Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  I was halfway through my boxing session, my gloved fists pounding into the leather-clad palms of my long-suffering trainer, when I realized in an epiphany of guilt whose face was dancing in front of my eyes. Madeleine. That smug look that glinted in her eyes as she said, “Market forces.” Whack! “The noughties generation.” Thud! “Retro-Seventies.” Smack! How dare she? Who the fuck does she think she is challenging my judgment in front of my whole staff? We might be lovers but that doesn’t mean we’re equals!

  Does she realize she’s undermined my authority; worse still, made me look like some old fart in front of kids I’m old enough to have fathered, kids whose opinions actually matter, opinions that can seep through the walls of Pear and infiltrate the industry like a fatal rising damp? Does she know how many people want to see me fail? For fuck’s sake, Play 360 are limited, they’re this season’s fourteen-year-old suburban chick’s band, tomorrow’s history. That’s their market: short but truly profitable if milked in the right way—which is not to a bunch of inner-city, pot-smoking, neo-grunge male hippies who collectively amount to about a hundred sales and about two hundred illegally burned CDs. Hare-Gives-Lip. Fuck that. Hasn’t she taken in anything I’ve taught her?

  I slam away until my T-shirt is soaked, the internal soliloquy stops drumming against my temples, and my knuckles begin to bruise under my leather gloves. It’s only walking back from the gym enveloped in that delicious vacant sensation one gets from strenuous exercise, watching bats engrave their way across the dusk, that I realize why I was so bloody furious. This is the first time she’s ever disagreed with me. My Madeleine. After all, I created her, shaped her in the way I like, the perfect partner: amicable, mellow, a pillowy body of adoration I can sink my battle-weary cock into. A highly crafted counterbalance to the constant barrage of criticism I go home to every night. And now my invention, my Eve, is rebelling. It’s enough to make a man weep. The best I can hope for is that it’s a temporary aberration—you know, one of those incomprehensible hormonal mists women often disappear into—and that my Madeleine will reemerge like a freshly scrubbed car, glistening with unconditional admiration. She’d better fucking do.

  I reach my beautiful house, with my beautiful wife framed by my beautiful pristine Federation shutters, and a wave of claustrophobia, the sense that this is my defined future forever and ever, sweeps over me and almost knocks me to the dog-turd pavement. Because, as I’m sure a few of you habitually unfaithful husbands will understand, marriage is a delicate business. Like an intricate piece of machinery, it requires a sensitive balancing system. Real time with wife equals downtime with mistress, the mathematical equation of which is something like four hours with the wife can be eradicated by half an hour with the mistress. I read that somewhere—was it Einstein? Like I said, marriage is a fragile equilibrium not to be recommended for the fainthearted. And so, with that balance totally thrown, I pick myself up off the pavement and enter the house with unresolved fury buzzing around me like a swarm of irritated bush flies.

  Women can be scary at the best of times, but they’re most frightening when through some unfathomable alchemy they’ve somehow managed to work out what’s going on. Personally I subscribe to the theory of alien abduction, only I think it was alien abandonment and women were introduced onto the planet as an extraterrestrial colonizing species whose sole quest is to infect us all.

  So there’s my wife at the door, looking sexier than I’ve seen her in a long time, and my first thought is, shit, what anniversary have I forgotten? While I’m busy panicking she leads me to the dining room where she’s actually laid the table and very nicely, thank you very much. Our best silverware, cloth napkins, even candles. Then she serves me my favorite—duck à l’orange with steamed snow peas and wild rice. Still suspicious I begin to eat, steeling myself for the moment she’s going to ask me for something, like a holiday or some ridiculous new gadget we need like a hole in the head, but instead she says, “Darling, how was work? Is everything okay?”

  It’s the sweetest voice I’ve heard out of her since we last had sex, which has got to be at least four months ago and, by coincidence, occurred on the night she asked me for a Mercedes SUV. So, gagging with suspicion and the parson’s nose, I think, fuck it, I’ll try the Play 360 dilemma on her, leaving the names out of course. And guess what? She agrees with me. She actually says she thinks my strategy, although short-term, is good. I swear I harden up just hearing her say the words, “Darling, your commerical nose is always right. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  Pathetic, I know, but you’ve got to understand—this is beyond the Bay of Pigs, beyond Tehran, beyond East Timor. Our marriage is one of those entrenched guerrilla wars that drags on with each surprise attack from the undergrowth. This is Vietnam, and, guys, she’s the Viet Cong. So I’m still waiting for the innocent-looking veiled woman sitting in the corner to blow up when, smiling mysteriously, Georgina takes my hand and leads me upstairs.

  I’m sitting beside the bed fully clothed, thinking what is wrong with this picture, when my wife drops to her knees and reaches for my fly.

  Sometimes, when you’ve been with the one person for a very long time, you stop seeing them altogether. They blend in with the furniture, become an inanimate object that is entirely recognizable, entirely predictable. It becomes unimportant to hear them or see them clearly because you already know what they are going to say, where they are going to move to next. And you realize that a profound ennui has infiltrated every centimeter of your being and it will take a completely unexpected act to jolt yourself and your loved one out of such a predicament. I suspect that’s how Surrealism was created—which happens to be the subject of the lecture I attended today and is a direct, or perhaps I should say lateral cause of why I am now kneeling in front of my husband in my very good Yves Saint Laurent suit about to take his penis into my mouth.

  I blame Magritte, or should it be Dali? Whichever, there is definitely something surreal about the sight of my husband’s erect member against the dark wool of the Paul Smith suit I made him buy that inspires me.

  As you can tell by the objectivity of the thoughts running through my head, I’m not exactly emotionally engaged in the act of fellatio. Until, that is, the sound of Robert murmuring my name floats down in a loving, surprised, and—I’m rather embarrassed to admit—thankful tone. Encouraged, I quicken my pace, tightening my grip as Robert groans and moans my name over and over. His fingers are winding through my hair, but not in that I have control, I will push your head down way, but tenderly, as if his amazement has made even his fingertips shy. As if all his normal defenses have been breached by the audacity of my act.

  And I love him then for his excitement. I love him for his vulnerability, for his cry as he buckles at the knees and shoots deep into my throat. I swallow with the panache of a whore and, in that same moment, find myself trying to banish the thought that yes, I can do it as well, maybe better, than her—the other woman, the young blond, the invisible third party who is always between us.

  But then as I stand I see that Robert, this great bear of a man, has turned scarlet with awkwardness as he stutters an apology. He kisses me with the hunger of youth, with the greed of old love that flares up in gratitude. And to my own amazement I believe him. I believe that he loves me. But before I can say anything he has me down on the bed, my panties yanked off, as if he is seeing me for the first time, as if we are a couple of clumsy virgin teenagers racing against our own inexperience. And he parts me to look at me. To study me.

  “Beautiful,” he whispers as I fight to stop the bubble of tears that is rising like a disastrous hiccup from somewhere below my heart-line. And his mouth is on me, his tongue tracing a quivering path across the inside of my thighs. Unbearably tantalizing, he teases me, circling around and around, his thumbs so gentle over my lips, over the tip of my clit, which feels as if it is unfurling and craning its little head up to reach him like the tendril of a plant, screaming touch me, touch me. His mouth is moving
slowly to the center of my pleasure; parting my lips he blows for a second before flickering across the top of me, his tongue a hot probing rod now as he takes all of me between his lips, sucking, licking, pulling open my pleasure like a great secret shame until, clutching at his hair, I come screaming like never before.

  And afterward, his cheek a burning weight against my thigh, I can feel both of us wondering…what now?

  It’s exactly like the magazine illustration, only gray. Gray with a silver shimmer. Almost two-tone if you hold it up to the light. It has long sleeves and a collar open to the chest with three small pearl buttons to fasten it. The hair, now spun into a light wool, has the texture of cashmere but a little coarser. As I stroke it I imagine what people will think, what animal they might guess the wool came from—an Angora goat? Some obscure Tibetan sheep? A sheepdog? But they’ll never think of human. I bury my nose in the soft folds and breathe deeply. Robert’s scent has been almost eradicated, replaced by the faint scent of cheap soap. I imagine the tiny Russian woman at the sink, standing on a box to reach it, kneading all that hair with her minute hands. She’s done a great job. At last I have something tangible, something actually made from his body.

  I ring work to tell them I’ll be in late, then I stretch the hair shirt out on the bed and wonder how it would look on him. Imagine his gray hair curling out at the collar, his fur that I love to sniff, to whirl around my fingers as I lay my head on his wide barrel of a chest, feeling safer than I ever do in the outside world. Daddy.

  Shit! Did I just call Robert daddy? I twist the word around in my mind and change it to a Marilyn Monroe sexy sort of daddy. Daddy Sophisticate who picks you up in the BMW. Daddy Sophisticate who drives you to the Aria awards because you are his little girl ripe with cleavage and dripping in diamonds. Daddy Sophisticate who yanks your pants down and puts you across his knee to spank you ever so lightly. Yum. I’m wet between the legs.

  Now I’m lying on top of the hair shirt. Close up I can see the forest of intricately woven hairs, each one plucked from a session of lovemaking, each one a chronicle of whispered promises—all of them broken. One loose thread sticks up like a deserting soldier. Without thinking I pull it out.

  The accident happened suddenly, out of the blue. I was driving the Mercedes when the steering wheel jumped out of my hands and turned itself toward the oncoming traffic. Luckily it was in Paddington late on a Monday morning and everyone else seemed to be at work or looking at real estate, so all that happened was I slammed into the side of a Volvo in the oncoming lane that was traveling at about 15k. I think I must have passed out after that, because all I remember is coming to slumped over the steering wheel with a sharp pain shooting through my midriff. There was a tapping sound, and as my mind cleared the face of the Volvo driver—a young Greek incongruously wearing a fireman’s uniform—came into focus as he knocked on the car window. I managed to unlock the door for him before the screaming siren announced the ambulance’s arrival.

  A shattered pelvis and one broken leg. Strangely, the Mercedes wasn’t damaged much at all.

  Robert was furious. I can only surmise it was a mixture of guilt and fear that somehow he might have been responsible for what he seemed to view as suicidal behavior.

  “Are you sure you didn’t fall asleep at the wheel?”

  “Robert, it was eleven in the morning!”

  “Well, there has to be some rational reason. Mercedes are virtually accident-proof.”

  “But not wife-proof evidently.”

  “Georgina, I’m sorry you broke your pelvis and I’m sorry about the leg, but it isn’t my fault. I’m just concerned that there might be some unconscious…”

  What a coward. He begins a sentence he can’t finish. I deliberately let him struggle for a few more seconds.

  “You think I want to kill myself?”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s just that you’re coming up to that time of life…”

  “Robert, I’m forty-two! I’m a good ten years off menopause.”

  “Well, would you like to provide another reason why a perfectly healthy woman in full control of her faculties swings into oncoming traffic in broad daylight?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. It was like the steering wheel was operating independently.”

  What could I say? It was the truth. Muttering something about losing his no-claims bonus he walked out, leaving a dozen roses and a box of candied fruit as consolation beside the bed. I hate candied fruit.

  I lie back on the pillows now, gazing at the harness that holds my leg and pelvis in place. What did happen? Am I really suffering from some kind of unconscious self-destructiveness? But as I reconstruct the accident the memory of the steering wheel swinging around by itself as if powered by some invisible external force becomes increasingly clear.

  I’m still lying on the bed with one hand on the hair shirt, the other between my thighs, when my mobile rings. I must have fallen asleep. Bleary-eyed I check the incoming number. Robert.

  “Hey, babe, listen—I can’t see you tonight, something’s come up. Georgina’s had an accident.”

  “That’s terrible.” Beat. Always play the sympathetic ear. Never display malice. “Is she okay?”

  “She’ll live, but it’s ugly—a broken pelvis and one busted leg. Weird thing is the car seems comparatively unscathed, although you should see the other guy’s. It’s gonna cost me my policy and some.”

  “What happened?”

  “She swerved into the opposite lane for no apparent reason. Crazy bitch.”

  “What time?”

  “About eleven this morning. Why?”

  “No reason. Robert…listen, I’m really sorry about the other morning. I had no right to question your judgment on Play 360. I’ve been thinking and you’re totally right about them.”

  Silence. I know he’s melting at the other end of the line. Fluffing up with self-justification. I love it when he gets like that, all bristly like a tomcat.

  “It’s okay, baby. But next time just agree with me, okay?”

  “From now on always. Hey, know what I’d do if you were lying right next to me this very moment…”

  The great thing about phone sex is that you can be anyone, have anyone’s body, fake the best orgasm you’ve ever had and the sheets stay clean. Plus you can embellish your lover’s penis with a few extra inches and he need never know. The bad thing is that after you’ve put the phone down you suddenly feel very foolish and more than a little desperate.

  Then I glance up at the clock and realize that I pulled the hair out of the shirt the very same moment Georgina swerved into the opposite lane. Suddenly I don’t feel so desperate after all.

  Fuck, I hate hospitals. I hate that nondescript color scheme, the stench you can’t help but associate with death and the ill-lit corridors that seem to wind on forever. Maybe it’s a flashback to a really bad acid trip that saw me in St. Vincent’s emergency ward fighting off a jungle of sprouting plastic chairs, or maybe it’s because a hospital’s where I think I’m going to end up dying. Either way, striding through some pus-green labyrinth trying to find my injured wife is not my idea of a happy Monday.

  And when I did locate her it gave me a horrible shock to see her so fine-boned and white, her body strapped up in a pulley. Almost as bad as getting the call from the ambulance guys. For a second I wondered what I’d feel if she’d actually died. Lost would be the best way to describe it. I mean, how many times have I wished her dead in the last sixteen years, and yet if it happened I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, wouldn’t know how to deal with the sudden gaping abyss.

  Oh, I’m not talking about lover stuff; that’s for the mistress—the clandestine adrenaline kick you get as you use the excuse of going out to buy a paper or walk the dog, or nick down for a packet of fags, so you can make the call on your mobile and feel your cock harden at the thought of someone wanting you outside of the zone of the house, the comforting routine of it all. Something to sharpen the hunter. No, I’m t
alking about the shadow of marriage, the extra, irritating yet comforting limb that grows with cohabitation. The wife limb that you take completely for granted, until it is chopped off and you find yourself whirling uselessly like a broken gyroscope, trying to find your equilibrium all over again. Some blokes never do. Pathetic fuckers, you see them everywhere—at the pub chain-smoking in the corner, at the back of the cinema pretending they’re waiting for a date—lurching around for the rest of their lives looking for that one piece of the machinery that will prop them up again. I’m telling you, Georgina’s accident scared the shit out of me.

  I’m not used to seeing my wife helpless. She’s the kind of woman who’s quite capable of setting up a stock portfolio on her own and only telling you about it five years later after you’ve stumbled upon some certificates.

  My first thought was, I’ll kill the bastard that did this to her, then I find out she was responsible for the accident. Suddenly I felt guilty, like she’d known about Madeleine all along and this was her perverse way of taking out her anger on me. Anyway, I had a word with the consultant and he agreed to quietly put her on some antidepressants and get her home as soon as possible on the proviso that I hire a private nurse. He gave me a card with a number to ring and told me she was young but reliable and that on my health insurance state-registered nurses were covered.

  I look down and see that the nurse has a Russian name. I smile. I’m partial to the Slavic aesthetic and I could do with some eye candy around the house, especially if poor Georgina is going to be landlocked for a few months. Feeling particularly benevolent I hire the nurse, then ring Madeleine to cancel our rendezvous tonight. Fuck, it’s hard being a man sometimes.

  I haven’t had any private time with him for over three weeks. Not even at work. Robert’s been flying out to cover the tour of one of our major acts, but then when I try to hook up with him he’s always rushing out for a meeting. I’m sure he’s doing it on purpose. It’s driving me crazy. At first he’d mutter stuff about being worried about Georgina, and how he has to stay home a lot to keep her company, and that he was really sorry but it’d all be over in a month or so when she was more mobile, then he stopped taking my calls. He has caller ID. I hate that, it’s so rude. He’s never done this before. He should be careful; I could cause a lot of trouble.