by Joy Fielding
“I can come over,” he offered, his right thumb hooking into the top of his towel. “Hang it for you right now.”
“It can wait till morning.”
“Some things are better hung at night.” His tongue darted between newly parted lips.
“Some things are better left to the imagination,” I countered.
“And I bet you have quite the imagination.”
“What makes you say that?”
His eyes traveled down my white sweater and black pants, lingering on my breasts, stopping on my crotch. “I’ve been watching you.”
“You’ve been watching me,” I repeated, afraid to say more. I felt an unwanted tingle between my legs.
“Just trying to figure you out.”
I lifted my hands into the air. Two can play this game, I thought, curiously emboldened. “What you see is what you get.”
“Is that so?”
I nodded as he edged closer, so close now I felt the dampness of his recent shower on my skin.
“No secrets?” he asked provocatively.
I shook my head, his breath brushing against the side of my cheek like a furtive kiss. “I’m very boring, I’m afraid.”
“What exactly is it you’re afraid of?”
I almost laughed, would have had he not been standing so close. “What exactly,” I repeated in a voice not quite my own, “do you want from me?”
“What do you want from me?”
This time I did laugh, immediately tasting his breath on mine. “I’ve never been very good at games.”
“I love games,” Lance countered. “You ever see a cat playing with a mouse? Cat gets the poor mouse cornered, no question the mouse is gonna bite the dust, but the cat isn’t satisfied with just the kill. The kill’s the least interesting part, as far as the cat’s concerned. No, the cat likes to play a while first.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Playing with me?”
“Is that what you’re doing?” he repeated slowly. “Playing with me?”
I heard footsteps behind me, felt the doorknob turn against the small of my back, and suddenly the door opened, and I was propelled into Lance’s waiting arms. Immediately, he grabbed my hand, slid it beneath the towel at his waist. I felt the wet curls of his pubic hair as his organ stiffened against my unwilling fingers. Without pausing to consider my actions, I reached up with my free hand and slapped him hard across the face. “Okay, that’s it. I want you out of here right now.”
“Terry!” Alison exclaimed, stepping inside as I struggled to compose myself. “What’s the matter?” She looked at her brother. “What’s going on here? What did you say to Terry? What have you done?”
“Just a slight misunderstanding,” Lance said, flopping down on the large chair and extending one leg across its overstuffed arm, so that his entire expanse of inner thigh was clearly visible. His cheek was red where I’d slapped him. “Isn’t that right, Terry?”
“I was just telling your brother that I think it’s time he found another place to stay.”
Alison’s expression vacillated between confusion and anger as her eyes traveled back and forth between us. “Whatever he’s done, please let me apologize—”
“Hey,” Lance interrupted, bringing both legs to the floor. “You don’t have to apologize for me. I was walking out of the shower when she came waltzing in.”
“I knocked,” I offered quickly. “Lance said to come in, the door was open.”
“You don’t have to explain,” Alison said, staring at her brother. “Whatever you said or did, I want you to apologize right now.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Apologize anyway.”
Lance glared at his sister, although by the time he turned to me, his face had softened, and he managed to look suitably contrite. “I’m sorry, Terry,” he said quietly and with conviction. “I thought we were just having some fun. I guess sometimes I get carried away. I really am sorry.”
I nodded, silently accepting his apology. “I should go.”
“I’ll be out of your hair in a few days. How’s that?” Lance asked as I opened the cottage door.
Again I nodded, stepping outside and closing the door behind me, hoping to overhear snatches of their conversation, but there was nothing. In the ensuing silence, I stumbled toward my back door, the night air cool against my skin, still damp from contact with Lance’s body, my fingers tingling with unwanted echoes of the feel of his flesh. You ever see a cat playing with a mouse? I heard him whisper in my ear.
“The cat isn’t satisfied with just the kill,” I acknowledged out loud as, moments later, I stepped into my own shower, tried washing the smell of him from my fingertips.
The cat likes to play a while first.
EIGHTEEN
The last time I made love was on New Year’s Eve,” Myra Wylie said, her voice heavy with age and infirmity, although a youthful glint was in her eyes. I pulled my chair closer to her bedside and leaned forward, eager to catch each word. “It was ten years ago. Steve and I—Steve was my husband—had been invited to this ghastly party, you know, one of those overblown affairs where there are too many people, most of them strangers, and everybody drinks too much, and laughs too loud, and makes a great show of having a good time, but they’re really pretty miserable. You know the kind of party I mean.”
I nodded, although I had no real idea what she was talking about. I’d never been to one of those parties. I’d never had a date for New Year’s Eve.
“Well, I wasn’t in a great mood because I didn’t want to go to the damn party, and Steve knew that, but it was at the home of one of his former business partners, and he didn’t think we could say no. You know how it is.”
I didn’t, but I agreed anyway.
“So, I got all dolled up in my fancy new dress, and Steve put on his tuxedo. He always looked so handsome in his tuxedo. Not that I told him how handsome he looked.” Myra’s eyes grew wistful, filled with tears. “I should have told him.”
I grabbed a tissue from the night table beside Myra’s bed and dabbed gently at the rolling waves of flesh beneath her eyes. “I’m sure he knew how you felt about him.”
“Oh, he knew. But I should have told him anyway. It never hurts to tell someone he’s loved.”
“So you went to the party,” I encouraged when she failed to continue.
“We went to the party,” Myra repeated, picking up the thread of her earlier musings, “and it was every bit as awful as I knew it was going to be, so I guess there was a certain satisfaction in that. And we drank too much champagne, and laughed too loud at jokes that were only mildly funny, and pretended to be having the best time of our lives, just like everybody else, and at midnight, we yelled, ‘Happy New Year,’ like a bunch of drunken old idiots, and kissed everyone in sight. Pretty soon after that, we left for home. I was very nervous. I was always on the lookout for drunk drivers—I had an uncle who’d been killed by one when I was a little girl—and this being New Year’s Eve, well . . .” She coughed, gasped for air. I lifted the nearby glass of water to her lips.
“All out of champagne, I’m afraid,” I said, watching her gulp it down.
“Tastes even better.” She finished the last of the water, lay back against her pillows. “Shouldn’t get so excited. It’s all this talk about sex, I guess.”
“I must have missed something,” I said, and she laughed.
“I haven’t gotten to the good part yet.” She cleared her throat. “Not that there was much of a good part.”
“No?”
“Not that it was bad,” she qualified. “What is it they say about sex? When it’s good, it’s really good, and when it’s bad, it’s still good? It was that kind of bad. Do you follow?”
Again I nodded, although my own experiences with sex had been decidedly more bad than good.
“Well, we got home around twelve-thirty, maybe later. I guess it doesn’t matter. The point is that it was later than we were used to staying up, and we were exhausted. I don�
��t know why we felt we had to have sex that night just because it was New Year’s Eve. I mean, we weren’t kids anymore. We were in our late seventies, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t like we weren’t going to see each other the next morning. It wasn’t like we hadn’t been having sex for almost half a century.” She stopped. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
I shook my head.
“I’m glad. Because I’m rather enjoying talking about this. I never have before, you know. Out loud, that is. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s been my experience that young people don’t like to hear about old people having sex. They think it’s, I don’t know . . . yicky,” she settled on finally.
I laughed. “Yicky?”
Good word, I heard Alison say.
I quickly pushed thoughts of Alison from my mind. I’d seen almost nothing of either her or her brother since the episode in the cottage. Alison had come over early the next morning to apologize again for her brother’s inappropriate behavior, and to assure me he’d be leaving in a matter of days. But Lance’s rented white Lincoln was still parked in my driveway when I’d left for work this evening, and the painting Alison had bought me for Christmas remained on my living room floor, waiting to be hung.
“Children, especially, don’t like to think of their parents having sex, even when they’re older and should know better. They prefer to think of their conception as some sort of miracle birth, or that their parents only did it that once or maybe twice and stopped altogether once they’d completed their families. But, God, Steve and I did it all the time. Sorry, I can see by the look on your face that was rather indelicate.”
“No, of course not,” I stammered, pushing some nonexistent hairs away from my forehead, trying to arrange my features into a placid mask. I was thinking of my own parents, how certain I’d always been that my birth had been a freak of nature, or that sex had been something they’d tried once, disliked intensely, and had never attempted again, that that was the reason I was an only child. Now Myra was telling me this wasn’t necessarily the case.
“Too much information,” Myra joked. “That’s what Josh always says.”
“He’ll be home soon.”
“Yes.” She looked toward the window. “Where was I?”
“You were having sex all the time.”
Myra all but hooted with glee. It was the most animated I’d ever seen her. “Oh, I was such a bad girl.” She laughed even harder. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?”
“Of course.” I held my breath, almost afraid of what she was about to say.
“Steve wasn’t the only man I ever had sex with.”
I said nothing; although truthfully, I was almost relieved. Myra Wylie was so full of surprises tonight, I hadn’t been sure what she was about to confide.
“No, there were several others before him. And this was in the days before birth control, when girls who had sex before marriage were considered loose women, although, of course, that never stopped anyone from doing it. Well, you know . . .”
I nodded. This time I did know.
“Anyway, there were several young men before I met Steve, although I told him he was the first, and he believed me.”
“Were you his first?”
She leaned forward, cupped withered hands around her mouth, lowered her voice, as if afraid her late husband might be eavesdropping at the door. “I think I was.” A smile pulled at her powdery skin. “Steve was such a natural lover. Much better than the other boys I’d been with.”
“And were there others after you got married?” I ventured.
“Heavens, no! Once I’d made that commitment, that was it. Not that there weren’t opportunities. But after I got married, I never really looked at other men in that way. I had my Stevie, and he kept me plenty busy.” Her voice trailed off. She stared at the ceiling. For a minute, I thought she might have fallen asleep. “So on New Year’s Eve,” she started up again, her eyes flickering across the ceiling as if her past were being projected on it, “we got home and went to bed, and we kissed each other and wished each other a happy New Year, and Steve said, ‘What do you think? Are you too tired?’ And I was, but I didn’t want to say so, so instead I said, ‘No. I’m okay. How about you?’ So, of course, he said he was okay too, and we made love, although neither of us really felt like it, and it was a bit of an effort, if you know what I mean.”
Again I nodded, hoping she wouldn’t go into details.
“But we managed. I think we felt we should, it being the New Year and everything. Sort of like on your anniversary or your birthday. You just feel you should. Anyway, we made love and then we fell asleep. Sex always puts me right to sleep.” She laughed. “And later, I was so glad we’d made love that night because it turned out to be the last time we ever did. Steve had a heart attack the following week and died a month after that.”
“You must miss him a great deal.”
“There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about him. But I guess I’ll be seeing him again pretty soon,” she said brightly.
“Well, let’s hope not too soon.” I patted her arm and stood up, straightening her covers, although there was no need. I checked my watch. Another twenty minutes and it would be a brand-new year.
“Will you sit with me until midnight?” she asked. “Then I promise to go to sleep like a good little girl.”
I sat back down, watched Myra’s eyes flutter to a close.
“I’m not asleep,” she warned. “Just resting my eyes.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I assured her, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest beneath the covers, noting the satisfied smile that lingered in the folds of her ancient face.
At seventy-seven, she’d still been sexually active. At eighty-seven, the thought of sex still made her smile. I was envious, I realized. When had sex ever made me smile? When had it brought me anything but embarrassment and shame?
My first time had been fast and uncomfortable and not particularly pleasant. I remember Roger Stillman trying to pry my legs apart, the few hurried grabs at my breasts that served as foreplay. And then the sudden jolt of pain as his body pushed into mine, the unexpected weight of his torso as he collapsed on top of me when it was over.
The last time I’d had sex hadn’t been much of an improvement, I thought with a shudder, again envying the dying old woman lying in bed before me. She’d been so open, so honest with me. What would she think if I were to be equally open and honest with her?
Could I tell her that the last time I’d had sex—real sex, not just the hint of it with Josh or the threat of it with Lance—had been the night my mother died? I shook my head in disbelief. Dear God, how could I have done anything so vile? What on earth had possessed me?
In truth, I’d all but pushed the details of that night out of my mind altogether. But Myra’s memories had unleashed a flood of my own. I sat back in my chair, stared at the window, saw the ghosts of my past etched in the dark mirror of glass.
I watched myself as I sat stiffly by my mother’s bedside, her death obvious in the grayness of her pallor, and the stillness that had settled over her body like a fine coating of wax. Her eyes and mouth were open, and I reached out to close them, her skin already cool against my fingers. Even in death, there remained a hint of the anger that had fueled her life. Even with her eyes closed and her breath stopped, a certain ferocity clung to her features. She was still a force to be reckoned with, I remember thinking as I bent down to kiss her lips, surprised to find them so soft and pliant. When had I ever experienced softness from those lips? Had she ever kissed me as a baby, a toddler, a child? Had those lips ever brushed across my forehead to check if I was feverish? Had they ever whispered “I love you” while I slept?
The sad fact was that I’d hated my mother almost as much as I’d loved her, that I’d spent my entire life trying to please her, to make up for whatever wrongs, both real and imaginary, I’d commit
ted. After she’d suffered her stroke, I’d tried everything in my power to nurse her back to health, and when it became obvious to both of us she wouldn’t get better, I’d continued to do my best to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. I’d sacrificed so much of my life for her, and suddenly she was gone, and I had nothing. No one. I was left with an emptiness so overwhelming I didn’t know what to do.
I remember pacing back and forth at the foot of her bed. Back and forth. Back and forth. I could feel her watching me through closed, dead eyes, casting her continuing disapproval across my shoulders like a heavy cloak. What kind of nurse are you that you couldn’t keep your own mother alive? I could hear her demand through cold, dead lips. And it was true, I conceded. I’d failed her. Again. As I’d always failed her.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried out loud. “So sorry.”
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
A sorry excuse for a nurse. A sorrier excuse for a daughter.
I don’t remember leaving the house, although at some point I obviously did. I must have showered and changed my clothes, although I have no memory of having done so. I do remember being in a bar on Atlantic Avenue, throwing back several glasses of tequila, and flirting with the handsomely nondescript bartender until he abandoned me for a girl who kept tossing her long blond hair from one shoulder to the other at the far end of the bar. I then turned my attention to another generically handsome man, this one wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt, who casually slipped his wedding band into the pocket of his tight jeans as he sidled up beside me.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before,” he said.
Yes, he actually said that. Maybe because it was true, maybe because he was too lazy to think of anything more original, maybe because he sensed I was such an easy mark that nothing was to be gained by being more creative.
“It’s my first time,” I told him, trying—and failing—to toss my hair over my shoulder like the blonde at the end of the bar.
“First time, huh?” He signaled the bartender to refill our drinks. “I like first times. Don’t you?”
I gave him what I hoped would pass as a mysterious smile and said nothing. Instead I pushed my shoulders back and crossed my legs, his eyes tracing each move. I was wearing a striped jersey that accentuated the swell of my bosom, and strappy sandals that dangled provocatively from my bare toes. He was tall and slender, with hair as black as coal and eyes the color of cool mint. He did most of the talking—about what I don’t remember. I’m sure he told me his name, but I’ve successfully blocked it out. Jack, John, Jerrod. Something with a J. I don’t think I told him mine. I’m not sure he asked.