by Amy Lapwing
Her figure at the tree, carefully snapping the fruit’s stem from its lifelong place, like so many people he had seen over the years on this patch of earth, touched him; his mind placed her image next to his first happy impression of the orchard so many years before, which in turn sat next to his childhood memories of his father’s fields of the towering cane plants. Suddenly he knew he wanted to slap a reservation on all the next times of the world, with her. He hurried to her. “Because,” he began, not knowing what he was going to say, “because, because, because—” What does it matter? “I don’t know!”
He looked deceptively simple to her, like a foreigner who does not know the language.
“Because I kissed you,” he announced. “That’s how I know.”
She backed away from him. “Oh, no.” She knew he wanted her, the complement to his body parts. She hurried toward the road.
Michael rushed after her. “Justina!” What did I say? his brain screamed. Is she crying?
“You’re so repressed. Women want it just as much as men, they’re just so conditioned not to.” He unbuckled his pants. “You want it as much as I do.” He kissed her, pushing her down on the bed. “You just don’t want to admit it. You think it’s dirty, don’t you? I’m dirty, that’s what you think.”
No, she thought. Yes. “No,” she said.
“I want it every day. Ten, twenty times a day.” He took off her jeans. “I don’t deny it. You do. You deny the truth. About yourself.” He took off her panties and rammed his erection between her legs. “That’s why you’re frigid.” He thrusted through her dryness.
I’m sorry, she thought, and turned her head from him.
“You deny the truth and you deny yourself.”
He came.
But not you, she thought, and her mind summoned her fantasy lover as he went down on her.
Michael caught up with her at the road and walked with her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t mean, I don’t mean I just like to kiss you.” She kept walking. “I do like kissing you, but— Justina, please stop and let me tell you what I mean.”
She stopped and let herself look at him. In her face were that year of hurt with the other man, and the disappointment which threatened at this moment.
“You— someone has hurt you,” he said softly. She shaded her eyes and turned her head. “¡Ay, querida!” he whispered. He put his hands on her shoulders, she started to pull away, then did not. “How could anyone hurt you?” he said.
She thought about that trip to the shore, how she and Rourke had snuck into an empty dorm to sleep, and how he had practically raped her the next morning. Practically, or really?
Michael stood behind her, his arms light around her shivering shoulders. “Oh, God! I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry, Justina.”
I won’t let him invade me this way, not anymore. “Bastard,” she cursed softly, and turned to look at Michael. “It’s all right. It’s not you.”
Michael wanted to squeeze her, just squeeze the bad thing, whatever it was, right out of her. He wanted to tell her he would never hurt her, that he wanted her, but not if she didn’t want him. "Come on,” he said, “that’s enough nature for today,” and she walked with him the quarter mile to his car parked outside his condo.
He unlocked her door.
“Michael, can I see your place?”
She was looking up at his second floor windows. Shaking off his surprise, he answered, “Sure,” and took her into his apartment.
She looked around at his things: his shelves of scores, his CD collection, the blocks of LPs, the posters announcing past concerts and festivals, his comfortable, not too new, furniture in its dark, masculine, she supposed, colors, and the black piano. She paused by the couch and picked up a black and white photo propped in its frame on the end table. It showed an old pickup truck with three children standing in front of the driver’s door, a boy and two girls, and a man who looked like Michael, only younger, behind them. A field of tall plants fanned out behind the truck. Michael cleared away the stacks of papers and scores from the couch. “Who’s this?” she asked.
“That’s my father and my sisters and me.” He pointed out the girls. “That’s Catalina, and that’s Marisol.”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Miguel. Padre. I’m Miguel hijo. Junior.
“What’s your full name?”
“Miguel Jorge Calderón Esquivel. Or Miguel Jorge Calderón, hijo. That’s what I go by here.”
“‘Jorge.’ That’s hard to say.”
“So is ‘Justina,’ if you’re Spanish. Believe me, if you lived in a Spanish-speaking country, you’d probably change your name.” He pronounced her name as though it were Spanish; she grimaced at the harsh ‘j’ sound. “What’s your full name?”
“Justina Czeslaw Trimble.”
“Czeslaw?”
“I know, we both have weird middle names. It was my mother’s maiden name.”
“What is your mother’s Christian name?”
“Mavis. My father’s name is George.”
“George! ‘Jorge’ is ‘George.’ My mother’s name is Beatríz. Beatríz Esquivel.”
Justina looked back at the photo. “Do you have any pictures of her?”
“Yes, they’re in— the rest of my family pictures I keep in my— I’ll go get one.” He went up into his bedroom and came back with a framed photo of his mother in her wedding dress, her mestiza features and dark skin so different from her husband’s European look.
“She’s beautiful.” She looked from the picture to Michael; he was looking at it, his eyes soft in a smile. “You look just like your dad in that picture, but I see your mother in you, too.”
“Very little, she says. She says if I didn’t look so much like Papá, he was going to throw her out. Really, no one thinks that the girls look like him.” He put the picture on the table next to the other one. “Please, sit down.” He picked up the scattered newspaper from the couch. “I’ll be right back.” He skittered off to the kitchen to figure out what to do next.
He was surprised she had not wanted to go home and recover from the incident in the orchard. He could not believe that she was ready for intimate activity of any kind, therefore she must want to talk. The asshole, she wants to talk about the asshole. I want to kill the asshole. Okay, okay, drinks.
He asked if she wanted coffee; she preferred tea, if he had it, so he heated a couple of mugs of water and brought in some tea and sugar. She sat on the couch, he sat in a chair opposite her; they stirred their tea, the unspoken subject heavy between them.
I won’t let that son of a bitch into this, she thought.
“Do you want—” began Michael.
No reason to tell Michael anything about him. The bastard has no place in my mind, I certainly won’t let him into Michael’s.
“Is that your stack of compositions?” she interrupted. He looked at the mundane, cheerful stack on the piano.
“I’m afraid it is.”
She went to the piano and looked at the top one. “Show me how you do them, how you correct them.”
They sat at the piano and he played one of the student compositions, stopping at a bad place.
“Yikes!” exclaimed Justina.
“Yikes is right.” Michael made a notation, moving the tenor note up a half-step. “But if we change this to this—” He replayed the line. “What do you think?”
“Ah.”
Michael finished the little piece and put the paper to one side. “Not bad.”
Justina handed him the next one. “Lawson? Is that the same—”
“You remember him?” He pushed his lips out in a moue. “‘Private lessons,’” he muttered. “Little tworp.” He played Lawson’s composition, a sequence of notes, nothing more.
“You’re not playing it right, are you?”
“It’s what he has written.”
“Is he trying to do, like, John Cage?”
<
br /> “I have no idea.” He finished the piece and wrote a note at the top and showed it to Justina: “See me.”
“He’s going to think ‘Either I’m a genius, or—’”
“Or an idiot,” completed Michael.
“A very brave idiot. Well? He obviously doesn’t know what he’s doing, but still he’s trying to learn something, anything. Don’t you think that’s brave?”
“He’s going about it the wrong way,” said Michael. “He should start with piano, then he can play these things and hear them. Once he hears, he’ll start to learn. But this—” he put the composition on the done stack. “He’s using the rules like it was math or something. It doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s not math, it’s music,” she summarized.
“Right.”
“So, that’s what you’ll tell him, when he sees you?”
He was going to suggest Lawson give up composition. “Yes.” This girl has heart, he thought. “What did I say again?”
She giggled and handed him the next one, looking at the name. “Is that Minnie I sat next to?”
“Mm-hm. This girl has got it.” He played the composition, suggestive of Aaron Copland. He finished it and sat scowling at it a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s good. It’s really, very good.” He wrote “See me” on the top. “I think it’s contest time for Minnie.”
They continued, he playing, she commenting, adding a descant of praise when it was good, trying to find something worthy when it was bad. Michael was glad she had not spoken of the asshole. It was past, there was nothing he could do. He did not like the feeling of helplessness when he saw her distressed. But if she needed to tell him, he hoped she knew she could. He wanted to feel big, for her.
He played the last one, marked it, and put it to bed in the done stack. He wished he could think of something else they could jump to immediately so she would stay.
“All done!” she chimed. “There, that didn’t take so long.” She looked out the window at the setting sun. “Or did it?”
“It didn’t seem long, for once.” He put his arm about her shoulders and pulled her close. She rested her head on his shoulder and they held each other a moment.
“Have you ever had paella?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh!” He pretended to be horrified. “Well, you’re going to find out what you’ve been missing.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Come with me.” He took her hand and stood. “Together we will make beautiful paella, mi bién,” he said, grinning. He led her into the kitchen and they improvised a paella of rice from left-overs in his refrigerator. Michael opened the bottle of wine he had gotten for last night, Justina moved the stacks of mail from the table onto a chair, and they ate in the kitchen.
“I can’t believe the first time you cook for me, it’s left-overs.”
He feared for a moment that he really had gaffed; she was smiling. “The wine isn’t left-over,” he pointed out.
“You’re not trying to get me drunk, are you?”
“I don’t need to get you drunk, babe.”
“Oh!” she laughed.
“Eat, it’s getting cold.”
They cleaned up in the kitchen together, Justina rinsing, Michael placing the dishes in the dishwasher, when he was not placing an already rinsed dish back on the dirty stack. She caught on to him after the third time and made them switch jobs.
She loaded the last dish in the machine. She wanted to say thanks for not asking, but then he would become curious again, and the cockroach would see his in and ruin everything. “I had a nice time today,” she said.
Michael kissed her hair. She is pensive today, he thought. “Me, too.”
“I better get going, I got an eight-thirty tomorrow.”
Arrived at her building, she took his hand as they went up the stairs.
“I’m not going to ask you in, because I really do have work to do.”
“I know, I didn’t expect it.”
“But—” She stepped closer to him and kissed him.
He kissed her, but did not feel as transported as last night, too much had gone on which he had not yet sorted out.
Chapter Nine
Too Big
On Monday morning Pascale came into Justina’s office with a cup of coffee, closed the door, and pestered her to know all about her first date with Michael. Justina told her about how he had listened to her at dinner, how he took such pleasure in the children’s performance.
“Was he nice? Was he gallant?” she gasped. “Was he sexy?”
“Yes, yes, and mega-yes.”
“What? What did he do?”
“Unh! You want a blow-by-blow?”
“You mean you—” Pascale put two fingers in her mouth.
“No! Pascale!”
“So you didn’t go to bed?”
“No!”
Pascale dropped her hands into her lap.
“We kissed. Okay? Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Why are you looking like that? Don’t you like for a man to kiss you?”
“Oh, he was incredibly sexy!” whispered Justina. “I can handle nice, gallant even, I have no problem with gallant. But he—”
“Justina, you are completely loony!” Pascale rolled her eyes. “Why do you think God gave you that body? How can Michael be anything but sexy with you?”
For the first time it occurred to Justina that perhaps she was the problem, that she was leading him on. But, I can dress however I want, she argued to herself. Doesn’t mean I’m inviting him to bed.
“What did you wear?” asked Pascale. Justina described her plum-colored dress. “Was it knit?”
“Yes.”
Pascale threw up her arms. “Nom de Dieu! You wear the sexiest dress you have and you expect him to keep his hands off you?”
“Pascale, this is the eighties.”
“Excuse me! Have you never heard of the sexual revolution? People feel attracted to each other, they have sex, no waiting period.” Justina appeared confused. Pascale’s eyes went wide with an idea. “Justina, are you ... virgin?”
“No, Pascale, I have had some sexual experience.” Not much, she thought, but enough to recognize trouble. “I thought you said Michael has a mind and a heart.”
“Come on, Justina, so he kissed you. Is that a bad thing? It’s love-making. Is that incorrect now, too? Along with being romantic?”
“Why isn’t this conversation helping me?”
Pascale took a gulp of her coffee and stood, studying her friend. “Do you like him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love him?”
“Uh! I just met him!”
“So, we leave that one open. You want to love him before you go to bed with him?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so. But maybe not.” Pascale leaned closer to Justina. “Just let him fuck your brains off. Then, you’ll know.”
“You are so full of merde, Pascale.”
Pascale crossed her arms and scrutinized her. “How old are you?”
“Why is everyone obsessing over my age?”
“Twenty-three, twenty-four?”
“I’m twenty-five!”
“Whatever. You’re young. You want to find love. With a big ‘L.’”
Justina snorted. “Something strange about that?”
“Then the order of first love, then sex is very important, to you.”
“Isn’t it to everybody? Everybody human, anyway?”
“No.” Pascale looked at her from under her eyebrows, lips foremost. “If I were a widow, God forbid—” She muttered a prayer and crossed herself. “And I were in your situation, I would just do it.”
“What’s being a widow have to do with it?”
“Because I have already loved. The big one. Then along comes a man, he’s very exciting, I feel so—” she mimed stabbing herself, eyes rolling back— “with him, then, I wou
ld just do whatever I desired. For the simple pleasure of it.”
“So, widows should worship at the shrine of Aphrodite?”
“Yes! Why not? Look at me! I have five, maybe ten more good years left. I mean really good, turn his head years, you know? Why not enjoy my power while I still can?”
“Wouldn’t you be afraid of being disappointed?”
“These are little loves I’m talking about. You enjoy them, like miniature paintings. They are exquisite, in their way, but you don’t keep coming back to them like you do to the huge, complicated, so rich tableau that you find something new in it every time you look at it.”
“That would be Denis.”
“I have my Denis. When I was twenty-five, I only had hope.”
Justina was working on the idea of middle-aged widows collecting miniatures. Pascale opened her door and waved at a student who passed by.
“Hey! Natalie! Who do you T.A. for?” The student mumbled a questioning response. “You want to do it for Enlightenment?” The girl mumbled an upbeat response. “Good! Okay, will you tell Eugenia? Tell her I said. Okay.” She turned back to Justina.
“Ooh! Can I get one, too?”
“You don’t have a T.A.? You better get one, quick, before the good ones are all gone!”
“How do I—”
“Ask Eugenia for the list of grad students.”
“How will I know who’s good?”
“I’ll tell you. I got to go. ‘Bye.”
Justina made a mental note to do what Pascale recommended, and forgot it.
Charles slipped through the water lazily, his breaststroke giving him plenty of opportunity to keep an eye out for interesting pool action. He stopped at the edge and watched a couple of middle-aged secretaries from Updoc’s office get out of the pool and walk over to a bench, taking up their towels. They briefly blotted their torsos, spent more time rubbing down their legs, their dangling, still wet breasts dripping onto their feet. The water erupted in splashes beside him as a body crawled to the pool’s border. Michael pulled himself up to sit on the edge and panted.
Charles glanced at him, then watched the women carefully.