WHAT WAS IN IT FOR ME? A relationship with Bradley Smith? Was this the classic instance of a smart woman selling herself short? As the weeks went on and I grew to know him better, I thought of all these default-mode negatives: he seemed not ignoble, not ill-spoken, not a bully, not inconsiderate, not obnoxious, not a boor, not violent, not distressing, not disdainful, not a bad dresser, not unmindful, not dirty or smelly, and not particularly ironic. He was not unhandsome. He was not unattractive.
In other words, he was husband material. Simple as that.
I didn’t need a husband, I’ve said that. But I hadn’t had one, not yet, though there had been half-hearted offers, and I was ready to have the experience, retro as it may have been, of being married, to say nothing of the fact that it seemed about time for one of them, one of these unattached default-mode fellows to wander into my life and choose me. God, I sound awful. Also, I wanted a baby sooner or later, and I didn’t want to do the baby thing without having a husband. I didn’t want the weird political progressivism and the faint pathos of the single mom label hanging over me. Myself, I wanted to do the whole scene in the old-fashioned way.
As my mother once said to me, They’re quite crazy, dear — men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you.
* * *
I WATCHED HIM PAINT his canvases in his basement. We went canoeing on the Huron River. I played with his companion, Bradley the dog (a special-needs dog, I am sorry to say, cognitively challenged, and a slobberer). We took some weekend trips to Chicago and listened to jazz. He drew a picture of the Dragon with the Rubber Nose giving me a ride on its back. That picture actually made my heart do a back flip. How could he possibly know that I had wanted to ride dragons from the time I was a girl? We had candlelit dinners at his house. We had sex, successful sex, good-enough sex, though when I compared him to David in that category, which I could not help doing, he lost. It seems a shame to say so, but one orgasm is not as good as another. So what, I thought. We sat around on Sunday morning, funky and grungy, and traded opinions. We went to galleries, where he expounded his views on the art we saw (he rarely liked it and denounced and demeaned it in whispers to me). He showed me his copies of ARTnews. I met his neighbors, the Ginsbergs. We went up to Five Oaks and met his sister and brother-in-law, the barber. We worked in the yard, we went to my health club. There was a peacefulness to it. I would talk about the law, and he would zone out a bit as he pretended to listen. I scared him and, humbly, he tried to cover it up. I gradually settled down into him the way you settle down into an easy chair. I accepted, conditionally, the kindheartedness he offered me, though I thought it a bit dull, the way a comfortable familiar thing is dull, and its dullness is totally beside the point.
I found myself, at odd moments, leaning over him and kissing his bald spot, the one toward the back of his head. I met his parents. He met mine. He was always nervous around me, afraid that he would say something that would unmask him as a fool or a dolt. Poor guy, he was unmasked right from the start. If I loved anything about him, it was his plainness, his lack of mask, his failure of costume. This is the sort of man he was: he made balloon sculpture every two weeks or so to amuse the neighborhood kids who lived up the block and sometimes wandered into his yard. He criticized himself for not being better at it. What a midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight. He was uninteresting and genuine, sweet-tempered and dependable, the sort of man who will stabilize your pulse rather than make it race.
He proposed. And I accepted.
THE NEXT TIME DAVID came over — because peacefulness is insufficient — he brought wild rice chicken soup, along with a perfectly chilled wine he liked, a sauvignon blanc. No leather jacket this time — he’d come from the office.
Somehow he’d gotten a streak of ink from a ballpoint pen on his face, the right side. (He’s clean-shaven.) Once he was inside the door, but just barely inside, I curled my leg around his and licked my finger with spit and slowly and pleasurably wiped the ink off.
As I did that, we talked about our usual news, but somehow I didn’t get around, at least not right away, to telling him about Bradley’s proposal and my acceptance of it. After the soup and the wine, we went into my bedroom where he kissed me and undressed me, unsnapping my skirt smartly and kneeling before me, slowly lowering my underwear. He liked to get on his knees before me while I was still standing, doing homage to me. He would put his arms around me, kissing me, and then he would hold his face against my abdomen, and I would feel the nubs of his beard, and I would sigh with pleasure. He made me, I have to admit it, weak in the knees. After that, I took off his clothes. I noticed his body a bit more this time, caring for it, appreciating its musculature. I saw his reflection in the dresser’s mirror, on whose side I had lodged Bradley’s drawing of me riding the dragon.
David and I made love at some length. While we were engaged in this activity, I continued to study him, between gasps, the way you’d study a habit you’re about to give up. This man, this particular one: all his adult physical features, all of them manfully occupied, not one of them boyish. Boyishness was not his style. We bucked and buckled and fought and ground ourselves into each other. First we made love — the quiet tenderness of it — and then we fucked brutally and mindlessly and then we went back to making love and then that lapsed into fucking again. He brought out a thing, a beast in me I hadn’t known I had, and it always surprised me to see it, to see her as me. For the first time in my life it occurred to me that a guy who is really, really good at making love to a woman, the same woman, and who is inventively and exceptionally good at it time after time, who is carefully brutal at some moments and solicitous at others, who knows her sweet spots and concentrates on them and seems to be worshipping her body and is keen on driving her to a sweet distraction every time, is not someone to be ignored or otherwise taken for granted or dismissed on minor charges, even as a lover, a recreational human.
When we were done, I inhaled and smelled the rank and honeyed odor of our brute sexual heat, which, that evening, made me feel nostalgic for us, for the two of us. I cut it off, that nostalgia, but it kept seeping back.
After a rest, I was kissing him on his flat gorgeous stomach, seasoned with small hairs, letting my own hair tickle him, and moving downward toward where the smell was strongest. It was then that I looked up at him and said, “You know what, David? Bradley proposed.”
He nodded. He knew all about Bradley. Apparently he had never taken him seriously. He had his fingers in my hair, my aggressive attitudinizing hair. He frowned. “Your artist? What did you say to him, Diana?” He waited as if he were actually curious. “What did you say in response? To his question?”
“I said yes.”
There was a long silence after that, during which he kept his fingers in my hair, stroking my scalp. I was still kissing him, more as a delay to the next stage of whatever we would do or say to each other.
“You did, eh? Well.” He leaned his head back. He was quiet. Sounds of the crickets came into the room, and the music from the CD player, Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” and the occasional car passing by on the street. “That’s interesting. So you said yes.” Then he said, a bit more querulously now, his face disagreeably restive, “Well, Diana. You agreed to marry him?” He was alert. He was quickening. “You actually did that?”
“Yup. That’s right,” I said.
“You are going to marry him. No kidding. Jesus, you’re mean. You’re doing this as a little prank. This is the joker side of you. But you know, you’re going to wither him right away. Honey, you are going to eat him alive. You do that to the nice ones, and I know that because you have a past and you have me, and I’ve seen you in action. I know you. Don’t say I don’t, kiddo, I know every square inch of you. He won’t stand up to you for longer than a year, you and your sharp edges. He’s not your match. You’ve described him to me, here in thi
s very bed. You’re such a bruiser, Diana, what the hell are you thinking?”
“Oh, I’m not that mean —”
“Yes you are.”
“Not to him, I’m not. Besides, you don’t know him. He makes me into a nice person, sometimes. You don’t know what he can and can’t do. I’m different with him than I am with you. You know, now that you mention it, maybe I should apologize.”
“To whom? To me? For being in bed with me?” he asked. “You’re being vague. That’s not like you. It’s not me you should apologize to.”
“No, no, that’s not what I’m getting at. You’re missing my point. Deliberately. Well, Bradley . . .” Somehow I couldn’t finish the thought. I couldn’t remember whom I thought I should apologize to. He had confused me for a minute. That wasn’t like me. My mind felt bleary.
Right about then the phone rang. He told me not to answer it, but I did, leaning over him so that my breasts brushed against his legs. It was a solicitation call, one for window treatments. I hung up briskly and looked over at David.
“What about Bradley?” he asked me, as if we hadn’t been interrupted. “Speaking of whom, why are you here with me?” His eyes, I thought, were quite bright with something like curiosity. “Let me get this straight. If you’re planning on getting married to this Bradley, this coffee guy, this sketch-pad fellow, what exactly are you doing here in bed with me? And how come you didn’t tell me until now? You’re supposed to be fat with your new love. You should be thick with it.” He scratched his shoulder and frowned squarely at me. “You should be strutting around arm in arm with him. You should be nestled with him, listening to those Mingus albums of yours. Instead, here you are, and you’re in bed with me. I thought this marriage idea of yours was a goof. You always said it was a goof.”
“A goof? No, I never said that. I’m sure I never said that. I wouldn’t use that word. I don’t know. As for us, you and me, we’re having sex. What do you mean, what am I doing here with you? I’m doing what we always do together. We talk and make love, and make love and talk.”
“Well, if you’re going to marry him . . .”
“I am going to marry him.”
“Then you shouldn’t be curled up naked with me like this, should you? Correct me if I’m wrong. You should be out there, wherever ‘out there’ is, with Bradley, this fiancé of yours, and being with him.” He waited for a moment. “Exclusively.”
“ ‘Exclusively’? Oh, come on. Don’t be priggish about this,” I said, collecting myself. “Exclusively. What a word. I don’t see why. Why I shouldn’t be here, I mean. You’re married, after all. You’re the married one. The guilty party.” I pointed at his finger. “When we’re both naked, just the two of us, you’re still dressed in your wedding ring. I’m not even married yet. I’m just that plain old traditional figure, the other woman. The mistress.” I had his cock in my hand. I was determined to keep this light, comic, social, and not insane, and I started to suck him playfully, but he wouldn’t let me go any further, shaking me off, and he sat up.
“Stop that. We need to talk. That’s different,” he said. “My being married.”
“No, it isn’t,” I told him. “It’s exactly the same. You can’t criticize me.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “You’re going in, a first-timer to marriage, lecturing me on ethics while you go down on me. You’re betraying him before you’ve even been faithful to him. What kind of scene can you call that? You haven’t even tried to be faithful. There was a time when I was faithful to Katrinka. You’re so restless, Diana, you haven’t even given your own marriage a chance. You’re pre-bored, for Chrissake. You’re like a monster who wants me to play with all your toys, out of sheer boredom.”
“You’re jealous, David. That’s sweet.”
“No I’m not. I’m taken aback, is what I am. I’m really taken aback.”
“ ‘Really taken aback.’ Listen to yourself. Look at the words you’re using. You’re not one to give me lectures on faithfulness, buddy boy. Is this some sort of guy solidarity thing?”
“Well,” David said. “Well.” He gathered himself, sat up in my bed, and stared at me. I looked away. “Hey, Diana,” he said, “look at me.” I did. No problem there. “You’re a pretty strong woman, you know that? And you’re beautiful. But the trouble is, you’re a thug. What do you think you’re doing here, doing this lonesome-girl thing in bed with me? Are you just playing with this guy? Do you love him? This Bradley person? Do you love this guy you’re going to marry?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is. It’s always that simple. So. Do you love him?”
“He’s lovable, David. That’s what counts.”
“No. That’s not what I asked. Lovable is different. Do you love him?”
“What a question. I don’t know,” I said. “Sort of.” I grinned and shrugged.
He wound back and slapped me, hard.
I got out of bed, right then, right away. I stood naked next to the window. On the bedside table the little votive candles that we always light for lovemaking were blown out by the breeze of my passing. “You bastard. Get the fuck out of my house,” I said.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” he said, a calm and sexy insolent look on his face. “Nope, I think I’ll stay here for a little while.” He snaked down under the sheet. “I’d like some coffee, if you please, Diana.” He thought for a moment. “Decaf.” He then gave me a strange look, one I can’t describe, as if he’d been gratified by hitting me.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” I said. “Don’t you hit me ever, you bastard.” I said this calmly.
“You’re marrying a man you’re not sure you love?” he asked from where he lay, scary and calm. “That’s what you’re doing? You cunt, you deserve to be slapped.”
“Don’t you ever call me that.”
“What?”
“That word. I hate that word.”
“Yeah, I agree. It’s an ugly word. But, you know, somebody should knock some sense into you. Honey pie, I should beat the living shit out of you.” At once he was on his feet, putting on his boxer shorts. Standing there, he cut a figure (David’s vice is his physical vanity), and I couldn’t help it, I watched him. He has nice legs, powerful thighs, every inch of which I had kissed and put my tongue upon, and I didn’t care anymore. “I’ve never hit a woman before in my life. Now I see the logic in it, if it’s you,” he said. His voice was heading toward a shout and soon would arrive there. “I would save you a ton of grief if I beat the living crap out of you, so you didn’t marry someone you didn’t love.” His eyes were glistening and bright with rage. “Goddamn you.” He was pacing. “You’ve just hired him as an entertainment. This is beneath you. Excuse me while I do the dishes. I have to calm down.”
He went into the kitchen. When I heard the sound of running water, I sat on the bed and I cradled my face in my hands for a few minutes. My cheek was burning where David had struck me. I made small wrinkles in the bedsheets with my toes. I was trying to think but seemed to be out of basic cognitive resources. That was new for me. I’m good at the complexities of argumentation. Somehow I hadn’t — I don’t know why — expected him to react the way he had. At last I stood up and put on a nightgown and went into the kitchen.
David was standing there in his boxer shorts, washing the soup bowls and rinsing them, washing the wineglasses and rinsing them, all with his usual care and thoughtfulness. I looked at the curve of his spine as it plunged into his shorts. I thought of how I would miss his body, the soups, the wine, the talk — the whole of this beautiful fucked-up man. I would miss the commotion we made together. That more than anything. Making love to him was like going through a car wash, except you came out dirtier and more alive at the other end.
“You made that coffee yet?” he asked.
“Not yet. I thought you could brew it yourself.”
“Why don’t you do that right now? And go to hell, if it’s no trouble, while you’re at it.”
“This coarse language isn’t like you, David.”
He turned around and gave me the display: he held his arms out operatically, and I was still so in love with him at that moment, I realized, so fevered, and I hated that. “Don’t get fastidious with me. What am I like, Diana? What am I like? What do I do? Go ahead. Tell me, if you’re so sure, if you’re the expert on me. What am I, besides your friend, and the man who makes love to you when we can both arrange it? Diana, I’m the guy who looks out for you. Who else does that?” He was getting angry all over again. He was re-angering himself. “Who else really does that for you? Nobody. I think I’ll go outside, right this minute if you don’t mind. If I don’t, I’ll make a mess of you, I’ll give you a shiner. And then what will the neighbors think? Why don’t you make that coffee for me, while I’m outside?”
“You’re not dressed.”
“I have my shorts on. Besides, do you think I give a flying fuck about the neighbors?”
He crossed the kitchen, past the vase where his cut flowers — gladioli this time — were arranged on the breakfast table, there in the alcove, and then he stomped out toward the back entryway. As quickly as I could, I put on a bathrobe and ran out to see where he’d gone. I couldn’t see him. In the living room, the CD player, rotating its carousel selections, had gotten around to the Miles Davis we had carefully timed for background to postcoital murmuring, Sketches of Spain. But no David in sight.
I put my face to the window and tried to see him. Oddly, for a moment Bradley’s word desolation returned to me as I raised my hand to the side of my face and stared out into the darkness. Night birds and crickets chirped away madly.
The house I own is a large one, and I have an ample front yard with azaleas planted on the north side, and when I put my hands to the sides of my head to blank out the light, I could see him squatting in the back under a tree, in his underwear, pulling out random clumps of grass with his right hand as he swigged at a beer, which he must have found somewhere in the refrigerator. He was talking to himself, a novelty David-thing, absolutely new and unseen before by me, though I couldn’t be absolutely sure what he was doing in that dim light aside from being actively upset with me. The face, though, was the classic male crying face even if there happened to be no tears on it. The son of a bitch loved me, and he had never told me about it. He was so rigorous.
The Feast of Love Page 14