Marriage Games (The Games Duet #1)

by CD Reiss

  On Bra Day, the Frick exhibit held Impressionists inspired by Old Masters or somesuch. We made small talk, and she stopped me in front of a particular painting and told me about men. I hadn’t been ready to hear it, but I remembered it.

  On the day of her funeral, I didn’t go to the Frick. I went to the Met to see the same painting. I’d noticed it was on loan from the Musée de Orsay that summer, and in some crazy fantasy, I thought Mom would get well enough to see it again with me. She died instead.

  The doctors had told me that as soon as I had children, I had to have my uterus, ovaries, and cervix removed. They stopped short of recommending a preventive mastectomy.

  Why is the feminine so volatile? Why don’t we get arm cancer? Cancer of the nose? The eyes? Why does femaleness kill so many of us?

  Bra Day.

  Funeral Day.

  Eight years apart and spun together like loose threads in the sewing box.

  On Bra Day, Manet’s Luncheon On the Grass was probably the first meta-painting I ever saw. Two fully dressed men sit on the grass, picnicking with a naked woman. Behind them, another woman wears a diaphanous white gown. The light and proportions tell the story on an intellectual level. It’s a painting about painting, where an artist and a friend step onto the canvas to discuss the image of the naked women bathing.

  “What do you think of this?” Mom had asked, flicking her wrist toward the painting. It was one of many, and I didn’t know why she was stopping in front of it.

  “The lighting is weird,” I said, clutching my bag of A-cups.

  She raised an eyebrow. “How does it make you feel?”

  A naked woman in arm’s reach of two clothed men. One of her feet was between the legs of the man in front of her, and she was very close to the man beside her. She looked at the viewer, daring them to take issue. She wasn’t uncomfortable, but I was.

  “Fine,” I said. I was twelve.

  “Do you wonder what a naked woman is doing with two men who are dressed? What do you think is the point of that?”

  “Manet was just starting to discover photography so—”

  “Dominance,” she interrupted, turning from me to the painting. She’d had me late in life, and her tightly twisted bun was thirty-percent grey. “It’s an expression of man’s dominance over women. She’s naked to them, and of course in his view, she’s fine with it, because it’s the proper order to Edouard Manet. The one with the stupid hat? Showing his friend what’s between her legs. They’ll dominate her, and she’ll submit her naked body to both of them.”

  “Mom…” I tried to shut her up. I was afraid someone would hear her and see the thoughts in my head. The nude leaning back and spreading her legs while the two men stood over her, looking at her body and deciding how to use it.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you talk more quietly?”

  “I’m not saying anything historians haven’t. This is how men make women feel.”

  Like this? Like they have to pee but in a totally different place? I felt swollen and slick, in need of the attention of fully clothed men, and it was terrifying.

  I’d been sexually aroused before, especially finding Daddy’s porn magazines between the bottom of the bathroom drawer and the casing underneath. The skin and dicks and open mouths. The women in red stilettos and corsets. The stories that taught me the word cock and the proper use of the word cunt. They were very well-hidden, and I always put them back exactly as they were, until I wondered if he meant for me to find them. I put them back sideways. They disappeared the next day.

  “Men,” I said to myself on Funeral Day, eight years later.

  Manet’s painting still aroused me, but it made me angry too. The anger was easier to deal with. It had an object. I couldn’t be mad at my mother because she was sick and she died, but I could join her in rage.

  “Men will try to dominate you,” she’d said on Bra Day. “They think it’s their right. Their privilege. They will do everything they can to degrade you. They’ll strip you down to body parts if you let them.”

  I looked at the wood floor of the Met as I remembered the scene at the Frick eight years earlier. I could hear her in my mind as if she was still alive.

  “It’s not their fault. They’re raised that way. You need to find a strong man. Use him to make yourself stronger, and if he loves you, he’ll want to be used for your betterment.”

  “Is that why you married Daddy?”

  “Your father is another kettle of fish. I let him use me for his betterment because I love him.”

  He was my kettle of fish now. I had to be strong for him. I had to take care of him and make sure he had the life my mother would want for him. Everything else was a waste of my strength and my womanhood.

  Chapter 65

  PRESENT TENSE – DAY ELEVEN

  I slept at some point. I’d rolled off the footboard like a clumsy one-night stand, used my feet to get the duvet back over me, and waited for the motion-sensor lights to go back on even as I denied caring.

  The sun was reflecting the white of new snow. The brightness was crisp and unforgiving.

  “Good morning,” Adam said from the door that connected our rooms, fully dressed in slacks and a button-front shirt.

  I turned away. I couldn’t look at him. Of course he was relaxed.

  He pulled the duvet off the floor and threw it on a chair. He opened my legs and inspected me as if checking under the hood. His manner was humiliating and degrading.

  And…?

  Arousing. Oddly. Goddammit.

  “Good morning,” I said. I didn’t want him to know I was mad. I wasn’t supposed to care, and I wasn’t giving him the power of my jealousy.

  He ran his fingers over the sheets, examining the corners at an angle. I’d admit I was curious about what he was doing, but I was too annoyed to ask.

  He crossed to the other side of the bed and stopped at the footboard. Considered the surface with a fingertip. Watching me, he put his thumb in his mouth, releasing it with a pop, and drew his wet thumb over the place I’d ridden.

  He put his thumb back in his mouth.

  “You still have the sweetest cunt I’ve ever tasted.”

  I should have been ashamed of the way he treated me. Of the way he checked on me. Of what I’d allowed him to do to my body. But my shame came from one place only. I’d failed. I’d been weak, and I’d disappointed him. I’d said I’d do what he told me for thirty days. That was the deal and I’d gone into it as payment for a smooth ride out of the marriage. I’d failed to keep my promise. Again.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, disappointment pouring off him.

  Well, I’d had a reason to get my rocks off.

  “What’s Serena’s taste like?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He unstrapped my left side. I bent my arm. Stretched. Bent.

  “As I recall, her cunt tastes like regular Tuesday cunt.”

  “Tuesday cunt?”

  “Yeah.” He got up and went to the other side of the bed. He’d navigated the sides of my bed a dozen times in the past twenty-four hours, and each time, he wound me tighter. “A regular Tuesday cunt. Nothing special. Not funky risky Saturday night cunt.” He undid my left side. “Not Sunday godly worship cunt. Tuesday cunt.”

  Once released, I sat up and rubbed my wrists. “What does mine taste like?”

  “A footboard.” He stepped back and stretched his arm toward the bathroom. “Get a bath ready. I’ll be back in four minutes to clean you up.”

  He left. He didn’t spin off in a huff or back out with a promise of something devilish. He just… left.

  The shame of getting caught failing was greater than any other. Not the shame of my nudity, being checked over like livestock, or the humiliation of being turned on by both. Failing was straight shameful.

  I turned the bath on as hot as it would go and sat on the little wooden stool, watching the column of water ripple in the center of the steam. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to cry. I was
stronger than that.

  But apparently, I wasn’t. I didn’t know anything anymore. Not about my husband. Not about myself. Nothing.

  By the time Adam came back in, the room was in a complete fog and my blubbering had gotten wet and loud. He crouched in front of me, putting his hands on my shaking shoulders.

  “Oh, Diana,” he said tenderly, pulling me to him.

  I couldn’t resist. Wanted to but didn’t, because I did want to even though I didn’t. I held both desires in my mind as he slid along the side of the tub until he was sitting with my naked body stretched across him. I cried harder because I was confused. He confused me. I confused me. My feelings and desires zigzagged all over the place.

  I cried and cried. My husband held me, wrapping his arms and legs around me as the bath tap roared and steamed. He didn’t say or ask anything, just held me and rocked me.

  I let him. I didn’t have the strength to explain myself. I let him comfort me. Let him command me. Let him envelop me completely. I cried, but I was dormant inside. My guts had been emptied into him through my tears. When he leaned into the tub to turn off the water, I missed the shelter of his arms but didn’t need them anymore.

  “I can give myself a bath.” I wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands.

  “I know.” He rolled up his sleeves. “But it’s my prerogative.”

  When his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, he held out his hand. I took it, letting him help me get in the tub. My skin stung at the waterline as I sank in and stretched out. Adam dunked a washcloth, wrung it, and pressed it to my face.

  “Talk about it,” he commanded.

  He didn’t ask me if I wanted to or if I felt all right. He told me what to do, and in that was an odd relief. I didn’t have to choose whether or not to be intimate. I didn’t have to decide whether or not to burden him or pull back into a shell. He didn’t say tell me. He took himself out of the equation by commanding me to speak about it, whether it was to him, myself, or the four walls.

  “I can’t put it in order,” I replied.

  “Tell it as it comes to you.”

  I took a deep breath and told it as he ran the washcloth over me. “What you’re doing right now? You’re washing me like I’m a puppy, or like, your car. You might love those things, but they’re objects. Do you see that? How you’re just efficient? I don’t… I didn’t know you were like that. And I’m mad at myself for not seeing it and I’m mad because… I’m mad at myself because it turns me on. All of this shit. I thought I’d just tolerate it, but instead I’m turned on all the time. And last night, I wanted you. I wanted you so bad. I didn’t want to hump a piece of wood. I wanted you to fuck me, but you went to fuck Serena. And you had to. You had to fuck her because I left you and why should you give me anything when I took everything from you? I’d fuck her too.”

  I started to cry again. He worked the insides of my thighs with the washcloth.

  “I’m better than this,” I said through my tears. “I’m better than a possession. I run a multimillion dollar company with my husband, and I haven’t worried about sales or the bottom line for days and days. Who am I now?”

  I leaned back and let him scrub my feet.

  “You’re a submissive.” He stated a fact.

  “Women aren’t naturally submissive.”

  “Most aren’t.”

  “But I am? Fuck you.”

  “It’s not an insult. It’s not a feminist issue. It’s a bedroom issue. I’ve denied this from the minute I met you because I didn’t want you to be submissive. Submissives scared me. It was you who opened my eyes to it. Once I did that, I saw you for the first time. You’re submissive, and the Dominant in me always knew it.” He gently put my foot into the water. “It doesn’t have to be shameful, and it doesn’t mean we’re not getting divorced.”

  The tap dripped. My skin tingled. His hand brushed the surface of the water, making a rippled V behind it.

  “It’s hard for me to…” I had to stop to clear a lump of gunk from my throat. It threatened to come up in a sob as soon as I spoke. “To be here while you fuck Serena. I’m not saying I blame you. But it’s hard.”

  His expression didn’t change. No surprise. No rush to comfort. “Why is it hard?”

  “You’re my husband.” I covered my pussy with my hands. A reflex I didn’t understand but was powerless to control.

  “And?” He moved my hands away.

  “There is no ‘and.’ There shouldn’t have to be.”

  “Explain it to yourself. Out loud so I can hear it.”

  I knew what he wanted to hear. The truth. In words. The part of me I shoved aside because it was reactionary and immature.

  I couldn’t deny him.

  “I’m jealous,” I whispered.

  “Ah.” He ran his fingers over the surface of the water again, detouring up my knee, down my leg. “Tell me what makes you think I’m fucking Serena.”

  “The light went on last night and didn’t go back on.” I didn’t tell him I’d gotten up to see him at the door. I wanted him to deny it. Tell me it was a cat or a bird. Make an excuse.

  “I know I told you I’d be in the next room. I’m sorry I left. I did go over there to check on her. The furnace is old. If it breaks in the night and she doesn’t feel comfortable coming over here, she could be in trouble.”

  “You were there for a long time.”

  The water cooling, he stroked my leg with real affection this time, lost in thought.

  “We did talk for a bit. Maybe it was forty-five minutes. She’s lonely.” He looked at me. “Like you were when you were married to me.”

  “If you kissed her, would you tell me?”

  “No.”

  “No?” Why did my voice crack? I didn’t even love him. I was fighting through the thick dregs of our relationship.

  “No. I’d leave you.” His hand lay flat inside my thigh and stroked to my center. “I wouldn’t touch you again.”

  But he was touching my legs tenderly, and that was his answer. I’d spent all night telling myself he could fuck her if he wanted, and he was telling me he hadn’t.

  “It’s not fair for me to pull you in two directions,” I said.

  “It’s not fair that Stefan and Serena are here at all. The cold weather isn’t fair. Stefan being in the city isn’t fair. I can make a longer list if I added everything I’ve done, but the water’s getting cold.”

  He helped me out of the bath and wrapped me in a thick towel.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I still have to punish you for disobeying me.”

  I looked at the floor, ashamed and annoyed at the same time.

  “Talk,” he commanded.

  “It sounds awful. ‘Disobeying’ you.”

  “Did I ever even give you an order before we came here?”

  “No.”

  “Bedroom games. That’s all it is. But they’re serious, and when played right, everyone wins.” He took me by the chin and made me face him. “I haven’t felt right in a long time. I need this corner of my world to be under control. You are the one great love of my life, but you don’t need this. You might like it, but you don’t need it. I do.”

  I nodded against the pressure of his hand.

  “Now, you can safe out, or you can dry off, take care of your business, and be downstairs in your nightgown, where I’ll punish you. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  He dropped his hand and started out. He stopped himself and turned when he was at the door. “You might like it.”

  “Yes,” I repeated. I almost said sir, but I bit it back. I’d kept sharing in the contract so I could remove the sirs and Masters. I wasn’t giving it up for a slip of the tongue.

  Chapter 66

  PRESENT TENSE – DAY ELEVEN

  What if I pretended it was all right? What if I told myself to go all in? To not let a hundred years of the feminist fight get in the way? Just forgot it for the rest of the month? What if I chose to play this part with
everything I had? For fun? Because it wasn’t so bad. Because I enjoyed it. Because I had more to gain than to lose.

  I’d have to choose it very deliberately and consciously. Could I?

  Could I?

  I made a big question mark at the end of the sentence and went downstairs. A simple breakfast of toast and fruit had been left out with a handwritten note.

  I’m in the office.

  I ate in front of the wall of windows looking onto the sea. The backyard and beach were covered in flat white snow. I wanted to go and wreck it. Write my name in footsteps. My mother and I had built a snow woman in front of our building once, and the doorman had put a hat and epaulettes on her until he found out she was a woman. He laughed and took his hat back as if gender prevented one from opening doors.

  And there I was, eating toast and wondering if I should get on my knees when I entered the office.

  I put the plate in the sink, washed up, and went to the west side of the house. Adam was at the desk. A chair was set up next to it. A robe was draped over the back.

  He looked up when I was almost at the door, and he stood, lifting the robe.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We have to break scene. Put this on.”

  “What does that mean?” He helped me push my arms through the sleeves. I belted the robe.

  “It means we have two problems. Which one do you want first? The one we can do something about or the one we can’t?”

  “The one we can’t. This way we can end with something to do.”

  “Good.” He showed me his phone.

  SEVERE STORM WARNING

  High winds and precipitation.

  Power and communication outages expected

  east of Hither Hills State Park.

  Take precautions.