!”
“Why? Doesn’t she count? I mean, I know she’s not much, but we ought to at least consider her in the game.”
And then she stepped back. Both lightning and tears flashed in Jesse’s eyes. Oh, the histrionics, Emma thought. Talk about who doesn’t play fair.
Hot and cold, cold and hot, Jesse’s voice now came from an underground cave. “Caroline counts all right. She keeps me sane. If it weren’t for her I’d have gone crazy already, living with you!”
Emma leaned her chin into the cup of one hand and smiled. It was not a very nice smile.
“Does she like to do it every day, Jesse? Or does she fake the desire—” and now her voice began to rise as she lost control— “does she fake it like anybody would have to to keep you happy, keep you feeling like a man?”
“Fuck you, Emma!” And his hand, empty now, slammed again on the counter. Veins stood out on his neck. He had never hit her. He had never laid a finger on her. Yet she wondered if this time maybe she hadn’t gone too far.
But his explosion had given him a little distance. Just enough to grasp again the real, real for him at least, issue at hand.
He plopped down heavily on a stool. “But we’re not talking about me here, my lovely. What we’re talking about is you. And where you really spent this past weekend.”
Emma’s heart hesitated and her blood pooled. Keep it going, she said to herself. And keep it simple.
“You know where I was—with Maria and Clifton.”
“Yes.” The s hissed like a snake. Ah. Now he was closing in for the kill.
“Yes. That’s true. Almost. But I called yesterday noon, and Clifton fumbled around, then said you had already left. Six hours before you got home.” He dangled the next words slowly, as if he were the one with the secret. “What did you do with those six hours, Emma? Hmmmmmm? Or were you ever really there at all?”
How could she have been so careless? But she’d been furious when she left for the weekend with her lover, so angry she had grabbed at any story as if it were a sweater, a last-minute afterthought. She should have known Clifton would never get it right. After all, Clifton was Jesse’s friend. Well, it didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she be nimble, that she be quick. You can do it, Emma, you can tap-dance. You can dazzle him with the flashy spangles of your virtuosity as you lie through your teeth.
“I drove. I cruised around the hills. I picked up two sixteen-year-old boys and fucked them silly. It’s none of your damn business what I did.”
* * *
What she did. What she really did. Even as she said those words, she warmed inside, she tingled, just as she did under her lover’s stroking fingers.
She could lie forever in
his arms on that boat bouncing out in the blue Pacific. He waited for her there, his patience endless, he had waited and taken her for a ride, out across the waves, out toward the sunset, out beyond the three-mile limit. Away from the pain of Jesse and his Caroline.
But no, that wasn’t right. Or was it? Was Jesse right when he said that Caroline was just a symptom? That he hadn’t stopped loving Emma, that she had pushed him away, that she’d never really wanted him?
“You let me get this close, Emma.” He had held up a thumb and forefinger, almost touching, but you could see light between them. “But never any closer. Do you think I’m going to steal your soul? Find out all your secrets and then run away?”
“I don’t have any secrets,” she’d said.
“I think you’re the biggest secret of all, Emma, from yourself. A goddamned mystery. You don’t know what the fuck you want. Or you do, and you lie about it.”
“You think fucking means being close, Jesse?”‘
For, even when he was angry with her, cold and distant, even after Caroline, he still demanded her flesh, all too often, as if coupling meant coupled.
“You never get it, do you, Emma? I still love you. Fucking you is the only way I have of getting inside you anymore.”
“No, that’s the only way you can control me anymore—with your dick.”
It was different with her lover. In his arms, it just flowed, she was free.
But Emma, a voice whispered, it isn’t for real, is it? He’s not free, you’re not free. You can’t be tied together. Or is that the real freedom?
* * *
“Oh yes, it is my business,” Jesse was saying, pulling her mind back into the kitchen. The rain was still pounding outside. It poured off the redwoods onto the deck like torrents of mountain tears. “It is most definitely my business and you’re going to tell me.” She could feel his breath on her face.
The coffee had dripped through. She reached for a mug and poured herself a cup. She stared at her hand, waiting for it to shake. It didn’t.
“I went for a long drive, Jesse. I wanted to think. Now, that’s the truth, and that’s the end of this stupid conversation.”
Keeping Secrets Page 2