by Kristen Mae
We only spent an hour in Pisa—the Leaning Tower was closed on Sundays so we couldn’t go inside—and arrived in Viareggio sooner than we’d planned. The beach was only a few blocks’ walk from the train station, down an avenue lined with pastel-colored tourist shops, gelaterias and cafés. We bought coffee and then browsed through a few of the shops, taking our time to examine the various trinkets and novelties. It felt a little like that first day we’d strolled the sidewalks together in downtown Conch Garden—the day I’d seen the puppy tied to the chair. The day I’d first really started to come unraveled.
The beach itself was dotted with what seemed like hundreds of blue-and-white striped lounge chairs, each outfitted with an umbrella in the same fabric. Most of the chairs were occupied, but we found a pair near the water and prepared to settle in, kicking our flip-flops off and shaking out our towels. Claire was sitting behind me, about to smear sunblock on my back, when a young man approached our umbrella. He wore an official-looking uniform and spoke in clipped Italian, but I only understood “Excuse me, ladies,” and everything after that was a jumble.
Claire, with greasy, sunblock-covered hands, reached into her bag, pulled out a wad of Euros, and tossed them on the lounge chair in front of him, responding to him in Italian too quick for me to understand.
“Grazie, signore,” he said, but hesitated and stared at us as if there was something else he thought he should say.
Claire swept my hair aside and onto my shoulders, then flattened her sticky palms against my back. “I think this guy wants a show,” she whispered against my ear. She spread the sunblock down the center of my back until her fingers dipped deep into my bathing suit bottoms, then swooped her hands up my sides again, her movement far slower than was necessary.
“Claire!” I hissed, my ears flaming, as the poor hotel employee finally slunk away. We broke into stifled giggles. “What did he want, anyway?”
“To tell us the chairs are only for hotel guests.”
“What did you say to him?”
“That we are hotel guests.”
I laughed and let her finish massaging the sunblock into my skin, wishing like hell we were the only ones on the beach.
I applied her sunblock too, being extra generous because of how pale she was.
She smiled up at me as I positioned the umbrella so she was more in the shade. “You’re as bad as Mike, you know.”
My heart clenched at his name, at the way she said it with that familiarity only a spouse can have for their mate. But, as easily as I’d been jealous of Raymond, who was obviously not my competition, I couldn’t seem to muster any ill feeling toward Mike. There was only dread—dread at the prospect of returning Claire to him when we got back. I lay down on my stomach in my chair beside her.
Part of me was scrambling to find a way to keep her. Let it be our secret? Tell our husbands we were going to be a thing and they would simply have to find a way to be cool with it? Did people do that? I remembered Mike’s bold suggestion, but the thought of being with him made me cringe. I didn’t want to share Oren or Claire either, with anyone. I wanted them both for myself. Selfish.
I tried to imagine how I would be with Oren when I got back. I wondered if I could translate some of the things my body was doing with Claire into my relationship with him—if I could ever let go with him as I had with her. My heart stuttered with panic at the thought.
“You’re thinking again, aren’t you?”
I turned on my side to face her. She was gazing at me, her cheek smashed into the lounge chair cushion.
A dirty-looking seagull waddled primly through the sand behind her, near where she’d laid her bag and flip-flops. “I can’t help it.”
The seagull pecked at invisible debris beside Claire’s flip-flop while keeping a watchful eye on us, as if trying to determine whether we were dangerous predators or a potential source of food.
“I know. Me neither.”
The seagull paced back and forth, somehow always scrutinizing us no matter which way he turned his head.
I sighed. “What are we going to do?”
Claire snorted and shrugged. “What can we do? We’ll go back to real life, and we’ll deal with whatever comes.”
My heart sank, but I nodded agreement. The seagull took a shit on Claire’s flip-flop. Of course.
Her face was turning red. A muscle in her jaw twitched.
“Claire?”
“You know, I thought this was going to be easier.” She turned her head away from me.
I wanted to climb onto her chair with her, cradle her, spoon my body against hers. Instead, I shifted my arm across the few inches between us, linked my pinky with hers, and squeezed. She squeezed back.
We passed the remainder of the afternoon eating gelato and wading in the dark waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. We talked and laughed about trivial things, told stories from our childhoods, and exchanged memories of conservatory life. It was a good day.
Later, when it was time to leave, I forgot to tell her about the bird shit on her flip-flop, and she stepped right in it.
TWENTY-SIX
Our last week in Italy would be the busiest of the three. The faculty quartet was scheduled to perform Friday, and the students would hold their last concert Saturday evening. I couldn’t decide if I felt relieved or distraught that the new rotation had Claire and me coaching different groups for the week. I was finding it harder and harder to act normal in her presence, yet being apart from her was unbearable. I could hardly see straight when she wasn’t in the room.
I’d been assigned to coach the piano quintet with Paolo, and Claire and Katrina were handling the sextet. Iris was in my group again. At breakfast Monday morning, she sipped cappuccino and chattered with her girlfriends like a typical college-aged girl. Her perkiness irritated me. I don’t know why I expected her to look unhappy or damaged. It shouldn’t have disappointed me that she was able to be happy, pretend or otherwise. She smiled and waved at me, but I couldn’t make myself return the pleasantries. I shook my head at her and sipped my own coffee, feeling a guilty sense of satisfaction when I saw her face fall. I wondered if she knew I’d found out about her going home with a stranger.
At rehearsal she assumed a quiet, reserved demeanor, focusing intensely on her music and glancing at me out of the corner of her eye as if trying to assess my feelings for her.
At our quartet rehearsal Monday night, we worked through a new Mozart quartet and Borodin’s Quartet No. 2. We’d also added Puccini’s Chrysanthemums quartet, a short, moving piece that would fit nicely between the two larger works. I had suggested the piece to the others back in the States when we were putting together our program for our Italy concert, acting as if it was a work I’d always wanted to play. The truth was that I had stumbled across it in my anguish over my inappropriate feelings for Claire, and in an insane moment of masochism, I’d suggested we play it together as a group. Its aching harmonies so perfectly captured that unrequited lust I’d had in the weeks leading up to Italy.
We used the last thirty minutes of rehearsal to work on Chrysanthemums. After the run-through I stole a discreet look at Claire, wondering if she would remember that I’d been the one to suggest the piece, and, if she did remember, if she would realize why. The piece was really about loss, an elegy Puccini wrote while grieving the death of a friend. How strange that I’d grieved the loss of Claire before I’d ever laid a hand on her, though I suppose that’s all unrequited lust is: the loss of something we never possessed to begin with.
She didn’t look at me. She flipped her music back to the first page and said, “I think we’re taking it a little too slow. We can still capture the melancholy of the music without turning it into a dirge and boring the audience to tears.”
“I don’t think it sounds like a dirge,” I said like a pouty teenager.
Katrina gave me a strange look but addressed the group. “Let’s try it a couple of ticks faster. Claire, you’re starting, so you lead.”
It�
�s just a stupid six-minute piece of music. Relax. I was being much too careless with my emotions. I followed along with the group and was irritated to find the new speed invigorated the music. The melancholy still dominated, but the piece was subtly more romantic at the faster tempo—it dug at me the same way it had back in the States when I’d first heard it, carving out a hollowness in my chest, reminding me of everything I would be forced to give up.
“Damn,” said Raymond when we finished. “I can’t believe I didn’t know this piece before today. Gets me right here.” He pounded his chest with his fist.
Claire looked at me innocently. “So, Hazel, do you like it fast?”
Jesus. “Yep. It’s good.” I stared hard at my music and kept my face neutral.
Later that evening in my apartment living room, Claire found a recording of Chrysanthemums online and plugged it into her portable speaker. As the opening notes rang out, she came to me where I sat on the couch and knelt between my legs with her arms around my hips, her head resting on my abdomen.
I said, “Do you understand? Did you hear?”
“Of course I heard, Hazel.” She was pushing my shirt up and putting her mouth all over the bare skin of my stomach. “It’s just so fucking sad,” she said between kisses.
For a second I felt like I might cry, but she pulled my pants down and kissed me over my underwear. During the next six minutes, she did things to me that made it so that every time we rehearsed Chrysanthemums I blushed through the entire thing.
“I miss you.”
It was Tuesday afternoon between rehearsal and dinner, and Oren and I were talking via internet chat. We hadn’t spoken since the weekend. I sat perched on the edge of the couch in my little apartment staring at the computer on the wooden coffee table. I was alone in the apartment—Claire was out giving a lesson to one of the cello students.
“I miss you too.” It was hard to say because it was barely true.
“You’re tan.”
“I am?” I had to think for a moment. “Oh, right…I went to the beach with Claire on Sunday. Guess I got a little burned.” I remembered Claire’s pinky linked in mine, how she’d turned her head away from me. How, later, we’d taken a cool shower and I’d drunk from her mouth as the water rained down between us.
“With Claire, huh? How is she doing?” He was in pain—it was all over his face.
“She’s fine.” How much did he know? What had Mike told him?
He looked away from me and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. My stomach dropped.
“I know something happened, Hazel. Or is happening.” He turned back to face me. “I want to put that out there so it’s not in between us like some big secret.”
He knew enough. I took a deep breath, but maintained eye contact. “I’m so sorry, Oren.”
“No, Hazel, you were honest about your feelings. I’m okay. I gave you the go ahead. It’s worse that you’re so awkward about it, like you’re afraid I’m going to freak out or something. You’ve done nothing, nothing wrong, okay?”
I looked down. “But…it’s different than I thought it would be, Oren.” My voice cracked and I quickly brushed a tear away.
He made a huffing noise. “I can see that. And I’m jealous as hell, I’ll admit it. The worst is that Mike keeps bringing it up, and he sees things a lot differently than I do. I don’t begrudge him his way of thinking, but I have asked him not to bring it up anymore.”
“You guys…talked about us?” I cringed, a hot wave of shame rushing over me.
“If the roles were reversed, wouldn’t you?”
I furrowed my brow. “Since when do I talk about those sorts of things? But anyway, it’s irrelevant because I would never agree to an arrangement like this…oh, god.” I covered my face with my hands to hide the tears that came. “I’m so selfish. I’m so very, very selfish!” I felt horribly guilty for putting Oren through this, yet not guilty enough to end my affair with Claire. I had her for six more days and I knew I was going to consume her during every available moment, no matter the cost. I was a monster.
“Hazel, please stop. You’re fine.” He let me cry for a moment longer, then said, “I want to tell you something I’ve been thinking about, and I’ve tried to tell you before but you never let me finish. Okay? Now quit crying and hear me out.”
I took another deep breath and wiped my tear-streaked face with my sleeve, like a little kid. The least I could do was listen to him.
“I pay attention, Hazel. I know you work hard to hide it, and you hide it well, I’m not complaining, but it’s obvious that you’re not comfortable, that you’ve… Well, the way we do things isn’t exactly, uh, normal.”
I winced. No, I didn’t want to hear this. Not now. Not ever. “Please, Oren, don’t.”
I stood up and walked away from the computer, pushing my hair away from my face. Motos zoomed by on the streets below, and the smell of garlic floated to me from a neighboring apartment. I stared at the terracotta rooftops outside the open window.
“Hazel,” said Oren’s voice from the computer. “Get back to where I can see you. Please.”
I sat down again, but I was finding it harder and harder to breathe, and my hands were shaking.
“I’ll say it fast.” His face was determined, but his eyes were kind, imploring. “I know it’s not easy for you. But still, you’ve given and given and given to make me happy. And I let you do that. All these years I’ve been taking from you, knowing it, and I’m no better than—no better…fuck. God, I’m so fucking sorry, Hazel.” He put his head in his hands. His shoulders heaved.
My throat burned with regret. Not regret for Claire, exactly, but for all the ugly things in my past I couldn’t change. My hands were clasped on my knees, shaking. My knees shook too. All of me shook. Yeah, I’d given to Oren. I’d given him my soggy rape leftovers and was about as entertaining to make love to as a slab of rotten meat. I’d given him what scraps remained after the good, pure stuff had been taken from me. Worse, all the late-blooming lust had spilled out of me to someone else. I’d given it all to Claire.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“Please don’t be sorry, Hazel. It’s just…dammit, does she…I mean, fuck! with her…you’re different with her, right?” He looked up at me with sad, desperate eyes, and I knew he was begging me to assure him that I was as awkward and cold with Claire as I was with him.
“Oren, please.” I saw myself, the way I was with Claire, swollen lips and bedroom eyes, hungry hands and mouth, frantic, heavy-breathed and open-legged, and I transposed that image of myself into a fresh new scene where there was no Claire, but only Oren. A massive wall of panic roared toward me like a tsunami, ready to dash me against the rocks.
“I knew it.” Oren’s jaw tensed and the veins in his temples bulged. The computer screen swam in front of me. Beads of sweat sprang up on my scalp. My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t only that I’d imagined myself being sexually vulnerable with Oren. It was also because being with Oren meant not being with Claire.
“I shouldn’t have asked that,” Oren said. His voice sounded like it was coming at me through a paper towel tube. “I’m not dealing with this at all like I thought I would. But that’s on me, not you. Wait—Hazel?”
“Would you please…stop…talking!” I screeched, and he fell into stunned silence.
I choked air into my lungs and let the tremors ripple through me. Oren was watching me closely now, quiet and patient, waiting for me to come back to myself. After a few minutes, my hands still shook, but I was able to breathe again.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked, his voice almost a whisper.
I hung my head. “I’m sorry. I feel…stupid.”
He shook his head, exasperated. “I won’t push you anymore. And don’t feel stupid. You’re not stupid. You’re going through some shit. We’ll figure everything out when you get back, okay?”
“You are too good for me.”
“Stop it, Hazel.”
&
nbsp; I winced again.
“Talk in a couple of days?”
I forced a smile. “Of course.”
“All right, then.” He leaned forward, then pulled back. “But one more thing—promise me now that you won’t let this conversation mess up the rest of your week. Whatever you’ve been…uh, doing…if you’re enjoying yourself…uh, keep doing it.” He scratched his head, flinching with embarrassment.
I blushed, horribly, obviously, painfully. And poor Oren, it stung him to see me blush for someone else; it was evident in the wounded twist of his expression, but he laughed in spite of it. “We’ll work everything out,” he said. “When you come back.”
“I really do love you, Oren.” I meant it, truly meant it, this time without qualification, more so than when I’d said I missed him. My heart felt too big for my chest. I didn’t deserve him, and I wanted to tell him so, but I knew he wouldn’t want to hear it.
“Love you too, Hazel.”
“Oren is jealous,” I whispered.
Claire’s head rested on my shoulder, her legs entangled in mine, her fingertips brushing my abdomen. We’d just finished taking turns going down on each other, and the taste of her still lingered in my mouth.
Her hand stilled. “He is? Did you talk to him?”
“This afternoon. He’d told he didn’t want details, but I think Mike might’ve given him some. Probably too many.”
Her cheek tightened as she cringed against my shoulder. “Oh, man. I’m sorry, Hazel.”
“He doesn’t want us to stop, though.”
She propped herself up on her elbow so she could look at me. Her eyes were serious. “But he’s hurting?”
I already wished I hadn’t said anything. “Well, but he made me promise not to stop. He said we’ll figure everything out when I get back.” I could hear my voice: unsteady, pleading, desperate.
She looked at me for a while longer and then laid her head back down on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and wondered if she could hear the furious pounding of my heart.