by Amy Lapwing
“Want me to bring you some supper?” he asked.
“That’d be great. So, how do you say, ‘ring around the collar,’ Pascale?”
Michael walked into his classroom just in time for Women’s Chorus. He was impatient for the period to end. He told them to “Practice—” and dismissed them when they gigglingly supplied the rest of the phrase, and went straight to his computer. Of course, she will not have answered yet, she has probably not even seen the message yet. Nestled amongst three or four other lines the reliable Zenith delivered the string “Subject: RE: NY [email protected].” He opened her message.
“Dear Miguel,” it began— she had adopted his old-fashioned greeting style— “You are right to ask. It will take time to explain, and I’m afraid of not making myself clear via email. Would you come to my house? Tonight? —As ever, Teresa.”
I’m going to her house to talk about us. Not about Derek, not about the trial. Us, how we were when we loved each other.
He popped open a reply window and sat back in his chair. I should ask Justina. But am I really asking her? If she said no, would I not go? No, this doesn’t involve her, it’s something I need to do. But I must tell her, otherwise it seems I’m sneaking around. I have no reason to sneak around. She’s someone I used to know and I wish to speak to her about something. I’ll tell Justina when I bring her supper.
He typed a response saying he would come to her house after dinner, at seven-thirty that evening.
He felt a surge of energy for the rest of the afternoon. He knew that Teresa was going to tell him how she had still loved him, even eight years after leaving him. He was going to see her face, and hear her say the words, tonight, this very night. He felt himself zooming through the world, hurrying to the athletic center, looking at his legs and seeing they walked no faster than usual. He sped through the water, it seemed, though he ended no more than the usual two laps ahead of Charles and Helena.
He made couscous and vegetables, throwing in some sausage in a portion just for himself and ate it right away. He fixed a plastic plateful for Justina and covered it with foil and drove over to her office with it. She brought her feet down from her desk when he appeared in her doorway.
“Service with a smile,” she said and she cleared her books away.
He put the plate down in front of her and picked up her mug. “Want some water?” he asked.
“Please.”
He brought her water and sat in her client chair and watched her eat.
“Yummy-good,” she said. “You put sausage in yours, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“I wouldn’t have minded a bite or two, myself.”
“Oh! I’m sorry!”
“No, it’s okay, I just meant you didn’t have to separate it out.”
“What you working on tonight?”
“A great many topics on a wide range of subjects.”
“I have a brain, you know,” he said.
“Queneau and Truffaut, a comparison. Probably none, but I want to check something out. You know, Zazie and Antoine Doinel, wise child heroes, that kind of thing.”
“Wise child?”
“You know, a kid who thinks he knows it all because he sees the absurdities that adults live by.”
“What absurdities?”
“Like, lies, things we take as the way it is when it’s just because we’re too lazy to change things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like saying we should use less fossil fuels, but then we don’t invest in public transportation. You know, we don’t give ourselves any practical way of trying to get to an ideal. So we give up on the ideal. But kids don’t give up, they just blow raspberries at the stupid adults and tell themselves that if they were in charge, things would be different.”
“So, you will write a paper on the ideals of children?”
“Probably not. Just thinking out loud. Guess it sounds pretty stupid. Jejune.” She pushed her lips out simian-like to pronounce the ‘june.’ “Vapidly jejune, dahling.”
He shrugged. “I’m not the person to ask.”
“Yeah, it’s all words to you.”
“No, I understand what you say,” he enunciated with care, “but I cannot say if it is worthy, to the other scholars.”
She pressed her lips together, pushed out the corners of her mouth, raised her eyebrows, and resumed eating her supper.
“Justina, I’m going out tonight.”
“Okay.”
“To Teresa’s.”
“Another party?”
“I want to talk to her.”
“You going to ask him to get tested?”
“Yes, I will ask. Why do you keep saying that?”
“Why do you keep forgetting?”
“I don’t forget.”
“You’ve seen them, four times? Five times? And you still haven’t even mentioned it, have you?” He simply looked at her. “Michael, they think that you think you’re the father.”
“Justina, it is very likely I am his father.”
“Why? What makes you say that?”
“He’s just like me! He looks like me, he has talent in music like me. He’s just like I was when I was twenty.”
Oh, God. He was looking stubborn, almost defiant. He did want to be the father, she could see it now; he didn’t want to risk finding out the truth was otherwise. Why? Why did he care so much? Did he just want a son? Did he want the whole package, him and her both? Ready-made family. She studied his face, as though she could find the string to pull to make that hard look fall away. She heard herself ask, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’ve been a stranger to him long enough. I want to know him, I want him to feel I’m his father.”
“You said you would take the test.”
“Yes, I will. But I can’t ask him now, just before the trial. It’s better for him this way, to know he can rely on me.”
“But Michael,” she began. It was no use, he had an answer for every objection she might make. “It’s for her, isn’t it?”
“You’re jealous of her,” he jabbed back. He had been expecting this.
“Should I be?” Her voice was very small, a timid flutist playing an unfamiliar tune for the first time.
“You don’t trust me.”
“I want to.”
He stood up and put on his jacket and went to the door. “I have always trusted you, Justina. Always.” He went out.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. That sweet smile, those deep, deep eyes. She’s so good, I want to have her all night. He was sitting on the couch. She came in with a bright blue Sarchí tray and put it down on the coffee table and handed him a mug. Just like theirs, the ones Justina had bought in Santa Ana. She took the other one and sat in the salmon chair opposite him, her knees together in a vector pointed at him from her sweetly round hips. He was not at all nervous, he sat looking at her and thinking of her and felt no distance between them. She did a double-take at his look and her smile relaxed as she saw something in him she had not seen in a long time. “I don’t know how to start,” she said.
“Start at the beginning,” he said, leaning his elbows on his knees, cupping his mug. “Tell me how you used to love me.”
“I was so happy with you. When you asked me to marry you I was on top of the world. Then we visited your family again and I was thrown into a pit. I couldn’t see any way out. Except to leave you. To say no and then to leave you, go where you couldn’t find me. So I did. I went to the states, I looked for work in music. I taught piano, I played in churches. But I had no money. I had no love and no money. There was nothing I could do about love, but I decided I’d go back to school so I could get more money. I took a course in computers and I got a job in Austin at Lockheed. I met Whit and we fell in love. He reminded me of you, he was very handsome and, just a devil. I married him right away. I think I was afraid of waiting, that it would fade away. And within a month it started. He was so jealous, of every little thing, even of woman friend
s I tried to make, and he got so angry when I argued with him, but I was just trying to defend myself. All the time I told myself I loved him, that there was a price to pay for a great love. And I paid it. For three years. Then I told him if he didn’t change, I would leave. And of course he didn’t change and I had to follow through on my threat. I didn’t know where to go. I had no relatives here, everyone’s still back at home. And I had no close friends, Whit had seen to that. I literally had no one else to count on but him. I thought of you, I thought you were probably here, in the States, somewhere. I called Lita and asked her to find out where you were, for me. She found out through a friend of a friend of Marisol’s, so I went to New York.
“I was afraid, of course, I didn’t know what I would find. I was pretty sure you weren’t married, I thought Lita would have found that out. But you could have had a girlfriend. Or maybe you didn’t care about me. Maybe you were angry at me. But I was so lucky. You remember? How it was when you opened the door to me? I thought I would faint, you were so good to see.” It was a well-remembered mental portrait, Miguel in a white tee shirt and blue jeans, his overgrown hair tousled like he had just gotten up, and he probably had, it was only nine o’clock on a Sunday morning; his eyes were so soft, the lashes so thick, and the smile so gentle, so unbelieving. “Just, so good.
“Of course, I felt guilty, I was married. But after the first day I just told myself I wasn’t going to think about him. I just wanted to think about you. About you and me. So I did. And I didn’t think of him. It was just you and me, our whole world, right there in New York, it could have been anywhere, it didn’t matter. It was only the two of us.”
“Teresa—” He put the mug down on the table. “Why didn’t you stay? Why did you go?”
She came to sit by him, her small hips making scarcely any indentation on the cushion. “I wasn’t ready to divorce him. I knew how wonderful you were, but I wasn’t ready to give up on him. I guess I was still in love with him. I must have been. I knew it was wrong to be with you. But I thought if I go back to him and make it work, it’ll be all right. God will forgive me. I was right, wasn’t I?”
He shook his head at her, as though it was now that she was about to make a big mistake.
“And it did work,” she continued. “He didn’t hit me again, all during the pregnancy he was sweet to me. But he started up again when Derek was almost two. His work wasn’t going well, they’d changed the commission system so that he had to work harder for it. And coming home to a frazzled wife, I was still working, and a noisy toddler, it was really too much for him. I don’t make excuses for him, he didn’t have to hit us, but really I don’t think he could have changed. He just wasn’t good husband material. Or father.”
“When you say that, I see some man hitting you and I could just—”
She put a hand on his arm. “Don’t. It’s not— It’s okay.”
He put his hand over hers and she lifted it to his cheek. He kissed her palm, and her cheek, and her mouth. So good, so good. He felt her back, the delicate ribs, the soft hips.
“Just a little tenderness,” she said, “that’s all I ask.” She kissed him and put her hand inside his shirt.
He opened her blouse and caressed her breasts in their bra as she stood on her knees. She undid the hooks and it sprang off her chest. She straddled his lap and put one of her nipples to his lips.
He gently sucked her dried rose teat and she hummed. He sucked harder and she thrust her chest against him. He sucked still harder and she moaned. He could not believe it. Stop, too much, he heard a voice in his head say. Justina’s.
Teresa rounded her back and got off his lap when he turned his head.
He got up from the couch.
“Please, don’t worry,” she said, buttoning her blouse. “Please come to see Derek. We won’t— I won’t—”
He said nothing as he looked at her, sitting up at attention on the couch, small and rejected, not chastened. “Yeah,” he said. He took his jacket from the peg, knocking her sweater to the floor. Fuck. He hung the sweater back up and left.
What a nice green, really lovely, blue-green. She hated to rip it. It was that thick kind of wrapping paper, that people reserved for wrapping expensive gifts. She propped the oblong gift on her knees, admiring the paper one last time. There was no ribbon or other decoration, he had wrapped it himself. Contents camouflaged, the job was done. But what nice paper. “I just love looking at this color. Perhaps I’ll save it till later.”
“Open it now,” he said. She lifted the taped down points at either end and eased the box out of its covering. She did not know why she did not just tear it, she was not the type to reuse wrapping paper. She put the paper aside on the sofa and looked at the box.
“Spanish lessons?” she said.
“Mm-hm, and look inside, there are some little papers.”
She opened the box and found on top of the twenty or so tapes a set of brochures. They described Spanish language schools in Costa Rica. She opened one out and looked at the photos of the students engrossed in their lessons, the instructors gesturing animatedly before them.
“Next time we go, maybe you will like to take a course. They’re very good, I know someone there, at that one,” he said, pointing to one of the pamphlets. “You study all day, it’s very intense. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Mm-hm. Thank you. I’ll just pop one in right now.” She bussed his lips and put Lesson One in the tape deck and pressed Play. A man’s voice cheerfully greeted them, his voice a range of tall spikes on a spectrogram, and asked them their names and asked them how to get to the airport and thanked them and asked for the check. “I’ve never heard such slow Spanish. They’ll think I’m a retard if I talk like that.”
“I would love to speak Spanish with you,” he said. “You will be transformed.”
She sat again on the sofa with him. “Into what?”
“Come on, you know what I mean.” Apparently she did not. “Doesn’t it feel different talking to Pascale in English than when she speaks in French?”
“She seems kind of boxed-in when she speaks English, compared to French. You want me to sound boxed-in?”
“No, nevermind, I don’t know.” He picked up the box and looked at the lesson book. “You don’t like it. I’m sorry.”
“No! I do, it’s— I do.” She kissed him again.
He was still frowning. “We’ve known each other six years,” he said. “I know it’s not a long time, but all you know how to say is ‘gracias’ and ‘muy bien’ and ‘ay, mierda.’
“And ‘te amo, querida,” she added, resting her clasped hands upon his shoulder. “Oh!” She breathed into his ear, “and ‘chupame.’”
He was supposed to laugh; he smiled and said, “How did you learn that?”
“Beats me,” she said and she slid her hand down his fly before getting up. “Guess I’ll start the coffee.”
The guests arrived shortly thereafter, just Pascale and Denis and Nicolas and Charles and Helena, and she opened their presents to her. She could not shake the impression that Michael’s gift was a reminder of a deficiency. She supposed she should have learned more Spanish by now, she should probably be speaking it with him everyday, but it did not seem an urgent necessity, his English was more than sufficient. Besides, he had been in the U.S. for many years now, surely speaking English came effortlessly to him.
Pascale cornered her in the laundry room. “So, how’s it going?” she asked as she undid the tapes over the little bears in baseball suits on Nicolas’ diaper.
“Fine.”
Pascale scrutinized her eyeballs. “Has he seen her again?”
Justina sighed. “You mean since she told him about Derek? Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Three.”
Apparently it was a big number.
“He went with them to meet with the lawyer,” explained Justina. “And he took them out to dinner after. And he went to his birthday party.”
&nb
sp; “Whose?”
“The ‘son’s,’” she said, deepening her voice with mock reverence. “Derek’s.”
“Did you go?”
Justina shook her head.
“I don’t blame you. What was the third time?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
“What for?”
“Don’t know.”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
Justina was playing with Nicolas’ tiny breath-mint-toes.
“Well, if that was two weeks ago,” said Pascale, “then he’s probably had enough of her. They remember how they used to look and they look at each other now, so, it’s enough, already.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the way he looks, Pascale.”
“Yes, but she—” Pascale made a face like a ghoul.
“You’ve seen her?”
“No, but I’m sure she’s old and ugly. Doesn’t he say anything about her?”
“No.”
“Well, still, two weeks, I’d say he’s through with her. Reminiscing, I mean.” More gently she asked, “Has he taken the test yet?”
“Nope.”
“What’s he waiting for?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t even told them. I’m sure they think he thinks he’s the father.”
“Then he’ll be seeing them again,” said Pascale narrowing her eyes in a warning, “as long as he thinks that. He has reason to, if he’s the father. But he has absolutely no reason to if he’s not.”
Justina stared at the washing machine dials. “I think he wants to be his father,” she said.
Pascale finished snapping up Nicolas’ overalls. “I don’t know why. He’s no prize. Who would want him, a rapist?” She lifted Nicolas and nattered at him in a high, soft voice. He focused his eyes on her nose and stretched his mouth in a loose grin. Pascale kissed him and handed him to Justina. She put him over her shoulder. “Just in case,” said Pascale and she put a cloth diaper over Justina’s shoulder under the baby’s chin. “You think he is?” asked Pascale.