by Nancy Thayer
“My chest hurts,” Wilbur said. “Oh, God, I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“You’ll be all right,” Reynolds said. “We’ll get help.” But Wilbur’s eyes closed—he had passed out. Reynolds rocked back on his heels, frightened at the sight of someone so startlingly out of control, then he put his hands on the floor and pushed himself up. “I think Wilbur Wilson’s had a heart attack,” he announced.
“Wilbur!” Norma cried. “Please let me through!” She began to claw her way from the end of the room to the center where Wilbur lay.
“Is there a doctor here?” Peter called, knowing as he spoke that there wasn’t. Many doctors were official members of the church but few of them came regularly. “Call an ambulance,” Peter said. He looked to see who was standing closest to the door leading to the upstairs offices. “Pam,” he called. “Hurry. Call an ambulance.”
The hallway surged with action. Pam Moyer raced up the stairs and everyone else turned toward the spot where Wilbur lay. Many of them tried to push forward to see him, as if it could not be true until they had actually set eyes on the man.
Judy Bennett moved through the crowd, looked down at Wilbur’s inert body, and said with authority, “Stand back. Someone give me a coat; he needs to be covered up. Everybody stand back. He needs air.”
“Coats! Air! Christ!” Liza Howard said. “He needs CPR. Doesn’t anyone here know CPR?” She glanced around quickly, her expression indicating clearly that it was only too obvious that the fools gathered around her had no knowledge of CPR. Then she sank to her knees, so swiftly that the sides of her coat flew upward like the wings of a bird. She tore her gloves from her hands and dropped them, then quickly loosened Wilbur’s tie and collar and shirt. She placed her ear against his chest, and at the same time grasped his wrist, but quickly and unceremoniously dropped it. She took Wilbur’s head in her hands and gently flexed it backward, then she pinched his nostrils together and put her mouth to his. She took her mouth away, and in what seemed to the onlookers an obscene gesture, she brought her right leg over Wilbur’s body so that she straddled his hips with her knees, careful not to let the weight of her body touch his. She pushed both hands down hard at the center of his lower chest, and pushed again, and again, and again, and again, then brought her mouth down over Wilbur’s once more.
The room buzzed with whispers.
“What’s she doing?”
“CPR.”
“What’s that?”
“Cardiopulmonary respiration.”
“Resuscitation.”
“Look how gray he is!”
“How old is he?”
“I called the ambulance,” Pam Moyer called from a doorway. “They’re on their way.”
“Let Norma through,” someone said.
Norma dropped on her knees next to her husband and took his hand, but carefully kept out of Liza’s way.
“Is he breathing?”
“Is he okay?”
“Is he dead?”
Liza worked on, oblivious to the questions, intent on the rhythm of counting as she pushed Wilbur’s chest and breathed into his mouth.
Several children came clattering down the choir-loft stairs or up from the basement. “What’s happening?” they asked in shrill voices, and were shunted off down the stairs to Friendship Hall by adults who had suddenly gone stern, as if solemnity were necessary to save Wilbur’s life. Everyone else stood still, helpless witnesses to the scene, and if there was ever a time in the history of this congregation when the members thought as one, it was now. “Oh, God, help him, let him live,” they prayed, in that silent, individual way that people pray at points of crisis. Occasionally Norma Wilson’s voice broke the silence: “Oh, God, oh, God,” she cried.
Liza worked on, like an expensive machine, pushing on Wilbur’s chest, breathing into his mouth. From above, her pumping body in the thick mink coat looked like that of an animal; people could see nothing but the brown fur and her shining blond hair. When she leaned forward to breathe into his mouth, her bottom rose high in the air, so that she seemed involved in some weird sexual parody. Peter Taylor had moved through the crowd and knelt down next to Norma, touching her shoulder gently in support. For a terrifying moment this tableau seemed frozen, eternal; Wilbur would always lie there, dying; Liza would always kneel above him, forcing him to live; the members of the church would stand around him, captured there, helpless, forever.
But an ambulance siren screamed in the distance and then screamed closer and abruptly stopped. Two men and a woman came in through the high wooden church doors and went immediately to Wilbur. The crowd automatically pushed back to make room for them. Liza did not stop or look up, did not break her rhythm until one of the attendants placed an oxygen mask over Wilbur’s face.
“He’s alive. He’s breathing. He’s responding,” one of the men said. He looked at Liza, who had brought her body off of Wilbur’s and was just kneeling there by his side. “You did a good job,” he said to her.
Then the attendants got Wilbur’s inert body onto a stretcher and people cleared a path so they could get him out the door.
“Can I ride with you?” Norma asked, clutching the sleeve of one of the men. “I’m his wife.”
“I’m sorry, but we’ve got work to do. You’d get in the way. You’ll have to have someone else drive you,” the man said, and then they were out the door.
Almost everyone clamored at once, offering to drive Norma to the hospital, but Ron Bennett, seeing that the woman was too stunned to decide, pushed through the crowd, took Norma’s arm, and led her out the door.
“I’ve got my car keys right here,” he said. “My car is just over there.”
So it did not strike anyone as especially strange when John Bennett pushed his way through to where Liza Howard was, still kneeling on the black-and-white tiles. Like father, like son, people thought, if they thought anything about it: two kind and helpful men.
John knelt down next to Liza. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.
She had just been sitting back on her heels, her head down, as if trying to catch her breath. Now she raised her head and met his eyes, and her own blue eyes shimmered at him. Johnny wanted to lift her up in his arms, this unparalleled creature, he wanted to carry her over the threshold of the church and out into the world as if she were his bride.
“Let me take you home,” he said. “I’ll drive your car for you.”
He rose, and Liza gave him her hand, that hand which moments before had seemed such an efficient, competent, inhuman thing, pushing life back into Wilbur’s chest. He helped her to her feet.
People began to crowd toward her now.
“Liza, that was wonderful!”
“Liza, you were marvelous. You saved his life!”
“Liza—”
But she would not look at them. Johnny, as if protecting her, led her out the doors.
Mandy Findly, who had been too much behind other people to see anything, now was shoved forward by the crowd, and she tripped on something. Looking down, she saw that she was standing on Liza Howard’s brown kid gloves. She bent down and picked them up and smoothed them out; how supple, how deliciously soft the skin was! What kind of creature was Liza Howard, Mandy thought, to be capable of saving a man’s life, and yet to own such glamorous gloves?
Judy Bennett watched her husband lead Norma Wilson through the tall main doors and then her son lead Liza Howard out the same way. She was slightly surprised at Johnny’s actions, but she thought: How like him, to be like his father, like all Bennetts, thoughtful, helpful, taking charge. Her husband and son had risen chivalrously to the occasion before any other males, and Judy felt proud of them, and a little smug. She turned to search out Pam and Gary Moyer, who would be only too glad to drive her home.
So Judy Bennett did not see how her son kept his arm around Liza Howard as they went down the sidewalk toward Liza’s black Cadillac.
“You were wonderful,” Johnny was saying to Liza. “You were m
agnificent. Shit, you saved his life!”
“Yes,” Liza said, “I probably did save his life. At least that part of life that’s important. When there’s a heart attack, it’s the brain that goes fastest. It dies in the first five minutes.”
They came to the black Cadillac and stopped. Johnny opened the door for Liza and she slid in. When he had crossed around and settled himself behind the steering wheel, he looked over at Liza. She was sitting very still, staring straight ahead, as if she were looking at some scene from some other time.
“Well, damn, honey,” Johnny said. “I just can’t get over it. That whole church full of people, and you’re the one who knew what to do. Were you a nurse once? How’d you come to know stuff like that?”
Liza turned toward him, but did not look at him. “I know stuff like that,” she said, “because I married a man who had already had two heart attacks. When I knew I was going to marry Mitchell, I took a course in CPR, hoping that if—if the occasion ever arose—” Liza broke off.
“But Mitchell died of a heart attack, didn’t he?” Johnny asked.
“Mitchell died of a heart attack,” Liza said. She glared at Johnny. “He died in bed right next to me as we slept. He didn’t do me the favor of giving me the chance to help him. I woke up that morning, and he was lying there in bed next to me, and he was dead. The doctor came and said that Mitchell had had a heart attack. My God, the irony of it. There I was, completely prepared to save his life, and he lay right next to me and died. The fool. Why couldn’t he have just reached over and tugged my arm?”
Johnny stared at Liza, entranced. He had never known any woman who was quite so calm and also so passionate. She had turned her face sharply away from him in a firm motion, and as she sat next to him now, fierce and arrogant, she was contemptuous of tears. To Johnny she seemed a magical woman. If he had not been totally enslaved by his love for her before, he was so now.
“I’ll drive home, Liza,” he said, for he could think of nothing else to say.
They drove in silence, too occupied with private thoughts to speak. Liza was thinking that in China, Japan, one of those places, they believed that if you saved a person’s life you were then responsible for that life, like a parent. Or was it that the person then owed his life to you? Whichever way, she wanted no part of it. She was glad to have been able to save Wilbur Wilson’s life, for she liked him, but she could foresee the consequences of her action, and it almost made her ill. Mrs. Wilson would have to call her to thank her, and all the do-gooders who had stood around gawking would be in a frenzy now, wanting to be the first to call her to praise her so that they could in turn call one another and discuss it. People did that sort of thing, milked every ounce of drama they could out of a situation; and then they liked praising people for a virtuous or valorous act, because it made them in turn seem virtuous or valorous for having recognized it. This was just the sort of self-important, picayune community that grasped at such occasions as opportunities to puff itself up and give awards. Oh, God, she would really die if they tried to give her an award, but she could just see how they would all fuss and flurry around, trying to make her one instinctive act into something larger, so that there would be room enough for them all to own a part of it. She could not bear it. Simpering hypocrites. She would not answer the phone today, to speak to people who had shunned her before. No. She would pack and leave town today. Let Johnny come with her today, or not at all.
Johnny was thinking that Liza was a true heroine. He was thinking that it had to mean something that she had saved a person’s life, and in church. He always had been just a little afraid of Liza, because of her sexual power, and now he admitted to himself that he was still in awe of her, but that it had somehow been proven to him that it was okay, this awe, this love, it was good. How could a woman who saved lives not be good? In fact, he was immensely aroused. He wanted to possess this magic woman, sexually and in every other way. He wanted her to be his.
He parked the Cadillac in front of the Howard mansion, and they went in. The house rose cool, vast, and shadowy around them. Liza turned to Johnny but did not really see him. She had that out-of-focus, preoccupied look that made her large eyes seem even more enormous.
“Thanks for driving me home,” she said. She laughed shortly then, as a thought occurred to her. “Now how are you going to get home?”
“I’m not going home,” Johnny said. He wanted the drama of the morning to last. “I’m not leaving your side ever again,” he said. He drew her to him, and held her tightly against his body.
“Oh, Johnny.” She was exhausted.
But her reluctance only made him more ardent. He could not have explained the subtleties of this moment—they stood there together in the entrance hall, still in their coats, in each other’s arms. He could not have compared this moment, when Liza just leaned against him, her arms hanging at her sides, her long body almost limp, her whole being still, with all the other times they had held each other. Those other times Liza had been the seductress, supple and elegant, but busy, busy—busy doing things to him. She had been the one in charge. But now she was soft with a languorous indifference, catlike; she was a different woman, and Johnny did not know why, but he was as excited as if he were holding a new lover in his arms. He bent to put one arm under her knees, and with a graceful swoop he did what he had always dreamed of doing with a woman: he picked her up, thick fur coat and all, up, up into his arms, and turned to carry her up the stairs to the bedroom. Liza drew her arms around his neck and let her head droop against his chest, thinking, oh, well, she had played the heroine; now he could play the hero.
But just then the phone rang, startling them both so much that he almost dropped her. The phone seldom rang in this house.
“I cannot bear it,” Liza said, and meant it.
Johnny turned away from the stairs and carried Liza into the library. A white-and-gold telephone sat on the long mahogany library table, ringing imperiously. Johnny knocked the phone onto the floor with an elbow, and the ringing stopped, but only to be replaced by a woman’s voice saying, “Hello? Hellow? Is this Liza Howard’s residence? Hel-low?”
“Oh, rip the damned thing out of the wall,” Liza said.
Johnny looked at the phone, looked at Liza, then set her as delicately as possible right down on the library table. He bent down and yanked the phone cord. It did not come out easily. He pulled again, and then harder, faster, again, and finally the woman’s voice was done away with, and he turned back to Liza, a dead phone cord hanging in his hand.
Liza smiled, and then, with one long movement, she slid her arms behind her, as if slowly stretching, and leaned back, back until she was lying on the table. Her head nestled against a pair of brass bookends holding a leather-bound set of dictionaries; her outstretched arm softly struck a crystal ashtray, and it fell to the carpet with a thud. She lay there, a sleek strange sight, with her knees bent exactly at the end of the table so that her legs hung down as if broken. She was motionless, waiting, and as Johnny looked at her, at all that richness, smooth skin against silk fabric sinking into silk-lined fur against polished mahogany, he longed to sink into her. He dropped the phone cord and eased himself between Liza’s legs. The table was a perfect height: he slid his hands up her thighs under the silk of her dress, and the fabric of the dress made a slithery sound as it drew away from her legs. She was wearing a garter belt and hose and underpants—of course underpants, she had been at church. She just lay there watching as Johnny unsnapped the garters, then reached up with both hands and slipped her lacy beige panties down. He unzipped his trousers, and pulled Liza to him, and, bending his knees slightly, thrust into her. She was moist; she closed her eyes; she scarcely moved. She didn’t have to: Johnny was moving to her, pulling her hips toward him with both hands, moving his own hips to hers as rhythmically as a machine.
“Johnny,” Liza said suddenly, and when her eyes flew open, it was as if a door had been flung wide, exposing secrets. on to something, she reached for
the back of the leather sofa which stretched along the length of the library table, but Johnny pulled her toward him just then, and instead of gripping the sofa, she only managed to drag her nails down it, leaving five long rippling marks irrevocably in the dark leather.
In the weeks they had known each other they had done many things with each other’s bodies to give pleasure, but this was an act of a different sort. It had about it the binding intimacy of seeing the other in illness or fear or extreme joy or pain. Now, Liza thought, as Johnny finally cried out and gripped her thighs so tightly she knew her skin would show bruises, now either he will run or he will be bound to me forever. His head was bent back, his eyes closed, and he stayed that way as his body relaxed against her, and when he finally lowered his head to look down at her, she saw that he was afraid.
“Johnny Bennett, in the library, on the library table,” she said, smiling, to ease the situation.
“Liza,” Johnny said, “did I hurt you?”
“No,” she lied, and reached her arms forward so that he could take her hands and pull her up into a sitting position. She wrapped her arms around his back and pressed her head against his chest and they stayed that way awhile, catching their breath. Liza could feel how Johnny was shaking, ever so slightly, and she held him tighter.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Johnny said. “I can’t help how I am when I’m with you.”
“I know,” she answered. “Sssh. I know.” She brought her hand up and placed it gently over his mouth. The expression in his eyes alarmed her: he looked so sincere, and Liza knew just how terrified a boy like Johnny Bennett would be if he suspected he actually loved a woman like her. It was okay to indulge himself in one last pleasure binge, to spend himself sexually in one prolonged and carefree spree; but he would not be able to approve of himself if he felt true affection for a woman he had just fucked as if she were a whore. He was, in his own way, as Victorian as Charles Dickens in his morality, and Liza knew she had to act fast if she were to keep the situation light—if she were to keep him.