“Since we got married.” She hesitated to tell him how long she was married.
“Always just the two of you,” he remarked, making it sound as though it were a conclusion he had just reached.
“Yes. We have no children. We tried, but…please, sit down.”
“Thanks.” He did so. She thought he looked so much bigger than Bart did at the table. The sweater emphasized the wideness of his shoulders and made him appear even taller.
After she had poured the two cups of coffee at the counter, she was sorry she had done it there. It meant turning and carrying them to the table, and she already could feel the trembling in her body. She was sure the cup and saucer would shake, so even though it looked silly, she took one cup in both hands and brought it to him.
“My, but you’re careful,” he said.
“What? Oh.”
“No wonder this house looks so immaculate.”
“I suppose I am a little neurotic about it.”
“It’s a good neurosis.”
She went back for her cup, thinking how important it was to keep talking and to prevent long moments of silence. She was afraid of what she would reveal in her face, afraid of what would come between them when they stared at each another. Already, her heart was pounding and she stumbled nervously over syllables.
“So how do you like Centerville?”
“It’s a very nice place. Pleasant. All the people I have met are friendly. Of course, I haven’t met that many. Parents and school people mostly.”
“And kids. You have some group, I see. There’s a regular parade of them afternoons and evenings.”
“It’s going well,” he said.
“Were you always just a…I mean…”
“Just a tutor? Yes.” He smiled.
“I didn’t mean to make it sound insignificant.”
“That’s all right. I know it is rare for someone to make his living solely as a tutor nowadays. Usually, they teach and tutor on the side for extra income.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’ve made it into a specialty—one-on-one instruction,” he said and leaned toward her, his face becoming serious and intense. “In this age of computers, high tech, mass communications, people long for personal contact. Especially kids who can be made to feel insignificant and unwanted in so many ways, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Although I must admit, I never thought about it quite like that.”
“We’ve come a long way from the one-room school house. Today’s schools are growing increasingly impersonalized with their objective marking systems and their standardized tests. They punch you out on a card and program you into oblivion. Actually,” he continued after he sipped some coffee, “I’m an anomaly. In some ways I’m very old-fashioned because I’m not afraid of personal relationships. In fact I encourage them.”
“I think that’s very nice,” she said. He could talk her into believing anything, she thought.
“Do you?” He paused and looked at her hard. His question was more demanding than it seemed.
“Yes,” she said softly, “although I don’t have as many close relationships as I would like.”
“Really? I would have thought…I mean, in such a small community…”
“I have friends, acquaintances.” There was another long pause and that intense gaze of his. “What brought you to Centerville? I’m curious.”
“I like small communities, places where people get to know each other better. There’s more opportunity for personal relationships, even if there aren’t as many as we’d like.”
“You grew up in a small town, I take it.”
“Yes. Very much like this one. And you lived here all your life?”
“Yes. Things were different when I was a little girl growing up here though. There was always a lot of activity in the summer. All the bungalows and small hotels were kept well and were filled with tourists. There was an excitement then and…” She stopped, embarrassed by her enthusiastic description. “I make it sound as though I’m a hundred years old.”
“Not at all. I like it when you get excited like that. It brings a light into your eyes that’s fascinating.”
She looked at him and then looked down quickly. It was happening and she couldn’t prevent it. She felt herself slipping, sliding down like someone easing into a warm bath. She felt a stirring within her, and saw the image of a flower opening to greet the sun. Is that how I really feel, she wondered, like someone living in shadows most of the time?
“Would you like some more?”
“More?”
“Coffee.”
“No thank you,” he said. She could let it go now, she thought. She could end the conversation and indicate he should leave. But she didn’t.
“What do you do all day?” she asked. “I mean, before your students arrive.”
“I devote part of it to myself, just like you do. I exercise; I read. Then I prepare my lessons. That takes time because each student gets individualized treatment.”
“They’re there all late afternoon and into the evening,” she commented, not realizing she was revealing how much she watched his house and the things he did.
“I try not to go beyond eleven o’clock.”
“And a good chunk of your Sunday, too.”
“I see you’ve been watching me,” he said, smiling. She blushed.
“I…well, we don’t miss much on this block.”
“That’s what I meant about small communities.” He put his cup down and looked about again. “This is a nice house.”
“Thank you. We have two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. I have the back room converted into my exercise room and my husband has a small office next to it.”
“Insurance?”
“Yes. All his life,” she added, unable to delete a note of sadness. “Not romantic or exciting.”
“Very few careers really are, and the ones we think might be are usually matter-of-fact to those who have them. I’m in insurance, too, you know.”
“You are?”
“Figuratively speaking. Parents use me as an insurance policy or a last resort.”
“Oh. Yes, I suppose you could think of it that way.”
“I do.” He smiled at her again. “You really do have lovely hair,” he said.
“Thank you. I keep after it.”
“Exercise has done well by you.”
“I try.”
There was another long pause and she felt if she didn’t speak up, he would go on staring at her for hours. It wasn’t that his look was unnerving; she was comfortable with it, too comfortable perhaps. She felt herself on the verge of drifting and sensed a warm glow coming into her face.
“And how do you spend your day?” he asked.
“Filled with trivial things.”
“If you feel that way, why don’t you look for work, develop a career?”
“I’ve been thinking about doing that. Vaguely,” she added and laughed. “I suppose I’ve gotten spoiled.”
“We’ve all got to be careful about that. It happens too easily. Have you worked before?”
“A secretary. In Barton’s firm.”
“Why not go back to it?”
“I wouldn’t want to work there now. Barton brings the work home enough as it is. With me there, too…besides, I don’t know if I could go back to being a secretary. I’m rusty when it comes to skills. I can get proficient with a typewriter, but all those letter-writing skills and grammar and…”
“Be glad to tutor you.”
“What?” She smiled widely.
“Help you bone up. No problem. Free of charge, too. A neighborly gesture.” They both laughed.
“I might just take you up on that.”
“You don’t scare me.”
She laughed again. Then she got up and took the cups and the saucers to the sink. For a moment he just sat there staring at her. She felt his gaze. When she turned around, he was up, too. Neither of them spoke, but his eyes d
rew her to him in such a magnetic way, she felt unable to turn aside. Seconds seemed like minutes.
“I can usually tell about people,” he said. The tone of his voice had changed. It was soft and soothing and resonant like the voice of that analyst she had gone to last year. “You’re different.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a quality to you, a depth. You have greater needs, don’t you? You’re not satisfied with what you have in this town. Sometimes, you feel like you’re on an island by yourself.”
“Yes,” she said. It was only a whisper.
“Everyone’s a stranger, even people you’ve known all your life…especially people you’ve known all your life.”
“It’s true.”
“I’ve been watching you; I’ve seen the way you look at things; I can practically hear your thoughts. I was the same way so I know what it is to be imprisoned within yourself, to have all these perceptions and feelings, to have all these unsaid words dying in echoes, to be unable to share any real discoveries and interesting thoughts. You live in the world of the deaf and the dumb and you see and hear.”
He was much closer now. Suddenly, his face was only inches from hers, his eyes holding her even before his hand touched her waist. Her lips parted slightly as he brought his to them. The kiss was soft, undemanding, exploratory. She turned into him, fitting her body neatly within his embrace, welcoming the strength in his arms and the hard, manly torso that pressed against her breasts.
Before she could speak, he scooped her into his arms and carried her out of the kitchen as easily as he would carry a baby. She had no desire to protest, although the words formed themselves dutifully in her mind. Almost as quickly as they did, however, she subdued them, pushed them under the surface of her consciousness, dooming them to the oblivion of distant memories. She wanted what was happening even more than she had suspected she wanted it. It encompassed all the forbidden things there ever were in her life, all those things her parents had denied her because she was too young or they were too dangerous to do; all those things she had denied herself because she couldn’t throw off the hood of fear that shadowed them.
As he turned to the stairway, she closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest. With her body cupped in his arms, she let herself drift into fantasies. A flood of previously frustrated images charged forward, now released by her determination not to refuse those darker, unseen voices that had called to her in dreams, that had tempted her with “evil” scenarios reaching as far back as she could remember. This was the culmination of it all, her most daring act.
She didn’t open her eyes until she felt herself being lowered to her bed. Then she looked up at him, but neither of them spoke. He lifted his sweater over his head and unbuttoned his shirt. Naked to the waist, he sat beside her. She watched his fingers release each of the buttons on her blouse. After he did them all, he paused before lifting the material from her breasts, and looked at her as if requesting her final approval before going further. She merely closed her eyes again.
Never had lovemaking with Barton lasted so long. Her chest ached from the heavy breathing and her skin burned with the redness that had come over it in little patches all over her body. Her legs tightened as though she had been doing aerobics for hours.
She didn’t remember exactly how it ended. He brought her to another climax and then withdrew. Grateful for the respite, she turned over and embraced the pillow. She felt him rise off the bed. She didn’t turn to watch him dress, but she heard the rustling of clothing. What she was waiting for was her heartbeat to slow up and her breathing to calm down. By the time it did and she turned on her back again to talk to him, he was gone.
He had slipped from the room so silently and so quickly, she had the momentary feeling that he had been a ghost or the figment of her imagination. The realization that he wasn’t there sobered her even more quickly. She sat up and listened for him.
“Adam?”
Perhaps he went to the bathroom, she thought. She got up, but when she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she stopped abruptly. Her skin was patchy red in so many spots, including her neck; her hair was completely wild; and her face looked so flushed it was as though she had a terrific fever.
“Adam?”
She went to the doorway, but she heard nothing. Puzzled, she went back to the bed, put on her clothes, and walked downstairs again. He was nowhere in the house.
She opened the front door and stepped outside, feeling both disappointed and annoyed. Old man Cutler was walking his dog, a large mixed poodle that looked as tired and as senile as did the old man. It was hard to determine who was walking whom.
“Hello, Ellen,” he said. Oh no, she thought, he can talk for hours.
“Do you smell something burning?” she asked.
“Burning?”
“Oh, my eggs!” she screamed and turned back into the house, closing the door quickly behind her.
A mixture of emotions seized her. First she laughed hysterically at what she had just done, how cleverly she had escaped from the old man; then she realized that Adam was gone, that she was exhausted but high, that she was excited but afraid. All of it came back to her, rushing over her in a mixture of images—Adam’s smile, his kiss, her dreamy trip up the stairs, the passion, the violence of their lovemaking, her return to consciousness and reality, old man Cutler’s surprised expression, and the sound of her own laughter.
She looked at herself in the little entranceway wall mirror. My God, she thought, look at me. What did I do?
Her laughter turned to tears, her tears back to laughter. She hurried upstairs and stripped quickly to get into a shower. The hot and cold water revived her. Afterward, she sat by the vanity table rubbing cream into her face until she brought herself back to the softness and color she wanted. She brushed her hair neatly into place this time and dressed again, this time putting on her bra and panties. When all that was completed, she went downstairs.
She stood by the front window in the living room a moment debating what to do. It was her day for food shopping and she did want to look for that wallpaper for the bathroom. The fact that she could recuperate so quickly and get back into the ordinariness of her life intrigued her. It made her question what had really happened. How much of it was real and how much had she imagined?
Realizing she had to put it all into the back of her mind in order to function, she moved quickly to get her things together. She stopped for a moment only when she went through the kitchen and saw his coffee cup alongside hers in the sink. It was almost like something at the end of a “Twilight Zone” episode, an object that proved the fantastic event really had occurred.
She took up the cups quickly and put them in the dishwasher, for now she thought of them as evidence. It was only then that she realized she felt no sense of remorse, no sense of guilt. Perhaps that was because it had all happened so quickly and so passionately it seemed beyond actuality, she thought. At least that was the way it would be for now.
But what would be later, especially when she faced Barton? Would her face reveal anything? Would he, in a moment, sense her betrayal? It was like that in so many of the romance stories she read; was it like that in real life?
When she stepped outside and the cool, clear air caressed her face, she paused. She looked back at her house as though she wanted to press it forever into memory. She felt like someone leaving home forever.
She started toward her car, but stopped to look over at the old Taylor house. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he gone inside or somewhere downtown? She considered going over to knock on the door and confront him, but the street was coming alive. People were taking out the garbage, dogs were barking, there was more traffic. It was too late.
But why did he leave so quickly? Was he ashamed? Did he feel guilty, afraid? Did he hear something and think Barton was coming home? None of these ideas seemed right. It had to be something else, but what?
Wondering about him like this brought her though
ts back to the end of their lovemaking. God, it was good, she thought; it was so good and yet…there was something, something gnawing at her consciousness, some thought trying to make itself clear.
She opened the car door and got in behind the wheel. She started the engine and reached for the radio dial. But she stopped and looked at his house again.
That was it, she thought. He hadn’t said a word to her from the moment he carried her upstairs to the moment he left. There were no words of affection, not even any sounds…no grunts, no moans, no sighs, nothing.
It was the silence, the weird, deep silence. All the sounds she had heard were the sounds she had made. It was as though he had come to her house to accomplish a predetermined task and then left, having done it. What was the task? What had he done?
Suddenly she felt more like a woman who had been raped than a woman who had made love. After all, she had just slept with a man and made the most intimate contact with him that she could, and as far as she was concerned, he was still a stranger.
It was as though it had never happened.
She would try to keep it that way for as long as she could.
8
The four of them walked together through the village toward Mr. Lucy’s house. There was something they had among them, something that made them special and strong. They were all aware of it, but Johnny sensed it the most. He felt as though there was a protective field around them. An invisible chain linked them so tightly to one another that they moved as one.
They faced forward as they walked, their heads high and proud, their posture improved but arrogant. Johnny led them; they hovered beside and right behind him. The other three were vividly alert to his every move. When he stopped, they stopped; when he looked to the right, they all looked to the right to see what had attracted his attention.
He was cognizant of the way people looked at them. He saw many pedestrians stop to stare; he saw people looking interestedly out of storefronts; he saw drivers turn their way; he even caught sight of an elderly woman, Mrs. Melenick, gazing down at them from her third-story apartment above Feldman’s Fish Market, her face, gray and skeletonlike, framed in the dusty pane, a study in age captured like a face in a cameo.
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