Dream Lover: Pam of Babylon Book #3

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “We won’t be coming for dinner Christmas day, Mom.” Rather than offer an excuse, she allowed my mother to ask the questions. It was the way things worked at our house. Mom was wiping down dishes as she unloaded the dishwasher. She could never get it through her head that all you needed to do was to let them sit and they would dry on their own. She put the dishcloth down.

  “What do you mean you won’t be coming for dinner on Christmas? Everyone comes here for Christmas dinner.” My mother never considered that one of her seven children would ever not show up for a dinner. We came far and wide to honor those traditions, no matter how tough it might be to get there. “You’ll come.”

  “Not this year, Mom,” Heather stated. “Mark is leaving.” I thought, so that’s the problem. I wondered when it would happen. How long would it take our mother to figure this out? Heather couldn’t say, ‘We are getting a divorce.’

  “Well you’ll come after he goes.” I looked sideways at my mother. Was she being wise?

  “Mom, Heather and Mark are getting a divorce.” There, I said it. My mother picked up her dishcloth again and started wiping.

  “No one gets a divorce in this family. What are you talking about? Cynthia, you take after my mother-in-law. Your grandmother could take the birth of a baby and turn it into the ugliest story you ever heard.” Heather and Mark could get a divorce; they could both marry other people and start families with them and my mother would never accept it.

  “Mom,” Heather started, “Cindy is telling you the truth. Mark is leaving me. He doesn’t love me anymore.” Heather wasn’t beyond exaggeration to get my mother to see her point of view. Surely if the man left, she would have to accept that. “Doesn’t it say in the Bible that if he wants to go, you were supposed to let him?”

  “Right! That’s exactly what it says, Mom,” I said, “It says to ‘let the unbeliever go,’ doesn’t it Heather?” She nodded her head yes, but that only fueled the fire. The amazing thing was that my parents hated Mark! He was an atheist Jew who insulted their Christianity at every turn, usually not intentional. They, in turn insulted Judaism over and over again. I thought it might be a blessing that he was going his own way.

  “It says in the Bible that God hates divorce! I won’t have this kind of talk. No one gets divorced in our family. If the husband acts like a donkey you lie about it, you don’t tell your mother that you aren’t coming to Christmas dinner because your husband doesn’t love you anymore! Who cares about love? I never heard such talk in my life. You two act like you were raised by a couple of heathens. Wait till Daddy hears about this. Just wait.” I had the feeling my father would be more understanding, but didn’t say so. “I can’t believe my own daughter would even entertain the idea of getting a divorce. It’s a sin!” She yelled. “You’ll go to hell! Why’d we spend every dime we had sending you all to parochial school and then have this kind of sin?” She finally threw down her towel and plunked down in a chair. My brother, Fred came into the room next.

  “What’s up?” He asked as he opened the refrigerator door. “I heard yelling.” My mother thought she would get an ally in Fred.

  “Heather and Mark are getting a divorce. How do you like that?” She hit the table with her open palm for emphasis.

  “It isn’t such a big deal now days. You couldn’t stand Mark, anyway. Remember how he kept hanging the baby Jesus by his toes last Christmas?” Mark had insisted on picking up the plastic doll out of the manger and swinging him around by his feet, in spite of my mother crying out to him to stop, yelling, ‘You’re making all the blood rush to his head!’ Heather put her head down on the table and pretended she was crying, but she was really hiding laughter from our mother, who was on the verge of storming out of the room. If that happened, it would be weeks before we would get her to talk to us again. This was all blasphemy. Fred went on. “And what about him dressing up like an apostle for Halloween? A gentile apostle! No, I say good riddance to Mark. Besides, Mother Dear, gluttony is a sin too, yet I don’t hear you yelling at me to stop eating so much.” Fred, a three hundred pounder, found something good to eat and was taking it with him back to his room. He was one of three children still home. My mother was furious.

  “Heather Ann, stop laughing at me this instant. I’m so upset right now. What’s keeping your father?” She turned to the telephone and picked it up to see if there was a dial tone. She would call him and make sure he was coming home. Fred had already given him a heads up. He would calm her down as only he was able. However, she wasn’t finished with us.

  “Why’d you ever marry a Jew anyway? I told you this would happen! He thought he was better than us. He made fun of every celebration we had here.” Her arms were crossed over her chest and she had her best I told you so expression on her face. Heather couldn’t argue with our mother because she knew it was true. They should have never gotten married. They married for lust. The folks hated him and it filtered down to Heather, who ended up siding with our parents because she had too much to lose if she didn’t, forgetting her husband in the process.

  “Yes, well hindsight and all that, Mom. I’m sorry I hurt you and Daddy. However, this isn’t easy for me. If you’re going to yell at me every time I come home, I won’t come anymore.” My mother thought about this.

  “So you’ll come for Christmas?” The woman was one track, there was no arguing that.

  “Yes! I’ll come. But promise me you won’t mention his name.” Mark’s name came up during Christmas weekend that year anyway. Just once my mother mentioned him in a prayer and the entire family moaned. What would my parents say to me when it came time for my unveiling? I’d have to give them some background. Their beloved eldest daughter had an affair with a married man. Heather and Mark would seem like a gift from heaven after my revelation was made.

  After that first time in the hotel with Jack, I had serious doubts about the future of my relationship with this man. For one thing, the sex was not that great. He wasn’t interested in my satisfaction at all. The expression getting his rocks off fit Jack to a tee. I kept thinking that a hand job in the bathroom wasn’t much different than the hotel experience and it was cheaper and neater, too. He did ask me to do a few weird things for him. He asked me to pose in my underwear. I was to take my panty hose off; he hated panty hose, and put my shoes back on, and then remove my clothes. Not like a striptease, just like I was normally undressing. He would go nuts. If I wore long pants, he asked me to take them off with my back facing him so he could watch me bend over to take them off. I thought he would pass out from that one.

  He liked me to jump on the bed, too. He’d lie next to where I was jumping and laugh and laugh. And then he would tackle me. That was his foreplay. Now that I think of it, I never had an orgasm with Jack in three years. He wasn’t interested in it, never asked ‘did you come?’ We never discussed sex. I was just to assume that we would do it every single time we were together.

  So that was my life for three years. We never had a real date that I remember; just an evening in the hotel. He never took me to a show; we didn’t spend a weekend together. It was so textbook. He wouldn’t give me a phone number. I did finally find out that his last name was Smith, and when I did, I laughed for at least five minutes. There are over two hundred Jack Smith’s in New York alone. How would I ever find him? It once occurred to me to follow him into his building to try to find out who he worked for, but he caught me and I didn’t see him for a week after that. I had learned my lesson.

  Another time, we were on the street together and someone he worked with saw us. He didn’t say who, just that that person had questioned him later in the day about the woman he was lunching with. After that, we didn’t stop at our usual vendor for lunch. We ate closer to the campus bathroom. Our love nest.

  I got to carrying around one of those metallic blankets that fold up into a tiny, silver dollar sized bag and we would spread that out on the floor of the bathroom. He would lie down because his knees couldn’t take the hard tile. Or he would
sit on the toilet and I would sit on him. Only once did someone interrupt us, and Jack just yelled that he was in there, sick. The person wasn’t waiting when we came out. For three years, my clothing choices were made to accommodate my lunchtime trysts with Jack. I would go shopping and see something, a dress with a full skirt, or a wraparound skirt, and think; this would be good for seeing Jack.

  I never had that many friends, but now I was completely isolated. My sisters didn’t question what I was up to.

  “I am almost afraid to ask,” Heather stated. “I just hope you are safe.” Prophetic. Now Heather and Mark are back together with one son and another on the way. Will they ever allow me to touch their children again?

  After the first week of Jack’s disappearance, I started to get frightened. During the first few days he didn’t show up, I examined each and every move I made and word I said, to try to uncover anything that might have annoyed him. There was nothing. I had become a voiceless, selfless automaton. So that left the possibility that he had gone on vacation and forgotten to tell me; it had happened before and he wasn’t apologetic when he returned and I confronted him. I factored nowhere in his life. I was a hand job in the bathroom during lunch for the price of a hot dog and soda.

  By the tenth day of his absence, I was frantic. What if he had moved away, or gotten another job? I had a friend from yoga who worked in the ER at Saint Vincent’s; she suggested I check out the Obituaries in the New York Times when I confided in her, and that is where I found him. It took another week and two sick days of searching, but I finally saw it with my own eyes. Jack Edward Smith. I couldn’t read further. It was the correct Jack; this one was fifty-five, lived at the beach, but Long Island, not New Jersey. I lay down on my bed and pulled the covers up under my chin. He was dead! His funeral had come and gone. I needed a calendar to check the dates, to see where I was and what I was doing when he died. I got out of bed and brought the calendar back. Somehow I had to force myself to read the obituary. There was a related story.

  Why would anyone write about Jack? The article would tell a lot. I was fucking a well-known person! Jack Edward Smith, born September Thirtieth, Nineteen-Fifty-Five, Died May 28th in Manhattan. Mr. Smith suffered a massive heart attack on a train bound for Long Island. He was mugged sometime before he was discovered by passengers. He later died in the hospital. His wife, the former Pamela Fabian of Brooklyn, was unavailable for comment. Mr. Smith was a partner in the firm Lane, Smith and Romney. His partner, Peter Romney stated that it was ‘a sad day for the company. But business will go on.’ I sat back against my pillows. The story about the boss being a tyrant was a lie. I picked up my laptop and continued reading.

  The father of two college students, Mr. Smith was well-known in the community for his involvement of the Babylon Athletic League. A generous supporter of the arts in Manhattan, the Smith’s rarely missed a performance at Lincoln Center.

  He was the son of Bernice Stein Smith and the late Harold Smith of Columbus Avenue.

  The funeral was held in Babylon the day after Memorial Day. It is estimated that several hundred friends and family from around the country paid homage. The decedent’s brother, William Smith, gave a moving tribute to his brother. Burial was private.

  I was unable to move. Thinking back three weeks ago, I remembered our dialogue on Thursday, the last day I saw him.

  “Have a good holiday. You get a long weekend, correct? The Exchange isn’t open on Memorial Day.” We were walking back toward Wall Street, but would be parting ways before we reached it. It was the first time I had been with him all week. Was he going to ask to see me over the weekend? During the past eight months or so, he said he was tied up with a project that required him to be out of the office more and more. He wouldn’t always be downtown at lunchtime. “So what are you going to do with yourself?” And then the unforgiveable; he looked at his watch.

  I should have suspected something, because that autumn he also stopped seeing me at night. We were limited to one or two half-hour screws a week and we rarely met on the street anymore. I would have to walk to the campus bathroom. I was sure he was either seeing someone else who might run into us, or his boss was getting suspicious. It was starting to bother me enough that I was building the courage to say something to him, and then he had to go and die. I couldn’t even stop seeing him on my own.

  The next day I planned on calling out sick again from work. I had to do something to finalize the last three years with him. I decided I would sell the jewelry he gave me; it meant nothing to me now. And I couldn’t pass by that hot dog cart again without feeling like crap. I certainly wouldn’t be making any farewell visits to the bathroom. I gathered everything he had given me and took it to a jeweler I knew in Journal Square. He offered me almost eight thousand dollars for it. But before I took the check, I thought of something else. I wanted to have something to prove we had been together, and the only thing I had was the jewelry. He never called me so I had no cell phone records, and he always paid for the hotel, so I didn’t have a receipt. There were no ticket stubs, no mementos of any kind, except for fifteen or sixteen pieces of jewelry. The guy in Journal Square thought the garnet earrings might have been estate pieces. I had wondered if they were stolen. Having read that he was a partner in a Wall Street firm of some kind; I hadn’t researched that yet, he was probably rich, too. His parents were from Columbus Avenue. That fact said a ton.

  I needed a plan. The first thing I could do was go to his office. I wanted to see where he worked. He hadn’t said much about his work; the only person I knew anything about was his boss, the religious fanatic. Now that I knew he was a partner, all of the boss talk was lies. Maybe I would go into the city and not call out sick after all.

  At lunch, I decided to make my visit. The obit had said his company was Lane, Smith and Romney. I went in the front entrance and walked to the directory hanging by the elevators. His office was on thirty-five. I got on the elevator, my heart pounding so hard I wondered if my clothes were moving. What did I have to be afraid of? He was dead. He wouldn’t get angry with me. The worst that could happen was that I would be escorted out. I wouldn’t cause a scene. I just needed to be validated.

  The elevator opened directly into the reception area. It was gorgeous. There was a gleaming desk of some light, modern wood, with a giant brass sign of the partner’s names. The lighting was perfect, soft area lighting and direct work lights over the receptionist. She was young and attractive and smiled a big, toothy smile.

  “May I help you?” She asked.

  “I’m here for Mr. Smith,” I lied. That would get their attention. The receptionist frowned and asked me to have a seat. She picked up her phone and keyed in some numbers, speaking softly into the receiver.

  “Someone will be right out,” she said. In less than a minute, a tall, beautiful young woman walked in. She extended her hand.

  “I’m Sandra Benson,” she said. “Did you say you had an appointment with Mr. Smith?” I didn’t speak for a minute, not sure what to say next.

  “Not an appointment. I’m just here to see him.” Sandra Benson spent a few seconds thinking and then said out loud,

  “Come with me, won’t you?” And she smiled down at me. When I stood up, I realized she was several inches taller than me. Although I was sure she was younger, I felt silly and immature next to her. It was stupid to come here, but now that I had risked it, I needed to find out more about him. What was he? I was examining why I allowed him to treat me so badly and I wanted to know why he did it. Who was Jack Smith? I followed her down a long, low ceilinged, narrow passageway. When I entered her office, I was surprised at its size, the height of the ceilings, the view of the harbor and the loveliness of the art she had chosen to hang. I would later come to find out that Jack himself had bought the oil painting of vividly colored flower gardens which hung on the wall behind her desk.

  “Sit down, won’t you?” She pointed to a chair positioned in front of her desk, as she walked around to sit behind it. I f
elt as though I was at a job interview and in a few moments, this person would be asking me why I felt like I was suited for the job. “Now what can I do for you?” She asked. She had a pleasant smile on her face, but I could sense a tension behind her eyes, as though she had been through this before. She waited patiently for me to start talking, but as soon as I opened my mouth, the tears started. I was disgusted with myself.

  “I was seeing a man who worked here, and I haven’t heard from him for a few weeks. I was just wondering if he was okay. I don’t mean to cause any trouble.” She pushed a box of tissues toward me, but remained silent. Her facial expression had barely changed, but it was discernible; I was correct, she had been through this before. I wasn’t the first one. Then she smiled at me.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it? Jack is a well-loved man. Have you been seeing him long?” I couldn’t read Sandra Benson. Was she really concerned? Or digging? I decided I didn’t care. I needed validation.

  “We have been together for three years.” When the words were out, I realized how ludicrous it sounded. We weren’t really together, but I was not telling her. I could see that the news was not welcome. She stood up and began walking around her desk. I was thinking she might show me the door, but instead she went over and shut it, turning the lock.

  “That’s a long time. But I am confused, so please forgive me if I ask too many questions. First of all, I think I need to tell you that Jack passed away. Memorial Day weekend. He had a heart attack on the train.” Although I knew it, hearing for real made me cry again. She didn’t know that I came there aware he was dead. I wanted information from her, so I better stay in character; the shocked and grieving girlfriend. I put my head down in my hands and had a good ball. She didn’t move to comfort me, or say anything to try to make me feel better. She actually looked a little pissed, but was doing her best to hide it. I found myself wondering if she was fucking him, too.