The First Time

by Joy Fielding

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The nightmare started the same way it always did.

  Jake’s mother was dancing around the predominantly beige-and-brown living room of his childhood, tossing her blond hair from side to side, raising her wide floral skirt to reveal provocative flashes of thigh, trying to lure her husband out from behind his newspaper. “You never tell me I’m beautiful,” she was saying. “How come you never tell me I’m beautiful?”

  “I tell you all the time,” came the time-honored reply. “You don’t listen.”

  “Why don’t we go somewhere? Let’s go dancing. Did you hear me? I said, let’s go dancing.”

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “I haven’t been drinking.”

  “I can smell the liquor on your breath from here.”

  Jake moaned in his sleep, tried to block out the sound of their voices the way he always did, despite knowing such efforts were futile.

  “How about a movie? We haven’t been to a movie in ages.”

  “Call up one of your girlfriends if you want to go to a movie.”

  “You’re the one with the girlfriends,” Jake heard his mother snap.

  “Lower your voice. You’ll wake the boys.”

  Yes, wake up, a little voice whispered inside Jake’s head. Wake up. You’re not a child anymore. You don’t have to listen to this. Wake up. You’re not in your parents’ house. You’re on the other side of the world. And you’re all grown up. She can’t hurt you here. Wake up. Wake up.

  But even as Jake was admonishing himself to ignore the voices in his head, his attention was diverted by the sight of three small boys in their pajamas joining forces, constructing a futile barrier of books and toys at the base of his bedroom door.

  “You think I don’t know about your little friends? You think I don’t know where you go at night? You think I don’t know everything about you, you miserable son of a bitch?” Eva Hart was yelling, raising the ante along with her voice, a voice strong enough to pierce through solid walls, span decades, cross oceans.

  Jake watched his mother drive her fist through the middle of his father’s newspaper, feeling the full impact of that fist in the middle of his gut. He grabbed his stomach, doubled over in bed, as if he’d been sucker-punched.

  His father leaped from his chair, threw his newspaper to the floor. “You’re crazy,” he was screaming as he headed to the door. “You’re a crazy woman. You should be committed to an institution.”

  The three small boys raced for the closet, locking the door after them, huddling together at the back of the small dark space, Luke shaking in Jake’s arms, Nicholas off by himself, staring blankly ahead.

  Jake watched his mother lunge toward his father as if she were about to pounce on his back, ride him like a bucking bronco. Instead she lost her balance, fell against the skinny standing lamp next to the front door. It teetered back and forth like a metronome, counting off the seconds till his father’s furious farewell. “I’m crazy for staying with a crazy woman.”

  “Yeah? Then why don’t you leave, you miserable excuse for a man.”

  Don’t leave, Jake cried silently. Please, Daddy. Don’t leave. You can’t leave us alone with her. You don’t know what she’ll do. “It’ll be all right,” he whispered to his brothers, reminding them of the water and first-aid kit he’d safely stashed away. “We’ll be fine as long as we don’t make a sound.”

  You don’t have to watch this, the little voice whispered in Jake’s ear. This may have been your reality once upon a time, but it isn’t anymore. Now it’s nothing but a bad dream. Wake up. You don’t have to be here anymore.

  But it was too late. His mother was already pounding her fists on Jake’s closet door, demanding access, demanding loyalty, demanding his very soul. He watched her stumble around his room in a drunken rage, kicking at his shoes, emptying drawers of his clothes onto the floor, swooping up his model airplane, the one he’d spent weeks putting together, the one he’d been planning to present to his teacher and classmates during next week’s show-and-tell.

  Wake up before she can send it smashing to smithereens, the little voice admonished, invisible hands on Jake’s sleeping shoulders, trying to shake him awake, as if he were standing outside himself. Wake up. Wake up.

  For several seconds Jake straddled the peripheries of his dream, one foot inside, the other out. “Wake up,” he repeated out loud, the sound of his voice pushing him over the periphery, across the invisible border that divided his present from his past.

  Jake opened his eyes, hearing his ragged breathing ricochet off the walls of the small hotel room. It took him a minute to focus, to figure out where he was, to realize who he was. You’re Jake Hart, he told himself. Adult. Lawyer. Husband. Father. You’re not some frightened little boy anymore. You’re all grown up. And still frightened, still running scared, Jake acknowledged, wiping the perspiration from his brow, releasing a deep breath of air from his lungs. How long had he been holding his breath? he wondered.

  All your life, the little voice said.

  Jake looked over at Mattie, asleep beside him in the old-fashioned, less-than-standard-size double bed. When the French described something as charming and old-world, Mattie had said earlier, he could translate that to mean small and just plain old. Jake smiled, feeling the warmth of Mattie’s legs against his own. There was something to be said for the forced intimacy of old-fashioned, less-than-standard-size double beds.

  “What a day,” Jake said out loud, careful not to disturb Mattie as he climbed out of bed and walked to the window overlooking the street. Paris was truly an amazing city. Mattie had been right about that, as she was right about so many things. He should have listened to her years ago, when she first suggested coming here, when her steps had been as unfettered as her enthusiasm. She wouldn’t have had to wait for any crowded, slow-moving elevator to take her to the top of the Eiffel Tower. She would have challenged him to a race to the top. And won.

  “Don’t start feeling guilty,” she’d told him, reading his thoughts, as they stood on the top observation deck of the tower, overlooking the breathtaking panorama that was Paris at night. “I’m having the best time. There’s nothing better than this.”

  “Better than the boat ride?” he’d asked playfully, and they’d laughed, as they did often these days. (“Why do they call it Bateaux Mouches?” he’d asked, checking his pocket dictionary as they boarded the large boat earlier in the evening for a one-hour tour of the Seine. “Doesn’t that mean Boat Bugs?” Ten minutes later, as he and Mattie sat swatting pesky hordes of flying insects away from their faces, they understood.)

  She never seemed to tire, although she was having obvious difficulty walking. At times she dragged one foot behind the other. Still, she refused to call it a night. They had dinner at a crowded bistro on rue Jacob called Le Petit Zinc, where a young couple sat making out at a nearby table. Ultimately Jake was the one to plead exhaustion. Mattie immediately put her arm through his, and they crossed the busy street to their hotel.

  Even at four in the morning the street still wasn’t empty, Jake marveled now, as a young man on a motor scooter stalled under Jake’s window. The young man, who wore a black leather jacket and a deep purple helmet, looked up, as if he knew he were being watched, and waved when he saw Jake. Jake smiled, waved back, his attention quickly diverted by a small band of teenagers skipping down the middle of the road, their arms around one another’s waists, their mouths open in easy laughter. At the corner, he noticed a middle-aged couple cuddling under the awning of a closed café. Did Parisians never sleep?

  Maybe, like him, they were afraid to.

  Jake returned to the bed, sat for several minutes watching the steady rise and fall of Mattie’s breathing. Probably a result of the morphine he’d insisted she take. She’d resisted. “You have to sleep, Mattie,” he told her. “You have us on one hell of a schedule. You’re going to need all your strength.”

  “You’re all I need,” she said, drawing h
im into her arms, guiding him gently inside her.

  And yet, at the moment of climax, she’d had trouble catching her breath, her body growing rigid in his arms as she fought for air, her arms flailing about in helpless abandon, as if she were choking on a piece of steak, her face growing red, her eyes wide with terror as she tried to gather the air around her into her open palms, to literally push oxygen into her lungs. Ultimately she collapsed beside him, coughing and crying, her body soaked in sweat. Jake wiped her forehead with a soft white towel, then held her tightly against his chest, trying to regulate her breathing with his own, if necessary to breathe for both of them.

  It was then that Mattie agreed to take the morphine. Soon after, curled inside Jake’s arms, she drifted off to asleep.

  She’d lost so much weight, Jake realized with a shudder, staring at the delicate arm resting atop the billowy white comforter, like a small wiggly line. At least ten pounds, maybe more. She tried to hide it, wearing loose bulky clothing in the daytime, shapeless nightgowns at night. But lying here now, with the Parisian moonlight streaming in from the nearby window, the extent of her weight loss was impossible to dismiss or ignore. She seemed more bone than flesh. Even her hair seemed thinner. Jake brushed several fine strands away from Mattie’s pronounced cheekbones, his fingers lingering on her pale skin, as if reluctant to leave her. Disappearing before my very eyes, he thought, bending toward her, his lips caressing Mattie’s forehead with the softness of a feather. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by a sadness so strong, it hurt to breathe. Was that how Mattie felt, he wondered, when she struggled for air?

  “I love you,” she’d told him the day he’d come home early to tell her they were going to Paris on schedule after all. She’d offered the words without prompting, without waiting for, or even expecting, him to say the words back. And he hadn’t said them. Not then. Not since. How could he? he wondered, not trusting his voice. Not trusting himself. And so the words lingered provocatively on the tip of his tongue when they were together, playing with his lips, taking refuge behind his closed mouth. How ironic, he thought now, climbing back under the comforter and arranging his body around hers, that just as Mattie’s life was ending, he couldn’t imagine life without her.

  Mattie stirred in her sleep, fitting the convex curve of her backside into the concave curve of his stomach, as if they were two pieces of the same puzzle, which was as good a way to describe them as any, Jake thought. He kissed her shoulder, inhaling the gentle remnants of her lilac perfume, purposefully holding her scent in his lungs for as long as he could, as if by doing so he could somehow keep her safe. Then he released it, slowly, reluctantly, his head falling against his pillow, sleep tugging at his eyelids.

  He felt his nightmare lurking, waiting to sputter into action, like a video he’d stopped in midreel, jumping forward and back, trying to find the right spot, his father’s face, his mother’s fist, the pathetic stockpile of books and toys on the bedroom floor, his mother ransacking his room, hurling her vile threats against his closet door. “I can’t live this way any longer,” she was shouting. “Do you hear me? I can’t live this way anymore. Nobody loves me. Nobody cares whether I live or die.”

  Still awake, Jake heard Nicholas whimper, watched Luke tightly clutch the handle of the closet door, his stomach twisting with each twist of the knob. Trembling, Jake withdrew his arm from Mattie’s side, covered his ears to the sickening thud of his model plane crashing to the ground.

  “Damn you,” his mother yelled, kicking at the door. “Damn all of you spoiled little brats. You know what I’m going to do? You know what I’m going to do now? I’m going into the kitchen, and I’m going to turn on the gas, and in the morning, when your father comes home from sleeping with his girlfriend, he’ll find us all dead in our beds.”

  “No!” Nicholas cried, burying his head beneath his hands.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” Eva Hart shouted, tripping over the books and toys now strewn across the floor, aiming a shoe at the closet door. “You’ll die in your sleep. You won’t suffer the way I have. You won’t even know what’s happening.”

  “No!” Jake said now, opening his eyes, drawing strength from Mattie’s steady breathing, refusing to be cowed any longer. There was no gas. There was nothing to be afraid of. He had a wife who loved him, who knew him better than any living soul, and still she loved him. Because he deserved to be loved. Because he was worthy of love, Jake understood for the first time.

  If Mattie could face such a cruel, unfair future with such courage, then surely he could come to terms with a past he’d allowed to control him for way too long, a past that was slowly suffocating him to death.

  He looked over at Mattie. No point in both of us suffocating to death, he heard her say, a wink in her voice.

  And suddenly Jake was on his feet in the middle of the tiny room, an adult amid the chaos and debris of his childhood, and he was laughing. His mother was at the door, her back to him. His laughter filled every available space, assuming a life of its own, blocking his mother’s exit. It was the force of his laughter that grabbed his mother by her shoulders and spun her around.

  If she was startled to see him, she didn’t let on. She stared at her grown son in drunken defiance. “What are you laughing about?” she growled. “Who do you think you are, laughing at me?”

  “I’m your son,” Jake said simply.

  Eva Hart snorted, distinctly unimpressed. “Leave me alone,” she said, twisting toward the door.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Jake told her.

  “I’ll do whatever I damn well please.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Jake repeated, standing his ground. “No one’s leaving this room. No one’s going to turn on the gas.”

  Now it was his mother’s turn to laugh. “You can’t tell me you took that silly threat seriously. You know I’d never do such a thing.”

  “I’m five years old, Mother,” the adult Jake responded. “Of course I take your stupid threats seriously.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t.” His mother smiled, almost coquettishly. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you. You’ve always been my favorite.”

  “Have you any idea how much I hate you?” Jake asked. “How much I’ve always hated you?”

  “Really, Jason. What kind of way is that to talk to your mother? You’re a very bad boy, Jason.”

  Bad boy, Jason. Bad boy, Jason. Bad boy, Jason.

  Badboyjason, badboyjason, badboyjason.

  “I’m not a bad boy,” Jake heard himself say.

  “You take things far too seriously. You always did. Come on, Jason. Don’t be a whiner. You’re starting to sound like your brothers.”

  “The only thing wrong with my brothers was their mother.”

  “Well now, that’s not very nice, is it? I mean, I wasn’t such a bad mother. Look at you. You turned out okay.” She winked. “I must have done something right.”

  “The only thing you did right was die.”

  “Oh my. Well, aren’t we the melodramatic one. Maybe I should go turn on the gas after all.”

  “You’re through terrorizing us. Do you understand?” Jake squeezed his mother’s arm so tightly, he felt his own fingers meet through her skin.

  “Let me go,” his mother protested. “I’m your mother, damn it. How dare you talk to me this way.”

  “You’re nothing but a drunken bully. You can’t hurt me anymore.”

  “Let go of my arm. Get out of my way,” Eva Hart said, but her voice was weakening, and her image was blurring, smudging at the edges, like a chalk drawing, growing fainter with each word.

  “You have no more power over me,” Jake said, his own voice clear and strong.

  A puzzled look crossed his mother’s flirtatious hazel eyes. And then she was gone.

  Jake stood absolutely still for several seconds, relishing the silence, then returned to the bed, dropping down beside Mattie, his hand absently caressing the gentle curve
of her hip as his mind began picking up the books and toys that lay scattered on the floor, returning each to its proper place. With great care he retrieved the pieces of his broken model airplane and deposited them on the small table where the plane normally sat. Then he watched himself walk to the closet door and open it, staring at the three small boys huddled together on the other side. “You can come out now,” he said silently. “She’s gone.”

  Immediately, Nicholas bolted out the closet door and ran from the room.

  “Nick,” Jake called out after him, watching him vanish into thin air. “Catch you later,” he said softly, returning his attention to the two boys still cowering in the closet. Luke sat closest to the door, his eyes open wide, staring blankly into space. “I’m so sorry, Luke,” Jake said, squeezing his ample frame inside the cramped space, kneeling beside the young boy who was his older brother. “Please, can you forgive me?”

  Luke said nothing. Instead he leaned his child’s body into Jake’s side, allowing Jake to take him in his arms and rock him gently back and forth until he disappeared.

  And then only the child Jake remained. “You’re a good boy,” Jake told him simply, without words, watching the boy’s smile reflected in his eyes. “A very good boy, Jason. A very good boy.”

  “Jake,” Mattie was saying, sitting up beside him, her voice lifting him out of his past into the dawn of a new day. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” he answered. “Just a little trouble sleeping.”

  “I had a dream you were laughing.”

  “Sounds like a good dream.”

  “What about you?” Mattie asked, concern returning to her voice. “Any more nightmares?”

  Jake shook his head. “No,” he said, folding her inside his arms, lying down beside her, and closing his eyes. “No more nightmares.”